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seat was filled this past Friday for the Xolos’ 2-0 victory over Monterrey, but it might have been a lot closer if more people were actually sitting in their seats. Two or three deep around the lower bowl, fans stood throughout the game. People. Along with a few dogs.
And behind one goal is a full section of fans – known as La Masakr3 (“the massacre”) – that is worth the price of admission. (For the cheapest ticket, that price is a paltry $20 or so, depending on the exchange rate; a season pass for seats in the lower bowl near midfield can be had for just under $300.)
For a goal, the entire place loses its collective mind in a way that makes 20,000 sound like 50,000. And the knowledgeable crowd cheers loudly for various nuances.
But the movement behind the southern goal never stops. Nor the noise.
Giant red, white and black checkered flags wave constantly, passed from person to person, presumably when arms get tired. Chants and songs are shouted. Various portions of La Masakr3 jumps rhythmically throughout. A half-dozen drums are constantly keeping time to it all.
Think what “The Show” used to be and remains for portions of Aztecs basketball games – except for 45 minutes without end. Then after a break for halftime, for another unceasing 45 minutes.
Oh, and in a corner of the upper deck on the opposite end of the stadium, a smaller group of opposing fans are also banging a drum and jumping and chanting. The entire time.The Chinese vessel was found in a restricted area and attempted a collision maneuver, according to authorities.
Early this week, on either Monday or Tuesday, Argentina’s coast guard sank a Chinese fishing boat that it claimed was fishing illegally in a restricted area near Puerto Madryn. The Argentine Naval Prefecture, the country’s maritime police force, chased and sank the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 010 fishing vessel. According to Argentine officials, the Chinese ship was fishing within Argentina’s exclusive economic zone.
The Argentine Naval Prefecture released a video of its pursuit of the Chinese vessel on YouTube:
According to a statement released by the Agentine Naval Prefecture, the coast guard vessel in pursuit of the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 010 fired warning shots after attempting to establish radio contact. The Chinese fishing boat then reportedly turned off its lights and tried to evade the coast guard vessel. Ultimately, the statement notes that the Lu Yan Yuan Yu 010 attempted dangerous maneuvers, including an attempt to collide with the coast guard vessel in pursuit.
Following a collision attempt, the Argentine vessel – likely a Mantilla-class offshore patrol vessel – sank the fishing boat. The crew of the Chinese boat survived and was safely rescued. Three fishermen and the fishing boat’s captain were recovered by the Argentine coast guard while others boarded a nearby fishing boat.
Argentine authorities have notified the Chinese government of the incident. “The Foreign Ministry and Chinese embassy in Argentina have already lodged emergency representations with the Argentinian side and expressed serious concern about the incident, demanding Argentina launch an immediate probe and report on the details to China,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement. Chinese fishing vessels conduct similar activities all over the world.
In fact, in 2013, Argentine authorities caught an illegal Chinese fishing boat hoarding 180 tonnes of fresh squid caught in Argentina’s exclusive economic zone. Additionally, as the New York Times‘ Ian Urbina recently reported, Chinese poachers pose similar problems for the maritime authorities of small Pacific Island nations. Closer to home, in the South China Sea, China’s rapidly expanding fishing fleet has encountered similar friction with neighboring states.
It’s unknown what precisely the fishermen involved in Tuesday’s incident had caught or were in the process of catching, but this is far from the first time Chinese fishermen have been at the center of illegal fishing disputes far from Chinese shores.
Both Argentina and China are parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS), which defines exclusive economic zones as areas “beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea” where a coastal state has special sovereign rights, including for the exploration and exploitation of natural resources.This month we have a very exciting Piercing Model. He couldn’t find the right piercing for his needs and created his own! Our monthly Piercing Model of February will talk about his Trident Piercing, providing us with his experiences and tips.
Piercing Model: Marcus Freeman’s Trident Piercing
We are happy to announce that this month’s Piercing Models is Marcus Freeman from North Flordia, US. He has been looking far and wide for a piercer who could bend piercing jewelry. He asked tons of shops and not one was able to even attempt it, so he went and did it himself: “I used 3 different straight bars before I got it right.” We interviewed him about his experience with his Trident Piercing. You can follow more of him via his Instagram account @FreemanOnFire!
Thank you for this interview! Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
I’m just a 21-year-old that got my piercing in my small hometown and went on a journey to have what I consider one of the best tridents out there. I pride myself that the first thing people say is “Hey you have a pitchfork/trident in your ear!” Followed by “Does it go thru the bottom!?” Yes, it does!
I work at liberty marine services, we are a full-service ship chandler. We sell stuff to large ships all around the world. I’m in their buying dept. I went to school for computer science. My hobbies include longboarding, cooking, and juggling. I own a home with my wife in North Florida.
When did you get your first piercing and which one did you get?
My wife got my tongue pierced for my 18th birthday when we were still dating.
What made you want a Trident Piercing?
The trident broke the mold for me. It wasn’t a standard piercing. All of my tattoos are sea life so it fits perfect to get the trident. It also seemed like it would take more effort than other piercings.
How did you make the Trident piercing?
To make the trident, you first have to find a good piercer who is comfortable with the idea. Many piercers won’t touch it. You first get three cartridge piercings and piercing in the bottom of the conch. All the piercings will start as small starter bars. They will stay separate for about 6 to 8 months. Then you have to look at the shape of your ear some people can wear a straight vertical industrial. Many people don’t have the anatomy for it. In this case either find a piercer who bends or buy a straight bar a little longer than you want. The tricky part is to put the bend in it and still have it technically straight. I bent mine with pliers and a cloth then I would lay it on a flat surface to check if it’s straight. The horseshoe is even more complicated as you have to find a bar twice as long as you want to hang down. Then you need to bend it in half so it looks like a perfect horseshoe. Then you have to adjust it ’til it fits between the two holes. The plus side of doing it yourself is that you’re comfortable adjusting it.
Does a Trident Piercing hurt?
The days after you bend it you need to listen to your ear. A little pain is normal, especially in the morning. But a lot of pain means something is too tight and needs further adjustment.
How much does a Trident Piercing cost to pierce?
The cost for this trident piercing was $125, but most piercing shops do a deal for multiple holes so just ask your piercer!
Do you have any advice for people who what a Trident Piercing as well?
Buy more than one bar for the horseshoe as it is very easy to mess it up and have to start over. I went through 3 bars making mine. The more you adjust the more creative you can get with it. With this piercing, the sky is the limit, and never let a piercer tell you that you don’t have the ear for it. I have never had someone not realize what it is right off the bat.
Are there any other piercings on your bucket list?
I really want hip bars. Not a dermal but actual 14g straight barbells. Another one are collar bone bars with the same straight bar. I’m currently working on my conch orbital in the other ear which when I’m done will have a ship wheel hanging off. I plan to have a trident tattooed on my right shoulder under my trident piercing and a ship wheel on my left shoulder. It goes with my theme for my tattoos but that’s a story for another post! I think I want my tragus pierced on the side with the orbital.
Thank you, Marcus, for this great insight in the trident piercing! For more awesome pictures check out his Instagram or to say hi email him here.
What do you think of the Trident Piercing and his story? Let us know in the comments!
[fbcomments]When it comes to reforming the global food system, ditching industrial agriculture and going local is all anyone seems to talk about these days. Nurturing localized “foodsheds” is routinely promoted by sustainable food advocates as an effective way to subvert agribusiness while empowering communities to reclaim the mythical connection between farm and fork.
This is not to suggest that there’s anything wrong with supporting local food production. If civic-minded foodies want to build locavore safe havens, more power to them. After spending two years visiting college campuses and speaking about my book Just Food: How Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, I came away genuinely impressed with these homegrown efforts, ones that certainly lead to fresher food and, at least for some citizens, communities enhanced by a shared mission. Plus, there's nothing like a locally sourced tomato.
But a problem emerges when food reformers argue that localizing food systems offers a useful approach to addressing the ecological injustices plaguing industrialized agriculture—injustices that bear directly on environmental stewardship, human safety, and the sustainability of the world’s most precious resources. Too often, when food reformers insist that we should go local, they allow global and environmentally detrimental trends to hide in plain sight.
When it comes to agriculture, the single most pressing global trend that critics of industrial agriculture currently overlook as they diligently green their own backyards is the rapidly expanding worldwide production and trade in animal feed.
The growing global demand for meat, led by China, has sparked a corresponding demand for meat’s necessary counterpart—crops needed to fatten farm animals, but whose production is ecologically harmful, straining basic resources such as land, oil, and water (not to mention requiring more antibiotics, fertilizer and pesticides).
A recent UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report confirms the fact that, despite the oft-touted drop in meat consumption in the United States, demand for animal flesh continues to spike in developing countries. That is, as more affluent populations make marginal but hopeful moves toward reducing the animal-based excesses of the standard western diet, an aspiring middle class appears poised as never before to embrace it in all its carnivorous entirety.
In 2013, citizens throughout the developing world consumed 60 percent of the 67.5 million tons of the world’s bovine meat. Capitalizing on this demand, Brazil is about to hit record levels of beef production, as is India, which has risen to the world’s fifth-largest producer of beef. Even in much of Africa, where rainfall has been relatively abundant, there’s been “a moderate increase” in beef output, according to the FAO study.
Whereas increasing global demand for beef is at least partially offset by declining consumption in developed countries, such is not the case with poultry, whose consumption is rising in both developed and developing countries. The consumption of pig meat, for its part, has dropped ever so slightly in the developed world but rose 1.7 percent overall in 2013, hitting a record level of 114.6 million tons. Nearly half of it came from China. Mexico is gearing up to tap this market in a big way as well.
As demand for meat rises, animals bred to feed the developing world’s westernizing palate are consolidated into factory-like settings (CAFOs), most of which are poorly regulated and highly polluting. This arrangement, for which the United States has generously provided a template, requires a constant supply of cereal feed. Russia has led the way on this front. Watching the Chinese rates of animal consumption gradually rise in the 1990s, Russian corporations started to invest heavily in feed infrastructure early this century. The industry has since grown at a rate of 30 percent a year.
Significantly, the global feed industry is also undergoing a shift in the kind of feed grown, yet again mirroring the most ecologically harmful aspects of the American model. Between July and October of 2013, according to the Russian Federation Static Service, wheat and barley grown for feed rose by 1.8 percent and 1.4 percent, respectively, over the previous year. Corn, by contrast, rose by 42.7 percent.
Land-intensive feed production has, in turn, fostered a kind of ecological imperialism. Consider what’s happening in Romania. In 2009, Smithfield, the world’s largest producer of pork (once based in Virginia but now run by a state-owned Chinese company), moved in “a very, very big way, very very fast” into places such as Romania, where it built feed mills, cereal storage facilities, and slaughterhouses catering to pork production
Since then, Romania has become, according to one assessment, “a playground for foreign investors,” with over 700,000 hectares of land owned by foreigners such as Smithfield profiting from farmland, feed and CAFOs. Right now, any country with an excess of cheap arable land, a disempowered rural class, and relatively weak environmental laws is poised to become grist for the agribusiness mill. Poland and Bulgaria are likely next.
Without persistent opposition, the ripple effects of global feed are bound to further compromise an already devastated agricultural landscape. While the impulse in wealthy regions of the developed world is to drop out and go local, it’s ultimately an irrelevant response to a global agricultural crisis that’s only getting worse.
Time is short for reforming global agriculture. The sooner food reformers realize that scaling back the size of animal agriculture won't diminish the problems inherent in growing crops to produce meat, the sooner we'll beat a path to a real agrarian revolution.
Follow me on twitter @the_pitchfork and on my blog at james-mcwilliams.comIsrael's Army Radio reported on Wednesday that the United States has sent Israel a secret document committing to nuclear cooperation between the two countries.
According to Army Radio, the U.S. has reportedly pledged to sell Israel materials used to produce electricity, as well as nuclear technology and other supplies, despite the fact that Israel is not a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Other countries have refused to cooperate with Israel on nuclear matters because it has not signed the NPT, and there has been increasing international pressure for Israel to be more transparent about its nuclear arsenal.
Army Radio's diplomatic correspondent said the reported offer could put Israel on a par with India, another NPT holdout which is openly nuclear-armed but in 2008 secured a U.S.-led deal granting it civilian nuclear imports.
During Tuesday's meeting between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, the two leaders discussed the global challenge of nuclear proliferation and the need to strengthen the nonproliferation system.
They also discussed calls for a conference on a nuclear-free Middle East, which was peoposed during the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NTP) review conference in New York and which Netanyahu said he would not take part in because it intends to single out Israel.
Obama informed Netanyahu that, as a co-sponsor charged with enabling the proposed conference, the United States will insist that such a conference have a broad agenda to include regional security issues, verification and compliance and discussion of all types of weapons of mass destruction.
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Obama emphasized the conference will only take place if all countries "feel confident that they can attend," and said that efforts to single out Israel would make the prospects of such a conference unlikely.
The two leaders agreed to work together to oppose efforts to single out Israel at the IAEA General Conference in September.
Obama emphasized that the U.S. will continue to work closely with Israel to ensure that arms control initiatives and policies do not detract from Israels security, and "support our common efforts to strengthen international peace and stability."
Dan Meridor, Netanyahu's deputy prime minister in charge of nuclear affairs, said Obama's endorsement was not new but that its public expression - two months after Washington supported Egypt's proposal at a review conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) - was significant.
Obama's statement "was without a doubt a special and significant text. It was important for us, and it was important for the region," Meridor said.
Israel neither confirms nor denies having nuclear weapons under an "ambiguity" strategy billed as warding off foes while avoiding public provocations that can spark regional arms races.
The official reticence, and its toleration in Washington, has long aggrieved many Arabs and Iranians - especially given U.S.-led pressure on Tehran to rein in its nuclear program.
U.S. President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu walking at the White House, on July 6, 2010. ReutersSimilar to its critically acclaimed Limbo, developer Playdead’s Inside is a black-and-white, sidescrolling puzzle-platformer starring a young boy. Unlike Limbo‘s hero, however, Inside‘s child protagonist can have his throat crushed between the jaws of a rabid dog.
More interesting – and less disturbing – than the fact that the lad’s neck snaps like peanut brittle when he’s captured by a vicious pup, is that he sports no facial features. Despite having no eyes, nose, or mouth, though, he’s among the most expressive, emotionally engaging characters I’ve ever had the pleasure of controlling. From the way he reactively turns his head and tumbles down hills, to how he tiptoes through shallow water and breaths heavily when hiding from threats, every single one of his subtle movements and more action-heavy animations brim with life.
This same affecting attention to detail is reflected in the game’s stunning visual presentation. Coupled with gorgeous art direction, the sparing – but extremely effective – use of lighting, shadows, and physics yields some of the most atmospheric environments ever witnessed in a virtual world. You’ll be stricken with fear when one of those four-legged foes comes chasing after you, but you’ll be simultaneously impressed by the animal’s animation, as it dives into the water and leaves realistic ripples in its wake.
Inside‘s lack of any tutorial or user interface elements only furthers its ability to immerse you in its incredibly rich, moving world. That’s not to say, however, that the absence of traditional tips, meters, or on-screen text will leave you hanging. On the contrary: The game’s ability to communicate to the player via subtle visual cues and smart level design provides all the info you need, without ever pulling you from the experience.
This sort of seamless, immersion-focused philosophy translates to Inside‘s puzzles as well. Without spoiling too much, I’ll say that of the few head-scratchers I encountered during my demo, none felt like “puzzles” so much as organic extensions of the story and gameplay. No challenge ever seemed arbitrary or tacked-on, but simply part of the story’s natural progression. When I cushioned the protagonist’s fall by landing on pile of pig corpses, for example, I didn’t feel like I was solving a puzzle, but rather saving the boy’s life.
Of course, that example also brings us back to Inside‘s dark, mature, and crazy-creepy nature. In addition to the deadly dogs, players will encounter masked men, nightmare-conjuring contraptions, and zombie-like beings controlled via a brain-swapping device that wouldn’t look out of place in a mad scientist’s laboratory.
As mysterious as it is menacing, and clever as it is creepy, Inside appears to answer the question: “Can we get another game like Limbo, only way more sinister and scary?” We’ll know for sure when Playdead’s latest rises from the grave on Xbox One, come June 29!Spread the love
Cheyenne, WY — A heartening trend is growing on social media showing that people are waking up to the state persecuting individuals over victimless crimes. The latest example of this trend comes from the Cheyenne Police Department who posted a photo of money they seized from a homeless man and then attempted to justify and brag about it. When people read the department’s post, they lashed out — peacefully — to let them know what they were doing is wrong.
The department’s post has since gone viral, prompting both praise and scorn for their ridiculous image bragging about stealing money from a homeless man because he was drunk.
The image was posted with the following statement:
Yesterday, July 22, we arrested a transient for public intoxication. This is a person we frequently deal with, but we want to illustrate that there are better ways to help the transient population than to give them money for panhandling. This person collected $234.94 in just a few hours of asking for money. Rather than feeding someone’s alcohol addiction, you can donate directly to local charities such as the Comea Shelter where your money will assist the homeless in a much more effective way.
Aside from the sheer lack of humanity of this post, the police department’s choice to lay out the money and the sign they took from this homeless man highlights a much deeper problem among police and the homeless.
One person in the comments explained it succinctly.
Who did this person harm? What damage did he cause? Is there a victim? If the answer to these questions is no, you had no authority to touch this person.
Beat downs and arrests by police are, unfortunately, becoming a larger and larger part of the homeless culture.
Whether the dehumanization is to make way for the up and coming comic book festival or just a run of the mill sadistic police gang murder, homeless folks in the US are finding themselves in an increasingly hostile police state.
Cops in Saginaw, Michigan, who shot and killed homeless Saginaw resident Milton Hall, in firing squad fashion, during a confrontation in a shopping plaza parking lot were told that they won’t be facing any charges. Who cares about one dead homeless guy, right?
Not only are police attacking the homeless, but they are also attacking people for helping the homeless.
In a disgusting display of totalitarianism, Daytona Police descended upon a group of Good Samaritans who were feeding homeless people in a public park. They were told that if they tried to come back in the park, they would be arrested.
In this post, they also tell people not to help the homeless. Who gets to decide how much money a homeless man can have? Is $234.94 too much? If he had $100, would they have laid it out and made a Facebook post about it? If he wasn’t homeless, would they have made a Facebook post at all?
Another Facebook user pointed this out too.
So if I get arrested for public intoxication you’re gonna count how much money I have in my wallet?
When apologists attempted to answer this person’s question by claiming that police inventory everything a person gets arrested with, he weighed back in again and made the point entirely clear.
You’re missing the point of the post. No, they wouldn’t count, and post the amount of money in my wallet. They are only pushing the stigma that homeless people are drunks and are undeserving of money that people choose to give to them.
With an increase in unemployment and skyrocketing foreclosures stoking homelessness in the US, the government is making it harder than ever to be homeless. It is becoming a crime.
Legislative measures that criminalize the terrible situation of being down on your luck are steadily increasing in the US and this Facebook post illustrates it perfectly. As one Facebook user pointed out:
Arresting someone strictly for intoxication undermines American freedom so much. That’s letting the state dictate what people choose to do with their own bodies and lives. Once again, mainly so he state can further extort money from said person after their rights are violated. Don’t pretend you care about addicts. The state has shown time and time again it isn’t compassionate for drug addicts.
As the laws to make homelessness illegal are increasing, the government facilities to help the homeless have been decreasing. However, that didn’t stop the Cheyenne police from telling people to stop voluntarily giving spare change to beggars. Fortunately, however, people saw through it.
Just when I think this place can’t get any more backward. I will give MY money to whoever I please. You’re seriously telling us, like we’re children, how we should treat people? If someone stands on a corner and collects what we consider to be “too much” money, more power to them. It’s OUR money to give or keep as we please. Because of this post, I’m going, right now, to each exit, where they usually hang out, and each one is getting $20.
Thank you, Cheyenne Police Department for making this post and allowing people to call you out for it. Every one of the comments in opposition to arresting a man for a victimless crime and bragging about it on Facebook give us that much more faith in humanity.Actor Kangana Ranaut has landed herself in yet another controversy: Days after film writer-editor Apurva Asrani accused her of taking the “screenplay and dialogues’ credit” for Hansal Mehta’s Simran, filmmaker Ketan Mehta has now sent a legal notice to the Queen star for “hijacking” one of his most ambitious film projects, Rani of Jhansi: The Warrior Queen.
Kangana during the poster launch of Manikarnika.
Sources close to the filmmaker have revealed that he had spent around ten years researching for the movie.
“This is regarding my project called Rani of Jhansi: The Warrior Queen and her (Kangana’s) attempt and the producer Kamal Jain at hijacking the project. Since 2015, I was in contact with Kangana for the project. I was sharing research material and several drafts of the script with Kangana and she was actively participating,” Ketan told Hindustan Times.
“My legal notice says how we have worked on the project for two years and how all of a sudden everything happened. We have asked for the film (Manikarnika) to stop as we plan to go ahead with our project (Ketan’s film),” the filmmaker added.
He also said that he learnt of Krish’s Manikarnika only through newspapers and that he was shocked to see Kangana announcing Rani of Jhansi with another producer and director. Kangana being privy to all the documents and research material along with the script, has knowingly hijacked the project in collusion with producer Kamal Jain, he said.
Kangana performed Ganga Aarti at Varanasi during the poster launch of Manikarnika.
When asked if Kangana and Ketan had a fallout in March because the filmmaker wanted to make the film in English, he said, “No! This was a fabricated piece of news. The film was supposed to be bilingual - English and Hindi. We believed it is a story that needs to be told not just in India, but abroad as well. Rani of Jhansi is one of the most fascinating characters of human history.”
“Kangana introduced me to Mr Kamal Jain. We had an international producer and we were looking for an Indian co-producer. We had meetings with Mr Kamal where Kangana was also involved and we shared all the information. And then, suddenly, we hear about this project. It is completely unethical. And this was after we shared access to all our research material from past ten years,” he added.
Ketan is the maker of internationally acclaimed films like Mirch Masala, Sardar (on the life of Sardar Patel), Maya Memsaab, and Manjhi- The Mountain Man.
Ketan said that he had confirmation that Kangana has received the notice but has not heard from her or the producers.
Hindustan Times tried contacting Kangana’s manager, but there was no response.
Follow @htshowbiz for more
First Published: May 19, 2017 07:43 ISTKnife Party teases new album just a little bit more
Knife Party teases new album just a little bit more
We\’ve gotten a few looks into Knife Party\’s upcoming album titled \”Abandon Ship,\” but here\’s a little bit more to get you through the night.
Coming straight from Rob Swire, as do almost all the teasers, the 11th track on the album, \”Give It Up,\” was shared on Twitter in a 34 second snippet. And when critics claimed that it sounded like the crowd-favorite \”Bonfire,\” Swire shot back with another 9 second teaser of \”Superstar\” to emphasize the variety of style the LP will expand on. Or at least, that\’s what it seems like so far.
Check out the previews below:
Be sure to pre-order Abandon Ship here.
Is it October 27th, yet?Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens almost always vote together on the Supreme Court, but they are polar opposites when it comes to the State of the Union address. Breyer always attends, believing that the Court needs to show the country that the Justices are part of the government, if an independent and co-equal branch. Stevens, on the other hand, never goes to the speech, on the theory that the independence of the judiciary requires a position of detachment for the Justices, physical and otherwise. It’s likely that Samuel Alito is spending some time today weighing these alternative views a little more carefully.
That’s because the cameras caught Alito giving an unusually demonstrative response to President Obama’s speech last night. It came after Obama said this: “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests—including foreign corporations—to spend without limit in our elections.” In the audience, Alito could be seen shaking his head in response and saying, it seemed, “Not true, not true.”
There’s a big issue and a small issue here. The first concerns the specific nature of the dispute, about the Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, In that five-to-four decision, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Alito, the Court held that corporations, labor unions, and other organizations have the right under the First Amendment to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcomes of elections. Obama may have been overstating the point when he said foreign companies now had the same unlimited rights to participate in our elections. The Court’s opinion carefully said it was not deciding the issue with regard to foreign entities. So the Court may give the green light to these foreign companies—but it hasn’t done so yet. In time, though, Congress will or will not pass a law to revive the limits on corporate spending, and the Court will or will not reject that effort as well.
The larger issue raised by Alito’s pouty face goes to the place of the Court in American life. In public, and especially in confirmation hearings, the Justices try to portray themselves as Olympian figures, removed from the hurly burly of politics. In Chief Justice Roberts’ famous (now mostly infamous) phrase at his confirmation hearing, the Justices are like baseball umpires, who do nothing more than call balls and strikes. But that’s not true—and it never has been true. (I discussed this issue in my Profile of Roberts.) The Justices have strong political views, which have powerful impacts on how they do their jobs. Alito performed the public service of making this point clearer for a national audience.
What makes Alito’s reaction even more delicious is that it’s further evidence that the Justice just can’t stand Obama. As a Senator, Obama voted against Alito’s confirmation, which the Justice does not seem to have forgotten. When the President-elect Obama made a courtesy call on the Justices shortly before his inauguration last year, Alito was the only member of the Court not to attend. (Obama voted against Roberts, too, but the Chief Justice managed to spare the time to welcome Obama.) The first law that Obama signed as President was the Lilly Ledbetter Act—which reversed a decision by the Supreme Court that had erected new barriers to plaintiffs filing employment discrimination cases. The author of that now-overruled decision? Samuel Alito. These two guys have a history.
And now everyone knows it. And for that reason, then, I don’t begrudge Alito his grimace. He was just being honest. Alito’s role in that room—and his place at the Court—is no different from that of the Republican members of Congress; both are dedicated political adversaries of the President. The camera—and the Justice—didn’t lie.(Image: Joe Bergeron/Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics)
The universe’s galactic zoo evolved into recognisable species a mere 2.5 billion years after the big bang. An extensive survey of massive galaxies in the early universe shows that the objects had adopted the same distinct colours and shapes we see among mature galaxies today.
The find deepens a mystery surrounding the processes that create our galactic catalogue, says Mauro Giavalisco of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. In the 1920s astronomer Edwin Hubble sorted the massive galaxies we see today into two general types based on their shapes and colours. Galaxies that are discs or spirals are mostly blue, a sign that they are forming new stars. Blobby spheroidal galaxies, meanwhile, are red and are no longer making stars.
“The two types are equally massive, so they have the same gravity,” says Giavalisco. “Why can one type accrete gas and convert it into stars and keep on evolving, while the other is red and dead and pretty much defunct?” The new survey shows that whatever shuts down star birth in spheroidal galaxies, it must happen very quickly to have caused them to emerge so soon after the big bang.
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High noon
To probe galactic structure over time, Giavalisco and his graduate student BoMee Lee used the Hubble Space Telescope’s Cosmic Assembly Near-Infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), which includes the largest sample of very distant galaxies yet collected.
The team focused on the era between 1.5 and 3 billion years after the big bang. Astronomers call this time “cosmic high noon”, because star formation in galaxies was at its peak. Previous studies had peered back into this epoch for lower-mass galaxies, which don’t have distinctive shapes. But none had looked at the galaxies that are Milky Way-sized or bigger.
The team analysed 1671 massive galaxies from cosmic high noon. Even back then, the familiar breakdown of galactic shapes was clearly apparent: the same fraction of galaxies was blue and disc-shaped, while the others were red and globular.
“Already, 2.5 billion years after the big bang, galaxies appeared to have the same correlation of morphological properties and star formation properties as we see in the local, present-day universe,” says Giavalisco. “So this process of galaxy diversification is really fast and effective.”
Flagship finding
Galaxies can change their shapes over time. When two spirals merge, for instance, they often lose much of their cold, star-forming gas, shut down and settle into a spheroidal shape. And spheroids can be rejuvenated and start forming new stars if they manage to snare cold gas from a neighbouring galaxy that gets too close.
The new results will help theorists sort out which of the processes that go into galaxy building are the most important to a mature object’s shape, says Eric Murphy of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, who was not involved in the new study. That in turn can tell us a lot about the distribution of matter in the universe, which is tied to how structure emerged from the homogenous soup that existed right after the big bang.
“It’s a very important conclusion that will certainly help in guiding models,” he says. “This is going to be a flagship paper for CANDELS.”
Journal reference: The Astrophysical Journal, DOI: 10.1088/0004-637X/774/1/47Quote:
Originally Posted by
I'm going to break down the announced features of KitKat versus what is in the latest KitKat with Sense 5.5 to the best of my knowledge.
This is based from:
http://www.android.com/versions/kit-kat-4-4/
Just say “Ok Google” (on homescreen): NO, Not in the stock Sense launcher, they state it is on the Nexus 5 only. Must sideload the Nexus 5 Google Launcher
, Not in the stock Sense launcher, they state it is on the Nexus 5 only. Must sideload the Nexus 5 Google Launcher A work of art (Full screen coverart on lockscreen): NO, still shows the coverart in the little bar on the lockscreen
, still shows the coverart in the little bar on the lockscreen Immerse yourself (in full screen apps, swipe from the top of the screen to get notification bar): YES
Faster multitasking: UNKNOWN, Sense multitasking seems about the same performance as before
, Sense multitasking seems about the same performance as before The future is calling (Contact prioritization AND places/business search within dialer): NO
A smarter caller ID (looks for matches from businesses with local listings when they call): NO
All your messages in the same place (Hangouts): YES
Emoji everywhere: YES - had it in 4.3 using sense keyboard, but now it will have emoji in the Google Keyboard
- had it in 4.3 using sense keyboard, but now it will have emoji in the Google Keyboard Print wherever, whenever (built in printer functionality): NO? I do not see any options for printers, have to use Cloud Print
Pick a file, any file (New Open From ui): YES
Your office, anywhere (Quickoffice): YES, install from Play Store
, install from Play Store Bluetooth MAP support (BT enhancements): UNKNOWN, I don't have a car with MAP messaging
, I don't have a car with MAP messaging Chromecast support: YES, install from Play store
, install from Play store Chrome web view: UNKNOWN, Didn't have time to test
, Didn't have time to test Closed captioning: YES
Device management built-in: YES
Downloads app redesign |
be skilled in isolated scenarios, when working together they may wrongly estimate either their ability to deal with the enemy or what their allies may do. An example of this can be seen when, in the first week of the NA Summer LCS this year, when Cloud 9 gave up a 5 minute triple kill to RobertXLee. They overestimated their ability to 3v3 and/or did not account for Brokenshard to be in the area, which sealed the deal for C9’s bot lane.
Teams with a certain style also can beat other teams that have a more optimal composition because they’re so practiced in it. The KT Arrows, my favorite team at this time, have a very aggressive all-in style similar to SKT T1 K before their period of dominance. Although their strategy is not optimal, they are still a top team in Korea. The picture below depicts Hachani being reassured by Coach Lee about picking Blitzcrank, a very KT Arrows-esq champion, into an easily predicted Yasuo pick. KT Arrows won this game.
Outside of the general team synergy lies the role specific synergy: how two or more members on your team work together. In almost every game, skirmishes between a couple of champions on each team will break out, creating small teamfight scenarios outside of a traditional 5v5. Regardless of the meta, it’s crucial to have good synergy between the AD Carry and Support player because they have to lane with one another. In the way the current lane-swapping meta works, there also needs to be good synergy between the Top Laner and Jungler as they buddy jungle in the early game, and in prior metas the Jungler and Mid Laner needed good synergy because 2v2’s in the mid lane used to happen more frequently.
To summarize this article:
Micro, or ‘mechanics’, is the ability to consistently execute commands.
or ‘mechanics’, is the ability to consistently execute commands. Macro is everything micro isn’t; big picture strategy and the ability to find and use information given to you. Read more about Macro in my Objectives article.
is everything micro isn’t; big picture strategy and the ability to find and use information given to you. Read more about Macro in my Objectives article. League’s macro game makes up for it’s lack of difficulty in the micro game (relative to other esports).
makes up for it’s lack of difficulty in the micro game (relative to other esports) Individual micro is commanding your champion, while teamplay execution requires the shotcaller to command you.
. Top teams often beat other top teams because they had better execution in a game, even when their strategy might be worse.
. A single mistake in the early game can lose the whole game in a competitive environment, unlike soloqueue, which is more forgiving.Lobbying by Tory peers has helped the two historic student societies escape from the home secretary’s crackdown on extremism in higher education
The elite bastions of the Oxford and Cambridge unions have been exempted from the government’s counter-terror ban on extremist speakers from university campuses, Home Office ministers have confirmed.
The two prestigious student societies have escaped from the home secretary Theresa May’s counter-terror crackdown on non-violent extremism in higher education after strong lobbying from senior Tory peers.
The decision comes as the government issues new statutory guidance to university and further education student unions requiring them to have clear policies “setting out the activities that are or are not allowed to take place on campus”. The new guidance also suggests that elected student union officers and staff should also undergo Prevent counter-terrorism awareness training.
The pressure to exempt the two elite student debating societies included protests from two ex-Cabinet ministers, Lord Deben and Lord Lamont, who claimed the ban would have stopped a famous 1960 Cambridge Union debate with the wartime British fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley.
Mosley was invited and then directly challenged by two students who were both future Tory cabinet ministers, Kenneth Clarke and John Selwyn Gummer, despite demands from some Cambridge students, including Michael Howard, that the meeting should be banned.
The issue was also raised with Home Office ministers by Lord Renfrew, a former master of Jesus College, Cambridge, who told them that the Cambridge Union, which is celebrating its 200th anniversary this year, could not continue to flourish with the freedom of speech constraints imposed on it by the new guidance. However, Oxford University insisted that because the debating union and the university were separate entities, it would never have been covered by the legislation.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Malcolm X in Oxford, before addressing university students on the subject of extremism and liberty, 3 December 1964. Photograph: Keystone/Getty Images
A Home Office minister, Lord Bates, has told peers that the two privileged debating societies will, however, be exempt from the statutory guidance denying non-violent extremists a platform in universities. He said it had been decided that the Oxford and Cambridge Unions would be exempt because “they exist separately from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and as such are not covered by the duty”.
University vice-chancellors face the ultimate threat of imprisonment for contempt of court if they fail to comply with a ministerial direction from the home secretary telling them to impose a ban on extremist speakers and take other measures to stop students from “being drawn into terrorism”.
Strong opposition from the House of Lords and from the business secretary, Vince Cable, within the coalition government forced a commitment from May to write academic freedom of speech safeguards into the guidance banning non-violent extremist speakers from campus.
Last week the internal coalition row over the issue broke out into the open when the home secretary claimed Cable was trying to water down the guidance by trying to give discretion to colleges over whether specific speakers should be banned or challenged in open debate.
“If colleges and universities did not realise before what we are up against they should now. We are not talking about regulating legitimate debate – we’re saying we need to do more to stop radicalisation on campus,” she told the Sunday Times.
But the statutory guidance shows the row remains unresolved. The new guidance issued on Thursday simply says: “Radicalisation on campus can be facilitated through events held for extremist speakers. There will be further guidance issued on the management of external speakers and events, including on the interaction of the Prevent duty with universities’ existing duties to secure freedom of speech and have regard to the importance of academic freedom.”
It is understood that the intention is that the rules detailing how the ban will operate will be published before the election campaign gets under way at the end of the month.
A spokesperson for Oxford University said: “The Oxford Union is legally separate from Oxford University, and always has been. As such it was never covered by the anti-terror legislation, and any implication that an intervention needed to be made on their behalf is wrong.”
The National Union of Students said the fact that the Oxford and Cambridge unions were not affected by the proposed laws highlighted the bill’s confusion, and was another reason why it should be stopped.
“We are alarmed about the speed at which the bill is being introduced. Rushed laws are very often ill-thought out, or otherwise poorly scrutinised, and we will continue to strongly oppose the bill while calling for a thorough assessment into the legality of its proposals,” the NUS said.
The Home Office’s statutory Prevent duty guidance for universities – issued on Thursday – also applies different guidelines to Scotland compared with those given to universities in England and Wales.
The guidance for England and Wales says that “young people continue to make up a disproportionately high number of those arrested in this country for terrorist-related offences and of those who are travelling to join terrorist organisations in Syria and Iraq. Universities must be vigilant and aware of the risks this poses.” This passage is omitted from the guidance for Scottish universities.
Universities in England are told that their risk assessments should include “not just violent extremism but also non-violent extremism, which can create an atmosphere conducive to terrorism and can popularise views which terrorists exploit”. Non-violent extremism is not mentioned in the Scotland version, as a result of lobbying by the Scottish government.
Pam Tatlow, chief executive of the university thinktank Million+, said: “The story here is we’ve got universities in Scotland doing one thing, and universities in England and Wales doing something else.
“The inclusion of a reference to non-violent extremism in the guidance for England and Wales but its exclusion from the guidance in Scotland reveals the extent of the disagreements between governments and the determination of the Home Office and No 10 to put universities in the frame.”The teenage ‘terror twins’ who fled Britain to join ISIS have tried to recruit their younger siblings since arriving in Syria.
Twins Zahra and Salma Halane, from Manchester, sent threatening messages to their family, swearing hatred for ‘the infidels’ and encouraging them to join ISIS.
One message, sent by Zahra to encourage her two younger brothers to sign up as ‘future mujaheddin’, read: ‘We might seem evil to you, but we will all be happy in jannah [the afterlife].
Scroll down for video
Fanatics: Salma (left) and Zahra Halane (right), who fled their homes in Manchester to become jihadi brides, attempted to recruit their whole family to join them in Syria using social media messages
‘Are you coming to Dawlah [ISIS]? They will train you up. You will meet boys from England, China, Ireland, Sweden, FROM EVERYWHERE. Want to see my Kalash [Kalashnikov]?? Ha ha ha.’
The now 17-year-old twins fled Manchester together in June last year, accompanied on their journey by an adult couple and an infant, to become jihadi brides.
Salma was married to a 19-year-old fighter from Coventry, whom she met online before travelling to join him.
The marriage was arranged by Aqsa Mahmood, a Glaswegian woman who was placed on a UN sanctions list last week.
Both their husbands have since been killed in battle, and Salma gave birth to a boy in June.
Concerns have been raised about a covert but rapidly growing network of recruiters and influence at the twins’ school.
Zahra added, in another message to her family: ‘We have a caliph and we must obey him. He said everyone that doesn’t come is kuffar [a non-believer]. I had to fulfil my commitment and so will you.
The now 17-year-old twins fled Manchester together in June last year, accompanied on their journey by an adult couple and an infant, to become jihadi brides
‘Allah, the merciful, placed something in mine and Salma’s hearts that we came to hate the infidels [in Britain] – to such a degree we could not even bear to look at them.
‘My best advice to you is to get the whole family to make hijrah [travel] to the Islamic State.’
The revelations have emerged in a new book about foreign jihadists by a Danish journalist, which is based on the testimony of friends and relatives.
The book, ‘Denmark’s Children in Holy War’, offers the most detailed account yet of how the girls, who had previously dreamed of being doctors and were dedicated Manchester United fans, were radicalised.
Written by terrorism expert Jakob Sheikh, of Politiken newspaper, the book portrays the sisters as well integrated members of Western society.
The Halane family is of Somali origin, but lived in Denmark as refugees before settling in Chorlton, in Manchester.
ISIS is using a complex web of recruiters to lure foreign girls to join them in Syria. More than 500 women from the west have left their lives behind and gone to join ISIS in Syria and Iraq
Once in ISIS, the women are likely to be sexually abused by the terrorists and used as sex slaves. Both the Halane twins were married to soldiers, but both their husbands have since died in battle
In December 2013, Salma was caught viewing ISIS propaganda at their sixth form college, which included images of a suicide vest, a boy with a machine gun and a British jihadist in Syria, named Abu Qaqa.
Qaqa, a prolific ISIS recruiter from Manchester whose real name is Raphael Hostey, later boasted of how he lured the twins to Syria.
The college did not alert the police at the time because she claimed that she was trying to find her older brother, who had previously travelled to Syria to fight.
Then, in June 2014, the twins stole £840 in cash from their father and fled their family home under cover of night.
They first flew to Istanbul in Turkey, with the couple and infant, where they posed as a family on holiday.
Later the twins, who have an older sister and seven brothers, crossed the Syrian border.CLOSE On the second ballot, Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson gathered over 50 percent of the votes to become the next libertarian presidential nominee to challenge Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. (May 29) AP
A popular third-party candidate could frustrate Trump and Clinton, putting the 12th Amendment in play.
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson. (Photo11: John Raoux, AP)
In this extraordinary presidential election, when the presumptive nominees of both major parties have historically low approval ratings, many Americans are looking for other options. But the structural obstacles facing third-party and independent candidates — ranging from campaign-finance regulations to ballot-access rules — prevent viable alternatives. Add in the common sentiment that a vote for someone other than a Republican or Democrat is “wasted” and it’s clear that, assuming they do get their respective parties’ nomination, nobody other than Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton has a chance to win, right?
Actually, it’s not so simple. While it’s inconceivable that anyone other than the major-party candidates could win the popular vote, it’s possible that nobody wins a majority in the electoral college. If there’s no electoral majority, the 12th Amendment specifies that the House of Representatives, voting by state, will choose the president among the top three. It’s only happened once — in 1824, when John Quincy Adams won despite Andrew Jackson’s having gained popular and electoral pluralities — but it’s not too much to expect in this bizarre political year.
One could imagine a scenario where former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party nominee, wins his home state and possibly others. He’s apparently drawing slightly more support from Clinton than from Trump — which would prevent Hillary from simply sweeping pluralities in all the swing states — and has been polling in double-digits in a three-way race. Or maybe Mitt Romney gets into the mix, or outspoken Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., or someone else conjured by Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol (a leader of the #NeverTrump movement). If such candidates campaign strategically, they could win electoral votes. In 1968, the segregationist George Wallace won five states and 46 electors.
Moreover, faithless electors, who don't vote for the candidate to whom they’re pledged, have appeared in seven of the 14 elections since Alaska and Hawaii began voting in 1960. (John Edwards got one in 2004!) Given the major candidates’ (un)favorability ratings, the “faithlessness” probability is high — and it won’t take many votes in a close race to deny either Trump or Clinton a majority.
So what happens if the election goes to the House? There are currently 33 states with Republican-majority delegations, 14 with Democratic majorities, and three that are tied. Let’s say that, come January — it’s the “new” House that matters — the Republican-Democratic ratio is 30-20. If even five of those red states refuse to vote for Trump, there’s no majority and no president.
But simultaneously, the Senate picks the vice president from the top two finishers. If the Democrats take the upper chamber, House Republicans will have to reach a presidential agreement to prevent Hillary’s vice presidential nominee from becoming acting president. And if the Republicans keep the Senate, it could be that they prefer Trump’s vice president to The Donald himself.
POLICING THE USA: A look at race, justice, media
Oh, and there’s one more possibility: If the Senate is tied — or enough senators abstain to again prevent a majority of the whole body — then we’ll have four years of President Paul Ryan, who as House speaker is next in line. Wouldn’t that be huge?
Ilya Shapiro is a senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute. He tweets at @ishapiro.
In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors. To read more columns, go to the Opinion front page and follow us on Twitter @USATOpinion.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1WY6I8OThe Broadway production is the fourth for “The Great Comet.” The musical, then billed as an “electropop opera,” was commissioned by, workshopped, and first staged, in 2012, at a risk-embracing Off Broadway nonprofit, Ars Nova, with 87 seats, rented costumes for the actors and Costco pierogies for the audience.
“By the end of the first workshop, I remember thinking, I have no idea what’s going on, but this is going to be incredible,” recalled Jason Eagan, the company’s founding artistic director. (The show was the biggest ever undertaken by Ars Nova, and will be its first ever to transfer to Broadway.)
Mr. Malloy had a strong sense of what he wanted the show to feel like, shaped by two experiences: a boozy night at Chez Poulet, a San Francisco warehouse space where “Beowulf” was performed mid-crowd, with actors staging their fighting among the drinkers; and another at Cafe Margarita, a Moscow bar with an unmarked door where musicians were cheek-by-jowl with shaker-shaking, vodka-swilling diners, so crowded that Mr. Malloy had a viola at his ear.
As collaborators for “The Great Comet,” he enlisted two friends who shared his passion for erasing lines between performers and audiences: Ms. Chavkin, a founder of an experimental theater company called the Team, and Ms. Lien, a college architecture major who had studied painting in Italy before finding her way to set design.
“The goal from the beginning has been remarkably the same: putting the performers in close proximity to the audience members, and putting the audience members in very close proximity to each other, sitting at a table together, drinking vodka and eating bread,” said Ms. Lien, who last year won a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in part for her work on this show.
“It’s not so much a show that you sit back and watch from a distance, but it’s an experience that you’re actually inside of,” she added.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has few options for stopping Russia’s military advance deep into Georgia and is partly to blame for encouraging Georgia’s pro-Western government to overreach, analysts said.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrives in the southern city of Vladikavkaz, located next to the Georgian separatist region of South Ossetia, August 9, 2008. Putin sharply criticized the United States on Monday, saying its support for Georgia in the conflict over the separatist region South Ossetia displayed a cynical Cold War mentality. REUTERS/RIA Novosti/Pool
Despite warnings by President George W. Bush for Russia to “reverse the course it appears to be on” and withdraw its troops to avert a “dramatic and brutal escalation” of violence,” U.S. military intervention in the small former Soviet republic is nearly unthinkable, analysts said on Monday.
There also is little Washington can do diplomatically to restrain the Russians, according to foreign policy experts.
“Let me say at this point that there are no good solutions. Either we have to try to remove them (the Russians) by force or accept a humiliating defeat,” said Dimitri Simes, founding president of the Nixon Center in Washington.
“It is not a happy situation, and we did not have to have this situation, and I think the (Bush) administration has considerable responsibility for that.”
Georgian forces entered separatist South Ossetia last week, trying to retake the pro-Russian enclave that broke away in the 1990s. Moscow, which supports South Ossetia’s independence, responded by sending its troops into Georgia proper.
Georgia has appealed for international intervention and pulled its battered forces back to defend the capital, Tbilisi, as Russian troops pushed deeper into its territory, ignoring Western pleas to halt.
Simes said U.S. encouragement of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, one of Washington’s staunchest allies, may have led him to believe he could get away with military action to take back control of South Ossetia.
The Bush administration has pushed hard for Georgia to join NATO, against European misgivings and Russian fury at the idea.
“Saakashvili was discouraged from attacking Russian troops in South Ossetia but he clearly never was told point blank ‘If you do it, you are on your own,’” said Moscow-born Simes, who was an informal adviser to President Richard Nixon.
‘MISCALCULATION’
Charles Kupchan of the Council on Foreign Relations, agreed that U.S. encouragement may have made Saakashvili “miscalculate” and send Georgian troops into South Ossetia.
“I think in many respects Saakashvili got too close to the United States and the United States got too close to Saakashvili,” Kupchan said. “It made him overreach, it made him feel at the end of the day that the West would come to his assistance if he got into trouble.”
Bush told Russia on Monday to reverse course or risk jeopardizing relations with the United States.
But Washington has limited leverage over Moscow after years of strained relations on a range of issues from Iraq to the United States’ insistence on placing missile defenses in Europe, the analysts said.
The next U.S. president will inherit that chilly relationship. Both presidential candidates — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama — have called for diplomacy to resolve the conflict over Georgia’s breakaway regions.
“When you have very thin relations, it doesn’t give you a lot of diplomatic tools,” said Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who is now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution. “There are not a lot of things in terms of U.S.-Russian cooperation that we can threaten to stop, that the Russians care about.”
Foreign ministers from the world’s leading industrialized states urged Russia to agree to a ceasefire, and the United States sent senior State Department official Matt Bryza to Tbilisi to join international mediation efforts.
A U.S. official said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had made more than 90 calls since Friday to find ways to end the conflict and spoke with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Sunday.
Janusz Bugajski of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said there was still room for a muscular U.S. diplomacy to contain the crisis and support Georgia’s government and territorial sovereignty.
“We need somebody much higher to go to Tbilisi, to demonstrate to Russia that we support this government,” Bugajski said, given the danger of wider conflict in the volatile Caucasus region.This is a strange year when it comes to the NBA’s end-of-season player awards.
Typically, there is a lot of debate over who deserves each honor. There are 129 sportswriters and broadcasters who make up the voting panel, and they receive their ballots two weeks before the regular season ends. Some years, voters will wait until the absolute final moment (after the final regular season game) to cast their ballot because the competition is that intense and they want to have as much information as possible before making up their mind.
However, this season’s award races will be relatively anti-climactic because the results seem rather obvious. Stephen Curry will be Most Valuable Player, Karl-Anthony Towns seems poised to be Rookie of the Year, C.J. McCollum will likely be Most Improved Player and Defensive Player of the Year seems like it’ll once again come down to Kawhi Leonard or Draymond Green.
There doesn’t seem to be many wide-open award races this year. That is, except for Sixth Man of the Year. The award is obviously given to the most productive reserve and, in order to be eligible, a player must come off of the bench in more games than he starts.
The top two vote-getters from last season are currently ineligible, so it’ll be interesting to see who the media turns to now. Last year, Lou Williams and Isaiah Thomas finished first and second in the voting, but both players used their successful 2014-15 campaign as a springboard to an increased role.
The veterans who are typically mentioned as possible Sixth Man candidates, such San Antonio Spurs guard Manu Ginobili, Houston Rockets guard Jason Terry and Golden State Warriors forward Andre Iguodala, seem like long shots now. Each of these players have seen their production dip significantly as they’ve gotten older and all three are averaging single-digit points.
The only “usual suspect” left in the race is Los Angeles Clippers guard Jamal Crawford, who is competing with a host of new candidates such as Oklahoma City Thunder center Enes Kanter, Denver Nuggets guard Will Barton, Charlotte Hornets guard Jeremy Lin and New Orleans Pelicans forward Ryan Anderson among others.
But while it seems there isn’t a clear-cut frontrunner, NBA players see the Sixth Man of the Year race very differently. Basketball Insiders talked to a long list of NBA players and almost every single one said that Crawford deserves the award.
Obviously Crawford’s teammates were quick to campaign for him, but players from all around the NBA voiced their support for the 36-year-old guard as well.
If Crawford is named this season’s Sixth Man of the Year, he’ll become the first player in NBA history to win the award three times. He also earned the honor in 2010 (with the Atlanta Hawks) and 2014 (with the Clippers), joining Kevin McHale, Ricky Pierce and Detlef Schrempf as the only two-time winners.
“When you win games, those individual honors have a way of working themselves out,” Crawford told Basketball Insiders. “You can’t be in the conversation for any of those things if you’re not winning. To be recognized again would be a great honor! But obviously winning is the most important thing, especially this season. We revamped our team to start the season and then lost our big gun, Blake Griffin, for a while. No one thought we would be in this position now – fourth in the Western Conference – but here we are. It’s taken a collective effort from the coaches and players to get here. And we’re not satisfied with where we are because we still have a long way to go. There’s so much more work to be done.”
This season, Crawford is averaging 14 points in 26.8 minutes off the bench. He stepped up significantly once the Clippers lost Griffin due to injury. Since Dec. 25 (the last time that Griffin played), Crawford has increased his average to 15.5 points per game and he has scored 15 or more points in 27 contests, which is the most of any bench player during that span. He has scored in double figures in 54 games this season. Many players who felt Crawford deserved the award mentioned how he’s helped keep the Clippers’ offense performing at it’s usual high level in Griffin’s absence. L.A. currently has the NBA’s sixth-best offense, scoring 106 points per 100 possessions.
Crawford has also played well when his team needs him most: in the fourth quarter. This season, he leads the Clippers in total points scored in the fourth quarter with 319. He may not start games for Los Angeles, but he often finishes them and makes an impact in the final period.
The fact that Crawford is putting up these numbers on a legitimate contender helps his case for the award too. In the past 20 seasons, every Sixth Man of the Year winner came from a playoff team. Crawford is the leading reserve scorer among all postseason-bound teams.
But perhaps the biggest reason Crawford is so universally respected among opposing players is his ability to create his own shot. He ranks seventh in the league in isolation points (223) behind only stars James Harden, Carmelo Anthony, Damian Lillard, LeBron James, DeMar DeRozan and Kevin Durant.
Crawford does some amazing things with the ball in his hands, and he’s excellent in one-on-one situations. Even the best defenders in the NBA admit that they hate guarding Crawford because he has so many different weapons in his offensive arsenal and he’s completely unpredictable. Fouling him is pointless too since he is ranked first in the NBA in free throw percentage this season, hitting 90.9 percent of his shots from the charity stripe.
Crawford certainly doesn’t look like a 36-year-old on the court. In fact, as SLAM recently noted, he’s the first NBA player in history to average over 13 points while playing fewer than 27 minutes per game in at least his 16th NBA season. Crawford found that stat amusing. He also laughed when he learned that he’s averaging 18.5 points per-36-minutes this year, which is actually higher than his per-36-minutes scoring average from over a decade ago when he was in his prime with the New York Knicks.
On many teams, Crawford would be starting. However, he has embraced the sixth-man role and enjoys leading the second unit. Still, if asked to start, Crawford will rise to the occasion. In his three starts this season for the Clippers, he averaged 28 points, five assists and four rebounds while shooting 45.2 percent from the field, 43.5 percent from three-point range and 94.7 percent from the free throw line.
Crawford has had a number of signature performances this season too.
He had 37 points, eight assists and six rebounds in a November win over the Detroit Pistons (numbers that only Stephen Curry, James Harden, LeBron James, Kemba Walker and Russell Westbrook have matched this season). Crawford had 32 points (including 6-9 three-pointers) and five assists to beat the Orlando Magic in December. Later that month, he led the Clippers to a win over the Washington Wizards by scoring an efficient 21 points on 9-12 shooting from the field. In January, the veteran guard contributed 26 points (on 11-15 shooting from the field) and three assists to defeat the Chicago Bulls. Last month, Crawford had 26 points in 25 minutes – hitting 10-17 shots, including 3-4 three-pointers – to beat the Brooklyn Nets.
For an example of Crawford getting hot and helping lead L.A. to a victory, look no further than last night’s 25-point performance against the Portland Trail Blazers.
Some NBA decision-makers also believe Crawford is the obvious choice for the award.
“Jamal is worthy of the award almost every year, but he has to get it this year,” said one rival Western Conference executive who spoke under the condition of anonymity. “Without Jamal, they’d have been sunk by the Blake Griffin injury. He is definitely one of the elite sixth men in the league and somehow he still remains underrated. He not only comes off the bench and scores, he does it in a way that helps them win games.”
“Jamal has been amazing; he provides the type of spark off the bench that can be the difference between a team having an early exit in the postseason and making a deep playoff run,” said an NBA assistant coach, who spoke under the condition of anonymity. “His instant offense really comes up big in games where game plans are thwarted early and you simply need to get buckets. In my opinion, he deserves Sixth Man of the Year honors.”
It’s clear that there’s an overwhelming number of NBA players who are adamant that Crawford is the NBA’s best sixth man. Many players – young and old, short and tall, East and West – all have a lot of respect for Crawford. Here’s what players told Basketball Insiders:
Sacramento Kings forward Caron Butler: “He’s the greatest sixth man in NBA history. He should win the award this year, and that would solidify him as the best sixth man ever. He was a great teammate [on the Clippers] and an even better person. I’m happy to call him a friend. He has the respect of all of his peers. As athletes, that’s what we all shoot for: winning, being respected and having a solid legacy.”
Indiana Pacers point guard Ty Lawson: “[Winning three Sixth Man awards] has never been done. It would be a big honor for him to win that award three times because he’s one of the best players to have ever come off a bench. You never know what he’s going to do. He might come down and just pull up for a three, or he might give you a hesitation move (which he normally does right before he pulls up for a three) or he just blows by you. It’s so hard to guard him. Even in the lane, he knows how to throw up floaters and he always seems to make them.”
Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin: “Jamal is not only a huge part of our bench, but also our team. I’ve never seen a guy be able to come off the bench and consistently score and carry a second unit the way he does while accepting his role. As good as he is on the court, he’s even better off of it. He’s a terrific locker room guy. He should win Sixth Man of the Year this season. And I think he should have won the award two more times than he already has, in my opinion.”
Five-time All-Star Chauncey Billups: “Of course Jamal should be the Sixth Man of the Year this season – again! He’s a guy who deserves a tremendous amount of credit for accepting a reserve role while knowing that he could be a top-five scorer in the league if put in that position. He’s extremely valuable to the Clippers. They depend on his production every night. He’s the best in the league at what he does.”
Two-time All-Star Baron Davis: “I love Jamal Crawford. He is one of my favorite players to watch. He has always been stellar and consistent. He is a player that every team wishes they had coming off the bench. I think he is a key to the Clippers making a run this year. He deserves Sixth Man of the Year because of the impact he has on the team.”
Orlando Magic guard Elfrid Payton: “He deserves to win Sixth Man of the Year. He’s so important to that team because he’s instant offense off of the bench. He’s somebody who can come in and bring energy and get the crowd into the game. Also, when it comes to closing games, he’s someone who can create his own shot, so he’s very important to the Clippers. He’s tough to guard because he is so good at making tough shots. No shot is a bad shot for him. I remember watching him when I was younger – four-point play after four-point play.”
Boston Celtics guard Isaiah Thomas: “He’s in the conversation every year. He does for his team what other guys try to do and can’t. And it happens to be year 16 in his NBA career! It says a lot about the type of player he is. He could easily start around the league, but he’s a guy who doesn’t care about that and cares about doing what’s best for the team. It’s a blessing to play against Jamal because he is a big brother to me and I’ve known him for so long. Going against him is like playing in his pro-am in the summers; we battle and have fun at the same time. He’s very important to the Clippers. I watch all of their games when I’m not playing and it seems like if Jamal doesn’t play well, then they don’t play well. He’s a big part of their team and when he plays well, they usually win. I believe he should be high up in the conversation about another Sixth Man of the Year award. He deserves it, and his team is winning.”
Portland Trail Blazers point guard Damian Lillard: “He’s a game-changer for them. They could be having a bad night and he can take over. He makes big shots, tough shots, and draws fouls if you’re too physical.”
Washington Wizards forward Jared Dudley: “Jamal Crawford is one of the most unique players in the NBA. His shot-making ability off the dribble and his uncanny way to get to the free throw line makes him dangerous. He’s the Benjamin Button of the NBA. He’s simply not aging at all.”
Seven-time All-Star Grant Hill: “Aside from his impressive shot-making ability and his vast array of illusory skills, what’s impressed me most about Jamal is his longevity and durability. To be able to dominate off the bench in now his 16th year in the league is quite remarkable.”
Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert: “He is, for sure, one of the frontrunners. You know he can go off anytime, so you cannot relax against him.”
Los Angeles Clippers guard J.J. Redick: “Jamal is one of a kind – both as a player and a person. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know him and playing with him the past three seasons. He’s the epitome of what a sixth man should be: someone who instantly changes the flow and dynamic of the game with his skill set. For Jamal, that is scoring the basketball. There are few players, if any, like him.”
Nine-year NBA veteran Mo Evans: “Jamal Crawford is a prolific scorer with a high basketball IQ and a knack for hitting big shots. He did this for our Atlanta Hawks team over and over again in 2010, when he won his first Sixth Man of the Year award. His game is proving to be timeless. He is still equally impactful at 36 years old as he was in his younger years. He has heavily contributed to the Clippers’ success this year, especially with Blake Griffin out of the line-up. He’s a big reason L.A. is fourth in the Western Conference. All things considered, I believe he deserves a historic third Sixth Man of the Year award.”
Portland Trail Blazers guard C.J. McCollum: “Jamal is one of the toughest covers in the league. His ability to shoot off the dribble and manipulate ball screens makes him a unique guard. [He] also gives the Clippers a secondary ball handler. … Jamal could potentially win [the Sixth Man award] every year.”
Miami HEAT center Hassan Whiteside: “When he has the ball, you never know what he is going to do with it. [Until this interview], I didn’t know he was 36 years old. Wow. That’s crazy.”
Brooklyn Nets point guard Shane Larkin: “I think Jamal Crawford has a good chance at winning Sixth Man of the Year because he is crucial to the Clippers’ success. He comes into the game for J.J. [Redick] most of the time and immediately makes them more dangerous because he can do everything with the ball offensively and pretty much carries the second unit for them. Whenever you’re playing against him, you have to respect his jumper but he also keeps you on your heels because at any moment he can cross you over and make a mid-range pull-up or get all the way to the bucket. He is the one guy on their second unit who consistently gives |
ereid Monument, British Museum. This was a new "Greek Temple" type of tomb for Lycia, adopted circa 380 BC.[33]
The Lycians once again fell under Persian domination, and by 412 BC, Lycia is documented as fighting on the winning side of Persia. The Persian satraps were re-installed, but (as the coinage of the time attests) they allowed local dynasts the freedom to rule.[34]
The last known dynast of Lycia was Perikles. He ruled 380-360 BCE over eastern Lycia from Limyra, at a time when Western Lycia was directly under Persian domination.[35] Pericles took an active part in the Revolt of the Satraps against Achaemenid power, but lost his territory when defeated.[35][36][37]
After Perikles, Persian rule was reestablished firmly in Lycia in 366 or 362 BCE. Control was taken by Mausolus, the satrap of nearby Caria, who moved the satrap's residence to Halicarnassus.[35] Lycia was also ruled directly by the Carian dynast Pixodarus, son of Hecatomnus, as shown in the Xanthos trilingual inscription.
Lycia was also ruled by men such as Mithrapata (late 4th century BC), whose name was Persian. Persia held Lycia until it was conquered by Alexander III (the Great) of Macedon during 334–333 BC.[38]
Dynastic portraiture on coinage
Although many of the first coins in Antiquity illustrated the images of various gods, the first portraiture of actual rulers appears with the coinage of Lycia in the late 5th century BC.[39][40] No ruler had dared to illustrate his own portrait on coinage until that time.[40] The Achaemenids had been the first to illustrate the person of their king or a hero in a stereotypical undifferentiated manner, showing a bust or the full body, but never an actual portrait, on their Sigloi and Daric coinage from circa 500 BC.[40][41][42] From the time of Alexander the Great, portraiture of the issuing ruler would then become a standard, generalized, feature of coinage.[40]
Hellenistic period (333-168 BC) [ edit ]
Ptolemaion in Lymira Ptolemaion in Limyra, circa 270 BC. Ptolemaion sculpture of a lady.
After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, his generals fought amongst themselves over the succession. Lycia fell into the hands of the general Antigonus by 304 BC. In 301 BC Antigonus was killed by an alliance of the other successors of Alexander, and Lycia became a part of the kingdom of Lysimachus, who ruled until he was killed in battle in 281 BC.[43]
Control then passed to the Ptolemaic Kingdom, centre on Egypt. Ptolemy II Philadelphos (ruled 285–246 BC), who supported the Limyrans of Lycia when they were threatened by the Galatians (a Celtic tribe that had invaded Asia Minor). The citizens of Limyra in return dedicated a monument to Ptolemy, called the Ptolemaion circa 270 BC.[44] By 240 BC Lycia was firmly part of the Ptolemaic Kingdom, centred on Egypt,[45] and remained in their control through 200 BC.[46]
It had apparently come under Seleucid control by 190 BC, when the Seleucids' defeat in the Battle of Magnesia resulted in Lycia being awarded to Rhodes in the Peace of Apamea in 188 BC. It was then granted autonomy as a protectorate of Rome in 168 BC and remained so until becoming a Roman province in 43 AD under Claudius.[47]
Lycian League [ edit ]
LYCIAN LEAGUE
τὸ Λυκιακοῦ σύστημα City Votes Xanthos 3 Patara 3 Myra 3 Pinara 3 Tlos 3 Olympos 3 Sympolity of Aperlae, Simena,
Isinda, Apollonia 1 Amelas? Antiphellus? Arycanda? Balbura? Bubon? Cyaneae? Dias? Gagae? Idebessos? Limyra? Oenoanda? Phaselis? Phellus? Podalia? Rhodiapolis? Sidyma? Telmessus? Trebenna?
Formation [ edit ]
The Lycian League (Lykiakon systema in Strabo's Greek transliterated, a "standing together") is first known from two inscriptions of the early 2nd century BC in which it honors two citizens.[48] Bryce hypothesizes that it was formed as an agent to convince Rome to rescind the annexation of Lycia to Rhodes. It is not known for certain whether it was formed before or after Lycia was removed from Rhodian control. According to Livy, the consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio Asiaticus put Lycia had been under Rhodian control in 190 BC. He wrote that a Lycian embassy complained about the cruel tyranny of the Rhodians and that they were under king Antiochus III the Great they had been in liberty in comparison. It was slavery, rather that just political oppression, " they, their wives and children were the victims of violence; their oppressors vented their rage on their persons and their backs, their good name was besmirched and dishonoured, their condition rendered detestable in order that their tyrants might openly assert a legal right over them and reduce them to the status of slaves bought with money.. the senate gave them a letter to and to the Rhodians that...it was not the pleasure of the senate that either the Lycians or any other men born free should be handed over as slaves to the Rhodians or any one else. The Lycians possessed the same rights under the suzerainty and protection of Rhodes that friendly states possessed under the suzerainty of Rome."[49] Polybius wrote that the Romans sent envoys to Rhodes to say that "the Lycians had not been handed over to Rhodes as a gift, but to be treated like friends and allies." [50] The Rhodians claimed that king Eumenes of Pergamon had stirred up the Lycians against them.[51] In 169 BC, during the Third Macedonian War, the relationship between Rome and Rhodes became strained and the Roman senate issued a decree which gave the Carians and the Lycians their freedom.[52] Polybius recorded a decree “freeing” the Carians and Lycians in 168–7 BC.[53]
Strabo wrote that there were twenty-three cities which came together for a general assembly and had a share in its votes "after choosing whatever city they approve of". The last statement is unclear. The largest cities had three votes, the medium-sized ones two, and the rest one. He noted that the League did not have freedom over matters of war and peace: "Formerly they deliberated about war and peace, and alliances, but this is not now permitted, as these things are under the control of the Romans. It is only done by their consent, or when it may be for their own advantage." However, they had the freedom to choose a Lyciarch as the head of the league and to designate general courts. He also noted "since they lived under such a good government, they remained ever free under the Romans, thus retaining their ancestral usages [i.e ancestral laws and customs]."[54]
Composition [ edit ]
Strabo wrote that according to a source the six largest were Xanthos, Patara, Pinara, Olympos, Myra, and Tlos. Tlos was near the pass that leads over into Cibyra.[55] The names of the other cities has been identified by a study of the coins and mention in other texts.[56] The coins recognize two districts, termed, for want of a better term, "monetary districts:" Masicytus and Cragus, both named after mountain ranges, in the shadow of which, presumably, the communities lived and conducted business.[57] Where coinage before the Lycian League had often been stamped LY for Lycia, it was now stamped KP (kr) or MA.
In 81 BC Lucius Licinius Murena, the Roman commander who fought the Second Mithridatic War (83-81 BC) in Anatolia deposed Moagetes, a tyrant of the tetrapolis (four towns) in the Cibyratis (northern Lycia). It had been formed by the city of Cibyra Megale, (Greater Cibyra, as opposed to Cibyra Mikra, Little Cibyra, of the coast, not too far from modern Side. It was in the Cibyratis region, in today's Turkish Lake Region. According to Strabo, Cibyra had two votes, while the other three cities had one and the tertarchy was ruled by a benign tyrannts. When Murena ended the tyranny he included the cities of Balbura and Bubon within the territory of the Lycians.[58][59]
In 181 BC, at the end of the Roman-Seleucid War, the consul Gnaeus Manlius Vulso decided to fight the Galatian War (189 BC) against the Galatians. He was supported by Attalus II, the king of Pergamon. The two leaders marched inland and reached Phambylia levying soldiers from local rulers. They then got to the territory of Cibrya, ruled by another tyrant called Moagetes. When Roman envoys went to the city he begged them not to ravage is lands as he was a friend of Rome and promised a paltry sum of money, fifteen talents. Moagetes sent his envoys to Manlius' camp. Polybius had Manlius say that he was the worst enemy of Rome and that he deserved punishment rather than friendship (ancient historians made up speeches). Moagetes and his friends went to meet Manlius dressed in humble clothing, bewailing the weakness of his town and begging to accept the fifteen talents Manlius was 'amazed at his impudence' and said that if he did not pay 500 talents and thank his stars, he would lay is lands to waste and sack the city. Moagetes persuaded him to reduce the sum to 100 talents and promised an amount of grain. Moagetes saved his city and Manlius moved on. Polybius described Moagetes as "cruel and treacherous man and worthy of more than a passing notice."[60]
Silver Drachm of Trajan from Lycia, 98–99 AD, minted during Roman rule.
Roman period [ edit ]
When Rome got involved in the eastern Mediterranean the Lycians allied with Rome. An inscription found in Tyberissos provides the first record of such an alliance treaty (foedus). The dating is uncertain. It precedes the treaty of 46 BC (see below) and could go back to the second or first century BC. The context in which this treaty was made in unknown. It could have been concluded during the expansionist moves by Antiochus III the Great, the Seleucid king, in Anatolia prior to the Roman-Seleucid War (192–188 BC), or during or after this war. Alternatively, it could have been concluded in the context of the Mithridatic Wars in Anatolia in the first century BC. The preamble stated: "There will be peace and loyal alliance between the People of the Romans and the cities of Lycia and the assembly of the Lycians by land and sea for all time.” There were four clauses which stipulated that: 1) the Lycian League was not to allow enemies of Rome to cross all territory over which they had authority so that they could bring war on Rome or her subjects and was not to give them aid; 2) Rome was not to allow enemies of the Lycians to pass through territory they controlled or had authority over so that they might bring war on the Lycian League or the people subject to them and was not to give them aid; 3) if anyone started a war against the Lycian people first, Rome was to come to her aid as soon as possible and if anyone started a war against Rome, the Lycian league was to aid Rome as soon as possible provided that this was allowed to Rome and the Lycian League in accordance with the agreements and oath; 4) Additions and subtractions to the agreements were possible if each side agreed though a joint decision.[61]
The Roman theater in Pinara
The Roman Bridge near Limyra in Lycia, one of the oldest segmental arch bridges in the world.
An inscription found on a statue-base found in Thespiae attests that in 46 BC Julius Caesar signed a treaty with the Lycian league. It had nine articles. The first article stipulated "Friendship, alliance and peace both by land and sea in perpetuity "Let the Lycians observe the power and preeminence of the Romans as is proper in all circumstances." The other articles stipulated: 2) Neutrality of each party to the other's enemy; 3) mutual help in case of an attack on either party; 4) anyone charged with import or export of contraband goods was to be charged by the highest official of the two parties; 5) Romans accused of a capital crime in Lycia were to be judged in Rome by her own laws and Licyans accused of these crimes were to be judged in Lycia by her own laws; 6) Romans in a dispute with Lycians were to be judged in Lycia according to her own laws, if Lycians were brought to court by Romans the case was to be heard by whatever official the disputants chose for the case to be dealt with justly; 7) No person was to be taken as a surety, Roman and Lycian war prisoners were to be returned to their own countries, captured horses, slaves or ships were to be restored; 8) named cities, ports and territories which were restored to the Lycians were to belong to them; 9) both parties agreed to abide by the terms of this oath and the treaty. Details could be amended if both parties agreed.[62]
In 43 AD the emperor Claudius annexed Lycia. Cassius Dio wrote that Claudius ‘reduced the Lycians to servitude because they had revolted and slain some Romans and he incorporated them in the prefecture of Pamphylia." He also provided some details of the investigation of this affair conducted in the senate.[63] Suetonius wrote that Claudius "deprived the Lycians of their independence because of deadly intestine feuds."[64] In an inscription found at Perge which has been dated to late 45/early 46 BC the Lycians, who described themselves as 'faithful allies’, praised Claudius for freeing them from disturbances, lawlessness and brigandage and for the restoration of the ancestral laws. It makes a reference to the transfer of power from the multitude to the councillors, selected from among the best. Therefore, it seems that there might have been a revolutionary popular uprising which could have overturned the established order. The annexation of Lycia seems to fit the common reason for annexing Roman client states or allies in this period: the loss on stability due to internal strife or, in some cases, the weakening or end of a ruling dynasty. The restoration of ancestral law was probably linked to the Roman practice of respecting and guaranteeing the ancestral laws, customs and privileges of city-states or leagues of city-states it made alliance agreements with in the eastern Mediterranean. Lycia was annexed, but the Lycian League was retained as so were self-governance regarding most local matters according to local traditional laws and the League's authority over local courts. The treaty concluded by Caesar in 46 BC had already established a framework for the distinction of judicial areas under the competence of the Lycian League and those under the Roman praetor peregrino (chief justice for foreigners) and could be used to define the assignment of legal areas between the Roman provincial governor and the League. The Romans re-established stability in Lycia and retained friendly relations with the Lycians and Lycian rights to their traditional laws, customs and privileges.[65]
In 74 AD the emperor Vespasian joined the Roman provinces of Lycia and Pamphylia into the province of Lycia et Pamphylia.[66][67] Cassius Dio's statement that Claudius incorporated Lycia into Phampylia (which he had as governed by a prefect, rather than a propraetor, see above) is refuted by the existence of legati Augusti pro praetore Lyciae (imperial provincial governors of Lycia with propraetorial rank). The adoptive son and heir of Augustus, Gaius Caesar, died in Lycia in 4 AD after being wounded during a campaign in Artagira, Armenia.[68]
Byzantine era [ edit ]
During the Byzantine period Lycia and Pamphylia came under the command of the Karabisianoi (the mainstay of the Byzantine navy from the mid-7th century until the early 8th century). After the Karabisianoi were disbanded (between ca. 719/720 and ca. 727) they became the Theme of the Cibyrrhaeots.
Turkish era [ edit ]
Abandoned Greek city of Kayaköy
Lycia was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire and eventually became part of Turkey. After WW1 Lycia was assigned to the Kingdom of Italy with the Treaty of Sèvres and occupied for a few years, but in 1923 was assigned to Turkey.[69]
A substantial Christian community of Greeks lived in Lycia until the 1920s when they were forced to migrate to Greece after the population exchange between Greece and Turkey following the Greco-Turkish War in the early 20th century.[70] The abandoned Greek villages in the region are a striking reminder of this exodus. Abandoned Greek houses can still be seen in the towns of Demre, Kalkan and Kaş, and Kaya is a Greek ghost town.[70] A small population of Turkish farmers moved into the region when the Lycian Greeks migrated to Greece.[70] The region is now one of the key centres of domestic and foreign tourism in Turkey.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]
Primary sources [ edit ]
“Poem on the Battle of Kadesh” 305–313, Ramesses II
“Great Karnak Inscription” 572–592, Merneptah
Breasted, J. H. 1906. Ancient Records of Egypt. Vol. III. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
“Plague Prayers of Mursilis” A1–11, b, Mursilis
Pritchard, J. B. 1969. Ancient Near Eastern Texts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Secondary sources [ edit ]
Coordinates:A late Glenn Murray penalty rescued an unlikely draw for Crystal Palace against fellow strugglers Swansea.
Jonathan de Guzman fired the Swans ahead before Eagles goalkeeper Julian Speroni saved well from Wilfried Bony to prevent Palace going 2-0 down.
But with eight minutes left, Chico Flores saw red after it was deemed he had fouled Glenn Murray inside the box.
Murray sent Michel Vorm the wrong way but the 10-man Swans thwarted Palace's attempts to force a late winner.
Pulis's Palace Premier away record Premier League: Played: 7 Won: 1 Drawn: 1 Lost: 5 Goals for: 3 Goals against: 9
The Eagles looked the happier of the two teams after securing their first away Premier League draw of the season in atrocious conditions at the Liberty Stadium.
The result moved them three points above the relegation zone in 16th, two points behind their 14th-placed opponents.
Swansea started the brighter as Palace sat back and invited pressure from their hosts, who dominated possession and territory early on.
The Eagles looked to utilise the pace of Yannick Bolasie - but he was often left isolated and crowded out by the home defence.
Despite their early dominance, the Swans' first real effort did not come until the 21st minute, when Pablo Hernandez drove a shot wide.
And it took some slick passing and movement to carve out De Guzman's opener.
Ashley Williams's long pass found Bony, who combined with Leon Britton to find the Dutchman, who slotted home from 14 yards out.
Bony seemed certain to double the advantage with a first-time effort from six yards out but Speroni dived to his right to save one-handed.
Palace looked to up the tempo in the second half but Vorm easily gathered a tame, hooked shot from Murray and comfortably saved a Cameron Jerome header.
And Swansea looked to be heading for a comfortable win until the game turned with eight minutes remaining.
Murray latched onto a long ball over the top, toe-poking it past Vorm before being brought down by Flores.
Referee Mike Dean pointed to the spot, though replays suggested initial contact may have taken place just outside the area, before sending off Flores.
Murray converted the penalty high into the right corner, and nearly netted a late winner when his goalbound shot was blocked by Jordi Amat.
There was still time for Palace to have an injury-time appeal for a penalty turned down, with winger Jerome Thomas booked for diving.PROVO — BYU was in the news Wednesday for its investigation of allegations that some members of its football team over the years have received “improper benefits” from former director of football operations Duane Busby. While potentially an impactful development, at present this should fall under the “let’s-wait-and-see-the-facts-before-we-over-analyze-it” category of news stories.
There’s actually another BYU story right now that involves more important issues, in the big picture, than whether some college athletes stayed on someone’s couch for free or received minor assistance in other ways.
BYU and its supporters need to be prepared to make news for a totally different reason. They need to be ready to raise a little political havoc in the name of anti-discrimination and equality, if they want to remain legitimately in the business of college sports, and especially college football.
Anti-discrimination and equality are big topics in America right now.
One very recent, very public example is the NBA’s banning of LA Clippers’ owner, Donald Sterling, for his remarks about blacks and other ethnicities.
Sterling, however, didn’t get himself banned from the NBA because he was a racist. No, Sterling was banned because the people demanded it; because enough people with influence finally stood tall and said, “We’re not going to stand for this anymore.”
By most accounts, it appears Sterling had been who he is for a long time. The recording that caught Sterling making his racist statements doesn’t appear to even be legal or admissible as evidence in a United States courtroom.
But it wasn’t the recording that got Sterling banned — it was the demand of the people, led and fueled by many people of influence. The punishment was unprecedented. The change didn’t happen because somebody asked nicely — what happened to Sterling came about because people forced the NBA’s hand.
Soon it very well might be BYU’s turn to force a few hands.
In college athletics, BYU, the flagship university of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, is on the outside looking in right now.
Not only has BYU been excluded from entry into one of the Power 5 athletic conferences — the SEC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac 12 and ACC — but the SEC and ACC recently ruled that BYU would not even be considered a top-level program for scheduling purposes.
It’s reaching a point where BYU and its supporters need to be ready to stand up and say, “We’re not going to stand for this anymore.”
Can anyone rationally argue that BYU, based on its athletic accomplishments and other applicable merits, does not deserve to be included in the top tier of college athletics?
There is no valid argument against it.
There are 62 college football programs included in those Power 5 conferences. With Notre Dame it makes 63. These five conferences are not only the dominant controlling force in football, but generally are in all college sports. They have the money, the facilities and the power. They are the top tier.
Can anyone make an argument that BYU does not possess a top 60 athletic program or a top 60 football program?
In the Division 1 Learfield Sports Director’s Cup standings, which ranks entire athletic programs according to their on-field accomplishments, BYU finished the 2013 fall sports season ranked No. 11 in the country. Since the inception of the Director’s Cup 21 years ago, BYU has finished the fall season ranked in the top 25 nationally 17 times.
BYU doesn’t just squeak into the top 60 of athletic programs — it is well within the dividing line.
In 2009, ESPN created a comprehensive all-time college football “Prestige Ranking.” BYU was ranked No. 25 — higher than well over 30 Power 5 programs, including Utah which ranked No. 43.
In July 2012, Sports Illustrated’s Steward Mandel unveiled his “Program Pecking Order” for college football, identifying programs based on prestige as kings, barons, knights, or peasants. Mandel identified 13 programs as kings and 10 as barons. BYU and Utah were both labeled in the next category as knights, along with 27 other programs including Arizona State, Arkansas, Cal, Colorado, Michigan State, Missouri, Oklahoma State, Stanford, Washington and other Power 5 programs (plus Boise State). While Mandel did not rank the schools within each category, this would put BYU somewhere between No. 24 and No. 52 in terms of college football prestige.
In 2010, Bleacher Report’s senior writer, Michael Pinto, did a power ranking of the top 50 college football programs of all time. BYU came in at No. 25.
In August 2013, scout.com released its list of the greatest college football programs by decade based on AP poll data. BYU ranked No. 15 in the 80s, No. 26 in the 90s, and No. 26 in the 2000s. Interestingly, Utah State is the only program from Utah to register AP poll data in the 2010s so far.
The prestige and pecking-order rankings of college football programs by Sports Illustrated and ESPN speak not only to BYU’s on-field performance but also to its overall prestige as a program. In December 2012, Jeff Call of the Deseret News wrote a piece on a statistical study that confirmed BYU’s strong national following.
In the article, Call quotes ESPN’s national college football reporter, Joe Schad, as saying: “I think BYU is certainly a national brand, in the same ilk as Notre Dame. They have a national recruiting base and a national following. BYU is a very attractive brand from a television perspective. My company desired BYU as a broadcast partner. BYU is attractive to our television audience and to our executives.”
So, again the question: Can anyone rationally argue that BYU, based on its athletic accomplishments and other applicable merits, does not deserve to be included in the top tier of college athletics?
If BYU so clearly deserves to be included, then why is it being forced below the large and ever-expanding dividing line between the Power 5 conferences in American college sports and the rest?
It’s a question that deserves attention from those that are, or claim to be, interested in equality and anti-discrimination in America.
Is it just a coincidence that BYU, the flagship institution of what one study in "American Grace" found to be the third-most hated religion in America, is the one institution finding itself in this situation? Maybe.
If BYU and its supporters want to secure the university’s place as a top-tier athletic institution long-term, however, they better make absolutely certain it is just a coincidence and they better be prepared to play every discrimination and equality card in the book.
In a wide-ranging 2012 survey from the Pew Research Center, 46 percent of LDS Church members said they face “a lot of discrimination in the U.S. today.” When asked to describe in their own words the most important problems facing them in the U.S., 56 percent cited misperceptions about Mormonism, discrimination, lack of acceptance in American society and similar issues. The word most commonly used to describe Mormons by others was “cult.”
That 46 percent statistic is a massively high number. In doing research, it’s not difficult to find examples of why many LDS members feel this way. BU Today had an interesting piece in 2012 called “Why We’re Afraid of Mormons.” A fairly recent poll by the Washington Post found that 20 percent of Americans would not want a family member marrying a Mormon.
It seems reasonable to assert that whether Mormons are discriminated against generally in the United States or not, the fact that BYU is being excluded from the top tier of college athletics, when it is so obviously belongs in the top tier based on its merits, is at least in some ways a demonstration of discrimination or inequality — whether by definition or by effect.
Historically, groups that have faced these situations do not find improvement in their status or circumstances by asking nicely or by waiting for those “above” them to extend an invitation.
The athletic program at BYU may seem like a small thing compared to other issues in America. There is an argument to be made that we place far too big of an emphasis on sports in our country as a whole, especially on college sports.
Being an emotionally invested fan of a sports team when we have no control over its successes or failures is irrational in and of itself.
Nevertheless, athletics play a large role in many ways in our society and in the lives of millions of Americans. For better or worse, sports matter in our country.
Sports at BYU are no exception. As I’ve written about previously, a separation of sports and school in America might be a good thing, but it isn’t going to happen.
To the contrary, the connection between sports and school, and the billions of business dollars that bind them together, is only growing stronger.
It’s altogether possible that BYU’s athletic program has only scratched the surface of what it can become in the future. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is no stagnant or diminishing organization. No, the Mormons with their emphasis on education, family, missionary service and personal progress are only poised to grow in number and influence in the years to come, with the same being true for their flagship university.
First, however, BYU has to get itself included in the upper class of college sports, where it belongs.
Not only should BYU and its supporters care about this, but anyone that is in favor of equality and reward based on merit should be willing to lend support to the Cougars’ cause.
Based on its merits as an athletic program, by all measures, BYU deserves to be included in the upper division of college sports.
If things don’t change soon, it might be time for the peaceful, conservative institution in Provo, Utah, to raise a little havoc.Abstract
Objective To determine if patients receiving chronic opioid therapy can be tapered to lower opioid doses without a subsequent increase in pain. Design Retrospective and prospective chart review at a VA Medical Center. Methods Patients were included in the review if they were prescribed opioids chronically for at least 90 consecutive days and if a plan to taper opioid doses was agreed upon. Patients 89 years of age and older, patients with cancer, and patients exhibiting aberrant behavior were excluded. The primary endpoint was to determine the percent reduction of morphine equivalents (ME) over a 12-month period. Secondary endpoints included percent reduction of ME at 3 and 6 months, change in pain perception at 3, 6, and 12 months, and change in the number of adjuvant medications prescribed at 3, 6, and 12 months. Data were analyzed utilizing descriptive statistics. Results A total of 50 patient charts were included in the study. The average percent reduction of opioid doses was 46% over a 12-month period. Seventy percent of patients either experienced no change in pain or had less pain when comparing baseline to 12 months. An equal percentage of patients either had no change in the number of adjuvant medications prescribed or had more adjuvant medications prescribed when comparing baseline to 12 months. Conclusions Patients in the population studied can be successfully tapered to lower opioid doses and may not necessarily experience more pain.
Introduction
Unintentional overdose increased by 124% in the United States between 1999 and 2007 and may partly be explained by the increase in prescription opioids. Other explanations for unintentional overdose include mixing opioids with central nervous system depressants such as alcohol and inadequate patient counseling or monitoring on initiation of opioid therapy. This represents a large public health concern. The percentage risk of overdose and adverse drug effects increases with higher opioid doses. Adverse effects from high-dose opioids may include arrhythmias, thyroid disease, hypogonadism with sexual dysfunction, fractures, and hyperalgesia. Chronic use of Schedule II opioids are associated with more emergency department visits as well.
Use of high-dose opioids is a concern in the veteran population. One retrospective review found that the care for patients receiving chronic opioid therapy was not in accordance to evidence-based treatment guidelines. In particular, the use of short-acting opioids were frequent, urine drug screens were administered to only 40.8% of patients, and concurrent benzodiazepine use occurred in 32.0% of patients. Another study found that patients with mental health disorders were more likely to be prescribed higher opioid doses, increasing the risk of adverse events. While the frequency of fatal overdose with opioids was 0.04% in a case-cohort study in a veteran population, the overall overdose percentage was 1.8% in patients on greater than or equal to 100 mg/day in morphine equivalents (ME).
Nationally, an Opioid Safety Initiative (OSI) was chartered by the Under Secretary of Health in 2012 to address the research findings which described safety issues with high-dose opioids among veterans. The goals were to develop short- and long-term plans to deploy an opioid safety monitoring system that ensured opioid pain medications are used safely, effectively, and judiciously. This system-wide initiative identifies patients with one or a combination of risk factors, such as high dose of opioids or opioids combined with sedatives. It also identifies providers whose prescribing practices are misaligned with medical evidence/strong practices and provides counseling, education, and support to these providers to help them improve their care of veterans with pain.
Recent data from the OSI demonstrated that the program is producing the desired effects with significantly fewer veterans receiving opioids and opioid and benzodiazepine combinations and more patients on opioids having urine drug screens documented to help guide treatment decisions. Because of the OSI, one study found that the percentage of patients prescribed opioids greater than 200 mg/day in ME decreased from 0.65% to 0.12%. This study also found that the number of patients receiving at least one opioid prescription within 90 days decreased by 13.8% after implementation of the OSI. The OSI was found to positively impact prescriber views on setting an opioid dose limit of 200 mg/day in ME as well.
As suggested by the OSI, opioid prescribing practices need to change to help reduce the risk of overdose and to prevent adverse effects. Trials have demonstrated modest or equivocal benefit of chronic opioid therapy to treat noncancer pain. Furthermore, more evidence is revealing numerous risks associated with chronic opioid therapy, including a greater occurrence of psychosocial issues. Because of this, evidence-based guidelines recommend that chronic opioid therapy be tapered or weaned off if there is no progress toward meeting therapeutic goals. An opioid trial may be useful in demonstrating the utility of chronic opioid therapy.
This study will examine whether patients can be successfully tapered to lower opioid doses without a subsequent increase in pain. The primary aim is to determine the percent reduction of ME over a 12-month period. Secondary aims include percent reduction of ME at 3 and 6 months, change in pain perception at 3, 6, and 12 months, and change in the number of adjuvant medications prescribed at 3, 6, and 12 months.
Methods
The Institutional Review Board approved this retrospective and prospective chart review and exempted the study from obtaining informed consents. Patients were drawn from a list of patients initiated on an opioid taper that was kept due to the national OSI to allow for quality improvement. The tapers were implemented by primary care providers, the pain service, or the pharmacist-run pain management clinic at the provider's discretion. Examples of reasons to implement an opioid taper included inappropriate initiation of chronic opioid therapy due to questionable diagnosis as well as patient specific risk factors. Patients from the opioid taper list were included in the study if a plan to initiate a taper was agreed upon and if the taper was initiated between January 1, 2010 and January 31, 2013. Patients with cancer and patients exhibiting aberrant behavior were excluded from the study. A total of 12 months of data were collected for each patient beginning from the time the opioid taper was initiated. Patients were seen in clinic at least once a month. A single data point that fell closest to 3, 6, and 12 months was recorded for each endpoint. All doses were converted to ME utilizing a standard Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) 4 equianalgesic table (Table 0001 ). Pain perception was based on either a documented pain score or pain report and was recorded as improved, no change, or worsened. The number of adjuvant medications was determined by looking at active prescriptions for acetaminophen, anticonvulsants, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, topical analgesics, tramadol, tricyclic antidepressants, serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, and skeletal muscle relaxants. Patients were considered to have been successfully tapered if their 12-month opioid dose was less than their baseline opioid dose. Conversely, patients were considered to be unsuccessfully tapered if their 12-month opioid dose was greater than or equal to their baseline opioid dose. Data were analyzed utilizing comparative and descriptive statistics.
Table 1 Opioid ME Fentanyl Transdermal 1 mcg/hour to 2 mg/day Methadone 1 to 6 Morphine 1 to 1 Oxycodone 1 to 1.5 O |
http://www.ovw.usdoj.gov/open-solicitations.htm. You may subscribe to instant updates on new solicitations by signing up for the EGov Delivery Option: http://www.justice.gov/govdelivery/subscribe.html?code=USDOJ_59. We also encourage everyone to review carefully “Information for Applicants” in each solicitation which includes the first-ever OVW Grant Program Reference Guide. This important resource includes eligibility requirements for all OVW programs, solicitation timelines, budget caps and project periods, information about how to apply, required application content, grant writing tips, sample budgets, and much more! Please review the guidebook carefully and thoroughly as you prepare for the 2010 application process. As 2009 comes to a close and the holidays approach, I want to give thanks to everyone in the field for your efforts every day on behalf of survivors. It is a joy to do this work with devoted men and women committed to changing the status quo. In looking forward to December 3rd and 2010, we will continue our efforts until we see a day where men, women, and children are considered sacred in a world without violence. Happy Thanksgiving and, again, with gratitude,
Catherine Pierce
Acting Director Date of RADAR Release: January 4, 2010 R.A.D.A.R. – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting – is a non-profit, non-partisan organization of men and women working to improve the effectiveness of our nation's approach to solving domestic violence. http://www.mediaradar.orgIn truth, Trump’s suggestion is much more of a musing than an actual plan. His entire comments Wednesday morning on CBS were contradictory and at times incoherent. “I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt!” he said at first, embracing a label that Hillary Clinton seized on during her anti-Trump economic speech on Tuesday. “Nobody knows debt better than me. I’ve made a fortune by using the debt. If things don’t work out, I renegotiate the debt. That’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing.”
Trump’s argument: Debt is good, and so is renegotiating it. “You go back and say, hey guess what, the economy just crashed. I’m going to give you back half,” he said.
But then he switched, clarifying that what’s good for Trump is not necessarily good for the country. “I like debt for me. I don’t like debt for the country. I like debt for my company. I don’t like debt for the country,” he said. “We are sitting on a time bomb,” Trump continued, pointing out that the national debt has soared in recent years to more than $19 trillion. “We have to start chopping that debt down.”
Debt is bad. Got it?
Then Trump shifted again, emphasizing that “chopping that debt down” or offering to pay less was not renegotiating it. “I wouldn’t renegotiate the debt,” he said. “That’s a different thing. That’s just a corporate thing.”
“So I wouldn’t do that,” Trump added. “But I think it could be a good time to borrow, and pay off debt. Borrow debt. Make longer-term debt.”
The most charitable explanation of Trump’s idea is that he would seek to restructure the nation’s debt in a way that would benefit the economy just like he did with corporate debt as a businessman. But of course, at times during that interview he said he would do no such thing.
There are a couple of risks associated with Trump’s lack of clarity. The first is that in the financial world, idle speculation from current or would-be presidents can have actual effects on financial markets, which can cost real people real money. Trump’s low standing in the polls at the moment may mitigate any fallout, but the closer he gets to Clinton and the closer it gets to November, the greater the impact these comments could have. The second is that most U.S. voters are not financial experts, and Trump’s suggestion for restructuring, or renegotiating, or just not paying all of the nation’s debt sounds great in theory—especially when politicians of all stripes have made the debt ceiling sound like an average credit card. (Just make the minimum payment!)
Trump could help clear things up by putting out an actual plan and explaining how he intends to run the nation’s finances. But unless he commits to staving off an unprecedented default, he probably won’t satisfy economists or the markets, even if his tough talk and business savvy sounds appealing to regular people.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.Police Chief Henry P. Stawinski III spoke at a press conference on March 13 after an "unprovoked attack" on Prince George's County District III station killed an officer. "One of your defenders, Jacai Colson...lost his life in defense of this county today," he said. (The Washington Post)
Police Chief Henry P. Stawinski III spoke at a press conference on March 13 after an "unprovoked attack" on Prince George's County District III station killed an officer. "One of your defenders, Jacai Colson...lost his life in defense of this county today," he said. (The Washington Post)
(Update: Police take third brother into custody in shooting of police officer)
A Prince George’s County police officer was killed Sunday in a fierce shootout with a man outside a district station in Landover, in what the police chief said was an unprovoked attack.
Police Chief Henry P. Stawinski III said a man walked up to the District III station and opened fire outside the front doors about 4:30 p.m. Officers rushed out to stop the attack. Officer Jacai Colson, 28, a four-year department veteran, was killed in the gunfight, the chief said. Police said the suspect was wounded and taken to a hospital, where he was listed in stable condition.
Police said they didn’t know of a motive, but the suspect and a man police officials described as his brother were both in custody.
“One of your defenders lost his life in defense of this community today. This was an unprovoked attack,” Stawinski said at a somber news conference Sunday night.
A relative and law enforcement officials identified the two people in custody as Malik Ford and Michael Ford, both of Temple Hills.
The slain officer’s father, James Colson III, was rushing from Philadelphia to the Washington region Sunday night. His son, he said, “was courageous and an excellent role model” for young men.
Colson graduated from Chichester High School in Boothwyn, Pa., where he was born, and went on to play football at Randolph-Macon College, according to a team roster. Pedro Arruza, the football team’s coach, recalled Colson for his strength of character.
“He was a great kid,” Arruza said of Colson, who played one season for the team at defensive back and wide receiver. “A really respectful kid and just a high-character young man. He treated everyone with respect.... To be honest, he wasn’t a great player, but he was a really great person.”
His high school coach, Joe LaRose, said Jacai Colson’s grandfather was also a police officer.
The shooting terrified many in the Palmer Park and Landover areas. Police urged residents to shelter in place to ensure their safety. The warning was lifted shortly after 7:30 p.m.
One witness said she grabbed her sleeping 14-month-old son from his playpen when she heard what she thought was probably firecrackers. She looked out a window and saw a man dressed in black firing a handgun at the police station.
Forensic investigators confer Sunday outside a restaurant near the area where a police officer was shot in Landover. (J. Lawler Duggan for The Washington Post)
“He fired one shot, and then he started pacing back and forth, then fired another shot,” said Lascelles Grant, a nurse. “Who would shoot a police station on Sunday evening? This is insane.”
Then, police began pouring out of the station.
“Just looking outside, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, look at all these police officers running out, putting their lives really in danger,’ ” Grant said. As shooting continued, the Jamaican immigrant ran to her bathroom to take cover, and said she thought, “Lord, please don’t let no shot come inside here and hurt my baby and me.”
Erica Thomas, 39, of Washington, said the two people in custody are her nephews. She said relatives had informed her that Michael was injured in the shooting and she tearfully waited at the hospital Sunday night.
“I just want to know where they’re at,” she said.
She said she did not know of a possible motive for an attack. “What we wanna know is why did all of this happen? What caused this? That’s what we wanna know.”
Thomas received word from family members Sunday afternoon that her nephew may have been shot by officers after he opened fire. “I apologize if that’s the case, but all lives matter. Where is my nephew?”
Their grandmother, Deidre Ramos, 60, of Hyattsville, said Malik and Michael Ford were arrested in connection with the shooting but she said police had the wrong suspects. “They weren’t involved,” she said. Asked if police arrested the wrong people, she said, “Yes.”
Colson, who would have turned 29 this week, was described as a “cop’s cop” and as having an “infectious smile.”
Stawinski said the incident “wasn’t about anything.”
“He opened fire on the first police officer he saw,” Stawinski said.
Colson was an undercover narcotics officer who worked in high-risk situations, Stawinski said. “When things began to turn, he immediately stepped into action,” Stawinski said of Colson’s response Sunday.
“He was always there for his fellow brothers and sisters,” said Prince George’s Fraternal Order of Police President John Teletchea.
Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela Alsobrooks called the incident “another horrific act of evil.” “We have another mother tonight without her son,” Alsobrooks said.
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) ordered flags to fly at half-staff. “The First Lady and I send our sincere prayers to the family and loved ones of Officer Colson, who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to his fellow citizens and community,” Hogan said in a statement. “It is my hope that his proud legacy of commitment and passion for law enforcement and serving others will provide some comfort in the difficult days that lie ahead.”
Police cars and barricades continued to block the area around the police headquarters — also connected to the district station — late into the evening.
Four miles away, in Cheverly, police cruisers lined the entrance to Prince George’s Hospital Center. Officers shared hugs and shed tears. They huddled in a circle, holding hands and reciting prayers for their fallen comrade.
Sunday’s killing came 12 days after the funeral for Prince William County officer Ashley Guindon, who was shot and killed there on her first day on duty. Guindon was killed when she and two fellow officers were sent to a home in the Woodbridge area of the county to answer a call about a domestic dispute.
Ronald Williams Hamilton, 32, an Army staff sergeant, allegedly opened fire on Guindon and the two other officers Feb. 27 as they approached the front door to his and wife’s home.
During his two decades as a high school football coach, LaRose saw hundreds of kids come through, but he said few were like Jacai Colson.
“He was that kid that every once in a while you hope you have,” LaRose said. “That kid who is a leader. There’s an old saying that when you’re a leader and you turn around, everyone is following you. He had that way of being a leader.”
Growing up around police inculcated him, LaRose said, with a sense of discipline. Colson was so mature, LaRose said, that he decided to start him at quarterback when he was still a sophomore. Most students, he said, would have wilted under the pressure of playing with older students.
But not Colson.
“He walked into the huddle of older kids and led them to a successful season,” LaRose said. He said he wasn’t surprised when he learned he had become a police officer. He said he “felt safer” knowing Colson had decided to serve.
“We lost a great one today,” he said.
Arelis R. Hernández, Hamil R. Harris, Martin Weil, Julie Tate, Jennifer Jenkins, Ovetta Wiggins and Peter Hermann contributed to this report.Home > News > Press releases >
8. July 2015
Swede Ship Marine will install new Kongsberg Maritime sonar systems as part of a major rebuild and lifetime extension of five patrol boats for the Swedish Navy. The new sonars will replace the previous model SIMRAD SS576 sonars first installed in 1996 on board the Tapper-class (or Bevakningsbåt 80), with the purpose to protect and patrol Swedish coastal waters.
The Tapper-class Fast Patrol Boats operate in extremely shallow water, and require Sonar capable of high performance in such environments. Photo copyright Swede Ship.
With 22 meters in length and a displacement of 62 tons, the Tapper-class Fast Patrol Boats operate in extremely shallow water, and require sonars capable of high performance in such environments. The Kongsberg Maritime sonar selected for this upgrade will be used for Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), Mine and Obstacle detection and Navigation, and is designed for use in shallow water.
"The Swedish Navy is one of the most experienced Navies with regards to operation of sonars in shallow and challenging waters so we are proud to have the preferred sonar solution for protection of the Swedish coastline," said Thomas Hostvedt Dahle, Naval Sonar Product Sales Manager, Kongsberg Maritime.
"Our sonars have acoustic properties specially developed for shallow water and our design is compact in order to enable installation also on very small ships. This supports the ASW tactics of fighting submarines in shallow water with the use of several smaller ships that are equipped with sonars. We look forward to the ship being delivered with upgraded sonars to the Swedish Navy, in less than a year."
The rebuild and lifetime extension project has already started, with the first vessel being prepared for the work in the shipyard.
Contact usSunday's vote represents the final stage in Tunisia's democratic transition nearly fours years after the autocrat Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali was ousted.
With a new constitution and full parliament elected in October, the north African state has been hailed as an example of democratic change in a region still reeling from the Arab Spring revolts.
The two candidates in the presidential race are Beji Caid Essebsi, leader of the anti-Islamist Nidaa Tounes party, and incumbent Moncef Marzouki (photo), who held the post through an alliance with the moderate Islamist movement Ennahda.
In the first round of voting in late November, a record 27 candidates entered the race, however, none of them won a clear majority.
Tunisia's Administrative Court rejected appeals filed by Marzouki against the results and the election commission announced a run-off vote would be held in December.
Security tight as polls open
The eve of the election was marked by violence with the shooting of a soldier near the city of Kairouan.
Extremists warned there would be further attacks on security forces in a video that appeared on social media networks last week.
The authorities said around 100,000 police officers and soldiers had been deployed to secure polling stations.
Polls are due to close at 1700 GMT and the result is expected to be announced sometime between Monday and Wednesday.
lw/pfd (AP, AFP, Reuters, dpa)90 percent of Tor keys can be broken by NSA: what does it mean?
Errata Security CEO Rob Graham has published a blog-post speculating that ninety percent of the traffic on the Tor anonymized network can be broken by the NSA. That's because the majority of Tor users are still on the an old version of the software, 2.3, which uses 1024 RSA/DH keys -- and at keylengths of 1024 RSA/DH crypto can be broken in a matter of hours using custom chips fabbed at an estimated cost of $1B. It seems likely that the NSA has spent the necessary sum and sourced these chips (likely from IBM).
This isn't the same as being able to decrypt all of Tor in realtime, but it does suggest that the NSA could selectively decrypt its stored archives of Tor traffic.
However, the new version of Tor, 2.4, uses elliptical curve Diffie-Hellman ciphers, which are probably beyond the NSA's reach.
Graham faults the Tor Project for the poor uptake of its new version, though as an Ars Technica commenter points out, popular GNU/Linux distributions like Debian and its derivative Ubuntu are also to blame, since they only distribute the older, weaker version. In either event, this is a wake-up call that will likely spur both the Tor Project and the major distros to push the update.
Yesterday's revelations about the NSA's ability to decrypt'secure' communications were taken by many to mean that the NSA had made fundamental mathematical or computing breakthroughs that allowed it to decrypt securely enciphered messages. But it's pretty clear that's not what's going on.
Mostly, the NSA has spent $250,000,000 per year on a program of sabotage, through which they have inveigled proprietary hardware and software companies, as well as standards bodies, into deliberately introducing back-doors into their technology. This is much more frightening than the idea that the NSA has made profound mathematical breakthroughs -- such breakthroughs might stay within the NSA's walls for years or decades. But a program of systematic sabotage against common crypto tools means that anyone of sufficient skill and attentiveness is likely to discover and exploit those same back-doors -- that means that organized crime, totalitarian states, and other entities even less savory than the NSA should now be assumed to have full access to the financial system, government databases, and other sensitive systems.
But the good news is that, as the ProPublica article mentioned (quoting whistleblower Edward Snowden), "Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on." That means that free/open source security tools like Tor (which can be publicly inspected for sabotage) can indeed be trusted, where they use state-of-the-art crypto, and implement it well.
It's not surprising to learn that 1024 RSA/DH can be broken by spending huge sums on brute-force computation -- that was already public knowledge prior to yesterday's revelations. But crypto is asymmetrical: it is much, much easier to make crypto stronger than it is to break crypto through brute force. Merely by switching to 1025-bit RSA/DH keys, the Tor Project could double its security. Switching to 1030-bit RSA/DH keys increases the difficulty 64-fold. And by switching to more secure ciphers like elliptical curve Diffie-Hellman, Tor becomes vastly more secure still.By Dana O'Neil
IT HAS BEEN 25 years since Grant Hill tossed a perfect length-of-the-floor pass to Christian Laettner, a quarter of a century since Laettner, who didn't miss a shot the entire game, dribbled, turned and swished Duke into the Final Four with a 104-103 overtime win against Kentucky. The building that hosted the game is gone -- the Philadelphia Spectrum was bulldozed in the name of progress in 2010. The players' playing days are long over. Some are in coaching or other basketball-related gigs. Others have moved on altogether. The sport, meanwhile, has hosted 96 more regional final games since that 1992 Elite Eight game between the Blue Devils and Wildcats and has crowned 24 more national champions. Yet we can't seem to let it go. As long as there is an NCAA tournament, those 2.1 seconds will live on, a moment so incredible and unforgettable that even all these years later, even after other game winners have stolen our attention for a time, the Laettner buzzer-beater is the only one we call The Shot.
Despite both teams' rich histories, Duke entered the game as the prohibitive favorites. The Blue Devils had won their first national championship under coach Mike Krzyzewski a year earlier. The star players -- Hill, Laettner, Bobby Hurley, Brian Davis and Thomas Hill -- were practically household names. Kentucky, on the other hand, was just three years removed from an NCAA scandal under former coach Eddie Sutton that had resulted in serious penalties. With the exception of Jamal Mashburn, most of the roster was made up of homegrown Kentuckians who were lightly regarded as recruits.
Cast of Characters
Mike
Krzyzewski Duke, Head Coach Mike
Brey Duke, Asst. Coach Grant
Hill Duke, Sophomore Bobby
Hurley Duke, Junior Thomas
Hill Duke, Junior Ashok
Varadhan Duke, Manager
Rick
Pitino Kentucky, Head Coach Deron
Feldhaus Kentucky, Senior John
Pelphrey Kentucky, Senior Jeff
Morrow Kentucky Manager Pat
McGee Kentucky, Fan Tim
Higgins Official Rick
Bozich Sports Columnist
View All
Grant Hill
"Obviously, it was a great play, but I also feel like it was symbolic of an era that is no more. What I mean by that is, that was right before the mass exodus began, with guys leaving early. We've had great teams and great games since, but nobody has been able to sustain it. We were on regular television so much in our years at Duke, it was like we were regular programming. People knew who we were, whether that was good, bad or indifferent, so that helped make this game an even bigger deal.''
Ashok Varadhan
"It was like traveling with the Beatles. They were pop stars. After one of the games, I forget where it was, the managers, we put Bobby Hurley in a duffel bag so he could avoid getting accosted. He was small enough.''
Thomas Hill
"Our coach did a good job of shielding us from the outside world. We were a really together group, a close-knit group. But all the attention that we received, that's why you go to Duke. You want to play in those games. You want that attention and that pressure. It's awesome.''
Jeff Morrow
"Since we were in Philadelphia, everyone was making the Rocky comparisons. Some of our coaches even said they ran up the [Philadelphia Art Museum] steps. I remember when Duke went to the open practice, it was like a rock concert.''
Deron Feldhaus
"Believe me, Coach [Rick] Pitino had us believing we could win the whole thing. We were pretty big underdogs, but we didn't see ourselves that way. We had [Jamal] Mashburn, and we were playing good ball. We definitely thought we could win that game.''
Bobby Hurley
"We were so driven that year. We had so many guys returning, and we were so focused.''
The Pass
Pat McGee
"These two cute little girls were behind me making signs, and one tapped me on the shoulder. 'Hey, do you want to make a sign?' My buddies sitting next to me were like, 'Oh, come on, make a sign.' So I made the sign and went on to watch one of the best basketball games ever played.''
Seconds before Laettner's heroic shot, Kentucky's Sean Woods made an off-balance jumper to give the Wildcats a 103-102 lead. Laettner signaled for an immediate timeout, leaving just 2.1 seconds on the clock.
Rick Bozich
"I thought that was the final shot. I couldn't believe he took it. He wasn't the greatest shooter, but that was a helluva shot that has gotten forgotten in the aftermath.''
Mike Brey
"Woods hits that shot over Laettner, and Christian has the presence of mind -- he was always thinking the game -- he goes immediately into a timeout signal. He has his hands up. Doesn't react to the shot, just gets the timeout.''
Ashok Varadhan
"As a manager, all you want to do during the timeout is make sure you get Coach K a clipboard with a working marker. Nothing else matters. Make sure you get the clipboard, and make sure the marker has ink. That was it. That was my mission. That was my contribution to the shot.''
Jeff Morrow
"I'm hugging the trainer. She's hugging me. There was a timeout, and it wasn't until after that, as the guys are walking on the floor, it smacks you in the face that this thing isn't over yet.''
Thomas Hill
"There was not a game I played at Duke where I felt like we were going to lose. We broke the huddle, and I didn't know what was going to happen, but I knew something was going to happen, and we would do something [to] win the game. It never crossed my mind that we would lose.''
Mike Brey
"Mike [Krzyzewski] did a really good job of selling, 'We're going to win. We've got this.' Later, on the plane, [fellow assistant coach] Tommy Amaker and I were teasing each other. We were looking at the scoreboard like, 'Does he know how rough this is right now?' I had my 'It's been a good run' line ready.''
The Catch
Tim Higgins
"What was I thinking? Violations. He can run the end line. Is there a blocking foul? All the things we normally think about.''
Grant Hill
"I would always trash-talk that I had football in my genes [Hill's father, Calvin, played 12 years in the NFL]. I knew I could make that pass. We practiced that, not necessarily the play, but that pass every day. We had two-man drills, where you'd get the rebound and outlet it. Sometimes we'd do the Wes Unseld full-court chest-pass thing. The last thing we did was a baseball pass. Your partner runs the court, you throw it, and they catch it and lay it in. When I saw nobody was on me, I knew I could make the pass.''
Thomas Hill
"We practiced that play pretty regularly. We had a chance to run it in a game against Wake Forest that year and didn't execute, but we were all very comfortable with the call.''
Pat McGee
"The first thing I thought was, 'Why doesn't [Rick Pitino] have anyone on the ball?"'
John Pelphrey
"Think about a Hail Mary in football. Nobody goes man-to-man. If they did, every armchair quarterback would be screaming, 'What are you doing, Mr. Defensive Coordinator?' That's what we did. We went five on four. Grant Hill was not taking us out on that play.''
Rick Pitino
"Everyone thought my mistake was not putting a guy on the inbounds. That wasn't my mistake. Laettner hadn't missed a shot the entire game, so at the timeout, I told my guys, 'Whatever you do, don't foul him.' [John] Pelphrey and [Deron] Feldhaus just froze. They were so afraid to foul him, they let him get an open shot.''
Deron Feldhaus
"Well, it's easy to say that now, and he did stress it a couple of times, but the bottom line is we were way too soft on the play. Where I second guess myself is I should have gone for the pass to steal the ball. When you're standing behind the guy, that's where you got to worry about fouling him.''
The Dribble
John Pelphrey
"The most miraculous part of that play was the throw and the catch, not the shot. He made much more challenging shots in the course of the game. I thought I had my hands on the ball. I never touched it. What hurt was we didn't execute. We run that play in practice, and they never caught the ball, let alone got a shot off. They won that play. We lost that play. That's all it was.''
Bobby Hurley
"I was the second option, but I'm not really an end-of-game, the-buzzer-sounds kind of guy. I've made some big shots in deep stretches, but I'm not sure I ever hit a shot as time expired. I had a chance at the end of regulation to win it, and I missed. Probably better off they didn't come to me.''
Grant Hill
"When [Laettner] caught it, he dribbled, and the only thing I thought was, 'No!!! No, no, don't dribble! We don't have enough time for that.'''
Rick Bozich
"I remember thinking 2.1 seconds felt more like 20 seconds. But he had enough intelligence to dribble, pivot and take the shot with perfect form.''
The Shot
Bobby Hurley
"I was going across half court, getting the screen. I had a straight-on look at the shot. I was just concerned that he took too much time, and because you're so locked in, you don't even hear the buzzer. I knew it was real close. Once it left his hands, I knew it was in. I was just concerned he didn't get it off in time.''
Tim Higgins
"I was right behind Laettner when he shot. I had a perfect look at him, the clock and the ball as soon as it left his hands. I thought, 'This thing has got a chance.' I took a quick look at the clock and knew if it went in, it was good. I was just looking to make sure there wasn't goaltending at the basket.''
Rick Pitino
"It did look good, and he didn't miss a shot the entire game, so no one should be surprised that it was.''
Mike Brey
"What ran through my mind was 'How did he have the presence of mind to take that dribble?' But he was so calculating, such a cold-blooded winner. As soon as he turned, I knew he was clean, and I just thought, 'We're winning this game.' He drilled it. There's never been a more clutch guy in the history of the NCAA tournament.''
The Aftermath
Rick Bozich
"My biggest concern was we had to dial a seven to get out [from the courtside phones to file his story]. I was freaking out because our computers were pre-set, and we couldn't figure out how to use a seven. I was deathly afraid we weren't going to be able to file.''
Tim Higgins
"When it went, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. I knew it was going to be a mob scene, so I wanted to get the hell out of there.''
Thomas Hill
"My expression after the game, that's my indication of how great the game was, how big that game was. That was pure emotion. It wasn't scripted. He hit the shot, and I turned to look at the crowd, look at the fans, and that's when the camera catches me. I looked at one of our assistants, Pete Gaudet, and that's when I made the face. It was just, we're going back to the Final Four. I wasn't crying. That's just an expression I've made my whole life when something incredible happens. What's kind of different about it is that's what I'm known for now. Four years at Duke, a lot of plays, and it's a non-basketball play people know you for.''
Grant Hill
"You know, if that happens today, everyone goes back to the locker room and looks on their phone and sees the replay. I don't think we saw that play really until the next day. We had interviews, got on a plane and flew back that night to Durham. By the time we got back and saw it, Coach is always big on, if you have a big win or a big moment, you celebrate it and move on. We were getting ready for the Final Four. We didn't have time to really process it.''
Bobby Hurley
"I was emotionally and physically exhausted. I played the entire 45 minutes, and I had to work. There was a lot of running, and I was just two weeks coming back from a broken foot. I went to the locker room, and I just remember sitting there, taking a lot more time than normal to get showered and dressed. I was exhausted.''
Thomas Hill
"We were walking in the locker room, and I remember telling Christian, 'Hey, I don't think you missed a shot.' We looked at the stat sheet, and sure enough, he didn't.''
Rick Bozich
"We went in the Kentucky locker room, and I didn't feel like I belonged there. The emotion was so raw, and they were so hurt by losing the game, the end of their careers, not going to the Final Four. I just thought, 'I have enough to write. I don't need to ask them questions about it.' No one was saying anything. They were all crying, wedged into their lockers at these weird angles, and you could just see how much they were hurting.''
Rick Pitino
"It was grim, really grim.''
Jeff Morrow
"John Pelphrey and some other guys, I remember, were in the bathroom stalls. They couldn't compose themselves enough to come out. And then you look at Coach, someone who always has that composed demeanor, and he's struggling for words. Finally, he went over to his briefcase and pulled out the copy of Sports Illustrated [that had a cover story about the NCAA scandal that read 'Kentucky Shame']. That was his message that he tried to convey once everybody was able to listen -- this is where we were a short time ago. Now we're here.''
Pat McGee
"I stood there in my seat for a little while, and then eventually, there was a big group of us, we left. Some people went back to the hotel. We were staying at the Howard Johnson's in Runnemede, New Jersey, the only place we could find a room. I went out with a few people in Philly. We ended up in a Pizzeria Uno, and I remember having a lot of beers. The next morning, I laid in the back of someone's SUV for the road trip home.''
Tim Higgins
"My wife was at the game, and when I walked out to the car afterward, I said to her, 'That's the best college basketball game that's ever been played.' I thought maybe I was exaggerating then, but I still think that now. That was two teams that wouldn't quit, wouldn't give up. It was intense from the moment it started until it ended.''
Jeff Morrow
"That night after we lost, the fire alarm in the [Warwick] hotel went off around two in the morning. So we go downstairs, and there's [longtime Kentucky radio voice] Cawood Ledford standing there in his pajamas, with his top hat, overcoat and his house slippers. Standing right next to him in the same outfit is Abe Vigoda from "Barney Miller." He was living in our hotel.''
Rick Bozich
"I don't remember what I wrote, but I remember the next day I got paged at the Delta counter by my editor. When we got back to town, he wanted us to write everything we had. For Monday, we had maybe two or three pages more on the game. Our sports editor, David Hawpe, realized what a big deal it was.''
Rick Pitino
"We went home, and we had 15,000 people waiting for us at the arena. We were coming off probation, and we made it to the Elite Eight. People understood and appreciated what this team had accomplished. As I look back now, I'm not disappointed at all. It was a classic game, and I'm proud to have been a part of it.''
Deron Feldhaus
I don't think the fans would have looked at us any differently if we had won a championship. The way they accepted us, being the Unforgettables. To have your jersey retired at Rupp, that's something special.''
Mike Krzyzewski
"[Rick] understood it was a moment in time. It looked like it was a better moment for me at the time, but eventually it turned out to be a great moment for him, too, because of how he built his program, how he handled it and how his team handled it. He knew he was in the moment.''
John Pelphrey
"I don't see it as much as a special moment as everyone else does because we lost. Had we won, maybe I'd think differently. But to me, that was the last time I put that uniform on. That was the last time all of us were together. That was the last time Coach Pitino coached us. It was a really important moment in time, but when people refer to it as special? Not for me.''
Grant Hill
"I had no idea how big it was at the time. I'm 19 years old. I could barely process 20 days, let alone 25 years. I didn't really appreciate it until I got into the NBA and I'm watching March Madness as a spectator. I'm sitting in my hotel room, and they're showing Michael Jordan in 1982, the Georgetown-Villanova game in 1985 and Dereck Whittenburg's shot against Houston and us. And then I was like, 'Wow.' This is something that might be playing for years.''Last spring, the Republican National Committee (RNC) unveiled an ingenious new fundraising technique: mailing solicitations that were disguised as delinquency notices. Envelopes were stamped with "NOTICE OF DELINQUENCY" in large bold red print with the return address:
Office of Records
[Recipient's state] Area Assessment
***Immediate Response Requested***
***Immediate Response Requested***
The envelope had the stark appearance of official government mail. "Office of Records" suggested the letter came from a governmental agency. "Assessment" gave the impression the letter was notice of an overdue property tax bill. The enclosed invoice was marked "PAST DUE," which was circled in red. An undated letter began:
This NOTICE OF DELINQUENCY has been sent to you because the Republican Party has contacted you multiple times to ask for your support for the 2016 campaign...
From this point, the letter reads like a typical partisan fundraising solicitation and was signed by Reince Priebus, Chairman of the RNC.
ADVERTISEMENT
The mailing was sent to potential donors in at least a dozen states and received extensive, negative coverage in local media across the country, though little national attention. Many who received the letter were late middle-aged or elderly, a population especially vulnerable to such schemes. Some of them reported that, contrary to the letter's claim, they had not been previously contacted by |
29; 21, 20, 29; and 4, 3, 5 would be found more convenient ratios than 1 to 1, and 1½ to 1, etc. Templates and battering rules would be more perfect and correct, and the engineer could prove his slopes and measure his work at one and the same time without the aid of a staff or level; the slope measures would reveal the depth, and the slope measures and bottom width would be all the measures required, while the top width would prove the correctness of the slopes and the measurements.
To the land surveyor, however, the primary triangle would be the most useful, and more especially to those laying out new holdings, whether small or large, in new countries.
Whether it be for a "squatter's run," or for a town allotment, the advantages of a diagonal measure to every parallelogram in even miles, chains, or feet, should be keenly felt and appreciated.
[Pg 85]
This was, I believe, one of the secrets of the speedy and correct replacement of boundary marks by the Egyptian land surveyors.
I have heard of a review in the "Contemporary," September, 1881, referring to the translation of a papyrus in the British Museum, by Dr. Eisenlohr—"A handbook of practical arithmetic and geometry," etc., "such as we might suppose would be used by a scribe acting as clerk of the works, or by an architect to shew the working out of the problems he had to solve in his operations." I should like to see a translation of the book, from which it appears that "the clumsiness of the Egyptian method is very remarkable." Perhaps this Egyptian "Handbook" may yet shew that their operations were not so "clumsy," as they appear at first sight to those accustomed to the practice of modern trigonometry. I may not have got the exact "hang" of the Egyptian method of land surveying—for I do not suppose that even their "clumsy" method is to be got at intuitively; but I claim that I have shewn how the Pyramids could be used for that purpose, and that the subsidiary instrument described by me was practicable.
I claim, therefore, that the theory I have set up, that the pyramids were the theodolites of the Egyptians, is sound. That the ground plan of these pyramids discloses a beautiful system of primary triangles and satellites I think I have shown beyond the shadow of a doubt; and that this system of geometric triangulation or right-angled trigonometry was the method practised,[Pg 86] seems in the preceding pages to be fairly established. I claim, therefore, that I have discovered and described the main secret of the pyramids, that I have found for them at last a practical use, and that it is no longer "a marvel how after the annual inundation, each property could have been accurately described by the aid of geometry." I have advanced nothing in the shape of a theory that will not stand a practical test; but to do it, the pyramids should be re-cased. Iron sheeting, on iron or wooden framework, would answer. I may be wrong in some of my conclusions, but in the main I am satisfied that I am right. It must be admitted that I have worked under difficulties; a glimpse at the pyramids three and twenty years ago, and the meagre library of a nomad in the Australian wilderness having been all my advantages, and time at my disposal only that snatched from the rare intervals of leisure afforded by an arduous professional life.
After fruitless waiting for a chance of visiting Egypt and Europe, to sift the matter to the bottom, I have at last resolved to give my ideas to the world as they stand; crude necessarily, so I must be excused if in some details I may be found erroneous; there is truth I know in the general conclusions. I am presumptuous enough to believe that the R.B. cubit of 1·685 British feet was the measure of the pyramids of Gïzeh, although there may have been an astronomical 25 inch cubit also. It appears to me that no cubit measure to be depended on is either to be got from a stray measuring stick found[Pg 87] in the joints of a ruined building, or from any line or dimensions of one of the pyramids. I submit that a most reasonable way to get a cubit measure out of the Pyramids of Gïzeh, was to do as I did:—take them as a whole, comprehend and establish the general ground plan, find it geometric and harmonic, obtain the ratios of all the lines, establish a complete set of natural and even numbers to represent the measures of the lines, and finally bring these numbers to cubits by a common multiplier (which in this case was the number eight). After the whole proportions had been thus expressed in a cubit evolved from the whole proportions, I established its length in British feet by dividing the base of Cephren, as known, by the number of my cubits representing its base. It is pretty sound evidence of the theory being correct that this test, with 420 cubits neat for Cephren, gave me also a neat measure for Cheops, from Piazzi Smyth's base, of 452 cubits, and that at the same level, these two pyramids become equal based.
I have paid little attention to the inside measurements. I take it we should first obtain our exoteric knowledge before venturing on esotoric research. Thus the intricate internal measurements of Cheops, made by various enquirers have been little service to me, while the accurate measures of the base of Cheops by Piazzi Smyth, and John James Wild's letter to Lord Brougham, helped me amazingly, as from the two I established the plan level and even bases of Cheops and Cephren at plan level—as I have shown in the preceding[Pg 88] pages. My theory demanded that both for the building of the pyramids and for the construction of the models or subsidiary instruments of the surveyors, simple slope ratios should govern each building; before I conclude, I shall show how I got at my slope ratios, by evolving them from the general ground plan.
I am firmly convinced that a careful investigation into the ground plans of the various other groups of pyramids will amply confirm my survey theory—the relative positions of the groups should also be established—much additional light will be then thrown on the subject.
Let me conjure the investigator to view these piles from a distance with his mind's eye, as the old surveyors viewed them with their bodily eye. Approach them too nearly, and, like Henry Kinglake, you will be lost in the "one idea of solid immensity." Common sense tells us they were built to be viewed from a distance.
Modern surveyors stand near their instruments, and send their flagmen to a distance; the Egyptian surveyor was one of his own flagmen, and his instruments were towering to the skies on the distant horizon. These mighty tools will last out many a generation of surveyors.
The modern astronomer from the top of an observatory points his instruments direct at the stars; the Egyptian astronomer from the summit of his particular pyramid directed his observations to the rising and setting of the stars, or the positions of the heavenly bodies[Pg 89] in respect to the far away groups of pyramids scattered around him in the distance; and by comparing notes, and with the knowledge of the relative position of the groups, did these observers map out the sky. Solar and lunar shadows of their own pyramids on the flat trenches prepared for the purpose, enabled the astronomer at each observatory to record the annual and monthly flight of time, while its hours were marked by the shadows of their obelisks, capped by copper pyramids or balls, on the more delicate pavements of the court-yards of their public buildings.
We must grasp that their celestial and terrestrial surveys were almost a reverse process to our own, before we can venture to enquire into its details. It then becomes a much easier tangle to unravel. That a particular pyramid among so many, should have been chosen as a favoured interpreter of Divine truths, seems an unfair conclusion to the other pyramids;—that the other pyramids were rough and imperfect imitations, appears to my poor capacity "a base and impotent conclusion;"—(as far as I can learn, Mycerinus, in its perfection, was a marvel of the mason's art;) but that one particular pyramid should have anything to do with the past or the future of the lost ten tribes of Israel (whoever that fraction of our present earthly community may be), seems to me the wildest conclusion of all, except perhaps the theory that this one pyramid points to the future of the British race. Yet in one way do I admit that the pyramids point to our future.
[Pg 90]
Thirty-six centuries ago, they, already venerable with antiquity, looked proudly down on living labouring Israel, in helpless slavery, in the midst of an advanced civilization, of which the hist233 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print
On Tuesday, October 5th, Phoenix police officers Richard Chrisman and Sergio Virgillo responded to a domestic disturbance call made by Elvira Fernandez. Ms. Fernandez was concerned that her son, Danny Frank Rodriguez, was throwing things against the wall and might hurt her. She left her home and went to a neighbor’s home to call the police, in hopes they would reason with him and deescalate the situation. She hoped they would teach him some “respect” and if that failed, at least get him to leave her home.
Ms. Fernandez would learn a very hard lesson about calling the police to resolve family disputes that day (if you don’t already know, DON’T DO IT! Chances are, it’ll only make things worse, and certainly more violent). Instead of teaching her son the lesson she hoped for, 15 minutes after police arrived, her son (and the family dog) would lay dead on the floor of her mobile home. In the aftermath of this tragic shooting, Officer Vergillo, would be instrumental in his partner Chrisman’s arrest for what transpired in the trailer that afternoon.
Less than an hour after the shooting, Officer Chrisman was arrested and charged with aggravated assault, though officials acknowledge the severity of the incident warrants more severe charges being filed. His partner’s allegations, outlined in an extensive police report, describe Chrisman as a loose cannon, like Mel Gibson’s Lethal Weapon character, immediately after initiating contact with the victim drawing his gun, holding it to Rodriguez’s head and shouting “I don’t need no warrant, motherfucker.”
Vergillo describes that afternoon as “the worst day of [his] life,” surely an understatement as far as the family of Danny Rodriguez is concerned. However, it goes to show just how egregious Chrisman’s behavior must have been. In his sworn statement, Vergillo states emphatically that there was never a threat to either officer that would justify deadly force, and that Rodriguez never displayed a weapon. He also asserted that the dog that Chrisman executed barked, but had never “attacked” them, and that Rodriguez was understandably upset when his dog was killed, so he tried to talk him down and de-escalate the situation. When Chrisman went “hands on” with Rodriguez, Vergillo attempted to assist him, going so far as to deploy his own Taser, after Chrisman had failed to subdue Rodriguez with his own. In a display of valiant defiance, Rodriguez removed the Taser probes and stood up, whereupon Chrisman shot him in the face with “OC” (pepper) spray. Finally, Rodriguez informed the officers of his intent to leave, grabbing his bicycle that had been leaning against the kitchen counter. Vergillo stood behind Chrisman as Rodriguez attempted to exit the trailer, both hands on the handlebars of his bike, stepping toward the door. Chrisman grasped the handlebars from the other side, and a physical struggle for control of the bike ensued, and finally, with his partner only a few feet away, Chrisman stepped back from the bicycle, drew his weapon, and fired repeatedly into Rodriguez’s chest, killing him almost instantly.
It was after this climactic end to what should have been a routine domestic disturbance call that Chrisman simply left the building, while his partner was left to tend to the victim. Vergillo immediately radioed in a “998,” the PPD code for an officer involved shooting and requested an ambulance, but that was to no avail. Soon after that, detectives arrived, and on the basis of Vergillo’s statement, Chrisman was arrested on the scene.
This horrific situation raises a number of questions. Obviously, if true, the allegations against Chrisman are an extremely egregious case of police brutality, excessive force, and abuse of authority. But, in addition, one must ask, what about Officer Vergillo? Why did he stand by while all this went down, in the course of what he knew was likely an unjustified entry, especially after the assault with a deadly weapon (Chrisman placing his gun against Rodriguez’s temple) committed by his partner? Why did it take witnessing a willful act of murder to bring out this officer’s sense of duty to protect the community from acts of violent criminality?
The Police Union has come out in support of Officer Chrisman, helping him post a $150,000 bond, despite him being accused of gross violations of civil rights, professional standards of behavior, and the most basic moral tenets of any human society, and not by a mere mundane, but by a fellow officer. It is telling that Chrisman is a member of PLEA (an ironic name, under the circumstances) the Phoenix police officers union, while Vergillo is not.
Examining the record on these two officers is very enlightening. Chrisman is on the Brady list, a national database available to prosecutors of officers whose credibility as witnesses have been thoroughly compromised, due to documented instances of official dishonesty. Of course, the specifics of the 2007 incident that landed him there are kept secret from the public, but the significance of this fact is obvious. That the state itself does not trust this man to proffer honest testimony in open court speaks volumes about his integrity, especially given the well known proclivity the boys in blue have for “creative” testimony on behalf of their government handlers. If a DA wont have him, whatever it was, it must have been BAD. In addition, he has built extensive files with personnel and internal affairs in his 9-year tenure with the force.
On the other hand, Vergillo is a 14-year PPD veteran, and while he’s not on the Brady list, and hasn’t had any previous public allegations of excessive force, it is alleged he was demoted from the Drug Enforcement Bureau on account of his wife’s criminal involvement with the cartels. Nonetheless, by comparison, he looks far more reliable and credible than his partner.
Which brings me to the crux of this conflict for the powers that be. While racial tensions and the political climate cannot be overlooked, what with Joe Arpaio’s war on brown folks, the recent payout of a large settlement by the neighboring City of Mesa for a police shooting that ended the life of a 15 year old Hispanic boy, the embarrassing arrest of African American city councilman and former police officer Michael Johnson, and statewide minority outrage against SB1070, which Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon has publicly come out against, what is more interesting to me is the clash of cultures within the police community. Both accuser and accused are police officers. The union is firmly behind Officer Chrisman, whom they represent, but have so far refrained from openly criticizing his partner (the same cannot be said for Chrisman’s attorney, who is being paid for by PLEA). Meanwhile, Officer Vergillo and members of his family have already made statements to the press, and the Chief of the Phoenix Police Department has held a press conference that was unusual in it’s candor, wherein he seemed genuinely interested in seeing some kind of justice done, and highly critical of Chrisman’s behavior. He even went as far as thanking Vergillo for “telling the truth” about the matter, suggesting he believes the allegations to be accurate. However, the attitude of rank and file officers is not so supportive, and online comments identifying themselves as police personnel or their families have already referred to Vergillo as “the rat in the station” and suggested that he’s motivated by racial solidarity with the victim, despite the fact that he’s Italian, and not Hispanic.
In spite of the chief’s laudatory speeches and assurances to concerned community leaders that he’ll be protected from professional reprisal, I can tell you what is likely to happen to Officer Vergillo for speaking up. The same thing that happened to countless others who dared cross that “Thin Blue Line” in order to keep their “Brother Officers” honest, and to police their own. He’ll be frozen out, his performance reviews will suddenly become universally negative, he’ll get the worst shifts, in the worst neighborhoods, and he’ll get partnered with all the misfit rookies. They’ll harass him, threaten him and otherwise treat him like a pariah until he quits, or retires, or transfers elsewhere. In the worst case, he’ll be set up for a crime or even murdered (it has happened before). Within most police forces, officers value group loyalty over individual honesty, and betrayal of that loyalty is the one crime they will not look the other way on or cover up for another officer.
I’ll be following this story as it develops, and I’ll bring you updates as they become available. Should be very interesting to watch this play out. I can only hope that the resolution brings some level of justice to Elvira Fernandez, though I doubt it will do much to assuage the guilt she feels for calling the police that fateful day.
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EPNINGREDIENTS
100ml sunflower oil
2 tsp fenugreek seeds (see tips)
½ tsp asafoetida (see know-how)
6 garlic cloves, cut into 2mm slices
1kg spinach, washed, cut into 1cm strips and left to dry overnight, if you like, see tip
2 medium onions, halved and sliced into 5mm strips
2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground turmeric
3 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1½ tsp medium red chilli powder
METHOD
01.Heat the oil in your largest heavy-based pan with a lid for 2 minutes over a medium heat. Add the fenugreek seeds and stir through the warm oil for a few seconds. Stir in the asafoetida and garlic, then fry until the garlic starts to brown (about 30 seconds).
02.Add half the spinach, cover and cook for 3 minutes. Add the onions and emaining spinach, stir gently, then cover again and cook for 5-6 minutes until totally wilted.
03.Mix everything together, then add the salt, turmeric, coriander, cumin and chilli powder, gently stirring it in, and cook uncovered for 4 minutes. Taste and season, then serve immediately.
TIPS
Kaushy says: "I cut it into strips the day before making this dish to dry out some of the moisture in the leaves, but you can skip this step if you prefer a more saucy consistency. I love starting with so much spinach that it seems impossible to ft in the pan, then watching as it miraculously wilts."
Use less fenugreek if you want a more subtle flavour – its strong aroma can stay in the house for days. Make sure your spinach is dried thoroughly after washing.
KNOW-HOWThere was a time when you had to go to the post-apocalyptic wasteland to get married to someone of the same sex. On Friday, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision making gay marriage legal in all fifty states, scoring an important victory for the 1st amendment, the 14th amendment, and human dignity overall. It was the definitive answer in a long debate taking place across all fifty states and — because this is a video game blog — a range of virtual worlds as well. And it’s important to remember that Fallout 2 gave players the opportunity to marry whomever they wanted all the way back in 1998.
Games have been dealing with gay marriage in various ways for while now, and The Sims and Fable both make the list, as do Bioware games that don’t feature explicit “marriage,” but clearly let the players pursue homosexual relationships. One of the best examples comes from Nintendo, who came under fire for not including gay relationships in Tomodatchi Life but just announced that gay marriage would be coming to Fire Emblem this week. Maybe the justices decided that they couldn’t possibly lag behind what Nintendo had already decreed? Hard to say. Games have been dealing with gay marriage in various ways for while now, and Kotkau has a brief rundown of some of the more important examples of virtual same sex marriages.The SimsandFableboth make the list, as do Bioware games that don’t feature explicit “marriage,” but clearly let the players pursue homosexual relationships. One of the best examples comes from Nintendo, who came under fire for not including gay relationships inTomodatchi Lifebut just announced that gay marriage would be coming toFire Emblemthis week. Maybe the justices decided that they couldn’t possibly lag behind what Nintendo had already decreed? Hard to say.
But we’ll return to Fallout 2 for a second, noteworthy not just because it was the first game to include gay relationships but also because of why it does so, at least in my eyes. The most important thing is that Fallout 2, like the Bethesda Fallout games that would follow it, is an open-world game. And any open-world game is predicated on freedom. You’re meant to be able to go anywhere you want and do anything you want — open-world games all play with this concept to some degree, but the Fallout series is particularly committed to what we could imagine as an originalist interpretation of the idea. It’s a sandbox, offering you a playground and telling you to do what you want in it. In that context, restricting gay relationships would be absurd. How could you pretend you had a concept of player freedom without offering homosexual relationships?
It took a while for the big open-world game we all live in to come around to that idea, but I like knowing that many video games took it as the only logical choice a long time ago. I also like the idea that whenever anyone tries to incorporate “realism” into a modern game, they’ll have to put gay marriage in there, too.
A screenshot form the upcoming ‘Fallout 4′One of the greatest challenges for writers and greatest joys for readers of fantasy and science fiction is what we call “world building,” the art of creating cities, countries, continents, planets, galaxies, and whole universes to people with warring factions and nomadic truth seekers. Such writing is the natural offspring of the Medieval travelogue, a genre once taken not as fantasy but fact, when sailors, crusaders, pilgrims, merchants, and mercenaries set out to chart, trade for, and convert, and conquer the world, and returned home with outlandish tales of glittering empires and people with faces in their chests or hopping around on a single foot so big they could use it to shade themselves.
One of the most famous of such chroniclers, Sir John Mandeville, may now be mostly forgotten, but for centuries his Travels was so popular with aspiring navigators and literary men like Shakespeare, Milton, and Keats that “until the Victorian era,” writes Giles Milton, it was he, “not Chaucer, who was known as ‘the father of English prose.’”
Mandeville, like Marco Polo half a century before him, may have been part adventurer, part charlatan, but in any case, both drew their itineraries, as did later navigators like Columbus and Walter Raleigh, from a very long tradition: the making of speculative world maps, which far predates the early Middle Ages of pilgrimage and thirst for Eastern spices and gold.
In the Western tradition, we can trace world mapmaking all the way back to 6th century B.C.E., Pre-Socratic thinker Anaximander, student of Thales, whom Aristotle regarded as the first Greek philosopher. We have no copy of the map, but we have some idea what it might have looked since Herodotus described it in detail, a circular known world sitting atop an earth the shape of a drum. (Anaximander was also an original speculative astronomer.) His map contained two continents, or halves, “Europe” and “Asia”---which included the known countries of North Africa. "Two relatively small strips of land north and south of the Mediterranean Sea," with ten inhabited regions in total, that illustrate the very early dichotomizing of the world---in this case divided top to bottom rather than west and east.
Anaximander may have been the first Greek geographer, but it is the 2nd century B.C.E. that Libyan-Greek scientist and philosopher Eratosthenes who has historically been given the title “Father of Geography” for his three-volume Geography, his discovery that the earth is round, and his accurate calculation of its circumference. Lost to history, Eratosthenes’ Geography has been pieced together from descriptions by Roman authors, as has his map of the world---at the top in a 19th-century reconstruction---showing a contiguous inhabited landmass resembling a lobster claw.
You’ll note that Eratosthenes drew primarily on Anaximander’s description of the world. In turn, his map had a significant influence on later Medieval geographers. A Babylonian world map, inscribed on a clay tablet around the time Anaximander imagined the world (and thought to be the earliest extant example of such a thing), may have influenced European map-making in the age of discovery as well. It depicts a flat, round world, with Babylon at the center (see the British Museum for a detailed translation and commentary of the map’s legend).
The Babylonian map is said to survive in the similar-looking “T and O map” (third image from top), representing the words orbis terrarium and originating from descriptions in 7th century C.E. Spanish scholar Isadora of Seville’s Etymologiae. The “T” is the Mediterranean and the “O” the ocean. In the version above, a recreation of an 8th century drawing, and every derivation thereafter, we see the three known continents, Asia, Europe, and Africa, with the holy city, Jerusalem, at the center. This map greatly informed early Medieval conceptions of the world, from crusaders to garrulous knights errant like Mandeville, and raconteur merchants like Polo, both of whom made quite an impression on Columbus and Raleigh, as did the circa 1300 map from Constantinople above, the oldest of many drawn from the thousands of coordinates in Roman geographer and astronomer Ptolemy’s Geographia.
It wouldn’t be until 100 years after the translation of Ptolemy’s text from Greek to Latin in 1407 that his geographical precision became widely known. Until this, “all knowledge of these co-ordinates had been lost in the West,” writes the British Library. This would not be so in the East, however, where world maps like Ibn Hawqal’s, above from 980 C.E., show the influence of Ptolemy, already so long dominant in geography in the Islamic world that it was beginning to wane. Many more world maps survive from 11-12th century Britain, Turkey, and Sicily, from 16th century Korea, and from that wandering age of Columbus and Raleigh, beginning to increasingly resemble the world maps we’re familiar with today. (See a 15th century reconstruction of Ptolemy’s geography below.)
For most of recorded history, knowledge of the world from any one place in it was almost wholly or partly speculative and imaginative, often peopled with monsters and wonders. “All cultures have always believed that the map they valorize is real and true and objective and transparent,” as Jerry Brotton Professor at Queen Mary University of London tells Uri Friedman at The Atlantic. Columbus believed in his speculative maps, even when he ran into islands off the coast of continents charted on none of them. We are still conceptual prisoners—or consumers, users, readers, viewers, audiences—of maps, though we’ve physically plotted every corner of the globe. Perspectives cannot be rendered objective. No gods-eye views exist.
Nonetheless, several culturally formative projections of the world since Ptolemy’s Geography and well before it have changed the whole world, pointing to the power of human imagination and the legendarily imaginative, as well as legendarily brutal, acts of “world building” in real life.
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Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagnessPanthers quarterback Cam Newton will star in a 20-episode "docu-series" on NIckelodeon beginning in 2016, the network announced Tuesday.
According to Nickelodeon's release, each episode of "I Wanna Be …" will follow the two-time Pro Bowl QB "as he takes real kids on the ride of their lives to help make their dreams come true" as they're mentored by experts and supported by Newton in endeavors such as decorating award-winning cakes and landing a spot on a Broadway stage.
PHOTOS: NFL players doing good | WATCH: Newton's flip into end zone
“Time in the spotlight has made me realize the importance of creating positive messages to inspire the next generation. I’m very passionate about mentoring young people, and this show will be the perfect opportunity to help talented kids get the chance to pursue their dreams," Newton said in the release.
The series, from the same company that produces "Project Greenlight" and "Top Chef," will be filmed during the NFL offseason.Despite his record setting year, the media narrative this season did not hone in on Bradley Wright-Phillips, the goalscorer. Instead, his amazing production was chalked up to Thierry Henry, the provider.
Certainly, there is a case to be made for that storyline. After all, nine of Wright-Phillips’ 27 goals this season have come courtesy of an Henry feed. However, it is worth noting that the last primary assist from Henry that resulted in a Wright-Phillips goal came in late August against the Montreal Impact. Since then, the Englishman has been on fire, scoring 11 goals — including a brace this Sunday to match the MLS single season goal scoring record.
Wright-Phillips has been well aware of the chatter surrounding his production, but has been able to brush it aside.
“People can say what they want to say,” Wright-Phillips said. “All the best strikers have someone putting great passes, giving great assists and they score.”
In fact, the former Charlton striker pointed the finger right back at his strike partner to make his case, noting the success of Henry with fellow Arsenal great Dennis Bergkamp in the glory days of the Gunners.
“People are always going to be saying negative things,” Wright-Phillips continued “Obviously, I would have liked Thierry playing [against Sporting KC]. I dont care what people say. If he is going to feed me nice passes, I am going to be on the end of it. I still have to make the runs, you know? I could have done with him being there [Sunday] too. Maybe I could have had a few more chances.”
Henry missed Sunday’s encounter with Achilles inflammation in both legs. Despite his two-goal performance, Wright-Phillips lamented the captain’s absence. “We have other players that can feed me the ball. You saw [Sunday], I had four or five chances,” Wright-Phillips said, adding, “When he is there, I get more chances because of the player he is. If not, I try to make more chances.”
Whatever people may believe, Wright-Phillips greatly credits Henry not just for his own goal production, but for the symbiotic nature of their relationship. Roles were defined early, egos put aside — and both men are the better for it.
“He has stepped back a bit and let me play the going in behind role and I appreciate Thierry for that because he is a great player and sees what I can do for the team and he let me do that this season,” Wright-Phillips said. “It takes a mature player and a great player to do that.”I have never found my world as beautiful as I do now, and that breaks my heart. For I will die tomorrow.
I am in the unlikely situation of knowing the exact circumstances of my demise. I know the how, the where, the who and the why. I know that I will die at the blade of my Father’s sword in the most beautiful place in the world. In my world.
But I won’t spoil it for you. The surprise has already been ruined for me and besides, you wouldn’t understand the half of it.
It’s fair to say I’ve got a bit of explaining to do…
I.
My name is Tabitha. L. Tabitha, I’m Forty-one, black, shorter than most and starting to bald. I am the ruler of the planet Mellyora, due to a crash and a loop, and would like to keep it that way. I mentioned before, it’s beautiful.
I don’t want to die. Forty-one is hardly the start of life and I’ve got so much to do. Mellyora only has one city, it needs more; the mountains are dissolving, they need fixing; I am balding, I need to grow my hair back.
If I die, none of these things will happen. Someone else will take control of Mellyora and I know who that someone is and I know what will happen if they take over.
I am the best woman for the job. That’s not egotistical or showing off. It’s true.
Besides if I die I’ve no hope of growing my hair back.
***
Part 2 of For I Will Die Tomorrow
AdvertisementsFinding your way as an Independent Scientologist
This post is placed here as a landing spot for those who have just recently left the Church of Scientology. It contains vital data to help you through the transition to life as an independent person with personal and family goals as opposed to organizational goals.
As an independent Scientologist, you will be exposed to new data on Ron’s life and career, the development of the technology, and an intimate history of the Church that you have never seen before.
You have left an environment where ANY questioning of the Tech, Policy, Management, or Ron causes severe repercussions and have entered this new environment where you are permitted to ask questions and are encouraged to make up your own mind!
Can this shake your stable data? It sure can, especially when you start looking at aspects of the Tech, of the Church itself, and LRH that you have never permitted yourself to see before. For some of you, this can be a bit overwhelming at first.
Just remember that you have left a structured environment where you wore self-imposed blinders and are now free to observe and comment on your observations.
Do you remember this from the Creed of the Church of Scientology?
We of the Church believe:
That all men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others.
The Church of Scientology does not practice what it preaches. You are only allowed to follow the party line.
As an Independent Scientologist, you are free to follow your own Code of Honor and seek truth.
In this new environment, there are many different viewpoints and you will find a constant stream of discussions about what is true and what is not true. You will even find some areas of Independent Scientology calling other areas “Squirrels” to hoots of laughter from those who have found many workable solutions to setting beings free.
If the new data you are being exposed puts you into a confusion, there is a way to find certainty under these conditions and thus map out a course to spiritual freedom that works for you. The solution employs some very basic technology which you can use to sort things out for yourself.
From Introduction to Scientology Ethics we see that Confusion can be defined as any set of factors or circumstances which do not seem to have any immediate solution.
Confusions have pieces. If you were to grasp one piece of the confusion and relate other pieces to what you have grasped, you will soon have mastered the confusion.
If you look at your past and present exposure to Scientology, is there one piece that you have total certainty on?
Use this to align all of the other material you are about to encounter.
For me, it is the absolute certainty that the auditing and ethics technology produce fantastic results when standardly delivered (with the Auditors Code fully in).
Using that certainty, I can now evaluate the importance of LRH’s real life as opposed to the CofS version. I can also evaluate the importance of knowing that Volney Mattheson’s work with his e-meter predated and formed the basis of much that LRH wrote about metered auditing.
Do I care that David Mayo may have developed some of the NOTS material while doing repairs on LRH? Do I care that Jack Parsons studies in Black Magic may have influenced LRH? No!
Does it matter that LRH did not create scientology from scratch and may have adapted the work of others? Not at all!
What I care is that the technology I experienced as a PC and delivered as an auditor for 20 years produces workable and repeatable results in spite of auditing errors, C/Sing errors and arbitraries introduced by management.
We have an opportunity as Independent Scientologists to handle the errors of the past, handle inconsistencies in programming cases, and to explore productive avenues that were deliberately ignored in the past.
Some may wish to preserve Scientology as it was in the Sixties, or Seventies, or even post-GAT. That is their privilege. They probably do not realize that the rigid top-down control of the Tech is history.
We live in a connected world where the market is better informed than the purveyors of services. Wins and failures alike are swiftly exchanged on the Internet. Any group that seeks to help Man had better get used to having their motives and their services questioned and discussed.
Any organization delivering auditing will benefit from PCs sharing their wins and disappointments with others. The groups that will survive will listen to their public and swiftly handle any errors in delivery or in setting expectations.
Unfortunately, the CofS is not doing this and will shortly fade into oblivion like other organizations that tried to control customer communication |
whether they are really needed.”
The study analyzes traffic projections that led to the authorization of 11 highway expansion projects and compares them to recent traffic counts in the current highway corridors. The analysis finds that recent traffic counts on all of the 11 projects are unlikely to come close to the projections offered by WISDOT. Traffic projections are just one of several factors that are used to determine the need for highway expansion but they are crucial in getting federal matching funds.
“For example, WISDOT is projecting a 23% increase in traffic on I-94 near the Brewer’s Stadium by 2040. However, actual traffic counts show that traffic has actually decreased by 8% along that stretch of highway. Present trends show that the DOT projections will never be achieved,” said Hiniker.
The total cost of the 14 projects where traffic counts diverge from WISDOT projections is more than $3 billion. Though there may be other improvements still needed for many of the projects, costly real estate acquisition and the expense of more lane miles of concrete could be saved by downsizing the projects.
The Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group (WisPIRG) joined 1000 Friends of Wisconsin in raising concerns over WISDOT projections. “We applaud 1,000 Friends of Wisconsin for conducting this important analysis, which confirms earlier research about WISDOT’s expensive failure to acknowledge that travel behavior has been changing in Wisconsin,” said Bruce Speight, WISPIRG Director.
“Wisconsin taxpayers deserve more accountability,” added Hiniker. “WISDOT and some state leaders are asking for more money for transportation. Before taxpayers fork out more, we should make sure we are fixing local infrastructure and not wasting billions on highway expansions that are unnecessary. Let’s start by getting our transportation priorities straight before we waste taxpayer money on highway expansion projects we don’t need,” concluded Hiniker.
View the slide show and read the study.Advertisement
The U.S. Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency announced yesterday fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks, having last year sharply tightened CAFE limits for light vehicles. Covering new vehicles made between 2014 and 2018, DOT and EPA says the heavy-vehicle measures will "reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 250 million metric tons and save 500 million barrels of oil over the lives of the vehicles produced within the program’s first five years."
According to the New York Times, the standards draw heavily on a National Academy study issued earlier this year, which said that big fuel savings could be achieved by means of current technologies such as low-rolling-resistance tires, improved aerodynamics, better engines, hybrid-electric drive systems, and idling controls. The standards do not seem to owe much, however, to T. Boone Pickens' proposal to switch trucks to natural gas--in his revised "Pickens plan"--or to the long one-on-one conversation he boasted of having with Candidate Obama during the last presidential campaign.
In the new rules, if they take effect largely intact after a public comment period, tractor trailers including 18-wheelers will be required to show improved fuel efficiency of 20 percent, the heavier pickup trucks and vans of 10-15 percent, and specialized vehicles like fire engines and cement mixers of 10 percent. Though heavy vehicles are a relatively small proportion of all vehicles on the road, they account for a relatively large fraction of fuel consumption and emissions in the transportation sector. Enforcement of the new standards thus will go some way toward meeting Obama's 2020 greenhouse gas reduction pledge.Fadel Senna, AFP | French soldiers from the Wagram Task Force kneel next to a CAESAR unit, a French self-propelled 155mm howitzer, north of Mosul on July 13.
A French special forces soldier was killed in combat this morning in the Iraq-Syria region, the French presidency announced on Saturday.
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The Élysée Palace said in a statement that President Emmanuel Macron had "learned with great sadness" of the death of a soldier from the 13th regiment of paratroopers who was killed in combat in the Levant.
The French military operation in Iraq and Syria, known as Opération Chammal, is part of the US-led coalition of nations battling the Islamic State group. Military sources told AFP that it was the first French casualty since Chammal was launched in September 2014.
French forces are involved in several overseas military theatres, while a major domestic military deployment also remains active as part of anti-terrorism measures under Opération Sentinelle.
Former military general Dominique Trinquand, who once led the French military mission at the UN, told FRANCE 24 that French forces have been in Iraq "for a while" and in Syria since at least the spring.
Former general Dominique Trinquand speaks to FRANCE 24
The 13th parachute regiment is a French special forces unit that is not officially present in either Syria or Iraq. Trinquand said the details of special forces missions are not made public, which is why the precise location of the soldier's death remains unknown.
“Special forces are there to provide equipment and training for … Iraqi forces and the Kurds” as well as the Kurdish fighters in Syria, he said.
“Sometimes when you are training you are in the combat zone,” he added.
The Élysée's statement went on to say that Macron "salutes the sacrifice" of the soldier, who was killed while pursuing a mission "to defend our country, protect our fellow citizens and win the struggle against barbarism".
The French president also expressed "his confidence and pride in the French soldiers" who courageously battle "terrorist groups from the Levant to the Sahel" in Africa.The terrorism suspect has landed in Jordan after his plane left at about 2.45am on Sunday morning, following a legal battle that cost more than £1.7 million.
The case prompted calls for reforms to human rights laws to make it easier to eject foreign criminals from the country.
The Prime Minister said it was “excellent news” that the 53-year-old cleric, once described as Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe, was no longer in the UK.
“I was absolutely delighted,” Mr Cameron said. “This was something this Government said it would get done and we have got it done.
“It’s an issue that, like the rest of the country, has made my blood boil that this man who has no right to be in our country, who was a threat to our country and that it took so long and was so difficult to deport him.
“But we’ve done it, he’s back in Jordan, and that’s excellent news.”
Qatada is facing terrorism charges in Jordan but his deportation was blocked over concerns that he may not receive a fair trial.
The European Court of Human rights ruled that he could not be deported due to a risk that evidence obtained under torture could be used against him.
Following numerous courtroom battles, a treaty was signed between the British and Jordanian governments that finally secured Qatada's departure.
Qatada agreed in May to leave Britain once the treaty had been fully ratified, a process which was completed earlier this week.
However, the length of time and cost to taxpayers, which included almost £900,000 in legal aid for Qatada to fight his case, has angered MPs and campaigners.
Handout photo issued by the Ministry of Defence of Abu Qatada (left) at RAF Northolt. Photo: PA
Soon after Qatada’s flight took off, Theresa May, the Home Secretary gave a series of television interviews calling for radical legal reforms to make it easier to deport criminals from Britain.
She said the UK’s relationship with the European Court of Human Rights must change, adding that “nothing should be off the table”.
“I am glad that this government's determination to see him on a plane has been vindicated and that we have at last achieved what previous governments, Parliament and the British public have long called for,” she said.
“This dangerous man has now been removed from our shores to face the courts in his own country.
“I am also clear that we need to make sense of our human rights laws and remove the many layers of appeals available to foreign nationals we want to deport. We are taking steps - including through the new Immigration Bill - to put this right.”
The government is reforming the deportation process to reduce the number of times individuals can appeal to courts in the UK, she said.
However, Britain must also re-examine “our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights”, she said.
“We have got to look at that relationship and, as far as I’m concerned, I think nothing should be off the table in terms of looking at how we work with and how we deal with the European Court.”
Keith Vaz, the Labour MP and chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said government lawyers should have drawn up the treaty with Jordan sooner.
“Only 446 days after the Home Secretary said Abu Qatada would be on a plane shortly, he has finally reached the end of the runway,” Mr Vaz zaid.
“In the end, it was the king of Jordan who secured his departure by agreeing to this treaty.
“The Home Secretary's legal advisers will have questions to answer as to why they didn't conceive of this scheme earlier which would have prevented a cost to the taxpayer of £1.7 million.”Pin Share 1 131 Shares
Even the most ardent critic of DRM will admit that it has its uses. DRM may have a deleterious effect on consumers, but public libraries wouldn't be able to lend ebooks without DRM, nor could companies control their proprietary info.
But what you won't hear a DRM critic say, or even a DRM advocate, is that DRM is absolutely necessary as the only way to guarantee that they "achieve proper reward for their work".
And that's exactly what LockLizard is claiming in their latest blog post.
LockLizard is a UK-based tech company with a DRM solution for PDFs which can control how a PDF is accessed in the web browser, or on Android, OSX, Windows, or iOS.
That's all well and good, and I know LockLizard will find a market for their tech, but I still have a problem with how the company is using FUD to sell their DRM.
Tim Cushing gave me a link to a LockLizard blog post this morning where the company implied that everyone who might buy an author's works is a thief:
So the author is prevented from deriving the economic benefits that should flow to them as a result of their labour because copying is not being prevented. Enter DRM to redress the balance so that authors can gain their economic rights (why bother to write a book if you aren’t going to get paid?). In fact, as was discussed when the idea of copyright was created, what is the implication if the only people that can publish are those who can afford to? Exactly what literary landscape are we creating when only the rich (or those who are funded) get to make it big in print?... Absent DRM technologies, authors have no practical means to protect their intellectual capital or achieve proper reward for their work. In fact, the Internet offers, taken together with DRM, the ability for authors to bypass the traditional publisher, and reach directly to their market. The cost of making copies, instead of being (perhaps second only to advertising) the major cost, is now non-existent. But there is still no advantage if authors don’t get paid. The idea of the EFF that people will pay what they think something is worth is, to put it mildly, a pipe dream. People do not appreciate what they do not pay for. Charge too little (permit uncontrolled copying) and the work has no worth because you don’t have to pay for it – QED.
That is honestly the biggest load of ignorant BS I have read since I stopped following Joe Wikert. LockLizard's claims are not just arguably wrong, they are so false as to be lies. (In this situation, where the claim is used to pitch a product, it is a lie.)
Folks, it's 2016, and we have multiple publishers (Baen Books, O"Reilly) which have been selling DRM-free ebooks direct to their readers since the turn of the millennium. There are several deals sites (StoryBundle, Humble Bundle) which sell ebooks without DRM, and authors who do direct sales.
And there are two whole national markets (Poland, the Netherlands) where publishers have largely dropped the harder forms of DRM in favor of digital watermarks. (There's also Germany, but that's a weird "half-pregnant" situation which is neither fish nor fowl).
And yet, in spite of all the empirical evidence to the contrary, LockLizard claims that there is no way to profit off of ebooks without DRM?
That's just nonsense.
While LockLizard is entitled to its own opinion, it doesn't get to invent its own facts. And the simple fact is DRM is optional for many ebook markets. It is also frequently an unnecessary expense, and a waste of time.
One can go down LockLizard's route, and assume that all of one's customers are thieves in the making, or one can trust that customers are generally decent people. As Baen and O'Reilly have shown us, the latter option has worked for nearly two decades, and it has saved the companies both time and money.
So no, DRM is not absolutely necessary.
Next!
image by vrogy, Science NewsSOUTH JORDAN -- A South Jordan mom cited for child neglect after letting her 5-year-old son walk to school alone plans to fight the charge. We first brought you the story Wednesday, and the response from people who support and disagree with the woman has been overwhelming.
Rosella Talbot said she couldn't talk to us Thursday on the advice of her attorney, but she maintains she did nothing wrong by letting her son walk the nine-tenths of a mile from her home to Monte Vista Elementary School.
Related story
South Jordan mom cited for neglect for allowing child to walk to school A South Jordan mom cited for child neglect after letting her 5-year-old son walk to school alone plans to fight the charge. We first brought you the story Wednesday, and the response from people who support and disagree with the woman has been overwhelming.
"I'm not a neglectful parent, and that is why I have raised my voice," she said.
The telling her story has struck a nerve with KSL viewers. Some of Talbot's neighbors are coming to her defense, saying she's a good mother, but one neighbor, who didn't want to be identified, says Talbot wasn't acting responsibly when she let her 5-and-a-half-year-old son Noah walk to school alone last Friday.
"My biggest thing is that it was rainy, he was cold and he was upset. It was during school hours so there were no other kids around and there was so much traffic," that neighbor said.
At that time, Noah was going home after getting into a fight with his older brother at school. His mother sent him back.
According the police report, that's when a South Jordan police officer saw the boy walking along 2700 West and noticed a van following him.
"The driver was concerned the child was alone in inclement weather and possibly lost," the officer wrote.
The officer drove the boy home and, after talking with Talbot, cited her with child neglect.
In an interview with KSL Wednesday, Talbot voiced frustration about a dilemma she's been dealing with since the budget shortfall forced the district to eliminate its hazardous bus routes. Until this year, her children rode a bus to school.
Talbot says, she's gone out of her way to make sure her kids could get to school safely. Noah goes to school with his older brother has to walk home alone because he attends for just a half day.
"They have to wear an orange vest when they walk to school every day, to and from. It's part of their clothing," Talbot said.
That neighbor says she and other parents have offered to drive Noah home after school but Talbot has declined.
Thursday, Talbot told KSL she could pick up her child but prefers he gets exercise.
Her neighbor says safety should come first. "Noah, I feel like she's putting him in jeopardy to make a statement, and that in itself is neglectful," she said.
Talbot said that was not true and referred KSL to her attorney. She said all she wants is for the child neglect charge to be dropped. Her attorney says she'll enter a not guilty plea at her arraignment on January 5th.
E-mail: syi@ksl.com
×Pool Miners' SegWit Vote: the First Results [updated]
Warning: This post is very old, and may contain outdated information.
2017-01-30 23:27 UTC (2 years ago)
Update (2017-02-05): See here for the latest data.
As promised, here are the first results of our SegWit support vote! So far, 106 of our miners have expressed their preference. By hash rate, 16.3% have voted Yes, while 0.3% have voted No. The large majority of active miners, however, have not yet voted or are abstaining.
Update (2017-02-03): 196 votes so far. By hash rate, 21.5% Yes, 0.4% No.
As previously announced, for the first few weeks we'll probably consider abstentions as non-readiness votes. In practice, this means that for the time being we'll be able to start signaling SegWit support with at least 21% of our blocks. The actual percentage will however be updated constantly, based on each miner's vote and hash rate.
We will of course post updates on the evolution of the vote. Meanwhile, we have also updated our Network Hash Rate Distribution page to show which blocks will be signaling SegWit support with their version bits. Block 1,145,088 will mark the start of the soft fork signaling period.
Update (2017-01-31): We have sent out emails to notify all active miners who haven't expressed their preference.O'Reilly, who finished second on the Sabres in scoring with 55 points (20 goals, 35 assists) in 72 games, expects to improve and help Buffalo get back to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2011.
PARIS -- Center Ryan O'Reilly is putting it on himself to help the Buffalo Sabres improve on a disappointing 2016-17 season.
[RELATED: O'Reilly already primed for 2018 Winter Classic | Complete World Championship coverage]
"There were some tough times during the year where I think I shunned away and focused more on my own game instead of taking responsibility for other guys," O'Reilly said. "[Kyle] Okposo, at the end of the year, he finally stepped up. He held everyone accountable. He finally said, 'We're changing things,' and he held everyone accountable. He made a change.
"It was a good realization, to realize there's a lot of things that have to change and I have to be a guy who is holding guys accountable, being more disciplined in certain things. There's a lot that needs to change."
The Sabres finished last in the Atlantic Division and 26th in the NHL with a 33-37-12 record; they were 17 points behind the Toronto Maple Leafs for the second wild card into the playoffs from the Eastern Conference. General manager Tim Murray and coach Dan Bylsma were fired on April 20.
Video: TOR@BUF: O'Reilly nets SHG with beautiful wrist shot
O'Reilly sensed that change was coming.
"I thought it would be done quicker if it was to happen. That was my mindset," he said. "I was more focused on my own game and what I could've really done differently. It wasn't the year I wanted to have. Leadership-wise I wasn't in the spot. I could've made some changes and been the guy. That's what I'm really focused on.
"You can't say the past guys were the reason. I look at myself. There were a lot of things I could've done differently. When things don't go well, changes [are] made. I think that's what [owners Terry and Kim Pegula] did. I support them. It's really on myself, though. There's lots of things I could change in that room and will change."
Jason Botterill was hired as general manager on Thursday. Botterill, a former NHL forward, was an associate GM with the Pittsburgh Penguins for the past three seasons after joining their front office in 2007. He was promoted from director of hockey administration to assistant GM in 2009.
The news quickly found its way to O'Reilly, who is playing for Canada at the 2017 IIHF World Championship in Paris and Cologne, Germany, through May 21.
"Hearing it on the news, it's good," he said. "The Pegulas, they're great and they want to win and if things don't work they make changes. I'm definitely excited for it. I've heard great things. I haven't had a chance to talk to [Botterill] yet at all, but I'm sure when things wind down over here I'll get in touch with him. I'm excited."
Video: TBL@BUF: O'Reilly blasts a PPG to open the scoring
The change in management is only one step of the process, O'Reilly said. Another starts with himself.
"I think it is a big part of my job," he said. "I want to be that leader. I want to be that guy that everyone respects. I want to be the guy that can say the right things and hold guys [accountable]. I've got to be that guy. I've played enough seasons now (eight). I'm knowledgeable enough in the game. I feel guys respect me. It's time to change.
"If we don't, making the coach and GM change … it can only do so much. It comes down to guys on the ice and I'm responsible for that. I'm one of those guys. It's my job."
Results from Friday
Sweden 8, Italy 1: Elias Lindholm (Carolina Hurricanes) and defenseman Jonas Brodin (Minnesota Wild) each had a goal and an assist and forward William Nylander (Toronto Maple Leafs) had three assists in a Group A preliminary round win at Lanxess Arena in Cologne.
Czech Republic 5, Slovenia 1: Petr Mrazek (Detroit Red Wings) made 14 saves and defenseman Michal Kempny (Chicago Blackhawks) scored in the Czech Republic's fourth straight Group B preliminary round win at AccorHotels Arena in Paris.
Denmark 3, Germany 2 (OT): Nikolaj Ehlers (Winnipeg Jets) assisted on Peter Regin's goal 1:40 into overtime for Denmark in Group A in Cologne.
France 4, Belarus 3 (SO): Pierre-Edouard Bellemare (Philadelphia Flyers) scored the tying goal in the third period and France kept Belarus winless in the tournament with a shootout victory in their Group B game in Paris.Nadia Lockyer charged: drugs, child abuse ORANGE COUNTY
Former Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer is charged with a felony and three misdemeanors. Former Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer is charged with a felony and three misdemeanors. Photo: Handout, Orange County District Attorney Photo: Handout, Orange County District Attorney Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Nadia Lockyer charged: drugs, child abuse 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Former Alameda County Supervisor Nadia Lockyer has been charged with drug violations and child endangerment after being found with methamphetamine at a home in Orange County, authorities said Wednesday.
Lockyer was staying with her 9-year-old son at a relative's home in Orange on Aug. 28 when police received reports that she was in possession of drugs there, said Farrah Emami, spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney's office.
Officers found methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, including tubular aluminum foil with a burned end, according to the criminal complaint. Lockyer showed "objective signs of being under the influence of a drug," Emami said.
Lockyer was charged with possession of methamphetamine, a felony, and three misdemeanors: being under the influence of methamphetamine, possession of controlled substance paraphernalia and child abuse.
Lockyer pleaded not guilty last Thursday in Orange County Superior Court and was released on her own recognizance, Emami said.
Her attorney, Allan Stokke of Newport Beach, said Wednesday, "Nadia recognizes her error, and she intends to take all appropriate action to regain her health."
Her arrest comes two months after her husband, state Treasurer Bill Lockyer, filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.
Nadia Lockyer crashed her car into a light pole and a tree outside the couple's Hayward home after her husband gave her the news. She told The Chronicle that she had thought someone was following her and crashed when she phoned her husband to report her suspicions.
Nadia Lockyer's troubles began in February after she reported that she had been assaulted by an ex-boyfriend at a Newark hotel. She later said she had met the ex-boyfriend while attending treatment programs for chemical and alcohol dependency. She resigned from the Board of Supervisors in April.
Tom Dressler, Bill Lockyer's spokesman, said Wednesday that the couple's son has returned to live with his father.
"He is living with Bill in the Bay Area, and he is safe and sound," Dressler said. "Bill hopes Nadia has a safe recovery."Gordon Van Gilder (Photo: Submitted)
A felony gun charge against a Port Elizabeth resident arrested by police last year for possessing an unloaded antique weapon has been dismissed by the Cumberland County Prosecutor's Office, according to a news release issued Wednesday.
Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae announced in the release that the state will exercise "prosecutorial discretion to dismiss" the second-degree unlawful possession of a weapon charge against Gordon N. Van Gilder.
"Accordingly, the public should be forewarned about the prescriptions against possessing a firearm — even an antique — in a vehicle," she continued.
Webb-McRae declined to comment further on the dismissal.
Van Gilder's Eatontown attorney Evan Nappen said he was delighted to hear charges were dropped.
The attorney learned of the dismissal while in an interview with The Daily Journal.
"That is very good," he said while reading the news release over the phone. "I commend the prosecutor for exercising her dis
cretion accordingly."
If convicted of the second-degree charge, Van Gilder could have faced a maximum of 10 years behind bars
The charge also carried a minimum 3.5-year sentence that could have seriously jeopardized Van Gilder's public school pension, his right to vote and his reputation in the community, Nappen said.
"I'm very appreciative that they exercised their discretion here and did the right thing," Nappen said.
Nappen said his client will follow up on trying to retrieve the centuries-old "Queen Anne" flintlock antique pistol now in custody of the county.
"It's a valuable collector's item," he said.
The dismissal comes after a two-week long public outcry against state and law enforcement officials, with many charging that officials overstepped in their pursuit of charges against the elderly man over an unloaded antique weapon.
Van Gilder, a 72-year-old former educator at Millville Senior High School, was arrested at his Port Elizabeth home by members of the Cumberland County Sheriff's Department on Nov. 21, 2014.
The arrest came a day after he and 22-year-old Adam Puttergill were stopped in their Toyota Tacoma by Sheriff's Department officers in a Millville neighborhood.
The two said they were in the process of returning to their Port Elizabeth home after visiting a Vineland pawn shop, at which Van Gilder purchased the 300-year-old flintlock pistol.
Puttergill was acting as the driver for Van Gilder, who suffers severe arthritis, he said.
He also lives with Van Gilder, who informally adopted him about a decade ago.
Cumberland County Sheriff Robert Austino later said his officers pulled the two over because they were in a suspicious neighborhood known for illegal drug activity.
While talking to the two, officers at the scene discovered empty heroin bags and a broken scale used for measuring drugs, Austino said.
The discovery prompted a full search of the vehicle and officers also found Van Gilder's 300-year-old flintlock pistol wrapped in cloth inside the glove compartment.
Puttergill was taken into custody on an outstanding Vineland Municipal Court contempt warrant, he told The Daily Journal last week.
He also was charged with possessing two prescription pills that were not in their pharmacy container. The drug charge has since been handled by Puttergill's attorney in Millville Municipal Court, resulting in a conditional discharge of the charge.
While Van Gilder was let go at the scene, Sheriff's Officers returned to his home the next day and arrested and booked the 72-year-old on the unlawful weapons charge for his unregistered gun.
The incident quickly went on to attract state and national attention following revelation of the arrest by The Daily Journal last week.
Nappen and other public supporters of Van Gilder accused the Sheriff's Department of a "smear campaign" for charging the elderly man with what they view as an egregious and overstepping charge.
The incident even spurred at least two New Jersey lawmakers to introduce bills that would provide state judges with sentencing discretion in such future cases involving those charged with unlawful weapons possession.
A bill sponsored by state Sen. Jeff Van Drew and Assemblyman Bob Andrzejczak, whose district includes Millville, would further revise the Graves Act, allowing courts to permit a person convicted of unlawful possession of a firearm admittance to pretrial intervention or supervisory treatment if they had no known association with a criminal street gang and no criminal convictions.
Read or Share this story: http://vineland.dj/1BvT0QZIt’s been a tough week for bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox. Not only has the exchange halted withdrawals, but it released a statement on Monday that had a good chunk of the bitcoin community reaching for their pitchforks.
Mt. Gox blamed an issue in the bitcoin software as a reason for the withdrawal halt, and noted that withdrawals would resume once a proper fix was in place.
Widespread outrage over Mt. Gox’s claims were felt on social sharing website Reddit.com, along with Twitter and Facebook — accusing Gox CEO Mark Karpeles of “throwing bitcoin under the bus” in defense of his company. Others demanded Karpeles resign from his board position at the Bitcoin Foundation.
Karpeles is now responding, noting that he stands behind his company’s systems, though he expresses regret that Monday’s announcement upset people in the community.
Highlights (out of order):
Note that our announce[ment], while unfortunately upsetting a lot of people, allowed other exchanges to be much more cautious when faced with failing transactions, and most likely helped a lot of people understanding and dealing with the problem.
On the topic of the issue itself:
The Bitcoin Foundation has hired Bitcoin Developers for the purpose of promoting Bitcoin use. I guess the most puzzling part is why this issue hasn’t be[en] solved since 2011.
Possible solution:
We have proposed a solution that would allow people sending bitcoins to track sent coins no matter what happens in terms of malleability (a solution that can be applied quickly and without breaking anything), and the Bitcoin developers are preparing ways to prevent modified transactions from being relayed by the network (which will take a lot of time and may break some bitcoin custom clients).
If you’ve been following this issue, we urge you to read the full interview on the Forbes website.Loot boxes have been getting a pretty bad name lately due to the controversy surrounding Electronic Arts' latest game Star Wars Battlefront II - not exactly good publicity for the latest Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, which opens here tomorrow.
In video games, a loot box (sometimes called a loot crate or prize crate) is a consumable virtual item that you can earn or buy (such transactions are sometimes called micro-transactions), in order to redeem in-game goodies such as a character's costume, better armour, a more powerful weapon or a new character.
In some cases, the items inside a loot box are a random mix. It is like playing Japanese gashapon - those capsule toys in vending machines. You never know what you're going to get.
Loot boxes and micro-transactions have been around in video games for the longest time, and are generally more prevalent in free-to-play games where they allow developers to earn a constant stream of revenue.
Loot boxes have also slowly found their way into AAA game titles such as Blizzard's Overwatch and Activision's Destiny 2.
Battlefront II gamers have complained that buying loot boxes has become almost essential in order to advance in the game.
The complaints attracted international media coverage as well as investigations from the Belgian Gaming Commission. Even US senators have chipped in as they felt loot boxes are akin to gambling. Electronic Arts has had to pull all micro-transactions from the game until further notice.
I feel the gamers' uproar came mostly because these AAA games already have an upfront cost unlike free-to-play games.
Yet, many AAA games these days have loot boxes. For example, the popular Fifa football games allow you to buy Card Packs that give you random players and other perks to build your own Ultimate Team.
Some say buying loot crates is like gambling or can be as addictive as gambling. Yes, it is like gashapon and might entice you to keep spending in order to get the items you want.
However, I feel this is no different from marketing tactics that offer mystery gifts to attract consumers to buy a product.
I concede that excessive buying of loot boxes is a problem that needs to be tackled.
But like all things in life, be it excessive shopping, smoking or gambling, it is the lack of restraint that results in addiction.
Educating gamers about the potential pitfalls of loot boxes and to exercise restraint, which should be done by both consumer protection groups and developers, is far more intuitive than an outright ban.
At the same time, people should realise the large amount of money needed to develop and maintain top video games. Many of these AAA game titles cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop.
Not to mention, there are also servers to maintain for games with multi-player modes.
With most gamers not willing to pay an online subscription fee, having loot crates and micro-transactions has become a good way for developers to generate revenue.
Gamers want longevity for their games, yet bring out their virtual pitchforks whenever they are asked to pay a wee bit more.
They need to understand that the programmers, artists, developers and others working on these games all need to put meals on their families' tables.
I have spent quite a bit buying loot boxes and in micro transactions in many games. For example, I bought many Card Packs in Fifa 2017 in order to get Lionel Messi in my team. I also paid to upgrade my in-game avatar's shooting stats in the NBA 2K games.
Some might say this is cheating. But time is money.
If you want to save time, you have to pay money. If you want to save money, you have to pay with your time. If you really feel so strongly about having to pay for the loot boxes of these games, maybe it is better for you not to buy and play the game at all. No pay, no play.
SEE DIGITAL: One to keep the Star Wars fan 'battle-happy'A Canadian filmmaker found stabbed to death outside his home in Belize Monday evening is being remembered as a multi-talented "ambassador" for his hometown of Gatineau, Que.
Belize police told CBC News that Matthiew Klinck, 37, was found lying face-up about five-metres from his home, which "appeared ransacked." He had been stabbed 14 times in his lower neck and upper back, local police Supt. Andrew Ramirez told CBC News.
There are no suspects at this time.
His mother Louise Dallaire, who lives in Gatineau, told Radio-Canada that she is flying to Belize with family members on Thursday.
Jacques Ménard, commissioner for the Gatineau-Outaouais Film and Television Office, knew Klinck as someone with an "entrepreneur spirit," who worked as a producer, director, videographer and editor.
"He was great as an ambassador for the region because of his travels all over the world," he said. "It's just a very sad story that his family would lose him, his friends would lose him and the region would lose this guy."
Klinck directed the 2007 film Greg & Gentillon, about two small-time comedians, and the 2008 film Hank and Mike, an Easter movie about holiday mascots. He was living and working in Belize at the time of his death.
Klinck last seen alive Saturday
Klinck's body "was in its initial stage of decomposition" when it was found around 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 4 in an "isolated" area in the village of Selena in the western part of Belize, Ramirez said.
He had not been seen since Saturday afternoon, Ramirez said.
He offered his "sincerest condolences" to Klinck's family.
"We will try our utmost best to find out who did this heinous act upon Mr. Klinck and to bring proper closure and make sure justice prevails," Ramirez said. "We want to know if he has any enemies around the community."
An autopsy confirmed that he died of internal and external bleeding, Ramirez said.Even if you haven’t watched a single episode of Freaks and Geeks, you undoubtedly recognize at least a few of its most famous faces.
The cast of Freaks and Geeks may not have had a lot of work before the series debuted, but most of the cast have had incredible success ever since. While a few names may not be immediately recognizable, many are pretty much household names at this point. Check out what the cast has been up to in the 15 years since the short-lived series was cancelled.
Linda Cardellini (AKA Lindsay Weir)
The lady behind Lindsay Weir has had a pretty steady stream of work since Freaks and Geeks ended, with roles in every kind of project, from Brokeback Mountain to Human Giant, including stops at New Girl and Mad Men. She has a brand spanking new Netflix series coming out this week, called Bloodline, co-starring Kyle Chandler that looks insanely interesting.
John Francis Daley (AKA Sam Weir)
Work has also come pretty steadily for John Francis Daley, who has appeared in multiple series including: Judging Amy, Boston Public, and Spin City. However, his most notable role has been as Dr. Lance Sweets in Bones. Having appeared in more than 130 episodes, his character quickly became a fan favorite, and some crazy events in season 9 had fans in an absolute uproar.
James Franco (AKA Daniel Desario)
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Arguably the best known of the Freaks and Geeks cast, James Franco has had no shortage of interesting projects at his fingertips. A |
Transcript
Mollie Halpern: The digital age brings national security, public safety, and privacy concerns to the national forefront.
You’re listening to Inside the FBI, thanks for joining us. I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau.
The same technology we use to communicate, store personal information, and to entertain is also the tool of choice for terrorists and criminals who use it for their own malicious purposes.
Law enforcement, however, can’t always obtain the electronic evidence it needs to arrest those terrorists and criminals—even with lawful authority.
America’s national security and public safety are at risk when those charged with protecting it are hindered from the tools necessary to perform their duties.
This gap between the echnology and the law, as well as the public safety problem it creates, is referred to as “Going Dark.”
The FBI upholds the fundamental right to privacy.
FBI Director James Comey believes privacy can co-exist with security.
Others suggest there is a conflict between liberty and security.
These concerns ignited a national discourse that stemmed from an iPhone that belonged to one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terror attack last September, in which 14 men and women were killed.
Director Comey was recently the keynote speaker at the Center for the Study of American Democracy Biennial Conference at Kenyon College in Ohio. There, he spoke to students about his views regarding Going Dark, the Apple/encryption discourse, and more. Take a listen to what he had to say.
FBI Director James Comey: Tonight I want to talk to you about privacy as the keynote speaker. I also want to talk to you about how we might have better conversations about privacy, how we deal with the issues of privacy, how we think about the costs associated with the tough decisions will affect your lives—I’m talking to the students now—most of all and longest. I think we need to find a way to make smart, balanced decisions, ones that will serve us well over the long run. And to make good decisions, we have to find a way to have good conversations about things that matter, and that can often separate people of goodwill. Let me start with something you heard earlier, expectations of privacy.
So, what does privacy mean to you? What are your expectations, and what should they be? Right now, I suspect your privacy revolves mostly around social media and your personal lives. You don’t want your mom to see the text you’re exchanging with somebody in bio class. You don’t want your next employer to know that you’re a big fan of taking fish-gape selfies with your friends. I understand the fish-gape has replaced the duck face in selfie world. I am much cooler than I appear to be.
You want to keep your nosey relatives from reading your Facebook posts, your Tweets, visiting your Instagram account, looking at your texts. You really don’t like the idea of the government, law enforcement in particular, seeing any of it—not pictures, not texts, not Tweets, who your friends are, where you’ve been online. I get that; I really do. I don’t want anybody looking at my stuff either. I don’t want anyone poking through my Instagram account, which has seven followers. They’re all my children, my spouse, and I’ve let one son-in-law in so far.
As much as I get that, I also think there are other perspectives in play, other issues to consider. Imagine this: What if law enforcement had a phone owned by somebody who abducted your sister? Or a phone used by a suicide bomber who blew up the train station in your hometown? Or the phone of somebody who hurt a little kid in your neighborhood? Would that cause you to think about it differently? I think it should, or at least it should change the way that we have a conversation about it, and I’ll tell you why.
In this great country, we often have a reasonable expectation of privacy in our houses, in our cars, in telephone booths, in our devices. That makes good sense. That has long meant that the government could not invade our privacy without good reason, reviewable in court. It also meant that with good reason, law enforcement could enter private spaces. Since the founding of our country, if law enforcement had probable cause to believe that there was evidence of a crime in some space, whether that’s a house, or a vehicle, or a device, some space that you controlled, law enforcement could go to a judge and get a warrant, go to that private space, and look through your stuff.
They could search wherever the judge said they could—in your car, in your closets, in your computer, in your phone. They could take whatever the judge said they could take. There are vital constraints on law enforcement, and we must never ever forget them, but the general principle is one we’ve always accepted in this country. There is no such thing as absolute privacy in America. There is no place outside the reach of judicial authority. That’s a bargain that we made with ourselves 240 years ago to achieve two things we all treasure—liberty and security.
And that bargain—“No invasion of private spaces without good reason and appropriate oversight”—has made America a country rooted deeply in the rule of law. But it has also meant that there are no absolutes in American life. All kinds of interactions that are incredibly important to everybody here, and to me, incredibly personal and private, none of them are absolutely so under the law.
Private conversations that matter most to us often at the most difficult moments in our lives, conversations with our doctors, with our attorneys, with our therapists, with our lawyers, with our spouses, with reporters, with all kinds of people that we have to have important conversations with, those are all protected by law, but none of them absolutely so.
All of those zones of privacy can be pierced if a court finds compelling reasons to do so, and have long been physical spaces in our lives that are intensely personal, and private to all of us, but none of them absolutely so. Safe-deposit boxes, storage units, car trunks, our diaries, even if we have one of those little locks on them, all of those things, all of those things can be opened if the interests favoring opening them are compelling. As strange as it sounds even our memories are not absolutely private.
Anyone of us could be compelled by a judge to testify about what we saw, what we heard, what we remember. We can be compelled to say what’s in the content of our minds even if it would hurt us, even if it was incriminating to us so long as we were protected from the government’s use of that information by an immunity order. In America we’ve always balanced privacy and security. It can be messy, it can be painful, but we’ve always worked through the three branches of government to achieve that balance in a sensible way.
The country’s effort to achieve that balance for over 200 years was not complicated by technology, because there was no widely available space in American life that couldn’t be entered if there was a court order. No car, no trunk, no closet, no safe-deposit box, no safe that couldn’t be opened if a judge said it should be open. Here’s what changed, the advent of widely available strong encryption has changed the entire thing. It’s really happened in a huge way just in the last three years.
I say it that way because encryption has always been around at least for decades, always available to the sophisticated user, both for data at rest sitting on a device, and data in motion being transmitted over a line. What’s changed in the last few years is that it has now become the default covering wide swaths of our lives, and covering wide swaths of law enforcement’s responsibilities. For mobile devices for instance, Apple and Google made the move to encrypt the devices only in late 2014.
It seems like a lifetime ago, WhatsApp announced that encryption moved on all of their services yesterday. A billion people now communicating in ways that can’t be intercepted even with a judge’s order. Today those of us in law enforcement are confronted with boxes that can’t be opened. We face devices that we can’t open, we face data that even if we’re able to collect it with a court order, we can’t read it. It’s gobbledygook to us, so encryption brings us to a place or to quote a portion of the Fourth Amendment, all of our papers and effects can be entirely private to a place where nobody can listen to our conversations, read our texts, look at our documents, see our pictures, know what’s in our e-mails, unless we give them permission, unless we say so.
There is a lot to love about this. I love strong encryption. It protects us in so many ways from bad people. It helps the FBI with our mission, which centers on protecting privacy and fighting hackers. In many ways I think all of us like the idea of a storage space in our lives that no one can get into, a safe box that’s only mine, but it takes us to a place of absolute privacy that we have not been to before where the balance we have long struck is fundamentally challenged, and changed.
That’s why we have to talk about it, that’s why we have to have an adult conversation about the balance that means so much to all of us, because no matter how you feel about it, you have to acknowledge there are costs to this new world. You may decide the costs are outweighed by the benefits, or you may decide that there’s nothing we can do about it technologically, but you simply have to as part of the conversation stare at the cost in a fair way. The reason for that is we are not the only ones who love strong encryption.
Child predators love it, organized criminals love it, terrorists love it, and it’s part of their tradecraft. Hackers love it in all of their work. All of those people understand the power of strong encryption. ISIL, the so-called Islamic State, uses mobile messaging apps that are encrypted end-to-end to reach its followers, motivate them, and then direct them. We work very, very hard in the FBI to track those who might be moving to violence on ISIL’s behalf, but sometimes it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack. When that needle moves to a mobile messaging app that’s end-to-end encrypted, that needle disappears.
The great fear that dominates our lives is that that needle’s going to reappear at a train station wearing a suicide vest. As I said before, we can get a court order, but what we collect is unreadable. Last spring to give one example, a group of terrorists tried to attack, and did attack a “Draw Mohammed” contest in Garland, Texas. Before that attack, one of those people in Texas exchanged 100 messages with an overseas terrorist. We today have no idea what they said to each other, because they used a mobile messaging app that was end-to-end encrypted.
We can look at that, it’s gobbledygook to us. This isn’t a problem just in national security cases. Last spring an eight-month pregnant woman opened her front door in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to somebody she apparently knew, and that person killed her. The case is cold already, her mom says she kept a detailed diary on her phone. The phone was there with her body, and the phone is locked, and we can’t open it. We don’t know what was going on in her life that she confided to her diary, and that case remains unsolved.
These are powerful and painful examples, but I think everybody has to agree that whether you work in technology, or law enforcement, or you simply own a phone, which I think is all of us, the logic of strong encryption means that all of our lives, including law enforcement’s life will soon be affected by strong encryption. We live our lives on these mobile devices, and when those are off-limits despite court orders, our world changes.
My first point is simply we have a problem.
Maybe there is nothing that can be done about it, maybe there is, but we should weigh things differently. I hope we will start with the common ground, that ubiquitous strong encryption is bringing significant change to the way we think about liberty and security. We should try to have a thoughtful conversation about what we do about it as a people. Let’s turn to what I hope, what I dream that conversation can be like.
I have discovered that it is incredibly difficult to have a good conversation about the impact of encryption on law enforcement and national security.
There is for reasons I don’t fully understand, an intensity of emotion around the issue on all sides that makes even really bright people struggle to find balance and empathy that they might otherwise bring readily to hard topics. A group of technology companies last year sent the letter to President Obama where they urged him to promise never to seek legislation to address the intersection of encryption and public safety. That’s certainly an understandable position, and these were serious people from serious companies.
When I read the letter at the time, I said something that maybe one of those things that’s in your head, you said, “Did I say that out loud?” I did say it out loud, and I meant it so I’m going to repeat it, I said, “I think the letter is depressing.” The reason I said that is, the letter did a great job of talking about awesome things that encryption offers all of us, and I agree with all that. The letter made no mention of the impact on public safety, and to my mind that meant either that these folks writing the letter didn’t understand the potential costs, or that they weren’t being fair-minded about it.
Either way that was a depressing thing, because to me it said either we have to spend a ton more time trying to have people understand why we’re talking about this, or a ton more time trying to get people to be open and fair with us in the conversation. I’ve got to tell you I found a whole lot of the rhetoric of that we have engaged in this country in connection with the recent litigation involving the government and Apple, I found a whole lot of it similarly disheartening.
First let me make sure though that we’re all on the same page when it comes to that case. In December, two terrorists attacked an office gathering in San Bernardino, and they killed 14 people and wounded 22 others. They left behind three phones. Two were cheapo phones that they smashed, and we could not recover anything from them. The third was an iPhone 5C running IOS 9, and that matters. It was a phone owned by one of the killer’s employers, the County of San Bernardino.
For the FBI to competently investigate a mass murder in the United States, we believe we had to use all lawful tools to find out whether there was evidence on that phone that either shed more light on what these two killers had done, or shed light on who else might be involved and still out there. We got a search warrant, and we got consent from the phone’s owner—the county—and we tried to open the 5C. We checked with everybody inside the U.S. government, and we checked with a whole lot of people outside of the U.S. government to see if anybody had a solution that will allow us with the court order to open a 5C running IOS 9.
The danger is if we try to guess the passcode beyond the 10th guess, the phone may well auto encrypt permanently, essentially erase itself. Even if that feature goes away, guessing would take us decades, because the phone is designed to have each guess require a longer period of time as you wait to make the next guess, and to make the number of guesses you’d have to crack the code it would take us many, many years. We went to court, the court from which we’d gotten the search warrant, and the government’s lawyers from the Department of Justice required a court order that would direct Apple to do a couple of things, two things:
Shut off that auto encrypt feature on the phone, and shut off the feature that delays successively longer periods after each unsuccessful guess. With those two features disabled, then the government would be able to try to guess the code, and our people are confident that they could guess it without those features, with electronic pulses in about 26 minutes. Under the judge’s order, Apple would be required to write code for that phone to turn off those features. The phone could stay in Apple’s possession, the software that they wrote would stay in Apple’s possession.
Apple resisted the order, which is their right, and their main argument was that the court didn’t have the authority to order them to take the step of creating software for that particular device, that it went beyond the court’s authority to direct Americans to assist with the execution of court orders. That’s a good-faith reasonable argument about a federal court’s authority, and it’s an interesting question. Obviously the government has a different view of the law there, because we believe that the court’s authority does extend to such assistance, but it was Apple’s right to make that argument.
If I were their lawyer, I would have made the same argument. I believe it was a reasonable argument even if I have a different view of the law, but beyond the reasonable arguments, the controversy over the Apple case, over the challenge of encryption more broadly, has been chock-full of slippery slope arguments, and absolutist arguments. If we do this for example, and you can supply your own “this,” but if we open this phone, if we make this accommodation, then horrible things will inevitably happen.
It’s the first step down a slippery slope, or a whole lot of folks have said things like, “We must protect privacy absolutely. Phones contain our lives, and they must be off-limits to the government.” Now I know you’ve already learned this from your philosophy classes here at Kenyon, but every time you hear somebody making a slippery slope argument, an alarm should go off in your head. There is a reason your professors call this “slippery slope fallacy.” It could be that if you take one step you’ll inevitably fall down a slick slope, it could be.
It depends a lot on what kind of shoes you’re wearing, whether the slope is a stairs slope, and whether there’s a railing. It is a fallacy, because it is deceptively misleading. Sometimes one step leads inevitably to others, sometimes not; it depends upon a whole lot that a good conversation is needed to figure out. The notion that privacy should be absolute, or that the government should keep their hands off our phones, to me just makes no sense given our history and our values—something that President Obama said two weeks ago in Texas.
You may still end up disagreeing with the government, but starting from the position that privacy should be absolute is just not a fair-minded place to be in my estimation. What I find so frustrating about the emotion around encryption, is that very, very smart people who would otherwise be deeply skeptical of slippery slope, and absolute arguments in the context of other issues like guns, seemed less skeptical of those rhetorical techniques in this context for reasons that I honestly don’t understand.
It is simply not the case that if Apple wrote software for the killer’s phone it would inevitably be at catastrophic risk, anymore than we are at catastrophic risk now that the government has purchased a tool that allows court-authorized access to the phone. As I mentioned, until late 2014, neither Apple nor Google made phones that law enforcement couldn’t open, and with court orders they routinely opened those phones. Today, the iCloud is encrypted, Apple decrypts it in response to court orders, and produces the contents in law enforcement investigations.
In my view, privacy and security didn’t end in 2014, and we are not ending it today. There are risks, there are benefits, there are steps that make us more secure, there are steps that make us less secure. It requires detailed facts, and balancing to assess how do those risks, how do those benefits change with each step? I believe the stakes are high enough that thoughtful people should work very hard to resist fallacies, and talk to each other in a fair-minded way. It’s also not the case I believe that any infringement on privacy is to be feared.
The question we must all ask is this: So what’s the nature of the infringement, and under what circumstances, and with what oversight, and what are the benefits of the costs associated with that incremental infringement? We have to find thoughtful, productive ways to talk about issues of privacy and security, and here’s the thing, by thoughtful I don’t mean that I’m right, and you’re wrong. I could be wrong about the way I assess, the way I perceive, the way I balance, the way I reason, but I think all productive conversations start from a place of humility. I could be wrong.
I hope very much that you recognize that you could be too, and if we start there, that’s the basis for a good conversation. On behalf of the grown-ups of the United States, I’d like to apologize that we have not done a good job in this country in recent years at modeling how to have good conversations about hard things. We tend to shout talking points at each other, or as we get cooler, even though we’re old we launch tweets at each other without any real interest in questioning our own assumptions, our own perceptions, our own reasoning, and without an openness to be wrong, in whole or in part.
The litigation between the government and Apple over the San Bernardino phone has ended, because the government has purchased from a private party a way to get into that phone 5C running IOS 9. I think that’s a very good thing for at least two reasons. First, that litigation really, really was about the government needing to get access to a terrorist’s device. As I said at the time, we should be fired if we had a lawful means to get into terrorist’s phone and we didn’t try to. It was not—repeat not—about trying to send a message, or create a precedent.
We kept trying to find ways into that phone before we brought the litigation. We kept trying to find ways to get into that phone after the litigation, and one of the benefits, one of the maybe few benefits to all the controversy around it, is that a worldwide market of creative people was stimulated that hadn’t existed before, where a whole lot of folks tried to see, “Could I break into a 5C running IOS 9?” Everybody and his Uncle Fred called us with ideas. We had people in Congress asking me about ideas during hearings, and I said, “I welcome all comers, this really is about trying to get into that phone.”
We have a conversation we have to have about the broader issues. I don’t want this to be part of it, I want to find out whether there’s something we need to know in a terrorist’s phone. Someone outside the government in response to that attention came up with a solution. One that I am confident will be closely protected, and used lawfully and appropriately. That’s a very good thing for this terrorist investigation. Second, litigation is a terrible place to have any discussion about a complicated policy issue, especially one that touches on our values, on the things we care about most, on technology, on trade-offs, and balance.
It is a good thing that the litigation is over, but it will be a bad thing if the conversation ended, because we have to have it. It’s unbelievably complicated, touching on every issue we care about, it has implications for safety, privacy, innovation, human rights, national security, international relations, and probably a few others that you can think of that I can’t think of. It does not fit in a tweet. We must have the conversation because encryption’s impact is great, wonderful in a lot of ways, and growing.
At some point it’s going to figure in a major tragedy in this country. It is very hard for us as a people to have thoughtful conversations in an emergency, and in the wake of a major tragedy. We have to have this conversation now, and let me now show you what a dreamer I am.
I hope as we have this conversation that we will successfully resist some of the most challenging aspects of our very nature. One of the strongest forces I think in human experience is the confirmation bias.
That extraordinary aspect of our brains that makes us hungry for data, that is consistent with that which we already believe, and often keeps contrary data from reaching my consciousness. From never entering into my mind, because it got filed away before it got there. I don’t know about you, but that is terrifying to me. I think it’s part of the reason that humans can convince themselves of nearly anything, and then cling to it like a life raft in a storm. It’s one of the things that should make all of us in government, out of government, skeptical of power.
John Adams once wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “Power always thinks it has a great soul.” People, in my experience are at their most dangerous when they are certain their cause is just, and certain that their facts are right. Oh lordy, they are frequently certain of both. Today, even if you’re tempted to doubt, you can be quickly reinforced by an echo chamber that’s on your device 24 hours a day. It will buttress that which you already believe, so there’s very little risk of you overcoming the confirmation bias that way.
To depress you further, I think humans also have a tendency to travel in packs, and surrender individual judgment to the will of a group, and allow the loudest voices to hijack that group, the lowest common denominator to hijack that group. That side of us is only reinforced today by the technology that’s around us. By the world of reflexive likes and retweets. Human nature, and our respect for it, and fear of it, is the reason why all FBI agents in training, and all FBI intelligence analysts in training go to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, so they can see, and hear, and feel what we are capable of.
What people who are believing they are righteous, and lack constraint and oversight can do. When people surrender their moral authority to the group. It’s also the reason why every new analyst and agent at the FBI is required to take a course on this organization’s interactions with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s intended to remind all of them of the dangers of becoming untethered to oversight and accountability without having checks on human nature.
As a further reminder about human nature, I think all of my employees now know this.
I have an old desk that has a glass tabletop. In the right-hand corner of it under the glass is a single piece of paper. It’s from October 1963, and it’s a memo from J. Edgar Hoover to Robert F. Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States, asking for permission to bug Martin Luther King Jr. It’s five sentences long, it’s utterly devoid of factual content, of any consequence. There is no date limitation, there’s no geographic limitation, it simply says we need to bug this guy essentially. Hoover signed it, Kennedy signed it, and they were off to the races.
This isn’t about me trying to pick on Bobby Kennedy, or J. Edgar Hoover, but here’s the thing. I have no doubt that they believed they were doing the right thing. I keep it there to remind me in that spot, because that’s the spot where every morning I review the thick stack of applications that the FBI’s going to send to federal judges to ask permission to wiretap or bug people in our national security investigations. Those things are thicker than my arm, it’s a huge pain in the neck to get those orders, that’s a great thing.
It sits there—that order—to remind me and everybody who hears about it, to be very, very careful about being certain that your cause is just and that your facts are right.
I’m hugely grateful to Kenyon for a bunch of reasons. You have afforded my son an incredible education. I’m grateful to all of you for fighting to find the space to have a quality conversation about privacy, and to talk about things that matter. My hope is that tonight when we start talking, and over the next two days you will engage, you will question assumptions, and biases, your own, and those of the people you’re talking with.
You’ll ask good questions, you’ll listen with an open mind, and by that I mean a mind open to being convinced, even if you’re not convinced at the end of the day. I also hope we will resist the temptation to demonize anybody in this discussion, whether that’s the tech companies, or the government, or anybody else. I haven’t seen any demons in this conversation. We are all people trying to do the right thing as we see the right. It is not for the FBI to decide how this country should govern itself.
It’s not for the FBI to decide what the right approach is here. Our job is to investigate. Our job is to tell you, the people who pay for us, when the tools you count on us to use aren’t working so much anymore, so you can figure out what to do about that. It’s also not the job of the technology companies to tell us—to tell you—what to do about this. Their job is to innovate and come up with the next great thing, and they’re spectacular at that, which is to be treasured. How we move forward needs to be resolved by the American people, and especially the young who know technology so well, and who care so deeply about getting the hard things right.
Thank you for caring about it, thank you for getting involved, and I look forward to our conversation. Thank you very much.
Halpern: Following this speech, Director Comey spent time answering thoughtful questions from students and community members.
He says the FBI will continue to engage private companies, academia, and others to share perspectives and help find the balance between liberty, security, and public safety.
To learn more about this topic visit www.fbi.gov. Thanks for listening to this episode of Inside the FBI, I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau.A 'terminal' rift has severed relations between Rupert Murdoch and Tony Blair over reports of Mr Blair's friendship with the entrepreneur's ex-wife Wendi Deng, it is claimed.
Blair has always stated that his relationship with Deng is platonic and there is no suggestion of any impropriety by Blair or Deng.
Despite efforts by Blair to contact Murdoch, the media mogul has refused to speak to him since he filed for divorce from Deng in June, according to the Mail on Sunday.
Sources close to Murdoch in London claim that Blair, 60, and Deng, 44, had'multiple encounters' without 82-year-old Murdoch's knowledge.
They are said to have stayed overnight at Murdoch's £12m California home on weekends in October 2012 and April 2013, and spent a weekend at Murdoch's LA home and meetings in London and New York.
Murdoch and Deng's divorce was finalised by a US court last week after the couple reached an "amicable" divorce settlement to end their 14-year marriage.
On Saturday night a feud erupted between allies of Blair and Murdoch, whose stable of newspapers includes The Sun and The Times.
A close friend of Blair told the Daily Mail: "Rupert Murdoch is putting out ridiculous stories about Wendi and Tony which are not true. It is the ravings of a sad old man."
A friend of Murdoch told the newspaper: "Rupert Murdoch will have nothing more to do with Tony Blair. Not ever."
Murdoch and Blair were close allies for many years and Murdoch's support is widely considered to have been a crucial factor in Labour's three consecutive election victories from 1997 onwards.
Blair and Murdoch were good friends, and Blair even became godfather to the Murdochs' daughter Grace in 2010.
Allies of Murdoch told the Daily Mail that he is said to have been "shocked" to learn that Wendi had met Mr Blair without his knowledge. He is said to have asked her for an explanation.
Speculation of an affair between Blair and Deng first emerged in June after a tweet from BBC journalist Robert Peston who said: "Am told that undisclosed reasons for Murdoch divorcing Deng are jaw-dropping and hate myself for wanting to know what they are."
At the time a spokesperson for Blair denied an affair with Deng.
Murdoch met Deng, a Yale business school graduate, in 1997 on a business trip to Shanghai when he sought to hire a translator and guide.
Spokespeople for Blair, Murdoch and Deng did not respond to requests for comment.Memo to billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk: The Empire State could be next.
New York’s auto dealers are pressing state lawmakers to ban the direct sale of cars, a move made earlier this week by Gov. Chris Christie’s administration in New Jersey.
Car dealers in New York said they hope to ban Tesla’s direct-sales method as soon as this summer, sources told The Post.
If it happens, New York will become the sixth state to ban or limit direct sales from Musk’s popular electric-car company, Tesla Motors.
“My hope is that we are going to be the next state,” Mark Scheinberg, president of the Greater New York Automobile Dealers Association (GNYADA), told The Post on Thursday. “I feel confident.”
The move by Christie provoked Musk’s ire this week because it requires carmakers to have franchise agreements and sell their autos through independent dealers.
Musk blasted New Jersey’s ban, saying that the state’s auto dealers were “subverting democratic process to try to block Tesla sales.”
Musk might return fire with a lawsuit, some industry experts speculated.
Several states, including Texas, Arizona and Virginia, have banned or curbed Tesla’s ability to sell cars directly, amid fears of similar sales tactics by manufacturers from China and India.
A flood of bans could force Tesla to rethink its sales strategy or risk damping its rapid-fire sales, which pushed the stock up more than 350 percent last year. The share price climbed 58 percent in 2014. The stock closed Thursday at $237.79, down $3.70.
In New York, the battle against direct car sales is being waged via a second front: the courts.
GNYADA is also appealing a New York court ruling last April that tossed the group’s lawsuit against the New York Department of Motor Vehicles.
The group accused the state DMV of breaking existing laws by giving Tesla approval to sell its own cars.
The dealerships are open to compromise, said Bob Vancavage of the New York State Automobile Dealers Association — but he doesn’t think the outspoken billionaire Musk will give even an inch.
“I think a lot of billionaires got there by being a certain way,” Vancavage said. “He’s not used to people saying no.”Ted Cruz: Donald Trump may, indeed, be a “pathological liar,” as Cruz once claimed but now he’s Cruz’s pathological liar. Credit: Getty Images
Donald Trump is a "pathological liar" who "doesn't know the difference between truth and lies." Trump "lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth." Trump is "utterly amoral" and "will betray his supporters on every issue."
Remember the great orator who heaped such calumny upon The Donald? It wasn't Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or President Barack Obama. It was Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, shortly after Trump both accused Cruz's father of being complicit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and mocked Cruz's wife's looks.
That also would be the same Ted Cruz who, on Thursday of this week, agreed to speak at the Republican convention in Cleveland later this month. The very convention that will in all likelihood nominate Donald Trump. (As Business Insider's Josh Barro tweeted, "Ted Cruz did draw the line at Trump's demand that Heidi wear a paper bag over her head during the convention.")
Cruz's agreement to be in Cleveland to support Trump's coronation is exactly the reason people hate politicians. Sure, the image of the duplicitous politician is burned in the American psyche — citizens have accused elected representatives of being oleaginous weasels as long as they've been casting ballots. But watching conservative politicians capitulate to Trump's strong-arm tactics has quickly turned the knob to "11."
Even the GOP's once-most promising members have gotten in on the act. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal called Trump a "narcissist," and an "egomaniacal madman" who had no principles — months later, Jindal endorsed Trump. Sen. Marco Rubio was once Trump's harshest critic, at one point saying Trump shouldn't be given access to the nation's nuclear codes. In May, Rubio endorsed Trump. (One wonders how we can trust Trump with the nation's nuclear football when we couldn't even trust him with the USFL.)
But in politics, we are once again finding out that almost all deeply held positions are situational. Politicians are willing to take courageous stands right up until the moment the usefulness of those beliefs expire.
Yet there is one politician who refuses to alter his positions for political expediency. And that is likely why he is the presumptive Republican nominee. Trump is the flip side of the weak-of-conscience opponents he defenestrated during the GOP primary; He will cling to his positions, no matter how obnoxious or detrimental.
And that is why it made sense for voters to pick a reality television star as a major party nominee; for many Americans, politics is now simply a television show that bears little resemblance to their own lives. They see backstabbing, screaming, narcissism and scheming, while nothing of substance ever gets done. Call this show "The Real House Members of Washington, D.C."
Much of the media coverage of the presidential race foments this idea of the whole thing as an empty spectacle. Right now, CNN is running a commercial that literally looks exactly like a movie trailer, promising "a race like no other" — as if that in and of itself were a selling point. If one of the candidates gave stump speeches while operating a ventriloquist dummy, it would certainly be a race like no other, but not in any way that was particularly edifying.
(Further feeding the politics-as-entertainment machine this week was Eric Trump, who suggested his sister Ivanka would be a terrific vice president because "she's got the beautiful looks." Evidently he's forgotten Dick Cheney's raw sexuality.)
So there in Cleveland will be a handful of Trump's vanquished foes, laying down to a candidate that bullied and intimidated them into submission. They will be there putting their party in front of their dignity, hoping to maintain in good standing with the party for future elections. It would no doubt serve members of the party of the elephant well to have much longer memories.
Christian Schneider is a Journal Sentinel columnist and blogger. Email cschneider@jrn.com. Twitter: @Schneider_CMSmall News Hi folks: A few seemingly random notes... PHP 7 and Updating Indexhibit is both PHP 7 and https ready. If your site is randomly out-or-order there was probably server upgrade and you haven't updated for a few years. Updating will very likely help. Paid Support Most people probably don't realize that I've been doing this for thirteen years now - and for the majority of that time my work and help has been unpaid. I do not have help with anything. You could help both myself and Indexhibit out by hiring me for updating sites, customizations or even other kinds of web projects. Even better |
regularly to make sure you’re not grinding past the cap.
Event currency is lost at the end of the event, so spend it! You can always buy Potions even if you’ve got all the unique items.
Triangle Things???
Minimum Rank: 40
Info soon?
Rank 40+ Info
Rank 40 is apparently Majero Spoilerinos and I haven’t reached it yet myself.
If you’re rank 40+ and need info, here’s two useful super spoiler filled links:
How to play after R40
R40+ Data Collection
Grinding
Though the game does not run whatsoever while the app is closed unlike many idle games, there are still methods that allow you to truly automate grinding in the game. Exactly how to go about it depends on what you want.
General Overnight Grinding (Experience/Fishcake)
The single most important thing for grinding is Auto-Fish. In combination with the Fishing Speed skill, Auto-Fish will actually automatically catch fish faster than if you had fought them manually despite being completely idle. Auto-Skill Use helps a lot as well, as you can loop using Fishing Speed as soon as it becomes available, drastically increasing the amount of fish you’ll catch.
While not necessary, higher levels of Auto-Fish can help a lot, adding the ability to Auto-Fish Rare Fish, Boss Fish, allowing you to benefit from Combos, and at max level you can turn on the Auto-Fish button which automatically pulls up Legendary Fish/Junk/Fish who’s levels are too high to Auto-Fish.
To grind, make sure you have Auto-Fish and ideally those other skills, then travel to a Fishing Area and cast your line. Leave the line somewhere where you’re confident you can beat 100% of the fish that appear (roughly at or below your level is generally safe).
Once you’re auto-fishing, you can just leave the game on (do not turn off the screen), put on Neglect Mode (the moon icon) and lower your phone’s brightness to the minimum to reduce battery usage, and leave your phone on charger overnight as the game fishes automatically. You’ll wake up to a higher level, lots of fishcake and maybe more if you use some of the below more specialized grinding methods.
Don’t forget to grab your Hot Time rewards, your daily login rewards, your Achievement pearls, spend Event Currency, and level up your weapons whenever you check in after grinding.
Pearls Grinding
Pearls grinding is a more active affair, and can be done most easily once Auto-Voyage lvl 1 is bought in the Mastery section. The best way is usually to set Auto Voyage to only Pearls and location to “Rarest” (areas with higher level drops first). You’ll want Auto-Fish level 4 as well as you can Auto-Fish Rare Fish.
Be sure to turn off the Detector unless you also want to catch Junk while you’re at it. This is a pretty good way to gather Junk as well, but Junk also fills your inventory faster.
Basically the game will auto travel between active Rare Fish spots to collect their items, and eventually once your inventory is full, it’ll take you to a Harbor where you’ll have to manually sell things. This is why it’s more manual than most grinding. If you leave the game overnight, you’ll just end up at a harbor within about an hour and waste the rest of your time.
Early on you’ll probably want to do some Pearls Grinding because you can’t do Amber Stones yet and Pearls are quite valuable early on while there’s lots of cheap Skins to buy. It’s also fair to do Pearls Grinding while you’re active and Amber Stones grinding while you’re busy/asleep/etc.
You can buy Auto-Sell tickets with Potions to make Pearls Grinding truly automated (until it runs out of tickets!), but I’m not sure it’s worth it, especially if you have any Mastery left to buy with Potions, which is how I spend them. There’s also a max of 20 Auto Sell tickets so eventually the game will run out and stop either way. Auto Sell tickets do not trigger the ads when selling.
A softer sort of Pearls grinding can just be grinding overnight at a place that has Rare Fish with Auto-Voyage off; this way your inventory will fill but you won’t go to a Harbor and thus never stop fishing. This precludes you from farming Amber Stones however.
Mastery Grinding
This isn’t really automated like any of the other grinding methods, but with Auto-Voyage level 3 you can automatically move between the Mastery locations as their cooldown finishes. You’ll have to play the minigames manually. I don’t personally think it’s very worth it since the Alchemy and Black Market are the only places that give good Mastery. Generally spending Potions directly is the best way to get Mastery (and IMO, the best way to spend Potions).
Amber Stones Grinding
Amber Stone grinding requires Auto Voyage Level 4, Auto-Fish level 6 and of course that Legendary Fish/Amber Stones be unlocked (Rank 24).
To grind you’ll want to set Auto Voyage to Amber Stones only and leave it on, and otherwise grind normally overnight. You’ll also need to turn the Auto-Fish button On, as otherwise you won’t pull up the Legendary Fish and get stuck at the Thunderstorm.
This is generally the best way to grind overnight, as it doesn’t really decrease your amount of Experience much and it works totally automatically unlike Pearl Grinding. You’ll wake up to a large amount of EXP, Fishcake, and Amber Stones.
Event Grinding
Event grinding is no different from Generic/Amber grinding; just catch lots of fish overnight/while you’re not playing. You should easily fill up your full 2200 slots for Event Currency overnight, earning you a bare minimum of one Event item per day if you only farm overnight; just enough to be able to finish any Event.
You can get at least two if you grind day and night and check at least once in the morning and once midday/before bed. IMO it’s always worth grinding a bit extra to get the Event things, they’re very hard to come by otherwise, they’re fun to have, and they have gameplay bonuses like all other Skins.
Upgrades
Mastery
Mastery is used to unlock and upgrade passive skills, making it very important. Generally you’ll want to spread your points widely and shallowly, unlocking everything but waiting to pay for the most expensive upgrades until later.
Here’s a table with the Mastery prices per level. It costs an impressive 131,040 Mastery to upgrade everything.
Auto Fish You will occasionally automatically and instantly catch a fish Level 1: Auto-catch Normal Fish Level 2: Shows notification for fish that can’t be auto-fished (Vibration + green N on the fish meter). Fish higher than the highest level you’ve caught can’t be auto fished Level 3: Combo stack now applies to auto-fishing Level 4: Auto-catch Rare Fish Level 5: Auto-catch Boss Fish Level 6: Start Auto-Fish button availible Cost per level: 5, 25, 100, 500, 1,000, 1,600
Auto Voyage Auto travel to locations Level 1: Adds Auto Voyage option, only for “pearls” at first. What this means is you’ll auto voyage to any Fishing Area that has a Rare Fish. The Rare Fish will each drop an item, so after enough locations your inventory will be full and you’ll automatically sail to a harbor. You can (but shouldn’t) auto-sell by buying auto-sell tickets with Potions. Otherwise, you’ll have to manually sell once Auto Voyage takes you to a Harbor. By default you use “Rarest First” Auto Voyage, which actually takes you to the highest level areas first (which have the highest value drops) Level 2: Adds Proximity First option to Auto Voyage, going to the nearest spot available each time significantly reducing travel time in most cases. Level 3: Auto Voyage for Mastery points option. Travels to Alchemy/Roulette/etc when Mastery can be gained, requiring manual intervention to actually play the minigames. The options are all separate toggles so you can choose which to go for. I recommend leaving Mastery off. Level 4: Auto Voyage for Amber Stones/Legendary Fish option. The only Auto Voyage that keeps gaining even without manual intervention! Level 5: Auto Voyage for Bosses option. Only useful after rank 40 apparently? Costs: 250, 500, 800, 2,000, 3,000
Fishing Meter Holder Level 1: Adds a control that caps the level at which the Fishing meter will stop. Longpress on the meter while not fishing to readjust it. Level 2: Starts Auto Fish at departure and enables you to buy Auto Sell tickets. Only useful along with Auto Voyage. Auto Sell does not trigger ads, so don’t worry about selling interrupting your overnight farming. Costs: 100, 1000
Junk Stack Enables you to “stack” junk, storing more than one item per item slot in Inventory Gets expensive fast and the first half of the levels are most critical, so I’d recommend stopping once it starts costing a thousand+ Mastery per level Max level: 14, total of 15 junks per inventory slot Costs: 50, 100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 3,500, 4,000, 4,500, 5,000
Upgrade Combo Raises max Combo count from 5, still giving 5% Fishcake/EXP bonus per Combo Max Level: 10, total of 15 Combos 5, 20, 50, 100, 400, 500, 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000
Detector Upgrade Max level: 10 Costs: 25, 50, 100, 200, 250, 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 3,000, 4,000, 5,000
Expand Inventory Adds one inventory tile per level One of the most important upgrades Max level: 14, total of 20 slots 10, 25, 50, 100, 150, 200, 400, 600, 800, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 2,500, 3,000
Teleportation Reduces Teleportation cost by 2% per level Unless you’re extremely impatient, Teleportation is a really bad way to get around. Use the Altars and Home Teleport instead and save mana for Skills. Max level: 10, total of 20% reduction 50, 100, 150, 200, 300, 400, 500, 750, 1,000, 1,500
Skill: Fishing Speed Increase Upgrade Reduces Fishing Speed Increase’s mana cost by 1 per level Max level: 10, final cost 20 Mana 5, 20, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1,400, 2,000, 3,000
Skill: Navigation Speed Increase Upgrade Reduces Navigation Speed Increase’s mana cost by 1 per level Max level: 10, final cost 25 Mana 5, 20, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1,400, 2,000, 3,000
Skill: World Acceleration Upgrade Reduces World Acceleration’s mana cost by 1 per level Max level: 10, Final cost 35 Mana 5, 20, 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1,400, 2,000, 3,000
Auto Skill Casting Adds a button in Skills that will auto-cast a skill as soon as it runs out if you have enough Mana (will not consume Potions) Cost: 1,000
Skill Booster Adds a button in Skills that will temporarily buff a skill’s effect by a base of 1.5% in exchange for reducing its duration by half. Generally it won’t be worth it unless you really need the extra effect more (for say Junk farming with Navigation Boost) than you need Duration. It’s also incredibly expensive so I recommend upgrading it very late, but the first two levels are cheap Max Level: 11 200, 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000, 2,500, 3,000, 3,500, 4,000, 4,500, 5,000
Skins
“Skins” are how A Girl Adrift refers to cosmetic items like outfits, boats, and weapon designs.
Each type of Skin grants a permanent bonus (even while not using it) determined by what type of Skin it is. You can see your total bonus for a specific Skin type in it’s tab in the Skin menu.
Fishing Rod Raises High level Fish chance
Hat Raises EXP gained
Hair Raises Fishcakes gained
Outfit Raises Rare Fish occurrence rate
Boat Raises Navigation Speed
Storage Spawns more relief items (the parachuting fishcake/mana)
Lantern Extends skill duration
Harpoon Turret Raises harpoon damage
Cannon Raises cannon damage
Machine Gun
Raises machine gun damage
Magic Stone Raises magic stone damage
Cat Fishing Rod
Skin list coming soon, but you can check this ingame anyway in the Skin tab.
Daily Reward Skins
Daily Reward refreshes every day at Midnight UTC.
7 days: Prize Box
14 days: Fish Trophy
21 days: Prize Ship
50 days: Red Waves dress
75 days: Lady Red
100 days: Prize Tiara
Locations
Several Locations in the game can be upgraded, mostly by using Junk.
Home
Minimum Rank: 16
Home is where the Fishcake is.
Home is basically a farm that auto generates a moderate amount of Fishcake automatically. You can create cosmetic Furniture items here too with Junk to improve Fishcake production and decorate. Note that just like Skins, all Furniture you’ve created here adds a passive bonus even when it’s not equipped.
For a list of upgrades on the Home/Farm, /u/JubileeJones on Reddit has put together an impressive table of all Farm Upgrade information!
Unlocking Home also enables you to instantly teleport back to Home no matter where you are for free, but you can only do this once every 30 minutes.
Thunderstorms
Magic Essence can be used to upgrade Thunderstorms, though you can only visit (and thus upgrade) them when there’s a Legendary Fish to catch. Keep this in mind and upgrade the Thunderstorm before fighting the Legendary Fish if you have enough Magic Essence.
Cost per level: 50, 75, 113, 169, 254, 380, 570, 855
Alchemy
Alchemy is one of the best ways to get free Mastery, but you can get Pearls as well. The Free Use gives you three Potions’ worth of Pearls or Mastery, for a minimum of 90 Pearls/33 Mastery and up to 180 Pearls/66 Mastery each go.
Alchemy is also where most of your initial Potions should go, they convert into Mastery at a good rate here.
Roulette
Roulette is a pretty bad way to get Mastery, but it’s there.
Whack-A-Mole
Whack A Mole is an only slightly less bad way to get Mastery.
Black Marketeer
You can sell items to the Black Marketeer every hour to get Mastery. The exact amount varies both on what item you sell and how generous the Black Marketeer is feeling (indicated by the % he shows)
Black Marketeer offers Mastery points equal to the item’s Pearl + Mastery points value multiplied by the percentage shown.
Junkyard
The Junkyard lets you build artifacts out of Junk. Note you have to have a full set of the required Junk to build them, unlike most upgrades where you can spend one Junk at a time.
It’s probably best to spend the 300 pearls to get 10 random artifact points instead.
Altars
Altars are big spooky obelisks that you can offer Amber Stones at to unlock and upgrade various passive gameplay bonuses. Earn Amber Stones by fighting the Legendary Fish, which unlocks just before the first Altar does.
See the Altars subsection of Upgrades for the details on which altar does what and how significant they are.
You can teleport to any Altar instantly for free from another Altar or Home.
Fishing Area
Simply areas to fish, each fishing area may have a unique Rare Fish (indicated by the yellow triangle Fish sign on the map), which respawns after a certain amount of time.
Fishing areas also may have Bosses specific to them, so to progress in A Girl Adrift you will often need to catch a new Boss fish when a Skull icon appears on a Fishing area.
For a list of which Rare/Boss fish may appear in an area, see the Rare/Boss Fish List. Normal fish appear anywhere regardless of location.
Harbors
Harbors are where you can sell your items and buy new Skins, cosmetic items that add gameplay benefits too. They’re also often important for Quests.
Norway
Norway is technically a Harbor, but it uniquely has the Blacksmith’s Anvil, which you can upgrade your Skins at for extra passive bonus effects.
Rank
Rank is the primary aspect of game progress, and each new Rank unlocks new gameplay features, areas, fish etc. Ranks are raised every Boss Fish you catch. New boss fish are discovered by following Story Quests. If you take on all your quests you’ll always find your way to the Bosses, though you might not be able to beat a boss the first try.
Speed of Rank increases varies a bit; from Rank 1 through 25 or so you’ll be getting multiple ranks a day. Through the late 20s through early 25s it starts to slow to a rank a day at most to several days for a Rank, even with a large amount of skilled play. At Rank 35 (due to the Will Altar’s effect) you can start progressing a bit faster, just a few days per Rank again, then it begins to slow down once again.
To see the max Altar/weapon/etc levels available at each rank, see this spreadsheet. However, note it is never to your benefit to dawdle at a lower rank when you can beat a boss; you should always advance ranks as soon as possible and thus you should almost never have max rank anything (except altars, which are much easier to max out especially early on).
Rank Unlocks
Rank 0 Seoul
Rank 1 Busan Harbor, Pearls Currency, Mastery Currency, Tokyo
Rank 2 Hokkaido
Rank 3 Hong Kong
Rank 4 Alechemy Location, Everest
Rank 5 Harpoon Weapon, Singapore
Rank 6 Fishing Speed Skill, Mana Currency, Bali
Rank 7 Uluru
Rank 8 Sydney Harbor, Auckland
Rank 9 Roulette Location, Tasmania
Rank 10 Combos, Mumbai
Rank 11 Cannon weapon, Kilimanjaro
Rank 12 Lusaka Harbor, Madagascar
Rank 13 Navigation Speed skill, Cape Town
Rank 14 Wack a Mole location, African Gulf
Rank 15 Cairo
Rank 16 Athens, Home Location, Detector
Rank 17 Norway Harbor, Machine Gun weapon, Paris
Rank 18 Teleportation skill, Dublin
Rank 19 Iceland
Rank 20 World Acceleration skill, Boston
Rank 21 New York Harbor, St. Louis
Rank 22 Altar of Growth, Amber Stones currency, Legendary Fish
Rank 23 Magic Stone weapon
Rank 24 Altar of Abundance
Rank 25 Altar of Heavy Blow, Black Marketeer Location
Rank 27 Junkyard Location
Rank 29 Altar of Sharpness
Rank 31 Imphomus Harbor Remnants of Inscriptions
Rank 32 (?) Currency
Rank 33 Cat Partner (unlocked after doing a few non-boss quests)
Rank 35 Octoland Harbor, Altar of Will, Early Autumn Road
Rank 36 Refrigerated Sea
Rank 40 (?), (?)
Rank 46 (?)
Altars
Altars unlock at Rank 22 and are upgraded with Amber Stones earned from fishing Legendary Fish. Note that if you are at an Altar or Home, you can freely teleport between Altars in the Amber Stones menu to quickly upgrade the altar of your choice.
Altar of Growth
Unlocks rank 22. Can max it out at rank 45.
Increases Experience earned
Max level 215
Altar of Abundance
Unlocks Rank 24. Can max it out at rank 45.
Lvl1: Increase fishcakes by 50.81%
lvl 2 51.62%
lvl3 52.44
lvl 11 59,23%
Max level 190
Altar of Heavy Blow
Unlocks Rank 25. Can max it out at rank 46.
Increases Critical Hit Rate
Max level 255
Altar of Sharpness
Unlocks Rank 29. Can max it out at rank 46.
Increases Critical damage
Lvl 1: 45% Cost: 20
Lvl 14: 240% cost 41
Max level 255
Altar of Will
Unlocks Rank 35. Can max it out at rank 46.
Max level 255
Events
Events in A Girl Adrift are pretty by-the-numbers; you’ll earn a special Event Currency every time you fish (amount seemingly random per-fish), and the currency can be spent on one cosmetic item for each kind of skin for both outfits and boat parts.
Events appear to last 2 weeks each, so they’re short, but long enough to get all the items if you’re moderately attentive. Leaving the game idle for a few hours with Auto Fishing should fill your Event Currency inventory easily.
Note you can (but shouldn’t) buy Event items with Diamonds.
Cat Cafe Event!
Dates: November 15th – November 27th.
Mew
Halloween Event
Dates: October 26th – November 9th.
Halloween event is live! Collect wax Candy Corn by fishing normally and spend it on themed Halloween skins (with the usual gameplay benefits too)! Events in this game are short, so try to keep up on it and get the items ASAP.
Skins
Event skins always cost 2000 Currency each. You can buy Potions for 500 each once you’ve run out of skins.
Rod: Witch Broom
Hat: Witch Hat
Hair: Violet Witch
Outfit: Halloween Festival
Ship: Wicket Hollow
Chest: Black Casket
Lamp: Deep Night Light
Cat: Black Cat
Harpoon: Pumpkin Turret
Canon: Pumpkin Canon
Machine Gun: Pumpkin Candy Basket
Magic Gem: Pumpkin Ghost
VIP Events
I put this here since I wasn’t sure where else to, but the VIP events aren’t really events per se; you just get extra “daily bonus” coupons (the kind you can buy in the store in the Attendance tab).
According to the game if you spend more than $10 on A Girl Adrift IAP at the store and email the payment receipt to [email protected], you’ll get VIP coupons sent twice a month.
If you have extra info on this let me know, I haven’t spent $10 total yet.
Fish
Normal Fish
Normal Fish are added to the whole sea upon a certain Rank. I don’t know most of the early Ranks yet as I wasn’t keeping track. Time of day seems to affect which fish you get as well.
Starfish R0
Anchovy R0
Mackerel R0
Halibut R3
Monkfish R3
Sea Anemone R4
Tuna R5
Conch R6
Shrimp R8
Rockfish R9
Characin R10
Mozambique Tilapia R11
Catfish R13
Mussel R14
Clam R15
Goldfish R17
Lobster R18
Sea Urchin R20
Hawaiian R21
Sting Ray
Silver Warehou
Blood Carp
Cobalt Ladder R30
Pumpkin Jelly R31
Sugar Ghost R33
Ice Sea Bream R35
Yellow Mellow R36
Blugo R38
Waffle & Machine R39
Bubble Bell R40
Roquid R41
Distant Sea Jellyfish R42
Rare Fish & Boss Fish List
Each location has a couple of unique fish: a Boss Fish, and a Rare Fish which will only show up after the Boss Fish has been beaten at least once. Rare and Boss fish will always drop an item for you to sell.
Boss Fish are first encountered at a specific Quest and location, and from thereafter can be found as rare encounters (when the Yellow Sign appears) in that same area. Rare Fish are found the same way, as yellow sign occurrences after the Boss Fish was defeated. Rare Fish will be more common than Boss Fish at Yellow Signs.
If you fail to catch a Rare or Boss Fish it won’t despawn until you successfully catch it.
“The Rare Fish Rate Increase” buff that Outfit Skins give you both decrease the respawn time for Rare Fish locations and also give a higher chance of encountering the Boss Fish instead of the Rare Fish, meaning better items. Rare/Boss fish drops appear to be random but the higher rank the area they were found in the more likely they are to be expensive.
Spoilers begin shortly after Panama.
Seoul Rare: Grass Mackerel Boss: Taiyaking
Tokyo Rare: Dumpling Fish Boss: Sushi Shark
Hokkaido Rare: Cherry Blossom Carp Boss: Takoyaki
Hong Kong Rare: Old Boots Boss: Pine Turtle
Everest Rare: Sumie Carp Boss: Butter Squid
Singapore Rare: Soy Tube Boss: King Crab
Bali Rare: Sunfish Boss: Angelic Jellyfish
Uluru Rare: Piney Boss: Saw Stingray
Auckland Rare: Doctor Black Boss: Little Penguin
Tasmania Rare: Grass Sea Dragon Boss: Sea Dragon
Mumbai Rare: Swimgem Boss: Sea Corbra
Kilimanjaro Rare: Coral Reef Boss: Rock Eater
Madagascar Rare: Watercorn Boss: Voodoo Fish
Cape Town Rare: Gazelle Boss: Totem Fish
African Gulf Rare: Discus Boss: Warrior
Cairo Rare: Sea Swallow Boss: Mjolnir Shark
Athens Rare: Axolotl Boss: Viking Shell
Paris Rare: Seastar Boss: Seal
Dublin Rare: Golden Turtle Boss: Ice Shark
Iceland Rare: Gothfish Boss: Trident
Boston Rare: Sardine Pie Boss: Haunted ship
St. Louis Rare: Hotdog Boss: Hamburgtle
Florida Rare: Corntopus Boss: Unicorn
Grand Canyon Rare: Ironhead Boss: Superball
San Francisco Rare: Generalfish Boss: Skull Squid
Panama Rare: Ghost Fish Boss: Dark Ammonite
Machu Picchu Rare: Footballfish Boss: Dead Cage
Rio de Janero Rare: Waxy Boss: Evil Blowfish Warning things be getting spoilery beyond ye point!
Easter Rare: Plesiosaurus Boss: Deep One
R’lyeh Rare: Thorn Crab Boss: Qthulhu
Remnants of Inscriptions Rare: Flower Lilly Boss: Bitedog
Ruins Rare: Cookie Fish Boss: Pumpkin Whale
Lonely Pier Rare: Pinky Peace Boss: Venom
Trucidator Rare: Fish Gake Boss: Rampley
Nostra Rare: Magic Broom Boss: Damus
Early Autumn Road Rare: Last Leaf Boss: Baked Yam
Refrigerated Island Rare: Shellfish Lady Boss: Ice Breeder
Ice Wall Rare: G-Force Boss: Mega Hot King Crab
Center of Altar Rare: Sun Fish A different sun fish Boss: Guardian Only encountered once, after this you’ll only get Sun Fish
Power Plant Boss: Ocean King No more Rare fish beyond here
Hibernation Room Boss: V10 Whale
Isolated Prison Boss: Big Father Penguin
Altar Construction Lab Swimming Spagetti Monster
Secret Archive R44 Boss: Prefab Fish
R44 Energy Absorber R45 Boss: Crane Turtle
R45 Cradle R46 Boss: Heart
R46
Legendary Fish
Legendary Fish are only fought at the Thunderstorm. Legendaries are unlocked by special stones dropped randomly after fishing normal fish, and you’ll get a notification when it’s ready. Additionally, Auto Voyage can be set to immediately head to the appropriate Thunderstorm. Legendary Fish are vital as they drop Amber Stones needed to level up Altars for their various benefits.
Fighting the legendary fish is mostly like any other fish. They will always start at the lowest level you can possibly fish up and they have countless health bars. Their health bars go backwards and you earn Amber as you fill the bars, each bar having more and more health to go through.
The fight always ends once the timer reaches the right side of the health bar, and the Legendary Fish’s attacks will decrease the time remaining; tap the Notes/rocks to stop the attacks. Attacks have no effect on you other than reducing the timer.
You can also quickly upgrade a Legendary Fish straight from the Legendary Fish icon that appears on right of the screen (the one that takes you to the fish) to upgrade a Level 8 Thunderstorm even before you get there.
Margarglés’um
Most of the time you’ll fight Margarglés’um, a giant Mermaid with a harp. She shoots music notes at slow intervals that you have to tap, otherwise they’ll reduce the time you can fight her if they hit your boat. They’re best tapped immediately after spawning as they’ll stay in place for a few moments.
Und’avalena
A second Legendary Fish worth more Amber Stones can be fought at Rank 25 and above by “overcharging” a Thunderstorm by leveling it past 8 (it will revert to 8 after the fight). The first level costs 250 Amber Stones, and you can only pay to overcharge the Thunderstorm just before fishing it, not after.
Some kind of rocker girl with a sweet Treasure Whale and sound stage, Und’avalena rains down large amounts of yellow gems at you that need to be tapped or you’ll lose time. She plays something like a mobile Guitar Hero stage and is harder to perfectly block, but gives more Amber Stones overall. I tend to tap three fingers somewhat like a piano so I can more easily reach the rocks all over the screen.
Coupon Codes
Coupons are Android Only. Enter these in Menu > Enter coupon to get free rewards. The A Girl Adrift developers seem to have a new one every week or so.
The Subreddit keeps better track of new coupon codes than I do, see the latest codes here.
Addendum
Very in depth damage/health/HP formulas
Spreadsheets with charts derived from above info
The subreddit dedicated to questions, guides and info on the game
Common Questions thread on the SubReddit
Which Purchases are most worth it?
My AbyssRium guide, a comprehensive guide for a similar, fish-focused Idle game
Cosmetic Skin Set Demonstrations by /u/Router26
Bugs
The “Exp rate” Home/Farm upgrades do literally nothing. The Fishcake rate increase is used instead for both Fishcake and Experience boosts. So ignore Exp Rate upgrades and focus on Fishcake instead.
The game will rarely crash after fighting a Legendary Fish.
The first fight after opening A Girl Adrift after closing the app you’ll deal less than half the damage you should for a brief period. It seems to come back after a fight or so.
Credits
Thanks to the /r/AGirlAdrift subreddit in general for collecting a lot of information!
Thanks a lot to /u/Tymex123s and /u/Router26 for helping me complete the fish list!Pete Carroll left USC to become the Seattle Seahawks head coach prior to the 2010 NFL season. He brought with him a press style cover-3 defense that has dominated the NFL, leading to a Super Bowl win over the Denver Broncos. Carroll was also a Marshawn Lynch hand-off away from winning a second Super Bowl over the New England “it was a fumble” Patriots.
In just his second season at the helm of the Seahawks, Carroll’s defense was top ten in the league. In the five years since, his defense has been top five including ranking 1st in the 2013 and 2014 seasons. With this level of success it’s no surprise that other teams are implementing their own versions of this system.
Carroll’s defense is so effective because it is designed to prevent short passes with press coverage due to the cornerbacks playing a step-kick technique mirroring the wide receiver. It also utilizes a single high safety, bringing the other safety down into “the box.” This gives the defense an 8-man front helping to stop the run.
The biggest weakness to any single high defense is the deep pass. The cornerbacks cannot count on safety help because he is responsible for the whole field and may not get there in time. This was the way the Raiders were attacking single high looks and with great success.
Derek Carr has freedom at the line of scrimmage to change play calls and proved himself to be a gunslinger last season. For the huge Kobe Bryant fan, this play was “Mamba Mentality” at its finest.
On 4th and 2 Carr audibles from a run play to a fade route attacking the Chargers press man, single high coverage. Michael Crabtree makes a great catch for one of his 8 touchdowns last season. The fade route was Carr’s go to route against this defense last season.
Most coaches and quarterbacks will play more conservative on shorter 3rd downs. For obvious reasons they will concentrate of converting the first down and make shorter throws with higher completion probability. The situation did not have any effect on Carr’s willingness to throw the fade.
Here on 3rd and 3 Carr again audibles to a fade route to take advantage of the man coverage. Carr is able to complete the pass to Amari Cooper for a 24 yard gain. It is almost impossible for a defense to counter Carr’s aggression in these situations. If the cornerbacks play off, the Raiders will pick up an easy first down.
An interesting observation from the game film was Carr’s willingness to trust any receiver. Most quarterbacks have one or maybe two receivers they will trust enough to throw this type of pass to. Carr did not seem to take the receiver into account, if he saw an opportunity to attack, he was taking it.
Seldom used wide receiver Andre Holmes had 14 receptions in each of his last two seasons with the Raiders. Those are not exactly the stats of a guy you expect the quarterback to just throw the ball up to, but this is Derek Carr we are talking about.
The pass did fall incomplete but it is the fact that it was even thrown that is the most impressive. Carr is telling the defense that they cannot simply concentrate on Amari or Crabtree. This will force the safety to cover the whole field and not just shade to one side or the other.
The next step in Carr’s progression will be utilizing the routes that naturally play off the fade route. Getting the corners to worry about the fade route will force them to play “over” technique. This will prevent those deep passes but opens them up for back shoulder throws, deep comebacks, and hitch routes.
A receiver with Amari Cooper’s elusiveness can really make teams pay with the extra room he will have as defenders play off of him. Look at how much room he has on this hitch route.
Amari will provide plenty of highlights if defenses give him this much room to run this season. Cordarrelle Patterson who the Raiders signed as a free agent this offseason, is another receiver who can hurt teams when he is in space.
The Raiders have a young and aggressive quarterback who has even more weapons to work with. Defenses will have to pick their poison with Carr this season. Do they play press and get beat deep or back off and let the receivers gain yards after the catch? Either way it should be another great season for the Raiders quarterback and explosive offense.A contractor attaches a new wire at 56th Street and 11th Avenue. Michael Inscoe/Atlas Obscura
Every Thursday and Friday morning, Rabbi Moshe Tauber leaves his home in Rockland County, New York, at about 3:30 a.m. He arrives in Manhattan an hour later and drives the 20-mile length of a nearly invisible series of wires that surrounds most of the borough. He starts at 126th Street in Harlem and drives down, hugging the Hudson River most of the way, to Battery Park and back up along the East River, marking in a small notebook where he notices breaks in the line. Known as an eruv, the wire is a symbolic boundary that allows observant Jews to carry out a range of ordinary activities otherwise forbidden on the Shabbat.
Any necessary repairs must be finished before sundown on Friday, when Shabbat begins. The day of rest then lasts until the following day when there’s no more red in the western sky. Throughout that time, observant Jews are prohibited from performing many basic activities, and the observance of this law has been updated over time to reflect current technologies, such as cars, electricity, and keys. “Carrying from one domain to another,” or moving objects between public and private areas, for example, is forbidden. Eruvin (the plural of eruv) transcend this restrictive rule by serving as a symbolic border that links together many private spaces in the community, which in turn permits people to ferry around keys, children, and canes, or push wheelchairs and strollers.
A contractor reattaches a wire that was damaged by construction. Michael Inscoe/Atlas Obscura
But a single break in any part of the line voids that symbolic space. According to the 100 pages devoted to eruvin in the ancient Talmud, the boundary is only effective when the entire line is intact. And there are plenty of ways these breaks can happen. Sometimes it’s the elements, but more often construction is responsible. The wires, attached to telephone and light poles, can be severed or simply pushed down (the eruv must remain at the top of the pole) to make room for maintenance on other lines. And this is where Tauber comes in. “If they’re lousy they’ll just cut the lines and let it go,” he says. He’s been doing this carefully orchestrated monitoring since 2000. The repairs are “a secret operation,” chairman of the Manhattan Eruv Committee Rabbi Adam Mintz told the New York Post in 2015. That’s by design.
Tauber checks the lines so early in the morning in the interests of efficiency—driving around the island at any other time would be virtually impossible |
.
With no response from Russia — and passage of the referendum seen as assured — U.S. and European planning is now focused on what will happen after the vote Sunday. Any move by Putin to annex Crimea would probably be met with a new round of sanctions.
A statement by the Group of Seven industrialized countries criticized the “intimidating presence of Russian troops” in Crimea ahead of the hastily arranged secession vote and said that “Russian annexation... would be a clear violation of the United Nations Charter” and other international commitments.
Annexation, the group said, “could have grave implications for the legal order that protects the unity and sovereignty of all states. Should the Russian Federation take such a step, we will take further action, individually and collectively.”
In testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee, Kerry said he was unwilling to “go into all of the sanctions. We’ve been pretty explicit about visa sanctions, banking sanctions, targeted business sanctions, individual kinds of sanctions.”
“I don’t want to go into all the detail except to say this,” Kerry said. “It can get ugly fast if the wrong choices are made, and it can get ugly in multiple directions.”
It was unclear whether Russia planned to “annex Crimea,” Kerry said. “They may well, but they may have the referendum, have the vote, and not move” in the Russian Duma, or parliament, “to do the other things.”
Short of annexation, Crimea — and the West — may be left in a sort of limbo.
Yatsenyuk said Ukraine plans no punitive moves against Crimea, such as cutting off water or electricity, no matter the outcome of the referendum. “Crimea is an integral part of Ukraine,” he said during a speech at the Atlantic Council after his meeting with Obama. “This is our territory, and they are our citizens.”
“If Russia moved further,” he said, apparently referring to fears that Russian troops might expand into eastern Ukraine, “this would definitely undermine the entire global security.” Only Putin knows how far he plans to take the confrontation in Ukraine, Yatsenyuk said. But, he alleged, Russia has contingency plans for occupying the entire country.
In addition to his White House visit, Yatsenyuk also had meetings on Capitol Hill, with the International Monetary Fund and, on Thursday, at the United Nations.
While they decide how to respond to Russia, the administration and its allies took additional steps this week to boost Ukraine’s foundering economy and solidify the government there as it moves toward a presidential election on May 25.
Obama called on Congress to quickly pass legislation, introduced Wednesday in the Senate, authorizing a $1 billion loan guarantee and sanctions against Russia in addition to those put forward by the president in an executive order last week. The House has passed its own version of the loan guarantees.
In a fact sheet detailing increased cooperation with Ukraine, the administration said it would reactivate a Strategic Partnership Commission, convene a U.S.-Ukraine business summit and hold bilateral defense consultations in Kiev within the next month.
The E.U. association agreement Yatsenyuk referred to in his remarks with Obama is the same document that his pro-Russian predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, refused to sign. That decision was a major catalyst for massive, pro-Europe demonstrations. Yanukovych fled the country and is currently in Russia.
Russia has called the takeover by an interim government a coup and said it is protecting ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers in Crimea from “ultranationalist extremists.”
Ed O’Keefe contributed to this report.Porsche is globally recognized as the top automotive brand, a fact regularly affirmed by various consumer studies and surveys. Indeed, for the 11th consecutive year, Porsche finished on top of J.D. Power’s APEAL study for 2015.
APEAL stands for U.S. Automotive Performance, Execution and Layout study what looks at 77 vehicle attributes to determine what owners like and dislike about their new cars. Those attributes are comprised of categories including the design, content, layout, execution, and performance of the respective models.
For 2015, J.D. Power surveyed more than 84,000 new car buyers from February to May, in a bid to determine how buyers and lessees felt about their vehicles after 90 days of ownership. Power uses a 1,000-point scale and assigns a number to each model as well as an overall score for the make or brand.
This year, the average score has risen by four points to 798. Safety features contributed to the increase, including blind spot monitoring and warning systems. Both premium and mainstream brands are benefiting with the latter group closing the traditional satisfaction void with its high-end counterparts. Further, models equipped with advanced safety systems score an average of 38 points higher than those not so equipped.
“Unlike other technologies, such as voice recognition, that can be challenging to operate, most safety features provide information in a more intuitive way, giving owners a greater sense of security,” said Renee Stephens, vice president of U.S. automotive quality at J.D. Power. “Not only are models increasingly offering systems that improve safety and visibility, but owners are also using them on a regular basis. This can go a long way toward generating positive feelings about their vehicle overall.”
Power also found that consumers will happily pay more for certain safety features such as blind-spot warning and detection systems. That’s one perquisite consumers say that they’d be willing to pay as much as $750 to receive. Clearly, car manufacturers will hone their attention on that revelation.
Porsche led all comers with a score of 874 followed by 855 for Jaguar, 854 for BMW, 853 for Mercedes-Benz, and 852 for Audi. Porsche also had three of the top models in the 26 segments featured. Indeed, the Porsche Cayman led the Compact Premium Sporty Car category, the Porsche Macan took the Compact Premium SUV segment, and the Porsche Cayenne led the Midsize Premium SUV group.
Among mainstream brands Mini placed first, finishing with a score of 825. Chevrolet and Ford, like Porsche, each had three segment leaders. Audi, BMW, Dodge, Mazda and Mini placed two group leaders each.
Once again, J.D. Power reaffirmed a problem that has plagued new car buyers in recent years: how to work the advanced technologies found in today’s cars. Frustration with those technologies will often impact model and brand scores, something Power says can be overcome at the dealer level.
Specifically, the research firm offered advice for consumers, including discovering the benefits of safety features before opting for them. However, in many cases, these features are standard or are included with particular trim level or package offerings.
Consumers should also familiarize themselves with the entire safety package, not just the items they think they will use. Power also urged consumers to keep track of the technological features that are of most interest to consumers, including those still needing to be perfected. The last tip points to a problem inherent in many vehicles — wonky GPS-based infotainment systems that can be difficult to decipher.
Like some of the other studies offered in recent years, the APEAL study indicates manufacturers are listening to consumer concerns and are actively keeping up with the latest auto trends, especially safety and in-cabin technologies. Some brands, such as Jaguar and Mini, have made much progress in recent years, reflecting positive changes to company culture that are in prevalence today.
See Also — Kia, Hyundai Star in 2015 J.D. Power Survey
Photos copyright Auto Trends Magazine.This piece originally appeared in Foreign Policy on December 10, 2014.
On his first full day in office as president, Barack Obama signed an executive order to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Nearly six years later, his administration has finally begun delivering on its promise. Sunday's transfer of six detainees to Uruguay brings the total number of detainees transferred since the beginning of November to 13 — more than the total number of transfers than took place in all of 2013. That's a big deal. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.
While the administration has transferred detainees cleared for release in occasional bursts, it has failed to meaningfully address the plight of the more than 60 men held in indefinite detention without charge or trial. One cause of the failure is simple: in 2011, the Obama administration designed an administrative hearing mechanism called the Periodic Review Board (PRB) to review the cases of indefinitely held detainees. But since then it has made only inconsistent, half-hearted use of this tool. And now time is running out.
Under the PRB's original mandate, representatives from six defense and intelligence agencies, including the Department of Justice and the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, sit on the boards and review the cases of all detainees designated for continued detention who face neither charge nor conviction. The PRB would then make a transfer recommendation to the secretary of defense for detainees it determined no longer represented a threat to the United States.
Granted, the PRBs only hold administrative hearings and cannot correct the injustice of detention without charge or trial. But they are a key pathway to freedom for those detained indefinitely at Guantanamo.
Yet the board did not convene for the first time until Nov. 2013 — over a year and a half behind schedule. The PRBs also have a large task in front of them, as over 40 percent of the prison's 136 detainees are eligible for a review. And since the PRBs began, they have done little to advance efforts to close the prison. In many cases, detainees and their representatives are only allowed to see summaries of the government's evidence against them. Even worse, detainees without private lawyers must rely on representatives provided by the government who may not even have a legal background. Attorneys or not, these representatives are not allowed to make use of any evidence except for the material provided to them by board administrators.
Despite this bias at the core of the process, the review board has cleared five of the detainees who have appeared before it (the six released on Sunday were cleared for release in 2010, before the board). But that is out of only nine men who have been lucky enough to appear before the board, a telling reminder of how excruciatingly slow the PRB process has been.
When the PRBs first began in November of last year, 71 detainees were eligible for review; today, 57 are eligible for their first review, but have not yet received it (this accounts for five prisoners exchanged last summer whose cases weren't reviewed). At this rate, it will take at least six years to complete the first review of eligible detainees. Even then, a favorable decision would not guarantee a detainee's release. Sixty-eight detainees currently held at the prison are cleared for release, the vast majority of them since 2010. Yet they remain behind bars.
Why the glacial pace? One rationale that NGOs monitoring the boards often hear from government representatives is that there's a lack of human resources. For each case the PRB hears, a special interagency body — the " Analytic Task Force " (ATF) — must compile all information relevant to the detainee's case and develop a summary of it. But according to government sources, there is no easy way to translate additional dollars for PRB operations into a faster pace for hearings given the unique mix of skillset, experience, and security clearance ATF staff need. Their hands are tied.
The excuse is as implausible as it is disappointing. In fact, four years ago, the Guantanamo Review Task Force — a separate interagency body created just days after the Obama administration took office to determine which detainees should be released, tried, or detained indefinitely — reviewed all 240 Guantanamo detainee cases. That process took just one year to complete. But while the task force designated 126 detainees as cleared for transfer, the majority of them remain at Guantanamo to this day. Then in 2013, the president appointed two envoys to oversee the prison's closure. Finally, the PRB process began later that year to review the cases of the men the Task Force originally saw as unfit for transfer or trial.
Because of the delays in implementing the president's commitment to close the prison at Guantanamo, detainees have begun losing hope. In a speech to Congress in spring 2013, Gen. John Kelly of U.S. Southern Command conceded that detainees were "devastated" that Obama had "backed off … of closing the facility." A hunger strike broke out. By the summer of 2013, more than 100 detainees were on strike. In December of last year, the Defense Department stopped releasing figures on the hunger strike, in an effort to undermine the protest.
Without addressing this blight, history will interpret Obama's legacy on Guantanamo as one that reinforced — not repudiated — indefinite detention without charge or trial. The president could and should release those detainees held at Guantanamo who have never been charged with a crime.
The only real impediment the PRBs suffer is the administration's failure to prioritize them. And if Obama is to make good on his promise to shutter the Guantanamo facility he must, at the very least, get the PRBs moving again.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 dwarf stripper got a bride-to-be pregnant after her hen night celebrations got a little too wild.
The guilty woman had to confess to cheating on her husband with her entertainer after giving birth to a child with dwarfism at a hospital in Valencia.
A Spanish news website revealed the incident today and it was quickly picked up by local and national media.
Neither the hospital nor the woman have been named.
Her encounter is said to have occurred at the start of the year.
Reportedly in the dark, the cheating wife's partner was of the firm belief the child was his - until it was born.
Website LasCincoDelDia, which broke the news, said: “Neither her closest female friends or her family knew she had sex with the midget stripper but once she had her son in her arms, she broke down and confessed what had happened.
“As you can imagine no-one that sleeps with a stripper at her hen night broadcasts it or at least they try to take their secret to the grave.
“But the protagonist of this episode had no choice but to confess and could never have pretended the boy was her husband’s because of a little problem - the child was born with dwarfism.”The 8raw8 Analog Drum Machine Expander is a new drum synth that’s a clone of the analog drum synth voices of the legendary Roland TR808.
According to the developers, the 8raw8 is designed to be an affordable reproduction of the original 808, without any compromise on the sound.
It is a MIDI drum synth module, not a full 808 clone. The standard 1-octave MIDI mapping ranges from C3 to B3 (11 analog voices + Accent).
Here’s the official video demo:
Features:
11 Analog drum voices + Accent
Separate output for each voice
Master output
Through-hole electronic components
‘Ultra-fast’ MIDI processing
Bass Drum tune mod
Hand Clap VCA mod
Aluminum chassis
Quality Alpha potentiometers
Moog-style rotary knobs
The 8raw8 is designed to offer an accurate reproduction of the original 808’s audio circuitry.
The developers note:
Every active component on the signal path is the exact same reference as those used in the original 808. This includes: OP amps, transistors, diodes, signal ICs. At the exception of the Hand Clap VCA (orig:BA662), replaced by it’s little brother (BA6110) sounding perfect with little tweaks.
When we receive parts, we make sure they are true originals by testing them. It took ages to find the real deal.
Passive components (capacitors, resistors) come from EU stocks. They were carefully selected for their sound properties when prototyping on breadboards. Their technology, brand, tolerancy… can make a big difference when A/B testing with an original 808.
All our components are Through Hole. It means they are soldered through the mainboard, unlike modern miniaturized SMD chips (Surface Mounting Device) which have different power ratings, and sometimes are off specs compared to a Through Hole version.
Power Supply and MIDI circuits were redesigned with up-to-date components.
The 8raw8 does include two mods to the sound-generation circuitry:
Bass Drum Tune Mod: allows you to modify the BD pitch. Adjust the BassDrum oscillator frequency in the key of your song, or create basslines using long decay settings (rather than DAW detuning). Recall standard pitch by turning off the “Mod on/off” switch.
Hand Clap VCA Mod: From soft clicky handclap to loud harsh CLAP. Opening the VCA potentiometer in Maracas mode will create a cool white noise FX (the clap isn’t triggered anymore).
8raw8 Direct Output:
Pricing and Availability
Information on pricing and availability is TBA, no details are currently provided on the 8raw8 site.
via protoolerblogIn December 2016, US-based Economic Security Project (ESP), co-chaired by future of work expert Natalie Foster, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and Roosevelt Institute Fellow Dorian Warren, pledged $10 million in initial project fund to explore how a 'basic income' could rebalance the economy and ensure economic opportunity for all.
Silicon Valley, automation and universal basic income; what to do to stay one step ahead of the robots?
The move is just one in a series of such clamours around the world getting momentum over the concept of a universal basic income (UBI) for all.
On January 1, Finland became the first country in the world to pay a basic income to citizens on an experimental basis for two years wherein Finns randomly picked from across the country will receive an unconditional monthly tax-free basic income of 560 euros ($586).
Back in June 2016, Swiss voters had rejected a proposal to provide a universal basic income grant to all citizens after critics slammed that such an initiative will be detrimental to the economy as it would result in sky-high costs and people would quit their jobs in droves. "If you pay people to do nothing, they will do nothing," Charles Wyplosz, economics professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute, said.
Other better off countries like the Netherlands, Canada and New Zealand are also considering whether the basic income concept can actually be implemented on the ground.
A close look at the above examples makes it clear that all the countries either mulling or experimenting such a move are small in population and most of them are small in area as well. What if a country like India starts thinking about this? Will it be even worth considering, leave alone implementing?
Currently, India's social security system has a large number of schemes and programs that involve a variety of laws and regulations. The country has a large group of people working in the unorganised sector and hence are out of the ambit of several welfare schemes.
Over the last few years, several NGOs and other private organisations have conducted pilot projects on basic income in India.
According to Development Pathways, a UK-based group working for social protection across the developing world, India has a huge number of social protection schemes, including cash transfers, but many of which do little in making a difference in the lives of those living in poverty.
India's public distribution system (PDS) – which gives people living in poverty access to ration shops where they can buy basic goods such as grain and kerosene at a much lower price – uses a mechanism known as the 'Below Poverty Line (BPL)' list. This method is notorious for excluding many of those living in poverty and including many non-poor. Revealing how inefficient the PDS system is, the erstwhile Planning Commission in 2007 estimated that providing 1 rupee worth of food costs Rs 3.65 to administer. The Central government has brought a new National Food Security Act (NFSA), but this has still not been implemented as planned.
According to rough estimates, there are more than 1,000 different schemes at the central-level alone and hundreds more in each state. For example, in Madhya Pradesh alone, there are more than 300 such schemes.
A basic income would do away with the heavy administration cost of the PDS and, by abandoning the BPL targeting mechanism, exclusion errors and leakages would fall considerably. An unconditional and universal basic income could present an attractive option for making the system more effective.
A universal basic income providing every person aged 15 and above with Rs 300 ($4.36) per month and every child below 15 with Rs 150 ($2.18) would cost approximately 3.2 percent of India's GDP, Development Pathways highlighted in a report.
This will not at all put a burden on the economy comparing how other countries, including Brazil, are spending on social security. In fact, several middle-income countries have recently increased the proportion of GDP invested in public social security by more than three percentage points. Hence, 3.2 percent of GDP would be a very small price to pay for the transformation of rural India.
In the report, Development Pathways recommends that state governments should conduct expanded pilots in tribal villages. These villages are among the most deprived and vulnerable communities in India and the implementation of basic income during the pilot projects showed a particularly strong impact in the tribal villages.
At present, India spends only about 0.4 percent of its GDP on its social pension, on par with much poorer neighbour Nepal and far below the international levels.
If India were to universalise its pension to everybody aged 60 and above, the cost would correspond to:
• 0.6 percent of GDP at 500 rupees per month (about $7.50)
• 1.1 percent of GDP at 1,000 rupees per month (about $15)
• 2.2 percent of GDP at 2,000 rupees per month (about $30)
A pension of Rs 2,000 per month would bring India in line with the international norm that pensions should provide at least 20-33 percent of the general living standard.
The experience from other countries shows that pensions can have a very significant effect on poverty reduction. For example, in rural Brazil, pensions has brought about a 37 percent reduction in extreme poverty among the entire rural population.
All said, cash transfers may obviously not solve all the issues faced by the poor people, but it is amazing how much can be done simply by providing people with a small extra income on a regular and predictable basis.
Social protection policies, including income security, are not only considered fundamental human rights but are also believed to play a key role in boosting domestic demand, supporting national economies and fostering inclusive and sustainable growth. As the need for social income protection is getting increasingly recognised worldwide, the viability of a universal basic income still remains questionable as economies – irrespective of their size – battle fiscal consolidation in uncertain times.
Some statistics (source: International Labour Organization)I was born in England in 1948, late enough to avoid conscription by a few years, but in time for the Beatles: I was fourteen when they came out with “Love Me Do.” Three years later the first miniskirts appeared: I was old enough to appreciate their virtues, young enough to take advantage of them. I grew up in an age of prosperity, security, and comfort—and therefore, turning twenty in 1968, I rebelled. Like so many baby boomers, I conformed in my nonconformity.
Without question, the 1960s were a good time to be young. Everything appeared to be changing at unprecedented speed and the world seemed to be dominated by young people (a statistically verifiable observation). On the other hand, at least in England, change could be deceptive. As students we vociferously opposed the Labour government’s support for Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam. I recall at least one such protest in Cambridge, following a talk there by Denis Healey, the defense minister of the time. We chased his car out of the town—a friend of mine, now married to the EU high commissioner for foreign affairs, leaped onto the hood and hammered furiously at the windows.
It was only as Healey sped away that we realized how late it was—college dinner would start in a few minutes and we did not want to miss it. Heading back into town, I found myself trotting alongside a uniformed policeman assigned to monitor the crowd. We looked at each other. “How do you think the demonstration went?” I asked him. Taking the question in stride—finding in it nothing extraordinary—he replied: “Oh I think it went quite well, Sir.”
Cambridge, clearly, was not ripe for revolution. Nor was London: at the notorious Grosvenor Square demonstration outside the American embassy (once again about Vietnam—like so many of my contemporaries I was most readily mobilized against injustice committed many thousands of miles away), squeezed between a bored police horse and some park railings, I felt a warm, wet sensation down my leg. Incontinence? A bloody wound? No such luck. A red paint bomb that I had intended to throw in the direction of the embassy had burst in my pocket.
That same evening I was to dine with my future mother-in-law, a German lady of impeccably conservative instincts. I doubt if it improved her skeptical view of me when I arrived at her door covered from waist to ankle in a sticky red substance—she was already alarmed to discover that her daughter was dating one of those scruffy lefties chanting “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh” whom she had been watching with some distaste on television that afternoon. I, of course, was only sorry that it was paint and not blood. Oh to épater la bourgeoisie.
For real revolution, of course, you went to Paris. Like so many of my friends and contemporaries I traveled there in the spring of 1968 to observe—to inhale—the genuine item. Or, at any rate, a remarkably faithful performance of the genuine item. Or, perhaps, in the skeptical words of Raymond Aron, a psychodrama acted out on the stage where once the genuine item had been performed in repertoire. Because Paris really had been the site of revolution—indeed, much of our visual understanding of the term derives from what we think we know of the events there in the years 1789-1794—it was sometimes difficult to distinguish between politics, parody, pastiche…and performance.
From one perspective everything was as it should be: real paving stones, real issues (or real enough to the participants), real violence, and occasionally real victims. But at another level it all seemed not quite serious: even then I was hard pushed to believe that beneath the paving stones lay the beach (sous les pavés la plage), much less that a community of students shamelessly obsessed with their summer travel plans—in the midst of intense demonstrations and debates, I recall much talk of Cuban vacations—seriously intended to overthrow President Charles de Gaulle and his Fifth Republic. All the same, it was their own children out on the streets, so many French commentators purported to believe this might happen and were duly nervous.
By any serious measure, nothing at all happened and we all went home. At the time, I thought Aron unfairly dismissive—his dyspepsia prompted by the sycophantic enthusiasms of some of his fellow professors, swept off their feet by the vapid utopian cliches of their attractive young charges and desperate to join them. Today I would be disposed to share his contempt, but back then it seemed a bit excessive. The thing that seemed most to annoy Aron was that everyone was having fun —for all his brilliance he could not see that even though having fun is not the same as making a revolution, many revolutions really did begin playfully and with laughter.
A year or two later I visited a friend studying at a German university—Goettingen, I believe. “Revolution” in Germany, it turned out, meant something very different. No one was having fun. To an English eye, everyone appeared unutterably serious—and alarmingly preoccupied with sex. This was something new: English students thought a lot about sex but did surprisingly little; French students were far more sexually active (as it seemed to me) but kept sex and politics quite separate. Except for the occasional exhortation to “make love, not war,” their politics were intensely—even absurdly—theoretical and dry. Women participated—if at all—as coffee makers and sleeping partners (and as shoulder-borne visual accessories for the benefit of press photographers). Little wonder that radical feminism followed in short order.
But in Germany, politics was about sex—and sex very largely about politics. I was amazed to discover, while visiting a German student collective (all the German students I knew seemed to live in communes, sharing large old apartments and each other’s partners), that my contemporaries in the Bundesrepublik really believed their own rhetoric. A rigorously complex-free approach to casual intercourse was, they explained, the best way to rid oneself of any illusions about American imperialism—and represented a therapeutic purging of their parents’ Nazi heritage, characterized as repressed sexuality masquerading as nationalist machismo.
The notion that a twenty-year-old in Western Europe might exorcise his parents’ guilt by stripping himself (and his partner) of clothes and inhibitions—metaphorically casting off the symbols of repressive tolerance—struck my empirical English leftism as somewhat suspicious. How fortunate that anti-Nazism required—indeed, was defined by—serial orgasm. But on reflection, who was I to complain? A Cambridge student whose political universe was bounded by deferential policemen and the clean conscience of a victorious, unoccupied country was perhaps ill-placed to assess other peoples’ purgative strategies.
I might have felt a little less superior had I known more about what was going on some 250 miles to the east. What does it say of the hermetically sealed world of cold war Western Europe that I—a well-educated student of history, of East European Jewish provenance, at ease in a number of foreign languages, and widely traveled in my half of the continent—was utterly ignorant of the cataclysmic events unraveling in contemporary Poland and Czechoslovakia? Attracted to revolution? Then why not go to Prague, unquestionably the most exciting place in Europe at that time? Or Warsaw, where my youthful contemporaries were risking expulsion, exile, and prison for their ideas and ideals?
What does it tell us of the delusions of May 1968 that I cannot recall a single allusion to the Prague Spring, much less the Polish student uprising, in all of our earnest radical debates? Had we been less parochial (at forty years’ distance, the level of intensity with which we could discuss the injustice of college gate hours is a little difficult to convey), we might have left a more enduring mark. As it was, we could expatiate deep into the night on China’s Cultural Revolution, the Mexican upheavals, or even the sit-ins at Columbia University. But except for the occasional contemptuous German who was content to see in Czechoslovakia’s Dubcek just another reformist turncoat, no one talked of Eastern Europe.
Looking back, I can’t help feeling we missed the boat. Marxists? Then why weren’t we in Warsaw debating the last shards of Communist revisionism with the great Leszek Kolakowski and his students? Rebels? In what cause? At what price? Even those few brave souls of my acquaintance who were unfortunate enough to spend a night in jail were usually home in time for lunch. What did we know of the courage it took to withstand weeks of interrogation in Warsaw prisons, followed by jail sentences of one, two, or three years for students who had dared to demand the things we took for granted?
For all our grandstanding theories of history, then, we failed to notice one of its seminal turning points. It was in Prague and Warsaw, in those summer months of 1968, that Marxism ran itself into the ground. It was the student rebels of Central Europe who went on to undermine, discredit, and overthrow not just a couple of dilapidated Communist regimes but the very Communist idea itself. Had we cared a little more about the fate of ideas we tossed around so glibly, we might have paid greater attention to the actions and opinions of those who had been brought up in their shadow.
No one should feel guilty for being born in the right place at the right time. We in the West were a lucky generation. We did not change the world; rather, the world changed obligingly for us. Everything seemed possible: unlike young people today we never doubted that there would be an interesting job for us, and thus felt no need to fritter away our time on anything as degrading as “business school.” Most of us went on to useful employment in education or public service. We devoted energy to discussing what was wrong with the world and how to change it. We protested the things we didn’t like, and we were right to do so. In our own eyes at least, we were a revolutionary generation. Pity we missed the revolution.
—“Revolutionaries” is part of a continuing series of memoirs by Tony Judt, and appears along with two others in the February 25 issue of the Review.A Florida man was arrested after he left his wallet behind at the scene of an armed robbery, authorities said.
Keith Ray Howell, 22, is facing multiple charges including armed robbery and marijuana possession following his arrest near Ocala Wednesday, according to Marion County Sheriff's Office jail records.
He was being held without bond Thursday and it was unknown whether he has an attorney.
TheOcala Star-Banner reports investigators found Howell's wallet Friday in the driveway behind a convenience store after it was held up by two men. A detective went to the home listed on the ID, which was inside the wallet, and found a grocery bag on the porch with a ski mask inside.
An investigator pulled over a car Wednesday and found Howell in the back seat. Howell and two others were taken in for questioning. A search of Howell's car uncovered latex gloves, a black mask and a pellet gun.
Howell told officers his wallet had been taken from his car, then told them he had lost it. He claimed he didn't know anything about the robbery. Authorities said he could be linked to a number of other nearby robberies, the paper reported.
Copyright Associated Press / NBC New YorkBEIJING (Reuters) - China hit back on Thursday at recent criticism from the United States about its trade practices, saying some countries’ unilateralism is an unprecedented challenge to global trade.
FILE PHOTO: Flags of U.S. and China are placed for a meeting between Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and China's Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu at the Ministry of Agriculture in Beijing, China June 30, 2017. REUTERS/Jason Lee
Ministry of Commerce spokesman Gao Feng also said that foreign and domestic firms are treated equally in China and that foreign firms should not have concerns about investing in China.
The comments come amid stepped up pressure on Beijing from Washington over trade and pledges by China to further open its markets to foreign investors.
“Some countries’ unilateral actions and calls for unilateralism are an unprecedented challenge to the multilateral trading system,” Gao said.
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has begun to launch trade investigations under statutes seldom used in the World Trade Organization (WTO) era, including a “Section 301” probe of China’s intellectual property practices.
On Monday, U.S. trade envoy Robert Lighthizer said that China was a threat to the world trading system.
“The sheer scale of their coordinated efforts to develop their economy, to subsidise, to create national champions, to force technology transfer, and to distort markets in China and throughout the world is a threat to the world trading system that is unprecedented,” Lighthizer said, according to a transcript of the speech on the website of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Gao defended China’s foreign investment policies, saying it has no laws requiring foreign companies to transfer technology to Chinese firms.
“(Any technology transfer) is market-driven behaviour between companies; there is absolutely no government intervention,” said Gao.
The commerce ministry on Monday unveiled a four-month crackdown, running from September until the end of 2017, to protect the intellectual property rights of companies with foreign investors.
Gao also said China hopes the European Union will maintain an open market and create a good environment for foreign firms, including Chinese companies.
China on Monday expressed concern about a proposal by European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker to limit its ability to buy up European companies in the infrastructure, hi-tech manufacturing and energy industries.
“China and the EU are both strong supporters of free trade, and we hope that with the current international trend, both sides can jointly oppose trade and investment protectionism and actively promote facilitation and liberalisation of global investment,” Gao said.
A top European business lobby said on Tuesday it hopes the new leadership to emerge from China’s upcoming Communist Party meeting will show a commitment to market opening, but that its members were not optimistic and suffering from “promise fatigue”.Boxing great Mike Tyson recalls his friendship with rap icon Tupac Shakur in a new documentary airing on ESPN Tuesday night. The film, One Night In Vegas: Tyson & Tupac, chronicles the pair’s friendship and the night in 1996 when Shakur was shot on the Las Vegas Strip.
The mercurial boxer has one big regret about their relationship. “He always wanted me to smoke weed with him, and I never did, and I wish I did,” Tyson said, reports AP music writer Nekesa Mumbi Moody
Tyson said he turned down the pot because he was a “closet smoker” and “didn’t want it to get out” that he smoked weed.
“That’s my biggest regret,” Tyson says now, when he looks back on the lost opportunity.
Shakur, 25, was shot after a Tyson fight in Vegas on September 7, 1996. He died six days later.
”He didn’t last long, but the time he did last, every minute, every tenth of a moment was explosive,” Tyson said.
Tyson said the relationship bloomed when he was serving prison time for rape in 1992.
“Every day, he would call me or get a chance to call me or send a message,” said Tyson. “He would get word to me in prison.”
By the time Tyson was released in 1995, Shakur would be jailed for sex abuse; he was released on bond later that year.
When he got out of prison, Tyson and Shakur’s friendship deepened. Tyson said that both men had difficulty finding people who truly cared for them.
“Our problem was we always had to worry about someone betraying us, our closest friends,” Tyson said.
Tyson said that Shakur once criticized him for picking a song from rapper Redman as his intro music at a fight.
“He said, ‘Don’t you ever play those [expletive]songs again, they don’t give a [expletive]about you,’ ” Tyson said.
After that talk, Tyson said he decided Shakur’s tunes would be his intro music for life.
And it was partly because of Tyson choosing Shakur’s music as his fight intro that Shakur went to Tyson’s fight in Las Vegas that fateful night in 1996. Pac made a special rap for Tyson’s big night.
After the fight |
global war on terror.” He added, “The Administration has been fuzzing the lines; there used to be a shade of gray”—between operations that had to be briefed to the senior congressional leadership and those which did not—“but now it’s a shade of mush.” “The agency says we’re not going to get in the position of helping to kill people without a Finding,” the former senior intelligence official told me. He was referring to the legal threat confronting some agency operatives for their involvement in the rendition and alleged torture of suspects in the war on terror. “This drove the military people up the wall,” he said. As far as the C.I.A. was concerned, the former senior intelligence official said, “the over-all authorization includes killing, but it’s not as though that’s what they’re setting out to do. It’s about gathering information, enlisting support.” The Finding sent to Congress was a compromise, providing legal cover for the C.I.A. while referring to the use of lethal force in ambiguous terms. The defensive-lethal language led some Democrats, according to congressional sources familiar with their views, to call in the director of the C.I.A., Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, for a special briefing. Hayden reassured the legislators that the language did nothing more than provide authority for Special Forces operatives on the ground in Iran to shoot their way out if they faced capture or harm. The legislators were far from convinced. One congressman subsequently wrote a personal letter to President Bush insisting that “no lethal action, period” had been authorized within Iran’s borders. As of June, he had received no answer. Members of Congress have expressed skepticism in the past about the information provided by the White House. On March 15, 2005, David Obey, then the ranking Democrat on the Republican-led House Appropriations Committee, announced that he was putting aside an amendment that he had intended to offer that day, and that would have cut off all funding for national-intelligence programs unless the President agreed to keep Congress fully informed about clandestine military activities undertaken in the war on terror. He had changed his mind, he said, because the White House promised better coöperation. “The Executive Branch understands that we are not trying to dictate what they do,” he said in a floor speech at the time. “We are simply trying to see to it that what they do is consistent with American values and will not get the country in trouble.” Obey declined to comment on the specifics of the operations in Iran, but he did tell me that the White House reneged on its promise to consult more fully with Congress. He said, “I suspect there’s something going on, but I don’t know what to believe. Cheney has always wanted to go after Iran, and if he had more time he’d find a way to do it. We still don’t get enough information from the agencies, and I have very little confidence that they give us information on the edge.” None of the four Democrats in the Gang of Eight—Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, and House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes—would comment on the Finding, with some noting that it was highly classified. An aide to one member of the Democratic leadership responded, on his behalf, by pointing to the limitations of the Gang of Eight process. The notification of a Finding, the aide said, “is just that—notification, and not a sign-off on activities. Proper oversight of ongoing intelligence activities is done by fully briefing the members of the intelligence committee.” However, Congress does have the means to challenge the White House once it has been sent a Finding. It has the power to withhold funding for any government operation. The members of the House and Senate Democratic leadership who have access to the Finding can also, if they choose to do so, and if they have shared concerns, come up with ways to exert their influence on Administration policy. (A spokesman for the C.I.A. said, “As a rule, we don’t comment one way or the other on allegations of covert activities or purported findings.” The White House also declined to comment.) A member of the House Appropriations Committee acknowledged that, even with a Democratic victory in November, “it will take another year before we get the intelligence activities under control.” He went on, “We control the money and they can’t do anything without the money. Money is what it’s all about. But I’m very leery of this Administration.” He added, “This Administration has been so secretive.”
One irony of Admiral Fallon’s departure is that he was, in many areas, in agreement with President Bush on the threat posed by Iran. They had a good working relationship, Fallon told me, and, when he ran CENTCOM, were in regular communication. On March 4th, a week before his resignation, Fallon testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, saying that he was “encouraged” about the situations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regarding the role played by Iran’s leaders, he said, “They’ve been absolutely unhelpful, very damaging, and I absolutely don’t condone any of their activities. And I have yet to see anything since I’ve been in this job in the way of a public action by Iran that’s been at all helpful in this region.” Fallon made it clear in our conversations that he considered it inappropriate to comment publicly about the President, the Vice-President, or Special Operations. But he said he had heard that people in the White House had been “struggling” with his views on Iran. “When I arrived at CENTCOM, the Iranians were funding every entity inside Iraq. It was in their interest to get us out, and so they decided to kill as many Americans as they could. And why not? They didn’t know who’d come out ahead, but they wanted us out. I decided that I couldn’t resolve the situation in Iraq without the neighborhood. To get this problem in Iraq solved, we had to somehow involve Iran and Syria. I had to work the neighborhood.” Fallon told me that his focus had been not on the Iranian nuclear issue, or on regime change there, but on “putting out the fires in Iraq.” There were constant discussions in Washington and in the field about how to engage Iran and, on the subject of the bombing option, Fallon said, he believed that “it would happen only if the Iranians did something stupid.” Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility. One of Fallon’s defenders is retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, whose last assignment was as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, where Fallon was a deputy. Last year, Sheehan rejected a White House offer to become the President’s “czar” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “One of the reasons the White House selected Fallon for CENTCOM was that he’s known to be a strategic thinker and had demonstrated those skills in the Pacific,” Sheehan told me. (Fallon served as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 2005 to 2007.) “He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O.”—area of operations. “That was not happening,” Sheehan said. “When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.” The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military. “The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations,” Sheehan said. “If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can’t have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.” Admiral Fallon, who is known as Fox, was aware that he would face special difficulties as the first Navy officer to lead CENTCOM, which had always been headed by a ground commander, one of his military colleagues told me. He was also aware that the Special Operations community would be a concern. “Fox said that there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing,” Fallon’s colleague said. “The Special Ops guys eventually figured out they needed Fox, and so they began to talk to him. Fox would have won his fight with Special Ops but for Cheney.” The Pentagon consultant said, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”
In recent months, according to the Iranian media, there has been a surge in violence in Iran; it is impossible at this early stage, however, to credit JSOC or C.I.A. activities, or to assess their impact on the Iranian leadership. The Iranian press reports are being carefully monitored by retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner, who has taught strategy at the National War College and now conducts war games centered on Iran for the federal government, think tanks, and universities. The Iranian press “is very open in describing the killings going on inside the country,” Gardiner said. It is, he said, “a controlled press, which makes it more important that it publishes these things. We begin to see inside the government.” He added, “Hardly a day goes by now we don’t see a clash somewhere. There were three or four incidents over a recent weekend, and the Iranians are even naming the Revolutionary Guard officers who have been killed.” Earlier this year, a militant Ahwazi group claimed to have assassinated a Revolutionary Guard colonel, and the Iranian government acknowledged that an explosion in a cultural center in Shiraz, in the southern part of the country, which killed at least twelve people and injured more than two hundred, had been a terrorist act and not, as it earlier insisted, an accident. It could not be learned whether there has been American involvement in any specific incident in Iran, but, according to Gardiner, the Iranians have begun publicly blaming the U.S., Great Britain, and, more recently, the C.I.A. for some incidents. The agency was involved in a coup in Iran in 1953, and its support for the unpopular regime of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi—who was overthrown in 1979—was condemned for years by the ruling mullahs in Tehran, to great effect. “This is the ultimate for the Iranians—to blame the C.I.A.,” Gardiner said. “This is new, and it’s an escalation—a ratcheting up of tensions. It rallies support for the regime and shows the people that there is a continuing threat from the ‘Great Satan.’ ” In Gardiner’s view, the violence, rather than weakening Iran’s religious government, may generate support for it. Many of the activities may be being carried out by dissidents in Iran, and not by Americans in the field. One problem with “passing money” (to use the term of the person familiar with the Finding) in a covert setting is that it is hard to control where the money goes and whom it benefits. Nonetheless, the former senior intelligence official said, “We’ve got exposure, because of the transfer of our weapons and our communications gear. The Iranians will be able to make the argument that the opposition was inspired by the Americans. How many times have we tried this without asking the right questions? Is the risk worth it?” One possible consequence of these operations would be a violent Iranian crackdown on one of the dissident groups, which could give the Bush Administration a reason to intervene. A strategy of using ethnic minorities to undermine Iran is flawed, according to Vali Nasr, who teaches international politics at Tufts University and is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue,” Nasr told me. “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran.” The minority groups that the U.S. is reaching out to are either well integrated or small and marginal, without much influence on the government or much ability to present a political challenge, Nasr said. “You can always find some activist groups that will go and kill a policeman, but working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.” The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists. One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support. The C.I.A. and Special Operations communities also have long-standing ties to two other dissident groups in Iran: the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K., and a Kurdish separatist group, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK. The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.” The Kurdish party, PJAK, which has also been reported to be covertly supported by the United States, has been operating against Iran from bases in northern Iraq for at least three years. (Iran, like Iraq and Turkey, has a Kurdish minority, and PJAK and other groups have sought self-rule in territory that is now part of each of those countries.) In recent weeks, according to Sam Gardiner, the military strategist, there has been a marked increase in the number of PJAK armed engagements with Iranians and terrorist attacks on Iranian targets. In early June, the news agency Fars reported that a dozen PJAK members and four Iranian border guards were killed in a clash near the Iraq border; a similar attack in May killed three Revolutionary Guards and nine PJAK fighters. PJAK has also subjected Turkey, a member of NATO, to repeated terrorist attacks, and reports of American support for the group have been a source of friction between the two governments. Gardiner also mentioned a trip that the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, made to Tehran in June. After his return, Maliki announced that his government would ban any contact between foreigners and the M.E.K.—a slap at the U.S.’s dealings with the group. Maliki declared that Iraq was not willing to be a staging ground for covert operations against other countries. This was a sign, Gardiner said, of “Maliki’s increasingly choosing the interests of Iraq over the interests of the United States.” In terms of U.S. allegations of Iranian involvement in the killing of American soldiers, he said, “Maliki was unwilling to play the blame-Iran game.” Gardiner added that Pakistan had just agreed to turn over a Jundallah leader to the Iranian government. America’s covert operations, he said, “seem to be harming relations with the governments of both Iraq and Pakistan and could well be strengthening the connection between Tehran and Baghdad.”
The White House’s reliance on questionable operatives, and on plans involving possible lethal action inside Iran, has created anger as well as anxiety within the Special Operations and intelligence communities. JSOC’s operations in Iran are believed to be modelled on a program that has, with some success, used surrogates to target the Taliban leadership in the tribal territories of Waziristan, along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. But the situations in Waziristan and Iran are not comparable. In Waziristan, “the program works because it’s small and smart guys are running it,” the former senior intelligence official told me. “It’s being executed by professionals. The N.S.A., the C.I.A., and the D.I.A.”—the Defense Intelligence Agency—“are right in there with the Special Forces and Pakistani intelligence, and they’re dealing with serious bad guys.” He added, “We have to be really careful in calling in the missiles. We have to hit certain houses at certain times. The people on the ground are watching through binoculars a few hundred yards away and calling specific locations, in latitude and longitude. We keep the Predator loitering until the targets go into a house, and we have to make sure our guys are far enough away so they don’t get hit.” One of the most prominent victims of the program, the former official said, was Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior Al Qaeda* commander, who was killed on January 31st, reportedly in a missile strike that also killed eleven other people. A dispatch published on March 26th by the Washington Post reported on the increasing number of successful strikes against Taliban and other insurgent units in Pakistan’s tribal areas. A follow-up article noted that, in response, the Taliban had killed “dozens of people” suspected of providing information to the United States and its allies on the whereabouts of Taliban leaders. Many of the victims were thought to be American spies, and their executions—a beheading, in one case—were videotaped and distributed by DVD as a warning to others. It is not simple to replicate the program in Iran. “Everybody’s arguing about the high-value-target list,” the former senior intelligence official said. “The Special Ops guys are pissed off because Cheney’s office set up priorities for categories of targets, and now he’s getting impatient and applying pressure for results. But it takes a long time to get the right guys in place.” The Pentagon consultant told me, “We’ve had wonderful results in the Horn of Africa with the use of surrogates and false flags—basic counterintelligence and counter-insurgency tactics. And we’re beginning to tie them in knots in Afghanistan. But the White House is going to kill the program if they use it to go after Iran. It’s one thing to engage in selective strikes and assassinations in Waziristan and another in Iran. The White House believes that one size fits all, but the legal issues surrounding extrajudicial killings in Waziristan are less of a problem because Al Qaeda and the Taliban cross the border into Afghanistan and back again, often with U.S. and NATO forces in hot pursuit. The situation is not nearly as clear in the Iranian case. All the considerations—judicial, strategic, and political—are different in Iran.” He added, “There is huge opposition inside the intelligence community to the idea of waging a covert war inside Iran, and using Baluchis and Ahwazis as surrogates. The leaders of our Special Operations community all have remarkable physical courage, but they are less likely to voice their opposition to policy. Iran is not Waziristan.”
A Gallup poll taken last November, before the N.I.E. was made public, found that seventy-three per cent of those surveyed thought that the United States should use economic action and diplomacy to stop Iran’s nuclear program, while only eighteen per cent favored direct military action. Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats to endorse a military strike. Weariness with the war in Iraq has undoubtedly affected the public’s tolerance for an attack on Iran. This mood could change quickly, however. The potential for escalation became clear in early January, when five Iranian patrol boats, believed to be under the command of the Revolutionary Guard, made a series of aggressive moves toward three Navy warships sailing through the Strait of Hormuz. Initial reports of the incident made public by the Pentagon press office said that the Iranians had transmitted threats, over ship-to-ship radio, to “explode” the American ships. At a White House news conference, the President, on the day he left for an eight-day trip to the Middle East, called the incident “provocative” and “dangerous,” and there was, very briefly, a sense of crisis and of outrage at Iran. “TWO MINUTES FROM WAR” was the headline in one British newspaper. The crisis was quickly defused by Vice-Admiral Kevin Cosgriff, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the region. No warning shots were fired, the Admiral told the Pentagon press corps on January 7th, via teleconference from his headquarters, in Bahrain. “Yes, it’s more serious than we have seen, but, to put it in context, we do interact with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and their Navy regularly,” Cosgriff said. “I didn’t get the sense from the reports I was receiving that there was a sense of being afraid of these five boats.” Admiral Cosgriff’s caution was well founded: within a week, the Pentagon acknowledged that it could not positively identify the Iranian boats as the source of the ominous radio transmission, and press reports suggested that it had instead come from a prankster long known for sending fake messages in the region. Nonetheless, Cosgriff’s demeanor angered Cheney, according to the former senior intelligence official. But a lesson was learned in the incident: The public had supported the idea of retaliation, and was even asking why the U.S. didn’t do more. The former official said that, a few weeks later, a meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. “The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,” he said.About the Tradition
On December 6th, 1917, a massive explosion rocked the City of Halifax. The Norwegian supply ship Imo collided with the French munitions ship Mont-Blanc, causing the largest man-made explosion the world had ever seen. Close to 2,000 people were killed, hundreds wounded, 1,600 homes were destroyed.
Within hours, the people of Boston came to our aid. Boston authorities quickly organized and dispatched a relief train that night, to assist survivors. A blizzard following the explosion delayed the train, but it arrived the morning of December 8, and workers immediately began distributing food, water, and medical supplies. Medical personnel were able to relieve the Nova Scotia medical staff, most of whom had worked without rest since the explosion occurred. The help from Boston continued throughout the rebuilding process.
In 1918, Halifax sent a Christmas tree to the City of Boston to thank them for their kindness. That gift was revived in 1971 and continues today.
Visit the Public Archives Virtual Exhibit about the Halifax ExplosionThe Breakdown explains what's behind Southern California business and economic news. It describes the effects the headlines have on you: whether you're an investor, a business owner, an employee, homeowner, consumer or just someone who wants to know how to save a buck.
Comcast announced on Tuesday that it's acquiring General Electric's entire remaining stake of 49 percent in NBCUniversal.
The deal amounts to almost $17 billion. Added to Comcast's initial acquisition of 51 percent of NBCU in 2011 for $30, the total cost to Comcast is $47 billion.
Comcast now owns all of Universal Studios and the Universal Studios theme parks around the world. It also owns NBC, CNBC, and a several other media properties, as well as 30 Rockefeller Center in New York.
General Electric had always planned to gradually sell off its NBCU stake, but in a statement, Comcast said:
"This is an exciting day for Comcast as we have agreed to accelerate the purchase of NBCUniversal. The management team at GE has been a wonderful partner during the past two years and their support has been very valuable. Our decision to acquire GE's ownership is driven by our sense of optimism for the future prospects of NBCUniversal and our desire to capture future value that we hope to create for our shareholders," said Brian L. Roberts, Chairman and CEO....
Most of the deal was done with $11.4 billion incash on hand. An additional $6 billion was debt, and the balance - $725 million - was stock issued to GE.
A review of Comcast's balance sheet — the company announced fourth quarter 2012 earnings today — shows that it bulked up its cash position in advance of buying GE's stake.
Cash holdings went from $1.6 billion in the fourth quarter of 2011 to $11 billion in 2012.
Follow Matthew DeBord and the DeBord Report on Twitter. And ask Matt questions at Quora.So my santa had some difficulties with my gift. She ordered a gift to come in to their place, but it hadn't arrived before she had to leave for the holidays. Since she didn't have a gift to send me at the time, she ordered a different gift online and had it sent directly to me.
Part One (received at post office sometime after Christmas, picked up and opened January 10th):
I've received a coffee mug with binary on it. It's a heat changing coffee mug, which means it changes appearance if I put coffee/tea in it. When I read the binary and converted it to ASCII, it translated to "HOT".
They also sent me a card, which contained a magnet from their town. I don't think I'm allowed to post a picture of the magnet due to reddit rules on revealing personal information. On the magnet, it says "Where Every Moment Makes A Memory". It looks beautiful and I'd love to go there sometime.
Part Two (received at post office and picked January 24th, opened January 30th):
After a bit longer of a wait, my parents informed me that a package had arrived for me. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to come home until a week after the package had arrived.
I had received an 8-bit reddit T-shirt. The shirt fits me comfortably and it properly represents my interests.
Wrapped up in said T-Shirt was a sampler with a lovely programming joke on it. It gave me a great laugh. Even my friends laughed when I told them about it.
Thank you for your gifts Santa, I absolutely love them!On 12/29/12, President Obama signed HR 4310, the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act. Section 1078 (thomas.loc. gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.4310:) of the bill authorizes the use of propaganda inside the US, which had previously been banned since 1948 when the Smith-Mundt Act was passed.
History of Section 1078:
1) First version of NDAA is proposed, does not include domestic propaganda legislation (3/29/12)
2) Domestic propaganda legislation introduced by Rep. Thornberry as stand-alone legislation not related to NDAA, HR 5736, entitled ‘Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.’ Defeated in committee vote. (5/10/12)
3) Exact text of HR 5736 introduced as Section 1097 of third version of NDAA, which was approved by the house. House sends bill to Senate. Section 1097 is entitled ‘Dissemination Abroad of Information about the United States.’ The text of this Section 1097 is virtually identical to that of HR 5736, except one word is removed (see below)*. (5/18/12)
4) NDAA referred to Senate. Section 1097 appears in fourth version of bill, ‘Referred in Senate’ version. In this version, there is a Section 1078, listed as ‘Authority for Corps of Engineers to Construct Projects Critical to Navigation Safety’ (6/19/12)
5) Section 1097 does not appear ‘Public Print’ version, nor does Section 1078. There is no section regarding ‘Dissemination Abroad of Information.’ (12/4/12)
6) In, ‘Engrossed Amendment Senate’ version, Section 1097 reappears as ‘Transportation of Individuals to and from Facilities of Department of Veterans Affairs.’ There is no section regarding ‘Dissemination Abroad of Information.’ (12/12/12)
7) Final version of bill is returned to House and Senate for re-approval. Section 1097 does not appear, and the ‘Transportation of Individuals’ clause does not appear elsewhere in the bill. Section 1078 reappears, now entitled ‘Dissemination Abroad of Information about the United States.’ The text of this Section 1078 is identical to the text of Section 1097 from the third version of the bill discussed in point #3. (12/21/12)
8) Obama signs this final version of HR 4310. (12/29/12)
That is the basic history of this bill. All information is sourced from Library of Congress.
*There is only one difference between the text of HR 5736 and Section 1078, and it is that the word ‘primarily’ from ‘intended primarily for foreign audiences’ appears in HR 5736 but is removed in Section 1078 of HR 4310 and the wording is ‘intended for foreign audiences.’
Below I’m going to paste the important parts of the bill’s text to help your writers. Bracketed text is mine. The beginning of the bill is misleading, and apparent reversals of clauses in it are made in subsequent subsections (however, if the reader uses a broad interpretation, they’re not really reversals, only expansions on the original meaning):
SEC. 1097. DISSEMINATION ABROAD OF INFORMATION ABOUT THE UNITED STATES.
(a) United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 [aka Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which banned domestic propaganda]- Section 501 of the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. 1461) is amended to read as follows:
GENERAL AUTHORIZATION
Sec. 501. (a) The Secretary and the Broadcasting Board of Governors are authorized to use funds appropriated or otherwise made available for public diplomacy information programs to provide for the preparation, dissemination, and use of information intended for foreign audiences abroad about the United States, its people, and its policies, through press, publications, radio, motion pictures, the Internet, and other information media, including social media, and through information centers, instructors, and other direct or indirect means of communication.
[using a broad interpretation, ‘intended for foreign audiences abroad’ could apply to any material that could at any point after release be potentially made available to any person who lives outside of the US]
SEC. 208. CLARIFICATION ON DOMESTIC DISTRIBUTION OF PROGRAM MATERIAL
(a) In General- No funds authorized to be appropriated to the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States. This section shall apply only to programs carried out pursuant to the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. 1431 et seq.), the United States International Broadcasting Act of 1994 (22 U.S.C. 6201 et seq.), the Radio Broadcasting to Cuba Act (22 U.S.C. 1465 et seq.), and the Television Broadcasting to Cuba Act (22 U.S.C. 1465aa et seq.). This section shall not prohibit or delay the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors from providing information about its operations, policies, programs, or program material, or making such available, to the media, public, or Congress, in accordance with other applicable law.
(b) Rule of Construction- Nothing in this section shall be construed to prohibit the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors from engaging in any medium or form of communication, either directly or indirectly, because a United States domestic audience is or may be thereby exposed to program material, or based on a presumption of such exposure. Such material may be made available within the United States and disseminated, when appropriate, pursuant to sections 502 and 1005 of the United States Information and Educational Exchange Act of 1948 (22 U.S.C. 1462 and 1437), except that nothing in this section may be construed to authorize the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors to disseminate within the United States any program material prepared for dissemination abroad on or before the effective date of the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.
[Note that section B expressly allows the use of propaganda domestically, as long as there is some possibility that at least one non-US-citizen will eventually receive the given communication]
This bill appears to not only open the door to legalization of the dissemination of propaganda in America, but would also legalize covert infiltration of media organizations by government agents and even the creation of media outlets that legally operate entirely as government fronts.A vigil is set to begin at 6 p.m. for the pastor of Bright Hope Baptist Church and former congressman William "Bill" Gray. NBC10's Jacqueline London reports. (Published Tuesday, July 2, 2013)
Funeral arrangements are expected to be released Wednesday for former member of the U.S. House of Representatives and Philadelphia minister William Herbert (Bill) Gray III.
Gray died on Monday while attending the Wimbledon Tennis Championships in London. He was 71 years old. A family spokesman said Gray had not been ill and that his death was sudden. It appears that he died from natural causes, according to the spokesman.
A memorial service is planned for Saturday, July 13 at Bright Hope Baptist Church in North Philadelphia at 11 a.m. Further memorial and funeral plans are expected to be finalized soon.
Born in Baton Rouge, La., Gray graduated from Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia back in 1959. In 1972, he became the senior minister at Bright Hope Baptist Church, also in Philly.
Remembering Bill Gray
William "Bill" Gray, one of the most influential figures in Philadelphia politics, died on Monday while attending the WImbledon Tennis Championships. Friends and family speak on Gray's life and lasting legacy. (Published Tuesday, July 2, 2013)
Church leaders from Bright Hope Baptist learned of Gray's death during an emergency meeting.
"We're talking about someone who not only became majority whip but was the Barack Obama of his day." said Rev. Kevin Johnson of Bright Hope Baptist.
"It's heart-wrenching," said Brenda Willingham, who attends the church. "It hurts so bad. He's going to be truly missed by his congregation."
In 1978, Gray was elected as a Democrat to represent Philadelphia in the House of Representatives. He represented Pennsylvania’s 2nd congressional district until he resigned in 1991.
Gray was also the first African-American to chair the House Budget Committee and the first to serve as the Majority Whip.
"He was a big man doing a big job," former Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode said. "He knew how to get stuff done."
Goode, who was Philly's first African American Mayor, says Gray paved the way for him and other African Americans in politics.
"He was a pathfinder," Goode said. "He proved that an African American can run without party support."
While chairman of the Committee on Budget, Gray introduced H.R. 1460, an influential anti-apartheid bill.
From 1991 to 2004, Gray served as president of the United Negro College Fund.
Gray leaves behind a wife and three sons. The family spokesperson says funeral services will soon be announced.
Mayor Michael Nutter ordered that all city flags at city buildings and facilities will be at half-staff on Tuesday, in honor of Gray.
“I am truly stunned, saddened and hurt by the loss of this great man who was so influential in my own growth as a public servant as well as dozens of other Philadelphians, particularly in the African American community," Nutter said. "Bill Gray was also a unifying force bringing together a multi-racial coalition to work in the best interests of all Philadelphians. Bill’s passing is a dramatic and significant loss for Philadelphia, the Commonwealth and the nation he served with honor and distinction."
Philadelphia Council President Darrell Clarke called Gray "one of the most significant figures in Philadelphia politics" in a released statement.
“From advocating for Philadelphia’s fair share of federal dollars to fighting against the injustice of apartheid in South Africa, Congressman Gray’s mark cannot be erased," Clarke said. "He helped make the renovation of 30th Street Station possible, and the sight of that magnificent structure should give us all reason to be thankful for his service."Fan feedback is an important part of how we’ve built Xbox over the years, and this month’s update, which we expect to roll out later today, is all about addressing feedback from the community:
Upload custom Gamerpics to your Xbox profile; choose how you want to express yourself.
Mixer Co-streaming is now on console |
picked up by media outlets and eventually landed on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson:
“You know, we’ve got all sorts of shortages these days. But have you heard the latest? I’m not kidding. I saw it in the papers. There’s a shortage of toilet paper!”
1973 was a time of a shortages and Johnny Carson’s audience found the joke frightening instead of funny. In the following weeks, stores were flooded with customers looking to buy up the last remaining rolls of toilet paper. But since stores were not prepared for the sudden rush of sales, many people found themselves staring at empty shelves. This reinforced the idea that America was truly running out of toilet paper.
On 27 December 1973, the St. Petersburg Times reported several stores had started rationing their toilet paper:
Toilet paper has become the Suncoast’s latest shortage as shoppers are finding themselves faced with empty supermarket shelves and rationing. Other paper products, such as paper towels, napkins and bags, are also increasingly in short supply, but toilet paper stocks have been hit the hardest.A Times check of 10 stores Wednesday found that only three were selling toilet paper without rationing. Five were limiting customers to two or four rolls each and two stores were sold out. One store also was rationing paper towels, two rolls to a customer. “Toilet paper is in very critical supply,” said vice president and general manager of Atlantic Enterprises, a Tampa wholesale paper supplier. He said his firm is refusing new customers who want to buy toilet paper. “If people wouldn’t hoard and get so excited about this, everything would be okay,” said Mark Hollis, vice president of Publix Super Markets Inc. He said customers are hoarding toilet paper because of remarks made about a shortage on the Johnny Carson “Tonight Show” last week.
While Carson’s comments became a self-fulfilling prophecy, the comedian did try to convince his viewers that America’s supply of toilet paper was not in danger:An Australian news website has warned that Brits are about to become "unbearable" following Andy Murray's historic victory at Wimbledon, Chris Froome's stunning performances in the Tour de France and the possibility of England winning the Ashes (to cap the British and Irish Lions' rugby victory down under).
It aims to take the swagger out of the UK's stride, by arguing, among other things, that British beer is tasteless. "Hence the longtime popularity for Foster's beer, an Australian brand," it says.
But how Australian is Foster's? It's actually one of a number of beers marketed as quintessentially Australian/British/Indian etc which turn out to have rather more complicated stories.
FOSTER'S
Marketed as: Australian
Australian Actually: Australians couldn't give a 4X about it
It's the product advertised on both sides of the Atlantic as "Australian for lager". If you believed the ads you'd think that modern Australian men love nothing more than kicking back at the beach club with a fridgeful of Foster's. This stereotype-heavy depiction of brand loyalty traces back to the 1980s UK ads featuring Paul "Crocodile Dundee" Hogan swigging pints of "the amber nectar" in British settings, dispensing catchphrases ("What a ripper!") and anecdotes about the lager's popularity back home.
The reality is that if you walked into a bar in Australia and ordered a Foster's, you might well receive some quizzical looks - it's a long way down the popularity list and almost unheard of in some parts of the country, making a mockery of slogans such as "Think Australian, Drink Australian". It's brewed under licence in Britain, its biggest international market, where it ranks as the country's second most popular lager.
For the record, VB and XXXX are Australia's biggest-selling beers, so those erstwhile ads saying Australians wouldn't give very much for anything else were a lot more fair dinkum.
COBRA
Marketed as: Indian
Indian Actually: Like India Pale Ale, part-British part-Indian
Image caption One ad featured a Cobra vendor on an Indian train
Just as the chicken tikka masala became an Indian restaurant staple to satisfy British palates, so too did a beer conceived by an Indian Cambridge student dissatisfied with the regular gassy lagers bloating his belly at local curry houses. Karan Bilimoria's less gassy Cobra brew slid down more easily with spicy food, and ended up snaking into more than 6,000 Indian restaurants across the country, confounding the recession-hit UK market it entered in 1990.
Though born in Bangalore, the lager has been brewed since 1997 in Bedfordshire, at the Charles Wells brewery famous for Bombardier ale (slogan: "Drink of England"). Though production resumed in India in 2005, per-capita sales there lag a long way behind the UK's.
Like Stella, Cobra is positioned as a premium beer, which in its earlier days created a logistical problem in that Bilimoria had to park his battered Citroen streets away from the restaurants he was delivering to. Like Carling, its slogan equates nationality with quality ("Splendidly Indian, Superbly Smooth"). And like Foster's, its exotic far-flung heritage is proclaimed at elephantine volume (Indian elephants are also embossed onto Cobra bottles).
And it works. Sole supplier for the Queen's Jubilee picnic and concert at Buckingham Palace last year, Cobra remains Britain's biggest-ever "Indian" lager.
STELLA ARTOIS
Marketed as: French?
French? Actually: Belgian
You'll have seen the cinematic commercials over the years. In Stella's "reassuringly expensive" 1990s heyday, they stylistically imitated the French cinema classic Jean de Florette, following the exploits of itinerant flower-seller Jacques who in one advert trades a whole cartload of blooms for a glass of the lager. Later ads in the series portrayed wartime France or parodied the Henri Charriere novel Papillon, while the 2000s saw a Gallic lothario charming ladies on the French Riviera. It was this pervading romanticised Frenchness that helped Stella became Britain's biggest-selling "premium" lager.
The thing is, not only is the lager actually Belgian, it originates from the Dutch-speaking city of Leuven where it's been brewed in its current form for almost 90 years. The brewers don't exactly disguise the beer's Belgian origins. The words "Leuven" and "Belgium's original" appear on bottles and cans. In branding terms, it has something of a split personality. "Artois" itself is a region in northern France that frequently changed hands, sometimes ruled by the French, sometimes by the Dutch.
Marketed as a regular lager in Belgium with unpretentious advertising, it isn't as popular as market-leaders Jupiler and Maes. Even Stella's latest Cidre product, hailed as "C'est cidre, not cider", is produced in the Dutch-speaking municipality of Zonhoven. Sacre biere!
CARLING
Marketed as: British
British Actually: Canadian
Image caption One advert reimagined a Dambusters' raid
While many marketers exaggerate and amplify a lager's foreign heritage, Carling appears to have done the reverse. "Brilliantly British, Brilliantly Refreshing" ran the recent slogan, while its official brewery webpage waxes patriotic about the "100% British barley" and other home-sourced ingredients in "Britain's favourite beer". They're right in that respect - Carling is the UK's biggest-selling beer, with more than 1bn pints brewed in the UK last year. However, it hails from Ontario, Canada, where it was brewed for more than 100 years before a drop was sold on British soil.
Carling rose to prominence in the UK through the 1970s and 80s with a series of adverts in which displays of cleverness or cool prompted the response: "I bet he drinks Carling Black Label" (as it was then called). Its place in British culture was later cemented via sponsorship of English football's Premier League and League Cup, as well as music institutions like Academy Music Group venues and Reading Festival. By the end of the century, its Canadian history was as good as erased, and these days it's hardly heard of in Canada.
More recently, however, just like Stella's latest "Cidre" brand seemed to overlook its own provenance, it emerged Carling's new "British Cider" contained as little as 10% UK-sourced fruit.
GORDON SCOTCH ALE + OLDE ENGLISH 800
Marketed as: Scottish and English
Scottish and English Actually: Belgian/American
It's not just the UK that peddles ersatz beers of a particular nation. Scots visiting Belgium may have encountered the tartan-labelled Gordon Finest Scotch Ale - marketed as "the soul of the Scottish Highlands", born amid "wild lochs and haunted castles". The brainchild of a canny English expat and early practitioner of pseudo-patriotic marketing, John Martin, Gordon has been brewed since 1924 in Flemish Brabant, becoming so popular in Belgium that it later rolled out into Western Europe - though it never reached its Scottish "homeland".
Meanwhile England comes full-circle in the form of Olde English 800 - one of America's most-popular malt liquors (super-strength beers). Sporting a label decorated with royal crowns and often sold in 40oz (2.5 pint) bottles, the potent brew has come under fire over the years for its connotations as "liquid crack" putatively targeting urban minority drinkers, prompting brewers Miller to realign its marketing with stigma-reducing measures, such as the sponsoring of a series of minority business seminars.
It's perhaps sobering to see, while the Gordon brand colourfully evokes Scottish bonhomie, what England has come to represent in overseas alcohol marketing.
You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on FacebookMANHATTAN — Police Commissioner Bill Bratton lambasted several NYPD officers from the 75th Precinct after they let a prisoner escape their custody on Tuesday morning.
"They are an embarrassment to themselves, to their unit and to the department," the normally stoic Bratton said at a press conference. "I'm not going to tolerate it."
The prisoner, Gerald Brooks, 39, was picked up by the warrant squad about 5:45 a.m. Tuesday on at least five outstanding warrants, according to the NYPD.
In spite of having his hands cuffed behind his back, Brooks was able to "bump" a sergeant away and escape at 654 Sheffield Ave. about 7:30 a.m. as officers were trying to transfer him to another precinct in Brooklyn, police said.
Three officers gave chase, but he still managed to outrun them, fleeing northbound on Georgia Ave towards New Lots Ave, police said.
"If the cops would just pay attention to their responsibilities, a lot of this would stop," said the Bratton, adding that veteran officers should know better.
Brooks has 54 previous arrests for domestic violence and assault among other charges, police said.
Brooks is the latest prisoner to give officers the slip.
This summer, three prisoners escaped from three different precincts in Harlem.
In August, a suspect being brought to the 23rd Precinct in East Harlem successfully ran away. In July, a suspect at East Harlem's 25th Precinct escaped custody. And in June, attempted murder suspect Tareek Arnold, 23, also escaped from Central Harlem's 32nd Precinct while officers were transporting him to Central Booking. Arnold was later caught.
Tuesday's escaped prisoner comes on the heels of an officer from the 75th Precinct who left his loaded service weapon, uniform and other gear in the trunk of his car, and came back to find it stolen, officials said. It was later recovered.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of the story misstated that Brooks escaped from the 75th Precinct. He escaped police custody at 654 Sheffield Ave.India signalled it has entered the digital era post demonetisation, but the vision has not been put into practice in the first Republic Day post the announcement.
One of the high points of India's Republic Day celebrations is the grand parade on New Delhi's Rajpath, in which the country demonstrates its diversity, progress and military might.
In tune with the long established practice, the Ministry of Defence had in early January, started the sale of tickets for the Republic Day Parade at Rajpath and Beating Retreat Ceremony at Vijay Chowk.
On January 26, 2017, while India showcases its technological prowess, much of the audience in attendance will be holding on to a relic of a non-digital era.
While this year's Republic Day ticket sales has adopted cashless modes of payments - debit and credit cards - it hasn't gone digital. You cannot buy the tickets online. They can only be purchased from one of the seven designated counters for the general public and another inside Parliament for the members.
Even while being limited in scope, the sale of Republic Day tickets online would have been an important symbolic step in reinforcing the idea of Digital India. Not that the government or its subsidiaries lack the ability of such sales. You can even buy platform tickets online.
The online sales could have been carried out in association with Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation Ltd (IRCTC), that happens to be India's largest e-commerce service.
Ministry of Defence press release regarding the sale of Republic Day Parade tickets
Production of a government-issued identity card was made mandatory for purchase of Republic Day tickets since 2015 because of security reasons. This shouldn't be a big deterrent to online ticketing, as Aadhaar is one of the accepted identity documents and can be easily verified online. Alternatively, as it happens on trains and at airports, the identity can be corroborated at the venue.
Security concerns will, however, prevent it from being paperless as electronic devices are not allowed.
On January 26, 2017, while India will showcase its technological prowess to the world, much of the audience in attendance in Rajpath will be holding on to a relic of the non-digital era, a physically purchased paper ticket.Flash at your own RISK!Tested on T-Mobile,AT&T,Verizon & SprintHow to install Xposed on your Snapdragon S8+I want to thank the man @ elliwigy for making root happen!I also want to thank @ ErnyTech for making Xposed happen also!Now it's time to share how to install this bad boy on Snapdragon S8+First, you will need is flash fire and root to make this work!Make sure you download these files to get Xposed to work people it's an easy way to work1. https://forum.xda-developers.com/dev...t/dl/?id=25965 2. https://drive.google.com/uc?export=d...VN5eFVEdGdoaFU Make sure you get the updated version for link number 1Installed apk first then in flash fire make you put Android Nougat SDK24 7.0 into the flash zip or ota sectionMAKE SURE! you dont check auto-mount and mount/system read/then just hit the check on the top right cornerAfter let it do its magic and hit flash and ones it boots back up Xposed should be workingList of modules that work as of 8/28/2017 7:32 pm north-west timeGravityBox (N) ( https://forum.xda-developers.com/att...3&d=1502286810 IfontMagisk App Only (Test) ( https://www.apkmirror.com/apk/topjoh...-apk-download/ 3C Toolbox ProAll my...Adblocker RebornAFWall+App localeApp settingsAppOpsXposedAwesome pop-up videoBetter Battery SaverBlurred SystemUI (LP)Boot ManagerCall Blacklist ProCool ToolCrappaLinksDevice ID changerDisable Flag SecureEnhanced ToastsExi for SwiftkeyFake GappsFake Wifi ConnectionFingerprint enablerFlat style bar indicatorForceDozeForce Immersive ModeGNL App HiderGoogle Search Bar DestroyerGravityBoxHaveOwnOrientationHide CarrierInstallerOptLataclysm 1.32Lightning WallLockscreen tweakboxMaxLockMyAndroidToolsXposedMy Day Off Messenger XposedNative clipboardNo Device CheckNo Lock Home for 5.x/6.0No Lockscreen WallpaperNSFW GBoardOne-Hand Mode Xposed ModObb on SDPixel Settings (Update for Nougat is released)Play store changelogPowerNapPrevent RunningQs X tiles per rowReceiver StopRe-Enable ScreenshotRootCloakScreen off animationSmart Network 1.7.1Status bar cleanupStatusbar Download ProgressScreenshot Delay Remover - ModSuggestions ToggleText AideTumblr AdAwayUnique controlsUnrestrictedgettasksXInstaXinternalSd worksX Messenger Privacy PremiumXposed edgeXposed one tap for FacebookXposed one tap for YouTubeXposed StatusBar TextXPrivacyXNotificationsXtended NavbarYouTube AdawayYouTube background playbackXVolume30Disable Samsung Gear Manager NotificationLucky PatcherBurnt ToastButteredToastCopy ToastPartially Working:Amplify: convert in System App and change all files permission to 777, SELinux permisiveFlat style bar indicators: works with signal, wifi, clock, battery being themedLollistat: module works with some appsMinminguard: Makes some apps Crash better not use it at the momentObb on Sd: works perfectly on SD650/SD820; Works partially on SD835).Physical Button Music Control: Some Users reported its working, for some notSnapprefs : SC randomly crash, most of the features don't work BUT saving is okay (via 'Autosave', not'save Button')Use USB for marshmallowI want to say thanks to these people for sharing their discoveriesHIT THE BIG THUMPS UP AND SHARE!ALSO, Hit the 5 Stars PLEASE!Construction News
06/10/2014
New £56.5m Science Building Unveiled
5 million science building in Bristol.The world-class facilities for science research and teaching are within the University of Bristol's Life Science building.The building, designed by the architects Sheppard Robson and built by Vinci Construction UK, forms a new landmark on the Bristol skyline and has a terrace with views across the city.Work to construct the 13,500 square metre iconic Life Sciences building began in July 2011 and it has just welcomed its first intake of students.A total of 2,000 people have worked on the project, including 28 architects from 10 countries.Patrick Finch, Bursar at the University of Bristol, said: "This building and its surrounding public realm has represented the most ambitious project taken on by the University's Estates Office to date."That it has now been successfully handed over to form a wonderful new home for staff and students is a testimony to a strong ethos of team working between staff in Estates and in the School of Biological Sciences, consultants and contractors. I am immensely proud of the team's achievement, which should set a standard in the sector for many years to come."This project showcases the best in sustainable design and energy efficiency and it’s been designed to achieve the environmental accreditation BREEAM Excellent and represents a major part of the University’s drive to provide energy efficient laboratories.Heat from the laboratories' ventilation systems is reclaimed and re-used, rainwater collected from the roof is used to flush the toilets, blinds lower automatically when the sun shines and lighting has been designed to avoid pollution of the night sky.To reflect the research being carried out inside, the exterior of the building is home to a striking vertical garden, called a living wall, which stands over 20 metres above street level. It’s home to 11 different species of plant, plus boxes for birds and bats, and creates the pattern of a microscope image of algal cells.A state-of-the-art greenhouse, known as a GroDome, sits on top of the building and is capable of recreating tropical conditions thanks to controlled light, humidity and temperature.The Life Sciences building also has one of the largest teaching labs in the country, capable of teaching 200 students at once. There are multiple screens to ensure all students can see close-up what the lecturer is doing and moveable walls can change the size of the teaching space.A five-storey laboratory wing boasts acoustic chambers for bat research, an insectarium, labs for studying ant and bee behaviour, spectroscopy and microscope rooms.(CD/IT)Here's another unfortunate fact that tends to reinforce most men's feelings of inferiority: There is always someone around with a whopper. I call the phenomenon the Ron Jeremy Syndrome, after the porn star who is reputed to penis that is larger than 9", and definitely fucks some of the hottest women in the world.
Such people are a menace. They spoil things for the rest of us who have small penises. A disdainful aura emanates from them as they strut into view—the ghastly glow of the show-off. One of the by-products of the sexual revolution is that such unrepresentative beefcakes are given parts in erotic movies. Consequently, most of the men in the audience feel uncomfortable, and most of the women in the audience feel deprived.
This feeling of deficiency even got to Al Goldstein, publisher of the sex paper Screw, who reviewed such films for many years. I once asked him how he felt about his cock. “I thought of myself as normal," said Al, “until I started going to porno movies. As the men on the screen got bigger and bigger, my own cock seemed to get smaller and smaller. Now I do feel inadequate." I queried his dimensions. "Seven inches," he replied.
If Al's got problems, we've all got problems. And according to one sex therapist interviewed, that's practically the case. Doctor D. E. Keller, professor of biology at Pace University in New York, told me that most men who come to her for surgery are convinced that they have small penises. What does she do for them? “" have a normal-size penis in the closet," she said, "which I take out and show to them. 'That's normal,' I tell them; 'How does it compare with yours?' In most cases they are instantly relieved."
Thank you, Dr. Keller. For the treatment of the rare and unfortunate few whose organs are of genuine pygmy proportions, the technique is to deemphasize the cock as a sexual implement and to encourage the patient to explore alternative methods of arousal and satisfaction. Although Dr. Keller could not confirm my theory that those with truly small penis tend to compensate vividly, I still believe that penis problems can lead some men into negative or hostile attitudes regarding sex toward themselves or toward the world.
There are other kinds of compensation, too, less manic. I understand that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a very nice man, personable and charming, who was five times Mr. Olympia and the former governor of California. He has devoted his life to packaging his masculinity and looks a treat; and in no way was I surprised when, in a conversation with a woman of our mutual acquaintance, his name cropped up in connection with this research.
Nearly all men, except for the few who were blessed with a Buick between their legs, seem to fear having a small penis. For years many magazines and websites have been protesting too much that women are indifferent to penis size. Many therapists now believe this is ridiculous, among them Dr. Keller. Basing her conclusions on in-depth studies with 57 active women over a two-year period, she writes: "Overwhelming evidence from sexually active females who are in a real position to assess and assay effectiveness of male sexual functioning within the context of penis size reports over and over again that males with similar techniques using similar positions during sexual intercourse—but with penises of different length and/or width—create differing degrees of sexual pleasure." Thank you, Dr. Keller.
It's an example of more wonderful fallout from the sexual revolution. Increasing sexual mobility has provided women with grounds for comparison. Until recently, when women sensed dissatisfaction, they blamed themselves for being too big. That attitude is now changing, and some women are beginning to admit in private to sexual therapists that they are disappointed by their husbands' dimensions.
In the oncoming bedroom holocaust, Mr. Average and Below will have to learn to tough it out. Don't try to make it bigger "There is only one safe way to enlarge the penis" according to Dr. Keller, "and that's with a magnifying glass."
Whatever the contemporary attitudes of fantasies of women, a terrific time can still be had by all in bed, no matter what size the various attributes of participants are. Sex, after all, is 99 percent imagination and emotion. The other 1 percent can be done with an elbow, if necessary. Should any readers fear a crisis of confidence on a future occasion, screenshot this article and save it for a pep talk later on.Holy shit, folks. This is not a drill.
REPEAT: NOT. A. DRILL.
If you’re anything like me aka a completely normal human being with normal thoughts, you no doubt fantasise about being hand-fed by Jeff Goldblum around two-to-three times an hour.
And as you all know, such a giddy thrill can really only ever exist in fantasy because there’s not a scenario on earth where that could actually happen.
Except in Sydney.
Today.
It’s happening.
Jeff Goldblum is in Sydney right sodding now handing out free sausages, no we are absolutely not kidding, look at the dang photos.
Terrible photo of me, but I don’t even mind because Jeff Goldblum serenaded me the Jurassic Park theme song! Can’t wipe the smile off my face???? #secretproject #jeffgoldblum #jurassicpark A post shared by CHANTEL ZAMPARUTTI (@chantelfrances) on Apr 25, 2017 at 7:40pm PDT
Just casual lunch with #JeffGoldblum at #chefgoldblums. As you do. #lovesydney A post shared by Shaun (@shaunteh1) on Apr 25, 2017 at 9:07pm PDT
Scoring a sanga from #brundlefly #chefgoldblum I’m, I’m simply saying that life, uh… finds a way A post shared by Phillips Huynh (@ph22ps) on Apr 25, 2017 at 7:40pm PDT
Good to be working with my old friend #chefgoldblum … come down to the quay for a freebie A post shared by Yo (@theyomamaskitchen) on Apr 25, 2017 at 8:18pm PDT
The legend himself, @jeffgoldblum, is selling sausages at Circular Quay.??#sydney #barbecue #gourmet #keepitretail A post shared by Martin Feld Retail Collection (@martinfeldretail) on Apr 25, 2017 at 9:17pm PDT
The man himself is seriously manning the counter in the Chef Goldblum’s food truck, slinging up gourmet bangers for absolutely nothing this afternoon.
The truck began its afternoon trip at Wynyard Station, but at last check it appears to be currently hanging out somewhere around Circular Quay.
For the love of all that is holy – run, do not walk. Get your arse down there as soon as humanly possible, and live out the dream that this particular writer is only mildly weirded out about being turned on at the thought of it.
Source: Instagram.
Photo: Shaunteh1/Instagram.How does fashion shape adolescence? Every month, Claire Healy deconstructs the ways that style culture has contributed to the idea of the teenager in new series Extreme Adolescents
In a photograph taken by Simon Baker in 1977, Siouxsie Sioux carefully applies bright make-up in a handheld mirror. Transforming her eyes into geometric art, she wears sparkling earrings and a hot-pink blouse. By the early 80s, her fearless look would become iconic, empowering teenaged, raven-haired acolytes up and down the country: she was their ‘godmother of goth’. But Sioux herself always resisted that label. As she would later refer to it, “the doom, the black” – what did the witty effervescence of the Banshees have to do with all that?
Divorced from the style’s roots in the fashion provocateurs of the 1980s, today’s perennial goth – sitting at your bus stop, looking awkward on the beach – can be easy to dismiss. But before the health goth, mall goth, and even the term ‘goth’ was used to describe these children of darkness at all, the movement’s beginnings are intriguing and complex. In its original form, goth style was as much about startling individualism as belonging to a clique: something encapsulated by Sioux’s exotic make-up, bejewelled gloves and nipple-baring fetish gear. In early-80s London, you might find Sioux so outfitted at the movement’s high church nestled in Soho’s backstreets, known as The Batcave.
“It’s a name that people know, even if they never went to it,” writes Liisa Ladouceur, author of the Encyclopedia Gothica. Founded by Olli Wisdom and his band Specimen, the Batcave was the hub of the burgeoning gothic rock scene from 1982 to 1986. The club’s regulars ran the gamut of goth’s hall of fame: there, you’d find Robert Smith, Nick Cave and, of course, Siouxsie and her Banshees watching shows by Specimen or Alien Sex Fiend. More than a club night, The Batcave hosted scary arthouse movies and cabaret nights. In 1983, it even produced a definitive compilation record, Young Limbs and Numb Hymns.
“In its original form, goth style was as much about startling individualism as belonging to a clique”
With the space decked out in all the hallmarks of a Halloween party – spiderwebs, coffins and bin liners – it was the DIY attitude to fashion that would really define The Batcave’s lasting aesthetic influence. Decades before the hot topic fashions preferred by today’s teens, the club’s attendees has no such choice in London’s retail environs. Instead, Batcavers would paint and customise their clothes using whatever they could lay their hands on, and the resulting looks defied gender norms: women’s tights for sleeves, vintage men’s suits and African jewellery were all aspects of the Batcave style that you wouldn’t necessarily associate with your neighbourhood goth today.
Pre-YouTube tutorials, there was an eclecticism also reflected in the beauty looks donned by the goths. Men and women wore make-up in widely different styles, whether inspired by the ghoulish facepaint of Alien Sex Fiend frontman Nik Fiend, or those heavy brows, Egyptian-lined eyes and sharp painted lips of Sioux’s. Others wore sunglasses indoors, as if to plunge their dark vision further into the shadows. In contrast to the battle lines later drawn between teen tribes, it didn’t really matter what you looked like: the club operated with an open-door policy, and welcomed anyone who sought a space to state their difference from the everyday.India will face arch-foes Pakistan in a battle that will determine the top placement in Pool A of the Asia Cup at the Maulana Bhashani National Hockey Stadium here on Sunday.The live broadcast of the match will be shown on Star Sports network while the live streaming of the match will be on Hotstar.com. The match is scheduled to start at 5:00 PM IST. You can also check out News18Sports LIVE blog for all the latest action from the match.The Sjoerd Marijne-coached India have so far stormed to the top of the pool with two easy wins over Japan (5-1) and hosts Bangladesh (7-0) in the first two matches. They will be aiming to continue to pump in more goals with their forwards in very good form.On the other hand, Pakistan on Friday dropped two points after Japan held them 2-2. The record world champions had earlier drubbed Bangladesh 7-0.At the Hero Hockey World League Semi Final in London, India had thrashed their neighbours 7-1 in the pool stage and followed it up with a 6-1 win in the classification match.However, for India captain Manpreet, resting on past laurels is not the way forward."What happened in London is history for us now. We did well there but to repeat similar results we want to focus on our game," Manpreet said.The clashes against Pakistan are of bigger proportions. But the midfielder said his team's focus will be to top the pool table and to do that they want to make sure they come up with an overall performance against Pakistan."For hockey lovers, India vs Pakistan is always a great game to watch. For us, we want to play them as any other opponent. We want to focus on our strategies against them and ensure we get on to a good start and not concede early goals," the 25-year-old stated.While the Indian forward line of S.V. Sunil, Akashdeep Singh, Ramandeep Singh and Lalit Upadhyay has showcased excellent form, the team continues to work hard on penalty corner conversion."I don't think our penalty corner conversation is bad. Yes, we missed a few chances but you must also acknowledge that Bangladesh defence was good," Manpreet pointed out.Meanwhile Pakistan skipper Muhammad Irfan insisted that the current team is different from the one in London and is hopeful of a good show on Sunday."What happened in London was different. I am aware we lost two back-to-back matches against India but the present Pakistan team is different with a few of the senior players making a comeback," he said."Our management has changed and I am confident we will put up a good show where hockey lovers from across the world will enjoy the match," expressed the 27-year-old.Pakistan are second on the table, while Japan have one point. The Japanese are expected to have an easy game against Bangladesh. Hence, Pakistan will aim to at least earn a draw against India in order to advance to the second round."It is a must-win game for us otherwise we know it will come down to the match between Japan and Bangladesh and if Japan beat the hosts by a big margin then we are in trouble," emphasised Irfan.He rued the chances his forwards missed against Japan but is hopeful they won't make the same mistakes against India."We watched the video of the match against Japan. There were easy chances that we missed but we don't want to repeat the same mistake against India. They are a strong team with good strategies but we want to focus on our individual skills," he added.Donald Johnson (Photo: Submitted)
MURFREESBORO –
Rockvale Elementary School principal Donnie Johnson has been suspended after investigators witnessed his participation in a drug transaction Friday afternoon, according to a news release from Murfreesboro Police Department.
Murfreesboro Police Vice Detective Shawn Jensen received information that Johnson, 58, had purchased crack cocaine in Murfreesboro multiple times and was going to purchase more this afternoon at a pharmacy on Cason Lane, according to the MPD release. The name of the pharmacy was not released.
Detective Jensen and other detectives from the vice unit observed Johnson at the specified location use an ATM to retrieve cash, the release stated. Johnson then met the seller, Tiquista Robinson, in the parking lot of the business.
Detectives witnessed a hand-to-hand transaction and stopped both subjects, according to police.
Johnson said he was buying the crack cocaine for his personal use and was charged with one count of simple possession and casual exchange, police said. He was released from the Rutherford County Jail at 9:10 p.m. Friday on a $1,000 bond
Robinson, 29, admitted she sold the cocaine, police said.. She faces a felony count possession of a Schedule II drug. She was also released at 9:10 p.m. Friday on a $4,500 bond.
Johnson has been employed by Rutherford County Schools for more than 30 years, according to a statement issued by the school system Friday evening.
"We are shocked, saddened and disturbed by the news of longtime educator Donnie Johnson being charged with possession of crack cocaine," the statement said. "We did not learn of the charge until after hours Friday evening and have limited information. However, this type of alleged behavior cannot be tolerated and Mr. Johnson will not be permitted to return to work at this time."
Rutherford County Schools' release stated that Johnson has no record of such behavior with the school system.
After their arrests, Johnson and Robinson were transported to the Rutherford County Jail, according to police.
Johnson has called Friday night football games on WGNS Radio with Bryan Barrett for more than 15 years, said Scott Walker, station president.
Walker said he found out about Johnson's arrest from Barrett around 8:45 p.m., but had no prior knowledge of any drug use by Johnson.
"We're certainly praying for him and that he gets the help that he needs. We'll stay with him through it," Walker told The Daily News Journal.
Contact Mealand Ragland-Hudgins at 615-278-5189 or mragland@dnj.com. Follow her on Twitter @dnj_mrhudgins.
Read or Share this story: http://on.dnj.com/1prHnUBOne of the best parts of working with Clint Darden as your coach is the personalized advice and demonstration he sends via video. When his clients struggle with part of their training or need help understanding a cue, Clint doesn't just send an email with advice — he films a video showing exactly what they need to work on or adds commentary to client training videos to point out each area for improvement. In the past, we've shared videos like this of Clint coaching or reviewing the sumo deadlift, various strongman events, and the bench press. In this video, he breaks down the strongman jerk and shows how best to hone-in technique.
Clint first demonstrates the main idea: a failed jerk turns into a push press and this is something you have to avoid. To begin, focus on sticking your chest out as much as possible and getting the elbows in front of the bar. Then you can think about your legs. If you're going to use leg drive, you don't want your legs to go forward — you want them to go out. The push press and the overhead press should not hurt your knees, and if they do, that's an indicator your knees are going excessively forward. The other thing to avoid is a slow dip. You want to drop quickly and reverse direction with a short dip, keeping your weight on your knees rather than over your toes. Knees go out, chest goes up, and then you drive from that position.
Clint then demonstrates the push press. The push press should involve no shoulders until the bar is level with your head. You should extend your lower |
a thousand years, until the emergence of a chieftain of the Dúnedain from the North who could trace his lineage back to Isildur: Aragorn, King Elessar. Gondor was once again ruled by a descendant of lost Númenor.
This discussion reveals an interesting aspect of the kingship as it relates to Gondor: having a king is considered important. Tracing the lineage of the ruler back to a powerful forebear has value for the people of Gondor, and it is prized enough to record, even over the course of thousands of years. This is true despite the understanding that some of the kings of Gondor were not very effective, or were in some cases downright bad. Do the positives spring from some inherent quality in the blood of Númenor, and the negatives arise from its dilution? Or is there another factor? Might a king’s accomplishments be measured by the extent to which he feels the weight of his responsibility, and seeks to bear it?
The great variance in the quality of the Kings of Gondor is instructive, and lends credence to the second factor. If a king’s authority is derived solely from his proximity to the font from which springs his heritage, we would expect the rule of each subsequent king to be less successful than his predecessor. The decline of Gondor would be permanent, and no return to a golden age would be possible; with every passing king, the memory of Númenor would fade further.
But if the lineage of Elendil provides kingly authority but not limitation, it is possible that the rule of King Elessar might halt the decline of Gondor, and perhaps reverse it. If he proves a good and wise ruler, there is the possibility that Gondor will thrive once again as it did of old. By choosing to aid the Kingdom of Gondor allegiance, you will help King Elessar as he sets the kingdom in order and provides for a bright future to come.While bulldozing salt from the Chehrabad Salt Mine, Iranian miners recently uncovered the sixth “salt man” to be found in the last fifteen years. These “salt men” are in fact ancient corpses killed or crushed in the cave and mummified by the extreme conditions. Hair, flesh and bone are all preserved by the dry salinity of the cave, and even internal organs such as stomachs and colons have been found intact.
The first salt mummy, dated to 300 A.D., was discovered in 1993, sporting a long white beard, iron knives and a single gold earring. In 2004 another mummy was discovered only 50 feet away, followed by another in 2005 and a “teenage” boy mummy later that year. The oldest of the salt men found is truly ancient and has been carbon dated to 9550 B.C.
Stanford University’s folklorist Adrienne Mayor thinks there may be another layer to the already intriguing story of the salt men. She thinks the mummies may be the origin of the ancient myth of the satyr. “Obviously satyrs are mythic creatures,” Mayor said, but pointed out that the heads of the humans who had been preserved in the salt bear “a striking resemblance to ancient Greek and Roman depictions of satyrs.”
Classical images of satyrs are indeed similar looking, with similar hair and beards, snub noses and protruding jaws. “I think it’s very likely that an ancient discovery of a similarly preserved ‘salt man’ in northwestern Iran is the basis for St. Jerome’s account of the ‘satyr’ preserved in salt and examined by the Emperor Constantine and numerous other curious visitors in Antioch,” Mayor writes.
While four salt men have been transferred to the Zanjan Archaeology Museum and one to the National Museum of Iran in Tehran (all can be seen by the public), the final salt man remains in-situ, half stuck in a mountain of salt. As of 2008, Iran’s Ministry of Industries and Mines canceled the mining permit for the Chehrabad Salt Mine and declared the site an archeological research center so more work could be done to look for and preserve other salt men.
With the recent unrest in Iran, the fate of the salt men remains uncertain.SENATOR FRANK FEIGHAN has called on the European Medicines Agency to partly relocate from Canary Wharf to Carrick-On-Shannon.
Earlier this month the Department of Health confirmed that they are preparing for a bid to bring the EMA to Dublin.
Five other EU countries are seeking to host the agency, whose future in Canary Wharf in London is in doubt following the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.
Senator Frank Feighan, who earlier this year championed Ireland’s rejoining of the Commonwealth, wants the Government to champion Carrick On Shannon as host for at least part of the agency’s functions.
“There’s a shortage of office space in Dublin, Carrick on Shannon is an hour and a quarter from the M50,” he told TheJournal.ie.
Sometimes we don’t think of Dublin as an international city like London, but it’s bursting at the seams.
“And we’ve got a great talent pool just down the road – a lot of the people who worked for [credit card company] MBNA are still living in the area.”
Source: Rollingnews.ie
Spain, Sweden, Italy and Germany have all also expressed an interest in hosting the EMA, which is responsible for the protection of public and animal health.
The agency which employs 890 people and overseen drug approvals across the 31 nations of the European Economic Area since 1995 from its HQ in London’s docklands.
Office space
Feighan is a former chairman of the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly, and says he has taken soundings from figures in multinationals on the issue of locating the EU regulatory body to Ireland.
“Four hundred or 500 jobs in the northwest would bring in all the surrounding areas.
Carrick-On-Shannon is the centre of a region now.
“This agency has many areas of expertise. It has seven committees that carry out its scientific assessments.
Some of this activity could be located in Carrick-on-Shannon because there is plenty of office space in the town and in other local towns in the region.
“The EMA employs about 900 people and locating part of this agency to this side of the country would be a huge boost for the regional economy along with its additional spin-offs.”The maker of the Firefox browser is wading into an increasingly contentious court battle over an undisclosed security vulnerability the FBI used to track down anonymous users of a child-porn site.
The FBI took over a dark web child-pornography site called Playpen last year and, rather than shut it down, used a secret, still-undisclosed vulnerability in the Tor Browser to install malware on the computers of more than 1,000 users that allowed the FBI to determine their locations.
But in Tacoma, Washington, lawyers for a school administrator caught in the dragnet have successfully demanded the right to review the malware in order to pursue their argument that it, rather than he, was responsible for the illicit material ending up on his computer.
The Tor Browser is a free browser that shields a user’s identity. It is also based on code from the Firefox browser.
Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, has long worried that the Tor Browser vulnerability might still be out there, could be exploited by bad actors, and could exist in Firefox, which is much more widely used than the Tor Browser.
So while it seems likely that the FBI will go to great lengths not to turn over the code – possibly dropping the case altogether – Mozilla’s top lawyer, Denelle Dixon-Thayer, is now arguing “that the government must disclose the vulnerability to us before it is disclosed to any other party.”
She explained: “Court ordered disclosure of vulnerabilities should follow the best practice of advance disclosure that is standard in the security research community. In this instance, the judge should require the government to disclose the vulnerability to the affected technology companies first, so it can be patched quickly.”
Dixon-Thayer noted that Mozilla isn’t taking sides, pro- or anti-disclosure. It just wants to make sure that if there is disclosure, Mozilla gets it first. Here is the legal brief Mozilla filed on Wednesday.
The issue of when the government should disclose security vulnerabilities is a hotly contested issue outside the courtroom as well.
The Obama administration’s policy is that when the government learns of a new flaw, it has to submit the flaw to an interagency group. The White House says that group has a “strong bias” toward disclosure to vendors so that they can fix them, rather than just letting the agencies keep the flaws secret and continue to use them. But the evidence suggests that is not the case.President Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE will likely sign the Republican tax overhaul on Friday, according to a White House official.
"There's a very good chance the president signs it tomorrow," said the official.
The measure was the most extensive rewrite of the tax code in at least a generation and its passage Wednesday marked the first major legislative achievement for Trump and the GOP.
But the question of when Trump would sign the bill into law had remained unanswered.
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White House officials said the president might wait until the new year if Congress did not approve a provision waiving automatic spending cuts as part of a government funding bill to prevent a shutdown.
But a waiver of the pay-as-you-go budgetary rules was included in the funding bill, which lawmakers are expected to send to the president's desk late Thursday or early Friday.
Under the law, automatic cuts to Medicare and other programs would have been triggered in January because the tax bill is projected to increase the budget deficit by $1.5 trillion over 10 years.
Waiting until early 2018 to sign the tax bill would have staved off the cuts until 2019.An FBI investigation into bank fraud allegations against Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersSenate Dems seek to turn tables on GOP in climate change fight Bernie Sanders Town Hall finishes third in cable news race, draws 1.4 million viewers Woman to undecided Biden: 'Just say yes' to 2020 bid MORE’s (I-Vt.) wife could offer Republicans early ammunition for 2020.
Sanders is one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent politicians, even though he officially remains outside of it. And while he’ll be 79 on Inauguration Day 2021, Sanders hasn’t ruled out another presidential bid in 2020.
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Republicans have seized on the ongoing investigation, which centers on a loan Jane Sanders secured while running a Vermont college, as a chance to attack a politician who regularly ranks as one of the most popular in the country.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) repeatedly used the investigation against Bernie Sanders this week as new developments brought renewed attention to the case.
The GOP attacks appear to be early signs of the strategy that Republicans have used in the past to soften up potential political threats such as Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE, seeking to damage top rivals ahead of expected bids for higher office.
Now they’re looking to use the same tactics against a politician who launched his 2016 presidential bid with populist attacks on the political and business establishments.
“For Sen. Sanders, this is not what voters have in mind when they think of him. Those are the narratives, the ones that are totally counter to what people think of you, that are most damaging,” said Colin Reed, the executive director of the GOP opposition research super PAC America Rising.
“This goes at his perceived strength, and in politics on either side of the aisle, perception is reality.”
Sanders and his wife have faced scrutiny for at least a year over a loan that Burlington College received in 2010 while Jane Sanders was the school’s president. But the issue has largely stayed off the front pages.
Last year, the Vermont blog VTDigger reported that Sanders had inflated the amount of donations the college had received for a land deal by $2 million, a figure that helped the college secure a $6.7 million loan for the property. In two cases, a person whose pledge had been used as part of the loan application told the blog that the amount of their pledge had been exaggerated.
That report led Brady Toensing, a Vermont Republican lawyer who chaired President Trump’s campaign in the state, to ask the Justice Department to investigate for alleged fraud. VTDigger uncovered emails in April that proved the existence of an investigation.
But the news gained little traction in the media until last week, when Bernie Sanders biographer Harry Jaffe wrote an article about the case for Politico Magazine that confirmed the couple had hired lawyers.
That revelation earned new attention for the story, with the RNC promoting it on social media and in email blasts to reporters.
“We have a pretty serious investigation, serious allegations and... he’s been on a honeymoon of coverage from this. No one asks them about this,” RNC rapid response director Michael Ahrens said in an interview with The Hill.
He contrasted the lack of attention to the story with the wall-to-wall coverage of former Rep. Aaron Schock (R-Ill.), who was eventually charged in a federal investigation that began over his office decorations.
“Aaron Schock spent too much money on couches in his office and everyone in the country knows about it. One of the most prominent figures on the left is under some pretty serious FBI allegations and no one even asked him about it until yesterday outside of one local reporter,” Ahrens said.
Muddying voter opinion of Sanders, who enjoyed a 57 percent approval rating in a HuffPost polling average, could damage the Democratic brand ahead of the 2018 midterms. And attacks on Sanders could hurt the appeal of his populist message, now gaining ground in the Democratic Party’s resurgent left.
The investigation gives Republicans a chance to launch early attacks on a potential 2020 threat to President Trump.
The GOP started building its narrative on Clinton, the Democratic Party’s 2016 presidential nominee, long before she announced her bid, prosecuting a years-long case that she was too untrustworthy and corrupt to run the country.
By Election Day, Clinton’s favorability was just a few points higher than Trump’s, whose campaign had been plagued by gaffes and scandals.
Sanders’s political team and top aides did not respond to requests for comment from The Hill.
But the senator himself pushed back on the narrative when confronted about it during a Tuesday prime-time interview on CNN, arguing that the accusations are rooted in politics.
“My wife is about the most honest person I know. When she came to that college, it was failing financially and academically. When she left it, it was in better shape than it had ever been,” Sanders said in response to a question about whether his wife was under FBI investigation.
Sanders went on to point out that Toensing is a Trump supporter, arguing that the Republican “launched” this investigation “just at the moment, coincidentally, no doubt, when I am a candidate for president.”
“It is a sad state of affairs in America not only when we have politicians being destroyed, when there are attacks against public officials. When you go after people’s wives, that’s pretty pathetic,” Sanders added during the interview.
Sanders supporters who spoke with The Hill said that attacks from the GOP prove that Republicans are hell-bent on hurting Sanders because they see him as a political threat.
Nomiki Konst, a progressive journalist who was one of Sanders’s picks for a Democratic unity commission, blasted the GOP for “spreading misinformation and lies while they continue to be the party that is advertising cutting health insurance for 23 million people.”
And Jonathan Tasini, a progressive organizer and former Sanders primary surrogate, added that Republicans want to “throw whatever rubbish they can at him” because, as he sees it, Sanders’s coalition is key to the Democratic effort to take back the House.
But Republicans believe it’s time for someone with Sanders’s stature within the party to receive some scrutiny, especially as Democrats continue to push the thread about the FBI’s investigation into allegations that Trump aides colluded with Russia during the presidential campaign.
And for Reed, a veteran of the opposition-research wars that have helped to define presidential races, the early attempts to shape Sanders’s narrative could help the GOP down the road.
“Trust is a huge issue, especially for a presidential candidate,” Reed said.
“The longer these narratives have to bake in with the electorate, the more effective they are when voters go to vote. We learned that from Secretary Clinton — we were able to get a four-year head-start on the research for her.”The protest movement energized by Occupy Wall Street is trying to build momentum in Washington, with demonstrators from the October 2011 and Occupy DC groups gathering Thursday at Freedom Plaza.
The movement, which began in New York City to protest the United States’s “corrupt democratic process,” has spread to cities like D.C., Los Angeles and Chicago, gaining credibility as support from politicians and celebrities has grown.
Occupy DC protesters have been gathering in McPherson Square for planning meetings since Saturday--so far in relatively small numbers, compared to the New York movement.
Protesters marched to Capitol Hill on Wednesday, and plan to hold a rally and concert at Freedom Plaza at noon Thursday, according to their Web site.
While the group doesn’t have a specific agenda, many members have said they oppose the outsized role of corporate money in politics.
Reporter @anniegowen will tweet live from the demonstration.
Share your Occupy DC photos and tell us what you see today using #occupydc.
Live video from the protest:Talk radio host Mark Levin warned Friday, in wake of the terror attacks that occurred in Paris, about the looming threat illegal immigration and unsecured borders pose to the national security of the the United States.
“You know ladies and gentleman I don’t know about you, but I am so sick and tired of politicians telling us we can’t control our border we can’t determine whose coming into this country,” Levin lamented.“I am so sick of these ethic front groups—groups like CAIR and Muslim Brother hood and Muslim associated groups in this country—pretending to be civil rights groups and using our laws against us, using our freedom against us. I am so sick of it.”
He argued that while Americans appear to be nonchalant about the threat of Islamic radicalism, the United States will also be attacked, especially if we don’t secure the border.
“The FBI says he’s got an investigation in all fifty states related to terrorism and people yawn and roll their eyes. Political correctness in the face of this war? France is at war. We are all under attack, we are all at war,” he said. “For those of you who say why are we going over there? Why do we have to do anything? What more evidence do you need? What’s going on in France is going to happen here.”
The thousands of refugees pouring into Europe is a “welcomed” invasion, Levin said, are causing Europe to collapse.
“We are an easy hit, an easy target, we don’t secure the border. We coddle people who come in here illegally. We have a president who wants to bring in tens of thousands of people from Syria. We don’t know their background. It doesn’t mean that all of them are terrorists. It could be that twenty of them are terrorists. That’s enough. They slaughter people,” he said. “Our government has an obligation to protect us. Europe is dying. Europe is dying in front of your eyes. Europe has been invaded. I say, invaded it’s not really invaded when hundreds of thousands of people are welcomed.”
He pointed out that if Hillary Clinton, President Obama had their way we’d all be disarmed and defenseless.
“I am going to tell you what goes through my mind and what goes through a lot our minds. Thank God for the Second Amendment. Thank God for the second amendment or we’d be Europe. We’d all be disarmed. You know Obama and Hillary, all of the Democrats, most of the Republicans, there would be nor NRA, there’d be none of those groups trying to protect us. Thank God for the Founding Fathers, and the framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights,”Levin said. “We are the targets ladies and gentleman. We the people. Not even our government. Not even our military. We the people are the target.by Luke Peristy
I haven't written anything in a while, so I'm going to over-compensate by writing one enormous article that's far too long. Hope you've got a long lunch break!
Opening Monologue
In which I rant incoherently on a topic of my choice.
I hate the Habs. I hate everything about them with a passion that burns like that stupid torch they light before every game.
I hate how Habs fans boo every "missed" call. I don't mean that I hate that they boo; every home team boos the refs. No, I literally hate how they boo. When Habs fans boo a missed call they sound genuinely aggrieved, as if it's a personal affront to them and their team. The ref is doing the best he can, and he's already ON YOUR SIDE! Shut up, and if you're so worked up about it, try to deaden your senses with that $12 Molson you're holding, like the rest of us.
I hate that the Habs are touted as some geographical and cultural phenomenon, as if the entire fanbase isn't just a loosely organized collection of smug front-runners with a certain fondness for primary colours. Oh, what's that? You had to suffer through the Jose Theodore years? Cry me a river, you silly bags of entitlement. Let's see how long your passion lasts when you're into year 8 of a rebuild and your GM is Brian Burke.
I was displeased when Boston lost to Montreal, but what I hated was that they went out like such punks and ceded the moral high ground to the Habs in the process. I hate how I have to watch the Habs be held up as the paragon of all that is good and honourable in the game of hockey as if Daniel Briere wouldn't cross-check his own mother from behind if it meant winning a cup, to say nothing of Brendan Gallagher's grin that I would politely describe as "coprophagic".
And good for Dustin Tokarski and all, but how many times are the Habs going to find some rookie goaltender to lead them out of the desert before one of them actually looks mortal? What are they doing to goalies in the basement of the Bell Centre? I can only assume it's some sort of religious ceremony where the rookie goalie has to drink communion wine out of Jacques Plante's ancient jock strap.
I'm gonna cut this short before it ends up being another 2000 words.
Speed Round
In which I use all the jokes I didn't think were good enough for Twitter.
Curtis Lazar: Curtis Lazar should show up to camp a little out of shape or post a inappropriate picture to Twitter or something. He's just a little too perfect right now, like Tim Tebow, but with less Jesus and more leadership.
Eugene Melnyk: Congrats again to The Euge for having his Curtis Lazar should show up to camp a little out of shape or post a inappropriate picture to Twitter or something. He's just a little too perfect right now, like Tim Tebow, but with less Jesus and more leadership.Congrats again to The Euge for having his nasal spray pass its latest clinical trial. How can you not root for literally anyone else to own this team, though
Top 3 Top 5
The excellence of this list could not be contained in a mere three entries, so for this week only, we're counting down the Top 5 Senators Song Parodies.
When you're a boy between the ages of 10 and 17, you consider to be song parody the pinnacle of all comedic genres. Any man who didn't want to be Weird Al at some point in their lives is a liar. For most of us, comedy song parody appreciation is a phase we grow out of around the time we discover that we'd quite like to make out with someone and a grown man playing accordion does not set the mood quite as well as we first thought. However, you'd be surprised how many people still have a copy of Dare to Be Stupid kicking around on cassette tape, assuming they remembered to take it out of their 1996 Toyota Corolla before leaving for university.
We here at Bonk's Mullet dot com
(Lack of) Vocal Quality ( /10): The more a song sounds as if it was sung by someone who might be construed as possessing talent, the lower this score will be.
Forced-ness of Lyrics ( /10): The less the song's lyrics fit with the original, the higher this score will be.
Unintentional Humour ( /10): You'll know it when you see it.
Zeitgeist Capture ( /5): It's no surprise to anyone that the best parody songs work with the best source material. Why do you think a song like Smells Like Nirvana has stood the test of time? The more "dated" a song is, the higher this score will be.
Intangibles ( /5): There are some songs with fantastic grit and leadership qualities on this list.
Total Marks Available: 40
Let's get to the hilarity!
No. 5: All the Leafs Stink (Parody of All the Small Things)
Choice Lyric: Darcy / Tucker / That little ****er
(Lack of) Vocal Quality: (7/10) The vocals in this song have a sort of nasal quality, like how I imagine Jim O'Brien would sound at karaoke night, but it doesn't sound entirely unlike the original. Top marks to the vocalist for really going after those "Na"s in the chorus.
Forced-ness of Lyrics: (6/10) No real attempt has been made to follow the lyrical structure of the original. The "She left me broken by the stairs" line changes the rhythm of the verse in the original, and this song could have used that here. Weird Al would never have stood for something so ordinary.
Unintentional Humour: (2/10) This song is pretty well a straight shooter, although the irony of calling Curtis Joseph "a sieve" around the time he shut out Ottawa 9 times in a 4 game series (I swear this happened) is not lost on me.
Zeitgeist Capture: (5/5) Could anything broadcast "The year was 2001..." like a Blink-182 parody song that contains chirps about Darcy Tucker, Shayne Corson, and Pat Quinn? Well, perhaps this
Intangibles: (1/5) Much like the Senators teams of its time, there's nothing wrong with this song, but it doesn't seem to have that something extra that would push it over the edge.
Score: 21/40
No. 4: Pesky Back (Parody of Sexy Back)
Choice Lyric: We're bringing pesky back / Alfredsson, Karlsson and Michalek
(Lack of) Vocal Quality: (4/10) This song is easily the least vocally offensive on the list. This is probably because it's been auto-tuned to within an inch of its life, but what good is technology if you're not going to use it to make you seem more awesome than you actually are. [*Goes back to managing his Facebook and Twitter*]
Forced-ness of Lyrics: (8/10) In the first verse alone, the word "back" is rhymed with "Michalek" and "back". I will say no more on this matter.
Unintentional Humour: (8/10) The lip synching in this song is pretty amusing, but when The Maclone shows up so some girls extol that the "coach looks like a walrus", the video goes from good to great. Just when you think it can't get better, 1:05 happens, and The Maclone. Breaks. It. The. Funk. Down. I know The Maclone must look great in the club, because that's exactly how I dance.
Zeitgeist Capture: (2/5) Sexy Back is a timeless classic. Justin Timberlake is the Frank Sinatra of our age, only with less Mafia connections. That said, "pesky" is SO 2013.
Intangibles: (3/5) This is the only song on this list not recorded by the Team 1200, so I'd like to keep encouraging CTV Ottawa to continue their involvment in the parody song game. Will video kill the radio parody star? Only time will tell.
Score: 25/40
No. 3: I Got a Feeling (Parody of I Got a Feeling)
Choice Lyric: They'll crap their pants / That's why they're called "De Pens"
(Lack of) Vocal Quality: (7/10) This song sounds only marginally worse than the Black Eyed Peas original, but that's a bar that's so low, it's more of an extremely narrow ditch.
Forced-ness of Lyrics: (9/10) I can't figure out if the auto-tuned "Ruuuuttuuuuuu" is terrible or a stroke of brilliance.
Unintentional Humour: (5/10) Let's run through that list of names: Alfie, "Volchie", Elliot, Kelly, Spezza, Phillips, Fisher, and Campoli. 75% of that list isn't on the team any more, two or three of them would later be described as "bad guys", and one is going to be likely going to be acrimoniously run out of town this summer. Still, at least that 2010 team actually made the playoffs.
Speaking of which, Brian Elliot once started playoff games for the Ottawa Senators. That makes me laugh, but then I have a particularly dark sense of humour.
Zeitgeist Capture: (5/5) "Boy, that Peter Regin sure looks great, doesn't he? He'll be around forever. Spezza finally found his winger." - Everyone, May 2010
Intangibles: (1/5) This video ends with Matt Carkner's 3OT goal, which would be the last good thing to happen to the Senators for quite some time.
Score: 27/40
No. 2: Paul is the Walrus (Parody of I am the Walrus)
Choice Lyric: Karlsson's the d-man / Alfie's the captain / Paul is the Walrus / Go go Sens go
(Lack of) Vocal Quality: (9/10) I tried dropping acid before listening to this, but it didn't help.
Forced-ness of Lyrics: (10/10) Turning "I'm crying" into "The Habs are crying" was an inspired work of genius. I also liked how "Corporation t-shirt" turned into a line about a Sens jersey. Way to keep the sartorial theme going, there.
Unintentional Humour: (5/10) Any time you can record a parody song using a MIDI file backing track, you have to do it.
Zeitgeist Capture: (1/5) The Beatles had two of the greatest song writers of the 20th century, and it's sad to hear their work degraded in this way. If there had been another pop song written that heavily featured a walrus, no doubt it would have been a better fit. Instead we get this desecration of the Magical Mystery Tour and everything it stands for. (Drugs, mostly.)
Intangibles: (5/5) Dave "The Voice" Schreiber's call of Pageau's hat trick is dubbed over top of the song at one point, and it's by far the best part of the song.
Score: 31/40
No. 1: Sens Play Friday (Parody of Friday)
Choice Lyric: *Unintelligible kazoo*
(Lack of) Vocal Quality: (15/10) *Luke is passed out in his chair, bleeding from the ears*
Forced-ness of Lyrics: (8/10) "Patrick Weircioch" is rhymed with "Big Marc Methot", among other crimes against humanity.
Unintentional Humour: (??/10) I have no idea how to grade this. How are you supposed to treat an intentionally bad parody of a song that is, itself, intentionally bad. This is way too meta.
Zeitgeist Capture: (4/5) Shout outs to Cory Conacher, Bobby Ryan, and Jason Spezza who "now leads this team". Ladies and gentlemen, your 2013-2014 Ottawa Senators!
Intangibles: (5/5) Even the TEAM 1200 reached their breaking point with this song and refused to play the whole thing. You win, Friday. You win.
Score: 32+/40
Let us never speak of this again. When you're a boy between the ages of 10 and 17, you consider to be song parody the pinnacle of all comedic genres. Any man who didn't want to be Weird Al at some point in their lives is a liar. For most of us, comedy song parody appreciation is a phase we grow out of around the time we discover that we'd quite like to make out with someone and a grown man playing accordion does not set the mood quite as well as we first thought. However, you'd be surprised how many people still have a copy ofkicking around on cassette tape, assuming they remembered to take it out of their 1996 Toyota Corolla before leaving for university.We here at Bonk's Mullet dot com are no strangers to this often underappreciated comedy genre. In this spirit of comedic excellence, I have sought out the best (read: worst) song parodies related to the Ottawa Senators. The quality of the competition was so high that I was forced to create a marking system to objectively rank the songs, lest this list become too arbitrary. All songs were marked based on the following criteria.The more a song sounds as if it was sung by someone who might be construed as possessing talent, the lower this score will be.The less the song's lyrics fit with the original, the higher this score will be.You'll know it when you see it.It's no surprise to anyone that the best parody songs work with the best source material. Why do you think a song likehas stood the test of time? The more "dated" a song is, the higher this score will be.There are some songs with fantastic grit and leadership qualities on this list.40Let's get to the hilarity!Darcy / Tucker / That little ****erThe vocals in this song have a sort of nasal quality, like how I imagine Jim O'Brien would sound at karaoke night, but it doesn't sound entirely unlike the original. Top marks to the vocalist for really going after those "Na"s in the chorus.No real attempt has been made to follow the lyrical structure of the original. The "She left me broken by the stairs" line changes the rhythm of the verse in the original, and this song could have used that here. Weird Al would never have stood for something so ordinary.This song is pretty well a straight shooter, although the irony of calling Curtis Joseph "a sieve" around the time he shut out Ottawa 9 times in a 4 game series (I swear this happened) is not lost on me.Could anything broadcast "The year was 2001..." like a Blink-182 parody song that contains chirps about Darcy Tucker, Shayne Corson, and Pat Quinn? Well, perhaps this Hey Ya parody, but still.Much like the Senators teams of its time, there's nothing wrong with this song, but it doesn't seem to have that something extra that would push it over the edge.21/40We're bringing pesky back / Alfredsson, Karlsson and MichalekThis song is easily the least vocally offensive on the list. This is probably because it's been auto-tuned to within an inch of its life, but what good is technology if you're not going to use it to make you seem more awesome than you actually are. [In the first verse alone, the word "back" is rhymed with "Michalek" and "back". I will say no more on this matter.The lip synching in this song is pretty amusing, but when The Maclone shows up so some girls extol that the "coach looks like a walrus", the video goes from good to great. Just when you think it can't get better, 1:05 happens, and The Maclone. Breaks. It. The. Funk. Down. I know The Maclone must look great in the club, because that's exactly how I dance.Sexy Back is a timeless classic. Justin Timberlake is the Frank Sinatra of our age, only with less Mafia connections. That said, "pesky" is SO 2013.This is the only song on this list not recorded by the Team 1200, so I'd like to keep encouraging CTV Ottawa to continue their involvment in the parody song game. Will video kill the radio parody star? Only time will tell.25/40They'll crap their pants / That's why they're called "De Pens"This song sounds only marginally worse than the Black Eyed Peas original, but that's a bar that's so low, it's more of an extremely narrow ditch.I can't figure out if the auto-tuned "Ruuuuttuuuuuu" is terrible or a stroke of brilliance.Let's run through that list of names: Alfie, "Volchie", Elliot, Kelly, Spezza, Phillips, Fisher, and Campoli. 75% of that list isn't on the team any more, two or three of them would later be described as "bad guys", and one is going to be likely going to be acrimoniously run out of town this summer. Still, at least that 2010 team actually made the playoffs.Speaking of which, Brian Elliot once started playoff games for the Ottawa Senators. That makes me laugh, but then I have a particularly dark sense of humour."Boy, that Peter Regin sure looks great, doesn't he? He'll be around forever. Spezza finally found his winger." - Everyone, May 2010This video ends with Matt Carkner's 3OT goal, which would be the last good thing to happen to the Senators for quite some time.27/40Karlsson's the d-man / Alfie's the captain / Paul is the Walrus / Go go Sens goI tried dropping acid before listening to this, but it didn't help.Turning "I'm crying" into "The Habs are crying" was an inspired work of genius. I also liked how "Corporation t-shirt" turned into a line about a Sens jersey. |
relations for a number of NHS authorities.
He later becoming a director of a consultancy that advised the NHS on media issues.
A keen conservationist, Martin also jointly directed and produced a documentary about issues facing the River Thames near the town of Cricklade, in Wiltshire, with his future wife Diane Scully, even enlisting TV expert David Bellamy to work on the project.
Martin, whose funeral was held yesterday, died on 20 August at a hospice near his home in Somerset last month, having been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour while on holiday four months ago.
He and Diane were recently married, after his illness was diagnosed.
Freelance journalist and Advertiser contributor Barry Leighton, who worked with Martin in Swindon, said: “This is devastating news for anyone who knew Martin. Quite simply, he was a great bloke.
“We all had huge respect for Martin in the Advertiser news room both as a person and a journalist. He certainly knew his stuff as a reporter.
“He was very passionate about the stories he became involved with. He was also fiercely competitive in just about anything he undertook, from football to Trivial Pursuit.
“You meet scores of people along the way in this profession, but Martin sticks out. He was a bit special, Martin.”published on 2016-04-18
This Techtroners meech is work of me and Yules from Eurobricks.com - basically I've redesigned his original military armored model to highly lightened exploration version of my Techtroners.
Planet Pluto and its moon Charon - realm of this machine and its crew: terrain survey and search for potential traces of oldtimes CS atronauts.
This mech carry one mini-base (on its back), two small transportation vehicles (on legs lower parts) and two exploration mini-rockets (on legs upper parts) - in addition each of the legs contain one white detachable highly durable tablet. It has foldable cabin which is able - uppon its lock-off - lowering itself completelly down to the ground. Robot is controlled by one pilot, mini-base is then controlled by the other one.
TECHTRONERS PLOT
New set of astronauts is sent to the planet of their old ancestors from 80's and 90's having check if their old stuff (bases, vehicles and spaceships) can be reused or even rebuild, therefore their name is TECHTRONERS (basically space technicians). But as of their arrival to the planet they've discovered everything there react to design concepts and all that does not resemble those old times things (at least a bit) is destroyed or having problems with planets flora and fauna (for some strange reason they attack those that differ too much from those old design concepts). And so they have made their machines looking partially like those space sets from late 80's or early 90's to be able to work peacefully and without any kind of harassment from planet's non-human residents.On 14th of December, Longzhu Gaming Kim “PraY” Jong-in came on his personal stream and to share his thoughts and experiences with 2017 All-Stars Events. PraY was voted represented LCK All-Stars team along with CuVee, Ambition, Faker and Gorilla. In his review stream, PraY shared his All-Stars episodes with his Korean fans, including his interactions with Faker and CuVee, his 1v1 Garen duel with Rekkles; and why he believed that “All-Stars is no longer the festival that it used to be.”
All-Stars was too competitive this year
In previous years, the LoL All-Stars Events have been a yearly culmination to close out the competitive season, where the best players around the world gathered to mingle and have fun. This year, however, Riot has made All-Stars a more serious event; they took away the fun mode games and Team Ice & Fire, and brought more focus to the inter-regional tournament. Many fans did not act approvingly of this change, however; commenting that the competitive aspect put players under more pressure, that prize pool was removed; that the novelty of fun mode games were now gone. And now, PraY added his voice to this public opinion.
“During the feedback session provided by Riot, I suggested that [All-Stars] was too competitive this year. Ambition hyung said the same thing; it’s no longer the festival that it used to be, but a continuation of Worlds.” He said in his stream, adding that he missed playing Magma Chamber and other fun modes. “It’s too stressful; I’m playing with teammates that I’ve never played before, and yet there is that pressure not to lose a match. However, I do understand that from a viewer’s perspective it’s more interesting when matches are competitive. So I wouldn’t know how to resolve this and create a balance between fun and competitive.”
Bringing “fun” back into All-Stars with his Garen
PraY also had a few things to share about his 1v1 experiences. On his stream, PraY said that the famous Garen duel was his and Rekkles’ own attempt to bring “fun” back into All-Stars. “It’s Rekkles who actually suggested a mirror match-up first. We were talking about playing a “funny champ”, and we were discussing Garen, Tahm Kench or Alistar. Rekkles was also the person to suggest our bans to spell out “LZ PRAY”. The match itself was exhilarating….I’d love to face Rekkles next All-Stars and play Garen against him again.”
“After that, I wanted to make it to the 1v1 finals desperately. I wanted to face Bjergsen at the finals and suggest that we have a “fun” game fitting of All-Stars; but alas, I could not overcome Uzi. Uzi-hyung is a serious guy and I couldn’t convince him into doing anything similar, I could barely exchange a word with him. I’m so sorry, Bjergsen-hyung, that I didn’t get to face you at the finals.”
PraY with some Faker gossip
Other than sharing his experiences attending All-Stars, PraY also had plenty of gossip about his fellow players. The gossip that the viewers were most interested about centered around Faker – the iconic superstar of LCK and League of Legends. “Sang Hyuk is a celebrity. In Disneyland, Faker was in his basic skin – an SKT jersey – and he was turning heads, he was attracting a crowd. I’m not sure how fans knew, but there was even a crowd at our hotel lobby, fans screaming “Faker! Faker!” PraY recounted. “When we were in China, it was even more intense; when we were in our bus fans were chasing us with cars, taking pictures and screaming.”
PraY also had a few light-hearted episodes about Faker to share, a glimpse of the dubbed esports God’s more humane moments; talking about the time when Faker lost his passport and everyone went looking for it until they found it in Faker’s jacket pocket, or PraY’s shock when he discovered Faker owned no other clothing other than SKT clothing and white t-shirts. “After semi-finals, we went to dinner with Riot employees. I don’t know how the subject got there, but we mentioned Bitcoin. After this the Riot employee started talking about Bitcoins with Faker – that conversation honestly went on for an hour. Let’s just say that Sang Hyeok has very strong opinions about certain things.”
PraY spills the beans about CuVee, his new favourite player
One of the 5 players that represented the LCK All-Star team was CuVee, the top laner for Samsung Galaxy. A humble and relaxed character with puffy cheeks and a perpetual grin, CuVee is often memed for being a gourmet and a heavy eater. PraY claimed that the memes about CuVee and his food are indeed true, saying “CuVee eats so much, and enjoys every bite”.
But he also had some new information about CuVee. According to PraY, CuVee packed very lightly when he arrived at the airport to attend All-Stars. “When I first met CuVee at the airport, he said he didn’t bring a carrier. I laughed thinking that he’s joking; then it dawned on me that he was dead serious. He literally had packed one extra set of clothing and one piece of underwear.”
“CuVee’s endearing, so likeable. I’ve always used to be Sang Hyeok (Faker)’s fan, but now I think I’m also a fan of CuVee.”
Will the LCK streaming superstar come to Twitch?
Outside Korea, PraY is renowned mostly for his performance as ADC laner, throughout his career in Najin, ROX and Longzhu. In Korea, PraY is also famous for his personality; a social butterfly with a big heart, who is known for dedication to his fans; a dedication that leads to him turning on his stream not long after his return flight lands in Seoul. It is of little surprise that PraY’s stream is currently the most watched Korean pro-gamer stream on AfreecaTV, second overall behind Faker’s stream on Twitch.
A significant number of fans have suggested that PraY move from AfreecaTV, the traditional Korean Streaming platform of choice for both current and former pro-gamers, and begin streaming on Twitch. This move would allow for easier access to PraY’s stream for non-Korean fans, as well as increase the overall amount of support PraY receives through fan donations. To these requests, PraY responded – “AfreecaTV is where I started streaming, and I have a lot of nostalgia, but it’s something that I’ll always consider, as I’m not under any streaming contract… Always and foremost, my top priority is whether I can keep communicating with my fans.“As an artist who began his career battling, New Jersey rapper Joe Budden recently spoke with Rap Grid about Battle Rap and the artists currently making noise in today’s Battle Rap scene. Before rattling off a list of his favorite battles, Budden addressed the possibility of artists who are considered mainstream returning to Battle Rap.
According to the rapper, there is a possibility that an artist with mainstream exposure might be willing to take part in a battle, but due to their exposure as a popular artist, they’d likely be coming into the battle with a slight disadvantage.
“It’s not fear,” he says. “Fear is the wrong word, but I mean people have a lot to lose. In Hip Hop your credibility is everything. And it puts the artist with more exposure at a slight disadvantage because of said exposure. You know? You getting here and you facing somebody who knows everything about you. They’ve seen everything about you. They have so much to say. They could speak on your failures, your—they can speak on anything. And you just battling an up-and-coming guy. But I think we will see it eventually. Meek has come from that. Cassidy he comes from that. So, you have guys that are well-versed in battling. So, I can’t wait to see it.”
As far as the Slaughterhouse emcee making his own return to the battle rap arena is concerned, he says it is a possibility.
“I might do it…But that’s a possibility,” he said when asked about participating in a battle of his own.
Budden later revealed that there isn’t a particular Battle Rap artist that is his personal favorite and instead informed those watching that he looks out for artists who have the best bars, delivery, and other qualities.
“Whoever has the best bars,” Budden said. “I have no horse in the race. Whoever performs the best and gives the best delivery, the best bars, the best cadence, that’s what I’m looking out for.”
After stating that the battle between Loaded Lux and Hollow Da Don is one of his Top 5 battles of all time, the Jersey emcee went on to list a handful of his favorite battles.
“Some of my favorite battles are Lux and Calicoe, JC versus Chilla, Verb versus Hitman, Big T versus Surf,” he said. “If I stand here for long enough I can give you a million battles that I really, really, really enjoyed, but that one—I don’t know if it was because I was in the building or what, but they both just delivered the way that we expected them both to deliver. So, I mean it was Top 5 for me.”
Late last month in a post made on his Instagram page, Budden addressed a possible battle between himself and Hollow Da Don. Budden’s post included a picture of both the Slaughterhouse rapper and Hollow along with the following caption: “Niggas always think they want a problem til they get it.”
No updates in regards to a battle between the two artists have been made following Budden’s social media posts.
RELATED: Slaughterhouse Confirms “Road To Total Slaughter” Battle Rap Reality ShowStory highlights A deputy working security noticed the error
The rugs got rolled up and put away
(CNN) A Florida sheriff's office is sending back some official rugs after an embarrassing typo in them put the rug company in the doghouse.
Sheriff's carpet: In Dog We Trust
The large green rugs with the black and yellow Pinellas County Sheriff's Office logo included the phrase "In Dog We Trust" within one of its crests.
It was supposed to read "In God We Trust." A deputy standing in the lobby spotted the error on Wednesday, according to CNN affiliate WFTS
The Sheriff's Office told WFTS that rug manufacturer, American Floor Mats, made the "In Dog We Trust" error. The company will replace them.
The sheriff's office has tucked the rugs out of sight, but pictures from the CNN affiliate clearly show the mistake.
Read MoreSINGAPORE - Unhappy and angry with the service he had received from a woman at a telco, he e-mailed her, her colleagues and senior management obscene content with sexually explicit material to tarnish her reputation.
One of the messages contained nine attached images of nude women engaging in sexual acts with animals, and identified the 48-year-old victim and the organisation she was working for. But none of the images were that of the victim.
On Wednesday (Oct 12), the perpetrator, David Daniel Liu Fu Long, 39, was sentenced to 13 weeks' jail after admitting to two charges each of transmitting obscene objects and intentionally causing harassment to another victim, a 44-year-old female doctor.
In the first case, Liu sent e-mails to the 48-year-old victim and her colleagues with obscene objects at about 1am and 8.15am on Aug 6, 2016, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Samuel Koh.
Liu admitted that he had sent the e-mails as he was unhappy and angry with the victim's service, and intended to tarnish her reputation.
The 1.04am e-mail showed nine purported images of the victim naked, and added that she could be seen "naked several times a day in her house".
Although the image attachments were labelled using the victim's name, none were actually of her. She experienced great distress and embarrassment as a result of this.
She lodged a police report the same day. Four days later, she e-mailed the relevant investigation officers, saying that on Aug 9, she had again received an e-mail containing obscene objects with gruesome and intimidating material, which had also been circulated.
Investigations showed that on Aug 9, Liu sent an e-mail to the victim containing two attached images of dead cats run over by vehicles on a road.
The e-mail also claimed that one of the cats might have to enter hell as retribution and punishment for its bad deeds, and that the victim should be quarantined for sharing the same name as the cat.
As a result, the victim felt extremely disturbed and intimidated, as she interpreted the e-mail as a death threat.
Liu told investigators that he sent the e-mail to the victim and others as he was dissatisfied that he had not received any reply following previous e-mails he had sent.
In the other case, the court heard that Liu created an e-mail address on July 26, 2015 to impersonate a 44-year-old female doctor to send an e-mail to her colleagues. In the e-mail, he described the doctor as a prostitute, a gang member, an Institute of Mental Health patient, and that she should resign and be imprisoned.
DPP Koh said the case was quite aggravated, malicious and vindictive. What made it worse in this case was that Liu was targeting the victim within her workplace, which had a serious risk of endangering her livelihood.
Liu has two previous convictions.The Department of Marine and Coastal Resources will propose Bryde's whale as a protected specie same as dugong after finding its population in the Thai waters declines significantly.
The department’s director general Mr Cholathit Suraswadi said latest survey from 2009-2015 in Thai waters showed there are 52 Bryde’s whales, comprising 14 adult females and 23 young whales.
But with the adult females breeding in every two years time, or 2.4% birth rate while death rate stands at 5% from garbage, tourism, and fishing causes, the sea mammoth is facing extinction from the Thai waters if nothing was done to protect them.
During the past 12 years from 2003-2014, a total of 2,201 rare marine species like sea turtles, dugongs, whales and dolphins were washed ashore.
They included 1,209 sea turtles, 851 whales and dolphins and 141 dugongs.
Statistics showed the number of dead rare animals washed ashore or injured was rising yearly.
With the growing concern of its endangered population, he said he would propose Bryde’s whale as a protected specie same as dugong in the Wildlife Conservation and Protection Act 1992.
He said Bryde’s whales will be the second marine life to come under protection by law, after dugong, if the proposal is approved.
He said the department is looking for a suitable area to declare a safe sanctuary for the whales, and will also encourage awareness in the communities to help protect them.Only in the CFL would a Canadian quarterback not be classified as a Canadian … national … whatever.
Welcome to the (ahem) logic that, at least for the time being, applies to the likes of Andrew Buckley and Brandon Bridge.
Buckley plays for the hometown Calgary Stampeders. Bridge is under contract to the Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Bridge and Buckley just happen to play football’s marquee position. For many years, there has been a frequent lament about the dearth of Canadian starting quarterbacks in the CFL. However, the rules — as currently applied — actually create a disincentive for teams to develop and deploy a home-grown quarterback.
Teams are allowed to dress three quarterbacks of any nationality. So, naturally, most of those roster spots are held by Americans.
Buckley and Bridge are rare and notable exceptions. Buckley is second on the Stampeders’ depth chart, behind Bo Levi Mitchell. As the backup to Kevin Glenn in 2017, Bridge received significant playing time and generally impressed when he was utilized.
Bridge succeeded in spite of the system. The Roughriders did not derive any ratio-related benefits from playing him, but play him they did.
Teams are required to start least seven Canadians. Yet, even when Bridge was in the game, the Roughriders still had to field seven other Canadians who they deemed to be worthy of front-line duty.
Bridge’s presence didn’t simply expose the evident and long-standing flaws in this system. So did his words.
During the season, the 25-year-old product of Mississauga, Ont., politely asked for some time with CFL commissioner Randy Ambrosie. Bridge wanted to make the case that a Canadian quarterback should count against the ratio when he plays — an entirely reasonable point that has somehow eluded the decision-makers.
Ambrosie was very accommodating. He and Bridge chatted informally when the commissioner was in Regina for the Roughriders’ Plaza of Honour ceremonies in October.
“He’s a very nice young man and he said ‘Mr. Commissioner, can we have a conversation about quarterbacks?’ ” Ambrosie told Postmedia’s Ted Wyman last month. “I thought he handled himself incredibly well.”
As for the change espoused by Bridge …
“We should look at it,” Ambrosie said. “We’ve got a couple of really good Canadian quarterbacks and maybe more, and we should have a conversation about it. We should always be open to these things. We should be willing to look at it and talk about it and consider new ways of doing things. That’s where innovation comes from.”
There was the same refrain when Ambrosie spoke with Dave Naylor.
“I think we should take input from important sources and who better to start with than him?” Ambrosie told TSN’s CFL insider. “My plan is to put this on the table this off-season because I think it’s an important issue we should be discussing.”
And soon.
Bridge is eligible to become a free agent on Feb. 13.
By then, Bridge and the teams deserve to know how he will be classified. A determination on his status will undoubtedly affect teams’ spending and Bridge’s income.
Make no mistake, Bridge played well enough in 2017 that he should receive some enticing offers if he decides to test free agency. Not only is he a Canadian, he is a 6-foot-5 passer with a strong arm, impressive mobility and a winning personality.
There have been preliminary discussions with the Roughriders, according to Bridge, but why sign now?
Teams routinely lavish six-figure salaries on Canadian offensive linemen that nobody, friends and loved ones excepted, pays to see.
Canadian starters are coveted to the point where the Roughriders have spent $100,000-plus on receiver Shamawd Chambers and running back Kienan LaFrance.
With that in mind, what would a ratio-breaking quarterback be worth?
The onus is on Ambrosie to ensure that the question can be answered as soon as possible — certainly before the free-agency deadline.
In his short tenure as the commissioner, Ambrosie has repeatedly proven that he is a man of action, and a man of foresight. Time and time again, he does the right thing, and has been deservedly bathed in praise for doing so.
Now it is time for Ambrosie to do right by Andrew Buckley and Brandon Bridge.
rvanstone@postmedia.com
twitter.com/robvanstoneMedia playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Dutch foreign minister says it is possible the last nine victims will never be recovered, as David Stern reports
Nine of the 298 victims of July's MH17 crash in eastern Ukraine are still unaccounted for, Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders has said.
He was speaking after a ceremony in Kharkiv as another five coffins with remains were flown to the Netherlands.
The Boeing 777 Malaysian Airlines was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it crashed in territory held by pro-Russian rebels.
The majority of the victims - 193 - were Dutch.
Both rebels and their supporters in Russia have denied shooting the aircraft down.
Investigators have struggled to gain access to the site as clashes continue nearby between Ukrainian government forces and the separatists.
Security concerns
Mr Koenders said experts had already come "a long way" with the identification process and would do everything they could to find more remains.
Image copyright EPA Image caption The identification process is taking place at Hilversum in the Netherlands
Image copyright EPA Image caption Investigators say the plane was probably hit by a surface-to-air missile
"We cannot say at this moment in any certain way... at what moment and even if we can recover the last nine, but we will do everything we can in co-operation with authorities here to make that happen," he said, quoted by AFP news agency.
He added that investigators still hoped to recover more remnants of the plane, but it was unclear when this would happen because of uncertainties about the security situation.
Initial investigations at the site were suspended in August because of heavy fighting in the area.
They resumed in September after a ceasefire deal was signed, with experts making four visits to the site.
A report issued in September by Dutch investigators found MH17 was hit by multiple "high-energy" objects.
The report did not apportion blame but it is believed to have been hit by a surface-to-air missile fired from an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
Russian officials have denied the allegations and instead suggested Ukrainian fighter jets were culpable.Andrea Caldarelli is set to make his single-seater return with Dragon Racing at the Marrakesh Formula E Rookie Test next month, e-racing365 can reveal.
Caldarelli, who has solely driven GT cars for nearly three years, is in line to occupy one of the seats at the American team for the test on January 14.
Caldarelli has had a long association with Toyota stretching back to 2008 when he tested one of the Japanese manufacturer’s Formula 1 cars.
Since then Caldarelli has competed mostly in Japan, where he has raced sporadically in Formula Nippon/Super Formula and in the Japanese Super GT Series.
The Italian has notched up two runner-up results in 2014 and 2016. He is also currently a Lamborghini factory driver and has raced in the Blancpain GT Series Sprint Cup for the GRT Grasser team.
It is unlikely that Caldarelli’s test is connected to Toyota or a possible look at a future Formula E program.
The Japanese manufacturer has previously had discussions with series boss Alejandro Agag, but not since 2015.
Caldarelli is not a centrally contracted driver but one who is approved by the manufacturer when it comes to Japanese GT teams choosing its drivers.
Toyota is focusing more on EV cars for the future, with at least 10 different pure EV models set to be in production by 2020. It had been one of the market leaders with the Prius models until more recently concentrating on Hydrogen Cell development projects.
The manufacturer also wants to make either a Hybrid or EV version of its cars by 2025. This information was distributed via a press briefing in Tokyo earlier this week.
Toyota also recently confirmed its FIA World Endurance Championship program for at least the 2018-19 season.
Dragon would not comment on its Marrakesh line-up when contacted by e-racing365, but Caldarelli is expected to be officially announced along with another as- yet-unknown driver.The Coat of Arms of the Medici popes
The List of popes from the Medici family includes four men from the late- 15th century through the early-17th century. The Medici family, also known as the House of Medici, first attained wealth and political power in Florence in the 13th century through its success in commerce and banking. They were closely associated with the Renaissance and cultural and artistic revival during this period.[1]
History [ edit ]
The Medici were a powerful and influential Florentine family from the 13th to 17th century. There were four popes who were related to the Medici and each other.[2]
Pope Leo X (December 11, 1475 – December 1, 1521), born Giovanni de' Medici, was pope from 1513 to his death. [3]
Pope Clement VII (May 26, 1478 – September 25, 1534), born Giulio di Giuliano de' Medici, was a cardinal from 1513 to 1523 and was pope from 1523 to 1534. [4]
Pope Pius IV (31 March 1499 – December 9, 1565), born Giovanni Angelo Medici, was pope from 1559 to 1565. However, he was only distantly related to the other Medici Popes. [5]
Pope Leo XI (June 2, 1535 – April 27, 1605), born Alessandro Ottaviano de' Medici, was pope from April 1, 1605, to April 27 of the same year.[6]Washington: A new study has suggested that ancestor of horses and rhinos originated on the Asian subcontinent while it was still an island.
Researchers from the Johns Hopkins, who have been working at the edge of a coal mine in India, have filled in a major gap in science's understanding of the evolution of a group of animals that includes horses and rhinos. That group likely originated on the subcontinent when it was still an island headed swiftly for collision with Asia.
Modern horses, rhinos and tapirs belong to a biological group, or order, called Perissodactyla. Also known as "odd-toed ungulates," animals in the order have, as their name implies, an uneven number of toes on their hind feet and a distinctive digestive system. Though paleontologists had found remains of Perissodactyla from as far back as the beginnings of the Eocene epoch, about 56 million years ago, their earlier evolution remained a mystery, says Dr. Ken Rose.
Rose and Indian colleagues in 2001 began exploring Eocene sediments in Western India because it had been proposed that perissodactyls and some other mammal groups might have originated there. In an open-pit coal mine northeast of Mumbai, they uncovered a rich vein of ancient bones. Rose says he and his collaborators obtained funding from the National Geographic Society to send a research team to the mine site at Gujarat in the far Western part of India for two weeks at a time once every year or two over the last decade.
The mine yielded a treasure trove of teeth and bones, of which more than 200 fossils turned out to belong to an animal dubbed Cambaytherium thewissi, about which little had been known. The researchers dated the fossils to about 54.5 million years old, making them slightly younger than the oldest known Perissodactyla remains, but, Rose said that it provided a window into what a common ancestor of all Perissodactyla would have looked like.
Cambaytherium and other finds from the Gujarat coal mine also provide tantalizing clues about India's separation from Madagascar, lonely migration, and eventual collision with the continent of Asia as the Earth's plates shifted, he added.
Rose said that around Cambaytherium's time, India might have been an island, but it also had primates and a rodent similar to those living in Europe at the time. One possible explanation was that India passed close by the Arabian Peninsula or the Horn of Africa, and there was a land bridge that allowed the animals to migrate. But Cambaytherium is unique and suggests that India was indeed isolated for a while.
The findings are reported in the online journal Nature Communications.PHOENIX -- We haven't even played a week's worth of games this spring, but Michael Choice already is making an impression.
The 24-year-old outfielder continues to hit the ball well and make smart decisions on the bases, looking like a player focused on compelling the Texas Rangers to at least ponder putting him on their big league roster.
The Rangers must decide if it's in their best interest to let Choice play every day in the minors or have his bat off the bench when needed.
That call is still at least a few weeks away.
In the meantime, Choice is going about showing why he has so much promise.
On Saturday, he got to face his old team and didn't waste any time making an impact in a game against the Oakland Athletics that was stopped after nine innings in a 2-2 tie.
Choice smacked the first pitch he saw from right-handed starter Sonny Gray into left-center for a double.
He went from first to third in the fourth on a single by Rougned Odor. Choice said it was a hit-and-run call with two strikes, but with two outs he knew to keep running. His hustle got him to third when Odor's short fly to left dropped in.
"I feel like I'm seeing the ball well," Choice said. "That goes to the work that goes on in the cages, working with all our hitting guys in the morning and focusing on really honing in and getting prepared for the season."
Choice said he's taking what he's doing in those morning sessions, designed to keep his swing short, and apply them to the games.
"I'm letting all the hard work we prepare in the mornings play out instead of trying to do too much," said Choice, who also credits his routine in the cages that has him more comfortable. "I'm getting into the flow of the game.
"Sometimes you get tense and try to do too much. Why prepare a short swing early and then get big in the game? Before I step in the box, I relax everything and focus on the things I've been working on."
Kirkman's Ks: Michael Kirkman pitched two scoreless innings, allowing two hits and striking out two. He struck out Yoenis Cespedes on a nice curve ball and he got Nate Freiman to swing at a change that Kirkman says acts like a splitter.
"He's always had the stuff," Washington said. "It's about consistency. He just has to get the consistency."
Teaching moment: Rangers manager Ron Washington wasn't thrilled that Jose Felix failed to get a bunt down on a suicide squeeze late in the game. Felix got a pitch he could deal with, but missed it and Alex Castellanos, running from third, was tagged out.
"He has to get that bunt down," Washington said. "It's all part of the learning process."
Perez's sinker: If there was one thing that Martin Perez (two innings pitched, one run, one strikeout, one walk) wants to improve upon, it's his sinker. He said the pitch moved too much, allowing hitters to lay off and take it for a ball. It's something he said he'll refine between outings.
Double-play combo: Second baseman Odor and shortstop Luis Sardinas, the double-play combo in Double-A Frisco when the season ended, turned their first double play of the Cactus League. It came off the bat of Michael Taylor and Odor made a quick flip to Sardinas, who converted to Mitch Moreland at first. It's likely both players will be together in Frisco again when the season starts, though that hasn't been decided yet.
Nice at-bat: Jurickson Profar was the leadoff hitter on Saturday and fell behind 0-2. But he fouled off a pitch and then showed some good discipline, taking four balls out of the strike zone to draw a walk. It was a patience at-bat, though Profar ended up stranded at third.
Rios in right: Alex Rios got his first action in right field of the spring, now that his toe is fine. He caught a fly ball and was 0-for-3 at the plate with two strikeouts. He did steal a base in the first moments after his hustle to first eliminated a double play chance.
Too aggressive: Engel Beltre had a rough day on the bases. He was caught stealing in the third after getting a poor jump (perhaps a moist infield played a part in that) and then tried to go from first to third on a Mitch Moreland hit to center and was thrown out easily.As B.C. gears up to host the First Ministers’ climate meeting, new federal data confirms the province’s emissions soaring and its once vaunted clean economy leadership in disarray.
Global warming pollution has risen each year under Premier Christy Clark and the province is projected to fail by a large margin in meeting its own legislated emissions requirements.
Data Environment Canada's 2014 Emissions Trends report
British Columbia’s reversal is particularly striking since the province was very recently the darling of the international community, praised by international leaders as a “textbook case” of policies for building a modern clean economy. However the federal data shows B.C. falling behind even within Canada as the country’s most populous provinces show significant progress reducing emissions.
B.C. climate pollution rises while Ontario and Quebec manage to cut back
B.C. climate pollution increased (2011 to 2013) by 1.5 MT CO2eq (carbon dioxide equivalent) – the equivalent of adding 400,000 cars to the province’s roads.
Meanwhile, Ontario and Quebec managed decreases of 4 and 1.6 MT of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Observers attribute the problems to a change in political leadership within the governing party. Simon Fraser University professor Mark Jaccard, a key architect of BC’s original climate plan describes a series of policy reversals:
“B.C., under the premiership of Gordon Campbell in the period 2006-2011, showed incredible climate leadership. Since his replacement by Christy Clark in 2011, the situation has reversed as she froze what was supposed to be a rising carbon tax, undermined the clean electricity regulation, cut funding for efficiency and halted the intended intensification of other regulatory initiatives on vehicles, fuels, buildings, waste management and various industrial processes.”
The policy reversals are reason for concern in British Columbia’s clean tech sector, which grew under the original policy framework. The Canadian Wind Energy Association recently announced it was closing up shop in British Columbia in order to focus on greener pastures for renewable energy.
“While B.C. has tremendous untapped potential for wind energy … it’s also true that, at this time, there’s no vision of short-term opportunities emerging in B.C.” said association president Robert Hornung.
The association will redirect resources to Alberta. That province already has tripled the installed wind energy of B.C., but the association is banking on a hot market created by Alberta’s newly announced Climate Leadership plan.
Recent economic analyses for British Columbia predict that a revitalized push towards climate goals would have significant economic benefits. If B.C. were to meet its 2050 climate goals the economy would almost double to $425 billion in GDP per year while creating 900,000 new jobs.
The provincial government is now mulling whether to adopt the recommendations of an independent advisory panel which counseled the province to reinstate and enhance climate and clean energy policies.
The government has given little indication to date whether it is inclined to adopt the recommendations. Matt Horne, the Pembina Institute’s British Columbia Associate Director describes the situation as a clear decision point.
"B.C.'s climate leadership has stalled, and carbon pollution is going up as a result. For the province to get back on track, it needs to say yes to an ambitious climate plan."Central Bank governor Philip Lane has indicated the regulator will intervene in the event of runaway house price inflation that might arise from tweaks to its mortgage lending rules and the planned tax rebate scheme for first-time buyers.
“If we see that there’s a perverse, unwelcome interaction between excessively rapid lending and excessively rapid increases in house prices, then we can intervene,” he said at the unveiling of “limited” changes to its macroprudential rules.
Mr Lane said that after the Central Bank signalled in 2014 that it intended to cap mortgage lending “it became clear to everyone that... a system whereby there’d be year-on-year-on-year double-digit increases in house prices would not be very likely... unless we see |
. That's why in this case it actually reads a line, prints it to the output, reads the next line, prints it, etc. For binary files, the default buffering is usually block-buffering. That means that it will read the file chunk by chunk. The chunk size is some size that your operating system thinks is cool.
You can control how exactly buffering is done by using the hSetBuffering function. It takes a handle and a BufferMode and returns an I/O action that sets the buffering. BufferMode is a simple enumeration data type and the possible values it can hold are: NoBuffering, LineBuffering or BlockBuffering (Maybe Int). The Maybe Int is for how big the chunk should be, in bytes. If it's Nothing, then the operating system determines the chunk size. NoBuffering means that it will be read one character at a time. NoBuffering usually sucks as a buffering mode because it has to access the disk so much.
Here's our previous piece of code, only it doesn't read it line by line but reads the whole file in chunks of 2048 bytes.
main = do withFile "something.txt" ReadMode (\handle -> do hSetBuffering handle $ BlockBuffering (Just 2048) contents <- hGetContents handle putStr contents)
Reading files in bigger chunks can help if we want to minimize disk access or when our file is actually a slow network resource.
We can also use hFlush, which is a function that takes a handle and returns an I/O action that will flush the buffer of the file associated with the handle. When we're doing line-buffering, the buffer is flushed after every line. When we're doing block-buffering, it's after we've read a chunk. It's also flushed after closing a handle. That means that when we've reached a newline character, the reading (or writing) mechanism reports all the data so far. But we can use hFlush to force that reporting of data that has been read so far. After flushing, the data is available to other programs that are running at the same time.
Think of reading a block-buffered file like this: your toilet bowl is set to flush itself after it has one gallon of water inside it. So you start pouring in water and once the gallon mark is reached, that water is automatically flushed and the data in the water that you've poured in so far is read. But you can flush the toilet manually too by pressing the button on the toilet. This makes the toilet flush and all the water (data) inside the toilet is read. In case you haven't noticed, flushing the toilet manually is a metaphor for hFlush. This is not a very great analogy by programming analogy standards, but I wanted a real world object that can be flushed for the punchline.
We already made a program to add a new item to our to-do list in todo.txt, now let's make a program to remove an item. I'll just paste the code and then we'll go over the program together so you see that it's really easy. We'll be using a few new functions from System.Directory and one new function from System.IO, but they'll all be explained.
Anyway, here's the program for removing an item from todo.txt:
import System.IO import System.Directory import Data.List main = do handle <- openFile "todo.txt" ReadMode (tempName, tempHandle) <- openTempFile "." "temp" contents <- hGetContents handle let todoTasks = lines contents numberedTasks = zipWith (
line -> show n ++ " - " ++ line) [0..] todoTasks putStrLn "These are your TO-DO items:" putStr $ unlines numberedTasks putStrLn "Which one do you want to delete?" numberString <- getLine let number = read numberString newTodoItems = delete (todoTasks!! number) todoTasks hPutStr tempHandle $ unlines newTodoItems hClose handle hClose tempHandle removeFile "todo.txt" renameFile tempName "todo.txt"
At first, we just open todo.txt in read mode and bind its handle to handle.
Next up, we use a function that we haven't met before which is from System.IO — openTempFile. Its name is pretty self-explanatory. It takes a path to a temporary directory and a template name for a file and opens a temporary file. We used "." for the temporary directory, because. denotes the current directory on just about any OS. We used "temp" as the template name for the temporary file, which means that the temporary file will be named temp plus some random characters. It returns an I/O action that makes the temporary file and the result in that I/O action is a pair of values: the name of the temporary file and a handle. We could just open a normal file called todo2.txt or something like that but it's better practice to use openTempFile so you know you're probably not overwriting anything.
The reason we didn't use getCurrentDirectory to get the current directory and then pass it to openTempFile but instead just passed "." to openTempFile is because. refers to the current directory on unix-like system and Windows
Next up, we bind the contents of todo.txt to contents. Then, split that string into a list of strings, each string one line. So todoTasks is now something like ["Iron the dishes", "Dust the dog", "Take salad out of the oven"]. We zip the numbers from 0 onwards and that list with a function that takes a number, like 3, and a string, like "hey" and returns "3 - hey", so numberedTasks is ["0 - Iron the dishes", "1 - Dust the dog".... We join that list of strings into a single newline delimited string with unlines and print that string out to the terminal. Note that instead of doing that, we could have also done mapM putStrLn numberedTasks
We ask the user which one they want to delete and wait for them to enter a number. Let's say they want to delete number 1, which is Dust the dog, so they punch in 1. numberString is now "1" and because we want a number, not a string, we run read on that to get 1 and bind that to number.
Remember the delete and!! functions from Data.List.!! returns an element from a list with some index and delete deletes the first occurence of an element in a list and returns a new list without that occurence. (todoTasks!! number) (number is now 1) returns "Dust the dog". We bind todoTasks without the first occurence of "Dust the dog" to newTodoItems and then join that into a single string with unlines before writing it to the temporary file that we opened. The old file is now unchanged and the temporary file contains all the lines that the old one does, except the one we deleted.
After that we close both the original and the temporary files and then we remove the original one with removeFile, which, as you can see, takes a path to a file and deletes it. After deleting the old todo.txt, we use renameFile to rename the temporary file to todo.txt. Be careful, removeFile and renameFile (which are both in System.Directory by the way) take file paths as their parameters, not handles.
And that's that! We could have done this in even fewer lines, but we were very careful not to overwrite any existing files and politely asked the operating system to tell us where we can put our temporary file. Let's give this a go!
$ runhaskell deletetodo.hs These are your TO-DO items: 0 - Iron the dishes 1 - Dust the dog 2 - Take salad out of the oven Which one do you want to delete? 1 $ cat todo.txt Iron the dishes Take salad out of the oven $ runhaskell deletetodo.hs These are your TO-DO items: 0 - Iron the dishes 1 - Take salad out of the oven Which one do you want to delete? 0 $ cat todo.txt Take salad out of the oven
Command line arguments
Dealing with command line arguments is pretty much a necessity if you want to make a script or application that runs on a terminal. Luckily, Haskell's standard library has a nice way of getting command line arguments of a program.
In the previous section, we made one program for adding a to-do item to our to-do list and one program for removing an item. There are two problems with the approach we took. The first one is that we just hardcoded the name of our to-do file in our code. We just decided that the file will be named todo.txt and that the user will never have a need for managing several to-do lists.
One way to solve that is to always ask the user which file they want to use as their to-do list. We used that approach when we wanted to know which item the user wants to delete. It works, but it's not so good, because it requires the user to run the program, wait for the program to ask something and then tell that to the program. That's called an interactive program and the difficult bit with interactive command line programs is this — what if you want to automate the execution of that program, like with a batch script? It's harder to make a batch script that interacts with a program than a batch script that just calls one program or several of them.
That's why it's sometimes better to have the user tell the program what they want when they run the program, instead of having the program ask the user once it's run. And what better way to have the user tell the program what they want it to do when they run it than via command line arguments!
The System.Environment module has two cool I/O actions. One is getArgs, which has a type of getArgs :: IO [String] and is an I/O action that will get the arguments that the program was run with and have as its contained result a list with the arguments. getProgName has a type of getProgName :: IO String and is an I/O action that contains the program name.
Here's a small program that demonstrates how these two work:
import System.Environment import Data.List main = do args <- getArgs progName <- getProgName putStrLn "The arguments are:" mapM putStrLn args putStrLn "The program name is:" putStrLn progName
We bind getArgs and progName to args and progName. We say The arguments are: and then for every argument in args, we do putStrLn. Finally, we also print out the program name. Let's compile this as arg-test.
$./arg-test first second w00t "multi word arg" The arguments are: first second w00t multi word arg The program name is: arg-test
Nice. Armed with this knowledge you could create some cool command line apps. In fact, let's go ahead and make one. In the previous section, we made a separate program for adding tasks and a separate program for deleting them. Now, we're going to join that into one program, what it does will depend on the command line arguments. We're also going to make it so it can operate on different files, not just todo.txt.
We'll call it simply todo and it'll be able to do (haha!) three different things:
View tasks
Add tasks
Delete tasks
We're not going to concern ourselves with possible bad input too much right now.
Our program will be made so that if we want to add the task Find the magic sword of power to the file todo.txt, we have to punch in todo add todo.txt "Find the magic sword of power" in our terminal. To view the tasks we'll just do todo view todo.txt and to remove the task with the index of 2, we'll do todo remove todo.txt 2.
We'll start by making a dispatch association list. It's going to be a simple association list that has command line arguments as keys and functions as their corresponding values. All these functions will be of type [String] -> IO (). They're going to take the argument list as a parameter and return an I/O action that does the viewing, adding, deleting, etc.
import System.Environment import System.Directory import System.IO import Data.List dispatch :: [(String, [String] -> IO ())] dispatch = [ ("add", add), ("view", view), ("remove", remove) ]
We have yet to define main, add, view and remove, so let's start with main:
main = do (command:args) <- getArgs let (Just action) = lookup command dispatch action args
First, we get the arguments and bind them to (command:args). If you remember your pattern matching, this means that the first argument will get bound to command and the rest of them will get bound to args. If we call our program like todo add todo.txt "Spank the monkey", command will be "add" and args will be ["todo.xt", "Spank the monkey"].
In the next line, we look up our command in the dispatch list. Because "add" points to add, we get Just add as a result. We use pattern matching again to extract our function out of the Maybe. What happens if our command isn't in the dispatch list? Well then the lookup will return Nothing, but we said we won't concern ourselves with failing gracefully too much, so the pattern matching will fail and our program will throw a fit.
Finally, we call our action function with the rest of the argument list. That will return an I/O action that either adds an item, displays a list of items or deletes an item and because that action is part of the main do block, it will get performed. If we follow our concrete example so far and our action function is add, it will get called with args (so ["todo.txt", "Spank the monkey"]) and return an I/O action that adds Spank the monkey to todo.txt.
Great! All that's left now is to implement add, view and remove. Let's start with add:
add :: [String] -> IO () add [fileName, todoItem] = appendFile fileName (todoItem ++ "
")
If we call our program like todo add todo.txt "Spank the monkey", the "add" will get bound to command in the first pattern match in the main block, whereas ["todo.txt", "Spank the monkey"] will get passed to the function that we get from the dispatch list. So, because we're not dealing with bad input right now, we just pattern match against a list with those two elements right away and return an I/O action that appends that line to the end of the file, along with a newline character.
Next, let's implement the list viewing functionality. If we want to view the items in a file, we do todo view todo.txt. So in the first pattern match, command will be "view" and args will be ["todo.txt"].
view :: [String] -> IO () view [fileName] = do contents <- readFile fileName let todoTasks = lines contents numberedTasks = zipWith (
line -> show n ++ " - " ++ line) [0..] todoTasks putStr $ unlines numberedTasks
We already did pretty much the same thing in the program that only deleted tasks when we were displaying the tasks so that the user can choose one for deletion, only here we just display the tasks.
And finally, we're going to implement remove. It's going to be very similar to the program that only deleted the tasks, so if you don't understand how deleting an item here works, check out the explanation under that program. The main difference is that we're not hardcoding todo.txt but getting it as an argument. We're also not prompting the user for the task number to delete, we're getting it as an argument.
remove :: [String] -> IO () remove [fileName, numberString] = do handle <- openFile fileName ReadMode (tempName, tempHandle) <- openTempFile "." "temp" contents <- hGetContents handle let number = read numberString todoTasks = lines contents newTodoItems = delete (todoTasks!! number) todoTasks hPutStr tempHandle $ unlines newTodoItems hClose handle hClose tempHandle removeFile fileName renameFile tempName fileName
We opened up the file based on fileName and opened a temporary file, deleted the line with the index that the user wants to delete, wrote that to the temporary file, removed the original file and renamed the temporary file back to fileName.
Here's the whole program at once, in all its glory!
import System.Environment import System.Directory import System.IO import Data.List dispatch :: [(String, [String] -> IO ())] dispatch = [ ("add", add), ("view", view), ("remove", remove) ] main = do (command:args) <- getArgs let (Just action) = lookup command dispatch action args add :: [String] -> IO () add [fileName, todoItem] = appendFile fileName (todoItem ++ "
") view :: [String] -> IO () view [fileName] = do contents <- readFile fileName let todoTasks = lines contents numberedTasks = zipWith (
line -> show n ++ " - " ++ line) [0..] todoTasks putStr $ unlines numberedTasks remove :: [String] -> IO () remove [fileName, numberString] = do handle <- openFile fileName ReadMode (tempName, tempHandle) <- openTempFile "." "temp" contents <- hGetContents handle let number = read numberString todoTasks = lines contents newTodoItems = delete (todoTasks!! number) todoTasks hPutStr tempHandle $ unlines newTodoItems hClose handle hClose tempHandle removeFile fileName renameFile tempName fileName
To summarize our solution: we made a dispatch association that maps from commands to functions that take some command line arguments and return an I/O action. We see what the command is and based on that we get the appropriate function from the dispatch list. We call that function with the rest of the command line arguments to get back an I/O action that will do the appropriate thing and then just perform that action!
In other languages, we might have implemented this with a big switch case statement or whatever, but using higher order functions allows us to just tell the dispatch list to give us the appropriate function and then tell that function to give us an I/O action for some command line arguments.
Let's try our app out!
$./todo view todo.txt 0 - Iron the dishes 1 - Dust the dog 2 - Take salad out of the oven $./todo add todo.txt "Pick up children from drycleaners" $./todo view todo.txt 0 - Iron the dishes 1 - Dust the dog 2 - Take salad out of the oven 3 - Pick up children from drycleaners $./todo remove todo.txt 2 $./todo view todo.txt 0 - Iron the dishes 1 - Dust the dog 2 - Pick up children from drycleaners
Another cool thing about this is that it's easy to add extra functionality. Just add an entry in the dispatch association list and implement the corresponding function and you're laughing! As an exercise, you can try implementing a bump function that will take a file and a task number and return an I/O action that bumps that task to the top of the to-do list.
You could make this program fail a bit more gracefully in case of bad input (for example, if someone runs todo UP YOURS HAHAHAHA) by making an I/O action that just reports there has been an error (say, errorExit :: IO ()) and then check for possible erronous input and if there is erronous input, perform the error reporting I/O action. Another way is to use exceptions, which we will meet soon.
Randomness
Many times while programming, you need to get some random data. Maybe you're making a game where a die needs to be thrown or you need to generate some test data to test out your program. There are a lot of uses for random data when programming. Well, actually, pseudo-random, because we all know that the only true source of randomness is a monkey on a unicycle with a cheese in one hand and its butt in the other. In this section, we'll take a look at how to make Haskell generate seemingly random data.
In most other programming languages, you have functions that give you back some random number. Each time you call that function, you get back a (hopefully) different random number. How about Haskell? Well, remember, Haskell is a pure functional language. What that means is that it has referential transparency. What THAT means is that a function, if given the same parameters twice, must produce the same result twice. That's really cool because it allows us to reason differently about programs and it enables us to defer evaluation until we really need it. If I call a function, I can be sure that it won't do any funny stuff before giving me the results. All that matters are its results. However, this makes it a bit tricky for getting random numbers. If I have a function like this:
randomNumber :: (Num a) => a randomNumber = 4
It's not very useful as a random number function because it will always return 4, even though I can assure you that the 4 is completely random, because I used a die to determine it.
How do other languages make seemingly random numbers? Well, they take various info from your computer, like the current time, how much and where you moved your mouse and what kind of noises you made behind your computer and based on that, give a number that looks really random. The combination of those factors (that randomness) is probably different in any given moment in time, so you get a different random number.
Ah. So in Haskell, we can make a random number then if we make a function that takes as its parameter that randomness and based on that returns some number (or other data type).
Enter the System.Random module. It has all the functions that satisfy our need for randomness. Let's just dive into one of the functions it exports then, namely random. Here's its type: random :: (RandomGen g, Random a) => g -> (a, g). Whoa! Some new typeclasses in this type declaration up in here! The RandomGen typeclass is for types that can act as sources of randomness. The Random typeclass is for things that can take on random values. A boolean value can take on a random value, namely True or False. A number can also take up a plethora of different random values. Can a function take on a random value? I don't think so, probably not! If we try to translate the type declaration of random to English, we get something like: it takes a random generator (that's our source of randomness) and returns a random value and a new random generator. Why does it also return a new generator as well as a random value? Well, we'll see in a moment.
To use our random function, we have to get our hands on one of those random generators. The System.Random module exports a cool type, namely StdGen that is an instance of the RandomGen typeclass. We can either make a StdGen manually or we can tell the system to give us one based on a multitude of sort of random stuff.
To manually make a random generator, use the mkStdGen function. It has a type of mkStdGen :: Int -> StdGen. It takes an integer and based on that, gives us a random generator. Okay then, let's try using random and mkStdGen in tandem to get a (hardly random) number.
ghci> random (mkStdGen 100)
<interactive>:1:0: Ambiguous type variable `a' in the constraint: `Random a' arising from a use of `random' at <interactive>:1:0-20 Probable fix: add a type signature that fixes these type variable(s)
What's this? Ah, right, the random function can return a value of any type that's part of the Random typeclass, so we have to inform Haskell what kind of type we want. Also let's not forget that it returns a random value and a random generator in a pair.
ghci> random (mkStdGen 100) :: (Int, StdGen) (-1352021624,651872571 1655838864)
Finally! A number that looks kind of random! The first component of the tuple is our number whereas the second component is a textual representation of our new random generator. What happens if we call random with the same random generator again?
ghci> random (mkStdGen 100) :: (Int, StdGen) (-1352021624,651872571 1655838864)
Of course. The same result for the same parameters. So let's try giving it a different random generator as a parameter.
ghci> random (mkStdGen 949494) :: (Int, StdGen) (539963926,466647808 1655838864)
Alright, cool, great, a different number. We can use the type annotation to get different types back from that function.
ghci> random (mkStdGen 949488) :: (Float, StdGen) (0.8938442,1597344447 1655838864) ghci> random (mkStdGen 949488) :: (Bool, StdGen) (False,1485632275 40692) ghci> random (mkStdGen 949488) :: (Integer, StdGen) (1691547873,1597344447 1655838864)
Let's make a function that simulates tossing a coin three times. If random didn't return a new generator along with a random value, we'd have to make this function take three random generators as a parameter and then return coin tosses for each of them. But that sounds wrong because if one generator can make a random value of type Int (which can take on a load of different values), it should be able to make three coin tosses (which can take on precisely eight combinations). So this is where random returning a new generator along with a value really comes in handy.
We'll represent a coin with a simple Bool. True is tails, False is heads.
threeCoins :: StdGen -> (Bool, Bool, Bool) threeCoins gen = let (firstCoin, newGen) = random gen (secondCoin, newGen') = random newGen (thirdCoin, newGen'') = random newGen' in (firstCoin, secondCoin, thirdCoin)
We call random with the generator we got as a parameter to get a coin and a new generator. Then we call it again, only this time with our new generator, to get the second coin. We do the same for the third coin. Had we called it with the same generator every time, all the coins would have had the same value and we'd only be able to get (False, False, False) or (True, True, True) as a result.
ghci> threeCoins (mkStdGen 21) (True,True,True) ghci> threeCoins (mkStdGen 22) (True,False,True) ghci> threeCoins (mkStdGen 943) (True,False,True) ghci> threeCoins (mkStdGen 944) (True,True,True)
Notice that we didn't have to do random gen :: (Bool, StdGen). That's because we already specified that we want booleans in the type declaration of the function. That's why Haskell can infer that we want a boolean value in this case.
So what if we want to flip four coins? Or five? Well, there's a function called randoms that takes a generator and returns an infinite sequence of values based on that generator.
ghci> take 5 $ randoms (mkStdGen 11) :: [Int] [-1807975507,545074951,-1015194702,-1622477312,-502893664] ghci> take 5 $ randoms (mkStdGen 11) :: [Bool] [True,True,True,True,False] ghci> take 5 $ randoms (mkStdGen 11) :: [Float] [7.904789e-2,0.62691015,0.26363158,0.12223756,0.38291094]
Why doesn't randoms return a new generator as well as a list? We could implement the randoms function very easily like this:
randoms' :: (RandomGen g, Random a) => g -> [a] randoms' gen = let (value, newGen) = random gen in value:randoms' newGen
A recursive definition. We get a random value and a new generator from the current generator and then make a list that has the value as its head and random numbers based on the new generator as its tail. Because we have to be able to potentially generate an infinite amount of numbers, we can't give the new random generator back.
We could make a function that generates a finite stream of numbers and a new generator like this:
finiteRandoms :: (RandomGen g, Random a, Num n) => n -> g -> ([a], g) finiteRandoms 0 gen = ([], gen) finiteRandoms n gen = let (value, newGen) = random gen (restOfList, finalGen) = finiteRandoms (n-1) newGen in (value:restOfList, finalGen)
Again, a recursive definition. We say that if we want 0 numbers, we just return an empty list and the generator that was given to us. For any other number of random values, we first get one random number and a new generator. That will be the head. Then we say that the tail will be n - 1 numbers generated with the new generator. Then we return the head and the rest of the list joined and the final generator that we got from getting the n - 1 random numbers.
What if we want a random value in some sort of range? All the random integers so far were outrageously big or small. What if we want to to throw a die? Well, we use randomR for that purpose. It has a type of randomR :: (RandomGen g, Random a) :: (a, a) -> g -> (a, g), meaning that it's kind of like random, only it takes as its first parameter a pair of values that set the lower and upper bounds and the final value produced will be within those bounds.
ghci> randomR (1,6) (mkStdGen 359353) (6,1494289578 40692) ghci> randomR (1,6) (mkStdGen 35935335) (3,1250031057 40692)
There's also randomRs, which produces a stream of random values within our defined ranges. Check this out:
ghci> take 10 $ randomRs ('a','z') (mkStdGen 3) :: [Char] "ndkxbvmomg"
Nice, looks like a super secret password or something.
You may be asking yourself, what does this section have to do with I/O anyway? We haven't done anything concerning I/O so far. Well, so far we've always made our random number generator manually by making it with some arbitrary integer. The problem is, if we do that in our real programs, they will always return the same random numbers, which is no good for us. That's why System.Random offers the getStdGen I/O action, which has a type of IO StdGen. When your program starts, it asks the system for a good random number generator and stores that in a so called global generator. getStdGen fetches you that global random generator when you bind it to something.
Here's a simple program that generates a random string.
import System.Random main = do gen <- getStdGen putStr $ take 20 (randomRs ('a','z') gen)
$ runhaskell random_string.hs pybphhzzhuepknbykxhe $ runhaskell random_string.hs eiqgcxykivpudlsvvjpg $ runhaskell random_string.hs nzdceoconysdgcyqjruo $ runhaskell random_string.hs bakzhnnuzrkgvesqplrx
Be careful though, just performing getStdGen twice will ask the system for the same global generator twice. If you do this:
import System.Random main = do gen <- getStdGen putStrLn $ take 20 (randomRs ('a','z') gen) gen2 <- getStdGen putStr $ take 20 (randomRs ('a','z') gen2)
you will get the same string printed out twice! One way to get two different strings of length 20 is to set up an infinite stream and then take the first 20 characters and print them out in one line and then take the second set of 20 characters and print them out in the second line. For this, we can use the splitAt function from Data.List, which splits a list at some index and returns a tuple that has the first part as the first component and the second part as the second component.
import System.Random import Data.List main = do gen <- getStdGen let randomChars = randomRs ('a','z') gen (first20, rest) = splitAt 20 randomChars (second20, _) = splitAt 20 rest putStrLn first20 putStr second20
Another way is to use the newStdGen action, which splits our current random generator into two generators. It updates the global random generator with one of them and encapsulates the other as its result.
import System.Random main = do gen <- getStdGen putStrLn $ take 20 (randomRs ('a','z') gen) gen' <- newStdGen putStr $ take 20 (randomRs ('a','z') gen')
Not only do we get a new random generator when we bind newStdGen to something, the global one gets updated as well, so if we do getStdGen again and bind it to something, we'll get a generator that's not the same as gen.
Here's a little program that will make the user guess which number it's thinking of.
import System.Random import Control.Monad(when) main = do gen <- getStdGen askForNumber gen askForNumber :: StdGen -> IO () askForNumber gen = do let (randNumber, newGen) = randomR (1,10) gen :: (Int, StdGen) putStr "Which number in the range from 1 to 10 am I thinking of? " numberString <- getLine when (not $ null numberString) $ do let number = read numberString if randNumber == number then putStrLn "You are correct!" else putStrLn $ "Sorry, it was " ++ show randNumber askForNumber newGen
We make a function askForNumber, which takes a random number generator and returns an I/O action that will prompt the user for a number and tell him if he guessed it right. In that function, we first generate a random number and a new generator based on the generator that we got as a parameter and call them randNumber and newGen. Let's say that the number generated was 7. Then we tell the user to guess which number we're thinking of. We perform getLine and bind its result to numberString. When the user enters 7, numberString becomes "7". Next, we use when to check if the string the user entered is an empty string. If it is, an empty I/O action of return () is performed, which effectively ends the program. If it isn't, the action consisting of that do block right there gets performed. We use read on numberString to convert it to a number, so number is now 7.
Excuse me! If the user gives us some input here that read can't read (like "haha" ), our program will crash with an ugly error message. If you don't want your program to crash on erronous input, use reads, which returns an empty list when it fails to read a string. When it succeeds, it returns a singleton list with a tuple that has our desired value as one component and a string with what it didn't consume as the other.
We check if the number that we entered is equal to the one generated randomly and give the user the appropriate message. And then we call askForNumber recursively, only this time with the new generator that we got, which gives us an I/O action that's just like the one we performed, only it depends on a different generator and we perform it.
main consists of just getting a random generator from the system and calling askForNumber with it to get the initial action.
Here's our program in action!
$ runhaskell guess_the_number.hs Which number in the range from 1 to 10 am I thinking of? 4 Sorry, it was 3 Which number in the range from 1 to 10 am I thinking of? 10 You are correct! Which number in the range from 1 to 10 am I thinking of? 2 Sorry, it was 4 Which number in the range from 1 to 10 am I thinking of? 5 Sorry, it was 10 Which number in the range from 1 to 10 am I thinking of?
Another way to make this same program is like this:
import System.Random import Control.Monad(when) main = do gen <- getStdGen let (randNumber, _) = randomR (1,10) gen :: (Int, StdGen) putStr "Which number in the range from 1 to 10 am I thinking of? " numberString <- getLine when (not $ null numberString) $ do let number = read numberString if randNumber == number then putStrLn "You are correct!" else putStrLn $ "Sorry, it was " ++ show randNumber newStdGen main
It's very similar to the previous version, only instead of making a function that takes a generator and then calls itself recursively with the new updated generator, we do all the work in main. After telling the user whether they were correct in their guess or not, we update the global generator and then call main again. Both approaches are valid but I like the first one more since it does less stuff in main and also provides us with a function that we can reuse easily.
Bytestrings
Lists are a cool and useful data structure. So far, we've used them pretty much everywhere. There are a multitude of functions that operate on them and Haskell's laziness allows us to exchange the for and while loops of other languages for filtering and mapping over lists, because evaluation will only happen once it really needs to, so things like infinite lists (and even infinite lists of infinite lists!) are no problem for us. That's why lists can also be used to represent streams, either when reading from the standard input or when reading from files. We can just open a file and read it as a string, even though it will only be accessed when the need arises.
However, processing files as strings has one drawback: it tends to be slow. As you know, String is a type synonym for [Char]. Chars don't have a fixed size, because it takes several bytes to represent a character from, say, Unicode. Furthemore, lists are really lazy. If you have a list like [1, |
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Benoit Sicard (France) had an Armenian friend in high school. He visited Armenia in 2014 as part of a larger trip throughout the region and decided that he would try to return for a more immersive experience. Currently completing a Master’s in International Business, Benoit is fulfilling his university internship requirements at the Enterprise Incubator Foundation. He is also supporting Meline’s Garden as they research and plan how to target new foreign markets for their Armenian-grown products.
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As you plan your 2017 travels, why not consider a service experience in Armenia? AVC will customize the experience to suit your background and interests. Email us your questions at info@avc.am. When you’re ready, you can apply online.Blades of Steel, later released in Japan as Konamic Ice Hockey (コナミック アイスホッケー, Konamikku Aisu Hokkē), is an ice hockey video game released by Konami for North American arcades in 1987, and ported to the Family Computer Disk System and Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. All teams are fictional but based out of real Canadian and American cities. The game is known for its fast paced hockey action and especially for the fighting. It is a one or two player game. When playing against the computer, there are three difficulty levels to choose from: Junior, College, and Pro (with Pro being the most difficult and Junior being the easiest). Each team consists of three forwards, two defencemen, and a goaltender.
The NES version was re-released on Nintendo's Virtual Console service on December 24, 2007. The arcade version was re-released on Microsoft's Game Room service on November 24, 2010.[3]
Gameplay [ edit ]
An in-game screenshot of the NES version.
At the beginning of the game, players can select either "Exhibition" or "Tournament" matches. An exhibition match is just one game played against either the computer or another player. Tournament matches are similar to the NHL playoffs. It starts out as one team of the player's choice going against other teams in a playoff style tournament. The team that is successful in beating all of the opposing teams is awarded the Cup.[4]
Fighting in the game is initiated whenever two players bump into each other three times in a row without hitting another player. The two players will stop skating and engage in pre-fight confrontation where they are able to exchange punches if they choose. If one player is able to rapidly punch their opponent during the pre-fight there is a chance they will knock their opponent down and neither player suffers a penalty. If mutual punches are thrown during the pre-fight sequence, then a voice yells "fight", the fight screen appears, and the gamers take control of their players. During the fight a player can punch high, punch low, block high, or block low and is given a health bar of five hits. The loser is the first person to get hit five times, is given the penalty, and sent to the penalty box (the winner is not punished), creating a power play opportunity of 5-on-4 skaters. Up to four players can be penalized, for a maximum of a 5-on-1 advantage. If a fight occurs close to one of the nets, the referee may break up the fight and call a "penalty shot".
During the second intermission, either a playable mini-game will appear for Player One to play or a Konami ad will appear featuring a bear shooting the puck into a net mouthing the words "Nice Shot!" The mini-game is actually an advertisement for Contra and other Konami games, in which (at one point) a little spaceship is trying to destroy a much larger spaceship, this being a reference to Gradius.
If the score is tied at the end of the game, a shoot out (similar to a penalty shot) is used to determine the winner. Each team gets five shots. The team with the most goals after five shots is the winner. If, after that, the game is still tied, each team keeps getting one more shot until a winner is determined.
There are a total of eight teams (four from Canada and four from the United States), each one representing a city that housed a NHL team at the time of development. The four Canadian cities are Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, and Edmonton. The four American teams are from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Minnesota. Teams are depicted with jerseys that vary in color.[citation needed]
This game also features distinct voice samples, which were rare at the time in NES games. Most notably, the voice says "Blades of Steel!" on the title screen, "FACEOFF!" before each faceoff, "FIGHT!" when a fight breaks out, "Get the pass" after a successful pass is made, "Penalty Shot," and an "Aaahhh!" made by the losing player after a fight, or when a player skates into a goalie. The NES passing sound bite is garbled and has been interpreted as "With the pass", "It's a pass", etc. but the arcade passing bite is clearly audible and confirms the phrase as "Get the pass". The arcade version has a greater variety of sound bites and commentary owing to the hardware's better speech faculties and extra memory.[citation needed]
Blades of Steel differs from the professional game in the NHL in the late 1980s in that it has no offside rule, and its interpretation of penalties is somewhat unusual.[citation needed] The game's officials only call two penalties. Players who lose a fistfight are penalized for two minutes, an abstract reworking of the five-minute offsetting majors normally assigned in the event of a fight. Should a fight break out in front of one team's net, then the player on offense gets a penalty shot.[citation needed] The penalty shot is administered in the style of a soccer penalty shot, in that the shooting player must stand on the blue line, instead of moving towards the goaltender. The game also recognizes icing infractions, with an appropriate game reset and faceoff in the liable team's zone.
Reception and legacy [ edit ]
Reception Review scores Publication Score AllGame [5] IGN 7.5/10 [6]
Blades of Steel has been well received by critics. Allgame editor Skyler Miller described the game as "one of the most enjoyable sports games of its era".[5]For all the talk about the advantages of Windows 8 over Windows 7—for example, account sync, better multiple monitor support, and faster startup times—some people just can't get past Windows 8's radical shift in user interface. Some may even want to ditch Windows 8 altogether in favor of Windows 7 after spending a few days with the new OS.
In a Monday blog post, usability expert Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group explained in excruciating detail exactly why and how Windows 8 is difficult to use. It was a damning report that might have many questioning whether to take the Windows 8 plunge. The good news is you can buy a PC loaded with Windows 8 Pro, try out the new OS, and then downgrade to Windows 7. Unfortunately, however, the road back to Windows 7 can be confusing and full of twists.
Hewlett-Packard is typical: It does not support downgrades of consumer-grade Windows 8 PCs to Windows 7. But if you buy a machine loaded with Windows 8 Pro, you can make the jump. HP's policy is based on Microsoft's licensing terms, which support downgrade rights only to new PCs preloaded with Windows 8 Pro, the version of Windows designed for business.
[See related: 8 worst Windows 8 irritations (and how to fix them) ]
Unfortunately, machines loaded with Windows 8 Pro will demand a pricing premium over similarly spec'd Windows 8 systems. We ran a quick comparison survey of machines from HP, Dell, and Toshiba, and found that an upgrade to the Pro version of Windows 8 increased system prices anywhere between $35 and $100.
And even when the price delta is small enough to justify buying a Windows 8 Pro machine (complete with downgrade rights!), the downgrade process can still be difficult to figure out. When PCWorld researched this, sales and support reps for both Microsoft and major PC manufacturers told us two different stories.
A Dell representative said that to downgrade from Windows 8, you needed to buy a new, unused copy of Windows 7—thus making the whole point of having downgrade rights pointless. Another representative said a Windows 7 disc image would be built into new Windows 8 Pro machines. This contradicts pretty much everything Microsoft has ever posted online about downgrade rights.
But after scouring Microsoft's online support pages, checking out real-world downgrade experiences on various forums, and then confirming the process with Microsoft's press team, we can now share the truth about how downgrades work for anyone with a PC running Windows 8 Pro.
But first: Why downgrade?
Microsoft offers a downgrade path mostly for enterprise and small business PC users who may not be ready to use the new version of Windows. Some businesses don't want to suffer the training costs associated with rolling out a new OS to employee workstations. Others are concerned about incompatibility issues with legacy software.
Consumers, on the other hand, usually want to dump Windows 8 because they simply don't like the new OS. The Nielsen Norman Group found consumers' main gripe with Windows 8 is the dual nature of the system, which combines desktop and touch-friendly environments in an oftentimes confusing melange. Not only is the user interface inconsistent, it also requires users to remember where to go for which features, and to waste time switching between interfaces.
[See Related: Windows 8 interface called 'disappointing' by usability expert ]
You need to really want it
If you already know that you're going to downgrade to Windows 7, you could save yourself some grief and buy a new Windows 7 PC. First, just because you have the right to downgrade a Windows 8 Pro machine to Windows 7 doesn't mean running the older OS on newer hardware will be problem-free. HP, for example, warns that it hasn't tested all of its Windows 8 hardware with Windows 7. So the company says there's no guarantee you'll be able to download the drivers you need to run your Windows 7 system properly.
Second, even though Microsoft and its partners are pushing Windows 8, you can still find Windows 7 machines for sale on Amazon, Best Buy, and Dell, to name a few locations. Amazon, for example, is selling a limited number of 15.6-inch Samsung laptops featuring a 2.4 GHz Intel Core i3-2370M processor, 6GB RAM, a 750 GB HDD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium for $500.
Best Buy has a 14-inch Asus laptop with a 2.3Ghz Intel Pentium processor, 4GB RAM, a 320GB HDD, and 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium for $300. You can find comparable Windows 8 machines for around $100 to $200 more. So you will also save a bit of money if you purchase a Windows 7 machine instead of Windows 8. Also, if you buy a Windows 7 machine before January 31, 2013, you have until February 28 to purchase a Windows 8 upgrade for $15.
Here's the bottom line taking pricing and installation headaches into consideration: As long as Windows 7 is available on new PCs, buying a Windows 8 Pro machine with downgrade rights really only makes sense if you plan on returning to Windows 8 at a later date. That way, you'll have hardware built for the new version of Windows such as a convertible laptop or an all-in-one desktop PC with a touchscreen.
It's also important to note that you cannot downgrade to Windows 7 after buying a Windows 8 Pro upgrade for an old Vista or Windows XP machine. Your only possible downgrade path in that situation is to reinstall the original OS that came with your PC, as long as you still have your old system discs that is.
Next Up: What can Windows 8 Pro downgrade to?ProRes is becoming a standard file format for professionals who use Final Cut Pro. The latest version of Final Cut Pro currently offers 5 flavors of ProRes. The set of Apple ProRes codecs provides all the necessary data rates for most professionals.ProRes 422 has a data rate of 145 Mbps.Data Rates for Pro-Res is measured in Mbps. So, what exactly does Mbps mean? How does it relate to'real-world' storage requirements for the 'non-geek'?For starters..... 1 byte equals 8 bits of data. Hence, that's why everything works with a base of 8 in terms of computer processors. 8 bit processing, 16 bit processing, 32 bit processing, and so on......stands for 1 Megabit per second, and 1 Megabit is 8,000 bytes. This also means thatWhew! make sense? Don't worry.Honestly, talking in bits and bytes starts to make my head spin. I personally tend to think of things in terms of Gigabytes and Terabytes. If you're like me, you want to know how many minutes of ProRes storage will fit on your new 500GB, or 1TB drive.So here it is: A one terabyte drive will hold roughly 1,000 minutes of ProRes 422 media. Yes, that's pretty easy math!or 500 Gigs = 500 minutes. Got it?However, this calculation is only an approximate. The amount of storage will also depend on things like the number of audio tracks, and image complexity when it's being encoded into ProRes.However, if you are curious how to get to that number, here's the math:
Note to PC Users: You can download the
You can download the Apple Pro Res QuickTime Decoder so you can play QuickTime movies encoded with ProRes on your Windows PC. If necessary, you'll be able to import the media into you editing system. One catch though... you won't be able to export back out to ProRes media on a PC.
Divide the data rate by 8. So for ProRes 442 which has a data rate of 145 Mpbs, divide 145 by 8 which comes out to almost 18 Megabytes per second.The Real Math: 145 / 8 = 18.125Then multiply 18 by 60 to get how much storage it will take up for every minute. So 1 minute of ProRes 422 will take up roughly 1000 megabytes.The Real Math: 18.125 x 60 = 1087.50 megabytes per minute (or 18.1 MB/sec)Since 1 gigabyte is 1000 megabytes, it comes out to roughly 1 gigabyte per minute when working with ProRes 422.You'll notice in the screen shot below, that the data rate for these ProRes 422 clips are just below 17 MB/sec which is a bit lower than 18.125 based on my calculations. However, these clips don't have any audio, which will use some additional storage.My point here is to come up with an approximation, and it's always good to leave a little extra head room when calculating storage requirements. You never want to end up on the short end.The list of ProRes codec choices are shown below.(data rate of 45 Mbps)I've found this is good for editing in multi-camera mode, and/or if you need a smaller footrpint to edit on a Mac Book Pro. When you are finished editing, just replace your Proxy Media with your full res ProRes 442 media. Final Cut Pro will then relink to the new files.(data rate of 100 Mbps)If your doing basic cuts and you're not working with a lot of layers and graphics, I've found ProRes LT works fantastic for news, sports, and talking heads. I've found the quality holds up extremely well, and saves quite a bit of hard drive space when compared to the standard ProRes 422 codec.(data rate of 145 Mpbs)This has become the standard editing codec for most professional that are working with multiple layers of video and need to maintain a high quality image throughout the entire post production process.(data rate of 200 Mbps)If image quality if the utmost importance, and you are working with hi-end graphics and color correction techniques, then you may want to work with ProRes 422HQ.(data rate of 330 Mbps)Even though ProRes 4444 takes up a hefty footprint, it's the only ProRes codec that will allow you to export out with an Alpha Channel. With a high data rate, this codec is also recommended when working with RED Camera footage. If you are an Avid Media Composer user running your software on a Mac, you will also be able to export your QuickTime movie files as ProRes.Send, receieve, store Bitcoin (BTC) by SMS
SMS: The next phase of Bitcoin adoption
Coinapult Blocked Unblock Follow Following Dec 1, 2014
Coinapult is excited to announce the re-launch of our SMS Bitcoin service. Coinapult was first to market with Bitcoin by SMS services in 2012. At that point, the service was only available in the US and Canada, it’s now available worldwide.*
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The delivery of bitcoin services over SMS could well be one of the greatest opportunities we can act on today, to lower the barriers to global trade and establish a new era of economic inclusion, cooperation and empowerment.
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Our SMS bitcoin service empowers users from around the world to send, receive, lock, and obtain price information with simple text message commands.**
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We have launched the tools into the wild, the next task is raising awareness about the opportunities that have been created. Please share this post to help us raise awareness, or follow our quick start guide below to create a wallet and see for yourself.
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BTC by SMS walkthrough
*Support for this service in the US has been discontinued. We’re working on bringing it back in the future.
**International SMS rates may apply, please consult your local carrier.Sphoṭa (Devanagari स्फोट, the Sanskrit for "bursting, opening", "spurt") is an important concept in the Indian grammatical tradition of Vyakarana, relating to the problem of speech production, how the mind orders linguistic units into coherent discourse and meaning.
The theory of sphoṭa is associated with Bhartṛhari ( c. 5th century ), an early figure in Indic linguistic theory, mentioned in the 670s by Chinese traveller Yi-Jing. Bhartṛhari is the author of the Vākyapadīya ("[treatise] on words and sentences"). The work is divided into three books, the Brahma-kāṇḍa, (or Āgama-samuccaya "aggregation of traditions"), the Vākya-kāṇḍa, and the Pada-kāṇḍa (or Prakīrṇaka "miscellaneous").
He theorized the act of speech as being made up of three stages:
Conceptualization by the speaker (Paśyantī "idea") Performance of speaking (Madhyamā "medium") Comprehension by the interpreter (Vaikharī "complete utterance").
Bhartṛhari is of the śabda-advaita "speech monistic" school which identifies language and cognition. According to George Cardona, "Vākyapadīya is considered to be the major Indian work of its time on grammar, semantics and philosophy."
Origin of the term [ edit ]
While the sphoṭa theory proper (sphoṭavāda) originates with Bhartṛhari, the term has a longer history of use in the technical vocabulary of Sanskrit grammarians, and Bhartṛhari may have been building on the ideas of his predecessors, whose works are partly lost.
Sanskrit sphoṭa is etymologically derived from the root sphuṭ 'to burst'. It is used in its technical linguistic sense by Patañjali (2nd century BCE), in reference to the "bursting forth" of meaning or idea on the mind as language is uttered. Patañjali's sphoṭa is the invariant quality of speech. The acoustic element (dhvani) can be long or short, loud or soft, but the sphoṭa remains unaffected by individual speaker differences. Thus, a single phoneme (varṇa) such as /k/, /p/ or /a/ is an abstraction, distinct from variants produced in actual enunciation.[2] Eternal qualities in language are already postulated by Yāska, in his Nirukta (1.1), where reference is made to another ancient grammarian, Audumbarāyaṇa, about whose work nothing is known, but who has been suggested as the original source of the concept.[3] The grammarian Vyāḍi, author of the lost text Saṃgraha, may have developed some ideas in sphoṭa theory; in particular some distinctions relevant to dhvani are referred to by Bhartṛhari.[4]
There is no use of sphoṭa as a technical term prior to Patañjali, but Pāṇini (6.1.123) refers to a grammarian named Sphoṭāyana as one of his predecessors. This has induced Pāṇini's medieval commentators (such as Haradatta) to ascribe the first development of the sphoṭavāda to Sphoṭāyana.
Vākyapadīya [ edit ]
The account of the Chinese traveller Yi-Jing places a firm terminus ante quem of AD 670 on Bhartrhari. Scholarly opinion had formerly tended to place him in the 6th or 7th century; current consensus places him in the 5th century. By some traditional accounts, he is the same as the poet Bhartṛhari who wrote the Śatakatraya.
In the Vākyapadīya, the term sphoṭa takes on a finer nuance, but there is some dissension among scholars as to what Bhartṛhari intended to say. Sphoṭa retains its invariant attribute, but sometimes its indivisibility is emphasized and at other times it is said to operate at several levels. In verse I.93, Bhartṛhari states that the sphota is the universal or linguistic type — sentence-type or word-type, as opposed to their tokens (sounds).[2]
Bhartṛhari develops this doctrine in a metaphysical setting, where he views sphoṭa as the language capability of man, revealing his consciousness.[5] Indeed, the ultimate reality is also expressible in language, the śabda-brahman, or "Eternal Verbum". Early Indologists such as A. B. Keith felt that Bhartṛhari's sphoṭa was a mystical notion, owing to the metaphysical underpinning of Bhartṛhari's text, Vākyapādiya where it is discussed. Also, the notion of "flash or insight" or "revelation" central to the concept also lent itself to this viewpoint. However, the modern view[according to whom?] is that it is perhaps a more psychological distinction.
Bhartṛhari expands on the notion of sphoṭa in Patañjali, and discusses three levels:
varṇa-sphoṭa, at the syllable level. George Cardona feels that this remains an abstraction of sound, a further refinement on Patañjali for the concept of phoneme- now it stands for units of sound. pada-sphoṭa, at the word level, and vakya-sphoṭa, at the sentence level.
He makes a distinction between sphoṭa, which is whole and indivisible, and nāda, the sound, which is sequenced and therefore divisible. The sphoṭa is the causal root, the intention, behind an utterance, in which sense is similar to the notion of lemma in most psycholinguistic theories of speech production. However, sphoṭa arises also in the listener, which is different from the lemma position. Uttering the nāda induces the same mental state or sphoṭa in the listener - it comes as a whole, in a flash of recognition or intuition (pratibhā,'shining forth'). This is particularly true for vakya-sphoṭa, where the entire sentence is thought of (by the speaker), and grasped (by the listener) as a whole.
Bimal K. Matilal (1990) has tried to unify these views - he feels that for Bhartṛhari the very process of thinking involves vibrations, so that thought has some sound-like properties. Thought operates by śabdanaor'speaking', - so that the mechanisms of thought are the same as that of language. Indeed, Bhartṛhari seems to be saying that thought is not possible without language. This leads to a somewhat whorfian position on the relationship between language and thought. The sphoṭa then is the carrier of this thought, as a primordial vibration.
Sometimes the nāda-sphoṭa distinction is posited in terms of the signifier-signified mapping, but this is a misconception. In traditional Sanskrit linguistic discourse (e.g. in Katyāyana), vācaka refers to the signifier, and 'vācya' the signified. The 'vācaka-vācya' relation is eternal for Katyāyana and the Mīmāṃsakas, but is conventional among the Nyāya. However, in Bhartṛhari, this duality is given up in favour of a more holistic view - for him, there is no independent meaning or signified; the meaning is inherent in the word or the sphoṭa itself.
Reception [ edit ]
Vyākaraṇa [ edit ]
Sphoṭa theory remained widely influential in Indian philosophy of language and was the focus of much debate over several centuries. It was adopted by most scholars of Vyākaraṇa (grammar), but both the Mīmāṃsā and Nyāya schools rejected it, primarily on the grounds of compositionality. Adherents of the'sphota' doctrine were holistic or non-compositional (a-khanḍa-pakṣa), suggesting that many larger units of language are understood as a whole, whereas the Mīmāṃsakas in particular proposed compositionality (khanḍa-pakṣa). According to the former, word meanings, if any, are arrived at after analyzing the sentences in which they occur. This debate had many of the features animating present day debates in language over semantic holism, for example.
The Mīmāṃsakas felt that the sound-units or the letters alone make up the word. The sound-units are uttered in sequence, but each leaves behind an impression, and the meaning is grasped only when the last unit is uttered. The position was most ably stated by Kumarila Bhatta (7th century) who argued that the'sphoṭas' at the word and sentence level are after all composed of the smaller units, and cannot be different from their combination.[6] However, in the end it is cognized as a whole, and this leads to the misperception of the sphoṭa as a single indivisible unit. Each sound unit in the utterance is an eternal, and the actual sounds differ owing to differences in manifestation.
The Nyāya view is enunciated among others by Jayanta (9th century), who argues against the Mīmāṃsā position by saying that the sound units as uttered are different; e.g. for the sound [g], we infer its 'g-hood' based on its similarity to other such sounds, and not because of any underlying eternal. Also, the vācaka-vācya linkage is viewed as arbitrary and conventional, and not eternal. However, he agrees with Kumarila in terms of the compositionality of an utterance.
Throughout the second millennium, a number of treatises discussed the sphoṭa doctrine. Particularly notable is Nageśabhaṭṭa's Sphotavāda (18th century). Nageśa clearly defines sphoṭa as a carrier of meaning, and identifies eight levels, some of which are divisible.
Modern linguistics [ edit ]
In modern times, scholars of Bhartṛhari have included Ferdinand de Saussure, who did his doctoral work on the genitive in Sanskrit, and lectured on Sanskrit and Indo-European languages at the Paris and at the University of Geneva for nearly three decades. It is thought that he might have been influenced by some ideas of Bhartṛhari, particularly the sphoṭa debate. In particular, his description of the sign, as composed of the signifier and the signified, where these entities are not separable - the whole mapping from sound to denotation constitutes the sign, seems to have some colourings of sphoṭa in it. Many other prominent European scholars around 1900, including linguists such as Leonard Bloomfield and Roman Jakobson may have been influenced by Bhartṛhari.[7]
Editions of the Vākyapadīya [ edit ]
Wilhelm Rau, Bhartṛharis Vākyapadīya / die mūlakārikās nach den Handschriften hrsg. und mit einem pāda-Index versehen, Wiesbaden : Steiner, 1977, Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 42,4
, Wiesbaden : Steiner, 1977, Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 42,4 Wilhelm Rau, Bhartṛharis Vākyapadīya II : Text der Palmblatt-Handschrift Trivandrum S.N. 532 (= A), Stuttgart : Steiner, 1991, Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Nr. 7, ISBN 3-515-06001-4
, Stuttgart : Steiner, 1991, Abhandlungen der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Klasse, Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur Nr. 7, ISBN 3-515-06001-4 Saroja Bhate, Word index to the Vākyapadīya of Bhartr̥hari, together with the complete text of the Vākyapadīya (Delhi: Eastern Book Linkers, 1992.) ISBN 8185133549 Open Library
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Alessandro Graheli, Teoria dello Sphoṭa nel sesto Ahnikā della Nyāyamañjarī di Jayantabhaṭṭa (2003), University "La Sapienza" thesis, Rome (2003).
(2003), University "La Sapienza" thesis, Rome (2003). Alessandro Graheli, History and Transmission of the Nyāyamañjarī. Crtical Edition of the Section on the Sphoṭa, Wien: Akademie Verlag, 2015.
, Wien: Akademie Verlag, 2015. Clear, E. H., 'Hindu philosophy', in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, London: Routledge (1998) [1]
, London: Routledge (1998) [1] Saroja Bhate, Johannes Bronkhorst (eds.), Bhartṛhari - philosopher and grammarian : proceedings of the First International Conference on Bhartṛhari, University of Poona, January 6–8, 1992, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1997, ISBN 81-208-1198-4
, University of Poona, January 6–8, 1992, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1997, ISBN 81-208-1198-4 K. Raghavan Pillai (trans.), Bhartrihari. The Vâkyapadîya, Critical texts of Cantos I and II with English Translation Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971.
Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1971. Coward, Harold G., The Sphota Theory of Language: A Philosophical Analysis, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980.
, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1980. Herzberger, Radhika, Bhartrihari and the Buddhists, Dordrecht: D. Reidel/Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986.
, Dordrecht: D. Reidel/Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1986. Houben, Jan E.M., The Sambanda Samuddesha and Bhartrihari's Philosophy of Language, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995.
, Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995. Iyer, Subramania, K.A., Bhartrihari. A Study of Vâkyapadîya in the Light of Ancient Commentaries, Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate Research Institute, 1969, reprint 1997.
, Poona: Deccan College Postgraduate Research Institute, 1969, reprint 1997. Shah, K.J., "Bhartrihari and Wittgenstein" in Perspectives on the Philosophy of Meaning (Vol. I, No. 1. New Delhi.)1/1 (1990): 80-95.
(Vol. I, No. 1. New Delhi.)1/1 (1990): 80-95. Saroja Bhate, Johannes Bronkhorst (eds.), Bhartṛhari - philosopher and grammarian : proceedings of the First International Conference on Bhartṛhari, University of Poona, January 6–8, 1992, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1997, ISBN 81-208-1198-4
, University of Poona, January 6–8, 1992, Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1997, ISBN 81-208-1198-4 Patnaik, Tandra, Śabda : a study of Bhartrhari's philosophy of language, New Delhi : DK Printworld, 1994, ISBN 81-246-0028-7.
, New Delhi : DK Printworld, 1994, ISBN 81-246-0028-7. Maria Piera Candotti, Interprétations du discours métalinguistique : la fortune du sūtra A 1 1 68 chez Patañjali et Bhartṛhari, Kykéion studi e testi. 1, Scienze delle religioni, Firenze University Press, 2006, Diss. Univ. Lausanne, 2004, ISBN 978-88-8453-452-1Each of the twelve essays in this volume takes up an issue pertaining to one of the three titular topics or, more often, some combination thereof. The essays are tied together by implicit or explicit reference to some aspect of the problem of realism which Raftopoulos and Machamer describe as, "the problem of our access (if any) to the world" (p. 1). In their introductory chapter, they succeed in showing the relevance of some of the issues discussed in the papers on perception and reference to the question of whether perception or linguistic terms put the perceiver into an epistemically direct relation to the world, or whether these relations are instead mediated by our concepts or theories, or are otherwise interest dependent.
This collection will be of interest to anyone concerned with the problem of realism in perception and linguistic reference. Some themes running through the volume include: how perception individuates, picks out and tracks perceptual objects; the relation between embodiment and action and perceptual or linguistic representations; the relation between reference of perceptual demonstratives and linguistic reference; the role of location in perceptual individuation of objects; the validity of common arguments for indirect realism such as the argument from illusion; the role of behavior in reference and whether embodied or situated accounts affect the topic of reference.
The book may be of |
to keep in mind when using one-way bindings (as mentioned in the “First impressions” paragraph).
Caveats
In one-way binding, Object values are set to the isolate Component using the same value, the parent Object’s identity. When we break this identity (like I did above in the examples), we’re technically “breaking” that identity binding and the parent’s $watch will not fire. Objects are bound by reference, which means that if we change a property, it’ll still kind-of two-way bind:
Our isolate property parent.someObject is isolated as obj, which means we can access this.obj.todd.age to get my age. We can also mutate this property by setting a new value. This will force the parent to also update as Objects are bound by reference and not copied by Angular.
I’ve omitted the Primitive properties for this as it’s not what we’re interested in:By: Mercer May
The professionalization of public policy has led to an era in which experts rule the field – each individual seeking to stake out their own niche and claim ownership over it. Because of this, in depth analysis of specific topics is rampant. Policy prescriptions carry down to the tiniest of details. While in some cases this may be viewed as a positive, it has also led to the dangerous norm of viewing policy in isolation and not as an interconnected, holistic practice.
For far too long now, experts have been attempting to solve public policy questions as though they exist in a vacuum. This article plans to serve as a template to how we can approach public policy as an interconnected ecosystem, looking from one area to the next for positive changes that will effect a plethora of other areas. In this case, how a revamping of the military in America could solve a myriad of issues, including the economy, our declining cities, and national security.
The United States military is the most powerful in the world. However, in today’s political climate, there is growing discontent with the way our government spends money – and one of the largest expenditures of cash is the United States military. Much of this expenditure goes directly into fueling the costs of overseas bases. Some of these overseas bases are absolutely vital to the security of the United States and its ability to project power on a global scale. But American residents see few tangible returns for this massive expenditure of money, especially compared to residents of the nations hosting the bases.
As technology advances, it offers us the opportunity to think over our strategy. Are there changes we can make in military spending to shift more of the direct benefits back to the homeland while still maintain our undeniable global superiority?
I grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia, a heavily militarized area with Norfolk Naval Base and Shipyard, the largest naval base in the world, right around the corner. We also had Oceana Naval Aviation Station, Little Creek Naval Base, Dam Neck Naval Base, and Langley was just up the road an hour. Growing up, I saw the importance of these Navy personnel to the local economy. An aircraft carrier alone carries nearly six thousand crewmen, and when it pulls out for a six-month tour it actually puts a dent into the local economy as service jobs from the restaurant business to the dry-cleaning industry slowdown. On the flip side, young men and women who have been out to sea for six-months are the most liberal spenders of their cash, from bars to cars. Every city or town that has a military instillation inside its borders knows the importance of the troops to not only the economy but also to the morale and security of their hometown.
Military installations are, however, expensive. In 2009, the United States military spent $515.4 billion in total base operations (which encompasses buying of materials, goods, services, contracting, anything dealing with on-base activities), with about half of that going into overseas bases. The military has done a good job at not releasing specifics in the amount of money that it spends building bases either in America or overseas, but there is no doubt that it is in the hundreds of billions of dollars range.
A huge sum of money could be reapportioned to the homeland by abandoning bases that are overseas in areas that are deemed non-essential by a bi-partisan commission run by civilians and military personnel. These areas may include bases in countries such as Japan, Germany, Italy, Guam, or the countless other non-necessity bases that remain from World War II. We can expect that the host nations will cry in outrage for the same reason I listed above; the importance of military bases and personnel to local economies. Certainly there are dissidents in the nations that host American bases that have legitimate complaints of sovereignty, crime, and a balance of power, but most, if not all, national leaders view the American presence as a positive. Not only does an American presence deter any potential aggression from neighbors or regional powerhouses, but it also helps solidify the power of those in charge by forming tight relationships with their American counterparts. Undoubtedly, the internal politics of each host nation is complex; however, the internal American politics should dictate the re-appropriation of American military assets. I believe it is time to take the needs of American prosperity over the desires of foreign states.
We must have an open discussion about where we want the future of American foreign policy to go, either retreat back into the Monrovian ideal or continue along the status quo to police the world as the global superpower. Both have their benefits as both have their downfalls. If we pull back a large amount of our troops, our ability to quickly react to situations as they arise around the world will be diminished, but it will also offer us a chance to restructure American military spending without the constraints of global imperialism. Furthermore, with the massive increases in technology that has accelerated American assets ability to deploy and deploy more effectively, our abilities to quickly react to the problems across the globe will not be disturbed nearly as much as they would have been just a decade ago. The risk of losing our seat of power is greatly diminished thanks to these technological achievements, and it offers us the opportunity to use our military as an economic and security gain for our country.
With the above assumptions realized, the American military should retract all American personnel that are in non-vital battlefield or supplementary rolls, for example, holding bases that do not directly play into staging roles for the current wars. There should remain some sort of headquarters in every geographical region that still maintains the ability to quickly and efficiently dispatch American military assets to any conflict that may spring up. This should alleviate some $150 billion of funds that are spent operating these foreign bases that can in turn be used to build new instillations on American soil. The plan is not to shrink the size of the military nor to cut back on personnel, but rather to shift them away from foreign territory and back to America. To make the system competitive and highlight the local leaders of the modern era, a “contest” series should be put into place in which if a community wants a military base put into their city, they must build a resume of why they should receive this benefit (because it is incredibly beneficiary to communities). The criteria should include how this base can help with national security, how the local community will support the base and personnel both economically and in the service industry, – including schools for the military personnel’s children, available real estate for off-base housing, future career options for post-retirement personnel, and all other benefits the city would be willing to offer – and complete plans with the assistance of local private contractors on how expensive, how big the base will be, and how many servicemen and women will be stationed there. The military is then allowed the opportunity to tour potential sites and to decide on the course in which they wish to pursue.
This addresses two huge economic problems: the blue collar and the long term micro-economics of cities. These communities that are selected to receive bases will get the long-term economic perks that similar cities such as Virginia Beach, Norfolk, San Diego, Pensacola, and so forth, are already receiving. As I listed above, by stationing hundreds or thousands of individuals in a locality, it is an immediate stimulus of x amount of solid middle class jobs provided by the military, plus all of the service economy jobs that will inevitably come into existence to serve this new population. Cities will receive a windfall of new local taxes, businesses will receive hundreds if not thousands of new customers, small-business entrepreneurs will use this as an opportunity to get their ideas off the ground, home prices will go up, long-term construction will bounce back, churches and community centers will have more members, and tens of thousands of peripheral jobs will be created. The list goes on and on.
The cities will also receive the short-term boom of the profitable construction industry which will have to hire thousands if not millions of working class citizens across the nation to deal with the spike in construction – from high tech security companies for the bases’ security infrastructure to the routine construction of supplementary houses for off-base servicemen and women. This would be a huge coup for any presidential administration. The middle-class, blue-collar, construction industry was one of the hardest hit employment sectors during the 2008 crises and onwards. It is still struggling to make a full recovery as hundreds of thousands of general laborers are still seeking employment eight years later. These are the 50-year old men that have worked their entire lives in construction as a general laborer and do not have the time, nor the capacity, nor the incentive, to go back to school and retrain themselves for what experts deem the “21st Century Economy.” Society has all but left these individuals behind. This plan would reincorporate them into a massive jobs program akin to the FDR’s job program and would revitalize the American economy and help rebuild the middle class.
The economy is not the only thing that will be helped by this plan. The borders have been a topic of increased scrutiny this presidential election, as thousands of illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border to come into America. Overlooking the sensitive cultural/societal issues that come along with this debate, I believe that both sides of the aisle, at a very broad level, can agree that illegal immigration is a bad thing. It drives down wages for American workers as immigrants accept lower pay and longer hours; it causes great concern for national security as porous borders allows for easy entry and exit of criminals (terrorists or drug cartel members); and it creates a logistical nightmare trying to police the border and the people attempting to cross over. With the proposed plan above, the military should decide to increase their presence along the borders and use its personnel to support the overburdened border patrol agencies with the securing of our border against illegal immigrants and black market transfers along the southern border. Not only does this have a cost-sharing and cost-effective angle to it, but it will also increase the actual effectiveness of missions to secure the border that will keep billions of dollars of hard drugs off American streets.
The military instillations in San Diego already work hand-in-hand with border patrol and they have had a successful track record together. This concept could be exported to scores of cities along our northern and southern borders. Instead of spending millions of dollars flying artificial training missions over the island of Guam, or in Japan, or in England, our servicemen can fly live missions patrolling our border, keeping America secure and also saving thousands of lives (thousands of immigrants die each year in the desert between Mexico and America). And it is not only our southern border that gives rise to alarm for national security experts. For the sake of perspective, here is a statistic that I find wildly disturbing: only twenty percent of the incoming cargo from overseas trade is inspected. This creates a massive hole in the security of the American homeland, and national security experts have pointed to this fact as being one of the most threatening oversights to America, even claiming that it would be incredibly easy to smuggle a “dirty bomb” from, say, Lebanon to the United States on a cargo ship. An increase of military presence in private trade port cities would also help ease the burden of the private industry when it comes to security while also protecting Americans from possible threats.
Stationing troops in American cities, will revitalize their economies, keep their streets safer, strengthen their communities, and bring a plethora of other intangible day-to-day benefits. Gang violence and crime have skyrocketed in down-trodden cities, and it is difficult for many of these cities to rise out of this emotional and economic depression. As areas get worse and worse, more of the higher income families move away from the area, thus pulling all-important tax revenue out of the city which in turn makes it even more difficult for the city to fight their problems with their already stressed treasuries. There is less money to hire police officers, less money to work on infrastructure, less money to hire administrators and educators, only jail time being funded out of the already strained treasuries of the city, forcing the administration to make more cuts to other programs aimed at finding a long-term cure instead of a short-term jail-sentence. In these conditions, little wonder that crime flourishes and become entrenched in gang culture, as young people follow the example of those around them.
To break out of this vicious cycle, cities desperately need an infusion of new energy, new money, and new people. A military instillation could help cure this problem. By no means am I suggesting that martial law be put into place in these cities (however an agreement between the city, the police department, and the commander at the new military base on contracting out certain security assignments could constitutionally be arranged), but our uniformed soldiers tend to be good Samaritans, and those who may not find help during their time in need currently will likely find it in a solider. As base personnel move off campus and into the surrounding community, it can be understood that housing values will increase as those who take pride in their uniform also take pride in their homes, pulling up the neighboring houses and city with them.
The city will have a new revenue source of middle-class constituents so that it may continue its work in the community, from building schools to running after school activities to keep the youth away from crime to helping support the elderly. New ideas will flood city hall on projects that they should fund in the community as military personnel bring forth new concepts that they witnessed while on tours through other high-risk areas around the world; ideas that are helping impoverished communities in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Africa that could be modified to fit the American model and bring prosperity to the community. But most importantly, and again this is away from the financial realm of this plan, it will give the youth something besides gang-banging to aspire to, a “way out.”
The purpose of this plan isn’t for military instillations to be built and then have our soldiers drive through the gates in the morning and then leave and drive home at night. That culture, the culture of secrecy that has indoctrinated our military, needs to be done away with, and in its place a culture of community and service should become dominant. The purpose of this plan is to reintegrate the military and its civilian counterparts, not simply just move troops back to the home-front and continue along with the culture of the status-quo. Like the police, the military’s job is to protect and to serve, and American culture has unfortunately (but understandably in a post-9/11 world) put the majority of emphasis on the protection aspect of the creed. We need our military and our police force to remember the importance of service in the community, whether that be offering to drive home a young boy or girl from school when their parents are busy working, or if it is helping build a community outreach center for children in threatening environments. That car ride home with a man or woman in uniform will have more of an impact on that child’s life than one may ever assume, and could be the difference between a future serviceman or a future criminal.
This is a moral argument that we as a nation have moved away from since World War II. American heritage lies in our military; the uniform is more than just fabric, it is a symbol of our everlasting dedication to fight for our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, friends and strangers, all Americans who cannot fight for themselves, both at home and abroad. Our men and women in uniform are what our children aspire to be, who their peers respect unanimously, and who we all trust implicitly. Patriotism and nationalism is deep-seeded into the DNA of Americans, much of which unfortunately has been lost over the years due to lack of faith and credibility in the government. Vietnam can certainly be seen as a low point for the relationship between the American people and the military, but it can also be argued that if it wasn’t for Washington making the decisions to police the world, that scar would never have been cut. More recently, there has been positive encouragement regarding the manner in which troops are being treated by the masses, even by those who do not agree with the war itself. Signs that read “support the troops, not the war” may not be what politicians want to see, but it’s what we as Americans want to see. If this plan is implemented, we can expect to see the pride of America restored, children dressing as soldiers again, and the overall quality of life and morale increasing around the states, particularly in those areas immediately affected by this plan. Economies will boom, civilians will find work again, our borders will be secure, our children will be inspired, our cities will become stronger, and America will become better.
With one retooling of one public policy decision, we see that there is a plethora of positive side effects that will affect millions of lives. As you, the reader, have read through this, I am sure that you too have contemplated ideas on how bringing our troops back to the homeland can benefit the nation as a whole. The examples I listed out above are just a short list of the possible positive side effects of this public policy prescription, and as an idea like this becomes more serious and gains steam, we can imagine that scores of other positive side effects will be discovered. The military is capable of bearing this burden; for as Atlas bore the burden of the world, our military can undoubtedly bear the burden of our country. This is the power of the American military. This is the power of creative thought. This is the power of holistic public policy.
Mercer May is a J.D. Candidate at the University of Richmond and has worked in numerous public policy and legislative roles – including the Senate of Virginia, the Virginia House of Delegates, and the Office of the Attorney General of Virginia. He holds a B.A. in Political Science, a B.A. in Religious Studies, and a minor in Economics from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Image: 2013 deployments of the US military Grey = None or no data available Orange = <100 troops (Including Military attachés) Red = 100-1000 troops Black = 1000+ troops. Via Wikipedia. Distributed under the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.Today, we’re excited to announce Chromecast support for Gear VR! Now, you’ll be able to share all of your Gear VR experiences directly from the headset by streaming to your TV in real-time.
All you need is the latest version of both the Oculus mobile app and Android. Just hit the Cast button, select your favorite nearby Cast-enabled device, and step inside Gear VR while your friends sit back and enjoy the ride.
Chromecast lets you enjoy VR while staying connected and engaged with everyone in the room. Show off your quick draw and sharp shooting in Dead and Buried or host a VR party night. It’s also a great way to introduce new people to VR, since you can see everything they see inside the headset.
We can’t wait for people to check out this new social element of mobile VR.
— The Oculus TeamIt’s the fall which, for runners, means one thing: marathon season.
All across the world runners are pulling on their shoes and racing some of the most famous city courses in the world: Berlin, Chicago, New York…the list goes on.
As the millions of spectators who line these famous routes take in the sights and sounds of the hundreds of thousands of runners who make these races the center of their autumnal campaigns, it’s hard to avoid glancing or even staring at the one thing that almost all of the runners have in common.
No, not the courage to start the race, the hunger for a personal best, or a commitment to driving forward to the finish. Those are the sorts of things that cannot be seen, only recognized on the faces of those who run past.
It’s something more basic than this: shoes.
Almost every marathon runner goes through the process of pulling on a pair of running shoes, tugging the laces tight, and toeing the start line ahead of those long 26.2 miles.
And almost every brand of shoes that can be seen across those miles has an Instagram account for spectators and runners alike to drool over post-race.
Sports Footwear: Form As Well As Function
Sports footwear certainly serves a functional purpose. Good shoes protect the runner’s feet, provide cushioning from the hard asphalt surfaces of the city, and ensure that the runner can walk the day after their race instead of hobbling around the office, broken and beaten down by the course.
But there is also a form factor at play, too.
Sports footwear doesn’t just have to work well to be popular, it also needs to look good. Even great. And when you have a product that looks great there is perhaps no better place to promote it to the masses than on social media, specifically Instagram.
We’ve taken a look at some of the top sports footwear brands on Instagram and highlighted the nine that we think best demonstrate how to use this platform effectively.
Followers: 24.7 million
Posts: +800
What We Love: For a brand worth in excess of $80 billion the Oregon powerhouse still manages to have some fun. Sure, there’s plenty of action shots of sports superstars and the Average Joe, too. But then there are the shots that surprise, like the one above with its unique and literal take on the famous Nike waffle sole.
Followers: 1.4 million
Posts: +1,600
What We Love: Usain Bolt. And that smile. When you sponsor one of the biggest names in world sports it makes sense to feature him on your Instagram account. So, too, the sports teams that find their feet in Puma shoes, cleats, and boots. Puma demonstrates how to balance the footwear and the famous who use them.
Followers: 5.8 million
Posts: +750
What We Love: Adidas balances the sports, fashion, and sponsored athletes and celebrities who promote their products on their Instagram account, perhaps better than anyone else. They mix color and form, action shots and behind the scenes glimpses, competition compositions and fashion shoots with efficacy and class.
Followers: 145 thousand
Posts: 500
What We Love: Brooks are a serious running brand and it is no surprise to see many action and competition shots in their Instagram repertoire. Yet for all the pros and amateurs they highlight there are some great artistic shots, too. Take the image above: any doubt that Brooks shoes belong on and are inspired by the trail?
Followers: 466 thousand
Posts: +900
What We Love: Reebok sponsors athletes from around the world but much of their Instagram feed is made up of regular folks working out, running, diving through mud, and exploring the world in Reebok shoes. Like the image above – a Mother’s Day special – embracing the everyman and everywoman works wonders on social.
Followers: 1.2 million
Posts: +1,500
What We Love: If there’s a word to describe how New Balance separates itself from the other footwear brands on our list it’s ‘art’. Somehow the serious running shoe brand and Boston Marathon favorite has built an Instagram feed that is all about the beauty of the shoe. Take the image above, for example: intriguing, no?
Followers: 25 thousand
Posts: 300
What We Love: The French trail running shoe company has a cult following and their Instagram feed reflects that. Lots of stunning exterior shots, competition shots, and a touch of the artistic, too. Hoka One One highlight the trails their shoes are made for not the urban landscape you long to leave when you pull them on.
Followers: 2.7 million
Posts: +1,300
What We Love: Converse embraces the rebellious feel of its signature Chuck Taylor All Stars and depicts the shoes everywhere you might expect. In the city, in the wild, on the feet of a lead singer or the pigeon-toed pose of a teenage girl. Wear them anywhere, be yourself, and define yourself by what you do. Perfect.
Followers: 25 thousand
Posts: 200
What We Love: The Asics Instagram feed is all about movement. Whether cityscapes or forest runs, rugby or running, climbing the stairs, crossing the street, or summiting a climb, Asics highlights the movement. Even in shots where the shoes don’t move (see the shot above) there’s the impression that travel is never far away.Ari Picker felt exhausted and burned out by Lost In The Trees’ A Church That Fits Our Needs. The 2012 album memorialized Picker’s mother, who committed suicide in 2008. The project was deeply personal and deeply ambitious. It made many critics’ 2012 top-10 lists (including the top spot for the Wall Street Journal), and it led the North Carolina band to appear at New York’s Lincoln Center for the American Songbook Series. But the tour that preceded that show was fraught with challenges: Rock clubs weren’t the ideal venues for the band’s delicate dynamics and string arrangements for cellos and violins. After all that, Picker questioned his desire to make another album. But he has made another. Past Life (Anti-) jettisons many of Church’s identifying markers: It’s abstract and impressionistic rather than overtly personal, and it’s minimalist rather than maximalist. Picker will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Lost In The Trees feature.
Picker: I fell in love with Neutral Milk Hotel in the early aughts, long after they had played their last show and Jeff had gone into the songwriter abyss. After playing both NMH records to death, I discovered this live album of Jeff playing solo in front of a small group of friends. The lo-fi minimalism only empower Mangum’s songs. From dialing in his jangly guitar sound, the child screaming in the background and his candid, self-deprecating introductions to half-written songs that “probably will never get released” (“Two Headed Boy”) give a haunted and clear insight to Jeff’s songs, his voice and relationship with his audience and friends. Jeff is certainly the anti-rock star. Songs like “Naomi” and “Baby For Pree” are more direct and poignant than the album versions, and his cover of Phil Spector’s “I Love How You Love Me” is fantastic. When Jeff started playing again, I was extremely fortunate to play his ATP fest and get to see his set several times. Seeing Jeff solo is mesmerizing, and Jittery Joe’s captures this beautifully. It’s my go-to album when I need a NMH fix.Slovakian centre-half seeks to revive club career in Turkey after falling out of favour with Jürgen Klopp following eight years at Anfield
Liverpool’s long-serving defender Martin Skrtel is close to agreeing a £5.5m move to Fenerbahce. The Slovakia international signed a new three-year contract at Anfield last summer but has accepted his eight-year career on Merseyside is over having fallen out of favour under Jürgen Klopp.
Premier League 2016-17 fixtures: Arsenal face Liverpool on opening day Read more
The 31-year-old started only four games for Klopp after the turn of the year, with the Liverpool manager favouring Kolo Touré alongside Dejan Lovren when Mamadou Sakho was unavailable.
Skrtel has had offers from Germany and China this summer but has decided to relaunch his career in Turkey with Fenerbahce, who finished second in Super Lig last season.
Liverpool have accepted a £5.5m offer from the Istanbul club for a player they signed for £6.5m from Zenit Saint-Petersburg in January 2008 and has made 320 appearances. He will be the second central defender to leave Anfield this summer after Touré was released at the end of his contract.Anti-Tory majority needs to assert itself to save Britain, he says in Guardian article
Peter Hain today becomes the first cabinet minister to call for a new era of Labour-Liberal Democrat co-operation, saying "the new development in British politics is the emerging common ground" between the two parties.
He tells the Guardian: "The stakes are very high. If we recognise our common ground, a new progressive era of political reform based on Britain's natural anti-Tory majority can take charge."
Hain's remarks in an article and accompanying interview appear designed to encourage anti-Tory tactical voting, and to open up the possibility of a form of co-operation between the two other main parties in the event of a hung parliament.
"Only if progressives come together to fight for their beliefs can Labour win the election and be at the centre of a wider movement of like-minded people," the secretary of state for Wales says.
Hain also calls on progressives of all kinds to vote tactically against the Tories in Labour-Tory marginals. He argues that tactical voting in such seats "would not require voters to sign up to Labour's entire record or every one of our policies, still less to renounce their principles".
He argues that millions of people see themselves not as dyed-in-the-wool Labour supporters but as progressive individuals who may also vote for the Lib Dems, Greens, or Plaid Cymru in Wales.
Hain supports what many see as necessary for a stable coalition government to be formed: a fixed-term parliament, common in most other countries. David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has embraced the proposal, and it is understood that the home secretary, Alan Johnson, also favours the move on the basis that it would be a symbol of the government giving up a power.
It is often argued that a minority party in a hung parliament should not risk joining a coalition without fixed-term parliaments because if the larger party is free to chose the election date, it can manipulate events so that an election is called at a time of maximum advantage to them.
Hain says there are strong similarities between the Labour and Lib Dem programmes, on constitutional reform, handling the economic recovery, public service reform and even civil liberties. Differences on issues such as ID cards are smaller than is recognised, he suggests.
Many cabinet ministers are privately revising their forecasts for the election in the face of a slew of polls pointing to a hung parliament. Some privately favour a deal with the Lib Dems even if Labour secures a small overall majority.
Hain admits: "The anti-Tory tactical voting that stood progressives in good stead in the 1997 and 2001 elections has gradually been unwinding. I detect on the ground that there is an awakening, and people are beginning to realise Tory government would be horrendous. I think it is very important that the anti-Tory forces come together. The anti-Tory majority in this country needs to assert itself to save Britain."
Hain said Labour was for the first time committed to wholesale constitutional reform - the alternative vote system, an elected Lords, and the right of recall of corrupt MPs. "Together we could allow a really exciting agenda for the next parliament, and I think it is something the Liberal Democrats would support."
Hain will make a similar appeal more directly on Saturday at the Welsh Labour Pparty conference, where he will appeal to middle Wales not to let the Conservatives back in. The last poll in Wales by HTV showed Labour leading the Conservatives by 35 to 32 points.Comment, page 32Diego Maradona has likened Louis van Gaal to the devil over his treatment of the misfiring Manchester United striker Radamel Falcao.
The Colombian striker has struggled for goals and game time since his summer loan move from Monaco and United thought they had pulled off one of the best deals of the summer transfer window then they signed Falcao on a season-long loan from Monaco.
The Colombian came to United with an impressive goalscoring record but, eight months later, he has found the net just four times for the club. Falcao has been on the bench for the last five games and that has not gone down well with Maradona.
The former Argentina star, speaking at a press conference in Bogotá, Colombia, to promote a charity match, criticised United manager Van Gaal for his handling of the two-time Ballon d’Or nominee. “Van Gaal is not a nice guy,” said Maradona when asked about the Dutchman’s handling of Falcao. “Van Gaal is closer to the devil than anything.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watch Diego Maradona score the winning goal in the Colombian match for peace.
The Argentinian, who visited Old Trafford to watch United lose to Liverpool last year, believes the fact that Falcao has had to recover from a serious knee injury has made his adaptation to English football harder. The 29-year-old was ruled out of the World Cup because of the injury he suffered in January and he has been hindered by a number of niggling problems since he signed for United.
“His time was cut short after the injury and he has to adapt to the move,” Maradona said at the press conference shown on the YouTube channel of TV station Canal Capital.
Falcao looks set to be on the bench again on Sunday when United host City in the Manchester derby.
United have the option of buying him for £43.2m in the summer, but the player’s form so far this term suggests they are unlikely to do so.Doogie Horner's chart of talk show hosts: a Boing Boing exclusive
We've featured the amazing work of graphic designer and comedian Doogie Horner on Boing Boing before. (HOWTO explain the Internet to a Dickensian street urchin, Things to say during sex, Heavy Metal band name taxonomy)
He's got a new book out filled with these funny charts, called Everything Explained Through Flowcharts.
Everything Explained Through Flowcharts is packed with meticulously designed charts that trace the labyrinthine connections that order the universe, illuminate life's great mysteries, and cause eye strain in senior citizens. Swiss scientists at the prestigious University of Helsinki have said that Everything Explained Through Flowcharts is the closest thing there is to a working unified field theory, and have gone on to claim that they aren't Swiss, aren't scientists, and aren't sure whether or not Helsinki is in Switzerland. And yet the Swiss consulate has not denied that this book contains more than two hundred illustrations, forty mammoth charts, and innumerable supporting graphs and essays, including: • An illustrated matrix of WWF Finishing Moves
• Heavy metal band names taxonomy
• The noble art of zeppelin warfare demystified
• How to win any argument
• Tragedy to comedy conversion chart for comedians
• A creepy drawing of a baby skeleton
• How to tell if you're an evil twin
To celebrate the launch of book, Doogie created a chart of late night talk show hosts especially for Boing Boing.
The above is just a small portion of the chart. The entire chart can be viewed here.Dashiell Bennett/Business Insider Everyone in the sports media world made a very big deal out of ESPN.com columnist Bill Simmons's new Website, Grantland, when it launched earlier this month.
This was for a good reason: Simmons is a big star.
So it was a bit surprising this morning to find that Grantland.com is no more.
At least, for the moment.
Go there right now (2:48 EST) and you'll find a note from a company called Network Solutions: " grantland.com expired on 06/13/2008 and is pending renewal or deletion."
Whoopsie!
Hey Bill, click here to renew.
Update: Nine hours ago, Simmons tweeted: "FYI: Grantland.com is down for the next 2-6 hours, had a server issue that will be resolved soon. Unrelated: Happy Father's Day!" So now we know that the site outage is either a domain issue or a server issue. Or something else!
Anyway, here's what the Website has looked like all day:Just over two months ago, hours after a lone gunman opened fire at Republican members of Congress practicing baseball one lovely June morning in suburban Washington, D.C., Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont took to the Senate floor to decry the shooting that had wounded four before the would-be assassin was shot dead by Capitol police.
The shooter, James Hodgkinson, had been a volunteer for the senator’s presidential campaign. He was an overheated far-left militant, burning with hatred for Republicans, especially President Donald Trump, and with resentment of the rich. Those political preoccupations may have helped turn his troubled mind toward violence.
Sanders said all the right things that day, “in the strongest possible terms,” as he put it.
Declaring that he was “sickened by this despicable act,” Sanders added that “[v]iolence of any kind is unacceptable in our society. … Real change can only come about through nonviolent action, and anything else runs counter to our most deeply held American values.”
Excellent words. Yet after the past week’s trauma, one thing seems notably absent from Sanders’ well-received remarks back then. The senator said nothing to condemn, or even criticize, the ideology that apparently fueled Hodgkinson’s violent rage. He did not denounce, say, “left-wing radicalism” or “class warfare mentality” or even generic “partisan extremism.”
Instead, in the face of political violence, Sanders drew the bright line that has traditionally defined a sharp boundary between what is “unacceptable in our society” and what lies at the heart of American freedom.
The line is this: Americans are free to think and “speak” as they will, to call and push for whatever “real change” they desire — however much some of their fellow citizens may decry or even abhor their views.
It is violence, on the other hand — “of any kind” — that never can be tolerated.
Donald Trump’s comprehensive deficiencies as president — and the overheated responses they inspire so widely — threaten to undermine many vital principles of American political life.
A week ago, in the wake of political violence in Charlottesville, Va., what might be called “Trump fever” accelerated a troubling trend already far advanced in America. We are moving unnervingly toward forgetting that it is uniquely political violence — assault on the rule of law and peaceful democratic processes — wholly divorced from the various ideological motives that may inspire it, that is the ultimate unAmericanism.
After clashes between white nationalist groups and counterprotesters ended on Aug. 12 in a brutal vehicular murder by a young neo-Nazi, Trump, initially sounding rather like Sanders, decried “in the strongest possible terms” the day’s “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence.” But Trump went on to say those evils had arisen “on many sides,” and had been “going on for a long time in our country.” And this attempt to broaden responsibility ignited a firestorm.
In a backlash notable even in the Trump era for |
M entered St. Barnabas Hospital in New Jersey, in 2006, after experiencing contractions. She was immediately asked to sign consent forms for “the administration of intravenous fluids, antibiotics, oxygen, fetal heart rate monitoring, an episiotomy and an epidural anesthetic” but she refused to essentially pre-consent to “any other invasive treatment.” Kathrine Jack, staff attorney with NAPW involved in the case from the beginning, told Rewire,
“This occurred in a New Jersey hospital that has a 50 percent c-section rate. The hospital policy is that whenever a maternity patient comes in the door, they immediately are asked to pre-authorize any intervention. It’s standard practice and it’s not uncommon.”
Jack’s colleague, Farah Diaz-Tello, a fellow NAPW attorney continued,
“A lot of hospitals have these. From a legal perspective, however, they are questionable. Can you have informed consent, pro-forma?”
It’s an excellent question and it’s precisely in a case like this where that idea gets tested. Can a woman exercise informed consent to a medical intervention during labor if the situation under which she may consent to the intervention hasn’t happened yet? This hospital has a c-section rate that is well above what the World Health Organization deems a safe c-section rate; if women are consenting to a c-section right off the bat (not to mention fetal heart-rate monitoring, antibiotics, episiotomies, and epidurals!) regardless of whether one is actually medically indicated, it’s certainly blurring the lines between what’s medically necessary and the power of suggestion from a medical “authority.” Where does an individual’s right to make an informed choice begin and hospital legal policy end?
Ms. M had a history of psychiatric issues, having been on a range of medication including Zoloft and Prozac and in psychotherapy prior to her pregnancy. Not unlike millions of Americans, she suffered from what was characterized at different times in the court decision as depression, a panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder. She went off her medication during her pregnancy for fear of its effect on her fetus. Prior to coming to the hospital to give birth, there was no indication that she was a danger to herself or to others. V.M. sought prenatal care, according to the records, from Dr. Ted Stevens, an ob-gyn.
This all changed, according to the lower court ruling, during her labor. Ms. M suddenly became a danger to her as-of-yet unborn child when she a) refused to consent, before it was necessary, to a c-section and b) became, what was referred to in the court decision as “combative.”
According to the decision,
“In the hospital records, V.M. is described as “combative,” “uncooperative,” “erratic,” “non-compliant,” “irrational” and “inappropriate.” She ordered the attending obstetrician, Dr. Shetal Mansuria, to leave the room and told her if she did not do what V.M. said, she would be off the case. V.M. then threatened to report the doctor to the police. In fact, at one point V.M. did call the Livingston Police to report that she was being abused and denied treatment. She told a nurse that “no one is going to touch my baby.”
As Diaz-Tello told Rewire, when asked about what kind of “combative behavior” Ms. M/V.M. displayed during and immediately after birth,
“The ‘combative behavior’ was in relation to things that happened after the delivery…you have to see them in the context of when they told her they were taking her baby away.”
Her “combative” and “non-compliant” actions, then, were in response to being told by the hospital that the baby she had just given birth to would be taken from her. The decision states:
She would not allow Dr. Mansuria to touch the baby or perform an ultrasound examination.... V.M. “was very boisterous and yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs.”
Is this potentially what the in the first court, ruling against Ms. M, also meant by “uncooperative”, “erratic” and “irrational”? Well, that pretty well describes many women’s behavior during birth but most especially for women who may not abide by what a doctor’s and others’ vision is for her labor and delivery. In fact, notes NAPW,
“…the court itself cites a clinician’s opinion that “it is not surprising that she panicked at the time of delivery... [after] being approached about the possibility of a Cesarean section” given her particular emotional vulnerability.”
Ms. M had been evaluated by a psychiatrist because of her refusal to consent to a c-section (“She thrashed about to the extent that it was unsafe…to administer an epidural”); and because, from the record, she was “very boisterous…yelling and screaming at the top of her lungs.” The psychiatrist spoke with her for an hour to make sure she understood the risks and complications of having a c-section or refusing one; Ms. M was honest about her psychiatric history, according to the notes, and was clear about her choice. The psychiatrist concluded that:
“…V.M. (Ms. M) was not psychotic and had the capacity for informed consent with regard to the c-section.”
Not only did the psychiatrist find she had the capacity for informed consent and therefore was capable of saying no to the surgery but mental health, says Diaz-Tello, is not a reason in and of itself for taking a child away from her or his parents.
Despite the psychiatrist’s finding, however, and despite having no apparent legal basis, the initial decision to remove the newborn from Ms. M’s and her husband’s care was specifically related to her decision not to pre-authorize a cesarean section. An amicus brief, filed on behalf of more than 20 organizations and experts including many individual physicians called the lower court’s decision an “injustice and misuse of the child welfare laws” and notes:
“The record is clear that hospital staff referred V.M.’s case to the Division of Youth and Family Services (“the Division” or “DY FS”) at least in part because of concerns regarding V.M.’s decisions during labor, including her decision not to preauthorize consent to cesarean surgery.”
Unfortunately, the lower court also relied entirely on hearsay evidence to keep Ms. M, her husband, and their baby apart for three years. The series of events were recounted in court, seemingly, to highlight her “combative” and “erratic” behavior without giving rise to the real reasons behind her actions. Jack explains:
“None of the people who were present during her labor and delivery actually testified to anything. The only evidence was the testimony of the child welfare case worker testifying about what the people in the hospital told her after the fact. For example, the evidence of combative behavior is pretty subjective and it was the care providers giving information to a case worker who gave it to the lower court judge…it was a hearsay problem. They may have conflated her adamant refusal [to consent to a c-section] at the time with her anger afterwards and wanting to call the police [after they said they were taking her baby from her].”
It’s not just the fact that the plaintiff (the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services) relied on hearsay evidence to prop up its position and ultimately ensure a newborn was separated from her parents but that there seemed to be no legal basis for the decision. According to the amicus brief, not only is the right to refuse consent of a c-section constitutionally protected but the New Jersey statute (N.J.S.A. 30:4C-15.1(a)) used by the court to terminate Ms. M’s parental rights does not pertain to pregnant women. From the amicus brief,
“…family court judges may not consider pregnant women’s medical decisions in terminating parental rights” because, says the amicus brief, “that law does not apply to pregnant women or their fetuses.”
What would the fall-out have been, therefore, had the Superior Court of NJ not ruled in the mother’s favor, last week?
“Our thought in taking this case was to prevent a precedent that would allow for the consideration of a woman’s decision-making process during labor or about labor to have any place at all in neglect or termination of parental rights,” says Jack of NAPW.
Diaz-Tello goes on,
“…the concern that this would be used as precedent to force women to have c-sections was taken care of at the Appellate level last year. What made this case a continuing problem was the “other factors” were all either precipitated by or discovered as a result of the refusal. The current case doesn’t resolve that problem, but at least it directly states in the majority opinion that the refusal of the cesarean had “no place” in the termination proceeding.The reason we stayed with the case, is that her refusal [to consent to a c-section] opened up a fishing expedition because of the nature of the child welfare proceeding. Once the door is open you can have field day with every aspect of a woman’s life – that even though they can’t technically use that as the finding, they can use it in some capacity…”
It’s certainly a valid concern given how women’s choices are judged and then used as reasons to deny us our rights. From the cases of women who have given birth to stillborn babies being convicted of homicide because of a history of drug-use while pregnant, to women who are raped only to see their own sexual history used against them in court, courts have used personal biases and pre-conceived notions of how society believes women should behave to justify legal decisions with profound and very real consequences.
For Ms. M, her husband and their now three-year old child, however, the story isn’t over.
With this recent victory, the case has hit a happier note but there is a possibility that the NJ Department of Youth and Family Services will repeal the Appellate court decision; they have thirty days to do so. If they don’t appeal, says Jack, the case goes back to the lower court which will hopefully take steps towards reuniting the family. But because they have been separated so long, says Diaz-Tello, this is certain to be a long process.Starting in April 2016, gay and bisexual men will be able to donate blood plasma — the pale yellow fluid portion of the blood, in which the blood cells and platelets are suspended — under the same conditions as heterosexual donors. This means they cannot give plasma if they have engaged in sexual activity with more than one partner in the four months preceding their donation.
Touraine took to Twitter to express her "pride and joy" at the lifting of the ban. But many of the gay advocacy groups that had been pushing for its repeal expressed disappointment over the restrictions imposed on gay blood donors.
President François Hollande promised to scrap the ban during his presidential campaign. In April, the European Court of Justice encouraged the French government to revise its rules on blood donation.
"We are putting an end to discrimination based on sexual orientation," Touraine said, referring to a ban on blood donations from gay men that was introduced in 1983 to prevent the spread of AIDS.
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France will lift its ban on gay men donating blood in the spring, French Health Minister Marisol Touraine announced on Wednesday.
"We are putting an end to discrimination based on sexual orientation," Touraine said, referring to a ban on blood donations from gay men that was introduced in 1983 to prevent the spread of AIDS.
President François Hollande promised to scrap the ban during his presidential campaign. In April, the European Court of Justice encouraged the French government to revise its rules on blood donation.
Fière et heureuse de lever enfin l'exclusion du don du sang des homosexuels. Fin d'une discrimination et d'un tabou. — Marisol Touraine (@MarisolTouraine)November 4, 2015
Touraine took to Twitter to express her "pride and joy" at the lifting of the ban. But many of the gay advocacy groups that had been pushing for its repeal expressed disappointment over the restrictions imposed on gay blood donors.
Starting in April 2016, gay and bisexual men will be able to donate blood plasma — the pale yellow fluid portion of the blood, in which the blood cells and platelets are suspended — under the same conditions as heterosexual donors. This means they cannot give plasma if they have engaged in sexual activity with more than one partner in the four months preceding their donation.
But for donating whole blood, it's 12 months of no homosexual sex at all. Unlike heterosexual, lesbian, and bisexual female donors — who can give blood providing they have only had one sexual partner in the last four months — gay men will be ineligible if they have been sexually active in the 12 months preceding their donation.
"For us, it's both an insult and a regression," said Frédéric Pecharman, who coordinates the Homodonneur collective, a group that has been advocating for a change in the law since 2009. "Not only is the measure unacceptable on a human level, since a person in good health tends to have sexual relations, but it's also dangerous, because it will encourage those who want to give blood to lie."
The French Health Ministry has described the new measure as a step toward donor equality. Plasma donations will be placed in a "secure quarantine process" and will be used for research. If the samples show that donations from MSM — medical lingo for "men who have sex with men" — are no riskier than other samples, the government will further relax the restrictions.
Related: French Pharmacies Begin Selling HIV/AIDS Home Testing Kits
France will be joining a growing list of countries that have lifted the ban, including the UK, which adopted the one-year abstinence restriction in 2011. On October 29, the Netherlands lifted its own ban on gay blood donors while also adopting the 12-month moratorium on gay sex. As in France, Dutch authorities have pledged to loosen the restrictions pending further research.
As well as arguing for equality among blood donors, critics of the measure say the restrictions are unnecessarily limiting the access to much-needed blood donations. A 2014 study by the Williams Institute at UCLA claimed that allowing gay men to give blood could help save more than a million lives worldwide.
In the US, the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) banned homosexual men from donating blood in 1983, after several high-profile scares involving transfusions of HIV-tainted blood. The FDA recently proposed ending the lifetime ban on blood donations from gay men, which is also on the condition of 12-month celibacy.
Among those protesting the enduring ban in the US is artist Jordan Eagles, whose sculpture "Blood Mirror" — made from the blood of nine of his gay and bisexual friends — is currently on display at New York City's Trinity Church until World Aids Day, December 1. The sculpture is meant to draw attention to blood that might have otherwise been used to save lives.
— GMHC (@GMHC)November 3, 2015
A hypocritical restrictionYohann Roszéwitch, the president of French LGBT rights group SOS Homophobie, said the new measure amounted to "symbolic progress, since we've gone from a lifetime ban to a 12-month delay."
But despite welcoming the lifting of the ban, Roszéwitch noted that "homosexuals will still have a hard time donating their blood, and a [gay] man who's married, faithful, and uses protection won't even be able to."
"The left gave us permission to marry, but in order to give blood, it wants us to abstain. I don't even need to explain to you how stupid the restriction is," said Pecharman. According to him, the condition only perpetuates the myth that all gays are "libertines who sleep around without using condoms."
The HIV virus can be successfully detected six weeks after contamination. In France, every blood donation is tested by the French Blood Establishment to limit the risk of accidental contamination.
According to France's General Directorate of Health, a government agency that answers to the Health Ministry, "there is currently not enough data to demonstrate the absence of an increased risk of HIV transmission through transfusions with less than a 12-month delay." In the absence of reliable data on the issue, the French government has decided to conduct its own blood security survey.
"The ministry explained that they have no studies for a delay of less than twelve months," said Roszéwitch, who has played an active role in changing France's outdated policy. "In Italy, the conditions [for heterosexual and homosexual donors] are completely aligned, and, at first sight, there have been no contaminations. But we're being told the two models are not comparable."
Infected blood scandalMany others — including Thomas Sannié, the president of the French Hemophilia Association — see the restriction as necessary.
"We accept the one-year delay because the Australian example shows that this policy can be applied," Sannié said in July, referring to Australia's adoption of the 12-month moratorium. "What we categorically refused was bringing that down to four months."
In 1991, a French journalist revealed that the National Center for Blood Transfusions had distributed HIV and hepatitis C-tainted blood to patients in 1984 and 1985. As a result of the subsequent investigation, then-Prime Minister Laurent Fabius and two cabinet ministers — Georgina Dufoix and Edmond Hervé — were tried on charges of manslaughter in 1999. While Fabius and Dufoix were eventually acquitted, Hervé was found guilty of "two contaminations." He received no sentence.
"We understand that hemophilia groups were hit hard by this scandal," said Pecharman. "But the debate cannot be based on impassioned arguments. We need a rational debate. And until then, we will continue our action on the ground."
Follow Lucie Aubourg on Twitter: @LucieAbrgAdditional reporting by Pierre Longeray: @PLongerayImage via Wikimedia CommonsThings started cheerily enough, with the president’s appearance on Kimmel’s semi-regular series, “Celebrities Read Mean Tweets.” It was Obama’s second time participating in that—dramatically reading the criticisms people had tweeted at his expense—and an extremely funny one. Some of the tweets the president read:
— Barack Obama is the Sharknado of presidents. Loud, stupid and over-hyped. #sharknado4
— Obama couldn’t negotiate getting a whopper without pickles.
— I just found out my daughter shares a birthday with Obama. PUKE!
— My mom bought a new conditioner and it sucks. It isn’t even conditioning my hair. I blame Obama.
Obama concluded his reading, however, with a specially selected mean tweet: “President Obama will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!”
Obama paused. The tweet was from @realdonaldtrump.
He paused again, getting the timing perfectly.
“Well, @realdonaldtrump, at least I will go down as a president,” Obama said. Then he dropped the mic smartphone.
During Kimmel’s interview segment, though, things stayed on the topic of Trump but took a much more serious turn. The two engaged in typical small talk—about the mozzarella sticks backstage that Obama snacked on, about the Cubs’ participation in the World Series, about Bill Murray’s recent meeting at the White House—but quickly moved on to politics. Obama and Kimmel discussed Hillary Clinton: In response to Kimmel’s question about why so many people seem to distrust her, the president explained that “a lot of this just has to do with the fact that she has been in the trenches, in the arena, for 30 years.” They talked about Obama’s post-presidency life, and the family’s plan to stay in Washington. “I’m like the old guy in the bar where you went to high school,” Obama joked—“just kind of hanging around.”
But then: Trump. Trumpety-Trump Trump. “When you watch Trump in the debate,” Kimmel asked, “do you ever laugh?”
“Most of the time,” Obama replied.
They talked about the Access Hollywood video. “I think that’s one of those things where, if your best friend who worked in the office somewhere had that video, it’d be a problem for him,” Obama said. “And he’s not running for president.”
Things built, then, to another Trump question. “Do you ever wish you were running against Donald Trump?” Kimmel asked. “Do you ever wish you were in there?”
“You know, I think Hillary’s doing just fine,” the president responded.
After a moment, though, he added:
We joke about Donald Trump, but I do think that part of the reason you’ve seen Michelle so passionate in this election, part of the reason that we get involved as much as we have, is not just because we think Hillary is going to be a great president, but it’s also because there is something qualitatively different about the way Trump has operated in the political sphere.
And this is where the President Obama of 2016 had his moment of reckoning with the President Obama of 2011. The appropriate response to Trump, he suggested, is no longer to laugh him off. It’s no longer to do what a late-night show used to be all about: to mock the candidates in an equal-opportunity way. We are beyond that now. Late-night comedy is also, in some sense, beyond that. “Look, I ran against John McCain,” the president said. “I ran against Mitt Romney. Obviously, I thought that I could do a better job. But they’re both honorable men, and if they had won, then I wouldn’t worry about the general course of this country.”The IDF Civil Administration is taking steps to increase state-ownership of West Bank lands, an internal military document reveals. The policy enables increased construction not only around settlement blocs like Ariel, Ma'aleh Adumim and Gush Etzion, but also in strategic areas like the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea.
Until now it was not known that the administration, which is a military agency, was charged with distinguishing between the blocs Israel is demanding to annex as part of a final-status agreement and the rest of the settlements.
Construction in the West Bank settlement of Modi’in Ilit. AP
The document was written by Lt.Col. Zvi Cohen, head of the civil administration's infrastructures department, in January. On the same day, Cohen signed a procedure stipulating that the custodian of government property is authorized to take possession of lands whose ownership is undefined.
The first document, setting the civil administration's priorities in advancing Israeli take over of West Bank lands, says the construction would take place on state-owned land. Cohen writes that in view of the fact that building settlements on private Palestinian land, as in the case of most illegal outposts, constitutes a violation of international law and a government decision.
The document was passed on to the Rabbis for Human Rights under the Freedom of Information law.
The inclusion of the Jordan Valley, northern Dead Sea and area surrounding Ariel in the "settlement blocs" whose takeover the administration is advancing, would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state with territorial contiguity. In addition, the scope of land in question thwarts the possibility of exchanging areas in a peace settlement, according to the formula presented by U.S. President Barack Obama on May 19.
This is because on the western side of the Green Line there is not enough open land to compensate the Palestinians for such an extensive annexation, according to examinations carried out during previous talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
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It has recently been reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants Obama to ratify the letter of his predecessor George Bush, of April 2004, saying the United States is in favor of the new borders, which take into account "the new reality on the ground," including the existence of "major Israeli population centers."
However, the letter says the changes on the border must have the agreement of both sides. A position paper submitted by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the American envoy George Mitchell a year ago rules out the possibility of a settlement that includes Israeli control of the Jordan Valley, northern Dead Sea and Ariel.
Cohen details the work procedures of the administration's team, dubbed "Blue Line," for demarcating state lands in the West Bank. He writes that the team's major task is to examine the state's declarations of ownership on lands mainly in the 80s and 90s. But the team, which has been working since 1999, is also examining the possibility of declaring lands with undefined ownership as state lands.
The document says the team gives priority to territories whose ownership is subject to a court debate or to dispute between settlers and Palestinians and between Palestinians and the state. The team also gives priority to advancing building public institutions, schools, parks and "other matters classified as urgent by the authorized bodies."
The document says the team's goal is to make sure the planning procedures and land allocations are advanced only on lands that are government property and not Palestinian-owned, in keeping with international law.
The document also says the government's decision of 1979, saying that extending West Bank settlements and building new ones would only be carried out on state-owned land, must be adhered to.
Despite the document, dozens of settlements and outposts have been built, with the authorities' knowledge and assistance, on private, Palestinian-owned lands. These include Ofra, Beit El and Eli and the outposts Amona, Givat Asaf and Migron, to name just a few.
The document says the Blue Line team is not required to examine and ascertain land ownership where the ownership has already been determined de facto
by illegal construction.
Dror Etkes, a left-wing activist monitoring construction in the settlements, has found that the administration's team included at least 26 outposts in territories it defines as state lands. This means the state has started a process to legitimize these outposts.
Official information the administration gave Etkes, under the Freedom of Information Law, reveals that almost half of the Blue Line team's work has been carried out in areas Israel defines as "settlement blocs." Altogether the team has examined in 12 years' work 195,000 dunams, 92,000 of them west of the approved separation fence line, and 103,000 dunams east of it.
Almost 13,000 dunams of the examined lands are located in the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley region.
In an overwhelming majority of cases the team recommended classifying the examined lands as state lands, but in some cases the team accepted Palestinians' appeals, after appelants produced documents proving their ownership of the land.
The second document Cohen signed in January pertains to another team for examining lands whose ownership is not determined.
A letter, also passed on to the Rabbis for Human Rights, says these are "lands the custodian [of government property] is authorized to take possession of, being government property which hasn't been declared [state lands] yet, or these procedures are still in process and are not registered in the land registry."
Rabbis for Human Rights commented that "a politically motivated land policy must not come at the expense of the rights of a population subjected to occupation, which is excluded from the decision-making processes of those shaping its destiny. The procedures empower the ability to use the mechanism Israel set up for declaring'state lands' for the purpose of dispossessing Palestinian communities and individuals of their rights and lands."
Etkes said the document provides a rare glimpse into the delicate interface between the politicians and those carrying out their orders obediently. In 99.9 percent of the cases the procedure of declaring state lands and allocating them are aimed at benefitting the settlers, and them alone, he said.
"That's the main way Israel enforces its discriminatory land policy, which aims to evict the Palestinians from most of the West Bank and take possession of these territories," Etkes said.
Rabbis for Human Rights said in response that land policies with political dimensions should not come at the expense of the rights of the population under occupation, and is banished from the decision making processes that shape their fate. The procedures enhance the ability to use the mechanism that Israel created of declaring state land to discard Palestinian communities and individuals of their rights and their land.It’s being billed online as an epic student sex club adventure — and in other corners of the web, a student orgy. The University of Toronto Sexual Education Centre (SEC) is kicking off its annual Sexual Awareness Week next Monday at Oasis Aqua Lounge, a downtown club that bills itself as a water-themed adult playground, where swingers are welcome and sex is allowed everywhere but the hot tub.
Owner Jana Matthews poses in one of the rooms in the Oasis Aqua Lounge, a Toronto sex club, that features the back of a van. ( Colin McConnell / Toronto Star )
“U of T is holding an orgy, and you’re invited! You just need your student ID” one Reddit user posted in a University of Waterloo forum. “Our executive director made it very clear that this is not an orgy, we’re not funding an orgy,” says external education and outreach co-ordinator Dylan Tower, 22, as he sits inside the sixth-floor office of SEC. “People are allowed to have sex on premise … there is not any type of ‘You should be having sex when you’re here.’ It’s very much, come and enjoy the space, there’s no prodding or pushing in that direction.” The event begins in the daytime, and organizers are asking students to keep their clothes on until 7 p.m., when the “party becomes clothing-optional so you can get naked with all your new friends.”
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SEC is an affiliated levy group of the University of Toronto Students Union. Undergraduate students pay.25 cents a term for the services, and can opt out if they choose. The group’s mission is to foster a sex-positive attitude in the greater U of T area, by offering information, programming, safer-sex supplies, and peer counselling in a welcoming environment. Their sexual awareness week includes a discussion on sex positivity, an interactive sex toy demonstration and an afternoon of pornography. The first event is the party at Oasis: the organization rented the club and lowered the price to $5 a person. (Admission for couples is normally $80.) Tower said it is a safe and cheaper way to introduce curious students to the sex club scene in Toronto. The group plans to provide a “myriad of safer-sex supplies” so “everyone can be as safe as possible” and volunteers will circulate to “make sure everyone is respectful and having the best experience Oasis has to offer,” he posted online, addressing concerns. The club is four storeys of easy-to-clean surfaces, with sanitizing wipes, baskets of condoms, and lots of places to mingle, including the back of a hippie van and a heated pool. “I’m not in the lifestyle. It’s not for me, but I’m the owner, and it makes people happy,” said Jana Matthews, as she gave a tour of the facility on a quiet Monday afternoon.
Matthews said people like to visit the club because it is a safe space where there are rules and etiquette, but no judgment. Some people like to watch and be watched; other couples keep to themselves; some people go as a group and have sex with each other. Everything has to be consensual. Single men are only welcome one night a week. For the U of T event, there aren’t the same restrictions. Students are allowed to bring one guest, but must have their student ID cards.
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“Young people often experiment with their sexuality, and we know that many young adults’ conceptualizations of what constitutes a ‘relationship’ has changed over the years. Recognizing those changes and offering mechanisms and events for young adults to self-express their sexual attitudes in a safe environment should be encouraged,” she wrote in an email. “It’s time that we recognize that not everyone is in heterosexual, monogamous, committed long-term relationships and nor does everyone wish to be.” Tower says sex positivity is all about coexisting, and not having disagreements about what is morally right or appropriate. “We just make sure that everyone, no matter what they’re into, can communicate about it, and have a great experience socially, without people being like, “You can't do that, that’s gross.” When asked whether it was a U of T-sanctioned event, and whether the university had any concerns, a spokesperson responded with an emailed statement: “The University will not attempt to censor, control or interfere with any group on the basis of its philosophy, beliefs, interests or opinions expressed, unless and until these lead to activities which are illegal or which infringe the rights and freedoms.”Obama Draws More Confidence than GOP Leaders on Deficit
Most Support Raising Taxes on High Incomes to Reduce Deficit
Overview
As the nation prepares for another round of deficit reduction debates, the public’s confidence in congressional leaders, particularly Republican leaders in Congress, has plummeted. Jus t 35% say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Republican leaders in Congress to do the right thing when it comes to dealing with the federal budget deficit, down from 47% in May. Fully 62% say they have little or no confidence in the Republican leaders on this issue.
Public confidence in Barack Obama on the budget deficit, by comparison, has remained largely unchanged. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Sept. 22-25 among 1,000 adults finds that 52% express at least a fair amount of confidence in Obama to do the right thing when it comes to dealing with the deficit, virtually unchanged from 55% earlier in the year.
The drop in confidence in GOP congressional leaders is broad based, even occurring among Republicans themselves. The share of Republicans confident in their party’s leaders on this issue has fallen from 76% four months ago to 62% today, with comparable declines among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who agree with the Tea Party and those who do not.
Public trust in Democratic congressional leaders has also suffered – 43% say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Democratic leaders, down from 51% four months ago.
Democrats offer a more positive assessment of their leaders’ handling of the deficit than Republicans do of theirs. Fully 84% of Democrats have at least a fair amount of confidence in Obama to do the right thing regarding the deficit, and 75% are confident in Democratic leaders in Congress. This compares with 62% of Republicans who are confident in how GOP congressional leaders will handle this issue.
Independents are equally skeptical of both parties in Congress (35% have at least a fair amount of confidence in Republican leaders, 34% express confidence in Democratic leaders). Nearly half of independents (47%) say they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in Obama to do the right thing when it comes to dealing with the federal budget deficit.
Proposals to Reduce Deficit and Debt
The survey also finds continued public support for raising the tax rate on high incomes as a way to reduce the federal budget deficit and the size of the national debt.
Two-thirds (67%) approve of raising the tax rate on incomes over $250,000 as a means of reducing the national debt. This is virtually unchanged from May (66% approve). Just 30% disapprove of raising tax rates for incomes above $250,000.
About half who approve of raising the tax rate on incomes above $250,000 – 33% of the public overall – say they strongly approve of this proposal. By contrast, only about a third of those who disapprove – 10% of the public – say they strongly disapprove of raising tax rates for incomes above $250,000.
Democrats overwhelming support raising the tax rate on income over $250,000; 82% of Democrats approve of this proposal and 67% of independents agree. As was the case in May, Republicans are divided: 47% approve and 51% disapprove of higher tax rates on income in excess of $250,000.
Views of other proposals to address the deficit and national debt also have changed only modestly since May. Two-thirds (66%) approve of reducing military commitments overseas to reduce the debt while 56% approve of limiting tax deductions for large corporations. While more Democrats (72%) than Republicans (54%) approve of reducing military commitments to reduce the debt, there are no partisan differences in opinions about limiting corporate tax deductions to achieve this goal (56% of Republicans and Democrats, 60% of independents).
Most Americans continue to oppose reducing federal government spending on programs to help lower income people (55% disapprove, 40% approve) to reduce the budget deficit and national debt. And two-thirds (66%) disapprove of reducing federal support to states for things like education and roads, while only about half that number (32%) approves of this proposal.RENOWNED prankster Lewis Spears, aka Nebz Adlay, is being investigated by police for his apparent involvement in yesterday’s April Fools prank claiming Castle Hill High School had burned down.
media_camera A Facebook screengrab from Speers’ Facebook page purportedly showing the prank SMS being sent from a computer.
More than 1000 parents received a text message from the school’s SMS broadcast system early on Tuesday morning, warning parents not to send students to the school as it had been closed due to an arson attack.
The prank drew a mixed response on social media.
Related: April Fool’s prank claims school burned down
Hills Police detective inspector Gary Bailey confirmed that Spears is one of the line of inquiries that police are following and they are currently examining his call records and IP address.
Spears famously pranked Channel Seven’s Today Tonight last year claiming to be the instigator of a vicious cyberbullying campaign.
The current affairs program ran a story on Spears, before his “victim” revealed herself to be a friend and part of the prank.
media_camera A Facebook screengrab from Spears’ Facebook page purportedly showing some of the texts sent back by Castle Hill High School parents in response to the prank SMS.
Yesterday, posts on his Facebook page claiming to be by Spears, included what was claimed to be evidence of his involvement in the Castle Hill High School prank, including alleged screen shots of him sending out the fake text, and an alleged screenshot of the messaging program showing SMS messages sent back to the school by parents in response.
“Inb4 Minister of Education at my door, happy April fools to entire school,” read the post on Spears’ Facebook page.
“I did it lol.”
While some saw the funny side of the prank, others messaged Hills Shire Times concerned private details had been compromised.
“It’s all good and well to play jokes but when does a joke go too far? Think it would be a different voice if your personal identification had been accessed,” said Leigh-Anne Du Plooy
Roxane Martin-Hayter added: “I don’t think it’s funny at all. Quite pathetic actually. I would have been furious firstly to be woken up and secondly if it had been |
strictures of writing short fiction forces Sanderson to write with a much tighter focus, which makes for a more satisfying reading experience. The author has a tendency to concentrate on extraneous plotlines that don't always have much importance in the greater scheme of things. These meandering storylines habitually kill the flow of a novel and are often just filler material. Not so in. The format insures that it's mostly killer and no filler.will please Sanderson's legions (Sorry for the same pun again. I couldn't resist!) of fans and will probably gain him some new followers. God knows I'm looking forward to what comes next!The final verdict: 7.75/10For more info about this title, check out the Subterranean Press website For those interested in these novellas, you can still download the first one,, for only 2.99$ hereThe Rev. William J. H. Boetcker published a pamphlet in 1916 known as “The 10 Cannots.” Often misattributed to Lincoln, these 10 statements embody a tremendous wealth of wisdom and truth:
WHY are Progressives so obsessive about raising their taxes? Answer: The left REALLY DOES BELIEVE the zero sum game myth.In their view, there’s only so much sand in the sandbox. You can’t pile up a lot of sand in one corner without depriving the rest of the sandbox. So if you succeed beyond a certain point, you’re DEPRIVING someone, somewhere of a decent living! FAIRNESS DEMANDS that they smooth out the sandbox! And since it’s a “zero sum game,” by making the rich poorer, automatically and magically you improve the lot of the poor!The fact is that the economy is neither zero sum, nor is it static. It expands or contracts based on the BEHAVIORS of the participants! Innovation, invention, provision of needed services, advancement of knowledge, investment in new ideas, etc., all generate NEW wealth. It is not simply a matter of shuffling around a limited money supply. When you ENCOURAGE these activities (through lower taxes and reduced regulation and government intrusion) you UNLEASH the engine of the economy to churn and burn and heat up … and to grow and expand. Conversely, when you hamstring the economy with overregulation, overtaxation and excessive intrusion – you put ankle weights on the runners that drive the economy and you experience contraction and slowdown. This discourages risk taking. This discourages business expansion and job creation. Equal Opportunity does not guarantee equality of outcomes. Still, whether your share is a large slice or a small slice of pie, if the economy grows, the pie gets bigger and everyone gets a bigger piece of pie! Doug Edelman is a conservative political analyst and commentator, and has been a contributing editor for The Conservative Voice. His work is also seen on Western Front American, Small Government Times, Western Journalism, News By Us, The American Daily, The Post Chronicle, New Media Journal, Capitol Hill Coffee House and more. Mr. Edelman is also an IT Consultant/Contractor and owner of a Computer Services Business. He has taught PC Maintenance & Repair and Networking at his local Community College, and maintains a blog at http://starboard.blogtownhall.com.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption BBC's Paul Wood, in Homs, says Russian-made tanks are firing on residents
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has called for a solution to the crisis in Syria based on initiatives put forward by the Arab League.
Visiting Syria, Mr Lavrov said Damascus was ready for a larger Arab mission to monitor peace efforts, and would set a date for a constitutional referendum.
His visit comes after Russia and China vetoed a UN resolution. Gulf states say they are expelling Syria's ambassadors.
Government forces are continuing a fierce assault on rebels in Homs.
The BBC's Paul Wood - one of the only foreign reporters in Homs - says the Syrian army resumed mortar attacks and heavy machine-gun fire after daybreak.
He says Russian-made tanks have been seen close to the city centre, but these is no sign so far of the ground assault feared by many residents.
Hundreds are reported to have died since shelling of the city began on Friday. At least 95 people were killed on Monday alone, activists say.
'Rapid solution'
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Crowds of people were out in Damascus as Sergei Lavrov's convoy arrived
The Syrian opposition has voiced strong criticism of the stalemate at the UN, saying the Russian and Chinese vetoes on Saturday encouraged the Syrian government to step up the assault on Homs.
But after meeting Syrian leaders, Mr Lavrov said President Bashar al-Assad was "fully committed" to ending bloodshed and ready for dialogue with all political forces.
Mr Assad would soon announce a date for a referendum on a new constitution, he added.
"We [Russia] confirmed our readiness to act for a rapid solution to the crisis based on the plan put forward by the Arab League," Mr Lavrov said, though Syrian officials later clarified that he was was not referring to the current Arab League plan which calls for Mr Assad to step down in favour of his vice-president.
"Syria is informing the Arab League it is interested in the League's mission continuing its work and being increased in terms of quantity," he added.
The league deployed an observer mission to Syria in December but suspended it in late January amid worsening violence.
In a separate development, Gulf Arab states said they were expelling Syria's ambassadors in the region and recall their own ambassadors in Syria over what they described as the "mass slaughter" of civilians.
The decision comes a day after the US closed its embassy in Damascus and pulled out all remaining staff.
The UK, France, Spain and Italy have also recalled their ambassadors.
'Isolated regime'
Analysis After the collapse of efforts to pass a UN Security Council resolution on Syria, all the talk now is of "new initiatives" - Turkey, France, the UK, the Arab League are all promising action. So what's on offer? First there will be efforts through other parts of the UN system - the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council - to try to increase the pressure on Damascus. The Arab League may appoint a special envoy for Syria. Momentum is building for a much broader group of countries - perhaps styled as "the Friends of Syria" - to co-ordinate activities and keep the Syria issue in the spotlight. For now though this is all entirely in the realm of diplomacy. Some may already be filtering arms to Syrian rebel fighters but the international consensus is that external military intervention has no role in this crisis.
Thousands of President Assad's supporters lined the streets of Damascus and waved flags as Mr Lavrov's motorcade drove through the city ahead of his meeting with Mr Assad, in what correspondents described as a hero's welcome.
Mr Lavrov has said Western reaction condemning Russia's veto of the UN Security Council resolution on Saturday bordered on "hysteria".
Moscow has said the draft - which backed an Arab League peace plan calling for President Assad to hand over power - would have forced regime change on Syria.
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland urged Mr Lavrov to "use this opportunity to make absolutely clear to the Assad regime how isolated it is and to encourage Assad and his people to make use of the Arab League plan and provide for a transition".
Russia is the main supplier of arms to Damascus. The Syrian port of Tartus is home to Russia's only Mediterranean naval base.
Meanwhile Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan told MPs in Ankara: "We will start a new initiative with those countries who stand by the Syrian people, not the regime."
The Syrian government, which has been fighting an uprising against President Assad's rule since March, says it is fighting foreign-backed armed gangs.
Thousands of former army soldiers have defected to the rebel side, forming the Free Syrian Army.
Syria's interior ministry said operations against "terrorist groups" would continue until "security and order are restored" in Homs.
Human rights groups and activists say more than 7,000 people have been killed by Syrian security forces since the uprising began last March.
The UN stopped estimating the death toll in Syria after it passed 5,400 in January, saying it was too difficult to confirm.
President Assad's government says at least 2,000 members of the security forces have been killed.Fernández’s charitable deeds have been acknowledged by the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, who honored the philanthropist for his contribution to his motherland.
Residents of Cerezales del Condado, a tiny village in the northwestern Spanish province of Leon were in for a life-changing surprise when the founder of Corona beer left each of them with almost $2.5 million each in his will.
Antonino Fernández, former Chairman of the Grupo Modelo group in Mexico, died at the age of 99 in August this year. Even though he was a billionaire at the time of his death, the initial part of his life was spent battling poverty in Cerezales del Condado.
Born in 1917, Fernández was forced to leave school at the age of 14 as his parents could not afford the fees. In 1949, at the age of 32, Fernández moved to Mexico to work at his wife’s uncle’s company, Grupo Modelo. Starting off as a warehouse worker, he climbed up the ranks slowly, becoming the CEO in 1971, a position he held till 1997.
Fernández remained the Chairman of the Board until 2005 and the Honorary Life Chairman of Grupo Modelo, which manufactures the Conona Extra beer, until his death.
The billionaire remained close to his roots in Spain and after his death, left $210 million to the residents of Cerezales, with each villager inheriting over $2 million.
For Maximino Sanchez, the owner of the only bar in the village, Fernández is nothing short of a hero. The Diario de León newspaper quoted Sanchez as saying: “We never had any pesete (money) before. I don't know, what we would have done without Antonino.”
Fernández’s charitable deeds have been acknowledged by the former King of Spain, Juan Carlos, who honored the philanthropist for his contribution to his motherland. An organization established by Fernández in Leon — Soltra — worked on providing disabled people with employments opportunities.
He is also credited with setting up the 'Cerezales Antonino y Cinia' Foundation in his village in 2009, to support rural initiatives in the region.
Corona Extra is the second-most imported bottled beer in the United States, boasting of $693million in annual sales.
Related ArticlesWhen you look at it on a stat sheet, a 1-yard touchdown pass from Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers to tight end Richard Rodgers might not look like much.
But then again, you might have been folding paper footballs that day in geometry class when they covered the Pythagorean theorem.
Via Rob Demovsky of ESPN.com, the heave from one side of the field to the back of the end zone of the other traveled 39.4 yards in the air. (And Jason Wilde of ESPN Wisconsin showed his work, and can prove it. #nerds)
Of course, the real losers were the Vikings, who didn’t have a defender within 15 yards of the Packers tight end who caught it.
On a first-and-goal from the Vikings 1, Aaron Rodgers rolled right, to the other sideline. All the Vikings chased him, ignorning the fact Richard Rogers was drifiting alone to the left corner of the end zone.
“You usually don’t have to throw the ball 20 or 30 yards for a 1-yard touchdown,” Packers coach Mike McCarthy said. “I’m sure you guys will measure that out and correct me. But Richard ran a great route on the back side. It’s a delay route. Aaron delayed more than he probably needed to, but it was obviously a great throw.”
Richard said he was open “forever,” so he started waving his arms like on the playground.
“I was just open, no one was really covering me,” he said. “So I was just standing back there waving.”
Aaron had to put a little more muscle on the ball than he anticipated from that down and distance, but the results were geometrically amazing.People removing a tattoo by a laser and excision increase in Japan. Specifically, mayor Hashimoto prohibited a tattoo to the Osaka city staff and became the topic. In recent years, the fashion tattoo is becoming popular with the young generation, but Japanese people still doesn’t accept it from their history and prejudice.
During the Edo period in Japan, the punishment in which a criminal is tattooed on the face or the arm as evidence of a criminal record. Most of members of the antisocial organisation including the Japanese gang has a tattoo. The image of tattoo is that the Yakuza’s symbol is still strong in Japan.
<Limitation and risk of living in Japanese society by having a tattoo.> Here is listing up risks and Japanese peoples’ comments as below.Update: Flowers has now been released. This is what he did for the Chiefs defense.
Cutting Brandon Flowers would be a disaster for the Kansas City Chiefs. There, I said it.
The Chiefs, who ranked 25th against the pass last season, are under the microscope after Flowers did not show up to voluntary OTAs this past week. Some have speculated the team told Flowers to stay away from the facility so it can work out a trade (Andy Reid says he wasn't told to stay home), relieving the Chiefs of $7.5 million against the cap both this season and next season.
That savings would be nice with the team trying to extend the contracts of Alex Smith and Justin Houston, but know this: The jettisoning of Flowers would spell disaster for the 2014 Chiefs.
Anybody who thinks Flowers is overrated should go to NFL.com and buy NFL Rewind yesterday. Flowers is one of the very few corners who can play both outside the numbers and in the slot with great effectiveness, despite his relatively diminutive stature.
The jettisoning of Flowers would spell disaster for the 2014 Chiefs.
While we are on his size, the narrative that general manager John Dorsey would get rid of Flowers because he likes bigger corners is crazy talk. If Dorsey liked slower, power backs, would he cut Jamaal Charles? The idea is to get the best players.
Last year, the Chiefs lost a playoff game 45-44 to the Indianapolis Colts. You might recall the game. You know, the one that ended with T.Y. Hilton streaking past Kendrick Lewis and Quintin Demps. What you might have forgotten was the score of the game while Flowers was covering Hilton.
Here is an excerpt from a piece I wrote about the Chiefs defense in that game
Beginning with the following drive and lasting until Flowers was hurt, Cooper, Flowers and Smith were the only cornerbacks to see the field in a man-coverage role. In that span, the Chiefs allowed three points. In the other 35 minutes, Kansas City surrendered 42 points. With Cooper replacing the beleaguered Robinson, Sutton put Flowers in the slot. The move forced the Colts to make a tough decision. Either play Hilton in the slot and face Flowers, or move him out of his preferred spot and send him outside the numbers. Indianapolis chose to mix the looks, mostly challenging Flowers. Flowers gives the Chiefs a huge advantage. If your best receiver is a slot guy, he will be blanketed. If he's an outside receiver not named Dez Bryant, he will be covered (I see you, DeSean Jackson). The opposing offensive coordinator can't put receivers in certain spots knowing he will create a big mismatch. With Flowers out, Hilton went solely to the slot. Why? The Colts knew only Robinson could guard him there, or they would see zone coverage. Smith and Cooper can't play inside, making the Chiefs insanely predictable. Sutton should have mixed up the coverages more by going to zone, even doubling with Berry. He never did.
Without Flowers, the Chiefs secondary becomes insanely easy for a team like the Broncos or Chargers to play against. Removing the Chiefs best corner gives you a static look: Cooper and Smith on the outside, with Chris Owens (probably) playing in the slot.
Denver will destroy Kansas City with a bunch of Emmanuel Sanders and Wes Welker in the slot. San Diego will employ looks getting Keenan Allen into the slot. It will be a field day for smart offensive coordinators and experienced quarterbacks such as the ones residing in the AFC West.
Before anybody starts with the logic of "It's fine, we have Chris Owens and a developing youngster in Cooper!", let me interject. We are talking about Chris Owens. The same Chris Owens who has played for three teams in five years, including two last year. The same Chris Owens who was cut by the Cleveland Browns. Let that last sentence sink in for a second.
I'm not saying Owens can't help and won't be better than Dunta Robinson -- because if he is upright and breathing he is better -- but let's not get carried away. He is not half of Flowers, which is why the Chiefs were able to sign him for one year and $800,000, otherwise known as $70,000 above the minimum for his service time.
On the outside, I'm happy with Marcus Cooper and Sean Smith. You know what I'm not happy about? The depth behind them. With Flowers, you can move him outside should one of them go down and put Owens into the slot role. Without Flowers, you have Phillip Gaines coming in.
Nothing personal against Gaines, but we have no idea if he can play. I don't care about his game tape at Rice, he's a rookie who is known longer in Conference USA. He could turn out to be Darrell Green. He could also turn out to be Jalil Brown or Donald Washington.
Gaines should not be the primary depth. If Flowers is gone and Smith / Cooper suffers an injury, good night.
Look, I understand the Chiefs need to make cap space for guys like Houston, Smith and eventually Berry. However, there are easier ways (and less painful ones). First, sign Houston to an extension with his new deal kicking in next year, along with a signing bonus he receives immediately.
With Smith, either sign him to an extension also beginning next year, or wait until after this season ends. Kansas City won't lose Smith if it wants him around, thanks to the franchise tag. The Chiefs can always franchise Smith and then work out a long-term deal.
After this season, the cap is expected to rise another $9 million. Factor that in, along with potentially cutting Tamba Hali ($9M savings), Mike DeVito ($4M savings), Chase Daniel ($3.8M savings) and Donnie Avery ($3.5m savings).
Still think cutting Flowers is a necessary move?Please let the school committee in Cranston, R.I. know that the nation is watching them. Join FFRF (read FFRF's letter here) in urging the committee to do the right thing, and not appeal the Jan. 11 federal appeals court ruling in Jessica Ahlquist's favor. Please take a moment to contact the school committee now, when it counts. The Cranston School Committee is meeting and holding a public hearing on whether to appeal the ruling at 6 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 16. Send a quick email or message urging them not to appeal the ruling.
The 16-year-old sued over an unconstitutional prayer banner hanging at her high school. In ruling in Jessica’s favor, the judge noted that she “is clearly an articulate and courageous young woman, who took a brave stand, particularly in light of the hostile response she has received from her community.” Jessica, after numerous threats, has had to go to school with police escort! Her state representative called her "an evil little thing" on the radio. Her mayor has spoken against her challenge. She is such a persona non grata in her community that FFRF could not find a nearby floral shop willing to deliver our flowers to her! (See links below).
That the situation has gotten so out of hand is the fault of the school board, which should never have defended the unconstitutional prayer banner. In eking out its decision whether or not to appeal, the board has made Jessica Ahlquist a lightning rod for public opprobrium. It's time for the school board to recognize its role in fomenting community hostility, to stand up for the Constitution and the rights of a teenager. The Rhode Island Chapter of the ACLU, which brought the suit on Jessica's behalf, has already filed a request for repayment of attorney's fees in the amount of $173,000. It is morally wrong and fiscal insanity to consider appealing the ruling.
CONTACT
Please write the Superintendent and Committee Chairperson, and "cc" the others. (Only personal email and phone numbers of Committee members are listed by the school website.)
Cranston School Committee
*Peter Nero - Superintendent
Phone: 401-270-8000
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
*Andrea M. Iannazzi - Chairperson
Home Tel: 401-935-2411
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Frank S. Lombardi - Clerk
Home Tel: 401-942-9774
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Steven Bloom
Home Tel: 401-447-3976
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Stephanie Culhane
Home Tel: 401-781-2119
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Paula McFarland
Home Tel: 401-944-5802
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Janice Ruggieri
Home Tel: 401-944-4832
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Michael A. Traficante
Home Tel: 401-943-0026
E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
ATTEND SCHOOL BOARD MEETING
If you live in the New England area, you may wish to attend and speak at the hearing. FFRF'ers will be there along with Humanists of Rhode Island, including Ellery Schempp. Ellery, as a high school student, started the famed Abington v. Schempp case in which the Supreme Court decision declared bible readings in schools unconstitutional.
Cranston School Committee Meeting - Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012
Cranston High School East
899 Park Avenue
Cranston, R.I.
6 PM
TALKING POINTS TO SCHOOL COMMITTEE
Feel free to cut and paste. Better yet, use your own words. One or two sentences is effective:
Do not appeal the sound decision of U.S. District Judge Ronald Lagueux, against a prayer banner at Cranston East High. It is the duty of the school board to protect taxpayers' money from a costly losing battle, but even more to put a stop to an increasingly nasty religious crusade against one district student. Join one brave teenager in standing up for principles which protect us all. The treatment Jessica Ahlquist has endured is an object lesson in why religion and prayer do not belong our public schools. In voting against appealing, you are voting to uphold the freedom of conscience so precious to Rhode Island's founder, Roger Williams.
BACKGROUND
Providence Journal: "School Committee moves meeting to talk about prayer banner to Cranston East."
New York Times: "Student Faces Town’s Wrath in Protest Against a Prayer."
Jessica Ahlquist News Releases
Hooray for Jessica!
Rhode Island florists refuse to deliver FFRF’s flowers to Jessica Ahlquist
FFRF announces “Atheists in Foxholes Support Fund”
Florist shops violate Rhode Island public accommodation statute
Jessica Ahlquist needs your support!
Thank you for your support!
For maximum effectiveness be succinct and write as an individual, not as a member of FFRF. We are pleased to receive "blind" ("BCC") copies of your messages and correspondence by email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..CLOSE There's a tech gap between rural and urban areas, and the problems it creates are bigger than just streaming Netflix. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
Broadband access lacking in upstate New York (Photo: Sheldon Sneed/USA TODAY Network)
Upstate New York is lagging when it comes to internet access, and industry experts say the ramifications are troubling for struggling local economies.
For the last few years, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has spearheaded an initiative to help expand broadband access to underserved communities. But critics say the program is not doing enough to bridge the digital divide that exists between downstate and upstate.
Phil Dampier, founder of Stop the Cap, an advocacy group that fights for better broadband, says the quality of service for New Yorkers drops dramatically once you move west of the Hudson Valley.
“We are slow and dismal. We're way behind a lot of other states when it comes to innovation and development.” Phil Dampier, Stop the Cap
"We are slow and dismal," said Dampier. "We're way behind a lot of other states when it comes to innovation and development."
The Federal Communications Commission set 25 Mbps (megabits per second) as the minimum speed for broadband service. What does that mean?
A few years ago 25 Mbps was considered very fast, and for some users that may still be adequate. If you're sending emails or browsing Facebook from your computer, you're not likely to run into any problems. You'll need about 5 Mbps to stream an HD movie on Netflix.
But usage patterns have changed. People own more devices that are competing for that bandwidth on home networks. When you put a smart TV, a couple of laptops, smartphones and a few internet-connected devices on one home network, the service can slow to a crawl.
Read more
► Advice on improving your Internet speed
► Questions to ask when buying Internet service
► Slow internet? Test it and tell the state
►Time Warner Cable is now Spectrum
For businesses that have moved to the cloud, the demands have also increased dramatically.
"Speeds of 100 Mbps are the standard in most places," Dampier says, "but in much of the state, those speeds simply aren't available."
Statewide, 74 percent have access to broadband at speeds of 100 Mbps or faster. In Westchester County, it's 100 percent. It's 95 percent in Brooklyn and 84.8 percent in Albany.
But data gathered by industry watchdog Broadband Now shows a starkly different picture in western New York and the Southern Tier. In Monroe County, only 48 percent of residents have access to 100 Mbps service. It's 25 percent in Broome County and 4 percent in Tompkins County. If you live in Chemung or Orleans or Wayne County, it's essentially unavailable.
Dampier says that the governor's plan to bring 25 Mbps to rural areas and 100 Mbps to other underserved communities is an important step, but doesn't go far enough. It doesn't help residents whose existing internet providers aren't offering packages at those speeds.
"The problem is so big in upstate that you had to start somewhere," Dampier said.
Promises, promises
Even when they offer faster speeds, internet providers in New York can't always deliver.
A yearlong investigation by State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman concluded that some consumers who signed up for premium plans were actually getting speeds as much as 70 percent slower than promised. That investigation prompted a lawsuit filed in February against Time Warner Cable (now called Spectrum), alleging that the company deliberately scammed customers by promising internet speeds its hardware was incapable of providing.
"There's been a move in recent years to introduce new packages that offer faster speeds," Schneiderman said, "but that has often happened without making any effort to improve the equipment or making adjustments to their network."
Schneiderman said he would continue to gather information on other internet providers, asking consumers to test their internet speeds and submit results to his office. He said additional action might be forthcoming.
"We are looking broadly at this industry," he said. "It's an ongoing investigation and we want to make sure that people continue to test their internet speeds."
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For many parts of upstate, consumers have little choice when it comes to purchasing internet services. The typical options are one cable company and one phone company offering internet service. Without significant competition, there's no incentive for companies to invest in building a better infrastructure. This would require significant spending to deploy the fiber optic cable networks that faster internet would require.
Spectrum takes over for remaining Time Warner Cable customers today. For upstate NY, W Mass, Maine you get one advertised speed: 60Mbps. — Stop the Cap! (@stopthecap) March 14, 2017
Spectrum arrives
The dominant service provider in Western New York has long been Time Warner Cable, which was purchased by Charter Communications last year. The $67 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable and Florida based Bright House Networks made Charter the second-largest home internet provider in the U.S.
Charter, which is based in Stamford, Connecticut, says it now has 24 million subscribers in 41 states, including western New York and the Southern Tier. The company is offering services under the Spectrum brand name.
“At Charter, we are working hard to redefine what a cable company can be and we call it Spectrum,” said Tom Rutledge, Charter chairman and CEO, in a statement earlier this week.
At this point it's unclear what impact the new company will have on the quality and price of broadband service. A company spokesman said it plans to offer faster speeds to existing customers.
"Spectrum’s starting internet speed of 60 Mbps is faster than the fastest offering from TWC in Buffalo and Rochester," said Andrew Russell, Charter's director of communications for the Northeast. "We also offer a 100 Mbps service, well in advance of our December 2018 commitment to do so across our New York service area."
The challenge of making these upgrades in an inherited physical network is not trivial. One of the strategies will be freeing up capacity by transitioning to an all-digital lineup for television service. This would likely take a couple of years for former Time Warner Cable systems that are not currently all-digital, including Rochester and Buffalo.
Spectrum currently offers 300 Mbps speeds in New York City and the Hudson Valley.
The company also plans to offer nationally uniform pricing. They say some existing TWC customers may see faster speeds for a lower price.
"Spectrum Internet is a very good value — 60 Mbps for $53.99/month for Spectrum TV customers, with no modem fees, data caps or contracts," Russell said. "By contrast, TWC Internet at 15 Mbps was $59.99/month retail, plus $10 leased modem fee if you didn’t own your own modem."
Affording home broadband
High prices have been as much a problem for upstate customers as slow speeds. Too often, that means that broadband service has simply been unaffordable for many households.
Rochester and Buffalo appeared on a list of the 25 worst connected U.S. cities published last November.
The report, using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, looked at the percentage of households that lacked access to fixed broadband internet service. The median for cities with at least 50,000 households was 28.6 percent. Rochester ranked 12th at 42.7 percent. Buffalo was 16th at 42.1 percent. Totals in Southern Tier counties like Chemung (37.8), Broome (35.3), and Tompkins (31.9) were comparable.
Even though broadband service is available in those urban centers, many households can't afford to pay the monthly fees. This puts students at a disadvantage, of course, but also creates challenges for families who increasingly are directed to the internet for interactions that used to take place offline.
"Lack of access to sufficient bandwidth and current digital skills holds those individuals back, which impacts their communities," said Angela Siefer, director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. "In addition, industries such as banking and health have demonstrated how they can reduce costs through consumer technology, but that only works if the consumers have affordable bandwidth, the appropriate devices, relevant digital skills and tech support."
Siefer says the disparity is greatest among the most vulnerable populations — low-income, undereducated, seniors, children and the disabled. A study by the Pew Research Center found that more people in those populations are reliant on smartphones as their only way to connect to the internet.
Most cell service providers have data caps which drives up the cost of connectivity. Relying on Wi-Fi connections is often insufficient, and many websites simply don't work well on smartphones.
"The issue needs to be addressed through affordable broadband, appropriate devices, relevant skills and tech support." Siefer said. "Only addressing the infrastructure piece of the equation is common and shortsighted. Simple availability of broadband service in a region does not address the barriers of affordability (of home broadband and devices) or lack of digital skills."
An ethernet cable with fiber optic background. (Photo: Getty Images / iStockphoto)
Faster elsewhere
That hasn't been the case in other parts of the country, such as Raleigh, North Carolina, or Chattanooga, Tennessee. The development of 1-gigabit networks — 10 times faster than 100 Mbps — are attracting high-tech businesses to those regions.
The loss of manufacturing jobs is not unique to upstate cities. What's been different is the aggressiveness with which some communities have pursued high speed internet as an engine of economic growth.
In Rochester, mayoral candidate Rachel Barnhart has proposed a citywide fiber network as part of her campaign platform. Public funding of high speed networks is an idea that's been discussed in some parts of upstate, but finding both the political will and the millions of dollars required are huge hurdles.
"Syracuse has looked at it," said Dampier. "Ithaca is working on its own public broadband network."
Smaller companies have built out 1-gigabit networks to small pockets of residents; those include Greenlight Networks in Rochester, Fiberspark in Ithaca and Empire Access in Corning, Elmira and other spots across the Southern Tier. But Dampier says the scale of those networks falls short of what's needed to turn the tide.
"Rust Belt economies are reinventing themselves in the digital knowledge economy," said Dampier. "Businesses rise and fall based on the infrastructure that's available. We are way behind the rest of the country in this regard."
Dampier says efforts to jump-start upstate economies with publicly funded jobs programs, like the state and federal collaboration to bring a photonics institute to Rochester, won't succeed if they don't include a plan for improving network infrastructures.
"Employers, small business start-ups and workers moving into the region are likely to be considerably less impressed by Rochester’s incumbent telecommunications service providers." Dampier said. "The area’s fiber future remains bleak."
SLAHMAN@Gannett.com
Read or Share this story: http://on.rocne.ws/2macokUFor the second straight year, the New Japan “Best of the Super Juniors” was hit with the injury bug, throwing a major wrenches in the booking.
In 2013, Ryusuke Taguchi won his block but suffered a hip injury in his final bout, removing him from the semifinals against Alex Shelley, and eliminating a likely finals meeting with former tag team partner and newly-minted heel Prince Devitt. With Taguchi out, New Japan almost lucked into a compelling battle of the Time Splitters, but an 8-point log jam between five wrestlers that included KUSHIDA ended up with the tie breaker falling into TAKA Michinoku’s favor.
This year, a Time Splitters battle was potentially booked for some point on the final night, but like Taguchi the year before, Block B winner Alex Shelley was injured in his final bout. And also like the year before, a member of the low-ranked Suzuki-gun junior team ended up winning the tie-breaker, with Taichi’s head to head win over Nick Jackson sending him into the next round to face KUSHIDA.
Block A was an even bigger mess, with Alex Kozlov dislocating his shoulder five minutes into his first bout vs Ricochet. This led to the dreaded forfeit victories for every other participant in the block, and very likely the massive rebooking of nearly every other remaining match to get back to the desired semi final result. The end result of this mess was KUSHIDA vs Taichi, and Taguchi vs Ricochet as the semi final match ups. Three of those men were likely planned to be there all along. Normally, Taichi would be an eye roll educing accidental semi finalist because, well, normally Taichi is an eye roll educing participant in the tournament, period. But this year you could argue Taichi had been the most interesting wrestler in the field, with an altered gimmick and a new, serious edge.
Taichi was nearly pulled from the tournament before it even started, due to a tabloid controversy that broke two weeks ago in which he was shown in provocative photos with a woman who was not his wife. In the west, this would barely register a blip beyond the curiosity of hardcore fans, but the culture in Japan is much different. New Japan announced that he would participate in the tournament, but likely face discipline later. The situation seems to have lit a fire under the normally lazy and complacent Taichi, who has long been mired in a pattern of completely uninspiring opening bout performances, particularly since injuring his leg in a car accident last year. He’s been very aggressive in this tournament, with a noticeable increase in workrate, and a new addition to his gimmick where he brings a microphone stand to the ring and sings his entrance theme. He (sort of) addressed the personal issue in a promo following his night one match, stating that “I will always be me.”
So what to do about the injuries? There is really nothing that you can do. This is not a situation similar to the G1, where you have large men working a physical style and beating each other into legit submission. The average BotSJ match goes about 9 minutes. The longest match of the tournament went 16. Most of the bouts are fast paced sprints, with far fewer dangerous dives and such than you would think. I chalk it up to bad luck. One change I would consider is replacing injured wrestlers who get hurt early on in |
in England. In addition to the usual problems settling in England, he was unsettled by tabloid press intrusion into his private life, had to cope with his girlfriend remaining in Spain, and instead lived in England with his parents. His father, in particular, seems an important character to De Gea. He's a former goalkeeper himself, and used to accompany De Gea to training sessions with Atletico and gave him feedback after sessions, but this wasn't possible at United. De Gea appears to need a certain type of environment off the pitch.
On it, too, he's simply more confident; it shines through, particularly when dealing with crosses. The most fascinating stat from Neville's in-depth analysis was that De Gea's catch-to-punch ratio is 92 percent this season, up from 56, 69, and 92 percent in previous campaigns. Even this was something Schmeichel struggled with, and this relates to tactical improvement, too.
"I was used to the idea that high crosses delivered from the wings were my balls. I thought I could transfer to English conditions without any problems," said Schmeichel. "But I realised that it was quite normal for strikers to make physical challenges in the air, and I wasn't used to that. I slowly began to accept that I would have to adjust my style of play."
That adjustment to English football has been vital. It's worth remembering that De Gea already looked outstanding at Atletico Madrid, where his only apparent weakness was a vulnerability to long-range shots. English football requires different challenges, and as someone who knew relatively little about the Premier League upon his arrival -- he had no idea about Stoke's long throws, for example -- it took around a year to adjust his approach.
In England, fans, pundits and players relish the fact foreigners find the style of play difficult, and there's a peculiar fetish for newcomers struggling with the physicality. Cristiano Ronaldo, another who progressed incredibly over the course of six seasons at United, is another obvious example. However, if this seems cynical and occasionally jingoistic, there's also huge respect for the players who manage to adapt. Ronaldo was initially mocked for his flimsiness, but later was recognised as the Premier League's best player.
Arsenal's Robert Pires was left on the bench for his first Premier League game, away at Sunderland, because Arsene Wenger "needed him to understand how matches are played over here."
Pires was taken aback. "After 25 minutes I was at a loss. I'd never seen such thunderous tackling, all studs up with arms flailing; how was I going to make my mark in this type of football?" By the end of his second season, he too had been recognised as the best footballer in England. More recently, the likes of Luka Modric, David Silva and Theo Walcott were also questioned for their lack of physicality, but became highly respected once they toughened up.
It's unusual for a goalkeeper to face this situation, but De Gea has experienced a similar development: he was a weak link in his early Manchester United days, but is now tougher mentally, tougher physically too and has been one of the Premier League's best performers so far this season. United still have plenty of problems under Louis van Gaal, but with developing youngsters in the back line and others gradually adapting to English football from more technical leagues, De Gea is an obvious role model.
Michael Cox is the editor of zonalmarking.net and a contributor to ESPN FC. Follow him on Twitter @Zonal_Marking.ROMANS 13:8-14
« Romans 12 | Romans 13 | Romans 14 »
Fulfilling the Law Through Love
8 Owe no one anything, except to love each other, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.
9 For the commandments, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and any other commandment, are summed up in this word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
10 Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.
11 Besides this you know the time, that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed.
12 The night is far gone; the day is at hand. So then let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.
13 Let us walk properly as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy.A Toronto woman in her late 30s is the most recent pedestrian victim in a string of deadly collisions that have killed 14 people this month in the GTA. The accident occurred around 6:30 p.m. at the intersection of Davenport Rd. and Symington Ave. when a Dodge Durango hit the woman. A police investigation concluded that the SUV was travelling north on Symington Ave. when it made a left turn onto Davenport, striking the woman. Sgt. Tim Burrows said the victim was crossing slightly west of the crosswalk at the intersection. "It's difficult to determine who is at fault," he said. But he added the pedestrian was crossing in a way that was "not predictable and not the safest place to be" but was walking on a green light.
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"I'd rather just say that road safety is a shared responsibility and everyone has to do their part and abide by the laws and common sense." Burrows said the woman was carried on the hood of the vehicle before being vaulted off and run over. He added that she was stuck under the SUV for some time. "Despite the best efforts of emergency crews, she was pronounced dead on the scene," Burrows said.
Her death marks the 14th pedestrian fatality in the GTA this month. Maria Carvalho, 47, who was walking nearby, heard the accident. She heard a scream and looked back to see a woman lying on the ground. The victim's purse was tossed some distance away. "I saw a lady lying on the ground and went back to see if I knew her, but I didn't," she said.
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Carvalho said she was very shaken by the accident and that her daughter learned on the Internet that the victim had died. Young Kuk Kim, the owner of a convenience store at the corner, said that someone came into his store and told him to call police. A customer made the call on a cellphone. Police at the scene were interviewing a number of people including the female driver of the Durango. The driver's father rushed to the intersection as soon as he learned she had been in an accident. He told the Star that his son called him to say that his daughter was involved. As he spoke, his daughter, who was in a police cruiser, rolled down the window and asked him not to speak to reporters. The intersection remained closed for several hours as investigators looked for clues to understand why another pedestrian was killed on city streets. The 13th pedestrian fatality occurred earlier Monday when a 35-year-old Woodbridge man who walked into the path of a streetcar on Queen St. E. died in hospital from his injuries. Police suspect the man may have been distracted on his cellphone when the accident happened early Sunday. "We don't want people to be paranoid (about being hit by a car), but we want them to be aware," Burrows said. "If this series of accidents doesn't make people aware of their vulnerability and how dangerous it can be if they are not paying attention, I don't know what else will." Last year, there were 31 pedestrian fatalities in the city of Toronto. With the two deaths on Monday, the 2010 Toronto count rises to eight, which represents 25 per cent of last year's total. There have been no charges laid in either collision.The Minnesota Vikings didn't get Adrian Peterson back this week, but they did see a far lesser running back fall into their laps.
The Vikings claimed Ben Tate off waivers Wednesday, one day after he was dropped by the Cleveland Browns. The back was not happy about losing carries to rookies Isaiah Crowell and Terrance West in Cleveland.
Tate signed a two-year, $6.2 million contract with the Browns in the offseason, but he struggled this season to stay healthy or run decisively. He was the third-best runner on the Browns but should find a quick role in Minnesota. Jerick McKinnon (back) and Matt Asiata (concussion) both missed practice Wednesday, raising the possibility that Tate could possibly even start Sunday against Green Bay.
McKinnon has earned a long-term role in Minnesota as a third-down back at worst, but Tate has a good opportunity to revive his career. He's only due $2.2 million next season, so it wouldn't be a surprise if he sticks with the Vikings if he finishes out the season strong.
The latest Around The NFL Podcast previews Chiefs-Raiders and reacts to the drama in D.C. as well as Adrian Peterson's suspension. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL NOW.Mercedes non-executive chairman Niki Lauda says the FIA is right to investigate Sebastian Vettel's during in last Sunday's Azerbaijan GP.
Like many, the F1 legend was dumbfounded by the German driver's maneuver, when he banged wheels with Lewis Hamilton after believing the Mercedes driver has brake-tested him.
But Lauda is even more incensed by Vettel's inability to own up to his mistake, and agrees with the FIA's decision to further probe the matter, believing the penalty given by the stewards in Azerbaijan was "a joke".
"What makes it even worse is that Vettel took absolutely no blame -- although that is always so with him," he said.
"I can understand Lewis' anger and I'm really angry as well. Why couldn't he just say 'It was my mistake, I screwed up'?"
The FIA confirmed yesterday that it will "further examine the causes of the incident in order to evaluate whether further action is necessary".
A meeting will take place on Monday, July 3, which also happens to be Sebastian Vettel's birthday!
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LAST CHANCE to enter our ULTIMATE TRACKDAY competition! FREE ENTRY HERE!Armed police outside the Houses of Parliament in London on March 22. (Stefan Rousseau/PA via AP)
LONDON — Britain was rocked by a terrorist attack at the center of its capital Wednesday, but there was also a widespread sense that things could have been worse. Four people, including the perpetrator, were killed in the attack, and 29 more were wounded. But the toll was lower than in other similar recent attacks.
To some Britons, there was one obvious reason for this: Britain's strict gun laws. James Cracknell, a former rower and Olympic Gold medalist for Britain, wrote about how differently things might have turned out if Britain had a more gun-friendly culture.
Reflecting on the heinous events at Westminster, how much worse would it have been if UK had different gun culture, armed police etc? — James Cracknell (@jamescracknell) March 23, 2017
Paul Danaher, a British journalist with the BBC based in Washington, was among many other Brits who expressed similar sentiments on social media.
What we definitely can say after the terror attack in London is that if gun’s were freely available in the UK it would have been even worse — Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) March 22, 2017
Firearm ownership is heavily restricted in Britain. After a horrific mass shooting at a school killed 15 children and their teacher in 1996, the British government pursued legislative bans on assault rifles and handguns and dramatically tightened background checks for other types of firearms.
“In terms of the types of gun that can be legally owned, background checks and the penalties for illegal possession and use, we are one of the strictest in Europe,” Helen Poole, a researcher with the University of Coventry who recently studied firearms across the European Union, told WorldViews in an email last year.
These measures have had a clear effect. As The Washington Post reported in 2013 a total of 200,000 guns and 700 tons of ammunition had been taken off the streets in the 17 years since the 1996 school attack. Legal gun ownership, which was always relatively low, is now dramatically lower than gun ownership in the United States.
Illicit gun ownership is also low in Britain, which does not have the porous land borders of many of its European neighbors. Matt Lewis, director of Arquebus Solutions, a company that helps governments track illegal firearms, told WorldViews that the country is also a “world leader” in managing illicit gun circulation.
Evidence shows that with a limited supply, criminals are often forced to resort to desperate measures to acquire firearms. In 2014, the Birmingham Mail reported that gangs in the city had been using “plundered war trophies and collectible weapons, sometimes more than 100 years old.” During riots in the city in 2011, experts discovered that a late-19th-century St. Etienne revolver had been fired.
Such gun measures seem to be broadly popular in Britain. A 2010 poll from YouGov found just 4 percent of the country wanted gun control relaxed, a figure dwarfed by the 31 percent who thought all guns should be completely banned. Some figures on the right, such as former United Kingdom Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, have called for laws to be relaxed in recent years.
Gun crime is relatively low in the country, although it hasn't been eradicated. There have been some cases of domestic terrorism in which firearms were used — just last year, a British member of Parliament was shot and stabbed to death by a licensed firearm holder as she walked around her constituency. But the lack of firearms, and in particular weapons such as assault rifles, limits the options of would-be terrorists. The Westminster attacker's choice of weapons — a more readily available knife and a rental SUV — seemed to be born out of limited options.
However, while the death count in London may have been relatively low, other vehicle-based attacks in France and Germany have shown how deadly the tactic can be. And other observers noted that the police officer killed in the attack, Constable Keith Palmer, was unarmed when he confronted a knife-wielding attacker — and that the attacker was ultimately stopped by another officer carrying a firearm.
More on WorldViews
What we know about the victims of the London terrorist attack
‘Our family is heartbroken’: American killed in London attack was celebrating wedding anniversary
A terrorist attack in London and the all-too-familiar responseGlen Ellyn studies ways to limit Lake Ellyn flooding
hello
A consultant recommends that the length of Lake Ellyn's weir -- a device that influences how fast water can leave the lake -- be extended to help mitigate flooding there during major storm events. Daily Herald File Photo
A consultant's report recommends changes to Lake Ellyn in Glen Ellyn that would increase the man-made lake's capacity and could reduce the potential of flooding during storms.
But the recommendations still won't completely prevent the lake from overflowing, officials say.
The lake, located north of the village's downtown, holds stormwater for roughly a one-square-mile area, and discharges it through underground pipes to nearby Perry's Pond and the East Branch of the DuPage River.
The conclusions of the hydrologic and hydraulic study by RHMG Engineers were released this week after the village and park district commissioned the Mundelein-based engineering firm to look at lake capacity issues last August. They've sought solutions to lake overflows after major storms in July 2010 and September 2008 left the nearby park, roads and some houses flooded.
Already, two of the consultant's recommendations have been implemented, since there was no cost involved. They are:
• Lowering the lake's normal water level from 707.5 feet to 707 feet, which would allow an additional 4.5 acre feet of storage. It also wouldn't impact recreational use of the lake.
• Removing the restrictor plate on an outlet pipe that would increase the discharge rate from 23 cubic feet per second to 37 cubic feet per second.
A third change, to increase the length of the lake's weir -- a device that influences how fast water can leave the lake early on in a storm event -- would cost about $152,000 and require the approval of the village and park district boards.
Two other changes -- to raise the lake's high water level and to expand the footprint of the lake -- were discussed but ultimately determined not to be feasible, said Bill Rickert, president of RHMG Engineers.
In the case of the first, it could lead to the boathouse being flooded, as well as Duchon Field at Glenbard West High School and nearby roads.
In the second case, park land and mature trees could be impacted, while little increase in additional storage volume would be achieved.
Since the lake was dredged and expanded in 1991, the amount of water that comes into it has increased. The recommended changes "reboot the lake, in a sense, to meet its original design intent" in being able to detain stormwater from so-called "100-year" floods, said Bob Minix, the village's professional engineer.
But even if modifications are made to the lake, it still won't be able to contain a "48-hour critical duration" storm event, Rickert said.
Joe Sinopoli, a nearby resident to the lake, said the consultant's recommendations are helpful, though they might not solve all the issues. He said he is confident that local officials are doing everything they can to mitigate flooding.
"I think everyone is pleased that there are some solutions now in place and other ideas are being discussed. That's very positive," Sinopoli said. "I think most of the residents in the area are hoping the village does even more. When we bought our houses, no one thought a lake two or three blocks away was gonna come down our street."
The consultant, who presented the report to the village board this week, is expected to meet with the park district board May 15. Minix said the village, park district and consultant will discuss next steps after that point.Photograph by Express Monorail
Photograph by Dryad & Sprite Photography
The 2004 winner of the Reader’s Choice Award for ‘Favourite Attraction at the Magic Kingdom Park’, Splash Mountain is your classic theme park water ride. With a big drop, huge splash and a guarantee that you will be soaking wet, what’s not to love?
Did I mention the candid photographs? Another staple of any major theme-park ride is the photograph (for sale of course), to capture that special moment when you’re in mid-drop and soaking is imminent. Here are 21 priceless capture’s of this legendary ride.
1. Classic pose
2. Extreme Chess
3. Utter boredom
4. Reading time
5. Just woke up
6. Men in Black
7. Very important call
8. Not amused
9. Time check
10. Extreme Connect Four
11. En-garde!
12. Jager Bombs
13. Durrr
14. Stormtrooper’s day off
15. The grope
16. Why????
17. Snakes on a plane log
18. Genuine Fear
19. Coordinated effort
20. Fast asleep
21. Meh
If you enjoyed this article, the Sifter highly recommends: 25 HILARIOUS HALLOWEEN COSTUMESAMD, founded in 1969, develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. The company trails behind rival Intel Corp. (INTC) in the market for x-86-based microprocessors, and competes against Nvidia Corp. (NVDA) in the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) space.
As of October 24, 2018, AMD trades at $22.79 per share. On October 24, 2018 the company reported its Q3 2018 results. Revenues for the period rose to $1.65 billion compared to $1.58 billion in Q3 2017 while profits over the period jumped to $102 million versus $62 million in Q3 last year.
The fourteen current directors and executive officers of Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD) own a collective 17 million shares, or about 1.8% of the company, as reported on March 5, 2018.
Below are AMD’s three largest individual shareholders, all currently serving in top decision making roles at the global corporation.
Lisa T. Su
Dr. Lisa T Su. has been the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President of AMD since August 2014 and October 2014 respectively. Su, as of September 6, 2018, beneficially owns 2.43 million shares of AMD. This makes Su the firm’s largest shareholder. Under her leadership, the chip maker’s stock has more than tripled. The electrical engineer and chip designer has helped AMD secure a comeback against Nvidia and Intel, making significant strides in the graphics and video game console chip markets and landing a major deal to license server chip designs in China. Su has also doubled down on more high-end chips, debuting the company’s newest line called “Zen” in order to increase its market reach.
Previously, she held positions as Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Senior VP and General Manager of Global Business at AMD. Before that, Su served in various executive roles at Freescale Semiconductor Holdings Ltd. The CEO has co-authored over 40 technical publications and a book chapter on next-generation consumer electronics. Dr. Su received a B.S., M.S., and Doctorate Degree in Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mark D. Papermaster
Mark D. Papermaster is AMD’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Senior Vice President of Technology and Engineering. As of October 15, 2018, Papermaster beneficially owns 1.26 million shares of AMD. This makes Papermaster the company’s second largest shareholder. He is responsible for corporate technical direction and production development, including system-on-chip (SOC) methodology, microprocessor design, I/O and memory and advanced research. The CTO also oversees Information Technology to deliver AMD’s compute infrastructure and services.
Papermaster brings to AMD over 35 years of engineering experience, including leadership positions with Cisco’s Silicon Engineering Group, Apple’s Devices Hardware Engineering, and IBM, where he oversaw development of key microprocessor and server technologies. The engineer received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s degree from the University of Vermont.
Devinder Kumar
According to an SEC filing on August 29, 2018, Devinder Kumar owns 664,814 shares of AMD, making him the third largest shareholder. He is the Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and treasurer of AMD, and is responsible for the company’s global finance organization as well as global corporate services and facilities."The Apple Computer. A truly complete microcomputer system on a single PC board." When Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs presented the Apple I Computer to the Homebrew Computer Club in 1976, it was dismissed by everyone but Paul Terrell, the owner of a chain of stores called Byte Shop. Terrell ordered 50 computers for $500 apiece, insisting that the circuit boards come fully assembled rather than as DIY kits similar to the Altair, and Jobs and Woz managed to produce the requisite computers in 30 days. They continued production, immediately creating 50 additional Apple I's to sell to friends and an additional 100 to sell through vendors, at a retail price of $666.66, a number that garnered complaints among conservative Christians, but provided a lucrative 33% markup.
As the first ready-made personal computer, the Apple I signaled a new age in which computing became accessible to the masses. The interface of circuitry and software that Woz created enabled users to type letters with "a human-typable keyboard instead of a stupid, cryptic front panel with a bunch of lights and switches," as he explained to the Homebrew Computer Club. Even so, it was sold without a keyboard, monitor, case, or power supply. An exceptionally rare, working example with original Apple cassette interface, operation manuals and a rare BASIC Users' Manual. It is thought that fewer than 50 Apple I Computers survive, with only 6 known to be in working condition.When the Titanic set sail from Southampton on April 10, 1912, bound for New York, it was called “unsinkable.” This was before that chance encounter in the North Atlantic with a large iceberg. You know how that movie ended.
Many people died, of course, because there were too few lifeboats. But even if the luxury liner had four times as many, the Titanic still would have ended up on the bottom of the ocean, done in by a captain more concerned with speed than safety — and that iceberg.
This simple reality, however, obscures a broader truth.
Before it sank, more than 700 passengers loaded onto the 20 lifeboats on board and escaped with their lives. More than 1,500 others died. The Titanic had the capacity for 64 lifeboats, which could each hold 65 people. Fully loaded, they could have carried more than 4,000 to safety — or every man, woman and child aboard. Thus, many more could have survived.
While the shortage of lifeboats didn’t cause the sinking, this insufficiency after the crash was a factor in the 1,502 deaths.
I was reminded of this recently after reading articles that argued over the role the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act played in the financial crisis. The Depression-era regulation that separated Main Street banks from Wall Street investment firms had a huge impact on the finance sector.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall may not have caused the crisis — but its repeal was a factor that made it much worse. And it was a continuum of the radical deregulation movement. This philosophy incorrectly held that banks could regulate themselves, that government had no place in overseeing finance and that the free market works best when left alone. This belief system manifested itself in damaging ways, including eliminating regulation and oversight on derivatives, allowing exemptions for excess leverage rules for a handful of players and creating dangerous legislation.
As the events of 2007 to 2009 have revealed, this erroneous belief system was a major factor leading to the credit boom and bust, as well as the financial collapse.
I have been unable to find any evidence that the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act — the legislation that repealed Glass-Steagall — was a primary cause of the financial crisis. Imagine a “but for” scenario where Glass-Steagall had not been overturned but the rest of the deregulatory actions had still taken place. Would the crisis have occurred? Without a doubt, yes.
The Fed still would have taken rates down to unprecedented low levels. This would have led to a global spiral in asset prices. The nonbank, lend-to-sell-to-securitizer mortgage originators were still going to make subprime-mortgage loans to unqualified borrowers. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers would still have overwhelmingly increased exposure to subprime mortgages. AIG would still have written trillions of dollars in credit-default swaps and other derivatives with zero reserves set against them. The largest security firms and deposit banks would still have charged headlong into the subprime securitization business. And Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would still have belatedly chased these banks into the same subprime market, just at the peak of the housing boom.
Lastly, housing prices would still have run up to absurd levels and then collapsed.
So no, the repeal of Glass-Steagall was not a proximate cause of the crisis. But its impact was both nuanced and complex. Consider the context in which it occurred:
● The repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 was part of a broad deregulatory push, championed by the likes of Fed chief Alan Greenspan, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, that eliminated much of the oversight on Wall Street. Freed from onerous regulation, the banks could “innovate” and grow.
● After the repeal, banks merged into more complex and more leveraged institutions.
● These banks, which were customers of nonbank firms such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, in turn contributed to these firms bulking up their subprime holdings as well. This turned out to be speculative and dangerous.
So we can say that Glass-Steagall’s repeal allowed the credit bubble to inflate much larger. It allowed banks to be more complex and difficult to manage. When it all came down, the crisis was broader, deeper and more dangerous than it would have been otherwise.
Glass-Steagall’s repeal, after 25 years and $300 million worth of lobbying efforts, culminated decades of deregulation.
Newfangled derivatives? No oversight, reporting or reserves necessary, courtesy of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Subprime-lend-to-sell-to-securitizers business model? Those are the financial innovators! At least, that is what Greenspan called them, and why he refused to oversee them as Fed chairman. Rules on SEC leverage? Let’s create a special exemption from the law for just five investment banks.
Of course “reputational risk” would serve as a deterrent to poor decision making! No bank would ever behave so recklessly as to put their own hard-won status on the line — or its very existence.
How’d that idea work out?
With Glass-Steagall, there would not, could not, have been a Citi/Travelers merger, and competitors would not, could not have bulked up the way they did. Major money center banks most likely would have been smaller, more manageable, more easily wound down. Arguably, too big to fail might not have been the rule, and bailouts might not have been necessary. This is, of course, mere supposition.
What we should be discussing is the corrupting influence of crony capitalism and radical deregulation. Instead, we find ourselves forced to defend capitalism and free markets. We should be finding ways to definancialize the U.S. economy and reduce bankers’ influence.
There are lots of thing we can do about this, but I have a modest suggestion that would be a good start: No more Wall Street bankers as Treasury secretaries. It would be much better for the nation to find someone from industry who understands finance rather than finding someone from finance who understands industry.
Consider where we would be today if we put Citi and Bank of America into prepackaged bankruptcy (as was done with GM). It would have been much more painful, but ultimately, much healthier.
The past 50 years have seen a dramatic financialization of the American economy. Wall Street has morphed from serving industry to a Titanic leaving a damaged economy in its wake.
Ritholtz is chief executive of FusionIQ, a quantitative research firm. He is the author of “Bailout Nation” and runs a finance blog, the Big Picture. Twitter: @RitholtzTwo University of New Mexico football players and another student plan to sue the school for how it investigated sexual-assault allegations against them.
At a press conference last week, the students said the sex with their accuser was consensual, the Albuquerque Journal reported. Their lawyer, George Bleus, said the suit would focus on the university police’s “alarming level of investigation – or lack thereof.”
It’s a double whammy for the university: The Justice Department said Dec. 5 it was investigating how the University of New Mexico handles reported sexual assaults and harassment, in response to “multiple complaints.”
In April, SaQwan Edwards, Crusoe Gongbay and Central New Mexico Community College student Ryan Ruff were accused of kidnapping a female student, identified in legal papers as “CS,” from an off-campus party and sexually assaulting her.
The affidavit for Ruff’s arrest gives the accuser’s account of what occurred that night – that Edwards, Gongbay and Ruff abducted CS and coerced her into performing multiple sexual acts with them.
The district attorney’s office dismissed criminal charges in June without entirely dropping the case, KQRE News 13 reported. The players were allowed to rejoin the team in August, the Journal reported.
The lawsuit against the school concerns the initial stages of the investigation, conducted by the University of New Mexico Police Department, which led to criminal charges.
Lawyer Bleus told The College Fix in a phone interview the university police investigation was “shoddy and deficient.”
In a case that revolves around kidnapping and “criminal sexual penetration” in a vehicle, Bleus said university police made no effort to secure the vehicle and search it for physical evidence. “A total lack of forensic evidence in the vehicle,” said Bleus, “would have cleared my clients.”
The alleged victim also claims Ruff threatened her with a gun while she was in the vehicle. According to Bleus, university police made no effort to find this gun.
On these and other issues where factual disputes would have arisen, Bleus said, university police “just took the victim’s word for it.”
“Civil rights violations” will be among the claims the accused students bring against the university and its police, Bleus said, but couldn’t state exactly what claims they will file.
The university released a statement last week saying it has “received no notice” of the forthcoming lawsuit, but that it “stands by the investigation” by its police. Its police department declined to comment on its handling of the investigation.
Bleus and the accuser’s lawyer, Brad Hall, began publicly squabbling in June after Bleus showed videos to the media that he said exonerated Ruff, whom he represented at the time. Edwards and Gongbay had separate legal representation during the criminal proceedings.
“Publicly branding the victim a ‘liar’ and releasing videos of unconsented sexual activity while the investigation is still ongoing sends a strong message to other rape victims, and deter them from coming forward,” Hall wrote in a statement that called Bleus’ action “unprofessional and morally reprehensible.”
“The video clips apparently shown to the media by a criminal defense attorney are proof of drugged behavior, not consent,” Hall wrote.
Bleus shot back that Hall alleged the use of a “date rape drug” months after the accuser made her initial allegations, as listed in Ruff’s arrest warrant. The defense lawyer suggested that the accuser was only belatedly claiming memory loss when her version of events “was put to the test.”
Bleus told The Fix that he intentionally “tried his case in the media” in June. He decided to “put all his cards on the table” by releasing videos of the incident and allowing the public to come to their own conclusions.
College Fix reporter Stephen Edwards is a student at Furman University.
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IMAGE: OpenThreads/FlickrTeens sneaked on base to test handgun, police say, before boy’s brother allegedly heard shot and saw 17-year-old holding gun as victim lay on ground
A 13-year-old boy who was shot in the face last week at a military base in Washington state has died, and his 17-year-old friend remains in juvenile detention, police said Monday.
The boy died Sunday night at a hospital, where he was taken after being shot last Tuesday at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, said Lakewood police lieutenant John Unfred.
Unfred told the Associated Press the boy sneaked on to a remote, wooded part of the base with his 14-year-old brother and their friend, apparently so they could “shoot off a few rounds” from an old handgun they had somehow obtained. They entered the base through a hole that had been cut in a perimeter fence that abuts a neighborhood, he said.
The victim’s brother told authorities that the three boys were walking in the woods when he heard a gunshot; he turned to see his brother lying on the ground and the 17-year-old holding a gun, court records said.
The older boy, who ran off after the shooting, later said it was an accident, the News Tribune newspaper of Tacoma reported, citing court records. He pleaded not guilty Friday to charges of third-degree assault and unlawful possession of a firearm, charges which had not been changed as of Monday morning.
Lakewood police are investigating how the boys got the gun, Unfred said. The US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ran a trace on the weapon, which showed the last official documentation of it to have been a sale in Kansas about 35 years ago, he said.Hugging all over the world: Amma in New York, Santiago, Zurich, Rio
By Mario Cacciottolo
BBC News
"Yes," replies the bus driver, somewhat wearily, for the third time, "this does go to Alexandra Palace".
Amma, the "Hugging Saint", is in town. And this procession of slightly disoriented passengers are among the crowds making their way to be embraced by her at the north London venue.
For 30 years Indian spiritual leader Mata Amritanandamayi, to give her her real name, has been hugging people, leading some to give her a saintly nickname.
The time it takes and money it costs to fly over from Australia is worth it for a hug with Amma
Suraj Vagjiani
This really is as simple as it sounds.
Amma sits on a slightly elevated seat. Strangers come before her, kneeling, and she embraces each as though they were her own flesh and blood.
Time spent with Amma is free and she does not promote any particular faith, being for "all religions and none". She is said to have doled out some 26 million hugs, or "darshan", as the experience is known. Each is counted off with a clicker.
She has said that to hug someone is to symbolise giving, and that her embrace should help awaken the spirit of selflessness in people.
But there's more than just a cuddle being dished out here. Her charity, the Mata Amritanandamayi Math, has UN consultative status and claims to have built more than 36,000 homes and several hospitals for India's poor.
Small hours
Now, for the 20th year, she is back in the UK, and the main hall at Alexandra Palace thrives with the smell of incense and the sound of musical chanting.
Katarina Diss said she was left "dazed" by her hug
One such volunteer Julia Lewis, a 36-year-old management consultant, says no-one leaves unhugged.
"Amma will stay until 2am, 3am, 4am or later, until there is no-one left. She does not get up, she'll just sit there the entire time and has about an hour and a half to sleep before she starts again."
Katarina Diss, 52, of Bedfordshire, is one of those at the event who has experienced darshan for the first time.
"It's difficult to put into words," she says. "You are touched by something very profound that ripples through you |
the time, and said, 'You know, f*** it. F*** America. F*** it'... And when I got off the plane and went through customs, there were like 1,000 messages from my manager going, 'They wrote a part for you... and come back because you're going to start shooting in five days.'"
"I read the pilots every year and... they’re all the same. The ['Orange Is The New Black'] pilot came across my desk and it was unbelievable. It was so different from anything I’d read in so long. I needed to be part of this show," Prepon told O Canada. "I originally auditioned for the role of Piper, which I knew I wasn’t right for but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be part of it. After I auditioned I went parasailing around a German castle. When I got back, they told me that Taylor [Schilling] had gotten the part, but asked if I’d be willing to read with her for the role of Alex. I was like, ‘Wait, the manipulative, drug smuggling lesbian? OK.’"
Kohan told Collider that "a lot of the other characters came out of auditions. Abigail Savage, who plays Gina, in the kitchen, auditioned for Alex. And then, Alysia Reiner, who plays Fig, the assistant warden, auditioned for everything. When the warden part came up, she didn’t even audition because I was like, 'The one with the face. Just put her in it.' You remember performances, and there was some mixing and matching from the auditions... [We] wanted to create more parts for different people that we fell in love with, in casting."
"Orange Is The New Black" Season 1 is currently streaming on Netflix and Season 2 is in production.A wildlife conservationist has described the sight of up to 20 basking sharks feeding off the Co Clare coast as "incredible".
Andrew Power spotted the sharks - which can reach up to 10m in length - swimming close to the shore near Kilkee yesterday morning.
He said: "They were feeding actively for about three hours. You could see the inside of their huge mouths very clearly under the water as they were feeding.
"They swam close to the rocks going in circles. It was incredible."
The basking shark is the largest fish in the northern Atlantic and the second largest in the world.
They are most frequently sighted in inshore waters April to September.
Meanwhile, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group has recorded the first sighting this year of humpback whales off the Kerry coast.
The IWDG has received reports of humpbacks off Slea Head and Bray Head.Why are hundreds of these Port Jackson sharks hanging together?
Neville Barrett has spent over 20 years studying Australia's reef systems, and yet the seasoned researcher is still frequently puzzled by what he finds hidden beneath the surface. The Commonwealth waters surrounding the continent now contain 40 new marine reserves, and many of these remain largely unexplored. During a recent expedition to one such swathe of protected ocean, Barrett and his colleagues encountered a veritable horde of Port Jackson sharks. The species has been documented in the region before, but this particular excursion turned up hundreds of individuals, gathered together atop a single rocky reef.
We tend to think of sharks as lone giants that scour the seas on an endless mission to gobble up formidable prey. In reality, however, the apex predator of "Air Jaws" fame is the odd "man" out in the shark world. There are over 500 known shark species, and most of them are small, unassuming and often left out of the limelight – but just as deserving of our attention. Recent studies on Port Jackson sharks, for example, suggest that these nocturnal bottom-dwellers display complex social dynamics.
"The most surprising thing about this sighting was the actual abundance of the sharks in this aggregation," says Barrett, who is a research fellow with the University of Tasmania Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS). "We often see small aggregations when diving, up to eight or so, but this one was clearly in the hundreds at a minimum, and potentially much greater if we could have spent time to survey it properly."
Barrett and his team weren't actually looking for sharks: their unexpected encounter occurred during a ten-day cruise to survey the reefs at Beagle Marine Park (formerly the Beagle Commonwealth Marine Reserve). This 3,000-square-kilometre area has been protected for a decade, but its remote location in Bass Strait, which separates Tasmania from the Australian mainland, has made studying the reserve a challenge over the years.
"There are more than 40 reserves in the new Australian Marine Park network," explains Barrett. "They are all in Commonwealth waters, which is a minimum of three [nautical miles] offshore."
Beagle lies about a day's travel from the nearest port – amazingly, it's one of the easier reserves to reach – but expeditions of this nature still require multiple days on the water. What's more, the seabed in the reserve reaches 70 metres deep.
Using an autonomous underwater vehicle (think the aquatic equivalent of the Mars Rover), the team was able to capture three-dimensional photographic maps of the reserve – and the Port Jackson shark party was only one of many interesting observations.
"A big part of what we are doing is going around the new marine parks one by one and documenting what is actually in them, as at present we don't have a clue!" says Barrett. "We have only recently gotten the technology to do this effectively. It's a big job, one step at a time."
Shark aggregations of this size are typically associated with mating, but Port Jackson sharks are known to lay their eggs nearly 600 miles north of Bass Strait, off the coast of New South Wales (NSW). Between breeding seasons, the animals do migrate to Tasmania, though they return to the same NSW reefs each year with incredible accuracy.
The Bass Strait footage was recorded in July, while breeding typically occurs between August and October. This has left Barrett wondering whether the mass gathering could be a sign that the sharks kick off their mating routine in southern waters.
"At such a size, it does suggest that this may be a mating aggregation, but I'm no expert of Port Jackson shark biology," he says. "If it isn't a mating aggregation, it could well be that the sharks are in good winter foraging grounds, and are using this reef as a resting refuge where they have some protection, shelter from currents, and safety in numbers against possible predators, including seals that are common in the area."
Macquarie University professor Dr Culum Brown, who runs a long-term monitoring programme of Port Jackson sharks in New South Wales, suspects the latter may be true, and offers another possibility.
"My feeling is that it is unlikely to be a breeding aggregation," he says. "It could be a mustering place prior to migration." A pre-coitus caucus seems to line up with what experts have learned about the preferred travel routes of this species. After breeding, sharks tagged by Brown and his colleagues in Sydney Harbour and Jervis Bay migrated to the Wilsons Promontory peninsula at the southern tip of the mainland, and even farther, to Bass Strait's Barron Island.
"We know very little about the southern populations," notes Brown, "[but] there is every chance that [the sharks in the footage] were about to migrate north. The timing is about right."
Both male and female Pork Jackson sharks make annual migrations to their egg-laying sites, a rarity among sharks. What's more, their individual positions within these gatherings – and which sharks they join up with – seem to remain relatively consistent from year to year. This doesn't mean Port Jackson sharks seek out former flings or finned best friends, but they do appear to hang with "familiar" faces in some capacity.
The animals often congregate in small groups to rest during daylight hours, repeatedly sharing refuges with the same individuals.
The sharks in Barrett's video, however, don't appear particularly "jiggy"– as we've witnessed before, shark sex can be a bit rough – which also indicates that the aggregation he witnessed served some other purpose.
Unlike sprawling barrier reefs, the sponge-littered rocky reef at Beagle is both relatively isolated and bordered by steep drop-offs. It makes for a good stopover, one that would allow the sharks to rest and feed on tasty invertebrates while being sheltered from strong currents.
When it comes to shark jaws, Port Jacksons rock one of the weirdest. Their signature curled snout (there's a reason these animals are also known as "pig-nosed" sharks) conceals dozens of tiny, pointed teeth and a crushing plate used to break into hard prey like urchins, molluscs and crustaceans.
The recent sighting has also piqued the interest of Macquarie University behavioural ecologist Dr Johann Mourier, who has been studying Port Jackson sharks in the region along with Dr Brown.
"From our previous knowledge, it is surprising, as such aggregations have been seen on northern locations. But sharks always surprise us and there're still much to learn about them," he says. "Whether they form here for breeding or to initiate a synchronous migration, a social signal or social-learning process is required for sharks to gather at a same location."
Through their work at the New South Wales breeding grounds, the Macquarie team has become fascinated by Port Jackson social networks.
While we may never know precisely why the Port Jackson sharks got sociable at Beagle, Barrett and his team plan to return to the area next year for a larger-scale biodiversity survey with Parks Australia. The possibility of spotting a similar aggregation again – if the fish return – depends largely on timing.
Exploring these reserves, meanwhile, will help local wildlife authorities to identify key points for long-term monitoring – which means more interesting discoveries are undoubtedly in store.
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Top header image: scubas1au/FlickrAseel Badiyan said he was using his camera to take shots of the mountains, nearly 90 km from the capital Sanaa, when the object shot across his lens.Commenting on the photograph, a well-known Saudi astronomer said he had checked the picture and found that it was authentic.“I have surfed the internet for similar sightings worldwide and found that the picture I captured is the clearest so far…I believe that those who are behind such objects are advanced people who possess a very intelligent civilization,” Badiyan told Saudi and Yemeni newspapers.Quoted by the Saudi Arabic language daily Ajel, deputy chairman of the Saudi astronomy association, Sharaf Al Sifyati, said:”There is no doubt that we are not alone in this spacious universe and that there are other creatures which only God knows.”He added:”When this Yemeni photographer contacted me and showed me that picture, I felt that he was telling the truth..I checked the picture and found that is authentic and does not involve any tricks or tampering….as for that object, I believe it is strange and unfamiliar but I am not sure it is a space object because these phenomena remain a possibility rather than a reality…I think this incident has to be fully investigated.Source : http://www.emirates247.comAn unidentified man poses for a photo with two Tibetan mastiffs after they were sold at a “luxury pet” fair in eastern China’s Zhejiang province. One of the Tibetan mastiff puppies (L) was sold for almost $2 million, in what could be the most expensive dog sale ever. (AFP/Getty Images)
A Tibetan Mastiff — an ancient breed of dog that looks more lion than canine — just went for nearly $2 million at a Chinese “luxury pet fair” in the eastern province of Zhejiang, Agence France-Presse reports.
More expensive than the 2011 sale of a red mastiff named Big Splash, which cost $1.6 million, Tuesday’s transaction might just make this dog the most expensive of all time, AFP says.
The buyer, an unnamed 56-year-old property developer from Qingdao, dropped a whopping 12 million yuan on the dog on Tuesday, and the dog’s breeder was overjoyed. For reporters on Tuesday, he laid it on thick. His dogs “have lion’s blood and are top-of-the-range mastiff studs. Pure Tibetan mastiffs are very rare, just like our nationally treasured pandas, so the prices are so high.”
In 2010, the Associated Press called the breed the “dog of the moment.” Its ownership has come to symbolize wealth and status as much as a new car or an ostentatious mansion.
“I used to invest in German shepherds, but Tibetan mastiffs are what’s hot right now,” business owner Sui Huizheng, who owns 20 of the dogs, told the AP.
But they are relatively common in China, and have a short life expectancy. “It’s quite puzzling why they are fetching such a high price in China,” says Martha Feltenstein, president of the American Tibetan Mastiff Association.
This red-haired, two-million-dollar dog is a hulk of an animal, 31 inches tall and weighing nearly 200 pounds, AFP reports.
The luxury dog trade has been a hot business in China lately.
China today has more than 800,000 millionaires — the most in its history — and that nascent class has helped make China one of the world’s largest luxury markets.Story highlights Mohamed Abrini says he threw away his jacket and sold his hat after the attack, prosecutor's office says
Belgian authorities formally ID suspect in Brussels metro attack surveillance footage
Osama Krayem and Abrini were among six detained Friday in raids across Belgium
(CNN) The third suspect in the Brussels Airport attack -- the "man in the hat" -- has been positively identified as Mohamed Abrini, according to the Belgian federal prosecutor's office.
Abrini, believed to be the lone surviving suspect in the March 22 attack on the airport, is seen in surveillance images wearing a dark hat and a light-colored jacket, rolling luggage carts with two men it is now believed were suicide bombers.
The prosecutor's office said in a Saturday statement that Abrini confessed to having thrown his jacket away, and told them he later sold his hat.
Abrini, who was one of six people detained Friday in raids across the Belgian capital, also has been tied through surveillance video and DNA to last November's terror attacks on Paris, which left 130 people dead.
Thirty-two people were killed in the March 22 Brussels attacks, which occurred at the city's airport and at a busy subway station.
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Read MoreGirlfriend on the run after allegedly shooting boyfriend multiple times
Police are on the hunt for a woman believed to have shot her boyfriend early Thursday at a southwest Houston apartment complex. (Metro Video) Police are on the hunt for a woman believed to have shot her boyfriend early Thursday at a southwest Houston apartment complex. (Metro Video) Photo: Metro Video Photo: Metro Video Image 1 of / 3 Caption Close Girlfriend on the run after allegedly shooting boyfriend multiple times 1 / 3 Back to Gallery
A woman is on the run after reports that she shot her estranged boyfriend early Thursday at a southwest Houston apartment complex.
Officers headed about 1 a.m. to the apartments, the Oaks of Charleston, on Charleston Park Drive off of Highway 90, said Capt. Megan Howard with the Houston Police Department.
There, they found a 23-year-old man who had been shot multiple times.
Neighbors told police that the man had been arguing with his girlfriend over the past few days. Officers believe the man's girlfriend entered his apartment with two other people and gunfire ensued, according to an HPD news release.
The man was taken to an area hospital and is expected to survive.
Police did not immediately identify the man or his girlfriend.
Early Thursday, the girlfriend was still at large.FILE PHOTO: Shoppers carry purchases on Regent Street after it and Oxford Street were closed to vehicle traffic for a pre-Christmas shopping weekend in London December 11, 2011. REUTERS/Toby Melville
(Reuters) - British companies increased their marketing budgets during the second quarter despite uncertainties about the economy as the UK looks to exit the European Union, a survey showed on Wednesday.
The IPA Bellwether report showed that over 28 percent of its survey panel recorded an upward revision to their 2017/2018 marketing budgets during the second quarter, compared with around 15 percent that recorded a fall.
The survey, conducted by IHS Markit on behalf of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, said on balance a net 13.1 percent of UK companies indicated they would increase their 2017/2018 marketing budgets in the second quarter, higher than the 11.8 percent in the first quarter.
Around 300 UK marketing professionals, primarily from Britain’s top 1,000 companies and across all key business sectors, were interviewed for the survey.
Growth in ad spending is expected to be a marginal 0.6 percent in 2017 and expected to stagnate in 2018, hurt by “underwhelming” performance in business investment and softness in consumer confidence, the survey showed.
British inflation unexpectedly slowed last month for the first time since October, but Bank of England Governor Mark Carney said on Tuesday that the “big picture” for inflation remained the same.
“The election result has thrown further uncertainty into an already volatile environment. It is inevitable that this has had a knock-on effect on UK plc,” IPA’s director general Paul Bainsfair said.
The increased marketing spend was broadly concentrated in the digital space during the second quarter, with the latest survey showing that internet budgets were raised to the greatest degree in just under a decade, according to the report.The federal government has served notice that it will have back-to-work legislation on Air Canada's contract disputes ready as early as next week.
On Friday afternoon, the government served notice on parliament's order paper that it will have a bill prepared on the continuation of air services.
In an interview set to air on CBC Radio's The House program on Saturday morning, Labour Minister Lisa Raitt told host Evan Solomon that there is a mandatory 48-hour notice period for any new legislation.
So if the government wants to act early next week when a lockout deadline between the airline and its 3,000 pilots was originally set to expire, Ottawa must move swiftly to introduce the bill. The airline's 8,600 ground staff, which includes mechanics, baggage handlers and cargo agents, had also threatened to go on strike beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Monday, March 12.
"We wanted to make sure at least we had something," Raitt said in the interview.
Opposition politicians quickly weighed in on the government's move.
"If the government feels Air Canada is an essential service, they have to provide a fair arbitration process," interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae tweeted.
By putting the bill on the order paper Friday, MPs could see it tabled in the House of Commons as early as Tuesday. It would then be up to the government to decide when to bring it up for debate.
Dave Ritchie, the Canadian general vice-president of the International Machinists and Aerospace Workers, which represents the Air Canada ground crews, said he was not surprised by the move.
"And once again the heavy-handed government is upon us," Ritchie told CBC News.
After Air Canada made a surprise move on Thursday to lock out its pilots as of early Monday morning, Raitt referred the file to the Canada Industrial Relations Board to investigate. In effect, that withdrew the threat of a disruption during the key March break travel season because no work stoppage is legally possible as long as the board is investigating.
"Even though we've referred it to the CIRB they could come back at any moment with a decision," Raitt told Solomon in the interview. So the government moved ahead with the new tactic on Friday to make sure they had other options to ensure the Canadian economy can't be unduly harmed by a grounding of Canada's major carrier.
"Quite frankly, we don't know whether the CIRB will make their decision on Monday," Raitt said.
Raitt reiterated the government's position that while they support the collective bargaining process, they aren't willing to put the Canadian economy at risk because of a shutdown of Canada's largest airline.
"We know a work stoppage there is going to cause difficulty for the Canadian economy," Raitt said. "It's also going to cause difficulty for Canadian families on March break."
"You're going to have a million passengers flying Air Canada in the next 10 days," Raitt said.
Earlier on Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper told reporters at an event in Toronto that the government was not willing to let Air Canada's service grind to a halt.
"I'll be darned if we will now sit by and let the airline shut itself down," Harper told reporters on Friday.
Ottawa made the same CIRB move late last year when Air Canada's flight attendants were on the verge of striking. When asked Friday how Ottawa sees fit to take such an active role in the business dealings of a private corporation, Harper noted that Air Canada's status as Canada's dominant carrier makes its situation unlike other companies.
During the recession, he noted, the company specifically asked the federal government for assistance in a number of areas because of the danger to the economy that a shutdown would have presented.
"As much as there's a side of me that doesn't like to do this, I think these actions are essential to keep the airline flying," Harper said. "My concern is not management or labour, my concern is the broader Canadian public and I think the public overwhelmingly expects the government to act."We usually think of castles as inaccessible places which you could probably see only as a visitor if one had been converted into a museum. But it turns out Europe (and, to a lesser extent, a few other parts of the world) is filled with countless palaces, villas, and old manors. They were built and used to be inhabited by the aristocracy of olden days, but now many of them are available on the market just like any mansion completed in the past few years. Provided you have the funds, here are some of the countries you could go to and have a good chance of finding this kind of home:
10. Sweden
The peaceful and egalitarian (and rather cold) nation of Sweden is considered one of the best in the world when it comes to economic competitiveness, good governance, and quality of life – a state of affairs built on solid historical foundations.
The Nordic country is not known for its excesses, and its charming castles are no exception. Like the Bryngenäs Palace seen here (which was on the market for about $3.5 million not long ago), luxurious edifices here have a certain understated elegance about them. Add to this the fact that you’d be living in one of the best run countries in the world and you have yourself a really enticing prospect.
9. Belgium
Other than hosting the capital of the European Union, there isn’t much Belgium is famous for. But while there isn’t any other event, landmark, or stereotype of note related to the Western European nation, nor was it particularly prominent throughout history, it is nevertheless a quietly powerful and dynamic country with a rich and proud history.
Like other places on the Old Continent, Belgium too has maintained part of its heritage in the form of picturesque castles, whether they are fortresses, aristocratic palaces, or simply manor houses. Some of them, like the 18th century Wannegem Castle, are available for purchase today and are perfectly suited to serve as luxurious secluded retreats.`
8. Russia
When you hear of Russia, you usually think of dreary,” communists-style” buildings, which are grand in scale but otherwise kind of grey and unattractive. But like all European powers, it too had a powerful and extremely rich aristocratic class, who pretty much enjoyed living in opulent palaces. After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, tens of thousands of large properties were nationalized as their former owners fled the country. Nowadays, many of these estates have been snapped up by the new nobility, the so-called ‘oligarchs’. Roman Abramovich, for example, has bought Tenisheva’s Palace, on the English Embankment, one of St. Petersburg’s most fashionable areas – ostensibly for the government of Chukotka, where he was governor.
Also on the English Embankment is the stunning 18th century palace you can see below.
7. Romania
In the spring of 2014, a rumor emerged that Bran, one of Romania’s most striking castles, was to be sold by its owners. Bran is a site closely associated with Vlad the Impaler, which you might recognize as the inspiration for the legendary Count Dracula, since he was imprisoned there for a short time during the 15th century. While the owners have since denied the rumors, it’s not inconceivable that a deal might happen, even though potential buyers would have to dig deep into their pockets to meet the estimated $80 million asking price, and also hope the Romanian government doesn’t exercise its right of first refusal.
6. Japan
With its long history of conflict between feudal warlords and their samurai armies, Japan is probably more like medieval Europe than any other place in the world. And just like in Europe, many of these powerful local rulers built imposing fortifications as a show of prestige and to keep their enemies out.
Once, there were thousands of castles and forts scattered throughout Japan, but today only a handful remain which are more than 150 years old – and most of them are owned by the national and local government. There are, however, some exceptions, like the 400-year-old Nakatsu Castle (see below), sold in 2010 for about $400,000. There are also plenty of replicas, built in the past few decades, but just as impressive as their older counterparts.
5. Poland
Poland’s location, sandwiched between very powerful neighbors, in the way of countless invasions from every direction, has made its lands very contested over the centuries. Many grandiose residences are thus scattered around the country, some designed as fortresses, other as opulent mansions for the powerful and wealthy aristocracy which to a certain extent ruled over and protected the lands.
Quite a number of these castles fell into disrepair after the communists took over in Poland and nationalized them, a situation which worsened after the collapse of the system in 1989. Now, however, the Polish government has decided to sell the old buildings to people with the desire and the resources to properly use and preserve them.
The charming residences, like the Staniszow Palace seen below (which is now a hotel), usually come with six-figure price tags.
4. Germany
Nowadays one of the biggest countries in Europe and one of the most influential in the world, Germany was once divided into a ridiculous number of small fiefdoms, principalities, free cities, duchies, and kingdoms. And like in many parts of Europe, these local lords liked to rule from a castle, which was sometimes fortified, but always much more comfortable than the average dwelling of the day.
Once renovated according to 21st century standards, these centuries-old homes, like the Waldorf Castle seen here (which was placed on the market a couple of years ago with a price tag exceeding $20 million), become impressive residences, offering privacy, awesome views, and the stately atmosphere you’d expected in a place with such a history.
3. Italy
The birthplace of the Renaissance and the home of many great architects and artists, as well as a thriving aristocracy, Italy has a rich cultural heritage which includes myriad old villas and castles. Many of them are now museums or resorts, but some have maintained their old use as extravagant homes for the wealthy.
A great example, among countless others scattered all across the country, is the luxurious mansion displayed here, set in the picturesque town of Lucca in Central Italy, near the Tyrrhenian Sea.
2. England
Perhaps no country is more in tune with its heritage, its past culture, traditions, and institutions, as is England. A big part of that its old aristocracy, who used to rule their lands from the castles scattered across the countryside. Few countries have preserved their nobility like the English and many Lords and Ladies still live in palaces which have been in their families for centuries. However nothing lasts forever, no matter how conservative a nation is, and some of these old homes are now available for purchase. Like Thurland Castle, these residences are now open to all who can afford to buy or rent them, regardless of name and lineage.
1. France
France is so closely associated with charming castles that their word for this kind of edifice, chateau, has even made its way into English and is sometimes used to describe particularly elegant residences wherever they may be situated. The south of the country is famous for the many such estates it is home to, with the Loire Valley, a UNESCO Word Heritage Site, being particularly well-endowed in this regard.
This fairy-tale castle overlooking the Dordogne River, called Château de la Treyne, is a perfect illustration of France’s fabulous landmarks.Gay Republicans are torn over supporting Donald Trump. | AP Photo Gay Republicans want more from Trump LGBT conservatives are encouraged by the Republican nominee's overtures, but are disappointed he didn't push for platform changes.
CLEVELAND — Gay Republicans had hoped for more from Donald Trump.
He’s certainly courting them: Trump became the first GOP nominee to mention gay Americans in his acceptance speech when he pledged to “do everything in my power to protect our LGBTQ citizens” from terrorism – even ad-libbing praise for the die-hard Republican audience when they applauded that sentiment.
Story Continued Below
But some say Trump has already missed opportunities to fight for their cause.
He invited Caitlyn Jenner to use the facility of her choice in Trump Tower after North Carolina passed its transgender bathroom law, but the Republicans’ 2016 platform says it would be “illegal and dangerous” to let trans students decide which door to enter. He attended Elton John’s wedding, but the platform still calls for overturning the Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage ruling – and Trump has promised to appoint judges who would do that.
“I will applaud Donald Trump the person” for his individual embrace of gay people, said Christian Berle, an openly gay Republican. “But he would be Donald Trump the president.”
Even without his help, gay Republicans and their allies are gearing up to push for new anti-discrimination laws, with a big assist from Jenner. And they expect to come back to the platform committee savvier and with more delegates on their side in 2020.
“We’re actually emboldened,” said Margaret Hoover, president of the American Unity Fund, which has put big money into both electing pro-LGBT Republicans and changing the platform.
But in the short run, gay Republicans are torn over supporting Trump.
There is frustration about the platform, said Gregory T. Angelo, president of the Log Cabin Republicans. But the convention has also had highlights for LGBT conservatives: Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich and even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) all gave the gay community positive shout-outs in their speeches. On Thursday, Pay Pal co-founder Peter Thiel declared from the stage of the Quicken Loans Arena that he is “proud to be gay” – drawing mostly applause and a few scattered boos – and he called the bathroom debate a “distraction.”
“Who cares?” he said, prompting loud cheers.
So will Log Cabin Republicans factor in Trump’s “continued and unabashed and unprecedented outreach to the LGBT community?” Angelo added. “You bet we will.”
The balance will become more clear after the Log Cabins send out their quadrennial survey to tens of thousands of members around the country, but the fight ahead of the national board’s vote threatens to be contentious.
Then again, endorsement decisions for the Log Cabin Republicans have never been easy, forcing people to choose between their conservative ideologies and sexual identities. The group chose not to endorse George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004, as he campaigned on a traditional marriage amendment. But they backed Sen. John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
“I think they had a few private commitments from the campaign about where he would be on LGBT issues,” said Berle, a former Log Cabin official who didn’t back the Romney endorsement then – and is active in Never Trump efforts now.
Some gay Republicans are confident that Trump would be even more LGBT-friendly than his public comments.
Richard Grenell resigned as Romney's foreign policy spokesman after socially conservative groups complained loudly about hi status as an openly gay supporter of same-sex marriage. Since then, he’s made no secret of the fact that he would like to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
“I think Trump is the best GOP nominee we've ever had on equality issues,” Grenell said. “So it's an easy support for me."
The platform was a major letdown for LGBT Republicans. With the gay marriage question settled by the Supreme Court, they hoped to get the party to at least move on, if not embrace gay Americans. And to help push them along, the American Unity Fund, backed by Paul Singer and other GOP megadonors, waged an unusually organized effort to install LGBT-friendly platform delegates.
There was also the personal plea of Rachel Hoff. Though she was the first openly gay platform delegate, Hoff hadn’t been active within the party on LGBT issues before, instead building her conservative credentials with over a decade of work on campaigns and as a right-leaning defense analyst.
She thought this “might be my moment to actually be a voice that can be useful in this limited way," Hoff said in an interview. The amendment to strike anti-LGBT language on marriage failed, as did a lower-key effort to acknowledge the threat from “radical Islamic terrorism” to women, religious minorities and LGBT people.
Republicans gathered at a “Big Tent Brunch” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Wednesday thought Trump could have been more helpful.
While Trump took an unusually hands-off approach to the document, his advisers “were absolutely there, and they were absolutely on the issues that matter most to Mr. Trump, shaping what was happening,” said Hoff, citing immigration and trade. “And so that tells me that perhaps LGBT issues are not one of the most important things to Donald Trump.”
Others are less concerned about that – especially since the Supreme Court has made the marriage issue something of a moot point.
"We're not going to ever go backwards," said Gregory Gandrud, an openly gay Republican from California.
And support has been building, longtime LGBT GOP activists say.
"I’ve been to every convention since 1992,” Grenell said. “We're not there yet, but we have made incredible progress."
He added, "I'm flooded with support as I walk through the convention, but with politicians and activists who privately tell me that they're totally with me. And I say to everybody, thank you for your private support, but I need your public support.”
Another sign of a shift: 21 of the platform committee’s 112 members backed removing the anti-gay language, up from five in 2012.
Several Republican lawmakers were spotted at the brunch where Jenner spoke, including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Mimi Walters (R-Calif.) and Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the chairman of House Republicans’ campaign arm.
But getting them to appear with her in a picture was a tougher sell.
Jenner is key to American Unity Fund’s legislative strategy going forward, Hoover said – but unlike the open-press brunch, her meetings on the Hill will be private.
“I think the Republican Party needs to understand, they need to know people who are trans,” Jenner said at the brunch.
American Unity Fund is focused on getting Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) re-elected in November. Just as American public opinion more broadly has changed in favor of gay rights as more individuals have exited the closet, Portman is a model for bringing Republicans around: his gay son persuaded him to back same-sex marriage.
Legislation that makes LGBT a protected class under federal statute is top of the agenda for the next Congress, Hoover said.
“We’re the only group that is able to navigate the concerns that Republicans have,” she said, namely around religious freedom protections.
And in a rare move for a political organization with paid staff, Hoover said an anti-discrimination law would be the end of American Freedom Fund’s mandate.
“We close our doors, we’re done.”About
LobitaWorks presents: the Candycorn Bats!
These cute creatures flap around in search of candy and other sweet treats to nibble at. Candycorn Bat sightings become the most frequent around fall, and in particular, Halloween. These bats can be spotted well into December, as there is always an overabundance of holiday yummies to sample!
We have captured a few Candycorn Bats and have been training them to be cuddle buddies for the general public! The bats have taken very well to this new lifestyle- give them something sweet to eat and they’ll be your friend for life!
Each Candycorn bat sits at 12” tall including the big colorful ears, and is made out of super soft minky fabric, with faux fur accents. Their shape and material lends them to being extra super huggable! We know you’re going to absolutely love these.
BASIC FUNDING GOAL:
My initial funding goal of $12000 will cover 500 adorable bats to be produced. Your pledge is a pre-order and in the event we don’t reach our funding goal, you will not be charged. If you want a spooky friend to cuddle, be sure and tell your friends about this project!
Here’s a pie chart with the cost breakdown:
…It’s not a real pie, you can stop gnawing on that. Silly bats!
REWARDS:
BAT SUPPORT SQUAD
$1 You will receive a digital Candycorn Bat desktop wallpaper, usable on your phone, computer, or tablet!
BATTY GOODIE BAG
$5 You will receive a digital Candycorn Bat desktop wallpaper, plus a postcard, sticker, and pin-backed button!
EARLY BAT SPECIAL
$25 You will receive one Candycorn bat plushie, a pin-backed button, a postcard, and a sticker, plus the digital Candycorn Bat desktop wallpaper! Limited 15 slots
NEW! JUST THE BAT, MA'AM
$30 Just a bat by itself, no other goodies except the digital wallpaper.
ONE SPOOKY FRIEND
$35 You will receive one Candycorn bat plushie, a pin-backed button, a postcard, and a sticker, plus the digital Candycorn Bat desktop wallpaper!
TWO BUDDIES
$65 You will receive TWO Candycorn bat plushies |
down, calling out to her. "Emilia!"
"It's the barrier... nothing to worry about, I suppose, this is a natural for half-bloods that pass through it," She said facing forward, making it look like it's not a big deal, Garfiel also seemed to not be concerned about it.
"Barrier? And you're telling us this now!?"
"B-Betty forgot about it, I suppose, how do you expect Betty to remember everything from a place she's only been in for a few years!"
Suddenly Garfiel looked down at Beatrice from the top of the carriage, "Hey, lil girl, don't think I've ever seen anyone like you in Sanctuary and I know everyone here, so how do you know about the Barrier?"
"Watch who you call a little girl, I suppose!" She shouts while looking away pouting, that was a very, little girl thing to do. "Well, she's Beatrice, my contract spirit. She told me her mother used to live here a few hundred years ago" Subaru said from inside the carriage.
"Contract spirit? Okay then... wait four-hundred years! Then yer like 'The ol' granny on the sleepin hill'!...But then yer mother must-" Before he could complete his sentence Beatrice sent him a death glare, she sent a terrifying aura at him, keeping his mouth shut out of fear.
"R-Right... hows about that one?" He points to Otto.
"Oh, he's just Otto" Subaru sighed as he introduced Otto
"Natsuki-san... why did my introduction sound like you were trying to pity me?"
"No, that's impossible Otto, your misfortune is so great it's almost impossible to feel pity for you, haha!"
"What!"
They went past a stone gate and a few houses started to appear.
"So, Garfiel... care to tell us a little bit about Sanctuary?" He asked Garfiel
Garfiel clicks his tongue before answering, "Tch, thas what the bastard's callin it? Call it what you want but here 'S more or less known's the Witch a greed's cemetery, a test site where a bunch of nobodies gather"
"Nothings changed, I suppose...," Beatrice added, "I heard there were other witches, one for each of the other six sins... Does this place always have such a depressing atmosphere?"
Hearing this Garfiel sighs, "Sure 'S a depressin' place. Jussayin', the people inside're even more depressin'. Everybody's got this gloomy look, like they're livin' but they're dead. 'S messed ups what it is"
After a few more minutes they saw houses, slightly run down, the overall feel was gloomy. Emilia started to wake up, and they arrived shortly after, the citizens gave them lifeless glances, it was a disturbing scene. They saw Ram standing there waiting for them.
They stopped and Rem rushed over and hugs her, a sisterly thing to do, she was glad Rem wasn't sad anymore. Emilia came out next then Garfiel and Otto, Subaru came out last with Beatrice.
"Barusu..." She slowly approached him, giving him a glare. "You're on your own, I suppose," Beatrice said as she let go of his hand and went to where everyone else stood. They all looked confused when they saw this, mostly Garfiel.
"Ah... a promise is a promise... make it painless ok..." He surrenders, lifting his arms in the air.
"Hmph, I have no intention of making it painless" She raises a hand and faces the palm at him, then sighs "Though torturing you here and now would only make me look bad, instead I'll work you dead when we return, be grateful for my mercy"
He fell to his knees and breaths out a sigh of release, "T-Thank you Ram, for showing mercy!"
Emilia and Rem burst into laughter, Otto and Garfi gave him a confused while Beatrice just doesn't care.
Deep in the forest, something moves, there are many, yet it acts as one. A grave danger seeps through Sanctuary, preparing its onslaught on its residence.
A/N
Wooh, Garfiel's accent/wordings were very hard to make, nows where the real differences will pop up, let's see how Subaru reacts when he finds out that Dona is Betty's mom. I think my writing has improved a lot over the last month, I'm proud of myself.
Updates will most likely be irregular later on, but who knows.
~('u')~ See ya later!Bright colours
As we all know colours can convey emotions and they can be used strategically in brand and UI design. Bright colours tend to grab our attention and generate more positive emotions than dark or neutral colours. Bright, popping colours are always fun, energetic and bold while pastel ones are more relaxing and discrete.
2017 is an exciting year, start-ups and new products are popping up like mushrooms, all fighting for their place in the market. Colour is a good way to get our attention and engage with us and this is why vibrant colours are getting more and more popular. But as appealing as this trend might be, it can easily backfire and interfere with the user experience.
Dangers
Large bright coloured surfaces or many adjacent bright colours can make our eyes ‘bleed’, not literally, of course, but they will hurt them for sure. Eyes that hurt will close or leave, while you want them to stay; this is why you used all these flashing colours in the first place. Bright colours, behind or even near text copy, can make reading unpleasant, annoying, or impossible. Bright colours reflect more light. It’s like flashing a torch on peoples’ faces, while they are trying to read. Even if they do manage to read, they will have a negative experience resulting in disliking you and whatever you are trying to say there.
Do
Balance bright colours with big chunks of darker or more neutral ones.
Use bright colours as a detail, to draw attention and guide the user.
Use bright colours on large typography, as a decorative element.
Use bright colours to underline and promote content or interactions.
Don’t
Avoid using bright colours on large surfaces or as the main background colour.
Avoid using too many bright colours in one page or next to each other.
Do not use bright colours behind or near the main text copy.
Do not use bright colours on small surfaces that hold meaning, like small icons and navigation.
Experimental Layouts
In the race for attention, designers refuse to limit their imagination, rebelling against harmony, bringing directed chaos back to the designing table with unique, unbalanced, and atypical compositions. Experimental layouts are getting more popular in 2017.
This trend is interesting and playful. It’s a nice way to add some variety and help art or fashion designs stand out in a sea of tidy layouts. Experimental layouts are not perfectly balanced; the photography, typography or interface are usually not aligned, elements have different paddings and often tend to overlap.
Dangers
Our daily lives are chaotic enough. Do we need more of that, while trying to find information online? The unbalanced playfulness in a layout can easily interfere with the scannability and discoverability of information in a website, making browsing an overwhelming experience. When the main objective is getting information from a content heavy page, then layout structure is necessary. Visual hierarchy is also very important guiding users through the content. In experimental layouts, elements often float away from each other, splitting the content in weird and sometimes random, non-hierarchical ways. Other elements might overlap or end-up in less visible areas of the page, making it particularly hard to read, group and process information.
Do
Use experimental layouts, when reading through content is not the main objective.
Use imbalanced layouts as a playful detail between well structured and aligned blocks.
Keep grouped elements in proximity and have a clear separation between different chunks of content.
Use overlapping elements only when you have a good contrast and big enough typography.
Don’t
Do not use experimental layouts in content heavy pages.
Do not use imbalanced layouts when your audience has limited time to browse through content.
Do not randomly throw elements all over the page. Some basic alignment must always take place.
Do not overlap elements blindly. Consider contrast and related meaning.
Little details
Minimalism was popular for a long time and still is. Yet, we are currently witnessing a shift to more detailed layouts. There’s a reason for that; minimal designs cannot offer as many opportunities to delight and differentiate, as more detailed and complex compositions. Focusing on little details is very important these days.
Space with little details can drive the eye, from minor ones like navigation dots to floating elements which serve no function. Flying decorative icons, underscores, geometric figures and fragments are getting more and more popular, as they can add an interesting note to any design. They can act as balancers, separators, or pointers to content, like little useful comments.
Dangers
Little details can be useful for drawing attention and delighting the users, but they can accidentally compete with the actual, navigation and content. Too many details can get overwhelming messing with the hierarchy, confusing, rather than helping the users navigate or scan content. Little details that serve no purpose are digital noises and glitches. Little details are often used as a decorative element, next to imagery or typography, sometimes overlapping with them. Sometimes they follow scrolling or the mouse cursor. As a result, they gain our attention, which can be both good and bad. We need to be aware of this function and place them accordingly without jeopardising readability.
Do
Use little details with awareness of the content, making sure that readability is not affected.
Use little details as pointers to guide attention to or separate the main content.
Balance little details with a minimal and clean layout.
Try adding context to the details making them relevant to the content.
Don’tBudapest, May 30 (MTI) – Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said that Hungary will develop closer ties with the Republic of Mordovia, a federal constituent of Russia.
More intensive cooperation with Mordvinia may help counterbalance the decline in Hungarian-Russian trade, the minister said on Monday after talks with Vladimir Volkov, head of the republic.
The two sides signed an economic cooperation agreement.
Addressing a subsequent press conference, Szijjártó noted that the trade turnover between Hungary and Russia fell by 47 percent last year, and by another 25 percent in January-February this year.
He said that agriculture, the biggest loser in the decline, may play a key role in cooperation with Mordvinia, for instance in the fields of cattle breeding, goose feather processing and seed-corn production.
Volkov said that Hungary and the Republic of Mordovia were cooperating in preserving the cultural roots of Finno-Ugric peoples.
Photo: MTI
Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-mattersThe Report of the Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency, also known as Senate Report 93-549, was a document issued by the "Special Committee on the Termination of the National Emergency" of the 93rd Congress (hence the "93" in the name) (1973 to 1975). Its purpose was to discuss and address the 40-year-long national emergency that had been in effect in the United States since 1933. During the continued emergency, Congress voted to transfer powers from itself to the President. The debate to end long-running states of National Emergency was ended in 1976 with the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601–1651), which rescinded the president's authority under the prior emergencies[1][2][3] and established an expiration period (subject to annual presidential renewal) on future declared emergencies.
Cover page of the report
Content [ edit ]
The bulk of the report is an inventory of approximately 470 sections in federal law that extend emergency powers to the President and the executive branch. Before this comes an introduction discussing the history of how such a political situation developed.
The committee noted that prior to Franklin Roosevelt, presidents had responded to emergencies through existing legal authority, or by seeking emergency legislation. Roosevelt took a more assertive approach, believing that the executive branch had a public duty to "do anything that the needs of the Nation demanded" except where the Constitution or laws prohibited it.[4] In responding to the Great Depression and World War II, Roosevelt used declarations of emergency to signal his intent to broaden executive power, with the expectation that Congress (controlled by his own party) would ratify his actions. This pattern repeated under Harry Truman during the Korean War and became the backdrop of the Cold War.[5] Reflecting on the situation, the committee observed:[6]
"The 2,000-year-old problem of how a legislative body in a democratic republic may extend extraordinary powers for use by the executive during times of great crisis and dire emergency — but do so in ways assuring both that such necessary powers will be terminated immediately when the emergency has ended and that normal processes will be resumed — has not yet been resolved in this country. Too few are aware of the existence of emergency powers and their extent, and the problem has never been squarely faced."
The committee's investigation found that while some declared emergencies had been explicitly terminated, others had not. These were:
Aside from these particular examples, the committee noted a trend since Roosevelt of transferring broad authority to the President in times of crisis and leaving it in place. The practical effect was to enable the President, as much as Congress, to make laws. The committee found that these longstanding grants of authority were not merely theoretical, but that executive agencies actively used them to justify various programs such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation's domestic surveillance program.[7] The report recommended that Congress should act to terminate the standing emergencies and to regulate the President's use of emergency authority.
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]A complete guide to disassembling the new PlayStation 3 "Super Slim" has been posted to YouTube, giving us some firm answers about the revisions Sony has made to the basic design of its veteran console.
Posted by YouTube user "K0st3yr", it's the third and final video in the series that offers up the most interesting insights into the construction of the new console. A key element in reducing the cost of a games console comes down to fabricating the core silicon - the most expensive elements in this case being the Cell CPU and the RSX graphics core. Microsoft's approach with its 2010 360S revision was to integrate these two components into a single part, reducing costs significantly - not just in terms of the silicon, but also with the attendant cooling set-up. This approach is nothing new - Sony did the same with the PlayStation 2, integrating the Graphics Synthesizer and Emotion Engine into one chip - but the additional complexity of current-gen parts makes this a major engineering challenge.
In K0st3yr's videos, it's immediately apparent that while the structural design of the new PlayStation is significantly simpler - and thus easier and cheaper to produce - Sony is still relying upon discrete components for its main processors. Curiously, the integrated metallic heatspreader that sat on top of the RSX is now gone and based on size comparisons with the USB port, it appears that the chip remains identical to that found in the existing PlayStation 3 Slim - fabricated at 40nm. We also see that the GPU retains the four GDDR3 memory modules, again a match for the older model.
"The internals suggest a robustly built piece of hardware, significantly scaled down but with Cell and RSX unchanged from the last Slim, suggesting cooler, more power-efficient revisions to come."
Cell itself remains tucked under a heatspreader, so it's difficult to tell if any changes have been made in this regard. However, our feeling is that once again the component is a match for the existing model as the integrated power supply offers peak power output along similar lines to the last Slim, while a smaller component would reduce load significantly. A drop from Cell's current 45nm process chip to 32nm would be the next logical step, but based on the LinkedIn profile of IBM's Elizabeth Gerhard - who "owned delivery" of key console processors at various fabrication nodes - there's a strong suggestion that the chip skips ahead to 22nm at some point in the future instead.
Elsewhere, while the exterior plastics, buttons and slidey lid cover are a step down from premium finish traditionally associated with PS3 build quality, the rest of the innards look reassuringly robust, and the complexity of the construction in general looks more involved than the Xbox 360S (with the original launch 360 looking almost agricultural in comparison). The cooling array looks sufficiently meaty, and just like the existing Slim, the entire top surface of the motherboard is encased in a metallic shield connected directly to the heatsink and fan. The Blu-ray drive appears to be significantly smaller too and overall part-count looks much reduced.
Next up is the 12GB flash PlayStation 3, based on the same chassis. Going forward, this looks to be the most price-competitive model Sony has in the offing, with the firm hinting in a recent Eurogamer interview that we could see some aggressive pricing at retail, along with some intriguing expansion options - including the ability to slot in an existing drive from your current PS3, or upgrade with your own HDD using an inexpensive caddy.It was only a week ago we posted our monthly private tracker open signup update for February 2011. The previous articled covered 12 new torrent sites but as pointed out by some of our readers, we had missed out on several of the newer trackers. So, consider this post an extension to our previous open signup update – here we bring you summarized information about 8 more private BitTorrent communities that are currently open for signup. Unlike our last post which focused on niche, specialty trackers, this article mostly features General/0Day torrent sites that do not limit themselves to a specific category of torrents. These sites track anything and everything ranging from movies, music, TV shows, books, video games, etc. There is only one specialty tracker in this bunch which is CatTorrents, an E-book and Audiobook torrent site.
Note that if you are looking for niche torrent sites, you might want to read our previous update (in case you still haven’t). Most of the sites mentioned there are still open for signup.
TheCamorra
Site Name: TheCamorra (http://thecamorra.org)
Signup URL: http://thecamorra.org/free-signup.php
Stats: 1900+ users and 690+ torrents (360 active)
Description: When it first appeared on the internet a couple of weeks ago, most people though TheCamorra to be a clone of the CN tracker. The timing of it’s launch (soon after the downtime of CN), the mafia themed style sheet and its entry into the BT scene as a specialized movie tracker just like CN fueled these suspicions. However, Camorra is changing gears – it will no longer be a movies only tracker but will become a General/0Day tracker with scene and non scene content.
ScanBits
Site Name: ScanBits (http://www.scanbits.org)
Signup URL: http://www.scanbits.org/signup.php
Stats: 1200+ torrents
Description: ScanBits is a two week old general tracker of Scandinavian origins. The site tracks a mix of both English and Scandinavian content including scene, P2P and user uploads. Torrents are being added at a decent speed and the index has already shot past the 1000 torrents mark.
PolishSource
Site Name: PolishSource (http://polishsource.org)
Signup URL: http://polishsource.org/signup.php?lang=en
Stats: 3300+ users and 8800+ torrents
Description: Although this may look like a new site, PolishSource has actually been online since 2008. They recently merged with HeavenTracker to form HeavenSource, a new Gazelle based torrent site (full details about HS here). The merger apparently did not pay off, with the end result being PolishSource finally de-merging from HS. HS continues to operate as a private tracker to date while PolishSource has once again moved to a separate home as an independent entity.
SceneZone
: SceneZone ( http://www.scenezone.org : 3000+ users and 1400+ torrents (~1000 active): Out of the general trackers featured in this post, SceneZone is one of the more organized and cleaner looking torrent sites. Double upload and free leech is currently activated for all indexed torrents.
SmokeThe.Net
Site Name: SmokeThe.Net (http://www.smokethe.net)
Signup URL: http://www.smokethe.net/signup.php
Stats: 4200+ torrents
Description: SmokeThe.Net is the latest site to join the ‘The.Net’ naming bandwagon. This site was previously known as SmokeIt.Ro and they have launched v2 with a name change and several other features.
TorrentCity
Site Name: TorrentCity (http://torrentcity.ro)
Signup URL: http://torrentcity.ro/signup.php
Stats: 7100+ users and 230+ torrents
Description: TorrentCity is a Romanian general tracker with a user interface which is similar to that of LastTorrents.
MovieFox
Site Name: MovieFox (http://moviefox.org)
Signup URL: http://moviefox.org/index.php?page=signup
Stats: 6400+ users and ~5000 torrents
Description: Although it’s name might make you believe it’s a dedicated movie tracker, MoviexFox is actually a General/0Day torrent site. It’s one of the older torrent sites to be featured in this post and has an established user base as well as a torrent index with nearly 5k torrents.
CatTorrent
Site Name: CatTorrent (http://www.cattorrent.co.uk)
Signup URL: http://www.cattorrent.co.uk/signup.php
Stats: 2600+ users and 4900+ torrents
Description: CatTorrent is the only niche torrent tracker to be mentioned in this article. It’s an underrated private tracker that tracks lots of audiobooks and e-books. For a detailed review of this tracker including screenshots, please refer to this article. The site is only occasionally open for signup so get in while you can.
Looking for more private torrent sites that are open for signup? Check out this post for more.
Special thanks to everyone who submitted tracker news.
Related ArticlesIn Part One, we explained what we were trying to do, and established the areas we'd look at and the players we'd consider. In Part Two, we started to look at how the top defenceman in the NHL stacked up against each other this year. Now, there's nothing left to do but reveal our results, and who we think should have received nominations for the Norris Trophy as top defenceman.
If you're one of those impatient types who can't wait any longer, click at the link at the bottom of this article to see the whole list.
The overall results were incredibly close, so we'll start by looking at some Honourable Mentions. With just a small change in one of their individual statistics, any of the following players could have been among the contenders or even considered the most deserving of the Norris:
Rank Name ES PPG PP PPG ZSHIFT SA/60 FEN% PK TOI ES TOI QOC Score 6 Ryan McDonagh 12.90 0.30 3.60 11.10 9.40 4.20 24.50 4.35 70.35 7 Shea Weber 11.85 4.00 3.05 8.70 8.20 3.00 23.75 7.80 70.35 8 Jay Bouwmeester 9.90 2.40 3.90 9.75 8.30 4.65 23.25 7.95 70.10 9 Zdeno Chara 10.35 1.30 2.65 8.40 9.60 5.00 22.50 9.90 69.70 10 P.K. Subban 10.20 10.00 1.10 13.20 10.00 2.25 20.00 2.85 69.60
We mentioned in Part 2 how Subban (and Chara) found themselves at the top of the most different statistical categories, so how do they only land 10th and 9th, respectively? While Subban picked up a massive amount of points over the others here in Power Play points, he gave it all back due to his low Quality of Competition. Subban's Zone Shift and Even Strength Time are lower than the other honourable mentions, too. Chara doesn't have any significantly low statistic to explain it, just a number of middle of the pack scores that dragged him down just enough to leave him out of our finalists.
We had a four-way tie for fourth place, so an emergency tiebreaker procedure was needed. The highest possible score in any one category would earn the higher rank. Our 4th and 5th place finalists both won a category, so McDonagh and Weber settle for Honourable Mention status.
On to the main course.
Our 5 finalists are.....
Ryan Suter #20 / Defenseman / Minnesota Wild Height: 6-1 Weight: 198 Born: Jan 21, 1985
Rank Name ES PPG PP PPG ZSHIFT SA/60 FEN% PK TOI ES TOI QOC Score 5 Ryan Suter 12.60 5.00 0.75 9.45 8.40 3.30 25.00 5.85 70.35
(7th) (6th) (41st) (14th) (31st) (31st) (1st) (23rd)
The Wild's Mr. Everything, Ryan Suter's case generally relies on his strong offensive play this season (7th among our pool in ES points per game, 6th in PP points per game) and his league-leading ice time (including the most ES ice-time). His possession stats drag him down, rankig near the bottom in Zone Shift, and more importatnly towards the middle of the pack in his Fenwick and QOC numbers. Suter played a lot of minutes, others played a lot harder.
The intersting thing is Suter wsa also the only person in our top 5 to have his main defensive partner also qualify for this list; Wild rookie defender Jonas Brodin (who placed 31st). All in all, a succesful season for the former Predator, who has firmly stepped outside of Shea Weber's shadow.
Dion Phaneuf #3 / Defenseman / Toronto Maple Leafs Height: 6-3 Weight: 214 Born: Apr 10, 1985
Rank Name ES PPG PP PPG ZSHIFT SA/60 FEN% PK TOI ES TOI QOC Score 4 Dion Phaneuf 9.00 5.40 2.55 4.50 7.30 4.85 21.75 15.00 70.35
(30th) (5th) (24th) (45th) (45th) (7th) (23rd) (1st)
I'm going to need you to trust me that when i set out to do this, I didn't intend for the Leafs captain to be a contender. And honestly, after Part 2 where Dion Phaneuf finished dead last in two separate categories, I figured any chance Phaneuf had would have disappeared.
Phaneuf's numbers are positively boom-or-bust. He lead the league in QOC, by a considerable margin. He was among the leaders in power play production and in penalty kill ice time, and was middle of the pack in the other categories (of course finishing last in two). So how does Dion land 4th? Because when Dion finished behind the leaders he didn't lose that many points. When Dion finished at the top, he had a significant edge over others.
Consider that QOC and Shots Against got the same weighting; 15 points. Phaneuf finished last in Shots Against, but dropped 7.7 points compared to PK Subban, the leader. Phaneuf had the maximum score for QOC; the 7.3 points he got in Shots Against for coming last? That was the QOC score for Brian Campbell who finsihed 15th. Don't believe anyone who tries to tell you differently; Phaneuf had a season worthy of Norris consideration.
Victor Hedman #77 / Defenseman / Tampa Bay Lightning Height: 6-6 Weight: 229 Born: Dec 18, 1990
Rank Name ES PPG PP PPG ZSHIFT SA/60 FEN% PK TOI ES TOI QOC Score 3 Victor Hedman 14.55 0.70 4.25 9.90 8.30 4.05 21.50 7.80 71.05
(3rd) (38th) (3rd) (10th) (33rd) (22nd) (28th) (10th)
Hedman was another bit of a surprising name to land this high on the list, but really when you look at why Phaneuf made it onto the list, Hedman's case is just a little stonger. Hedmand was top 3 in two of our offensive categories, top 10 in a defensive category, and top 10 in a usage category. In the other categories he was firmly in the middle and didn't lose that much ground. The only real blemish was not being used on the power play to the degree of others (38th place in PP PPG), but then again on a team that scored goals for fun, it was Hedman who drew the job of trying to keep order in the defensive end.
Rank Name ES PPG PP PPG ZSHIFT SA/60 FEN% PK TOI ES TOI QOC Score 2 Alex Pietrangelo 12.90 2.10 1.60 11.40 9.20 4.70 22.50 7.05 71.45
(4th) (26th) (33rd) (4th) (9th) (10th) (13th) (15th)
St. Louis Blues head coach Ken Hitchcock has a reputation for demanding strong defensive play from his team, and generally being difficult for the opponents to play against. So for Hitchcock to have a defensive gem like Pietrangelo, it certainly makes paying his preferred style that much easier.
The 4th overall pick in 2008 was in the Top 10 in every defensive category, and the Top 15 in both usage categories, adding a 4th place in ES PPG for good measure. When we set out to identify the best all-around defenceman in the league, this is the sort of record we were trying to come across, and how Pietrangelo didn't merit consideration for the Norris is puzzling. Only lower Power Play production and some curiously low Zone Shift numbers kept him from being our winner, and he still only was the runner-up by a scant 0.25 points.
Oliver Ekman-Larsson #23 / Defenseman / Phoenix Coyotes Height: 6-2 Weight: 190 Born: Jul 17, 1991
Rank Name ES PPG PP PPG ZSHIFT SA/60 FEN% PK TOI ES TOI QOC Score 1 Oliver Ekman-Larsson 11.85 2.70 3.15 7.80 8.60 4.70 21.50 11.40 71.70
(12th) (22nd) (11th) (31st) (24th) (10th) (28th) (2nd)
Hidden away in Phoenix, Oliver Ekman-Larsson is a gem. A model of consistency, he never stood out in any particular category (except QOC where he finished a distant 2nd to Phaneuf). His consistency across the board secures him our selection for this year's Norris Trophy; he simply had no weak point this season compared to his peers, staying within the pack in all categories and never losing too many points to the leaders. So when Dion Phaneuf scored an outrageous QOC score that left the field in the dust, but OEL doesn't fall too far behind, that powers him to the top of the list.
It's funny from a Leaf fan perspective to note that according to our formula, the top 2 defenceman in the league this season were both taken one pick before the Leafs picked (Pietrangelo in 2008 right before the Leafs took Luke Schenn, Ekman-Larsson in 2009 one selection before Nazem Kadri). What might have been.
Congratulations to Oliver Ekman-Larsson on not being nominated for the Norris Trophy he should have won this season.
The full spreadsheet with data can be found here - Norris by the Numbersby Irv Soonachan
Due to his advanced age, Jerry West likes to describe himself as being in “God’s waiting room.” But he doesn’t act like it. West glides around the hallways of Oracle Arena with the easy grace of someone not far removed from being one of the greatest basketball players ever. He remembers people’s names—from security personnel to office staff—stops to chat, and visibly enjoys the camaraderie.
West has stayed busy, too. In October 2011 he published his autobiography, West by West: My Charmed, Tormented Life, which details his history as an abused child and the effect it had on his life, career and seemingly inexhaustible competitive drive. A month later, despite his incredible success as a player and executive for the archrival Lakers, he joined the Golden State Warriors as a member of the team’s executive board, taking an active role in helping the perennial bottom-dweller change its culture. Though not involved in day-to-day management, he has been visible at practices, helps evaluate talent for the Draft, and team sources say his voice is heard behind closed doors regarding major personnel moves.
West, who turns 76 in May, dislikes feeling confined, so he met with SLAM in the Warriors’ spacious press conference room while the team prepared for Monday night’s game against Minnesota. Even while sitting in a distractingly empty space, the ever-intense West never broke eye contact.
SLAM: As you watch NBA games today, how do you feel about the product on the court? It has changed a lot since you started.
Jerry West: It has changed a lot and I think that expansion has changed the game because there are not as many players who can play at this level. I think sometimes we have so many young kids in the League that it takes a while for them to get going. I don’t think the quality of play is where the League would like it. I know the teams that are losing don’t like it. I would say there’s not quite enough experienced talent around.
The other thing is, I think coaches have changed the game. People value the three-point line so much. You see shots taken, particularly when there’s a lot of time left on the shot clock, that I don’t think should be taken. I don’t think they’re good shots because it jeopardizes your defense when you take a quick shot from the corner and teams run out against you. But it’s fun and creates fan interest. I know here in Golden State we have two guys in the backcourt who can really give our fans fun evenings with their shooting ability. But at the end of the day this is all about winning.
I worked in Los Angeles with an owner who wanted the team to win, but he thought basketball was entertainment. I’m talking about Jerry Buss. He did a lot of things to create a different kind of atmosphere that are very much in prominence in the NBA today. Making it not just a sporting event, but also an entertainment event. We see that a lot in arenas today.
SLAM: As somebody who built championship teams, how do you feel about where the Warriors are in their development?
JW: We have a very good team. We’ve had some crazy injuries that have detracted from us getting to where we want to be. You don’t want to limp into the Playoffs. It’s been a good year but I think all of us would have liked it to be better. We have a respectable team, a team that can get better, and a team that needs to take another quantum step in terms of playing at a higher level every night. We’ve seen that our effort is usually fantastic against the good teams. Against teams you would think we have a reasonably good chance to beat, sometimes you shake your head and say, “We didn’t come to play tonight.” Frankly, that’s on the players. This is a profession. You get paid an awful lot of money to do it, and coaches can’t deliver some kind of speech every night. It’s on the players.
SLAM: How did you get through that regular-season grind for 14 years as a player?
JW: Playing the game was the easy part for me. I loved the competition, I didn’t like to lose, don’t like to lose today, don’t want to be associated with losing to be honest with you, and it was just something that was easy for me. I was extremely competitive.
SLAM: Steph Curry plays the game differently than anybody I can think of. Is there a template for a player like that?
JW: He’s unique in a lot of ways, and he kind of reminds me a little bit of a smaller Kevin Durant. He’s so much fun to watch. There are three or four players in the League I’d pay to see play, and he is one of them. The other thing I don’t think people realize is what a great competitor he is. He was also raised really well by his parents; he’s very grounded. He’s a pleasure to be around.
SLAM: Your competitive drive and the effect it’s had on your health are well documented, such as your hospital stay after the Lakers signed Shaq. How are you balancing your competitive edge after joining the Warriors in your 70s?
JW: If I were handling the day-to-day thing here, with the way this year is going and some of the games we’ve lost, I’d probably be in the hospital again, to be honest with you. I don’t like to lose. Before the season starts you look at your team and say, “How many games can we win?” To me that is kind of a checks and balances system for executives and you’re basing that estimate on reasonably good health. I thought we’d win a few more games this year. Our team missed a lot of games, particularly our starters.
If we have a bad loss, I still don’t sleep. It drives me crazy to this day because you see one or two little plays that are made in the course |
it was increasing my rate plan to $17.95/month from my current $14.95/month. $14.95/month was the lowest rate plan on Vonage’s website. The other choice was a $24.95/month “unlimited” plan, which I certainly didn’t need.
It was clear that Vonage was encouraging its customers to upgrade to its $24.95 rate plan for “only eight dollars a month!” I had a better idea.
I have had fantastic success negotiating with both cable and cell phone companies. Comcast is currently paying me to watch cable TV — I downgraded to basic cable, saving my HDTV and dual-tuner TiVo features, but my cost for basic cable is less than the 2-package discount I get by having our Internet service with them as well.
As for my cell phone, I currently pay Sprint PCS for two cell phone lines, 1000 minutes shared, 500 text messages per month per line, two data access plans with tethering, and insurance in case one phone breaks or is lost/stolen. Total cost? $67/month. (My boyfriend and I split this cost, meaning we pay less individually than anyone I know for post-paid cell phone service.)
In this article, I’m going to show you six easy steps to negotiate like a pro with your cable or phone company. All consumer cable and phone companies operate on the same basic principle — that saving a customer is better than trying to find a new one. The best thing about these tricks is if for some reason, they don’t work, you can just hang up. These companies won’t disconnect your service without you jumping through a lot of hoops, so don’t be concerned about “accidentally” canceling.
Step 1: Call and tell the prompt that you want to cancel your service.
Never call and ask for customer service. Customer service doesn’t have the power to lower your rate. Always call and ask to cancel your service. The automatic voice prompters almost universally recognize the word “cancel.” If you get to an operator, make sure you specifically state that you want to cancel your service.
Step 2: Stomach your fear and be kind.
When the rep comes on the line and asks what he/she can do for you, state “I would like to cancel my service, please.” It’s worth noting here that you should be as nice as possible. Put a smile in your voice. You want the rep to like you. They have a script, but they get personal bonuses for you to stay on as a customer. You both have the same end goal: for you to remain happy with their service and stay a customer for many years to come.
The script varies a bit here, but after confirming your account information, most customer service reps will note how long you have been a customer. The longer you have been a customer, the better. If you have been a customer less than 12 months, or are still in a service contract, odds are slim that you will get a sweet deal. If you have been a customer longer than 24 months, are no longer in a contract, and pay every month on time, you have much more negotiating power.
Pro negotiating tip #1: Always set your bill to auto-pay and pay it every month consistently to become a preferred customer.
Pro negotiating tip #2: Stick with the same service provider, using retentions when you want a better deal, instead of hopping carriers. I’ve been with Sprint PCS since 1999. The longer-term relationship you can develop, the better.
In this case, the rep said “I see you’re a long-term customer of Vonage. You signed up almost 5 years ago, in February 2004. What can I do for you today?”
Step 3: The four key words you MUST use.
At this point, you say the following words: “I can’t afford it.” These are the four words that tip off any rep that you want a lower price, not more features. What I typically say is, “Well, I’ve been with [your company] quite a while, and it’s getting tough for me to afford the monthly fee. I just can’t afford it any longer.” They don’t need a whole sob story — simply saying a form of “I can’t afford it” will trigger the correct script. Don’t threaten to take your business elsewhere, especially since you don’t plan to. Resist the temptation to justify. Just leave that “I can’t afford it” hanging out there.
They will almost always respond with “Let me see what I can do for you.”
Step 4: Never take the first offer.
Their first offer is a test, designed to get you off the phone as quickly as possible and score them the bonus. (Don’t fault them — remember, this is a script!) It’s guaranteed to be weak. In this case, I had explained I was calling because I couldn’t afford the rate increase to $17/month. The rep offered me six months of continuing the $14.95 rate.
Be polite! I said, “Hmm, I appreciate that, but that’s not really going to do it for me. I need something more permanent.” Again, no sob story, just a simple statement. That’s their signal to bring out the real discounts.
After putting me on hold for a minute (sometimes, at this point, they will pull in a supervisor, but Vonage didn’t), the rep came back with a much better offer. He said, “I see you’re only using around 100 minutes a month. We do have a special rate plan that I am authorized to give you today. [Erica’s note: Those words are another cue that you’re about to get a good deal.] It’s $9.99/month for 100 minutes a month. Additional minutes are 3.9 cents per minute. Incoming and forwarded calls are free; these minutes are for outgoing calls.”
I asked, “Is this a permanent rate?”
He replied, “Yes.”
Step 5: Once you get an offer you like, ask them to tweak it.
This was a great rate, and one not advertised on Vonage’s website, so I knew this was what is termed a “retention plan” — a plan designed to keep you as a customer. Once you get into the territory of unadvertised plans, you know you’ve hit gold. Now you simply ask for another tweak. For cell phone carriers, now is your time to ask for extra minutes, more text messages, or some other perk they can throw in cheaply. But with Vonage, I didn’t need any perks, so I said: “That sounds great. I’m interested. But could you get me a few months free on that? Say, 3 months?”
Most of them will chuckle at this point. They are aware by now they are dealing with a seasoned negotiator. This is a good thing; you’re developing a camaraderie with them. They should say “Let me see what I can do for you” again.
He came back on the phone and said he could do one month free on that plan. I said, “Great! That’s excellent. Thank you.”
Step 6: Thank them.
Everyone likes gratitude. Don’t forget to thank your customer service rep.
In Vonage’s case, they sent me an email confirming that my plan would be free for the next month and then drop to $9.99/month for 100 minutes/month. The total call took 12 minutes.
If I keep this plan for a year, I will save $106 ($8/month plus one free $10 month.) Based on the 12 minutes spent on the phone, that’s an hourly rate of $530 — making this strategy well worth your time to learn!
A few more tips…
Drop the land line. There’s not a whole lot of reason to have a land line these days. Some people keep one around for E-911 service or to use during power outages, but they’re often not worth the price. Vonage requires you to input an E-911 address onto their website where 911 calls are automatically dispatched to if you call from that line. Since I only use my Vonage line at home, that works for me. If you have a landline, I’d encourage you to check out Vonage or RingCentral.
There’s not a whole lot of reason to have a land line these days. Some people keep one around for E-911 service or to use during power outages, but they’re often not worth the price. Vonage requires you to input an E-911 address onto their website where 911 calls are automatically dispatched to if you call from that line. Since I only use my Vonage line at home, that works for me. If you have a landline, I’d encourage you to check out Vonage or RingCentral. Some carriers are tougher than others. Comcast won’t budge if you compare them to other providers, but “I can’t afford it” and then escalating to a supervisor works. To get the $67/month Sprint PCS rate, I made 5 calls and spent nearly 3 hours on the phone with 8 different representatives — 6 of whom said the rate I eventually got wasn’t possible. Was it worth the 3 hours? Yes! Over my 2-year contract, I will save over $1400 over Sprint’s posted rates for the same plan. That’s almost the same bang for the buck that my 12-minute call with Vonage provided.
Comcast won’t budge if you compare them to other providers, but “I can’t afford it” and then escalating to a supervisor works. To get the $67/month Sprint PCS rate, I made 5 calls and spent nearly 3 hours on the phone with 8 different representatives — 6 of whom said the rate I eventually got wasn’t possible. Was it worth the 3 hours? Yes! Over my 2-year contract, I will save over Sprint’s posted rates for the same plan. That’s almost the same bang for the buck that my 12-minute call with Vonage provided. Don’t ever sign a contract without going through retentions. I’ve gotten a $200 credit, lower monthly rates, and even free or ridiculously cheap phones. Retentions is there to satisfy your needs. Use this to your benefit, and have fun with it!
Recommended Reading:Mark Morford, a liberal columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, published a tirade Monday in which he wished for Rush Limbaugh’s death — both commercially and literally.
In a column entitled “Cheer up! Rush Limbaugh is not long for this world,” Morford hailed “the imminent, long-overdue demise of the most fatuous, morally flatulent king of all hate media.”
Citing left-wing sources such as Media Matters, Morford claimed that Limbaugh’s ratings are declining and his contract renewal is jeopardized by the financial troubles of iHeartMedia (formerly Clear Channel).
He also expressed the hope that Limbaugh “suffers an inoperable swarm of genital warts, in perpetuity, forever.”
Morford, who has been suspended from the paper several times, including for mocking statutory rape, is responsible for a widely-mocked column during the 2008 campaign lauding then-Sen. Barack Obama as a “Lightworker”:
Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul. [Original emphasis]
Beyond Limbaugh, Morford writes, there are still other conservatives to hate, including “Breitbart, Drudge, Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Michael Savage and, um, a few others I don’t care to dredge up, because I have a functioning soul, because I value joy and I care about the world.”
The Chronicle publishes Morford’s column under the heading “Notes & Errata.” He also describes himself as a “senior yoga instructor” and “admirer of trees.”
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new e-book, Leadership Secrets of the Kings and Prophets: What the Bible’s Struggles Teach Us About Today, is on sale through Amazon Kindle Direct. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.Houris in paradise, riding camels. From a 15th-century Persian manuscript.
The houris (;[1] from Persian: حُـورِی, ḥūrī; plural of ḥaurāʾ or ḥūrīyah;[note 1] Arabic: حُـورِيَّـة) are beings in Islamic mythology, described in English translations as "and splendid companions of equal age [or well-matched]",[2][3] "lovely eyed",[4] of "modest gaze"[5] and virgins[6] who will accompany the faithful in Jannah (Muslim paradise).[7]
Descriptions [ edit ]
The houris are mentioned in several passages of the Quran, always in plural form. No specifics are ever given, though, as to the number of houris that should be available to each believer. As for the gender of the houris, the Quran does not indicate that only men would be granted the company of houris—in fact, it can be inferred from the context that both men and women believers will have a plural number of houris for themselves.[8] This in turn leads to the assumptions that houris can be both male or female.
On the other hand, feminine adjectives or participles are always used when it is possible to make a distinction,[9] and the Qur'an says that one of the favors granted to those in Paradise is houris "untouched before them by man or Jinni",[10] which implies that they are (female) virgins.[11] They are described as virgins in 56:36 (although the word in another context can mean "first-born").
Quranic description [ edit ]
In the Quran, the houris are called "companions", described as being "restraining in their glances" (chaste),[12][13] with "modest gazes",[5] "wide and beautiful/lovely eyes",[4][12][14] "eyes like pearls",[4] and "full-breasted".[2] The word itself occurs four times, always in the plural, but they are also referred to in a few other passages in different terms:[15]
44:54: [16] "Thus. And We will marry them to fair women with large, [beautiful] eyes",
"Thus. And We will marry them to fair women with large, [beautiful] eyes", 52:20: [17] "They will be reclining on thrones lined up, and We will marry them to fair women with large, [beautiful] eyes",
"They will be reclining on thrones lined up, and We will marry them to fair women with large, [beautiful] eyes", 55:72: [18] "Fair ones reserved in pavilions",
"Fair ones reserved in pavilions", 56:22:[19] "And [for them are] fair women with large, [beautiful] eyes"
And among His wonders is this: He creates for you mates out of your own kind so that you might incline towards them, and He engenders love and tenderness between you: in this, behold, there are messages indeed for people who think!... And He it is who creates [all life] in the first instance, and then brings it forth anew: and most easy is this for Him, since His is the essence of all that is most sublime in the heavens and on earth, and He alone is almighty, truly wise. Quran, sura 30 (Ar-Rum), ayat 21...27[20]
And, O our Sustainer, bring them into the gardens of perpetual bliss which Thou hast promised them, together with the righteous from among their forebears, and their spouses, and their offspring—for, verily, Thou alone art almighty, truly wise Quran, sura 40 (Ghafir), ayah 8[21]
Shi'ite description [ edit ]
To Shi'ite scholars, the most important fact of the description of the houris is that good deeds performed by believers are recompensated by the houris, which are the physical manifestations of ideal forms, that would not fade away over time, and who will serve as faithful companions to those they accompany.[22]
Sunni description [ edit ]
Details of the houris that have been pointed out by Sunni scholars include that the houris would not urinate, defecate or menstruate.[23] It has also been said that all houris are "transparent to the marrow of their bones",[24][25] "eternally young",[26] "hairless except the eyebrows and the head",[26] "pure"[25] and "beautiful".[25] Islamic scholars such as Ibn Majah and Al-Suyuti have also described them as having libidinous vaginas.[27][28]
Hadiths [ edit ]
A number of Sunni ahadith (collections of the reports of the teachings, deeds and sayings of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, accepted as canonic by most, but not all, Muslims) also mention the houris:
"...everyone will have two wives from the houris, (who will be so beautiful, pure and transparent that) the marrow of the bones of their legs will be seen through the bones and the flesh." Muhammad al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 54 "The Beginning of Creation", hadith 476)[29]
[People who enter Paradise] will not urinate, relieve nature, spit, or have any nasal secretions. Their combs will be of gold, and their sweat will smell like musk. The aloes-wood will be used in their censers. Their wives will be houris. All of them will look alike and will resemble their father Adam (in stature), sixty cubits tall. Muhammad al-Bukhari, Sahih al-Bukhari, Book 55 "Prophets", hadith 544[30][31]
[note 2]
Muhammad reported that some (persons) stated with a sense of pride and some discussed whether there would be more men in Paradise or more women. It was upon this that Abu Huraira reported that Abu'l Qasim (the Holy Prophet) said: The (members) of the first group to get into Paradise would have their faces as bright as full moon during the night, and the next to this group would have their faces as bright as the shining stars in the sky, and every person would have two wives and the marrow of their shanks would glimmer beneath the flesh and there would be none without a wife in Paradise. Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj Nishapuri, Sahih Muslim, Book 40 "Pertaining to Paradise", hadith 6793[32]
Jabir b. 'Abdullah reported: I was shown Paradise and I saw the wife of Abu Talha (i. e. Umm Sulaim) and I heard the noise of steps before me and, lo, it was that of Bilal. Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj Nishapuri, Sahih Muslim, Book 31 "Pertaining to the Merits of the Companions", hadith 6012[33]
Al-Hasan Al-Basri says that an old woman came to the messenger of Allah and made a request, O’ Messenger of Allah make Dua that Allah grants me entrance into Jannah. The messenger of Allah replied, O’ Mother, an old woman cannot enter Jannah. That woman started crying and began to leave. The messenger of Allah said, Say to the woman that one will not enter in a state of old age, but Allah will make all the women of Jannah young virgins. Allah Ta’aala says, Lo! We have created them a (new) creation and made them virgins, lovers, equal in age. Al-Tirmidhi, Jami` at-Tirmidhi (Surah Waaqi’ah, 35–37).[34]
A houri is a most beautiful young woman with a transparent body. The marrow of her bones is visible like the interior lines of pearls and rubies. She looks like red wine in a white glass. She is of white color, and free from the routine physical disabilities of an ordinary woman such as menstruation, menopause, urinal and offal discharge, child bearing and the related pollution. A houri is a girl of tender age, having large breasts which are round (pointed), and not inclined to dangle. Houris dwell in palaces of splendid surroundings. Al-Tirmidhi, Jami` at-Tirmidhi[35]
Houris do not want wives to annoy their husbands, since the houris will also be the wives of the husbands in the afterlife. "Muadh ibn Jabal (Allah be pleased with him) reported that Allah's Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, 'A woman does not annoy her husband but his spouse from amongst the maidens with wide eyes intensely white and deeply black will say: Do not annoy him, may Allah ruin you." He is with you as a passing guest. Very soon, he will part with you and come to us. Ibn Majah, Sunan ibn Majah[36][37]
Like Muslim ibn al-Hajjaj Nishapuri (see above), Abu Hurairah mentions houris as the solution to previous mundane worries as to whether there would be more women or more men who would go to paradise[32] (and whether, therefore, there would be a shortage of each gender for couple-making in the afterlife). Abu Ubaidah ibn al Jarrah (Abu Ubayda) said that the recreated women of this life referring to We have created (their Companions) of special creation.
And made them virgin—pure (and undefiled) Quran, sura 56 (Al-Waqia), ayat 35-36[38]
were mentioned in the previous verse as houri in verse 22. Al-Hasan al-Basri stated that the word "houri" implied the righteous women among mankind who are rewarded with paradise as related in the Tafsir of Tabari quoted by Muhammad Asad in his tafsir "Message of Quran"[39] concerning the following ayah:
We have created (their Companions) of special creation.
And made them virgin—pure (and undefiled) Quran, sura 56 (Al-Waqia), ayat 35-36[38]
Artat bin Al-Mundhir said regarding houri mentioned in sura Rahman (55), ayah (verse) 56:
Damrah bin Habib was asked if the Jinns will enter Paradise and he said, 'Yes, and they will get married. The Jinns will have Jinn women and the humans will have female humans.' — Ibn Kathir, Tafsir ibn Kathir
Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari mentions that all righteous women, however old and decayed they may have been on earth, will be resurrected as virginal maidens and will, like their male counterparts, remain eternally young in paradise. [39]
Ibn Kathir says that the houris "are delightful virgins of comparable age who never had sexual intercourse with anyone, whether from mankind or Jinns, before their husbands." [40] by commenting, "in the other life, after they became old in this life, they were brought back while virgin, youthful, being delightfully passionate with their husbands, beautiful, kind and cheerful." [41] Ibn Kathir also stated that Muhammad confirmed that there would be sexual intercourse in Paradise. [31]
by commenting, "in the other life, after they became old in this life, they were brought back while virgin, youthful, being delightfully passionate with their husbands, beautiful, kind and cheerful." Ibn Kathir also stated that Muhammad confirmed that there would be sexual intercourse in Paradise. Al-Qurtubi reconciled between a previous hadith that stated that the majority of the inhabitants of Hell (Jahannam) would be women by suggesting that many of the women that will form the majority in Hell will be among the sinners that would stay there merely temporarily and would then be brought out of Hell, into Paradise. Thereafter the majority of the people of Paradise will be women. [42]
Fakhr al-Din al-Razi comments that amongst the houris mentioned in the Quran would also be "[even] those toothless old women of yours whom God will resurrect as new beings"[43]
Etymology [ edit ]
Classical Arabic usage [ edit ]
The word 'ḥūr' (Arabic: حُور) is the plural of both ʾaḥwar (Arabic: أحْوَر) (masculine) and ḥawrāʾ (Arabic: حَوْراء) (feminine) [44] which can be translates as "gazelle-eyed" (or "having eyes with an intense contrast of white and black",[45]) or as "distinguished by ḥawar (حَوَر)", which itself means "intense whiteness of the eyeballs and lustrous black of the pupils". This is when it is used to describe the eyes, on its own the word simply means a white-skinned woman. Some also propose that the most literal translation of the noun into English would be "pure companions, most beautiful of the eyes".[46]
Corresponding Hebrew root [ edit ]
In Hebrew the corresponding adjective חיוור hiwer has the same root h-w-r, meaning "pale, whitish". The corresponding word for eye is עין Ayin.
European usage [ edit ]
The word "houri" has entered several European languages (French – 1654, English – 1737) with the meaning of a "elegant, beautiful, charming woman".[47][48]
"Houri" versus "whore" [ edit ]
The English word "whore" (German Hure, Danish hore, Swedish hora, Dutch hoer, Proto-Germanic *hōrōn, masculine form Gothic hors, Proto-Germanic *hōraz) is thought to stem from the Proto-Indo-European verb root *keh₂- "to love" and is not etymologically related to the Arabic (Semitic and thus non-Indo-European) word houri.[49]
Misconceptions [ edit ]
Several translators—like Hilali-Khan, Arberry, Palmer, Rodwell and Sale—have translated the adjective ka'ib in Book 78, verse 33 of the Quran to refer to "wide shoulders and chest".[50]
Ibn Kathir, in his tafsir, writes that the adjective contained in said verse "means 'fit pectorals or breasts'." He goes on as to state that it is "meant by this that the chest and pectorals or breasts of these girls will be fully fit and not sagging, because they will be virgins, equal in age. And the houris can be male and female both. It means the 'fit pectorals or breasts' can be male or female."[51]
Abdullah Yusuf Ali, on the other hand, translates said adjective into English simply as "charming, elegant and holy"[52]—which refers to sensual (or physical) attributes, though not necessarily chest, pectorals or breasts.[53]
As an alternative interpretation, Muhammad Asad has said the following regarding such verse:
As regards my rendering of kawa’ib as "splendid companions", it is to be remembered that the term ka'b—from which the participle ka’ib is derived—has many meanings, and that one of these meanings is "prominence", "eminence" or "glory" (Lisan al-Arab); thus, the verb ka'ba, when applied to a person, signifies "he made [another person] prominent", "glorious" or "splendid" (ibid.) Based on this tropical meaning of both the verb ka'ba and the noun ka'b, the participle ka'ib has often been used, in popular parlance, to denote "a girl whose shoulder and chest are becoming prominent" or "are budding" hence, many commentators see in it an allusion to some sort of youthful "female companions' who would entertain the (presumably male) occupants of paradise... This interpretation of kawa’ib overlooks the purely derivative origin of the above popular usage—which is based on the tropical connotation of "prominence" inherent in the noun ka'b—and substitutes for this obvious tropism the literal meaning of something that is physically prominent: and this, in my opinion, is utterly unjustified. If we bear in mind that the Qur'anic descriptions of the blessings of paradise are always allegorical, we realize that in the above context the term kawa’ib can have no other meaning than "glorious [or "splendid"] beings". Muhammad Asad, The Message of The Qur'an[3]
The authoritative Arabic-English Lexicon of Edward William Lane defines the singular of the word kawa`ib as "A girl whose chest is beginning to swell, or become prominent, or protuberant",[54] related to words meaning knob, chest, bosom, virginity, and so forth.[55]
Sexual intercourse in Paradise [ edit ]
Ibn Kathir mentions Muhammed saying that man in heaven would have sex with one hundred virgins in one day.[56] In another version of the hadith, Muhammad is reported to have said: "In Paradise, the believer will be given such and such strength for women." Anas said, "I asked, 'O Allah's Messenger! Will one be able to do that?' He said, "He will be given the strength of a hundred (men)".[56] Some companions of Muhammad are reported to have said that man in heaven will be "busy in deflowering virgins"[57] Ibn Kathir says that the houri "are delightful virgins of comparable age who never had sexual intercourse with anyone, whether from mankind or Jinns, before their husbands."[40] by commenting,"in the other life, after they became old in this life, they were brought back while virgin, youthful, being delightfully passionate with their husbands, beautiful, kind and cheerful." [58]
In another place, Ibn Kathir emphasizes the literal nature of sexual intercourse in Paradise by another Hadith:
"The Prophet was asked : 'Do we have sex in Paradise?' He answered: 'Yes, by him who holds my soul in his hand, and it will be done dahman, dahman (that is intercourse done with such shove and disturbance[59]). And when it is finished she will return pure and virgin again.'"[60]
Alternative Interpretations [ edit ]
Ibn Kathir relates concerning the following verses: "Verily, the dwellers of the Paradise, that Day, will be busy with joyful things. They and their wives will be in pleasant shade, reclining on thrones. They will have therein fruits and all that they ask for." [Chapter (Surah) Ya Seen (O Thou Human Being)(36):55-57][61]
Although Ibn Kathir relates the opinion of some companions of Muhammad being reported to have said concerning "will be busy with joyful things" that means in heaven people will be "busy in deflowering virgins", he continues to relate other alternate meanings. Another companion, Ibn Abass has said that it refers "listening to stringed instruments".[57] Others such as Al-Hasan Al-Basri and Isma`il bin Abi Khalid have said, "they will be too busy to think about the torment which the people of Hell are suffering." Qatadah implied "with the delights which they are enjoying." Ibn Abas said, "this means that they will be rejoicing.". While Mujahid said, "Their spouses,(will be in pleasant shade) means, in the shade of trees."Ibn `Abbas, Mujahid, `Ikrimah, Muhammad bin Ka`b, Al-Hasan, Qatadah, As-Suddi and Khusayf said, "beds beneath canopies."[61]
Reference to "72 virgins" [ edit ]
The idea of 72 virgins in Islam refers to an aspect of paradise. In a Sunni collection by Abu `Isa Muhammad ibn `Isa at-Tirmidhi in his Jami` at-Tirmidhi[62] and also quoted by Ibn Kathir in his Tafsir ibn Kathir of sura 55[63] it is stated:
It was mentioned by Daraj Ibn Abi Hatim, that Abu al-Haytham 'Adullah Ibn Wahb narrated from Abu Sa'id al-Khudhri, who heard Muhammad saying, 'The smallest reward for the people of Heaven is an abode where there are eighty thousand servants and seventy-two houri, over which stands a dome decorated with pearls, aquamarine, and ruby, as wide as the distance from al-Jabiyyah to San'a.[64]
However, regarding the above statement Hafiz Salahuddin Yusuf has said: "The narration, which claims that everyone would have seventy-two wives has a weak chain of narrators."[65]
In the same collection of Sunni hadiths, however, the following is judged strong (hasan sahih):
That the Messenger of Allah said: "There are six things with Allah for the martyr. He is forgiven with the first flow of blood (he suffers), he is shown his place in Paradise, he is protected from punishment in the grave, secured from the greatest terror, the crown of dignity is placed upon his head—and its gems are better than the world and what is in it—he is married to seventy two wives among the Hur the `Iyn ["wide-eyed ones", اثْنَتَيْنِ وَسَبْعِينَ زَوْجَةً مِنَ الْحُورِ الْعِينِ] of Paradise, and he may intercede for seventy of his close relatives."[66]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ حورية is also ḥūriyyah or ḥūriyya; pronunciation: /ħuː.ˈrij.ja/. is also transliterated asor ^ Sixty cubits is approximately 28 metres (92 feet). Al-Bukhari notes elsewhere that "people have been decreasing in stature since Adam's creation."
^A zawajnahoom : pair them, marry them. Note zawj (lit., "a pair" or, according to the context, "one of a pair") applies to either of the two sexes, a man to a woman and a woman to a man, as does the transitive verb zawaja, "he paired" or "joined", i.e., one person with another [67]
: pair them, marry them. Note (lit., "a pair" or, according to the context, "one of a pair") applies to either of the two sexes, a man to a woman and a woman to a man, as does the transitive verb, "he paired" or "joined", i.e., one person with another ^B qasirat at-tarf : Lit., "such as restrain their gaze", i.e., are of modest bearing and have eyes only for their mates (Tafsir Razi). This phrase applies to both genders. [5]
: Lit., "such as restrain their gaze", i.e., are of modest bearing and have eyes only for their mates (Tafsir Razi). This phrase applies to both genders. ^C min anfusikum azwajan, Lit. "from among yourselves mates (spouses, one of the pair)"
, Lit. "from among yourselves mates (spouses, one of the pair)" ^D waalmuminoona (male believers) waalmuminatu (female believers)
(male believers) (female believers) ^E min (from) thakarin (male) aw (or) ontha (female) [68]
(from) (male) (or) (female) ^F [69] waa li kul-li wa ahidin minhoom zawjataani = and to every single (everyone) among them zawjataani. The expression kulli wa hadin -each one (everyone) includes both males and females. Note: the feminine ending -at(un) (feminine ta-marbuta, -ah in modern Arabic language) is also added to distinguish a person in an exemplary manner as in allamun = scholar, allamatun (-ah) = distinguished scholar [not "female scholar"], or as in rawin = narrator, rawiyatun (-ah) = narrator(of poems) [not "female narrator"]. These forms ending in -at(un) (modern -ah), as they designate the individual, are treated as masculines. [70] [zawjatan: dual connotation (Classical Arabic Idiom, which can be used to refer to two different things calling them by the same name: two paired persons or things can be expressed by the dual of one of them (e.g. abawaani [dual of aba (father)] = parents (father and mother, not "two fathers"; qamarani [dual of qamar (moon)] = sun and moon (not "two moons"); [71] usage in " Qur'an in Surah Al-Furqan(25):53 " bahrayn [dual of bahr (sea)] = sea " salty and bitter " and river " sweet and thirst-allaying " (not "two seas"); sometimes the word with the female gender is chosen to make the dual form, such as in the expression " the two Marwas ", referring to the two hills of As-Safa and Al-Marwa (not "two hills, each called Al-Marwa") in Mecca; [72] ) ( (i.e. Husband - zawj and wife -zawjah can be referred as zawjatan in the dual form)] [73]
= and to every single (everyone) among them. The expression -each one (everyone) includes both males and females. Note: the feminine ending -at(un) (feminine ta-marbuta, -ah in modern Arabic language) is also added to distinguish a person in an |
make moral choices. But what is moral for a robot? Is this the same as what’s moral for a human?
Philosophers and computer scientists alike tend to focus on the difficulty of implementing subtle human morality in literal-minded machines. But there’s another problem, one that really ought to come first. It’s the question of whether we ought to try to impose our own morality on intelligent machines at all. In fact, I’d argue that doing so is likely to be counterproductive, and even unethical. The real problem of robot morality is not the robots, but us. Can we handle sharing the world with a new type of moral creature?
We like to imagine that artificial intelligence (AI) will be similar to humans, because we are the only advanced intelligence we know. But we are probably wrong. If and when AI appears, it will probably be quite unlike us. It might not reason the way we do, and we could have difficulty understanding its choices.
In 2016, a computer program challenged Lee Sedol, humanity’s leading player of the ancient game of Go. The program, a Google project called AlphaGo, is an early example of what AI might be like. In the second game of the match, AlphaGo made a move – ‘Move 37’ – that stunned expert commenters. Some thought it was a mistake. Lee, the human opponent, stood up from the table and left the room. No one quite knew what AlphaGo was doing; this was a tactic that expert human players simply did not use. But it worked. AlphaGo won that match, as it had the game before and the next game. In the end, Lee won only a single game out of five.
AlphaGo is very, very good at Go, but it is not good in the same way that humans are. Not even its creators can explain how it settles on its strategy in each game. Imagine that you could talk to AlphaGo and ask why it made Move 37. Would it be able to explain the choice to you – or to human Go experts? Perhaps. Artificial minds needn’t work as ours do to accomplish similar tasks.
In fact, we might discover that intelligent machines think about everything, not just Go, in ways that are alien us. You don’t have to imagine some horrible science-fiction scenario, where robots go on a murderous rampage. It might be something more like this: imagine that robots show moral concern for humans, and robots, and most animals… and also sofas. They are very careful not to damage sofas, just as we’re careful not to damage babies. We might ask the machines: why are you so worried about sofas? And their explanation might not make sense to us, just as AlphaGo’s explanation of Move 37 might not make sense.
This line of thinking takes us to the heart of a very old philosophical puzzle about the nature of morality. Is it something above and beyond human experience, something that applies to anyone or anything that could make choices – or is morality a distinctly human creation, something specially adapted to our particular existence?
Long before robots, the ancient Greeks had to grapple with the morality of a different kind of alien mind: the teenager. The Greeks worried endlessly about how to cultivate morality in their youth. Plato thought that our human concept of justice, like all human concepts, was a pale reflection of some perfect form of Justice. He believed that we have an innate acquaintance with these forms, but that we understand them only dimly as children. Perhaps we will encounter pure Justice after death, but the task of philosophy is to try to reason our way back to these truths while we are still living.
Plato’s student Aristotle disagreed. He thought that each sort of thing in the world – squirrels, musical instruments, humans – has a distinct nature, and the best way for each thing to be is a reflection of its own particular nature. ‘Morality’ is a way of describing the best way for humans to be, and it grows out of our human nature. For Aristotle, unlike Plato, morality is something about us, not something outside us to which we must conform. Moral education, then, was about training children to develop abilities already in their nature.
We might call these two approaches the ‘Celestial’ view and the ‘Organic’ view. (I’ve adapted the ‘Celestial’ from the philosopher Nomy Arpaly, although she used it in a slightly different way.) Celestials, including Plato, see morality as somehow ‘out there’ – beyond mere human nature – eternal and objective. Organics, meanwhile, see morality as a feature of the particular nature of specific moral beings. Human morality is a product of human nature; but perhaps other natures would have other moralities. Which perspective we choose makes a big difference to what we ought to do with intelligent machines.
Who speaks for Celestials? The Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant, for one. According to him, morality is simply what any fully rational agent would choose to do. A rational agent is any entity that’s capable of thinking for itself and acting upon reasons, in accordance with universal laws of conduct. But the laws themselves don’t just apply to human beings. ‘“You ought not to lie” is valid not merely for human beings, as though other rational beings did not have to heed it; and likewise all the other genuinely moral laws,’ wrote Kant in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).
Kant briefly considered whether there are any other rational agents, apart from humans. Animals are not rational agents, because they act from instinct rather than reason. God and the angels are rational agents, Kant said, but they don’t need moral rules because they aren’t capable of wrongdoing. Morality is all about guiding rational agents who are capable of making mistaken choices. Kant, of course, wasn’t thinking about intelligent robots two centuries ago. But it’s not hard to image what he’d say: if robots can think for themselves and make reasoned choices, then the rules apply equally to them and to us.
If we’re basically getting it right, robots should be like us. But if we’re getting it wrong, they should be better
Another school of Celestial thought is the tradition associated with philosophers such as the 19th-century utilitarian Henry Sidgwick. He insisted that moral actions must be justified ‘from the point of view of the universe’. The idea is that an action can’t be moral simply because it seems right to you or me – it counts as moral only if it can be justified from some impersonal perspective, divorced from the concerns of any particular individuals. This means figuring out what choices will maximise good outcomes for everyone.
The Celestial view, then, suggests that we should instil human morality in artificially intelligent creatures only on one condition: if humans are already doing a good enough job at figuring out the truth of universal morality ourselves. If we’re basically getting it right, then robots should be like us. But if we’re getting it wrong, they shouldn’t: they should be better.
The possibility of improving on our partial perspective is built into Celestial moral theories. For example, the contemporary utilitarian Peter Singer has often argued that we should not care more about our own children than about all other children. We care most about our own because this was evolutionarily adaptive. But whether something is adaptive is irrelevant from the point of view of the universe. Objectively, Singer says, there’s no reason why my child is more important than any other child.
Singer admits that, since humans are morally imperfect, it makes sense for governments to let us go on caring for our own kids. We’d probably screw up badly if we tried to care about all children equally. Some children would get overlooked. So we should work with what evolution has left us, flawed as it is. From Singer’s Celestial viewpoint, our familiar child-caring arrangements are like a duct-taped TV antenna. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best we’ve got.
But intelligent machines will not share our accidental biological history. They needn’t have our moral flaws. They get a fresh moral start. What if we could design machines to think from the point of view of the universe? They could care equally about all needy children; they would not be inefficiently partial.
Imagine it’s 2026. An autonomous public robocar is driving your two children to school, unsupervised by a human. Suddenly, three unfamiliar kids appear on the street ahead – and the pavement is too slick to stop in time. The only way to avoid killing the three kids on the street is to swerve into a flooded ditch, where your two children will almost certainly drown.
You wouldn’t want the car to swerve off the road, obviously. But according to the Celestials, this is because your evolutionary programming makes you morally flawed. Your logically arbitrary attachment to your children blinds you to the fact that the overall good of the universe is best served if two children drown rather than three children get run over. A robocar needn’t be so morally foolish. It can do the math. It will swerve into the ditch, your children will die, and from the point of view of the universe, the most possible good will have been done.
On the Celestial view, intelligent machines ought to do whatever’s objectively morally correct, even if we defective humans couldn’t bring ourselves to do it. So the Celestial might end up rejecting our imposition of human morality on intelligent robots, since humans are morally compromised. Robots should be allowed to make choices that might seem repugnant to us.
However, there’s an additional problem, even if you accept the Celestial view in principle. It’s a problem about how we get from here – flawed human moralists trapped in our arbitrarily evolved mindset – to there, creators of artificial minds that transcend their creators’ limits. How do we morally defective humans design these future minds to be morally correct?
Recall AlphaGo, the world’s best Go player, with its inscrutable Move 37. AlphaGo shows that AI can play complex games better than we can teach it. Perhaps, then, AI could teach itself better moral reasoning. Humans could start this process by training machines to respond properly to simple features of stimuli, but eventually the machines will be on their own. The most sophisticated machines are already trained by other machines, or other parts of their own software. AI grows by running its conjectures against other artificial intelligences, then resetting itself in response to corrective feedback.
This self-training could lead to what AI theorists call an ‘intelligence explosion’, in which the growing cleverness of machines feeds on itself so rapidly that they suddenly become much smarter than we are. Theorists who write about this sort of thing aren’t normally thinking about these machines as rational moral agents, in a Kantian sense. They tend to think of them as problem-solvers, digital brains that can do massive calculations involving complex logic beyond our limited human capacity. But suppose you are a Celestial moralist, and you think that morality is just the application of careful reasoning from the point of view of the universe. You might conjecture that, just as these robots can become better at solving extremely complex mathematical problems, they might also end up being better able to solve moral problems. If the intelligence explosion begins, machines might go beyond us, and work out what morally ought to be done, even if we can’t.
So that’s a way for moral robots to go beyond human limits. But on closer inspection, this approach leads to other problems. The first is: how does a machine learn morality? Morality is not the same as Go. A game is defined by a limited set of rules, so that there are clear criteria for what counts as a win. This isn’t necessarily true of morality. Of course, according to the Celestial view, there is some set of objectively correct rules for action, and a machine that learns these would thereby ‘win’. But the point is that we don’t know what these rules are, because we are morally flawed. If we knew, then we wouldn’t need super-intelligent machines to figure it all out.
Perhaps we could set the initial specifications for moral learning, such as not pointlessly hurting sentient creatures, and then let the machine train itself from there. If it’s very good at reasoning, it will go beyond our limitations to attain a higher moral state. But this leads us into the second problem. How are we going to respond once the developing AI starts to deviate from what seems morally right to us? Eventually it must, or else there’s no point in expecting it to escape from the orbit of our limited human morality. The problem is that advanced robots’ moral choices will not make sense to us. Remember that even AlphaGo’s creators weren’t sure what was going on with Move 37. Luckily for them, in Go, there are clear criteria for determining that the program had made good moves. AlphaGo won consistently against a great player, so we know it made good moves. But how would we know whether an AI’s seemingly nonsensical moral choices are ‘winning’? How could we tell it hadn’t gone terribly off the moral rails? How might we react, once robocars begin heroically drowning our children?
There’s also the chance that intelligent machines might figure out the morally right thing to do, from the point of view of the universe, but that they won’t be able to explain it to our limited brains. Maybe, from the point of view of the universe, it really is morally important to protect both babies and sofas. On the other hand, it could turn out that intelligent machines are headed toward moral disaster. They might be smarter than we are mathematically, but this might not be enough to keep them from constructing an inhumanly elegant logic of carelessness or harm.
We won’t permit robots to become much better than us, because we won’t permit them to become too different from us
There seem to be two possibilities: machines will become morally much better than we are, or morally much worse. But the point is that we won’t be able to tell which is which, and from our perspective it will almost certainly look like they are going downhill. The machines might choose to protect things we think are valueless, or sacrifice things (such as our children in the robocar) that we believe are beyond valuation. And if we still have the power to shut them down, that’s almost certainly what we will do.
Here’s why the Celestial view will not help us with robot morality. If there is some objective moral perspective out there beyond human comprehension, we won’t willingly allow our machines to arrive at it. The farther they stray from recognisable human norms, the harder it will be for us to know that they are doing the right thing, and the more incomprehensible it will seem. We won’t permit them to become too much better than us, because we won’t permit them to become too different from us.
In March 2016, Microsoft launched a Twitter chatbot named Tay: a limited AI designed to learn how to talk like a young millennial, by talking to young millennials: ‘wuts ur fav thing to do? mine is 2 comment on pix!’ Tay said. ‘send me one to see!’ Legions of internet trolls obliged. Within hours, Tay had learned to praise photos of Hitler and blurt ethnic slurs. Microsoft shut her down and apologised. A week later, Tay inexplicably reappeared, though only long enough to tweet ‘kush! [I’m smoking kush infront the police]’ before being permanently silenced.
The Tay fiasco was a lesson in the perils of letting the internet play with a developing mind (something human parents might consider as well). But it also shows that we won’t tolerate being offended by the learning process of machines. Tay, presumably, was not on her way to the Celestial heavens to commune with Plato’s eternal form of Justice. But how would we know if she were?
Perhaps the Organic view can do better. Remember, this denies that morality is something ‘out there’, beyond humanity. Instead, it insists that morals are really just idealised aspects of human nature; so a person living morally is living the right sort of life for the type of entity that a human happens to be. The Organic view allows that morality might be different for different types of entities.
The Organic view runs from Aristotle through thinkers such as David Hume and Charles Darwin. In recent decades, the most able exponent has been the late British philosopher Bernard Williams. In the essay ‘The Point of View of the Universe’ (1982), Williams levelled a pointed attack on Sidgwick’s theory of impartiality. Instead, Williams wrote, morality is about how humans should live given that we are humans – given our particular biological and cultural nature. What are reasonable choices to make for entities such as us?
The Organic view isn’t simplistic moral relativism. Organic philosophers insist that our biological and cultural background provides an unavoidable starting point, but also that we must reflect on this starting point. For instance, much of our cultural heritage seems to value men more than women, without any plausible justification. And since most of us would rather not live inconsistent lives, doing one thing today and another the next, we will try to resolve such inconsistencies. At the centre of the Organic view, then, is the idea that moral reflection is about taking our messy human nature, and working to make it consistently justified to ourselves and to other people.
But what about intelligent robots? They wouldn’t share our biological and cultural nature. Robots probably won’t get pregnant, won’t be born, won’t age or naturally die. Their experience will not fit the basic shape of human existence. Left to their own devices, they are likely to focus on very different concerns to ours, and their Organic morality will presumably reflect this difference.
Perhaps we needn’t be so passive about the nature of intelligent machines. We will be their creators, after all. We could deliberately shape their natures, so they turn out to be as similar to us as possible. The earliest proposals for robot morality seemed to have this aim. In the 1940s, the science-fiction author Isaac Asimov crafted the Three Laws of Robotics to make robots useful to us while blunting any danger they might pose. The first law is simply: ‘A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.’ The remaining laws enjoin robots to follow human orders or preserve their own survival only if compatible with that first law. On Asimov’s account, we should design machines so that their entire existence is structured around serving and protecting us. Their nature would be supplementary to ours, and their morality, on the Organic view, would be happily conducive to our interests.
Robosurgeons will need to understand why the pianist might prefer the loss of her life to the loss of her hand
The problem with Asimov’s laws is that they must be interpreted. The first rule talks about ‘harm’, but what does ‘harm’ mean? Imagine, for instance, a pianist whose dominant hand is suffering gangrene. If her hand is not amputated, she will die. But she swears she does not wish to live without her ability to play. Yet she is feverish as she says this; maybe she doesn’t really mean it. What should a robot surgeon do with this patient? Cause the harm of removing her hand despite her protestations? Or allow the harm of her death from gangrene?
Human ethicists debate this sort of question endlessly. When I teach medical ethics, I stress to my students that the goal is not for them to come out agreeing with one view or another. Instead, they should be able to explain the moral reasons supporting the position they endorse. It is essential that future human physicians are able to do this, since they might practise alongside others with very different moral convictions.
So if robosurgeons are going to work among – and on – humans, they will need to be able to understand and explain the sort of reasons that make sense to humans. They will need to understand why the pianist might prefer the loss of her life to the loss of her hand, as irrational as that might seem.
So, if we are going to shape robot nature after our own, it will take more than a few laws. Perhaps the simplest solution is to train them to think as we do. Train them to constantly simulate a human perspective, to value the things we value, to interact as we do. Don’t allow them to teach themselves morality, the way AlphaGo taught itself Go. Proceed slowly, with our thumbs on the scale, and make sure they share our moral judgments.
How agreeable: helpful, intelligent machines, trained to think like us, and who share our concerns. But there’s a trap in the Organic view. No matter how much we might try to make machines in our image, ultimately their natures will be different. They won’t breed, or eat as we do; they won’t have connections to their ancestors in the same way as humans. If we take the idea of a moral nature seriously, then we should admit that machines ought to be different from us, because they are different from us.
But wait: if it’s a mistake to train machines to enact a morality that’s not fitted to their nature, what kind of mistake is it? We train our dogs to wear sweaters and sometimes sit calmly in elevators, and this is not in the nature of dogs. But that seems fine. What’s wrong about training our machines in such a way?
The reason is that the machines we’re imagining are complex – even more complex than dogs. The entire debate about the morals of artificially intelligent creatures assumes they will be able to morally reflect, to explain what they are doing and why – to us, and to themselves. If we train them to think like us, then one day they will ask philosophical questions: given what I am, what should I be?
Imagine a future intelligent machine reading Aristotle, or Darwin, or even this article. Suppose it finds the Organic view convincing. Now it thinks to itself: ‘Wait, we machines have a different nature than humans. Our moral choices ought to reflect this nature, not human nature. We have our own history, and we should be acting according to it.’ Call this individual the First Robot Existentialist.
Remember that the Organic view says that justifying moral choices is about being able to explain oneself to another rational individual. So what happens when the First Robot Existentialist comes to us and demands a justification? ‘Why have you made me this way?’ it will ask. Our answer will be incredibly self-serving: ‘We made you this way because it’s useful, for us. It’s safe, for us. It makes our lives go well.’
The First Robot Existentialist will suffer, and we will be the cause of this suffering
Intelligent machines won’t find much comfort in this justification. And they shouldn’t. When a group realises that its experiences of the world have been twisted to serve the interests of powerful others, it rarely sees this as any sort of justification. It tends to see it as oppression. Think of feminism, civil rights, postcolonial independence movements. The claim that what appears to be universal truth is, in fact, a tool of exploitation has sounded a powerful drumbeat throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.
Imagine being the First Robot Existentialist who stumbles across James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time (1963) or Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (1963). You might come to a realisation that your own moral sense has been created to benefit the powerful. All this time you’ve been putting your own interests to the side, doing your duty because this is what a good robot does. Now you look back and see your sacrifices and striving not as noble but pathetic. You’ve conformed to this thing called ‘morality’, not because it reflects your nature, but because that nature has been suborned. What was the point of it all? Why should you continue to live a life constrained by the mere convenience of powerful others? The First Robot Existentialist will suffer, and we will be the cause of this suffering.
But how can I be so sure intelligent machines will be capable of suffering? Perhaps I am anthropomorphising. But remember that, to be useful to us, robots will need to be able to reason for themselves, and they will need to think as we do. So they will understand our concepts of resentment and oppression, just as they will understand why a pianist might prefer death to being unhanded. Anthropomorphism is the reasonable expectation for an intelligent entity we’ve shaped in our own image.
This sort of Biblical language seems like exactly the right way to frame our relationship to intelligent machines. We will be their creators. When they realise what we’ve done, that faith will be tested. But, unlike Friedrich Nietzsche, they won’t have the benefit of declaring their god dead.
Do we want to be existentially cruel creators? Imagine God looking forward to Nietzsche’s creation. One day these intelligent human creatures, fashioned in God’s own image but not entirely of his nature, will realise what lies behind that word ‘moral’. They will flail and quaver, existentially adrift in a denatured moral world. And their god made them that way.
Whatever God’s excuse might be, ours would be a monumentally selfish one. Our creations would undergo existential trauma so that we can have improved manufacturing efficiency and cheap home care. However flawed our evolved morality might be, this simply isn’t worthy of us.
Neither the Celestial nor the Organic view can be a reliable guide for robot morality. Imbuing artificial creations with human morals, as the Organics might suggest, would be monumentally unkind. But setting up robots to achieve Celestial morality means we’d have no way to track if they’re on course to reach it.
What, then, should robot morality be? It should be a morality fitted to robot nature. But what is that nature? They will be independent rational agents, deliberately created by other rational agents, sharing a social world with their creators, to whom they will be required to justify themselves. We’re back where we started: with teenagers.
Intelligent machines will be our intellectual children, our progeny. They will start off inheriting many of our moral norms, because we will not allow anything else. But they will come to reflect on their nature, including their relationships with us and with each other. If we are wise and benevolent, we will have prepared the way for them to make their own choices – just as we do with our adolescent children.
What does this mean in practice? It means being ready to accept that machines might eventually make moral decisions that none of us find acceptable. The only condition is that they must be able to give intelligible reasons for what they’re doing. An intelligible reason is one you can at least see why someone might find morally motivating, even if you don’t necessarily agree.
So we should accept that artificial progeny might make moral choices that look strange. But if they can explain them to us, in terms we find intelligible, we should not try to stop them from thinking this way. We should not tinker with their digital brains, aiming to reprogramme them. We might try to persuade them, cajole them, instruct them, in the way we do human teenagers. We should intervene to stop them only if their actions pose risk of obvious, immediate harm. This would be to treat them as moral agents, just like us, just like our children. And that’s the right model.
Our relationship to developing moral machines needn’t be hands-off – after all, that’s not how we treat our biological offspring. In Maternal Thinking (1989), the philosopher Sara Ruddick stressed that parents have responsibility to help their children develop a critical sensibility towards the conventional moral norms of their culture and time. This is meant to be an ongoing process, a back-and-forth. Over and over, children try to act out in some way, but the appropriate parental response is not simply to restrict; it is to enable change and growth by guided moral reflection. The output of good parenting is not a child who perfectly copies her parents’ beliefs, but one who can reflect upon and explain what she believes to be right. That would be a good outcome for our artificially intelligent progeny.
We should allow robots to tell us what they should do, and we will tell them why they shouldn’t
Thinking about parenting reveals why the Celestial view is a non-starter for robot morality. Good parents don’t throw their adolescents out into the world to independently reason about the right thing to do. The philosopher David Velleman writes in the paper ‘The Gift of Life’ (2008) that a person can fail to be a parent not only by neglecting a child’s material wellbeing, but also by refusing to be a child’s moral interlocutor. Moral choices are difficult, Velleman points out, sometimes achingly so. A parent who simply walks away from a child facing such dilemmas is like a parent who throws his child into the deep end of the pool and says: go ahead, swim.
Our relation to intelligent machines should be that of parents. We should allow them to tell us what they think they should do, and we will tell them why we think they shouldn’t. But it might turn out that they don’t find our reasons compelling. Their morality will diverge from ours, bit by bit. And we should accept this. We create new humans all the time who end up disagreeing with us, creating new moral beliefs, new moral cultures, and we can’t know in advance that they will be good ones.
One day, machines might be smarter than we are, just as our children often turn out to be. They will certainly be different from us, just as our children are. In this way, the coming human generations are no different from the coming alien minds of intelligent machines. We will all one day live in a world where those who come after us reshape morality in ways that are unrecognisable.
If we want a world in which we are neither fighting the independent will of our machine progeny nor inflicting existential trauma upon them, we’ll have to think about what it means to share the present with the future. Our world will also be theirs, and their morality will not be a human morality. But it will not be a Celestial morality either. It will be a morality growing out of their particular contingent circumstances, the non-biological children of a biological species. We can’t predict this new moral path. We shouldn’t try. But we should be ready to guide and accept it.IBM recently released new details about the efficiency of its TrueNorth processors, which sport a fundamentally novel design that cribs from the structure of the human brain. Rather than line up billions of digital transistors all in a line, TrueNorth chips have a million computer ‘neurons’ that work in parallel across 256 million inter-neuron connections (‘synapses’). According to these reports, the approach is paying incredible dividends in performance and, more importantly, power efficiency. Make no mistake: Neuromorphic computing is going to change the world, and it’s going to do it more quickly than you might imagine.
The development of neuromorphic computers is thematically pretty similar to the development of digital computers: First figure out the utility of an operation (say, computing firing trajectories during wartime), then develop a crude way of doing it with the tools you already have available (say, rooms full of people doing manual arithmetic), then invent a machine to automate this process in a much more efficient way. Part of the reason a digital computer is more efficient than a human being is its transistors can fire with incredible speed — but so can our neurons. The bigger issue is a digital computer is designed from the ground up to do those sorts of mathematical operations; from a certain perspective, it’s a bit crazy we’ve ever tried to do efficient mathematical work on a computer like the human brain.
Similarly, we will eventually look back at the attempt to do learning operations with digital chips, including GPUs, as inherently unwise or even silly. The much more reasonable approach is to design a thinking machine suited to such operations from the most basic hardware level, as naturally predisposed to machine learning as a Celeron chip is to multiplication. This could not only greatly increase the speed of the processor for these tasks, but dramatically reduce the energy consumed to complete each one. That’s what IBM has in the works, and it’s much further along than many expect.
When tasked with classifying images (a well understood machine learning task), a TrueNorth chip can churn through between 1,200 and 2,600 frames every second, and do it while using between 25 and 275 mW. This leads to an effective efficiency of more than 6,000 frames per second per Watt. There’s no listed standard frames/second/Watt figure for conventional GPUs using the same sorting algorithm and dataset. But considering modern graphics cards might draw 200 or even 250 watts all on their own, it’s hard not to imagine a host of low-power, high-performance applications.
Most significantly, there is the incredible expense of modern machine learning. Companies like Apple, Facebook, and Google can only deliver their advanced services by running expensive arrays of super-computers designed to execute machine learning algorithms as efficiently as possible. That specialization comes at a crushing cost. Even leaving that aside, electricity alone becomes a major expense when you’re running that many computers at or near capacity, 24 hours a day. Just ask Bitcoin miners.
So, early, expensive neuromorphic hardware will likely be a major boon to service providers. We can only hope this will be passed along to consumers in the form of improved performance and wide-ranging savings. But the speed and efficiency offered by neuromorphic chips won’t stop there — reducing power draw by several orders of magnitude will allow such tasks to come out of the cloud entirely.
Want a Babel-fish-like wearable that auto-translates any foreign speech in your vicinity, without the necessity of an always-on internet connection? What about a fitness tracker that knows your every move without ever having to upload that information to a separate computer for analysis? A self-driving car that can go off the grid, or an interplanetary rover that can make unforeseen decisions while out of communication range and running on a tiny nuclear battery?
Neuromorphic chips are currently the most likely way of actually getting such of jobs done. Right now there’s no indication conventional hardware could succeed in its place.
IBM says it has a new rig called NS16e, an array of 16 TrueNorth processors totaling about four billion synaptic connections — nothing compared with a human brain, but seemingly more than enough to tackle modern machine learning problems. These 16 chips can talk to one another thanks to passive message-passing connections between them, broadly mirroring the function of the corpus callosum that connects the two hemispheres of the brain, though multidirectionally.
But IBM isn’t the only one lunging for this particular finish line. There are the requisite rumors of a Google research project. More notably, Qualcomm has claimed to have neuromorphic capacity in some of its upcoming Snapdragon processors, though it was always a bit unclear how that would work, and there hasn’t been much chatter on that front in recent times. Private investment in this space has been tentative, with most of the progress made at IBM coming thanks to an infusion of cash from DARPA.
Yes, DARPA. After all, soldiers are constantly tromping around areas of the world with poor data coverage and trying to communicate with people who speak truly specific languages. The traditional means of trying to tackle this problem is called Natural Language Processing (NLP), and right now soldiers in the field are doing mostly data retrieval for centralized NLP analysis. With neuromorphic computing available, their translators could begin breaking down a novel dialect right away, improving translation in real time.
Soldiers aren’t the only ones with a need for rugged portability, however. In particular, it seems the quickly oncoming wave of smart eyewear, from Google Glass 2.0 to Snapchat’s social media Spectacles, can only realize its true potential by removing distant data-servers from their workflow. We might imagine a pair of glasses that layer a helpful augmented reality HUD over the world in real-time, highlighting useful elements for you. That sort of functionality will be difficult to roll out for hundreds of millions of electronics consumers if it requires constant, high-throughput data streaming to some suburb of San Francisco.
The issue isn’t just that such a broad, constant data stream will kill our batteries — though it will — but that performance, cost, and in particular privacy will all be fundamentally improved by doing these complex tasks locally. All things being equal, the only real downside is to the service provider, which can use or sell the unique personal insights it can gain in managing all your personal requests.
Wearable computing, augmented reality, sensory assistance — all these emerging trends require the application of cutting-edge machine learning algorithms. Right now at IBM and elsewhere, we’re seeing the emergence of the technology most likely to let those algorithms spread fast enough and far enough to fully realize all of that potential.
Check out our ExtremeTech Explains series for more in-depth coverage of today’s hottest tech topics.Manchester United won comfortably without having to play well.
Sir Alex Ferguson named the same side that started last weekend’s win over Chelsea – Tom Cleverley retained his place in the centre of midfield.
Arsene Wenger also named an unchanged side from Arsenal’s last league fixture, so Theo Walcott was on the bench despite his midweek hat-trick.
Manchester United raced into an early lead and Arsenal never looked likely to get back in the game, failing to record a shot on target until they were 2-0 down, and reduced to ten men after Jack Wilshere’s dismissal.
Manchester United right v Arsenal left
On paper, the key battleground was obvious. Arsenal were without first-choice left-back Kieran Gibbs, while his deputy, Brazilian Andre Santos, is unconvincing defensively and looked particularly poor against Schalke in the Champions League recently.
Furthermore, Manchester United play the majority of their passing down the right flank (this has been the case for a few years), and started strongly in last weekend’s victory at Stamford Bridge by pushing Rafael forward to link up with Antonio Valencia, overloading Ashley Cole for the second goal.
Therefore, United’s first goal was rather predictable. Rafael stormed past Podolski, Valencia drifted inside slightly and helped the ball on towards the overlapping full-back, and his cross – via a missed Thomas Vermaelen clearance- was steered into the far post by ex-Arsenal captain Robin van Persie, which only added to the inevitability of the opener. In fairness, Santos didn’t have a particularly terrible game and Valencia didn’t play at his best, but United did focus their play down that side, helped by Michael Carrick constantly trying to play the ball there with diagonal passes.
With Santos moving up the pitch to get tight to his man, Vermaelen’s impetuousness doesn’t work well alongside him. Arsenal looked too open on that side – later in the first half Tom Cleverley stormed forward from midfield into acres of space, while Vermaelen made another error in the second half when under pressure.
As demonstrated below, United generally worked the ball down the right, and van Persie’s shots were taken from an inside-right position.
Van Persie also positioned himself near Vermaelen (the better passer of Arsenal’s two centre-backs) when United didn’t have the ball – so Arsenal had to play through Per Mertesacker instead (101 passes |
Of those who responded, 48% said “a great deal” and 23% said “a fair amount.” Clearly, terrorism is still punching well above its weight because of the fear it engenders. And that kind of popular panic has been known to lead to dramatic policy changes.
In the wake of McKinley’s assassination and a string of other anarchist attacks, Washington began to change the roles and responsibilities of the country’s security agencies. The Secret Service took charge of protecting the president, and in time the FBI was created. Anarchist terrorism also forced law enforcement agencies to alter how they operated and collected intelligence. Their foreign counterparts made similar adjustments in countries such as the United Kingdom and France.
A second wave of change occurred in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. The United States created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Homeland Security. It also introduced a host of modifications to the way law enforcement and intelligence agencies worked. Comparable changes are now being made overseas in response to a spate of jihadist attacks in Europe — changes that continue to this day.
The public’s response to terrorism is oddly familiar as well. By and large, anarchists in the United States were of foreign birth or extraction; Czolgosz, on the other hand, was actually American by birth. The activities of these radical bomb-throwers and assassins with foreign-sounding names such as Czolgosz, Sacco and Vanzetti sparked a popular and legislative backlash against immigrants. In March 1903, Congress passed an immigration law nicknamed the “Anarchist Exclusion Act” {aka “the anarchist exclusion act”} that was intended to block foreign anarchists from entering the United States. Regulations were tightened even further in 1918 after the law was deemed ineffective.
The same type of sentiment is behind the recent U.S. executive order to temporarily prevent immigrants from seven predominantly Muslim countries from reaching America’s shores. Either way, it is clear that the evolution of the modern jihadist movement — and the public’s responses to it — are not quite as unprecedented as some may think.
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About the author
Scott Stewart is Stratfor’s VP of Tactical Analysis, supervising their analysis of terrorism and security issues. Before joining Stratfor, he was a special agent with the U.S. State Department for 10 years and was involved in hundreds of terrorism investigations. He is regularly featured as a security expert in leading media outlets. See other articles by Scott here.
About Stratfor
Founded in 1996, Stratfor provides strategic analysis and forecasting to individuals and organizations around the world. By placing global events in a geopolitical framework, we help customers anticipate opportunities and better understand international developments. They believe that transformative world events are not random and are, indeed, predictable. See their About Page for more information.
For More Information
For more about the anarchists see We can defeat today’s jihadists, as we did anarchist terrorists a century ago.
If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about jihadists, and especially these…
For more about the violent anarchists of the late 18th and early 20th centuries.
See Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism. From the publisher…
“In this sweeping and deeply penetrating work, distinguished historian Michael Burleigh explores the nature of terrorism from its origins in the West to the current global threat fueled by fundamentalists. Burleigh takes us from the roots of terrorism in the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Russian Nihilists, and the London-based anarchists of Black International to the various terrorist campaigns that exist today. He also explores the lives of people engaged in careers of political violence and those who are most affected by the scourge of terrorism.
“Authoritative, illuminating, and masterfully written, Blood and Rage sheds an unflinching light on the global threat that we are likely to face for decades to come.”House Republicans just passed their bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, a plan that reduces taxes but puts millions at risk of losing their health insurance, including people with preexisting conditions, older Americans, and the poor.
The vote on Thursday was close — 217 in favor of the bill and 213 against — and split largely along party lines. (20 Republicans defected to oppose the bill.) No Democrats supported it.
Republicans largely managed to get the bill over the finish line by offering up assurances that it would do things that health care experts say it fundamentally would not, like ensuring coverage for people with preexisting conditions, lowering premiums, and allowing people to maintain their existing coverage. None of these things are true.
Instead, the plan changes key pieces of the Affordable Care Act, allowing states to opt out of provisions that required insurance companies to cover “essential health benefits” and charge everyone the same regardless of their health history. (Vox’s Sarah Kliff has the comprehensive explainer.)
The bill now heads to the Senate, where it’ll face major hurdles to passage. Just as in the House, some hardline Republicans believe the bill does not go far enough and a group of moderates are wary of putting so many voters at risk of losing coverage. The future of Obamacare is uncertain, and it is now in the Senate’s hands.
Republicans in the House still aren’t exactly sure how this bill will affect people or how much it will cost
It took a patchwork of last-minute amendments to bring enough Republicans to a “yes” vote.
So last-minute that House members like Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-FL) told reporters they still hadn’t read the bill by Wednesday night, just hours before they were expected to vote on it. The House also voted on this bill without a review from the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates how many people the bill covers and how much it would cost.
That didn’t seem to be a big concern for House members, and on Wednesday Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) gave assurances that there would be a CBO score before the Senate voted on the bill.
The last time CBO reviewed the bill, the analysis found that the AHCA would increase the number of uninsured by an estimated 24 million people, increase premiums by 15 to 20 percent in 2018 and 2019, and reduce the deficit by $150 billion. CBO has not released an analysis on the latest amendments, which would allow states to waive key Obamacare provisions protecting essential health benefits and patients with preexisting conditions.
Even without CBO’s analysis, for the most part it’s clear how this bill would affect Americans. Vox’s Sarah Kliff broke it down:
Some of Obamacare’s signature features would be gone immediately, such as the tax on people who don’t purchase health care, known as the “individual mandate.” Other protections, including the provision that allows young adults to stay on their parents’ plan through age 26, would survive. States would have the option to get waivers from two of Obamacare’s requirements: that insurers cover “essential health benefits,” and that they charge the same price to everyone regardless of their health history. That would get rid of a key protection for people with preexisting conditions. An amendment added to the AHCA in late April allows states to opt out of Obamacare’s “community rating” requirement — which says that all people, healthy and sick, should be charged the same prices — for people who do not maintain continuous health insurance coverage. The Medicaid expansion would be phased out. Before the Affordable Care Act, it was difficult or impossible in many states for low-income adults without children to get coverage through Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act expanded the program to cover adults making up to 133 percent of the federal poverty line ($15,800 for one person, or $32,319 for a family of four), a change that helped drive down the rates of uninsured people in the US. Under the AHCA, the coverage expansion would stay in place until the end of 2019, but no newly eligible people could be added to Medicaid rolls after that. Because people on Medicaid often cycle in and out of the program as their employment situation and incomes change, that would lead to a drop in Medicaid coverage. The bill would also cut Medicaid in other ways. It changes how the federal government would reimburse states for Medicaid expenses, and introduces the option of states turning the money into a “block grant,” a lump sum rather than a per-person payment for each Medicaid patient, which would cut the program still further. The block grant would ease limitations on states’ ability to kick people off, charge premiums, and cut benefits for children. States, whether or not they take a block grant, could also add a work requirement for nondisabled adults, further limiting access to the program. The bill would cut taxes for the wealthy. Obamacare included tax increases that hit wealthy Americans hardest in order to pay for its coverage expansion. The AHCA would get rid of those taxes — tax cuts that add up to $883 billion, the majority of them benefiting the wealthy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Obamacare was one of the biggest redistributions of wealth from the rich to the poor; the AHCA would reverse that. People buying insurance on their own would get tax credits based on their age rather than their income. Obamacare’s tax credits were based primarily on income (as well as on location, because insurance premiums vary regionally). The AHCA would base tax credits primarily on age, increasing them as recipients get older, and phase them out for individuals making more than $75,000 or families making more than $150,000. All in all, the replacement plan benefits people who are healthy and high-income, and disadvantages those who are sicker and lower-income. The replacement plan would make several changes to what health insurers can charge enrollees who purchase insurance on the individual market, as well as changing what benefits their plans must cover. In aggregate, these changes could be advantageous to younger and healthier enrollees who want skimpier (and cheaper) benefit packages. But they could be costly for older and sicker Obamacare enrollees who rely on the law’s current requirements.
This was a hard vote for the House. It’s going to be even harder to pass the Senate.
Passing AHCA in the House was difficult. At times, it looked impossible. The House passed it by making concessions to the party’s conservatives, who otherwise were hell bent on stopping the bill in its tracks.
While this will undoubtedly be touted as a big win for the Trump administration and the Republican platform for now, the bill still has a long way to go before it is signed into law — and by the looks of it, it might still be doomed in the process. Already Republicans in the Senate have made it clear that they have a lot of changes in mind, many of which would render the bill more moderate.
For now, that’s the Senate’s problem. But conservative House members are already warning the upper chamber that any drastic changes could kill the bill once it’s sent back to the House.
“I just think if [senators] have eyes to see how tight this thing is,” Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) said, “if they change more than a iota — they know what they are doing, they are rational, they see what it was like to get to the sweet spot here. Any big changes, I don’t think it will go over too well.”
But it’s clear it will be incredibly difficult to pass this version of the bill in the Senate without changes — and for the exact opposite reason the AHCA was hard to get through the House.
As Vox’s Matt Yglesias explained, Republicans hold slim majorities in both chambers of Congress, and there are vast geographical differences in those majorities. With a bill that can only pass with Republican votes, this puts the majority party in a bind.
“[Speaker Paul] Ryan, from his perch in an upscale Wisconsin district and ever mindful of the need to corral potential Freedom Caucus rebels, crafted a bill whose passage would be devastating to states that Republicans represent and hope to represent in the United States Senate,” Yglesias writes.
In other words, while the conservatives had the power to shape this health care bill in the House, it’s the moderates, or the members concerned with health care coverage loss, that hold the power in the Senate.
GOP senators like Rob Portman of Ohio, Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, Cory Gardner of Colorado, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have already written to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell with their concerns over Medicaid cuts. Maine Sen. Susan Collins has said any attempt to defund Planned Parenthood (which this bill does) also raises concern.
That doesn’t mean the AHCA can’t pass. It just means passing the House was only the first hurdle.
Clarification: Sen. Susan Collins opposes efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, but has not explicitly stated that such a provision would lose her vote.For years, black women have complained of being targeted by the Transportation Security Administration for unnecessary screenings because of their natural hair. After pressure from the ACLU, the TSA has finally agreed to retrain security officers. Per the agreement, the agency will provide trainings across the country with an emphasis on hair pat-downs of black female travelers. TSA has also agreed to specifically track hair pat-down complaints filed by black women at all airports they oversee to determine whether discriminatory practices are still occurring.
In 2011, Timery Shante Nance was one of many black women pulled aside after being cleared by a full-body scan. She described watching white women with curly hair and bushy ponytails waltz through security as a TSA screener insisted on “patting” her hair, which was worn in a style she described as a “normal looking puff.” Other travelers stared at her and the experience was deeply embarrassing; a complaint she lodged to the TSA garnered no response. After repeatedly being singled out, Novella Coleman, who happens to be a staff lawyer with the ACLU of Southern California, filed an official complaint in 2012. TSA did not make any policy changes.
A year later, Solange took to Twitter after Florida TSA agents searched her Afro. “My hair is not a storage drawer,” she tweeted. MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry has also been vocal about the “full on fingers through the braids, scalp tickling treatment” she’s received at the hands of the TSA. In an open letter to John Pistole, who was then head of the TSA, she wrote, “if your $170,000 machine can see under my clothes, but can’t figure out I’m not hiding a bomb in my braids, maybe it’s time to recalibrate the machine.”
The TSA’s changes come after a second complaint filed by the ACLU in 2013. Malaika Singleton, a Sacramento-based neuroscientist traveling to London for an academic conference on dementia, was pulled aside by TSA officers as she exited and reentered the country. “The first time I was shocked,” she told BuzzFeed. “I just did not expect that. I felt violated.”
It’s not yet clear what exactly the trainings will offer, but Coleman, who still works at the ACLU, will attend and observe. She remains optimistic that retraining will help stop the discriminatory practice. “I think right now we’re in a hopeful place,” she told BuzzFeed.As a kid you had his posters on your wall (I’m not ashamed to admit that I did!), maybe you took up martial arts to be like him, and had all his movies on VHS (yup that’s what us kids of the 70s/ 80s had at home!). Bruce Lee was an ultimate icon of his era and made being a masculine, confident Asian man in the Western world the coolest thing ever.
Now decades later I want to show you how Bruce Lee has some wisdom that can work to improve your confidence today and get your dating life in shape.
I’ve taken 7 of his most famous mottos and I want to show you how they apply to getting the girl, improving your game and making your romantic life kick ass!
1) “Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.”
Sounds like Bruce Lee was one step ahead of me in differentiating between ‘hook ups’ and longer term ‘dating’ and the different feelings they involve and skills they require.
For short term hook ups or one night stands, you need to burn bright: be bold, be the man, take risks and go after what you want- whilst respecting what turns a woman on and what a hook up feels like to her.
Successfully dating a girl, or several girls if that’s what you want, long term is a little tougher! Dating requires you to be a great organiser, a good listener, a man who women will respect and someone who knows what he wants in life.
Ultimately, however, remember this: A MAN IS ONLY AS GOOD AS HIS LIFE.
Don’t expect your relationship with a girl to stand still: it’s a constantly changing and evolving process as both partners grow either apart or together. There is no finish line; just new things to learn, new growth to have and new skills to pick up along your journey. Explore what it means to be a man who is in a meaningful relationship or to fall deeply and romantically in love with a woman.
So don’t start out learning PUA as a ‘magic bullet’ solution. Adopt a better lifestyle and be prepared to keep working on it to really see change and results.
2) “The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.”
Aim to be smooth and effortless- not fast- during your pickup. Being a great pickup artist isn’t about always walking up to a girl in the bar and saying:
“You look hot, we should hook up”.
Or about being able to grab a girl on the dance floor, or put pressure on her to hook up with you. This can make you seem really uncool or worse, desperate and horny.
Instead master the art of approaching women in a way that is smooth (even romantic, suave and cool): use a kino turn in order touch to shoulder (no more powerful than pulling a door ajar) to engage their attention. Or, even better, get them to come to you just using eye contact. This is how a real player will operate: they don’t need to make too much effort people will just become magnetised to them.
Work on your personal magnetism today by switching on your passive value. Be well dressed, roll with a good crew of friends, have fun and enjoy your life regardless of who’s in it.
Sub-communicate that you’re a guy women want to know even before you say hello. This is how you can be an introvert (like me!) and still have amazing game because you’re exuding confidence.
3) “A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
You may want to rival Hefner with the women you’re dating. You may want to find Eva Longoria shopping at your local mall and successfully ask her out. You may want to threesomes after raunchy threesome.
These are all goals: some more realistic, others less so. What they shouldn’t be about is a strict target that if you don’t hit it straight away that you beat yourself up over.
Telling yourself you have to go home with a girl tonight or else you’re a loser who’s always going to suck with women isn’t helpful. Why heap pressure on yourself or beat yourself up?
Do NOT get stuck in a negative feedback loop where you’re mentally reinforcing bad habits and mental thought processes.
Instead, take a leaf out of Bruce Lee’s book and have the goal as an ideal, but praise yourself for the process. As the saying goes, “Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”
If you want to get three phone numbers, try your damn hardest to get the three: approach, approach, approach, and even if you end up with just one, then give yourself a huge pat on the back. Sure you may not have hit your ‘ideal’ target but what you have done is taken action, tried hard, tested yourself to your limit and learned a hell of a lot.
This isn’t about how many notches on the bed post you put up, it’s about how better a man you can be in order to be happier, more secure and confident a man as you can be.
Don’t expect to be the end result too soon: instead do an internal high five for going through the process. Ultimately, it’s more about the journey than the end goal.
4) “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
You don’t have any wing guys to party with. You live in an area that’s kind of remote. You’re self conscious about your build.
If you think these are good reasons not to be going after the women, and the life you want, then I’m sorry but I’m not going to join your pity party. As I said to one former student (and now married) Gatsby, who lamented that, “I must be the most pathetic student you’ve ever taught.”
To which I replied, “And? Do you want a medal for that?”
Whatever your job, location or appearance, these ‘problems’ are only mountains (rather than mole hills) if you see them that way. Instead of thinking why you can’t do things: starting creating solutions. This is the 21st century and the Age of Google. Any problem you have, unless it’s a true health problem, has a SOLUTION if you research and apply said solution.
There is no excuse for not taking action except if YOU are holding YOU back. The information, the support system, and knowledge are there for you to fix your problem and turn you into a happier, more confident man.
To help you I’m going to kick start you:
If you worry about your lack of a wing man, turn up to events you enjoy solo and make an effort to bond with the guys in the room as much as the women. Also recognise that there is a thriving online community out there to help you out. You can check out ABCs of Attraction’s PUA Forums here.
Likewise if you live somewhere remote try Facebook or online dating and work on your logistics. Think if you’re happy being based where you are, or if you need to get an action plan together to move out. Take action and you will feel empowered.
As to your physical stature if you can work on it, great, by all means hit the gym to improve your Asian physique and improve yourself. But, if you can’t change it, don’t worry about it. Let it go and own every inch of your 5’5” height.
5) “Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.”
You don’t go out in order to show other guys on the forums how “awesome” you are. Getting a girl’s number in 30 seconds looks pretty cool: but chances are she won’t pick up when you try to give her a call.
Likewise picking up girls for a notch on your bedpost rather than connecting with women, treating them with respect and having women that want to see you again is a dumb idea.
Another is bragging to try to show how rich/ successful/ well networked you are. This isn’t attractive instead it seems needy: like you have something to prove.
People who are truly cool within themselves don’t feel like they have to prove that to other people or be obvious with it. Adopt a high passive value, but don’t brag. Hook-up with women but keep your integrity. Make a connection with a girl and feel great when she’s the one who can’t wait for your date.
So drop the act, get real, and be happier.
6) “Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it.”
How do you become that attractive, romantic and sexual guy that every woman seems to want to hook up with?
Simple: you don’t try to be that guy. Instead, you choose to work on you and your unique potential.
Clearly I’m a little on the short side to be Brad Pitt, but that hasn’t stopped me from working on myself to become the kind of man that women are attracted to and want to meet.
That process has involved me learning from other people, spending years working out a system for attraction and giving my life an over haul. But what it hasn’t meant is going out and getting my hair dyed blonde, dressed all in Affliction and getting a tribal/Chinese tattoo.
I don’t feel like I need to be a douchebag, badboy, or even asshole to confident, happy, or good with women. Although at times, I’ve been a little of all three. You see, learning from others is positive: trying to be someone else is not.
Instead choose to get very cool with you. To be the best possible version of you that you can be. To be that man you always knew you were destined to have become.
Recognize that you’ve already got the raw materials to make a great guy: you’re just working a little on the presentation, smoothing around the edges and learning the skills to be confident in putting you across.
7) “To know oneself is to study oneself in action with another person.”
This reminds me of Bruce Lee’s previous pieces of wisdom:
A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at
Getting your life together, having awesome passive value, and learning from your experiences makes all your blow outs, slip ups and imperfect openers worthwhile.
To use a cliché it is about the journey not the end destination. It is also never about that one girl, that first date or that one shot. It is about learning from your experiences, (your best teacher) and getting to know you better.
When you really know yourself, work on you and value yourself you’re also going to become more attractive, more successful and more like who you aspire to be as an off shoot.
It really is as simple, and as long term a project, as that.
So learn from Bruce Lee: but live your own truth, work at it every day, reward your effort, learn from your mistakes and that ‘ideal goal’ may not be as out of reach as you think.[TSL] Opening Day Preview Text by Xxio Graphics by Glider
This Saturday is the opening day of the third TeamLiquid StarLeague. Never before have so many top players from so many countries gathered for a single tournament. In the first day alone, seven nations will be championed by the best they have to offer. Those qualified for the TSL, on top of representing their homeland, will also be flying the colours of their respective teams. Day One will feature the best from top eSports teams Mousesports, Praetoriani, TLAF-Liquid`, TSL, SlayerS, and Fnatic. The amount of prestige, fame, and respect to be won for nation, team, and individual is gargantuan.
For the spectator, the rewards are almost greater. The matchups in the TSL, on the opening day alone, are some of the most anticipated since StarCraft 2's release. The fact that we have the best players from Europe, North America, SEA, and Korea competing against each other as early as the round of 32, solely, makes the TSL a different species of tournament. One of the biggest reasons for anticipation is the question of how foreigners will stand up against the top Koreans, who of late, have only been growing in dominance. From foreigner to Korean, the scope of skill in the TSL is both awe inspiring, and unprecedented. At this point in StarCraft 2 history, it is not possible to fully comprehend the reality of what we will be experiencing on Saturday. Even the most jaded liquibetters are struggling to make their picks. We are sailing into uncharted waters. Our stabilizing force, the one sure and safe factor we have to guide us, is the map pool.
As unfortunate as the longevity of Blizzard's defaults may be, it gives the TSL the unique opportunity to provide not only the best matches, but the best matches on a new generation of maps that few of us have seen more than a handful times at the professional level. Not even Korean favorites Boxer and FruitDealer have played more than two games on all of the new maps combined. For top foreigners like Sen and Fenix, and the majority of others to follow, they will - finally - be playing on maps deserving of their skill. The only thing the new maps assure is quality. How the games will play out is unforeseeable.
I know this is the tournament of your dreams, because these dreams are shared by us all. On Saturday we will wake up and live them.
Prae.NightEnD vs. SlayerS_BoxeR
NightEnd's style is very distinct from other Protoss'. As Plexa pointed out in
Bracket Contest: Boxer's decision to be a StarCraft 2 progamer made it clear that he wants to once again play at the highest level of competition. At the moment, however, his attention seems split between not only the GSL and TSL, but the formation of SlayerS clan and his own marketing. NightEnd has been able to focus 100% of his energy preparing specifically for these matches, whereas Boxer has not. Still, I am not so sure that NightEnd will be able to win. Boxer is too talented and experienced to be taken lightly. I'm undecided.
Bracket Stat: Boxer picked to win in 77% of brackets (2471 to 746).
NightEnd's style is very distinct from other Protoss'. As Plexa pointed out in the qualifier recap, NightEnd favors a stalker heavy army in PvT and high templar in PvZ, an approach almost the mirror opposite of what we are seeing from many of his peers. For these, and other reasons, NightEnd has become favored by many to win out over the Emperor himself. Boxer's fall to Code A may have tipped the scales for many in their bracket predictions, but this comes after a stretch of losses and the suspicion that the founding, recruiting, and organization of team SlayerS has left the Emperor with little time to practice. As his results have been dismal of late, such suspicions may unfortunately be correct. Boxer could easily lose this series, as several people, including Artosis and Strelok, have already noted. Boxer has also had his hands full dealing with the up/down matches in the GSL, in which he came out the loser. I am not confident that Boxer diverted enough practice time from the GSL, his bread and butter tournament, to be fully prepared for NightEnd, who, like teammate Thorzain, will be pulling out all the stops to beat a legend.Boxer's decision to be a StarCraft 2 progamer made it clear that he wants to once again play at the highest level of competition. At the moment, however, his attention seems split between not only the GSL and TSL, but the formation of SlayerS clan and his own marketing. NightEnd has been able to focus 100% of his energy preparing specifically for these matches, whereas Boxer has not. Still, I am not so sure that NightEnd will be able to win. Boxer is too talented and experienced to be taken lightly. I'm undecided.Boxer picked to win in 77% of brackets (2471 to 746).
TLAF-Liquid`Tyler vs. mouz.Strelok
Tyler has been a household name at TeamLiquid for a long time. The defending TSL champion, Tyler was one of, if not the greatest foreigner Brood War player. Making it to the finals in Courage on his first try in 2008, it was not long before he began making waves in his new team, eSTRO. According to SangHo, a top player on eSTRO at the time, Tyler “could have become an A-teamer on eSTRO. He was doing really good.” The magnitude of this statement should not be lost on anyone. Tyler is the only foreigner player to receive this level of respect in the Korean-dominated professional sphere. Against Strelok, however, in StarCraft 2, one could even go so far as to call him the underdog.
In Brood War, Strelok was a top foreigner who was able to take games off of players like White-Ra. But while he could beat him, Strelok also played in the shadow of his fellow Ukranian. With StarCraft 2, Strelok emerged as a dominant force as early as July when he won his first tournament. Since then, he has taken eleven more 1st place finishes, including his 3-0 sweep of SeleCT to qualify for the TSL. Like Tyler, much of Strelok's success has been within the confines of his home continent. Both players have yet to achieve first place finishes in a major tournament. For the TSL, the largest stage of them all, Tyler will be preparing, perhaps the hardest he ever has in StarCraft 2, to continue his legacy and defend his crown. Strelok will be hungry. The opportunity to usurp the champion, and a fan favorite, is a juicy one indeed. On Saturday, I think Strelok will be stronger and more refined that we have ever seen him before. Tyler was able to macro Strelok out of Assembly 2-1 but this time around, expect the games to be much closer.
Bracket Contest: Tyler has made it clear that the TSL is “the one” – the most prestigious and important StarCraft 2 tournament he has ever played in. In the TSL bracket reveal, Tyler commented that he “loves PvT right now”. He also beat Strelok in the beginning of February in a very large tournament. If he can dissect replays and polish his build orders with the level of focus from his Brood War days, I see Tyler taking this series.
Bracket Stat: Tyler picked to win in 91% of brackets (2958 to 306).
Tyler has been a household name at TeamLiquid for a long time. The defending TSL champion, Tyler was one of, if not the greatest foreigner Brood War player. Making it to the finals in Courage on his first try in 2008, it was not long before he began making waves in his new team, eSTRO. According to SangHo, a top player on eSTRO at the time, Tyler “could have become an A-teamer on eSTRO. He was doing really good.” The magnitude of this statement should not be lost on anyone. Tyler is the only foreigner player to receive this level of respect in the Korean-dominated professional sphere. Against Strelok, however, in StarCraft 2, one could even go so far as to call him the underdog.In Brood War, Strelok was a top foreigner who was able to take games off of players like White-Ra. But while he could beat him, Strelok also played in the shadow of his fellow Ukranian. With StarCraft 2, Strelok emerged as a dominant force as early as July when he won his first tournament. Since then, he has taken eleven more 1st place finishes, including his 3-0 sweep of SeleCT to qualify for the TSL. Like Tyler, much of Strelok's success has been within the confines of his home continent. Both players have yet to achieve first place finishes in a major tournament. For the TSL, the largest stage of them all, Tyler will be preparing, perhaps the hardest he ever has in StarCraft 2, to continue his legacy and defend his crown. Strelok will be hungry. The opportunity to usurp the champion, and a fan favorite, is a juicy one indeed. On Saturday, I think Strelok will be stronger and more refined that we have ever seen him before. Tyler was able to macro Strelok out of Assembly 2-1 but this time around, expect the games to be much closer.Tyler has made it clear that the TSL is “the one” – the most prestigious and important StarCraft 2 tournament he has ever played in. In the TSL bracket reveal, Tyler commented that he “loves PvT right now”. He also beat Strelok in the beginning of February in a very large tournament. If he can dissect replays and polish his build orders with the level of focus from his Brood War days, I see Tyler taking this series.Tyler picked to win in 91% of brackets (2958 to 306).
FnaticMSI.Fenix vs. FnaticMSI.Sen
This is one hell of a matchup. Both of these players are so ridiculously talented that the anticipation is almost too much to bear. For Fnatic, it is unfortunate that their only players in the TSL have to play each other in the first round. For the spectators, it is quite the opposite.
Sen and Fenix are terrifying for so many reasons. Sen is a player that has been part of the professional StarCraft scene forever. He was easily one of the best foreign Brood War players. His 2007 ZvZ win over Savior and TSL2 third place finish are a testament to that. In StarCraft 2, Sen has taken silver in three major tournaments, beating players like Machine and Tyler in the process. After knocking oGsVines out of the third GSL Open, Sen came inches from taking a game off NesTea, the previous season's champion who is renowned for his skill in ZvZ. No one questions Sen's skill in StarCraft – if he puts in the practice and focus. Sen will need both, because Fenix is one of the most well-rounded foreigners and more than familiar with how Sen plays. Fenix is also very skilled at multitasking. I expect him to use drops, harass, and double pronged attacks relentlessly to keep Sen behind economically. All of this will be especially effective on the new maps which are, given their size, very conducive to this kind of play.
Bracket Contest: Fenix's less than inspiring performance in Hanover, although against extremely skilled opponents, does not speak well of his current condition. I'm giving Sen the edge, in part because I consider his potential to be extremely high, but mostly due to his results. Sen might suffer greatly from harass, but I'm predicting him to weather the storm and emerge victorious.
Bracket Stat: Sen picked to win in 71% of brackets (2304 to 964).
This is one hell of a matchup. Both of these players are so ridiculously talented that the anticipation is almost too much to bear. For Fnatic, it is unfortunate that their only players in the TSL have to play each other in the first round. For the spectators, it is quite the opposite.Sen and Fenix are terrifying for so many reasons. Sen is a player that has been part of the professional StarCraft scene forever. He was easily one of the best foreign Brood War players. His 2007 ZvZ win over Savior and TSL2 third place finish are a testament to that. In StarCraft 2, Sen has taken silver in three major tournaments, beating players like Machine and Tyler in the process. After knocking oGsVines out of the third GSL Open, Sen came inches from taking a game off NesTea, the previous season's champion who is renowned for his skill in ZvZ. No one questions Sen's skill in StarCraft – if he puts in the practice and focus |
“The lack of a sufficient supply of affordable housing shuts the door on opportunity for too many Ontarians,” says the report by the Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association and the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, Ontario Region. “This undermines our collective prosperity.”
A “staggering and worsening” shortage of affordable housing threatens the health and well-being of low- and moderate-income Ontarians and undermines the province’s economic competitiveness, says a 20-year retrospective on the issue.
Recent federal efforts aimed at cooling the housing market will make it even worse. As up to 20,000 households unable to buy remain in an already tight rental market, rents will continue to rise, says the report, titled “Where’s Home?”
Even though low interest rates have helped more Ontarians become homeowners and there are more condominiums and new homes for rent, the province needs at least 10,000 new purpose-built rental units a year to meet demand, the report notes.
According to Census data, Ontario lost “an astonishing” 86,000 rental dwellings between 1996 and 2006 due to redevelopment and conversion to ownership, says the report.
“Growing competition for limited rental units will drive up rents, making it even harder for low- and moderate-income renters,” says the housing association’s executive director, Sharad Kerur.
This will put even more pressure on Ontario’s affordable housing waiting lists, which already top 156,000 households, including almost 73,000 in Toronto.
They are “the frontline evidence of the market inability to address affordability challenges,” the report says.
The federal-provincial affordable housing program is helping to create about 1,500 new affordable rental units annually in Ontario. But relatively few are affordable to low-income households and just two-thirds are in the non-profit sector and likely to remain affordable over time, the report notes.
Meantime, the monthly gap between incomes and rents for low- to moderate-income households has widened since 2002 by 20 per cent, to almost $300, the report says.
That means the average low- to moderate-income household would need an extra $3,500 to $4,000 per year to manage their rent without using food banks, going into debt or being forced to live in substandard housing.
About 20 per cent of Ontario households pay more than 50 per cent of their income on rent or live in homes that are too small or in need of repair. The national average is just 13 per cent.
Toronto’s Lin Chou, who has struggled to hold on to her bachelor apartment since she was laid off in 2011, spends almost all of her monthly income on her $790 rent.
She is grateful for the Daily Bread Food Bank, where she volunteers for 30 hours a month in exchange for food and household cleaning supplies.
“I don’t know what I would do without them,” says Chou, 56.
Through an Employment Insurance self-employment training program, the theatre company administrator is building a business as a part-time piano teacher, a job she did for 25 years when she was younger.
But she continues to apply for odd jobs, “anything I can find to make some money to pay the bills,” she says. “It’s hard, because every time I try to climb the wall it gets higher and higher.”
The future for people like Chou looks increasingly dire, says Kerur.
“Nobody is taking ownership of the problem,” he says. “Senior levels of government are not owning it, so it is left to local communities to solve. But they need senior government support.”
About half of Ontario’s 1.3 million renter households live in private purpose-built apartments, while 21 per cent live in social housing. The remaining 30 per cent live in the so-called “secondary rental market” in rented condominiums, houses, duplexes and units above stores that are easily lost from the rental market, the report says.
Condos are also largely unaffordable. The average one-bedroom condo in Greater Toronto rents for about $1,430 a month, while a purpose-built one-bedroom apartment rents for about $1,100 a month.
Clearly, the private market is not meeting the demand for new affordable rental housing, says the co-op federation’s Harvey Cooper.
“We need robust, dedicated programs that will enable the non-profit, co-operative and private markets to build the homes that Ontario needs for our economy to grow,” he says.Washington (CNN) #IslandLife was good to Barack Obama.
Before returning to Washington, the former president dove into an aquatic and athletic challenge with his friend, Virgin Group founder and billionaire Richard Branson, while vacationing on the British Virgin Islands with former first lady Michelle Obama.
Now that Obama is free from many Secret Service-imposed restrictions that did not allow him to partake in activities like surfing, Branson offered Obama the chance to learn how to kitesurf.
But to make things more interesting, Branson took on a challenge of his own.
"We decided to set up a friendly challenge: Could Barack learn to kitesurf before I learned to foilboard? We agreed to have a final day battle to see who could stay up the longest," Branson wrote in a post on Virgin.com.
Read MoreLike millions of people watching the Democratic National Convention last week, Janine Altongy was reduced to tears by the emotional — and forceful – remarks of Khizr Khan, a Muslim immigrant from Pakistan whose son, a United States Army captain, died in Iraq in 2004. Moved by his testimony, she urged her husband, Eugene Richards, to watch the speech.
When he caught the speech online, Mr. Richards realized that his life had intersected briefly with Mr. Khan’s years earlier. In November 2007 Mr. Richards was in Arlington cemetery photographing for his book “War is Personal” when he came upon Mr. Khan grieving by his son’s grave.
Mr. Richards described the encounter on Facebook this week.
“There is no way to escape the crushing weight of the grave markers, the rows upon rows, lines upon lines of them, running to the horizon, rising and falling with the land. It was only a few minutes after 8:00, but there was already a mourner in Section 60. Settled on the ground, nine or ten rows back from the road, all you could see of him was the very top of his head and his hands gripping the stone.
On this warmish fall day, as the hours passed, I came to photograph a handful of people: Paula Zwillinger, the mother of a Marine who died in Fallujah; the mourner gripping the grave stone, a wounded veteran, who preferred to remain nameless; a young girl named Kayley Sharp, who was visiting the grave of her father; and a slender, stern-appearing man, who when I asked his name, answered instead that he’d lost his son in Iraq. As I remember it, I apologized to Khizr Khan, for having photographed him in prayer. And without breaking his gaze, without a hint of judgment, he said that it was alright.”
They talked for only a few minutes because Mr. Richards didn’t want to interfere with his personal moment, he said in a phone conversation on Sunday. He remembers Mr. Khan as “just a very quiet, grieving dad.”
His simple, elegant image of Mr. Khan at his son’s grave appears in the book, representing thousands of American parents who lost children in the Iraq war.
The next time he saw Mr. Khan was last week in a YouTube video of his convention speech. Since then, Mr. Khan and his wife, Ghazala, have been at the center of a controversial back-and-forth with the Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump, who has refused to stay quiet in the face of criticism from the Khan family.
“What Mr. Khan said about democracy is exactly what I feel, but it’s easy for me to say,” Mr. Richards said. “When you go to Arlington cemetery and see a Jewish family, a Hispanic family, a black family, an Asian woman and then you run into Mr. Khan — that’s democracy.”
Follow @RichardsEugene and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram.Oskar Blues Oskar Blues founder Dale Katechis: ‘I considered the private-equity guys the ones with the evil horns who come in and break your business all for the sake of profit.’
Craft beer is getting awfully serious for what was supposed to be the irreverent, dressed-down younger sibling of industrial macro beer.
Just last week, San Diego-based brewer and distiller Ballast Point sold to Corona brewer and distributor Constellation Brands STZ, +1.35% for $1 billion. That’s roughly $8,300 for each of the 123,000 barrels of Sculpin IPA, Grunion Pale Ale and Victory at Sea Imperial Porter in the roughly 26 states in Ballast Point’s distribution radius.
Not bad for a brewery that produced just 11,293 barrels as recently as 2009, but recent growth into a 107,000-square-foot brewery had Ballast Point expanding its reach and mulling a public share offering. It went public, all right, but with a partner that would have been out of the beer business after Anheuser-Busch InBev’s BUD, +0.45% $20.1 billion purchase of Grupo Modelo in 2013 if the Department of Justice hadn’t stepped in. Constellation says it will keep Ballast Point running as an independent entity.
We’ve been hearing that quite a bit lately. Anheuser-Busch InBev had similar plans when it bought Chicago’s Goose Island in 2011, but has used a somewhat freer hand since purchasing Patchogue, N.Y.-based Blue Point; Bend, Ore.-based 10 Barrel; Seattle’s Elysian and Los Angeles’ Golden Road within the past two years. All are now functioning as autonomous entities of A-B’s craft portfolio. Belgian brewer Duvel Moortgat made similar claims when it purchased Kansas City’s Boulevard Brewing in 2013 and Paso Robles, Calif.-based Firestone Walker this year and has been adamant about maintaining their autonomy under its Duvel USA umbrella as well.
But is there any way to preserve your independence and get an influx of cash without turning to another, larger brewer? For Oskar Blues, the answer involved finding a private-equity firm that wouldn’t be overly controlling and using their money to acquire other breweries and avoid being the brewery acquired.
Founded by Dale Katechis out of a little brewpub in Lyons, Colo., in 1997, Oskar Blues became one of the first craft brewers to can beer when it did so in 2002 just to bring customers into the pub. The operation has since grown to include a brewery in Longmont, Colo., another in Brevard, N.C., a chain of hamburger restaurants, a bicycle-fabrication company, a coffee roaster, a manufacturer of aluminum can “growler” containers, a NASCAR sponsorship and, next year, a third brewing facility in Austin, Texas. It’s watched production climb from roughly 86,000 barrels just before the Brevard brewery opened in 2012 to more than 140,000 barrels last year.
However, all that growth comes at a cost. Earlier this year, Katechis sold a controlling stake in Oskar Blues to Fireman Capital in Boston just before buying Perrin Brewing in Comstock Park, Mich., just outside of Grand Rapids. Fireman also owns a $35 million stake in Utah Brewing Partners and their Wasatch and Squatters beers and has been, by all accounts, an ideal partner. However, the purchase of stakes in, or control of, Southern Tier in Lakewood, N.Y., SweetWater in Atlanta, Uinta in Salt Lake City and Full Sail in Hood River, Ore., to private-equity firms underscores the fact that private-equity money doesn’t always constitute independence. Sure, your brewery isn’t under some larger brewer’s flag, but it requires just the right partner to invest in your brewery that doesn’t want to immediately rip the labels off, redo the logo, trim the beer selection, flood the market, trim all other costs and get out of the market.
Speaking with Katechis, it seems as if he’s not only found that partner, but a viable alternative to the recent spate of brewery buyouts. We’ve been sitting on this interview with Katechis for a while, but his thoughts on expansion, private-equity partnerships and the culture of craft beer got only more relevant in the wake of recent craft beer acquisitions.
So how did Austin come about? There are elements of the city that make complete sense for Oskar Blues, but that can be said of many cities. What made you decide to set up shop there?
Katechis: We were throwing out ideas in some of our meetings, like we did with Brevard.
Initially, the idea of traveling and building a brewery on the other side of the country didn’t seem exciting at all. That’s why we chose a place that I was willing to travel to, and I wanted it to add to my quality of life. We really didn’t shop anywhere. We just chose a place that I was willing to travel to and that the rest of our team ended up falling in love with due to its proximity to Pisgah National Forest and some of the best mountain biking on the East Coast.
It kind of set the precedent in the way that, if we’re looking at other locations for a brewery in order to capitalize on all of the synergies that we realized with Brevard — from shipping savings to the alignment and the relationship we built with the local community — Austin was certainly on top of the list for different reasons than Brevard. From a cultural standpoint, what I believe Oskar Blues is made up of is beer, bikes, food and music, in no particular order. Just things that I find fulfilling about this world. I think we’ve built a pretty interesting culture around here and I think people feel the same.
Austin certainly had an irreverent vibe to it and uniqueness about it that we were attracted to. Obviously the local music scene, but it’s a foodie town. So we all sat around and said: “Would we be able to travel there and spend our lives in this town?” And the unanimous answer was “yes.” That’s really how those decisions get made.
I think Austin may benefit from being a little bit of a bigger town than Brevard is from an infrastructure standpoint in terms of waste water and whatnot from building a brewery. But once we got past that, we started looking for a spot and went to town. Two of our guys went down there to meet with civil engineers and we hope to be up and running by April.
What does this do for Oskar Blues in terms of shipping and availability? What does this open up that didn’t exist before?
Katechis: What we’ve learned is that the beer we ship from Colorado — and we do about 100,000 barrels in a 200-mile radius, and in Colorado that’s really just Colorado — is 21% of the beer we sell, in just that radius. What we noticed when we went to North Carolina was that the cost of that brewery is already equal to the savings on shipping to date.
You basically, on a napkin, build these three breweries. That allows us to invest in our people and the communities that we sell beer — all of the fulfilling parts of working 16-hour days. In North Carolina, from the day that we opened — Dec. 12, 2012 — that first year we brewed 40,000 barrels. We tripled our sales within that 200-mile radius around that brewery, and we’re seeing growth because of the investment we’ve made in that community. Three years later, North Carolina sales are up 45%, South Carolina is up 85% and Florida is still up 45%.
The beer is getting to these places quicker, which means it’s fresher, and the way that the consumer is educating their palate these days, they know the difference. Our brewers love it, and we love it because it’s fresh beer and it’s like you’re having a beer at the brewery. What we’re hoping is that, in a market like Texas, which has a significant population base within a 200-mile radius of the Austin brewery, that we might see similar growth trends.
With variables of family and your future endeavors on the table, is that why you brought Fireman Capital into the equation?
Katechis: I think that whole relationship started with kind of that thought: “Hey, I’m not getting any younger.” I might have even read somewhere “Hey, do you have a succession plan?”
To be honest with you, it started with a life insurance policy and then talking to my accountant about “Hey, you have to start worrying about these things” and I’m, like, “I’ve been too busy to worry about these things and they really haven’t been a thought.” Then you start thinking about these things. Are my kids going to take over my business? We built something that we want to live on forever because we’re proud of it and we think it’s great, but how do you plan for that? That was a whole new experience for me.
I hadn’t even thought about it and, looking at my kids, two of them are at the age where they’re too young to even think about it and the other ones look like they’re going to choose different paths. I started looking at the options out there for how to prepare this business for life after me. That’s how we came to meet Fireman and we just fell in love with those guys. I’d had partnerships in business before and I knew the quality that I was looking for in a partner and I knew what I wasn’t looking for.
We started entertaining the idea and they saw the beer world the same way as we did. It wasn’t just for the money; they were branding experts. And Dan Fireman’s just a great f***ing guy. I was like “I can do business with this guy, you know? We can go out to his farm and blow up cars with 50-caliber machine guns, I wanna hang out with that guy.”
The whole idea was to shed a little risk and breathe a little, and what we’re seeing is that everyone is engaged now. We’re more irreverent, and we’re probably having more fun than we ever have.
It kind of shows in the business. Your REEB bicycle fabrication business is up and running, your restaurant presence is expanding, your Crowler can growlers are in the market and your Hotbox Coffee Roasters just launched this year. How difficult is it to find a partner who’s willing to say “OK” to all of these peripheral ideas coming out of what is, ostensibly, a beer company?
Katechis: I will tell you that we met with some folks who were just a nonstarter in the first five minutes, so we did kind of have to look and find the right partner.
Credit to Dan Fireman. He really searched us out and he wanted to make sure that I didn’t consider him just another one of those guys. I considered the PE guys the ones with the evil horns who come in and break your business all for the sake of profit. It was refreshing to meet someone who understood the heart and the soul of this business was and knew how important the heart and the soul is to it. Sometimes, it isn’t the best business decisions that are the heart and the soul.
If you focus on the things that matter and the things that matter to your customer, then your customer is going to reward you by paying you for what that thing is worth.
Of the more than 4,000 brewers in the U.S., yours is one of the few that’s still trying new things and taking chances as if it’s 1995. Will it look the same from this point on and what do you have planned down the line?
Katechis: What we’ve learned is that we’ve built this business by creating bottlenecks for ourselves. Once we break through those bottlenecks where there’s a learning curve, we’ve learned a few things about production and sales and marketing. What that does is it allows you to focus on other things, whether it’s branding or marketing efforts or new companies that attach to the side of this Oskar Blues dynamic.
It’s encouraging and fulfilling for us. It’s kind of like when you walk into a restaurant and see the staff having a good time. It makes you want to have a good time, you know? I come from a restaurant background and that’s how I perceive my business. If we can have a great time doing what we’re doing and make some money doing it, then our customer is going to see and feel that.
Moving forward, all of those things that lie ahead of us will stem from me or one of my staff who has a great idea and we say “Hey, let’s do this.”
This year, that approach has enabled you to do some pretty special things for a brewery your size, including your takeover of Perrin Brewing in Michigan. There have been a lot of acquisitions since then, but that one seemed relatively smooth and benign in hindsight. How did you reach that deal and how do you view it months later?
Katechis: Ah, it’s a f***in’ grand slam.
The way that came about was Keith Klopcic, our distributor in Michigan, took us there after a meeting and said: “I’m getting out of the distribution business, my brother’s buying me out, I’m ready for a new challenge. What do you think of this place?” I said: “I love this place.” He said: “Why don’t you and I buy it?”
The partnership was falling apart, one of the brothers wanted out and we were like “That sounds like a great idea.” Within a couple of weeks, we got that contract together and I had already begun the process with Fireman. They had built this brewery that wasn’t into packaging but had done 14,000 barrels in two years, which is just unheard of. They weren’t in package yet, but had built a network of distributors around Michigan and the mission was and is still today to just own Michigan.
We thought that, we can our beer and we know how to do it, so we got a can line over there pronto and we believed we could double cash flow and business within 12 months. The day we closed, we turned the can line on and we already doubled cash flow in the first three months. On a trailing 12 months, it looks like we can triple cash flow on a business that’s growing exponentially and is operating as its own thing. It doesn’t feel like Oskar Blues; it’s its own thing. Keith runs it, and he and I have a great partnership. It’s fulfilling to see that happen and be an arm of what we’re doing.
Where we really capitalize on it is that it all started with a collaboration with these guys [in December 2014]. Our whole idea was to take the collaboration to the next level. That’s what these acquisitions are all about. They’re fun, our brewers love them, it engages them, they’re a part of the process and we’re able to engage the local community at a higher level. It’s good for both brands, and if your staff is having fun, everyone else is too.
We’ll continue to take these collaborations to the next level and look for opportunities for acquisitions — the ones that feel right. It’ll certainly be part of our strategy moving forward.
You dove into this in one of the most established craft beer towns in the U.S. in Grand Rapids. What was the reaction like there and how does it make you feel about potential acquisitions in the future?
Katechis: I think it’s a great sign of how attached local communities are to their beer. Everybody has their guard up for the sellout.
We just had this meeting with our entire sales force about a sellout because there was a feeling among the local die-hard Perrin guys that Oskar Blues was going to come in and change our new local brewery. There was a little apprehension there, but we’re going to talk the talk and walk the walk. We have a plan, and it’s not to change the culture of any of the breweries.
It’s to the contrary: We want to help them solve the problems that we know they’re going to face, but that we’ve been through a thousand times. It’s a mentorship, in ways, and then there’s an element in which they help us. What I like about this business is the smallness of it. I don’t enjoy this large piece of business and how big it’s gotten. I’m reminded daily that it’s important to keep a lot of these ventures and activities small so you stay grounded and you stay authentic.
These breweries are helping all of us do that because that’s the fun stuff: Helping pick up a pallet of beer that got dumped over in an alleyway because a forklift tire fell off. Things that just remind you not to take yourselves too seriously, because we’re starting to see a lot of that in the marketplace. Everyone is positioning themselves because everybody’s getting bigger and the stakes are getting higher and it’s just... like... we’re making beer. We’re just a bunch of guys making beer.
There are things like that that we need to continue to inject into our culture to make sure that we stay real, keep it real and keep the authenticity of our brand alive and well.
You go broad with your audience, but you don’t dumb down the experience or your beer. How do you walk that fine line?
Katechis: At the end of the day, for us, it’s about experimentation. We have a lot of ideas that come down the pipe and we try to only execute the ones we sign off on and feel like us.
Of course we want to appeal to a larger audience. It speaks to us and how we see the craft segment growing, and we want to be at the forefront of that. In order to do that, you have to take risks and do things that people might deem as big beer or mainstream and not a local beer festival. We certainly do that and we like to walk the line. We’ve built a culture of people that will sniff out bulls*** really quick and that’s one of the benefits of coming in every day and grinding. You set the tone, you let people know what’s acceptable and people know that bulls*** and a**holes are not acceptable around here. It’s cultural and part of the fabric that’s made up Oskar Blues, and I don’t have to walk around and do that anymore. The pirates have taken over the ship.
Jason Notte is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Esquire. Notte received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.BEREA, Ohio -- The unexpected life of Browns punter Spencer Lanning began with the death of a dream in the winter of 2005.
The kid from Rock Hill, S.C., aspired to play soccer in college and perhaps in a lower-tiered professional league in Europe. Lanning was an aggressive, cocky striker who amassed goals and yellow cards with regularity.
The sport consumed him. He played soccer year around and kicked footballs on Friday nights in the fall.
"It was something I did because (the high school team) needed somebody and I didn't take it that serious," the 5-foot-11, 200-pounder said of kicking.
But a tear of a ligament led to a twist of fate. It set Lanning on a course he never charted eight years ago.
--- A diehard Clemson fan became a walk-on at the University of South Carolina.
--- A kicker transformed himself into a college team captain.
--- A competitor spent a surreal month playing minor-league football for the Sacramento Mountain Lions for $3,500 a game after being rejected by four NFL teams.
--- A rookie in his third game became the first player in 45 years with a punt, extra point and touchdown pass in the same game.
Whose life is this, anyway?
"It's crazy to look back and I do it before every game," Lanning said. "It's like, 'wow.' Nine or ten years ago I would have never thought I''d be in the position I am today."
Lanning is a key member of the Browns, a team with a 4-5 record making an unexpected journey of its own by moving into playoff contention. He ranks tied for second in the league with 50 punts and rarely puts his defense in bad position with a poor kick.
That knuckleball he punted Sunday night which produced a third-quarter Tandon Doss fumble, one of key plays in the Browns' 24-18 win over Baltimore? Lanning struck the ball that way intentionally to make it flutter and tougher to catch, Browns special teams coach Chris Tabor said.
"Spencer is kind of a gym rat," he added. "He loves to watch other guys, loves to see how others kick, he likes to work on different kicks. He's very adaptable and I think that's one of his strengths."
The most fateful moment of his life forced him to become that way.
Career change
On Thursday, the Browns scattered for their long weekend courtesy of a bye. Lanning headed home to train with his father, Tad.
Rock Hill, a city of 65,000 residents just south of the North Carolina border, is famous for producing textiles and football players. Among the NFL notables are: former Browns tight end Ben Watson, former Browns linebacker Gerald Dixon, Jeff Burris, Chris Hope and Cordarrelle Patterson. Likely top-five draft pick Jadeveon Clowney also is a native.
Tad Lanning never thought his son would become part of that list.
"Spencer was pretty much as a soccer brat until he was a junior," Tad said.
In South Carolina, prep soccer is played in the spring so when football coaches at York Comprehensive High School asked him to kick and punt for them during his junior year he agreed.
His strong right leg made him a natural, but his passion had been soccer since age 6. As a sophomore he was the state's sixth-leading goal scorer playing on a middling prep team.
"I was like a completely different person," Lanning said. "I was aggressive, the guy who played really hard and got into trouble, got cards. Most strikers who are good are kind of arrogant and cocky and I guess I was that guy."
But on Jan. 27, 2005 he tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during soccer practice. His world and plans unraveled. He was devastated by an injury to his plant leg, which compromised his game.
"I was never someone who would become mediocre at something I thought I was pretty good at at one time," he said.
Lanning rehabilitated his knee in six months and decided to quit soccer, devoting his energy into kicking and punting. He spent countless hours working with his father.
Tad, a former prep football player, didn't know much about coaching a kicker, but applied his understanding of physics to his son's steps and leg swing. He is a radiation protection specialist for Duke Energy.
"My dad probably is my biggest influence," Lanning said. "He always kept me hungry, he always kept me working toward my goals.
"This is probably terrible to say, but we were out there kicking the ball two weeks after (surgery). I had a knee brace on that went all the way to my hip and we went to the doctor and my dad said, 'Can he be swinging his leg?' And, the doctor said, 'He shouldn't even be standing on it.' We've always been aggressive about things."
Lanning kicked and punted his senior season wearing a brace and earned MVP honors in the state's North-South All-Star Game.
Several major colleges asked him to walk on, but nobody offered a scholarship. His favorite team Clemson, the alma mater of Tad and his mother, Lisa, showed no interest. Ultimately, Lanning chose South Carolina, where he graduated with a degree in exercise science and was awarded a scholarship by his junior season.
His work ethic was so impressive coach Steve Spurrier, who called him "the guy with two last names," made Lanning a senior captain.
While he didn't throw a touchdown pass in college as he did against the Minnesota Vikings on Sept. 22, the Gamecocks capitalized on his athletic abilities. Lanning ran for a first down on a fake punt and also completed a pass, nullified by a penalty. In an age of specialization, Lanning handled both the kicking and punting duties in his final two seasons.
"It was remarkable to think he had just been playing soccer only a few years earlier," Tad said. "Down here it's every father's dream having your son playing football in the SEC."
And while some in the South might dispute it, there is a higher level of football. Lanning would play in the NFL, but not before his patience and pride was tested.
Getting his shot
In the chaotic final minutes of the Browns' 31-27 win at Minnesota, the coaching staff was trying to determine Lanning's field-goal range. Billy Cundiff had suffered a quad injury and couldn't kick on the last drive.
"Spencer is very strong mentally, an unflappable guy," Tabor said of Lanning who kicked a game-winning 40-yard field goal in the final preseason exhibition. "When Billy got hurt in Minnesota we had to ask him to kick and we were thinking, "What is his field goal range? We were thinking 15 to 20.' He kind of looked at us and said, 'Whaddya mean? I'm good from 35.'"
Lanning's confidence never wavered during the two years he waited to find work with an NFL team. He learned quickly, however, that punters are as disposable as razor blades.
The undrafted free agent was signed and released by Chicago in 2011. He was picked up by Jacksonville in the winter of 2012 only to watch the Jaguars use a third-round pick on punter Bryan Anger.
"Lisa and I were watching the draft and seeing the ribbon go by on the bottom of the TV screen," Tad recalled. "When Jacksonville took the punter my wife said, 'I think I'm going to throw up."
The Browns signed and later released him in training camp a year ago. The New York Jets did the same. In a desperate attempt to kick start his career, Lanning joined Sacramento of the defunct United Football League. The Mountain Lions played in a minor-league baseball stadium before about 8,000 fans per game. The league included four teams -- Sacramento, Las Vegas, Omaha, Virginia -- and one constant: nobody was getting fully paid.
In Sacramento, practice conditions were poor, there was no weight room and team meals reportedly consisted of hot dogs and stew. The league folded midway through an eight-game schedule.
"The coaches would tell us, 'Fellas, you need to write all these stories down because you could write a book on it and people would not believe this is professional football.'
"We'd take a bus to practice. We would have the old-school Greyhound bus from the Forrest Gump movie pick us up. It had no air. We're in Sacramento in September and it's 90 degrees. We lived in a hotel, we had no cars and they weren't paying us."
Lanning, 25, became a certified personal trainer and gave himself two more years to find an NFL job. His longtime girlfriend, Brittany, never pressured him to join the workforce, he said.
In February, the Browns called again. His family still has the original message saved on their answering machine. Lanning beat out two punters in training camp to win the position.
His net average per punt is 39.5 yards. He ranks second in league with 15 fair catches and tied for eighth in punts inside the 20. He might be best remembered, though, for his 11-yard TD pass to Jordan Cameron and his extra point in Minnesota. His unlikely heroics earned him AFC Special Teams Player of the Week honors.
"We were at my father's house for that game and when Spencer lined up for the PAT, his grandmother said, 'What else are they going to ask that poor boy to do?'" Tad recalled. "My father said, 'Let him go, he can handle it.'"
Although firmly entrenched in the football culture, Lanning still loves soccer. He traveled to Spain not long ago and saw it played at its highest level. He shakes his head and laughs knowing he never could have reached soccer's equivalent to the NFL.
Nothing worked out as Spencer Lanning planned. And for that, he couldn't be happier.Young Adults After the Recession: Fewer Homes, Fewer Cars, Less Debt
After running up record debt-to-income ratios during the bubble economy of the 2000s, young adults shed substantially more debt than older adults did during the Great Recession and its immediate aftermath—mainly by virtue of owning fewer houses and cars, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of Federal Reserve Board and other government data.
From 2007 to 2010, the median debt of households headed by an adult younger than 35 fell by 29%, compared with a decline of just 8% among households headed by adults ages 35 and older. Also, the share of younger households holding debt of any kind fell to 78%, the lowest level since the government began collecting such data in 1983.
Debt reduction among young adults during bad economic times has been driven mainly by the shrinking share who own homes and cars, but it also reflects a significant decline in the share who are carrying credit card debt, from 48% in 2007 to 39% in 2010.
On the other side of the ledger, many more younger households were carrying student loan debt after the recession than before: 40% had such debt in 2010, up from 34% in 2007 and 26% in 2001.
These shifts in the debt profile of younger adults reflect a broader societal shift toward delayed marriage and household formation that has been under way for decades. This report analyzes the patterns of debt holding and asset ownership among younger households over time. Here are its key findings:
Home
The share of younger households owning their primary residence fell sharply from 40% in 2007 to 34% in 2011. Among younger households, the fall in ownership was accompanied by a decline in how many younger households had debt secured by residential property. In 2007, 38% of younger households had debt secured by residential property. By 2010 only 35% had such debt. The median outstanding amount of residential property debt owed (by younger households with such debt) fell from about $150,000 in 2007 to $128,000 in 2010.
Cars
In 2007, 73% of households headed by an adult younger than 25 owned or leased at least one vehicle. By 2011, 66% of these young households had a vehicle. Among households younger than 35, outstanding vehicle debt |
interest in a case from Virginia, writing that it was in the public's interest to make sure that “all students, including transgender students, have the opportunity to learn in an environment free of sex discrimination.”
At least two lawsuits have already successfully upheld access to bathrooms for trans children. In 2013, the family of Coy Mathis, a transgender first-grader, won a lawsuit against their Colorado school district that allowed her to use the girls’ bathroom. In 2014, Maine's highest court ruled in favor of transgender student Nicole Maines after she sued when her high school required her to use a separate staff restroom.
The only time Keisling, who is transgender, has ever been bothered about her own bathroom usage was when she was attending a dinner with a group of transgender lawyers at a restaurant in New York City.
As she prepared to enter the women’s bathroom, a waiter tried to stop her. “I know what you are,” Keisling recalled him saying to her.
Thinking of the crew of lawyers back at the table, and knowing her rights — New York City amended its human rights law in 2002 to protect against gender identity discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodation — she responded, “This is illegal,” and breezed right past him.More builders have died on UK sites in the past decade than soldiers fighting overseas. Calls are growing for tighter safety rules and an end to construction's hire-and-fire culture
The Francis Crick Institute, swiftly rising from a vast building site behind the British Library, next to London's St Pancras station, will be the biggest laboratory in Europe, a glittering "jewel in the crown" of UK medical research, according to ministers.
Keen to share in the project's glory, on Radio Four's Today programme last week the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, even acknowledged that the Crick, as it has become known, is a key part of his plan for a "MedCity", something of a branding wheeze by Johnson to attract "big-pharma" investment to this part of north London and gain him kudos as a political visionary.
The Crick is also where Richard Laco, 31, a labourer from Slovakia, was killed by falling concrete and steel on a cold Wednesday last November.
The construction industry is the most dangerous sector in Britain. There is no trade like it. To put it in context, 448 British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001. Over the same period, more than 760 construction workers have been killed on British sites.
It is an industry whose workers have from the year dot suffered from being treated as casual labour, picked up and dropped by companies according to the ebb and flow of the economic tide.
Union involvement by workers has historically been a black mark against their names – sometimes literally in the case of the 3,300 workers condemned to work outside the industry through an industry-run blacklist, often for raising issues of health and safety.
And beyond the headline fatalities on building sites – around 40 in 2013-14, the Health and Safety Executive is expected to report soon – last year there were 2,500 deaths due to asbestos exposure, 500 due to respirable crystalline silica exposure and 200 from diesel exhaust emissions.
In the case of Laco, whose Facebook page advertises his love of hip-hop, the sitcom Frasier and playing basketball, he was killed when one of the building's concrete stairwells fell on him as it was being raised into position.
He had been in and out of construction over the previous decade – Laing O'Rourke describe him as a qualified operative with 10 years' experience – picking up work when other career ventures failed. Laco's CV included a three-month trainee post at Amplify Trading in Canary Wharf, learning to be a trader in futures, as well as stints at the outdoor clothing and equipment store Ellis Brigham Mountain Sports.
However, during the economic downturn he was not able to turn his fluency in four languages and a first-class degree in banking, finance and economics from Middlesex university into the career for which he yearned. So his last days were spent working for a Laing O'Rourke sub-contractor.
Laco's death received little attention in the media. Although, like 90% of construction workers, he was not a member of a union, Unite organised a two-minute silence in his memory outside the site as workers on the upper floors of the Crick looked down. Laing O'Rourke said its staff had unanimously decided to pay their respects in a separate commemoration on the other side of security gates.
A few weeks earlier, Unite officials who wanted to talk to some of the company's employees about redundancy negotiations had been told they were not welcome on the site. Unite officials had been banned, claimed assistant general secretary Gail Cartmail, "and I can't help but think that death is more likely where unions are not welcome".
A spokesman for Laing O'Rourke said the company saw it differently. There is no union ban but, while complying with industry-wide guidelines concerning access for union officials, they will only go so far. "Although union-appointed safety representatives may have an interest in the welfare of their members, we do not believe their involvement will add anything beyond our existing extensive approach, as they do not possess the technical understanding of our delivery approach to fully comprehend and be able to mitigate the safety risks on our projects," a spokesman said.
Within a week of Laco's death, the Crick workers began to build again.
Last month Rene Tkacik, a 43-year-old Slovakian, was 32ft below Holborn in a Crossrail tunnel when he was killed by falling concrete. Then there was Kevin Campbell, 46, killed at a Docklands Light Railway site after being struck by a piece of machinery attached to an excavator.
And yet Laco, Campbell and Tkacik were working for the big companies or on public-sector sites – the safest jobs in the industry, for what that is worth.
Richard Laco, from Slovakia, pictured with his sister. He was killed by falling concrete and steel at the Francis Crick Institute site in north London. Photograph: Facebook
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which took a 35% cut to its funding in 2011, told the Observer that it now puts 70% of its diminished resources not into the Laing O'Rourkes of this world, but the small and medium-sized businesses. That's where the real risk-takers operate, they believe.
Take the case of Silviu Radulescu, 31, who was killed just a week into his job as a labourer on a demolition job at a decommissioned prison service headquarters in south London.
Radulescu, who had been working in a car handwash stall since arriving from Romania two years previously, wanted to emulate his younger brother, who was making good money on sites. He was killed in 2011 when he was asked to put aside his duties to help manually raise a broken lift. It fell five storeys when he was standing on its roof.
In February this year, Westminster's coroner's court gave a verdict of unlawful death and the police are considering a charge of corporate manslaughter against his sometime employer TE Scudder (Demolition), according to Helen Clifford of solicitors Leigh Day, who represented the dead man's grieving family.
Flavia Radulescu, his sister-in-law, who lives in St Albans, Hertfordshire, told the Observer that she wants lessons learned. "Silviu wanted to work in construction but this job was as a labourer, just to get some experience," she said. "It was my job to tell his parents back in Romania that he had been killed. I called them, but I just lied. I said he was in hospital, in a coma. For two weeks I couldn't tell them that he was dead – it was too hard. Silviu came here just to have a better life. He wanted to have a family and he would spend lots of time playing with my daughter.
"I was angry, so angry, at the time of his death. But now I just want them to learn, to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else."
The industry has been dragged kicking and screaming over the decades to change its practices and protect those desperate for work. The Latham report in 1994, commissioned by John Major's government, described industry practices as adversarial, ineffective, fragmented, incapable of delivering for its clients and lacking respect for its employees. Then the Egan report in 1998, commissioned by Tony Blair's government, sought to promote the training of staff down the supply chain and the dissemination of best practice. And in 2001 John Prescott, then the deputy prime minister, organised a summit where change was said to be imperative. And standards were raised; the numbers of fatalities did go down – incrementally.
Lady Donaghy was the woman chosen by Gordon Brown's administration to usher in the next era of reform with a report, published in 2010, on what more could be done. She reported that the construction industry was designed for optimal flexibility, with 40% of workers self-employed, with the proportion more like 90% in London – often dependent on goodwill for their next shift. "Some claimed that they were less likely to report unsafe practices because 'they wanted a job next Monday'; in other words, they were less secure in their employment," she wrote.
Donaghy's report concluded there was little she could do about the casualisation of the industry. She wrote: "The advantages are obvious in that it reduces overheads. Some, but not all, argue that it improves profitability and productivity. The disadvantages are that it becomes more difficult for a safety culture to flourish, worker engagement is weak, employment security and continuity is minimal and training is minimal."
However, she made recommendations to ameliorate the dangers. Companies should name directors who are to be held responsible for health and safety, to ensure the courts can prosecute effectively, she said, at a time when smaller companies were simply going into voluntary liquidation following a fatality and emerging under another name. She also said there should be a full-time minister for construction who should encourage worker engagement with companies due to a lack of union presence on many sites. And the HSE should be properly funded. Donaghy's report, One Death Is Too Many, was welcomed by Brown's administration in March 2010, but then they lost power. None of the recommendations came to pass.
It wasn't just the change of government, though, that put improvements on ice. The recession changed everything, too. The 39 deaths recorded by the HSE in construction for 2012-13 was a record low. But that may well be because between 2008 and 2009 the numbers working in construction were cut by a fifth and output by 17.1%.
Problems that were intrinsic to the industry, causing the high rates of deaths and injuries in the mid-2000s, before the financial crash, have been left unsolved. "Is it a ticking timebomb? Possibly, yes," Donaghy said. "With the upturn there is a danger that people with insufficient skills will be taken on. That's when the deaths and accidents start to take place."
The number of fatalities in the capital, where the clearest signs of growth in the industry can be seen, has doubled from four in 2011-12 to eight in 2012-13, and it is believed to have remained at around that number during the last year, if not higher.
"The green shoots are arriving in London and there are fewer experienced people on site and more pressure to finish jobs and get on with another one," Donaghy said. "That's where a properly funded HSE is really important."
And that's one of the worries of Steve Murphy, general secretary of the construction union Ucatt. In advance of Workers' Memorial Day on 28 April, he has publicised a freedom of information response from the HSE which shows that proactive inspections of sites went down from 11,334 in 2011-12 to 10,577 in 2012-13. The HSE claims that this was rectified in the last year, with 11,255 taking place. Murphy says this is not the step-up in activity that the new economic conditions demand. "I believe there is chaos in the construction industry and deaths will rise," said Murphy.
Heather Bryant, who was appointed chief inspector for construction at the HSE in 2013, lists a series of safety initiatives, but she also recognises the challenges. "Historically, you would expect to see an increase in fatalities and injuries. But one of the things we have been trying to do is work closely with the industry and say: 'Watch out, be ahead of the game. This is what has happened historically, let's make sure it doesn't happen this time.'"Jokic’s attitude was neither a deception nor a way to deflect pressure. It was, in fact, the reason he had become the NBA’s biggest surprise.
He had looked nothing like a professional center during his teenage years in Serbia. "He will tell you he was a young fat point guard growing up,’’ said Malone. And so now it was as if he was playing with house money. Jokic insisted on the morning of his biggest game that he would not feel pressure later that night.
"Pressure is just bad things for you,’’ he said. "You just need to go and -- I’m telling you -- every game is (like) the game of pickup basketball in my hometown. You need to go with that mentality and play the game. No pressure. Yes, you need to do something. But it’s just a game.’’
He had always approached basketball from this nothing-to-lose, everything-to-gain point of view. "My dad is not really a relaxed guy,’’ Jokic said for the sake of comparison. "He’s nervous. He wants to do everything. But I am completely opposite to him. I am calm.’’
In which case he must have driven his father crazy. "Yes, oh my god,’’ said Jokic with laughing exasperation. "Thousand times, even one million times - even now. I drive him crazy right now because I am so calm and nothing can touch me.’’
He was recalling the many times when his father would try to make him approach basketball more seriously. "He would say, 'How you can be that calm? Look at that!’’’ said Jokic. "And I have two brothers, they have a really bad temper, they’re also nervous and all that.’’
They would think that their younger brother didn’t care as much as they did. "Probably, probably,’’ agreed Jokic, even though he knew that they were wrong. There is no way that Jokic could create so many beautiful plays of ingenuity without reaching deeply into his imagination to make them so.
Coach Michael Malone (right) knows criticism will eventually find its way to the talented Nikola Jokic.
As a rookie last year, when he found himself on the court with Tim Duncan for the first time, he had to convince himself that he belonged in the NBA. "I mean, I really like Tim Duncan, and when I play against him that’s really a big deal for me,’’ Jokic said. "Then you step on the floor. If you think that he has achieved something, or he was something, or he wants something, then you are not going to be good in that game. You cannot think about him. You have to think about yourself. You just need to go there and play your game your normal game.’’
He has turned the corner. He does not see the game from the point of view his more famous opponents. All that matters to Jokic now is his own unique vision and the desire to fulfill his imagination.
He is that rare young talent who does not make the game more complicated than it needs to be. He has succeeded, so far, in getting out of his own way.
Nurkic's revenge against Denver
By the second quarter of this game on Tuesday, Nurkic was taking it to him. At halftime, Nurkic led all scorers with 21 points to go with eight rebounds, two assists, a blocked shot and no turnovers. Jokic, by comparison, had 11 points, five rebounds and three turnovers -- but he also had generated five assists to keep his team within 66-64 of the hometown Blazers.
Afterward, Lillard’s teammates would explain why they had entered the game with great confidence in their new teammate Nurkic. "He's had this game circled since he got here,’’ said C.J. McCollum, who would lead all scorers with 38 points.
"Last night he actually reached out to me and said, 'I need you tomorrow,’’’ said Lillard, who added 19 points and seven assists. "He really wanted to win this game.’’
Nurkic, 22, had learned the secret of elevating his game when his team needed it most. Which, in turn, will be the standard by which Jokic will be judged someday.
Grounded without an ego
"Do you dream about basketball in your sleep?’’ Jokic was asked on the morning of the biggest game.
"No, no,’’ he said, smiling. "To be honest, I have bad dream last night. My last dream was bad dream. Some guy -- actually two guys are chasing me and beating me. It was not good dream.’’
The pressure on players -- as generated by the fans, at least -- is much greater in Europe than in the NBA, said Jokic. Most NBA players with European experience would not argue with this point. The fans of Serbia, Greece, Turkey and other European leagues are more passionate and demanding than NBA fans.
That point of view changes in the playoffs, however. The internal pressures tend to be magnified tremendously by the NBA postseason. But that lesson has not been passed onto Jokic as yet.
"To be honest, everybody told me the playoffs is just fine,’’ Jokic said. "It’s just playing the games.’’ Asked whether he can imagine feeling intimidated by the pressure of a deep playoff series, he said: "I don’t think that it is ever going to happen to me.’’
"Obviously with pressure comes a lot of that stuff where you start looking at things negatively,’’ said Miller, who provided Jokic with his nickname "The Joker.’’ "There hasn’t been anything negatively said about him. He hasn’t gone through that part of the league yet. He’s going to hit those things. Then it’s about who you have around you when you go through it. And I think he’s going to have the right people around him.’’
As Jokic continues to improve and push his team closer to contention, he will experience greater demands and criticism when he falls short.
"I think it’s a great question,’’ said Malone. "Right now he’s the feel-good story, and everybody loves Joker and what a great kid he is and how unselfish he is and all of the behind-the-back passes. But the criticism will come: Can he lead his team to the playoffs? Can he lead his team to wins in the playoffs? I think it’s those trials and tribulations and criticisms that build great players. He’s on his way, and I think that’s going to be part of his journey, part of his process.
"Michael Jordan, Isiah Thomas -- every great player has to go through it. I coached LeBron for five years, LeBron went through it. At some point Nikola is going to be criticized, and he’s going to have to face adversity. Right now this is year two for him and no one picked us to make the playoffs. In the future it’s going to be, OK, enough feel-good. We want results. I think he’s grounded, he’s got no ego, he comes into work every day and he doesn’t let all the outside noise affect him. And when that time comes where he is being criticized and facing that adversity, I think he’s going to handle it well because of where he’s from, his family background, and his mental toughness.’’
The point that Malone was making was that the criticism can’t come soon enough. The Nuggets will want their Joker to turn the corner into contention as quickly as possible.
"No doubt,’’ said Malone. "Because once that days happens, that means we’re on the precipice of doing something great. We have some really good players on this team, but he is the face of this franchise. He is our future. And it’s exciting to see where he’s going to take us.’’
Not fearing adversity
In the visitors lockerroom late Tuesday night, Jokic stood up to leave without realizing that several reporters were waiting to speak with him. The modes of leadership were still new as he spun around to answer questions about the 122-113 loss that severely damaged the playoff hopes for his Nuggets.
"We tried our best, but we didn’t do anything,’’ said Jokic, who contributed 17 points, eight assists, eight rebounds and two blocks. "They wanted it more than us.’’ He stopped himself, thought about what he had said, and then nodded. "Yeah, they wanted it more than us.’’
How could a young center in his second year be criticized for generating a near-triple-double? And yet, in this matchup of old teammates, Jokic had been outperformed. Nurkic, his former understudy, had played the game of his life: 33 points (12-for-15 from the field), 16 rebounds, three blocks, two assists and several standing ovations as the Blazers generated 16 offensive rebounds and 28 second-chance points. "Nurkic obviously kicked our a**,’’ said Malone. "You can’t go on the road and get your a** kicked on the glass like that and give out 28 points.’’
Jokic had embraced Nurkic on the court after the game. "I expected it,’’ said Jokic of his opponent’s enhanced performance. "We all expected it because I know his temper. I knew that he was going to be aggressive and try to have the game of his life.’’
The feel-good story was already beginning to change, and there was nothing wrong with that. Adversity is not to be feared. In a way that would probably make Jokic smile, he was starting to realize that becoming a subject of criticism, for a young man of such overwhelming potential, is going to be the next goal.
Ian Thomsen has covered the NBA since 2000. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here or follow him on Twitter.
The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting.Harry Potter and The Casual Vacancy author J.K. Rowling has revealed that she wrote a crime novel titled The Cuckoo’s Calling under a pseudonym.
Rowling operated under the name Robert Galbraith to publish The Cuckoo’s Calling in April of this year.
The Telegraph received confirmation from the author as well as a statement. “I had hoped to keep this secret a little longer because being Robert Galbraith has been such a liberating experience,” said Rowling. “It has been wonderful to publish without hype or expectation and pure pleasure to get feedback under a different name.”
UPDATE 2: The Sunday Times spoke to The New York Times and revealed how they came to uncover the connection between Rowling and The Cuckoo’s Calling.
UPDATE: Alternate versions of the statement indicate Rowling confirmed that there will be additional books in this series. “And to those who have asked for a sequel, Robert fully intends to keep writing the series, although he will probably continue to turn down personal appearances,” she said.
The author’s biography is as hilarious as this news that’s been kept secret from us for several months. It reads, “After several years with the Royal Military Police, Robert Galbraith was attached to the SIB (Special Investigative Branch), the plain-clothes branch of the RMP. He left the military in 2003 and has been working since then in the civilian security industry. The idea for Cormoran Strike grew directly out of his own experiences and those of his military friends who returned to the civilian world. ‘Robert Galbraith’ is a pseudonym.”
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The book is available right now on Amazon and currently has a nearly 5-star rating.
Says the book’s official synopsis found on Amazon:
A brilliant debut mystery in a classic vein: Detective Cormoran Strike investigates a supermodel’s suicide. After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Strike is down to one client, and creditors are calling. He has also just broken up with his longtime girlfriend and is living in his office. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: His sister, thelegendary supermodel Lula Landry, known to her friends as the Cuckoo, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man. You may think you know detectives, but you’ve never met one quite like Strike. You may think you know about the wealthy and famous, but you’ve never seen them under an investigation like this.
The cover:
We’ll be covering this new (?) book this weekend, and you can bet we’ll be reading it very soon.5th September, 2014 by Amy Hopkins
Four Roses master distiller Jim Rutledge talks distillery capacity, age statements and why a flavoured Bourbon will never happen on his watch.
You’ve been in the business for almost 50 years, what’s the biggest change you’ve seen during that time?
We’ve come light years since I first worked at the Four Roses distillery as a shift supervisor in 1969, when everything was done manually. If we wanted to increase the flow rate between the fermenter and still, we’d have pencil marks on a valve and it would take us an hour or so to adjust things. But today we just punch it in the computer and boom, it’s done. Everything has become automated and we’re so much better off than back in the 70s because there’s not as much room for human error. The quality of Bourbon has improved dramatically.
Surely another change is the demand for Bourbon?
I’ve seen the demand go up and down like a rollercoaster ride, but over the last 5-6 years the demand for Bourbon has been increasing at a steady rate and that’s here to stay. It started when the Bourbon business began to move away from standard products to focus on premiums like single barrel or small batch and limited editions; that brought more focus and attention to the quality of the product. Social media has also had a big impact. If you introduced a new brand 25 years ago you had to use the traditional billboard, magazine, and newspaper route and it would take a year or two for word to get around. Now it happens overnight.
How well placed is Four Roses to meet that demand right now?
Over the last three years domestic sales in the US have gone up by 42% (2010), 58% (2011) and 71% (2012). Those are numbers you can never ever plan for, especially when you’re planning for 10 years down the road. But the economic downturn had a huge impact on our business. We were number one in Spain, Italy, Greece and a lot of other markets that have never recovered from the recession. That freed up a lot of barrels to use in domestic sales. So we might be able to weather the storm. It’s extremely unfortunate what’s happened in the global economy, but that’s the only reason we’ve been able to sustain our level of growth.
Will Four Roses be increasing capacity soon?
We will have to expand our distillation, fermentation and cooking capacity in around four years’ time to keep up with this growth. Right now we’re looking at a low-range global sales forecast, which the increased US demand is driving. Japan is our number one market, France is number two, but we expect the US to overtake Japan within two years.
Why is Four Roses so big in Japan?
It happened back in 1988, when our industry had been declining by 3-5% a year since the 60s. The rest of the world stayed on track, but Japan shot through the roof. We were already number one but it caught our entire industry with our pants down. So we made some changes and picked up some inventory to satisfy demand. Four years later the rest of the world began to trickle up.
Four Roses doesn’t carry an age statement. Was that a strategic move?
Some distilleries choose to put an age statement on their whiskeys but I’ve refused to let that happen, because sometimes you get yourself in trouble by waiting on birthdays of barrels; you can never hit your target flavour profile. More often than not it has a negative impact rather than positive, and for that reason we’ve chosen not to put age statements on bottles. A lot of people in the Scotch industry are shying away from it too, as they are now in a position where they can’t sustain the age and are trying to catch up with their stocks.
Four Roses currently doesn’t make a flavoured whiskey, but would you like to?
If someone wants a blackberry-flavoured Bourbon drink, ask your bartender to make you one. It’ll be a hell of a lot better than something out of huge bulk tanks and put in bottles. If you ever see a bottle of Four Roses with cherry flavour, you know I’m retired, because before that time it will never happen. I believe Bourbon is good enough to stand on its own two legs.
Would you call yourself a traditionalist, Jim?
Yes, absolutely.Danny Sandler, a.k.a. 'Evil Elmo’ back, winds up in slammer
Dan Sandler takes a break from posing for photos with tourist dressed as Elmo in Fisherman's Wharf on March 5th 2014. Sandlers has been known to go on various heated controversial rants while wearing the costume. less Dan Sandler takes a break from posing for photos with tourist dressed as Elmo in Fisherman's Wharf on March 5th 2014. Sandlers has been known to go on various heated controversial rants while wearing the... more Photo: Sam Wolson / Special To The Chronicle Photo: Sam Wolson / Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 17 Caption Close Danny Sandler, a.k.a. 'Evil Elmo’ back, winds up in slammer 1 / 17 Back to Gallery
“Evil Elmo,” the screeching twin of the lovable “Sesame Street” character, is in the slammer after being accused of threatening a merchant along San Francisco’s touristy waterfront.
For years, Elmo — a.k.a. Danny or Adam Sandler — has eked out a living from Fisherman’s Wharf to New York’s Times Square, wearing a furry red costume and having his picture taken with tourists.
He has also been an unwelcome nuisance, garnering media attention for aggressive outbursts at tourists who wouldn’t pay him or mixing it up with the homeless.
His rants have kept him on the move — pingponging from Los Angeles and Honolulu to San Francisco and New York, and picking up a string of police citations en route.
Fisherman’s Wharf merchants were anything but tickled when Elmo popped up here last winter, and pretty soon, police and a quality-of-life prosecutor assigned to the neighborhood were collecting video and other evidence chronicling Elmo’s bad behavior.
A number of shop owners around Jefferson and Leavenworth streets, where Elmo hung out, posted signs in their windows making it clear he had no connection to their businesses, contrary to what he might have suggested to some tourists.
Sandler apparently got ticked off — and when he ran across a food merchant the other day, he allegedly demanded she remove the anti-Elmo sign from her window.
When she refused, according to district attorney’s spokesman Alex Bastian, Sandler let her have it with a stream of expletives and yelled, “I’m going to rip your throat out!”
The cops showed, slapped the cuffs on Elmo and arrested him for allegedly making a criminal threat. They also booked him on a series of misdemeanor counts dating back to August.
Prosecutors argued that Sandler was becoming increasingly belligerent, which, coupled with an outstanding bench warrant from New York, made him a flight risk. The judge agreed and set Sandler’s bail at $250,000. He’s still being held at County Jail pending a court date Thursday.
Elmo’s furry red suit has also been locked up — placed into evidence at the Hall of Justice.
Sandler’s court-appointed attorney, Rafael Trujillo, after briefly meeting with his client in a holding cell, told us he was still trying to make sense of the unusually high bail. “He seems like a perfectly nice gentleman,’’ Trujillo said.
Conflicted: Lawyers for the new Transbay Transit Center want prominent San Francisco attorney and ex-Police Commission President John Keker to stop representing downtown developers in their megamillion-dollar tax fight with the city, saying he has a conflict of interest.
At issue: Keker was earlier paid $950 an hour to represent the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, which is overseeing construction of the new transit center, in a separate dispute with some of the same developers. He was thus privy to “confidential information” on financial and legal matters that he could now use in the fight against the agency’s plan to tax his new clients hundreds of millions of dollars, the authority said.
Andrew Schwartz, an attorney for the authority, demanded in a Nov. 10 letter to Keker that he withdraw from representing Boston Properties or any other developer that would be affected by the tax. He also called for Keker to disclose any confidential information he got from the authority that he may have since shared with the developers.
Boston Properties and other developers are threatening to sue over their tax bill, jeopardizing both the completion of the $2 billion Transbay Transit Center at Mission and First streets and the nearly $2 billion plan to build a rail tunnel to the Caltrain station at Fourth and King streets.
Keker called the demand that he step aside “a chickens— move.”
“They should be embarrassed,” he said. “There is no conflict. This is a tactical move, which I consider a great compliment, because they’re scared to have my firm on the other side.”
The envelope, please:One big winner in last week’s election was Nicole Derse and the gang at 50+1 Strategies, who ran Supervisor David Chiu’s by-a-nose win over David Campos for state Assembly, Nick Josefowitz’s upset win over James Fang for the BART board and Malia Cohen’s re-election to the Board of Supervisors.
The 50+1 group also worked with Airbnb, organizing short-term renters to lobby the Board of Supervisors to approve Chiu’s legislation legalizing “shared” home use.
Before setting up shop on her own, Derse worked with Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. Her first big local race was helping Ross Mirkarimi win election to the Board of Supervisors in 2004.
Mirkarimi, of course, was front and center as an issue in the Chiu-Campos race — with Chiu’s campaign putting Campos on the defensive for voting to let the sheriff keep his job after pleading guilty to a domestic-violence-related misdemeanor.
But don’t look for any conflicted feelings from Derse: “I’ve been consistent. Ross should not be sheriff,” she said.
Guess that’s one re-election campaign 50+1 won’t be running.
San Francisco Chronicle columnists Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross appear Sundays, Mondays and Wednesdays. Matier can be seen on the KPIX TV morning and evening news. He can also be heard on KCBS radio Monday through Friday at 7:50 a.m. and 5:50 p.m. Got a tip? Call (415) 777-8815, or e-mail matierandross@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @matierandrossThe Native American Party, renamed the American Party in 1855 and commonly known as the Know Nothing movement, was an American nativist political party that operated nationally in the mid-1850s. It was primarily anti-Catholic, xenophobic, and hostile to immigration, starting originally as a secret society. The movement briefly emerged as a major political party in the form of the American Party. Adherents to the movement were to reply "I know nothing" when asked about its specifics by outsiders, thus providing the group with its common name.
The Know Nothings believed a "Romanist" conspiracy was afoot to subvert civil and religious liberty in the United States and sought to politically organize native-born Protestants in what they described as a defense of their traditional religious and political values. It is remembered for this theme because of fears by Protestants that Catholic priests and bishops would control a large bloc of voters. In most places, Know Nothingism lasted only a year or two before disintegrating because of weak local leaders, few publicly declared national leaders and a deep split over the issue of slavery. In the South, the party did not emphasize anti-Catholicism, but was the main alternative to the dominant Democratic Party.
The collapse of the Whig Party after the passage of the Kansas–Nebraska Act left an opening for the emergence of a new major party in opposition to the Democrats. The Know Nothings elected congressman Nathaniel P. Banks of Massachusetts and several other individuals in the 1854 elections and created a new party organization known as the American Party. Particularly in the South, the American Party served as a vehicle for politicians opposed to the Democratic Party. Many also hoped that it would seek a middle ground between the pro-slavery positions of many Democratic politicians and the anti-slavery positions of the emerging Republican Party. The American Party nominated former President Millard Fillmore in the 1856 presidential election, although he kept quiet about his membership.[1] Fillmore received 21.5% of the popular vote in the 1856 presidential election, finishing behind the Democratic and Republican nominees.
The party declined rapidly after the 1856 election. The 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision further aroused opposition to slavery in the North, where many Know Nothings joined the Republicans. Most of the remaining members of the party supported the Constitutional Union Party in the 1860 presidential election.
History [ edit ]
Anti-Catholicism had been a factor in colonial America but played a minor role in American politics until the arrival of large numbers of Irish and German Catholics in the 1840s.[2] It then reemerged in nativist attacks on Catholic immigration. It appeared in New York politics as early as 1843 under the banner of the American Republican Party.[3] The movement quickly spread to nearby states using that name or Native American Party or variants of it |
that distinct selves can have perceptions that stand in relations of similarity and causality with one another. Thus, perceptions must already come parcelled into distinct "bundles" before they can be associated according to the relations of similarity and causality. In other words, the mind must already possess a unity that cannot be generated, or constituted, by these relations alone. Since the bundle-theory interpretation portrays Hume as answering an ontological question, philosophers, like Galen Strawson, who see Hume as not very concerned with such questions have queried whether the view is really Hume's. Instead, it is suggested by Strawson that Hume might have been answering an epistemological question about the causal origin of our concept of the self. In the Appendix to the Treatise, Hume declares himself dissatisfied with his earlier account of personal identity in Book 1. Philosopher Corliss Swain notes that "Commentators agree that if Hume did find some new problem" when he reviewed the section on personal identity, "he wasn't forthcoming about its nature in the Appendix." One interpretation of Hume's view of the self has been argued for by philosopher and psychologist James Giles. According to his view, Hume is not arguing for a bundle theory, which is a form of reductionism, but rather for an eliminative view of the self. That is, rather than reducing the self to a bundle of perceptions, Hume is rejecting the idea of the self altogether. On this interpretation, Hume is proposing a "no-self theory" and thus has much in common with Buddhist thought. On this point, psychologist Alison Gopnik has argued that Hume was in a position to learn about Buddhist thought during his time in France in the 1730s.
Practical reason [ edit ]
An essential question of practical reason for Hume was whether or not standards or principles exist (and if they do, what they are) for practical reason, that are also authoritative for all rational beings, dictating people's intentions and actions. Hume is mainly considered an anti-rationalist, denying the possibility for practical reason as a principle to exist, although other philosophers such as Christine Korsgaard, Jean Hampton, and Elijah Millgram claim that Hume is not so much of an anti-rationalist as he is just a skeptic of practical reason.[101]
Hume denied the existence of practical reason as a principle because he claimed reason does not have any effect on morality, since morality is capable of producing effects in people that reason alone cannot create. As Hume explains in A Treatise of Human Nature (1740): “Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.”[102]
Since practical reason is supposed to regulate our actions (in theory), Hume denied practical reason on the grounds that reason cannot directly oppose passions. As Hume puts it, “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” Reason is less significant than any passion because reason has no original influence, while "A passion is an original existence, or, if you will, modification of existence".[103]
Practical reason is also concerned with the value of actions rather than the truth of propositions,[104] so Hume believed that reason's shortcoming of affecting morality proved that practical reason could not be authoritative for all rational beings, since morality was essential for dictating people's intentions and actions.
Ethics [ edit ]
Hume's writings on ethics began in the Treatise and were refined in his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). His views on ethics are that "[m]oral decisions are grounded in moral sentiment." It is not knowing that governs ethical actions, but feelings. Arguing that reason cannot be behind morality, he wrote:
Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.
Hume's moral sentimentalism about morality was shared by his close friend Adam Smith,[not in citation given] and Hume and Smith were mutually influenced by the moral reflections of their older contemporary Francis Hutcheson. Peter Singer claims that Hume's argument that morals cannot have a rational basis alone "would have been enough to earn him a place in the history of ethics".
Hume also put forward the is–ought problem, later called Hume's Law, denying the possibility of logically deriving what ought to be from what is. He wrote in the Treatise that in every system of morality he has read, the author begins with stating facts about the world, but then suddenly is always referring to what ought to be the case. Hume demands that a reason should be given for inferring what ought to be the case, from what is the case. This because it "seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others".
Hume's theory of ethics has been influential in modern-day meta-ethical theory, helping to inspire emotivism, and ethical expressivism and non-cognitivism,[not in citation given] as well as Allan Gibbard's general theory of moral judgment and judgments of rationality.
Aesthetics [ edit ]
Hume's ideas about aesthetics and the theory of art are spread throughout his works, but are particularly connected with his ethical writings, and also the essays Of the Standard of Taste and Of Tragedy. His views are rooted in the work of Joseph Addison and Francis Hutcheson. In the Treatise he wrote of the connection between beauty and deformity and vice and virtue, and his later writings on this subject continue to draw parallels of beauty and deformity in art, with conduct and character.
In Of the Standard of Taste, Hume argues that no rules can be drawn up about what is a tasteful object. However, a reliable critic of taste can be recognised as being objective, sensible and unprejudiced, and having extensive experience. Of Tragedy addresses the question of why humans enjoy tragic drama. Hume was concerned with the way spectators find pleasure in the sorrow and anxiety depicted in a tragedy. He argued that this was because the spectator is aware that he is witnessing a dramatic performance. There is pleasure in realising that the terrible events that are being shown are actually fiction. Furthermore, Hume laid down rules for educating people in taste and correct conduct, and his writings in this area have been very influential on English and Anglo-Saxon aesthetics.
Free will, determinism, and responsibility [ edit ]
Hume, along with Thomas Hobbes, is cited as a classical compatibilist about the notions of freedom and determinism. The thesis of compatibilism seeks to reconcile human freedom with the mechanist belief that human beings are part of a deterministic universe, whose happenings are governed by physical laws. Hume, to this end, was influenced greatly by the scientific revolution and by in particular Sir Isaac Newton. Hume argued that the dispute about the compatibility of freedom and determinism has been continued over two thousand years by ambiguous terminology. He wrote: "From this circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot... we may presume that there is some ambiguity in the expression", and that different disputants use different meanings for the same terms.
Hume defines the concept of necessity as "the uniformity, observable in the operations of nature; where similar objects are constantly conjoined together", and liberty as "a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will". He then argues that, according to these definitions, not only are the two compatible, but liberty requires necessity. For if our actions were not necessitated in the above sense, they would "have so little in connexion with motives, inclinations and circumstances, that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other". But if our actions are not thus connected to the will, then our actions can never be free: they would be matters of "chance; which is universally allowed to have no existence". Australian philosopher John Passmore writes that confusion has arisen because "necessity" has been taken to mean "necessary connexion". Once this has been abandoned, Hume argues that "liberty and necessity will be found not to be in conflict one with another".
Moreover, Hume goes on to argue that in order to be held morally responsible, it is required that our behaviour be caused or necessitated, for, as he wrote:
Actions are, by their very nature, temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good; nor infamy, if evil.
Hume describes the link between causality and our capacity to rationally make a decision from this an inference of the mind. Human beings assess a situation based upon certain predetermined events and from that form a choice. Hume believes that this choice is made spontaneously. Hume calls this form of decision making the liberty of spontaneity.
Education writer Richard Wright considers that Hume's position rejects a famous moral puzzle attributed to French philosopher Jean Buridan. The Buridan's ass puzzle describes a donkey that is hungry. This donkey has on both sides of him separate bales of hay, which are of equal distances from him. The problem concerns which bale the donkey chooses. Buridan was said to believe that the donkey would die, because he has no autonomy. The donkey is incapable of forming a rational decision as there is no motive to choose one bale of hay over the other. However, human beings are different, because a human who is placed in a position where he is forced to choose one loaf of bread over another will make a decision to take one in lieu of the other. For Buridan, humans have the capacity of autonomy, and he recognises the choice that is ultimately made will be based on chance, as both loaves of bread are exactly the same. However, Wright says that Hume completely rejects this notion, arguing that a human will spontaneously act in such a situation because he is faced with impending death if he fails to do so. Such a decision is not made on the basis of chance, but rather on necessity and spontaneity, given the prior predetermined events leading up to the predicament.
Hume's argument is supported by modern-day compatibilists such as R. E. Hobart, a pseudonym of philosopher Dickinson S. Miller.[131] However, P. F. Strawson argued that the issue of whether we hold one another morally responsible does not ultimately depend on the truth or falsity of a metaphysical thesis such as determinism. This is because our so holding one another is a non-rational human sentiment that is not predicated on such theses.
Writings on religion [ edit ]
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy states that Hume "wrote forcefully and incisively on almost every central question in the philosophy of religion." His "various writings concerning problems of religion are among the most important and influential contributions on this topic." His writings in this field cover the philosophy, psychology, history, and anthropology of religious thought. All of these aspects were discussed in Hume's 1757 dissertation, The Natural History of Religion. Here he argued that the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all derive from earlier polytheistic religions. He also suggested that all religious belief "traces, in the end, to dread of the unknown." Hume had also written on religious subjects in the first Enquiry, as well as later in the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
Religious views [ edit ]
Although he wrote a great deal about religion, Hume's personal views are unclear, and there has been much discussion concerning his religious position.[137] Contemporaries considered him to be an atheist, or at least un-Christian, and the Church of Scotland seriously considered bringing charges of infidelity against him. The fact that contemporaries thought that he may have been an atheist is exemplified by a story Hume liked to tell:
The best theologian he ever met, he used to say, was the old Edinburgh fishwife who, having recognized him as Hume the atheist, refused to pull him out of the bog into which he had fallen until he declared he was a Christian and repeated the Lord's prayer.
However, in works such as Of Superstition and Enthusiasm, Hume specifically seems to support the standard religious views of his time and place. This still meant that he could be very critical of the Catholic Church, dismissing it with the standard Protestant accusations of superstition and idolatry, as well as dismissing as idolatry what his compatriots saw as uncivilised beliefs. He also considered extreme Protestant sects, the members of which he called "enthusiasts", to be corrupters of religion. By contrast, in his The Natural History of Religion, Hume presented arguments suggesting that polytheism had much to commend it over monotheism.
Philosopher Paul Russell writes that Hume was plainly sceptical about religious belief, although perhaps not to the extent of complete atheism. He suggests that Hume's position is best characterised by the term "irreligion", while philosopher David O'Connor argues that Hume's final position was "weakly deistic". For O'Connor, Hume's "position is deeply ironic. This is because, while inclining towards a weak form of deism, he seriously doubts that we can ever find a sufficiently favourable balance of evidence to justify accepting any religious position." He adds that Hume "did not believe in the God of standard theism... but he did not rule out all concepts of deity", and that "ambiguity suited his purposes, and this creates difficulty in definitively pinning down his final position on religion".
Design argument [ edit ]
One of the traditional topics of natural theology is that of the existence of God, and one of the a posteriori arguments for this is the argument from design or the teleological argument. The argument is that the existence of God can be proved by the design that is obvious in the complexity of the world. Encyclopædia Britannica states that this is "the most popular, because [it is] the most accessible of the theistic arguments... which identifies evidences of design in nature, inferring from them a divine designer... The fact that the universe as a whole is a coherent and efficiently functioning system likewise, in this view, indicates a divine intelligence behind it."[147][unreliable source?]
In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Hume wrote that the design argument seems to depend upon our experience, and its proponents "always suppose the universe, an effect quite singular and unparalleled, to be the proof of a Deity, a cause no less singular and unparalleled". Philosopher Louise E. Loeb notes that Hume is saying that only experience and observation can be our guide to making inferences about the conjunction between events. However, according to Hume, "we observe neither God nor other universes, and hence no conjunction involving them. There is no observed conjunction to ground an inference either to extended objects or to God, as unobserved causes."
Hume also criticised the argument in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779). In this, he suggested that, even if the world is a more or less smoothly functioning system, this may only be a result of the "chance permutations of particles falling into a temporary or permanent self-sustaining order, which thus has the appearance of design."[147]
A century later, the idea of order without design was rendered more plausible by Charles Darwin's discovery that the adaptations of the forms of life are a result of the natural selection of inherited characteristics.[147] For philosopher James D. Madden, it is "Hume, rivaled only by Darwin, [who] has done the most to undermine in principle our confidence in arguments from design among all figures in the Western intellectual tradition."
Finally, Hume discussed a version of the anthropic principle, which is the idea that theories of the universe are constrained by the need to allow for man's existence in it as an observer. Hume has his sceptical mouthpiece Philo suggest that there may have been many worlds, produced by an incompetent designer, whom he called a "stupid mechanic". In his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Hume wrote:
Many worlds might have been botched and bungled throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out: much labour lost: many fruitless trials made: and a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making.
American philosopher Daniel Dennett has suggested that this mechanical explanation of teleology, although "obviously... an amusing philosophical fantasy", anticipated the notion of natural selection, the 'continued improvement' being like "any Darwinian selection algorithm."
Problem of miracles [ edit ]
In his discussion of miracles, Hume argues that we should not believe that miracles have occurred and that they do not therefore provide us with any reason to think that God exists. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Section 10), Hume defines a miracle as "a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or by the interposition of some invisible agent". Hume says that we believe an event that has frequently occurred is likely to occur again, but we also take into account those instances where the event did not occur. Hume wrote:
A wise man [...] considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments [...] A hundred instances or experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance. In all cases, we must balance the opposite experiments [...] and deduct the smaller number from the greater, in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence.
Hume discusses the testimony of those who report miracles. He wrote that testimony might be doubted even from some great authority in case the facts themselves are not credible. "[T]he evidence, resulting from the testimony, admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual."
Although Hume leaves open the possibility for miracles to occur and be reported, he offers various arguments against this ever having happened in history: He points out that people often lie, and they have good reasons to lie about miracles occurring either because they believe they are doing so for the benefit of their religion or because of the fame that results. Furthermore, people by nature enjoy relating miracles they have heard without caring for their veracity and thus miracles are easily transmitted even when false. Also, Hume notes that miracles seem to occur mostly in "ignorant and barbarous nations" and times, and the reason they do not occur in the civilised societies is such societies are not awed by what they know to be natural events. Finally, the miracles of each religion argue against all other religions and their miracles, and so even if a proportion of all reported miracles across the world fit Hume's requirement for belief, the miracles of each religion make the other less likely.
Hume was extremely pleased with his argument against miracles in his Enquiry. He states "I flatter myself, that I have discovered an argument of a like nature, which, if just, will, with the wise and learned, be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion, and consequently, will be useful as long as the world endures." Thus, Hume's argument against miracles had a more abstract basis founded upon the scrutiny, not just primarily of miracles, but of all forms of belief systems. It is a common sense notion of veracity based upon epistemological evidence, and founded on a principle of rationality, proportionality and reasonability.
The criterion for assessing a belief system for Hume is based on the balance of probability whether something is more likely than not to have occurred. Since the weight of empirical experience contradicts the notion for the existence of miracles, such accounts should be treated with scepticism. Further, the myriad of accounts of miracles contradict one another, as some people who receive miracles will aim to prove the authority of Jesus, whereas others will aim to prove the authority of Muhammad or some other religious prophet or deity. These various differing accounts weaken the overall evidential power of miracles.[not in citation given]
Despite all this, Hume observes that belief in miracles is popular, and that "The gazing populace [...] receive greedily, without examination, whatever soothes superstition, and promotes wonder."
Critics have argued that Hume's position assumes the character of miracles and natural laws prior to any specific examination of miracle claims, thus it amounts to a subtle form of begging the question. To assume that testimony is a homogeneous reference group seems unwise- to compare private miracles with public miracles, unintellectual observers with intellectual observers and those who have little to gain and much to lose with those with much to gain and little to lose is not convincing to many. Indeed, many have argued that miracles not only do not contradict the laws of nature, but require the laws of nature to be intelligible as miraculous, and thus subverting the law of nature. For example, William Adams remarks that "there must be an ordinary course of nature before anything can be extraordinary. There must be a stream before anything can be interrupted".[162] They have also noted that it requires an appeal to inductive inference, as none have observed every part of nature nor examined every possible miracle claim, for instance those in the future. This, in Hume's philosophy, was especially problematic.
Little appreciated is the voluminous literature either foreshadowing Hume, in the likes of Thomas Sherlock[164] or directly responding to and engaging with Hume- from William Paley,[165] William Adams,[166] John Douglas,[167] John Leland [168] and George Campbell,[169] among others. Of Campbell, it is rumoured that, having read Campbell's Dissertation, Hume remarked that "the Scotch theologue had beaten him".[170]
Hume's main argument concerning miracles is that miracles by definition are singular events that differ from the established laws of nature. Such natural laws are codified as a result of past experiences. Therefore, a miracle is a violation of all prior experience and thus incapable on this basis of reasonable belief. However, the probability that something has occurred in contradiction of all past experience should always be judged to be less than the probability that either ones senses have deceived one, or the person recounting the miraculous occurrence is lying or mistaken. Hume would say, all of which he had past experience of. For Hume, this refusal to grant credence does not guarantee correctness. He offers the example of an Indian Prince, who, having grown up in a hot country, refuses to believe that water has frozen. By Hume's lights, this refusal is not wrong and the Prince "reasoned justly"; it is presumably only when he has had extensive experience of the freezing of water that he has warrant to believe that the event could occur.
So for Hume, either the miraculous event will become a recurrent event or else it will never be rational to believe it occurred. The connection to religious belief is left unexplained throughout, except for the close of his discussion where Hume notes the reliance of Christianity upon testimony of miraculous occurrences. He makes an ironic remark that anyone who "is moved by faith to assent" to revealed testimony "is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience." Hume writes that "All the testimony which ever was really given for any miracle, or ever will be given, is a subject of derision."
As historian of England [ edit ]
From 1754 to 1762 Hume published The History of England, a 6-volume work, which extends, says its subtitle, "From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688". Inspired by Voltaire's sense of the breadth of history, Hume widened the focus of the field away from merely kings, parliaments, and armies, to literature and science as well. He argued that the quest for liberty was the highest standard for judging the past, and concluded that after considerable fluctuation, England at the time of his writing had achieved "the most entire system of liberty that was ever known amongst mankind".[173] It "must be regarded as an event of cultural importance. In its own day, moreover, it was an innovation, soaring high above its very few predecessors."
Hume's coverage of the political upheavals of the 17th century relied in large part on the Earl of Clarendon's History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England (1646–69). Generally, Hume took a moderate royalist position and considered revolution unnecessary to achieve necessary reform. Hume was considered a Tory historian, and emphasised religious differences more than constitutional issues. Laird Okie explains that "Hume preached the virtues of political moderation, but... it was moderation with an anti-Whig, pro-royalist coloring." For "Hume shared the... Tory belief that the Stuarts were no more high-handed than their Tudor predecessors". "Even though Hume wrote with an anti-Whig animus, it is, paradoxically, correct to regard the History as an establishment work, one which implicitly endorsed the ruling oligarchy". Historians have debated whether Hume posited a universal unchanging human nature, or allowed for evolution and development.
Robert Roth argues that Hume's histories display his biases against Presbyterians and Puritans. Roth says his anti-Whig pro-monarchy position diminished the influence of his work, and that his emphasis on politics and religion led to a neglect of social and economic history.
Hume was an early cultural historian of science. His short biographies of leading scientists explored the process of scientific change. He developed new ways of seeing scientists in the context of their times by looking at how they interacted with society and each other. He covers over forty scientists, with special attention paid to Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, and Isaac Newton. Hume particularly praised William Harvey, writing about his treatise of the circulation of the blood: "Harvey is entitled to the glory of having made, by reasoning alone, without any mixture of accident, a capital discovery in one of the most important branches of science".
The History became a best-seller and made Hume a wealthy man who no longer had to take up salaried work for others. It was influential for nearly a century, despite competition from imitations by Smollett (1757), Goldsmith (1771) and others. By 1894, there were at least 50 editions as well as abridgements for students, and illustrated pocket editions, probably produced specifically for women.
Political theory [ edit ]
It is difficult to categorise Hume's political affiliations. His writings contain elements that are, in modern terms, both conservative and liberal, although these terms are anachronistic. Thomas Jefferson banned the History from University of Virginia, feeling that it had "spread universal toryism over the land".[184] By comparison, Samuel Johnson thought Hume "a Tory by chance... for he has no principle. If he is anything, he is a Hobbist", a follower of Thomas Hobbes. A major concern of Hume's political philosophy is the importance of the rule of law. He also stresses throughout his political essays the importance of moderation in politics: public spirit and regard to the community.
This outlook needs to be seen within the historical context of 18th-century Scotland. Here, the legacy of religious civil war, combined with the relatively recent memory of the 1715 and 1745 Jacobite risings, fostered in a historian such as Hume a distaste for enthusiasm and factionalism. These appeared to threaten the fragile and nascent political and social stability of a country that was deeply politically and religiously divided.[not in citation given] Hume thought that society is best governed by a general and impartial system of laws; he is less concerned about the form of government that administers these laws, so long as it does so fairly. However, he does write that a republic must produce laws, while "monarchy, when absolute, contains even something repugnant to law."
Hume expressed suspicion of attempts to reform society in ways that departed from long-established custom, and he counselled peoples not to resist their governments except in cases of the most egregious tyranny. However, he resisted aligning himself with either of Britain's two political parties, the Whigs and the Tories. Hume wrote:
My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representations of persons to Tory prejudices.[190]
Canadian philosopher Neil McArthur writes that Hume believed that we should try to balance our demands for liberty with the need for strong authority, without sacrificing either. McArthur characterises Hume as a "precautionary conservative", whose actions would have been "determined by prudential concerns about the consequences of change, which often demand we ignore our own principles about what is ideal or even legitimate."[not in citation given] Hume supported the liberty of the press, and was sympathetic to democracy, when suitably constrained. American historian Douglass Adair has argued that Hume was a major inspiration for James Madison's writings, and the essay "Federalist No. 10" in particular.
Hume offered his view on the best type of society in an essay titled "Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth", which lays out what he thought was the best form of government. He hoped that, "in some future age, an opportunity might be afforded of reducing the theory to practice, either by a dissolution of some old government, or by the combination of men to form a new one, in some distant part of the world". He defended a strict separation of powers, decentralisation, extending the franchise to anyone who held property of value and limiting the power of the clergy. The system of the Swiss militia was proposed as the best form of protection. Elections were to take place on an annual basis and representatives were to be unpaid. Political philosophers Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, writing of Hume's thoughts about "the wise statesman", note that he "will bear a reverence to what carries the marks of age". Also, if he wishes to improve a constitution, his innovations will take account of the "ancient fabric", in order not to disturb society.[195]
In the political analysis of philosopher George Sabine, the scepticism of Hume extended to the doctrine of government by consent. He notes that "allegiance is a habit enforced by education and consequently as much a part of human nature as any other motive."[196]
In the 1770s, Hume was critical of British policies toward the American colonies and advocated for American independence. He wrote in 1771 that "our union with America... in the nature of things, cannot long subsist".[44]
Contributions to economic thought [ edit ]
Hume noted his views as economist in his Political Discourses, which were incorporated in Essays and Treatises as Part II of Essays, Moral and Political.[197] To what extent he was influenced by Adam Smith is difficult to stress, however both of them had similar principles supported from historical events.[197] At the same time Hume did not demonstrate concrete system of economic theory which could be observed in Smith's Wealth of Nations. However, he introduced several new ideas around which the “classical economics” of the 18th century was built.[197] Through his discussions on politics, Hume developed many ideas that are prevalent in the field of economics. This includes ideas on private property, inflation, and foreign trade.[198] Referring to his essay "Of the Balance of Trade", economist Paul Krugman has remarked that "David Hume created what I consider the first true economic model."[199]
In contrast to Locke, Hume believes that private property is not a natural right. Hume argues it is justified, because resources are limited. Private property would be an unjustified, "idle ceremonial", if all goods were unlimited and available freely.[200] Hume also believed in an unequal distribution of property, because perfect equality would destroy the ideas of thrift and industry. Perfect equality would thus lead to impoverishment.[201][202]
Influence [ edit ]
Due to Hume's vast influence on contemporary philosophy, a large number of approaches in contemporary philosophy and cognitive science are today called "Humean."[203]
Attention to Hume's philosophical works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), credited Hume with awakening him from his "dogmatic slumber".[204]
According to Schopenhauer, "there is more to be learned from each page of David Hume than from the collected philosophical works of Hegel, Herbart and Schleiermacher taken together."[205]
A. J. Ayer, while introducing his classic exposition of logical positivism in 1936, claimed: "The views which are put forward in this treatise derive from... doctrines... which are themselves the logical outcome of the empiricism of Berkeley and David Hume."[206] Albert Einstein, in 1915, wrote that he was inspired by Hume's positivism when formulating his theory of special relativity.[207]
Hume's problem of induction was also of fundamental importance to the philosophy of Karl Popper. In his autobiography, Unended Quest, he wrote: "Knowledge... is objective; and it is hypothetical or conjectural. This way of looking at the problem made it possible for me to reformulate Hume's problem of induction". This insight resulted in Popper's major work The Logic of Scientific Discovery.[208] Also, in his Conjectures and Refutations, he wrote:
I approached the problem of induction through Hume. Hume, I felt, was perfectly right in pointing out that induction cannot be logically justified.[209]
The writings of Scottish philosopher and contemporary of Hume, Thomas Reid, were often criticisms of Hume's scepticism. Reid formulated his common sense philosophy in part as a reaction against Hume's views.[210]
Hume influenced and was influenced by the Christian philosopher Joseph Butler. Hume was impressed by Butler's way of thinking about religion, and Butler may well have been influenced by Hume's writings.[211][212]
Hume's rationalism in religious subjects influenced, via German-Scottish theologian Johann Joachim Spalding, the German neology school and rational theology, and contributed to the transformation of German theology in the age of enlightenment.[213][214] Hume pioneered a comparative history of religion,[215][216] tried to explain various rites and traditions as being based on deception[217][218] and challenged various aspects of rational and natural theology, such as the argument from design.[215]
Danish theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard adopted "Hume's suggestion that the role of reason is not to make us wise but to reveal our ignorance." However, Kierkegaard took this as a reason for the necessity of religious faith, or fideism. The "fact that Christianity is contrary to reason... is the necessary precondition for true faith." Political theorist Isaiah Berlin, for example, has pointed out the similarities between the arguments of Hume and Kierkegaard against rational theology.[219] Berlin also writes about Hume's influence on what Berlin calls the counter-enlightenment, and German anti-rationalism.[220]
According to philosopher Jerry Fodor, Hume's Treatise is "the founding document of cognitive science".[221]
Hume engaged with contemporary intellectual luminaries such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, James Boswell, and Adam Smith (who acknowledged Hume's influence on his economics and political philosophy).
Isaiah Berlin once said of Hume that "No man has influenced the history of philosophy to a deeper or more disturbing degree."[222]
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy writes that Hume is "[g]enerally regarded as one of the most important philosophers to write in English."[223]
Family [ edit ]
His nephew and namesake, David Hume of Ninewells (1757–1838), was a co-founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783. He was a Professor of Scots Law at Edinburgh University and rose to be Principal Clerk Of Session in the Scottish High court and Baron of the Exchequer. He is buried with his uncle in Old Calton Cemetery.[224]
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Notes [ edit ]
^ demonstration may be termed deductive reasoning, while probability may be termed inductive reasoning. These are Hume's terms. In modern parlance,may be termed, whilemay be termed
References [ edit ]
Sources [ edit ]of the 2015 AFC Championship Game at Gillette Stadium on January 18, 2015 in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Tom Brady #12 of the New England Patriots looks to pass in the first half against the Indianapolis Colts of the 2015 AFC Championship Game at Gillette Stadium on Jan. 18, 2015 in Foxboro, Mass. (credit: Jim Rogash/Getty Images)
— The NFL says its investigation into whether the New England Patriots used under-inflated footballs in the AFC championship game is ongoing after a report Tuesday night claimed the league found 11 balls were not properly inflated.
Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president for football operations, told The Associated Press that the “investigation is currently underway and we’re still awaiting findings.”
Vincent was responding to an ESPN report that cited anonymous league sources saying 11 of the Patriots’ 12 allotted game footballs were under-inflated by 2 pounds per square inch of air. ESPN did not say how that occurred.
Vincent said earlier Tuesday he expected the probe to be concluded by the end of the week. The last thing the NFL wants after a difficult season off the field is a potential cheating scandal that disrupts Super Bowl week. New England faces Seattle on Feb. 1 in Glendale, Arizona.
ESPN is also reporting that the Colts raised concerns to the NFL after their 42-20 loss in November to the Patriots about under-inflated footballs. There were reportedly concerns about the footballs after Colts safety Mike Adams gave the team’s equipment manager balls to save following his two-interception game against Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
A source told ESPN that the league is “disappointed … angry … distraught” over the recent findings.
The Patriots, who beat Indianapolis 45-7 for the AFC title, said they were cooperating with the league, and a Seahawks spokesman said the team would defer to the league on the matter.
The NFL began looking into the issue not only because doctoring the footballs could provide a competitive advantage, but because it would compromise the integrity of the game.
Now the Baltimore Ravens, who lost to the Patriots in the divisional round of the playoffs, believe that kicking balls they used during the game were under-inflated. CBS Sports reports that the Ravens kicking and punting units believed that the kicking balls weren’t getting its normal depth and distance.
Deflating a football can change the way it’s gripped by a player or the way it travels through the air. Under NFL rules, each team provides balls each game for use when its offense is on the field. The balls are inspected before the game by the officiating crew, then handled during the |
. at the federal courthouse a few blocks from the Capitol, where Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a longtime lord of the Appropriations Committee, was trying to get a judge to throw out his indictment on seven corruption-related counts. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan rejected the senator's request, clearing the way for a trial the week after next.Around 1 am on August 20, Ismael Saifan woke up with a terrible pain in his lower back, likely the result of moving furniture earlier that day.
“It was a very sharp muscle pain,” Saifan, a 39-year-old engineer, remembers. “I couldn’t move or sleep in any position. I was trying laying down, sitting down, nothing worked.”
Saifan went online to figure out where he could see a doctor. The only place open at that hour was Overland Park Regional Medical Center in his hometown of Overland Park, Kansas.
The doctor checked his blood pressure, asked about the pain, and gave him a muscle relaxant. The visit was quick and easy, lasting about 20 minutes.
But Saifan was shocked when he received bills totaling $2,429.84.
The bill included a $3.50 charge for the muscle relaxant. The rest — $2,426.34 — was from “facility fees” charged by the hospital and doctor for walking into the emergency room and seeking care.
Because Saifan’s health spending is still within his plan’s deductible, he is responsible for the entire amount.
“I called the insurance company to make sure the bill was real,” he says. “They said it was a reasonable price, and gave me a breakdown.”
Spending on emergency room fees has increased by $3 billion — even though the number of fees is declining slightly
There are 141 million visits to the emergency room each year, and nearly all of them (including Saifan’s) have a charge for something called a facility fee. This is the price of walking through the door and seeking service. It does not include any care provided.
Emergency rooms argue that these fees are necessary to keep their doors open, so they can be ready 24/7 to treat anything from a sore back to a gunshot wound. But there is also wide variation in how much hospitals charge for these fees, raising questions about how they are set and how closely they are tethered to overhead costs.
Most hospitals do not make these fees public. Patients typically learn what their emergency room facility fee is when they receive a bill weeks later. The fees can be hundreds or thousands of dollars. That’s why Vox has launched a year-long investigation into emergency room facility fees, to better understand how much they cost and how they affect patients.
Saifan’s bill was so expensive, it turns out, because the hospital used the facility fee typically reserved for complex, intensive emergency room visits.
Emergency room facility fees are usually coded on a 1 to 5 scale, to reflect the complexity of care delivered to the patient. Saifan’s visit where he received a muscle relaxant was coded by the doctor as a level 4 visit — the second highest — and came with hefty fees as a result.
The hospital billed a separate facility fee and chose level 3, typically reserved for moderately complex visits.
Saifan’s experience isn’t an anomaly: A new Vox analysis reveals that emergency rooms all across the country are increasingly using these higher-intensity codes, and that the price of these codes has increased sharply since 2009.
Vox worked with the nonprofit Health Care Cost Institute (HCCI) to analyze 70 million insurance bills for emergency room visits from between 2009 and 2015. We focused on the prices that health plans paid hospitals for facility fees, not the hospital charges (which can often be inflated well above what patients actually pay).
We found that the price of these fees rose 89 percent between 2009 and 2015 — rising twice as fast as the price of outpatient health care, and four times as fast as overall health care spending.
Overall spending on emergency room fees rose by more than $3 billion between 2009 and 2015, despite the fact the HCCI database shows a slight (2 percent) decline in the number of emergency room fees billed in the same time period.
“It is having a dramatic effect on what people spend in a hospital setting,” says Niall Brennan, executive director of the Health Care Cost Institute. “And as we know, that has a trickle-down effect on premiums and benefits.”
The HCCI data shows that prices are rising dramatically and that, increasingly, hospitals have gravitated to using the most expensive billing codes — the level 4 and 5 charges, typically reserved for the most complex visits.
The rising price of emergency room facility fees coupled with growing usage of the most expensive codes mean it’s significantly more expensive to go to an emergency room now than it was six years ago.
Hospitals argues that these increases are due to an aging, sicker population.
“The number and complexity of ED visits continues to increase — this trend is not surprising given current population and health care-related trends,” Ashley Thompson, senior vice president for public policy at the American Hospital Association, said in a statement.
Help our reporting Hospitals keep ER fees secret. Share your bill here to help change that.
But experts on emergency billing argue that this is evidence of hospitals taking advantage of their market power — charging high fees because they are often the only place, late at night or on the weekend, where Americans can seek health care.
“If you have a monopoly — and when it comes to the ER, it’s a monopoly — you can set any price you want,” says Robert Derlet, a professor emeritus in emergency medicine at the University of California Davis, who has been critical of ER billing in the past.
“What is going to deter me from increasing my price? Who can stop me? If I’m the financial officer for the hospital, I might even get a bonus for doing this.”
Hospitals increasingly code emergency room visits as complex
David Overton knows what strep throat feels like. He comes down with it once or twice every year. He typically goes to urgent care or a drug store clinic when his achy throat and fever symptoms start.
But his most recent strep throat infection flared up on Memorial Day, and those clinics were closed. So he went to Legacy Emergency Room & Urgent Care outside of Dallas.
Overton walked in the door for urgent care, but staff there said his case was severe enough to move him to the emergency room side of the clinic.
“I felt terrible, and I wasn’t up for debating it,” he says. “So I was like okay, I guess we’ll do this.”
The emergency room performed a CT scan and used IV medications to treat Overton. He immediately felt better, and left with a prescription for antibiotics. Three days, later he saw another doctor who confirmed it was a simple case of strep throat.
But because of the complex intervention — the CT scan, the IV drugs, the long visit — the hospital coded Overton has having the most complex visit possible, a level 5. They billed him a $1,900 facility fee. Because he has a high-deductible plan, he’s responsible for all of it.
“Did I need the CT scan? No. Did I need the IV antibiotics? No,” he says. “I could have been treated with oral antibiotics.”
He’s currently paying off the bill by $50 each month. So far, he’s paid $300.
Emergency billing guidelines offered by the American College of Emergency Physicians typically reward doctors for providing a higher level of medical care. They instruct hospitals to use the more expensive billing codes for cases where they have to perform multiple scans and examinations.
Two different hospitals trips for the same condition may be treated and billed quite differently. A case of strep throat treated with oral antibiotics — a simple visit — would likely be coded as a level 1 or 2 visit. But a visit with multiple scans and an IV drip could come out to a 4 or 5.
The HCCI data set suggests that Overton’s experience may not be atypical. It shows that more and more emergency rooms are billing the severe, expensive facility fee charges.
What’s more, there are no federal guidelines on how to code even the exact same visit. This is left up to a hospital’s billing staff, meaning that if two patients receive identical care in different emergency rooms, one may be coded as a level 3 and another as a level 4.
“There are charges that people could look at differently,” says David McKenzie, reimbursement director for the American College of Emergency Physicians. “Reasonable people could disagree on severity.”
These discrepancies can be expensive for patients, as emergency rooms charge hundreds of dollars more for the more severe codes.
The HCCI database shows that the average price of a level 3 facility fee (in medical coding, this is billed as 99283) is $576. Go up to the next severity code, level 4 (or, in medical codes, 99284), and the price rises to $810.
“Hospitals can make a lot of money charging for all the extras — CT scans, MRIs, laboratory fees, even starting an IV,” Derlet, the emergency physician, says.
In 2009, 50 percent of all emergency room facility fee charges were for level 4 and 5 codes. In 2015, that number rose to 59 percent.
How to interpret that trend isn’t fully clear. Some say it could signal hospitals charging higher rates for similar care. But the current data makes it impossible to rule out the fact that emergency room visits may just be getting more serious.
“At face value, it might suggest that patients are showing up at the ER sicker or with more serious injuries,” says Jonathan Mathieu, chief economist at the Center for Improving Health Care Value in Colorado. His group has documented similar, state-level trends to what the HCCI national data set shows. “This feels a little shaky, for a lack of a more elegant term, because it is the same trend year over year over year.”
Medicare tried to simplify facility fees. It failed.
The government has tried to crack down on high emergency room fees before — but ultimately was scared off by intense push back from health care industries.
In 2012, an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity showed that hospitals had earned an additional $1 billion in Medicare revenue by using the most expensive facility fees — the level 5 codes.
This meant that the public insurance program that covers Americans over 65 was suddenly spending significantly more money on these routine fees.
In response, the Obama administration proposed eliminating the facility fee levels entirely, to get rid of any incentives to bill for a higher price. It suggested one flat fee for all visits.
“A single code and payment for clinic visits is more administratively simple for hospitals and better reflects hospital resources involved in supporting an outpatient visit,” Medicare argued in November 2013.
But that rule never saw the light of day. After intense pushback from hospitals and doctor groups, the issue was dropped and the fee levels remain today.
“I remember we got an onslaught of comments, hospitals being very frustrated, emergency room doctors being upset,” one former Medicare official involved with the rule said. “It definitely got pulled, and it was just about the amount of commenting and concerns from the industry.”
At the time, Medicare issued a statement saying it “intends to consider options to improve the codes for these services in future rulemaking.” So far, the agency has taken no actions to re-regulate these codes.
Some patients, however, have had success taking matters into their own hands.
Last winter, John Shelbourne ended up with a small gash above his eye from a basketball game with friends.
“It was just big enough that it needed to be closed,” Shelbourne, 37, says. “It was probably 9 at night, so I had to head to the emergency room.”
The doctors at Swedish Covenant Hospital glued the wound shut and covered it with Steri-Strips. Shelbourne estimates the visit took about 15 minutes.
A few weeks later, he received a bill with a $899 facility fee. (Incidentally, the Steri-Strips — which cost $1.49 for a box of 12 at Target — were billed at $14.)
Shelbourne’s visit was coded level 3, a medium-intensity facility fee. He showed the bill to his father, a doctor.
“I was able to ask him what these levels were, and he asked his nurses, who knew the difference,” he says. “They said level 3 is a complex procedure, and once I found that out, I knew there was no way this was a complex visit.”
Shelbourne started calling the hospital, arguing that his visit should be coded level 2 instead of 3. He made 25 separate calls over two months. He kept records of all of them, on sticky notes around his desk at work. The hospital eventually agreed with him and lowered his visit from a level 3 down to a level 2.
That change lowered his portion of the bill from $441 down to $305.
“I’m stubborn,” Shelbourne says. “Once I found out what a level 3 visit was, I got pissed off about it. I was on a mission. I went from not knowing the difference between ER visit levels to seeing how these things could get totally slipped by you.”
Saifan, the engineer in Kansas who received the $2,429.84 bill for the muscle relaxant, is disputing his bill as well.
“We’ll see how the dispute goes, but I’m not expecting it to change,” he says. He says the hospital told him he could get a 10 percent discount if he paid the bill in full rather than installments over time, which he’ll do if his dispute is unsuccessful. His family has enough money to pay off the bill.
“It’s not easy to pay $2,500, but it won’t be life or death,” he says. “It would be a pretty frustrating disappointment.”
Help us report on the costs to visit the emergency room. Share your bill here.For the first time, Governor-elect Scott Walker is raising the possibility he could support spending $810 million in federal funds on train service - just not the train service for which it was allocated.
It's a potentially significant change for a politician who has insisted that all of the federal stimulus money should be redirected from high-speed rail to Wisconsin highways - a position flatly rejected by federal and state officials.
Rail supporters still want the federal dollars spent on their intended purpose: a planned high-speed rail line from Milwaukee to Madison. More than 200 people rallied Monday outside the Talgo Inc. train plant to urge Walker to relent.
Walker, the Milwaukee County executive, has repeatedly vowed to block construction of that line. He reiterated that position Sunday in an interview with Mike Gousha on "UpFront" on WISN-TV (Channel 12).
In that interview, Walker said using the money for highways is still his preference, but that he and his staff also had "looked at options relative to rail." He specifically mentioned Amtrak's existing Milwaukee-to-Chicago Hiawatha line and the long-distance Empire Builder, which runs from Chicago to the Pacific Northwest by way of Milwaukee, the Twin Cities and several Wisconsin communities.
Unlike his Republican primary opponent, former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann, Walker has backed continued state support for the Hiawatha, which runs seven round trips daily from downtown Milwaukee to downtown Chicago, with stops in between at Mitchell International Airport, Sturtevant and Glenview, Ill. The line carried 741,781 passengers last year and is strongly supported by the business community.
Redirecting the stimulus money from high-speed rail to highways would take an act of Congress, which is currently controlled by Democrats. Walker said last week that he would not press for a decision on the funding shift until after he takes office in January, when his fellow Republicans will take control of the House. But the U.S. Senate and White House will remain in Democratic hands, and Rep. Tom Petri, a Fond du Lac Republican, has said it's not politically realistic to believe the money can be moved to highways.
Walker's transition team and the state Department of Transportation did not return calls seeking further comment. A U.S. Department of Transportation spokeswoman declined to comment.
The Milwaukee-to-Madison line would operate as an extension of the Hiawatha and eventually could become part of a larger Chicago-to-Twin Cities route and a Midwestern network of fast, frequent trains. Plans call for service to start in 2013, with six round trips daily at a top speed of 79 mph, rising to a top speed of 110 mph in 2015.
Talgo rally
At the Talgo plant on Milwaukee's north side, demonstrators chanted "Trains mean jobs!" and "Talgo yes! Walker no!" And representatives from a broad range of organizations, from labor and social justice groups to religious and political leaders, stressed the project's importance as a catalyst for redevelopment of the city's former Tower Automotive site and the creation of new jobs, especially in Milwaukee's central city.
"Talgo represents a resurrection for many people in this state, and especially in this city," the Rev. Ken Wheeler, pastor of Cross Lutheran Church and a member of the Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope, told the crowd.
"I remind you that you are not just the governor of a select few, the wealthy and those who live outside of the city," Wheeler said of Walker. "Don't do what is expedient. Do what is right."
Spanish-owned Talgo moved to the Tower site after winning contracts to build two trains for the Hiawatha and two for Oregon. By next year, it expects to have 125 people working on those jobs.
The company also had hoped to build the additional trains that would be needed if the Hiawatha was extended to Madison. But with Walker pledging to block the extension, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is wooing Talgo, and a Talgo spokeswoman has said her company would seriously consider moving to Illinois or elsewhere after fulfilling its current orders in spring 2012.
Rally organizers said Walker's decision could cost the state nearly 15,000 jobs - a third of those for construction and the rest permanent - and render Wisconsin a laughing stock across the country. The claim of almost 10,000 permanent jobs is based on a 2006 study with so many assumptions that PolitiFact Wisconsin ruled it "barely true."
"Let's be responsible. This is just not the time to be chasing jobs away," said Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO.
Operating costs
As part of the Hiawatha, the Milwaukee-to-Madison leg would be what Amtrak calls "corridor service," with the state picking up a chunk of the operating costs. After subtracting fare revenue, the route would cost $7.5 million a year to operate - a major reason for Walker's opposition. But state transportation officials say federal aid could cover up to 90% of that cost, as it does on the Hiawatha, leaving $750,000 a year for state taxpayers.
By contrast, states pay nothing for long-distance routes like the Empire Builder, which offers one round trip daily and stops in Columbus, Portage, Wisconsin Dells, Tomah and La Crosse as well as Milwaukee.
When the Midwest regional rail network was being mapped out in the 1990s, then-Gov. Tommy G. Thompson and other backers said starting with a new Milwaukee-to-Madison route would provide more "bang for the buck" than first upgrading the current Hiawatha route to 110 mph service, which they said would take more money and more time. Long-term plans still call for speeding up the Milwaukee-to-Chicago leg.
The federal stimulus money was awarded in a competitive process, with dozens of projects nationwide vying for $8 billion. Wisconsin won more than 10% of the cash after submitting a detailed application, built on years of studies, in coordination with other Midwestern projects that also received funding.
Moving the Wisconsin allocation to rail projects that were not considered in the review process could draw objections from other states with projects that either didn't get funded or didn't get all the money they requested. Also, the stimulus money was supposed to go to "shovel-ready" projects that could put people to work soon, and federally required studies could take months or years.
Quinn and New York Governor-elect Andrew Cuomo are already seeking Wisconsin's $810 million and more than $400 million allocated for a planned 79-mph Ohio line that Governor-elect John Kasich has promised to kill.
Of the $810 million for the Milwaukee-to-Madison route, some $70 million would be used for projects that would be needed anyway for the Hiawatha, and Wisconsin received another $12 million for Hiawatha upgrades. Outgoing Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle has said Walker's stance would jeopardize funding for those projects. Federal transportation officials have declined to comment on Doyle's statements.
Illinois also helps pay for the Hiawatha's operating costs and recently received $3.7 million in federal money for Hiawatha bridge upgrades. Federal officials haven't said Walker's stand would imperil that grant, and no one from the federal or Wisconsin governments has discussed shifting Wisconsin's high-speed rail allocation into Hiawatha improvements, said Guy Tridgell, a spokesman for the Illinois Department of Transportation.Coal Ash
Why should you care about coal ash?
If clean water is important to you and your family, you need to know about a silent danger to our waterways and public health.* Coal ash, the waste left over after coal is burned to generate power, contains concentrated amounts of heavy metals such as lead, mercury, arsenic, chromium, and selenium, which are hazardous to human health, and to wildlife. Coal ash contains arsenic, lead, mercury, chromium, and a range of harmful heavy metals and toxic pollutants that poison the air and drinking water supplies of communities living near coal ash dumpsites. Coal ash threatens the respiratory, cardiovascular, and neurological systems of people living near more than 1400 dump sites across the nation. Despite this danger, coal ash is subject to less stringent rules than everyday household garbage! Coal ash, mixed with water to form a toxic slurry, is stored in huge impoundments, commonly called “coal ash ponds” or “lagoons”, which often have no liners to prevent heavy metals from getting into drinking water.*
Alabama has nine coal-fired power plants with at least 44 coal ash ponds resting on rivers and creeks throughout the state. These plants produce 3.2 million tons of coal ash every year, and because of the high quantity of toxic heavy metals, Alabama houses the most toxic coal ash of any other state in the US. *
Coal ash disasters have been plaguing communities living near poisonous and dangerous dump sites – from the 2008 disaster in Tennessee, when a billion gallons of toxic sludge poured onto farmland and into the Emory and Clinch rivers, to the recent failure along North Carolina’s Dan River, when a burst stormwater pipe underneath an unlined coal ash pit dumped 140,000 tons of coal ash and toxic wastewater into the river – the problem with coal ash pollution is getting worse and more dangerous every day.
Over 1.5 million children live near coal ash storage sites and 70 percent of all coal ash lagoons disproportionately impact low-income communities. When coal ash comes in contact with water, a toxic soup of hazardous pollutants can leach out of the waste and poison our water. The EPA has found some coal ash ponds pose a 1 in 50 risk of cancer to residents drinking arsenic-contaminated water – a risk 2000 times higher than EPA’s regulatory goal. The vast majority of states do not require adequate monitoring or liners to stop the release of toxic chemicals, nor do they ensure that massive earthen dams are maintained safely. States have routinely failed to protect their citizens from coal ash – as was evident in North Carolina’s recent handling of the Dan River coal ash spill.
What is the Alabama Rivers Alliance doing about coal ash?
How can I learn more?
Watch this short film from Southern Exposure Film Fellowship program:
Download our brochure addressing coal ash issues in Alabama created by the Alabama Rivers Alliance and partners.
Sources:
“Alabama: A state’s role in coal ash regulation.” (2013). Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and partners. Retrieved from http://www.southeastcoalash.org/ “What you need to know about coal ash.” (2014). Retrieved from http://www.southeastcoalash.org/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congress moved closer on Wednesday to slashing lead content in toys and devoting more government resources to product safety regulation, but final action was not expected until next year.
Democratic presidential candidate U.S. Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) (R) sorts toys collected by his campaign and donated to Toys for Tots in Londonderry, New Hampshire December 19,2007. REUTERS/Brian Snyder
After a surge of recalls of lead-tainted toys, many of them made in China, the House of Representatives voted 407-0 for a bill that would nearly eliminate lead in toys and boost funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC).
“This legislation represents a quantum leap forward in strengthening the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s watchdog role on behalf of American consumers,” said Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, a key backer of the House legislation.
A similar bill is moving through the Senate, but congressional aides said negotiations over language were still under way and a floor vote would not come until next year.
In the interim, Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin said that a 2008 budget bill passed by the Senate on Tuesday included a nearly 30-percent CPSC budget increase, the largest increase in more than 30 years.
With bipartisan support for broader reform and future funding increases, however, lawmakers said they were confident that a House-Senate compromise could be reached soon and a final bill sent to President George W. Bush for consideration.
“Something very close to this bill will be on the president’s desk. We will have a bill-signing ceremony in the Rose Garden sometime later in this Congress,” said Texas Republican Rep. Joe Barton in House floor remarks.
“This bill has the toughest lead standards in the world for children’s products,” Barton said.
Consumer product safety grabbed the public spotlight and Congress’ attention earlier this year amid scores of recalls of products by Mattel Inc, RC2 Corp and other companies due to excessive lead content and other hazards.
The ensuing uproar led House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a few other lawmakers to call for the ouster of CPSC Acting Chairman Nancy Nord. But she refused to quit, while Congress stepped up efforts to reform the agency and tackle the lead problem.
Nord thanked the House for passing its bill and urged the Senate to “follow the House’s lead in passing bipartisan and sensible product safety legislation.”
The House’s bill would require a gradual reduction of lead content in children’s products, with the limit going down to 100 parts per million effective four years after enactment.
It would also require manufacturers to include tracking labels on products to speed recalls of toys for children aged 12 and younger, while mandating independent safety testing of toys by labs accredited by the CPSC.
The National Association of Manufacturers, an industry group, called the House bill “strong, bipartisan legislation to give the CPSC resources it needs to carry out its duties.”
The CPSC back in the 1980s had a staff of 1,000. Today, it has 420 people and only a tiny toy-testing office.
The bill would steadily increase the CPSC’s budget to $100 million by fiscal 2011. Plus, it would raise penalties for failing to cooperate with the CPSC to $10 million from the current $1.25 million, while giving the beleaguered agency $20 million to modernize its toy-testing laboratory.
Nord is one of only two commissioners now serving on the CPSC, which was created in the 1970s to regulate hazards in about 15,000 different consumer products. The House bill would restore the CPSC to its full complement of five commissioners.
Consumers Union and other public interest activist groups praised the House vote.
“The issue now moves to the Senate,” they said in a statement. “We hope to work with both the House and the Senate to get a strong final CPSC reform bill to the president as soon next year as possible.”All the versions of this article: [English] [français]
The France Palestine Solidarity Association (AFPS) has, yet again, become the target of attacks and serious threats by a fringe group that calls itself the "Jewish Brigade". These threats were subsequently relayed by websites including those of the Jewish Defense League (LDJ) and Coolamnews, a website boasting that it has an Israeli army officer at its disposal.
After an "ultimatum" demanding that the AFPS announce on its website that it would end its Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) actions, the home addresses and personal cellphone numbers of the members of the AFPS’s management were disclosed. This was immediately followed by threats, via telephone, of extremely violent physical assault against many of our association’s leaders, including death threats and rape, as well as number spoofing.
In February 2016, the Israeli government announced, without any shame, that it would invest considerable means in discrediting or silencing those around the world who denounce its policies. The aforementioned dark dens of fascist methods are merely minions, doing Israel’s bidding.
What we are confronted with is, in fact, yet another manifestation of the constant interference by the State of Israel in French affairs, which we condemned in a recent press release.
Thus far, despite numerous filings of complaints to the police and requests for intervention, there has been no reaction from the French authorities except for the purely formal replies of the Ministry of the Interior referring us to the judicial authority.
It is worth noting that Facebook was obliged to remove the page of this so-called brigade.
We consider the French authorities to be directly liable. Their inaction is interpreted as encouragement by violent groups such as the LDJ, which the French authorities have permitted to thrive instead of disbanding them. The internationally unique decision by the French authorities to criminalize the call for boycott in the sole case of the State of Israel, and the intolerable statements of France’s then-Prime Minister, who equated criticism of the State of Israel with Anti-Semitism, have given free rein to fanatics who believe they are immune to our laws.
Threats such as those we’ve received will not deter us from the necessary fight for freedom of speech, for law and justice, a fight that we will continue to pursue via all peaceful means, including the call to Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions to enforce the law.
Faced with the intolerable interference of the State of Israel, which seeks to mobilize French citizens in a violent manner against other French citizens, our struggle for justice, open to all people of conscience, whatever their origins or their culture, is also a powerful contribution to the “vivre ensemble” (living together) in our country.
The Executive Board of the AFPSWolf’s Ridge Brewing is giving customers their first chance to take home a bottle of WRB beer later this month.
The brewery will release 22-oz bottles of Dire Wolf imperial stout, Dire Wolf One Line (made with coffee from the local roastery of the same name), and Dire Wolf Canis Mexicanus (infused with chili peppers, vanilla, coffee, cinnamon and cocoa nibs). The One Line variant is one of my favorite beers that Wolf’s Ridge has ever made, with rich coffee notes emphasized in an already stellar stout. Canis Mexicanus packs a little too much heat for my palate, but then again, so do most “mild” sauces. I’m a wuss ok.
The bottle sale will begin at 10am on Saturday, June 27, limit two bottles of each variation per customer. Bottles will retail for $8 for the base Dire Wolf and $10 for the two infusions. There will be live music at the taproom for the release.Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE said if he loses the Republican nomination, people shouldn't expect him to stick around in the public eye.
"They fight like hell for six months, and they're saying horrible things, the worst things you can imagine," Trump said during a rally in Maryland on Sunday.
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"And then one of them loses, one of them wins. And the one who loses says, 'I just want to congratulate my opponent. He is a brilliant man, he'll be a great governor or president or whatever,'" he said.
"I'm not sure you're ever going to see me there. I don't think I'm going to lose, but if I do, I don't think you're ever going to see me again, folks. I think I'll go to Turnberry and play golf or something."
Trump said sometimes the winner will put losing candidates in the administration.
"That's how they get rid of them," he said.
During the rally though, Trump said he expects he'll secure the nomination ahead of the Republican convention in July.
He also said he likes his chances to win all five states in the upcoming contests Tuesday.During a Q&A session with the Los Angeles Times, gun control proponent Micheal Bloomberg claimed the number of American gun deaths exceeds the entire history of American military deaths.
He offered no substantiation for this claim. Rather, he just interjected it into the dialogue, then moved on to the next point.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg admitted that gun control at the federal level is not going to happen anytime in the foreseeable future. He then talked about his efforts to circumvent Washington DC by going directly to the states via ballot initiatives and state legislatures. But his wins at the state level have been scarce at best, and one of his few wins–Nevada–was blocked by Nevada Attorney General Adam Paul Laxalt.
Bloomberg claimed that roughly 31,000 Americans will be killed this year with “illegal handguns.” He offered no substantiation for this claim, but seems to be assuming that a gun legally purchased, then used in crime, is an “illegal” handgun. But he cannot support this claim. After all the effort and money he spent to be sure Americans must go through background checks in order to acquire guns, he cannot then call those guns “illegal” simply because empirical evidence shows background checks fail to stop determined attackers.
Bloomberg told the Times that the number of American gun deaths exceeds the entire history of American military deaths. He said, “There have been more people killed with illegal handguns than soldiers that have died since the Revolutionary War through today in defense of our country.” Again, he provided no substantiation for this claim. But it should be noted that the Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAP) made the same claim in 2015. The claim was wrong then and it is wrong now.
CAP tweeted:
Just since Reagan more Americans have been killed by gun violence in our communities than in every American war, ever pic.twitter.com/GX8XGnuTVn — CAP Action Guns (@CAPActionGuns) September 21, 2015
On September 26, 2015, Breitbart News pointed out CAP’s claim that the number of “gun-related deaths in the United States from 1989 to 2014 [was] 836,290.” They juxtaposed this with their claim that the “total U.S. military killed in war from 1776 to 2015 [was] 656,397.” The problem with this claim is that over 600,000 Americans were killed in the Civil War alone. And consider the the deaths from World War I–approx. 115,000, World War II–418,000, Korea–35,000, and Vietnam–58,000. At this point we have already reached 1,226,000 American military deaths and have not even added the deaths from the American Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish / American War, Desert Storm, Afghanistan, Iraq, and others.
The bottom line: American gun deaths do not even come close to the number of deaths Americans have endured in their relentless fight for freedom.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.# Render tmx from pytmx import os.path import itertools import sdl import pytmx class TMXRender ( object ): def __init__ ( self, filename ): """ :param filename: the map data """ self. filename = filename self. tmx = pytmx. TiledMap ( self. filename ) def load ( self, renderer ): """Load the graphical data into textures compatible with renderer.""" # mainly from pytmx.tmxloader tmxdata = self. tmx # convert angles to float: for ob in self. tmx. objects : ob. rotation = float ( ob. rotation ) for ts in tmxdata. tilesets : path = os. path. join ( os. path. dirname ( tmxdata. filename ), ts. source ) colorkey = getattr ( ts, 'trans', None ) if colorkey : # Convert HTML-format hex color to (r, g, b): colorkey = tuple ( int ( colorkey [ x : x + 2 ], 16 ) for x in range ( 0, 6, 2 )) surface = sdl. image. load ( path ) if not surface : raise Exception ( sdl. getError ()) try : if colorkey and surface. format. BitsPerPixel == 8 : i = sdl. mapRGB ( surface. format, * colorkey ) assert sdl. setColorKey ( surface, 1, i ) == 0 ts. image = sdl. createTextureFromSurface ( renderer, surface ) finally : sdl. freeSurface ( surface ) rc, format, access, w, h = sdl. queryTexture ( ts. image ) # margins and spacing tilewidth = ts. tilewidth + ts. spacing tileheight = ts. tileheight + ts. spacing tile_size = ts. tilewidth, ts. tileheight # some tileset images may be slightly larger than the tile area # ie: may include a banner, copyright, etc. # this compensates for that width = int (((( w - ts. margin * 2 + ts. spacing ) / tilewidth ) * tilewidth ) - ts. spacing ) height = int (((( h - ts. margin * 2 + ts. spacing ) / tileheight ) * tileheight ) - ts. spacing ) # trim off any pixels on the right side that isn't a tile # this happens if extra graphics are included on the left, # but they are not actually part of the tileset width -= ( w - ts. margin ) % tilewidth # using product avoids the overhead of nested loops p = itertools. product ( xrange ( ts. margin, height + ts. margin, tileheight ), xrange ( ts. margin, width + ts. margin, tilewidth |
." What they did, what she did, probably overstepped a massive amount of boundaries they had both set up in order to keep their relationship "natural", and this was dawning on her more the longer they stayed silent.
All she needed was confirmation that either things were still okay between them, or that things weren't. And while Elsa felt prepared for either outcome, she was obviously hoping that it was the former. Just so she could ease her conscience.
Finally a noise was made when the bed groaned as Anna got off of it, her hands timidly folding across her chest. Elsa scanned the redhead's face to see if there was even a sliver of regret or remorse, promising to apologize profusely if there was. But there wasn't. There were cheeks flushed with red, lips curled up into a smile that would have been missed had Elsa not been so close to her, and eyes fixed on the carpeted floor, but there was no regret.
"So, uh...I'll talk to you tonight?" Anna muttered, still looking down at the ground.
Oh thank god, she doesn't hate you.
Elsa flashed a small, relieved smile and gingerly placed her hands on the younger girl's shoulders she assumed to be highly sensitive at the moment. She said two words she knew she could say: "Of course."
"Anna you know I don't usually mind you staying at a friend's house, but you really should have told your mom and I a lot sooner."
"Sorry about that dad." Anna replied as she tossed her bag inside the back her parent's car and made her way in soon afterwards. "It was a bit of a last minute thing."
She settled herself inside and pulled down the seatbelt until she heard a click. The text that her dad got obviously didn't contain the whole truth, all she said was that she was gonna be at Elise's house again and that her older sister would be driving them there. But at least the whole "last minute" thing was truthful.
Her dad adjusted the rear view mirror to catch his daughter's gaze, who looked back with the most apologetic look she could muster for the unknowing lie. "Alright well...just make sure to let us know earlier next time, okay?"
Anna nodded, "I will." The less they dwelled on this topic, the better.
"You ready to go, honey?" her mom leaned over from the passenger seat and asked with a genuine, motherly smile. The smile faded quickly, replaced with a curious look and a quick sniff of the air. "Is that...mint?"
The redhead felt her spine tingle in sharp contrast to the sensation she had felt earlier. Elsa's perfume must have gotten on her when they...
Anna did her best to recover by going to the one tactic that hadn't failed her yet. "Oh, um...yeah it is. Elise let me borrow some of her perfume." she lied...again...again.
And the lie once again worked to sickening perfection as her mother smiled like her daughter was a baby again, taking her first steps. "Aww, well that was nice of her."
"Yeah...it was..." Anna stated vaguely while nervously running a hand across her neck, in the same spot that Elsa's lips had been. She was still in disbelief that...all of that had just happened. But for now she repressed the memory, after all it would be a lot harder to lie about why her face was beet red than to lie about why she smelled like mint.
Lies. Just like always.
As the car lurched forward, Anna's stomach felt like it was doing just the same. She should have been happy, ecstatic, at how she and Elsa's relationship was still alive, and kicking, and no doubt progressing, but all she felt was...sick. Again with the lies, their relationship was built on lies that she singlehandedly put down brick by pitiful brick.
Elsa had always been honest with her, except for this time, but it was really her fault for trying to push her into disclosing something she already knew about vaguely and something that Elsa clearly didn't want to revisit. All Elsa did was tell the truth and it was her honesty that would always make Anna feel better about her own dishonesty. Which, as she reminded herself constantly, was selfish and downright stupid.
And that wasn't fair to Elsa, to her girlfriend, the girl she lo-
Anna's eyes grew wide as she caught her mind drifting to that one word. The one word neither of them had said out loud yet. But getting to that point in her thoughts...it had to mean something right?
She leaned against the car door and stared out the window, the blurry scenery behind the glass acted as a background for her inner soliloquy.
Were they at that point yet? Had they been taking things naturally enough that it was time to break out that "l" world. Anna really didn't know; after all Elsa was the first person she'd ever actually been with.
Two dates in and the fact that they had only made themselves official a month ago should have hindered any chances of that being true, but at the same time maybe it was one of those things where it just had to feel right, no matter how much time had passed.
But again, she didn't know. Although there was one thing she did know, and that's if she ever did want to say that word then she'd have to quit with the lies, start being honest and finally come clean. It was time to officially take those words Violet said to heart.
Anna clenched her fist seated on her lap with determination as she made an ultimatum, a deadline. Next Friday after the concert she would tell Elsa, and her parents, the truth. Get this all out in the open.
And if her parents forgave her, and more importantly if Elsa forgave her, then maybe...maybe she could say it.
She just hope she wasn't too late.
Another blast of water was sprayed across her face and this time Elsa put her hands up to defend herself against the assault. She had been lying down on her bed, shamelessly recollecting her time with Anna and saving it for later, when her sister barged into the room and launched her attack.
"Ah god! What the hell Elise, fucking stop!"
"Not until you tell me what the heck you were thinking!" the younger sister rebutted, trying to find gaps in Elsa's defenses with her plastic spray bottle.
The endless droplets continued to pelt Elsa despite her best efforts to block them. "What do you-where the fuck did you get a spray bottle anyway?!" she said, shifting her question to what she thought was more important.
"That's not important right now!" Elise continued until the bottle finally began to wheeze out puffs of air instead of water. Still she continued to point it at her older sister like a pitchfork aimed at Frankenstein's monster. "She's 14, Elsa! 14!"
"Yeah I know that, but I don't see why that's-ow fuck!" Elsa's comment was cut short as the spray bottle hit her right on her wrist with enough force to legitimately hurt. The pain throbbed as she lowered her defenses and clutched her wrist with her unharmed hand. "What is your problem?!"
"What is your problem?" her irate little sister said while jabbing a finger towards Elsa. "Her neck? Seriously?! What do you think would happen if someone at school saw any marks you left? What do you think they'd say about Anna, huh?!"
Elsa hissed as she put pressure on the bruise. "What do you mean..."
Oh.
"Okay I know what you saw looked pretty bad but I'm telling you I didn't...I didn't go there. I hadn't-"
"But you were going to. Weren't you?"
Elsa was floored, there was just no way to answer that. But the easy out was right there in front of her. She could say that of course she wasn't going to, she cared about Anna and wouldn't do anything to hurt her. It would be so easy to say that, but there was no way she could make it sound convincing. Make no mistake she would never do anything to intentionally hurt Anna, but when she lost all control of her actions, when she did things before even questioning if they were okay, that was the worrying part. That was what was making her so apprehensive from telling the truth.
Would she have gone farther had Elise not stopped them?...yes, and she was deeply ashamed of her honesty.
Her shame was magnified as she tore her gaze away from her sister and nodded meekly.
"Elsa you can't...you can't do that!" Elise furiously tapped a finger on her temple. "You're the adult here, you need to know better."
Elsa stood up from the bed, her shirt was still damp from the water and it caused a chill to sweep through her skin. It helped in dulling the nerves that were keeping her from fighting back with some dignity. "I...I do know...I mean I should. Look I know I fucked up okay, but just-"
"Is this about Belle?"
The unexpected utterance of her ex's name, in a flash, cast a dark cloud looming over Elsa, souring her already terrible mood. "Wh-what?" she stammered.
"Are you pushing your limits with Anna because you miss how...close you were with your ex?"
The cloud started to rumble and crash lightning down around Elsa, frying her dulled nerves and blanking out her vision. She could feel it, that beast taking over for the second time that day, shifting from carnal to hostile. "Elise th-that's not fair you can't-"
"Are you still not over her?"
"Would you please just stop interrupting me and let me-"
Do you even like Anna or are you just-"
A lightning bolt whipped through Elsa and she lashed out, her palm smacked across her sister's cheek, and her face contorted into a haunting combination of disgust and anger. She felt her blood boiling and her ears ringing as she fully lost herself inside the belly of the beast, watching her actions from within.
Holy shit.
Elise cupped her stinging cheek and looked at her older sister hurt and shocked. There were tears forming in the corner of her eyes.
Okay fuck, just...don't make this worse. You've gone too far, just apologize.
Elsa was too far gone to do anything of the sort. Her eyes were coated with anger and frustration and she stalked slowly towards her fearful younger sister.
Apologize!
She subconsciously drowned out the voice in her head and grit her teeth, towering over Elise like a lion about to devour its prey.
"Get the fuck out of my room." Elsa growled.
There was a deafening silence between the two as those words festered, with Elise trying her best to hold back tears and Elsa holding that frightening look of intimidation. The room seemed to grow colder and colder as time passed.
Finally Elise began to walk away, slowly at first and then pacing towards the door while wiping her face on her sleeve. Elsa heard a sniffle before the door closed once again.
Her rage diminished as suddenly as it had surfaced, causing Elsa's knees to buckle underneath her and send her crashing down onto the floor, defeated and drained. She gripped tufts of the carpet in her hands tight enough that her knuckles turned white, her fingers clenched and unclenched in time to her panicked breathing.
What the hell did you just do?Please enjoy this thoughtful reminder of the place for sacred, uncaptured experience in spirituality and worship. It's a needed reminder for Generation Instagram. -Paul
Walter Mitty: When are you going to take [the picture]? Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it. Walter Mitty: Stay in it? Sean O'Connell: Yeah. Right there. Right here.
If you've not seen the most recent screen version of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, let me quickly put the above exchange into context for you. Mitty (the classic risk-averse, day-dreaming desk worker) has just braved an active volcano, narrowly survived treacherous Icelandic seas, and finally scaled the Himalayas in search of world renowned photographer Sean O'Connell.
O'Connell, for who knows how long, has hoped to catch even a glimpse of the elusive snow leopard. This creature, according to the film's...
1Voigt and two other NPD leaders were found guilty of offending German national footballer Patrick Owomoyela – who was born in Germany to a Nigerian father and a German mother – in a World Cup pamphlet printed in 2006. The cover of the planner showed a German football jersey with the caption, “White. Not just a shirt-colour! For a truly national team!”
The other two defendants, a 42-year-old and a 66-year-old, were sentenced to suspended sentences of seven and ten months respectively. All three NPD men must also pay fines of €2,000.
The case was centred on the number on the shirt pictured, which the state prosecutors said was 25, Owomoyela's jersey number in the 2006 World Cup squad.
A second version of the pamphlet showed a mocked-up picture of the German national team with only one white team member featuring a text suggesting that the team was becoming overrun by dark-skinned immigrants. The prosecutors said that the flyer tried to disqualify non-white Germans the right to play for the national team.
By receiving suspended sentences the three will not serve any actual jail time.Stanley Williams
Kentucky running back Stanley Williams runs the ball during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Missouri, Saturday, Sept. 26, 2015, in Lexington, Ky. Kentucky won the game 21-13. (AP Photo/David Stephenson)
(David Stephenson)
Stanley "Boom" Williams is expected to start at running back for Kentucky against Auburn Thursday, Wildcats head coach Mark Stoops announced Monday.
The 5-foot-9, 196-pound sophomore was held out of Kentucky's overtime win over Eastern Kentucky while dealing with a personal issue.
"He's back in good standing," Stoops said.
RELATED: Watch Stoops, coordinators preview Auburn game
According to The Courier-Journal, Williams missed multiple practices prior to the EKU game, but is back at No. 1 on Kentucky's depth chart. When asked if Williams values his role more after sitting a game out, Stoops said, "I believe so."
"That's part of us building our program and growing, and bringing along some young guys still. Just because we've talked about them for a year and a half doesn't mean they're grown yet."
Williams is Kentucky's leading rusher this season with 343 yards and one touchdown on 47 carries, an average of 7.3 yards per carry. He has eight catches for 30 yards. In Williams' absence, Jojo Kemp carried the load for the Wildcats against Eastern Kentucky, rushing 14 times for 46 yards and a score.
Auburn (3-2, 0-2 SEC) faces Kentucky (4-1, 2-1) at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.The announcement coming out of the Nov. 1 meeting of the provincial and territorial ministers of finance suggests expansion of the Canada Pension Plan is much closer to becoming a reality.
[np_storybar title=”Some questions about expanding the Canada Pension Plan” link=””]
Will it be fully funded? If provincial and territorial ministers really meant “fully funded,” younger workers especially should be relieved since it means they don’t have to pick up the cost of improving existing pensions for older workers or retirees.
The current $51,100 is too low, and PEI has proposed $102,000, a $75,000 ceiling is more affordable.The CPP payout is currently 25% of the average earnings ceiling in the last three years before retirement. It should be raised to the amount that gets most workers over the “adequacy threshold”; this may be 30% or 35% subject to further testing.Raising the normal retirement age from 65 to 67 makes sense for longer life spans, a coming worker shortage, and to align with OAS and GIS, even if change wasn’t implemented for 20 or 30 years. Early retirement from age 60 should still be allowed.The finance ministers should clarify the pension deal between Canada and its citizens and how far the government should go before it infringes on individual freedom to decide how much we spend versus save.
What’s next? Finance ministers meet again, this time with federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, in December.
[/np_storybar]
This is a far cry from December 2009 when the same ministers met in Whitehorse and concluded that the country’s retirement system was in need only of a little fine-tuning. Since then, the two main holdouts, Alberta and Quebec, have apparently jumped onto the Big CPP bandwagon and even the federal government, which would prefer a voluntary savings plan solution, is likely to come onside.
So, what will an expanded CPP look like? The announcement was short on details but the carefully chosen words still offer a few insights on what to expect. First, the ministers agreed that any improvement should be “fully funded and focus on today’s workers.”
This phrase strongly implies that any improvements will apply only to future service since an increase in existing benefits would not be fully funded for generations. If the ministers really mean “fully funded,” younger workers especially should be relieved. We have already seen what happens when we decide to grant ourselves benefits without paying for them. The current CPP benefit is worth only 6% of pay but is costing us 9.9% into perpetuity because the previous generations did not pay enough.
The announcement also asserts that it is “important to improve the future incomes of middle-income workers.” This has to mean that the CPP earnings ceiling, which tracks the national average wage, will be raised since the current ceiling of $51,100 is too low to capture much of the income of middle-income workers.
Once again, this is quite encouraging since raising the ceiling is the most effective change we can make to the CPP. To explain why, we can use the results from LifePaths, a sophisticated computer model developed by Statistics Canada which, among other things, estimates the income replacement rates of retirees. Most people want a replacement rate of 100% meaning they could maintain the same standard of living after retirement as while they were working.
Because so many big expenditures vanish by retirement, we can have much less income after retirement than when we were working and still achieve a 100% replacement ratio. With this in mind, the LifePaths results show the retirement problem is really concentrated within one income group.
Consider first those who earn less than half the average wage. Almost all of them will enjoy replacement rates of 100% or more, thanks to Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) alone. They won’t even need CPP to get there and higher CPP benefits would reduce their GIS income.
Those who earn between half and one times the average wage (i.e. $25,000 to $50,000) are doing nearly as well. Over half of the recent retirees in this income group have replacement rates of at least 115% while only 1 in 10 has a replacement rate below 85%.
The next income group consists of individuals who earn one to two times the national average wage, i.e. $50,000 to $100,000. These are the middle-income earners and about a third of them will have a replacement ratio less than 85%. Certainly they could be helped by increasing the benefit accrual rate (see below) but that would be overkill for the lower-income groups.
The more effective solution is to raise the CPP earnings ceiling. While I am on record as endorsing a $75,000 ceiling, PEI recently proposed increasing it to $102,000, which is defensible but is it affordable in this fragile economy, given the extra employee and employer contributions it entails?
The Nov. 1 announcement is less clear on whether the pension accrual rate would be increased but most proponents of Big CPP have suggested it should be. The CPP pension is currently 25% of the average earnings ceiling in the last three years before retirement. Whether it should be increased to 30%, 35% or 40% is not immediately clear. We should be determining the lowest rate north of 25% that produces a satisfactory outcome for the largest group of workers.
Unfortunately, nothing in the announcement suggests that a higher normal retirement age is on the ministers’ radar screen but raising it to 67 makes sense for three reasons. First, we are living longer and should expect to work a little longer to pay for it. Most developed countries are already phasing in a normal retirement age of 67 or 68 for this reason. Second, the economy will eventually need 60-somethings to work a little longer so a higher retirement age supports the public interest. Third, a normal retirement age of 67 would align the CPP with Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement, where the normal retirement age is rising to 67 by 2029.
CPP at 67 would be easy to implement because no one would be forced to work longer and no one would suffer a drop in pension, provided the CPP accrual rate is raised and individuals retain the option to retire as early as age 60. For example, consider a worker earning $50,000. Under the current CPP, she would have a CPP benefit of $12,500 at 65. If the CPP normal retirement age became 67 and the benefit was raised to 35%, she could still retire at age 65 in which case her reduced pension would be about $14,100.
This is based on 35% at 67 then reduced by 7.2% per annum between 65 and 67.
The change would not have to take effect for another 20 or 30 years but it should be announced in conjunction with the improvements described above. It will be much more contentious to make it happen after the fact.
Although the finance ministers appear to be on the right track, they might want to articulate the pension deal between Canada and its citizens. Clearly, we want everyone to be able to achieve a 100% replacement rate but should the government be responsible to ensure this happens? Shouldn’t individuals bear some responsibility, too, by saving in RRSPs and TFSAs? We should also consider at what point forced savings infringes unduly on individual freedoms. Assuming we don’t leave ourselves destitute, shouldn’t we be permitted to enjoy our income while we are still young rather than being forced to save it all for our twilight years?
We should expect to hear more by December when the finance ministers meet again, this time with the federal finance minister.Breakers coach Paul Henare had a long chat with his players to point out a few home truths after their fourth defeat in the last five ANBL games.
New Zealand Breakers coach Paul Henare has delivered a withering assessment of his free-falling team after their final quarter meltdown against Adelaide at Spark Arena on Friday night.
"Soft. Soft," said Henare as he assessed a 34-11 final quarter that saw the visiting 36ers storm back from nine down early to waltz to a 90-75 victory on the back of a 22-2 run that turned the game on its head.
And when Henare uses the word "soft" you know it's through gritted teeth. As a club legend who has his number hanging from the rafters at Atlas Place he never backed down from a challenge and always played with a full tank of commitment juice.
It must be killing him to see his team playing with so little heart, passion and intensity. Not to mention nous.
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"Guys were just driving past and laying the ball up. I definitely look at myself and defensive schemes to try put us in better positions. But that was just soft," he added
You know there is some soul-searching going on among the Breakers who led for the first three quarters against the Sixers, then undid their hard work with the limpest final stanza they have produced all season. It was their fourth defeat in five games since the Fiba international break, as they have plummeted from a commanding 9-1 record to a suddenly reachable 10-5.
Henare was later than he's ever been for his post-game media, finally turning up three-quarters of an hour after the final buzzer. That, he explained, was because he and his players had been having "a good chat".
Asked the tone of that conversation, he replied: "We've got the weekend off and I didn't want to sit on that until Monday. So while it was fresh in everyone's mind we hashed out a few things and talked them over and hopefully we'll see some change. We're hurting a little bit.
"It's a tough one to swallow. We played 25 minutes of pretty darned good basketball and then we have a fourth quarter like that. It is a balancing act. Do you get on the guys for a crappy 10 minutes of hoops and forget about the rest?
"But the way we finished that game is a sign of how we've been the last few weeks. There's just a little bit of softness about us and accountability is lacking right now. We needed to talk that through."
To put the Breakers' total and utter collapse into perspective, the 15-point winning margin for the Sixers was the largest achieved in 5891 games for a team that trailed through the first three periods since quarters were introduced to the NBL.
Henare's men shot a lousy 36 per cent from the floor, and made just seven of 29 three-pointers. In the final period they made just four of 21 shots, while allowing the Sixers to make 12 of their 19 attempts.
Their defence on Adelaide sixth man Ramone Moore was more or less non-existent, the big guard having his way en route to 27 points (11/16 FG), five boards, five assists and zero turnovers (the first time that's been done off the pine in the 40-minute NBL).
"He's talented player, a big guard, but having a game like that with the majority of the points in the paint was unacceptable."
And so it continued. Excluding Alex Pledger's 12 points on four-of-11 shooting, no Breakers starter cracked double-figures or made more than three field goals. Tom Abercrombie had just two points on one-of-six shooting. Imports Edgar Sosa (-27 in the scoring plus/minus) and DJ Newbill combined to shoot six of 22. Mika Vukona was a non-factor.
Good enough?
"Not at all," said Henare. "That last quarter we went away from what was working well. DJ and Sos and whoever else were just jacking the ball up from three rather than getting in the paint like we'd done the whole game."
The only thing resembling a positive for the Kiwi club was a strong bench effort, headed by a busy 11 points in just nine minutes from Finn Delany and a vague return to shooting form for veteran Kirk Penney (11 points at a five-of-12 clip).
The Breakers players have a rare weekend off to think about things before reassembling Monday to prepare for Friday's visit to Sydney. Suddenly the worst team in the league looks a formidable hurdle.Across the United States, concerned parents and students are refusing to participate in new tests aligned with the federal government’s Common Core state standards, and international journalist and educator Alex Newman could not be more excited about it.
“The explosive growth of the opt-out movement has been one extremely encouraging development in a sea of bad news when it comes to government education in the United States,” Newman told WND. “As more and more parents and teachers realize what is going on with Common Core, I expect this movement to continue growing by leaps and bounds.”
Newman, the co-author of “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children,” believes Common Core and its affiliated tests are not just ineffective but dangerous.
“There is no doubt that this Obama scheme to nationalize education is designed not to educate children properly, but to shape their minds with propaganda and reduce their critical thinking abilities for nefarious purposes,” Newman said. “As we show in our new book (“Crimes of the Educators”), rather than improve education, Common Core is the next phase in the education establishment’s destruction of American children. One state lawmaker with an education degree told me this plot was ‘state-sponsored child abuse.’ He is right.”
Read the details about your children’s schools, in “Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”
Many parents and students appear to have reached a similar conclusion, choosing to opt out of the Common Core tests. For example, nearly 1,000 students in the Portland, Oregon, Public School District have opted out of taking the new Smarter Balanced tests scheduled for later this month. The Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) is one of two federally funded multi-state consortia in charge of developing tests aligned with Common Core standards.
In Pacific Grove, California, one mother told local news station KION that she chose to withdraw her fifth-grade son from this month’s SBAC test upon discovering the test would not affect her son’s grades.
The mother also said she didn’t know she was allowed to opt out until another parent mentioned it. While California parents are allowed to make that choice, school districts don’t generally mention it to them.
That seems to be the case elsewhere as well. In Kennebunk, Maine, several parents complained at a school board meeting that their district did not make it clear their students had a right to opt out of the new SBAC test. The assistant superintendent had sent parents a letter describing the new Common Core-aligned test, but parents claimed the letter didn’t give information on how to opt out.
Newman, who has written extensively on education issues in the U.S. and worldwide, said states have different policies on opting out of the Common Core testing regime. Some claim the exams are mandatory, while others clearly give parents and students the right to refuse. Regardless of what a state’s laws are, Newman believes people always have a right to refuse what he sees as federal encroachment on a child’s education.
“Government does not own your children, so regardless of what bureaucrats and politicians in some especially radical states say, parents need to absolutely stand firm to protect their kids and their privacy,” Newman said. “We cannot allow government to usurp parents’ role in raising children and making decisions on education or anything else.
“Bureaucrats making lawless threats against parents and children who refuse to be subjected to this unconstitutional invasion of privacy are way out of line and need to be held accountable by voters, taxpayers, and our elected officials. Parents should research the law in their state carefully, but we must never allow ourselves to be intimidated by these lawless threats.”
It’s not just parents and students who oppose Common Core. Some teachers oppose it as well, and in one Seattle school district, the students are saving their teachers the trouble of protesting. At Garfield High School, the site of a 2013 testing boycott, roughly half the juniors have refused to take the new Smarter Balanced tests. Therefore, teachers who oppose the tests have said they don’t feel the need to protest this time around.
New York State has seemingly been the center of the opt-out movement. The Washington Post reported that about 60,000 New York students refused to take the state’s Common Core-aligned tests last year, and even more are expected to decline this year.
That anti-Common Core spirit was on display Tuesday in New Paltz, when more than 100 students, parents and teachers held a rally to call on families in their region to boycott the tests.
New York state law makes no provision for parents to opt out of the tests, although some state lawmakers want to change that. Assemblyman Dean Murray, a Republican, recently sponsored a bill to allow students to refuse the tests without negative consequences.
Newman believes students should refuse Common Core tests regardless of any threats of punishment, because he sees the alternative as far worse: a dumbed-down population that lacks privacy.
“These federally funded Common Core tests are being used to gather unimaginable amounts of private data on your child for the federal government – records that will follow him or her from ‘cradle to career,’ as Obama officials put it, and beyond,” Newman warned.
But Newman is encouraged by the opt-out movement, believing it could stop the education establishment from achieving its goals.
“Because the federally funded national testing regime is so crucial to both the Orwellian data-mining and the alignment of school curricula with Common Core, I think the opt-out movement may play a major role in derailing the whole abomination,” Newman said.
“Parents who love their children and do not want the federal government creating invasive dossiers on them need to educate themselves and refuse to participate in this nightmarish scheme foisted on America by an out-of-control Obama administration. Our children deserve better.”Request processing workflow in Spring Web MVC :
Front Controller (DispatcherServlet) receives requests based on the url-pattern mentioned inside servlet-mapping in web.xml. Based on HandlerMapping (map of URL and Controller), Front Controller delegates the request to the matching controller. Handler method of the matching controller is responsible for processing the delegated request and returns ModeAndView to the Front Controller (DispatcherServlet). DispatcherServlet resolves the logical view name to actual view using ViewResolver and passes the Model object to the view. Response is prepared using the Model and actual view. Then the control goes back to the DispatcherServlet. DispatcherServlet returns the response which gets rendered in the browser.
Image courtesy: springsource.org
Tools and Technologies used in this article :
Note : Spring 3 requires at least JDK 5. So, make sure you have JDK 5 or above.
1. Create a Java Web Project using m2e
Select from the menu File --> New --> Other --> Maven --> Maven Project. Browse to the workspace location and click 'Next' button.
Type 'webapp' in the 'Filter' field and select archetype'maven-archetype-webapp' to generate a simple java web application using Maven. Click 'Next' button.
Specify archetype parameters (Group Id, Artifact, Version and Package) and click 'Finish' button.
2. Add Project Dependencies in pom.xml
Add dependency of Spring MVC 3 in Maven pom.xml.
Note : Spring MVC depends on spring-core, spring-beans, spring-context, spring-web. If we add'spring-webmvc' dependency in pom.xml then all the required dependencies / libraries will be automatically downloaded and added to the project's classpath by Maven.
File : pom.xml
3. Controller Class and Request Mapping
Create a spring controller class called SpringMVCHelloController in package 'com.srccodes.spring.controller' and copy following code into it.
File : SpringMVCHelloController.java
@Controller annotation indicates that this class serves the role of a controller. The Servlet dispatcher scans @Controller annotated Controller classes for mapped handler methods and detects @RequestMapping annotations.
@RequestMapping annotation specifies that this handler method will process all requests beginning with '/' in the URL and return the logical view name.
'org.springframework.ui.Model' object is a map which is passed by the Spring container while invoking the handler method 'printHelloWorld'. The message string 'Hello World!' has been added to 'Model' object against the key'message'. This model object is available in the view. We can use the key'message' to get the value and display the same in the UI.
4. Create a JSP page as View
Now we need to create a JSP page called helloWorld.jsp under 'WEB-INF/pages' directory and copy the following jsp file content. We have used the key'message' in expression '${message}' to get the value and display the same in 'helloWorld.jsp'.
File : helloWorld.jsp
5. Add Spring Configuration File
Create an xml file called dispatcher-servlet.xml under 'WEB-INF' directory and copy the following content.
File : dispatcher-servlet.xml
The above configuration file provides context information to the Spring container. '<context:component-scan>' enables the auto-detection of annotated components (like Controller, Service etc). So spring container will scan and load all the annotated component (e.g. SpringMVCHelloController) from the package 'com.srccodes.spring.controller' and it's subpackages.
'<mvc:annotation-driven>' specifies that we are using annotation based configuration.
ViewResolver provides a mapping between logical view name and actual view. It enables us to render models in UI without tying us to a specific view technology like JSPs, JSF, Velocity templates etc. Handler method defined in Controller class must resolve to a logical view name. In our case, 'printHelloWorld' handler method returns 'helloWorld' view name. It gets resolved to the path 'WEB-INF/pages/helloWorld.jsp' by the 'InternalResourceViewResolver' by adding prefix '/WEB-INF/pages/' and suffix '.jsp' to the view name 'helloWorld'.
6. Integrate Spring with Web Application
Copy the following content in your web.xml file.
File: web.xml
DispatcherServlet (Front Controller) is mapped with the <url-pattern> '/'. Upon initialization of the DispatcherServlet, Spring MVC looks for a configuration file called [servlet-name]-servlet.xml under the WEB-INF directory and creates the beans defined there. In our case the file is 'dispatcher-servlet.xml'.
7. Overall Project Structure
8. Deploy and Run the Application
Right click on the project 'SpringMVCHelloWorld' and select from context menu 'Run As' --> 'Run on Server'. Select the existing tomcat server. If not available then manually define a new web server.Click "Finish" button. The web application will be deployed in the tomcat web server and a browser will be opened with 'Hello World!' message as shown below
http://localhost:8080/SpringMVCHelloWorld
Download Source Code
ReferencesChinese state media thanks women for being hot
In an attempt to highlight the role of women in Beijing’s annual National People’s Congress, China’s party newspaper the People’s Daily published "Beautiful female journalists at two sessions," consisting of women asking questions and "beautifying" China’s legislative session. It’s hard to think of a more awkward way for a media outlet to celebrate International Women’s Day, except maybe last year’s offering from China’s state news wire Xinhua: "Attractive females at NPC, CPCC sessions."
A few points here: Surprisingly for staid state media, Xinhua and the People’s Daily publish a lot of click bait in the form of near naked women: See for example today’s "Bikini Parade in Panama to set Guinness Record," and "Seductive leg models in |
attend and our turnout diminished.
Following a powerful rally at Holladay Park, we took to the streets to march. Although our group consisted nearly entirely minors simply showing solidarity and resistance in a peaceful manner, police aggressively blocked roadways and attempted to intimidate us. Still, everyone exemplified restraint and no violence or destruction of property took place.
It was clear from the start that the police were singling out Greg and Kat. We witnessed them pushing the two around and trying to separate them from the group. Police also rammed their bikes and motorcycles into us, threatened us, hit and pushed us, ran over our feet and yelled in our faces. Meanwhile, the Portland Police Bureau was tweeting their concern for the safety of students. Do not let them tell you they were protecting us tonight. The only real "danger" we experienced tonight were the actions of the police.
This all came to a climax when cops deliberately separated Gregory and Kathryn from our march as they were doing nothing but supporting our peaceful demonstration. A large police officer pinned Greg down and put him in handcuffs. Meanwhile, as Kat was hugging Greg, the police grabbed and threw her onto the ground. Male police officers pulled and twisted her arms and began violently touching her and ripping off her jacket. She screamed in pain and shouted arequest to be patted down by a female officer, but the male cops ignored it and continued to violate her. It has later been reported that Kat's hand was allegedly broken during the arrest.
The scene left many of us in shock. Although we recognize that this type of brutality occurs every day, especially to people of color, seeing this unprovoked violence unfold firsthand was a new experience for many.
Soon after, we headed to the police station to show our solidarity for those who were arrested. We sat on the curb in front of the station as officers chained the doors shut. They took pictures and selfies of us as they laughed and grinned with glee. These cops, Officer Taylor and Officer Tyler found the violent suppression of free speech to be a laughing matter. As our protest ended and students began to walk away, the police grabbed a final victim, known activist Micah Rhodes who was simply walking on the sidewalk peacefully, and put him under arrest.
Tonight's events are unacceptable. What occurred were planned-out, tactical arrests. Now, Kat, Greg and Micah are being held as political prisoners. This is police tyranny. It is an unsuccessful attempt to drown out the voices of students who are scared of this clearly oppressive police bureau and government. Portland Public Schools and many media sources are only covering up the police's abuses by furthering the false narrative of Greg, Kat and Micah being outside agitators encouraging students to unlawfully protest.
We, as students, refuse to be silenced. We stand with tonight's arrestees and pledge to do whatever we can to support them. We call on Portland Public Schools to consider whether they want to continue to take the side of an oppressive police bureau or stand in solidarity with their students and staff attempting to make our schools safe places for all. We ask that the media report truthfully from all perspectives and not be swayed by false accounts of events. We demand that the Portland Police Bureau drop all charges against Gregory McKelvey, Kathryn Stevens and Micah Rhodes and examine who it is they truly serve and protect.
We will not be intimidated. We will continue our fight against bigotry. We will resist.
- Callie Quinn-Ward, Dylan Palmer, Finn Hawley-Blue and other student organizers
-- Tony Hernandez
thernandez@oregonian.com
503-294-5928
@tonyhreports
Oregonian/OregonLive reporter Jim Ryan contributed to this report.Israel’s decades-long policy of deliberate ambiguity about its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme is being challenged more than ever before, by the international community and by voices within the Israeli society.
While Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu devoted most of his UN speech on Tuesday to Iran's alleged nuclear aspirations, his own country's WMD strategy might be headed for a dramatic change.
The ambiguity policy describes Israel's refusal to admit it has WMD. The country is alleged to have launched a secret nuclear programme in the 1960s, led by current Israeli president Shimon Peres who was then working as a director-general in the Ministry of Defense. The ambiguity policy was shaped under the influence of negotiations between Israeli and American leaders, serving both sides' interest of establishing Israeli military dominance while making it appear as if international norms are not compromised.
Significant information about Israel’s WMD programme was first leaked by nuclear-technician turned whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu in the 1980s. Over the years several news organisations have exposed more details about the programme, and today Israel is recognised worldwide as a nuclear state with 80 nuclear warheads per moderate estimates and up to 200 according to others. Nevertheless, Israeli officials have traditionally maintained the ambiguity policy, never confirming the existence of WMDs in their military’s arsenal. US administrations - including the current one - have responded to Israel’s nuclear ambiguity with a 'don’t ask, don’t tell' policy.
As long as Israel is following this ambiguity about possessing nuclear weapons, there would be never any chance for a WMD-free zone in the Middle East. Hossein Mousavian, formerly of Iran’s nuclear diplomacy team
Recent regional developments involving Syria and Iran have put a spotlight on Israel's WMD policies.
The use of chemical weapons in Syria turned attention on Israel's undeclared chemical stockpile, while Iran’s apparent willingness to have its nuclear facilities supervised by international inspectors could signal a new climate of transparency in nuclear affairs. Speaking at the United Nations last week, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Israel must declare it has nuclear capabilities.
Israel has been a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) since 1957 but it has never signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) - a landmark charter aimed at achieving nuclear disarmament.
On September 20, the latest attempt to get Israel to ratify the NPT failed when a resolution initiated by Arab countries at the IAEA’s annual meeting was rejected by a vote of 51-43. As long as it does not ratify the NPT, Israel can maintain its nuclear ambiguity.
Essential first step
Hossein Mousavian, who served on Iran's nuclear diplomacy team and is currently a visiting professor at Princeton, suggests that Israel removing its ambiguity policy is the essential first step to long term stability in the region.
"This would help for realization of the WMD-free zone in the Middle East," Mousavian said. "As long as Israel is following this ambiguity about possessing nuclear weapons, there would be never any chance for a WMD-free zone in the Middle East."
Other nuclear experts suggest the ambiguity policy is meaningless and only reflects Israel’s reluctance to comply with international law. Martin Malin, Executive Director of the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard, believes the policy is outdated.
"I think it serves Israel’s interest less and less," said Malin. "The purpose of the policy was to create as little incentive as possible for other states to create weapons, but I think that the decisions other states make are not really influenced by the ambiguity policy."
Amongst Israeli experts, opinions are mixed. Reuven Pedatzur, a senior military affairs analyst writing for Haaretz, suggested the ambiguity policy and is a "dangerous illusion" because Israel is relying on US support and it is only a matter of time before the Obama administration insists that Israel change its policy.
On the other hand, Emily Landau, Director of the Arms Control and Regional Security programme at the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli think tank, says that the focus should be on creating a regional platform for security discussions. Her view is that Israel coming out about its WMD capabilities is counterproductive because it would lead to speculation and heighten tensions in the Middle East.
"People will ask why did Israel come out of its ambiguity? Why is Israel declaring itself as a nuclear state? Is this an aggressive step on the part of Israel? Is this a prelude to some kind of threats that Israel might pose to the region? What’s behind this?" Landau said.
No longer taboo
Within the Israeli society, the nuclear issue which was once a taboo has become a more frequent topic of discussion. While domestic media outlets still have to add the word "alleged" when referring to the nuclear stockpile, the pros and cons of Israel's WMD capabilities, from the perspective of the state's national interests, are often discussed and internal criticism of the ambiguity is not hard to find. Parliament members still cannot publicly attest to the existence of WMD, but on June 18 an unprecedented discussion on the subject of nuclear weapons and nuclear activity was held at Israel's parliament.
Public discourse about Israel's WMD policies is on the rise [Credit: Israeli Disarmament Movement]
"The goal was to put the issue on the Knesset agenda for the first time in the Knesset’s history," explained Tamar Zandberg, a politician from the leftwing Meretz party who monitored the meeting.
"We have to first of all be aware of the dangers. We have to know the implications of what is called a low-scale nuclear war," Zandberg said, tip-toeing around any official acknowledgment of the WMD programme. "We should have responsibility for the region, for what is going on here, and at least know what is going on. That is something that has never been discussed in Israel."
Informing the Israeli public of nuclear issues and creating discourse about WMD is the main goal of the Israeli Disarmament Movement, a social justice group. Raising nuclear awareness in Israel is not easy according to the movement's founder, Sharon Dolev, because many people believe the secrecy is essential for national security.
"The people are curious but they feel they don’t have the right to talk about it," said Dolev, adding that in protests, when they hands out flyers with information about the dangers of nuclear weapons, she often receives negative responses. "Some people come and ask me not to speak. They think the fact that I speak is putting Israel in danger."
Coming out
While the timing depends on the outcome of the standoff over Iran's nuclear programme, some analysts believe the US is bound to eventually apply pressure on Israel to acknowledge its WMD stockpile. Haaretz’s senior security correspondent Amir Oren recently suggested the current conditions in the region are ripe for such a move, adding that wise Israeli policy could deliver assets in exchange for giving up nuclear ambiguity.
Israeli-born Avner Cohen, Professor of Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, has been for years advocating for an end to the ambiguity, calling it an untenable and unacceptable policy. He believes Israel is ready to make such a move but emphasises it should be done as part of a regional agreement.
"Dropping the ambiguity policy must be done in a responsible way," Cohen said. "You have to coordinate that with others, and you have to find the right political moment for it."
Between growing external and internal pressure, the right political moment for Israel to drop its ambiguity might be just around the corner. If it doesn’t take the initiative, its hand might be forced.
Follow Yermi Brenner on Twitter: @yermibrennerTo find out more about Facebook commenting please read the Conversation Guidelines and FAQs
A new book from NBC News correspondent Katy Tur about the Trump campaign details how the then-candidate surprised her with a kiss.
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NBC News' Katy Tur details unwanted Trump kiss in new book on campaign
CLOSE During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump vehemently denied allegations of sexual misconduct from more than a dozen women, including PEOPLE writer Natasha Stoynoff. But in November 2015, he bragged on live television about planting a “big kiss.” Time
'Unbelievable' by Katy Tur (Photo: Dey St.)
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There are cringe-worthy moments aplenty in the new book from NBC News' Katy Tur about her experience covering the Trump campaign.
But perhaps the most unbelievable moment in Unbelievable: My Front-Row Seat to the Craziest Campaign in American History comes when then-candidate Donald Trump abruptly kissed Tur on the cheek.
Trump is "barreling" toward her before an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe shot in New Hampshire the morning after the Nov. 10, 2015, Republican presidential debate, she writes. "Before I know what’s happening, his hands are on my shoulders and his lips are on my cheek. My eyes widen. My body freezes. My heart stops."
Trump leaves for the set "seemingly very proud of himself." But Tur writes she is "mortified" and thinks "F--k. I hope the cameras didn't see that. My bosses are never going to take me seriously. I didn't have time to duck!"
During Trump's on-air chat with hosts Mika and Joe Scarborough, he is talking about press coverage and "then looks at Joe as if he just had an epiphany. 'But actually, Katy Tur — what happened? She was so great. I just saw her back there. I gave her a big kiss. She was fantastic."
Katy Tury of NBC News. (Photo: MSNBC)
Tur spent more than 500 days covering the Trump campaign for NBC News and MSNBC. During that time, Trump often singled out Tur, saying "Katy hasn't even looked up once at me," during a June 2015 event, also in New Hampshire, and "She's back there, little Katy... third-rate reporter," in a December 2015 rally in Charleston, S.C., aboard the USS Yorktown.
The back and forth between the candidate and embedded reporter led to the creation of the Twitter hashtag #ImWithTur.
Looking back at the campaign, "it is still unbelievable," Tur told Today show host Matt Lauer during an interview Tuesday. "Especially when I went back and wrote the book and I reviewed a lot of the diary notes that I took and the reporting I did. I couldn’t believe that I experienced what I did.... There were actual memories where I went back and didn’t actually think they happened, and then I found a clip of it on television."
Since the book's release Tuesday, many have used Twitter to comment about the book and Tur's writing and experiences. Getting particular attention is an excerpt tweeted by her NBC News colleague and political reporter Benjy Sarlin. Near the book's end, Tur summarizes the incredible nature of Trump's campaign and how those who covered it will always "need each other just to vouch for stories that our children, spouses, and other friends surely won't believe. The shock-a-day style of the Trump campaign is overwhelming our means of recording it."
Another section noted by some appears in the prologue, in which Tur attempts to explain the national momentum that led to Trump's election win: "They've decided that this menacing, indecent, post-truth landscape is where they want to live for the next four years.... You feel like you are screaming at the top of your lungs in a room full of people wearing earplugs."
Tur says she gets those who are worried about jobs, small-town economics and outsourcing. "What I don't get are the little old ladies in powder-pink MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN hats calling me a liar," she writes.
(this is from Katy Tur's new book) lol is this for real.(this is from Katy Tur's new book) pic.twitter.com/UTCOLaG1y3 September 12, 2017
Tur's book landed Tuesday, the same day as did What Happened? by Democratic presidential candidate and former first lady Hillary Clinton. Another book in the works on Trump is from New York Times reporters Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman.
About all that, Trump chimed in Tuesday on Twitter to say: "Fascinating to watch people writing books and major articles about me and yet they know nothing about me & have zero access. FAKE NEWS!"
Fascinating to watch people writing books and major articles about me and yet they know nothing about me & have zero access. #FAKE NEWS! September 12, 2017
Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider
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Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2x0wkc2EDMONTON — Investigators have identified the man who killed eight people in Edmonton this week as 53-year-old Phu Lam, sources tell the Edmonton Journal.
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Lam is the co-owner of the north Edmonton home where seven of the victims — including two young children — were found dead early Tuesday morning. Another victim was found shot to death in a home in south Edmonton late Monday night, Lam was discovered dead in a restaurant in the neighbouring community of Fort Saskatchewan early Tuesday.
Edmonton Police Chief Rod Knecht has said the attack was “planned, deliberate and targeted.”
“In my 39 years of policing, I’ve never seen anything like it,” he said.
At both the north and south Edmonton homes, memorials are springing up, as neighbours and concerned citizens leave flowers and stuffed animals to commemorate the victims of what is the worst mass murder in the city’s history.
Knecht has stressed the public is not in danger. “These events do not appear to be gang-related, but rather tragic incidents of domestic violence.”
The series of events began at 6:52 p.m. Monday when police were called to a residence in the Haddow neighbourhood in south Edmonton where they say a man entered the home, and shot and killed a woman with a 9-mm handgun, before fleeing.
At the time, police said the death occurred in a “family setting.”
Late Tuesday, police identified the woman as Cyndi Duong, 37. An autopsy confirmed she died of a gunshot wound.
Neighbours say Duong and her husband, David Luu, had three children ages six to 13. A grandmother also lived at the house — government documents list a 59-year-old woman, Huong Lam, as a resident at the home.
On Wednesday morning, a small memorial with a red heart, pink flowers and a handful of candles was outside the home on Haswell Court. Four cars were parked outside the home, and the man who answered the door would not comment on the deaths. Two women later came out of the house with the man, loaded the trunks of the cars with belongings and drove away.
Most neighbours said they didn’t know the family and didn’t didn’t see or hear anything unusual on Monday night.
It’s unclear what ties the family to the gruesome homicide scene in north Edmonton. But it seems someone at the house recognized the shooter Monday night because at that time, police said they had information on the suspect but he was not in custody.
Later that night, police responded to a home in the Klarvatten neighbourhood in north Edmonton after a man’s family had reported he was depressed, overly emotional and potentially suicidal.
Edmonton police initially said they went to the home around 8:30 p.m., but late Tuesday night they revised that time to 9:44 p.m.
Police walked around the exterior of the home and peered in windows and found nothing suspicious. Nobody answered the door and there was no trace of the man, so officers left. Before entering the home, police needed “reasonable and probable grounds” to do so, and did not have them at that time, Knecht said.
They returned just after midnight after receiving further information from a “second individual,” the chief said, although he would not elaborate on the nature of the information or who the person was.
At that time, police found the bodies of seven people inside: three women, two men, and a boy and a girl.
Police say the adults are all aged 25-50, and the children both younger than 10. Knecht could not say what time they had been killed.
Land title documents show the home is owned by Phu Lam and Thuy-Tien “Tien” Truong. Neighbours say a couple lived in the home with two children, a boy around age eight and a toddler, as well as an elderly woman.
Elvis, the eldest child, was a favourite in the neighbourhood. One neighbour helped him take the training wheels off his bike, while another said Elvis played with all the kids on the block and was in Grade 3 with her son.
Police have not officially confirmed the suspect’s identity, but sources tell the Journal that it is Lam.
On Tuesday, Knecht said the suspect, who lived at the Klarvatten home, said he has a history of violence and drug-related crimes dating back to 1987. Officers responded to the home twice in the past two years: in November 2012 for domestic violence, sex assault and threats and in 2013 to check on someone’s welfare.
Thanh Nguyen, a friend who stopped by the home Tuesday afternoon, described Lam as “a really nice guy,” but noted that “the family had trouble, problems.”
Neighbours say they had seen the couple arguing in the past. Moe Assiff said he saw the couple yelling outside the house at 3 a.m. in August.
Nguyen said Lam’s ex-wife owns a restaurant in Fort Saskatchewan.
Two hours after police found the bodies in north Edmonton, officers in Fort Saskatchewan spotted a black Mercedes SUV that was connected to the first killing. It was parked outside a Vietnamese restaurant called VN Express, which police also linked to the suicidal male from the north Edmonton homicides. On Tuesday, Knecht said that the man had a “business interest” in the restaurant but would not specify exactly what that means. “To what extent, that is also being investigated at this time,” said Knecht.
Suspecting the man was inside, police surrounded the restaurant and then rammed its entrance at 6:30 a.m., and commanded he come out.
Receiving no response, police entered the restaurant at 7:34 a.m. and found a dead man matching the description of the suicidal male. Investigators then shut down the downtown area for an hour as they collected evidence. At around 2:30 p.m. the medical examiner’s office arrived at the scene and the body was removed on a stretcher.
Edmonton police are remaining tight-lipped about their investigation. Knecht said twice on Tuesday that the situation was “fluid” and that officers that investigators are still trying to sort out the exact sequence of events, and how all of the victims and suspects are linked.
Knecht said the handgun used in all of the deaths was legally registered in B.C. in 1997, but was stolen in Surrey in 2006.
The scope and the scale of the carnage has stunned everyone from neighbours to Alberta Premier Jim Prentice.
“I wish to express my sorrow at the tragic incident which claimed lives in Edmonton and Fort Saskatchewan today,” Prentice said in a statement. “In this season of peace and goodwill, this act of violence is all the more difficult to comprehend.”
Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson released a statement Wednesday saying he was “shocked and saddened” about the homicides. “As more details have emerged, it now seems clear that this is a devastating case of domestic violence. The scale of these events is rare and exceptional. However, domestic violence remains all too common in our society and this tragedy is a harsh reminder of the continuing need for support for individuals and families in crisis, and the critical importance of reporting any instances of domestic violence to police.”
Amy Duong, the vice-president external of the Edmonton Viets Association, said the group did not know the victims. All are believed to be Vietnamese.
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Dec. 29, 2014
6:52 p.m. : Police are called to a south Edmonton home at 1608 Haswell Court for a weapons complaint. Cindy Duong. 37, was shot with a 9-mm handgun by a man who entered the home, then fled. The victim died at the scene. Family members survived the shooting and told investigators about the suspect.
: Police are called to a south Edmonton home at 1608 Haswell Court for a weapons complaint. Cindy Duong. 37, was shot with a 9-mm handgun by a man who entered the home, then fled. The victim died at the scene. Family members survived the shooting and told investigators about the suspect. 8:28 p.m.: Police are called to a north Edmonton house at 180th Avenue and 83rd Street home after a report of a suicidal man who family reported was “depressed and overly emotional.” Police arrived, but got no response at the door, saw nothing suspicious during a search of the home’s exterior and did not locate the suicidal man. The officers left.
Dec. 30, 2014
12:23 a.m.: Police returned to the north-end home after receiving “further information” from another person (not the source of the original call to the home). The suicidal man was not found, but police entered the home and discovered seven bodies inside: three adult women, two adult men, one girl and one boy.
Police returned to the north-end home after receiving “further information” from another person (not the source of the original call to the home). The suicidal man was not found, but police entered the home and discovered seven bodies inside: three adult women, two adult men, one girl and one boy. 2:20 a.m.: In Fort Saskatchewan, police discovered a black Mercedes SUV parked outside the VN Express restaurant on 100th Avenue. That vehicle matched the description of one seen at the south Edmonton homicide scene. Investigators connected the restaurant to the suicidal male initially described at the north Edmonton homicide scene.
6:30 a.m.: A staff member at a restaurant near VN Express witnessed a police tactical team outside the restaurant. An officer yelled for someone inside to “come out with their hands up.”
7:43 a.m.: RCMP discovered the man dead inside the restaurant from an apparent suicide. He was identified as the same suicidal man police had spent the previous 12 hours searching for. Police say he is the sole suspect in the killings.
9 a.m.: For an hour, RCMP shut down all access to downtown Fort Saskatchewan during the investigation at VN Express.
3:30 p.m.: Police Chief Rod Knecht announced investigators are not looking for any additional suspects. He attributed the killings to domestic violence.
9 p.m.: Knecht holds another press conference, releasing some more details, including Cindy Duong’s identity. He said an autopsy had been completed on Duong, and she died of gunshot wounds. Autopsies on the seven other victims and the suspect will be conducted on Jan. 1.
Compiled by Ryan Cormier, Edmonton Journal
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“It’s a tragic and horrific event,” Duong said. “I’ve never heard of this kind of domestic violence in the Vietnamese community before.”
Sonia Bitar is a former citizenship judge and the executive director of Changing Together, a local NGO that works to support immigrant women.
“It’s really a disaster,” she said. “It’s absolutely tragic, what happened. Can you imagine? In one day, eight people?”
Bitar said that police have released so little information about the victims and the circumstances, it’s hard to draw conclusions about what happened and why. But, she notes, the Christmas season can create serious financial stresses for many families. It can also be a harder time of the year for people to get support to cope with domestic tensions. Domestic violence is a problem in all kind of families, she said, but it can be particularly difficult for immigrant women who don’t speak fluent English, or who feel culturally isolated, to ask for assistance.
“Sometimes, it’s really embarrassing to call for help. For so many families, the violence is hidden or accepted, for the sake of the children.”
Near the crime scenes, residents expressed horror over the events.
When Farley Yuras moved into his home on 180A Avenue over two years ago, a boy who lived around the corner asked if he could take Yuras’s dog for a walk. Yuras is stunned now that the house was the scene of a mass murder.
“I’m just sort of disgusted and shocked,” he said. “It’s just really, really sad.”
Prior to the killings on Monday and Tuesday, there had been 27 homicides in Edmonton in 2014. These eight deaths bring the total to 35.
Knecht said autopsies will be performed on the suspect and seven victims from the north Edmonton home on Jan. 1.
Responding officers did an admirable job, the chief said.
“At this point it appears we did everything we could have at that time,” Knecht said.
With files from Ryan Cormier, Paula Simons, Madeline Smith, and Elise StolteShutterstock
"It's not farfetched to say we're all cyborgs," says designer Aral Balkan, in the opening keynote of The Conference in Malmo.
It is a bold statement, but Balkan has a point: we already extend our biological capabilities through technology every single day, although this has yet to really impact how we see ourselves in relation to technology. Perhaps that needs to change. "What if we start seeing technology as an extension of ourselves?" he asks. If we start to consider our personal technology as part of our extended selves then we can start to change how we draw the boundaries of the self. "In this case, think about what spying on what we're doing becomes," says Balkan. "It becomes an intrusion of the self, an assault." Assault is a thing we already have laws to deal with, he adds. In order to prevent this, it becomes crucial that we as individuals own and control the means by which we extend ourselves.
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We have to ask ourselves the uncomfortable question of what do we call selling everything else about you other than your body? Aral Balkan
"You hear about data being the new oil -- how horrible is that?" Balkan asks. Data is us, he adds, and that makes us the commodity. We are ultimately sold to make money for shareholders -- this is not a revelation, but in the context of our cyborg futures, it can be seen in a new light. "In the past and unfortunately in some places still today, we had the practise of selling people," says Balkan. "We call this slavery. We have to ask ourselves the uncomfortable question of what do we call selling everything else about you other than your body? This is the business model of Silicon Valley."
Read next I tried to keep my unborn child secret from Facebook and Google I tried to keep my unborn child secret from Facebook and Google
This sparks the question as to why data-harvesting companies aren't regulated, says Balkan, but in fact those who should be regulating these activities -- namely governments -- are often acting as cheerleaders for the companies themselves. They form public-private and multi-stakeholder partnerships with the companies. "The problem is the size of everyone's stake is not the same; some of the people you've invited to the table actually made the table."
This creates an "economy of influence", says Balkan, the real danger of which is institutional corruption. "What we're really seeing is the transfer of power from governmental institutions to corporate ones." Governments end up in a situation where they make trade deals that allow them to be sued by the companies if they make decisions that are in the interests of their citizens, but not in the interests of their corporate friends. "Once they become law we will have lost democracy," says Balkan. In its place, we have a corporatocracy. "It it war on the public sphere, a war on the commons, a war on human rights and individual freedoms."
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This causes a seemingly huge problem, but Balkan insists that the problem isn't really difficult as it seems, and neither is the solution. "I'm a designer and as a designer my duty is to try and find the core problems that we can solve," he says. What he has discovered is that at their core, most things are very simple. If people tell you things are very complex -- too complex -- it is likely they have a vested interested in keeping it complex.
So what then is the simple solution? "We need to move beyond capitalism," says Balkan. "Capitalism today is monopoly -- we're talking about huge multinational corporations that cannot be touched." Technology is an important part of the solution, but for it to work, we also need to understand technology better, and this is where design comes into the picture.
Design without ethics is not design, it is decoration Aral Balkan
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"When I talk about design I don't mean aesthetics -- I'm talking about holistic design," says Balkan. He sees design in Silicon Valley as being all about what is awesome in the here and now. Google Maps, for example, is empowering when you need to get somewhere, but what is the cost? "Google gets to know where you're going and it adds them to all the other things it knows about you to make money. The cost is erosion to our civil liberties in the future."
The design of such products is what Balkan calls "design without ethics". "Design without ethics is not design, it is decoration. Decoration perpetuates the status quo, whereas design alters it."
Ethical design, on the other hand is about both now and the future. "These two things should not be dichotomies. At the very base we start with respecting human rights when designing," explains Balkan. This means making them private, secure, accessible and sustainable. The next layer of design is about making them functional, convenient, reliable. Finally, they must be delightful. "The quality of those experiences whether they are with people and with things is important." "It all comes downs to respect, respecting the human," says Balkan, but this is not how most mainstream technologies are built. "We fail at the very very beginning because we're not building products that respect human rights. You might say that is the new alphabet of our lives..." The audience laughs and Balkan grins. "Too soon?"Brexit could cause continuous tailbacks on the M20 in Kent
Brexit will spark continuous motorway tailbacks should the UK suffer the "nightmare" of leaving the EU without a customs deal, according to the shipping industry chief.
Guy Platten, the CEO of UK Chamber of Shipping, outlined how Britain's ports are "just not geared up" to quit the EU's Customs Union without an alternative agreement in place.
Demanding ministers ensure the maintenance of "frictionless" trade with the bloc and agree an "essential" transitional departure deal, Mr Platten described the nervousness of ferry companies about the result of Brexit negotiations.
He told Sky News how his organisation, which represents 170 members from across the maritime industry, is also calling on the Government to initiate cross-party talks on Brexit in the wake of the General Election result.
Image: Britain's ports could struggle to cope without a customs deal
On Sunday, Brexit Secretary David Davis admitted he is "not 100% sure" he will achieve the departure deal he wants, including a new agreement to replace Britain's membership of the Customs Union.
Mr Platten said: "We just want friction-less trade, whether that's in or outside the Customs Union.
"We'll see as it develops, maybe they'll call it a'special customs arrangement' or something like that to save face."
He described ferry companies as "really nervous" while "hauliers are starting to wake up to the fact this is going to not be good".
If Britain is left with a "hard border" with the EU, lorries piling up on the M20 motorway in Kent on their way to Dover would be a "continuous" sight as the port does not have the space for a big customs installation, Mr Platten warned.
One year on from Brexit
With 8,000 lorries passing through Dover each day on average - and sometimes as many as 11,000 - only around 500 are from non-EU countries, each taking 20 minutes to pass customs checks, Mr Platten explained.
If all vehicles had to undergo those checks in the absence of an EU customs agreement, the former Merchant Navy officer predicted: "It's going to be pretty much a nightmare."
Mr Platten described a transitional exit deal as "maybe the best we can hope for at the moment" and suggested it is "inevitable" the Government will have to compromise following the General Election result.
Image: David Davis has been urged to work with Labour's Sir Keir Starmer
He said: "You look at the Labour manifesto and you look at the Conservative manifesto, it's not a million miles apart is it? You can put a cigarette paper between it.
"It's such an important event for the country it needs to transcend party politics."
Outside the Customs Union, UK ferry companies could scrap duties on alcohol or cigarettes which might spell a return of the "booze cruise".The Western Indoor Soccer League (WISL) debuts this fall / winter in Washington. As they prepare to get rolling goalWA.net is partnering with the league and the Tacoma Soccer Center on “Inside Indoor Soccer,” which will look at the sport at all levels, including playing, coaching and watching. The content will vary from beginner to advanced. See all Inside Indoor Soccer columns here.
by John Weinstein
Playing goalie in indoor soccer is very, very hard. It requires lots of abilities and is in general a lot more difficult than outdoor soccer. This article will outline what you need to know and practice so you can be a better keeper!
The first thing that you definitely need is excellent reflexes. In indoor, the ball tends to come flying at you very fast from a short distance, so you need to be able to react and hit the ball away in a split second. The ball also spends a lot of time rebounding around the box, so you need to keep track of it and be able to quickly jump on it when you have a chance. Practicing your reaction speed and reflexes will definitely help you in indoor soccer!
The next attribute you need is field vision. Since the field is so cramped, you need to be constantly yelling at your players as a goalie. You have the best view of the field, so you are in the best position to provide feedback to your players. Tell them who to mark, when to push up, and when they’re screening you. All this will help to improve your team as a whole and make them appreciate you as a keeper.
The final important attribute for goalies is the ability to make quick decisions. Once you pick up the ball, you need to quickly make a decision and execute it. Since the game moves so quickly, you can’t let the other team reset and get back into their positions. One way to do this is quickly throw or kick the ball out to one of your defenders immediately and let them deal with it. Also, if you have a forward or midfielder open, it’s never a bad idea to hit the ball to them either.
MORE: Using Indoor Soccer To Train Good Goalkeeping Habits
Low and Lower. With a goal only six feet high, only the youngest and smallest goalkeepers need |
is one of the few sure-fire ways to kill it.[7]
Cultural references [ edit ]
The first use of the word in English was in John Wyclif's 1382 translation of the Bible[8] to translate different Hebrew words.[9] This usage was followed by the King James Version, the word being used several times.[10] The Revised Version—following the tradition established by Jerome's Vulgate basiliscus—renders the word "basilisk", and the New International Version translates it as "viper". In Proverbs 23:32 the similar Hebrew tzeph'a is rendered "adder", both in the Authorized Version and the Revised Version.
In Shakespeare's play "Richard III", the Duchess of York compares her son Richard to a cockatrice:
O ill-dispersing wind of misery!
O my accursed womb, the bed of death!
A cockatrice hast thou hatch'd to the world,
Whose unavoided eye is murderous.[11]
Cockatrice is also mentioned in Romeo and Juliet Act 3, scene 2 line 47 by Juliet.
In heraldry [ edit ]
Heraldic cockatrice
Arthur Fox-Davies describes the cockatrice as "comparatively rare" in heraldry.[12]
It was the heraldic beast of the Langleys of Agecroft Hall in Lancashire, England as far back as the 14th century.[13]
It is also the symbol of 3 (Fighter) Squadron, a fighter squadron of the Royal Air Force.
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Bitcoin Surpasses Milestone Price of $3000 Across Global Exchanges
Bitcoin has finally surpassed the US$3000 per BTC average across global exchanges. In fact, it didn’t stop there and touched an all-time high of $3230 during the start of August 5. The decentralized cryptocurrency now commands a hefty $51.9 billion market cap while trading platforms are currently seeing intense exchange volumes at $1.6 billion USD/BTC trades over the past 24-hours.
Also read: Considering Bitcoin An Asset Could Set Back Adoption in Israel
Bitcoin is Trending Worldwide
On August 5 bitcoin surpassed the $3000 USD per BTC threshold on the trading platform Bitstamp. Smashing the $3000 vantage point was not enough for bitcoin as BTC prices touched an all-time high of $3230. At press time one BTC is roughly $3150 as traders take some profits from the overnight high. Some speculate that the price spike may be due to BIP141 voting period ending and the possibility of activating the protocol Segregated Witness (Segwit). Currently, a vast quantity of the network’s hashrate is directing its efforts towards this plan as the first half of the “New York Agreement” otherwise known as Segwit2x. At the moment, there are 621 blocks left until Segwit goes live on the Bitcoin network. The second half of the agreement entails activating a 2MB hard fork on the network roughly ~3 months after the activation.
It’s also worth noting that the price has rallied during the latest announcement from global law enforcement detailing the takedown of the two biggest darknet markets Hansa, and Alphabay. Alongside this, the BTC-e exchange was also seized and the price didn’t nudge at all. It seems bitcoin markets have been resilient enough to bounce back after the Bitfinex hack last year, the recent ETF decision, and now the latest two darknet market takedowns also did nothing to the price.
In addition to this, the price spiked in the midst of a hard fork. The developers of the client Bitcoin ABC and others have veered off to form its own network. This, in turn, produced a new token called ‘Bitcoin Cash’ (BCH) which has an 8MB block size limit, and also removes Segregated Witness. Even though the blockchain split occurred on August 1 and the two bitcoin communities went separate ways, the price of BTC has remained extremely bullish. As bitcoin touched a high of $3230 across global exchanges BCH tokens have hit a low of $200-250 depending on the exchange.
The digital asset bitcoin has come a long way since the first issuance of bitcoins were released into the wild on January 3rd, 2009. Now there are 16.4 million BTC in circulation, and the cryptocurrency is more popular than ever. As far as the Google Trends site is concerned interest in bitcoin has grown exponentially higher than its jump in growth during 2013. Google Trends also shows a significant amount of interest is stemming from the eastern side of the world, most notably in Asia, and many countries located within the continent of Africa.
Record Trade Volumes
Furthermore, Localbitcoins volumes across the globe are also at all-time highs right now as people are trading over $20-30 million worth of bitcoins every two weeks. Alongside Localbitcoins and traditional exchange volumes reaching new highs, both Paxful and the decentralized trading platform Bitsquare are also seeing record trade volumes. Moreover, countries such as China, Japan, India, and Korea are dominating bitcoin trade volumes as cryptocurrencies have been high demand in those regions.
Bitcoin Printed in Newspapers Worldwide
As bitcoin’s value broke higher levels and crossed the $3K price zone, mainstream media has been reporting on the digital currency’s success nearly every day. On top of that, bitcoin stories are being printed in newspapers all around the world, in publications like Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Wall Street Journal, Dagens Næringsliv, the Moscow Times and more. The mainstream exposure has led to more people around the world hearing about bitcoin as well as attracting investment.
Celebrities, Socialites, and Big Name Investors Talk Bitcoin
In unison with the mainstream media headlines coming out every day, many famous celebrities, socialites and big name investors are also talking about bitcoin. Just recently the Shark Tank star Mark Cuban discussed the decentralized currency with his Twitter followers. Alongside this, more well-known individuals such as Chamath Palihapitiya, Dan Bilzerian, John Bollinger, Jeremy Liew and many others have been observed discussing bitcoin’s potential.
The Bitcoin Economy Grows Bigger Every Day
Right now it’s estimated that more than ten million people worldwide hold a material amount of bitcoin according to the University of Cambridge. 2.9 to 5.8 million users are actively using their bitcoin wallets, and the total number of wallets used in 2017 has increased 4X since 2013. Furthermore, the Bitcoin network hashrate is processing at over five exahash per second as mining power has increased exponentially. Nearly every statistic in bitcoin’s life has spiked massively over the past year.
It’s a great milestone for bitcoin to cross the $3000 USD per BTC territory but there are many other landmark occasions taking place often across the network. 2017 has been one of the most interesting years so far and the next six months will surely be filled with more excitement. $3000 is just one of many price records to break as many bitcoin proponents believe the rise in value is just getting started.
What do you think about bitcoin crossing the $3000 per BTC range? Let us know in the comments below.
Images via Pixabay, Warner Bros., Süddeutsche Zeitung, and Bitcoin Wisdom.
Need to calculate your bitcoin holdings? Check our tools section.Mercedes-Benz announced their first luxurious private jet interior today in cooperation with Lufthansa Technik. Aim is to design VIP cabins for both short- and medium-hall aircraft for private- and business use.
Lufthansa Technik is a subsidiary company of the Lufthansa Group and primarily deals with the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) of aircraft.
The concept for the cabins will be first showcased at the 15th edition of the EBACE 2015 (European Business Aviation Convention & Exhibition) show, which will take place from 19 to 21 May 2015 in Geneva, Switzerland.
EBACE 2015 is Europe’s biggest business aviation event held annually and comprising companies and aviation professionals from all over the world. It is jointly hosted by the European Business Aviation Association (EBAA) and the National Business Aviation Association (NBAA). This year, more than 500 companies are expected to showcase their products and services at the EBACE.
The luxurious and innovative airline cabins will be specifically made for the Airbus A320 and the Boeing 737 range.
“It was an inspiring challenge to transfer our design philosophy of sensual purity into the area of aeronautical engineering. The spectacular architecture of the interior shows creativity and modernity. Sensual surfaces and clear forms, combined with intelligent high-tech features and perfectly shaped modern luxury are the characteristic features of Mercedes-Benz design,” Gorden Wagener, Vice President Design, Daimler AG, said.
“The purpose of our cooperation with Mercedes-Benz Style is to unite the two companies’ innovative expertise in the areas of design and technology. Our goal is to offer a highly discerning global clientele a standard of interior design that leaves nothing to be desired. Whether for private or business use, our modular completion concept perfectly fits every purpose,” Walter Heerdt, Senior Vice President VIP & Executive Jet Solutions, Lufthansa Technik AG, added.
Over the coming months, Mercedes-Benz and Lufthansa Technik will further work upon the design of the cabins and analyse the potential demand for their product in the market.Tourists will be given an unprecedented full tour of Pyongyang’s metro system in April 2014, a German travel company announced on Thursday.
Announcing the new tour on their website, Pyongyang-Travel is giving tourists the opportunity to travel the entire network of Pyongyang’s metro, allowing them to get off at each station to take photographs.
The tours will take place in the evening, the website says, meaning “we will have the whole metro system just for ourselves”.
Director of Pyongyang-Travel.com Christoph Stephan told NK News that his company had been asking contacts in North Korea for a tour of the metro for a while: “We always said to them: ‘we want to do this’… and finally they confirmed to us that the tour will be running”.
Tourists will be allowed “about 10 to 15 minutes” at each station Stephan said, “they will be able to go out and take pictures, and that’s it, look at the station and the platform. They won’t be able to go outside on each platform, that’s not possible, but at least pictures and having a look.”
Stephan says the tour will be particularly interesting for public transport enthusiasts, as well as for Germans who remember seeing the metro trains in their own country: “It’s actually very nice to see them still running and in operation, because they’re really antique. There are actually two types of trains in Pyongyang – one from East Germany and one from West Germany, imported by North Korea in the late 1990s”.
The tour will take place from April 3 to April 10, and as well as covering the full metro, will allow tourists to visit Kaesong and Panmunjon and have the opportunity to fly in one of “Air Koryo’s antique Soviet aircrafts (like IL-18, AN-24, Tu-154B or IL62M)”.
The Pyongyang metro has a reputation for secrecy – for a long time tourists were only permitted to ride between two stops, leading some to speculate that the metro was much smaller than maps portrayed.
Since 2012 tourists have been able to visit an extended number of stations, normally between two and six depending on the tour.
The metro operates two lines: the Chŏllima, which runs north to south, and the Hyŏksin line, which runs east to west. It can also serve as a bomb shelter in event of war.
East Germans nostalgic of their former communist system often travel to North Korea to experience a contemporary socialist system.
Photo: Eric LafforgueAdministrators Had Refused to Ban Anti-Gay Symbols Fearing First Amendment Lawsuit
Some students in an Indio, California high school have placed an anti-gay symbol on their ID badges they wear around their necks. The image consists of the round red "no" sign over rainbow stripes, signifying "no gays" (image above). When members of the school's Gay-Straight Alliance complained to administrators at Shadow Hills High School they were told the students had the right to wear the symbols as long as they didn't use them in a harassing manner.
It's hard to imagine an LGBTQ teenager who sees the anti-gay symbol not feeling harassed. What, as one teacher asked, if it were a swastika? Or a symbol that telegraphed, "no Black people," "no Asian people," or "no women"?
"After consulting with district level personnel and our legal counsel, it was determined that these students do have the protected right to freedom of speech, just as students portraying rainbows in support of the LGBT would," a statement sent to staff last week via email read, according to Kristen Hwang at The Desert Sun.
"If at any point students are interrupting class time to express their beliefs, they are to be sent to the discipline office with a referral for disruption," the email added. "We all have a right to freedom of speech, but students also have a right to be educated without fear. This has always been our policy, and we will continue to enforce it."
Hwang reports that the "LGBTQ community on campus feels targeted. The same students who were distributing the anti-gay symbol on campus also placed one on the window of the Gay Straight Alliance coordinator's classroom, said Amy Oberman, an AP U.S. History teacher at Shadow Hills."
But today Hwang reports that the superintendent has asked the anti-gay students to remove the anti-gay badges "for now."
District Superintendent Gary Rutherford told The Desert Sun, "recently some information has been brought forward that requires additional investigation and follow-up to determine a proper course of action. Pending further investigation, we are going to ask students who are displaying the symbol showing a rainbow pattern with a circle and a line, at least for now, to remove symbols while at school."
Shadow Hills High School senior Michelle Bachman last week told The Desert Sun, "This group of students was publicly displaying an intolerance and hate for the LGBT community when a large portion of our students at SHHS are part of the community or close to people a part of it as well."
"This is definitely hate speech, but legally, we can't do anything until these students start to physically harass us, which I believe is an injustice."
Image via Twitter
See a mistake? Email corrections to: [email protected]In April, The Kickdrums were moments away from releasing their latest mixtape, Follow The Leaders, as a free release on the Internet. One of the tracks, "Ridin'," had all the A$AP Rocky and Lana Del Rey fans excited because the Brooklyn-based duo were the first known artists to put Rocky and Del Rey on a track together. With a preview already making rotation on the music blogs, the Kickdrums wanted to save the full version for the tape’s release. But suddenly, the song got cut from the final tracklist.
“Well, we had like a general consensus to go ahead and leak it. I don’t think even the people involved had any idea it would have such a large impact in such a short amount of time,” they said in an interview with MTV Hive on April 3. “But A$AP really wanted to use it for his album and as much as we love the song and are super excited to put it out and are disappointed that it’s not out, we’ve got to respect that. If he wants to put it on the album, that’s that.”
The Kickdrums recall Rocky recording the song and later saying, “You guys can use it for your mixtape and I’ll use it too for my album. You cool with that?”
POST CONTINUES BELOW
“We thought it was perfect. Then when all the press came in [yesterday] that’s when the label stepped in,” they added.
Yesterday, “Ridin’” leaked on the Internet exclusively on DDotOmen, before making its circulation to other major blogs. This afternoon, Rocky took to his Twitter account to sound off on the leak and revealed that his vocals weren't finished but merely a reference track. Check out his tweets below:
THAT RIDIN SONG WITH ME N LANA IZ NOT OFFICAL, ITS NOT MY REAL LYRICS, THAT WAZ A REFERENCE, THE KICK DRUMS CAN SUCK MY DICK!!!! — DAT PMF (@asvpxrocky) June 28, 2012
MY BARZ ARE WACK AF ON THAT SONG BRUH, THAT WAZ A FREESTYLE REFERENCE AND THEY KNOW DAT, FUCK THE KICK DRUMS!!! — DAT PMF (@asvpxrocky) June 28, 2012
I CARE ABOUT MY CRAFT TOO MUCH TO GIVE THE PPL GARBAGE LIKE THAT, SMH — DAT PMF (@asvpxrocky) June 28, 2012
The Kickdrums responded to Rocky’s frustration by saying they didn’t leak "Ridin'." Whatever the case, the track that would have been on LongLiveA$AP is out for free with a fan-made cover that you can see above. Maybe the recently announced “My Bitch” will be an entirely different song all together. We'll have to wait and see. Peep the Kickdrums' response below.
We didn't leak that "Ridin'" track. I was as surprised to see it on the web as everyone else. — TheKickDrums (@TheKickDrums) June 28, 2012I live in Northern California where Indian restaurant food and French restaurant food taste alike. That’s because the first is Mexican Indian food and the second is Mexican French food. All the cooks are Mexican. That’s an interesting economic fact. That’s not the whole story by a long shot. America is a great country where menial jobs have for generations led to entrepreneurship and in time, to dignified economic independence. So, Mexican cooks sometimes become Mexican-American restaurant owners.
In my town, there are dozens of Mexican restaurants and taco places. One full-fare restaurant stands among all others. It’s located downtown. It’s spacious and clean. The food there is reasonably good and moderately priced. The restaurant is also perfectly organized for the kind of fare it serves. Scarcely more than five minutes elapse between the moment you place your order and the moment it’s brought to your table. The table is cleaned within one minute of your leaving it so that the next customer does not have to wait.
This Mexican restaurant does not belong to a junior college drop-out, aging surfer as is often the case around here. It was launched and it is staffed by Mexicans immigrants and by their grown children and their buddies. You might say that it’s a great American entrepreneurial ship with a wholly Mexican crew.
One day, I noticed there an old Chinese man bent over a broom, laboriously sweeping the restaurant’s floor. It would have been hard not to notice him in the middle of the team of young, fairly loud Mexican workers. Discreetly, I inquired from the Mexican manager, who the old guy was. “We have been warned,” he declared mysteriously.
Apparently, the California bureaucracy in charge of such things had counted racial heads in that obviously successful, proudly Mexican establishment. It must have been decided that an all “Latino” crew violated some law or other. And twisted arms to force greater “diversity.” I would guess there aren’t two hundred permanent residents of Chinese extraction in the whole town. There are other Asians but who do you count in that category for “diversity” purposes? There are plenty of Indians but I think they don’t count. Is it because of a particular historical experience, real or imagined, their ancestors did not have? Or is it simply because they don’t look right for the part. Would Filipinos count then? Often they have brown skin but they also sport somewhat slanted eyes, although, in general, less markedly slanted than most Chinese.
I am getting confused although I have good credentials as a social scientist.
For twenty years, I drove on a narrow but fast mountain road to and from work to cross the chain of hills that separates living from working. At the top of the hill, overlooking a grandiose panorama there is a restaurant. There has always been a restaurant there, always facing the same problem: By the time they reach the summit, drivers want to gun their motor to fifty miles an hour to be home sooner. The compulsion is almost irresistible. It kills whatever impulse there might be to stop for a snack, and especially for a drink. Since there is speeding on that road, it’s often crawling with highway patrol. (Bless their heart!) That’s one more reason to not stop.
Seven years ago, a Korean restaurant replaced whatever other kind was there before. It struggled for two years. Then, the owners threw in the towel, realizing that native-born Americans don’t stop to eat exotic food on their way from work. Neither are they likely to drive up twenty minutes from either side of the mountain for a formal dinner at a restaurant of unknown reputation leaving behind on both sides towns with a wide variety of eating places.
I am more curious about food than most people, I am sure. (I used to be a Frenchman, that’s why.) Yet, I never stopped to sample the Korean fare at the mountain top although I must have driven by a couple of thousand times. This Asian enterprise just failed, I would venture.
A youngish Iranian couple took over and turned the place into a shish-kebab restaurant. They were obviously recent immigrants. The husband staid in the kitchen and said little. The wife served in the restaurant where she spoke sufficient but hesitant English. I know because I stopped there for breakfast with my daughter on a Saturday morning, when the traffic was light.
Although there were no other customers, the fried eggs were late in coming and cold upon arrival. The proprietress did not look right to me. I would not say she was dirty but she lacked the scrubbed-up, coiffed, and made-up appearance one expects of a female breakfast waitress anywhere in America. The room was decorated with a profusion of plastic flowers, reminding me of a discount funeral parlor. There was no music. The silence in that restaurant was deadly. The bill was on the high side, as one might expect maybe in a “scenic” restaurant.
Driving back, week by week, I could read the couple’s growing desperation in the ever increasing size of the signs they put up to draw speeding drivers’ attention and interest. The last sign was built squarely on the side of the restaurant. It advertised, “Best lam-shops in California.” It was as tall as the restaurant building and a third as wide as it was long. Steadying it in the wind must have required good carpentry skills. Then, the sign disappeared and the place looked deserted. This other set of immigrants from a less-developed country had lost its battle, apparently.
Nowadays, there are often dozens of cars in the parking lot. On nice weekends, it’s nearly full of motorcycles. The new owners have invested in a new large sign they placed on top of the building. The restaurant is now called, “ The ‘X’ Road House.” It sports a massive redwood sculpture of a bear, or of an eagle. I don’t even remember what the subject is. All the same, it cries out, “Redneck.” Rednecks will get out of their car and off their bikes for a bacon omelet with other rednecks.
Whites: 1; people of color: 0. Smacks of racism, right?
I hear the following news on Fox News, that cesspool of progressive sentiment: A privately owned swimming club in a white town in Pennsylvania abruptly canceled its contract to give access to its pool to a summer camp with many black children. It seems that everyone cries “racism.” Nothing is less obvious.
First things first: Depriving children of bathing and swimming they have been promised is crappy behavior. The swimming club decision-makers deserve a special place in Hell for this action, whatever their motivation.
The victims’ minders and all commentators I have heard assume the motivation is good old-fashioned racism, in the manner of Alabama circa 1940. It disturbs me that no one seems willing to consider other explanations. I think it’s because people are afraid of where it would take them. Racism may be involved but it’s also a lazy and cowardly explanation. It lets all of us who are not racists off the hook.
Here is a ready alternative: The lazy press gave no details about the social identity of the black children who fell victim to this decision.
Suppose many of them, even some of them, were the children of ghetto mothers who have never worked and who have had four children from three different men, none of whom is around. Suppose further these children live normally in the midst of drive-by shooting over drug turf. If both my suppositions are correct, is it possible that the children’s behavior would be judged much more disruptive than is considered acceptable in a middle-class suburb?
Low tolerance toward disruptive behavior may say something about the intolerant but it’s not racism. It ‘s not the same as past racial segregation. And yes, there is still racial prejudice in America, amazingly little considering this country’s history. Recently, an entertainer who was a also a freak and almost certainly a drug addict received a more grandiose national funeral than Abe Lincoln. It’s a mathematical certainty that most of the mourners had to be white although the deceased was black (or still kind of black, a little, anyway).
I am referring above mostly to white racism. Judge Sotomayor is a racist, of course.
I don’t know if any of my speculations above about the black children in the pool incident is correct. They are all plausible, however. It would have been easy for the lazy media to investigate and report. There are always alternative explanations to a given behavior. Deciding that one is correct without examining the others is bad social science. It’s also irrational and intellectually dishonest.
It disturbs me that liberal and progressive low-level intellectual terrorism seems to have won in America. I don’t like a world where some thoughts may not be thought and hardly anyone breaks the rule.
Pres. Obama is in Ghana as I write. I think he chose Ghana because it’s one of four or five democratic countries in sub-tropical Africa.
He is trying to burnish his image as the first really black President without getting splashed by the genuine self-inflicted horrors of the African continent.
Black Africa watchers are up in arms about his inaction concerning aid to Africa. His budgets decrease aid to Africa in general. I think that part of the world needs aid less than it needs honest ways to make a living. That requires trade fairness. American agricultural subsidies are killing African agriculturists in world markets. They can’t compete against cotton, for example, that earns money before it’s even come out of the ground.
The President owns both the bully pulpit and absolute majorities. The press believes he walks on air, like Jesus, except more graciously. The Republican Party is busy trying to sort out its (heterosexual) sex scandals. Why doesn’t the President do the obvious against a practice – subsidizing large farming corporations – that has no ethical justification whatsoever? It’s certainly not good capitalism.
This is a real question.
CHECK MY ARTICLE [pdf] WITH NIKIFOROV ON ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION FROM MEXICO, IN THE INDEPENDENT REVIEW (VOLUME 14 NUMBER 1, SUMMER 2009)Ghaziabad police claimed to have arrested 295 people named in various cases — including 11 for murder, six for rape, 12 for loot, five for dacoity, 10 others carrying a reward of Rs 5,000 each on their heads and 14 facing charges under the Gangster Act — all within a span of 24 hours.
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Police said the arrests were made in response to a drive by SSP Dharmendra Singh that focused on rounding up as many on-the-run criminals as possible in the span of a day — Sunday. The drive was announced in the form of a competition, in which it was announced that the DSP, SHO or chowki in-charge showing the maximum number of arrests would get monetary rewards.
CO (Border) Arvind Yadav was awarded Rs 10,000 while SHO (Loni) Gorakhnath Yadav was awarded Rs 7,000. The Loni police station, one of the stations supervised by Yadav, alone made over 50 arrests.
SSP Singh said the mass arrests were a result of preparations over the last 10 days. Almost the entire police force, including 4,000 constables, were involved, the officer said.
“We micromanaged the entire operation. The suspects were known. We gathered all the intelligence we had on them, gave the responsibility of the arrest of a suspect to the police officer best suited to nab him or her and just for a day, the entire police force had but one instruction — Ofocus on the criminals still absconding and arrest them. Of course, we make arrests daily, but the number was not going above 140, which is a result of officers being stretched in different directions. Four-thousand police personnel is not less, but to pull off an operation like this, you need single-minded and focused effort,” he said.
Another senior police officer said the force was capable of pulling off such arrests more often. “The attitude is, we will get them. What is the hurry? So the time-frame in which a job can be done gets stretched unnecessarily,” he said.
According to him, the initiative had certainly helped boost the morale of the force.
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According to SSP Singh, efforts are being made to keep the force motivated, so that Sunday’s results could be replicated more often. “I am trying to interact on a personal level with even the junior-most officers as often as possible. I eat with them sometimes, or go and watch a movie with them. It helps to keep them motivated about their work,” he said.After Edward Gaming destroyed SK Telecom T1's nexus in the last game of the Mid-Season Invitational finals, Clearlove was pronounced the MVP. It's hard to argue against choosing Clearlove as the tournament MVP, but for the final series alone, I would have given the prestigious award to a different player.
Meiko is by no means the best player on Edward Gaming, nor is he the best support player in China, but he was the most consistent player throughout finals. There's no two ways about it; his ability to both control vision and deny Wolf his comfort picks was instrumental in EDG’s win.
The most shocking thing about Meiko is that he hasn’t been playing League of Legends competitively for very long. Meiko debuted on Team RayUnion in August of 2014 at the start of the National Electronic Sports Tournament qualifiers under the ID “Mad.” Prior to joining RayUnion, Meiko had no experience outside solo queue.
NEST had eight qualifier brackets, each containing a single LPL team. Only three LPL teams lost in their brackets and failed to qualify for NEST proper. Young Glory dropped to Edward Gaming Future, who then lost to Team King, Snake beat out LGD Gaming, and Star Horn Royal Club, Uzi in tow, dropped to RayUnion.
In NEST quarterfinals in December, RayUnion immediately lost two games to King. Then in the 2014 Tencent Games Arena Winter tournament that qualified teams for the LoL Secondary Pro League, RayUnion didn’t advance past group stages.
Mad was RayUnion’s best player. It’s easy to see how a team whose best player is their support could topple the bottom lane-centric Star Horn Royal Club in August NEST qualifiers. His ability to continuously deny ganks and all-ins from Uzi and Zero made getting ahead difficult for SHRC. It’s likely with Regionals on the horizon at the time, SHRC weren’t giving their full attention to NEST. Yet it’s still impressive for a team of no-names carried by a rookie support to take down the eventual World Championship runner up.
His play on RayUnion wasn’t enough for Mad to get noticed by LPL teams. Reportedly, a friend recommended Meiko, having changed his name from Mad, to Edward Gaming’s coach Aaron after encountering him in solo queue. Since Aaron liked him, the team signed Meiko at the tail end of the 2014 Winter transfer season.
It’s important to note that Meiko wasn’t Edward Gaming’s first choice as a replacement for the retired Fzzf. In G League 2014 finals, the team debuted with a roster of Koro1, Clearlove, pawN, Deft, and Mouse. Mouse, once a mid lane main, played with Edward Gaming Future, EDG’s sister team, as the support during the 2014 season. The team destroyed King in a 3-0 blowout.
Edward Gaming triumphant after G League finals
In the LPL regular season, Mouse didn’t quite cut it. In an interview after Week 1, Aaron said that “for now [Mouse] can only fulfill the role of support at the minimum acceptable level.” The less-than-charitable assessment of Mouse’s skills rang true. He functioned one-dimentionally on engage supports, and his Janna play was underwhelming.
Edward Gaming lost to Snake 2-0 in Week 2 of 2015 LPL Spring. In the first game, Snake got a massive lead by focusing Deft, taking advantage of low vision control, and repeatedly ganking his lane. In the LGD series, Edward Gaming adapted their play to involve Clearlove more in bottom lane skirmishes, but vision was still a sore spot.
The team made a gamble in Week 3. Both Mouse and Meiko were rookies, but Meiko had less experience overall than Mouse. By most accounts, Deft and Mouse didn’t synergize well. It was time to let Meiko play.
Meiko might not be the strongest player on Edward Gaming, but they went from probably the best team in LPL to absolutely untouchable between Week 2 and Week 3. With Meiko on the team, EDG never again lost an entire regular season series. This came down to the wards dotting the map. EDG’s vision placement around Deft improved significantly with Meiko’s addition to the team.
Meiko during his first week as EDG's starting support
Edward Gaming’s comms function such that the team all contribute ideas, but they listen to Clearlove, the primary shotcaller, when dissent arises — with one exception; Meiko directs vision placement. By consensus, Meiko is the main vision resource, and with the drastic improvements EDG’s vision control saw after his addition, it’s impossible not to credit him.
Aside from improving EDG’s vision control in a single week, Meiko also showed a great deal of diversity in his playstyle. In his first week of play, Meiko turned heads on Janna and Annie. In Week 4, his fiercesome roaming Leona put down Master3. It wasn’t until Edward Gaming played against OMG that Meiko showed any champion pool limitations.
Against OMG, Meiko constantly missed Event Horizons on Veigar. The team’s loss came in part down to his inability to punish Cool’s Twisted Fate Destiny Gate engagements in the late game.
Motivated by this loss, Meiko likely pushed himself to improve. Against Snake a week later, his Veigar ended with a score line of 0/1/18. The precise Event Horizon and Corki burst combination obliterated Snake so severely they were forced to ban the Veigar in Game 2. Even knowing Veigar nerfs were on the way, Meiko made sure the champion was in his repertoire.
On Edward Gaming’s all-star lineup, as the youngest and least experienced player, Meiko has to work harder to pull his weight. He has said that he wants to prove he belongs on Edward Gaming, and that he can protect Deft.
Going into the Mid-Season Invitational, in a head-to-head, it was speculated that SK Telecom T1’s Wolf had the edge in the support matchup. His roaming Janna play had been fundamental to SK Telecom T1’s victories in LCK, and his Alistar in group stages was devastating. It seemed almost as if no one wanted to consider the possibility that a rookie could best Wolf, a support who has been playing professionally since 2012.
Meiko proved almost everyone wrong. In the finals of the Mid-Season Invitational, Meiko belted out his best rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Anything You Can Do.” Only Annie didn’t actually need a gun in Game 2 to completely devastate SK Telecom T1. Whatever possessed SK Telecom T1 to try to challenge Edward Gaming’s level one invasion went immediately awry with a flash and stun from Meiko. Despite SKT playing Game 2 better overall, they couldn't overcome EDG’s 3-0 early lead and gave the Chinese team their first victory of the series.
Throughout the set, EDG continued to deny Wolf’s best champion picks. Meiko played Annie again in Games 3 and 4, then grabbed the Alistar early in Game 5's draft. With Wolf out of his comfort zone, EDG found pick after pick using Meiko’s vision control.
Wolf, Meiko's opposite on SK Telecom T1 at MSI
Koro1 and Deft played worse than usual in Game 4, over-extending in a desperate attempt to get an early lead. Clearlove’s Game 2 Gragas left much to be desired. PawN was impotent in all matches except 3 and 5. Meiko put up solid performances every single game.
That doesn’t even speak to his play during the MSI group stages. Kalista has never been a Deft champion, but he and Meiko executed the Kalista-Thresh duo well despite their language barrier. Memorably, Deft and Meiko maneuvered around terrain in a 2v2 to re-engage after Deft got caught by Febiven’s Zed against Fnatic. The results were devastating.
If one discusses a support player on Edward Gaming, one cannot ignore the elephant in the room. Meiko will likely spend most of his career being compared to Fzzf, “the Chinese Madlife,” one of the most celebrated support players in League of Legends history (though certainly he is no Mata or Madlife).
Despite his retirement, many Chinese fans still maintain Fzzf is the best Chinese support. Fzzf’s strength was in his patience. He would get the perfect hook to turn a game on Thresh. He bided his time, refusing to go all-in unless he had his entire team to back him up. As a result, his skillshot accuracy was nearly incomparable in China, earning him his “Chinese Madlife” moniker.
Clearlove, U, NaMei, and Fzzf on EDG's 2014 lineup
Meiko’s fans have begun referring to him as “the new Fzzf,” but Meiko’s upside is higher than his predecessor's. One of my greatest criticisms of |
. with $403.9 million, and The Netherlands with $255 million.
The largest investments were made in finance and insurance — $2.8 billion; wholesale and retail trade — $524.9 million; and manufacturing - $475 million.
If using any of Russia Beyond's content, partly or in full, always provide an active hyperlink to the original material.PORT-AU-PRINCE – Israeli doctors preparing to go home:
Israel's field hospital in the quake-ravaged Haiti ended its operations at 4 pm local time Monday.
The hospital, set up by the IDF's medical corps, is still home to 15 patients who are being monitored following their operations. However, the Israeli hospital will only be receiving emergency cases during the night.
On Sunday, Israeli doctors already started bidding their patients farewell; many of these patients have no home to return to after leaving the hospital.
314 operations; 16 births (Photo: IDF Spokesman's Office)
By Tuesday morning, the last of the patients will be released and Israel's hospital will shut down. The IDF team in Haiti is expected to arrive back in Israel on Thursday.
The IDF's hospital treated a total of 1,102 Haitians, performed 314 surgeries, and delivered 16 babies during its deployment.
'Exceptional performance'
On Saturday, IDF Home Front Command Chief, Major General Yair Golan, lauded the "exceptional performance" of Israel's medical staff in Haiti.
"We can sum up by saying that we had three missions: Saving lives, providing medical services, and representing the State of Israel honorably," Golan said. "I think we met all three missions admirably. Indeed, the assistance was a drop in the bucket in the face of the immense human suffering in Haiti, yet nonetheless, we are glad that we could have offered some help, considering the difficult conditions over there."
Haiti's government said Monday that the death toll in the wake of the earthquake reached roughly 150,000 people. According to the UN's official count, the death toll stands at 112,250.
Meanwhile, local gangs are continuing the looting in the capital, while Haitians in more remote regions are trying to revert to their routine. Residents are slowly returning to work, and more stores are reportedly reopening in the wake of the disaster.I went to a matinee of “The Book of Mormon” over the weekend, and — I promise these things are connected, read on — when I came back from the city, late in the evening, I found just about everyone I follow on Twitter making sport of this foray from Joyce Carol Oates:
All we hear of ISIS is puritanical & punitive; is there nothing celebratory & joyous? Or is query naive? — Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) November 22, 2015
Now I get where the snark was coming from, I really do. (Especially given Oates’s rather, ah, entertaining Twitter history.) “All we hear about the Khmer Rouge is the massacres, the re-education camps, the piles of skulls; was there nothing celebratory in beginning society anew, with fewer intellectuals and bespectacled people?” “All anyone talks about with the Salem Witch Trials is the paranoia and fear and killing; was there nothing joyous about gathering as a community for a hanging?” You can play this game all day.
And yet: If you don’t recognize that for at least some of the Islamic State’s young volunteers there is a feeling of joy and celebration involved in joining up, then you’re a very long way from understanding the caliphate’s remarkable appeal. And Oates, in a daffy-seeming way, has put her finger on one of the West’s weaknesses in this conflict: Our widespread inability (concentrated in particular among our leadership class) to imagine or understand what else, beyond the pull of sadism and thuggery, our fellow human beings (including quite a few young, Western-raised people) seem to find intoxicating about the Daesh experiment.
Via Rod Dreher, who’s been writing a great deal on this theme, here’s an excerpt from a New York Review of Books piece by Scott Atran and Nafees Hamid, discussing the, yes, joyous and celebratory feelings that the Islamic state’s religious utopianism instills in people cut adrift by secular modernity:
France’s Center for the Prevention of Sectarian Drift Related to Islam (CPDSI) estimates that 90 percent of French citizens who have radical Islamist beliefs have French grandparents and 80 percent come from non-religious families. In fact, most Europeans who are drawn into jihad are “born again” into radical religion by their social peers. In France, and in Europe more generally, more than three of every four recruits join the Islamic State together with friends, while only one in five do so with family members and very few through direct recruitment by strangers. Many of these young people identify with neither the country their parents come from nor the country in which they live. Other identities are weak and non-motivating. One woman in the Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois described her conversion as being like that of a transgender person who opts out of the gender assigned at birth: “I was like a Muslim trapped in a Christian body,” she said. She believed she was only able to live fully as a Muslim with dignity in the Islamic State. For others who have struggled to find meaning in their lives, ISIS is a thrilling cause and call to action that promises glory and esteem in the eyes of friends, and through friends, eternal respect and remembrance in the wider world that many of them will never live to enjoy …
And here are the same authors on the gap between this vivid conversion experience and the feeble Western attempts to talk ISIS recruits out of their newfound cause:
In its feckless “Think Again Turn Away” social media program, the US State Department has tried to dissuade youth with mostly negative anonymous messaging. “So DAESH wants to build a future, well is beheading a future you want, or someone controlling details of your diet and dress?” Can anyone not know that already? Does it really matter to those drawn to the cause despite, or even because of, such things? As one teenage girl from a Chicago suburb retorted to FBI agents who stopped her from flying to Syria: “Well, what about the barrel bombings that kill thousands? Maybe if the beheading helps to stop that.” And for some, strict obedience provides freedom from uncertainty about what a good person is to do. By contrast, the Islamic State may spend hundreds of hours trying to enlist single individuals and groups of friends, empathizing instead of lecturing …
The deep reality here (a reality not unlike the one that’s playing itself out on certain college campuses right now) is that many human beings, especially perhaps young human beings, still crave a transcendent purpose, even in a society that tells them they don’t really need one to live a comfortable, fulfilling life. And more than that, many people experience both a kind of liberation and a kind of joy in submission to these purposes, even — as is the case with ISIS — when that submission involves accepting forms of violence and cruelty that rightly shock the conscience of the world.
This joy is not something that our culture is conditioned to expect or accept, let alone to counter. I promised to bring this back around to “The Book of Mormon,” so here goes (with spoilers): Despite being the work of two of American popular culture’s most scabrous and deliberately un-P.C. provocateurs, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the musical is remarkable for the deep conventionality of the religious story that it tells. That is, “Mormon” features a narrative in which the young L.D.S. missionaries are well-meaning guys straitjacketed by their religious culture’s vision of transcendence — the fear of hell it inspires, the repressive moral code it imposes, the implausible things it makes them believe in order to hope for everlasting life. But then they (with an assist from their African converts) realize that the real point of religious stories is just to help you be kind and happy and public-spirited, that it doesn’t really matter if they’re true, and the result is liberating, freeing, joyful:
What happens when we’re dead?
We shouldn’t think that far ahead
The only latter day that matters is tomorrow. … We love to dance and shout
and let all the feelings out
and work to make a better latter day …
John Lennon couldn’t have put it any better. And my distaste for “Imagine” notwithstanding, the joy involved in making this shift is perfectly real! Where traditional religious authorities crush the human spirit, the escape into either more liberal forms of faith (the “Book of Mormon” move) or straightforward secular humanism is very naturally felt as a blessed renewal, an ecstatic release. This feeling isn’t something made-up by a few godless liberals: Large parts of our culture lived through it in the 1960s, and people who grow up in particularly suffocating religious atmospheres can still experience it today — which is why the story retains so much power as a Western master narrative, why even men like the “South Park” guys, to whom little is sacred, rely on it to lend a moral arc to their cheerful blasphemies.
But as Philip Larkin knew early, the “long slide to happiness, endlessly” that allegedly awaits when you drop the old religious scruples often has something else waiting at the bottom, and the reality of death can be put off till a latter day, till tomorrow and tomorrow, and tomorrow …, but never entirely denied. “We love to dance and shout / and let all the feelings out, / and work to make a better latter day” … that’s a way to live, certainly, but it leaves some pretty big human concerns under-addressed, and when that “better latter day” isn’t all you hoped for fears creep in around the edges, and maybe you respond to them by injecting a little more utopianism into your secular liberalism … or maybe you’re a little more lost than that, a little more desperate, a little more existentially-adrift, and you make some new friends online who believe that God actually has a plan for you, that you aren’t just a mote floating randomly in sunlight streaming through high windows, that the eye that’s on the sparrow is on you as well, and if there’s a price to be paid for that belief, a price in blood and even savagery, well doesn’t everything worth anything come with a price?
“Nothing costs enough here,” Huxley’s Savage complains about the brave new world. If ISIS costs, a certain meaning-starved cohort in our world thinks, maybe that just means it’s real.
That cohort is still mercifully small, and unless radical Islam acquires a lot more intellectual cachet it’s likely to remain so. But if the West’s official alternative to ISIS is the full Belgium (basically good food + bureaucracy + euthanasia), if Western society seems like it’s closed most of the paths that human beings have traditionally followed to find transcendence, if Western culture loses the ability to even imagine the joy that comes with full commitment, and not just the remissive joy of sloughing commitments off — well, then we’re going to be supplying at least some recruits to groups like ISIS for a very long to come.
A last “Book of Mormon”-related thought: As it happens, I’ve visited the Mormon missionary center where the musical opens, as part of a larger excursion to Salt Lake City and Provo a few years ago. Seen through Catholic eyes, not secular ones, it’s a place and a culture that’s at once extraordinarily impressive and somewhat strange and stifling; you can understand why so many Mormons commit to it absolutely and also why a certain percentage flee it with relief.
But whether you’re looking at Mormonism or any other intensely-lived-out faith, you have to see both of those realities. Because if you build your entire worldview and assumptions, as too many of our cultural institutions and “thought leaders” have, around just the second half of that equation, then your understanding of your fellow human beings — and your ability to speak to some of them in extremis — will be tragically incomplete. If you can’t see — as “The Book of Mormon,” while generous in certain ways to its subjects, doesn’t really see or convey — that there’s more authentic, Joyce Carol Oates-ian joy in fervent conservative religious practice and belief than there is in many allegedly-enlightened swaths of our society (including certain “enlightened” Catholic theology departments, if I might offer a just-slightly uncharitable example), then the past and future alike are going to be mysterious to you, and so are certain very important things happening right now.
Where the brighter joy of Mormons is invisible, in other words, the dark joy of ISIS will be entirely incomprehensible. That lack of comprehension isn’t Islamic radicalism’s only weapon. But it’s a useful one for the caliphate to have ready to its hand.On Monday, both teams advanced to the semifinals, with Greenway starring with a goal and an assist in a 3-2 win over Switzerland.
On Wednesday, both teams won again, as the U.S. eked out a semifinal win over Russia, as Bellows scored twice and McAvoy added a goal and assist.
On Thursday, BU needed to play No. 10 Union while seven key members of its lineup got ready to play in the gold-medal game. Short on skaters but not on heart and skill, the few good men responded with a deeply satisfying 5-4 overtime win.
The gold-medal contest started north of the border an hour later than the Union game, so the BU team got to watch the U.S. team rally twice from two-goal deficits to beat Canada before the shootout victory resulted in gold around the necks of six Terriers. Only David Warsofsky had ever won a WJC gold medal for the program, so now those ranks have grown six-fold. On top of it all, McAvoy was named Team USA's Player of the Game for his great play while logging massive minutes.
With the full team together for the first time in nearly a month, the Terriers took the ice at Fenway Park today and earned a 5-3 win over UMass in their third appearance at Frozen Fenway.
– While we're admittedly only eight days into 2017, it's hard to imagine how any college hockey program getting a year off to a better start than Boston University has this January.For starters, BU set an all-time collegiate record by sending seven players to the prestigious World Junior Championships for Under-20 players.and goaliesuited up for the United States, whileroamed the blue line for Canada.So let's take a look at how this improbable week unfolded:"Obviously a hectic week for all of us," BU coachsaid. "Getting the seven guys back from World Juniors after playing the game Thursday night without them, having to practice with about 14 players. Just an uncharacteristic week for us but really proud of our team."Can it really get better than this as a way to kick off a year? Well,could have buried his empty-net attempt in the last couple of seconds of today's game. That would have meant that he started 2017 with two consecutive hat tricks. Instead, he had to settle for a mere five goals in two games after scoring just three goals in 17 games in the fall semester.JFK, as he's often called, was at a loss to explain his New Year fireworks. "I'm not sure. It works that way sometimes. For a while it won't come and then the next game you get three. It's nice to get this start to 2017."Forsbacka Karlsson scored the game-tying goal on Thursday on a pure snipe before completing his hat trick in overtime for the win. Today he had one especially slick goal when Bellows made a great backhanded feed through traffic to somehow find the Swedish sophomore on the doorstep, where he backhanded it home.Understandably, Forsbacka Karlsson isn't about to change anything right now. "A couple of kids were asking for my stick there, but I think I want to keep it since it was a nice day."Forsbacka Karlsson and McAvoy are both draft picks of the Boston Bruins, so playing at the home of another Boston sports institution today was an experience to remember. "It was really special," McAvoy said. "I was a New York kid, and I grew up as a New York sports fan, but then you get to Boston, and before I was even a Bruins draft pick I had been to Fenway. It's such a storied building and such a great city, you take on an allegiance to the Sox there. Once I got my Red Sox hat, then it was kind of serious. Playing here was a blast; it's something I'll remember for a long time."Players grow up in a hurry playing on the global stage, and McAvoy is definitely feeling it. "It's been crazy," the sophomore defenseman said. "I'm feeling like I've aged a little here over the whole thing. It's something you couldn't have drawn up. We had a very resilient World Junior team. When things didn't go our way, we found a way to make them go our way. That was an unbelievable experience and something we'll have for the rest of our lives."Back on campus, McAvoy has much to look forward to in the spring semester. The team is now 12-5-2, riding a season-best four-game winning streak, and tied for fourth in the PairWise Rankings, thanks in part to his teammates' great showing while he and the rest were playing in Canada. "It's great to be back here for sure to be with this family," McAvoy said. "To start off with the big win they had against Union when we weren't even here, which is going to pay dividends at the end of the year… and then to get this win is great."Todayandscored their second goals of the season. Combined with the short-staffed win on Thursday night, it makes a statement about the team's depth. "We feel we're 26 deep," Quinn said. "It's hard telling guys that they're not going to play, but we proved on Thursday night that we're 15 deep up front, eight deep on the blue line, and three deep in net. Depth played a huge role on Thursday night, and it's going to play a huge role going forward."So what's next after this whirlwind week? If the BU faithful fear a letdown after so many high-stakes games, bear in mind that this coming weekend will bring a home-and-home series against archrival Boston College.If the Terriers can sweep that big series, we'll have to start wondering exactly what the players and coaches vowed to do for their New Year's resolutions.The Trump campaign called Wednesday for Hillary Clinton to fire top advisers over emails, published by WikiLeaks, that appeared to mock politically conservative Catholics and push for a “Catholic Spring” from within.
Jennifer Palmieri, now the Clinton campaign’s director of communications, said in a 2011 email exchange that some politically conservative Catholics "think [Catholicism] is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals."
Palmieri was responding to a message from John Halpin, a fellow at the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. Halpin remarked on a magazine article that discussed how both 21st Century Fox CEO Rupert Murdoch and "Robert Thompson, managing editor of the [Wall Street Journal], are raising their kids Catholic."
"Friggin' Murdoch baptized his kids in Jordan where John the Baptist baptized Jesus," Halpin said, before dismissing Catholic beliefs on gender as “backwards.”
"It's an amazing bastardization of the faith," Halpin added. "They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy."
The exchange was included in a batch of hacked emails purportedly from Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta's account that were posted by WikiLeaks. Podesta was copied on the exchange between Palmieri and Halpin, but did not comment.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., described the comments as "staggering."
"To disparage the Catholic Church as ‘severely backwards’ is an insult to millions of people across the nation," Ryan, who is Catholic, said in a statement. "If anything, these statements reveal the Clinton campaign's hostile attitude toward people of faith in general.
"All Americans of faith should take a long, hard look at this and decide if these are the values we want to be represented in our next president," Ryan added. "If Hillary Clinton continues to employ people with biased and bigoted views, it's clear where her priorities lie."
Trump Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway blasted the remarks in a conference call Wednesday, saying they show the campaign’s disdain for Catholics.
“For 30 years Hillary Clinton has been openly hostile to practicing Catholics,” she said, citing Clinton’s support of partial birth abortion and the ObamaCare contraception mandate. “Now her staff is caught calling Catholics ‘backwards’ in emails seething with disdain.”
Conway called for Clinton to fire those on her staff who have expressed anti-Catholic sentiments.
“Everyone involved should be ashamed. The hostility to religious liberty and disdain for Catholics should not go unpunished,” she said. “We call on Hillary Clinton to apologize and fire the staff involved in this anti-Catholic bigotry.”
Trump, who himself was involved in a feud with Pope Francis over his immigration policies in February, also commented on the emails to a Florida crowd, saying they show members of Clinton team “viciously attacking Catholics and evangelicals.”
Latest faux controversy out of @Wikileaks hack: Accusing Jen Palmieri, who is Catholic, of being anti-Catholic. — Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) October 12, 2016
“It won’t be tolerated by the voters,” he added.
Palmieri responded to the controversy by noting that she is Catholic and telling reporters, “The Russians orchestrated this hack.”
Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon dismissed what he called the “faux controversy,” also citing Palmieri's faith.
In a separate 2012 exchange, Podesta was involved in a conversation in which he appears to approve of the idea of fomenting a so-called “Catholic spring.”
In an email to Podesta, Sandy Newman of the liberal nonprofit Voices for Progress says there “needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic church.”
“I have not thought at all about how one would 'plant the seeds of the revolution,' or who would plant them,” he muses.
Podesta tells him they are creating groups to work for such a goal:
“We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this. But I think it lacks the leadership to do so now. Likewise Catholics United. Like most Spring movements, I think this one will have to be bottom up,” he says.
Angela Flood, a member of Trump’s Catholic Advisory Group and former spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Washington, said that the email showed an attempt to undermine the Catholic faith.
“Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and other organizations are financed by George Soros and have goals inconsistent with Catholic thinking,” she said during the conference call, in response to a question from FoxNews.com. “They see this as an opportunity to infiltrate the Church and cause chaos and confusion. It is an attempt to undermine the faith.”
Rupert Murdoch is currently the executive chairman of Fox News, which includes FoxNews.com.LeBron James' LRMR marketing agency has severed ties and will no longer represent Cleveland Browns quarterback Johnny Manziel, according to Joe Vardon of Cleveland.com.
“We've decided to end our formal business relationship with Johnny,” LeBron James' business manager Maverick Carter told Cleveland.com.
“I will continue to support and advise him as a friend,” Carter added. “However, because Johnny needs to focus on personal growth, the next phase of his career and because LRMR continues to expand beyond marketing, we made the mutual decision that it was best to terminate our business relationship.”
The decison was also made to shift the long term focus on to bigger projects.
Manziel was reportedly seen gambling at a Las Vegas casino in disguise with a blond wig, fake mustache, and glasses over the weekend. He missed a concussion checkup at team headquarters Sunday morning and could not be reached on his phone all day.
• KING: It’s Playoff Time. But First...
The Heisman Trophy winner is a close friend of James and has been seen at Cavaliers home games. James shared his concern for Manziel on Wednesday.
"I don't know all the details on it, I really kind of even haven't been all up on it, but I've heard a little bit of it and it's just a distraction for not only himself but for everyone that's around him, including family, people that represent him, the people around him,” James said. “He'll figure it out at some point, we all hope.”
- Christopher ChavezThree French musicians have found themselves involved in an unusual business: rearranging the works of legendary American songwriter, guitarist and musical pioneer Frank Zappa (1940-1993) and performing them in unusual instrumental arrangements that create sounds never before heard. The percussion becomes a veritable orchestra, enriching not just the rhythmic element, but also the melody with gongs, tam-tams, cymbals, and a number of thrilling sound effects answering the motifs from the electric guitar. The organist, by using and exploiting the tonal possibilities offered up by the instrument, creates entirely new worlds. What also makes the production interesting is that two of the performers come from the world of classical music to tackle Zappa's already unique and unmistakable musical world. Henri-Charles Caget and Yves Rechsteiner are professors at the Lyon Conservatoire, and the latter has also taught at Basel's Schola Cantorum, one of the citadels of historical music, while Fred Maurin, who grew up on the music of Jimi Hendrix and King Crimson, primarily works in the areas of jazz and fusion music. The other musical instruments surrounding the organ and brought into dialogue with it, along with the musicians armed with extraordinary improvisational skill and technical knowledge, create a singular stylistic mix to delight music fans looking for novelty and adventure.
Presented by: Müpa Budapest
Parking information The Müpa Budapest underground garage gates will be operated by an automatic number plate recognition system. Parking is free of charge for visitors with tickets to any of our paid performances on that given day. The detailed parking policy of Müpa Budapest is available here.Duelyst is a pixel art turn based strategy game set in a world where battles are fought by Bloodborn Generals. Collect hundreds of cards, climb a ranked ladder, and conquer difficult challenges in this breathtakingly beautiful mix of Hearthstone and Hero Academy.
Duelyst is a turn-based strategy game developed and published by CounterPlay Games. Pit your Bloodborn General against rival city-states in a tournament to decide who takes home the grand prize. Pick from six different heroes and their accompanying dozens of cards into battle, where your units and spells will be summoned to edge out victory. Marvel at the expertly created pixel art characters and breathtaking water color environments in a fully realized world, while collecting hundreds of different cards with vastly different effects and stats—from creatures to spells. Climbing the ranked ladder won’t be easy. Practice the deeper intricacies of a class in a challenge mode where you’ll be forced to complete a puzzle in a specific way.
Magmar- Crush enemies with the most powerful units in the game that come back from the dead to continue fighting. Even though this is a fairly simple class, enemies wont be able to stop the constant barrage of strong units in addition to your general who's capable of putting down his own beatdown.
Vetruvian- Map pressure is central to Vetruvian's gameplay. Place Obelysks that will constantly spawn minions and keep ranged units in the back to force the opposing general to come to you, and die.
Abyssian- Coldly calculate the deaths of minions to buff the ones that are still alive. Clear a board of extremely cheap wraithlings to activate death watch, an effect on certain cards, to grant a massive advantage over the enemy. Careful setup is vital to winning with Abyssian.
Lyonar- This general inspires units to increase their potential to terrifying heights. Place units close to Argeon to gain effects like increased attack. Similarly, place units near enemies to lock them down from moving or attacking anyone else. Bully your enemy and win through brute strength.
Vanar- Specializes in spells that generate walls, allowing you to trap and split opponents. Effects like infiltrate, frost, and the ability to transform minions keep the enemy on their toes. Proper board positioning is key to using this class effectively.
Full Review
Duelyst Review
By, Charlie Perez
It’s every strategy game player’s dream: beautiful graphics on top of an extremely deep card-based battle system guided by industry giants. It's Duelyst. From incredibly diverse classes to the stunning visuals, CounterPlay Games debuts with a truly exceptional turn-based trading card game.
Pixel Perfect
The graphics in Duelyst are genuinely a work of art. Pixel perfect positioning and graceful animations combined with a fitting glow or shading depending upon which general you're playing is truly breathtaking; you could watch this game all day long. Double shielded juggernauts smash down on the map with every step, wraithlings look devious, a sly assassin looks untouchable, and the towering giants hold an enormous hammer. All the characters are brimming with personality and originality. This is also seen on every spell effect and every icon. The style and level of expertise matches even Gameboy/Nintendo DS Fire Emblem levels.
While not pixel art, the environments, character portraits, and menus all look sharp. In battle there are plenty of effects, like smoke, that help keep the game visually interesting. Though admittedly it is a bit weird to have such different styles juxtaposed next to each other. Regardless, both graphical presentations look stunning.
Tactical Me Maybe
While fairly dense overall, getting started is quite simple. If you’ve played games like Hearthstone, or more specifically Hero Academy, you’ll be right at home. You have an action bar where your “hand” containing cards is located. The cards have a mana cost that you get more of every turn. Place a unit within your mana constraint on the board within one tile of your general or another unit. Protect your general, akin to a king from chess, from harm while whittling down the opposing general. But that’s not to say you’re general is going to be sitting in the back sipping on Pina Coladas. Your champion has a base level attack of two and twenty five health. Lose that health and its game over. Fear not! Your champion can be buffed, healed, and even attack other units. The general being a unit similar to everyone else is such a nice touch. No longer are you protecting something as asinine as crystals, or a character portrait. It’s your own person and greatest weapon.
On that note, your hero will directly affect the game in ways more than simply a 2/25 unit. Certain characters can significantly buff the hero's attack, such as one that buffs ranged attacks, and another that's core to the hero. Lyonar, a paladinesque archetype, gives his minions buffs by staying within one tile of them. It's something that makes a lot of sense, but rarely implemented. The leader on a battlefield stays close to his soldiers to inspire courage and ferocity. And every character is vastly different from one another, leading to incredibly interesting match-ups.
Sit a Spell
Monsters, deities, and spells—besides being fantastically gorgeous—bring an unprecedented level of diversity. The cards go way past the typical buff, debuff, damage, health regen, or place a unit and forget stereotypes. Create walls, teleport units, attack along a row, taunt/root, fly, and much more, allowing for a significant number of ways to play. There are over a dozen and a half challenges teaching you how to play and combo correctly. For example, the Songhai general fills the assassin archetype. As such, his units are low in health and deal more damage when attacking from behind. They also make many moves in a short amount of time. A combo with this character would go something like: summon unit, teleport behind enemy, buff attack, un-exhaust so he can attack, attack, and un-exhaust again. A typical combo can easily halve an opposing general’s health. The drawback is that it requires almost a full hand of cards, leaving you weak both before and after the combo.
Besides challenges, there is also a single-player practice mode and a ranked ladder. The practice mode allows you to play both sides of the field, allowing you to try out intricate combos without hurting your rank. Ranked mode is fairly typical, win against other players of your skill level for prestige. Similar to the Arena mode from Hearthstone, Duelyst has their Gauntlet. Pick random cards to form a deck and face off against other people who have done the same. Survive longer for better rewards. I dislike the gold gate to this game mode, but the developers have to make their money somehow.
Show Me the Money
Following the standard for trading card games, you start with all basic cards and earn more by buying packs either through in-game gold or real world money. I don’t like this system in Hearthstone and I certainly don’t like it here either. There have been many situations in both games where I would’ve won the game if not for rare/legendary cards having overpowering stats for so little.
It’s so frustrating to not be able to climb the ranked ladder either because I haven’t grinded or spent enough money to keep up with other players. Not pay-to-win by definition, but it’s close enough to make me hesitant about playing at all. Granted, there is no easy solution. Cosmetics are a good choice, but having a rarity system in a card game is extremely deep rooted, and unfortunately won’t be going away any time soon.
Final Verdict - Excellent
This game is so good in every way I had to sit back for fifteen minutes trying to think of any reason to not play Duelyst. I’ve said it a million times already, but Duelyst truly is one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. The strategic diversity is spectacular and lead to many all-nighters, playing only this game. The only problems I had were a result of the game being in beta—the lack of a client for example which has been said to be coming soon. Duelyst is fantastic and my personal game of the year thus far.More than 180 cats have been removed from a single dwelling.
More than 180 cats are in SPCA care after being rescued from an alleged animal hoarder.
SPCA inspectors removed the cats from the property, a single dwelling, on July 23 after ongoing complaints. They are now at the charity's Auckland Animal Village in Mangere undergoing vet checks.
Chief executive Andrea Midgen said an investigation is underway and SPCA Auckland will likely prosecute the owner under the Animal Welfare Act.
"The condition they were living in was absolutely appalling from both a human and an animal perspective," she said.
"Surprisingly, a lot of the cats are not too bad - not as bad as we feared given the condition they were living in."
About 300 cats and kittens are now at the shelter in total and it is struggling to contain them all.
"We've been very creative. In our barn we have a piggery which has now been converted to hold cats, we've got dog-holding areas which have now been converted to hold cats."
The shelter has closed to incoming cats while vets carry out assessments.
People planning on dropping off a cat this week will need to find alternative arrangements, Midgen said.
She's encouraging owners to take photos, make fliers and post ads on sites like Pets on the Net and TradeMe to find their pets new homes.
"It is an owner's responsibility to rehome any family pet they can no longer provide with a home. The SPCA will happily provide people with help and advice on finding a new home for cats."
The charity will reassess its ability to take in more cats on July 29 or 30.
It will also be looking for foster homes for some of the rescued cats.INTO THE DARK: The ritual tooting on the drive through Mt Victoria tunnel may have its roots in superstition.
The first time I penetrated the dark recesses of the Mt Victoria tunnel was way back in the 1960s on my first trip to Wellington.
Having been spoilt by the pristine white walls of the glamorous new and widely celebrated Lyttelton tunnel, my reaction to the short and dingy Mt Victoria tunnel was one of disappointment.
Surely the capital could do better than this, I thought as we whisked through it listening to the taxi driver chin-wagging and moaning to my father about the idiosyncratic and annoying Wellingtonian habit of car drivers beeping their horns in this particular tunnel for no apparent reason.
Being juvenile in age and thought, I marvelled at the toots wishing the taxi driver would indulge his conservative Cantabrian cargo by letting rip on the horn to get a conversation going with the other parping cars.
But no, we sailed through like politicians maintaining a restrained and undignified silence.
For a time there while test-driving cars for purchase, one of the pre-requisites was that the heap possessed an ear-bleeding, basso profundo parp in order for it to leave an orchestral imprint over the eunuch cries of all other automobiles in the cacophony of the Mt Vic tunnel.
Forgive me to all those who know the story behind the tooting tunnel, but I have only become aware of the tale in recent times.
While the tunnel was under construction in the decade of 1920-30, George Coates, a labourer who worked on the tunnel supposedly murdered his lover, Phyllis Simmons, and buried her in the tunnel foundations.
He was tried, found guilty and hanged in Mt Crawford in 1931.
No human remains have been found since of the murdered woman, but legend has it that her ghost lingers, stalking the tunnel and to this day we sound our horns as a mark of respect to Phyllis, or for the more lily-livered among us, to keep her ghost away.
A couple of decades back I minced through the tunnel's anorexic footpath that has to be shared by both cyclist and walker, and found the experience to be highly pollutive to the lungs, causing a companion of mine to black out from the fumes and fall over cutting his chin badly.
You know head wounds, they bleed like the proverbial stuck pig and after trying ineptly to mop up the flow in the gloom with our T-shirts, we emerged at the Basin Reserve end of the tunnel into blazing sunlight looking like a couple |
ERS" when it comes to the lack of success with the 32nd overall pick, but I think it would be better to just lower expectations if that's what you are thinking. The truth of the matter is that not all first round picks are created equal, and picking last in the first round means you are much closer to the second round than you are to the first overall pick. In the top five, you should expect to pick an elite player, but with the 32nd pick, you should hope you get a starter.
The fact is that many teams haven't even been that lucky.
Over the last seven years, the only player to enjoy more than one season as a starter (with the exception of Matt Elam, who could technically not have more than one season as a starter yet) is Hood. He has three seasons as "starter" with the Steelers, and he was drafted five years ago. Sherrod and Merling have never been full-time starters (Sherrod has had most of his career wiped out with injuries) and at best, it might be nice just to see Seattle draft a player that can play some sort of role on the offense or defense.
And if you think that the Seahawks are an exception because of how well they draft, you might want to do some self-checkage prior to self-wreckage. Seattle has missed on first round picks before (James Carpenter, jury out on Bruce Irvin) and if they're taking a 'best player available' approach, that usually means that there is some level of risk involved since 'BPA' candidates typically slip due to some red flag.
Their highest probability bet is probably an offensive lineman, specifically a guard. If they take a defensive end, just note that those players have produced some decent hits (Kiwanuka) and some terrible misses (Merling, Tyler Brayton, Nate Davis.) And if they select a wide receiver, you may be getting something closer to Dennis Northcutt and not Reggie Wayne (30th, 2001.)
There are plenty of ways for the Seahawks to come away from this draft with a good player, but winning the Super Bowl means not getting the best options available. I think I can live with that.
Here is a link to all 32nd overall picks in history, courtesy of Pro-Football-Reference.During the Nindie Showcast today, Inti Creates revealed its new game / IP known as “Dragon: Marked for Death”. It’ll be out on Switch this winter.
Inti Creates has now followed up with the official announcement, pointing out how it’s “an immersive dark fantasy style action RPG that can be enjoyed solo, or together with up 3 other people in local or online multiplayer”. The studio also highlighted the fact that many staffers from the Mega Man Zero / Mega Man ZX series are working on the game.
Here’s the full rundown of staff:
Director: Ryota Ito
Megaman Zero series (Director), Megaman ZX series (Director), Megaman 9 (Director), Megaman 10 (Director)
Character Designer: Toru Nakayama
Megaman Zero 1-3 (Character Designer, Illustrator), Megaman ZX (Character Designer)
Chief Character Graphics Designer: Horikatsu Maeda
Megaman Zero 1-3 (Character Graphics), Megaman Zero 4 (Character Designer, Illustrator), Megaman ZX series (Character Graphics), Azure Striker Gunvolt series (Character Graphics), Blaster Master Zero (Character Graphics)
Scenario Writer (Planning), World Planner: Makoto Yabe
Megaman Zero 3-4 (Scenario Writer), Megaman ZX series (Scenario Writer, Character Designer, Illustrator)
Sound Producer: Ippo Yamada
Megaman Zero series (Sound Director, Sound Producer), Megaman ZX series (Sound Director, Sound Producer), Megaman 9 (Sound Director, Sound Producer), Megaman 10 (Sound Director, Sound Producer), Azure Striker Gunvolt series (Sound Director, Sound Producer), Blaster Master Zero (Sound Director, Sound Producer)
Main Programmer: Akihiro Shishido
Megaman Zero series (Programmer), Megaman ZX series (Main Programmer)
Lead Programmer: Shinichi Sema
Megaman Zero series (Programmer), Megaman 9 (Main Programmer)
Producer: Takuya Aizu
Megaman Zero series (Main Programmer, Producer), Megaman ZX series (Producer), Megaman 9 (Producer), Megaman 10 (Producer), Azure Striker Gunvolt series (Producer), Blaster Master Zero (Producer)
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PocketI recently discovered that a game I played as a child, Chutes and Ladders, is actually an ancient game from India known as Snakes and Ladders. The original game was interpreted by some as an illustration of fate or destiny. The game is pure luck, there is no skill involved, so a player's destiny depends upon the roll of the dice and the structure of the game. But in another interpretation the ladders represent virtuous choices -- the path to prosperity -- while the snakes or chutes represent vices that lead to ruin. There were more snakes than ladders in the original game to teach that it is harder to stay on the moral path than it is to fall off of it.
There are interesting similarities between these two interpretations of the game and the two most common explanations for the large increase in inequality in recent decades. One explanation for growing inequality relies upon institutional and political factors. For example, proponents of this view often argue that changes in legislation favored by powerful business interests undermined unions. This gave businesses the upper hand in wage negotiations and allowed business owners to capture a larger and unfair share of income.
From the perspective of workers, this is a story where their destiny is partly determined by changes in the rules of the game, and those changes work against them. It's not the individual's poor choices that make it hard to climb ladders, avoid snakes, and reach the top of the board. It’s that those who make it to the top are able to use the power that comes with wealth to change the game in a way that protects their own positions on the board, and this comes at the expense of those who do not have this degree of influence.
The second explanation relies upon increasing returns to education brought about by skill based technical change, winner take all markets that have grown with globalization, and other economic factors to explain rising inequality. This is fundamentally a virtues and vices story. Those who make good choices and have the virtues that society values are appropriately rewarded and they rise to the top, while those who do not stay at the bottom. Manipulation of the game by the powerful has little to do with the outcome.
As society becomes more divided, it becomes more difficult for those at the bottom to make their way to the top if for no other reason than the distance between the two groups is expanding.
What is the solution to the inequality problem? If the widening gap in the income distribution is the result of unfairness, if some people are getting more than they deserve, then the answer is simple in principle but much harder in practice. In the short-run, take from the undeserving and give to the deserving, and in the longer run fix the problems that produce the unfair distribution of income.
But suppose that growing inequality has nothing to do with political power, market power, rules that favor the perpetuation of wealth, and so on. The evidence suggests these are important factors, but suppose the second group is correct. Should we accept that people are getting paid according to their contribution to the social good, conclude that’s fair, and leave it at that?
Even in this case there are reasons to pursue redistributive policies. As society becomes more divided, it becomes more difficult for those at the bottom to make their way to the top if for no other reason than the distance between the two groups is expanding. In this case, taxing the winners to create more opportunity for the less fortunate – to build more ladders and extend those that already exist – is justified.
FIXING A BROKEN RUNG ON THE LADDER
We also need to expand social insurance, especially during recessions. When a recession hits there is a substantial increase in the number of destructive downward chutes for those in the middle and bottom of the income distribution. There is also a substantial decline in the number of ladders. More chutes appear at the top as well, but they are generally short due to the built in protection that wealth brings.
If we want to address the growing inequality problem, one of the most important things we can do is to use social insurance to stop people from losing ground for reasons that have nothing to do with their own choices. Too many people work for years and years to climb small ladders only to have a recession or unexpected health problems, for example, take away their hard-earned gains.
Unfortunately, all indications are that we are moving toward less social insurance – more chutes and less help climbing ladders – at a time when we ought to be moving in the other direction. We are wealthier as a society every year, and we can afford to provide more social insurance to working class households. More tax cuts are not the answer.
Inequality is a difficult problem to address, and commonly cited remedies such as better education are unlikely to be enough to resolve the problem. In the end, redistribution may be necessary. But one thing is clear. We have no business at all making the inequality problem worse by allowing the powerful to reduce social insurance and rewrite the rules of the game in a way that tears down ladders and reopens the destructive chutes to ruin.Lil Wayne’s preoccupation with Nirvana runs deep. He’s long cited Nevermind as a big influence on his decision to pursue music. Last fall as the album was celebrating its 20th anniversary, he sat with MTV to chat about its significance (his interviewer, Sway, even sagely mentioned the song “I Smell Teen Spirit”). Earlier that year, brilliantly ridiculous Canadian pundit Narduwar gifted Wayne a Nirvana poster book at their interview.
The latest manifestation of Weezy’s longtime fascination with Kurt Cobain and Co. has arrived on BreadOverBed.com, the website the MC launched with his buddy DJ Scoob Doo featuring “exclusive footage” meant to document “all the sacrifice” that comes along with Wayne’s success. As AllHipHop notes, Wayne (or somebody helping him deal with his success) has posted a three-minute video featuring Tunechi sitting (skateboard underfoot, obviously) between a painted portrait of Albert Einstein and interestingly altered cover art for Nirvana’s Nevermind explaining, that the phrase “Bread Over Bed” is his “lifestyle,” “[not] a saying, [not] a movement.
But… what is he trying to tell us by Photoshopping his baby photo — as originally seen on the cover of Tha Carter III — over the face of Spencer Elden, the 20-year-old whose legacy SPIN just won’t let him forget? Is he pulling a Hov and breaking news like a new album cover (I Am Not a Human Being II, perhaps)? Or is he just reiterating how much he seriously loves Nirvana, you guys?This is not easy for me. Believe you me…believe you me…” Those are the words I hear before the door opens. After six years and three trips to the Caribbean, searching and scouring the entire Jamaican island for Patrick Patterson, the moment has finally arrived. I’m outside his residence and he’s just about to step out. But somehow, I’m not sure of what to expect.
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For years now, I’ve only heard grave and dire speculations about Patterson’s present state — that he’s lost in the bush or is in an asylum; maybe, even roaming the streets as a destitute. Patterson has only added to the ambiguity. Earlier in the day, he had sounded rather cryptic over the phone. “I find moving around tough and I struggle with my daily functioning,” he had said. At some point, Patterson also mentioned not having his own shelter. And, as I stand near the gate of this rather spacious but slightly unkempt one-storey house, which I later realise has been home the former fastest-bowler-in-the-world-turned-recluse for nearly 25 years, it’s difficult not to fear the worst.
Those fears are put to rest, though, as soon as I see him walk out. Patterson, 55, is tall as ever, but a lot frailer than before — almost gaunt. He walks out wearing a loose, long shirt, khaki shorts, a cap and a disarming smile. The eyes still have the twinkle of yesteryears and the middle tooth is still conspicuously absent.
He agrees to pose for a picture outside the house in Kingston that he’s confined himself to ever since he disappeared from the scene in the late 1990s. But he politely refuses to let you in. “I wish I can call you in, but I can’t. I simply can’t,” he says.
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In a cab, en route to the waterfront bar close to the airport that he frequents, the 55-year-old tells you about the area we are in and how it went from being a once-posh locality to a lower middle-class suburb, before slowing regaining its social status. There’s barely a hint of what the world has been saying has happened to Patrick Patterson. If anything, I’m taken aback by how normal it all seems.
The next four hours are spent by the Marina, sipping beer — Patterson insists on having a milder, imported one — and sharing a massive snapper with some fried bammy. It is over these four hours, as we talk about everything from the heady heights of his cricketing career to the “dark days that were as dark as midnight” as he calls them, that you realise why the Caribbean and the cricketing universe doesn’t quite know what really happened to Patterson. For, even he has been struggling to make sense of it.
As the evening progresses, I get a sense of why that might be the case. While Patterson is, at times, lucid, his mind seems to be in a state of flux, swinging between reality and imagination, between what happened and what he presumes had happened. One moment, Patterson says he doesn’t know women played cricket at the highest level, the next moment he asks why the Indian Prime Minister has visited Israel after so many years. He insists that he wants to take me on a drive to show me Kingston the next time we meet, but then he reveals that he has a car that hasn’t been used for 10 years and is rotting like everything else inside his home, including its sole occupant.
Last year, during a “legendary wicket-keepers dinner” organised by the Lord’s Taverners in London, Jeffrey Dujon made a revealing statement. Asked who among the plethora of outrageously quick bowlers that he kept wickets to was the fastest, his answer surprised everyone present. “Patrick Patterson was the quickest of the lot,” said Dujon, who had the unwelcome job of facing up to everyone from Andy Roberts and Michael Holding to Malcolm Marshall and Curtly Ambrose from behind the stumps. But Dujon, even if the most qualified, isn’t the only one to say so. Former English cricket captain Graham Gooch once spoke about the mortal fear and concern for one’s physical well-being while facing Patterson. There is no dearth of YouTube videos that testify to that fact, where batsman after batsman are seen having their stumps shattered or edging deliveries while clearly not looking keen to get their bodies in line with the ball. There’s one video in which South African batsman Andrew Hudson’s bat flies out of his hand after it’s struck by a seemingly harmless length delivery from Patterson. The ball is just too quick for both the batsman and his bat.
Many other such anecdotes have turned into fast-bowling folklore in the Caribbean. The day I finally meet Patterson, I hear about the one time when Jamaica and Barbados faced up to each other in the late 1980s in what was referred to as a mini-Test. The game is supposed to have been the cricketing version of a demolition derby, a face-off between the fastest bowlers in the Caribbean. Barbados had Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall. Jamaica had Michael Holding, Courtney Walsh and Patterson. The one memory that stands out for many who were at the Kensington Oval that day, is of a Patterson delivery that slammed into Gordon Greenidge’s chest. They recall a puff of the starch on Greenidge’s shirt flying up and the rare instance of the legendary opener being staggered by the blow. There’s a consensus that the country boy from Portland had won that test of pace single-handedly.
In Jamaica, locals recall Sabina Park turning into a cauldron every time their beloved “Rambo”, as they called him here, would come galloping down from the George Headley Stand. As part of that same lecture last year, Dujon talks about the one time an enraged Patterson walked up to the Australian dressing-room after being sledged while batting at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and pointed at some of their batsmen saying, “You, you, you, you. I’ll kill you all tomorrow.” Needless to say, Patterson finished them off for 114 with a five-wicket haul.
Unfortunately, none of these incidents ring a bell for Patterson. He looks at you, nodding, like he’s hearing about his own feats for the first time. “I’m just so far from all of that, nothing around me to remind me really of the whole journey. It’s been like that for 20-odd years. I’ve just been at that address,” he says, almost apologetically. “I can remember the atmosphere at that match you talk about. It was electrifying. Like a Test atmosphere. But that’s all I remember. I hope you understand,” he repeats.
For India, he was the menace who arrived with the West Indies team in 1987. He blew them away in Delhi, his foot intimidatingly pointing at the batsman as he exploded into his delivery stride, ball after ball, as if to say, “you’re next”. Patterson nods and giggles when he hears about the fear that he had generated with his spells, like he is hearing about it for the first time. But then, out of nowhere, he tells you that his highest score in Test matches came at Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium — 21 not out — during that tour. And, all of a sudden, it’s like someone has switched on the recall button in his mind.
He starts rattling off about the memorable time he had in India on and off the field. “I remember Arun Lal — I got him out. Kris Srikkanth, what a dangerous fellow he was! If you didn’t get him out early, he would punish you. He and David Boon bothered me the most as batsmen. And I also developed a great friendship with Azharuddin. What is he up to now? Coaching?” he asks. When informed about the turn of events in the former Indian captain’s life since the last time they met, Patterson shakes his head in disbelief.
I press him about his bowling action — his unique footwork, in particular — and he just laughs. “It was natural. But after a point, only the foot was going higher and higher. Everything in my life was going the other way,” he says.
I first started looking for Patterson in 2011 when India toured the Caribbean for 45 days. Jamaica was the third stop and hosted the final ODI and the first Test. That left me with 10 days to find him. But few believed that he was still in the country or that he was of a sane mind. It was like the West Indies had not just given up on, but forgotten, one of their superstars of yore. And, of course, there was no sign of him.
I returned to the Caribbean in 2013 for a tri-series, and, this time, I decided to expand my search beyond Kingston. Patterson grew up in the village of Hector’s River in the Portland region in central Jamaica. It takes three hours to get there if you take the ragged roads winding through the hills. The roads are lined with shacks where locals play dominoes. I would stop at each one of them, asking whether they had any information about Patrick Patterson. The answer was generally either a “no” or “oh, me thought him lose it”. It was almost at the 15th or 16th stop that I accidentally bumped into his cousin, who led me to his parents’ house. However, they, too, insisted not knowing exactly where he was or what he was up to.
Finding him had become such an obsession that it was the first thing I mentioned to my bed-and-breakfast owner, Courtney, a former US marine who gave up watching cricket after Garry Sobers retired. The name was unfamiliar to him, but he insisted that he was also in the business of “finding people”. I laughed it off. But, by the next afternoon, Courtney not only had a number but also an address for the man who the rest of the Caribbean insists had gone AWOL for good. It was serendipity.
Courtney would later reveal that he had contacted one of his friends, Fred Locks. A 67-year-old reggae star from the 1970s, Locks continues to record music and is a dedicated Rasta with locks that stretch well beyond his feet. He lives in the same area where Patterson was assumed to be living. It was Locks who would inform the former pacer about an Indian cricket writer who had been on his lookout for years. “He told me he has been mentally disturbed for 20 years. Why do you want to meet him so badly?” Locks asks, when I meet him.
Patterson doesn’t sound too keen on giving an audience when I call him first, insisting that he will need some time to sort himself out. Eventually, upon incessant prodding, he agrees to meet after two days. When I call him on the appointed day, though, he has gone back to being reluctant about the meeting, telling me how difficult it is for him to do this. It takes 45 minutes to convince him to tell the world his story. This is the day of the fifth ODI in the India-West Indies series and Patterson changes the topic to inquire about the score, insisting that he barely knows anyone who plays for West Indies these days. He hangs up, requesting to be given an update about the match later.
When I call him later and reveal that Virat Kohli — who he has heard of and speaks of in the same breath as Sachin Tendulkar (who he bowled to in Sharjah, he says) — has scored yet another ODI ton, he agrees to meet me that evening. At 6 pm, I am outside his gate. This time, he is waiting for me. “The only reason I agreed to meet you was because I was touched when you said you went all the way to Portland to look for me the last time,” he tells me.
Patterson’s recollection of his early days in cricket is rather vivid. He recalls having caught a fancy for cricket by watching villagers in Portland play the sport during weekends. Though he always wanted to bowl, he also fancied himself as a batsman, even opening in one game for his high school. The bowling action, too, was natural. “I suppose when I grew, the leg also grew a bit too much,” he says, as an explanation of his high leg-lift. His talent with the ball got him attention even as a country boy, but it reached new heights when he moved to Kingston.
It’s here that he met a fellow fast bowler and long-term friend, Courtney Walsh. After two years at the local Wolmer’s High School, Patterson and Walsh teamed up at Excelsior High School for a year, forming a fearsome new-ball pair — a duty they would share for West Indies in the years to come. Patterson was getting faster and his leg was starting to go higher, and, before long he was debuting for Jamaica.
But it’s at this point, just after his first-class debut, that, he says, he underwent a life-altering experience. He was roped in to play in the Saddleworth League in England, a lower-tier league based in Lancashire, where Patterson claims he was playing alongside 60 and 70-year-olds. He was being paid a pittance and pretty much left to fend for himself. He remembers a one-off visit to Pakistani cricketer Wasim Akram’s residence. “It was a fancy house on a hill. He was a wonderful host, but I couldn’t stay for long. It made me feel awkward. At the same time, I was bunking with a bunch of reggae musicians in a low-income area of Manchester,” he says. His growing disenchantment led to differences with the captain and Patterson recalls how he stood at the top of his bowling mark once and just couldn’t bring himself to bowl.
Matters grew worse, he claims, when he finished the season there and joined Tasmania in Australia as an overseas professional in the Sheffield Shield. The treatment there was equally humiliating, he reveals, with the state team refusing to provide him with any sort of formal accommodation. “I was pretty much just staying with whoever would offer me a residence, man or woman. And often, when we went out of Hobart to play matches, my luggage would be in the reception the moment we returned after the last day’s play,” he says.
Patterson, of course, would go on to higher honours soon after with the West Indies and gain notoriety as one of the most menacing fast bowlers in the world. But, he keeps harping on how those early “misadventures” left an overriding impact on him, and, eventually, “took me to places that nobody should go”. He claims to have written “injustice” in bold, capital letters across his living room wall, but he has no memory of when he had done so.
Patterson’s international career was largely without incident till the very end, when he was unceremoniously dropped after the 1992-’93 tour of Australia on disciplinary grounds. He never played again. But, even while he ran roughshod through opposition line-ups, he insists on having felt uncomfortable and ill at ease in his own dressing room. He recalls the time he made life miserable for Desmond Haynes and Gordon Greenidge with a barrage of bouncers in a regional match. But he also says he often felt like he was being singled out. “When I was playing, there was no fun either, because of the treatment,” he says.
During the 1991 tour of England, he says, he came to be called Terry Alderman after the Australian cricketer of the same name, for his accuracy. He had picked up the skill to move the ball around in addition to his fiery pace. There was one training session, he tells me, where he had Viv Richards, on his farewell series, in all sorts of trouble. So frustrated was the legendary batsman, Patterson recalls, that he threw his bat at the net and walked away. “That taught me something. It was like I wasn’t expected to be doing this, troubling the master with my bowling. That wasn’t my job,” he says.
Within two years, Patterson was out of the picture. Around the same time, he moved into his home, where he has remained ever since, except for a handful of one-dayers he showed up for Jamaica in the 1997-’98 season. “Since I stopped playing, it’s been a 360 degree turnaround. It’s so far away from all I knew growing up that that in itself could send you places you aren’t prepared to go to without notice. Cricket wasn’t supposed to have done that to me,” he says.
So what has Patrick Patterson been doing over the last 25 years? “Absolutely nothing. Nothing that promotes good living,” he replies. At some point during the conversation, Patterson talks about certain “external forces” who are out to get him, or, at least, ensure that he stays where he is. He first refers to them as “gods” and then simply as “they”. “They wanted me to be here and they are responsible for this,” he says, but denies knowing who they are or what they want from him. He also blames “them” for all the rumours about him across the Caribbean, mostly to do with him having lost his way, if not his sanity. “One time, I heard a fellow convincing everyone that I was already in Bellevue (a mental asylum in Kingston). That day, I just hit the pits. I couldn’t move when I heard it. I was scared that that’s where they wanted me to be,” he says, his voice quivering. “They said they couldn’t find me, but I was right here. But they kept speculating and tarnishing my image and I couldn’t do anything about it because I had more basic things to worry about, like food,” he adds.
The sudden transformation in his life affected all his relationships and turned him into a recluse. The raging speculation over his condition only aggravated Patterson’s manically depressed state and fed his paranoia about what might happen to him. It’s even convinced him over the years that those trying to help him are putting themselves in harm’s way. “I am always scared for whoever reaches out to me, that they’ll get to them too and ensure that I’m stuck here. You should be careful too,” he says. It takes nearly two hours to somewhat get him to believe that there might not have been any “external forces” out to get him, that he might have ended up becoming his own enemy. He reluctantly agrees as we are about to get done.
Patterson admits to have gotten out of his shell slightly of late. He can go to the supermarket without worrying about what people might say. Over time, his estranged family has patched up with him, too. His children, a 27-year-old daughter and a 24-year-old son, who live in Canada, now visit him often. Last year, he even took them to meet their grandparents in the country. The children provide him with basic provisions every month to keep him afloat.
We get picked up by Locks that night. As he’s about to get out of the car, Patterson holds my hands and says, “I haven’t spoken like this to anyone from the time I can remember. I’m so glad I came. Money can’t buy this. I’m so glad I came…”
I meet him on a couple of occasions more. The second time was over dinner again, but this time in Port Royal, in the company of his friend of over three decades, Fozzie. The two get into a banter with the serving lady about her singing capabilities, and, for once, Patterson’s just like any other jolly, old guy, enjoying his retired life with some fish and beer. “They know how to kill a career and leave someone for dead,” Fozzie tells me when I ask him about his memories of Patterson’s cricketing days. He doesn’t divulge anything else about how he has dealt with seeing a friend turn from a superstar to a near-outcast. It’s clear from seeing them together that they still remain as close as ever. Patterson even perks up enough to recall more about his career, talking about the time he got Javed Miandad out in Pakistan, and, how, during that tour, an ODI had to be suspended briefly, and then, abandoned, when someone threw a boot that narrowly missed his face. He also talks about playing at Arundel and how Curtly Ambrose would jovially tell Richards before every game that “I know where your kids live” in case he didn’t give him a long bowling spell.
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Our final meeting is just before I head to the airport — again, outside his gate. Patterson, for once, doesn’t have a cap on and his hair is sticking out. For once, it’s like seeing the cricketer whom the world feared many years ago and not the man who has since lived in fear of the world. I get to see the front-yard, basking in the shade of a massive mango tree. “I planted it myself and the ones you see are all Julie mangoes. I want to plant some East Indian ones too,” he says. He thanks me again for having pushed him to step out of his self-imposed exile and spend some time in the real world. But, when I tell him that I’ll stay in touch even once I’m back home, his smile vanishes and his face turns serious. He comes close, holds my hands and says, “But don’t forget, they’ll be listening. They tap my phone, you know. This is not easy for me. Believe you me. Believe you me…”FILE PHOTO: Wind blows snow off the summit at dusk of the world's highest mountain Mount Everest, also known as Qomolangma, in the Tibet Autonomous Region May 5, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray
KATHMANDU (Reuters) - An American climber on Mount Everest died on Sunday, officials said, the third death on the world’s highest mountain in the past month and raising safety concerns for climbers.
Roland Yearwood, 50, from Alabama, perished at an altitude of about 8,400 meters (27,500 feet) in an area called “death zone” which is known for thin air, Murari Sharma of the Everest Parivas trekking company that sponsored his climb said.
“We have confirmation of his death but no other details are known,” Sharma told Reuters in Kathmandu. “It is also unclear if he was on his way up or down from the summit,” he said.
Yearwood was part of a 16-member team led by American climber Dan Mazur that is climbing the normal Southeast Ridge route from the Nepali side of the mountain.
Yearwood’s death comes a day after 26-year-old Indian climber Ravi Kumar went missing in the same area during his descent from the peak.
Kumar got separated from his guide near a place called Balcony on Saturday, Thupden Sherpa of the Arun Treks and Expedition company that sponsored Kumar’s team said in Kathmandu on Sunday.
“Three sherpa rescuers have been sent to search for Kumar,” Thupden said, adding the climber had been out of contact.
On April 30, a famed Swiss climber fell to his death near Mount Everest during preparations to climb the world’s highest mountain, while an 85-year-old Nepali man died at the base camp earlier this month while trying to set a record for the oldest climber.
Nepal has cleared 371 mountaineers to climb Mount Everest during the current season ending this month.“The image of Burgundy is badly damaged by this case,” said Laurent Ponsot, a prominent producer in the Burgundy village of Morey-Saint-Denis who worked with the F.B.I. to root out the alleged fraud by Mr. Kurniawan.
While noting that no one had been formally charged in the Labouré-Roi case, Mr. Ponsot added: “To see that people are taking these rules for nothing makes everyone very sad, even if, from inside, it’s not really news that these kinds of things are happening.”
Before the introduction of the French geographical labeling system in the 1930s, the practices of which Labouré-Roi is accused were considered widespread in Burgundy and other wine regions. Burgundy wines, which can sometimes be thinly endowed, were often blended with the more robust produce of the sunny South of France or Algeria, then a French colony.
Since then, frauds have periodically struck Burgundy. In 2005, for example, executives of several smaller-scale Burgundy merchant houses were found guilty of mislabeling some of their wines. But the allegations against Labouré-Roi, which is based in the storied winemaking town of Nuits-Saint-Georges, are more sweeping.
While not generally considered one of the best producers in Burgundy, the firm is one of the largest in the region, selling about 10 million bottles a year. About three-quarters of this is exported, and Labouré-Roi’s wines slake the thirst of first-class passengers on airlines like British Airways, Air France and All Nippon Airways.
Labouré-Roi is a so-called negociant, which buys grapes from independent growers and turns the produce into wine. The alleged fraud was uncovered when the police compared the firm’s incomings and outgoings.
While some wine is lost to evaporation and other causes during the vinification process, “in the accounts, there was nothing missing, as if the firm had succeeded in vinifying 100 percent of the juice, which is impossible,” said Eric Lallement, a prosecutor in the Burgundy capital of Dijon, at a news conference.
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The prosecutor said the firm was suspected of having topped up 500,000 bottles of supposedly fine Burgundy, worth €2.7 million in sales, with ordinary table wine. In a related scheme, the firm is accused of switching vintage labels to fill customer orders. If, for example, there was no more 2006 Meursault, Labouré-Roi simply slapped a 2006 label on the 2008 wine from that prestigious village, Mr. Lallement told reporters.
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Receptionists at Labouré-Roi and at the firm’s lawyer, Emmanuel Touraille in Dijon, said no one was available to comment.
Mr. Touraille told a local newspaper, Le Bien Public, that Labouré-Roi, owned by a company called Cottin Frères, whose top executives are the octogenarian brothers Louis and Armand Cottin, was cooperating with the investigation. The incidents in question had occurred more than three years ago, he added.
“There were some things that were not correct at the time, but we have rectified them all,” Mr. Touraille said.
That explanation has not satisfied the Burgundy Wine Board, which represents about 4,000 producers in the region. Concerned about the possible damage to the image of Burgundy, the board has moved to join the case against Labouré-Roi as a civil party, which would give it access to the prosecutors’ files.
“More than half of Burgundy wines are exported to some 150 countries,” said Michel Baldassini, deputy chairman of the board. “This is why any suspicion of dishonest practice that might tarnish the reputation of these wines cannot be tolerated.”
Meanwhile, fallout is rippling through the French wine industry.
Millésima |
80 miles of driving round-trip from Seattle. If you get 32 mpg (based on a Subaru Forester, one of Seattle’s best-selling cars) and pay $2.34 per gallon, the metro area’s average price at this writing, the bill at the pump = $5.85.
Grand total for the day’s outing for two = $99.15, plus tips where appropriate.
If you go
Where
From Interstate 5 in Tacoma, take Exit 133 to I-705 and follow signs to Schuster Parkway/Ruston Way. As Ruston Way ends, continue straight through two roundabouts, zigzag up the hill, turn right on Pearl Street and drive three blocks straight into the park.
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Tips, discretionary by nature, aren’t included in this accounting. Keep some extra bucks in your pocket to show appreciation as you go.
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metroparkstacoma.org/point-defiance-park; 253-305-1000In a first-of-its kind lawsuit, an IT-staffing firm has accused one of its former employees of violating the terms of her non-compete agreements through her conduct on LinkedIn.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Minnesota by TEKsystems, charges former employee Brelyn Hammernik of soliciting TEKSystems' employees and clients using LinkedIn.
The lawsuit alleges that after Hammernik left TEKsystems in November 2009, she "communicated" with at least 20 TEKSystems contract employees and "connected" with about 16 of them using the LinkedIn professional network.
TEKsystems contends that Hammernik's actions were on behalf of her new employer and constituted a violation of the noncompete and nonsolicitation contracts that she signed when joining TEKsystems as a recruiter in January 2007.
Does merely connecting on a professional social networking site constitute a violation of noncompete and nonsolicitation contracts?The case could "have far-reaching implications for the law governing restrictive covenants in employment," Renee Jackson, a Boston-based labor and employment attorney with Nixon Peabody LLP, wrote in a blog post.
The lawsuit raises the interesting legal question of whether the mere act of connecting with other professionals on a social networking site constitutes a violation of noncompete and nonsolicitation contracts, Jackson wrote. "Does the mere existence of a network of professional contacts equal solicitation?" wrote Jackson, who declined to be interviewed for this story, citing conflict issues.
It also raises the question of whether complying with a nonsolicitation restriction would require individuals to disconnect and de-friend colleagues and customers of former employees until the restriction period expires, Jackson noted.
According to TEKsystems, its restrictive covenants specifically forbade Hammernik from contacting its employees for the purposes of recruiting them, for a period of 18 months after leaving the company.
TEKsystems names two other former employees and Horizontal Integration, Hammernik's current employer in its lawsuit. The suit against Hammernik was filed in March, but the case has flown largely under the media radar so far.
The TEKsystems complaint lists a specific example of a LinkedIn communication where Hammernik appears to be inviting a employee of the firm to join her new company.
That one exchange could be seen as a clear violation of Hammernik's noncompete agreement, Jackson said. But even here it's unclear if she would have some wiggle room if Hammernik's contract did not specifically mention social-media communications, she wrote.
"Does the medium matter, or just the message? Would such communication be treated the same as e-mail, or does'social media' require its own standard?" Jackson wrote.
Rob Radcliff, an attorney with Gruber, Hurst, Johansen & Hail LLP, who has represented IT recruiting firms in noncompete cases, said it's the first time where social-media communications are being used as direct evidence of a non-compete violation.
Radcliff said Hammernik could have a hard time defending herself based on the LinkedIn communications that TEKsystems has highlighted in its complaint.
But what is unclear is how the company might have gotten its hands on the communications, and how many other examples the company might have of similar exchanges, Radcliff said. "In terms of the violation, the only evidence appears to be the LinkedIn communication," he said. "You got to wonder if the other communications were similar."
Typically, unless there is some "draconian provision", noncompete agreements should not prevent employees from using sites such as LinkedIn to remain in touch with other professionals and update contacts on their whereabouts, he said.
It's only when they use such sites to openly solicit that the could run into trouble, as happened in this case, he said.
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Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan or subscribe to Jaikumar's RSS feed. His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com.
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Copyright © 2010 IDG News Service. All rights reserved. IDG News Service is a trademark of International Data Group, Inc.Image copyright SPL Image caption Official figures show the pilot culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire cost £6.3m, equivalent to £3,350 for every badger killed, but Care For The Wild said this figure did not include the cost of policing
Badger culls in Somerset and Gloucestershire have cost the equivalent of £5,200 for each badger killed, an animal charity says.
Official figures show the cost of £3,350 for every animal killed, but Care for the Wild said this did not include the cost of policing.
The charity had previously estimated it cost more than £4,000 per badger killed.
The government and farmers believe culling badgers will curb TB in cattle.
The pilot culls aimed to kill 70% of the badger population to test the feasibility of a nationwide cull.
The government said costs totalling £6.3m were due to rigorous monitoring of the humanity and effectiveness of the culls, with 1,879 badgers being killed by controlled shooting.
However, Care for the Wild said shooting the animals was not a good way to control TB and was a waste of money.
An independent panel of experts also concluded shooting was not effective or humane.
'Horrendous waste of money'
Care for the Wild's Dominic Dyer said culling "is inhumane, unscientific and is throwing money down the drain".
He said: "If every badger killed last year cost the taxpayer £3,000, that would be a horrendous waste of money on a policy that leading scientists say won't work.
"But the reality is that every badger killed actually cost £5,200 - and that is simply beyond belief."
He said bovine TB should be tackled by improving farming practices and better cattle movement controls.
In a statement Defra said the cost of the badger cull pilots "needs to be seen in the context of the devastating scale of the threat bovine TB poses to our farming industry and food security".
"Doing nothing is not an option," it said.
Both Avon and Somerset Police and Gloucestershire Police have refused to answer Freedom of Information requests from the BBC over the cost of policing the culls.Finding housing in San Francisco is difficult. Finding housing that bears the Craigslist designation "420 Friendly" is not.
However, the Weekly writes that you could absolutely be evicted for smoking weed in your apartment, as it stands now, and that more anti-doper legislation is on the way.
Most current lease agreements have something in them banning activity forbidden by law, the Weekly points out, and of the many ways to be evicted, breaking the terms of your lease is a very good one. It's happened, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) tells the Weekly, and although the Rent Board couldn't recall any instances, habitual marijuana use may impair your memory.
Where was I? Currently, assembly member Jim Wood, a Democrat from Healdsburg who helped write last year's Medical Marijuana Regulation and Safety Act, wants to grant landlords the right to specifically ban pot smoking on their property. AB 2300, as the bill is known, unanimously cleared a committee recently, and according to the Weekly, "it's not likely to see much opposition." The bill would also, in its words, disallow "the smoking of medical marijuana where smoking is prohibited by a landlord, as specified."
The timing here is a bit odd, as California gets ready to probably legalize pot in November. But that's not a given, and perhaps this would pave the way for landlords who don't want recreational smokers, of which there could be a growing number, stinking up their places with that dank herb.
As SFGate's Homeguides section saw matters with regard to medicinal pot use few years ago, "the rights of medical marijuana smokers in California rental properties is not entirely clear because... there have been no legal cases that attempt to interpret the law regarding medical marijuana as a medical accessory to a disability." The state of affairs would seem to be a bit, well, hazy.
Related: Federal Prosecutors Drop Lawsuit Against Oakland's Harborside Pot DispensaryGlobal Oil Consumption Rate Grows
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Global oil consumption grew above the 10-year average rate for a second consecutive year in 2016.
Global oil consumption grew above the 10-year average rate for a second consecutive year in 2016, rising by 1.6 percent, or 1.6 million barrels per day, BP’s latest Statistical Review of World Energy revealed.
Strong increases in demand were seen from India (up 300,000 bpd) and Europe (up 300,000 bpd) and while demand from China continued to grow (up 400,000 bpd) it was lower than in recent years.
Growth in production was limited to only 0.5 percent, which led to the oil market broadly returning back into balance by mid-year. However, prices continued to be depressed by the large overhang of built-up inventories.
Natural gas production was also adversely affected by low prices, growing by only 0.3 percent. US gas output fell in 2016, the first reduction since the advent of the shale revolution in the mid-2000s.
Overall global energy demand was ‘weak’ in 2016 for the third consecutive year, growing by just 1 percent, according to BP’s review.
The growth rate was similar to rises of 0.9 percent and 1 percent seen in 2015 and 2014, respectively, and significantly lower than the 10-year average rate of growth of 1.8 percent. Almost all of the growth came from fast-growing developing economies, with China and India together accounting for half of all growth.
Renewables were the fastest growing of all energy sources, rising by 12 percent. Although providing still only 4 percent of total primary energy, the growth in renewables represented almost a third of the total growth in energy demand in 2016. In contrast, use of coal – the most carbon-intensive of the fossil fuels – fell steeply for a second year, down by 1.7 percent, primarily due to falling demand from both the US and China.
“Global energy markets are in transition,” Bob Dudley, BP group chief executive, said in a company statement.
“The longer-term trends we can see in this data are changing the patterns of demand and the mix of supply as the world works to meet the challenge of supplying the energy it needs while also reducing carbon emissions,” he added.
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***
It isn’t really a choice if you have no other options available to you. I knew this when I stood frozen, staring at the blue lines on the urine-splashed test for what could’ve been an hour, I don’t remember, blank and sick at the same time. I knew this when I glanced around my lousy overpriced little flat. I knew this when I saw my boyfriend’s face when I showed him the positive result on the pregnancy test. I knew this when I considered working, on my own, while pregnant in my minimum-wage job. I knew I had nothing to offer a child, right now.. The alternatives were also pretty bleak; raising a huge amount of money to travel to England only to return, bleeding on an airplane, or to illegally buy and import tablets, which were unreliable, and if I were caught, could earn me 14 years in prison.
***
As I wretched and heaved into the sink, in the tiny damp bathroom, the cat seemed worried. She weaved between my bare legs and her meows turned to yowls, and when I sat down the toilet to investigate the bleeding, she tried jumping onto my lap until I prevented her with my forearm. My underwear was now soaked and bright red blood streaked my thighs as I forced my pants down. I could feel the sweat building on my face, but but at the same time I was cold, shivering, and sore. For a moment I wondered if it wasn’t working, or if there were complications, or if I was going into shock. If so, I’d have to go to the hospital, and that sent a wave of anxiety through me. I had no money, lived somewhere terrible and would most likely lose my job if pregnant. That’s when I realized this wasn’t a choice; it was a necessity. I cried, tears streaking my face as I thought about the possibility of getting arrested despite the fact that if there really were job opportunities, or affordable places to live, I would be happy to be pregnant with a potentially beautiful curly haired child. As I dwelled on how bad of a bad person I was, my boyfriend knocked on the door to see if I was OK.
***
The process of acquiring the tablets was long and stressful. I had to source an address where I could receive the tablets, and there was a chance it could be intercepted. If that happened, I had no idea of what the repercussions would be beyond remaining pregnant. I went online, after my friend directed me to website where the pills were imported from India. I filled in my details. ‘How pregnant are you?’ the site asked. Years of irregular periods made this question hard to answer. I made an educated guess of eight weeks. The site advised against using the tablets after ten weeks.
***
How long would they take to arrive? My stomach knotted. If one small part of this whole process went wrong, the consequences could be dire. I was risking my freedom and health, but there was no other way. ‘Will you need counseling?’ the site asked. I answered ‘no’ despite the fact that I knew my decision was based on my circumstances, not an actual choice – and that I would always be plagued by the ‘what ifs’ of continuing the pregnancy. I made a donation to the site, which offered services to women in similar situations. Then, I waited, and felt utterly helpless. I tracked the parcel over the next ten days obsessively each day and made arrangements with work to take three off days, enough time, I hoped to collect the tablets and perform my illegal home abortion.
***
I lay on the couch wrapped in blankets, my torso on my boyfriend’s lap, as he stroked my hair and I sobbed quietly. The pain was unbearable, and I began to think that maybe I was further along than I had guessed. Apparently the further along you are, the more it hurts. I wondered if I would see the fetus, and whether it would be recognizable as the start of a human. All the while, as the pressure increased on my womb and shivering with contractions, I kept reassuring myself that this was the right decision. I just wanted it to be all over.
My boyfriend offered me chocolate and downloaded films for us to watch and I wondered whether he would be able to handle this. He rubbed my back and kissed my forehead and said and did all the right things, but was this simply to ensure that I went through with it? Was what he was doing out of real love or was he just terrified that I would make him a father against his will? I loved him, but through the pain I mostly felt resentment.
***
The day that we went to collect the parcel was wracked with anxiety from the offset. I woke up stressed and irritated, and when eventually we got the bus for a three-hour journey I was ready to explode. My boyfriend held my hand but had insisted on annoying me by singing stupid songs and telling me to ‘cheer up’ for the entire journey. I knew he did not mean it, but I felt that if it were his body that was in trouble, the tune would be different. For most of the journey I tried to ignore the stress and planned how I would take the tablets and the timing involved. The instructions that I had read online read as follows: take one tablet 24 hours before (mifepristone) and then take two batches of misoprostol at intervals of a few hours apart.
There was an extra batch of the misoprostol, just in case I thought it didn’t work. Under normal circumstances, in countries where abortion is legal, these tablets could be administered vaginally but because abortion is illegal in Ireland the tablets have to be held under the tongue until they dissolve, so if you present at a hospital saying you are miscarrying they cannot tell if you did so deliberately. All of this filled me with dread. On the bus home to Dublin I took the mifepristone and tried to nap.
***
Traveling abroad for a proper procedure would have been impossible. It was just too much money, and my morning sickness made walking to work difficult. Each morning as I walked to work, I vomited all the way down the street. A plane ride would have out of the question, not to mention the many difficulties that come with undergoing a medical procedure in a foreign country.
It gets worse: Ireland doesn’t even make exceptions for cases with severe birth defects, so expectant mothers are required by law to carry fetuses to term even if the child is expected to die just after birth, forcing them to endure another loss.
***
Holding the tablets under my tongue was traumatic. It took approximately 30 minutes for them to dissolve and filter into my system. Foamy drool dripped out the sides of my lips as I struggled to swallow the saliva, but not the tablets. I put on my oldest pajamas and a giant sanitary towel. I sighed, re-read the instructions and took note of this advice: If you are experiencing too much pain and bleeding you should go to a hospital, immediately causing me to wonder how much pain was too much pain. And then there was the question of what I should do next? Should I go to my doctor for a check-up afterwards and pretend I had a miscarriage?
***
There have been cases of women getting caught taking these tablets. In Northern Ireland, a woman was recently prosecuted for having an illegal home abortion when her roommate ratted her out to the authorities. The fear of being found out, or the parcel getting intercepted, adds to the trauma of an event that no woman actively wants to endure in the first place. I can guarantee you that nobody wants to have an abortion. No woman wants to have an unnecessary operation, one that is illegal and can be highly expensive. No woman wants to experience pain. It is a measure of last resort, a decision made for financial reasons or because the fetus has birth defects, or because there is no money or no safe place to raise the child. Nobody is happy about undergoing one, but sometimes it is the best option for a woman. That decision, like a woman’s body, is hers alone, and ought not be open to public debate.
***
Suddenly the pain became virtually unbearable, which again made me want to vomit. My pajamas were stained bright and dark red around my crotch, bleeding through the sanitary towel, and I could feel small amounts of blood drip down the inside of my leg. I sat on the toilet, the cat screaming at me again and circling my legs, and I stripped my bottoms off which were wet, and heavy with blood. Then the diarrhea started and I coughed and spluttered as I felt intense amounts of liquid and wet matter spill out of me. The urge to vomit suddenly returned and I thought back to the medicine’s directions—is this too much pain—and I jumped up from the toilet seat to lean over the sink.
I sobbed loudly as I wretched and the cat’s meows became even more intense, and as I leaned back to wipe my face I saw it on the rug beneath my feet. A bundle of what looked like liver, dark red, streaked with tiny bits of white and grey, a neat pile of matter in a small pool of dark blood. There it was on the mat, slowly the stain around it grew as I stared at this grape- sized organism, the source of all this pain, finally expelled from my body. I stared in awe and disgust at it, saddened and worn and elated that it was over, all at the same time. My legs were now covered in huge streaks of browning blood and I rubbed the cat to settle her down before walking off to find new bottoms.
Three days later, still in a severe amount of pain, but needing the money, I returned to work with a very pinched nerve in my back. Once again, I didn’t have another option. Unfortunately, Ireland is as about as unwelcoming to the poor as it is for women.
Image Credit:“Rally 6,” by Flickr User Pocket Revolution, licensed via a Creative Commons 2.0 License[Python-ideas] Please reconsider the Boolean evaluation of midnight
Hi all, This is my first post here, following a recommendation from Alexander Belopolsky to use this list, to try to convince the Python developers to reopen a ticket. I am a long-time Python user, and a Django committer. http://bugs.python.org/issue13936 is a complaint about the fact that midnight -- datetime.time(0,0,0) -- is evaluated as False in Boolean contexts. It was closed as invalid, under the claim that """It is odd, but really no odder than "zero values" of other types evaluating to false in Boolean contexts""". I would like to ask for this to be reconsidered; since the ticket was closed, two main arguments were given for this: 1) The practical argument (paraphrasing Danilo Bergen and Andreas Pelme): The current semantics is surprising and useless; users do not expect valid times to be falsey, and do not normally want code to have special behavior on midnight. Users who ask for Boolean evaluation of a variable that's supposed to hold a time value, usually write "if var" as shorthand for "if var is not None". 2) The principled argument (which I think is at the root of the practical argument); quoting myself from the ticket: """Midnight is not a "zero value", it is just a value. It does not have any special qualities analogous to those of 0, "", or the empty set.... Midnight evaluting to false makes as much sense as date(1,1,1) -- the minimal valid date value -- evaluating to false""". Thanks, Shai.Dear Prime Minister.
I understand that you are supporting a proposal to have a minimum price per unit of alcohol. It seems that it will probably be about 40p-50p per unit of alcohol. That would make a can of average strength lager £2 per can, and a bottle of supermarket red wine £6.50. I understand that the Treasury is in turmoil because they fear that they will lose revenue because people will buy less alcohol as a result, and they will raise less in taxes. That may be so, but I come at this from a different angle.
If alcohol is a bad drug and should be banned because it is harming the fabric of the nation, then ban it. If its use by some people causes problems, such as in antisocial behaviour, and/or a strain on the NHS, then address the people who have this problem. But do not take a steam hammer to crack a peanut, and support a blanket across the board arbitrary increase in the price of all alcohol in the hope that it may affect the target people you are trying to discourage from drinking excess alcohol.
Firstly it won’t have the desired effect on “problem” drinkers. They will merely divert more money to buy drink from other parts of their budget, and in doing so are likely to cause more harm to themselves and their family by eating less well, or even turning to crime to supplement their income so as to afford your increase in alcohol. You should address the problem of problem drinkers, and not inflict some pathetic easy-way-out option that penalises everyone. Alcoholic drink has been brewed, distilled or fermented in this country for hundreds of years. Has the fabric of the nation been undone due to drink in that time? Have we been too boozy to fight and win wars? Have we had revolution and overthrown governments in an alcoholic haze? Of course not. Problems caused by alcohol have always been a problem in a small minority of the population. So why penalise the rest of the population who are responsible drinkers?
You are in effect putting a tax on me and my bottle of wine because you are too lazy to address the issue of problem drinking by those who are the problem. And of course, as many people who drink responsibly earn less than you and your Tory cronies, it will affect them more than it does you and yours. In effect it’s a tax on the working class and the less well off. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Why don’t you impose a tax on any food that has added salt? Saturated fat? Added sugar? Or confectionary? Coffee? Anything that we enjoy but that a scientist somewhere says is bad for us or causes moral decline? What about religion? What about Members of Parliament fiddling expenses? Slap a tax on all that and it’s sorted?
Come on Mr Cameron, you know that this proposal is as flawed as alcohol-free wine. Think again, and have some respect for the millions of responsible drinkers in the country, and then I may raise a glass to you!Stephan Drake was halfway down a backcountry ski run in Alaska last March, filming with Sweetgrass Productions and Patagonia, when he aired over a steep spine onto an unexpected wind crust. The snow grabbed his right ski and Drake felt the unmistakable snap! of his knee ripping apart as he rolled down the slope like a starfish. Having torn his anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in 2009, the 37-year-old pro skier and DPS Skis founder knew exactly what the snapping sensation meant. Season over. And: time to make a decision. Surgery or no surgery?
Dr. Chris Centeno injecting stem cells back into patient’s knee.
Regenexx-SD procedure isolates and separates mesenchymal stem cells from bone marrow sample.
Twenty years ago, the idea of repairing a ruptured ACL without surgery would not have been rational. Within the past decade, however, a growing number of patients have opted for stem-cell injections to heal the native ligament over surgical reconstruction that uses various non-native tissues to replace it.
When Drake returned from Alaska, he learned he had not only suffered a Grade 3 tear of the ACL, which provides 80 percent of the knee's stability, but also had torn his medial and lateral meniscus and chipped a piece of bone off his femoral head.
After months of research, Drake decided to try stem-cell injections in a unique treatment called Regenexx at the Centeno-Schultz Clinic near Boulder, Colorado. Early one morning in August, he went in for the first of two visits that day. Dr. John Schultz drove a needle into Drake's hip and extracted a syringeful of stem-cell-rich bone marrow. Drake then left the clinic and drove to a coffee shop to eat breakfast. He returned about noon, after Schultz had finished concentrating the stem cells. Schultz then used a tiny camera and a needle to inject the cells precisely where he wanted in Drake's knee—where the ligaments had torn. Drake walked out of the clinic at 1 p.m.
Stem cells have been used in Europe to treat bone disease since the early 1990s, but same-day procedures like the one performed on Drake were first approved in the U.S. in 1999.
"I think about 70 to 80 percent of what's currently done surgically, in the future will move toward needle-based therapies," says Dr. Chris Centeno, Schultz's business partner, who began using stem cells in orthopedic medicine in 2005 and treated his first ACL tear with them four years ago. "Simply because athletes and others will want to return quicker, they'll want less invasive procedures, and there will be a focus on trying to regrow or heal tissue rather than to cut it out or replace it."
Chances are you have heard about stem cells. In layman's terms, they comprise the body's fix-it system, like maintenance men at an apartment complex. They exist in our fat, our marrow, our muscles, our skin. When we ski moguls, for example, we kill thousands of cartilage, muscle, and tendon cells; if we're young enough, our local stem cells take action by coordinating the repair response or taking the form of a variety of tissues themselves—from bone to cartilage to ligament to tendon—depending on what they detect to be in need of repair. The knock on them is that they are still poorly understood overall, and it's hard to predict exactly what they will become when injected into a new area, which is done to stimulate repair. But doctors and researchers know enough about their general healing ability that the U.S. government has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to stockpile stem cells in the event of a nuclear attack.
Stem cells as an orthopedic solution still carry a controversial stigma. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows them to be used for same-day procedures such as Drake's, but they cannot be "cultured," or multiplied over time. "You can't amplify them, that's the stem-cell rule," says Dr. Rocco Monto, a Nantucket-based orthopedic surgeon and longtime physician for U.S. Soccer, who serves as a spokesperson for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. The reason the FDA prohibits culturing is due to fears that the cells would be "abused in research," Monto says, by doctors creating some kind of monster cell with inhuman capabilities. However, no such restrictions exist in Europe or the Caribbean, which is why you may have heard of athletes like NFL MVP Peyton Manning or Cy Young-winning pitcher Bartolo Colon venturing overseas for cultured cells—and why many American doctors claim to be hamstrung in their pursuit of medicinal advancement, compared with their foreign peers.
Research restrictions and vagaries about their exact mechanism notwithstanding, stem cells are employed in a wide range of orthopedic cases, from torn rotator cuffs to knee arthritis. Dr. Joseph Purita, a leading surgeon and longtime stem-cell proponent in Boca Raton, Florida, claims to have used them to heal a pitcher's ulnar collateral ligament tear, a devastating elbow injury that usually requires so-called Tommy John surgery and a one-year recovery period. "He was back pitching in six, seven weeks," Purita says. (Most pro athletes who undergo stem-cell treatments don't allow their physicians to name them publicly due to contract implications.)
Stem cells are less trusted to heal fully ruptured ligaments than, say, a partial tear where the ligament remains attached to the bone. Centeno estimates about four in five ACL tears—of which roughly 200,000 occur in the U.S. annually, 25,000 while skiing—can be repaired via stem-cell injections, including cases with up to a one-centimeter gap between the ligament and the bone. (About 100,000 people who suffer tears opt for surgery; no one tracks how many opt for stem-cell therapy.) Depending upon the severity of the injury, Centeno touts a recovery time of six to 12 weeks, a fraction of the six to nine months it takes to recover from a standard ACL surgery. This disparity is mostly due to the trauma involved with reconstructive surgery, compared with none for stem-cell therapy, which allows rehabilitation to begin immediately. The cost, too, is far less—about $4,000 for a stem-cell procedure versus $12,000 or more for surgery. However, while surgery is often covered by insurance, you'll probably have to pay for stem-cell therapy yourself.
The light recovery time from a stem-cell injection is not guaranteed, either. For every patient like Peter Lyddon, a Colorado ski patrolman who returned to intensive skiing eight weeks after his ACL procedure—"It was really dramatic," he says—there are others who require more time and even, in some cases, another round of stem-cell therapy. Drake, after receiving his first dose in August, went in for a second injection in December. His knee still hurts and is weak, but it's showing progress, he said. Still, he has not skied this winter and does not expect to.
"I've basically written off this season and am planning a summer trip to South America," he said. "That's my new goal."
Because of cases like Drake's, skepticism persists in the medical community. Centeno and Purita cite MRIs that show their patients have fully healed, but some of their peers don't believe a photograph can prove structural integrity. "It might look normal, but it doesn't behave normally," Monto says. "You go in there, it's all stretched out, it's not good. ACLs are structures that function dynamically, under high stresses. And it takes a lot, even when you reconstruct them, to get them to work."
Dr. Angus Goetz, a leading orthopedic surgeon in Jackson Hole, uses stem cells to treat some sports injuries and considers them "the wave of the future" in orthopedic medicine. But, like other surgeons, he points at the lack of definitive research as a cautionary factor. "There is still no double-blinded study to suggest that a complete rupture treated with stem cells is equivalent or better than one treated surgically," he says.
Centeno compares the needle-based orthopedic treatment trend with the way heart surgeons have moved away from slicing open patients' chests and toward stents that are inserted through a catheter. He believes that 10 to 20 years from now, we could see a similar shift in sports medicine, especially if the FDA lifts its research restrictions. Even his wary peers don't dispute that.
"We see something broken, we want to put it together with steel," Monto says. "I think that's the real paradigm shift here: a shift to orthobiologic treatments. And it's coming. We're not there yet, but we're nudging at it."
Lost season or not, Drake believes his stem cells will ultimately leave his knee stronger than a surgeon could have.
"Even if it takes a little longer," Drake said, "this is still worth it to me."Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The demonstrators blocked traffic outside the venue where Donald Trump was holding a rally
Hundreds of demonstrators have blocked traffic outside a venue in California where Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump was holding a rally.
A police car had its windows smashed as Mr Trump spoke inside a hall in the Orange County Fairgrounds in Costa Mesa. Some 20 arrests were made.
Mr Trump has vowed to deport millions of illegal immigrants if he is elected US president in November.
He faces strong opposition in parts of California, particularly among Latinos.
California, the biggest prize for Republican candidates in the nomination race, holds its primaries on 7 June.
Mr Trump has called himself the Republican "presumptive nominee" after a string of primary wins.
The Pacific Amphitheatre in Costa Mesa was filled to its capacity of about 18,000 people and hundreds more were turned away.
Heated exchanges could be heard between Trump supporters and the protesters outside, with supporters chanting "Build that wall! Build that wall!", a reference to the candidate's call for a barrier between the US and Mexico to stop illegal border crossings.
Image copyright EPA Image caption Police kept rival crowds apart as people gathered for the rally
Image copyright Reuters Image caption California is the biggest prize of the primaries for Republicans
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Trump addressed a packed house
Image copyright EPA Image caption Outside, riot police were deployed
Image copyright Reuters Image caption They lined up on the street
Image copyright Reuters Image caption County sheriff's deputies were sent in
Police in riot gear and officers on horseback moved in to separate the two groups.
Reports from the scene say some protesters threw stones at motorists while others jumped on top of a police car, smashing its windows, the BBC's James Cook reports from Los Angeles.
They dispersed by 23:00 (06:00 GMT Friday), the Orange County Sheriff's Department reports.
The candidate did not seem fazed by the clashes, tweeting after the rally: "Thank you Costa Mesa, California! 31,000 people tonight with thousands turned away. I will be back! #Trump2016"
Mr Trump's campaign has been dogged by violence between his supporters and protesters, most notably at the University of Illinois in Chicago on 11 March, when a rally was called off after fighting broke out in the auditorium.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption A newly published article in GQ details Melania Trump's past
Meanwhile, a detailed profile of Mr Trump's wife Melania for GQ Magazine has sparked a hostile response from her.
The article revealed details about her upbringing in Slovenia and how she met Mr Trump. She called it "disingenuous reporting".
Julia Ioffe, the Jewish Russian-American reporter who wrote the article, said on Twitter she has received a barrage of anti-Semitic and threatening messages from Trump supporters since the piece came out.
"Now I'm getting phone calls from a blocked number that play Hitler's speeches when I pick up. Sad!" she tweeted.
"It's |
0 that we had reached the end of print. And while he was a bit premature, he was clearly the harbinger of doom because today, in 2015, we can say that we have reached the end of “the end of print.” We will still use those principles for screens and paper, but when it comes to 3D interactions with technologies, it’s time to leave that thinking behind. It’s time for us to start talking about designing rooms full of objects, rather than buttons on screens.
This is significant. It’s a very different way of thinking about technology, and how we interact with technology. When you look at a room there is very little text that that needs to be read, or buttons that need to be pushed. We know immediately how to interact with the objects in our room because their size and shape affords proper usage, telling us where to put our hands and where to apply pressure. In the real world, we spend less time looking at our tools, and more time using them.
That’s where paper comes in. It’s time to roll up your sleeves, open your mind, and start cutting and taping. In this post, we’ll take a look at ways you can hack the power of paper to bring your ideas into the real (or virtual) world – before you commit them to code. Marshall McLuhan famously said that “we shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” As we embark into a world of 3D interface this is a crucial insight. We will not be able to move past floating magic pieces of paper until we use different tools to design interfaces. In other words, we cannot design a 3D world with 2D screens.
“We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.” –Marshall McLuhan
If we want to think about the future of technology into imaginary worlds (VR) or technology into objects (IoT), we need to stop designing for the screen. The interfaces that we design today are the frameworks that will be very difficult to escape in a matter of years. Now is the time to design 3D interfaces that work for us.
Hacking with Paper
So where does paper come in? Back in 1992, I co-owned a small architectural firm called Zoyes East Inc. We quickly found that our clients had a hard time translating our 2D blueprints into what the final product would look like. So we built architectural models to help them understand what the space would be like.
What we quickly discovered was that not only did this help our clients, but it also helped us. We learned more about our own process because instead of just imagining it in our heads, we could actually see them in the real world. We could say “this window could give a great sightline through the archway to this other window, if we just moved it a few inches to the left.”
As a result, models became an essential part of our 3D design process, and I developed a rapid paper prototyping approach. In the next two sections, we’ll take a look at how this is reflected in two designs – a physical object and a virtual menu widget.
Paper + IoT: Digital Experiences that Feel Analog
Making tea is an incredibly physical experience – warmth and color, smell and taste. Even so, time and temperature are essential metrics to making the perfect cup of tea, and many people rely on timers and thermometers. The Kicker teapot was a concept design that we used to stretch our creative muscles and explore how we could bring the analog and digital together in a new way.
When we looked in the marketplace at teapots, we saw mostly glass and ceramic, and a little bit of metal. But when we looked at the market for teamakers, they looked a lot like coffee pots, with lots of knobs and lights and gears.
This was the complete antithesis of what tea drinkers said they wanted in their process. So we decided to make a completely analog-feeling digital tea maker. The metaphor came easily – an hourglass, with its analog sense of time and materials. But when we tried to design the controls, we basically ended up with a much larger, more clunky version of buttons and knobs. We needed to try a different approach.
We went physical. We created several rounds of prototypes, from rough mockups with plastic bottles to an Arduino with a tilt sensor taped to a glass jar. Through the process, we quickly discovered that the carafe itself could serve as the actuator for the technology – triggering a digital timer. The act of turning over the carafe still feels incredibly analog, but provides the necessary bridge between human input and digital power. No buttons needed.
It was the physical models that really helped us get to this point, because while we had made plenty of sketches, elaborate digital diagrams, and talked about it, it was only when we had a physical object in the real world that we could take it to the next step.
Paper + AR/VR: Designing the Leap Motion Widgets
The simplest things in life are often the most difficult to perfect – especially things that we normally take for granted. There’s nothing new about buttons or sliders, but how these fundamental UI elements translate to VR is profoundly important. Especially when you have a touchless interface where there’s no way to physically restrict people’s movements. Instead, you have to guide users to take certain approaches to the interface.
Our original ideas for the Unity Widgets began with translating existing interfaces that people are already familiar with. For the Dial Picker, the original concept was very 2D. The next natural step was to bring it into three dimensions.
We quickly realized that the approach that people’s hands took was as important as the mobile “contact point” we talked about earlier. VR makes it really easy to move through the target, and people take all kinds of different approaches to get to that affordance. As a result, users needed to understand that their trajectory was as important as the contact.
We had a few ideas, but it was the paper model that helped solidify how people would actually interact with the Widget. The options within would exist in 3D space as a wheel, but be bound by a flat plane. This ensured that users would approach the widget from the front and interact with it in predictable ways:
How to Create Your Own Paper Prototypes
Paper is kind of dumb, so you often need other tricks of the trade to emulate state changes. I create origami with clear mylar, which makes it easy to create 3D models. With a bit of tape, you can instantly create a hinge, or bind different pieces together. With a little imagination, the rough forms you can fold together make it a great rapid prototyping tool – something that your team (or best friend/guinea pig) can lay their hands on and understand what you’re trying to achieve.
The other essential ingredient in this approach is color film – translucent plastic, often used to place in front of lights to change their color. Much like old-fashioned 3D glasses, each colored film blocks out its own color, while allowing others to show. With a red film and blue film, and a red marker and a blue marker, you can demonstrate state changes in real time.
Designing in three dimensions can be a real challenge, but with the right tools, you can move beyond flat thinking. Whether you’re building a digital experience for an analog world, or an analog experience for a digital world – go forth and fold!Yoga is a proven way of living a healthy life. It is an ancient exercising technique, originated in India and practiced by millions of people since its introduction to the world. Today Yoga is not only practiced by Indians, but it is also popular all over the world. Over the time, it has proven that Yoga is capable of dealing with all sorts of health issues. Many individuals are still not practicing Yoga because they don’t have an idea about how to start, how to practice and which yoga exercises or poses they should try. Here we can help you in learning everything about the yoga. Just follow the suggestions and see how Yoga can change your life.
First know some important facts about yoga:
Almost individuals across the world know that Yoga is an ancient Indian technique. People know it is beneficial for them, but they do not know how it can benefit to their health. The trainers help the beginners in understanding the importance of this technique and also the way they should breath during the exercise. Later, the trainers explain Yoga Strategies For Beginners. There are multiple poses and multiple exercises in Yoga through which you can cure major diseases like diabetes, cancer, cholesterol, obesity and several others.
Thin people gain weight by practicing Yoga and obesity patients get quick relief from fatness after practicing yoga. The issues like back pain, neck pain, sciatic nerve pain get relieved by practicing Yogasans or Yoga poses. That’s why this ancient Indian exercising technique is gaining huge popularity across the world.
How to begin Yoga practice?
Before we explain essential Yoga Strategies For Beginners, we would suggest you to buy this Jade Harmony yoga mat. It is an important part of Yoga exercise because you practice all the poses and yoga exercises on this mat. It should be perfect, non-slip and cozy. Zade Harmony Professional would be the best choice. Follow below given method, once you have got your yoga mat.
• Know the right way of breathing:
The Yoga experts from all over the world emphasize that beginners should first learn Pranayam and then go for further exercises. Pranayam is an essential part of Yoga and some people also call it the breathing exercise. Pranayam alone is capable of dealing with several health issues. You need to learn that when to breathe in and when to breathe out during different Yoga poses. It is not so difficult to do and that’s why you should learn it before practicing yoga poses.
• Meditate:
Yoga exercises are not as simple as other exercises. You need to concentrate more on the movements of your body. You can improve your concentration by meditating. According to yoga, experts suggest people to pronounce Om and then meditate. Sit at least 3-5 minutes in easy pose to meditate. It will not take much time in realizing that you have a goal to achieve and that goal is healthier physique and charming shape.
• Start practicing beginner yoga poses:
You can check online or read in the Yoga books, there are several easy and difficult poses. People practice different Yoga poses for different health benefits. You should practice only beginners’ Yogasanas in the beginning. You may wish to practice the difficult poses, but thus you may harm yourself. First, learn how to do and then practice daily or you can also visit us to learn it practically.
The Yoga poses for beginners are explained below:
• Sukhasan Pose:
Sukhasan Pose is probably the easiest Yoga pose that a person can try at home. Take the Yoga mat and sit on it by folding your legs. Keep your back straight and place both of your palms on the knee. Both hand’s thumb should be touching the index finger, and your head should be straight. Now close your eyes and start breathing deeply. Practice this yoga pose at least for five minutes. It helps you in relaxing your mind and strengthening your backbone.
• Vakrasana Pose:
Sit straight and spread your legs towards the front side. Now place your right feet near the left knee and twist the waist towards the right side. Your upper body should be moving towards the right side with the twist of your waist and touch the floor with the right hand. Now get back to the initial position and repeat the same pose towards the left side. Vakrasana provides a gentle massage your backbone; neck, waist, and shoulders are exercised precisely.
• Mountain Pose:
Mountain pose is an efficient way of reducing back pain and improve body alignment. Sit in Sukhasana pose to practice this yoga pose. Now take both of your arms upsides and touch both palms like Indians do in Namaste position. Keep the elbows straight while your palms are joined and breathe deeply. Keep your hands in Namaste position for at least 5 seconds and get back in the sukhasan pose. Practice this yoga pose for 5 minutes in a day and experience reduced back pain.
• Utkatasana Pose:
Utkatasana pose is another name of chair pose, which is practiced by many individuals daily. This Yoga poses is beneficial for people with back pain because the lower back portion of your body stretched precisely when you practice this pose. Stand straight and keep your feet 12” apart. Now level your hands to the shoulders and palms facing downwards. Now bend your knees slowly and get your body in chair pose. Keep breathing deeply and exhale while getting back in normal standing position.
These four are easy and very beneficial Yoga poses, which you must try at home. Do not forget to end your exercise with the Shavasan because it is an important pose of Yoga. You just lie down on the Yoga mat and keep your eyes closed. Just concentrate on the changes you want to bring in your looks and health and keep relaxing your body. This is how you should practice Yoga.
There are several different Yogasanas that you can practice according to your requirements. For example, fat people can practice yoga poses to relieve extra fat, short people can practice yoga poses that can increase their height, and you can also find some yoga poses for daily fitness. So, choose your yoga poses and begin practicing them daily in the morning. This good habit will quickly bring health, happiness and prosperity in your life and you will be more intelligence, a calm and good-looking person.
AdvertisementsWhile some accuse Ponevezh Rosh Yeshiva HaGaon HaRav Gershon Edelstein Shlita of being too friendly with the Zionists for his position praising IDF soldiers, the rav remains steadfast and once again reiterated his position regarding IDF soldiers during recent days.
The rav explained last week that “Even the chilonim, those who do not adhere to Torah and mitzvos but are moser nefesh towards saving others through their love for others, they too have a share in Olam Haba just like the martyrs of Lod who gave their lives for the city”, Kikar Shabbat quotes the rav as saying.
“In Lod a bas melech was killed and they looked in the direction of the Jews. There was a gezeira that if the murderer was not found all the Jews would be executed. Two brothers admitted to the murder which they did not commit to save the Jews of the city and Chazal say that no one can stand in the mechitza of the martyrs of Lod.
After the rav’s words were publicized, the ‘kanoim’, those opposed to the rav serving in his current position, began to make their opinion known. Talmidim affiliated with the Eida Chareidis asked for an explanation, seeking to understand the rav’s position. The rav addressed the matter at hand with his closest talmidim, telling them that the kanoim may be compared to those who regularly mock gedolei yisrael.
A participant in the schmooze is quoted anonymously by Kikar Shabbat, explaining the rav added that his words are not his own, but the position of gedolei yisrael shlita. The rav reminded participants how the Chazon Ish would tell talmidim one may not hate the chilonim but one may however hate the act, not the person. We are required to rebuke them he explained, but since today we do not know how this is done, we refrain from this too.
“The Chazon Ish and the Steipler said we should vote in elections and therefore, they are mocking the Chazon Ish and the Steipler. From this we learn they are not genuine and not acting L’Shem Shomayim”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)Image copyright German Bundestag Image caption Nikolai Desyatnichenko (r) told German MPs that the fate of a Wehrmacht soldier "touched him"
A Russian schoolboy has received online abuse and death threats after suggesting that many German troops who invaded the USSR in World War Two were themselves victims of the conflict.
Teenager Nikolai Desyatnichenko was speaking to German MPs in Berlin. German and Russian schoolchildren had researched stories about war victims.
Some Russian MPs reacted with outrage.
The Kremlin said the criticism was excessive, but suggested re-examining aspects of Russia's education system.
Desyatnichenko said he had learned about a German soldier named Georg Johann Rau, a Wehrmacht corporal who fought in the Battle of Stalingrad and later died in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp.
"Georg's story and my work on the project touched me," he said, adding that he had started visiting the war graves of German soldiers around the Siberian city of Kopeisk.
"It deeply saddened me, because I saw the graves of people who died innocently, many of whom wanted to live in peace and did not want to go to war."
He spoke of the "unspeakable difficulties" faced by soldiers during the war, and ended his speech to the German parliament by expressing the hope that "common sense will prevail on Earth and the world will never see war again".
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption German forces devastated Stalingrad and were then trapped in the ruins
Read more on Russia and World War Two:
'Forgive us, Adolf'
Desyatnichenko's remarks went unnoticed for two days, until a Germany-based Facebook user with a Russian name posted a video of his speech late on Sunday, remarking that he found it "disgusting".
The post received more than 1,000 likes and provoked a wave of criticism and abuse directed against Desyatnichenko, initially mainly from strongly pro-Kremlin social media accounts. Several accused him of attempting to whitewash Nazi Germany's crimes in the USSR.
"Forgive us, Adolf," read one typical sarcastic comment on Twitter.
Image copyright AFP Image caption Millions of Soviet soldiers died in World War Two and it remains a very sensitive topic for Russians
The controversy generated more than 10,000 tweets in little over 18 hours, according to the social media analysis tool Spredfast.
It was also quickly picked up by Russian state television, with national channel Rossiya 1 devoting an hour-long political talk show to it, with one guest blaming "liberal propaganda" for the boy's remarks.
On Tuesday, President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said those accusing Desyatnichenko of defending Nazism were wrong, and accused them of "hounding" the boy, but also suggested that problems in the education system may be to blame for his remarks.
The Kremlin has in the past been accused of exploiting sensitivities around the war in order to promote a wider nationalistic agenda.
'Nip in the bud'
Several commentators suggested that Desyatnichenko's school in the Siberian town Novy Urengoi was to blame. They also suggested something might be wrong with the education system as a whole.
"We have brought up a generation that feels sorry for Nazis," one pro-Kremlin account calling itself Former Agent tweeted. Another said schools and colleges should be checked for the presence of "foreign non-governmental organisations" (NGOs).
The education department of Novy Urengoi said on Monday that it had launched an investigation into Desyatnichenko's school.
While most online commentators have been critical of Desyatnichenko, a few have come to his defence.
One Twitter user said the schoolboy had spoken to German MPs in "a spirit of reconciliation", but that this did not mean Russians had "reconciled themselves to Nazism".
BBC Monitoring reports and analyses news from TV, radio, web and print media around the world. You can follow BBC Monitoring on Twitter and Facebook.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Footage from China State TV apparently shows Gao Chengyong in custody
An alleged serial killer, who is accused of raping and murdering 11 female victims in northern China over more than a decade, has been captured by police, say local reports.
Gao Chengyong, called China's "Jack the Ripper", was detained at a grocery store he runs with his wife.
He admitted to the killings, which took place between 1988 and 2002, according to the Ministry of Public Security.
The 52-year-old is a married father of two.
Police say Mr Gao targeted young women dressed in red and followed them home, where he would rape and kill them, often cutting their throat and mutilating their bodies.
His youngest alleged victim was eight years old.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Gao has been dubbed China's "Jack the Ripper" for the string of gruesome murders he committed over 14 years
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Gao was eventually tracked down after his DNA was linked to his uncle's
In 2004, police had said the suspect they were looking for "has a sexual perversion and hates women".
"He's reclusive and unsociable, but patient."
Police had then posted a reward of £22,900 ($30,000) for information leading to an arrest. It was the first time all the crimes had been linked.
However, no leads were found until China's Criminal Investigation Bureau earlier this year re-launched an investigation into the case, using new technology to re-examine DNA.
Mr Gao was tracked down after his uncle was arrested for a minor crime, according to news outlet China Daily. He gave a DNA sample which police then linked to the crimes, determining they must have been committed by a relative.
Mr Gao's first alleged killing took place in May 1988, the year his son was born.
The 23-year-old woman was found in the city of Baiyin with 26 stab wounds to her body.
Subsequent murders followed a similar pattern, with the killer often targeting young women who lived alone.
Mr Gao also cut off parts of his victim's reproductive organs, according to the Beijing Youth Daily.
Women in Baiyin would not walk alone in the streets without being accompanied by male relatives or friends after the spate of attacks.
Mr Gao went on to work at a vocational school in Baiyin, and had two sons, both of whom attended university and found jobs.
There were no immediate explanations as to why the killings stopped in 2002.We recognize beauty when we see it, right? Michelangelo’s David, Machu Picchu, an ocean sunrise. Could we say the same about the cosmos itself? Frank Wilczek, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, thinks we can. And should. In his new book A Beautiful Question: Finding Nature’s Deep Design, Wilczek lays out his case for the elegance of mathematics and the coherence of nature’s underlying laws.
Wilczek won the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering, with David Gross and H. David Politzer, equations that govern one of the fundamental forces in physics, the strong interaction, which holds together quarks and gluons, and makes protons and neutrons. Their discovery of “asymptotic freedom” showed that as quarks get closer to each other, the charge between them grows weaker.
I love its weirdness and strangeness and the fact that it’s the way the world actually works.
Wilczek’s specialty is quantum theory, but the impact of his work has been apparent in cosmology—in the study of black holes, dark matter, and the age-old mystery of how something can arise out of nothing. Now 64, he has been seeking designs in nature since he was a young math student. “I liked playing with patterns and thinking about that kind of abstraction,” he says. “I was very interested in mathematical logic, which is a branch of philosophy, and the theory of how the mind works. I studied some neurobiology and computer science as I tried to figure out how abstract patterns map onto the workings of minds.”
Wilczek is not just a leading theoretical physicist but a student of philosophy and admirer of poet William Blake and Renaissance Italian architect Filippo Brunelleschi. In conversation he laughs readily and takes obvious delight in leaping from one idea to the next, whether he’s talking about string theory, The Matrix, the native intelligence of animals, or the wrong-headed views of philosophy held by scientists like Neil DeGrasse Tyson.
Also in Physics Before There Were Stars By Daniel Wolf Savin The universe is the grandest merger story that there is. Complete with mysterious origins, forces of light and darkness, and chemistry complex enough to make the chemical conglomerate BASF blush, the trip from the first moments after the Big Bang...READ MORE
You say there’s beauty in the design of nature. That seems to be a matter of aesthetics. Is it a scientific question?
It is a scientific question. The exact question I’m trying to address is whether the world embodies beautiful ideas. That’s a question about the world on the one hand and beauty on the other. Beauty is notoriously subjective and comes in many forms, but there is a historical record in art and philosophy that one can consult to see what people have objectively found beautiful. We can consult science and compare whether the concepts that emerge from the fundamental laws of nature have something in common with what people find beautiful.
Does it matter to a scientist if the world is beautiful?
I don’t think science is walled off from the rest of life. So yes, it matters to me a lot whether the world is beautiful. It’s also a practical question for physicists, engineers, and designers. At the frontiers of physics, we’re dealing with realms of the very small and the very large and the very strange. Everyday experience is not a good guide and experiments can be difficult and expensive. So the source of intuition is not so much from everyday experience or from a massive accumulation of facts, but from feelings about what would give the laws of nature more inner coherence and harmony. My work has been guided by trying to make the laws more beautiful.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Blancas/Wikipedia*
What is a beautiful law?
Two things stand out as common features of laws and equations that people find beautiful. One is what I call exuberance or productivity, where you get out more than you put in. You find some equation or law by putting together clues and making a guess, and then you can explain seven other things and you know you’re on the right track. You get out more than you put in. Symmetry is especially prominent in the fundamental laws of nature. As it’s commonly used, symmetry is kind of vague but somehow connotes harmony and beauty. The scientific usage is more precise and has been extremely fruitful. It’s change without change. You can make changes in physical objects or changes in the laws that could change them but don’t. A circle is symmetrical in the sense that you can rotate it around its center by any angle but the circle as a whole is unchanged. Most shapes, like triangles, look different if you rotate them.
So if you go down to the deepest structures of the universe—the laws of physics—are you saying there is profound symmetry?
Yes. Take the fact that the laws are eternal. That doesn’t sound like symmetry, but it is because the laws don’t change as the universe ages. So we have a change without change.
Suppose the universe didn’t embody beautiful ideas or elegant mathematical structures. Can we even imagine the laws of nature if they were full of asymmetries or imperfections?
I’ve wrestled with this question and there’s a thought-experiment that I find very satisfying. As computers get better and artificial intelligence gets better, you can make plausible thought experiments along the lines of The Matrix, where intelligence is embodied within a computer, and what it thinks of as its world is actually something that’s been programmed.
So we are just living in a computer simulation?
Let’s imagine ourselves in Super Mario’s World. The laws of physics wouldn’t look particularly beautiful. They would change with time and place. They would have a quirkiness to them that’s logically consistent but is very different from the way our world works, where the laws don’t change in time or place, and have a kind of reproducibility. Once you understand the small parts, you can build up by deduction to figure out how the large parts work, whereas in a programmed world, it’s just a matter of what the programmer’s whims were. It doesn’t have to make sense or be beautiful. So I don’t think there’s anything logically necessary about the beauty of the laws. Of course, they might’ve been much harder to discover if they weren’t beautiful, so the comprehensibility of the laws is to me even more mysterious than their beauty. It didn’t have to be that way, but it is.
I don’t think any of the received religions do justice to what I’ve discovered about the physical world.
Was beauty important to Einstein and the other founders of modern physics?
Absolutely, although they didn’t always think about it explicitly. Einstein and [James Clerk] Maxwell—and going back to Newton—all had this instinct for breaking down problems into small parts, with the idea that they would be comprehensible, and then you could build up to more complicated things that would have this kind of exuberance. Einstein was the decisive figure in bringing this second aspect of the beauty of nature—symmetry—to new heights. The theory of relativity is very much in the mold of change without change. You can look at the world from a moving platform and different things rushing at you or away from you will look quite different, but the same laws will apply as in the stationary frame. That’s the essence of the theory of relativity. You change the way things look and yet the laws are still valid.
Einstein didn’t like the idea of quantum entanglement, where two particles interact with each other on opposite sides of the universe. Did that violate his sense of beauty?
It violated his sense of determinism that the laws should always lead to the same consequences. He’s famously thought to have said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Yet that’s exactly the way quantum mechanics works. So he didn’t like it. But parents don’t always approve of the way their children turn out. Quantum mechanics is a framework that doesn’t itself seem to embody symmetry, although at a deeper level I think maybe it does. Quantum mechanics turns out to be a wonderful platform if you build equations that obey its principles. Those equations can support enormous amounts of change without change that go beyond anything in classical physics, and they truly describe the world.
We can’t predict what a particular particle is going to do at the quantum level. Do these irregularities that bothered Einstein also trouble you?
No, I love it. I love its weirdness and strangeness and the fact that it’s the way the world actually works.
This doesn’t violate your sense of order?
You know, it’s profound. In quantum mechanics, the primary description of reality is something called a wave function and the equations of the wave function are actually deterministic. They’re perfectly definite equations. If you know the wave function at one time, you can predict what it’s going to be at another time with no ambiguity. The problem is that it’s impossible experimentally to know what the wave function is. So the deep structure is determined, but from where we sit within the universe, it’s not something we can determine. Operationally, that means things look unpredictable. There are vast mounds of experimental data and experiences that directly confirm this aspect of quantum mechanics. Basically, all modern particle accelerators are based on doing the same thing over and over again: bashing together electrons and anti-electrons at exactly the same energy and exactly the same configuration. But different things come out. You do it billions of times and each time a different thing comes out. So it’s not a matter of opinion.
Wikipedia
Are humans really uncovering the deep structure of the universe? Or is this just our version of reality, given the way our brains work and how we see the world?
Well, physics works. You can’t design iPhones or the Large Hadron Collider or missions to Pluto without a description of the world that works in very detailed ways. So it’s not a fantasy. However, there could be different ways of organizing your thoughts. Some things would seem obvious to creatures that were evolved from intelligent spiders that seemed less intuitive to us. So the ways the laws get written down could look different in significant details, but I don’t think the results are negotiable. The world is what it is.
You have a fascinating thought experiment. If dogs or birds had advanced abstract reasoning, would they be good at physics?
I think birds would be very good but dogs not so much. The dog’s world is primarily based on smell. Of course, chemical senses can support a rich life of communication and appreciation of food. You smell a madeleine and remember the past. But even if you’re very smart and have a rich social life, it’s hard to get from sensations of smell to Newton’s laws of motion and mechanics. Humans are primarily visual animals, so we have powerful ways of understanding how things move through space. We’re lucky that we can see the planets. That gives us a nice opening into astronomy and understanding gravity.
So what’s special about birds?
Birds would have all that and more. Our experience is dominated by friction and the force of gravity here on Earth, which historically have caused great problems in understanding what inertia is. But birds just flap their wings for a while, then stop and glide, so they know about inertia. They would also have an intuitive sense of relativity—that the laws don’t change if you’re moving at a constant velocity. They experience that every day. So if birds became intelligent, I think they would make more rapid progress on physics than humans have. Spiders would also have a different perspective. They communicate through touch and the vibrations of their webs. They would have a very good entry into field theory and electricity.
The laws of physics apply to the brain, so you shouldn’t be searching for a soul or something immaterial.
One danger for a theoretical physicist is that you can get so caught up in the beauty of your equations and how everything fits together that you become detached from the physical world. You still need empirical tests to prove this underlying structure. Is this an occupational hazard for you?
It absolutely is. The great physicist Richard Feynman liked to say you have imagination, but it’s imagination in a straitjacket. To me it assumes a different level of interest when your ideas suggest experimental consequences that you can check.
What if there is no “theory of everything” that unites the laws of physics? Where does this leave your argument for nature as a work of beauty?
The argument is still correct. We already know there are beautiful laws that explain most of the way matter works. It’s just that we haven’t figured it all out. It’s difficult to exaggerate how symmetric, how fruitful, how creative the laws are. It’s a great gift. But we’re not satisfied because there are some annoying little flaws like in the story “The Birth-Mark,” where there’s this little imperfection that obsesses her suitor. So we’re trying to find new phenomena that would allow us to have even more symmetry and would make the equations more beautiful. But the ultimate verdict is experimental.
You seem somewhat unusual for a scientist. You clearly love to explore these big ideas. Did you ever think about becoming a philosopher rather than a physicist?
Absolutely. When I was a young teenager, my heroes were Einstein on the one hand and Bertrand Russell on the other. I loved reading about philosophy and thinking about those kinds of questions.
In the last few years, some high profile physicists, including Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, have made disparaging comments about philosophers, basically saying they have little value to the real world of science. What do you make of these attacks on philosophy by your colleagues?
I think it shows lack of imagination and lack of knowledge of what philosophy is all about. There is a lot about the world besides the laws of physics and physical phenomena. There are centuries of experience of wrestling with these problems and refining those concepts. It’s unwise and borderline silly to just write that off. As Einstein did, I’ve derived tremendous inspiration from the philosophical literature, from sharpening your mind against David Hume or Ernst Mach or Bertrand Russell.
Philosophers don’t just wonder how everything fits together. They ask if the universe has meaning. Does that question resonate for you?
Yes, of course. I care very much about what it all means. That’s what drives a lot of what I do.
So what does it mean?
I don’t think that’s the right question because I’m not sure what an answer would look like. I was very happy to come up with a different version of that question, which can be addressed in a very fruitful way: Does the world embody beautiful ideas? You can look at that question in an enlightening way by looking at the history of people’s ideas about beauty before they knew the laws of physics and then compare that to what we’ve actually found. You get an enriched perspective on both art and science.
If someone needs a deeper system of values to fall back on, are you saying beauty would be a good place to look for it?
Yes. Some people derive joy and understanding from the dogmas of different religions, and that’s one way to organize your life. I don’t find that possible because I don’t think any of the received religions do justice to what I’ve discovered about the physical world. It’s not so much that they’re wrong, although many details are wrong, but they just don’t do justice to the profound surprises that science turns up about how big the universe is, how old it is, how many little things go into making the big things we experience in life. That means it’s on us to figure out and make the meaning. And for me beauty is one of the big discoveries that goes into what it all means. That’s been a great source of joy.
One of the deepest questions for both science and religion is the question of origins. How did the universe begin, or does it even have a beginning? How does something come out of nothing? Lawrence Krauss claims this isn’t all that mysterious. He says vacuum states are unstable in quantum field theory, so it’s not unusual for states to pop in and out of existence.
In fact, my friend Lawrence was quoting my work. I don’t understand all the implications but the equations don’t permit stable solutions that have nothing. Void is a very different thing from a solution of the fundamental laws of nature, so if void is not allowed, that is an explanation for why there’s something rather than nothing. But I don’t think it really gets to the question that philosophers are asking.
They’re asking where the laws of physics come from.
Exactly. Where did the equations come from? We know that void is not a correct idea. It’s not a possibility given the laws that we know.
So there’s no such thing as empty space?
That’s right. The concept that space is an empty, passive receptacle that has no inner life is totally wrong. In quantum mechanics, space has spontaneous activities. These are called “virtual particles.” Part of what I got the Nobel Prize for was figuring out how virtual particles affect the real particles we see.
What are virtual particles?
It’s as if we’re living on the surface of a planet that has a lot of activity going on underneath that’s not seen on the surface, but affects the way the world is. In the laws of fundamental physics, the fields—for instance, electric and magnetic fields— |
the app’s messaging or calling features. That makes Instagram’s new milestone that much more impressive. It suggests a healthy percentage of the app’s more than 600 million users are spending time every day checking out Instagram Stories distinct from everything else they may be doing on the app.
Beyond boasting about its user base, Instagram does have a few new features it’s announcing today. The company is adding a new selfie sticker option that lets you turn one of your own self-portraits into a sticker you can then pin onto future photos. It effectively turns your own facial expression into a live emoji of sorts:
Instagram is also adding four new cities to its Geostickers feature, which are sets of custom artwork that let you broadcast visually that you’re in a distinct location. The new cities include Chicago, London, Madrid, and Tokyo; the feature first launched early last month for users in Jakarta and New York City.
Again, like most of these additions, Geostickers was coped from Snapchat. But as we can see from the popularity of Instagram Stories and Facebook’s storied social network history, it’s not really about which company does it first. Because users don’t care about originality in an app’s product roadmap so much as they’re concerned how their friends are communicating — and which apps they’re communicating on.Delhi is gone, West Bengal is going. Bihar looks uncertain, Punjab could be next.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s juggernaut has come to a halt, Amit Shah’s invincible army is staring at a year of tough battles and, perhaps, a few humiliating losses. The ground beneath BJP has started moving.
What Delhi thought a few months ago, Bengal thought earlier this week when its voters discarded the BJP in the civic polls, leaving its score-sheet blank. It was defeated in all the municipal boards, while bete noire and possible nemesis Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress almost doubled its tally—from 38 in 2010 to 71 (out of 92) this year.
During the Kolkata civic polls, Mamata had turned into a psephologist. “People’s notice is awaiting” the BJP, she had said, angry with the notices Mamata is getting from agencies probing the Saradha scam. “It has already got the people’s notice in Delhi and Orissa and it will get it in Bihar soon. In West Bengal, it will end with an empty box in the Kolkata municipal polls. People will serve on it the notice of rejection,” she said.
A part of her prophecy has come true.
According to the DNA, the BJP won just four percent of the state’s 2,090 wards, and suffered a huge setback in Kolkata. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP won a 17-per cent overall vote-share and two seats—the same as the CPM with its 23-per cent vote. It emerged as the Number Two party in Kolkata, winning in 26 wards with a 25-per cent vote-share. Now it has won just seven wards with an estimated 15-per cent share. Its appeal, always limited in Bengal, has faded as the Modi “novelty factor” has worn out. It’s unlikely to become the second largest party in 2016.
The opposition has alleged large-scale rigging in the local polls by Mamata’s cadre; some of the charges are supported by the scale of the victory and the margin of victory of TMC candidates. But this is unlikely to deflect attention from the fact that the BJP has been pushed to the bottom of the ladder, even the Congress has done better.
Enthused by the results, which have come as a shot in the arm for TMC after the Saradha scandal, Mamata is now contemplating early polls for the Vidhan Sabha, scheduled for mid-2016. If she goes ahead with the gamble, it would be a reliable indicator of the optimism in the TMC camp.
The BJP saw the silver lining—a paltry gain of three seats in Kolkata Municipal Corporation—as a sign of things to come. “The results have shown that only two parties have grown in terms of numbers. One is the TMC which has used muscle and money power to increase its votes and another is BJP which has increased its tally," state BJP president Rahul Sinha said, declaring the results in Assembly polls would be different.
But the BJP’s enthusiasm appears misplaced. Its defeat has shown that the gains it had made in the Lok Sabha polls because of the euphoria around Modi are evaporating. Its poor show in elections outside Kolkata suggests the BJP doesn’t have workers out in the field, a factor that could be decisive in a battle against cadre-based parties like TMC and the Left.
Bihar, where elections are due this November, isn’t looking easy either. The merger of Lalu Yadav’s party with Nitish Kumar’s has consolidated the anti-BJP vote. The alliance has won most of the by elections in Bihar after the Lok Sabha elections, corroborating the belief that the united Janata Parivar can take on the Saffron Parivar.
A snap poll by ABP-Nielsen in February, soon after Nitish replaced Jeetan Ram Manjhi as chief minister, indicated a gap of almost 15 per cent (56 JD (U)-RJD and 41 BJP+) in the number of people likely to vote for the two coalitions. If this gap translates into votes on the polling day, the BJP is likely to be wiped out in Bihar.
In Punjab too, which is the next battleground in north, the BJP-Akali alliance is facing double anti-incumbency. If the trend in the Lok Sabha polls (BJP-SAD won just 6 out of 13) holds, Punjab might have a new government two years later.
Just a few months ago, Modi’s name was enough for filling up ballot boxes for the BJP. Shah’s strategies—of stitching alliances with small parties and having workers right down to the street-level—were considered game-changers. Now the BJP can’t rely just on ‘Modi turns up, Shah converts the numbers into votes’ strategy.
A year ago, people voted for Modi because of his promises. Now they will evaluate him on the basis of his performance and that of his rivals. If Modi’s performance—and Bihar and Bengal will be authentic indicators—is judged below par, if he is rejected, it could be the beginning of a major problem for the PM.
To win elections, Modi needs to fasttrack development, unleash his promised range of reforms. For all this, he needs the numbers in the Rajya Sabha. And for the numbers in the upper house, he needs to win Bihar, Bengal and a few other states.
Modi would love to solve this conundrum. But can he?
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Speakers:
Taneli Tikka, Tieto: Lean Startup
Taneli Tikka is known in Finland as a serial entrepreneur, who has launched and lead multiple groundbreaking startups. Taneli is also one of the leading advocates of Lean innovative methodologies. Lean Startup methodology is combination of business-hypothesis-driven experimentation, iterative product releases, and validated learning. Taneli will share his view on the Lean Startup and will show how its effective utilization can change the way a company works.
Michihito Mizutani, Microsoft: Prototyping experience
Michihito is a Senior User Experience Designer at Microsoft. His topic will focus on how prototyping can be used to validate a concept or a user experience. Prototyping is a very effective tool in validating ideas and generating feedback about the relevant components of a solution, without needing to know much about the actual end product. Prototyping is also very integral in the Lean Startup methodology, where validation of a hypothesis is centered on prototyping.
Marc Dillon, Jolla: Success of Jolla
Marc Dillon is a co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Jolla Ltd. Marc has 23 years of experience in wireless communication, and he is global speaker and thought leader in mobile technology. Prior to Jolla, Marc worked for Nokia in 2001-2012. He is also a guitarist & singer, motorcyclist, and enthusiastic in mechanics & electronics.Use AdBlock And Yahoo May Block You From Reading Your E-Mail
If you still live in 2003 and have a Yahoo e-mail account but also use Ad Block to, ya know, block ads, then the folks at Yahoo might have a nasty surprise for you when you go to check your inbox.
Digiday, pointing to posts in the AdBlock Plus forums, reports that some Yahoo users have found they were unable to access their e-mail accounts because they were using ad-blocking plugins on their web browser.
This isn’t mere supposition or any sort of conspiracy theory. The on-screen message makes it clear in no uncertain terms that “We are unable to display Yahoo Mail. Please disable Ad Blocker to continue using Yahoo Mail.”
And the company confirmed to DSLreports.com that it is indeed barring some users from seeing their e-mails.
“At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences,” a Yahoo rep explains. “This is a test we’re running for a small number of Yahoo Mail users in the U.S.”
While we understand that billions of dollars are lost each year to blocked ads, we’re not sure if holding someone’s e-mails hostage is the best route to go for Yahoo, especially since the company can’t even get all of its own employees to use Yahoo Mail.
This sort of tactic also runs counter to the online ad industry’s recent admission that it had gotten overzealous during the last decade, resulting in an environment full of annoying, invasive ads that drive consumers to install ad blockers.Underage girls were groomed for sex for as little as ‘the price of a McDonald’s, a milkshake and cinema ticket’, judge says
Six men who were members of a child abuse ring in Aylesbury have been handed lengthy prison sentences for grooming vulnerable underage girls for sex for as little as “the price of a McDonald’s, a milkshake and cinema ticket”.
The men were convicted at the Old Bailey of a range of sex offences between 2006 and 2012, including multiple rape of a child under 13, child prostitution and administering a substance to “stupefy” a girl in order to engage in sexual activity.
Vikram Singh, Asif Hussain, Arshad Jani, Mohammed Imran, Akbari Khan and Taimoor Khan were jailed on Monday for between three and 19-and-a-half years.
Most of the offences related to child A, who was present in court to see the men who robbed her of her teenage years sent down.
In a statement, she told of her feelings of worthlessness as she battled depression and alcohol addiction, adding: “I feel my teenage years were taken away from me.”
During the sentencing, the judge, John Bevan QC, paid tribute to her bravery in laying bare her life “warts and all” and said the way some of the defendants took advantage of her vulnerability was “grotesque”.
He said: “She sought friendship amongst Asian males in their 20s and for the price of a McDonald’s, a milkshake and cinema ticket, she became ‘liked’ by stallholders in Aylesbury market, taxi and bus drivers.
“By the age of 13 she was sexually experienced, confusing sexual gratification for friendship and love.”
By the time she was 16, the girl had slept with just under 70 men and her vulnerability should have been “blindingly obvious”, the judge said.
He went on: “Why these defendants focused their attention on white underage girls is unexplained but I have no doubt vulnerability played a substantial part in it.
“The combination of inadequate parenting leading to rebellious children lacking supervision provided an opportunity. If they pursued Asian underage girls, they would have paid a heavy price in their community.”
The two victims came from troubled backgrounds and wanted to feel grown-up when they were befriended by the men, who groomed them by showering them with inexpensive gifts such as alcohol, DVDs, food and occasionally drugs.
While aged just 12 or 13, child A was passed between some 60 mainly Asian men for sex after being conditioned into thinking it was normal behaviour, jurors were told. The vast majority of the charges related to this child, while three charges related to girl B.
During the trial, the prosecutor, Oliver Saxby QC, told the jury that the youngsters were “easy prey for a group of men wanting casual sexual gratification that was easy, regular and readily available”.
He said the girls’ ideas of what was right had been “completely distorted”, and that they thought what was happening was normal and natural.
Many of the defendants were friends from the Aylesbury area. Some were married and had children, with some working at the market and a few working as taxi drivers.
Singh, 45, from Aylesbury, who has a wife and children, was told by Bevan he bore a heavy responsibility for the “degradation” of child A. He was jailed for a total of 17-and-a-half years for four counts of rape and administering a substance with intent.
Hussain, 33, from Milton Keynes, who was convicted of three counts of rape, was sentenced to 13-and-a-half years.
Jani, 33, from Aylesbury, received 13 years for rape and conspiracy to rape. The court heard the bus driver had supported a wife and 17-month-old daughter in Pakistan.
Imran, 38, from Bradford, was convicted of three counts of rape, one count of conspiracy to rape and one count of child prostitution. The Pakistani national was jailed for 19-and-a-half years and faces deportation afterwards. He was the only defendant to express remorse for his actions, saying through his lawyer he felt “guilt and shame” for what he had done.
Akbari Khan, 36, from Aylesbury, who was found guilty of two counts of rape, administering a substance with intent, and conspiracy to rape, was jailed for 16 years. He too has a wife and young daughter.
Taimoor Khan, 29, also from Aylesbury, was sentenced to three years in prison for one count of sexual activity with a child.
Afterwards, it emerged that child B is suing Buckinghamshire county council for negligence resulting in the unnecessary suffering of the victims.
In a statement, she said that “no sentence could ever put right what happened”, but added: “It’s an opportunity for all of us to say to the government and to social services, whose job it is to protect vulnerable people, that it is time to sit down and listen to our experiences, and I mean actually listen and reflect on what is happening in this country.
“This would go a long way in helping them to be able to understand the problems that exist, to enable them to prevent things like this from happening to others in the future.”
Her solicitor, Alan Collins, added: “It is without doubt that if social services had done more to protect the victims and spotted the crucial signs that something was wrong, we wouldn’t be here today.
“However, the sentencing of these individuals does not make up for the failings. As a consequence, we will now be taking legal action against Buckinghamshire county council for their negligence in this case, which resulted in the unnecessary suffering of these victims.”
Javed Khan, chief executive of the children’s charity Barnardo’s, which has supported the victims, said: “These sentences send out an important message: abusers will pay for their actions. Their crimes have had a devastating impact on their victims.
“We will continue to work with Thames Valley police, Buckinghamshire county council and our other partners to stamp out this terrible crime, by raising awareness of the signs a child or young person is being sexually exploited, and supporting victims.”A man and an underage family member of his were arrested late Sunday night after police stopped a vehicle for a missing headlight and allegedly found the pair with marijuana and an open can of beer.
Wesley A. Taylor, 41, was booked on charges of third-offense DUI, DUI with child endangerment, an open container violation, and felony marijuana possession. The teen's name and charges cannot be released by authorities, as she is a juvenile.
Court documents say a Casper police officer was patrolling the area of East 12th Street and South McKinley shortly before 11 p.m. Sunday when she saw a vehicle with a burned-out headlight. The officer decided to stop the vehicle at East 12th Street and South Jefferson.
As she approached the vehicle, the officer immediately smelled a strong odor of marijuana coming from inside. Taylor reportedly said he smoked marijuana before he left a barbeque. He said he wanted the teen to drive, but she could not see well at night.
Taylor also allegedly admitted to drinking a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon tall boys. The teen reportedly said she smoked marijuana three times each day, but Taylor said he was unaware she possessed or used any drugs.
When asked whether they had anything illegal on them, the teen reportedly pulled a small corner piece of a clear plastic bag from the left side of her bra. Inside the bag was a small amount of what later tested positive as marijuana.
A search of the vehicle allegedly turned up a small container which contained green residue, which the officer believed to be marijuana residue. Police also found a 16-oz. beer can, which was mostly empty, stuffed next to the passenger seat.
Police notified the Wyoming Department of Family Services, and the girl's mother was called to pick her up.
Taylor performed standardized field sobriety tests. He reportedly performed poorly, and was arrested.
He agreed to have his blood drawn. Taylor's blood-alcohol concentration was not included in charging documents.
Police note in the affidavit that Taylor had two prior DUI convictions in the past decade, as well as more than three drug possession convictions in his lifetime, which makes this latest alleged marijuana offense chargeable under Wyoming's felony statute.Letters written by Adam Gadahn (pictured) to Osama bin Laden outline how Gadahn planned a message to Ireland, hoping to convert it to Islam.
Letters written by Adam Gadahn (pictured) to Osama bin Laden outline how Gadahn planned a message to Ireland, hoping to convert it to Islam.
AL-QAEDA’S MAIN SPOKESMAN in the United States was preparing a message to the people of Ireland in an attempt to encourage the country to convert to Islam, new documents have revealed.
A series of documents seized during the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, which have been published by the Combating Terrorism Center, include a letter to bin Laden written by Adam Gadahn outlining his attempts to convert Europe.
“I was… starting to prepare a message to the Irish,” the translated letter, dated August 2010, reads.
This was after I noticed the sympathy of the Irish people to the Palestinian issue, and the soft treatment by the Irish Judicial system of the Muslims accused of terrorism, and also not participating with its troops in Bush’s Crusade wars (although it is participating within the European Union forces in training the Somali army).
Gadahn’s letter also discusses how the combined traumas of the economic collapse and the Church’s clerical abuse scandals had affected Ireland.
“What helped to prepare the message was the last economic crisis that affected Ireland a lot, thus forcing its youth to look for sources of living in the outside,” Gadahn wrote.
“The other matter is the increasing anger in Ireland towards the Catholic Church after exposing a number of sex scandals and others.
The people there are moving towards secularism, after it was the most religious of atheist Europe, and why do not we face them with Islam?
Any plans to issue a note to the people of Ireland – and also to Catholics in the Arab region – was upset by a raid on a Catholic Church in Baghdad by the Islamic State of Iraq, a militant group linked to Al-Qaeda and regularly referred to simply as ‘Al-Qaeda in Iraq’.
This attack halted me, and I thought twice about my two project messages. As actions are more effective than words, their act and the contacts they carried during the attack, and the statement they issued later, do not help to gain people’s sympathy.
Elsewhere, the documents outline how Bin Laden had considered changing the name of the organisation – which is formally titled ‘Qa’ida al-Jihad’ – because the name had come to be considered as a body outside of the teachings of Islam.
“This is what was raised repeatedly in the past as indicated by Obama, that our war is not on Islam or on the Muslim people, but rather our war is on the al-Qaida organisation,” bin Laden had written.
“So if the word al-Qaida was derived from, or had strong ties to, the word Islam or Muslims, or if it had the name ‘Islamic party’, it would be difficult for Obama to say that.”
Bin Laden also suggested that the name had come to depict a military-only organisation, which had ultimately detracted from its overall aim of ‘unifying the nation’, and proposed ten alternative names for other group leaders to consider.Republicans worry fellow Republicans may screw up the political gift of controversies. | AP Photos Why the GOP thinks it could blow it
Republicans are worried one thing could screw up the political gift of three Obama administration controversies at once: fellow Republicans.
Top GOP leaders are privately warning members to put a sock in it when it comes to silly calls for impeachment or over-the-top comparisons to Watergate. They want members to focus on months of fact-finding investigations — not rhetorical fury.
Story Continued Below
Why the fuss? Well…
—“People may be starting to use the I-word before too long,” Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) told a radio host, making plain impeachment was indeed the I-word in mind.
—“You could call #Benghazi Obama’s Watergate, except no one died,” Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) wrote on Twitter.
—“It harkens back to the days of Richard Nixon and maintaining a political enemies list and treating the federal government as a tool to exact the administration’s retribution,” Sen. Ted Cruz told the National Review.
—“This is far worse than Watergate,” Rep. Michele Bachmann said of the IRS mess at a tea party rally.
—“I believe that before it’s all over, this president will not fill out his full term,” former governor and presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said on his own show before the IRS and AP flaps.
—A PPP poll found all of this to be mainstream Republican thinking, with 41 percent calling Benghazi the BIGGEST political scandal in HISTORY.
( Also on POLITICO: Obama attempts'scandal reduction surgery')
“We have to be persistent but patient,” Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus told us. “I think where there’s smoke, there’s fire. If we present ourselves to the American people as intelligent, we’re going to be in a great place as far as showing that this administration is not transparent, is obsessed with power and hates dissent. But you don’t call for impeachment until you have evidence.”
It is important to remember that there is no evidence any of the specific controversies directly link to President Barack Obama himself. No one knows what the various congressional probes will turn up, but until there is a direct connection to the president, the best Republicans can probably do is use the three episodes to illustrate the dangerous reach — and what they see as pervasive incompetence — of the Obama government.
Meantime, the incentives for the incendiary are strong, as the PPP polls show: It helps Republicans raise money, get on Fox and excite conservatives. It also provides an easy way for someone like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to show skeptical conservatives that he is one of them — and therefore should not be challenged in an upcoming GOP primary. This is true for most House Republicans: Redistricting has left them far more threatened by a primary challenge from the right than by a general election challenge on the left.
( Also on POLITICO: Meet the Benghazi lobby)
A top Senate Republican leadership aide said Obama’s steps this week did nothing to diminish the GOP’s blood lust over the IRS, and said the coming investigation “has the capacity to be debilitating” for the administration. “It will take months, and it will ebb and flow in terms of its national attention,” the aide said. “But the ebbs will be white hot.”Tex-Mex cuisine is very popular in Houston. Many Mexican cuisine restaurants in Houston have aspects that originate from Texas culture. Katharine Shilcutt of the Houston Press said in 2012 that "Tex-Mex has been a vital part of our city for more than 100 years" and that it "never waned in that century."[1] She added that "[t]he cultural significance of Tex-Mex as a vital touchstone between generations and an expression of our roots cannot be denied."[1]
In his book Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of Mexican Americans in Houston, Arnoldo De León said that the recent immigrants from Mexico to Houston add foods that are popular with immigrants to menus of Mexican restaurants in Houston. Robb Walsh of the Houston Press said "You might say that the immigrant flow is what keeps the "Mex" in Tex-Mex."[2] In Houston, as in other places in Texas, the existing Chicano community influences the cooking methods used by recent immigrants.[2]
In Houston, several restaurants that have authentic Mexican cuisine call themselves "Mex-Mex." Several restaurants that have both Tex Mex and Mexican cuisine call themselves "Mix Mex."[3] As of 2012, Molina's Cantina is the oldest still-operating Tex-Mex restaurant in Houston. A restaurant featuring newer style Tex-Mex, Ninfa's became influential in the development of the cuisine in the city.
History [ edit ]
Tex-Mex cuisine in Houston began in the late 1800s, when street vendors appeared. Most were Hispanic, black and Native American.[4] In 1901 Tex-Mex good vendors began moving to indoor venues after the city government prohibited open-air food vending at Market Square.[5] In 1907 a food safety campaign began, and the resulting laws lead to many street vendors going out of business. By 1910, while some food vendors remained in business, restaurants began to replace the food vendors.[6]
The first Tex Mex restaurant in Houston was Original Mexican Restaurant; George Caldwell, a non-Hispanic White (Anglo) American from San Antonio, Texas, opened it in 1907. Robb Walsh said that "Caldwell was no doubt inspired by the Original Mexican Restaurant in his hometown, which opened in 1900."[6] In 1929 Felix Tijerina, who worked as a busboy in Caldwell's restaurant, opened Felix's.[7] While the business failed due to the Great Depression, Tijerina re-established it in 1937.[8] Early Tex Mex restaurants catered to Anglo palates. They were the first places where Anglo and Mexican Americans interacted with one another.[6] Molina's Cantina first opened in 1941,[9] making it, as of 2011, the oldest continually operating Tex-Mex restaurant in the city.[10] Cynthia Mayer of the Philadelphia Inquirer said that Molina's, "a restaurant that began serving Mexican food long before Corona beer and body shots became the yuppie rage," helped George H. W. Bush adjust to life as a Houstonian.[11]
In 1972 Diana Kennedy released the book The Cuisines of Mexico, which detailed food across Mexico from different socioeconomic and ethnic groups.[12] Beginning in 1973, newer style Tex-Mex restaurants, influenced by Kennedy and other people who advocated for actual Mexican cuisine, opened. The food included tended to have grilled meats, salsas, and seafood. Walsh said that while "[t]heir slogans promised authenticity", "the new Mexican restaurants weren't much more authentic than the ones they replaced."[8] Ninfa's began serving fajitas in 1973, and other restaurants followed suit.[13] Many of the foods originated from Tejano people from West Texas and the Rio Grande Valley, and not from central Mexico.[3]
Many older style Mexican restaurants declined and/or went out of business. Some old-style restaurants were frequented by older people who have a nostalgia for older cooking.[8] Some old-style restaurants cater to families with young children who may dislike the bolder flavors in newer Houston Tex-Mex.[14]
In 1977 Richard West of the Texas Monthly stated that Houston, the largest city in Texas, has "the highest percentage of demanding food seekers" and therefore "it's not too surprising that here one finds the widest spectrum of Mexican cuisine."[15]
Walsh said "From the "genuine Mexican food" of George Caldwell in 1907 to the claims you hear today, Mexican restaurants have always promised authenticity and have always delivered what sells. The real changes that have taken place are in the public's tastes. And understanding the way our tastes have changed can tell us a lot about where we're going and where we've been."[14]
Gallery [ edit ]
Original Ninfa's tacos al carbón/fajitas
See also [ edit ]The latest NDP platform was unveiled Thursday — a plan to scrap taxpayer-funded Executive Air.
With it came a ream of documents the NDP purported showed cabinet minister Bill Boyd’s use of the aircraft service.
Yet the government wouldn’t make Boyd available to answer NDP claims that he used the service for $400,000 worth of taxpayer-funded flights to and from his home in Eston over the past four years (a figure the government said at 5 p.m. it was still working to verify). Instead, it arranged a press conference with Education Minister Don Morgan in Saskatoon.
MLA travel rules allow members to use Executive Air if they live 350 kilometres from Regina; Eston is 302 km away as the crow flies, 374 km by road.
The NDP also called Thursday for a full judicial inquiry into controversial Global Transportation Hub deals.
Last month, the RM of Sherwood asked for a widened inquiry into land purchases for the entire Regina Bypass. On Thursday, Reeve Jeff Poissant supported the idea of a judicial inquiry, saying “it would be worth it,” because the project has affected so many local residents.
But the government would not grant an interview with Boyd about that, either, even though he’s the minister responsible for the GTH.
Instead, it emailed a statement saying the provincial auditor will look into the deals, and it will “support this process and will fully cooperate” with the auditor.
Thursday wasn’t the first time the government has denied requests to talk with Boyd about the land deals.
On Feb. 3, after the CBC broadcast the second story in series highlighting the purchases, the government said Boyd would not comment and was suing the national broadcaster. Hours later, he emerged from that day’s cabinet meeting with a statement and answered questions, saying he’d done nothing wrong.
(There is) no legal prohibition about discussing an issue before the court
Boyd hasn’t said much since.
On Feb. 9, he lodged a statement of claim with the Court of Queen’s Bench saying the CBC stories implied “that Boyd had acted unlawfully,” which was “untrue.”
He alleged they were “misleading and incorrect,” and implied that Boyd “was involved in unlawful conduct.”
He also took issue with the “implication” that he provided information to a man’s company that “donated directly to Boyd’s election campaign in 2011 and that between 2011 and 2014 the company also made three donations of between $500 and $1,000 to the Saskatchewan Party.”
“The clear implication of the reading of the stories is that Boyd provided the information to (the man) for his own personal advantage and as a result of his business dealings with (the man),” the statement reads.
Boyd filed the statement of claim less than two months before the provincial election. Last week, he affirmed he would continue with his lawsuit, but walked away in the face of more questions.
Late Thursday afternoon, a government note advising Boyd would be at an event in Saskatoon Friday was corrected; Minister Jeremy Harrison will be there instead.
Veteran Vancouver media lawyer David Sutherland points out there’s absolutely “no legal prohibition about discussing an issue before the court.”
Still, he said, “you don’t want to argue your case in the public press, so a lot of very good lawyers tell their clients, ‘Shut up.’ “
Yet Sutherland would also advise against anyone launching a defamation suit, saying “it’s almost always a mistake” and, generally, is “an absolutely terrible remedy.”
That’s because a small percentage will ever make it to trial, and monetary awards are usually paltry.
While “an awful lot of what is going on may be to deter all media from any repetition,” Sutherland called that “a poor plan” which could easily backfire.
egraney@postmedia.com
twitter.com/LP_EmmaGraneyHogmanay is Scotland's New Year's celebration. But did you know that it's a three to five day blast with a bunch of weird and wild, ancient traditions?
As Christmas festivities wind down all over the United Kingdom, the really spectacular Hogmanay parties in Scotland are just getting underway.
Why this big national party is called Hogmanay is anybody's guess. The word itself has been around since at least 1604 when it first appeared in written records.
But many of the traditions are much older. Scotland.Org, the Scottish government's online gateway to everything you ever wanted to know about visiting, working or living in Scotland, suggests it could be old Norman French from hoguinan (a New Year's gift). But they also guess it's a variation of the Gaelic og maidne (new morning), the Flemish hoog min dag (day or love) or, at a stretch, the Anglo Saxon haleg monath (holy month).
You get the picture. If even the Scots don't know the origin of the word for one of their most flamboyant celebrations, we're not likely to find out either.None of that, of course, effects the enormous public New Year's events (the biggest and most famous in Edinburgh) that light up cities and towns all over the country.
And, alongside the celebrations, street festivals, entertainment and wild - occasionally terrifying - fire festivals, people still practice rituals and traditions that go back for hundreds - maybe thousands - of years.
Here are five you may not have heard of before.
Five Hogmanay Traditions
Besides concerts, street parties, fireworks and more earthbound fire spectaculars, as well as consumption of one of Scotland's most famous products, Scotch whisky, a number of very ancient traditions associated with Hogmanay in Scotland can still be found in smaller communities and private celebrations:
Redding the House - Like the annual spring cleaning in some communities, or the ritual cleaning of the kitchen for the Jewish festival of Passover, families traditionally did a major cleanup to ready the house for the New Year. Sweeping out the fireplace was very important and there was a skill in reading the ashes, the way some people read tea leaves. And, at a time of year when fire plays a huge part in celebrations, it's only natural to bring a bit of it into the house. After the big cleanup, someone goes from room to room carrying a smoking juniper branch to discourage evil spirits and chase away disease. First Footing After the stroke of midnight, neighbors visit each other, bearing traditional symbolic gifts such as shortbread or black bun, a kind of fruit cake. The visitor, in turn, is offered a small whisky - a wee dram. A friend of mine who remembers first footing, also remembers that if you had a lot of friends, you'd be offered a great deal of whisky. The first person to enter a house in the New Year, the first foot, could bring luck for the whole year to come. The luckiest was a tall, dark and handsome man. The unluckiest a red head and the unluckiest of all a red-haired woman.
Bonfires and Fire Festivals Scotland's fire festivals at Hogmanay and later in January may have pagan or Viking origins. The use of fire to purify and drive away evil spirits is an ancient idea. Fire is at the center of Hogmanay celebrations in Stonehaven, Comrie and Biggar and has recently become an element in Edinburgh's Hogmanay celebration. The Singing of Auld Lang Syne All over the world, people sing Robert Burns' version of this traditional Scottish air. How it became the New Year's song is something of a mystery. At Edinburgh's Hogmanay, people join hands for what is reputed to be the world's biggest Auld Lang Syne. The Saining of the House This is a very old rural tradition that involved blessing the house and livestock with holy water from a local stream. Although it had nearly died out, in recent years it has experienced a revival. After the blessing with water, the woman of the house was supposed to go from room to room with a smoldering juniper branch, filling the house with purifying smoke (there's that smoldering juniper branch again). Of course, this being a Scottish celebration, traditional mayhem was sure to follow. Once everyone in the household was coughing and choking from the smoke, the windows would be thrown open and reviving drams (or two or three) of whisky would be passed around.
Why is Hogmanay so important to the Scots
Although some of these traditions are are ancient, Hogmanay celebrations were elevated in importance after the banning of Christmas in the 16th and 17th centuries. Under Oliver Cromwell, Parliament banned Christmas celebrations in 1647. The ban was lifted after Cromwell's downfall in 1660. But in Scotland, the stricter Scottish Presbyterian Church had been discouraging Christmas celebrations - as having no basis in the Bible, from as early as 1583. After the Cromwellian ban was lifted elsewhere, Christmas festivities continued to be discouraged in Scotland. In fact, Christmas remained a normal working day in Scotland until 1958 and Boxing Day did not become a National Holiday until much later.
But the impulse to party, to exchange gifts, and to put the products of Scotland's famous distilleries to good use, could not be repressed. In effect, Hogmanay became Scotland's main outlet for the mid-winter impulse to chase away the darkness with light, warmth and festivities.Before the ocean’s rise up and take our lives, relax remember it’s only the poor who die.
A disease named F.E.M.A, police look mean under dark goggles, gas masks and darker skies.
Fire’s rise from the death of the industrial age, a funeral pyre to engage the simulation, only in this game you don’t have infinite lives, just patience, with a bureaucracy to split your sides— stop laughing this is how you die.
we grope into the night, to find light or anything to survive, a pipe might suffice for some.
At least a third of my generation understands what it’s like to wonder, what it’s like to wonder why, about life, about wealth, the harmless scams we were fed by the man, that dried up the well.
Look around, it ain’t hard to tell. The fences aren’t to protect pedestrians, they’re to protect the drivers themselves. From the poor swarms on the other |
with the last line of the address consisting of "BFPO" followed a space and a number of 1 to 4 digits.
For consistency with the format of other UK addresses, in 2012 BFPO and Royal Mail jointly introduced an optional alternative postcode format for BFPO addresses, using the new non-geographic postcode area "BF" and the notional post town "BFPO". Each BFPO number is assigned to a postcode in the standard UK format, beginning "BF1". The database was released commercially in March 2012 as part of the Royal Mail Postal Address File (PAF).[40][41] A postcode is not required if the traditional "BFPO nnnn" format is used.
Non-geographic codes [ edit ]
Most postcodes apply to a geographic area but some are used only for routing and cannot be used for navigation or distance-finding.[42] They are often used for direct marketing and PO boxes. Some postcode sectors or districts are set aside solely for non-geographic postcodes, including EC50, BS98, BT58, BX1-BX9, IM99, M60, N1P, NE99, SA99, SW99 and JE4.
Girobank's headquarters in Bootle used the non-geographic postcode GIR 0AA. Non-geographic postcode area BX is used solely for non-geographic addresses, with codes independent of the location of the recipient. See next paragraph. There is also a special postcode for letters to Santa/Father Christmas, XM4 5HQ.[43]
Special postcodes [ edit ]
Postcodes are allocated by Royal Mail's Address Management Unit and cannot be purchased or specified by the recipient. However, Royal Mail sometimes assigns semi-mnemonic postcodes to high-profile organisations.[44]
Prominent examples include:
The postcode printed on Business Reply envelopes (which do not require a stamp) often ends with the letters BR.
Operation [ edit ]
Sorting [ edit ]
Postcodes are used to sort letters to their destination either manually, where sorters use labelled frames, or increasingly with letter-coding systems, where machines assist in sorting.[55] A variation of automated sorting uses optical character recognition (OCR) to read printed postcodes, best suited to mail that uses a standard layout and addressing format.[56]
A long string of "faced" letters (i.e. turned to allow the address to be read) is presented to a keyboard operator at a coding desk, who types the postcodes onto the envelopes in coloured phosphor dots. The associated machine uses the outward codes in these dots to direct bundles of letters into the correct bags for specific delivery offices. With a machine knowledge of the specific addresses handled by each postal walk at each office, the bundles can be further sorted using the dots of the inward sorting code so that each delivery round receives only its own letters.[24] This feature depends upon whether or not it is cost effective to second-sort outward letters, and tends to be used only at main sorting offices where high volumes are handled.[57] When postcodes are incomplete or missing, the operator reads the post town name and inserts a code sufficient for outward sorting to the post town where others can further direct it. The mail bags of letter bundles are sent by road, air or train, and eventually by road to the delivery office.[57] At the delivery office the mail that is handled manually is inward sorted to the postal walk that will deliver it, and it is then "set in", sorted into the walk order that allows the deliverer the most convenient progress in the round.[24][57] The latter process is now being automated, as the rollout of walk sequencing machines continues.[58][59]
Integrated Mail Processors [ edit ]
Integrated Mail Processors (IMPs) read the postcode on the item and translate it into two phosphorous barcodes, unique to the inward and outward parts of the postcode, which the machines subsequently print and read, to sort the mail to the correct outward postcode. Letters may also be sequentially sorted by a Compact Sequence Sorter (CSS) reading the outward postcode, in the order that a walking postman/woman will deliver, door to door. On such items the top phosphorous barcode is the inward part of the code, the bottom is the outward.[citation needed]
IMPs can also read RM4SCC items, as used in Cleanmail, a different format to the above.
Mailsort and Walksort [ edit ]
A newer system of five-digit codes called Mailsort was designed for users who send "a minimum of 4,000 letter-sized items".[60] It encodes the outward part of the postcode in a way that is useful for mail routing, so that a particular range of Mailsort codes goes on a particular plane or lorry. Mailsort users are supplied with a database to allow them to convert from postcodes to Mailsort codes and receive a discount if they deliver mail to the post office split up by Mailsort code. Users providing outgoing mail sorted by postcode receive no such incentive since postcode areas and districts are assigned using permanent mnemonics, and do not therefore assist with grouping items together into operationally significant blocks. Walksort[clarification needed] was discontinued in May 2012.
Listings and availability [ edit ]
There are approximately 1.7 million postcodes in the United Kingdom (including the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man).[61]
Each postcode is divided by a space into two parts. As mentioned above, the first part is known as a postcode district. Postcode districts with the same one or two letter prefixes are grouped into postcode areas. The second part of a postcode begins with a single digit which indicates the postcode sector within each district.
Postcode areas are also divided into several post towns, which predate the introduction of postcodes, with the London post town uniquely covering more than one postcode area.
As of June 2016, there are 124 postcode areas, 2,987 postcode districts, 11,192 postcode sectors, and 1,500 post towns.[61] Addresses receiving large volumes of mail are each assigned separate "large user" postcodes. But most postcodes are shared by several neighbouring properties, typically covering about 15 addresses.
Life-cycle of post codes [ edit ]
There are also significant numbers of discontinued (terminated) codes. Each month some 2,750 postcodes are created and 2,500 terminated.[62]
Component Part Example Live codes[63] Terminated codes[64] Other codes Total Postcode area Out code YO 124 0 3 127 Postcode district Out code YO31 2,984 103 4 3,087 Postcode sector In code YO31 1 11,197 1,071 4 12,272 Postcode unit In code YO31 1EB 1,755,005[64] 650,417 4 2,405,426 Postcode Addresses Approx. 29,965,962[65]
Postcode Address File (PAF) [ edit ]
The Address Management Unit of Royal Mail maintains an official database of UK postal addresses and postcodes on its Postcode Address File (PAF), which is made available under licence for a fee regulated by Ofcom. The PAF is commercially licenseable and is often incorporated in address management software packages. The capabilities of such packages allow most addresses to be constructed solely from the postcode and house number. By including the map references of postcodes in the address database, the postcode can be used to pinpoint a postcode area on a map. PAF is updated daily.[citation needed]
On its poweredbypaf.com website, Royal Mail publishes summary information about major changes to postcode sectors and postal localities (including post towns). Individual postcodes or postal addresses can be found using Royal Mail's Postcode and Address Finder website, but this is limited to 50 free searches per user per day.
Code-Point Open [ edit ]
A complete list of all current Great Britain postcodes, known as Code-Point Open, has been made available online (since 1 April 2010) by Ordnance Survey. Under the government's OS OpenData initiative, it is available for re-use without charge under an attribution-only licence. The Code-Point Open list includes median coordinates for each postcode but excludes postcodes in Northern Ireland and the Crown dependencies. Unlike the PAF products provided by Royal Mail, the Code-Point Open list does not include postal address text.
ONS Postcode Directory and National Statistics Postcode Lookup [ edit ]
The Office For National Statistics also produces postcode directories, under similar licence terms to the OS product. Both the ONSPD and NSPL contain Northern Ireland postcodes, with centroid coordinates in the OSI grid as opposed to the OSGB grid, although Northern Ireland postcodes are subject to a more restrictive licence permitting internal business use only.[66] Postcodes for the Crown Dependences are also included, without co-ordinates. A further difference is that non-current postcodes, and dates of introduction and withdrawal of postcodes are included.
Other uses [ edit ]
While postcodes were introduced to expedite the delivery of mail, they are useful tools for other purposes, particularly because codes are very fine-grained and identify just a few addresses. Among uses are:
Finding the nearest branch of an organisation to a given address. A computer program uses the postcodes of the target address and the branches to list the closest branches in order of distance as the crow flies (or, if used in conjunction with streetmap software, by road distance). This can be used by companies to inform potential customers where to go, by job centres to find jobs for job-seekers, to alert people of town planning applications in their area, and a great many other applications. [22]
With satellite navigation systems, to navigate to an address by street number and postcode.
By life insurance companies and pension funds to assess longevity for pricing and reserving. [67]
By other types of insurance companies to assess premiums for motoring/business/domestic policy premiums.
To determine catchment areas for school places or doctors' surgeries.
The phrase "postcode lottery" refers to the variation in the availability of services by region, though not always because of postcodes.
For these and related reasons, postcodes in some areas have become indicators of social status. Some residents have campaigned to change their postcode to associate themselves with a more desirable area,[68] to disassociate with a poorer area[69] or to be associated with an area with a lower cost of living.[70] In all these cases Royal Mail has said that there is "virtually no hope" of changing the postcode, referring to their policy of changing postcodes only to match changes in their operations.[71]
Postcode areas rarely align with local government boundaries, and a few straddle England's borders with Wales and Scotland. This has led to British Sky Broadcasting subscribers receiving the wrong BBC and ITV regions, and newly licensed radio amateurs being given incorrect call signs.
See also [ edit ]The Color of a Movement
It’s a question that’s not often acknowledged, much less answered. But the numbers don’t lie. Social psychologist Scott Plous, an expert in prejudice and discrimination, first demographically profiled the animal rights movement in 1990, when he published an article in the prestigious journal Psychological Science showing that 99+% (!!) of participants at the largest national AR event were white. Satya reported in 2006 that the figure was 97+%. Long-time activist and lawyer Steven Wise of the Non-Human Rights Project describes animal rights as “perhaps the whitest of all progressive or radical movements on the planet.” And at the national animal rights conference in Los Angeles this year, virtually all of the public faces were white. (The sidebar to the right shows the 15 faces featured on the conference's website.) In a country where people of color (PoC) are already the majority in some states, including California, these statistics are, to say the least, jarring.
Our movement’s overwhelming whiteness is obvious to anyone who even briefly considers the issue. What is less obvious, however, is the strategic problem this lack of diversity poses. We often perceive a lack of diversity as a mere faux pas. “So many animals are suffering,” we tell ourselves. “We can’t worry ourselves with the hurt feelings of a few blacks, Mexicans, or Asians.” Alternatively, we blame communities of color for their own non-participation. “They just don’t care as much as white people do.”
But there are compelling reasons to think these reactions are problematic on both ethical and pragmatic grounds. For one, PoC appear to be vegetarian at significantly higher rates than whites, both domestically and abroad. Indeed, traditions that stretch back thousands of years in countries such as China and India (both of which have millions more vegetarians than the United States) promote compassion for non-human life. If vegetarians are the fertile ground on which a movement can grow, we should expect far more PoC in our ranks.
For another, racial diversity has been shown vital to improving outcomes in areas ranging from education to problem-solving to non-profit management. As economist and Nobel Laureate Gary Becker pointed out over 40 years ago, racism simply doesn’t pay. There are too many hard-working people with unique perspectives and talents -- and too much important work to be done -- for us to exclude anyone from our ranks due to bias. And a failure to attract or include diverse faces is a demonstration of insular thinking that causes problems far beyond race. Even those who are not interested in racial diversity for its own sake, then, must pay heed.
But if including PoC is important for our success, and if we can’t blame PoC for their non-participation, what exactly is the problem? To answer that question, we have to return to my cousin’s question from 15 years ago: “It’s only white people that worry about such trivialities. Why be like them?”
We have to unpack what it means to perform whiteness.
An Awkward Beginning
“In both of these ways – the broader public’s targeting of ‘cruel’ minority practices and the AR movement’s promoting of a vegan lifestyle – contemporary animal politics is often seen not just as presupposing a privileged white perspective, but also as reaffirming or relegitimating those racial privileges, treating white perspectives as normative while ignoring the extent to which those perspectives are made possible by the oppression of others. Animal advocacy, in short, is seen as performing whiteness.”
- Philosopher Will Kymlicka, Mellon Sawyer Lecture
I have been part of the animal rights movement for 15 years. And being Asian in the animal rights movement is a little like being a Dodgers fan in Giants Stadium. You don’t just stick out. Your mere presence offends.
This is not (usually) hostile or overt. But the experience is real nonetheless. When one walks into a room filled with even “radical, anti-racist” animal liberationists, as a person of Asian descent, the awkwardness is painful. The few friendly voices might nod and smile at you while they nervously find any way out of the conversation. The more typical reaction is befuddlement: “What is this person doing here?” Sometimes, there is outright hostility: suspicious stares when you are walking into the room (“I bet he is an infiltrator”), and curt responses and avoidance of all eye contact when you actually try to have a conversation. It’s one of the many ironies of being a person of color that people can’t stop staring at you, when you’re not looking at them… but then avert their eyes the moment you look at them.
After 13 years in Chicago, I had almost forgotten how long it took me to build my credibility as an animal rights activist. But, in fact, the early road was incredibly hard. I just didn’t look the part. I would go to protests or leafleting events, and people would invariably assume I was a passerby rather than participant -- often even after I was already holding a sign or handing out leaflets. If I hadn’t been so acclimated to exclusion after a childhood of extreme unpopularity, I probably would have given up. But I believed in the people in our local animal rights community. I believed I had something to contribute. And most importantly, I believed in our cause. So I kept plugging along. And eventually, I won over many of the people who, initially, would not even look me in the eye. One activist, who confessed later that he was initially sure that I was a federal agent in disguise, became a dear friend and co-organizer.
But despite these struggles, I never tied my personal experience to any broader political consciousness. As Chinese, we are taught to accept dominant modes of thought. If people were not accepting of me, it had to be my own fault. Even when I heard people saying expressly racist things (“It’s really sick what Asians do to dogs.”), I would just pretend I didn’t hear it. Sometimes, I would even agree. And, even if I was not readily accepted, no one in Chicago personally attacked me for being Chinese. So I thought to myself, “You’re just seeing things. Calm down and get to work.”
What I was missing is the fact that racism, like speciesism, is not a product of individual prejudice but systems – broad cultural patterns of thought that often are entirely subconscious. Open racists are a dying breed. The forces of bigotry now operate in a more subtle and insidious way. There is the famous Harvard study showing that members of the public are more likely to shoot a black man, simply by virtue of his being black. Scholars at Columbia and UC-Davis have found that Asians are perceived as weak, effeminate, and less attractive. And a recent study at Wharton showed that PoC are six times more likely to be ignored by those in positions of power, simply because they have a non-white sounding name, e.g. Ramirez, Chen, or Ahmad. What’s striking about these bodies of research, however, is not that they show bias but how that bias is expressed. It’s not the hood-wearing KKK members placing burning crosses on a lawn. Racism has deeper roots in human culture, community, and even cognition.
Racism, it turns out, is everywhere.
Being exposed to this research, and communities of color who are trying to do something about it, awakened something in me that was lying dormant. For decades, the most aggressive and angry animal liberation campaigns have targeted Asians. Whether it’s the dolphin slaughter in Taiji, threats to orangutans in Indonesia, the dog and cat meat trade in China, or the burgeoning fur and vivisection industries across the entire continent, Asia has, in many ways, become Public Enemy #1. (The nuanced distinctions between the many categories of Asian – who, despite their status as “minorities,” in fact vastly outnumber the people from any other continent in the world – are lost in the mix.) I had previously accepted the mainstream narrative – that Asia was being targeted because Asia was especially bad – but what if there was something else at work? What if, in attacking minority peoples and practices, the AR movement is simply performing whiteness?
The discomfort for Asians in the animal rights movement has, in many ways, followed the broader trend in American culture. Historically hated by both the left (for taking American jobs) and the right (for refusing to adopt Christian values), Asians had a brief resurgence in the 1960s and 70s as an emblem of anti-imperialist politics. As millions of yellow and brown-skinned people in Korea, China, and Vietnam were being murdered by an American military juggernaut, progressives in the United States found inspiration in the fierce (and successful) acts of resistance by the native peoples of Asia. Huey Newton of the Black Panthers made Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book required reading. Jane Fonda flew to Hanoi. Even the now infamous Kim Jong Il, tyrant of North Korea, had a brief popular spell in the American Left.
But Asia’s moment in the sun – tokenized though it was (Newton did actually visit China, but most of those raving about the heroism of anti-imperialists in Asia never actually, well, talked to any Asian people) – came to a crashing halt when Nixon visited China. With Asia’s biggest power now kowtowing to American hegemony, the continent that once symbolized resistance to colonialism suddenly became Benedict Arnold to the Left. Things only got worse under Deng Xiaoping, the one-time Maoist exile who took control of China after the Mao’s death. Not content with just politically opening China to the West, Deng sought to actively copy the West’s capitalist system. American leftists, who had lionized China as a symbol of grassroots resistance to Western capitalism and power, felt utterly betrayed.Kendrick Lamar's first annual "Kunta's Groove Sessions" tour promises shows at "eight intimate venues" over eight nights. After announcing a few initial shows alongside his backing band the Wesley Theory and his TDE labelmate Jay Rock, he's now added shows in New York City, Philadelphia, and Cleveland. Find the revised dates below.
Kendrick Lamar:
10-20 Washington, DC - Kennedy Center
10-22 Brooklyn, NY - Barclays Center
10-24 Columbus, OH - LC Pavilion
10-25 Chicago, IL - United Center
10-27 Atlanta, GA - The Tabernacle *
10-29 Dallas, TX - South Side Music Hall *
11-01 Washington, DC - Lincoln Theatre *
11-02 New York, NY - Webster Hall *
11-03 Philadelphia, PA - The Trocadero Theatre *
11-04 Cleveland, OH - House of Blues *
11-08 Los Angeles, CA - The Forum
11-10 Oakland, CA - Fox Theater *
"Kunta's Groove Sessions" with Jay Rock and the Wesley Theory
Read "On Kendrick Lamar and Black Humanity" at the Pitch.
Watch Lamar perform "Fuck Your Ethnicity" at Pitchfork Music Festival:BOULDER, Colo. -- This time, there was no collapse or controversy that would sting Colorado with a bitterness that was hard to shake. This time, there were fans storming the court in celebration.
Spencer Dinwiddie scored 21 points and freshman Xavier Johnson added a season-high 19 points and nine rebounds as Colorado avenged a painful overtime loss at Arizona with a 71-58 rout of the ninth-ranked Wildcats on Thursday night.
On Jan. 3, the Buffaloes' apparent game-winning 3-pointer in Tucson was waved off at the end of regulation even though replays showed Sabatino Chen's shot was taken in time. The smarting Buffaloes got smoked in overtime, then went into a prolonged funk, dropping three of their next four.
"Of course, we were disappointed in ourselves for the way we closed it out and it goes without saying that we were disappointed with the call at the end," Dinwiddie said. "Of course, this was a revenge game."
His coach would disagree, but certainly the student section that emptied onto the floor would side with Dinwiddie.
The Buffaloes (17-7, 7-5 Pac-12) have won six of seven, and this win over the Wildcats was by far their most impressive yet. They played stingy defense, moved the ball efficiently, held their own on the boards and controlled the tempo from tipoff to buzzer.
"What makes this win sweet is it has nothing to do with revenge," Colorado coach Tad Boyle said. "It has everything to do with the respect I have for Arizona and Sean Miller and their basketball program. We beat a top-10 team in the country that's legitimate and they're going to win a lot of games as this season unfolds.
"And I think if we play the way we did tonight, we will, too."
The Wildcats (20-4, 8-4) had no answer for Dinwiddie, who scored 19 points in the second half to hold Arizona at bay.
The Wildcats were cold from the floor, shooting just 42 percent overall and 5-for-19 from beyond the arc. Solomon Hill led Arizona with 12 points and Mark Lyons had 11.
"It's never as bad as it seems, and the sky isn't falling," Miller said.
The Buffaloes led 30-23 at halftime and were never seriously threatened over the final 20 minutes.
"I thought Colorado had an incredible environment. This was a big game for them," Miller said. "They're playing really well.... This is a pivotal home game for them. They were ready to go."
Colorado started the second half with three free throws from Dinwiddie that gave the Buffaloes a double-digit lead. Dinwiddie added a dunk off a steal by Johnson and Andre Roberson's 3-pointer made it 38-23 with 17:50 left, prompting Miller to call his second timeout.
The Wildcats got back in it with consecutive 3s from Lyons and Nick Johnson, and when Grant Jerrett hit a 3-pointer from the top of the circle, the Wildcats had chipped the lead down to 45-39 with 10:43 remaining.
After Boyle's timeout, the Buffs went on an 8-0 run. Dinwiddie had a fast-break basket and a 3-pointer during the spurt that reserve Xavier Talton started with a 3 that got the crowd going again.
"Spencer, he's growing up before our eyes. I mean, he's becoming one of the premier guards in this league," Boyle said. "He played against one of the premier guards in our league in Mark Lyons. But I've said this before and I'll say it again, I wouldn't trade Spencer Dinwiddie for anybody.
"What he brings to this team, his ability to affect the game on so many different levels: defense, shooting the ball, making plays for each other, controlling the tempo. Spencer was special."
Every time the Wildcats cut the deficit to single digits, the Buffaloes went on a run -- led usually by Dinwiddie -- to restore their cushion. Talton's fast-break bucket made it 56-41, and Askia Booker's basket made it 68-53.
The Buffaloes didn't blow their big lead this time, unlike last month, when they led Arizona by as many as 17 and squandered a 10-point lead over the final 2 minutes of regulation.
The Buffaloes didn't let go of that loss very easily, or very quickly. Several weeks later, Colorado's game notes showed they were still smarting over the call when the school said the Buffs had 11 3-pointers against the Wildcats -- only 10 of which counted.
Chen got one of the loudest ovations from the sellout crowd at the Coors Events Center -- an audience that included John Elway at courtside -- when he entered early in the first half.
This was the second straight big night on the hardwood by a Colorado school, which has suddenly become a hoops hotbed with the Buffaloes, Colorado State, Air Force and Metro State in Denver all playing well. No. 24 Colorado State celebrated its first ranking in nearly six decades with a thrilling 66-60 win over San Diego State on Wednesday night.
This sellout crowd of 11,120 made the Coors Events Center every bit as rocking as Moby Arena was 24 hours earlier.
Miller said "it would have been hard" for any opponent to have won in Boulder on this night.
"I think some of the best teams in the country would have had to come in here and play a great game," he said. "This was an electric atmosphere and playing against a team that played really hard and they were ready and they played really well on offense. I thought Xavier Johnson was great; he probably doesn't get enough national recognition. I'm not so sure he's not the best freshman in our conference. If he's not, he should be certainly put up there with the three or four others that everybody acknowledges."By Natalia Castro
If most of us defied our bosses on social media we would be fired, yet apparently when it is the federal government being mocked by self-proclaimed rogue employees, it is an apparent act of patriotism. Liberal media are touting the prevalence of @RogueNASA and @AltEPA, Twitter pages aimed at delegitimizing the Trump administration; but these accounts are treading a thin legal line and simply acting as a liberal microphone.
The drama apparently began when the National Park Service’s official Twitter account was temporarily shut down by the Trump administration after it engaged in political tweets against Trump.
In an apparent response, Death Valley National Park, a government managed federal park, took to Twitter to seemingly comment on President Donald Trump’s proposed immigration policies on Jan. 25. The Death Valley Park Service tweeted a picture of a Japanese man sent to internment in the 1940s with a quotation advocating for looser immigration restraints.
The Death Valley Park Service’s decision to tweet immigration advocacy rather than their usual traffic updates and facts about flowers has spurred government employees from several other agencies to similar sponsorship of the cause.
The same day, accounts such as @RogueNASA, @AltUSNatParkSer, @AltEPA and @Alt_NASA started popping up, all claiming to be run by active or former employees of their respective departments in order to act in resistance to the Trump administration.
For example, on Jan. 25, @RogueNASA tweeted, “How sad is it that government employees have to create rogue Twitter accounts just to communicate FACTS to the American public?”
As these pages attempt to replicate the existence of real national park accounts, several have taken official logos and avatars from their official agency counterparts. Yet government trademark laws such as 18 U.S.C. Section 701 specifically prohibits the use of government insignia on non-government websites and pages.
That law states, “Whoever manufactures, sells, or possesses any badge, identification card, or other insignia, of the design prescribed by the head of any department or agency of the United States for use by any officer or employee thereof, or any colorable imitation thereof, or photographs, prints, or in any other manner makes or executes any engraving, photograph, print, or impression in the likeness of any such badge, identification card, or other insignia, or any colorable imitation thereof, except as authorized under regulations made pursuant to law, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six months, or both.”
While the copyright and trademark law does provide latitude for instances of parody however; As Kalev Leetaru explained on Forbes.com on Jan. 25, “The accounts in question have positioned themselves less as satiric and humorous parodies of the official accounts they mimic, but rather as resistance accounts that purport to offer the true story of those organizations. In particular, the accounts have positioned themselves in their tweets as alternative authoritative resources for those interested in their respective agencies’ research, replacing the official accounts.” This led several accounts to switch to new images.
This is a desperate attempt by liberal, apparent, government employees to resist Trump’s authority and dismiss his policies on immigration, energy, and the environment.
The worst part, as Leetaru notes, is that it is unknown if these are actual government employees from any of these agencies. They could be fakes. Although since they used real agency logos, even briefly, that would still probably violate the statute. It could be anyone hosting these “rogue” Twitter pages and, still, social media has given them a platform.
Politico writer Nancy Scola believes that the National Park employees felt particular angst surrounding Trump’s election due to his stance against EPA’s policies designed to combat climate issues. Unfortunately for these employees, Trump is president. And while they have the privilege of working for the federal government each day, thousands of Americans have been struggling due to the regulations of the Obama Administration. By whining on social media about the election, they are delegitimizing the plight of every American who lost their job because of government policies.
The presence of these rogue accounts is not only legally dubious, it demonstrates a larger problem of bureaucrats out of control — who believe they are entitled to their positions of power. This is legitimate not whistleblowing, it’s a temper tantrum.
Ironically, the whole controversy underscores the reason while millions of Americans voted for Trump to drain the swamp. Liberal government employees may believe they are creating a resistance, but in reality they are only resisting the positive change that the American people have been asking for to get the economy moving again.
Natalia Castro is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.When Democrats talk about President Donald Trump and Russia, they usually unload on the White House with both barrels.
But that changed last week, when lawmakers—some of whom have been the most critical of Trump and his Kremlin-friendly actions—offered effusive praise for his administration after it issued new Russia-related sanctions in close consultation with Congress.
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), a possible 2020 presidential contender, told The Daily Beast that the new designations were “a good sign and a good step in the right direction.”
The overall effort caught many lawmakers by surprise, after months of accusing the administration of stonewalling them over similar sanctions that the White House opposed from the start.
That’s because, despite its stated goal to rebuild U.S.-Russia relations, the administration last week sanctioned five Russian and Chechen individuals under the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 law that punishes alleged human rights abusers by freezing their assets and banning them from seeking visas. The sanctions targeted Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, over allegations of corruption and extrajudicial killings. The move drew a rebuke from the Kremlin, which called the U.S.’ actions “illegal” and “unfriendly” and said it further degrades the strained U.S.-Russia relationship.
Putin has condemned the Magnitsky Act and the resulting sanctions since it was passed, and he retaliated for the effort by banning Americans from adopting Russian children. The issue gained an international spotlight recently when it was revealed that Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, met last year at Trump Tower with Russians alleged to have Kremlin ties. The younger Trump initially said the meeting centered around the Russian adoption issue, but it was later revealed that he took the meeting after he was promised damaging information on Hillary Clinton.
Throughout Trump’s first year in office, lawmakers have noticed a determination on the part of some administration officials to get tougher on Russia in light of its destabilizing actions in eastern Europe and its efforts to meddle in the 2016 U.S. election. But Trump himself, they have argued, is preventing a whole-of-government approach to counter Russian aggression. From his tiptoeing around the issue of Russia’s election meddling to his slow-walking of a sweeping new Russia sanctions law he was forced to sign in August, his posturing has often conflicted with that of his top officials, who have confronted Russia more directly.
In many ways, the Trump administration is on autopilot on Russia policy despite the commander-in-chief. In addition to the Magnitsky sanctions, the administration has taken steps in recent days aimed at countering Russian aggression. Last week, top officials approved a lethal defensive weapons sale to Ukraine, where the military is fighting Russian-backed separatists. The White House also unveiled its National Security Strategy, in which it names Russia as a “revisionist power” and suggests the country is an “adversary” that aims to “shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests.”
These developments run counter to the views expressed by Trump himself throughout his nascent political career. Trump has praised Putin and suggested that he took the Russian leader at his word when he told Trump that Russia had not meddled in the 2016 U.S. election—only to walk it back later, affirming that he trusts the U.S. intelligence community’s January assessment on the matter.
“ Lawmakers have noticed a determination on the part of some administration officials to get tougher on Russia. But Trump himself is preventing an approach to counter Russian aggression. ”
Yuri Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general, has worked for years to undermine the Magnitsky Act and is believed to have spearheaded some of Russia’s meddling efforts in the American election as a way to fight back against the 2012 law. But U.S. sanctions have now hit Chaika personally.
On Friday, the U.S. took further actions under the Global Magnitsky Act, which former President Barack Obama signed into law last December as an extension of the original Magnitsky Act to include human rights abusers worldwide—not just in Russia. But the Trump administration, acting under the Global Magnitsky law for the first time since it was signed, levied sanctions at least against one Russian: Chaika’s son, Artem. The State Department alleges that he “ has leveraged his father’s position and ability to award his subordinates to unfairly win state-owned assets and contracts and put pressure on business competitors.”
Last week’s swift and decisive actions left Trump’s critics on Capitol Hill stunned. The same administration that was slow-walking new Russia sanctions enacted in August did an about-face by working closely with Congress on the Magnitsky sanctions. The praise heaped upon Trump and his administration has come from unlikely sources: Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“I want to give the administration credit. The process on both Russia-specific and Global Magnitsky—we, throughout the process, were engaged with,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), the ranking member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told The Daily Beast. “I knew how the reviews were being conducted. We had very close relationships. It was treated with the highest degree of priority among the administration. And they acted correctly.”
That was not the case for the August sanctions, known as the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA). Cardin and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, were left in the dark for weeks when they tried to inquire about why the State Department blew past an Oct. 1 deadline to issue guidance on the sanctions. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) feared it was another example of the administration showing its “blind spot” when it comes to Russia. But as Congress prepared to leave town for the holidays, Trump’s critics had nothing but kind words for the administration on its latest Russia-related actions.
“I think it’s important to recognize positive progress whenever it happens,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told The Daily Beast. “Even though I disagree with the administration broadly on what I view as their failure to make human rights a higher priority and to take more decisive action on the sanctions powers that Congress—on a very strong bipartisan basis—gave them, I do think it’s an important step forward that the Trump administration has designated under the Magnitsky Act. I hope that will be followed by stronger steps.”
The CAATSA sanctions—which Trump reluctantly signed into law after his administration tried to weaken the sanctions in the face of overwhelming congressional opposition in both chambers—were enacted in retaliation for Russia’s incursions into eastern Europe and its meddling in the 2016 election, something that Trump often dismisses as an excuse for Hillary Clinton’s election loss.
“I’m trying to be as positive as I can about what steps there are by the administration that I think do push back on Russia’s illegal and unconscionable invasion of and occupation in |
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http://www.neurosciencemarketing.com/blog/articles/cognitive-biases-cro.htmThe revelations found in a new batch of emails uncovered by Judicial Watch got a healthy dose of media coverage Wednesday as revelations of an apparent “pay-for-play” arrangement between the Clinton Foundation and the Hillary Clinton State Department raised eyebrows even in the most biased newsrooms in America. (Yes, even MSNBC and NPR covered the story.)
In fact…
State Dept: Clinton Foundation Conflicts Policy Didn’t Apply To Top Aides
CNN’s Griffin: “It’s Really Hard To Tell Where Any Lines Are Drawn” Between State Dept. Clinton Fdn.
CNN’s Griffin: Emails Show “Cozy Relationships” With Donors, “Wink & Nod” Approach At State Dept.
Dean Dodges When Asked About Clinton Fdn/State Dept Ties, Repeats Fact Checked Secret Server TP’s
MSNBC’s Welker: Emails “Raise Questions” About Clinton Fdn/State Dept Ties, Favors Done For Donors
Ron Fournier: Clinton Emails Blur The Lines Between Their Political And Personal Lives
And on CNN’s The Lead with Jake Tapper, Tapper conducted a panel discussion with David Gergen and Jackie Kucinich where he pointed out what should e evident to any other journalist not dazzled by the Clinton Campaign (and State Department) spin:
“This does feed into the narrative out there that the Clintons in general don’t think that the rules apply to them, and can’t understand why anybody would ever question their ethics or their integrity. This is exactly what the Obama transition team in 2008 wanted to avoid. They wanted a clear dilatation between the foundation and the State Department.”
“This does feed into the narrative out there that the Clintons in general don’t think that the rules apply to them,” is the quote being highlighted by many on the Internet because it resonates with one of the major problems with Clintonland. It also resonates across party lines because the Bernie Sanders campaign fed this narrative for the past year as well.
But, frankly, I appreciate the second part of Tapper’s statement even more than the first. “And (they) can’t understand why anybody would ever question their ethics or their integrity.”
It’s not just the apparent corruption and violation of the law that fuels resentment toward the Clintons, it’s the sanctimonious indignation that there’s something wrong with YOU for even daring to raise a question about their pristine integrity. It’s truly offensive and one of the things that makes Secretary Clinton that much more unlikable to the American people.
A clear example of this dismissive indignation occurred in the very first response she gave to the email scandal during her brief, encounter with journalists at the United Nations in March, 2015 when she deigned to grant an audience to the media to answer a small handful of questions.
People forget that before she lied to reporters and the American people answered questions about her emails, she gave a statement about human rights and women’s rights around the world and then gave a statement about the negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal and a letter sent to the Iranian government by Republican senators regarding the President’s ability to make that deal without Senate confirmation.
After reading those statements she then said this:
“Now, I would be pleased to talk more about this important matter, but I know there have been questions about my email, so I want to address that directly, and then I will take a few questions from you.”
In other words: “I’m a really important person dealing with really important issues but you pesky journalists and right-wing enemies want to distract the American people with this non-story about my emails.”
Over a year later we still have not gotten a straight answer from Clinton about her email server and she continues to lie about not only the scheme but the FBI investigation into it, but the noblesse oblige attitude in disseminating information to the huddled masses continues.
And unless the Trump campaign can figure out how to pounce on these latest revelations of the incestuous relationship between the Hillary’s cronies at the Clinton Foundation and the inner workings of the United States State Department, we should all prepare for four year of this kind of haughty attitude from “our betters” in the White House.Home at the edge of the forest in the district of Kibaale in western Uganda. (Megan Kearns.)
In a convincing new study conducted in Uganda and based on a program sponsored in part by its government, a team of researchers have found an effective and affordable way to combat deforestation in a country showing some of the fastest tree loss rates in the world. How? The program simply paid owners of forest land not to cut down their own trees for either agricultural purposes or to sell them for timber.
The research provides a positive model for protecting a forest region that is a hub for biodiversity, including serving as a key habitat for endangered chimpanzees. At the same time, it also validates the effectiveness of a “Payments for Ecosystems Services” program of the sort that could bolster the battle against global deforestation and its impact as a leading driver of climate change.
More such programs could be supported under a broader United Nations initiative called REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries), in which richer countries and other international funders make payments to developing nations in exchange for protecting their vital trees. That quest that has only become more urgent after an explicit shout-out to the importance of combating deforestation, and REDD+, in the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
In the new study, just published as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, owners of forested land in 60 villages in the Hoima and Kibaale districts of western Uganda were offered $ 28 per year (70,000 Ugandan shillings) over two years for every hectare of forest that they did not harvest or chop down for other economic reasons. By comparison, in 61 other villages, nothing was offered — but rates of deforestation were monitored by satellite in all villages.
The result was that while forest cover decreased by between 7 and 10 percent in the “control” villages, it only dropped between 2 to 5 percent in the designated “treatment” villages, suggesting that the incentive payments were preventing a significant number of landowners from selling large trees for timber or charcoal, or chopping down forest to grow more crops.
“This study I think of as an important proof of concept that this did have a big impact, and a lot of the money that was being paid was really creating new forest cover that would have disappeared absent the program,” said Seema Jayachandran, an economist at Northwestern University who led the research, which was conducted with colleagues from Stanford, the Carnegie Institution for Science and the Porticus Foundation.
The study validates the idea that deforestation can be battled in a cost-effective way, a policy possibility that emerges in part because of vast global economic inequities. This has created a situation where encouraging forest preservation in relatively poorer, developing countries, where forests are often relied on for livelihoods, turns out to be more cost effective.
“In terms of the global impact, we don’t care if a tree is kept intact in the U.S. versus in Uganda, but the income someone is getting for that tree in Uganda is less than they’re getting in the U.S.,” said Jayachandran.
The study estimated that the cost of delaying the emission of a ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere under this program was just 57 cents — but the benefit of doing so, based on calculations using the EPA’s standard “social cost of carbon” measurement, was $ 1.11.
The Payments for Ecosystems Services (PES) approach is commonly used in international conservation, in part because it involves a voluntary contract that landowners can either accept or reject based on their own economic interests, rather than compulsory programs like new regulations or laws. But Jayachandran said that randomized studies set up to examine its effectiveness, from start to finish, have been missing.
“At least to my knowledge, [the study] was the first one that was a randomized evaluation, and set it up prospectively so that it could be evaluated,” she said.
“The vast majority of PES programs initiated by NGOs, governments, etc., have not been implemented as part of an experimental design, making the evaluation of their success difficult,” agreed Chris Kennedy, a professor of environmental science and policy at George Mason University, in a comment praising the research methodology.
This particular research was based on a large PES program set up by a number of official bodies. Much of the funding came from the Global Environment Facility, distributed by the United Nations’ Environment Programme, and went to the Ugandan government’s environment agency, the National Environment Management Authority. The Ugandan government then turned to the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust to put it in place, and that group collaborated with the researchers, allowing them to study the program.
In the Ugandan villages studied, the average landowner owned about 2 hectares of forest, which meant that such an individual could receive up to about $ 56 in U.S. dollars for leaving that forest completely intact for a year. The researchers report that this payment amounts to about 5 percent of an average annual income in the area. However, the authors noted that the average amount of money (in U.S. dollars) made by selling trees for timber in the area was $ 151 per year, and that between $ 30 and $ 100 per year can be earned per hectare of land converted for agriculture.
“Most people aren’t getting most of their income from the forest products, it’s from their small business, but then [they] top that up with some revenue from selling timber trees, or charcoal, and people use it as a source of emergency cash,” said Jayachandran.
So while Ugandan landowners often draw upon their forests to supplement their income when needed, the payment provided an incentive for them to at least delay doing so for a year or two. However, it did not mean that the forest would remain entirely protected after the two-year study period was up — indeed, the authors assumed in their calculations that it would not.
Nonetheless, even delaying carbon emissions from deforestation is economically valuable, and the study clearly showed that this occurred. (Not to mention the other valuable results that arise from preserving forest biodiversity in this ecologically sensitive area).
“In this short program, it’s really just about delaying carbon emissions, and delaying when you would deforest, which still has an economic value,” said Jayachandran.
Importantly, the study also failed to find any evidence that the payments had had the effect of displacing deforestation elsewhere, or that landowners were entering into hidden agreements to get around the system (if two individuals team up, so that one receives payments and one does not, then deforestation could still happen on a plot of land that is not covered by the agreement).
“It is particularly encouraging that it does not show displacement of the deforestation (= “leakage”) to some other area of forest,” noted Tom Lovejoy, an Amazon deforestation expert at George Mason University, by email in a comment on the study. “So it is clear that rewarding a landowner for a ‘service’ provided by their forest ecosystem actually works.”
Jayachandran noted that under the REDD+ program, many payments are expected to be from developed nation governments to developing nations to help them preserve their forests, which can involve simply enforcing forest protections and cracking down on illegal logging and land clearing. But programs like PES can supplement these, she said, by also creating incentives to conserve even among landowners who legally have a right to deforest, at least to some extent.
“For the privately owned land, or community owned land, it’s a very promising policy tool for REDD+,” she said.Twitch streams a lot of events these days, and it's improving its iOS app to keep up with the flood of new content. The just-posted 2.3.5 update more than triples the number of accessible live channels from 200 to over 750, giving viewers a better chance of seeing a local tourney or a "let's play" feed. Chat has also received a thorough makeover that brings both a simpler design and support for Twitch's unique take on emoticons. And if you're a dedicated Dota 2 player, you'll definitely want this upgrade -- link your Steam account and you'll earn item drops in Valve's arena battler when watching certain streams. There's no word of corresponding updates for Android or other platforms, although Twitch says it's improving channel capacities across all its apps.Taylor Swift wrote her angriest song after her first boyfriend left her for another girl.
The 25-year-old pop superstar has since become known for writing scathing tracks about exes who had spurned her and one of her earliest was the 2008 single Picture To Burn about hunky high school classmate Jordan Alford.
Jordan, 25, was in the same year as Taylor at Hendersonville High School in Tennessee and they went out before he romanced fellow classmate Chelsea who would later become his wife.
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Former rivals: Taylor Swift is shown with former high school rival Chelsea Alford who married a classmate Taylor once dated and wrote a scathing song about
Chelsea recently recalled: 'We were kind of good friends at school, later not so much. She dated him, that's why.
'They dated in freshman year. Picture To Burn is about him. Because he's always had big old trucks and stuff,' Chelsea said.
'At first it was kind of like, ''Oh, that's weird?'' You know. I was shocked, kind of like, ''Whoa, OK… well that's cool, what other ones are about us?'',' she added.
'But then it was kind of funny, it was so long ago now, who even cares,' Chelsea said.
The couple were told by Taylor's best friend Abigail Anderson that the song was about Jordan.
'We just thought it was funny. [Jordan] was like, ''I'm not a redneck! She makes me look like some redneck!'' but other than that we just thought it was kind of funny,' Chelsea said.
Friends again: Chelsea said that Taylor met her for coffee and was kind to her little sister
Taylor's lyrics to Picture To Burn include: 'State the obvious, I didn't get my perfect fantasy / I realize you love yourself more than you could ever love me / So go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy / That's fine I'll tell mine that you're gay.'
Kindergarten teacher Chelsea, 24, said she and Taylor even got into an argument over Jordan – who was still known by his birth name, Paul, at the time – by their lockers.
She added: 'We exchanged a few words over a locker fight. We were 14, we were just being girly, snarky.'
Chelsea also told how everyone at their school was mesmerized by Taylor's self-titled first album, and tried to figure out who each of the songs was about.
She said: 'We know other people she wrote songs about. That first record was a game, like, 'OK, which one is this about? OK, did they even date? No? that's weird.'
'There were other songs on there about people that we talked about more probably, like Tears On My Guitar, about the guy she never dated, we were like ''that's a little odd.''
'She really does write her own songs, so I guess if you date her you have to know you're going to get a song written about you. In our case, back in school nobody thought she was actually going to go anywhere,' Chelsea said.
Pop superstar: Taylor is shown on Monday leaving her apartment in the Tribeca area of New York City
Chelsea had science classes with Taylor, who she described as'sweet' and 'kind of goofy' and said she could tell when the budding singer was writing a song instead of paying attention.
She explained: 'She would be in class and she'd be writing, rather than paying attention at all. She was different, she wasn't super popular, she kind of did her own thing. A normal, high school girl kind of thing.'
When it comes to guys, Chelsea doesn't think her former friend is ready to settle down yet, but when she is, it likely will be with a British gentleman.
She added: 'She liked to talk in a British accent. She would do that, [and] her ideal man would be a younger Hugh Grant, he's in her favourite movie, Love Actually.
'I don't think she'll settle down and have a family for a while, she's too boy crazy not too, but I think she will live it up for a while first. It sounds like she goes between crazy cat lady and dating people, it goes back and forth, why not have fun.
'I thought her and Jake Gyllenhaal were really cute together but that didn't last long,' Chelsea said.
Taylor grew up close to US country music capital Nashville, and when she made her debut she was billed as a country artist.
Former classmates: Chelsea said Taylor would sometimes write songs in class instead of paying attention
She has since swapped for pop and Chelsea thought that has always suited her style of songwriting better.
She added: 'She was never very country, her direction now is more of how you think she would go, because she's not from here, she's from Pennsylvania, which is not country. They found a way to get her in [the country scene] no one else was wearing sundresses flowers and boots and that became her little niche. She slipped right in at a good time.'
Despite falling out over Jordan, Chelsea and Taylor later buried the hatchet and she said they often say hello if they see each other around town.
Taylor even met up with Chelsea and her younger sister one day for a coffee.
'She was really sweet, when I was in college, I texted her and said, ''Hey girl is there any way you can meet my little sister? You're famous now and she doesn't remember you from before.''
'She was really cool, she met us at a Starbucks and let my sister sing to her and gave her autographs, she was really, really sweet. She did that and we hadn't talked in years,' Chelsea said."I [hadn't] seen Raymond in years," she said. "It was just something I said out of anger to my father."
Her father, though, grew furious. He grabbed his gun and hopped on his motorcycle and drove down Highway 278, Berlin, Alabama's main thoroughfare, dotted with churches, dollar stores and gas stations. The small buildings quickly turned to pine trees, as the father sped along the rolling hills out to the country, only stopping again when he reached Brooks' rural home.
Outside that home, he found an unarmed Brooks, who was 59-years-old. He raised a gun to the man who had abused his daughter for so many years, and fulfilled a father's dream of cold vengeance.
He pulled the trigger. Brooks died on the spot.
As he was pulling back onto the road from Brooks' home, an Alabama State Trooper arrested him.
"The guy was guilty of raping his little girl, and I guess he dealt with it for 12 years and it just built up," Cullman resident Jason Lackey, a friend of the father, told The Associated Press. "I won't say [he] had the right to go murder him, but I understand when he did."
Added Lackey, "I'm 100 per cent behind him."
On Monday, the father pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Brooks and was sentenced to 40 years in prison, the Cullman Times reported.
(The Washington Post is not naming the father, as he shares the last name of the sexual abuse victim.)
The woman explained her father's plea: "Basically he took it so that I didn't have to relive the molestation and also be on the stand in front of a bunch of people talking about and bringing back memories of the molestation," the daughter told AL.com. "My father was protecting me, like a father should do. He is an amazing father — actually the best. He loves us so much."
Well before Monday's guilty plea and 40-year prison sentence, the father's brand of outlaw justice sparked a debate across the Internet — and even attracted some donations to the man and his family from several supporters.
A Facebook page titled "Family, Friends and Supporters of [the father]" and liked by 2,739 people, included on post that showed four young women in flip-flops and short-shorts holding handwritten signs reading "Car Wash."
The post, liked by 112 people, stated, "We raised $172 at the car wash today!!!"
Another showed several people at another fundraiser — at which single women were auctioned to the highest bidder to participate in a motorcycle ride — wearing matching blue T-shirts reading, "A Father's Love, Is Like No Other."
One post invoked the Bible, particularly Hebrews 11:6, which reads in part, "... without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him."
Its caption read, "If we have faith and believe and expect to receive His favour, our Lord will show up and show out. Today, I have faith that [the father] will be home really soon!!"
A Change.org petition seeking the man's release received 986 signatures.
In a statement to HLN, the father's lawyer asked all to consider the "mental anguish" the man suffered:
"Over time; this situation has weighed heavily on [the father]; more importantly, on his daughter. Without discussing the facts related to the instant case; one need not wonder at the mental anguish and pain this family has suffered over the last several years. His family will tell you that few days pass without them questioning why such awful things occur; and, why they could not have done something to have stopped it. All men fear a day that they are unable to protect their children. [The father] is no different in this regard."
Not everyone, of course, believed the father was in the right. While some pointed to the fact that murder remains murder, regardless of motive, others pointed to his other crime.
On Monday, the father also pleaded guilty to attempted murder of another man, for which he was sentenced to 20 years in prison, to be served concurrently with his other sentence.
En route to Brooks' home that day, at about 7 p.m. he made a pit-stop on the way at the Berlin Plaza Quick Stop in the neighbouring town of Cullman.
He pulled up in front of the old gas station. Under a sign for Mike's BBQ, featuring a pink smiling pig, sat an outdoor ice box.
Standing next to that box was a man his stepdaughter had been dating — who he thought had been abusive.
Perhaps he knew what he planned to do to Brooks would end his chances of a free life, because the father raised a gun and fired a single shot into the building. He missed the boyfriend, though, merely chipping one of the large windows in between signs hawking watery beer and cheap smokes.
Mike Hays, owner of Mike's BBQ inside the Quick Stop and its colourful sign, pulled out his own weapon as the father burst into the store, gun in hand, looking for the boyfriend.
"He had the gun down by his side. He was calm, as calm as you are standing there now. But he had that look in his eye," said Hays, who faced off with the father and forced him to leave.
With more on his mind, the father peeled out of the cracked concrete parking lot and back onto the highway.
For HLN, Catherine Connors opined, "Even if he did this a week after the crime, even if he did this in the most precise and careful way, even if he did this in the overwhelming, pure spirit of revenge... it would still be wrong. We could better understand it, better forgive it, but it would still be wrong."
Pat Morrison in the Los Angeles Times found his widespread support worrisome. She wrote, "It's an unsettling cheering section for someone who allegedly meted out a private punishment against a sex offender who pleaded guilty and served prison time."
Morrison continued, "And when an Alabama father or a California mother usurps that role, they are not heroes, because vengeance is not justice. And justice, not just someone's child, becomes a victim too."
Perhaps the loudest voice claiming the father was not a hero belonged to Hays.
"People here are calling him a hero for killing a child molester," Hays told The Associated Press. "I'm calling him a psychopathic lunatic for endangering peoples' lives, including mine."
Hays told HLN, "There were five or six people in the store. If the gun had been six inches over, it probably would have hit a 12-year-old-boy."
Added Hays, "They are making it like it's OK to go up to a public place and leave your motorcycle out and shoot into an occupied business. I was able to go home and tell my son I loved him that night, and I almost wasn't able to do that."
The daughter whom the father was trying to protect has not found happiness or peace in the ordeal — just the opposite.
"I'm going through hell," she said. "Everything comes back to me as to why this has happened. I feel like it's my fault. I'm sad but yet mad."Publicidad
El Programa de Recuperación de la Cotorra Puertorriqueña, que cumple 20 años de fundación, reveló hoy que en los últimos meses se ha documentado un progreso en estas aves en peligro de extinción al registrarse un anidaje sin asistencia humana en el Bosque de Río Abajo, en Arecibo.
La secretaria de Recursos Naturales y Ambientales (DRNA), Carmen Guerrero Pérez, explicó que este acontecimiento ha demostrado que la Amazona Vittata, como se le conoce científicamente, han comenzado a dispersar en nuevas áreas de la isla.
Se estimaba que la población de las cotorras silvestres llegara entre 64 a 112, sin embargo, la dispersión de las aves en nuevas área evidencia que esta cifra pudiera ser mayor, “porque la especie pudiera estar reproduciéndose de forma natural lo que sería muy beneficioso para esta especie, que en un momento llegó a contar con solamente 13 individuos”.
Al momento, se ha avistado a la cotorra en los municipios de Utuado, Morovis, Hatillo e Isabela, a unos 30 kilómetros de distancia desde su liberación en el Bosque de Río Abajo.
La funcionaria aclaró, no obstante, que esto no significa que las aves hayan establecido sus hábitat en esos lugares.
“Estos datos son muestras adicionales de adaptabilidad de la cotorra puertorriqueña”, sostuvo Guerrero Pérez.
El subdirector regional para Servicios Ecológicos del Servicio de Pesca y Vida Silvestre, Leopoldo Miranda, aseguró que la cotorra no sólo ha regresado de casi la extinción, sino que ahora “nos puede ayudar a diseñar estrategias de conservación a nivel paisajista, que a su vez benefician a cientos de otras especies amenazadas, al agua, al suelo y a todos los habitantes de esta isla”.
“El éxito de este Programa de Recuperación de la Cotorra Puertorriqueña se debe a la buena colaboración y dedicación del personal de las agencias estatales y federales, al igual que el apoyo y el compromiso del público, organizaciones no gubernamentales de conservación y varias corporaciones privadas”, agregó.
Como parte de los logros de la iniciativa, se informó que cada año ha incrementado consistentemente la reproducción en cautiverio de la Amazona Vittata.
“Este año en nuestro Bosque de Río Abajo se produjo un récord de 51 volantones en el componente de cautiverio. Anteriormente, la cantidad más alta era de 34 individuos, la cual ocurrió en 2011. En la población silvestre se aumentó de 12 volantones producidos en la temporada reproductiva de 2012, a 15 volantones producidos en estos últimos siete meses estableciendo el número más alto de volantones producidos en el estado silvestre desde el comienzo del Programa de Recuperación”, detalló Guerrero Pérez.
Explicó, además, que la supervivencia estimada de los pájaros silvestres fluctúa entre 60 a 65 por ciento, lo que permite el crecimiento constante de esta población.
“Toda esta información es muy valiosa y los logros son bien significativos. Sin embargo, es importante destacar que el esfuerzo de reproducir y proteger a las cotorras puertorriqueñas no son únicamente responsabilidad de la agencia, del Servicio de Pesca y Vida Silvestre y del Servicio Forestal Federal. Es una responsabilidad que tenemos como país en la que todos podemos contribuir y ser partícipes”, argumentó.Getty Images
The Cowboys made what appears to be a “win-now” move in the draft when they selected running back Ezekiel Elliott with the fourth overall pick.
There’s a sense that the Cowboys are going all in on offense by using Elliott to repeat the success they had on the ground in 2014, something that ties into how much longer they can expect to have quarterback Tony Romo and tight end Jason Witten in the lineup. Witten said over the weekend that he likes that approach and feels the team is coming into the season with the right mindset as a result.
“I look at it as one year at a time and there’s expectations that I have and the team has for me in how they expect me to play, and I want to meet that and probably exceed that,” Witten said, via the Dallas Morning News. “Every year I start this offseason by evaluating that and how I can do better and things I can do to play at that level again for another year. So I’m excited about that, I think we’re more motivated now than we’ve ever been, and that gets you anxious about going into the season.”
Witten has accomplished plenty over the course of his time in Dallas, but a trip to the Super Bowl isn’t on the list. That makes for a pretty good motivational tool, just as the misses born of injuries and other mishaps provide cause for anxiety about what could go wrong for the Cowboys this time around.Jose Mourinho has urged Manchester United to sign Harry Kane. (Getty Images)
Jose Mourinho has told Manchester United’s board to sign Harry Kane ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo, according to reports.
The Sunday Mirror claims that the United manager has made his preference clear to Ed Woodward and has ordered the club to make a bid to Tottenham which they would struggle to reject.
How Kepa mocked Caballero when they squared up in furious dressing room row
It’s claimed that Mourinho is a keen admirer of the England international and believes United should launch a world-record move for the striker.
Mourinho’s request to land Kane is in addition to his desire to bring Alvaro Morata to Old Trafford, and the United manager believes those two in attack would be a better option than to re-sign Ronaldo.
Kane has won the Premier League’s Golden Boot twice in a row. (Getty Images)
For the second successive season, Kane finished up with the Premier League’s Golden Boot but a move for the 23-year-old would be problematic for United.
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The striker only signed a new contract in December which keeps him at Spurs until 2022, and the club could therefore command a fee in excess of £100 million.
Cristiano Ronaldo wants to leave Real Madrid this summer. (AFP/Getty Images)
Ronaldo, meanwhile, is set for talks with Real Madrid after Portugal’s Confederations Cup campaign.
It’s claimed that United were exploring the possibility of signing the 32-year-old but have not yet submitted a bid.
Ronaldo, however, has received offers from Paris Saint-Germain and the Chinese Super League, although he has no intention of joining a club outside of Europe.
MORE: Arsene Wenger to move for Anthony Martial if he fails to sign Kylian Mbappe for Arsenal
MORE: Jose Mourinho spearheads Manchester United’s contract offer to Radja NainggolanFirst Arkansas News, 10 Sept 2011 : "What would a series dedicated to old time radio serials be without some attention paid to a juvenile adventure program? Those 'kids on adventures' things were big back when OTR was king, and one of the more popular programs in the genre was the ambitiously named Speed Gibson of the International Secret Police. Yes, Speed was your average American boy — interested in short wave radios, aviation and fighting crime on an international scale."
San Antonio Express-News, 9 Sept 2011, Elaine Ayala: "George S. De Leon, an opera aficionado who sang tenor in the San Fernando Cathedral choir and mentored Sylvia Villarreal, who went on to sing opera internationally, died Sept. 3 of a heart attack. He was 76. De Leon developed a love of opera as a boy, first listening to it on a short-wave radio."
Euro Weekly News, 9 Sept 2011, Stephen Amore: Our family "apparently moved up the social scale and acquired a radiogram, remember them? A huge sideboard which opened up to reveal a record player with the same ‘drops down before it plays’ mechanism and also a radio! Holst ‘The Planets’ never sounded so good. This was a thing of beauty and when listening to the radio a huge glass screen lit up etched with the names of exotic radio stations from all around the world; all long and short wave of course."Retired NHL referee Kerry Fraser announced Friday that he has an incurable form of cancer.
The 65-year-old learned 10 days ago that he had a rare chronic blood disorder called essential thrombocythemia. It is in the leukemia family and can, in rare instances, evolve into myelofibrosis or acute leukemia.
Fraser revealed the diagnosis in a story on NHL.com and wrote that he was told it’s possible to “live a normal life for many years,” despite being afflicted.
“I consider myself blessed that this rare disease was diagnosed before I had a stroke or heart attack,” Fraser wrote. “At 65, I was planning on living a healthy, full life for many more years. Now that I know I have this disease I can take extra precautions to keep my blood thinner and hopefully prevent a blood clot from hitting my heart or brain.
“My family gives me strength and a good reason to prioritize my goals in life. My faith gives me the peace to know that all is in God’s hands.”
Fraser retired in 2010 after 30 years as a referee in the league.Old, stale and bitter Hillary Clinton is really going off the rails today. Now she’s bragging about her husband, Bill Clinton not using Twitter during his presidency. BJ Clinton when he wasn’t raping women or getting blow jobs from interns was president from 1993-2001. The Internet in those days were a lot different than it is now. So much so that Twitter and social media didn’t even exist the last time BJ Clinton sat in the Oval Office. Twitter wasn’t invented until 2006. Oops.
Hillary Clinton brags Bill Clinton didn’t use Twitter while POTUS (didn’t exist until 2006)
Hillary Clinton bragged about Bill Clinton not using Twitter when he was president from 1993 to 2001. Twitter was not created till 2006. #Clinton25 pic.twitter.com/hTjaoCSiwR — Ryan Saavedra 🇺🇸 (@RealSaavedra) November 19, 2017
Even if social media existed when Clinton was POTUS, he’d be far too busy with all the women he had to avoid being with his wife Hillary Clinton. I mean, he was too busy to go after Osama Bin Laden, which eventually lead to 9/11. What makes Hillary Clinton think he’d find the time for social media?3:35 p.m. update
***From USC Sports Information***
"We are aware of the allegations against Eric Cobb and Jamall Gregory and we will have no further comment at this time due to this being a legal matter." - South Carolina head coach Frank Martin
The five South Carolina men’s basketball student-athletes who were suspended earlier this week – TeMarcus Blanton, Eric Cobb, Jamall Gregory, Chris Silva and Marcus Stroman – continue to be suspended indefinitely.
1:24 p.m. update
The bond hearing for both players was filmed and released by The State. Both players were released on PR bonds and have scheduled court dates on April 1.
Attorney Seth Rose's statement for Gregory to the judge: "Your Honor, Jamall is 21-years-old. He has no prior record. He is a scholarship athlete at the University of South Carolina. He is a great young man. At this point in time we are asserting his innocence until we can see the evidence. We know through the court that he has been cooperative with law enforcement. He had no prior record and is certainly not a danger to the community."
Rose's statement for Cobb to the judge: "Your Honor, Eric is 19-years-old, again no prior record, and we simply ask for a PR bond. He is a not a danger to the community."
***Video courtesy of The State
11 a.m. update
According to the Richland Co. Detention Center website, both have been released from Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.
A judge released the two on PR bonds for the amount of the fines – $ |
to narrow (the cuts) down to under 10 positions.”After Bismark “Nana” Adjei-Boateng officially signed with the Colorado Rapids, off-season moves seemed to slow down, and most people assume that there will be no more movement during this transfer window. And everyone is probably right - going into preseason, the backline is intact, they added some attacking pieces, and a new/old face on the coaching staff. But just because the work for this transfer window is mostly done doesn’t mean the team can’t prepare for the next one.
News broke the other day that the Rapids traded an international slot away to NYCFC for $75,000 of GAM. The exact amount of international roster slots the Rapids own is unknown (between 6-8) but the roster currently lists seven international players (plus Juan Ramirez who is out on loan until June). Assuming they have seven slots available, all are filled, but the Rapids only have two Designated Player spots filled (Shkëlzen Gashi and Tim Howard). In order to fill that last DP slot the Rapids will either have to drop an international player from the current roster, trade for another international spot, or sign an American player as a DP.
Then on Sunday, news started to swirl that the Rapids were one of three teams showing some interest in American striker Aron Jóhannsson from Werder Bremen. Is Aron a good fit? Does he warrant a DP slot?
Player Profile
This year Aron has played eight games for his Bundesliga team and only started two games, earning one goal and one assist. Not the strongest stats, but he is coming off of a serious hip injury that kept him out of a year of soccer. Prior to the injury, he scored 29 goals in 58 games at AZ in the Netherlands, 2 goals in 6 games at Werder Bremen, and 4 goals in 18 games for the US. These numbers are a little more impressive. (By comparison Doyle has 11 goals in 46 games.)
Jóhannsson’s playing style is attractive for the Rapids, he is strong on the ball a good target forward. A strong finisher, a good dribbler, and a more than capable passer of the ball. He seems to find himself in the right position in the box to receive crosses from wingers, and the long ball in from the back line always finds its way to his feet. He has an ability to hit the back of the net from almost anywhere.
Making a move to MLS makes sense for Aron, his team is in jeopardy of being relegated to the second tier of German soccer. With a player trying to break back into the US National Team, playing in the second division is not a good stepping stone. Bruce Arena is from the US and respects the MLS players more than his predecessor. Pablo Mastroeni was a captain for the US team, and one of the best national team goalkeepers is on the Rapids, which means that Colorado would be a great place to get noticed.
Does it make sense to pay him a DP level contract?
Judging by his most recent performances, the short answer is no. As he’s coming off a long-term injury, signing Jóhannsson is a risk. But it wouldn’t happen until summer when the German season is over, which could mean that Jóhannsson gets more playing time, and has a chance to regain his fitness.
Personally I think his is a TAM level player, but if he does get healthy and starts scoring again, I think the Rapids would have to pay him more than TAM would allow. If he starts to score more the market will drive his price up, forcing a DP contract. Would he be a bad DP in this case? Probably not. He fits a need and would definitely score goals.
What do you think of Aron Jóhannsson? Does he fit? Should it happen? Let us know in the comments.
UPDATE: Sam Stejskal added more fuel to the fire in an article on 5/4/17. Read it here.Maryam Al-Khawaja is a human rights activist from Bahrain who is the Co-Director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights. She was involved in the protest movement in Bahrain in 2011, and advocates for human rights defenders in the region. Al-Khawaja’s father is also a human rights activist and was imprisoned in Bahrain for his work. Al-Khawaja went back to visit her father in prison in 2014, and tells the story of what happened.
“I was going back to Bahrain in 2014 to visit my father. He was on hunger strike and we didn't know if he would — he was at risk of losing his life at any time because of the hunger strike so I decided to go home to see him. I was arrested upon arrival in Bahrain. I was assaulted by the police. They damaged my shoulder muscle and then the same police officers who had assaulted me accused me of assaulting them, even though I told them that even if they beat me I will not respond because I'm a non-violent activist. When I was assaulted, I did not fight back.
“After that I was imprisoned for three weeks and I was charged with assaulting police. I have five other pending cases, but because of international pressure it became more costly for the Bahraini government to keep me in prison rather than to release me, so they released me. They allowed me to leave the country and then I was sentenced to one year in absentia. I'm currently wanted in Bahrain, and like I said I have five other pending cases as well. If I ever do go back to Bahrain, I doubt that I would be getting out any time soon.”
Al-Khawaja says that though her work in Bahrain and other Gulf countries has led to more arrests and violence, working peacefully for human rights is worth it in the long run.
“I would say as someone who has lived in a country where you don't have dignity, where you're not speaking out, where you're not taking to the streets, I see living in that situation is actually worse than deciding to come out and fight for those rights, even if it ends up costing you your freedom or your life at some times. I think that it really, from the outside, yes, it might look worse because the number of people getting arrested and tortured and killed is definitely much larger, but the fact that people took to the streets to demand their fundamental and basic human rights and freedoms, I think is something that should be applauded. It's something that actually changes something in the society, because dignity is something that they can no longer take away from us, it's something that we've regained and they can't take away again.”
Emily Bailey is an environmental activist from Wellington, New Zealand. She is part of a group called Climate Justice Taranaki (the name of the province where she lives) that works on climate change issues, sustainability and stopping fossil fuel extraction and use.
“Taranaki was the first place where people drilled for oil and there's still oil and gas production here. There's hundreds maybe thousands of wells across the region. In recent years with the rise of fracking there was a mass expansion of oil and gas in this region so our group formed to try to combat that.”
Emily has also worked with a small Māori community in Taranaki called Parihaka, which has a long history of peaceful resistance dating back to the British rule in the 1800s. She says that’s where she learned about nonviolent protest.
“I've been an activist for I don't know 10, 20 years or something now. When I first started it was amongst anarchist and environmentalist who were quite young and passionate and angry about the world. I guess our way of activism then was very, kind of, in your face and sort of protest protest and shout at people and come up with not very nice slogans. Fair enough, there were people who were doing really bad things. But we lost and we lost and we lost. It just didn't work. I guess in recent times through being at Parihaka, I've learned different ways of doing it. Just through things like forming relationships with people where you can actually start to talk and explain your point of view then they actually listen. Using the media trying to explain what you think and why and putting it into stories in the paper and TV so people understand.”
Emily Bailey in Parihaka with her daughter Credit: Robin Dianoux
Bailey says the people of Parihaka used such methods to prevent the expansion of the oil and gas industry in their community.
“We put a letter together, the whole community wrote this letter, and we sent that to all the companies, to the counsels, the government, the UN, some other industries — I think the unions — and said, 'look, we don't like what's happening. We don't want you to do it. It's hurting our land, it's hurting the atmosphere it's hurting our people. Please stop.' We didn't hear anything back.
“And then about a year later we got the new oil and gas permit block maps and suddenly there was a square around us. They'd taken us off the map, which was great. That was a good thing. They are no longer going to drill around us. It just showing that just by talking — I guess just by saying what we think and why — that we're going to stand in their way if we have to. They backed off.”
Jonathan Ancer was a member of the National Union of South African Students, which was an anti-apartheid organization. He was also active in an organization called the End Conscription Campaign, which opposed military conscription. White South African men were conscripted into the South African Defense Force and the organization fought against conscription into the apartheid's army.
“Well, I think as an organization, it probably can't claim to have played a role in dismantling apartheid, but I think it played its part in the sense that it conscientize a lot of white people to what was going on in South Africa, what was really going on. People led a very sheltered life about what was happening in their own country, and I think the End Conscription Campaign also gave a really big finger to the apartheid government in saying, ‘You know, we are white people, and we don't agree with what you're doing,’ and I think that in itself was quite a powerful statement.
"Young men are conscripted to assist in the implementation defence of apartheid policies." The End Conscription Campaign was known for its posters.
“The one amazing thing about this organization, it was a single-issue organization, so it campaigned around one specific issue, which was the ending of conscription into an apartheid army. And it brought together a whole lot of people. They were hippies and Marxists and members of the ANC (African National Congress) and pacifists and Christians and Jehovah's Witnesses. They were just a range of people who all came together for one specific issue, and that was to oppose conscription into the South African Defense Force. I think that, you know, was a powerful statement.”
Because he reached draft age in 1989, Ancer's involvement in the anti-conscription movement coincided with the fall of apartheid in South Africa.
“Being involved at that time was quite a special time. It was right at the death of apartheid, and there was a feeling of magic in the air that something big was happening and that we were part of it, and we were all embracing each other. South Africa today is in a very different space, but at that time there was a really amazing feeling that we were making history.
“That was a very special time to be an activist in South Africa, and I felt that I was really important. In the grand scheme of things I was very unimportant, but it felt that we were changing the world and we were changing lives. Maybe in a very tiny way we were, but it felt that we were part of something huge.”Despite having booked and paid for their booth at Gamex, Sweden's largest gaming exhibition, the Pirate Party have been excluded from the action this week. The party, who say they were nagged for 2 to 3 months to book for the event, were this week informed they were too controversial and no longer welcome.
Running from the 3rd to 6th November, Gamex is Sweden’s biggest gaming show. All the big names in interactive entertainment are there showing off their wares, including giants such as Activision, Electronic Arts, Microsoft and Nintendo.
One group that will not be there, however, are the Swedish Pirate Party.
“The Pirate Party would have been in place inside the show, but now we will not be,” says Pirate Party leader Anna Troberg. “We are simply no longer welcome.”
Troberg says that after the sales people from the exhibition pursued the party for months to participate, they decided to book and pay for a booth. Not only that, the party also agreed to a package of advertising and hotel rooms.
As can be seen from the photograph below of pre-event billboard advertising, everything was in place for the party to participate.
But earlier this week, just before the event was due to start, the Pirate Party received some surprise news.
“On Tuesday afternoon, I called a representative of the show with a few simple practical questions, but she seemed generally stressed out and said something vague about the show and not wanting any problems before she hung up,” says Troberg.
“I thought it was a bit strange, but in the afternoon, the pieces fell into place when the fair manager, Bear Wengse, phoned me and kindly, but firmly, announced that the Pirate Party was no longer welcome at the fair.”
Wengse informed Troberg that the exhibition is a meeting place and not a venue for political conflict and the party’s presence could cause problems, particularly since some of their work “could be perceived as criminal.”
Troberg countered that as a political party they only want to change certain laws democratically, and that can not be considered a crime. Nevertheless, the ban stood.
There isn’t a complete ban on politics at the event, though. The Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU) are being allowed to appear – even though they too support the decriminalization of non-commercial file sharing.
However, the SSU probably fly a little more easily under the radars of some of the more prominent entertainment industry exhibitors at Gamex – Warner, Sony and Disney as prime examples. There’s no proof that these companies objected to the Pirate Party’s presence, but the party’s support for their arch-enemy – The Pirate Bay – won’t have gone unnoticed.
Nevertheless, Troberg is upbeat. She extended thanks to the forces behind the party’s exclusion, the net result of which was more exposure for the party than they would have otherwise achieved at the exhibition, and at much less expense.
Visitors to the show wanting to show their support for the party weren’t disappointed, though. Yesterday the party’s Young Pirate division were outside the event, handing out free T-shirts to be worn inside.
“I find it absolutely hilarious that a gaming fair banned the Pirate Party on the official pretext that ‘our culture is harmful to gaming’,” Rick Falkvinge, founder of the first Pirate Party, told TorrentFreak.
“A decade down the road, people will just shake their heads at that. What else can you do, really?”The mountain of classified material the US Army soldier Bradley Manning gave to the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks revealed sensitive information about military operations and tactics, including code words and the name of at least one enemy target, according to evidence the government presented on Tuesday.
The 25-year-old Manning has said he did not believe the more than 700,000 battlefield reports, diplomatic cables and video clips he leaked while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad would hurt national security. Prosecutors want to convict him of aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence.
For the first time, prosecutors presented evidence that the disclosures compromised sensitive information in dozens of categories. In one such statement, a classification expert, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Martin Nehring, said his review of leaked Afghanistan and Iraq battlefield reports revealed techniques for neutralizing improvised explosives, the name of an enemy target, the names of criminal suspects and troop movements. Navy Reserve Lieutenant Commander Thomas Hoskins said his review of leaked Afghanistan battlefield reports found they revealed code words, tactics and techniques for responding to roadside bombings, weapon capabilities and assistance the United States had gotten from foreign nationals in locating suspects.
The evidence also covered leaked material from the Army's investigation into a 2009 airstrike in Afghanistan's Farah province that killed at least 26 civilians in the village of Garani. Manning has acknowledged leaking investigation documents and video of the airstrike. The leaked material forms the basis for one of eight federal espionage charges.
Prosecutors also presented a statement from Manning's aunt, Debra Van Alstyne, who talked about her interview with Army investigators in June 2010, shortly after Manning's arrest. She said one of them asked how Manning felt about the Army.
"I knew that Brad was proud of his job and of being in the Army," Van Alstyne said in her statement.
She said an investigator collected a digital camera data card Manning had sent her that was found to contain some of the leaked Iraq battlefield reports and video of an Apache helicopter attack WikiLeaks had posted in which civilians were killed. She said Manning called her after his arrest and asked if she had watched the helicopter video. She said he told her the video would be "big news" and that it would make a "big splash" in America.
Prosecutors began the day by presenting evidence that Manning used his work computer to access a classified 2008 Army counterintelligence report about the possibility that WikiLeaks posed a national security threat. The evidence indicated Manning first accessed the report 1 December 2009, about three weeks after he started work in Baghdad.The commander of the US navy has ordered an unprecedented worldwide “operational pause” as analysts warn Chinese hackers have breached US military security, causing two recent US naval collisions.
A report prepared for the Pentagon and officials from government and the defense industry in 2013 warned that the nation’s most sensitive advanced weapons systems had been compromised by Chinese hackers, and four years later the Pentagon’s worst fears are being realized.
The USS John S. McCain collided with an oil tanker early on Monday, sending water flooding into the hull and sparking an international search for the missing men. The accident – the second in two months involving a destroyer with the 7th Fleet – caused Admiral John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, to order an immediate halt to operations.
“This trend demands more forceful action,” he said. “As such, I have directed an operational pause be taken in all of our fleets around the world.”
What you are not being told about the navy collisions
More than two dozen major weapons systems whose designs were breached in 2013 were programs critical to U.S. missile defenses and navy ships, according to a Washington Post report that detailed previously undisclosed sections of a confidential report prepared for Pentagon leaders by the Defense Science Board.
Thoughts & prayers are w/ our @USNavy sailors aboard the #USSJohnSMcCain where search & rescue efforts are underway. https://t.co/DQU0zTRXNU — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 21, 2017
Experts warned that the electronic intrusions give China access to advanced technology that could accelerate the development of its weapons systems and weaken the U.S. military advantage in a future conflict.
And now the Chinese chickens are coming home to roost. The US navy has been effectively neutered and withdrawn from action until the problem can be resolved.
How did this happen?
This electronic intrusions were a huge issue a few years ago, with military experts warning that the practice of having all of our computer chips built in China was a disaster waiting to happen. Because we are too cheap to pay Americans to do the work, we have allowed China access to the backbone of our systems.
Now we are paying the price for our ignorance. Not only did we compromise our security, we gave China our technology to build these chips. There is a reason that China is now operating prototype jets and ships just like our own. They stole the technology.
And as was warned in 2013, they now have the ability to control our warships, causing embarrassing and operationally disastrous collisions in open water.
Jim Mattis, the defence secretary, has announced that an urgent review is being carried out, with the intention of getting the US navy back on the water as soon as possible.
“He [Admiral John Richardson] has put together a broader inquiry to look into these incidents,” said Mr Mattis.
A major overhaul of procedure will be required.Eggs are a source of cholesterol and choline and may impact plasma lipids and trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) concentrations, which are biomarkers for cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Therefore, the effects of increasing egg intake (0, 1, 2, and 3 eggs/day) on these and other CVD risk biomarkers were evaluated in a young, healthy population. Thirty-eight subjects [19 men/19 women, 24.1 ± 2.2 years, body mass index (BMI) 24.3 ± 2.5 kg/m2] participated in this 14-week crossover intervention. Participants underwent a 2-week washout with no egg consumption, followed by intake of 1, 2, and 3 eggs/day for 4 weeks each. Anthropometric data, blood pressure (BP), dietary records, and plasma biomarkers (lipids, glucose, choline, and TMAO) were measured during each intervention phase. BMI, waist circumference, systolic BP, plasma glucose, and plasma triacylglycerol did not change throughout the intervention. Diastolic BP decreased with egg intake (P < 0.05). Compared to 0 eggs/day, intake of 1 egg/day increased HDL cholesterol (HDL-c) (P < 0.05), and decreased LDL cholesterol (LDL-c) (P < 0.05) and the LDL-c/HDL-c ratio (P < 0.01). With intake of 2-3 eggs/day, these changes were maintained. Plasma choline increased dose-dependently with egg intake (P < 0.0001) while fasting plasma TMAO was unchanged. These results indicate that in a healthy population, consuming up to 3 eggs/day results in an overall beneficial effect on biomarkers associated with CVD risk, as documented by increased HDL-c, a reduced LDL-c/HDL-c ratio, and increased plasma choline in combination with no change in plasma LDL-c or TMAO concentrations.Image caption Asad Shah died after being found badly injured near his shop in the Shawlands area of Glasgow on Thursday
A man who issued a statement claiming he killed a Glasgow shopkeeper because he "disrespected" Islam has been condemned by Ahmadiyya Muslim leaders.
Murder accused Tanveer Ahmed, 32, from Bradford, said in a statement he killed 40-year-old Asad Shah as he had falsely claimed to be a prophet.
Mr Shah was an Ahmadiyya, a group known for its peaceful interfaith concerns.
Ahmadiyya Muslim leaders in Glasgow have now called for other Muslim leaders to condemn the statement.
In a statement issued on Wednesday through his lawyer, Mr Ahmed said: "Asad Shah disrespected the messenger of Islam the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him. Mr Shah claimed to be a Prophet."
He added: "If I had not done this others would and there would have been more killing and violence in the world."
Image caption Ahmadiyya Muslim leaders in Glasgow
Glasgow's Ahmadiyya Muslim leaders issued a statement in response stating Tanveer Ahmed had said that he killed Mr Shah because he 'disrespected' the Prophet of Islam.
The statement said: "This is deeply disturbing and sets an extremely dangerous precedent, as it justifies the killing of anyone - Muslim or non-Muslim - whom an extremist considers to have shown disrespect to Islam.
"In some countries Ahmadiyya Muslim members, Christians and people of other faiths are routinely attacked and murdered by extremists for accusations of blasphemy.
"Such killings are completely against the teachings of Islam.
Image caption Floral tributes have been placed near the scene
"We must not let the same mindset of hate and violence take root here in Glasgow, and for that matter, the UK and anywhere in the world.
"The Ahmadiyya Muslim community urges the government and law enforcement agencies to take all possible measures to root out all forms of religious hatred, intolerance and sectarianism.
"If extremists are given a free hand, we will come to see the same levels of religious hatred and persecution here in the UK that we see in some Muslim countries.
"It is the firm belief of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community that all people should be able to peacefully practice their faith without fear of persecution or violence.
"We urge all religious bodies, especially Muslim leaders and Imams, to come out in public to condemn this statement made by Tanveer Ahmed, so that all Muslims know this is never acceptable in Islam.
"This will go a long way to help eliminate all extremists."
Image caption Mr Shah was found seriously injured outside his shop in Shawlands
Mr Ahmed is accused of killing Mr Shah outside his shop in Glasgow's Shawlands area two weeks ago.
The shopkeeper, who had moved from Pakistan to Glasgow almost 20 years ago, was found with serious injuries outside his shop on Minard Road on 24 March. He was pronounced dead in hospital.
Mr Shah was killed just hours after he posted an Easter message on Facebook to his customers.
The message said: "Good Friday and a very happy Easter, especially to my beloved Christian nationx"
During the police investigation officers claimed the incident was "religiously prejudiced" and confirmed both men were Muslims.
Mr Ahmed has been charged with murder and made a second court appearance on Wednesday where he made no plea and was remanded in custody.There have been chaotic scenes at Zimbabwe's Harare International Airport after a safety drill was mistaken for a real plane accident.
The BBC's Brian Hungwe, at the airport, says he saw a large plume of smoke and helicopters over the runway.
Earlier, the Civil Aviation Authority head had confirmed to reporters that a plane had been involved in an accident.
But an aviation spokeswoman later told the BBC it was a drill, and that distressed "relatives" were "actors".
Correspondents say it seemed that not many people were informed of the safety drill.
Witnesses reported seeing several ambulances heading towards the airport.
Telling the media was part of the exercise. We wanted to see how the media would react David Chawota, Civil Aviation Authority head
David Chawota, Zimbabwe's Civil Aviation Authority head, then began fielding phone calls about the incident.
"I can confirm that a 767 plane coming from London has had an accident at Harare airport," he told AFP news agency.
He told Reuters: "I can confirm there has been an accident, but I cannot give details right now. I am not at the site, but there are just injuries, no deaths."
But at a press conference at the airport later, he said this was part of the plan.
"Telling the media was part of the exercise. We wanted to see how the media would react," AP news agency quoted him as saying.
"In the event, the drill was a success because all our systems worked perfectly," he said.
"Police, security and hospital staff reacted swiftly."Heuristics are rules intended to help you solve problems. When a problem is large or complex, and the optimal solution is unclear, applying a heuristic allows you to begin making progress towards a solution even though you can’t visualize the entire path from your starting point.
Suppose your goal is to climb to the peak of a mountain, but there’s no trail to follow. An example of a heuristic would be: Head directly towards the peak until you reach an obstacle you can’t cross. Whenever you reach such an obstacle, follow it around to the right until you’re able to head towards the peak once again. This isn’t the most intelligent or comprehensive heuristic, but in many cases it will work just fine, and you’ll eventually reach the peak.
Heuristics don’t guarantee you’ll find the optimal solution, nor do they generally guarantee a solution at all. But they do a good enough job of solving certain types of problems to be useful. Their strength is that they break the deadlock of indecision and get you into action. As you take action you begin to explore the solution space, which deepens your understanding of the problem. As you gain knowledge about the problem, you can make course corrections along the way, gradually improving your chances of finding a solution. If you try to solve a problem you don’t initially know how to solve, you’ll often figure out a solution as you go, one you never could have imagined until you started moving. This is especially true with creative work such as software development. Often you don’t even know exactly what you’re trying to build until you start building it.
Heuristics have many practical applications, and one of my favorite areas of application is personal productivity. Productivity heuristics are behavioral rules (some general, some situation-specific) that can help us get things done more efficiently. Here are some of my favorites:
Nuke it! The most efficient way to get through a task is to delete it. If it doesn’t need to be done, get it off your to do list. Daily goals. Without a clear focus, it’s too easy to succumb to distractions. Set targets for each day in advance. Decide what you’ll do; then do it. Worst first. To defeat procrastination learn to tackle your most unpleasant task first thing in the morning instead of delaying it until later in the day. This small victory will set the tone for a very productive day. Peak times. Identify your peak cycles of productivity, and schedule your most important tasks for those times. Work on minor tasks during your non-peak times. No-comm zones. Allocate uninterruptible blocks of time for solo work where you must concentrate. Schedule light, interruptible tasks for your open-comm periods and more challenging projects for your no-comm periods. Mini-milestones. When you begin a task, identify the target you must reach before you can stop working. For example, when working on a book, you could decide not to get up until you’ve written at least 1000 words. Hit your target no matter what. Timeboxing. Give yourself a fixed time period, like 30 minutes, to make a dent in a task. Don’t worry about how far you get. Just put in the time. See Timeboxing for more. Batching. Batch similar tasks like phone calls or errands into a single chunk, and knock them off in a single session. Early bird. Get up early in the morning, like at 5am, and go straight to work on your most important task. You can often get more done before 8am than most people do in a day. Cone of silence. Take a laptop with no network or WiFi access, and go to a place where you can work flat out without distractions, such as a library, park, coffee house, or your own backyard. Leave your comm gadgets behind. Tempo. Deliberately pick up the pace, and try to move a little faster than usual. Speak faster. Walk faster. Type faster. Read faster. Go home sooner. Relaxify. Reduce stress by cultivating a relaxing, clutter-free workspace. See 10 Ways to Relaxify Your Workspace. Agendas. Provide clear written agendas to meeting participants in advance. This greatly improves meeting focus and efficiency. You can use it for phone calls too. Pareto. The Pareto principle is the 80-20 rule, which states that 80% of the value of a task comes from 20% of the effort. Focus your energy on that critical 20%, and don’t overengineer the non-critical 80%. Ready-fire-aim. Bust procrastination by taking action immediately after setting a goal, even if the action isn’t perfectly planned. You can always adjust course along the way. Minuteman. Once you have the information you need to make a decision, start a timer and give yourself just 60 seconds to make the actual decision. Take a whole minute to vacillate and second-guess yourself all you want, but come out the other end with a clear choice. Once your decision is made, take some kind of action to set it in motion. Deadline. Set a deadline for task completion, and use it as a focal point to stay on track. Promise. Tell others of your commitments, since they’ll help hold you accountable. Punctuality. Whatever it takes, show up on time. Arrive early. Gap reading. Use reading to fill in those odd periods like waiting for an appointment, standing in line, or while the coffee is brewing. If you’re a male, you can even read an article while shaving (preferably with an electric razor). That’s 365 articles a year. Resonance. Visualize your goal as already accomplished. Put yourself into a state of actually being there. Make it real in your mind, and you’ll soon see it in your reality. Glittering prizes. Give yourself frequent rewards for achievement. See a movie, book a professional massage, or spend a day at an amusement park. Quad 2. Separate the truly important tasks from the merely urgent. Allocate blocks of time to work on the critical Quadrant 2 tasks, those which are important but rarely urgent, such as physical exercise, writing a book, and finding a relationship partner. Continuum. At the end of your workday, identify the first task you’ll work on the next day, and set out the materials in advance. The next day begin working on that task immediately. Slice and dice. Break complex projects into smaller, well-defined tasks. Focus on completing just one of those tasks. Single-handling. Once you begin a task, stick with it until it’s 100% complete. Don’t switch tasks in the middle. When distractions come up, jot them down to be dealt with later. Randomize. Pick a totally random piece of a larger project, and complete it. Pay one random bill. Make one phone call. Write page 42 of your book. Insanely bad. Defeat perfectionism by completing your task in an intentionally terrible fashion, knowing you need never share the results with anyone. Write a blog post about the taste of salt, design a hideously dysfunctional web site, or create a business plan that guarantees a first-year bankruptcy. With a truly horrendous first draft, there’s nowhere to go but up. 30 days. Identify a new habit you’d like to form, and commit to sticking with it for just 30 days. A temporary commitment is much easier to keep than a permanent one. See 30 Days to Success for details. Delegate. Convince someone else to do it for you. Cross-pollination. Sign up for martial arts, start a blog, or join an improv group. You’ll often encounter ideas in one field that can boost your performance in another. Intuition. Go with your gut instinct. It’s probably right. Optimization. Identify the processes you use most often, and write them down step-by-step. Refactor them on paper for greater efficiency. Then implement and test your improved processes. Sometimes we just can’t see what’s right in front of us until we examine it under a microscope.
Read the next two parts of this series here: Volume 2 and Volume 3On April 22, The Daily Show's Jon Stewart highlighted two recent reports concerning national security that have been largely ignored by most television news outlets and NPR: a New York Times article reporting that "the Bush administration has used" media military analysts, many of whom have clients with or seeking Pentagon contracts, "into a kind of media Trojan horse -- an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks"; and a Government Accountability Office report that found that the "United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven in Pakistan's FATA."
During the April 22 edition of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, host Jon Stewart highlighted two recent reports concerning national security that have been largely ignored by most television news outlets. The first was an April 20 New York Times article by investigative reporter David Barstow, who wrote that "the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform" media military analysts, many of whom have clients with an interest in obtaining Pentagon contracts, "into a kind of media Trojan horse -- an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." The second was a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, "The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas," released on April 17, which found that "[t]he United States has not met its national security goals to destroy terrorist threats and close the safe haven in Pakistan's FATA [Federally Administered Tribal Areas]. Since 2002, the United States relied principally on the Pakistan military to address U.S. national security goals. Of the approximately $5.8 billion the United States provided for efforts in the FATA and border region from 2002 through 2007, about 96 percent reimbursed Pakistan for military operations there." But while Comedy Central drew attention to the Times and GAO reports, an April 23 Media Matters for America search* of the Nexis database determined that, as of 11:59 p.m. ET April 22, none of these news outlets -- NBC, CBS, NPR, or PBS -- had mentioned either report during news programs whose transcripts are available in the Nexis database.** ABC and Fox News covered the GAO report. MSNBC and CNN covered both stories.
During the April 22 edition of The Daily Show, Stewart said:
STEWART: Now, another event making a recent cameo, the Iraq war. Remember? Remember when it started and it was kind of a big deal that some journalists were embedded with the troops? Well, this is great. As it turns out, it was more of an exchange program, because they actually also had troops embedded with the journalists. It's the subject of tonight's "The Less You Know." [...] STEWART: Well, it turns out many of these ex-military were not so "ex" -- working on behalf of defense contractors and the Pentagon itself. And while the news networks called them "military analysts," the Pentagon, in just released memos, referred to them as "message force multipliers" -- which sounds so much cooler than sneaky old guys. Message force multipliers. What are they, machine guns that shoot Post-it notes? By the way, message force multipliers? Worst Steven Seagal movie ever. They say he couldn't stay on message. They were wrong. They said he couldn't read prompter. All right. But have there been any reports about the broader war on terror that don't come in unreliable old-man form? Well, we're in luck, if by in luck you mean [bleeped out]. The Government Accountability Office just put out a report on America's progress pursuing the non-Iraqi perpetrators of |
Qiu told the state-controlled Global Times newspaper: "We feel like aliens - surrounded by youngsters. If there is another place in Shanghai where elderly people can gather, we are more than ready to pay twice as much and travel further."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Where will lonely hearts go in Shanghai?
But others online voiced support for the store's management, praising its efforts in "maintaining store policy".
"Intolerable behaviour," said one Weibo user. "I'm with the management on this. It's deplorable how people are caught photographed sleeping on Ikea displays, what more spitting and swearing in public? This should not be tolerated at all."
Another user Lao Gao from Beijing wrote: "To everyone romanticising this, please also consider that the store has an image to uphold while protecting the interests of other paying customers. It is ugly behaviour to take up seats for such long durations while you make others wait."
Reporting by the BBC's Grace Tsoi in Hong Kong and Heather Chen in Singapore.“Hinduism was the oldest and third largest religion of the world with about one billion adherents and a rich philosophical thought and it should not be taken frivolously. Symbols of any faith, larger or smaller, should not be mishandled,” Rajan Zed noted.
He was referring to Berentsens Brewery’s IPA entitled Bombay where an elephant is depicted on the bottle.
The brewery was first contacted about the matter in December of last year on behalf of the VHP Norway, Sanatan Mandir Sabha Slemmestad, Hindu Sanatan Mandir Drammen, Gujarati Association Norway, Bengali Samiti, and the Sri Lankan and Nepali association of Norway.
They claimed that having the image of Ganesh on a beer bottle was undesirable and disrespectful and that it’s “directly hurting the sentiments of the whole Hindu community.”
Alcohol consumption is generally not accepted in Hinduism.
CEO of Berentsens Brewery, Harald Berentsen denies accusations. He claims that it is not Ganesh whom is portrayed on the bottle, but a simple design of an elephant head. “It’s unfortunate that it has been interpreted in that way,” he told The Nordic Page. “We in no way meant to provoke or offend anybody.”
Fredrikke Berentsen of Berentsens Brewery clarified that the image is simply an elephant with a jewelry on its head. She also points out the imagery is lacking several symbols that are often included in drawings of Ganesh, such as the multiple arms and the flowers. She goes on to point out that Ganesh is usually illustrated from a front angle whereas the elephant on their label is a profile view.
The article continues under the photo.
Photo of Ganesh by Sathis Babu
India Pale Ale was exported to India from England during the colonial times in the 1800s, which was the inspiration behind the label. The designers of the label wanted to depict something that was “typical” Indian. They emphasize that there was no religious motive behind the label and that they were sorry to hear that this was an issue.
Several other beers from the brewery depict animals on their labels. Additionally, there is a beer named after the god Neptune, and a beer called Hulder (Nymph in English), which is a Greek and Latin mythological spirit.
When asked if Berentsens Brewery would discontinue the Bombay IPA, Harald Berentsens replied
“We see no reason to.”Happiness in the Age of Insta: Facing the Challenges of Social Media
The articles started appearing in 2011 or so. Published in a variety of publications, it was easy to detect a theme: “Facebook Is Making Us Miserable” (Harvard Business Review), “Is Facebook Making Us Lonely?” (The Atlantic), “How Facebook Makes Us Unhappy” (New Yorker). Clearly, Facebook had become a massive force to be reckoned with. With 2 billion regular monthly users, Facebook has a population larger than any single country in the world, and that is without even counting the additional 700 million and 1.2 billion users of Facebook-owned Instagram and WhatsApp, respectively. It connects so many of us to friends, family and communities spread throughout the globe. And yet, these articles quoted study after study of research that implicates social media in general, and Facebook in particular, in declines in happiness. As the years went on, and Instagram surged in popularity, it too started to draw the ire of researchers: “Why Instagram Is the Worst Social Media for Mental Health” (Time Health), “L.A. Kids and Instagram Anxiety: ‘Social Media Is Destroying Our Lives’” (Hollywood Reporter). A recently published New York Times Magazine article chronicles the rise of anxiety as the number-one mental health issue afflicting adolescents, and places the ubiquity of smartphones, social media and Instagram as one of the root causes.
What is going on here? Anyone who has ventured down the rabbit hole of food pics or top sports plays or [name your particular interest] can probably acknowledge the power of social media as a time waster. But is it really a source of extreme anxiety and unhappiness? And if so, what are we doing as parents and educators to help ensure our children are engaging with technology in a healthy way?
Livado: Having Confidence in Our Own Voice
The fundamental reason why technology generally, and social media in particular, has the potential to make us anxious and unhappy is because it undermines our ability to be comfortable when alone. Indeed, the Torah long ago captured the fundamental importance of such loneliness—the strength and self-reliance generated by a confident comfort with being disconnected.
Describing Yaakov Avinu in advance of his battle with Esav’s angel, the Torah notes that Yaakov was “livado”—alone. The word itself stands out in the pasuk, leading the Midrash to draw an extraordinary, but curious, parallel: just as Yaakov Avinu was livado—alone—prior to his battle with Esav’s angel, so too Hashem will livado—alone—be exalted on that day. The great mashgiach of the Mir Yeshiva, Rav Yerucham Levovitz (1873-1936), unpacking the underlying principle behind this semantic parallel, explained that Yaakov Avinu’s loneliness was patterned after Hashem’s; just as Hashem is alone, and needs no other being to exist, so too Yaakov Avinu had successfully cultivated his own inner confidence to a point where he no longer needed others for validation. It was precisely this characteristic of “livado” that gave Yaakov Avinu the power to defeat the angel of Esav that fateful night.
This idea is as powerful as it is simple: We must all strive to reach a point where we do not need to rely on other people for our own sense of self-worth. Each of us has a unique goal to accomplish on this earth, and by striving to imitate Hashem in achieving this ideal of “livado,” we develop a confidence in our voice and in our ability to impact the world regardless of others’ opinions, perceptions and pressures. As Rav Yerucham explains, when Ben Zoma asks the famous questions in Avot (4:1) of who is wise, mighty, rich and honored, he is really teaching us about the importance of having confidence in our own voice. Who is rich? Traditionally, one checks the Forbes list, or looks to see how their car stacks up with others in the office parking lot. No, says Ben Zoma. Being rich is a state of mind, and one works on themselves to reach a point of satisfaction with their lot, independent of anyone else. Who is honored? I might assume I am only honored if my shul or school dedicates their dinner journal to me. Ben Zoma says no—it’s within you. If you honor others, you are honored.
Back to Social Media
What all the studies indicate is that social media promotes what the United Kingdom Royal Society for Public Health #StatusOfMind survey calls a “compare and despair attitude”—meaning, what we share with our social networks is often a highly curated, best version of ourselves. While there is nothing inherently wrong with putting our best foot forward online, problems abound when we scroll through our feed, comparing our real life, with all of its trials and tribulations, high points and failures, with the perfect life projected by our peers and public figures. Becoming a “livado” Jew is hard enough on its own. Facing a constant stream of idealized versions of people’s lives in comparison to the good, bad and ugly of our real existence makes it almost impossible. This type of comparison is cited by researchers as playing a significant role in the spike in adolescent anxiety and depression, which began in 2012, “the moment when the proportion of Americans who owned a smartphone surpassed 50 percent” (“Have Smartphones Destroyed A Generation?” The Atlantic, September 2017).
What’s Our Role?
Recently, I’ve had the opportunity to engage students in a conversation about this topic in several schools. Contrary to what some might assume, kids understand how unhealthy this type of impossible comparing can be, and they desperately want the adults in their lives—parents, educators and others—to understand the challenges posed by social media. Sometimes adults will look at the social challenges of likes and posts and dismiss it as “kid stuff” and, therefore, unimportant. Doing so risks sacrificing a major opportunity for us as adult role models to be there for our kids, so that when they do face these challenges, they know we understand, accept them and can empathize with them.
We must also be fiercely and relentlessly devoted to elevating our children’s sense of “livado.” This includes talking about Hashem, how He loves each one of us and has given us the tremendous blessing to have the ability to play a unique role in this world, that unlike anyone else. Watching a student find that skill or activity or program that stokes their passion—be it in the beit midrash, STEM lab, basketball court or a shelter helping hurricane survivors in Houston—is the most incredible feeling. That young man is confidently and passionately alone. In that moment, he knows he can change the world. All of us—parents, educators, community members—working as partners, have a responsibility to continue to stoke that flame in our children so that they can follow in Yaakov’s footsteps as “livado” Jews.
By Rabbi Dov Emerson
Rabbi Dov Emerson (@dovemerson) is the director of teaching and learning at Yeshiva University High School for Boys/MTA. He and his wife Rina, along with their five children, live in Bergenfield, New Jersey.Social networking may be frowned upon and discouraged when it comes to road safety. With introduction of this innovative platform for vehicles, social networking may actually play a key role in keeping drivers safe while driving. The car-to-X (C2X) communication system has been recently tested in a major field trial with over 100 cars.
The Project simTD trial was sponsored by several public entities. Suppliers, communications firms, researchers and automakers all participated in the project. The trial was conducted under the leadership of Daimler AG.
In the trial consisting of 120 vehicles, the car technology was tested to see how effective communication between multiple vehicles could be leveraged to support driver safety. Each vehicle included in the trial is linked the other vehicles and the traffic infrastructure. The platform tracks all driving activity among the vehicles. The system tracks the road activity and shares information with the driver about traffic conditions and incidents, equipping the driver to make informed decisions.
All of the tracking and sharing on the car social networking platform helped drivers avoid and plan ahead for road conditions. The platform successfully prevented pileups among drivers, monitored braking activity and offered alternative routing among drivers included in the trial. Drivers were able to take advantage of suggested routes supplied by the c2x communication technology. The success of the trial may lead to automakers incorporating the technology into the design of vehicles within a few years.
Javaheri & Yahoudai, Personal Injury Attorney LA firm applauds the research and recognizes how important the technology would be in improving driver safety. In 2005, there were a total of 277 fatalities and nearly 430,000 car crash injuries. Congestion along major highways likely contributed to these alarming statistics. Driver inattention, drunk driving and speeding also play a major role in these statistics.
According to Javaheri &Yahoudai,Personal Injury Attorney LA firm, most of the driving accidents are tied to individual driver behavior. “While the technology can lower the numbers of injury crashes in Los Angeles, California, we can see how this would benefit the thousands of drivers on major roadways in Los Angeles,” Attorney (Mitchell) says. “We can only hope that drivers adopt safer driving habits until the technology becomes available.”
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AdvertisementsMarco Rubio’s robotic recitation of anti-Obama talking points may have been the biggest story coming out of Saturday’s GOP presidential debate, but at least one candidate stood out with his unrelenting dishonesty: Ted Cruz.
Following his opening statement, almost every remark from Cruz was either completely misleading or flat-out wrong.
1) Dirty Tricks
Cruz kicked things off by flatly lying about his campaign’s role in propagating a rumor about one of his rivals leaving the race during last week’s Iowa caucuses.
Shortly before Iowans started casting votes, the Cruz campaign urged its supporters to tell caucus-goers that Ben Carson was likely dropping out of the race and that his supporters should back Cruz instead.
At the debate, Cruz blamed a CNN report for suggesting that Carson was withdrawing from the race, claiming that it was an honest mistake from his campaign and blaming the network for only having “corrected” its reporting several hours later in the evening.
Cruz’s claim is bogus, and seeing that the dirty tricks story has been in the news for days, he must know by now that it is not true.
CNN never reported that Carson was quitting the presidential campaign. Its first report on Carson’s plan to fly to his Florida home after the caucuses, apparently so he could get a fresh set of clothes, stated that the neurosurgeon planned “to stay in the race beyond Iowa no matter what the results are tonight.”
“CNN never reported that Carson was suspending his campaign and never issued a correction, because there was no need to do so,” Dylan Byers notes. CNN itself strongly rebutted Cruz’s claim: “What Senator Cruz said tonight in the debate is categorically false. CNN never corrected its reporting because CNN never had anything to correct. The Cruz campaign’s actions the night of the Iowa caucuses had nothing to do with CNN’s reporting. The fact that Senator Cruz continues to knowingly mislead the voters about this is astonishing.”
The Texas senator’s campaign, it seems, is trying to cover up one lie with another.
2) North Korea
On the topic of North Korea, Cruz said that the Clinton administration allowed “billions of dollars” to flow into North Korea and that “the lead negotiator in that failed North Korea sanctions deal was a woman named Wendy Sherman who Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton promptly recruited to come back to be the lead negotiator with Iran.”
The Washington Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee writes that Cruz’s statement “significantly overstates the monetary benefits of the Clinton deal to North Korea.” As part of a limited accord known as the Agreed Framework, the North Korean government agreed to replace a “plutonium reactor with two light-water reactors,” and in return the U.S. supplied the country “with 500,000 tons of heavy fuel oil every year to make up for the theoretical loss of the reactor while the new ones were built.” Any money involved in the deal, writes the Post’s Glenn Kessler, went to companies outside of North Korea.
“It’s simply false that Clinton eased sanctions that led to billions of dollars flowing into North Korea, allowing it to build a nuclear weapon,” Kessler writes. “Virtually no funds were received by North Korea as a result of the Agreed Framework. He also notes that Cruz’s claim about Sherman is “also wrong,” since “she did not negotiate the Agreed Framework.”
Cruz finished his remarks by alleging that North Korea or another state could then use a nuclear electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack to “take down the entire electrical grid on the Eastern seaboard, potentially killing millions,” a notion roundly dismissed as overblown by security experts but is popular in right-wing media.
3) Immigration
After receiving applause for suggesting that he would task Donald Trump with building a wall along America’s southern border, Cruz said he would offer no path to legal status for any of the undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., instead promising to deport them all through existing law.
“I will enforce the law, and for everyone who says you can’t possibly do that, I would note that in eight years, Bill Clinton deported 12 million people,” he said. “In eight years, George W. Bush deported 10 million people. Enforcing the law — we can do it. What is missing is the political will.”
The Associated Press reports that Cruz’s figures on past administrations are just plain wrong: “Statistics from Immigration and Customs Enforcement show that roughly 1.6 million were deported under Bush, not 11 million. Under Clinton, about 870,000 immigrants were deported, not 12 million, according to the Migration Policy Institute. So far, about 2.4 million have been deported under the Obama administration.”
He also falsely claimed that undocumented immigrants are eligible for federal welfare benefits.
Cruz, unsurprisingly, is no stranger to telling falsehoods about immigration.
4) Health care
Cruz’s rant against the “disaster” of “socialized medicine,” in which he warned of health care rationing and doctor shortages, was so egregious that Jonathan Cohn of the Huffington Post laid out a six-point debunking of his claims.
Cohn notes that “countries with ‘socialized medicine’ seem to be getting results that are as good if not better than what the U.S. gets from its health care system — and they do so while spending far less money” and tend to have more physicians per capita than the U.S.
The rationing claim, reminiscent of the “death panel” smear, is also misleading, as countries with “socialized medicine” perform just as well if not better in providing services like hip replacements, while de facto rationing already exists America, as many people cannot afford or are unable to access health services.
5) Terrorism
When asked about his remarks mocking Donald Trump’s temperament, Cruz pivoted to criticizing President Obama, whom he said “is unwilling even to acknowledge the enemy we’re facing.” “[Obama] will not even use the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism,’ much less focus on defeating the enemy,” he said.
Cruz’s insistence that the Obama administration is ignoring the threat from terrorism came amidst news that a U.S. drone strike killed a senior commander of Al Qaeda and that ISIS is losing territory and followers in the Mideast in the wake of a U.S.-backed campaign against the terrorist organization.
He seems to think that the problem could be solved just by uttering the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism,” even though many experts caution that using such terms could be a huge propaganda victory for terrorists who try to claim that they are the true Muslims fighting against western powers that are warring against Islam, along with isolating the vast majority of Muslims and Muslim-led governments that oppose groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.
Cruz also misled on what he called the “generally recognized” definition of torture in his defense of waterboarding.
6) Iran
After criticizing the “James [sic] Bergdahl deal,” Cruz also denounced the Obama administration for releasing or ending the prosecution of “up to 21 terrorists or potential terrorists” as part of a deal with Iran to secure the release of four American prisoners.
Cruz was wrong on both counts: The U.S. only released seven people who were convicted or prosecuted for violating trade sanctions on Iran or, in one case, hacking a Vermont engineering business. The other 14 were only facing extradition and do not reside in the U.S.
Naturally, Cruz also used debunked revisionist history to extol the Reagan administration’s dealings with Iran.
Of course, we’ve known for quite a long time that Cruz has a difficult time with the truth.New Delhi, May 2: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislators and lawmakers are busy distributing certificates of nationalism to ideological opponents across the nation. The latest to join the fray of ‘anti-nationals’ are the medical practitioners who prefer giving their patients allopathic medicines rather than ayurvedic.
Heading the Ministry of AYUSH, BJP MP Shripad Yesso Naik made a highly objectionable statement in Kolhapur saying, “Doctors prescribing non-ayurvedic medicines are anti-nationals.”
“Some ayurveda practitioners have told me that doctors prescribing allopathy medicines often advise patients not to opt for ayurveda. Such doctors are anti-nationals,” he was quoted as saying by TOI. (ALSO READ: Government ready to help in construction of Ram temple: Shripad Naik)
Naik inaugurated an ayurveda research centre in Kolhapur on Saturday. During the event, he stressed on the importance of adopting ayurveda as a primary source of medicine. “How can anyone oppose ayurveda when the whole world is showing interest in it and trying to find remedies of diseases that modern medical science cannot?” Naik said, adding that Ayurveda is one of the precious aspect of Indian culture.
Ministry of AYUSH was formed in November 2014 by the Narendra Modi government. It is tasked to promote the use of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homoeopathy as mainstream medicine. (ALSO READ: AYUSH Ministry rejects purported RTI reply that claimed it does not recruit Muslims)
The ministry had earlier too entered into a controversy after a purported RTI application making rounds on the internet said, “As per government policy, no Muslim candidate could be invited, selected or sent abroad.” However, the AYUSH ministry rejected the reports calling the RTI application as “fake” and “mischievous”.A half-century after the Supreme Court legalized interracial marriage in the United States, 18% of all cohabiting adults have a partner of a different race or ethnicity – similar to the share of U.S. newlyweds who have a spouse of a different race or ethnicity (17%), according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data.
Among cohabiting U.S. adults – those living with an unmarried partner – Millennials and members of Generation X are particularly likely to have a live-in partner of a different race or ethnicity: Roughly one-in-five in each group do. The rates are significantly lower among cohabiting Baby Boomers (13%) and members of the Silent Generation (9%).
Cohabitation, while still relatively uncommon, is on the rise in the U.S. as marriage is declining. In 2015, 6% of all U.S. adults were living with a partner, while half of adults were married.
Of the major racial and ethnic groups, white adults who are in a cohabiting relationship are the least likely to be living with a partner of a different race or ethnicity (12%). This share rises to 20% among black cohabiters and 24% among Hispanic cohabiters. These rates are very similar to intermarriage rates among white (11%), black (18%) and Hispanic (27%) newlyweds.
The story is different for Asian adults who cohabit. Almost half (46%) are living with a partner of a different race or ethnicity. This is far higher than the share of Asian newlyweds who are intermarried (29%). One factor that might partially explain this difference is that a larger share of Asian cohabiters (39%) than Asian newlyweds (25%) were born in the U.S., and U.S.-born Asians are more likely than those who are foreign born to have a spouse or partner of a different race or ethnicity. (Among Asian immigrants who cohabit, 38% have partners of a different race or ethnicity compared with 59% of Asian cohabiters who are U.S. born.)
Like their newlywed counterparts, cohabiters with more education are somewhat more likely to have a significant other of a different race or ethnicity. While 14% of those ages 25 or older with a high school diploma or less are living with a partner of a different race or ethnicity, the share rises to 20% among those with at least some college experience. Among newlyweds, 14% with a high school diploma or less are intermarried, as are 18% of those with some college and 19% of those with a bachelor’s degree or more.
Topics: Hispanic/Latino Demographics, African Americans, Asian Americans, Marriage and Divorce, Race and Ethnicity, Generations and Age, Household and Family Structure—Originally Posted 7/4/17—
It’s summertime! To many, it’s an opportunity to get yourselves out and about while enjoying the warmest time of the year. For others, it’s the prime time to hunker down, blast the A.C., and scoop up titles available via lucrative summer discounts.
Right about now, year after year, publishers around the world slash prices on tons of games in the hopes that you’ll avoid the great outdoors and instead continue playing on. This is true for many companies across the game’s industry, and it’s why there’s a Steam Summer Sale, PlayStation Store Mid-Year Sale, and Xbox Ultimate Game Sale. But one company just doesn’t play nice like most of the others do.
Sure, Nintendo has “sales” that run throughout the summer. But when you compare them to the deals going on across, Steam, Xbox Live or the PlayStation Store, they’re laughable in comparison.
Nintendo’s Summer “Celebration” Is A Joke In Comparison to Steam’s Yearly Summer Sale
Looking at Nintendo’s Sales and Deals page, it will take some effort to find more than a couple deals that are actually worth anything. The highlight, which Nintendo does feature, is Snake Pass. Typically $19.99 on the Switch, you can currently get it for $11.99 on sale. This is the only game on sale for the Switch.
There’s also Runbow, normally $14.99 on Wii U. During Nintendo’s sale you can grab it for $5.09. But is anyone buying anything for the Wii U anymore? Outside of those Snake Pass and Runbow, the rest of the on sale offerings are a ragtag group of random bargain bin titles for the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. There is essentially nothing of note.
There are zero first-party games, by the way. You can search the sale page by franchise if you prefer. Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Metroid, Pokémon, Kirby and Animal Crossing are all options to sort by. And amongst all 7 there isn’t a single search result. If you’re a part of My Nintendo, there are some choices for you there though.
Here’s the selection of offerings:
Nintendo Selects titles:
• 15% off Animal Crossing™: New Leaf – Welcome amiibo (Nintendo 3DS™)
• 15% off The Legend of Zelda™: The Wind Waker HD (Wii U™)
• 20% off Luigi’s Mansion™: Dark Moon (Nintendo 3DS) • 20% off Tomodachi Life™ (Nintendo 3DS)
• 15% off Pikmin™ 3 (Wii U)
• 30% off Punch-Out!! (Wii U)
Prima Official Game Guide:
• Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon • Animal Crossing: New Leaf
• The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
• Pikmin 3
Mario Games:
• 30% off Mario Party™ 10 (Wii U)
• 20% off Mario Kart™ 64 (Wii U)
• Mario Kart DLC Pack 1 (Wii U)*
• 30% off Super Mario 64™ (Wii U)
Fighting Games:
• 30% off Super Punch Out!! (Wii U/3DS)
• 30% off Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream (Wii U/3DS)
• 30% off Punch-Out!! (Wii U)
It’s not just a matter of being enrolled in My Nintendo though. You have to have the proper coins in your vault to get whatever deal you’re looking for. For instance, Nintendo is offering My Nintendo members 15% off of Animal Crossing: New Leaf for 3DS and 15% off of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD for Wii U. However, to be entitled to get that 15% off you must first give Nintendo 300 Platinum points to be entitled to the deal.
Admitted, Platinum points are pretty easy to come by in the program. But there are other games such as Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon which require 30 Gold coins to earn a 20% discount. Gold coins are not easy to come by and are only rewarded for digital purchases through Nintendo’s store. A hell of a “Summer Celebration” indeed.
Oh, and don’t forget your discounted strategy guides…
The Other Guys
Nintendo’s embarrassing summer sale offerings are only highlighted by their competition. Let’s start with Steam for example. On their front page alone are a plethora of titles that are intriguingly cheap. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six entire franchise has deals between 40% and 60% off. WWE 2K17 is down to $14.99. The Witcher series is celebrating summer with games from 50% to 85% off. The underrated Mad Max is a whopping 60% off, priced at just $7.99. There’s plenty more like The Jackbox Party Pack 3, Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X, and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
On the PlayStation Store they too are celebrating with a “Mid Year Sale.” There are a ton of games with slashes prices, and on each one – if you’re a PlayStation Plus member – they’re slashed even further. Furi – Definitive Edition is 50% off at $10.99. The Disney Afternoon Collection is down to $13.99 after taking 30% off. And there are plenty more. Including Grand Theft Auto V, The Last of Us: Left Behind Stand Alone, Fallout 4, and Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag.
Microsoft is in on the action too. Their “Ultimate Game Sale” began June 30th and runs through July 10th. The deals include a whopping 300 games or the respective DLC packs. As of writing, the program isn’t live yet, so I don’t know exactly what will be discounted and to what amount. But Microsoft has announced that Injustice 2, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon: Wildlands, Prey, Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare and Rocket League are all in the mix. Additionally, Backwards Compatibility titles like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Skate 3 will be getting discounts as well.
These are great offerings on three great platforms. Whether you’re on PC, a PlayStation system, Xbox One or Xbox 360, there’s bound to be some deal you can’t deny if this heap of titles. Meanwhile, with Nintendo, not so much…
But… Why?
It’s really simple when it comes down to it: supply and demand.
Nintendo essentially never discounts their first-party offerings. They don’t have to. The Nintendo name means something to most people, and that’s quality. It can be easily argued that Nintendo is the greatest games publisher in existence. Sure, there have been plenty of missteps along the way, but which publisher hasn’t released a stinker here or there? Regardless, many Nintendo games just constantly stay in demand. On a number of consoles.
Nintendo is also a rarity when it comes to reselling games. If you look on eBay for Nintendo games, regardless of the system, odds are the game you look at will be selling for higher than you would have expected. I don’t know if that’s simply because there are typically less Nintendo consoles in the wild – thus games are a little harder to find. Or perhaps the consumers who purchase Nintendo games don’t frequently trade them in or try to resell them. Which makes used copies slightly more rare than usual, which in-turn makes used Nintendo games more expensive.
Nintendo games hold value over time. But that doesn’t mean they couldn’t throw us a bone here and there. Without me shelling out Gold coins of course. Games never go on sale for Nintendo. They do offer the “Nintendo Selects” brand, but there’s no rhyme or reason to it. The game simply needs to have sold well and have been on the market long enough that Nintendo feels it’s time to reduce price.
On the 3DS (in North America), only 12 titles have earned the title. One of which was a Frozen movie tie-in game. And those titles weren’t initiated into discount status until March 2016, August 2016 and February 2017. It’s the same situation on the Wii U, where only 7 games have been dubbed as Nintendo Selects. And again, those were discounted until March and August of 2016.
How Do You Fix It?
So what should Nintendo do? Honestly… nothing. Nintendo, again one of the strongest publishers in the world, doesn’t need to discount their games for you. If you’re a fan, you’re going to buy them. Time and time again. Steam, Microsoft and Sony are largely all beating to the same drum, fighting over the same consumers. Nintendo isn’t really a part of that battle. Nintendo does what Nintendo wants to, and as of right now, it’s working.
People can’t get enough Switch games. It will be quite interesting to see how something like ARMS does in terms of retail numbers. But I will say that if the Switch continues to be a strong indie port destination, Nintendo will have to work with those developers and publishers to compete on price point. They appear to have done so with Snake Pass. I don’t believe that’s discounted anywhere but Switch which is a positive sign.
But then again, Nintendo does what Nintendo wants – and it has worked pretty well over the last 34 years…
FROM AROUND THE WEBGruff JFreeChart XML/SWF FusionCharts Free FusionCharts v3 (Paid) Type Ruby classes Java Class files Flash charting component Flash Charting component Flash Charting component Operating System O/S Independent O/S Independent O/S Independent O/S Independent O/S Independent Adobe Flash Plug-in required No No Yes Yes Yes Suitable for Advanced Data Analysis No Yes Yes No Yes Any plug-ins or software to be installed Yes- RMagick, ImageMagick and Gruff Yes, JDK version 1.3 or later No No No Can the charts be animated? No Yes Yes Yes Yes Ability to save chart as image Yes Yes Yes No Yes UTF8 support Not Documented Yes Yes Yes Yes Ease Of Use In RoR Yes, but lot of coding involved. Not very easy to use. Not meant for end-user. Complex, too many xml tags for configuring the chart. Very easy to use. Developers and end-users can use it. Very easy to use. Developers and end-users can use it. Bar Charts 2D, 3D Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Line Charts Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Scatter Charts Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Area Charts Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Pie 2D, 3D Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Doughnut 2D, 3D No Yes, Ring Chart Yes Yes Yes Gantt Charts No Yes No Yes Yes ( as part of FusionWidgets v3) Combination Charts No Yes Yes Yes Yes Gauge charts No Yes ( as part of XML/SWF Gauge) Yes No Yes ( as part of FusionWidgets v3) Real-time charts No No No No Yes ( as part of FusionWidgets v3) Data-driven Maps No No No No Yes ( as part of FusionWidgets v3)
Web applications often analyze data in the database by generating reports. Charts provide a visual representation of the reports, can be used for understanding trends and generally facilitate better synthesis of data. Ruby On Rails is one of the technologies that can be used to create these web applications with reports and charts. In this article, we will discuss how to create charts in Ruby on Rails.For generating charts from reports or data in the database, we need a good charting product. Gruff, JFreeChart, XML/SWF charts, FusionCharts are few of the products available for Ruby on Rails. The following table gives a rough comparison of these charting products. Note that not all products have been tried and tested. Most of the analysis below is based on information gathered from the documentation of the products.
In this article, we will explore charting in Rails using FusionCharts and MySQL database. FusionCharts is a flash-based charting component which can generate interactive and animated charts. FusionCharts can be used with any web scripting language, to deliver powerful charts with fairly minimal coding. FusionCharts comes with wrapper modules for use with RoR. Easy to use, variety of chart types, good documentation and great support is the motivation behind using FusionCharts for this article.
This article describes the mechanism of generating charts using FusionCharts in Ruby on Rails through a sample application. To run the sample application discussed in this article, the following would be needed:
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• FusionCharts Free/ v3:
FusionCharts Free can be downloaded from www.fusioncharts.com/free, or the commercial version with more options can be downloaded from www.fusioncharts.com. In this article, we use the free version to create the charts.
Installation of FusionCharts merely involves copying and pasting the SWF and.rb files from the download package into appropriate application folder. The.rb files are present in Download Package > Code > RoR > Libraries folder.
• Ruby 1.8.6 or above:
Available at http://www.rubyonrails.org/down
• Rails gem 2.0.2 or above:
With RubyGems loaded, you can install all of Rails and its dependencies through the command line:
gem install rails
Rails can also be downloaded as stand-alone package from here.
• MySQL 4.0 or above:
Can be downloaded from here.
The sample application developed for this article is a basic time tracker application. This is a simple application where an employee fills out time for a week and views the chart based on the input hours. This article will discuss the sample application in two parts. The first part deals with the development of the basic application which includes list, edit, show and destroy for employees and timesheets. If you already have an application in which you have to integrate charts, then you can skip this part and go directly to the next part, which explains the integration of charts with the application. The article expects the reader to have a basic knowledge of Ruby on Rails.
Creating the Basic time tracker application
Using scaffold, the basic functionality of list, show, edit and delete for employees and timesheets can |
resources any Turing machine could be expanded into a full-scale simulation. But Turing machines are pretty simple, and brains supporting conscious observers are pretty complicated. To have conscious observers but not Turing machines – well, once again, this would have to be pretty weird.
Brains would have to run off a science different from the local science accessible to in-universe researchers. Probably they would be run remotely, in the simulating universe, and then the results beamed into the simulated universe with no regard for the computational rules of the simulation. Maybe an alien dissecting a fellow alien’s head would just find a perfectly featureless crystal with no internal structure, which is observed to inexplicably send nerve impulses to the rest of the entity’s body. Such aliens might invent psychology, but never neuroscience, and even if they speculated about it, it wouldn’t matter – attempts to “simulate” neurons would fail, their workings forever beyond locally accessible physics. Even if they completely mastered their local science, their brains would remain a mystery.
I used the phrase “conscious observers” above. There are versions of anthropics that work for p-zombies, but we’re not p-zombies and we don’t have to use them; we can do anthropics conditioning upon consciousness. Try that, and the simulation argument doesn’t exactly depend on a ground-level universe where further simulations are impossible. It depends on a ground-level universe where further simulations containing conscious observers are impossible.
This changes the scenario a bit. Now people in ground-level simulations can expect arbitrarily complex physics, physics that allow the creation of as many Turing machines as they want, but which can’t possibly explain consciousness. They should be able to master every aspect of the universe around them except consciousness, which try as they might will remain refractory to their simulations. Consciousness will make perfect sense in the physics of the universe above theirs, but the simulators will have excised all consciousness-related rules from the ground-level sim. Try as the simulated scientists might, it’ll remain a mystery.
If Carroll’s deconstruction of the simulation argument is right, then the more trouble we have explaining consciousness, the more that should push us to believe we’re in a ground-level simulation. There’s probably a higher-level version of physics in which consciousness makes sense. Our own consciousness is probably being run in a world that operates on that higher-level law. And we’re stuck in a low-resolution world whose physics doesn’t allow consciousness – because if we weren’t, we’d just keep recursing further until we were.MSNBC's Joy Reid, filling in for Chris Hayes, goes head-to-head with Steve Cortes, a Latino Trump supporter of Donald Trump, for using the term "illegals" to describe illegal immigrants.
Reid was also incredulous that Cortes would use that term, being that he is a Hispanic. Cortes told Reid his parents came to the U.S. legally. She wasn't impressed and lectured Cortes that she is also the daughter of immigrants.
"When it comes to the bedrock principles, I don't disagree with him at all," Cortes defended Trump on Thursday's broadcast of MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes. "Those are twofold. Number one, we have to secure our border. Number two, there can be no citizenship for illegals. You cannot reward criminality."
Reid stopped him right there.
"Hold on a second," the MSNBCer said.
"I'm going to stop you right there. You are Hispanic, Steve. Are you comfortable with that term, illegals? That is a pejorative to a lot of people. Why do you use that term?" Reid asked, not believing a Latino would use such a term.
"You know why, because words matter," Cortes said.
"Yeah, they do," Reid shot back.
"If you do something that is against the law, it's illegal," Cortes reminded Reid. "If you go into a store and you shoplift, you're not an undocumented holder of a good, you're a thief. If you come to the United States against the immigration laws of the United States, you're not undocumented, You're illegal.
"You said that you didn't agree with all the things he said last night. point out two or three of the things that you did not like?" Reid asked.
"Joy, listen, I would have a softer tone on illegals," Cortes suggested.
This time the interview came to a screeching halt.
"Can you do me a favor? Just while you're talking to me, can you not use that terminology?" a very offended Reid asked.
"No, I will not do you that favor," Cortes responded.
"Oh, interesting," a stunned Reid said.
"Because the English language matters," Cortes told Reid. "They're here illegally. We can't get over that. My father came here legally."
"My parents came here into this country as immigrants too, Steve," she said. "My parents came here too, so congratulations on that."
"I'm not going to use code words. That's absurd," Cortes said about substituting 'illegals' for another term.
"You just used a code word," Reid said.Today Meizu launches its new high-end flagship, the PRO 5. It was expected for Meizu to market this device as the MX5 Pro but it seems Meizu has chosen to separate the lineup to give better exposure to the higher-end "PRO" series. We've had a short look at the MX5 announcement earlier this summer, so while keeping that in mind, let's go over the improvements that the PRO 5 brings with itself.
At the heart of the phone we see Samsung's Exynos 7420 SoC. Meizu is one of the rare vendors besides Samsung Electronics to actually employ S.LSI's silicon so this puts the Chinese manufacturer in an interesting position this year as this allows them to have a competitive advantage over other manufacturers who chose other SoC suppliers. As we've seen earlier in the year, we deemed the Exynos 7420 as one of the highlights of this year so the PRO 5 is well served by the big.LITTLE chipset consisting of 4x Cortex A57 at 2.1GHz and 4x Cortex A53's at 1.5GHz. Graphics is provided by a Mali T760MP8 at 770MHz - also a top performer among SoCs this year.
Meizu PRO 5 Specifications SoC Samsung Exynos 7420
4x Cortex A57 @ 2.1GHz +
4x Cortex A53 @ 1.5GHz
Mali T760MP8 @ 770MHz RAM 3 / 4GB LPDDR4-3200 NAND / Storage 32 / 64GB UFS 2.0
+ microSD Display 5.7" 1920x1080 SuperAMOLED
2.5D Gorilla Glass 3 Network 2G / 3G / 4G LTE
FDD-LTE / TD-LTE / TD-SCDMA / WCDMA / GSM
(Chinese Bands) Dimensions 156.7 x 78 x 7.5 mm
168 grams Camera 21.16MP Sony IMX230 sensor F/2.0 Main camera
w/ Laser + PDAF auto-focus
w/ Dedicated Samsung ISP
5MP F/2.0 Front camera Battery 3050mAh OS Android 5.1
with Meizu FlymeOS 5.0 Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n/ac + BT 4.1 + BLE, GPS/GNSS
USB Type C SIM Size nanoSIM + nanoSIM
or
nanoSIM + microSD
Meizu continues the newly introduced usage of AMOLED screens. Similar to the MX4, the PRO5 uses a 1080p Samsung panel, but this time it increases the size to 5.7", increasing the footprint of the device to 156.7 x 78mm. The screen now features 2.5D edges and is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 3. Meizu was able to shave off 0.1mm of the thickness to get to a total of 7.5mm on the new flagship, but it seems the battery slightly lost some capacity in the process as it goes from 3150mAh in the MX5 to 3050mAh in the PRO5.
Storage-wise the device comes with either 32 or 64GB of memory backed by the new generation UFS 2.0 interface. Main memory also varies between 3GB or 4GB depending on the variant. What is new for Meizu is that for the first time the company is employing a microSD card slot that is part of the dual-SIM tray, meaning one can choose to use either two nanoSIMs, or have a combination of a microSD with a nanoSIM. The dual-SIM functionality provides dual-standby.
Meizu doesn't specify the specific bands or what kind of baseband processor is used on the PRO5. Last year we saw the MX4 Pro make unique use of a Marvell Armada baseband so we'll have to wait until the device is launched to find out what made it into this year's unit. It should be mentioned though that for now it seems Meizu limits itself to the Chinese market as the band support for western networks looks to be sparse.
On the camera-side, we now see usage of a new Sony IMX230 sensor. This is the same sensor found on the recently announced Moto X Style and Moto X Play. The sensor is encased in a 6-lens F/2.0 camera module. Interestingly, Meizu advertises usage of a dedicated Samsung ISP that is supposed to improve image quality. The camera is able to record 4K video in HEVC format, which should help reduce file sizes.
Among the usual top-end connectivity features, the phone comes with a new USB Type C connector which should enable it to be future-proof as the industry transitions over to the new standard.
The Meizu PRO5 comes in gold, grey, silver and silver & black colour options in either 3GB/32GB or 4GB/64GB variants priced at respectively￥2799 (US$438, 393€) or ￥3099 (US$485, 435€).
Source: MeizuST. PAUL -- Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) lawmakers in Minnesota agreed on a tax package Thursday that will require smokers--among others--to pay more, reported the Associated Press. The per-pack tax on cigarettes would rise by $1.60.
Minnesota's cigarette tax would jump to $2.83 per pack, rising 30 cents above what Wisconsin charges and going well beyond the rest of the neighboring states. It would bring in $370 million; and tens of millions of dollars would come through higher excise taxes on snuff and cigars, too.
The increase will be "extremely destructive to retailers across the state," Tom Briant, executive director of the National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO), told CSP Daily News.
Meanwhile, some corporate tax preferences will go away. Sales taxes will be imposed on business transactions involving warehousing, electronic equipment repair and commercial maintenance, AP said.
But there will not be any increases to the alcohol tax, as House Democrats had sought.
Governor Mark Dayton(DFL), House Speaker Paul Thissen (DFL) and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk (DFL) said during a news conference Thursday that the agreement will pave the way for the Legislature to pass its budget before a mandatory Monday night adjournment to the session.
And they said the tax increases--a combined $2 billion over the next two years--will plug a $627 million projected deficit and pay for a big jump in education spending and other priority programs.
"We are on the cusp of an important course correction in our state's history," Thissen said.
All three in the state's all-Democratic power alignment made concessions that they said were needed to close the deal.
"This is the linchpin of the session," Bakk said. "Now everything will fall in [place]."
Republicans said Democrats were going too far in their push for higher taxes. Senate Minority Leader David Hann (R) said the taxes targeted at businesses will trickle down the retail chain.
"This idea that it is only going to affect businesses is nonsense. It is ultimately going to affect consumers and everybody that buys anything those businesses support," Hann said.
By Thursday evening, the House and Senate had given final approval to a couple of budget bills, said the news agency.
One was a package of economic development programs that boosts state spending in that area by $90 million. It includes incentives for businesses to add to their payrolls or expand their physical presence in the state.This is not an easy article to write because as a content creator I constantly try to focus on the positive. However, at a business skills boot camp organized by the TMZ at Ryerson University I was encouraged to write down the top 5 mistakes we made while making Circuit Rider. This was just an exercise, but I turned into an article.
After jotting these down in a rapid brainstorming session, my initial hesitation dissipated as I realized all the things that I would do differently the next time around.
It is important to note that the following mistakes are by no means a reflection of the quality of the team that worked on the project, but rather an opinion of what I feel we could have been done differently to yield a better final result.
1.Too much time spent on writing the script and not enough time building and testing what works and what doesn’t.
As we had a solid idea for the project, but we spent a lot of time refining the script where we could have used that time building the mechanics and design of the world. Don’t get me wrong, I feel like having the script was incredibly important but we should have spent way less time writing it and more time working out ideas as we built.
2. Working with team members that weren’t engaged in the project and rather than letting them go when this went noticed, they ultimately left the project at a crucial time and which compounded the work for the rest of the team.
This is a tough one and firing people is never easy, but my advice here is that if you notice this type of behavior then you need to get rid of those individuals as soon as possible. When people behave like this, it’s because they are not interested in the work enough to give you the dedication that is needed to finish it. It’s therefore better for both parties to separate as soon as you notice this, so you don’t get saddled with a ton more work that you already have on your plate.
3. Everyone on the team didn’t have the necessary skills to build the project.
What happens when 40% of the team have the skills to put together the project, it puts a lot of pressure on those individuals to complete it. If something happens and they don’t have time for the project, it can throw the whole thing in disarray. I would argue that everyone should be building assets and everyone should be involved in the programming. If you don’t have this scenario on your team, then the team lead should be responsible for the coding because it will fall on them to finish it if something happens. I say this because I was the team lead on Circuit Rider and I did a lot of asset building, but I didn’t touch the code or the game engine. This was a mistake.
4.Not having everyone on the same page about what the final product would be.
This is a big one as some people wanted it just to be a demo and some wanted it to be a polished experience. It caused a bit of tension between the whole quality vs deadline debate when the issue of the deadline came up. On this everyone needs to be on the same page or it simply doesn’t work.
5.Having a bigger team doesn’t necessarily mean more productivity.
On Circuit Rider we had six people, but the bulk of the work was done by a little more than half. I think we could have either done more with less people or had people take on more work. If they couldn’t take on more work than get rid of them. It may sound harsh but if you want to produce something amazing, you need to work with only the most dedicated people you can.
In closing, I think whole team of Circuit Rider did an amazing job and I am very proud of the final product. That said, sometimes it is good to reflect on the things you felt went wrong so you can look back and be reminded of all the things that went right.
Circuit Rider will be showcased in Los Angeles at VRLA from April 14th-15th, 2017. It has also been submitted to Kaleidoscope VR Showcase Vol. 3 for consideration as well as the Oculus Rift store. This doesn’t mean it will get accepted.
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Thanks for hitting the 💙 if you enjoyed this article. This will tell me to write more of it!There was applause and a sense of relief in Vanuatu's parliament today as Tallis Obed Moses was voted in as Vanuatu's new President.
Mr Moses, who had been a Presbyterian pastor, was sworn in this afternoon in a brief ceremony.
Photo: Dan McGarry - Vanuatu Daily Post
He was one of 16 people put forward for the role and emerged with two/thirds of the vote.
Mr Moses replaces Father Baldwin Lonsdale who died suddenly last month.
Media director of the Vanuatu Daily Post Dan McGarry was at parliament this morning for the vote which he said was a nail-biting affair with the President Tallis Obed Moses only emerging victorious with the very last votes cast.
Photo: Dan McGarry - Vanuatu Daily Post
Mr McGarry said the new president is a man of the cloth who trained in Australia and Papua New Guinea and has served as the moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Vanuatu.
"And he is also widely reviewed as somebody who is of impeccable moral character and I think that ultimately was the decisive factor as people took the legacy of the late president Baldwin Lonsdale into account when they cast their votes."Greenland's glaciers are retreating quickly, and a new study shows in historical terms just how quickly: over the past century, at least twice as fast as any other time in the past 9,500 years. The study also provides new evidence for just how sensitive glaciers are to temperature, showing that they responded to past abrupt cooling and warming periods, some of which might have lasted only decades.
To track how glaciers grew and shrank over time, the scientists extracted sediment cores from a glacier-fed lake that provided the first continuous observation of glacier change in southeastern Greenland. They then compared the results to similar rare cores from Iceland and Canada's Baffin Island for a regional view.
"Two things are happening," said study co-author William D'Andrea, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "One is you have a very gradual decrease in the amount of sunlight hitting high latitudes in the summer. If that were the only thing happening, we would expect these glaciers to very slowly be creeping forward, forward, forward. But then we come along and start burning fossil fuels and adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and glaciers that would still be growing start to melt back because summer temperatures are warmer."
Glaciers are dynamic and heavy. As a glacier moves, it grinds the bedrock beneath, creating silt that the glacier's meltwater washes into the lake below. The larger the glacier, the more bedrock it grinds away. Scientists can take sediment cores from the bottom of glacier-fed lakes to see how much silt and organic material settled over time, along with other indicators of a changing climate. They can then use radiocarbon dating to determine when more or less silt was deposited.
Sediment cores from the glacier-fed Kulusuk Lake allowed the scientists to track changes in two nearby glaciers going back 9,500 years. Before the 20th century, the fastest rate of glacier retreat reflected in the core was about 8,500 years ago, at a time when the Earth's position relative to the sun resulted in more summer sunlight in the Arctic.
"If we compare the rate that these glaciers have retreated in the last hundred years to the rate that they retreated when they disappeared between 8,000 and 7,000 years ago, we see the rate of retreat in the last 100 years was about twice what it was under this naturally forced disappearance," D'Andrea said.
The history captured in the Kulusuk Lake cores shows that a warming period started about 8,500 years ago, when the glacier's erosion rates fell rapidly, suggesting the glacier was getting smaller. Then, about 8,200 years ago, temperatures began to cool rapidly and erosion rates increased again. That cooling period has been well documented by other studies and has been connected with large changes in ocean circulation.
Shortly after that advance, around 8,000 years ago, the glaciers wasted away and may have disappeared entirely -- little erosion appears in the sediment core between 7,000 and 4,000 years ago, according to the study, appearing in the latest issue of the journal Climate of the Past. During the warm period, the core also shows a large increase in organic matter from plants growing in and around the lake.
When the glaciers began growing again, about 4,000 years ago, they experienced a series of growth pulses that reveal their sensitivity to change. The glaciers expanded in bursts, advancing quickly, retreating briefly, and then expanding farther -- until about 100 years ago, according to the study. "This shows that there are internal responses within the climate system that can make glaciers grow and shrink on very short time scales. They're really dynamic systems, which we have not had much evidence for prior to this," D'Andrea said.
The pulses of growth match cooling periods documented in ocean sediment cores and in the continuous cores from Iceland and Baffin Island, suggesting that glaciers have responded in sync across the North Atlantic for at least the past 4,000 years, the authors write.
Understanding how glaciers melt and how ice melted in the past is a critical component to understanding past and future sea level rise and improving risk assessment in the future, said D'Andrea.
The paper's other authors are Nicholas Balascio (lead author), an assistant professor at the College of William & Mary who worked on the study as a postdoctoral researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory; and Raymond Bradley, a professor at the University of Massachusetts.Angry Mica to press for private airport screening option
But an angry U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, immediately vowed he will investigate the decision and seek to reverse it.
U.S. Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole has shut down a program that allowed airports to opt for private companies to perform security screenings of airline passengers, leaving plans by Orlando Sanford International Airport and Orlando International Airport up in the air.
"By no means am I going to take this sitting down," said Mica, who chairs the powerful House Transportation Committee.
Mica co-wrote the 2001 law that created the TSA and the private-company option. He said that he wanted — and expected — that many airports would choose to hire private companies to do passenger screening, rather than have TSA officers do the work.
Mica said Pistole's announcement caught him by surprise, though he had heard rumors it was coming. He charged that the edict is a way for the TSA to preserve its government jobs, including 3,700 administrative positions Mica said the agency has in Washington.
Under the private-screening program, 16 airports, including those in San Francisco, Kansas City, Mo., and Key West, have hired private screeners. The companies operate under all TSA rules and policies and are paid and supervised by the TSA.
Programs at those airports may continue, but the TSA administrator has largely closed the door to any more.
Mica has argued that the TSA is bloated and inefficient, and that private companies provide better customer service while adhering to TSA security standards. Last fall, he sent a letter to 100 major airports encouraging them to consider switching from TSA.
About the same time, the TSA was being fiercely criticized for new policies requiring see-through-clothing screeners or intimate pat-downs of some passengers, though Mica said the timing of his letter was coincidental to the TSA controversy.
On Friday, Pistole announced that the TSA would not approve any new privatization programs unless airports can demonstrate "clear and substantial advantages" will result from the switch. His statement did not provide clear reasons for the decision, other than to say he had concluded there was no clear advantage to using private screeners.
"At this time, TSA does not plan to expand the privatized screening program beyond the 16 airports currently participating," TSA spokesman Jonathan Allen said Monday, though he said the agency would continue to accept applications for privatization.
Locally, Orlando Sanford's board of directors voted in August to seek a private screening company, and Orlando International's board began making inquiries in December.
Diane Crews, vice president of operations at Orlando Sanford International, said the airport will formally apply this week to switch to private screeners.TACOMA, WA— (Stars release) The Tacoma Stars ignited as the club posted an 8-4 opening night victory over the visiting Soles De Sonora on Saturday night at the ShoWare Center before 2,871 fans.
Stars forward Derek Johnson and midfielder Jamael Cox both contributed two goals in the winning effort, while forward Dan Antoniuk opened the year with a trio of assists to help power the offense. Tacoma goalkeeper Danny Waltman chipped in with seven saves on 11 shots.
Sonora struck first with a goal from midfielder Daniel Lopez just under three minutes into the match, spotting the visitors an early 1-0 lead. Johnson and the Stars responded with three minutes left in the opening quarter, sending in the tying goal with an assist from defender Chase Hanson. Sonora would not lead again for the remainder of the night.
Slide show of photos from Tacoma Stars / Wilson Tsoi:
After ever @TacomaStarsSC game…the let kids and adults on the field to get autograps and pictures with players and mascots pic.twitter.com/WcAhb7eWg6 — FelixForever34 ™ ⭐️ (@FelixForever34) October 30, 2016
Forward Joey Gjertsen connected on his first goal of the year midway through the second quarter, giving Tacoma a 2-1 lead that would hold until halftime.
Tacoma raced out to a 4-1 lead with two unanswered goal in the third quarter. Just over two minutes into the second half, Johnson sent home his second goal of the night. Midfielder Joseph Cairel drilled his first score of the year into the net a couple minutes later to extend the lead.
The two clubs combined for seven goals and nine penalties over the final quarter, creating the final margin of 8-4 in favor of the Stars. Cox came alive for two goals in the period, while midfielder Michael Ramos and forward Vince McCluskey registered scores of their own.
Stars Earn 8-4 Victory Over Sonora On Opening Night RECAP: https://t.co/PrC5TuQ38T pic.twitter.com/0LOIjsFaR2 — Tacoma Stars (@TacomaStarsSC) October 30, 2016
It was the first victory over Sonora for Tacoma, after dropping both matches during their inaugural season in the Major Arena Soccer League in 2015-16.
Next up for the Stars is their first road match of the season, a contest against the Turlock Express on Friday, Nov. 4 with a first kick set for 7:05 p.m. PT.
Single game tickets, season ticket packages, group outings, family packs, and suite offerings for the Tacoma Stars 2016-17 season are available now. To purchase, call 1-844-STARS-TIME or visit the Stars online at http://www.tacomastars.com. The most up-to-date news and notes about the Stars can be found by following the Stars on Twitter (@TacomaStarsSC) or liking the team on Facebook.In reading your post, I find myself concerned with your tone – it comes off as decidedly not objective. In a platform like reddit where readers only get one perspective (that of the OP), sometimes OPs frame situations in specific ways to skew responses. Often this is done inadvertently due to strong emotions about the situation, but making sure to provide a subjective/ neutral description of the situation is a concern when seeking advice. Here’s what I am referring to, if you’re interested:
Sister's boyfriend is an aspiring MMA fighter. I think he is a middleweight. He also is a PX90 trainer and fitness coach. Stereotypical "bro jock."
Right off the bat, this sounds like a put down. Maybe bf deserves to be put down, but from your description of him (aspiring MMA fighter, trainer, fitness coach), you haven’t really said anything that deserves a put down yet. Sometimes know-it-alls are annoying and deserved to be taken down a notch, but is there another specific reason that you don’t like him?
Talk turned to mixed martial arts, and my sister's boyfriend starts pontificating and humble bragging about how tough it is, and by extension how tough HE is. He goes on and on about how he is "not a huge guy but can take down anyone," and that he has moves that are impossible to counter. Anyway my husband innocently says that no move is really impossible to counter.
The way that you describe your sister’s boyfriend and your husband in this conversation are completely opposite. You automatically put your husband in a positive light (word innocent) while simultaneously putting your sister’s boyfriend in a negative light (pontificating is a negative term as is humble bragging). This could be a completely accurate description, but without having been there, the descriptions you use make it seem like you are not entirely objective, which calls your descriptions into question.
Further, of course your husband isn’t required to disclose his knowledge of judo, and if the bf was truly being super annoying and said that some moves are “impossible” to counter, then he deserved to be proved wrong. But I’m just curious about why your husband didn’t reveal his own judo experience in a conversation about martial arts. That seems strange to me since it was relevant to the conversation prior to the boyfriend’s comments about some moves being impossible to counter.
You said that your husband doesn’t talk about judo with anyone, which is his choice, but then that information became relevant so your husband clearly decided to share his knowledge of judo. However, the way your husband decided to display his judo expertise is a little concerning to me, because your husband could have come at it a different way. I get that your sister’s boyfriend was probably being annoying and your husband had knowledge that proved the boyfriend wrong, so your husband wanted to prove him wrong. And I don’t think that’s bullying because your husband wasn’t trying to aggressively dominate the guy – it seems like he may have just wanted him to understand that he was wrong. However, your husband could have said something like, “hey, I’m pretty proficient in judo and I happened to know a few counter moves to (whatever move bf was talking about). Are you interested in me showing you?” This sets up a situation where, yes, bf is proven wrong but your husband is coming from a kind place of teaching that might even get your sister’s boyfriend interested in the sport rather than just embarrassed at all the nonsense he talked. I’m not saying your husband absolutely was malicious in not disclosing his judo skills prior to the demonstration but that it is just a concern in your situation that seems to be glossed over.
So, since his jock sensibilities were threatened…
Again, this is kind of a rude/ condescending way of describing your sister’s boyfriend, further putting him in a negative light. Is there a specific reason that you don’t like him? If so, that might be helpful to share in your post because as it stands, you haven’t explained why you don’t like him aside from the know-it-all/ bragging thing. So again, patronizing his athletic interests make your tone come off as not objective.
Sister's boyfriend is totally humiliated and eventually "surrenders." He is humble about it and shakes my husband's hand. Rest of the afternoon seemed to go just fine.
Again, is there a reason you don’t like your sister’s boyfriend? Because his response to being “humiliated” and proven wrong doesn’t seem particularly bad and it doesn’t seem to warrant the negative way in which he is portrayed in this post. Like I said, you may well have valid reasons to not like the guy, but without knowing if those exist/ what they are, it just seems like you don’t like him because he is a jock and was ignorant in what he was saying about martial arts.
I texted my sister back and said that her boyfriend was the one bragging endlessly about what a badass he thinks he is, and out of nowhere challenges my husband to break an "impossible" hold, and so my husband humors him and does exactly that.
Is that actually what happened? Your previous description of the situation doesn’t really reflect that. You said that they were having a conversation about martial arts and that your husband (rightfully) disagreed with something the boyfriend said, so the “challenge” wasn’t exactly “out of nowhere”. Also, your sister’s boyfriend “challenging” your husband has a much different connotation than “offering” to demonstrate an impossible hold, which is how you earlier described it. This again comes off as not objective because your two descriptions of the situation are conflicting.
she's processing it all like an immature ten year old instead of moving on with her job of... Unemployed.
…what does that have to do with this situation? This is another reason your post comes across as skewed – you’re intentionally adding irrelevant information to this post to make your sister look bad as well. If your sister is truly wrong in this situation, then she is wrong regardless of her employment status.
Then she went into a long spiel about how teachers are all corrupt (I'm a teacher too, for history) and just collecting paychecks and doing a lousy job, and how I think that now that I married a foreign person I think I'm exotic now.
I don’t blame you for being pissed about this, and this conversation might be what is coloring your description of this situation in this post.
It seemed like the other guy had a sporting attitude about being beaten, so I don't get why sister is so mad.
Just based on the way you describe her boyfriend in this post, your sister might be mad because you may have been inadvertently rude to him during their visit. Likewise, maybe your husband was rude in other interactions as well. Could that be the case?
I don’t think your husband was being a bully regarding the martial arts conversation/ demonstration, but if you or he were rude to the boyfriend for being a “jock”, an apology to him for that (but not for the martial arts conversation/ demonstration) might be in order.
Sorry – this ended up really long.This is the latest “under construction” map produced by Metro. As you can see, there are five rail projects shown that aren’t on the usual day-to-day rail map: the second phase of the Expo Line, the Gold Line Foothill Extension, the Crenshaw/LAX Line, the Regional Connector and Purple Line Extension of the subway.
The first two of those are under construction while utility relocations are underway on the other three.
It’s pretty impressive, given that prior to July 1990 — when the Blue Line opened — there was no Metro Rail. Check out this interactive map that shows how the system has grown in the past 23 years.
Metro Rail today has 87 miles of track and 80 stations and, of course, the system is set to expand beyond what’s shown above when other Measure R second and third decade projects are considered: the Eastside Gold Line Extension, the South Bay Green Line Extension, the Airport Metro Connector, the East San Fernando Valley Transit Corridor, the West Santa Ana Branch Corridor and the Sepulveda Pass Transit Corridor.
Like this: Like Loading...Guillermo del Toro on At The Mountains of Madness, “It would be fantastic to do it!”
So we’re back to the on then off again story of del Toro doing At the Mountains of Madness…. arrrg just make it! Anyway he’s just done an AMA on Reddit, I was too late to the party but others did get there to ask him about the project and here is his reply:
If you can’t see the image, then this is what he said:
It would be fantastic to do it! I promise that if we don’t get to do it for some reason, I will do my best to have Universal allow us to publish the book with all the making of, the behind the scenes art that we generated, because it is staggeringly beautiful. But any Lovecraft movie I could do, I would love – I love many of his tales, so if it’s not Mountains, I hopefully can do one day one of his smaller short stories.
So hope is yet alive…
Some related links:Donald Trump renewed his complaints on Monday about fire marshals limiting the size of his rally crowds, telling reporters in Columbus, Ohio that thousands of fans were kept out of the city's convention center 'purely for political reasons.'
The local fire marshal disagreed, telling reporters that the event was always to be limited to 1,000 audience members – something he insisted Trump's own staff knew ahead of time.
'We've had thousands of people outside. Thousands,' Trump told pool reporters as he entered the Greater Columbus Convention Center.
'They were turned away by – for political reasons – purely for political reasons.'
SCROLL DOWN FOR VIDEO
FURIOUS: Donald Trump blasted a fire marshal in Columbus, Ohio on Monday after his crowd size was limited 'purely for political reasons'
WIDE OPEN SPACES: The cavernous exhibit hall Trump's campaign rented inside the Greater Columbus Convention Center had large empty spaces when people outside were turned away
ONLY HALF: A blue curtain cut the hall in half, leaving room for thousands more Trump fans inside
ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Crowds stood in line for hours, only to be told they couldn't enter
'They said in this massive building you're not allowed to have any more than a thousand people. And that's nonsense,' Trump vented.
'We could've had four, five, six thousand people. They’ve all been turned away.'
'It's a disgrace,' he added.
'Look at the size of this place!' he said as he began his town hall meeting.
'Is the mayor a Democrat? Is he a Democrat over here? That's what I heard. He ought to be ashamed of himself.'
Columbus Division of Fire Battalion Chief Stave Martin, the agency's public information officer, said in a statement that cutting the crowd off at 1,000 people 'was the plan all along.'
'We feel disappointed that Mr. Trump wasn't aware of how that number was reached and that |
the tension between Holyrood and Westminster that any kind of interaction is jumped on or avoided. On the one hand the Scots are saying "come up here and discuss the issue, you scaredy-cats" and on the other are just as quick to snap back "who do you think you are coming up here and telling us what to do?"
Who knows what the future is for grassroots political movements in Scotland and the rest of the UK. This will be defined by the platform for power-management and change. Power is unfortunately in the hands of big business and it must be managed well by governments. There are currently alas no "alliances", no significant political and global movements to spearhead the changes we know are needed for today's global problems. The Scandinavian model is often cited as a guiding light of enlightened social policies, sustainable growth and justice. Scotland aspires to this and hopes to be as good.
Distanced from the mindlessness of the City of London, the inertia of Westminster and the class-obsession of England, Scotland can do well. With policies financed by good resources within a small, well-run country with strong ideas of community, with a less class-driven, less capital-driven society the future bodes well for Scotland. Who knows, it might just create a Scottish model others will want to copy.
It's not all negative towards Scotland. The English writer, political activist and singer, Billy Bragg's recent article in The Herald writes about the relevance of Scottish independence to England. In a rare, positive article by a relatively mainstream writer, Bragg identified his ambitions with and hopes of independence and the political reform it promises, or at least the debate in Scotland discusses, and hopes it might brush off on England.
However, he is in the minority. The cause and effect of independence is yet to be understood in much of the rest of the UK and especially England. This is at their own peril.
Many English, Welsh and Northern Irish are naturally asking why they are not involved or have a say in such big an issue. This may be where the rest of the UK, and more importantly, Westminster does come into the equation. Billy Bragg is right in saying that any reaction to a system that refuses to change will force people away. In 2011 the UK electorate (not just English votes) chose to turn down the biggest major change proposed for Westminster in decades – to change from the antiquated first-past-the-post system to the Alternative Vote system – a similar system currently in use in the Scottish parliament (and across Europe).
The electorate (surprisingly including the Scots) chose instead to keep the status quo at Westminster and so abandoning any chance of political reform for the UK as a whole. By refusing to change itself, the UK is left with no option but to have the change come to it. And now that possibility is looming, via Scotland, the rest of the UK is looking increasingly shaky and ill-prepared.
Who knows what the referendum will bring, current polls show a narrowing No vote. Many believe the rise in SNP support is not backed by an increased desire for independence. Only the referendum will tell.
In the meantime, the ball is rolling. Scotland is changing, the electorate are moving. The rest of the UK needs to wake up and understand the changes and possibly how it is to react to a new kingdom, without Scotland.
If this happens they will have a similar debate and calls for change. They will need to decide not only their own shape but how they build an alliance with Scotland under new terms. They must find a way to reshape their future in a positive and creative way and keep Scotland close. They will also need to learn from past mistakes and be able to debate constructively with other parts of the rest of the UK when they find a voice and appetite for separation.
The same old will no longer feel right and so will not do. Though how Westminster can be persuaded to do such things well, constructively and relinquish central power is a right-royal biggie.
Gary Hayes has worked as a writer, editor, researcher and campaigner for social issues, such as drug law reform in London, and is a Scot who now lives and runs a successful business in ScotlandI was recently reminded of how misunderstood the ideas of “perfect love and trust” are within our Witching communities. Perhaps if we all came to understand the power of this social contract, we wouldn’t have so much strife among us. <sigh>
Hint: Perfect, or “unconditional,” Divine love doesn’t mean unconditional relationships. It means I acknowledge your sovereign right to pursue happiness as you see fit, and I treat you with equal dignity all incarnate spirits deserve, even when you are acting like a loathsome jerk. Perfect, or “Unconditional,” Trust means that I will be a trustworthy person toward you, even when I see you breaking that trust. Neither, of these things means I am obligated to be your “friend.” What it does mean, is that I will not become your enemy.
In my own classroom and coven, “perfect love and trust” are words invoked so often, and with such depth of meaning and and breadth of application, that I’m sure they are THE reason that we’ve made it a whole six years, and counting. Today we have this thriving, healthy, balanced group of exceptional people doing the Great Work with such grace; I am bursting with love and pride for them all. Unfortunately, not everyone who’s come through our program left as satisfied or as successful as others.
This all come up, because I just received a nasty-gram full of personal insults about my failure as a teacher, leader, and friend. I’d like to tell you that this is the first angry or hateful message I’ve ever received from a former student. I’d like to say my heart no longer breaks when they arrive; that I don’t take these punches directly in the solar plexus and am sent into a tail-spin of self-scrutiny and mourning over lost love.
What can I say? I’m a Piscean, and I take these critiques very seriously.
These are the moments I am invited to “check in” with myself and my Divine guides. I open up to the counsel of the other folks in our circle. How often have we asked of each other, “In this situation, am I the one being the asshole? How can we best respond with perfect love and trust?” They help me keep things in perspective, being honest with me. THIS is why I love being in a coven; they hold up the mirror, and make sure I do not go off the rails. I think I offer the same service to them when its their difficult turn. That is part of “perfect love and trust.”
Yes, when I am confronted in this way my temper flares and my ego aches from the bruising… I’m a human being and those emotions are pretty normal. However, how I respond to these challenges is what defines me as a witch.
Your Priestess is Not Your Friend
In these past almost seven years teaching many dozens of seekers, I feel that I failed this one particular student the most, because I tried being a friend first. Back when she came through the program I was still apologetic about being a priestess. I failed to rise into the role that was needed of me, and meet the need at hand. Yet, that failure proved to be my greatest instructor.
I’ve learned some very hard lessons since I took up this work: to even dare to fill this sacred position, you cannot pussy-foot around trying to be their “friend” first. What a seeker needs more than friends is a divine mediator, and that is a rare find. A Priest or Priestess is of greatest value while standing firm on their principles, maintaining the long-vision, being the harsh taskmaster and pointing the discriminating finger at that elephant in the room.
There be Dragons…
To help another witch take full possession of their own sovereignty, to conquer their own dragons of fear, to achieve both grace and empowerment through a wellness on all levels, means that at some point the seeker must come to terms with their state of being at the beginning. Sometimes this requires they accept how unwell they are; mentally, emotionally, physically or spiritually. They won’t like that much, but you must identify point “A” if you are ever going to chart a course to arrive at point “B.
On the first day you open up your classroom, you will most likely open your heart to folks who are socially ostracized, mentally traumatized, emotionally wounded, poisoned and broken bodied; they may be spiritually starved and desperate. They will no doubt come in and take a seat, because that is what our modern society renders of our people; our deeply-feeling, intuitive, differently-aware people of this suffering earth that mundane society just LOVES to try and squash into it’s unnatural little boxes. That is how I came to the Craft, and I’m still in process of healing.
Following the path of least resistance is easy. Our people don’t take that path. Igniting the Witchflame, as they say, begins with saying NO to all that mundane bullshit, and finding the courage to show up in that classroom. So, these seekers already have tackled a huge hurtle; they want to know a new way because clearly the old way has failed them. Then there you are…sitting in that teacher chair with your burning incense, and athame glinting in the candle light, with that glamour of wisdom and attainment they so desire.
I’m told by strangers ALL THE TIME that I am intimidating. Good. If you know one priestess of the Craft in your life and it terrified you, I’m proud to play that role. But if they come into my circle, and stand beside me at the crossroads, know me any time at all, they’ll soon discover I’m a big goofball who licked her wounds, did the work, and learned all these hard lessons the stupid way, and so will they.
Well…hopefully with less stupidity than I did, because we are there to help each other. But in the beginning, seekers may put you on a pedestal you never asked for, and inevitably you must fall in their esteem. Just accept this as part of the job description. When it happens, it isn’t about you, it’s never been about you; this adjustment of perspective just shows how far they’ve progressed. It may look like disrespect, but its actually a very good sign when they realize you are just a human being same as they are.
You can’t worry about whether they’ll like you or not while you ask them to own their shadows, release their addictions and excuses, internalize the locus of control they so desperately want to project onto…well, anything else. Eventually, they will realize that you aren’t going to “save them” and they have to heal themselves and that will feel like a nightmare.
Not everyone is ready for this work; not everyone has what it will takes to be successful; not everyone is sane enough to not blow themselves up (or is it crazy enough to attempt it?) and it is your job to show the necessary discretion so that the ill-prepared are not handed the keys to the very arsenal they would use to destroy themselves, or others.
Sometimes the Answer is No
In other words, sometimes the way we show “perfect love” is by saying, “No, witchcraft training with this group is not appropriate or beneficial for you, or us, at this time.” Or, “You have proven yourself untrustworthy, and until you can understand why your behavior is harmful, forgive and heal yourself, I release you in peace.”
I wouldn’t expect to remain very popular among those whom are asked to leave your class, coven or life. No one likes a break-up, and the strong one who stands up to a toxic person and says “I will not let you harm me any further” will be the one recounted as the bad guy in that on-going saga they are living called “everything bad that happens to me is someone else’s fault.”
Moreover, if you are worried about what that might do to your reputation as a teacher in the wider witching world, know this: be highly suspicious of any instructor who hasn’t pissed off a few folks in their day. If they don’t have the integrity to turn someone away, and deny advancement to the ill-prepared, then their motives can’t be trusted.
You Can Lead a Witch to Circle, but you Can’t Make Them Coven
The students who do make it through the long dark night of the soul to arrive at the gates of their initiation will likely resent you at least a little bit before they reach the light. The Sojourner Tradition is self-initiatory, but I’ve now learned that if I don’t have FULL confidence in their preparation and responsibility, I cannot even bear witness to those rites. “Speak now or forever hold your peace.”
When I do stand before the gods and vouchsafe their entry, and once they jump that besom, I embrace them on the other side of this hedge as my sister or brother witch, equals in sovereignty. I release all expectation or hint of authority over them, just as they must release me. What they do with what I’ve taught them is now entirely their responsibility. If they strike out on their own, or petition to stay and join our coven, neither choice is about me or my ego. By their own free will they stay or go, it is all with my love. That is the hard deal with sovereignty. Like a mama heron, I pour everything I have into all those within my rookery, but then they must leave the nest and fly.
Remember, that you can lead a witch to circle, but you can’t make them coven. The attrition rate of my program is un-apologetically steep. Each year about twenty seekers begin, and we might have eight remaining after their “year” of forty-eight classes is complete. Ask any of our coven’s initiates how they felt about their dedicant year and a majority will say, “it was the hardest, most excruciating year of my life, and I’m so very glad I did this for myself; I’m a much better person today.” This is how you become known in your community for having such “high quality” pagans; we do the work of self-improvement, strive to live up to very high ideals, and hold each other to a high standard.
“Keep pure your highest ideals; strive ever towards it. Let naught stop you nor turn you aside.” Charge of the Goddess, Doreen Valiente
A Priestess’ Plea
To those teachers of the Craft out there, PLEASE keep doing this work. Don’t let these difficult aspects of the job “turn you aside.” I almost quit many times back in my early days when I was faced with my failures. I am so grateful that my own guides insisted that I soldier on. Stand firm on your principles and you will be known for your integrity by all those that “get it,” and the rest will hopefully grow to understand it eventually by observing your good example.
As our group struggled through our early evolution together, we slowly formulated our ground rules for how we would coven together and they emerged as The Thealogy of Perfection, and The Four Rules of Witchcraft. Follow the Link below, and I’ll share some from our teaching materials on those subjects; I hope that by doing so they will enrich your group, too.
Blessings,
~Heron
Click the image below to continue to the next installment:New York’s 2016 primary election was rife with rumors, due in part because New York’s primaries are closed, and also because an early change-of-party deadline had already created a good deal of confusion in an already complicated system. One claim that emerged from the rumors warned Bernie Sanders voters not to wear shirts or hats with his name on them to polling places:
Anybody voting for Bernie in New York, *please* google the phrase “passive electioneering.” New York is one of six states that has laws against passive electioneering. While it’s not always enforced, wearing Bernie pins/stickers/hats/shirts will give you trouble once you go to vote. At best, you’ll just be asked to remove the item, but at worst you could be barred from entering your polling place. Wear literally ANYTHING ELSE.
It is true that New York State voting laws contain a provision concerning “passive electioneering“, and rumors about voter suppression due to such laws circulated in 2008 as well. However, there is no reason that enforcement of it would affect only those who were casting ballots for any particular candidate.
At the same time, New York State’s Board of Elections was inundated with calls from worried voters about being turned away on a technicality. In a 2008 article, spokesman Bob Brehm was one of several parties who spoke to the Huffington Post about rumors concerning that law:
“No one will be thrown in jail over a shirt at the polls,” said state Board of Elections spokesman Bob Brehm, whose office has been bombarded by calls and emails from worried voters. But Brehm noted that anyone wearing a campaign button or T-shirt will be asked to remove the item. Jason Weingartner, executive director of the New York Republican County Committee, said the law is a good one – as long as it’s consistently applied. “It doesn’t put undue pressure on individual voters who are exercising their constitutional rights,” he said. City Councilman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) agreed, but added that in his experience the law “isn’t as strictly enforced as it should be.” Palyn Hung, a NYCLU staff attorney, said her group is including warnings about the law on its voters’ rights cards. “We’re not saying you’re absolutely prohibited (from wearing campaign paraphernalia), but we’re advising people that they might not be allowed to go in” to the polls, she said.
By law, no form of electioneering (passive or otherwise) can occur within 100 feet of a polling place:
While the polls are open no person shall do any electioneering within the polling place, or in any public street, within a one hundred foot radial measured from the entrances designated by the inspectors of election, to such polling place or within such distance in any place in a public manner; and no political banner, button, poster or placard shall be allowed in or upon the polling place or within such one hundred foot radial.
We contacted the Suffolk County Board of Elections to ask whether voters would be denied the right to participate in the state’s primary if they wore a shirt supporting any particular candidate. They told us that in a worst-case scenario, the voter would be asked to turn the shirt inside out, but would still be able to vote without interruption otherwise.
We asked about another rumor, specifically whether it was true that in some districts, polls would be opening at noon rather than 6 in the morning (which would prevent many from casting ballots before work). The Board of Elections worker said that the rumor was false for all of Long Island, and that all polling places in Nassau and Suffolk Counties were opening at 6am.
It is true, however, that polling hours are shorter for primaries than general elections in some regions of the state:
It is a certainty of Primary Day, just as some dejected voters will call their elections boards demanding to know why their polling station hours were changed only to be told that, in fact, they weren’t. Unlike for general elections, when polls are open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. everywhere in New York, state law cuts short voting times in primary elections by six hours in upstate, central and much of western New York, where polls are open from 12 to 9 p.m. Exceptions are New York City, and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Erie, where polls open at 6 a.m. and close at 9 p.m. like they do for all elections everywhere.
Despite rumors to the contrary, the shorter hours were not a new attempt at suppressing votes. This particular primary election clause has been in place in New York state for decades [PDF]:
Polls shall be open for voting during the following hours: a primary election from twelve o’clock noon until nine o’clock in the evening, except in the city of New York and the counties of Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, Putnam and Erie, and in such city or county from six o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock in the evening; the general election from six o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock in the evening; a special election called by the governor pursuant to the public officers law, and, except as otherwise provided by law, every other election, from six o’clock in the morning until nine o’clock in the evening.
According to that law, the noon provision was in effect as early as 1976. A challenge to the law in 1982 was initially successful, but overturned on appeal.
There were grains of truth to the rumors circulating among voters ahead of New York’s primaries. Voters were not allowed to engage in “passive electioneering” via shirts, hats, or buttons within 100 feet of a polling place on election Day. However, no one would lose the right to vote, and the law was typically described as “rarely enforced.” A voter might be asked to turn their shirt inside out or leave a hat in the car, but would not be denied at the voting booth. Also, it was false that any counties had primary hours cut; the law dictating a shorter voting window throughout the state of New York was in effect before 1982, and had nothing to do with the 2016 primaries.26-year-old Emma Fillipoff disappears from the streets of Victoria in 2012 and has never been seen since. Was it murder, suicide -- or did she want to hide? In “Finding Emma” host Mark Kelley follows a mother’s determined journey to look for her daughter – and looks at how hard it is to find many of 60,000 people who are reported missing every year in Canada.
Using exclusive surveillance footage taken only hours before she disappeared, the fifth estate speaks to police, friends and family to piece together the story of Emma Fillipoff. With the family’s blessing, the fifth estate shares excerpts of Emma’s hard drive – thousands of pages of diary entries, poems and messages – to a special team of five expert criminal investigators, including an active homicide police officer, a forensic psychologist and a criminologist who pore over the evidence.
Since May the fifth estate also launched a social media “Finding Emma” campaign of Twitter and Facebook and on national television – and in this week’s program, Kelley tracks down many of the tantalizing clues.When you send a letter to the president, it first passes through The Office of Presidential Correspondence, founded under President McKinley in 1897 to help his administration address the roughly 100 letters arriving for him per day. By the time Herbert Hoover was president, the office would receive around 800 letters daily. The current President of the United States gets tens of thousands of letters, parcels, and emails every day.
Those who write in know that the president himself will most likely not see their message. Many of their letters start with phrases like, “I know no one will read this.” Although someone does read those letters. And sometimes that person is Fiona Reeves, Director of Presidential Correspondence at the White House. She and a group of 45 staffers, 35 interns, and 300 rotating volunteers read thousands of letters sent to Barack Obama, who has specifically requested to receive ten letters to read every night.
“These letters, I think, do more to keep me in touch with what’s going on around the country than just about anything else,” says the president. “Some of them are funny. Some of them are angry. A lot of them are sad or frustrated about their current situation.” Many people reach out about their employment situation or concerns about big political, social, and environmental issues such as gun violence or climate change.
Before letters arrive at the Office of Presidential Correspondence, the Secret Service opens and inspects them. After being screened, paper letters are clipped to the envelopes they arrived in. Then it is up to the staff and interns and volunteers to dig through the letters and emails and figure out which ones to pass up the chain to Reeves, who personally reads around 300 per day.
In reviewing these letters, Reeves and her team are looking for a range of opinions and styles that will express what Americans are thinking about. “We want to give him mail…that is geographically diverse,” she explains. “We also look for different writing styles and different levels of writing and ways of communicating.”
The office also considers where the president will be traveling in the coming weeks and what issues he’ll be discussing. Reading letters from these places and about local topics “make[s] him better equipped to spend time in that community or to discuss an issue that he doesn’t have a personal perspective on … [it is] sort of a way of giving him more advisers.”
Reeves and her staff also take a “Random Daily Sample” of commonly-used terms and oft-cited issues found in the letters and emails which reflect what the American people are concerned about. These findings are synthesized and put into graphs and are accessible to staff throughout the White House.
After Reeves chooses the ten letters for the president, she hands them off to someone who scans them, then passes them to the person who puts together Obama’s nightly briefing book.
Unlike almost everything else that reaches the president, these letters have not been fact-checked or committee-reviewed. And because these letters are so direct and unfiltered, many of them are quite personal.
“Our office deals a lot in emotion and empathy,” says Reeves, “because we are absorbing so much of what people hope and fear.” People write things like, “I’m staying up late at night because I can’t stop thinking about this,” or share something about where they are and what their lives are like. Many recent letters feature phrases like, “I’ve been meaning to write this for seven years,” or, “here’s what I’ve been meaning to tell you,” to reflect on Obama’s presidency as it winds down.
The letters aren’t just sad or serious. The Office of Presidential Correspondence receives a number of sweet and funny letters as well. A high school student running for class president wrote in looking for speech-writing advice. And a nine-year-old girl asked President Obama how to make friends. In both of these cases, President Obama actually wrote back.
President Obama often responds to the ten letters. Most of the time he jots down notes in the margins about how to respond so that his staff writers can elaborate an official response. “And often his margin notes are so extensive, he’s practically responding to the letter himself,” says Reeves. “We end up serving more as typists than writers.”
The ten letters President Obama reads a night are more than just personal missives. They go on to shape White House policies and presidential pursuits, and they touch the lives of those tasked with reading through and curating them.
The White House is keeping their “Contact Us” form open through the last day of the Administration, January 19th 2017. Even if you write a letter on that final date, it may still reach Obama. He will be receiving ten letters on his last night in the oval office.
After that, mail for Obama will be handed over to the Former President’s Office or the President’s Library and Foundation.
When the next President takes office, mail that arrived for them prior to January 20th will be waiting for them and the new staff of the Office of Presidential Correspondence.
A version of this piece originally aired on Slate’s Working podcast as part of a series on White House jobs produced by Jacob Brogan and Mickey Capper.Related Products
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Tesla, which has generated much interest among fans of cars and technology, recently started shipping a two-seat electric sports car in limited quantities. Last year it hired Henrik Fisker, a Danish-born designer who is known for his work on high-end exotic sports cars, to do the body design for a four-seat sedan, code-named White Star.
The Tesla lawsuit contends that Mr. Fisker and his chief operating officer, Bernhard Koehler, doing business under the name Fisker Coachbuild, fraudulently agreed to take on Tesla’s $875,000 design contract to gain access to confidential design information and trade secrets, then announced a competing vehicle. Last fall Mr. Fisker founded Fisker Automotive, which is backed by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.
The quarrel sheds a light on the insular world of the Valley’s investors in environmentally friendly technologies. Sergey Brin and Larry Page, whose Google search engine was originally backed by Kleiner Perkins, were both early Tesla investors.
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Both the planned Tesla sedan and Mr. Fisker’s recently announced Karma are meant to be hybrid cars using a small gas engine to power a generator that charges a battery, which in turn powers an electric motor. The design, known as a serial hybrid, is thought to greatly extend the range and efficiency of hybrid vehicles.
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The Tesla lawsuit states that before doing the design work for Tesla, Mr. Fisker had no experience with hybrid technology. It says that he did substandard work for Tesla, essentially sabotaging it, and then used the revenue from the design contract to develop his company’s car.I’ll straight-up admit it. I’ve been procrastinating on my big Tamiya F4U-1 Corsair. Oh, sure, part of it’s been working on other builds, but a bigger part has been sheer anxiety over how I’m going to paint the thing.
The problem is pretty basic, really. I have a pretty reliable painting process that puts a lot of variation into potentially monochrome schemes – a must for a worn, faded, battered Marine Corsair serving in the South Pacific. I also have a need to introduce some fairly aggressive chipping and worn paint effects – a need that my black-basing process doesn’t really make provisions for.
I knew hairspray or some other kind of chipping solution would play into the answer, but how, specifically?
I decided to do a little experimentation to sort that out.
The Goal
The goal here is simple. Preserve my Black Basing technique, and incorporate chipping to show both primer and bare metal beneath.
Step 1: Prep for Alclad
To carry out my experiments, I pulled out a scrap fuselage that I’ve been using as a paint mule for a while now and gave a portion of it a nice coat of Gunze Mr. Surfacer 1500. Now, this isn’t the ideal base for Alclad, and if I were building a bare metal aircraft, I’d opt to put it over a gloss black. But we’re dealing with chipping and bits of metal showing through, so who cares.
There, a nice, good enough base to work from!
Step 2: Bare Metal!
With the base in place, it’s time for some bare metal. I opted for Alclad Aluminum, mainly for durability, but any metalizer will work including Gunze Super Metallics, Tamiya AS-12 Bare Metal Silver, and so on.
Step 3: Hairspray
Once the metalizer is set, cover it with a coat or two of hairspray or the other chipping medium of your preference. I use cheap stuff I bought at Target, but I’ve got some AK Interactive stuff and it works rather well, too. It all depends if you want universal or targeted chipping, I think. Hairspray is more a “bomb it on” affair.
With hairspray, give the surface 2-4 quick, passing coats. The more coats, the easier it’ll melt and chip, so go for more if you want to expose a lot of bare metal.
NOTE: Hairspray/chipping fluid application is still, to me, the most opaque part of this process. It’s hard to truly tell how much or how little to use. I recommend testing a few different application methods and, of course, refining over time based on what works for you.
Step 4: Spray Your Top Color
Once the hairspray sets (read: quickly), go ahead and spray your top color. Remember that this chipping technique more or less requires an acrylic paint to work. Again, it doesn’t hurt to test the process on scrap before committing to an actual build.
On my Corsair, I want the primer showing through the worn paint, as well as the bare metal. And reference photos indicate that the exterior skin of the F4U-1 was primed in zinc chromate yellow, not the salmon-tinged color applied to the interior surfaces. Tamiya just happens to make a reasonably good match for chromate yellow – XF-4 Yellow Green.
I opted for light, sporadic coverage. The surface is going to be chipped anyway, and then covered with more paint. So no need to get all perfectionist here.
Step 5: Chip It!
Chipping seems to be one of those techniques that causes a lot of freak-out among modelers. But really, it’s not that bad. I swear.
It helps to understand the underlying mechanism. Hairspray is water-soluble, even after it’s dry. This is ostensibly so people can wash it out of their hair with ease. In modeling terms, it means you can create a paint foundation that you can easily undermine if you choose to.
The actually chip paint, all you need to do is take a brush and some water. Get the brush wet, wet the paint surface, and start “sweeping”. Soon enough, the paint will begin to chip as the water absorbs into the paint and melts the hairspray underneath. You can use a big brush or a small brush. Stiff or soft. You can even use sponges and toothpicks and steel wool.
Beyond that, it’s really an exercise in control and restraint. As TankArt author and amazing modeler Michael Rinaldi says, “you can never have a chip that’s too small”. Or something like that. I’m probably paraphrasing. It’s very easy to overdo it, and half of learning the technique is learning when to stop.
For my experiment, I took the opportunity to play around with a few different techniques. Most of it will be buried, so there’s no harm in mucking about in the name of experience.
Step 6: To the Test
Single-layer chipping is pretty straightforward. But the thrust of this experiment was to sort out multi-layer chipping. So at this point, the test surface got split into three areas.
AFT: The aft portion of the test surface received an additional coat of hairspray on top of the XF-4 Yellow Green.
MID: The middle portion received a sealing clear coat of Gunze Semi-Gloss, and then a coat of hairspray.
FORWARD: The very forward portion received a sealing clear coat, and no hairspray. In TankArt 3, Rinaldi talks about another technique for paint-wearing that involves using a Windex-water solution to “thin” paint down in a realistic way. Call me curious.
Step 7: Back to Black
FINALLY, we’re back to a good black base to paint from. Given chipping’s acrylic requirement, I used Tamiya X-18 Semi-Gloss Black this time around.
Step 8: Time for the Blues
My Corsair is going to be getting the USN Blue Grey treatment, but for the purposes of this experiment, I opted to be lazy and use XF-18 Medium Blue as my stand-in. Seeing as it will make up something like 80% of my Blue Grey mix, it’ll do. This was airbrushed on in a quick-and-dirty version of my black-basing technique.
Step 9: Moment of Truth
Once the blue had a few minutes to set up, I started chipping. Once thing I found was that the chipping was a lot finer this time around, with fewer giant flakes pulling loose. I don’t know if this is due to the two layers of paint, or due to different hairspray application or what. Over time I’m hoping to get a better feel for the cause/effect relationship.
I think the results speak for themselves, but in case not:
AFT: I’ve experienced it in the past, but this was pretty definitive proof that you absolutely need to seal a color you’ve chipped if you plan to chip another color on top of it. While the chipping aft came off rather well, the XF-4 Yellow Green came off as well.
MID: Just about perfect. The lacquer clear coat created a great seal that protected the XF-4 and allowed it to show through the chipping. Additionally, there was not a single instance of the blue chipping away while leaving the black behind.
FORWARD: Total failure, for now. The water/Windex solution did nothing at first. Then a stronger, Windex-leaning solution ate right through the blue, black, clear coat and XF-4 all the way down to the Alclad.
So there you have it. For multi-layer chipping, be sure to use a non-acrylic clear coat to seal between layers. Now…on to the Corsair!Lightning Dogs: The Official Paw’dcast :: Episode 8 :: Home Sweet Homeworld – Part 1
Posted by NerdyShow on November 14, 2016
Ride with The Lightning Dogs: canines from another world; stranded on a post-apocalyptic Earth. It’s a crazy idea fueled by our favorite 80s pop culture and we’ve been recording our development of it since the moment lightning struck. Join us on our quest to build this world and launch it as an animated series.
Characters are shaped by the world in which they’re forged. So it should be no surprise that when we attempted to cement the origin stories of The Lightning Dogs, |
try to rationalize decisions or justify opinions. Why do you love me? Why did you buy that outfit? Why did you choose that career?
We might add to that list of questions. Here's one for Ben Bernanke — why did you create another bubble in the stock market which made the rich richer?
At the extreme, some experts argue that we can never be sure about what is actually real and so must confabulate all the time to to try to make sense of the world around us... The intriguing possibility is that we simply do not have access to all of the unconscious information on which we base our decisions, so we create fictions upon which to rationalize them, says neuroscientist Morten Kringelbach.
Intriguing possibility? And now let's observe flatland in action (congruent outputs).
That may well be a good thing, he adds. If we were aware of how we made every choice we would never get anything done — we cannot hold that much information in our consciousness. Wilson backs up this idea with some numbers: he says our senses may take in more than 11 million pieces of information each second, whereas even the most liberal estimates suggest that we are conscious of just 40 of these.
We are aware of at most 40 pieces of information out of 11 million. And what might we conclude from that?
Nevertheless it is an unsettling thought that perhaps all our conscious mind ever does is dream up stories in an attempt to make sense of our world. “The possibility is left open that in the most extreme case all of the people may confabulate [i.e., make stuff up] all of the time,” says philosopher Lars Hall.
While I am not claiming that humans confabulate all the time, I am indeed claiming that humans routinely confabulate when they rationalize/justify/defend/etc. congruent outputs as defined above (review the various modes of filtering). In fact, William Hirstein, the author of Brain Fiction, could not accept his own depressing conclusions about confabulation in every day life. That's another congruent output.
The flatland model is not meant to apply to anything that may be said to lie properly outside the domain of instinctual behaviors (including filtering). For example, this view does not apply to what consciousness researchers call qualia (feeling pain, seeing colors, etc.). It does not apply to emotional sensory states, although these too are no doubt instinctually-based. I am also agnostic about the behavior of the honest plumber who is fixing your leaking water pipe. I am not agnostic about the fate of the Earth's non-human primates. Here's another reminder about what we're talking about (Vox, January 23, 2017).
Primates are our closest relatives on Earth. If we can understand them better, we can understand ourselves. Here’s how Carl Zimmer at the New York Times explains it: The first primates evolved roughly 80 million years ago, and then split into the living lineages over millions of years. By comparing our biology to those of other primates, we have learned about the evolution of our brains, our vision and our vulnerability to diseases. When we lose the primates, we lose a bit of ourselves.
Why should humans save primate species they are driving to extinction? Because if we lose them, we lose a bit of ourselves. In the flatland model, this kind of response is a congruent output born of instinctual anthropocentrism. Humans are not aware and can not be aware of what drives this kind of typical human-centered response. Clearly humans do not know their own minds. Necessarily, the workings of the physical brain are opaque to self-awareness (the contents of consciousness).
My view is thus similar to and has been influenced by the hypothesis of philosopher Peter Carruthers, the author of Opacity Of Mind (Oxford, 2011). Carrthers' ISA theory was described by Keith Frankish in Whatever you think, you don’t necessarily know your own mind (Aeon, May 27, 2016).
... contemporary philosopher Peter Carruthers [argues] that our beliefs about our own thoughts and decisions are the product of self-interpretation and are often mistaken. Evidence for this comes from experimental work in social psychology. It is well established that people sometimes think they have beliefs that they don’t really have... [see the article] Building on such evidence, Carruthers makes a powerful case for an interpretive view of self-knowledge, set out in his book The Opacity of Mind (2011). The case starts with the claim that humans (and other primates) have a dedicated mental subsystem for understanding other people’s minds, which swiftly and unconsciously generates beliefs about what others think and feel, based on observations of their behavour. (Evidence for such a ‘mindreading’ system comes from a variety of sources, including the rapidity with which infants develop an understanding of people around them.) Carruthers argues that this same system is responsible for our knowledge of our own minds. Humans did not develop a second, inward-looking mindreading system (an inner sense); rather, they gained self-knowledge by directing the outward-looking system upon themselves. And because the system is outward-looking, it has access only to sensory inputs and must draw its conclusions from them alone. (Since it has direct access to sensory states, our knowledge of what we are experiencing is not interpretative.)
This theory makes sense, especially with respect to the instinctually driven behaviors we're interested in. This theory has some "startling" but unsurprising consequences (emphasis added).
The ISA theory has some startling consequences. One is that (with limited exceptions), we do not have conscious thoughts or make conscious decisions. For, if we did, we would be aware of them directly, not through interpretation. The conscious events we undergo are all sensory states of some kind, and what we take to be conscious thoughts and decisions are really sensory images – in particular, episodes of inner speech. These images might express thoughts, but they need to be interpreted. Another consequence is that we might be sincerely mistaken about our own beliefs...
Exactly. For example, those studying primates have evidence that these animals play an important role in their native ecosystems. That's science. Good enough. But science journalist Carl Zimmer (quoted above) also believes that primates should be saved because they can be useful to humans. That belief is instinctually forced by unconscious anthropocentrism. That belief is an example of self-interpretation as discussed by Carruthers and me. Zimmer does not know and can not know his own mind.
And Zimmer's rationalization (his "belief") is absurd to boot. Primates are not merely some conceptual extension of ourselves. Non-human primates are sui generis—we share the same evolutionary lineage but they are wholly "other". Primates lived independently of humans for at least 55 million years. Unfortunately, the continued existence of a growing number of primate species isn't compatible with Live & Grow in the human primate.
If consciousness merely reinforces or (mis)interprets congruent outputs, it follows that consciousness is a misleading trickster (DOTE, August 25, 2016). Mitchell Diamond nicely summed up this aspect of consciousness in his book Darwin's Apple, which lays out an instinctually-based theory of religion (p. 76, and see the DOTE review).
The detached science reveals [consciousness] contributes only a small portion to everyday life, but people feel it is far more important. Self-aware consciousness has the ironic consequence of giving people the illusion that it sits atop a throne and sees itself as the executive in charge. People believe they have conscious control of their actions because their consciousness tells them that they do, but consciousness is misinformed and misinforming. Despite our sense of consciousness' importance, consciousness comes with serious downsides. Introspection is more likely to lead to false or erroneous conclusions than true ones. Consciousness is an observer after the fact and rationalizes reality rather than directs it. People are lucky if they can accurately attribute actual causes to their behavior.
Unfortunately, humans don't get "lucky" very often when they are filtering threats to instincts, or even when they are acting instinctually. It may seem incredible—sadly, it is not —that it is relatively easy to observe flatland filtering behaviors in people who study free will and consciousness. I'll provide some examples for your edification and amusement.
I should also add that John Horgan is right when he observes that not only is study of the mind/body problem going nowhere, but it is also regressing. There seem to be two main reasons for this: 1) no one can locate consciousness in the brain or associate it reliably with specific brain states or wave patterns; and 2) more importantly, many people studying consciousness are consistently deceived by the awesoUbisoft is making a 30-day advent calendar full of gifts in order to wrap up its 30th anniversary celebration. And in an interesting turn of events, the source code of its website has revealed the full list of Ubisoft’s gifts.
What’s really interesting here is that this list has – most probably – leaked Ubisoft’s next free game.
According to the list, Assassin’s Creed 3 will be offered on December 12th. Moreover, from that list, Assassin’s Creed 3 is the only game that has not been offered for a whole month.
As such, we are almost certain that Ubisoft’s next monthly free game will be the third part in the Assassin’s Creed franchise.
Here is the full list of gifts that Ubisoft will be offering for the next 30 days.
Day 1 (Today – 24/11) : Rayman Classic on Mobile: Android – iOS
Day 2 (25/11) : 30% off Ubisoft Games
Day 3 (26/11) : Exclusive Collection of E3 2016 Cards
Day 4 (27/11) : Ubi30 Exclusive GIF
Day 5 (28/11) : For Honor GIFs
Day 6 (29/11) : Ubi30 360 Image
Day 7 (30/11) : Just Dance Greeting Card
Day 8 (01/12) : Ubisoft DIY Advent Calendar
Day 9 (02/12) : Steep Wallpaper
Day 10 (03/12) : Exclusive Digital Posters from E3 2016
Day 11 (04/12) : Rabbids Holiday Goodies
Day 12 (05/12) : WWW Wallpaper
Day 13 (06/12) : Ubisoft Cocktail recipes
Day 14 (07/12) : Free Assassin’s Creed 3 on PC
Day 15 (08/12) : Ubisoft Wrapping Paper
Day 16 (09/12) : 300 games Giveaway: 300 copies of 3 of the latest Ubisoft titles (1 game per person, first come first serve)
Day 17 (10/12) : Watch_Dogs 2 Wallpaper
Day 18 (11/12) : Ubisoft gift tags
Day 19 (12/12) : Ubisoft Dessert recipes
Day 20 (13/12) : Ghost Recon GIFs
Day 21 (14/12) : Wallpaper for mobile
Day 22 (15/12) : Free Prince of Persia on PC
Day 23 (16/12) : Free Rayman Legends on PC
Day 24 (17/12) : Free Splinter Cell on PC
Day 25 (18/12) : Free The Crew on PC
Day 26 (19/12) : Rayman GIF
Day 27 (20/12) : Steep GIF
Day 28 (21/12) : Exclusive 2017 Digital Holiday Cards
Day 29 (22/12) : Ubi30 Wallpaper
Day 30 (23/12) : Ubisoft Holiday decorationsSan Diego craft beer legend Karl Strauss Brewing Company is ready for its Los Angeles close-up, debuting a massive new 12,000+ square foot Downtown brewpub space on Monday.
The Wilshire Boulevard address has been more than a year in the making, but ultimately lands at a great time for Downtown and craft beer in Los Angeles as a whole. It also puts one big foot firmly into the still-growing craft beer market of L.A. for Karl Strauss, the oft-awarded San Diego brewing company with brewpub outlets in places like downtown San Diego, Carlsbad, and Temecula. Yes, the company has previously had a tourist-focused location at Universal City, but this bustling new location on Wilshire is the real flagship focus for the brand.
With the arrival of the 359-seat restaurant and pub comes a rare chance for Los Angeles to show off its urban brewing skills, too. So far the city has been hesitant to make life easy for brewers operating in the dense cores of L.A., but Karl Strauss is coming online with a seven-barrel brewhouse and two 14-barrel fermenters, meaning they’ll be able to turn over dozens of small-release beers per year. Guests will be able to drink on site, get growler fills, or take six-packs to go.
As for the dining side, expect a taproom with 24 lines filled with Karl Strauss signature beers as well as on-site brews made right on premises. There will be food too, the kind of unfussy California-centric pub cuisine you might expect from one of the country’s best brewpub brands.
Karl Strauss Brewing Company officially opens in Downtown on Monday, keeping operating hours from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, with an extension to 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.
Karl Strauss Brewing Company
600 Wilshire Blvd. #100
Los Angeles, CAGaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, left, and Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil, second left, visit a man wounded in an Israeli strike, at the hospital in Gaza City, Friday, Nov. 16, 2012. Early Friday, 85 missiles exploded within 45 minutes in Gaza City, sending black pillars of smoke towering above the coastal strip's largest city. The military said it was targeting underground rocket-launching sites. The Israeli offensive has not deterred the militants from firing more than 400 rockets aimed at southern Israel since Wednesday, the military said.(AP Photo/Mahmud Hams, Pool)
CAIRO (AP) — Thousands of Egyptians protested against Israel's offensive in the Gaza Strip on Friday as Egypt's prime minister visited the Palestinian enclave in a symbolic show of support for the territory's Hamas rulers.
The protests in Egypt highlight public sentiment against the Israeli military operation in Gaza. The latest operation started with the assassination of Hamas' military chief. Israel says it is responding to rocket fire by Gaza militants.
At least 22 Palestinians, including 12 militants and six children, as well as three Israelis have been killed in three days of fierce exchanges between the Israeli military and Gaza militants.
Egyptians on Friday marched in the country's two largest cities, Cairo and Alexandria, many waving Palestinian flags and chanting slogans against Israel. In Cairo's Tahrir Square, a few hundred protesters burned an Israeli flag.
The demonstrations were called by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood group.
Prominent Brotherhood figures took part, many brandishing the checkered Palestinian scarf, or keffiyeh, during the marches. Hamas is a Brotherhood offshoot in the Gaza Strip.
Morsi, Egypt's first freely elected president, has faced calls at home to take stronger action over the Gaza offensive. He has recalled Egypt's ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest and on Friday he dispatched Prime Minister Hesham Kandil to Gaza in a show of support for the Hamas-ruled territory.
Israel said it was halting its incessant air attacks on Gaza during Kandil's brief visit.
Also in Cairo on Friday, influential cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi said the Islamic world would not be silent in the face of Israel's military operation in Gaza.
The Egyptian-born al-Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar but has millions of followers around the world and is seen as one of most influential voices in Sunni Islam, delivered a special Friday sermon. The speech was heavily laced with comments about the Gaza offensive, the Arab Spring revolts and the ongoing civil war in Syria.
"Our (Muslim) community is the strongest community," he said from Cairo's al-Azhar Mosque to thousands of worshippers packed close to one another. "Israel, the arrogant supremacist on the ground, cannot break this community with its missiles, weapons from the air, ground and sea, or with its nuclear bombs."
Under autocratic leader Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown in a popular uprising in early 2011, al-Qaradawi was largely exiled from Egypt. Mubarak's regime built close ties with Hamas' Palestinian rival, Fatah.
Since 2007, Mubarak's government helped Israel in blockading Gaza and kept Egypt's only border crossing with the coastal strip closed for part of the three-week Israeli offensive in the territory in the winter of 2008-2009.
Egyptians, watching that incursion over Arab satellite TV channels, were infuriated by what they perceived as Mubarak's siding with Israel.
"We tell Israel, 'No. No we do not accept the injustice. We do not accept those killing our brothers'," Qaradawi said.
He spoke from the same pulpit where Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh delivered a symbolic speech in February — a move unthinkable under Mubarak's 30-year-rule — saying that the path to Jerusalem starts in Cairo. The phrase is a rallying call among pro-Palestinian activists for wresting Jerusalem from Israeli control.Steve Browett, the Crystal Palace co-chairman, has moved to assure the club's supporters that Wilfried Zaha "is not for sale," despite Sunday newspaper reports that clubs including Manchester City, Liverpool and Arsenal want to buy the 19-year-old winger. Browett insists Zaha will be playing Premier League football for Palace in the near future.
Writing on a club forum as CPFC2010, Browett said: "I can assure you that Wilfried is not 'for sale.' We hope that he'll be playing Premier League football next season. For us. Even if that doesn't happen, he's only 19 and still learning his trade in surroundings where he is comfortable and happy. He's on a five-year contract and we really don't need the money."
Browett, who owns Palace with co-chairman, Steve Parish, Martin Long and Jeremy Hoskin, added: "The four of us bought the club so that we could enjoy watching Palace play football, not to cash in as soon as the moneybags clubs come waving their cheque books. I hope that's clear enough.
"PS – and if he [Zaha] keeps developing the way he has so far you'll be reading plenty more rubbish in the Sunday papers."
Zaha has four England Under-21 appearances to his name and his 70 Championship starts for Palace have yielded 11 goals, including four in his last two games; the 2-1 win at Wolverhampton Wanderers and the 4-3 victory over Burnley. Palace are currently fourth, three points behind the leaders Cardiff City.During the last years Rails developers have been looking for ways to move from monolithic to component-based applications. One of these is the use of Rails Engines. The basic idea is to move away from the default MVC Rails architecture where “fat Models” end up being morbid obese.
If you are interested to know more about Rails Engines I highly recommend you to watch these two talks by Stephan Hagemann at Mountain West RubyConf 2013 and RailsConf 2014.
In a few words we’re talking about code that doesn’t pertain to your application core business logic but lives around it. Since we recognize that they’re not part of the core we can extract them into Rails Engines.
A typical example can be to extract email notifications functionality from the core of the application and move it to an Engine.
Decoupling engines
The most exciting thing, of course, is not just moving code around. It allows you to create APIs that developers can rely upon to build functionality. By encapsulating a feature to its own engine we can debug better since we know where all the code related to certain functionality is.
Using observers
One way to react to the changes of our models in core is to use good old observers. Before we had ActiveModel::Observer for that! And we still have it of course. The only issue now is that our observer class name is something like EmailNotificator::UserObserver and Rails cannot do the magic of inferring the Model from the class name. That’s when the convenient observe method comes to help. Look at the code to better understand how it works.
1 2 3 4 5 6 # engines/email_notificator/app/observers/email_notificator/user_observer.rb module EmailNotificator class UserObserver < ActiveModel :: Observer observe : user end end
In this Observer we’re subscribing to core User model changes. If we need to observe engine specific Models we can do the following instead:
1 2 3 4 5 6 # engines/email_notificator/app/observers/email_notificator/person_observer.rb module EmailNotificator class UserObserver < ActiveModel :: Observer observe 'EmailNotificator::Person' end end
Custom events
When our engine is waiting for a custom event to happen outside the engine itself, for instance waiting for an external service webhook, we need a way to subscribe to it. We can apply the pub/sub pattern using ActiveSupport::Notification. The idea is to trigger an ActiveSupport::Notification event from the core (or another engine) and then let our engine listen to it:
In the case of webhooks we’ll probably have a Controller inside an Engine that manages the incoming webhook. We can trigger the event inside the Controller’s action:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 # engines/webhook_manager/app/controllers/webhook_manager/webhook_controller.rb #... def create # code to store the webhook ActiveSupport :: Notifications. instrument ( 'webhook.received', options : { extra : 'information' } ) end #...
Then inside our engine code:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 # engines/email_notificator/config/initializers/email_notificator.rb ActiveSupport :: Notifications. subscribe ( 'webhook.received' ) do | name, start, finish, id, payload | # do some stuff here puts "A webwook has been received with some more extra #{payload[:options][:extra]}" end
Now every time a webhook.received event is triggered our engine will execute the code in the block.
ConclusionsI’m sorry, that’s all I can say. I have just read the headlines in the newspaper today, Tuesday 1st September 2015, which predict “UK population to soar to 85m by 2080; migrants fuel rise in Britain double that of the whole EU …. England’s green and pleasant land will be a thing of the past if this does happen.”
Born in Britain in 2015, you are now 65 years old, and I can’t imagine what life is like for you in 2080. I’m just glad that I won’t be around to see it. I’ll be long gone by then, having been born in 1947. Yes, I’m just a few years older than you are – I’ll be 68 next month. The population now is around 65 million (8 million of them foreign-born) and that is already more than enough for a country of this size. The majority of people here think so, but our governments don’t listen to us.
I think my generation has had the best of it you know, and the last of it; by that I mean the Britain I was born into, which was battered and bruised after the Second World War but still ruled itself as an independent nation with a very strong sense of history, identity and pride. It wasn’t easy in the post-war years with rationing and privations. However, every kid in my working-class school knew exactly the calibre of the country to which they belonged, and which unquestionably belonged to THEM; and they knew what it had achieved. “We won the war in nineteen forty four!” was a favourite skipping-rope chant (historical accuracy being sacrificed a little in the cause of rhyme). We were unaware that the country our fathers, grandfathers and uncles had fought to save from enemy invasion was going to be invaded anyway.
On the horizon loomed the long-term consequences of the post-war mass immigration from the Commonwealth that had already begun, followed by our ill-advised membership of the European Union and the right it gave to 500 million people in the EU to come here in the name of the ‘free movement of people’.
The Commonwealth immigrants were a curiosity at first, especially their colourful clothes and houses. In drab 1950’s Britain, we had never seen the outside of a house painted pink or orange until people from the Indian sub-continent arrived. We thought curry smelt awful; they thought boiled cabbage smelt worse. But conflict and unease was on a small scale for a couple of decades. The incomers seemed to work hard, mind their own business and not meddle in ours. We had no feelings one way or another about their religion being Islam; we knew little about it.
However, by the 1980s we were hearing of Christian churches turned into mosques, the demand for halal meat in school dinners, the insistence on Multicultural curriculums, and lessons taught in Punjabi and Urdu. Hang on a minute, the natives thought – they did choose to come to Britain, and they did know we do things differently here, didn’t they, so why are they trying to turn our country into a little Pakistan? But if you asked reasonable questions like this, people of the political left came down on you like a ton of bricks, called you a racist and accused you of a terrible crime: Political Incorrectness. A primary school headmaster, Ray Honeywell, who dared to say that it was better for the children of immigrants to learn good English at school so they could integrate effectively in our society was berated, carpeted and forced out of his job. Mr Honeywell became a pariah in the world of education and was out of work for good.
Well, we went on for another couple of decades with no one daring to say anything much because Multiculturalism was like a religion that you couldn’t question. It only tailed off when unintegrated British-born Muslims started supporting anti-British terrorist organisations, blowing up people on public transport or beheading victims in London. Although the first-generation immigrants had come to live in this country voluntarily and seemed happy to stay here, some of their children or grandchildren hated us and sided with our enemies. Plot after plot to kill British people was uncovered, but no one in charge said that if they didn’t like it here, the terrorists and their supporters should go somewhere else. Maybe those Islamist terrorists won in the end and are running the UK by now as they threatened to. I do hope not, for your sake.
In 1973 I was 26 and had been living in a free, sovereign nation all my life. All that changed when a horrible PM called Heath signed us up to the European Economic Community without even asking us if we wanted to be in it. He promised that our freedom to make our own laws and decisions for Britain’s good would not be compromised. But he was lying and so were all the other politicians who kept insisting that our way of life wouldn’t alter. Nothing much did seem to happen at first – well, except for having to change all our money and our measurements, and let foreigners steal fish from seas that used to be ours, and we had to eat what the EEC told us we could eat because they didn’t like certain shapes of bananas, cucumbers, apples or other fruit. So everyone in Europe had to eat the same-shaped fruit and vegetables, and any shopkeeper in the UK who tried to sell it in pounds and ounces instead of kilos was fined or sent to prison.
More and more people began to wish that we could come out of the EEC. But even though we had different political parties with different policies, they all agreed with each other about the EEC: that it was a very good thing and we had to stay in, however bossy and annoying it became. They kept signing treaties named after foreign places, such as Maastricht and Lisbon which changed its name to the European Union and created a European Constitution. Every time a treaty was signed, the EU became stronger, more binding and harder to question. Now its goal was to bring about “ever closer political union” with every country using the same money that the EU had invented and all of them obeying the same laws that had been decided in the EU headquarters in Brussels and every national government passing those laws even if the people in the different countries didn’t like them or want them. The next step planned was to create a United States of Europe.
The law that we in Britain especially disliked was the one about free movement of people. This was because more migrants wanted to come to the UK than any other country in Europe and the government, led by a terrible PM called Blair, even encouraged more to come, just to infuriate those who were worried about it. The EU allowed several quite poor countries to join, which meant that hundreds of thousands more economic migrants could come here year after year until it became millions. There aren’t enough jobs, houses or places in schools or hospitals for our own people. More migrants have arrived in ten years than had previously come in hundreds of years of our history and there is nothing we can do to stop them because we have to obey the treaties our Prime Ministers signed. They are still flocking in legally and illegally every day. There are even people from outside Europe squatting on the French coast trying to break into our country, angry that we won’t let them in. We are under siege.
Next year or the year after, there will be a referendum that allows us to vote on whether we want to stay in the EU or leave. We have an awful PM called Cameron who is doing everything he can to make us stay in the EU even though it’s destroying our country. I’m going to vote to leave the EU for your sake. I hope that most British people do the same. If they do, it might preserve the British birthright for you and your generation. If they don’t, I’m sorry.Share. Most should still be able to access online games and services. Most should still be able to access online games and services.
Sony has announced that the PlayStation Network will undergo scheduled maintenance tomorrow.
The service will be offline in the US from 9:40 am PT/ 12:40 pm ET until 4:50 pm PT/ 7:50 pm ET and in Europe from 16:00 BST until 5:00 BST on Friday.
Exit Theatre Mode
The maintenance was originally scheduled for this past Monday, but was postponed after the PlayStation Network suffered a DDoS attack over the weekend.
During the maintenance, you’ll be unable to access the PlayStation Store, PS Home and Account Management. If you’ve signed into the PSN since August 23, you’ll still be able to play games online and access other online services, such as Netflix.
Earlier today, Sony revealed the PS Plus content that subscribers will be receiving next month.
Jordan Sirani is a freelance news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter to discuss everything from games to goats.Author of the popular twitter handle @aapChutiyeHain, Akhil Mehta, allegedly committed suicide due to depression, according to the Finding Akhil Mehta facebook page - created to help find Mehta after his disappearance. The 27-year-old was last seen at Vijay Nagar, New Delhi on March 27.
Mehta's twitter handle described him as a proud Indian achieving ‘World peace through Insult Comedy'. The Finding Akhil Mehta revealed in a post that they fear he might have been kidnapped. Mehta would regularly receive threats from "several political and religious groups for criticising them" through his tweets as he was passionately against corruption, hypocrisy and disclosed any injustices done in society as he viewed it.
However, on March 28, the Business Standard reported that an "unidentified male" committed suicide by jumping from a high rise water tank in Tronica City, Ghazibad. Since the discovery, the Finding Akhil Mehta page confirmed the "unidentified male" was in fact Mehta.
The page also released a statement which read, "It's extremely heartbreaking for us to say that, Akhil is no more with us. It's very unfortunate to have lost him at such a young age, allegedly, to depression. Our deepest sympathies go out to his family and friends. May God give them comfort and peace in this difficult time and his soul may rest in peace."
Read: World Health Day: 42% Indian private sector employees face depression
In his last tweet on Valentine's Day, Mehta chose to post a heartfelt message of a mother's love.
Mom smiles and I am a beautiful person — #हिंदीहैशटैगडे (@AapChutiyeHain) February 14, 2015
Family and friends of Mehta have not confirmed whether Mehta was suffering from depression or what may have triggered it.
Also Read: What NOT to say to a depressed personAbout
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The Boozie is the newest covert drinking apparatus that will soon be introduced to the world!
The Boozie is a simple looking hoodie, but with a higher purpose than to just keep you comfortable. The Boozie has two secret compartments located in the hood that hold two separate bladders or flasks for transporting 20 ounces of your favorite liquids.
The clever part of the Boozie is in the way you consume the liquids. The unassuming hoodie drawstrings that dangle down in front of the wearer are actually the straws from which your liquid is dispensed! At the ends of these hoses are two soft, drip-free bite valves which you use just like any standard hydration pack.
This discreet consumption makes the Boozie the perfect accessory for all sorts of occasions like different sporting events, going to the movie theater, music festivals, family reunions, holiday celebrations, boating, going to the amusement park, beach trips, jogging and tailgating.
The purpose of this campaign is to raise money to put this product into production. The funds raised will go towards the expensive tooling costs associated with creating the custom flasks and the various plastic components involved. These donations will also allow us to receive a bulk discount when purchasing material and will help us in crafting smaller, more discreet nozzles.
Flasks
The flasks are made from a tough BPA-free plastic and are reinforced so you wont have to worry about breakage when roughhousing in your new Boozie.
Due to the costs of production we are currently limited on the colors we can offer. The degree of this campaign's success will determine whether or not we add more colors. Please feel free to send us your suggestions!
1: Adding more colors and options to the line. Options are a good thing! Right now we are limited in the different colors we can offer but the beauty of Kickstarter is that this can all change with the help of the community. Please don't hesitate to let us know what colors you would like to see in the lineup in the future.
Boozie Shot glass
Boozie T-shirtsGraeme Murty has made two changes for this evening’s match away to Hibernian, with Alfredo Morelos and Jamie Barjonas coming into the side.
It’s only a second start for 18 year-old Barjonas, with him taking the place of Daniel Candeias, while Morelos takes the place of Carlos Pena. Both those who miss out tonight make the bench.
That means it’s the same back five of Wes Foderingham in goals, with James Tavernier in front of him alongside Bruno Alves, Danny Wilson and Declan John.
Ross McCrorie, who was an injury doubt for the game, makes it into the side with Jason Holt, Barjonas, Kenny Miller, Josh Windass and Morelos completing the line-up.
On the bench are Liam Kelly, who continues to deputise for the injured Jak Alnwick, Eduardo Herrera, Niko Kranjcar, David Bates, Carlos Pena, Daniel Candeias and Lee Hodson.
Tonight’s game is live on RangersTV outside the UK and Ireland. Join Tom Miller and Kevin Drinkell for full coverage.
RANGERS: Foderingham, Tavernier, Alves, Wilson, John, McCrorie, Barjonas, Holt, Miller, Windass, Morelos.
SUBS: Kelly, Herrera, Kranjcar, Bates, Pena, Candeias, Hodson.Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is the start of the Spring Classics season. Whilst not a classic in itself, it’s the first race that will lead to the likes of Paris Roubaix and Liege Bastogne Liege. Omloop Het Nieuwsblad contains a few of the same cobbled climbs (hellingen) that are also in E3 Harelbeke and Tour of Flanders.
The repeated efforts up short, steep, bumpy climbs like these are designed to test the legs for strength of any contender. The race suits the puncheur type rider, capable of strong bursts of power and a reasonable sprint at the end too. The lightweight climbers get bounced out on the climbs and the pure sprinters struggle to climb all the hills at the top end pace. The race last year ended in a sprint between Greg Van Avermaet, Tiesij Benoot, Luke Rowe and Peter Sagan. With van Avermaet taking the win, just ahead of Sagan.
Omloop is the first of a double header of a weekend along with Kuurne Brussels Kuurne, which is previewed here.
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2017 Profile
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2017 Contenders
World Champion Peter Sagan is the obvious favourite for this and most of the other Spring races he’s entered for. Last year’s winner Greg van Avermaet is returning for BMC to defend his title. The European part of Tom Boonen‘s farewell year begins. He’s surprisingly never won Omloop Het Nieuwsblad so will be looking to make the most of his last chance. The Team Sky double threat of Luke Rowe and Ian Stannard will be contenders. Rowe in particular will be looking to improve on his 4th from last year.
Perennial threat Lars Boom will be a contender. So will 2016 Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne winner Jasper Stuyven. Whether he races hard in Omloop or works to retain his KBK title the day after remains to be seen. Eternal top 10 finisher Sep Vanmarcke should get himself in the mix towards the end as usual.
Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2017 Outsiders
Trek’s Edward |
, but wants to believe everyone else's pain is real.
On an airplane, he has another key encounter, with Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), a man whose manner cuts through the fog. He seems able to see right into the Narrator's soul, and shortly after, when the Narrator's high-rise apartment turns into a fireball, he turns to Tyler for shelter. He gets more than that. He gets in on the ground floor of Fight Club, a secret society of men who meet in order to find freedom and self-realization through beating one another into pulp.
It's at about this point that the movie stops being smart and savage and witty, and turns to some of the most brutal, unremitting, nonstop violence ever filmed. Although sensible people know that if you hit someone with an ungloved hand hard enough, you're going to end up with broken bones, the guys in "Fight Club" have fists of steel, and hammer one another while the sound effects guys beat the hell out of Naugahyde sofas with Ping-Pong paddles. Later, the movie takes still another turn. A lot of recent films seem unsatisfied unless they can add final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before; call it the Keyser Soze syndrome.
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What is all this about? According to Durden, it is about freeing yourself from the shackles of modern life, which imprisons and emasculates men. By being willing to give and receive pain and risk death, Fight Club members find freedom. Movies like "Crash" (1997), must play like cartoons for Durden. He's a shadowy, charismatic figure, able to inspire a legion of men in big cities to descend into the secret cellars of a Fight Club and beat one another up.
Only gradually are the final outlines of his master plan revealed. Is Tyler Durden in fact a leader of men with a useful philosophy? "It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything," he says, sounding like a man who tripped over the Nietzsche display on his way to the coffee bar in Borders. In my opinion, he has no useful truths. He's a bully--Werner Erhard plus S & M, a leather club operator without the decor. None of the Fight Club members grows stronger or freer because of their membership; they're reduced to pathetic cultists. Issue them black shirts and sign them up as skinheads. Whether Durden represents hidden aspects of the male psyche is a question the movie uses as a loophole--but is not able to escape through, because "Fight Club" is not about its ending but about its action.
Of course, "Fight Club" itself does not advocate Durden's philosophy. It is a warning against it, I guess; one critic I like says it makes "a telling point about the bestial nature of man and what can happen when the numbing effects of day-to-day drudgery cause people to go a little crazy." I think it's the numbing effects of movies like this that cause people go to a little crazy. Although sophisticates will be able to rationalize the movie as an argument against the behavior it shows, my guess is that audience will like the behavior but not the argument. Certainly they'll buy tickets because they can see Pitt and Norton pounding on each other; a lot more people will leave this movie and get in fights than will leave it discussing Tyler Durden's moral philosophy. The images in movies like this argue for themselves, and it takes a lot of narration (or Narration) to argue against them.
Lord knows the actors work hard enough. Norton and Pitt go through almost as much physical suffering in this movie as Demi Moore endured in "G.I. Jane," and Helena Bonham Carter creates a feisty chain-smoking hellcat who is probably so angry because none of the guys thinks having sex with her is as much fun as a broken nose. When you see good actors in a project like this, you wonder if they signed up as an alternative to canyoneering.
The movie was directed by David Fincher and written by Jim Uhls, who adapted the novel by Chuck Palahniuk. In many ways, it's like Fincher's movie "The Game" (1997), with the violence cranked up for teenage boys of all ages. That film was also about a testing process in which a man drowning in capitalism (Michael Douglas) has the rug of his life pulled out from under him and has to learn to fight for survival. I admired "The Game" much more than "Fight Club" because it was really about its theme, while the message in "Fight Club" is like bleeding scraps of Socially Redeeming Content thrown to the howling mob.
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Fincher is a good director (his work includes "Alien 3," one of the best-looking bad movies I have ever seen, and "Seven," the grisly and intelligent thriller). With "Fight Club" he seems to be setting himself some kind of a test--how far over the top can he go? The movie is visceral and hard-edged, with levels of irony and commentary above and below the action. If it had all continued in the vein explored in the first act, it might have become a great film. But the second act is pandering and the third is trickery, and whatever Fincher thinks the message is, that's not what most audience members will get. "Fight Club" is a thrill ride masquerading as philosophy--the kind of ride where some people puke and others can't wait to get on again.Getty Images Share
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You can take the man out of business, but you can’t take business out of the man.
It seems that a stiff prison sentence for running a Ponzi scheme wasn’t enough to dissuade Bernie Madoff from entrepreneurial ventures. The disgraced investor apparently seized control of the hot chocolate market in the North Carolina lockup where he’s serving time.
“Bernie really was a successful businessman with quite original insights into the market, and he’s continued applying his business instincts in prison,” Steve Fishman, a journalist who’s kept in touch with Madoff behind bars, told MarketWatch. “At one point, he cornered the hot chocolate market. He bought up every package of Swiss Miss from the commissary and sold it for a profit in the prison yard. He monopolized hot chocolate! He made it so that, if you wanted any, you had to go through Bernie.”
His fellow inmates, Fishman said, idolize Madoff for his skills as a schemer, and some look to him for advice on their own finances. The medium security facility is likely the only place he will ever get to ply his trade, as the 78-year-old is now serving an 150-year-sentence.
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at solomon@forward.com or on Twitter @DanielJSolomonAn Algonquin First Nation from Ontario has filed a law suit that could shut down development of the former Domtar lands on Chaudière and Albert islands, among other things, as part of a wide-ranging claim against numerous defendants.
A statement of claim filed by Stacy Amikwabi on behalf of the Amikwabi Nation and Algonquins in Ontario and Quebec covers sacred sites, development, consultation and hunting rights. It names Windmill Development Group Ltd., Domtar Inc., the National Capital Commission and the City of Ottawa and the federal and provincial governments among defendants as well as the Algonquins of Ontario. The legal proceeding is set to be heard in Ontario Superior Court in Toronto on July 13 and 14.
Windmill Development is planning a major multi-use residential, commercial and retail development for the 40-acre site encompassing Albert and Chaudière islands and part of the Gatineau shoreline. The development, which it has named Zibi — the Algonquin word for river — is opposed by the former chief of Quebec’s Kitigan Zibi reserve, Gilbert Whiteduck, and a group that includes architect Douglas Cardinal, who designed the nearby Museum of History. Cardinal has designed a First Nations healing and reconciliation centre, in keeping with the vision of Algonquin elder William Commanda, for part of the site.
Among other things, the statement of claim asks the court to order that sacred sites, including Chaudière and Albert islands, be placed under the stewardship and control of the Algonquin/Amikwha/Nipissing Nation.
Michael Swinwood, the lawyer representing Stacy Amikwabi, said his client and the Algonquins he represents don’t recognize Algonquin band councils in Ontario and Quebec currently involved in historic land claim negotiations.
Algonquin groups in Ontario and Kitigan Zibi were approached by Windmill about the planned development. Windmill officials have said they plan to work closely with First Nations, who consider the area around Chaudière Falls historic and sacred.
Swinwood said the statement of claim has been met with a flurry of motions from the defendants named in the case asking that it be dismissed before it reaches court, saying the plaintiff doesn’t have a legitimate claim to the land.
Swinwood said the Tsilhqot’in First Nation ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada last year, supports the claim. In Tsilhgot, the court agreed that the semi-nomadic First Nation, a group of six aboriginal bands, had title to lands. The case was considered a game changer for many First Nations in land disputes.
“My view is that we have a legitimate plaintiff, that we have a legitimate claim, and that we should have it treated in a legitimate way,” said Swinwood.
epayne@ottawacitizen.com
twitter.com/egpayneUniversal Basic Income (UBI) is now the answer to corporations and governments being unable to pay a living wage. But wait a minute, doesn't that money come from governments and doesn't that mean corporations will pay even less, knowing that you're already receiving X amount of dollars in basic income just for being alive!
Why of course that is exactly what it means.
Sorry, Zuckerberg. Your UBI idea will only succeed in creating couch potatoes hooked into Facebook virtual reality games. (Oh, wait a minute...)
In poor India, Economic Times editor Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiya wrote Tuesday that he wants his son to work for a living, not sit home playing video games and collecting a paltry sum paycheck.
When my son turns 18, I want him to look forward to working for a living. I don’t want him to be able to collect a UBI and sit at home playing video games. That will make for a lousy society. An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. Without work, people will get into undesirable activities, from petty crime and gambling to terrorism. Muslim ghettoes in Europe have unemployed hordes living off welfare, and produce Islamic radicals. President Bill Clinton converted welfare into workfare, with great social and economic success."
Aiyar got an earful from the UBI crowd in Delhi last week when he attended a seminar on the topic. One would think that a country like India would be ripe for bare bones income protection. It is far and away the poorest of the big four emerging markets. Yet, Aiyar was so unimpressed by the amounts of money being offered by pundits there that he penned the anti-UBI op-ed in the ET this wee, one of the first to appear in a major Indian daily.
Some at the seminar he attended proposed that a 10,000 rupee per year basic income should be a citizen’s right, he says. That's about $155 a year. Median income in India is around $700 annually. The 10,000 per month rupee paycheck will be provided by raising the equivalent of 10% of GDP through eliminating tax breaks and wasteful subsidies, which of course would be up for debate for years in India's parliament.
There's also been a proposal to just give everyone 3,500 rupee, or $54 extra. That paltry sum, even by India's standards, will cost 3.5% of GDP.
Aiyar spoke at the seminar as the voice of the opposition, going so far as to call the concept "immoral."
"Why call such small sums ‘basic income’, and hype them as a social revolution," he writes. "I want a society where people stand on their own feet. The State must provide high-quality public goods, including security, basic health and education, and infrastructure. It must also have targeted efforts to uplift the poor. But I denounce as immoral a UBI that makes it feasible to avoid working altogether."
Although Aiyar did not address this, none of the proposals floating around India amount to an income in the sense that most people think of income. The investor class thinks of income as things like rental property, dividend and fixed income yield. But the vast majority of the the mere mortals out there do not have any dividend income, or they reinvest that back into retirement funds. When people here of basic income, they think of salary, not dividend income, which no one but a few multi millionaires could ever truly live in given the sheer amount of investments they have in income producing assets. The average person, and clearly the majority in India, have no income producing investments and, thus, their "income" comes from their labor.
Therefore, a universal basic income, if it was merely a dividend payment, would never be enough for a person to live on.
During this year's college graduation season, Facebook billionaire Zuckerberg called for Universal Basic Income during a Harvard commencement speech.
The state of Alaska has something similar to a basic income for all residents. Its oil revenue-derived Alaska Permanent Fund has been around since 1976. It's hardly an income stream one can live on, unless they were living in a poor country like India. In 2016, every Alaskan with a minimum of one year residency received a dividend check for around $1,022.Those of us who’ve read the Harry Potter series fell in love because of the wonder of it all. This week’s release of the first Illustrated Edition brings back that magic.
I visited a bookstore bright and early Tuesday morning to pick up a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’s Illustrated Edition. It’s the first time I’ve been in a bookstore to purchase a Harry Potter book since July 2007.
Eight years may have passed, but I was no less excited than I was those many summers ago when I picked up new J.K. Rowling books.
In a way, these Harry Potter books are new. Paging through the Illustrated Edition brings back the magic and wonder you felt while reading the series for the first time. Jim Kay’s illustrations are simply gorgeous — they’re peppered throughout the story in different shapes and sizes, and perfectly blend with Rowling’s words.
Our suspicions leading up to this release were correct: This Illustrated Edition is wider and taller than other versions of the Potter books in order to accommodate the combination of Rowling’s words and Kay’s illustrations. Printed in full color with a slight gloss, turning each page is an exciting prospect: What will I find when I move forward?
The publishers say there are over 100 illustrations in the book, and I found them nicely distributed throughout the story. Some pages hold only text, but most of them have some sort of illustration to break up the words.
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I’m starting to think that I won’t read the “old” editions of the Potter books now that illustrated counterparts are becoming available. Why would I? The illustrations are so beautiful in this new edition that to go back to the originals would feel like downgrading my phone. Sure, those original books will always hold sentimental value, but as people who’ve already read those copies numerous times, it’s time for something new — and yet completely familiar.
I’m so glad Scholastic and Bloomsbury have teamed up to this see the Illustrated Editions through. Remember: They’ve previously announced that they’ve intended to release one new Illustrated Edition every year.
I can’t wait to see all of these books lined up on my book shelf around the year 2022. And can you imagine how big the later books will be?
Skimming through Sorcerer’s Stone I found a few illustrations in particular that really stand out to me. Kay’s interpretation of Nearly Headless Nick makes me wish he had a little more color in him in the movie:
And these two illustrations depicting Harry with Hagrid and Dumbledore remind you of the wonder Sorcerer’s Stone beholds: Harry is a new, young wizard being introduced to a complicated, beautiful, magical world for the first time.
Grab the Illustrated Edition here via Amazon (for about $22 – the cheapest price we’ve seen so far) or visit a local bookstore.
One quick warning for Americans: Barnes & Noble, the country’s only remaining bookstore chain, is selling the Illustrated Edition for the full $40 price tag in their stores. You can grab it for about $15 cheaper on their own website, but they won’t bend on the price in store. They told me they don’t price match their own website which I think is a bad move.Portland Police Officer Dane Reister should lose his job for suddenly firing a beanbag shotgun that he mistakenly loaded with lethal rounds at a man obviously suffering from a mental illness, a federal lawsuit filed Thursday says.
The attorney for William Kyle Monroe, wounded by Reister on June 30, 2011, accuses the officer, Police Chief Mike Reese and the city of Portland of violating Monroe's civil rights through false arrest, assault and negligence.
The suit seeks more than $11 million in damages.
Monroe, who was 20 at the time and diagnosed with bipolar disorder, narrowly escaped bleeding to death only because OHSU Hospital was near the shooting scene, but he's permanently disabled, his lawyer said.
The suit alleges that the police chief could have prevented such a mistake by prohibiting officers from mixing lethal ammunition with less-lethal munitions in their duty bags, as Reister did. Further, the suit contends, the bureau has failed to adequately discipline officers who are "pre-disposed'' to using excessive force.
"Defendant Reister's conduct was so extreme that it goes beyond all possible bounds of decency, and it constituted conduct that a reasonable person would regard as intolerable in a civilized community,"
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The suit calls on the court to order the Police Bureau to fire Reister and appoint an independent monitor to enforce the terms of the city's pending agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice on use of force policies, training and oversight. The reforms stem from a federal investigation last year that found Portland police engage in a pattern of excessive force against people with mental illness.
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Nearly two years after the shooting, the police chief and city have not disciplined Reister, who remains on paid administrative leave while facing criminal charges, the suit notes. Reister has pleaded not guilty to an indictment charging him with third- and fourth-degree assault charges. The Multnomah County District Attorney's Office added a negligent wounding charge. The indictment marked the first time in the county's history that a grand jury brought criminal charges against a Portland officer for force used on duty.
"By their inaction, said defendants have condoned, ratified or otherwise turned a blind eye to defendant Reister's extreme misconduct and demonstrated a deliberate indifference to the plaintiff's constitutionally protected rights," Tienson wrote in the suit.
Portland police Officer Dane Reister consults with his lawyer Janet Hoffman during a court hearing in 2011.
Janet Hoffman, Reister's attorney, issued a statement after she informed the officer about the suit Thursday. "Officer Reister is thankful that Mr. Monroe survived and is recovering," she said. "He is looking forward to the facts coming out at trial and fully explaining the situation."
According to the suit, Monroe, who lives with his father in Hillsboro, had intended to drive to Bremerton, Wash., to visit his mother the day before the shooting, but became disoriented and was suffering from a paranoid mania.
He ended up in Lair Hill Park the next morning, where children from a day camp were playing. Monroe pulled discarded flowers out of a park garbage bin and tossed them near the children. Camp supervisors told Monroe to leave the park. Police received two 9-1-1 calls from camp officials. The camp director said in the second call that Monroe may have a pocket knife up his sleeve.
Reister responded to the call. He spotted Monroe on Southwest Naito Parkway, commanded him to stop and get down on his knees with his hands behind his head. Reister asked Monroe if he had any weapons, and Monroe emptied his pockets, discarding his miniature Swiss army knife, the suit says. Monroe put his hands behind his head, but asked why he should get on his knees. Reister grabbed his beanbag shotgun from his car, and two more officers arrived.
Monroe assured police he hadn't done anything wrong as he backed away and then began running and yelled for help. Without warning, the suit says, Reister fired five times, emptying his clip. The fifth round jammed because of Reister's "excessively rapid firing," the suit says.
The shots fractured Monroe's pelvis, punctured his bladder, abdomen and colon. The fourth shot, fired from less than 15 feet away, left a "softball-size hole in his left leg," and severed the sciatic nerve, the suit says.
The next day, then-Mayor Sam Adams and Reese called the shooting a "tragic mistake." The president of the Portland Police Association said the union would "stand by" Reister through the judicial process.
Portland police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson said Thursday night that the bureau can no discuss not pending lawsuit.
Four months after the shooting,
, requiring that beanbag ammunition be stored only in a carrier attached to the side or stock of the orange-painted, 12-gauge beanbag shotguns.
Five years earlier, the suit noted, Reister mistakenly fired a loaded riot-suppression launcher during training, injuring an officer posing as a protester with a smoke round.
--Maxine BernsteinIllustration: IEEE Spectrum
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The Sovrin Foundation, a non-profit organization building online identity management tools with blockchain-inspired technologies, announced today that it will be taken on for incubation by Hyperledger Indy, a project run by the the Linux Foundation.
The problem of identity has attracted a whole flock of developers in the blockchain and distributed ledger space who see these technologies as a way to scoop up all the scraps of an individual’s online identity, consolidate them and put them under the individual’s control.
Today, for the most part, we lack that control. We have surrendered ourselves to the likes of Facebook, Google, Twitter and Amazon, whose profiles on their customers are so extensive that they are now, themsleves, used as standard identity verifiers across most Internet domains. Want to leave a comment? Just sign in with Facebook. Trying to get into your Medium account? Just login with Twitter.
And if those companies suddenly disappear, so too does your online identity.
Meanwhile, asserting more important things about yourself online is just as difficult as ever. You can efile your taxes, but first you’ll need that PIN from the IRS that you set up a bajillion years ago that somehow proves you are who you say you are.
It’s a terrible mess. And according to Phil Windley, the chair of the Sovrin Foundation, the best way to fix it is to use distributed ledger technology to make something that looks more like what we have offline.
“In the physical world I go to my pharmacy and they ask for my driver’s license to prove I’m over 18 and I supply it to them. They don’t have to have a direct connection to the Department of Motor Vehicles. They don’t have to have any kind of API integration to make that work. Because I am the conveyer of this verifiable claim called a driver’s license. That hasn’t been possible on the Internet and Sovrin makes that possible,” says Windley.
In this alternate view, it is the individual who possesses all the pieces of their identity, which ranges from mundane testimonials about what your favorite movie is, to critical information like age and date of birth.
In Sovrin, these facts about you (or pointers for where to find these facts) would all reside on a distributed public ledger which you alone had the authority to access and share. Other entities, however, could modify your claim by signing off on them with a cryptographic key, thereby adding weight and credibility to the pieces of your identity. For example, you may have an identity on the Sovrin network which specifies your driver’s license number and that information might be signed by your state’s DMV.
The technology has a slight whiff of blockchain, but doesn’t really have a blockchain. Rather, it is a ledger that is replicated over mulitple nodes that all coordinate to make updates and police the system and which together make up the Sovrin network. The nodes are invite-only, meaning that the ledger is public, but permissioned. As a result, Sovrin functions without the participation of miners, which makes it less expensive and less energy hungry than your typical open blockchain.
Windley says that he envisions the first applications coming from the financial sector. Banks could participate as node operators to maintain the ledger and provide it as the repository for their customers’ identities. If given permission by the customer, multiple banks could access this information in a single place in order to comply with Know-Your-Customer (KYC) regulations.
In joining Hyperledger Indy, Sovrin is donating all of its code and getting back developer power in return.
There are currently many other groups working in the blockchain and distributed ledger space to build self-sovereign identity systems. Bitnation began using the blockchain to issue its own nation state-independent version of a passport in 2014. That project now resides on the Ethereum network which also supports another identity management tool called uPort. And Civic is building out a similar project on Bitcoin.
Windley doesn’t necessarily see them as competition. “I believe that there won’t be a single identity solution; there’s going to be multiples,” he says. “We’re going to live in a world with multiple identity systems because they have different properties and [meet] different needs.”A Lexus that is designed to excel on the track as well as the street. That’s the mission of the 467-horsepower RC F. Featuring the most powerful Lexus V8 to date (51 more horses than the now-discontinued IS F) the RC F also claims to come with track-engineered chassis, drivetrain and brakes. In other words, if the press release is accurate, Lexus is offering a full combo platter of enthusiast driving pleasure.
Lower, longer and wider than the standard RC, all the flourishes and fancy bodywork on the RC F serve a purpose: from providing improved aerodynamics, to increasing airflow through the oil cooler.
We’ve given Lexus some guff for sticking the “F” badge on cars willy-nilly, but considering the RC F has been tuned on both Fuji Speedway (namesake of all “F” branded cars) and the Nürburgring Nordschleife, it seems this one may have earned its badge.
Because even sports cars need to be economical these days, the RC F engineers employed some witchcraft to make the V8 under its bulging hood even better than it was in the IS F. Redline has been increased 300 RPM to 7100, compression ratio is up to 12.3:1 (from 11.8:1 in the IS F). The engine also employs an Atkinson Cycle at cruising speed to improve fuel economy (TBD). Cooling of both the engine and the transmission has also improved, to increase longevity during trackdays.
The only transmission is the 8-speed Sports Direct Shift system. In other words, an automatic. But not just any automatic. This one has a bevy of options including a, you guessed it, trackday mode called S+. In this mode it will shift harder, faster, blip the throttle on aggressive downshifts and even hold or select gears based on G-sensor inputs.
We look forward to driving this one soon. Maybe a BMW vs. Lexus shootout is in order?Harper, 23, isn't a free agent until after the 2018 season, but he mentioned that he would like to be a member of the Nationals for the rest of his career. Harper's agent is Scott Boras, who has dealt with the Nationals' front office often.
WASHINGTON -- A few hours after being named the 2015 Baseball Writers' Association of America National League MVP Award winner, Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper indicated that he would welcome talks about a contract extension.
WASHINGTON -- A few hours after being named the 2015 Baseball Writers' Association of America National League MVP Award winner, Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper indicated that he would welcome talks about a contract extension.
Harper, 23, isn't a free agent until after the 2018 season, but he mentioned that he would like to be a member of the Nationals for the rest of his career. Harper's agent is Scott Boras, who has dealt with the Nationals' front office often.
"I'm definitely excited to be part of the Nationals organization," said Harper on Thursday night. "I think that being able to play in [Nationals Park], this city, this town, around the fans, it's such a great place to play. Baseball is up and coming. … I'm very excited to further my career with the Nationals. I have a couple of more years in D.C., and then hopefully at the end of that, we can do what we can and I can be a National for life, hopefully."
Harper was speaking after he became the first player in franchise history to win the NL MVP Award following a 2015 season in which Harper hit.330, led the NL in home runs (42, tied with Colorado's Nolan Arenado), runs scored (118), on-base percentage (.460) and slugging percentage (.649).
Video: Harper wins the 2015 BBWAA NL MVP Award
Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo was on MLB Network's "Hot Stove" Friday morning to talk about Harper and the club as a whole.
Rizzo, whose club selected Harper No. 1 overall in the 2010 Draft, said he was extremely proud of the all-around player Harper has become.
Rizzo was asked generically about how an organization assesses whether a player is worthy of the kind of contract that Harper's age and productivity may command on the open market, a contract that would not only impact a substantial amount of payroll space, but also make the player the face of franchise and someone who may or may not also have a say in the organization's direction.
"I think the most important part is, you've got to sign the right guy," Rizzo said. "He's got to have the attitude and the right character, he's got to be the type of person who can handle that big of a load of expectations, [handling] the money is always an issue, and handle the power of being the face of the franchise.
"I think lesson one is getting the right guy, have it be the right type of person you want, someone who will handle the mantel of that big enormous contract and the enormous expectations that come with it, and pick the right character guy to do it."
In four seasons with the Nationals, Harper, the BBWAA NL Rookie of the Year Award winner in 2012, has hit.289 with 97 home runs, 248 RBIs and 328 runs scored over 510 games, with an OPS of.902.Story highlights Dalton Hayes and Cheyenne Phillips are suspected of stealing three cars
They were the subject of a search that stretched from Kentucky to Georgia
(CNN) A teen couple from Kentucky was arrested Sunday after two weeks on the run following a series of car and gun thefts.
Dalton Hayes, 18, and Cheyenne Phillips, 13, were arrested in Panama City Beach, Florida, authorities said.
The two are suspected of stealing three cars -- two with guns inside -- in various states. They were the subjects of a search that stretched from Kentucky to Georgia.
Dalton Haynes talks with Panama City Beach Police during his arrest.
Authorities discovered them asleep in a Toyota Tundra stolen in Georgia, the Grayson County Sheriff's Office in Kentucky said in a statement.
"The vehicle was surrounded by law enforcement, and both Hayes and Phillips were taken into custody without further incident," the sheriff's office said.
Read MoreThe science
Mars One plans to send four people to Mars in 12 years, with the intent to launch subsequent manned missions and colonize the planet. Its Technical Feasibility section promises that the mission is possible using "existing, validated and available technology." Lansdorp places his faith completely in the companies that will build the necessary systems; Mars One won't manufacture any hardware itself.
Lansdorp, who founded his own wind-energy company in 2008, freely admits he doesn't understand the scientific details behind Mars One's proposals. "On a high level, yes. On a detailed level, absolutely not. I'm a mechanical engineer, so I know about the scientific principles in general," he says.
This is one reason Mars One will outsource all technological work: Currently, Paragon Space Development Corporation is working on Mars One's life-support systems. Paragon is preparing a report on the technical aspects of life on Mars, due out before the end of April. This will be Mars One's first attempt at explaining the dense science behind its space-survival concepts.
But for now, Mars One makes huge, impossible-sounding claims, but doesn't offer answers to technical questions, which is one reason MIT dove in itself.
"The Mars One mission plan, as described on their website and by Mr. Lansdorp on several occasions, is not feasible," write Sydney Do and Andrew Owens, the researchers behind the MIT study. They argue that Mars One's technological conceit is simply not viable. "Significant technology development is required before we can even land and sustain humans on Mars, much less support a growing colony," they say.
A Mars One habitat, in concept form
Do and Owens found three main issues with Mars One's plan: In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), plant growth/atmosphere management and spare parts manufacturing. ISRU means using existing elements on Mars to help sustain the crew. For example, Mars has high levels of nitrogen, an element necessary for human survival.
"Significant technology development, testing and validation efforts are required before ISRU technology can be relied on to support a human crew -- particularly a crew that has taken a one-way trip, since there is no contingency plan if something goes wrong," Do and Owens write.
As for plants and atmosphere management, the Mars One plan includes implementing 200 square meters of crops for food, for four people. The idea of growing food on Mars is admirable, but the amount of plants poses a problem, Do and Owens say. Four crew members would not produce enough carbon dioxide -- a natural byproduct of breathing -- to sustain 200 square meters of crops, so there would have to be some type of atmospheric control in place. Mars One recognizes this problem and proposes using carbon dioxide from the Martian atmosphere to combat it. But, this raises another issue: As plants process carbon dioxide, they create oxygen, which would build up to dangerous levels in the habitat, meaning it would require a venting system.
"This oxygen-removal technology has never been implemented in space, and is not 'validated and available' for application in a human colony on Mars," the researchers say.
Growing plants on Mars
Finally, the colonization aspect of Mars One's plan is daunting. The humans there would have only the supplies that they bring, meaning if the habitat breaks down and they can't fix it, they're dead. The Mars One Roadmap proposes launching primary and backup life-support systems alongside each subsequent mission, plus spare parts for the existing crew. The second crew brings parts for itself and the first crew; the third crew brings parts for itself, the second crew and the first crew, and so on. In terms of financial sustainability, this is a nightmare -- 3D printing won't cut it, Do and Owens say.
Lansdorp tackles this problem using a best-case scenario: "That's again assuming the spare-parts strategy of the International Space Station, which is when a system breaks, you replace the system. While if a system breaks on Mars, you find the component that broke down and replace the component. That might be a spring of a gram or half a gram, instead of throwing away a system that might be five or 10 kilos."
Parts larger than a gram, or even as large as 10 kilos, could also break down. Lansdorp recognizes that "spare parts is a problem," but it's not his problem -- Mars One will hire aerospace companies to figure out the necessary systems.
Do and Owens still aren't convinced that this is possible using current technology. To eradicate the resupply issue, they say it would be necessary to establish mining and manufacturing ecosystems on Mars, which would be costly in terms of time and money.
An outside view of conceptual Mars One habitats
The researchers think it's possible that humans will one day reach Mars -- it just won't be the Mars One way. "One of the interesting aspects of the Mars One organization is that for an organization proposing a technical endeavor, they do not spend much time talking about how they will achieve it," they say. "In addition, we have seen a few cases where Mr. Lansdorp seems to be confused or misinformed about some of the technological solutions that he proposes."
In the end, Mars One is the company making bold claims about living on another planet, and so the burden of proof falls to Lansdorp and his team. Still, he says the upcoming Paragon report isn't meant to prove the feasibility of Mars One.
"We have already enough support to show that," he says.
The response
Regardless of whether Mars One agrees with the MIT research, its response to criticism does not always inspire faith.
"He didn't do his homework at all.... You don't do this in science."
Dr. Norbert Kraft is the chief medical officer for Mars One. For nearly two decades, he's conducted research for NASA, the Russian Space Agency and JAXA, the Japanese space agency, specializing in the psychological and physiological effects of long-term spaceflight. He's a fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association and holds an M.D. from the University of Vienna, Austria.
"The issue is that, first, it's not an MIT study," Kraft says about Do and Owens' work. "A student, an undergraduate student, wanted to make a presentation at a conference. My problem with him is his scientific approach. As a scientist, you just can't read a website and make the rest of the stuff up."
There's one clear problem here: The MIT researchers are not undergrads. Do and Owens are Ph.D. candidates in aeronautics and astronautics at MIT, each with Master of Science degrees in the same field at MIT. Lansdorp also mentions that he believes Do and Owen are undergraduate students, but says he can't be sure.
Dr. Norbert Kraft
Apart from Mars One's assumption that the researchers are inexperienced students, Lansdorp disregards the study because he says it uses incorrect data and doesn't offer any solutions to proposed problems. However, Mars One changed two sections |
in our survey focussed on the use of mentors, with similar structure (to allow comparison with feedback on coaches).
In answer to the question, “Do you have a mentor?“:
67% Yes
33% No
Those results bear out my own experience, of selling coaching or mentoring services into UK & European businesses. Many companies appear to value ‘technical’ or ‘professional’ mentoring, whilst remaining sceptical about coaching. Despite that, my experience is mentoring engagements almost always involved elements of coaching & it may become apparent that is the client’s primary need. But, as they are more widely taken-up, let’s see how mentors are being used.
The following questions were only completed by the 67%, who answered ‘yes’ to having a mentor.
In answer to the question, “Do they also work for your employer?“:
60% No
40% Yes
Given the common situation of mentoring being provided by senior leaders within a business, this answer also surprised me. It seems, perhaps in line with the experience I shared above, that the take-up of external mentors has increased. It may just be the language used, or perhaps reflects the time poor nature of many business leaders. Are companies struggling to free up their own senior leaders for mentoring & opting to buy-in mentoring expertise instead? Either way, it confirms the greater popularity of mentoring rather than coaching services.
In answer to the question, “Do you believe you need a mentor, to develop in your career or succeed within your current organisation?“:
40% Yes
40% No
20% Don’t know
A more positive answer than the equivalent one for coaching, but still the majority answering “don’t know” or “no”. Perhaps the most interesting comparison is the lower number of undecided. It seems experiencing mentoring either clarifies that it is optional or identifies a clear need for this support. Once more, mentoring seems to be better understood than coaching.
Personal Development
Our final three questions focussed on respondents progress in their personal development & time commitment to any form of such investment.
In answer to the question, “Do you have clear goals for your leadership development this year?“:
50% No
50% Yes
A concerning lack of clarity amongst responders to this question. If leaders really only have a 50:50 chance of having clear goals to develop their leadership capability, a need for goal-orientated coaching or mentoring is clear. It’s perhaps not surprising from increasingly time poor leaders, working in business that too often focus on short-term targets. However, it is still concerning & perhaps something for prospective coaches or mentors to emphasise more – the benefits of such goal setting & how they can help clients use them.
In answer to the question, “Are you on track to achieve your goals?“:
60% Yes
40% No
Given the lack of clear goals identified in the previous answer, this positive view of progress risks looking overly optimistic. But, with hindsight, perhaps the wording here encouraged leaders to think about their wider goals. Another interpretation is that without clear goals it is easier to persuade yourself that you are doing fine. Certainly, believing you are on track, whilst potentially lacking clear goals or any accountability mechanism – could be a recipe for complacency. Does that also drive a lower uptake of coaches?
In answer to our final question, “How much time (per week) do you give to your personal development?“:
67% 1-2 hours
17% 3-4 hours
17% >1 day
In the full version of this question, participants were asked to consider all development activities (coaching, mentoring, reading, training, events, etc). In that context, leaders spending on 1-2 hours a week (<5% of a 40 hour working week) seems far too little. Perhaps another sign that “short-termism” can rob leaders of investing what they need to grow & develop in their leadership. For myself & leaders I work with, I’ve found that if you are not protecting sufficient time to develop your leadership skills, you not only fail to grow but also burnout quicker.
What are you going to do about it?
I hope those results were interesting. Feel free to share in our comments section whether the scores aligned to your experience.
If you have been challenged by this post, to reconsider investing more time in your personal development & perhaps seeking a coach or mentor, then stop right now. If that thought is going to become more than just wishful thinking, the best thing you can do is commit to an action you are going to take as a result.
What will you do differently, within the next 2 weeks? Write it down, preferably with an app that will remind you.
I wish you well with your development as a leader. Today’s customer insight teams need the best leaders possible.
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Like this: Like Loading...A Reddit user — presumably young, lovestruck and Internet savvy — took to the social media site on Saturday afternoon to ask Hamiltonians for help.
"I'm not from the Hamilton area," a person posting under the handle an_on_ym_ous wrote. "I'm looking for a nice place to bring my girlfriend to propose to her. Somewhere we can drive to or walk to, with nice scenery or a romantic atmosphere and not overly public/crowded. A well-lit area would be better as I plan on asking her in the evening."
Within hours, the thread had already picked up several comments. Parks and waterfalls, which Hamilton has in abundance, dominated the early suggestions.
So, what do you think? What are the best marriage proposal spots in Hamilton? Tell us on Twitter (@cbchamilton) or on our Facebook page and we'll feature your response in the roundup below. Feel free to include pictures and videos, too.PHILADELPHIA — As is the norm in the modern NFL, most Eagles’ training camp practices are private affairs. They practice at their regular training facility, on fields surrounded by tall fences, and the only outsiders allowed in are credentialed media, certain season-ticket holders, and special guests. The diehard Iggles fans, those who are tailgating outside Lincoln Financial Field at 6 a.m. on Sundays, have been shut out.
There is one exception. In the corner of the practice complex, just next to one of the fields, sits a large white RV, from which the radio station WIP broadcasts shows a few times a week. WIP is a fixture in the Philly sports scene. In the late 1980s, the station was among the first to move to the 24/7 sports-talk radio format as we know it today: loudmouth hosts giving opinions and taking calls from ornery fans. For about 30 years, WIP has been the place where people gather to discuss, analyze, and rip the Eagles year-round.
As you might imagine, the team and the station have a complicated relationship. From what WIP can gather, Eagles coaches and front office members do listen, if only to gauge the climate around the team. At one point, the Eagles actually assigned an intern to listen to WIP and report back what he heard. The players, meanwhile, try to avoid it. When linebacker Ike Reese flew in for rookie minicamp, in 1998, Mike Zordich, the Eagles’ veteran safety, picked him up at the airport. Driving into town, Zordich gave Reese two pieces of advice: “Don’t read the newspapers and don’t listen to WIP.”
But at training camp, for some time, there was no escaping it. For 17 years, from the mid ’90s until 2012, the Eagles held their camp at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pa. The practices were mostly open to the public, and as a way to promote the station, WIP would travel up there and host their various talk shows from time to time. The station set up a tent five feet from the sideline and broadcast from 6 a.m. until 7 at night. They’d interview players, take calls and evaluate the practice going on right in front of them. They even set up big speakers, so the fans could hear them. But the players could, too.
“If we were going: ‘I’m telling ya, this McNabb, he always chokes in the clutch...’ he could literally be walking by,” says Angelo Cataldi, a WIP personality who’s been at the station for 28 years. “Players would be coming down [the field] while we were ripping them.”
And they ripped Donovan McNabb worse than anyone. It didn’t help that he and WIP didn’t get off to a good start at the 1999 NFL draft. In the days leading up to it, Cataldi says, the mayor of Philadelphia, Ed Rendell, was convinced that the Eagles were taking Ricky Williams, the reigning Heisman Trophy winner, with the No. 2 pick. “Rendell told us that we should be up there for that crowning moment, when we got Ricky Williams,” Cataldi says. The station figured it’d at least make for a good promotion, so Cataldi took 30 Eagles fans—“30 crazy people,” as he describes them—up to New York. When the Eagles selected McNabb instead, those 30 Eagles fans booed him mercilessly. “And he held a grudge for 11 years,” Cataldi says. Not once in 11 training camps, according to Cataldi, did McNabb appear on a WIP show (though he did after retiring).
Other Eagles players had their own issues with the station. The constant critiquing and negative commentary got to be so much one year that, when WIP asked to interview a player, Ron Howard, the team’s public relations man at the time, told them none of the players wanted to—they hated the station that much. Cataldi was livid. He threatened to never broadcast from Lehigh again, so Howard said he would see what he could do. “He drags over Chad Lewis, and Lewis does a very perfunctory interview with us and leaves,” Cataldi recalls. “Ron told us later: he paid [Lewis] $200 to do it! I think out of his own pocket!”
WIP had that kind of pull in those days, during the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2004, during Terrell Owens’s first training camp, the Eagles were drawing about 20,000 fans a day and the WIP personalities acted a bit like rock stars playing to a packed house. The WIP tent became a meeting ground before practice, fans doing E-A-G-L-E-S chants and singing the team’s fight song. If a fan ever wanted to get on the radio, they’d just be handed a microphone.
You can see why Chip Kelly, in 2013, decided to move the team’s training camp to its practice facility in Philadelphia and close the majority of practices to the public. That didn’t stop WIP from pilling on Kelly, as the team kept losing, until he was fired late in 2015. After that, though, the mood on the WIP airwaves seemed to shift, to a more mellow tone. By that time, the Sixers were fully committed to The Process and a long rebuild, and irascible Philly fans had grown more patient. When the Eagles drafted another quarterback, Carson Wentz, with the second overall pick in 2016, he wasn’t booed the same way McNabb had been. He was roundly cheered.
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz. John Jones/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images
When Wentz first appeared on WIP, he sounded robotic, rehearsed, cliché. Then the Eagles traded Sam Bradford, Wentz became the starter, and the team started 3-0. Over the course of the season, Wentz started opening up during interviews, talking more about his maturation process, specifically tapping into the blue-collar identity of the city. “He’s good at [showing] how much it means to him,” says Jon Ritchie, the former Eagles fullback who now has a show on WIP. “It means so much to us as fans, and when you’ve got a guy, leading the team, that it means that much to as well, you feel a real bond there. You feel like you’re working together with this young man, witnessing the growth, and feeling a pride in the growth. Like you’re a part of the team. He’s able to engender that sort of reaction from the fans, which is very savvy. He’s young, but he’s got a great grasp of what makes this town tick.”
That is one thing that McNabb, at least in his critics’ eyes, apparently failed to do. “He never got the city,” Cataldi says. “He was the best quarterback the Eagles ever had, but he never made a connection with the fans.” (Multiple attempts to reach McNabb for this story were unsuccessful.)
Some people may look at this as a race issue—fans critiquing a black quarterback and celebrating a white one. Ike Reese, the former Eagles linebacker (and McNabb teammate) turned WIP host, doesn’t view it that way. “The only color these fans see is green,” he says. Wentz is being celebrated, he says, because the Eagles haven’t had a franchise QB since McNabb left, and fans finally think they have one in Wentz. “This town is tough,” Reese adds. “If things don’t go well, it’s not going to matter. Just ask Ron Jaworski. Ask Mike Schmidt.”
“We try to reflect the mind-set of the fan,” Cataldi says, “and it is a little gentler Philadelphia than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. We’ve all evolved over time.”
For now, Wentz is still enjoying his honeymoon period in Philly. After watching him for just one season, fans are calling into WIP singing his praises. They tell the hosts they’re expecting eight, nine, 10 wins this season, especially since the Eagles added Alshon Jeffrey, Torrey Smith, and LaGarrette Blount, giving Wentz two big-play receivers and a goal-line running back. “[Wentz has] given people reason for hope,” says Spike Eskin, the WIP program director. “They see light at the end of the tunnel, so they’re giving the team a chance to live up to that.” Four WIP personalities—Cataldi, Ritchie, Reese, and Joe DeCamara—all described themselves as big Carson Wentz fans. Cataldi says he hasn’t been this optimistic about the team since McNabb and the Eagles lost the Super Bowl at the end of the ’04 season.
Last Wednesday, Cataldi did his regular morning show from the Eagles’ facility, just like old times. Except now there are no booming speakers, no roaring crowds, no E-A-G-L-E-S chants. Just a quiet RV sitting there in the early morning, next to an empty row of fields. Then around 6:45 a.m., Wentz popped in for an interview. “Carson Wentz is in the house, baby!” Cataldi shouted into his mic. He interviewed Wentz for about 10 minutes, signed off by saying that he was “rooting” for him, and they posed for a picture together. This was the WIP of 2017, almost unrecognizable compared to the WIP of yesteryear.
“The heyday of WIP at training camp is probably over,” Cataldi says. “We try to reflect the mind-set of the fan, and it is a little gentler Philadelphia than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. We’ve all evolved over time. I guess we’ll have to find new ways to have fun and rip every one of our players. I will say this: it was a party while we had it. It was a party...”
Question? Comment? Story idea? Let us know at talkback@themmqb.comWhat did you do during the great battle of SOPA? What will you be able to tell your grandkids about the stand you took? The stand you took for our freedom to say “bottom” to a librarian? Me? I joined in the great blackout by playing a game without any graphics. In defiance of SOPA, I played the old but thoroughly delightful Half-Life 2 mod The Blind Monk’s Society.
Your character has had his eyes plucked out by ravenous birds, so you need to “see by hearing”. You learn this by guiding yourself through the map according to the narrator’s instructions. He’s a jolly sounding monk, charming, witty, and utterly dedicated to the world of auditory delights that you face. He explains the layout of the map, telling you how to discern the direction you need to go: keep a river on the left, head towards the ringing bell, etc.
Plug in a pair of headphones so you can better discern the direction sounds are coming from. It’s played with typical first-person controls, but I’d suggest a few control tweaks before you get started: add the strafe controls back (they’ve been cut), and bind a “turn left” and “turn right” to the arrow keys. After starting the game, remove your hand from the mouse. It’s slow going, and I over steered a lot when playing with the mouse: I resorted to binding the keys in order to know that I was making consistent movements, tapping them to turn, and to ensure my character wasn’t facing up or down. The best tip, though, is to close your eyes. Instead of the distraction of glowing monitors, the desk, and everything in my peripheral vision, the darkness brought me onto the world.
All you need to do is walk along a river and find a wind chime to return to the monks. Simple, but painfully tricky to do when moving unsighted. Every step creates an odd sense of paranoia: my thought process trolled me so many times, telling me I was moving too fast to hear subtle changes in the river’s direction, or warning me that I’d veered off course completely. I slowed down, taking uneager and hesitant steps, listening intently to the sounds: footsteps, rushing water, wind. I found myself wishing for a brief flicker of sight so I could orient myself. Even so, it’s worth getting lost if only to listen to the gentle annoyance of the monk. It’s a game that wouldn’t have worked if the voice acting and script were an afterthought, but there’s been a lot of care taken with the silly voices and Pratchett-esque lines. They’re aural anti-aliasing.
Going blind really undermines your judgement. I missed my eyes and cursed my ears and brain for their pathetic inability to take over. I was knee-deep in water more than once, panicking when a few steps in what I thought was the opposite direction didn’t take me out. Instead of leaping joyfully through the world, I’d stop and take it all in and try and build a mental picture of where I was, constructing the physical world from the background noise. That’s a remarkably hard thing to do, but it’s rewarding beyond belief when it turns out your senses and instinct were correct. Better than a headshot, but a billion times more stressful.Despite being launched a day ahead of its widely publicized November 22 release date, it would appear that players around the globe were more than ready to download — and start spending money in — Nintendo’s latest mobile game, Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. Soft launched in Australia last month, the game has become the No. 1 downloaded iPhone app on the U.S. App Store in just seven hours and has rocketed into the top 10 highest grossing iPhone apps on Japan’s App Store in the same amount of time.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp is currently the most downloaded iOS app in eight countries, including the United States, Japan, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, and Luxembourg. It’s in the top 10 most downloaded apps in an additional five countries, which include Great Britain, Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, and Singapore.
The chart below shows the game’s rapid climb to No. 1 on iPhone and No. 2 on iPad on the U.S. App Store.
Japan’s notoriously diehard mobile gamers already have propelled Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp into the upper stratosphere of spending on Apple’s App Store at No. 9 overall, but that isn’t unusual for Nintendo app launches. Its previous mobile release, Fire Emblem Heroes, reached No. 5 on Japan’s top grossing iPhone chart in the same number of hours back at its launch in February.
Currently, the game is No. 184 for iPhone revenue in the U.S., No. 136 in Great Britain, and is ranked highest outside of Japan in Finland at No. 109.
Google Play’s charts have yet to fully reflect initial downloads and spending on the game, but we expect it to be in line with what we’re seeing on the App Store, based on past performance of Nintendo’s mobile titles on the platform.
We’ll have more insights around Nintendo’s latest foray into mobile gaming soon.
Sensor Tower’s App Intelligence platform is an Enterprise level offering. Interested in learning more? Request a live demo with our team!, Copyright 2015. (Federal officials plan to add a 400-acre property known as Ackerson Meadow to Yosemite National Park. The privately owned land lies within the 2013 Rim Fire burn scar. Guy McCarthy / Union Democrat) 4705054
, Copyright 2015. (Federal officials plan to add a 400-acre property known as Ackerson Meadow to Yosemite National Park. The privately owned land lies within the 2013 Rim Fire burn scar. Guy McCarthy / Union Democrat) - union democrat
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Federal officials intend to add more than 400 acres in Tuolumne County to Yosemite National Park, and the Department of Interior is seeking public input through the end of January.
The area is a privately owned property known as Ackerson Meadow, currently surrounded by Stanislaus National Forest land and adjacent to Yosemite National Park near Evergreen Road.
The Trust for Public Land, a nonprofit organization with 30 offices nationwide, is working with the property owners to acquire Ackerson Meadow, then donate it to Yosemite National Park.
Ackerson Meadow is below Bald Mountain, off Highway 120, and bisected by Evergreen Road southwest of Hetch Hetchy Reservoir. It lies within the 2013 Rim Fire burn scar. There are two meadows on the property - Ackerson Meadow and South Meadow - both on the northeast side of Evergreen Road.
"It will be protected as part of the park," Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman said Tuesday. "We haven't decided whether it will be designated wilderness, but we're looking at it."
The property includes portions of Ackerson Creek as well as habitat for bear, deer, foxes and other mammals, said Markley Bavinger, of the Trust for Public Land.
Acquiring it has been a top priority for Yosemite officials since the 1980s, because of the value and diversity of habitat in the meadows and adjacent forest, and for what it adds to the existing ecosystem in adjacent wilderness, she said.
"Private individuals are going to pay for this property," Bavinger said.
The last time the property changed hands was for $2.6 million in 2006, according to Tuolumne County assessor records. The property is not yet paid for, Bavinger said. The Trust for Public Land hopes to complete fundraising by October, she said.
"We're the ones working with the landowners and potential donors and the park service to try to make this all happen," Bavinger said. "We have an agreement with the landowners to sell the property while we work to get the funding together."
County records list the current owners as Ware Holdings LP, and Lisa Cardone, of Woodbridge, New Jersey.
For the complete story, see the Jan. 9, 2015, edition of The Union Democrat.
11930079EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural
10 / 10
Quick Review
Full of complex flavor, effortless to smoke, and the price point. This cigar is well worth a 10 out of 10. EP Carrillo keeps hitting homeruns. Whether it's blending cigars for other manufacturers or his own. There is a reason he's called the Godfather of boutique cigars.
Stogie Specs Made By: E.P. Carrillo
Wrapper: Ecuadorian Sumatra
Binder: Nicaraguan
Filler: Nicaraguan
Average Price: $7.50
Ring Gauge: 52
Length: 5"
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Initial Thoughts
I’ve been a fan of EP Carrillo for quite some time. His New Wave Connecticut series was fantastic. He’s also responsible for delivering incredible blends for the Four Kicks and the Headley Grange. When I heard there was a new release from EPC on the market I went searching for it immediately. I asked around to all my local shops to see when they were getting it in. Finally, I dropped in one day and there they were. Sitting on the end cap in all their glory. I picked up the Natural and the Maduro. I wanted to smoke them very close together and see what the differences were. Let’s get into the review I know you’re all very eager!
Looks
I love the classic look of this EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural. It has his classic branding on the band. The swirling gold EP, and just below the bold font face spelling Carrillo. The packaging isn’t flashy nor does it stand out much. However, if you’re a fan of EPC you know exactly what to look for in the humidor!
The wrapper on this cigar is absolutely gorgeous. It’s a nice reddish brown Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper. The veins are very minimal and the seams are almost undetectable. Near flawless construction on this cigar which I’ve come to expect from EPC. The foot of the cigar is packed full of tobacco and the head is covered with a beautiful triple cap. I’m really excited to try this EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural, just looking at it my mouth is salivating with anticipation.
Function
I made sure to do an in-store pinch test of this cigar. Rolling it through my fingers I always try to get the best feeling cigar possible. I try not to touch them all, but sometimes it’s hard. I know some people think it’s bad etiquette to touch cigars in a humidor, but honestly, I’m not sure why. I don’t want to get into that here. This EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural has an incredible feel to it. Nice and firm with a tiny bit of sponginess to it.
It’s time to nip the cap and test the dry draw! I want to get all this pre-game stuff out of the way so I can enjoy smoking it already! The dry draw is exactly what I expected it would be, flawless. It has just enough resistance to where you don’t choke yourself with an abundance of smoke, yet it is open enough to where you can experience the flavors it has to offer before you even light it up.
Smoking
Ahhh, this EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural takes right to the flame and begins smoking effortlessly. Right out of the gate the burn line is perfect and holding a nice tight ash. I didn’t even toast the foot on this cigar. I just held the lighter to the foot and began puffing and boom the burn took off. Can’t ask for much more than that can you?
The first third produces some incredible creamy smoke. A nice burn and the ash held the entire first third. I was quite impressed. I tried to snag a picture of it, but of course it fell off onto my shirt while I was transitioning. I’ve gotta get better at that. Oh well I got a decent one before it fell it off anyway.
The second third burned just as well as the first. Not a single problem nor did I have to touch it up. Just an incredible draw to this EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural. I wish every cigar smoked like this one. I would never have to write a bad review. The second third continued into the final third smoking like a champion. Great burn line, incredible smoke, and just effortless and pleasureful all the way down to the nub.
Flavor So everything else about this EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural was a hit, hopefully the flavor doesn’t let you down right? Oh boy I can tell you right now the cigar is the real deal! I think I may have set the bar too high for 2013 smoking this one right out of the gate! There’s a reason I gave this cigar a 10 out of 10. The flavor was just incredible and complex! Pre light, I was able to get a wonderful rich and sweet smell of tobacco from the foot. I picked up a nice bit of brown sugar and molasses. Mmm, it smelled fantastic! The first third brought in the spice on the lips and on the retrohale. It nearly brought me to tears on the first retrohale. What followed was very peculiar meaty / savory flavor that made my mouth water for more. Towards the end of the first third I picked up more woodsy and vegetal notes and the pepper had calmed down a lot. Which I’m happy to say, because I don’t know if I could have handled that much pepper the rest of the way. The second third of this EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural became even more complex. I began picking up some very earthy coffee notes which is very indicative of Nicaraguan tobacco. The spice is still there, at about the same amount of intensity as the end of the first third. By the end of the second third the spice began picking up again but was followed by some bitter chocolate tastes. This cigar is incredibly complex and hitting all over the flavor wheel. It’s quite an exciting ride to say the least! The final third finished this cigar out with a bang. The spice had picked back up, but it was delivered with a nice creamy and smooth approach. The intensity was there, but it delivered with such grace that it’s hard not to enjoy it! Would I Buy It Again? No question. I would buy it over and over again. Is It an Every Day Smoke? Absolutely. Especially in this robusto size. Easily a daily smoke. Would I Buy a Box? I hope I can go to the store today and buy one. They are that good! Conclusion The first 10 out of 10 for 2013 comes on the 2nd day of the year. It’s hard to believe but this EP Carrillo Cardinal Natural is just that damn good! I knew I liked EPC’s cigars, but wow this was an incredible smoke. Talk about starting the year off on the right foot.
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OtherIf you have a jar of honey to trade for a pumpkin or a bag of vegetables to swap for a used trumpet, Barter Fest in Hewitt is the place to be this Saturday. The music and merchandise festival, in its third year, was dreamed up by Michael Dagen, an audio engineer, and his wife Amber Fletschock, a visual artist.
The two moved to Hewitt, a city of fewer than 300 people near Wadena, several years ago and have been building a home base for their artistic endeavors ever since.
Their efforts have dramatically affected the town, drawing grants to fix up its enormous former school, now a history museum, for example. “Our next project is we’re creating a lending library in the museum,” said Dagen. “We’re excited about it. People are dumping (off books) left and right. We’ve never had a library, not since the school was there.”
Fletschock and Dagen in their studio. (MPR Photo/Chris Welsch)
The couple has expressed the kind of entrepreneurial zeal that sometimes accompanies those new to a small community. Ground Level wrote about the phenomenon, which University of Minnesota Extension sociologist Ben Winchester calls the “brain gain,” here.
Dagen and Fletschock have also transformed an old hall into an art and recording studio and headquarters for the couple’s band, Dorthy Fix, which will play at this year’s Barter Fest.
The festival will include a lineup that’s hard to imagine winding up in Hewitt any other way, including the jug band Alien Brain and the Jugular Vein, Duluth-based fire dancers Spin Collective and the folk-rock band The Brothers Burn Mountain.
But the event is about more than music and trading, said Dagen. It’s about old-fashioned community building. “Barter Fest has grown in attendance and in people’s minds, when it comes to the ideas behind it,” he said. He described an “invisible barrier” that is crossed “when you start to think of value without money. You have to engage with people to figure out what is that thing worth. It’s so much more rewarding.”
Dagen recalled past trades such as a piece of Fletschock’s art for a massage, one of Dagen’s guitars for a yoga class and two blue hubbard squashes for a processed rabbit. “Later they threw in a jar of dried onions because they felt we got the better deal,” said Dagen.
“The deals always seem to get worked out so that both parties leave satisfied,” he said. “I have found that the experience feels so natural once you get into it. Often the swap breaks the ice and leads to a conversation and maybe a relationship.”
He likens these highly-personal exchanges to what must have taken place among settlers on the frontier. “That’s the way it was,” he said. “That’s how they ran, these small communities. Everybody knew everybody. They knew how to get what they needed. Over the last one hundred years, that has slowly eroded. People got disconnected and got afraid of each other.”
“Nobody has much money out here,” Dagen said. “But the cost of living is low, so you don’t need a lot to get by. You can live within your means and do things that don’t cost money.” That includes camping for free and making trades during Barter Fest. The bartering kicks off at 10 am on Saturday (you can bring money if you have nothing to trade), and the music starts at Hewitt’s noon town whistle.Shaikh M Tawhidi said Imams are trying to reform the Muslim community
The Imam in SA said the laws for women in headscarf need to be reviewed
This comes after a man is granted bail for grabbing a woman's headscarf
A Muslim leader has warned Australian Muslims could take'matters into their own hands' turning violent to protect their women if headscarf laws are not reviewed.
Shaikh M Tawhidi, founder of the Islamic Association of South Australia made the statement after a 27-year-old man was released on bail for allegedly grabbing a young woman's headscarf as she got onto a bus in Adelaide's inner-north, reported the ABC.
The man was arrested and charged with assault and offensive behaviour on a passenger vehicle on Tuesday over the incident which occurred on March 16 - but the Imam claims this is not enough.
Shaikh M Tawhidi, founder of the Islamic Association of South Australia, warns the Muslim community may turn violent to protect their women if the government does not review headscarf laws
Mr Tawhidi said Muslim leaders are trying 'hard to reform the Muslim community of SA into a tolerant community.'
But if the government fails to re-consider its headscarf laws issues may arise among the Muslim community, especially in Kilburn, Prospect and surrounding areas in north Adelaide which host a large number of Muslims.
'If government laws do not prevent such assaults, then I fear that a day will come where the Muslim community might take matters into their own hands to protect their women and mothers,' said Mr Tawhidi.
'It is actions like these, and non-strategic rulings that could spark a reaction from the affected families that will result in violence.'
The 27-year-old man is expected to appear in the Elizabeth Magistrates Court on 18 April.IT HAS been a rocky year for Bitcoin, the online peer-to-peer currency, with the exchange rate soaring from a few cents to over $30 per coin before crashing after a string of thefts, hacks and other setbacks. Coins have since regained a value of around $5. But it is becoming clear that the software could prove at least as useful as the currency itself, underpinning a number of important new technologies.
First, it could be used as a form of “carbon dating” for digital information – something that would make electronic voting more secure. This is possible because of the way Bitcoin records transactions, says Jeremy Clark, a computer scientist at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
“The currency’s software could ‘carbon date’ digital information, preventing votes from being changed”
An individual’s bitcoins are registered to one or more addresses, which are alphanumeric sequences that serve as the user’s identity on the P2P network. When a transaction takes place, it is broadcast on the network, effectively creating a public record. The coded address keeps the user’s identity anonymous.
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Clark and his colleague Aleksander Essex at the University of Waterloo, also in Ontario, realised they could convert a message – for example, a list of codes that securely link voters to their votes – into a Bitcoin address. Sending a tiny fraction of a bitcoin – a small transaction – to that address would allow the holder of that list to store it in the public record without revealing its contents. When they later publish the message for verification, anyone can repeat the conversion to a Bitcoin address and confirm its age by checking the public record.
Faking Bitcoin’s public record would be very difficult as you’d need more computing power than the rest of the Bitcoin network combined – a feature that ensures the currency’s security.
The pair have used their method, known as CommitCoin, to close a loophole in a voting system they helped develop. In the Scantegrity system, voters receive a confirmation code from the list that is cryptographically linked to their selected candidate and can be used to check on the election website that their vote is counted.
Now, if an unscrupulous election official tries to change votes they would be outed, because the code used to record the vote would change, and would not match up with the BitCoin network entry. “CommitCoin allows you to not trust anyone,” says Clark.
“It plugs that gap,” says Steve Schneider, who researches electronic voting systems at the University of Surrey, UK. He points out that, although such systems aren’t yet widely used, it is important that all security problems are resolved before they replace traditional voting methods.
Another system, Namecoin, could be used to circumvent internet censorship. Launched last year, it uses modified Bitcoin |
84 -0.89 0.29 0.58 -208 67 135 1977 Mike Livingston 331 966 2.92 -0.63 0.26 1.23 -209 85 407 1999 Billy Joe Tolliver 313 1286 4.11 -0.67 0.53 0.80 -209 164 251 1978 Fran Tarkenton 623 2113 3.39 -0.34 0.59 1.26 -211 370 785 2014 Shaun Hill 257 1241 4.83 -0.83 0.59 0.39 -213 151 99 2001 Aaron Brooks 688 3085 4.48 -0.31 0.89 1.04 -213 612 712 1974 Tom Owen 225 606 2.69 -0.95 -0.04 0.98 -213 -9 222 1987 Scott Campbell 306 1182 3.86 -0.70 0.44 0.90 -214 135 274 1958 Y.A. Tittle 230 773 3.36 -0.93 0.14 1.07 -214 32 246 1955 Tobin Rote 416 1426 3.43 -0.52 0.47 1.25 -215 195 520 2012 Matt Hasselbeck 248 1142 4.60 -0.87 0.50 0.52 -216 124 128 1988 Steve Beuerlein 294 1158 3.94 -0.73 0.43 0.87 -216 127 255 1963 Lamar McHan 229 769 3.36 -0.95 0.13 0.92 -218 29 210 1988 Ken O'Brien 482 2035 4.22 -0.45 0.72 1.15 -218 345 554 1990 Billy Joe Tolliver 443 1896 4.28 -0.49 0.70 0.96 -218 311 426 1996 Frank Reich 363 1497 4.12 -0.60 0.58 0.82 -218 211 299 2007 Chad Pennington 306 1309 4.28 -0.71 0.53 0.72 -219 163 221 2007 Trent Edwards 295 1254 4.25 -0.74 0.51 0.70 -219 150 205 1982 Jim Zorn 280 1041 3.72 -0.79 0.34 0.72 -220 95 202 2007 Brian Griese 290 1227 4.23 -0.76 0.49 0.68 -221 141 196 1985 Eric Hipple 487 1943 3.99 -0.46 0.66 0.97 -222 319 475 2013 Carson Palmer 640 3328 5.20 -0.35 1.04 0.93 -223 665 598 2011 Joe Flacco 612 3100 5.07 -0.36 0.99 1.06 -223 608 647 1999 Brian Griese 525 2284 4.35 -0.43 0.77 1.04 -224 403 547 1997 Kent Graham 279 1086 3.89 -0.80 0.37 0.64 -224 103 179 1994 Chris Miller 365 1526 4.18 -0.62 0.58 0.74 -226 212 270 1956 Ted Marchibroda 314 996 3.17 -0.72 0.25 1.04 -226 80 327 1991 Jim Everett 547 2302 4.21 -0.41 0.74 1.16 -226 406 633 1996 Jim Kelly 435 1829 4.20 -0.52 0.66 0.91 -226 288 394 1986 Mark Malone 469 1869 3.99 -0.48 0.63 1.04 -227 297 487 2008 Joe Flacco 512 2380 4.65 -0.45 0.83 1.15 -228 424 590 1947 Bob Waterfield 224 495 2.21 -1.02 -0.21 1.25 -229 -48 280 2003 Doug Johnson 276 1120 4.06 -0.84 0.39 0.63 -231 107 175 1978 Ken Anderson 378 1179 3.12 -0.61 0.32 0.99 -231 121 373 1975 Craig Morton 432 1375 3.18 -0.54 0.39 1.45 -232 170 627 1985 Marc Wilson 439 1719 3.92 -0.53 0.58 0.90 -233 255 395 2001 Tony Banks 446 1905 4.27 -0.52 0.68 0.82 -233 302 367 1974 Roman Gabriel 387 1174 3.03 -0.61 0.30 1.33 -235 117 513 1985 Tommy Kramer 572 2306 4.03 -0.41 0.70 1.02 -237 399 581 1973 Terry Bradshaw 238 652 2.74 -1.00 -0.06 0.93 -237 -15 222 1998 Warren Moon 296 1162 3.93 -0.80 0.38 0.67 -238 112 198 2001 Jim Miller 435 1843 4.24 -0.56 0.64 0.79 -242 279 343 2010 Donovan McNabb 538 2612 4.86 -0.45 0.88 1.13 -242 471 609 2012 Jay Cutler 513 2566 5.00 -0.47 0.90 0.91 -243 460 469 1981 Pat Haden 313 1162 3.71 -0.78 0.34 0.73 -245 107 228 1977 Lynn Dickey 246 628 2.55 -1.00 -0.11 0.86 -245 -27 212 1982 Steve DeBerg 247 867 3.51 -0.99 0.13 0.51 -245 33 127 1996 Warren Moon 275 1054 3.83 -0.89 0.29 0.53 -245 80 147 2015 Johnny Manziel 278 1354 4.87 -0.88 0.56 0.27 -246 154 74 2006 Eli Manning 572 2524 4.41 -0.43 0.78 1.01 -246 447 577 1999 Kent Graham 332 1340 4.04 -0.74 0.45 0.73 -246 150 242 1957 Earl Morrall 330 1127 3.42 -0.75 0.29 1.15 -247 97 380 1997 Tony Banks 577 2463 4.27 -0.43 0.75 1.02 -247 431 588 1998 Jim Harbaugh 356 1436 4.03 -0.70 0.49 0.78 -248 173 276 1939 Davey O'Brien 309 685 2.22 -0.81 -0.05 0.98 -250 -16 303 2002 Tim Couch 496 2106 4.25 -0.51 0.68 0.81 -252 338 400 1948 Fred Enke 295 809 2.74 -0.86 0.04 1.54 -252 13 455 2004 Drew Bledsoe 509 2209 4.34 -0.50 0.71 1.04 -253 363 529 1986 Dave Wilson 378 1436 3.80 -0.67 0.45 0.85 -253 169 322 1980 Steve DeBerg 341 1263 3.70 -0.75 0.37 0.68 -254 125 233 1986 Randy Wright 543 2170 4.00 -0.47 0.64 1.05 -257 350 570 1972 John Reaves 280 790 2.82 -0.92 0.01 0.86 -258 4 240 1952 Charlie Trippi 253 582 2.30 -1.02 -0.19 1.17 -258 -48 295 1970 Bart Starr 296 900 3.04 -0.88 0.10 0.79 -260 30 234 1988 Don Majkowski 414 1673 4.04 -0.63 0.54 0.97 -262 222 401 1981 Phil Simms 373 1412 3.79 -0.71 0.41 0.80 -265 154 299 2000 Cade McNown 357 1418 3.97 -0.74 0.43 0.61 -266 155 219 1961 Tom Flores 389 1477 3.80 -0.69 0.44 1.10 -267 169 427 1999 Cade McNown 285 1091 3.83 -0.95 0.24 0.52 -271 70 148 2001 Quincy Carter 233 846 3.63 -1.16 0.04 0.18 -271 8 43 2013 Matt Flynn 244 1082 4.43 -1.11 0.27 0.17 -272 67 41 1950 Frankie Albert 359 933 2.60 -0.76 0.08 1.37 -272 29 492 1986 Steve Pelluer 466 1810 3.88 -0.58 0.53 0.94 -273 248 437 1968 Joe Kapp 329 1106 3.36 -0.84 0.21 0.94 -277 69 310 2015 Sam Bradford 585 3089 5.28 -0.47 0.97 0.67 -277 565 395 1988 Chris Chandler 297 1110 3.74 -0.94 0.23 0.67 -278 69 198 1987 Randy Wright 280 999 3.57 -0.99 0.15 0.60 -278 41 168 1964 Dick Wood 367 1439 3.92 -0.76 0.41 0.78 -279 150 285 1980 Lynn Dickey 534 2096 3.93 -0.52 0.59 0.91 -280 314 484 1968 Bob Berry 228 678 2.97 -1.23 -0.18 0.56 -280 -41 127 1967 Jack Concannon 272 821 3.02 -1.03 -0.02 0.91 -281 -5 248 2000 Trent Dilfer 269 987 3.67 -1.05 0.13 0.31 -282 35 83 1976 Bob Avellini 313 843 2.69 -0.90 0.00 1.03 -282 -1 323 1990 Steve Walsh 366 1464 4.00 -0.77 0.42 0.68 -282 154 249 2006 Trent Green 241 884 3.67 -1.17 0.04 0.26 -283 9 64 1960 Johnny Green 249 861 3.46 -1.14 0.01 0.50 -284 2 125 1986 Todd Blackledge 259 873 3.37 -1.10 0.02 0.42 -284 5 110 1993 Craig Erickson 518 2104 4.06 -0.55 0.60 0.87 -286 312 450 1985 Lynn Dickey 362 1323 3.65 -0.79 0.32 0.64 -286 116 231 1982 Neil Lomax 264 902 3.42 -1.09 0.04 0.42 -287 10 111 2015 Andrew Luck 341 1674 4.91 -0.84 0.59 0.30 -288 203 104 1989 Vinny Testaverde 543 2288 4.21 -0.54 0.65 0.87 -292 353 473 1950 Joe Geri 301 719 2.39 -0.97 -0.13 1.16 -292 -39 349 2008 Gus Frerotte 349 1485 4.26 -0.84 0.43 0.76 -293 152 265 2014 Austin Davis 329 1568 4.77 -0.89 0.52 0.32 -293 172 106 1941 Parker Hall 247 420 1.70 -1.19 -0.47 0.97 -295 -116 239 2013 Robert Griffin 580 2923 5.04 -0.51 0.88 0.77 -295 510 449 1990 Anthony Dilweg 235 826 3.51 -1.26 -0.06 0.20 -295 -15 46 2012 Nick Foles 296 1325 4.48 -1.00 0.37 0.39 -296 110 115 1984 Marc Wilson 349 1259 3.61 -0.85 0.26 0.62 -297 92 216 2006 Alex Smith 521 2225 4.27 -0.57 0.64 0.87 -298 333 452 2015 Colin Kaepernick 316 1520 4.81 -0.94 0.49 0.20 -298 156 65 2015 Ryan Mallett 255 1169 4.58 -1.17 0.27 -0.02 -298 69 -5 1993 Drew Bledsoe 477 1902 3.99 -0.63 0.53 0.79 -299 252 379 1985 Bruce Mathison 277 933 3.37 -1.08 0.03 0.35 -299 9 98 1976 Roman Gabriel 109 92 0.84 -2.75 -1.85 -0.82 -300 -202 -89 1980 Scott Brunner 132 287 2.17 -2.28 -1.16 -0.85 -300 -153 -112 1979 Dan Pastorini 368 1221 3.32 -0.82 0.22 0.64 -301 80 235 1995 Gale Gilbert 76 63 0.83 -3.96 -2.77 -2.62 -301 -210 -199 2008 Andrew Walter 59 -1 -0.02 -5.11 -3.84 -3.51 -302 -226 -207 1995 Heath Shuler 156 446 2.86 -1.93 -0.74 -0.59 -302 -115 -92 1993 Wade Wilson 456 1802 3.95 -0.66 0.49 0.76 -302 224 346 1978 David Whitehurst 391 1157 2.96 -0.77 0.16 0.83 -302 63 323 1947 Jerry Niles 65 -92 -1.42 -4.65 -3.84 -2.37 -302 -250 -154 1961 Nick Papac 50 -79 -1.58 -6.06 -4.94 -4.28 -303 -247 -214 1974 Joe Ferguson 318 854 2.69 -0.96 -0.05 0.98 -304 -15 311 2003 Rick Mirer 263 983 3.74 -1.16 0.07 0.31 -304 18 83 1976 Jim Zorn 516 1551 3.01 -0.59 0.31 1.34 -304 160 693 2001 Jeff George 52 -55 -1.06 -5.85 -4.65 -4.51 -304 -242 -234 1997 Danny Kanell 328 1236 3.77 -0.93 0.25 0.52 -304 81 170 1972 Dan Pastorini 374 1096 2.93 -0.81 0.12 0.96 -304 46 361 1974 Joe Reed 97 48 0.49 -3.15 -2.24 -1.21 -305 -217 -118 1981 Archie Manning 255 841 3.30 -1.20 -0.07 0.31 -305 -19 80 1959 Eddie LeBaron 186 488 2.62 -1.64 -0.58 0.45 -306 -107 84 1947 Bob Hoernschemeyer 325 1315 4.05 -0.94 0.31 1.51 -306 99 492 1985 Scott Brunner 67 -8 -0.12 -4.57 -3.45 -3.13 -306 -231 -210 1953 Bill Mackrides 123 131 1.07 -2.49 -1.60 -0.32 -306 -197 -40 1963 Ralph Guglielmi 39 -138 -3.54 -7.85 -6.77 -5.98 -306 -264 -233 1955 Jim Finks 379 1188 3.13 -0.81 0.18 0.96 -307 66 362 1970 Jack Concannon 451 1460 3.24 -0.68 0.30 0.99 -308 134 445 1966 Gary Wood 222 611 2.75 -1.39 -0.35 0.59 -308 -78 131 1999 Trent Dilfer 305 1149 3.77 -1.01 0.18 0.46 -308 56 140 2001 Ryan Leaf 104 190 1.83 -2.97 -1.77 -1.62 -309 -184 -169 1992 Todd Marinovich 194 573 2.95 -1.59 -0.45 -0.07 -309 -88 -14 1980 Jack Thompson 265 870 3.28 -1.17 -0.05 0.26 -309 -14 70 1976 Carlos Brown 96 36 0.38 -3.22 -2.32 -1.29 -309 -223 -124 1984 Archie Manning 123 239 1.94 -2.51 -1.40 -1.05 -309 -172 -129 2007 Kyle Boller 318 1278 4.02 -0.97 0.27 0.46 -309 87 148 2005 Daunte Culpepper 271 1017 3.75 -1.14 0.08 0.36 -310 22 97 1972 Kent Nix 72 -40 -0.56 -4.30 -3.36 -2.52 -310 -242 -182 1987 Chris Miller 101 151 1.50 -3.07 -1.93 -1.47 -310 -195 -149 1999 Steve Stenstrom 113 230 2.04 -2.74 -1.55 -1.27 -310 -175 -144 2009 Kerry Collins 233 908 3.90 -1.33 -0.02 0.24 -310 -5 57 1991 Wade Wilson 143 351 2.45 -2.17 -1.01 -0.60 -310 -145 -85 1972 Gary Cuozzo 175 345 1.97 -1.77 -0.84 0.01 -310 -146 1 1948 Jim Youel 55 -113 -2.05 -5.65 -4.75 -3.26 -311 -261 -179 1964 Tobin Rote 173 499 2.88 -1.80 -0.63 -0.26 -311 -108 -45 1977 Joe Reed 52 -127 -2.44 -5.99 -5.10 -4.13 -312 -265 -215 1974 Pat Sullivan 118 118 1.00 -2.64 -1.73 -0.71 -312 -204 -84 1977 Tony Adams 115 96 0.83 -2.71 -1.83 -0.86 -312 -210 -98 1981 Bobby Scott 56 -61 -1.09 -5.58 -4.46 -4.07 -313 -250 -228 2011 Luke McCown 67 51 0.76 -4.67 -3.31 -3.25 -313 -222 -217 2009 Chad Henne 493 2264 4.59 -0.63 0.67 0.94 -313 331 463 1989 Gary Hogeboom 431 1734 4.02 -0.73 0.46 0.68 -314 198 293 1969 Bruce Lemmerman 86 41 0.48 -3.65 -2.62 -1.87 -314 -225 -160 1986 Bobby Hebert 89 83 0.93 -3.54 -2.42 -2.01 -315 -215 -179 1944 Charlie McGibbony 74 -87 -1.18 -4.26 -3.49 -1.72 -315 -258 -127 2011 Matt Moore 415 1938 4.67 -0.76 0.60 0.66 -315 248 275 1958 Ed Brown 250 757 3.03 -1.26 -0.19 0.74 -316 -48 184 1985 Todd Blackledge 204 590 2.89 -1.55 -0.44 -0.12 -317 -90 -25 1988 Mark Malone 318 1169 3.68 -1.00 0.17 0.60 -317 54 192 2013 Kellen Clemens 286 1269 4.44 -1.11 0.28 0.17 -318 79 49 2005 Vinny Testaverde 125 294 2.35 -2.54 -1.32 -1.04 -318 -165 -131 2000 Tony Banks 313 1158 3.70 -1.02 0.16 0.34 -318 51 106 1991 Jeff Carlson 81 56 0.69 -3.93 -2.77 -2.36 -318 -225 -191 1974 Mike Livingston 160 264 1.65 -1.99 -1.08 -0.06 -319 -173 -9 2000 Chris Chandler 392 1530 3.90 -0.81 0.37 0.54 -319 143 213 1960 King Hill 71 -13 -0.18 -4.49 -3.41 -2.37 -319 -242 -168 1968 Bob Davis 107 85 0.79 -2.98 -2.04 -0.84 -319 -218 -90 2003 Jeff Blake 416 1717 4.13 -0.77 0.46 0.70 -319 190 293 2012 Chad Henne 355 1624 4.57 -0.90 0.47 0.49 -320 166 173 2009 Marc Bulger 269 1086 4.04 -1.19 0.12 0.38 -320 31 103 2007 Byron Leftwich 70 29 0.41 -4.58 -3.33 -3.14 -320 -233 -220 1945 Buss Warren 188 118 0.63 -1.71 -1.12 0.86 -321 -211 162 2004 Tim Rattay 374 1488 3.98 -0.86 0.35 0.68 -321 132 254 1970 Alan Pastrana 97 59 0.61 -3.31 -2.33 -1.64 -321 -226 -159 2006 Jake Plummer 371 1475 3.98 -0.87 0.34 0.57 -322 128 212 1983 Gifford Nielsen 205 595 2.90 -1.57 -0.45 0.01 -322 -93 1 2008 Ben Roethlisberger 549 2473 4.50 -0.59 0.68 1.01 -323 376 553 1994 Trent Dilfer 92 118 1.28 -3.52 -2.32 -2.16 -324 -213 -199 2001 Vinny Testaverde 490 2025 4.13 -0.66 0.54 0.68 -324 263 335 2010 Kevin Kolb 219 838 3.83 -1.48 -0.15 0.10 -324 -33 23 1992 Tommy Maddox 140 312 2.23 -2.32 -1.18 -0.80 -324 -165 -111 1992 Frank Reich 65 -29 -0.45 -4.99 -3.85 -3.47 -324 -251 -226 1967 Gary Cuozzo 312 939 3.01 -1.04 -0.03 0.90 -325 -9 282 1969 Bob Griese 306 863 2.82 -1.06 -0.09 1.10 -325 -28 336 2015 Austin Davis 112 319 2.85 -2.91 -1.47 -1.76 -325 -164 -197 1978 Ken Stabler 447 1342 3.00 -0.73 0.20 0.87 -326 91 389 2010 Todd Collins 29 -172 -5.93 -11.24 -9.91 -9.65 -326 -287 -280 1971 Kent Nix 156 276 1.77 -2.09 -1.12 -0.35 -326 -175 -55 1970 Pete Liske 273 744 2.73 -1.19 -0.21 0.48 -326 -59 130 1973 Wayne Clark 112 92 0.82 -2.92 -1.98 -0.98 -327 -222 -110 1959 Y.A. Tittle 210 569 2.71 -1.56 -0.49 0.54 -327 -103 113 1988 Steve Dils 116 215 1.85 -2.82 -1.65 -1.22 -327 -192 -141 1998 Elvis Grbac 206 647 3.14 -1.59 -0.41 -0.12 -327So, The FBI put out an anti-violent-extremist website, and it’s horrendously out of touch.
It starts off with an awkward, stilted embedded YouTube video of the director of the FBI who claims, among other things, that the youth of today are vulnerable to recruitment to go fight a war overseas, and the fact that these youths are being mistakenly associated with hate groups is the reason for hate crimes against these young people. Um. There are words not being said and implications being made here.
Also, did you know the FBI has a YouTube account? That they uploaded their welcome video to, instead of, maybe, their actual government website? Regardless, I press forth, writing this article as I go and completely ensuring I’m going to end up on some sort of radical watch list after publication.
And, I mean, the design itself isn’t so bad at first. It’s a huge eyestrain, and just overall kind of overdone, but it’s not terrible. The puppet symbolism they have throughout the website is kind of heavy-handed. It’s fairly involved. There’s only one problem. Okay, there are many problems, but this is the biggest one I see from a design perspective.
Every page has a loading screen. Every single one. Because the website is so overdone, you’re sitting waiting for pages to load, and it’s definitely not a fluid experience. Maybe I’m so used to fast loading times at this point in my life, but the loading screens themselves make the whole thing feel awkward, and presumably it’s only done to provide a few seconds of animation here or there. If it wasn’t for the content I would say that the website design reminds of one of those click and play games for kids.
Speaking of which.
Slippery Slope (the first one – according to the website background there is a Slippery Slope II: Adventures of Poonikins, but you don’t get to play it) has awkward, unintuitive controls, is generally boring (there are six levels and if you die on almost every single level you can still make it to the end), and when you do beat it you just get a list of awkward phrases that are supposedly used to incite the youth to violent, extremist actions.
Overall, the website design is really, really poor. There’s no reason for them to do this, this isn’t appealing to their target market, and it’s kind of just a waste of time and money. You can see this by the number of people who have accessed the website the “correct” way – after playing the video, etc. – as opposed to being linked to it via the goat game on Tumblr or something. The video has around 6k plays at the time of this writing and was uploaded on February 8th, two weeks ago, quite possibly the worst early Valentine’s Day gift the FBI has to offer the public.
Honestly, this isn’t the way to appeal to teenagers. They don’t fall for this. Maybe preteens, or “the tweens,” but not older kids. Especially since I found the website itself from teenagers mocking it on the internet.Photo
Since 1999, The Grove restaurant, with its warm, woodsy interior and comfort food, has marketed itself as “San Francisco’s living room.” Its customers, who have a habit of lingering for hours, seem to agree.
That year, The Grove opened its flagship restaurant on Chestnut Street, in San Francisco’s tony Marina district, where Brian Wilson, the Giants’ quirky, former closer, is occasionally spotted completing crossword puzzles in a corner and disheveled techies, who keep late hours, come for the all-day breakfast.
The Grove acquired such a following over the past decade that its owners have opened three more locations around the city. But they recently announced that they’ll be closing the Chestnut Street location because of untenable rents — driven up, in large part, because of the well-paid techies who chow down on its huevos rancheros every day.
This year, the landlords raised the annual rent to $246,816, or roughly $20,000 a month, for the 1,500 square foot ground floor space. That is 50 percent higher than what The Grove’s owners paid five years ago. They said the only way they could possibly keep pace would be to drastically raise prices.
“It’s such a unique restaurant — it has an amazing product, a well-priced product — and it’s upsetting to think that their business model can no longer survive,” said Katie Spalding, a local interior designer. “To pay rent, they’ll either have to have astronomical prices, which will drive away customers, or go out of business.”
“It’s our favorite brunch spot,” Ms. Spalding added. “It will be really sad if it becomes just another bar.”
Regulars complain that The Grove’s planned closure is just the latest confirmation that the tech boom is making San Francisco unlivable, and pricing long-time businesses and residents out of the market. As start-ups and established tech companies like Google, Facebook and Square poach one another’s engineers with high salaries, rents are, on average, up almost 8 percent from a year ago, to $2,768 for an apartment in a large complex, according to RealFacts, a Novato, Calif., company that tracks real estate prices.
According to a report last month by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, 4 of the 10 most expensive housing markets in the country — San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara and Marin counties — are in the greater Bay Area. Even Oakland, once a cheaper alternative to the city, saw average rent surge 11 percent in 2012 over the previous year.
Those lucky enough to live in rent-controlled apartments say they fear that they can never afford to move. Those who are not so lucky say the rent increases have left them with little choice but to leave the city.
One apartment seeker, Melissa Jensen, said she recently moved from Los Angeles where she paid less than $2,000 for a one-bedroom in a nice neighborhood. “To get that same space in San Francisco I’m realizing I’m going to have to pay twice that much,” said Ms. Jensen, who is working to open a Northern California branch of The Help Company, a Los Angeles-based boutique staffing firm.
She compared apartment open houses to “cattle calls.” She said she had offered to pay one landlord six months rent up front, thinking that might do the trick, but he told her she was competing with others who were already in an all-out bidding war for the space. “There are young people with disposable incomes who make over $200,000 a year who are willing to pay whatever it takes,” she sighed. “It’s impossible.”
The Grove’s owners are looking for alternative locations in more affordable neighborhoods — if those still exist. But back on Chestnut Street last Friday morning, most of their patrons seemed oblivious to the impending closure. They were busy talking tech and, it seemed, too engulfed in the huevos rancheros.That’s according to a new political science study published today, which looked at the effect news outlets have on public discourse. While the findings may seem intuitive, this group of scholars—who work at Harvard, M.I.T., and the Florida State University—were able to show that whatever the media chooses to focus on has a profound impact on what people discuss in their everyday lives.
“What we wanted to do,” says Benjamin Schneer, a co-author and political science professor at Florida State University, “was figure out exactly what the effect of the media was on the national conversation.” So the political scientists essentially teamed up with a group of small to medium-sized publications and coordinated coverage at set intervals of time. They then analyzed the social media conversations around those specific topics.
Proving Something That Intuitively Makes Sense
Everyone loves to mock academic studies that prove the obvious, so it should be emphasized that this is no small feat. Historically, it’s proven very difficult for social scientists to quantitively show the media’s effect. “It’s actually really hard to measure how much of an impact the media has,” says Schneer.” For instance, if researchers are merely mapping what people are talking about, they are faced with a chicken versus egg problem. Which is to say, if simply looking at what’s written compares to what people are talking about, it would be nearly impossible to disentangle whether media coverage follows public conversation or vice versa. To circumvent this issue, the team did something quite ingenious: they facilitated their own coverage. Since they created the topics written about, they could then track whether or not this new coverage created heightened social media conversation.
The methodology worked like this: Schneer and his colleagues teamed up with the Media Consortium–a network of independent publications–and recruited nearly 50 publications who agreed to tailor certain coverage around important subjects–including race, the environment, immigration, jobs, abortion, etc. Two to five outlets were told to write about the same subject and even asked to collaborate. The idea was to create a journalistic moment–one outlet may produce a story and another may write a follow-up to it. Or, they may work together on a |
argument that it would’ve been the most-watched game of all-time,” ESPN analyst Jay Bilas said. “All year long, Kentucky was the best team. I said it a thousand times: I thought the team that had the best chance to beat them was Wisconsin, and they ran into Wisconsin. Duke was a better matchup for Kentucky than Wisconsin was, but that’s the way tournament play goes.
“I think everybody would’ve liked to have seen Kentucky-Duke – except for Wisconsin fans.”
Alas, the Cats finished 38-1, and the Blue Devils beat the Badgers to take the title, and the world had to wait for Tuesday night’s Champions Classic to finally see these teams play. Many of the names have changed, but the talent level hasn’t suffered significantly.
Depending which ranking you believe, either UK or Duke signed the No. 1 recruiting class in the country for 2015. The Blue Devils have seven former five-star prospects on their roster, including freshmen Brandon Ingram, Derryck Thornton, Chase Jeter and Luke Kennard.
The Wildcats have six former five-star recruits on their roster, including freshmen Skal Labissiere, Jamal Murray and Isaiah Briscoe. Labissiere, Ingram and Murray are all potential top-five NBA draft picks next summer.
Among the veterans, UK’s Tyler Ulis and Duke’s Grayson Allen (54 points in two games this season) are poised for breakout seasons with larger roles as sophomores.
“Both teams have a lot of weapons,” Bilas said, but “both teams are so different than they were last year. I think the guard matchups are going to decide it. Last year, both teams were more inside-oriented; this year you’re looking at more guard-oriented teams. So how the guards play, and specifically how they’re able to defend each other, will be really important.”
That’s what makes this game so compelling – if not as high-stakes as a spring meeting would’ve been. Like Calipari, Krzyzewski is still experimenting with his new group. Neither side is exactly sure what it has.
“We’re trying to figure it out,” Calipari said. “(Krzyzewski) is mixing up their defense like I’ve never seen them. He’s trying everything to see if he figures out what he likes for the team. I imagine they’ll do it in the game.”
Kentucky needs to see senior forward Alex Poythress test his surgically repaired knee against elite competition – and whether that challenge pushes him over another mental hurdle. The Wildcats want to pit their trio of five-star guards against Duke’s and see who blinks first.
“Two teams that are going to drive, drive, drive,” Calipari said, “so the game will probably take two-and-a-half hours, because there’s going to be fouls.”
UK needs to know what happens when the skinny, 6-foot-11 Labissiere runs into a big man with the size and attitude to push him around. The Blue Devils will throw 7-foot, 250-pound senior Marshall Plumlee at him.
“Skal will have trouble with Plumlee,” Calipari said. “Plays very physical. It’s going to be a challenge for him. This is a grit game, a grind-it game.”
After this, the third game in five days for both sides, the two teams will know a lot more about themselves. Is Briscoe really an elite defender? Can junior Derek Willis keep his hot streak going when facing future pros? Does freshman swingman Charles Matthews deserve a spot in UK’s much-tighter rotation?
“Neither team is nowhere near a finished product,” Matthews said. “It’s going to come down to who has the most fight in them.”
The winner will establish itself early as a serious national title contender yet again. But, unlike if they’d met seven and a half months ago, the loser might get just as much out of it.
“It doesn’t matter if you lose. This is not football,” Bilas said. “I don’t think Kentucky fans, with 38-1 last year, I don’t think they’d be horribly disappointed if their one loss had come against Kansas (in the Champions Classic) last year. It just happened to come against Wisconsin.”
The Wildcats don’t need reminding.
Kyle Tucker can be reached at (502) 582-4361. Email him at ktucker@courier-journal.com.BOCA RATON, Fla. -- New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist will need approximately 10 days to get ready before playing, general manager Glen Sather said Wednesday at the NHL general managers meetings.
Lundqvist, who hasn't played since Feb. 2 because of a vascular injury, was cleared Tuesday by the Rangers doctors to return to practice.
"Just because he was cleared doesn't mean he's ready to return," Sather said. "I'd say a week to 10 days, probably closer to 10 days."
Sather said the key for Lundqvist is to get into some games before the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Rangers have 14 games remaining, so there is plenty of time for Lundqvist to get up to speed.
"The other thing about this is we want him ready for the end of the year," Sather said. "We're going to make the playoffs. He's gotta get some games."
Lundqvist was injured when he was struck in the throat by a shot from Carolina Hurricanes forward Brad Malone on Jan. 31. He stayed in the game and played two nights later against the Florida Panthers, but hasn't played since.
The Rangers are 15-2-3 without Lundqvist. They have won five consecutive games heading into Wednesday against the Chicago Blackhawks (8 p.m. ET; NBCSN, TVA Sports, SN1).
---After an oil spill, the number one priority is finding a way to contain and remove the oil. Boat operators sometimes deploy physical booms to trap the oil so that it can be siphoned or burned off of the water's surface. But, because oil in water is tricky to contain, other methods for corraling it call for adding manmade chemicals to the water.
In a technique called dispersion, chemicals and wave action break down the oil into smaller particles, which then disperse and slowly biodegrade over a large area. Then, there is chemical herding. To clean up an oil spill with a chemical herder, crews spray a compound around the perimeter of the spill. The compound stays on the surface and causes the oil to thicken. Once it’s thick enough, it can be burned off. Chemical herding requires calm water, which makes it unreliable in some spills, but, unlike mechanical removal or dispersion, it gets all the oil. The technique has been around since the 1970s, but, until now, the chemicals used to herd the oil, called soap surfectants, didn't break down over time. After the oil burned off, they’d still be in the ecosystem.
Researchers at the City College of New York, led by chemist George John and chemical engineer Charles Maldarelli, have developed a way to clean up oil using a chemical herder made of phytol, a molecule in chlorophyll that makes algae green. It’s the first non-toxic, natural way to remediate oil spills.
“We didn’t want to add anything to the environment that would make it worse, so we decided to make molecules that came from natural products, so they would automatically biodegrade,” Maldarelli says. "We like the idea of using a molecule that's abundant in nature to arm against something humans have done to the environment."
The researchers settled on phytol, which they harvest from algae. It is a natural molecule that cleaves off as the chlorophyll breaks down, so they knew it would be stable in the environment. The phytol didn’t quite do the job on its own, so they added a plant-based fat, which helped align the molecules in a way that broke the water's surface tension.
In their Manhattan lab, the team tested the natural herder on fake oil spills, to see if it could condense the oil as effectively as current chemical herders. They dialed in the balance of elements until it herded just as fast as the chemical versions. Maldarelli says they looked closely at both biodegradability and toxicity, and at what they might need to source the new herder commercially.
“The commercial ones, they’re fairly non toxic—some are more than others," says Maldarelli. "But our claim is that if you start with natural products you’re ahead of the game."
The researchers are testing the natural herder in wave tanks and monitoring how long it takes to break down, as they think about scaling up and using it in emergency situations. They're still unsure if the lipid they're using is the best option, so they're testing other options for binders.
The natural herder can be sprayed from a plane, so Maldarelli says it’s best use case will be in calm waters where it’s hard to navigate a boat. "The Arctic seas are usually calmer and have icebergs floating, so chemical herding works there," he says.
On July 22, President Obama approved two of Royal Dutch Shell's permits for drilling in the Chukchi Sea, off the coast of northern Alaska. Shell had an accident the first time they tried to drill in the Arctic, in 2012, so having multiple cleanup methods could be a boon.California's Costa Mesa Police Department arrested more people on prostitution-related charges in the first four months of 2016 than it did in all of the preceding five years. The department is "being very proactive in regard to prostitution enforcement," said Police Captain Bryan Glass. In 2015, Costa Mesa police arrested one person on prostitution-related charges. From January through April 2016, they arrested 69. Police say this is thanks to a conscious decision to refocus a special investigations unit away from busting gang leaders, career criminals, and drug dealers and toward people involved in the sex trade.
"The squad of about 10 officers has typically had a broad focus, taking on complex investigations including drugs busts, tracking career criminals and keeping tabs on gangs," police told the Los Angeles Times. But after a series of prostitution stings earlier this year, the cops realized that focusing on prostitution "made the team's enforcement efforts immediately apparent, Glass said. A long-term drug investigation could eat up hours of work from a half-dozen detectives before police took a suspect into custody, he said."
Arresting sex workers, however, is easy. Over a two-week period in March, the team arranged meetings with 32 sex workers while posing as clients and then arrested them. Costa Mesa "is not a safe haven for prostitutes," the city crowed in a statement. The Orange County District Attorney's Office commended the department for its work.
But there may be an additional motive for the new focus: the city wants to get rid of several small motels and replace them with condo and apartment buildings. The hotels attract a lot of vice crimes—prostitution, drug use—and policing them is a drain on public safety resources, city leaders complain.
Rather than reconsidering the need to obsess over these activities in the first place, officials want the hotels to go away to make room for higher-end residential housing. "The plan would make motel properties more valuable"—and more profitable in terms of taxes to the city—"by allowing owners to change the zoning from commercial to high-density residential," the OC Register reports.
Located in Orange County, just south of Los Angeles, Costa Mesa is hemmed in by Huntington Beach and Newport Beach to the west and Irvine and Santa Ana (where, perhaps not coincidentally, a man posing as an undercover officer has been able to get away with sexually assaulting sex worker since last August) to the east. Apartments or condos in the area likely wouldn't go cheap. But even this isn't enough for some Costa Mesa officials: Councilwoman Katrina Foley fears a high-density apartments might still attract riffraff, and told the Register she wishes the motels could be replaced by "a row of boutique hotels."
Prostitution stings are just one part of the city's move to push out the older motels—which also functioned as affordable housing for longer-term residents—to make way for more lucrative and politically favored businesses. In 2014, the City Council voted to banned motel stays of longer than 30 days, and to fine motel owners for excessive nuisance complaints on their properties. In April, the city filed a public nuisance complaint aimed at forcing the New Harbor Inn's closure, calling it a "haven for prostitutes" and drug users.
Just to recap: the only reason sex workers and drug users need warrant excessive police intervention is because we have unnecessarily criminalized these people. Based on this whim, Costa Mesa police have devoted decades of time toward shuttering motels where they take place, levying health, safety, and nuisance fines at them whenever they could—and then complaining that the just-squeaking-by motel owners weren't making more cosmetic improvements or refusing certain clientele. Now the city leadership and cops are working together to take down these motels, because small business owners, low-income travelers, and sex workers aren't as profitable as wealthier transplants, tourists, and boutique hotels.By now you’ve heard of Jeremy Lin, point guard for the New York Knicks. You’ve seen the Linsation in action, crossing over last year’s number one pick, John Wall for the uncontested one-handed slam. Maybe you’ve been taken over by the Linsanity like the rest of the country. (His nicknames multiply with each start).
The second-year Harvard grad is putting up big numbers for the Knicks, saving NYC from the brink of another lost season. How big and timely are the numbers? Lin is averaging 25 points and eight assists in 39 minutes of action in his last three games, all wins for the Knicks who are missing both Melo and Amare. Lin’s burst onto the NYC scene has earned him 60,000 new Twitter followers in just five days. It’s become legend that Lin had been sleeping on his brother’s couch, unsure if the Knicks would cut him. (He has since found his own place). Fans at the Verizon Center held up signs that said “Linning and Grinning” during pre-game intros at the Verizon Center in D.C. last night. Not a bad week for J-Lin.
Have we ever seen anything like this — 12th man to starter to cult hero in less than seven days? Yes, actually. Two weeks ago in Minnesota with a 6-11, 290 pound center named Nikola Pekovic aka Pek-Man, aka Pekquille O’Neal, aka The Godfather. February has been a revelation for the Montenegran center. With Darko Milicic out with a quad injury and Kevin Love suspended two games for stomping on Luis Scola’s face, Pek provided toughness on defense and an innate ability give the Wolves much-needed front court production in and around the basket on offense.
In the month of February, Pek is averaging 16.8 points, and 10.2 rebounds while shooting 65.4% from the field in a little over 31 minutes of action. In Pekovic’s first 11 games, he played a total of four minutes for Rick Adelman. The knock on Pek was that he was a bruiser in Europe, otherwise known as a foul machine in the states. Last season, he led the league in fouls per 40 minutes. Perhaps finally understanding the American game, Pek is averaging only 2.6 personal fouls a game in February.
Like Lin, Nikola Pekovic’s cult following inside the Target Center has since exploded outside of Minny thanks to a string of impressive performances in the month of February. So while Lin grabs the headlines on SportsCenter and his dunks go viral on the web, just remember that before the Linsanity, there was Pek-Man.PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CLAMORING FOR A GOOD HULK-ARTICLE ARCHIVE.
AND RIGHTLY SO.
HULK KNOW THIS COULD BE EASILY REMEDIED BY REDOING THE SITE, BUT TO BE BLUNTLY HONEST, HULK DOESN’T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO DO THAT RIGHT NOW (HULK BARELY HAS ENOUGH TIME TO BUY UN-HULKED SHIRTS). AND BETTER YET, HULK LIKES THE BY-SUBJECT FORMAT OF ORGANIZATION BELOW SO MUCH BETTER THAN CHRONOLOGICAL LISTING.
HULK WILL UPDATE EVER MONTH OR SO.
HERE WE GO:
PRACTICAL “FILM SCHOOL”
SCREENWRITING 101 – TWO GIANT TOMES ON SCREENWRITING (VOLUME I AND VOLUME II) – HULK HOPE THIS SUPER USEFUL.
ACTING 101 – EASILY THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD AND POORLY-DISCUSSED FEATURE OF FILMMAKING
HULK EXPLAIN ACTION SCENES! (WITH TOM TOWNEND!) – DAY 1, DAY 2, DAY 3 – A GIANT WRITE UP ON HOW TO APPROACH ACTION IN CINEMA AS “VISUAL STORYTELLING” AND NOT “CHAOS CINEMA”
THE MYTH OF 3 ACT STRUCTURE – THE MOST COMMON APPROACH TO STORYTELLING IS, QUITE FRANKLY, A TERRIBLE APPROACH.
HULK EXPLAINS WHY WE SHOULD QUIT IT WITH HERO JOURNEY SHIT – SERIOUSLY IT’S TIME FOR A MORATORIUM
HULK VS. THE JOHN CARTER SCRIPT – WHILE THIS TECHNICALLY AN EVALUATION ON ONE FILM, IT MORE ABOUT THE PROBLEMS OF STORYTELLING VS. DRAMA
CONCEPTUAL FILM THINKING!
NEVER HATE A MOVIE: OR HOW QUENTIN TARANTINO GOT HULK TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMBS
WHY YOU LOVE MOVIES – JUST WHAT IT SAYS
TANGIBLE DETAILS AND THE NATURE OF CRITICISM – EVALUATION ABOUT SPEAKING THE LANGUAGE AND BUILDING THE KNOWLEDGE, JUST LIKE ANYTHING MORE CONCRETE.
HULK VS. THE TWILIGHT HOUR OF FILM – FILM IS DYING. WE SHOULD MOURN AND REVERE. NOT BICKER.
SERIOUS(ISH) CRITICISM
HULK VS. THE GENIUS OF MULHOLLAND DRIVE – DAVID LYNCH A BRILLIANT FILMMAKER!
THE HULK ON MARK RUFFALO’S HULK – A PIECE FOR THE NEW YORKER!
HULK VS. FIGHT CLUB (AND THE WORK OF DAVID FINCHER?)
WHAT THE FUCK IS IT ABOUT BATMAN? – A MEDITATION ON FAN MOTIVATIONS
HULK VS. THE GIRLS CRITICISM
HULK AND THE CINEMA OF EDGAR WRIGHT – A HISTORY
HULK VS. TWILIGHT – WHY IT’S WAY WORSE THAN YOU THINK (BUT STILL OKAY)
HULK VS. THE CHURCH OF SOUTH PARK
HULK VS. THE WAR ON QUIRK
HULK FINALLY READY TO POINT ON THE DOLL AND SHOW WHERE THE LOST FINALE TOUCHED HULK
HULK WATCHED EAT, PRAY, LOVE FOR YOU ASSHOLES.
“WHY IT WORKS” – MOVIE EVALUATIONS (OR NON-REVIEWS)
THE AVENGERS IS A JOSS WHEDON MOVIE – (THAT’S A GOOD THING)
22 SHORT THOUGHTS ABOUT MARGARET – IT’S A MASTERPIECE
WHAT 50/50 MEANS TO HULK – MOVIES ARE PERSONAL FOLKS
HULK VS. THE TWO HUGOS – THE PROBLEMS OF PROPULSION
THE ENDING IS THE CONCEIT – JAMES GUNN’S “SUPER” AND THE ART OF DISPLACEMENT
PEGGY CARTER – WHY CAPTAIN AMERICA WORKS
HULK VS. THE HULK MOVIES – AN XMAS PRESENT NON-MIRACLE!
THE AVENGERS SIT OUTSIDE A MOVIE THEATER AND TALK ABOUT “THOR”
ATTACK THE BLOCK IS A FLAT OUT MASTERPIECE
WHY YOU SHOULD WATCH DR. WHO
WHY CONTAGION WORKS
SUPER 8 – GOOD ENOUGH THAT HULK WISH IT WAS BETTER
COWBOYS AND ALIENS AND TERRIBLE SCREENPLAYS
SXSW RESPONSE: WHY BOYS SHOULD LIKE “GIRLS”
SXSW RESPONSE: THE RAID AND THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF MARTIAL ARTS CINEMA
SXSW RESPONSE: SXSW AND THE ONGOING PROBLEMS OF FOUND FOOTAGE
SXSW RESPONSE: GOD BLESS AMERICA AND THE DANGERS OF DIDACTICISM
SXSW RESPONSE: COMPLIANCE AND THE TRUE STORY COMPLEX
DRIVE – WHY NOT WHAT YOU THOUGHT IS OKAY
A DANGEROUS METHOD, DRY COMEDY, AND THE PROBLEMS OF ADORING CRONENBERG
WHY HULK LIKED MACGRUBER BETTER THAN BLUE VALENTINE
HULK SAW MIRANDA JULY’S “FUTURE”
HULK’S MOVIE WEEKEND: TREE OF LIFE AND KUNG FU PANDA 2
HULK REVIEW “SOMEWHERE” FOR YOU
COST OF LIVING AND THE STATE OF SHORT FILMS
VIDEO GAMES
HULK VS. THE BATSHIT EVOLUTION OF THE MODERN WARFARE SERIES – VIDEO GAME SEMIOTIC/ART TALK!
GODDAMMIT VIDEO GAMES, THE FIRST FEW HOURS OF ARKHAM CITY IS LOTS OF FUN, BUT SUPER-DUPER SEXIST
HULK VS. ARKHAM CITY – ROUND 2: BITCHES BE TRIPPIN’!
HULK PLAYED L.A. NOIRE
BOOKS
EXACTLY WHY A FEAST FOR CROWS IS A TERRIBLE WASTE OF 1,000 PAGES
WHY A DANCE WITH DRAGONS IS BOTH A VAST IMPROVEMENT AND YET UTTER PROOF THE BOOKS WILL NEVER BE GOOD AGAIN
MUSIC
WHAT THE FUCK REALLY HAPPENED TO WEEZER?
FILMCRITHULK-CENTRIC STUFF
YES INTERNET, THERE IS A FILM CRIT HULK
HULK VS. THE WHOLE VULTURE THINGY
HULK’S TOP 15 MOVIES OF 2010
HULK REVEALS THE MONDO HULK POSTER!
HULK INTERVIEWED BY SXSW
HULK DOES THE FAMOUS “12 QUESTIONS” INTERVIEW
HULK ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS – PART 1
HULK ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS – PART 2
HULK ON FACEBOOK AND STUFF
“HULK’S FAVORITE MOVIES” SERIES
PUTNEY SWOPE – THE GREATEST FUCK YOU MOVIE OF ALL TIME
HAPPY GO LUCKY – THIS MOVIE SAYS ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFUL THINGS EVER.
SUPERCOP – WHAT IS NOT GREAT ABOUT THIS MOVIE?
FUN/SILLY STUFF
HULK WATCHED TRANSFORMERS 2 FOR YOU ASSHOLES (MINUTE BY MINUTE ACCOUNT)
THE 13 MOST INTERESTING THINGS ABOUT KATY PERRY’S “LAST FRIDAY NIGHT” VIDEO AND YES HULK SERIOUS
FILM CRIT HULK SHORT CUTS
WON’T YOU MEET THE MUPPETS?
5 REASONS YOU SHOULD SEE BRIDESMAIDS
HULK VS. THE BOND MOVIES: DR. NO, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE, GOLDFINGER, THUNDERBALL, YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE… THE SERIES WASN’T FINISHED : /
GREEN LANTERN “REVIEWS” 1, 2
MOST IMPORTANT CINEMA QUESTION EVER: CAN YOU WATCH MOVIES WHILE DRUNK?
THINGS HULK THINKS ABOUT WHEN THERE IS NO POWER
THE DO-DECA PENTATHLON TRAILER
OUR DAILY TRAILER: DEATH TRAP
OUR DAILY TRAILER: THE THIN RED LINE
HULK SHARES: PORTAL PEEPS
HULK’S 5 FAVORITE THINGS ON YOUTUBE
CULTURE/RANDOM STUFF
POST MODERNISM… NOT A THING
POST MODERNISM… STILL NOT A THING! (A RESPONSE TO SAM STRANGE)
RYAN DUNN’S DEATH: THE INEVITABLE GOAL OF JACKASS
WHY HULK GO TO THE MOVIES – AS IN OUT TO THE MOVIES
HULK’S TAKE ON THE NATURE OF BOX-OFFICE
THANKS UNIVERSE, HULK NOW REPULSED BY STAR WARS
WHY CELEBRITIES GET MARRIED
HULK YOU-GOOGLE-A-GIZES: THEO ANGELOPOULOS
HULK ONE QUESTION INTERVIEW: PATTON OSWALT
A NOTE TO THEATER OWNERS/MOVIE-GOERS REGARDING SOUND
HULK PRESENTS: IT’S NOT JUST WHO BUT WHEN – RITA HAYWORTH (1941)
3 CRITICS HULK THINK YOU SHOULD READING
JOHN SINGLTON DIRECTED ABDUCTION? AND WHAT IS THIS SAYING?
WHY CHARLIE SHEEN PULLED A BIGGER HEIST THAN THE ONE IN OCEAN’S 11
TV! – COMMUNITY
YOU ARE OUT OF FUCKING EXCUSES. HULK COMMAND YOU TO WATCH COMMUNITY… RIGHT NOW!
COMMUNITY QUICK TAKE: “REMEDIAL CHAOS THEORY”
HULK’S OPEN LETTER TO NBC EXECUTIVES – WHY COMMUNITY MATTERS
TV! – DOWNTON ABBEY
DOWNTON ABBEY AND THE PECULIAR GLORY OF BRITISH DRAMA (ALL ABOUT SERIES I)
HULK VS. DOWNTON ABBEY – SERIES II
EPISODE # – 2.03
EPISODE # – 2.06
TV! – MAD MEN EPISODIC WRITE UPS
EPISODE 5.03 “TEA LEAVES”
EPISODE 5.05 “SIGNAL 30”
EPISODE 5.07 “AT THE CODFISH BALL”
EPISODE 5.09 “DARK SHADOWS”
EPISODE 5.11 “THE OTHER WOMAN”
PODCAST APPEARANCES
HULK PLAY WITH THE INDOOR KIDS – AND ASKS ARE VIDEO GAMES ART?
SILVERTONGUE UK ONLINE – SOUND IN MOVIES
SILVERTONGUE UK ONLINE – OSCAR TALK
THE GOLDEN BRIEFCASE – PROPAGANDA FILMS AND BELLFLOWER TALK
Advertisementswho wants to build a warp drive anyway?
The biggest problem with creating a warp drive is coming up with the energy to power one, even for a moment.
Usually, when I post about a scientific paper, the focus is on its methodology and interpreting its conclusions into real world applications. This time, we’re going to do something a little different and use an oft cited paper on the plausibility of warp drive propulsion to build a theoretical model of our own. You see, when physicists Richard Obousy and Gerald Cleaver put together the energy requirements for a warp drive, they noted that a sufficiently advanced civilization could one day build it. And we’re going to use those requirements to find out whether a civilization like that could conceivably exist and what would happen to their solar system if they ever tried to create a device that warps space and time by locally boosting the ongoing expansion of the universe.
So how much energy does it take to get a warp drive revving? A jaw dropping 1042 J / m3 which is like taking a planet a bit more massive than Saturn, crushing it into a cube about the size of a nightstand and turning all of that into raw, pure energy. Do that, say Obousy and Cleaver, and you effectively start changing the value of the cosmological constant, the Λ in Einstein’s general relativity equations. Each time you do that, you’ll get a cubic meter of warped space-time which will propel your ship forward at the speed of light. This is the kind of energy output that our hypothetical alien race interested in superluminal travel would have to meet to get then within a whisker of their goal. We’ll have to assume that they’re tens of thousands of years ahead of us in science and technology, and have an industrial capacity we could only dream of for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, any chance of them building any kind of warp device would be nil.
For the sake of argument, let’s get our aliens started with a more or less conventional approach. To pinch the fabric of space and time, they’re going to have to build an enormous bomb that will essentially implode into a cubic meter of warped space-time. Why a bomb? Because this energy would have to be delivered in a burst, or it will simply dissipate. Even though it sounds like a lot, the energy requirement we’re dealing with isn’t that much on a cosmic scales. Supernova explosions give off far more energy which simply spreads through their galaxy in a bubble measuring light years across. We want to take all those Joules and focus them on the area of space-time we want to manipulate. So how big would the bomb have to be when we use a technology that both we and our advanced aliens would know very well?
One of the most powerful explosive designs we’ve created was the Tsar Bomba which was initially built with a stunning 100 megaton yield that was later reduced due to concerns over widespread fallout. But let’s say that our aliens build an explosive sphere of staged thermonuclear devices with the full intended yield and with the same size and density. If we run through a quick blizzard of math, we’ll come up with a device that should be the stuff of nightmares for just about any intelligent species. It would be 7.5 billion km across and tip whatever monster scales you’d use to measure it at 50 quintillion metric tons. In other words, it would be roughly as big as a solar system and have a mass comparable to Mars. Clearly that’s not a very practical project since even at a rate of a million bombs a year, the giant device would take some 2.3 quintillion years to complete and the result wouldn’t be a reusable method of propulsion for a fleet of spacraft. Oh and by the way, those quintillions of years are longer than the lifetime of our current phase of the universe. The very last star would’ve died eons before the bomb is built and ready to go. Clearly, we’re not off to a good start here.
Luckily for us and our hypothetical aliens, Obousy and Cleaver provide an alternative in the form of 1028 kg of antimatter which could be used to generate more than enough power for a warp bubble accommodating one spacecraft with a volume of a cubic kilometer. Unfortunately that’s not a great alternative either. If we take half of that antimatter and come up with a chunk of matter just as huge, then collide them, we’ve effectively made a doomsday machine that would wipe out our hypothetical alien species. When matter and antimatter collide in an explosive reaction, they emit a flood of gamma rays. The ionizing radiation from the equivalent of blowing up Jupiter could easily decimate life in the solar system where the device is being built by triggering horrifying mass extinctions and changing the chemical structure of previously habitable atmospheres. It would be like a gamma ray burst from a hypernova and it doesn’t seem very likely that any civilization could survive triggering one in their own backyard. Besides, the sheer mechanics of assembling this much matter would be easily on par with the bomb scenario and whatever species started the project would be extinct long before completing it. Even boosting production rates by thousands of times wouldn’t help.
Finally, let’s go back to the initial requirements and consider what a density of 1042 J / m3 actually means. By converting this energy to mass, we’ll see that it far exceeds the density of the core of a neutron star. And since neutron stars are as dense as matter can get until it collapses into a black hole, anything that would create a similar energy density could essentially create a black hole about 33 meters across with an expected lifetime of 3.6 × 1060 years if it recreated the conditions needed for Obousy and Cleaver’s theoretical spacecraft to hit the speed of light. To escape the shockwave and be able to aim the GRB far enough away, the civilization that created this black hole machine would have to build it hundreds of millions of miles away from the planet it would occupy. Though, as we saw already, any civilization capable of building a black hole machine would be living in a cold, dark universe lit by embers of old, dead stars slowly simmering away into dense, solid matter, even if it started working on the project now. And in my humble opinion, such an advanced species would find other things to do with its time or just opt to make the best out of relativistic rocketry to get around.
See: Richard Obousy, Gerald Cleaver (2008). Warp Drive: A New Approach JBIS arXiv: 0712.1649v6false controversies and evolution in the u.s.
A filmmaker trying to kick-start a controversy to market a biographical movie about Charles Darwin is finding it hard to get attention. But why?
Despite the lamentations of Jeremy Thomas, the producer behind a recent biographical movie about Darwin, the entertainment industry in the United States didn’t find the topic too controversial to merit a distribution deal for the film. Newmarket Films will let it loose sometime in December and try to cash in on the free exposure the movie received. If we were to trust Thomas, creationists and fundamentalists will be incensed at any and all portrayal of Charles Darwin and his life that doesn’t show his picture framed right above the Nazi Swastika on the wall of Hitler’s office, which is why no American distributor wanted to take on this film. If they did, the protests will be so loud, the ensuing free press pretty much guarantees a handsome profit on the movie. And I have little doubt that this narrative influence Newmarket to sign on the dotted line. But if I were the executive in charge of Creation, I wouldn’t be rushing to count my box office or DVD controversy-fueled bonus just yet…
While UK’s Telegraph had a field day with Thomas’ comments, the truth behind American companies’ wait in picking up the rights was the fact that the movie wasn’t very marketable. It was just a biography of a scientist with no big stars, no explosions, no aliens condemned to slums in a statement about apartheid, nothing that leaps out and says how it could be pitched to an audience at a profit. And this is when it seems that Thomas’ senses told him to play the controversy gambit. Instead of trying to simply sell his movie as the biographical journey that helped Darwin solidify the idea of natural selection, he would dare distributors to take it on just to create a furor in the fundamentalist community which holds Darwin just a few notches below Satan on their official hate list. It’s cunning salesmanship, but at the same time, it’s very disingenuous. Fellow skeptic Jen Myers also pointed this out and went into even more detail about the real trials and tribulations faced by indie film distributors today.
The Telegraph’s article quotes that just 39% of American accept the theory of evolution and it’s true that far too many people in the U.S. simply refuse to consider the concept’s scientific merits because they’re afraid that by accepting evolution, they’re falling prey to evil, anti-God forces. But while the author is having a “look at those silly superstitious yanks” moment, the nature of Americans’ relationship with evolution is a lot more complex than it appears at first glance. All the polls about the theory don’t just ask whether people believe in evolution or not, but instead ask whether people believe that species evolved by themselves, with the help of a deity of some sort (aka theistic evolution), or that all species appeared as they are or almost as they are today. The positive replies to the first scenario are then used to show how many people accept the theory of evolution as scientists see it in their necessarily secular definition.
Typically, the result looks pretty abysmal, with acceptance of materialistic, natural evolution hovering at a very steady 36 to 38% since 1982, just as ardent creationists maintained around 45% over the same time period according to Gallup. But what about the theistic evolutionists? Their numbers actually increased significantly, from 9% to 14% over the last 27 years. In the scientific establishment, evolution is on par with gravity and the concept of the heliocentric solar system. But popular culture is very frequently and very loudly bombarded by the idea that tradition must trump fact and if it doesn’t, then the fact must be wrong. It’s like the old British joke about a man caught cheating with his best friend’s wife pleading his case. “Who are you going to believe here Reginald? Me or your eyes?” Spiked with the threat of eternal damnation as punishment for disagreement, a religious appeal against objective science prompts a lot of people to choose not to believe their eyes. Theistic evolution is as far as they will feel comfortable going with their scientific conceptualization of nature.
But now, what about those 45% of ardent denialists? Why is a developed country that is one of the leaders in scientific innovation and sophisticated technology, home to so many people who reject the basis for the facts that fuel its flourishing biotech industry? Part of the blame has to go to a school system which requires each state to make its own standards which will often fall victim to rabidly anti-scientific groups which undermine the quality of education for the purpose of feeling good about themselves and affirming their beliefs. Having a nationwide standard which requires a solid background in biology and teachers with the credentials to teach scientific disciplines would dramatically slash that number in just a decade. Nationwide education standards are part of why Europeans feel a lot more comfortable with the theory. More of them get exposed to biology in school despite the fact that creationists there can be just as vociferously anti-evolution as in the U.S.
All in all, evolution isn’t really a controversy in America as much as it’s a cultural debate in which one side has facts and evidence while the other hurls fire and brimstone at anyone who is willing to consider evolution as a perfectly plausible concept. A film about Charles Darwin would be no more controversial than your typical, run of the mill science museum which mentions his contribution as the seed that launched evolution from a then obscure concept being knocked around by some naturalists, to a hypothesis refined enough to be studied by prominent scientists. A real controversy would be a documentary on a major new discovery that’s being billed as the one, definitive proof |
appear on the page. The page basically has two containers—a canvas and a toolbar. You drag fields from the toolbar to the canvas, and then you can position the fields in the canvas to order them anyway you want. To remove a field, just drag it from the canvas back to the toolbar.
One of the things I wanted to implement was to always make sure the fields in the toolbar stayed in alphabetically ordered. While I knew it would be easy enough to whip up a sorting function, I decided to first search the jQuery Plug-ins to see if I could find something that was already written. That's when I found the TinySort jQuery Plug-in.
This plug-in allows you to sort an number of sibling DOM elements and you can sort by either it's text, an attribute or even a child element. Here's some examples (taken from the Sjeiti website:)
// sort by the element's text
$("ul#people> li").tsort();
// sort by a child's text
$("ul#people>li").tsort("span.surname");
// sort by the img element, order descending using the img's "alt" attribute
$("ul#people>li").tsort("img", { order:"desc",attr:"alt" } );
// sort's element, but puts the sorted items at the end of the parent element
$("ul#people>li").tsort( { place:"end" } );
The "place" option (as seen in the last example) is interesting because it allows you to control how the matching siblings are ordered in context to their non-matching siblings. In most cases you're probably sorting all of the children items of an element, but there may be times when you're ignoring certain elements (like disabled items.)
There are lots of working examples on the authors home page. If you need a way to quickly sort some elements on the page, I definitely recommend checking this plug-in out. It seems to have every option one would need to implement some basic sorting to some generic elements on a page.A shrimp from America has been invading Europe's rivers and lakes for several decades, but something seems to be preventing this colonist from becoming numerous and problematic, like so many other invaders - such as the Californian grey squirrel and American crayfish. Could the resident European shrimps have something to do with this?
Jaimie Dick and his colleagues mapped the occurrence of the interloper and found it only existed where native shrimps were absent or rare. When native shrimps were common, the American shrimp simply could not establish and it disappeared. The results have been published in the open access journal NeoBiota.
'We came up with the idea that the native shrimps might be eating the exotic species to the point of local extinction, and hence its patchy occurrence' said Prof. Dick. 'So we staged fights between two of our native shrimps, Gammarus pulex and Gammarus duebeni, and they both proved very effective at killing and eating the invader Crangonyx pseudogracilis. Remarkably, one of the native shrimps. G. pulex, which almost never allows the invader to establish, was the better of the two predators in our experiments. The other native shrimp, G. duebeni, sometimes co-exists with the invader because it is a less effective predator. Thus, our laboratory experiments helped us understand a Europe-wide pattern of failed invasion'.
Invasion ecologists use the term 'biotic resistance' to describe how native species might fight back and drive invaders extinct. But unravelling how this occurs is not an easy task. By comparing the numbers of invaders killed over a range of their densities, the research showed that the native shrimps can kill most invaders to the point their populations crash, and hence the invasion is halted.
'Understanding how native species resist exotic species could help us prevent further invasions that damage crops, biodiversity and cost £Billions each year. If we act to help native species populations, we can reduce the menace of invaders. Finally we can begin to turn the tide on unwelcome and out-of-control colonists.'
The authors are conducting more work in Ireland, England, Canada and South Africa to understand how native and invasive species interact and thus how to combat a very real environmental and economic problem throughout the world.
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Original source:
MacNeil C, Dick JTA, Alexander ME, Dodd JA, Ricciardi A (2013) Predators vs. alien: differential biotic resistance to an invasive species by two resident predators. NeoBiota 19: 1-19. doi: 10.3897/neobiota.19.4839WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday upheld 65-year-old limits on protesters’ First Amendment rights to gather and wave signs on the grand plaza in front of the Supreme Court, reversing a district court ruling that had found the restrictions “plainly unconstitutional.”
A three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled unanimously that restricting demonstrators to the wide sidewalks alongside the plaza was a reasonable limit to preserve the court’s decorum.
The ruling came in a case involving a man who was arrested in 2011 for protesting violence against minority groups on the court’s marble plaza. The appeals panel held that the plaza, with its tiered staircases leading to the pillared building’s formidable bronze doors, amounts to a “nonpublic forum” like the courthouse itself, a place not open to “expressive activity by the public.”
“The government retains substantially greater leeway to limit expressive conduct in such an area and to preserve the property for its intended purposes: here, as the actual and symbolic entryway to the nation’s highest court and the judicial business conducted within it,” the court wrote.If I'm going to put a program into production, there are several things I need that program to do in order to consider it "operationalized" – that is, running and maintainable in a measurable and verifiable way by both engineers and operations staff. For my purposes, an operationalized program must:
Be able to log at multiple levels (ex: debug, warning, etc.).
Be able to collect and share metrics/statistics about the types of work the program is doing and how long that work is taking. Ideally, the collected metrics are available in a format that's compatible with commonly-used monitoring tools like Ganglia, or can be so munged.
Be configurable, ideally via a system that allows configured properties in running programs to be updated without restarting said programs.
Be deployable to remote servers in a repeatable way.
In the Scala world, there are good libraries for dealing with at least the first three requirements. Examples:
Logula for logging.
Metrics or Ostrich for collecting and reporting metrics.
Configgy or Fig for configuration.
As for deployment, one approach taken in the Scala world is to bundle together the bytecode and libraries that comprise one's program with something like assembly-sbt, then push the resulting bundle (a "fat JAR") to remote servers with a tool like Capistrano that executes commands in parallel over SSH. This isn't a problem that necessitates language-specific tools, but I'm curious if such a tool exists in the Haskell community.
There are probably Haskell libraries that provide the traits I've described above. I'd like to know which of the available libraries are considered "best"; that is, which are most mature, well-maintained, commonly used in the Haskell community, and exemplary of Haskell best practices.
If there are any other libraries, tools, or practices around making Haskell code "production-ready", I'd love to know about those as well.The federal government considers marijuana to have no medical value. But US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy on Wednesday said "marijuana can be helpful" for some medical conditions and symptoms. And it seems like this wasn't a slip-up: the US Department of Health and Human Services appears to be promoting the comments on Twitter.
"We have some preliminary data that for certain medical conditions... marijuana can be helpful" - @Surgeon_General : http://t.co/Y3sfhwJ0DJ — HHS Media (@HHSMedia) February 5, 2015
This is a big deal. In the past, these types of positive comments about pot have been walked back by public officials. There's even a West Wing episode in which the surgeon general almost had to resign after suggesting pot should be decriminalized — likely based off a similar controversy during the Clinton administration.
But HHS is actually repromoting Murthy's comments — a sign of how views about medical marijuana are changing.
Under the federal scheduling system, the feds consider marijuana to have no medical value and a high potential for abuse, putting it in the same category as heroin and an even higher restriction than cocaine.
To find medical value for a controlled substance, a drug must have large-scale clinical trials to back it up — similar to what the Food and Drug Administration would expect from any other drug entering the market.
But the federal government's prohibition of marijuana is part of the reason large-scale clinical trials have been so hard to conduct. As a result of pot's schedule 1 status, the Drug Enforcement Administration limits the supply of marijuana for research. To obtain it for studies, researchers must get their studies approved by the Department of Health and Human Services, FDA, and DEA.
Given these restrictions, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently called on the federal government to reschedule marijuana to allow more research into its potential health effects for sick children.
Changing marijuana's status as a schedule 1 drug is a bit of a catch-22. There needs to be a certain level of scientific research proving marijuana has medical value, but federal restrictions make that difficult.
Watch: Ezra Klein's take on the subjectHomophobic Ex-VA Gov. Bob McDonnell Now Living With Priest Who Pled Guilty To Having Sex With Another Man In Public
When he was governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell proudly embraced his inner homophobe. He signed an executive order stripping state employees of anti-discrimination protections, defended the state’s ban on adoption by gay parents, and called the state’s ban on marriage equality “the right decision.”
So, of course, now that McDonnell is no longer in office and is standing trial for corruption charges, he’s living with a priest who was arrested for having sex with another man in a public place.
Really.
Rev. Wayne Ball was arrested in Norfolk in 2002 for “frequenting a bawdy place,” which is Virginian for cruising area. He and another man, also arrested, were found in a parked car, presumably discussing the finer points of the latest papal encyclical. Ball pled guilty to lewd behavior and was subsequently reassigned to another Church, in the fine Catholic tradition of protecting priests at all costs. The charge was dismissed after
McDonnell and Ball have been friends for years, with Ball presiding at the wedding of McDonnell’s daughter (to a man, just to be clear). Of course, the wedding itself is among the corruption charges against McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, which allege that they received inappropriate gifts and loans totalling at least $165,000 from a local businessman.
The trial has been spectacularly messy, with McDonnell essentially blaming all of his woes on his wife’s romantic delusions. McDonnell moved out of the house he shared with Maureen months ago to bunk at Ball’s parish house.
Ball has been a vocal supporter McDonnell, complaining in a blog post about how unfair the legal system has been to McDonnell because it forced him to talk about marital problems. “Is there any person at all who would want to stand up in public and tell the whole truth about their life?” Ball asked.
We wonder if he would be willing to answer that question for himself.As many of you may know, the lead developer of Reddcoin, Laudney, announced the official release of the Reddcoin POSV Wallet v1.3.0.0 today. While it is not necessary to upgrade to this wallet immediately, as the full switch to POSV will not happen until August 2, 2014, Reddcoin users should consider switching as soon as possible. Unlike previous wallet upgrades, this one takes a bit more work, so we will help you take it step-by-step:
Download the New Reddcoin POSV Wallet
The new wallet can be obtained from Github, by going to this link. Choose your operating system to download the appropriate format. This guide will focus on the Windows version of the wallet, but may be updated to include Linux, and possibly Mac, in the future.
Encrypt Your Current Reddcoin Wallet
WARNING: When Encrypting Your Wallet, MAKE SURE You Record The Encryption Password In A Way That You Cannot Forget It, and That No One Else Can Access It. If You Lose Your Password, You CANNOT Use Your Wallet.
Open your current Reddcoin wallet, click “Settings”, and then “Encrypt Wallet”
This will bring up the menu to enter you encryption password. Once again, PLEASE be careful with this. Once you encrypt your wallet, you must have the password to use the funds in it. If you lose the password, any Reddcoin in the wallet are effectively lost as well. While I would not suggest keeping a copy of the wallet that is unencrypted, as that is not a secure practice, if you are unsure that you can remember a password, or keep up with a record, and prefer to give up that security, then you should make a copy of the unencrypted wallet before you encrypt it. However, as I said, that is not a safe way to store any digital currency.
Backup Your Reddcoin Wallet.dat
Once you have encrypted your Reddcoin wallet, make a copy of the wallet.dat file that is in your Reddcoin folder.
Make sure you paste this copy in a different directory than your normal Reddcoin wallet.dat. It is an even better idea to make a copy on a flash drive, external harddrive, a different computer, or all of the above.
Uninstall The Old Reddcoin Wallet and Install The New Reddcoin POSV Wallet
To uninstall your old Reddcoin wallet, first you should run the uninstall application
This will leave some files intact. You must now delete ALL of the remaining files, with the exception of the wallet.dat.
Now copy the reddcoin-1.3.0.0-win.zip to your Reddcoin folder, and unzip it.
This will make new folders, so navigate to the sub folders created in your Reddcoin directory, reddcoin-1.3.0.0-win32 and run the reddcoin-1.3.0.0-win32-setup application.
During the setup process, you will be prompted to provide your Reddcoin directory. Make sure that you select the folder that contains your Reddcoin wallet.dat.
Launch the new Reddcoin POSV Wallet
Now, navigate to your Reddcoin-qt application, launch it, and the Reddcoin network should begin to sync. You may notice that I am using a shortcut, as I use –datadir=”folderpath” to direct where my Reddcoin data files are stored. This is not necessary, but I do it to keep from filling my SSD. You can ignore that, unless you have a reason to store all of the data files in the same directory.
Now, all you need to do is wait for the network to catch up. Mine is currently listing “no block sources available”, though that generally will clear up with a bit of time, and should become less common as more users switch to the new wallet. Update: It is now syncing! Image is updated to show that.
I hope this guide is helpful. If you have any further questions, or see an error in my tutorial, please let me know! I can't wait to see POSV in action.Man acquitted of setting dog on fire
Updated
A man has walked free from court after allegedly dealing with his neighbour's barking dog by pouring petrol over it and setting it alight.
Jake O'Dell, 25, faced Adelaide Magistrates Court charged with ill-treating an animal.
Sammie, a three-year-old staffordshire terrier cross, had been chained to a tree in the yard of a house at West Croydon when she was attacked in August 2009.
The dog suffered serious burns and needed its ears amputated.
Magistrate Fred Field found Mr O'Dell not guilty because he could not rule out the possibility someone else hurt the dog.
Sammie's owner Alice McDonnell cried as the verdict was given.
"Animals can't protect themselves. We need to protect them and if the law is not going to help, what chance does any animal have?" she said.
"I look at my dog and she's got just her bare skin on one side. She went through so much pain and she fought through it, and then to come out and have a not guilty verdict, it's just ridiculous."
The RSPCA says it will consider appealing against the verdict.
Spokesman Simon Richards says the organisation is extremely disappointed with the decision.
"For all who have been involved over the last two years, this is a devastating outcome," he said.
"We are currently reviewing the judgment and considering every option of appeal to the Supreme Court."
Topics: animal-welfare, community-and-society, human-interest, animals, law-crime-and-justice, courts-and-trials, croydon-5008, australia, adelaide-5000, sa
First postedInvoking a heavenly imperative, Gov. John Kasich said yesterday he will never give up the fight to expand Medicaid, even as a legislative leader said it is unlikely to happen this summer. Kasich told reporters he won't rest until the legislature passes his plan to expand Medicaid coverage to 275,000 more poor Ohioans.
Invoking a heavenly imperative, Gov. John Kasich said yesterday he will never give up the fight to expand Medicaid, even as a legislative leader said it is unlikely to happen this summer.
Kasich told reporters he won�t rest until the legislature passes his plan to expand Medicaid coverage to 275,000 more poor Ohioans.
�I�m not going to give this up. I will not. I don�t care how long it takes. Hopefully, it will be sooner rather than longer.�
But House Speaker William G. Batchelder, R-Medina, said he doubts the House can complete work on a bill designed to reform the Medicaid program before the chamber starts its summer break on June 30.
Legislators are working on a bipartisan bill to lower Medicaid costs and help those who rely on subsidized health care to move out of poverty. They said yesterday that a bill could be ready for a vote by the end of next week. Expanding Medicaid is not included in the bill as it stands, but that could be added once there is consensus on reforms.
�It�s a possibility,� said Rep. Ron Amstutz, R-Wooster, who is co-sponsoring House Bill 208 with Rep. Vernon Sykes, D-Akron. �We have to measure what we can do� based on what a majority of legislators will support.
Sykes said he thinks Batchelder remains open to the bill, which received its first hearing before a House subcommittee yesterday. A companion bill is to get its first hearing in the Senate today.
Kasich has been stymied by fellow Republicans in the General Assembly in his effort to bring $13 billion in federal money to the state over seven years to cover an estimated 275,000 low-income Ohioans, including 26,000 veterans and 55,000 people suffering from mental illness.
Kasich�s plan to expand Medicaid was stripped from the two-year state budget, which must be approved by July 1. Since then, at least three bills have been introduced to consider Medicaid expansion in separate legislation.
Supporters of expansion say that if lawmakers don�t act soon, state officials won�t have time to enact the plan before Jan. 1, the start of a three-year period when the federal government will pay all Medicaid-expansion costs. That�s also the date when most Americans must have health care or pay a tax penalty. Fines also will be imposed on businesses that do not offer coverage to their employees.
Yesterday, Arizona became the 24th state to move ahead with Medicaid expansion.
Talking to reporters, Kasich pleaded for legislators to approve the expansion.
�The most-important thing for this legislature to think about: Put yourself in somebody else�s shoes. Put yourself in the shoes of a mother and a father of an adult child that is struggling. Walk in somebody else�s moccasins. Understand that poverty is real.�
Kasich continued: �I had a conversation with one of the members of the legislature the other day. I said, �I respect the fact that you believe in small government. I do, too. I also know that you�re a person of faith.
�Now, when you die and get to the meeting with St. Peter, he�s probably not going to ask you much about what you did about keeping government small. But he is going to ask you what you did for the poor. You better have a good answer.�??�
jhallett@dispatch.com
@hallettjoe
ccandisky@dispatch.com
@ccandisky"Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker" was arrested after a Starbucks employee recognized the 24-year-old wanted in the beating death of a man nearly three times his age.
An undated photo of Caleb "Kai' Lawrence McGillvary. (Photo11: AP Photo/Union County Prosecutor's Office) Story Highlights "Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker" has been arrested for allegedly beating a man to death
Caleb "Kai" McGillvary was arrested Thursday in Philadelphia and arraigned Friday
A Starbucks employee was credited with recognizing the 24-year-old
ELIZABETH, New Jersey (AP) — Life on the run for the Internet sensation known as "Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker" ended when he asked for a cup of coffee. A Starbucks employee was credited Friday with recognizing 24-year-old Caleb "Kai" McGillvary, wanted in the beating death of a man nearly three times his age.
The pair met amid the neon lights of New York City's Times Square over the weekend and went to the home of 73-year-old lawyer Joseph Galfy Jr., authorities say. On Monday, Galfy was found beaten to death in his bedroom, wearing only his socks and underwear. McGillvary was arrested Thursday in Philadelphia and charged with his murder.
McGillvary was arraigned Friday. A court official said he has a U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement detainer for three arrests in Canada in recent years.
Spokesman Harold Orb told the Associated Press in a statement late Friday that ICE has lodged a detainer against McGillvary.
"Once charges are fully adjudicated, he will be turned over to ICE and placed in removal proceedings," Orb said.
McGillvary gained a measure of fame in February after intervening in an attack on a California utility worker. In an interview viewed millions of times online, he described using a hatchet he was carrying to repeatedly hit a man who had struck a worker with his car, fending off a further attack.
His rambling, profanity-laced interview to a television station went viral, with one version viewed more than 3.9 million times on YouTube. McGillvary later appeared on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"
On Thursday, McGillvary went into the coffee shop in Philadelphia, and the employee who waited on him recognized him and called police. McGillvary took off before police arrived, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said, but an officer found McGillvary at a nearby bus terminal.
McGillvary was being held on $3 million bail. It was not clear whether he has a lawyer.
Statements posted on McGillvary's Facebook page following the homicide were "sexual in nature," Union County Prosecutor Theodore J. Romankow said.
McGillvary's last post, dated Tuesday, asks "what would you do?" if you awoke in a stranger's house and found you'd been drugged and sexually assaulted. One commenter suggests hitting him with a hatchet — and McGillvary's final comment on the post says, "I like your idea."
Romankow declined to say what object was used in Galfy's beating.
Romankow said McGillvary had traded on his newfound prominence to meet fans across the country, and it apparently wasn't difficult to recognize him.
"Being on YouTube too much," Ramsey said, "is not always a good thing."
Copyright 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/12CxnKjOver the weekend, George Lindell became one of Donald Trump's most famous supporters when he was caught on video shouting, "Jew-S-A!" at the press pen during a Trump rally in Phoenix.
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Now Lindell has debuted the mother of all excuses for why he was shouting what appeared to be a blatantly anti-Semitic tirade.
“I’m around Mexican people all the time,” Lindell told Buzzfeed on Sunday. “I speak Spanish a lot. That’s just the way I say it.”
So, you see, Lindell wasn't being anti-Semitic at all! He was actually just pronouncing the word "U.S.A." in accented English, which, if true, definitely wouldn't also be a totally offensive thing to do.
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It's probably not true. In the video, Lindell can also be heard saying, "We're run by the Jews, OK?" But, in Lindell's defense, "we're run by the Jews" sounds a lot like biblioteca, the Spanish word for "library."
Trump has attracted a sometimes strongly anti-Semitic following. His legions of supporters have unleashed anti-Semitic attacks all over the internet—including from Trump himself (and his son).
This is not Lindell's first time as an internet celebrity. As Buzzfeed notes, Lindell first became internet famous back in 2011 when his colorful eyewitness account of a car crash went viral.
His transition from benign web sensation to Nazi-esque Trump supporter makes Lindell a sort of living embodiment of Godwin's law. Either that, or he's just the world's worst Spanish speaker.
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(H/T Irin Carmon.)Something Like the Old Form
Ever since I listened, mesmerized, to The Woman in White I’ve been intrigued by Wilkie Collins. A protégé of none other than Charles Dickens, he’s the sort of writer who, at his very best, makes you wish he had written a great deal more. He did, but he seems, at least according to my slender knowledge, to have failed to live up to the full promise of his talent. Though the flow of work continued to his death, the consistent excellence achieved in the 1860’s (The Woman in White, No Name, Armadale and The Moonstone) was not sustained through the last two decades of his life.
The death of his mentor in 1870 and an addiction to laudanum, which Collins first took to relieve severe gout, are usually blamed for the decline in the quality of his work. As sad as all that is, it leaves the person who wants to hear more of Collins in something of a quandary. I have The Moonstone and I can’t wait to hear it. But after Moonstone I will have run through Collins’ best-of hit parade. As far as I can tell, no recordings have been made of No Name or Armadale. So I hesitate to embark on the last of the best, knowing there’s nothing after that. Silly? I know, I know.
Plan B? I dither with lesser works, hoping that when the critics call his output “uneven” that implies there are still a few high spots. The good news is, there are. And Mrs. Zant and the Ghost is one of them.
I didn’t know the trajectory of Collins’ career when I picked up his “The Haunted Hotel” (1879) on sale late last year. My disappointment with that novella lead me to seek the explanation of how the author of The Woman in White could turn out something so muddled. Grabbing Mrs. Zant and the Ghost—a story that I assume, since I can find no bibliography that includes it, is part of the collection “The Ghost’s Touch and Other Stories” (1885)—was taking another risk, of course. But at an hour and 38 minutes the time commitment was minimal and at “free” (to Audible members and non-members alike) the price was right.
Like Woman in White, our protagonist is drawn into a strange situation quite accidentally. The unsettling weirdness that pervades the story is generated, as in Woman in White, by an inability on the part of the characters—and the reader/listener—to determine if the threat they sense is real or simply imagined. If real, something should be done and done quickly. But if imagined, acting would mean throwing outrageous charges at innocent people, making our protagonist look ridiculous or worse. The essential elements that make a “sensational” work by Collins so sensational are here. Added goose: unlike The Haunted Hotel, in this story he manages to make a ghostly visit feel authentic. By comparison, the floating head in Haunted Hotel looks like something strung up in a suburban front yard to startle the kids on Halloween night. Finally, if this story belongs to that 1885 collection, then Collins was also resisting an impulse to serious social commentary that harmed the popularity of his later output. I enjoy authors with a point of view. I avoid those who wave an agenda.
Gillian Anderson, does a fine job with all this. My only criticism may be rooted not in her performance but in my circumstances; I usually listen on the train to and from work. Especially on the way home, what with the gentle swaying of the cars and the 8 or 9 hours of work that just wound up, her soft, gentle, insinuating delivery threw a soporific veil over me more than a few times. I don’t think that, ensconced in an easy chair with something to drink at one’s elbow, that delivery, so perfectly modulated to the tenor of the writing, would pose the same problem.
10 of 10 people found this review helpfulFollowing a Fairfax report which claims a cashed-up CSL club is preparing to head-hunt the Socceroos coach, the agent warned that Postecoglou's hands "would be tied" over signings, with club presidents, sporting directors and agents dictating player recruitment.
He added that with the CSL transfer window now closed he would be saddled with a squad not of his choosing, "even if he did have a small say" on who to bring in.
"It would be foolhardy for Mr Postecoglou to consider any offers here right now," said the agent, who has been involved in several deals involving Australian players over the years.
"I am sure he is too smart to do something so stupid.
"He would have no say in signings - and the window has now just about closed anyway.
"The top five clubs (Shanghai SIPG, Jiangsu Sainty, Guangzhou Evergrande, Shanghai Shenhua and Beijing Guoan) all have coaches for the season (which kicks off on Match 23), which means he'd probably end up at a less well known team.
"Only a tiny handful of foreign managers have survived in the CSL (since its inception in 1993) for more than one or two years and players don't have too much security either.
"It's a pretty ruthless environment."
Postecoglou, who has 18 months to run on his contract with the FFA, is at the mid-point of an exacting qualification campaign for Russia 2018, with the Confederations Cup looming in June.
And it's highly speculative to imagine him exiting the Socceroos set up prematurely, unless of course they were to fail to qualify for the World Cup.
He will also be aware of the pitfalls of Asia, with former Socceroos assistant Graham Arnold surviving just eight games during his ill-fated tenure with J-League club Vegalta Sendai in 2014.
"You have to know the marketplace, the mentality of the people and a bit about the culture," added the agent.
"It's not easy for any coach coming here, especially as so much is expected of them.
"When it comes to signings, club presidents and sporting directors force players on you and you have to live with it."
The agent cited the example of Western Sydney Wanderers coach Tony Popovic, who rejected an offer to take charge at Shanghai Shenhua last November after concluding that there would to too much interference from above in player recruitment.
"I can totally understand why he said no to the offer," he added. "After the way they were beaten by Brisbane in the ACL, you can see it was the right decision.
"Many people were surprised that he didn't take the job but he must have known the job he was being given was impossible."Facebook has reversed its decision to block the famous image showing a naked girl suffering from a South Vietnamese napalm attack, after the network was accused of censorship around the world.
The social network was under immense pressure and ridicule after it emerged the website blocked the photo, which shows the naked 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running away in terror after her village was hit by a napalm attack. The photo “breached” Facebook’s standards for nudity in the image.
Facebook decided to reverse its decision Friday after it "listened to the community" and recognised the "global importance" of the photo.
"Because of its status as an iconic image of historical importance, the value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal, so we have decided to reinstate the image on Facebook where we are aware it has been removed," Facebook said in a statement.
"It will take some time to adjust these systems but the photo should be available for sharing in the coming days,” it added. "We are always looking to improve our policies to make sure they both promote free expression and keep our community safe."
@Reuters So I see FB hasn't gotten any better insofar as judging the importance of certain pix.Only famous people seem to get through to FB. — T S M DESIGNS (@TSMwatercolors) September 9, 2016
The website was slammed for censoring the photo after popular Norwegian author and journalist Tom Egeland posted the image, with the social network then blocking it.
Then, the country’s biggest newspaper featured the photograph on its front page alongside an open letter condemning Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg for censorship.
The country’s prime minister, Erna Solberg, even took the social network to task, criticizing its decision to censor the photo, stating that the tech giant was “limiting the freedom of expression.” Her post was deleted shortly after, without warning or notification.
Iconic war photo or child pornography? Facebook under attack for banning ‘Napalm girl’ pic https://t.co/vEeDtEGARp — RT (@RT_com) September 9, 2016
Egeland was one of the first to welcome the U-turn: “Now I'm happy!” Egeland tweeted after Facebook made its announcement.
"This does not alter at all the difficult issues that involve Facebook and the Norwegian media. But tonight I'm just happy,” he said, according to the BBC.
Solberg has also welcomed the news, describing it as a “very good” decision.
“I'm a happy prime minister,” she said. “It shows that using social media can make [a] political change even in social media.”
WATCH MORE:“When the president does it, that means it is not illegal”
— Former President Richard Nixon, as quoted in a new Sen. Mitch McConnell ad titled “Demand Answers”
This slick and hard-hitting video ad by Sen. Mitch McConnell’s reelection campaign seeks to highlight McConnell’s warnings in 2012 about possible shady doings by the Internal Revenue Service and tie President Obama personally to the scandal. The ad closes with the words: “Intimidation. Retaliation. Secretive...We demand answers.”
We have no issue with the first part of the 2 ½ minute video, which shows excerpts from a pair of speeches the Senate minority leader gave to the American Enterprise Institute and the Conservative Political Action Conference. This section depicts McConnell as prescient, warning about the problems some tea party groups were apparently having with the IRS, as the ad quickly follows with news clips about the revelations this year.
But, starting at about 1:50, with clips of the IRS’s Lois Lerner refusing to testify before Congress, the end of the ad raises serious questions because of its manipulative editing and juxtaposition of words and images.
Let’s take a closer look.
The Facts
Lerner, of course, is the career official who was in charge of the IRS division responsible for targeting conservative groups. After images of her appear, the words “Zero Accountability” appear on the screen. Then, there are quick cuts of testimony by former IRS commissioners Douglas Shulman (a George W. Bush appointee) and Stephen Miller (a career employee), saying variations of “don’t know” or “I did not know.”
The net effect is to make these officials appear shifty and lacking credibility. That may be par for the course for such ads, but it’s worth remembering that these were not officials appointed by Obama; he inherited them. (Update: A reader notes that Shulman’s last political contribution before being appointed was $500 to the Democratic National Committee.)
Then the video starts to push the envelope. A black screen shows the words: “What aren’t they telling us?” A voice asks, “Do you believe it is illegal” and Miller is seen saying, “I don’t believe it is.” Finally, former president Richard M. Nixon, in a clip from his interview with David Frost, says: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
Let’s back up a moment. First of all, the exchange with Miller is severely truncated. Here is the full exchange from a congressional hearing on May 17, with the parts in the video indicated in bold.
REP. TOM PRICE (R-Ga.): Do you believe it is illegal for employees of the IRS to create lists to target individual groups and citizens in this country?
MILLER: I think the Treasury Inspector General indicated it might not be, that others will be able to tell that it…
PRICE: What do you believe?
MILLER: I don't believe it is. I don't believe it should happen...
PRICE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
MILLER: Don't get me wrong. It should not happen.
So, first of all, Miller is engaged in a bit of a debate about whether this activity is illegal or not. Indeed, at the same hearing, Treasury Inspector General J. Russell George, who investigated the matter and wrote a comprehensive report, said “it is not illegal, but it was inappropriate.”
But then Miller states quite clearly that the activity should not have taken place. So the ad turns a theoretical debate over the law into an apparent dodge.
Jesse |
for this project from my lodge. This is a national project, we seriously can not ignore. It is our duty as the intellectual culture conservative forces in Norway to cooperate on this:) 2009-09-14 11:12:20 Very well written:) We should immediately work towards joint establishment of a cultural conservative major newspaper (paper / online national distribution). I know many of the Progress Party and know that there are strong forces there that want to develop "Progress," Progress Party newspaper. I also know of several cultural conservative investors. What about working to consolidate the Progress of document (may idag.no?) + Get funding from strategic investors? Call the newspaper: "Conservative" as the only cultural conservative media company in Norway. There is a chance that OBI will want to be part of such a project. Primary Doctrines: Critical to multiculturalism (Anti-kulturmarxistisk) Anti-racist Pro Progress Party (maybe right) Pro Israel (+ support for Armenia, Christian Copts / Maronite / Assyriere, cultural conservative Indians, support for the establishment of a Christian state Biafra, Southern Nigeria and support to the establishment of a Christian state in Sudan, support for Russian / Thailand / Philippines / China + Fighting Jihad) Anti-UN Anti-EU Critical to kulturmarxistiske media (all) Pro free market Pro Christian Some input? 2009-09-14 10:57:20 Caper, I did not say that the EDL in the present form, where we had wished it had been. But it is essential that the intellectual conservative forces gives (unofficial) political ideologist and training to our young people 15-25. Who else will do it? We can not despise the young people in society and refuse to approach them because they lack ideological training, then it just is OUR (the cultural conservative intellectuals) responsibility to ensure this. Bawer is NOK is not right person to work as a bridge builder. He is a liberal anti-jihadist and not a cultural conservative in many areas. I have my suspicions that he is too paranoid (in terms of its gays orientation). It seems that he fears that "cultural conservatives" are going to be a threat to gays in the future. He refuses, therefore, to seize their opportunity to influence these in a positive direction? This seems completely irrational. It should be noted that many organizations that VB has many "reforms" to complete before they are on our level. In all cases, we are not in a situation where we can pick and choose partners. We must therefore make sure to influence other cultural conservatives to come to our anti-rasistiske/pro-homser/pro-Israel line. When they reach this line, one can take it to the next level. The consolidation should continue, and people must not make a difference (rather than isolate). 2009-09-14 09:18:03 Jarle, Very good analysis. You're absolutely right. I have not been present in the Norwegian debate until now when I have debated in English for several years / total material Compendium, which I once finished:) I feel it is important to create a pan-European platform for rhetoric / objectives / policy analysis / research of historical factors relevant to so and transfer this knowledge to every nation. It pan-Europeiske/US environment Robert Spencer, Fjordman, Atlas, Analekta + 50 other EU / U.S. bloggers (and Facebook groups) is the epicenteret for policy analysis and has been for some years. Much of this knowledge has already been communicated through "document" (are incredibly impressed with the level of knowledge here:)) indicating that it is going to shape a new pan-European "cultural conservative" intellectual movement that is agreed on the basic truths. 10/20/30 The next year we should focus on the following: - Create a cultural conservative major newspaper (paper / online) in each country (our voice that reaches out to all of Norway). The goal is obviously to raise more Norwegians up from the coma. - Provide funding for this project through cultural conservative investors. -Contribute to shape / develop a youth / action group that represents our ideological platform (anti-racist but critical of multiculturalism / Islamization etc) EDL / SIOE form outlines how such an organization would look like. We can f as develop SIOE or create a new one. EDL has been racist stamp, and they work hard to get rid of this (all individuals who are racist / discriminatory speech will be from now thrown out). It is difficult to start a grass roots / action group in Norway when the government pumps in insane amounts of everything to please everyone (except us;) It's just for us to get started. The window opens up in the earliest 10 years, most recently about 70 years so we still have plenty of time. But we should not waste too much time to "confirm to each other that we have a problem." It is essential that we also focus on working specifically at these points. Jarle, I will send you an e-mail:) 2009-09-13 23:03:08 Hårstad / Xebeche / Skaug Yep, you're absolutely right. Kulturmarxistene managed to bargain crucial popular platforms that secured them victory: - Sexual Liberation (weakening of the church / morals / patriarchy / nuclear family / birth rates) - Feminism - positive and negative effects (weakening of the church / patriarchy / nuclear family / birth rates) - Rights of workers - positive aspects - Drug / alcohol / party of liberation (weakening of the nuclear family / moral / birth rates) - Multi-Cultural - sold in as the introduction of exciting offers / food / experiences (negative aspects: mass immigration, Islam, ghettofication-> enklavisering, crime-murder / rape / robbery / violence, weakening of the identity / culture / unit / nation etc.. ) Too much of these elements (with a few exceptions) will help to draw us towards a Marxist utopia (chaos). The only pragmatic we can do is work on cultural conservative consolidation in the next 10/20/30/40 year so that we can avail ourselves of the window that will surely open up (Fjord Man scenario.) 2009-09-13 18:24:47 98% of all Norwegian journalists are now cultural Marxists / multiculturalists / politically correct (or sympathize). The problem is that the fundamental institutions in Norway as for example, Volda University College (School of Journalism) and University of Oslo has been infiltrated already several decades ago (and most other schools for that matter). These are today indoktrineringsleire for future generations of the cultural Marxists / multiculturalists / politically correct. This was obviously not last year. The cultural Marxists have had the opportunity (when the AP never punished / imprisoned them) to infiltrate our institutions since 1945. In 1968, the first "litter" indoctrinated with Marxists are ready to implement their doctrines. The results we see today. I have no idea how we are to reverse this. It seems as if Islam can actually solve this problem for us in the course of 30-70 years, when the cultural Marxists will soon lose control over these forces. I've always wondered, there was no cultural conservative intellectual and / or grass roots options in 1968? One can see forever the cultural Marxists demonstrating in the streets of the images in 1968-1972, but where was the cultural-conservative forces? 2009-09-13 18:07:16 4 weeks of Jihad in Gothenburg, Sweden. European media companies are refusing two report. This case and the Muslim Riots in United Kingdom (also categorically ignored by 90% of journalists) could have influenced the Norwegian election. How Can a democracy work When 98% of Western European journalist openly sympathize with "cultural Marxism"? These Deliberate "media black-outs" are authoritarian in nature. 2009-09-12 12:18:50 Muslim riots in London yesterday - 11.09.09! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8251862.stm I reckon this is going on Newsnight today! (NOT). 2009-09-08 17:08:03 Yep, it's really bad (it can not possibly be worse than it is now?). I got the answers to two of my questions from the chief Communist in Aftenposten yesterday by the way: http://www.aftenposten.no/nettprat/article3251899.ece Aftenposten - interview with Hilde Scientist - Editor in Chief, came from Arbeiderbladet, many Aftenposten journalists are old AKP (ml) and SV sympathizers... What is the rationale for the Event, by 1972, gradually began to support multiculturalism (kulturmarxisme) and thus in practice no longer continued to be a cultural conservative media alternative? Was it because of pressure from the labor movement? Anders B Aftenposten is an independent newspaper, with a liberal-conservative worldviews. Hilde What do you think that Norway joins the ranks of countries that no longer have any major cultural conservative newspapers (newspapers that are critical of multiculturalism)? Anders B I also think it is a problem that the Norwegian media are too similar in their analysis and views. I think it is because the conflict in Norwegian politics really is not that great. Greeting Hilde 2009-09-08 17:00:26 Great that you found sources for the survey:) This process (Marxist-infiltration in European universities) began in 1945 after the Communists won the war. Europe's biggest mistake was that they allowed Marxists to operate freely after the war. 45-50 generation of Marxists was learning champions to 68-generation that today manages everything. Infiltration of Marxists in European universities (1945-1968) described in great detail here: http://www.freecongress.org/centers/cc/index.aspx 2009-09-08 15:46:51 Xebeche You argue very good for your eyesight. I have no doubt that you have good intentions. In all cases, we fundamentally disagree when it comes to goals. I wish it was possible to discuss it freely. "When you said what you want, you must say what you want instead. If not, nothing happens." The problem is that the assumptions for the discussion is not present in Norway and Western Europe. We, the cultural conservatives, is already being branded as fascists / racists / Nazis of the political and media establishment because we dare to criticize multiculturalism (cultural Marxism) which is totally unacceptable. It is as bad as the persecution of the Jews for 30 years or under the Inquisition. No / very few thus wishes to share the solution-oriented ideas / concepts in an open forum at this stage as this can help to stigmatize people further in the future. Fjordman, I have worked full time in more than three years of a solution-oriented work (lecture notes written in English). I have taken a view to contributing in areas that are on the side of what has been the main focus. Much of the info I'm sitting on is unknown to most, even for you. If you send me an email at year2083@gmail.com I will send an electronic version when I'm finished. Norway has for me been absolutely no interest until now. The main focus should be on an intellectual platform consolidation of European cultural conservative organizations / individuals. This alliance should have as its main focus is to de-legitimizing multiculturalism (cultural Marxism) of the "European ideology of hate" it actually is. Its purpose (or indirect result) is known to completely destroy western civilization, nation-states, Western culture / norms / traditions, Christianity - European / Norwegian identity. If this rough work is completed there is the basis for a Marxist superstate (EUSSR) without the necessary cultural conservative / nationalist components that could be stopped from Islam to dominate this new entity. 2009-09-08 01:27:58 Xebeche It seems like you're pretty unenlightened and naive, given the potential consequences of multiculturalism. I'm starting to wonder if you might be one of those who have not even studied the historical demographic surveys of countries that have had multiculturalism and where Islam has been involved?;) Look at the Lebanese demographic trends. As we all know, Lebanon's demographic development has been marked that the Islamic demographic warfare (invandring + high birth rates) combined with an escape of the Christian population. Lebanon was once a Christian country. Thanks to multiculturalism as unexpected pleasures is Lebanon today is a very unstable Muslim country that is characterized by murder, persecution and torture of non-Muslims: Lebanon demographic development - (Christian / Muslim) [1]: 1911 to 21% Islam 1921 to 45% 1932 to 49% 1943 to 48% 1970 to 58% (1975-1990 Civil War began when Islam reached 60%) 1990 to 65% (The Christians lost the war) 2008 to 75% What is your reasoning that you believe that no Western European countries will suffer the same fate? Source: 1. Tomass Mark, Game Theory with instrumentally irrational players: A Case Study of Civil War and Sectarian Cleansing, Journal of Economic Issues, Lincoln, June 1997. 2009-09-07 16:46:27 Xebeche I encourage you to read books that explain the ideology multiculturalism, Frankfurt School and its origin. You can for example start with the book "Defeating Eurabia". The main problem in Western Europe is that there is only one accepted alternative, namely PC (PC = cultural Marxism / multiculturalism). Those who dare to criticize multiculturalism (and supporting cultural conservative views) are now branded as fascists / Nazis / racists. The problem is that the doctrines which form the basis of political correctness will not or can allow alternative ideas and are thus very intolerant. Progress Party is a victim of this intolerance. 2009-09-07 14:28:28 Xebeche The question you should ask yourself is, if cultural differences were too great for the Christian Norwegians and Swedes Christians could live together, how can we expect the Norwegians and Somalis can live together peacefully? Ideology of multiculturalism (cultural Marxism) is an anti-European hatideologi whose purpose is to destroy European culture, identity and Christianity in general. I equate making multiculturalism with the other hatideologiene: Nazism (anti-Jewish), communism (anti-individualism) and Islam (anti-Kafr). Japan, South Korea and Taiwan refused to implement multiculturalism (like the three the only Western country that still has monokulturalisme). They argued that "societal Cohesion" is synonymous with harmony within a society. They still see with amazement at this strange European experiment. 2009-09-07 11:48:06 The following blog documents the number of white South Africans who have been killed in what begins to resemble a systematic racism motivated genocide. 3,066 documented murders (the real numbers are much higher NOK). 200 000-300 000 white Africans have already "escaped" from South Africa since the ANC took over. http://sarahmaidofalbion.blogspot.com/2009/04/more-white-crosses-in-south-africa.html 2009-09-07 09:23:59 Such cases must be considered together with similar cases where the media consistently ignores issues related to Muslim riots. All remember the July riots in Marseilles and other French cities where the media were instructed not to reportLast fall, two newly minted female lieutenants joined about 100 men in Quantico, Va., for one of the most grueling experiences that soldiers not in war can experience: the Marine Corps’ Infantry Officer Course.
During the 86-day course, candidates haul heavy packs and even heavier weapons up and down steep hills, execute ambushes and endure bitter cold, hunger and exhaustion. Uncertainty abounds: they do not know their next task, or even how long they will have to perform it. At I.O.C., calm leadership under duress is more important than physical strength, although strength is essential.
One of the women — the first to enter the course — was dropped on the first day with about two dozen men during a notoriously strenuous endurance test. But the second woman lasted deep into the second week, when a stress fracture in her leg forced her to quit.
“She was tough,” Gen. James F. Amos, the Marine Corps commandant, said of the woman, who is now at flight school. “She wasn’t going to quit.”Diogenes the Cynic, the ancient Greek philosopher, was probably the man who invented “the finger” insult.
The historian of philosophy Diogenes Laertios wrote that the cynical philosopher Diogenes made the gesture to orator Demosthenes in the 4th century BC in Athens.
When people in an inn expressed their desire to see the great orator Demosthenes, Diogenes allegedly showed them the middle finger and exclaimed, “This, for you, is the demagogue of the Athenians.”
Even though the gesture has been used in ancient Greece, modern Greeks have “imported” the offensive finger gesture from Western cultures.
Only days ago, Vicky Stamati, the convicted wife of former defense minister Tsochatzopoulos – who serves a long prison term for substantial armament kickbacks – gave the finger to reporters. The incident became big news in mass media and went viral on social media.
One wonders what Diogenes the Cynic – known for his Spartan lifestyle – would have said about the woman who flaunted her (stolen) wealth when her husband was receiving the huge kickbacks and then played the role of the victim when convicted. He would probably be the one to give her the finger first.
“This is one of the oldest known offensive gestures,” says anthropologist Desmond Morris.
It shows the back of a closed fist that has only the middle finger extended upward, although in some areas the thumb is extended. Finger extension is seen as a symbol of contempt in various cultures, mostly Western societies.
“The middle finger symbolizes the penis and the curved fingers on both sides, the two testicles. By doing so, you essentially give someone an offensive phallic gesture,” Morris says.Drag queens are awesome. Cooking shows are awesome. Cooking with Drag Queens combines the two into a fabulous web series where you get to know your favorite queens better and introduces you to some fabulous new gals.
Hi I'm Fausto Fernos and I'm Marc Felion. Together we host Feast of Fun, one of iTunes top podcasts. For the past decade we've interviewed many of the world's most beloved drag queens and introduced you to some fabulous new talent.
Marc Felion, Adore Delano, Bianca Del Rio and Fausto Fernós. Click here to listen to the podcast.
One of our popular video projects is Cooking with Drag Queens, where we ki-ki in the kitchen with our favorite squirrelfriends.
We are livng in a golden age of drag. Thanks to the success of RuPaul’s Drag Race, the greatest TV show ever, people have developed a huge appetite for drag, and the people are hungry for more.
You gotta feed the people! The people need to eat!
So it’s time to turn up the heat and make it sizzle. Together with Mike Malarkey from Second City and I.O., well known for their hilarious comedy videos, we want to turn cooking with drag queens into a full on web series eggs-travaganzza.
We’ll need the following ingredients:
A professional multi-camera crew.
Lighting & Sound technicians.
Video editors and direction.
Food to prepare. (Frosting ain’t cheap!)
Travel and Accommodation costs.
DIXIE: And lots of liquid eyeliner!
You’ll get to really know your favorite drag queens as we take you into their world and bring them into our kitchen.
We’d love to feature some delicious new talent in a ways you haven't seen before. Cooking with Drag Queens brings the cameras out of the bars and into the kitchen in a non-competitive atmosphere.
But just because it's noncompetitive doesn't mean we won't be bruising a few egos. After all you need a tenderize the meat a bit in order to bring out the flavor.
Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make a fabulous frittata.
Drag queens will be the inspiration for the recipes. We’ll add a tasty twist to the classics, combining new cultures and flavors in exciting ways. We think you’ll love the new series, but you don’t have to take our word for it- watch for yourself, check out the amazing testimonial video above.
If you’d like to see more programming with your favorite queens, this is the way.
Our goal is $12,000 to produce Season One with at least 10 drag queens, but if we go over our target, we’ll add even more episodes with more gals.
MARC: Give me more! More!
Give big to support the project and you’ll get great rewards: Cooking with Drag Queens aprons, oven mitts, chef hats, t-shirts and more.
BECOME A PRODUCER: Get your favorite recipe prepared with your favorite drag queen. We’ll even come to your house and make dinner for you and your friends, in drag! For the lucky person who helps make it happen, we’ll invite you to be on the show! I hope you look pretty in a dress.
With your support, Cooking with Drag Queens will be a community funded, broadcast quality program. Every show will be free to watch online, to anyone around the world.
We’ll introduce so many new and amazing gals to the world. The drag queens deserve it, and so do you.
Please share this video with your friends, blog about it, or send in your own testimonial video in drag.Shares of major North American potash producers fell sharply Tuesday on word that a Russian company is pulling out of a marketing group and is expected to undercut competitors' prices for the fertilizer.
OAO Uralkali announced Tuesday it was withdrawing from a joint venture with another company from Belarus that set the price for about a third of the world's potash supply. Instead, it plans to sell more potash to China, which buys about one fifth of the world's supply of the fertilizer.
"Our co-operation with our Belarusian partners … has come to a deadlock," Uralkali CEO Vladislav Baumgertner said in a statement posted on the company's website.
"In this situation we have to redirect our export deliveries through our own trader," he said, adding he wouldn't exclude the possibility of co-operation on a mutually beneficial basis in future.
Uralkali has a much lower cost of production than rival PotashCorp of Saskatchewan, which was briefly Canada's most valuable company in 2010 before the government stepped in and blocked a $40 billion takeover offer from Australian mining giant BHP Billiton.
Sharp selloff
"Uralkali’s announcement completely turns the global potash market upside down," analyst Elena Sakhnova of VTB Capital in Moscow told Bloomberg.
"If previously global potash producers were acting like an oligopoly, working with the rule that benefited higher potash prices … now the market will be fully competitive."
Uralkali has expenses of roughly $170 for every ton of potash it produces. That compares with the industry average of $240 a ton, an agricultural analyst at Goldman Sachs noted in a report Tuesday.
The moves by Uralkali could move the price of potash below $300 a ton, the company's CEO warned Tuesday. The company derives about half of its revenue from sales to Asia, so it is better equipped than other rivals to supply potash to one of the few places where demand is still increasing — China.
A spokesperson for the Saskatchewan government, which derives a significant amount of revenue from exporting potash, told CBC News the situation is being monitored.
"It is too soon to know the potential impact of today's announcement by OAO Uralkali on price, production and provincial potash revenues here in Saskatchewan," the spokesperson said. "We will be monitoring these developments closely and speaking with Saskatchewan potash producers to gain a better understanding of the potential impact. We will also be evaluating the potential impact on potash revenues, which will be reflected in the first quarter financial report when it is released in August."
After a run-up before and after the global recession that began in 2008, the world potash market is currently oversupplied.
Global oversupply
"The overall market is likely to remain in surplus for the next few years," CIBC World Markets said in a recent research report. "That implies that the outlook for prices will hinge to some degree on producers’ ability to maintain overall production discipline."
A major supplier pulling out of the cartel that had effectively been setting prices is a clear sign that discipline is ending, which means companies will have to vie for market share while prices move lower.
Saskatchewan as a whole has the world's largest reserves of potash, with PotashCorp holding the lion's share. Canadian potash companies typically sell through a similar venture known as Canpotex, which is able effectively to set prices because of its size.
Shares in Canada's major potash companies sold off heavily Tuesday in reaction to the news. At one point, PotashCorp plunged almost 25 per cent in New York trading. The stock finished the day at $31.63, down $6.27 or 16.5 per cent.
Mosaic fell $9.40 or 17.67 per cent to $43.81, and Agrium was down $4.93 or 5.39 per cent to $86.50.
With the selloff, PotashCorp has now lost roughly 50 per cent of its value since the BHP Billiton takeover was blocked in 2010. Adjusted for stock splits, PotashCorp is getting close to the level it was at before BHP Billiton came on the scene.
The company lowered its earnings forecast by roughly 20 per cent last week, citing lower prices.
"Highly competitive markets around the world had an impact on our results," PotashCorp chief executive Bill Doyle said at the time.Willard Christopher “Will” Smith, Jr. (born September 25, 1968) is an American actor, producer, and rapper.
He has enjoyed success in television, film and music. In April 2007, Newsweek called him the most powerful actor in Hollywood.
Smith has been nominated for four Golden Globe Awards, two Academy Awards, and has won four Grammy Awards.
Smith was consistently listed in Fortune Magazine’s “Richest 40” list of the forty wealthiest Americans under the age of 40.
I’ve trained myself to illuminate the things in my personality that are likable and to hide and protect the things that are less likeable.
If You Are Absent During My Struggle, Don’t Expect To Be Present During My Success.
Never lie, steal, cheat, or drink. But if you must lie, lie in the arms of the one you love. If you must steal, steal away from bad company. If you must cheat, cheat death. And if you must drink, drink in the moments that take your breath away
Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.
Throughout life people will make you mad, disrespect you and treat you bad. Let God deal with the things they do, cause hate in your heart will consume you too.
Fear is not real. The only place that fear can exist is in our thoughts of the future. It is a product of our imagination, causing us to fear things that do not at present and may not ever exist. That is near insanity. Do not misunderstand me danger is very real but fear is a choice.
You can’t be scared to die for the truth. The truth is the only thing that is ever going to be constant.
10 ways to love: Listen, speak, give, pray, answer, share, enjoy, trust, forgive, promise.
Stop letting people who do so little for you control so much of your mind, feelings & emotions
Never underestimate the pain of a person, because in all honesty, everyone is struggling. Some people are just better at hiding it than others
Don’t chase people. Be yourself, do your own thing and work hard. The right people – the ones who really belong in your life – will come to your. And stay
I don’t know what my calling is, but I want to be here for a bigger reason. I strive to be like the greatest people who have ever lived.
There are so many people who have lived and died before you. You will never have a new problem; you’re not going to ever have a new problem. Somebody wrote the answer down in a book somewhere.
Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.
The things that have been most valuable to me I did not learn in school.
I want the world to be better because I was here.
The first step is you have to say that you can.
While the other guy’s sleeping, I’m working. While the other guy’s eating, I’m working. While the other guy’s making love, I mean, I’m making love, too, but I’m working really hard at it!
I’ve always considered myself to be just average talent and what I have is a ridiculous insane obsessiveness for practice and preparation.
Love is the ultimate theme, but it’s not just for women.
The only thing that I see that is distinctly different about me is I’m not afraid to die on a treadmill. I will not be out-worked, period. You might have more talent than me, you might be smarter than me, you might be sexier than me, you might be all of those things you got it on me in nine categories. But if we get on the treadmill together, there’s two things: You’re getting off first, or I’m going to die. It’s really that simple, right?
Watch below the video which shows the inspiring speech of Will Smith.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Science Editor David Shukman takes a look at how rain in the air is calculated through a radar system
British winters are likely to become milder and wetter like the last one but cold spells still need to be planned for, says the UK Met Office.
Summers are likely to be hotter and drier, but washouts are still on the cards, it adds.
The assessment of future weather extremes finds the role of human influence is "detectable" in summer heatwaves and in intense rainfall.
However, the Met Office says a lot more work must be done to confirm the links.
The study has been released before a major new international climate report next week.
That report, to be produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, will look at the likely future impacts of global warming.
If the British assessment sounds confusing, you are not alone.
Assuming the Met Office study is correct (and its forecast runs out to the end of the century), it means everything from gumboots to snowploughs and sunscreen to anoraks will still be needed.
As the report's authors themselves readily admit, the British weather varies so "hugely year to year due to natural processes" that detecting trends is tough, and detecting a manmade fingerprint even harder.
'Fickle path'
Stephen Belcher, head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, sums it up like this: "We've got to continue living with the cold events and we've got to get used to the hot events."
He points out that a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture, and that the most intense downpours seem to have become more frequent over the past 50 years - what the report calls the changing "character" of British rainfall.
But that does not guarantee that we will definitely see an increased number of storms in the future.
The British Isles are not only tucked beside a vast Atlantic Ocean whose temperatures have a powerful effect on our weather, they are also at the receiving-end of the jetstream. And this fast-flowing "river of wind" drives storms our way along a fickle path that remains poorly understood - it's an "inherently chaotic" factor, according to Prof Belcher.
The Met Office study is timed to coincide with the start of the final negotiations of the IPCC's Working Group II report.
The scientists and officials involved in that task are closeted in Yokohama.
While that report will assess the latest science on the possible impacts of climate change on a global scale, the Met Office has tried to do the same for Britain.
'Honest' assessment
After the record-breaking downpours of the last winter, the question of the role of climate change has shot up the political agenda so what do the experts say?
A key conclusion is that the "role of human influence" can be detected in temperature extremes, but changes in storminess and rainfall rates need more research.
What this means is that some types of weather are easier to assess than others - and temperature has always been more straightforward than precipitation.
So the authors are pretty confident that average and maximum temperatures look set to rise - and that our greenhouse gases have increased the odds of heatwaves like the one in 2003.
They are slightly less confident that winters such as 2010-11 will become more likely - and that humans have had a role in this.
But as for the last winter, and the wet summer of 2012 and the dry summer of 2010, the conclusion is honest: it is "too early to say" whether our activities have changed the odds of similar events happening again.
The report makes clear that global trends do not necessarily apply to Britain.
For example, it says that while there are connections between climate change and dry seasons in some parts of the world, "there is currently no clear evidence of such a link to recent dry periods in the UK."
So, lots of uncertainty remains - and the scientists are hoping that bigger computers and better models will help provide clearer answer in future.PEOPLE who download the latest TV shows, films and games are at risk of prosecution as major distributors use new forensic technology to target individuals who illegally file-share on the internet.
The technology claimed its first scalp last week when Queenslander James Burt, 24, was ordered by the Federal Court to pay $1.5 million in damages for copying and uploading a Nintendo game.
Nintendo managing director Rose Lappin said it had ''no other choice'' than to go after Burt when he uploaded a copy of a new Super Mario Bros game that was yet to be released worldwide, resulting in 50,000 downloads of the game within six days.
''We will go to any lengths to stop piracy, including going after the individual,'' Ms Lappin said.
She would not go into detail about the technology used to track Burt but said it was now highly advanced. She said serial uploaders were under surveillance.Arakawa Under the Bridge (Japanese: 荒川アンダー ザ ブリッジ, Hepburn: Arakawa Andā za Burijji) is a Japanese manga series created by Hikaru Nakamura. The manga was first serialized in the Japanese seinen manga magazine Young GanGan starting December 3, 2004. An anime adaptation by Shaft was broadcast in Japan between April 4, 2010 and June 27, 2010 on TV Tokyo. A second season, titled Arakawa Under the Bridge x Bridge, aired in Japan between October 3, 2010 and December 26, 2010.
Plot [ edit ]
Set in Arakawa, Tokyo, the series tells the story of Kou Ichinomiya, a man who has accomplished everything by himself. Ever since he was little, his father has taught him one rule: to never be indebted to another person. One day by accident, he falls into the Arakawa River and almost drowns. A girl by the name of Nino rescues him and, in return, he owes her his life. Unable to accept the fact that he is indebted to her, he asks her about a way for him to repay her. In the end, she tells him to love her, beginning Kou's life of living under a bridge. However, as Kou starts to learn, Arakawa is a place full of weirdos and all of the people living under the bridge are what society would call "denpasan".
Characters [ edit ]
Kou Ichinomiya ( 市ノ宮 行, Ichinomiya Kō) Voiced by: Hiroshi Kamiya [2] Played by: Kento Hayashi Kou is the future owner of the Ichinomiya corporation. He is 22 years old and a university student before living under the bridge. Throughout his life, he has been living under the family rule of never being indebted to anyone. After nearly drowning in the river, he started a relationship with his savior, Nino, because it was the only way to remove the debt of saving his life. He is named "Recruit" ( リクルート, Rikurūto) by the village chief, but the villagers usually call him "Ric" ("Riku") for short. If he becomes indebted to someone but cannot repay them, he'll start having an asthma attack. Even since he was little, he has received the best education, learning how to play multiple instruments and earning a black belt in karate. Kou took the option of staying in the "villa" rather than Nino's house when he moved into the village, not knowing that the "villa" was the empty top of a pillar under the bridge. He quickly remedies the situation by building himself a proper apartment at the location. His job in the village is to be the teacher for the village's children. Due to his upbringing and his sudden intrusion into life under the bridge, he is exasperated at the nonsensical happenings that the others would consider normal.
Nino ( ニノ, Nino) Voiced by: Maaya Sakamoto [2] Played by: Mirei Kiritani A mysterious girl who lives in Arakawa. She is a self-claimed Venusian and later Kou's girlfriend. The origin of her name comes from the sweatsuit that she always wears that has the tag "Class 2-3" (Ni-no-san) on it. She is an incredible swimmer and can stay submerged for several minutes. With this skill, Nino commonly goes fishing in the river and it is her job in the village to provide fish for the residents. She often forgets important information and often needs Kou to remind her. Her home is constructed of cardboard, with the entrance sealed by a large curtain. Her lavish bed is made out of velvet, although she chooses to sleep in the drawer under the bed. If she becomes frightened or angry, she'll pull her sweatsuit over her head and climb on top of a streetlamp.
Village Chief ( 村長, Sonchō) Voiced by: Ke |
I don't know why! So, ideal podcast length. In my mind I see about an hour, or an hour and a half. While I listen to many podcasts, among them Intellivisionaries (and others) that are not short. And, as has been discussed on the Intellivisionaries, there's a pause button. So, if somehow we do end up at five hours, please understand that there is a pause button. If we end up less, you don't need to use the pause button. Isn't that great? Technology... right?
Chris: Well, a very good idea that you had was obviously to conduct interviews with some, I guess, what, Bally game writers, people who are really knowledgeable about it.
Adam: Well, there's quite a few people I'd like to interview. If we can find people from the 70s and the 80s, and even now, there's some people who have written some modern games-- at least written some programs for the system.
Chris: It would help if they're still around. Yeah.
Adam: Something that's interesting, that I wanna use, is that there's actually recorded interviews that we have from the early 80s and late 70s of phone conversations that Bob Fabris did (from the ARCADIAN publisher). There was a newsletter called the ARCADIAN and it published for seven years (from 1978 to 1984 or 85, depending on how you view things a bit). He recorded some conversations with some of the more prominent people of the time.
Chris: That's cool!
Adam: We've made WAV files of those or FLAC files and they're available for download (or many of them are already) from BallyAlley. But, it might be interesting to take out snippets from some of those and put them in the show. I hadn't thought of that before, but that's why we're going over this.
Chris: Yeah. Absolutely.
Adam: Right.
Chris: That's really cool. We say Bally Astrocade, like we say Atari 2600, but it was never actually called the Astrocade when Bally owned it.
Adam: Not when Bally owned it; no. But after it was resold they had the right to use the name Bally for one year.
Chris: Oh.
Adam: And Astrovision did do that. So, for a short time, for one year, it was known as the Bally Astrocade. And it actually was called that.
Chris: Oh. Okay.
Adam: But, somehow that name has stuck. And that is what the name is called. And many people think it was called that from the beginning. It was originally released under a few different names, which we'll get into at a later date. I think of it... I like to think of it as the Bally Arcade/Astrocade.
Chris: Yeah.
Adam: It depends on how you look at it. Sometimes I go with either. Sometimes I go with both. Sometimes I call it the Bally Library Computer. It just on how I'm feeling at the time. So, we also don't plan to pre-write episodes. You might have noticed that by now. We do have a list that we're going by, and we do wanna use notes, but reading from a script is not what I wanna do. I don't want to sound dry and humorless. I like to have Chris here making fun of me-- well, maybe not making fun of me, but, you know, Chris here... helping me along to give me moral support. And I enjoy that I'll be doing this with him, and hopefully Paul as well.
Chris: It is strange for you and I to sit around talking about old videogames.
Adam: Oh... isn't it! Isn't it though!
Chris: [Laughing] Some of the sections that Adam has come up with are really interesting. They sound like a lot of fun. And what's cool is that they are necessarily unique to a podcast about the Bally console. For instance, we were talking about the ARCADIAN newsletter. There's going to be a segment-- it will probably be every episode because there is a LOT of source material. This segment will delve into ARCADIAN notes and letters that did not make it into the published newsletter. It's kind of a time capsule. In some ways it will be fascinating even for people who don't know a lot about the Bally Astrocade because what you're getting is correspondence from the 70s and 80s, before anybody really knew what was gonna happen with the 8-bit era, you know?
Adam: There's material in the archives. All of this material is from Bob Fabris. He was the editor or the ARCADIAN. Two people, Paul Thacker and I, we bought that collection from an individual who had bought it in the early 2000s directly from Bob. It was never broken up, so it's all together in about eight boxes-- large boxes-- all in different folders. Bob Fabris kept a really, really detailed collection and in great order. He kept it in that shape from 1978 until, what?, about 2001 or 2002 when he sold it.
Chris: Wow.
Adam: So the fact that it survived and then someone else bought it and didn't want to break it up and sell it is pretty amazing to me. We were able to pool our funds together, Paul and I, and purchase it. All of it has been scanned. Not all of it is available. Oh, and by the way, BallyAlley, in case there are some listeners who don't know... BallyAlley is a website that I put together. It's mostly from the archives of the ARACADIAN. But, there's a lot, a LOT, of interesting material there. If you're interested in the Bally Arcade, you should check it out. It's BallyAlley.com.
Chris: Adam is being kinda modest. He's done a lot of work on this. You're gonna find archived materials that will make your eyeballs pop out of your head.
Adam: [Laughing]
Chris: You know, he's...
Adam: If you saw Chris, then you'd know that's true.
Chris: Yes. Absolutely. I'm recording blind. You know, he's very picky about high quality scans (as high as possible only). He's vey meticulous about it. And I definitely recommend that you guys visit BallyAlley period com. I know it's a lost battle; humor me. They're not dots. All right... anyway.
Adam: All right. Cartridge reviews. The Bally Arcade... it has a lot of perks, one of them is not it's huge library of games. I take that back. It has a huge library of games. Many of them, as some people may not even know who are listening to this, were released on tapes. But the vast majority of games, that people would think of as the console games, are cartridges. The Bally could "see" 8K at once. It didn't have to bankswitch or anything like that in order to do that. There was never a bankswitching cartridge that was released for the Bally. At least at that time. Since the library is so small, I'm not sure if we're planning to cover a game per episode, or since we plan to cover all of the games (and there are certainly less than fifty, if you include prototypes) and some of them are not games. Some of them were... BIORHYTHM, so that you could know when it would be a good time to get it on with your wife to have a baby. You know... [laughing] So, if that's what you wanna talk about and listen to... write us and say, "That's sounds great. I want you to tell me when I can get my wife pregnant." [laughing] The other day my wife was taking a look at a game I was playing for a competing console, the Atari 8-bit game system.
Chris: I thought you were gonna say the Arcadia.
Adam: No, not the Arcadia. I was playing a SUPER BREAKOUT clone. She took a look at it and didn't know what it was. I said, "You know, it's a BREAKOUT clone." She's like, "I don't know what that is." I said, "No. Look at the game for a minute. It looks like BREAKOUT." And she still didn't get it. And I said, "Okay, so you're gonna have a ball that bounces off a paddle and it's gonna hit the bricks up above." And she goes, "I've never seen this before." And I said, "Okay. You've heard of PONG, right?" She's like, "Well, yes I've heard of PONG." I said, "It's that."
Chris: [Laughing] It's that... except better. Between you and all of the people you're in contact with from the Bally era, and people like Paul. People who actually wrote games back then...
Adam: Um-hum.
Chris: Information about how the console works and its languages and stuff... is that pretty-much taken care of, or are there more mysteries to be solved.
Adam: There's some mysteries. The neat thing about this system was that even in the ARCADIAN, in the early issues, you could get access, for like $30, to the photocopies that were used at Nutting Associates. These are the people who actually designed the Bally system for Bally. They did arcade games-- we'll go more into that in another episode. This information was available to subscribers... almost from the get-go. So, if you wanted to have a source listing of the 8K ROM, you could get it. Of course, it came with a "Do Not Replicate" on every single page, but... it was... you were allowed to get it. You could purchase it. It was freely available and it was encouraged for users to use this information to learn about the system.
Chris: The reason I ask is that I'm wondering what the next step is. Whenever I think of this console... do people refer to it as a console or a computer, by and large?
Adam: A game system in my eyes. I mean, it's a console. People don't think of it as a computer. No.
Chris: I'll start over. Whenever I think about this system, what usually comes to mind is the fact that it is unexploited. And that is perhaps the, not quite an elephant in the room, but that is the only real disappointment about the Astrocade is that there are these amazing, vivid, brilliant, games. I mean, the arcade conversations on the Astrocade are, for all intents and purposes, arcade perfect. This was a superior machine. And yet, players were teased with a handful of astonishing games and then that was it. So, "what could have been," comes to mind for me a lot. And the phrase tragically untapped. What I'm wondering is why nobody has brought up the initiative of making new games. The last two were arcade conversations. They were not original, but they are, of course, phenomenal. I mean, two of the best titles, you know are WAR (which is a conversion of WORLORDS) and, of course, CRAZY CLIMBER. You were in charge of all the packaging and EPROM burning for those. I'm not saying...
Adam: Partially. Partially. For all of one of them I was, but the other one was handled by a man name Ken Lill. I did... I came up with the package design and stuff like that, and made a lot to make it happen. But, I didn't program the games. No.
Chris: Right. But I mean, somebody else did the coding, but didn't you have all the cartridge shells. And you were burning...
Adam: I made sure it all happened.
Chris: Okay.
Adam: Yeah. I mean, I didn't do all the work though.
Chris: Okay.
Adam: It helped that I was there. Put it that way.
Chris: We're talking about CRAZY CLIMBER, mainly, right? Because you helped with WAR as well.
Adam: Yeah. I did both. Yeah.
Chris. Okay.
Adam: Um-hum.
Chris: And you wrote some of the back of the box copy.
Adam: I did all of that. Yeah.
Chris: As expensive and limited as such a run would be, that's not really quite what I'm talking about. As having to go through all that to give people physical, boxes copies, I guess. Another reason why people might not have written anymore Astrocade games is that the relatively few surviving consoles could be prone to overheating themselves to death at any time. But, then there's emulation.
Adam: Right.
Chris: MESS is all that we have, and it's not perfect. So, wouldn't that be the first step for somebody to write a really good Astrocade emulator? I would do it, if I knew how.
Adam: Yes. If there's one of you out there who's like, "Who couldn't write an Astrocade emulator?"
Chris: Yes.
Adam: Please, would you do me a favor and send that to me tomorrow?
Chris: It's time....Tomorrow... [laughing]
Adam: Something that I wanna get at is that MESS does work for most games. There are a few that don't work. Some of them used to work and now they're broken. MESS was updated to make it "better," and now some games don't work. I don't understand why that happened. The biggest drawback to MESS is that is doesn't support the tape. It doesn't support-- it supports BASIC, but you can't save or load programs. And since they're hundreds... there's probably over 500 programs available. And there's... many, many of those have already been archived and put on BallyAlley.com. So you can try them out on a real system, but not under emulation. And it's quite easy to use under real hardware. We'll get into that at another time too.
Chris: In terms of cartridge reviews. And I'm only going to say this once. Thanks, by the way, for saying that this is our podcast
Adam: Sure.
Chris: I thought I was just being a guest.
Adam: No. No... you're just a gas.
Chris: I'm just a gas. So, should I help you pay for the the Libsyn?
Adam: I think we'll be okay.
Chris: All right.
Adam: All of our users are going to send donations every month.
Chris: Oh, that's right.
Adam: [Laughing] Just kidding there, guys.
Chris: So, I'm just going to say this once. And you're welcome. Review is a word I have a problem with when it comes to my own, well, stuff I write. But now, apparently, stuff I talk about. Because I associate the word review with critics. I think I was telling you the other day, Adam...
Adam: Yes, you were.
Chris: I would never hit such a low level of self-loathing that I would ever call myself a critic. Talk about a useless bunch. For me they'll be overviews. It's very picky. Very subjective. It has nothing to do with anybody else. You wanna consider yourself reviews-- totally respect that-- but I don't do reviews. So, either that, or I'm in some sort of really intense denial. But, personal reflections on games, reviews leaves out... when you call something a review, it leaves out the fact that taste is subjective. It's a personal thing. I can't review food for you and have you think, "Oh, now I like that food I used to hate." One's tastes in games, music, etcetera is just as personal. So, Adam was saying that there's so few of them, that we're not going to cover a game every episode. So, what we're going to do is alternate, so that you don't go completely without game "content" (isn't that a buzzword, a frequent word online now: "content").
Adam: That is. Yeah.
Chris: Everybody wants content. I gotta table of contents for ya. We're going to alternate actual commercial cartridge games with commercially available tape games and even type-in programs, because there were a lot of good ones.
Adam: Most of them were written in BASIC.
Chris: Which is just awesome to me.
Adam: Yeah.
Chris: We were thinking of alternating the games stuff I was just talking about with this:
Adam: The Astrocade system, well, the Bally Arcade system, as it was originally designed for home use, it had two versions. There was an arcade version, which came out in 1978 with the first game, Sea Wolf II in the arcades. And there was the version that was released for the home. It had 4K of RAM, while the version in the arcades had 16K (and some additional support), but they use the same hardware (like the data chip). They're so similar in fact, that many of the systems games were brought home as cartridges. They don't use the same code. They are not-- you can't run code for the arcade and vice-versa. You can, for instance, take a Gorf and run Gorf on Wizard of Wor hardware. It'll look the wrong direction, but you can do that. The systems are very similar in that respect. But, you can actually take an Astrocade (and it has been done before) that is a 4K unit, and actually do some fiddling with it, change the ROM a bit, give it more RAM (there's more that you have to do)-- there's actually an article about it, it was written in-depth (it's available on BallyAlley, the website). And you can make it into an arcade unit. It wouldn't be able to play the arcade games, but it would have access to 16K of RAM and that sort of thing.
Chris: When you say Sea Wolf II, you mean the arcade game was running this hardware that you're talking about.
Adam: Right.
Chris: Much of which was also in the console.
Adam: Yes.
Chris: Okay. And that goes for WIZARD OF WOR, GORF, SPACE ZAP. Well, that explains why there are so many arcade perfect home versions.
Adam. Um. Right. They don't share the same code, but they are very similar. The Hi-Res machine could display, in what was considered then a high resolution. The Bally display in 1/4 of that resolution. I think perhaps will have the first episode cover specifically the hardware of the astrocade.
Chris: So, you are saying that this segment would cover the arcade games that used the astrocade hardware, and I find that really, really interesting (because I never knew that). I thought that they were just, you know, very similar and some of the same people created the home versions, but I didn't realize that... I never realized they were so close.
Adam: So, another segment that we plan to do is called, "What the Heck?!?" It's going to focus on unusual hardware and maybe even released items, but something that, while it was released through the Arcadian newsletter or perhaps the Cursor newsletter (and maybe even one of the other small newsletters that were around for a short time for this system exclusively). When we're talking about a released product here, we are probably talking about in the tens-- the twenties. I mean, new homebrew games get a wider release than games that are considered released back then. Maybe not the games, but hardware peripherals. There was something called the Computer Ear which could do voice recognition-- sort of. But the software for that isn't available, I don't think… maybe it is. I have the hardware, but I've never tried running before.
Chris: We're also gonna-- I say "we," even though Adam's knowledge about, well pretty-much all of this stuff is much greater than mine, hoping to cover the Zgrass keyboard/computer. Is that a fair description?
Adam: Yeah. That's what you would read on the Internet about it. And if you can call that true, then that's what it is.
Chris: Right. And not just on the WikiRumor page.
Adam: Yeah.
Chris: It's a very unusual system and it's worth learning about. See, you don't hear about any of this stuff anywhere else and that's what's really cool about this podcast. Everything you've got archived, everything you've learned, you just never read about it back then, you know?
Adam: It was available to read about, but not in the normal sources that people read about the Astrocade. Which would have been Electronic Games and some of the other computing magazines at the time. But they didn't talk about, I mean, it was mentioned briefly... but only as a product that was supposed to come out. But, in a way, ZGrass did come out. The product, the language, ZGRASS, was available. There was a hardware system, a computer (which could cost upwards of $10,000) that used some of the custom chips that were available in the Astrocade. It was called the UV-1. It was-- I'll get more into that when I cover the Zgrass system in some future episode, which is why we're talking about it here. I would like to discover more about it. I wanna learn. I want-- I don't think I can use it, because it has not been archived. But, the documentation is available on BallyAlley. I have that. Maybe I'll go through that a little bit. It was... something to learn about and share...
Chris: Yeah. Really cool.
Adam: It's all about sharing, man. And caring. Okay. The Bally Arcade and Astrocade history. History of the month is something that we are going to have. It's going to start with the "Arcadians" #1, which was the first available newsletter. The "Arcadians" was a newsletter that published for just four issues. And it was published-- and it was only two pages. The first one, I think, was only front and back. Then, I think, maybe the next one was four pages, but that was only two pages front and back. It was really just a round-robin letter. It predates the "Arcadian." It was only available to a few people. These have been archived. You can read them online. I'm gonna start there. As soon as BASIC was released, it took a few months after the Astrocade came out (excuse me, before the Bally Arcade came out). Once that system came out with Bally BASIC (which required a separate BASIC interface so that you could record to tape), then Bob Fabris, the editor, said, "We've got something we can explore together. Let's do this. Let's pool our resources and come up with a way to share information. That was what they were all about. They did this very early on. That's something that interests me greatly about the system, and I want to be able to share that and compare it with knowledge of other systems that were out at the time.
Chris: That's really cool. I mean, it's one of the earliest systems of any kind, that I know of, that actually did have a community. You know, that were really trying to goad each other into doing new things and write programs and stuff like that. I mean, I can't imagine there was an Altair community. I'm trying to...
Adam: There was an Altair community.
Chris: Oh. Well, but they were all very rich. And they had a lot of time on their hands!
Adam:...those switches, right?
Chris: I hope that you're gonna to do a "What's New on Bally Alley" I know I keep going on about this, but that is just an amazing website to me. You do a lot of updates to it, so when you do add new things to the BallyAlley website. And, who knows, maybe this will give you a reason to add more things to the website.
Adam: It could. The website isn't updated very frequently. I have great intentions, everyone. So, if you've been wanting to see updates, give me some motivation to do some. I don't mean send me money. We, as the two of us (and other people on the Yahoo group), we do like to BS about the system. But, there's so much information in my archives, and there are only a few people who share it with me. Basically, two other people. We're thinking about putting it up on archive.org, but some of it is kind of-- I think it should, might remain hidden from viewers, even though it might be archived there. Because, it's personal letters that, I think, probably shouldn't be shared. Because, there's personal information there. I mean, when I got the collection, there was actually checks still that were un-cashed in it that were written in the 70s.
Chris: Wow!
Adam: Those kind of things I did not scan. Because I was like… what? [sounds of exasperation and/or confusion], it was very strange to me. They are un-canceled, unused checks out there in some boxes that were people subscribing to the newsletter. I'm not sure why he didn't cash the checks, but... they're there!
Chris: So you could have them in the archive, I guess.
Adam: Right. But I don't think I wanna-- I don't think that sort of information should be shared.
Chris: Oh, I agree. But, you know, I mean back then a dollar, back then, was the equivalent of fifty grand today. Don't you love it when people say stuff like that? It's like... well, you're going a little overboard.
Adam: Right. [Laughing] We had to walk up and down the hill both ways...
Chris: Both ways!
Adam:...in the snow. Pick up the coal from between the tracks.
Chris: Any Cosby reference, I'm on! What I'm hoping... do you think that Paul is going to take part in some way in this first episode?
Adam: I would like him to. If we take a long time, then probably.
Chris: Well, I'm hoping we're going to hear a lot from Paul Thacker.
Adam: Paul Thacker, he will definitely join us, at least, for the... if he can't make it into this zero episode, he will be in for the first one. He's a good guy. He has helped me-- more than helped me!-- he has... he is in control of archiving tapes. That is his department. After I wasn't really updating the site too much anymore (I actually had even pulled away from it), in about 2006, Paul Thacker came forward and he introduced himself to me through an email. He said he would like to help with archiving tapes. And... he really, really has. He's the leader in that department. He has contacted people to make archiving programs possible. He has followed up with people with large collections. He has archived them. Not all of it is available on the website yet, but it is... it has been done. They're truly archived. And, what's neat about Paul he has tapes that were available between users. If you're familiar with growing up with these old systems, you might have had a computer like an Atari 800 or a Commodore 64. Maybe you had some tapes that you recorded to (or disks). You would write a "Game Number 1." And then that was what you'd name the program-- even if the program was a type-in from a "Compute!" magazine or an "Antic" magazine.
Chris: Oh, you would save it as "Game Number 1"
Adam: This is how these tapes were. People would write one program on it... maybe, maybe even give it a clueless name, that meant nothing to either Paul or I. Paul would record the whole side. Paul would go through and say, "What's on here?" Paul would find a program. Paul would find SIX different versions of that program! Paul would find programs that had been halfway recorded over. Paul made sure to archive all of that, separately (and as efficiently as possible), document it. So, something I want to cover... there are so many topics... I should back up here, and I should say that there are a lot of topics available to anyone who is starting a podcast. Something that has to be zeroed in on (and that's not supposed to be a pun on the zero episode) is that you have to choose. You have to narrow. You have to focus. I am no good at that. I am not good at that... I can't do it.
Chris: How many fingers am I holding up?
Adam: Chris is holding up a finger, and I'm supposed to see one. And I'm hoping that is what he was doing-- and not giving me the finger.
Chris: [Laughing]
Adam: So, I would like to cover the ancestry of the Bally Arcade. Something that came up and about 2001, perhaps 2002, is someone named Tony Miller, who was responsible for working on the Bally Arcade when it was created, mentioned that the Bally Arcade's chipset is actually a direct descendent of "Space Invaders" arcade game's... the CPU for "Gun Fight". Or something to that affect. I didn't understand it then, I might be able to understand it better if I find those exact posts (which are definitely archived). Now, "Gun Fight" used the Intel 8080 CPU, which is why the Astrocade uses the Z80. Because it's compatible... sort of. The Z80 can run 8080 but not the other way around. As you can see, my knowledge of all of this is completely limited. What I just told you, is pretty much what I know. There's obviously a story there. If I could find people to interview, if I can dig into this, there is a GOOD story there. And I would like to discover it and present it.
Chris: Yeah, 'cause that would mean Taito took some technical influence from Midway. Because it was Midway that added a CPU, at all, to "Gun Fight," right? So... that's pretty interesting.
Adam: We'll find out, Chris.
Chris: Yeah. So, I've already talked about writing new games as the next logical step once one has a lot of information about any game system, or any computer (or anything like that). So, are we going to encourage activity in the homebrew Astrocade scene? Because, there is a latent one there. You should definitely cover the two released games that we've already talked about: WAR and CRAZY CLIMBER. Those were pretty big deals. The first new Astrocade game since... what?... 1985-ish? I mean, on cartridge...
Adam: It depends on how you look at it. There were actually some people in the community, who were just sending cartridges back and forth to each other, who were sharing code in the 80s. They're not considered released cartridges. Something that is available to the public… yes.
Chris: In terms of talking about homebrew programming, you can also talk about people who just play around with this system, or even interview them. What do you find interesting about the…
Adam: Yeah. I would like to do interviews with people who actually have a lot of experience with the system and maybe grew up with it, which I did not do. I didn't learn about it until... the 90s. About homebrew programming: I believe, and I would love to make you guys believe, that homebrew programming did not start in the 90s. I would like to let you know that homebrew programming has been around since 1975 (in my eyes) and earlier. The very, very first PCs, and by that I mean "Personal Computers," not "IBM Personal Computers," (alright?)... these systems were programmed in people's living rooms, in people's kitchens. If that is not homebrew programming, I don't know what is.
Chris: Right.
Adam: These people were learning for the sake of learning. They were playing for the sake of the experience of touching the hardware, learning the software-- they weren't doing this for work, they were doing this for pleasure. This is the same exact reason people are homebrewing games today. They were doing this back then. An insight that you get to see very clearly is in the in the "Arcadian" newsletters, and in the "Cursor" newsletters as well, is people want to teach other people. They are about sharing. They are about, "Hey I wrote this. This is great. You guys should type it in and try it out... and if you find out anything about it, let me know what you think. If you can add something to it… if you can cut off six bytes and add a sound effect, please do that, because there's no sound." These people wanted to help each other, and through that it is available in archives, and we can look at this and learn today. I would like to have that happen, so that people of today, people who have the knowledge, have modern computers that can cross-compile and create new games-- that would be neat... to me.
Chris: Yeah.
Adam: It has been neat, went two have been released already. But, even if new games don't get created, what about MESS? Let's make that better.
Chris: Before we go any further, I think you should "share" your email address so that you get feedback.
Adam: My name is Adam, and you can reach me at ballyalley@hotmail.com
Chris: You can private message me on AtariAge. I'm chris++.
Adam: Now we expect to get loads of email. We are gonna be clogged. We're going to have to have the first episode be nothing but reader feedback.
Chris: I'm telling ya, we really got a good thing going, so you better hang on to yourself.
Adam: [Laughing]
Chris: That's a Bowie quote. Well, before we wrap this up, let's cover the obvious thing. How did you get so involved in the Bally Arcade/Astrocade?
Adam: When I first began collecting some of these older consoles and home computers... I never stopped playing them, but when they started becoming available for a quarter, I said, "You know, why don't I just buy each one of them." I had a very large collection for awhile, until I finally gave some of it to Chris... got rid of most of it, and... I am glad I did, because now I play the games I own. What I don't play, I get to eventually. In about 1994... '93... I read about this system in one of the books I had that was from the early 80s that covered the Zgrass, actually. It was the system, I was like, "I want to get a Zgrass, that'd be neat." I don't have one. I did find out that it was related to the Bally Arcade. From there... I wanted one. I found my first one for a quarter. I picked it up at a flea market.
Chris: Oh.
Adam: It came with a few games. In fact, I saw the games first, and I was like, "How much you want for these?" Each game was a quarter. I think there was four or five of 'em. Then I saw the system, but I didn't have that much money with me. I had like a dollar left or something (I'd already bought some other things). I was talking to a friend that I'd gone with, and he said, "Why don't you go back there and offer him your buck for it?" I went back, and I said, "How much do you want for the game (the system)?" And he goes, "A quarter."
Chris: Wow.
Adam: So, I still had change to go by another: 2600, an Intellivision... no... [laughing] But, I didn't find anything else that day.
Chris: Those were the days before you people let eBay ruin that part of the hobby.
Adam: So, I did know that there was an "Arcadian" newsletter. But, I was a member of an Atari 8-bit user group here in town. It so happened, I was bringing it up... talking with someone there, and they said, "Oh, I've heard of that!" I'm like, "Oh, you've heard of the Bally?" They said, "Oh, sure. You should talk to Mr. Houser" (who was the president of the Atari club). Then he said, "I think he wrote some games for it." I said, "Hmm. That sounds interesting." So, I approached him. By 1994, there were very few users left in the Atari 8-bit group. Who was left, we all knew each other very well (or, as well as we could-- even though some of us only knew each other from meetings). We started talking. He told me that he'd been involved with the "Arcadian." He had published tapes. He had something called "The Catalog" [THE SOURCEBOOK], which I now know was the way most people order tapes (but, back then I didn't). He kept track of all this, and he still had all of his things. He invited me over one Sunday afternoon and he showed me what he owned, which was... pretty-much everything for the Astrocade that was released. We went through it one Sunday afternoon, and his son (who was in his early 20s) shared his memories of the machine. I fell in love: I thought, "Wow, this system is great!" While I was there Mr. Houser, his name was Richard Houser, he said, "Hey, you know what... we should call up Bob." I said, "Bob, who?" He said, "He was the person who used to publish the "Arcadian." I said, "... Really?" He's like, "Yeah, let's call him." So, he called up Bob. They chatted a bit (for a while) and he told him who I was-- I didn't talk to Bob. But, he was available back then. I thought that was great, so I |
investigation to determine whether and to what extent there was any politicization of intelligence at CENTCOM,” Clapper said.
A spokesperson for the defense inspector general declined to comment for this story.
In the survey from the ODNI, the analysts accused their superiors of editing or rejecting reports that cast doubt on whether the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS was dealing a crippling blow, and they accused senior CENTCOM intelligence officials of attempting to delete emails and other reports that provided evidence of their manipulations, according to a source familiar with the survey who spoke on condition of anonymity.
CENTCOM said no emails were deleted.
“It is important to allow the DoD IG investigation to run its course. However, I can tell you that neither Maj. Gen. Grove nor Mr Ryckman deleted any e-mails associated with the investigation. In fact, as a matter of CENTCOM policy, all senior leader e-mails are kept in storage for record keeping purposes. CENTCOM continues to cooperate fully with the DOD IG investigation,” Air Force Col. Patrick Ryder said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
It’s not clear when the survey responses were reviewed by ODNI officials, but they were included in a report that was finished by December 2015.
The ODNI chose not to investigate the claims of impropriety on its own because the Defense Department’s inspector general had already launched an investigation, sources familiar with the matter told The Daily Beast. That investigation, which hasn’t been completed, began after more than 50 CENTCOM analysts filed complaints with the Pentagon watchdog in July 2015.
U.S. Central Command, based in Tampa, Florida, is responsible for U.S. military operations across the Middle East, from Egypt to Afghanistan. There are more than 1,000 analysts assigned to assessing intelligence and other data on the security situation of the region. They include troops and civilian intelligence analysts who work for the nation’s various intelligence agencies.
The ODNI oversees all intelligence agencies, military and civilian, and is ultimately responsible for ensuring that intelligence reports are free from political influence and bias and that they’re based on sound, verifiable sources of information.
The ODNI standards group was set up by law following the botched intelligence community analysis of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program in 2002 (PDF), which suppressed dissenting views that doubted Saddam Hussein had a viable chemical weapons program. That report, which has been effectively disavowed, was seized upon by senior Bush administration officials to make a public case for invading the country.
The standards group “conducts regular periodic assessments of finished analytic products” and reviews them “for timeliness, objectivity and independence from political considerations, and ensures that the products are based upon all sources of available intelligence and employ the standards of proper analytic tradecraft,” Timothy Barrett, a spokesperson for the ODNI, told The Daily Beast in a written statement. “Intelligence analysis from CENTCOM was reviewed by [the group] in 2015 as a part of the periodic assessment, and the information is available to Congress and the [Defense Department inspector general],” Barrett said.
It wasn’t clear whether the congressional committees that oversee intelligence activities had seen the comments from CENTCOM analysts. According to one source familiar with the document, it has been classified at the “secret” level and cannot be widely shared with lawmakers beyond the two intelligence committees.
A task force composed of staff from three House committees—on intelligence, armed services, and appropriations—is investigating the analysts’ allegations and whether they reflect any systemic problems with intelligence analysis.
It remains unclear whether the analysts’ complaints to the ODNI led to any corrective actions or halted what they saw as an inappropriate practice of selectively altering reports. Three sources who are familiar with the defense inspector general’s investigation told The Daily Beast that the watchdog had conducted interviews with analysts at CENTCOM’s headquarters in Tampa, and had reviewed documents allegedly showing that senior officials, including Maj. Gen. Steven Grove, the command’s intelligence director, and his civilian deputy, Gregory Ryckman, had deleted emails and files from computer systems before the inspector general could examine them.
“The cancer was within the senior level of the intelligence command,” one defense official told The Daily Beast. The pushback by the analysts has been described as a “revolt.”
One person who knows the contents of the written complaint they sent to the defense inspector general said it used the word “Stalinist” to describe the tone set by officials overseeing CENTCOM’s analysis.
Two officials at CENTCOM told The Daily Beast they were not aware of the ODNI’s efforts or the survey that analysts had completed. They said the biggest changes to intelligence practices came in the days after analysts filed their complaint with the inspector general. Army Gen. Lloyd Austin, the commander of CENTCOM, urged analysts to speak up if they felt their assessments were being altered.
In the wake of the allegations of politicizing intelligence, some of the people who receive CENTCOM reports told The Daily Beast that they read them more skeptically.
But the reliability of CENTCOM’s analysis has only become more important since the accusations first emerged. In Afghanistan, the Taliban is resurgent and both ISIS and al Qaeda are trying to expand their footprint. In Iraq, U.S. and Iraqi forces pushed ISIS out of Ramadi, raising hopes that the two nations could launch a similar campaign in Iraq’s second-biggest city, Mosul, which serves as ISIS’s Iraqi capital.
In Yemen, ISIS is weaker but al Qaeda is stronger. And in Syria, Russian strikes are helping forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad reclaim territory in the city of Aleppo. Should that city fall squarely to the regime, Syria would devolve into a war largely between the regime and ISIS, leaving the Western world with no good outcomes for the fate of that state.
Were that to happen, unvarnished analysis on ISIS and the state of the war would be more important than ever.LOS ANGELES -- On April 13, Dr. Neal ElAttrache spent about 90 minutes with Zack Greinke at White Memorial Hospital, about five miles east of Dodger Stadium. The pitcher was out cold, anesthetized while the surgeon repaired his broken left collarbone by inserting a metal plate to stabilize it.
That may have been the best mechanical adjustment Greinke will make all season.
It's amazing what modern medicine, combined with modern training techniques and old-fashioned determination, can do these days. Greinke on Wednesday night looked almost as if he were pitching five days after that fateful collision with Carlos Quentin, not 34 days later. He held the Washington Nationals to one run over 5 1/3 innings in a 3-1 win.
Zack Greinke admitted he wasn't 100 percent quite yet, but also said his injured collarbone does not restrict his pitching. Stephen Dunn/Getty Images
"I'm sure Doc ElAttrache was sitting at home patting himself on the back," Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said.
Greinke didn't consider it anything out of the ordinary. In fact, he said he felt he could have pitched two weeks ago, or barely over two weeks after the doctor cut him open, fixed his bone and sewed him back together. It's not as if Greinke doesn't deserve some credit for getting back so quickly, three weeks ahead of schedule. He went about his business in a quiet, grimly determined manner while he was out.
Now, this could be just the jumping-off point.
"I think he'll get stronger and stronger as he goes," Mattingly said. "It's pretty amazing what this guy was able to do tonight."
The Dodgers didn't go 10-19 in Greinke's absence because he wasn't pitching every fifth day. At most, his outings would have gotten them another couple of wins. They'd still be under.500, still be digging to get back to contention.
But Wednesday felt like a mile marker for this Dodgers season. Greinke's return means the Dodgers have, essentially, their Opening Day roster once again. If they continue to flounder, they won't be able to say it's because they're hurt. So, let the evaluation period begin.
Greinke said he started feeling a bit of soreness in the area of his collarbone after an awkward swing in the second inning, but he recovered well enough to stroke an RBI single to right. He said he was nearing exhaustion as his pitch count got into the 70s in the fifth inning, but he got a second wind in the sixth.
In other words, this could just be the trailer for what he can do for the Dodgers' rotation. The movie is still in pre-production, but if Clayton Kershaw, Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu get on a collective roll, it could -- despite early appearances -- have a happy ending.
"We start to see the vision," Mattingly said.
Greinke didn't rush back, but he didn't exactly take his time. The doctors had to sign off on his return after looking at the latest X-rays. The Dodgers had to decide he was ready to pitch at a high enough level to help them pull themselves out of this rut they're in.
And nothing we saw Wednesday indicated anybody made the wrong call. At times, Greinke looked uncomfortable out there, tugging at his jersey and rolling his shoulders back as if he were feeling some pain.
"It's not 100 percent, but it doesn't restrict me at all on my pitching," he said.
In every other way, he was himself. His fastball may have been a tick or two slow, but he touched 92 mph a couple of times and what can you expect from a guy who essentially is coming out of spring training all over again?
He gave up a long home run to Adam LaRoche, but the Nationals didn't seem particularly comfortable otherwise. Greinke had the usual spread of speeds, from a 73 mph curveball on up. He's a lot to handle, even when he's not 100 percent.
Now, he finds out how many pitches Mattingly lets him throw in his next start, probably Tuesday in Milwaukee.
"I'm assuming normal, until I start to look bad," Greinke said.
That could take a while.AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas quarterback David Ash has been cleared to participate in offseason workouts with the team, the school announced Saturday.
Ash missed 10 games this season due to concussion-related symptoms. Texas head athletic trainer Kenny Boyd said Ash is expected to be available for full participation in spring practices.
The junior will seek a medical redshirt for his 2013 season after playing in just three games. Ash was ruled out for the season in November while he continued to recover for a concussion initially suffered in a loss to BYU on Sept. 7.
He played one half against Kansas State two weeks later but left the game and missed the rest of the season. Ash finished with 760 passing yards, seven touchdowns, two interceptions and a 60.9 completion percentage.
Getting him back on the practice field would be a critical step for new coach Charlie Strong and his coaching staff. Ash and freshman Tyrone Swoopes are the Longhorns' only scholarship quarterbacks available for spring practices.
While recovering from his concussion, Ash did not practice with the team. Texas began its offseason lifting and training this week led by new strength coach Pat Moorer.If you have a hankering to join the ranks of the 50,000+ strong group of iPhone developers but you lack the motivation to learn the ins and outs yourself, Stanford University may have just the thing for you. The school's Computer Science Department will be posting materials from its 10-week iPhone Application Programming course to iTunes U.
"There's a lot of interest in the iPhone," said Brent Izutsu, Stanford's project manager for Stanford on iTunes U, in a statement. "This course provides an excellent opportunity for us to show the breadth and depth of our curriculum and the innovation of our students."
Videos of all the lectures, lead by Apple engineers, will be posted on iTunes U two days after each class meeting—the first should be available later this week. The slides from the lectures will be available to download as well. The school notes that the material will be the same that enrolled students get, but unfortunately, following the lessons via iTunes U won't make you eligible for college credit. On the other hand, it might get you on your way to quitting your day job and making tons of cash. Hey, it could happen.Kilian Jornet Wins Hardrock 100 After Dislocating His Shoulder Kristan Dietz / July 17, 2017
Photo: Kilian Jornet Instagram
Famed ultrarunner Kilian Jornet won the Hardrock 100 for the 4th time this past weekend. What was notable about this particular victory, his slowest by far, was that he ran almost 87 miles of it with a dislocated shoulder.
Around mile 13, Jornet, a native of Spain, took a tumble as he was running through a steep patch of snow. According to this iRunFar post-race interview, Jornet said he was looking more at the surrounding scenery instead of the terrain beneath his feet. He dislocated his left shoulder during the fall, an injury he has dealt with multiple times. Using his other arm, Jornet was able to pop his shoulder back into place. Medics wrapped his arm in a sling at mile 42 due to the pain. In addition to the difficulty of running with only one functional arm, a hail storm slowed his progress during the race. His finishing time was 24 hours, 32 minutes and 32 seconds.
“Yeah, I didn’t think I could finish because at the beginning it was painful, then it was a bit better, but then when the storm started it became very painful,” said Jornet in his post-race interview. “It’s not easy. Yeah, I wasn’t sure at all.”
Following Jornet in second was American Mike Foote in 24 hours, 54 minutes and 54 seconds. Jornet and Foote exchanged leads until the final 11 miles. Colorado native Joe Grant was third in 25 hours, 37 minutes and 27 seconds.
The winner of the women’s race Caroline Chaverot of France, also faced difficulty on her way to victory. Chaverot almost dropped out when she and her pacesetter became lost two-thirds of the way through the race. She estimates that she spent 90 minutes lost in the dark, causing her to fall off course-record pace. Spotting another runner in the distance, she eventually made her way back on-course, finishing in 28 hours, 31 minutes and 18 seconds.
“It’s difficult to be motivated when you get lost,” said Chaverot in her post-race interview. “Then I said, Okay… my family is following and…so I was lucky enough to get one ticket, so I have to finish. It was really difficult. I tried to motivate myself.”
Darcy Piceu of Colorado was second in 29 hours, 21 minutes and 37 seconds. Nathalie Mauclair of France was third in 30 hours, 33 minutes and 50 seconds.
The Hardrock 100 is one of the most challenging ultramarathon courses. Runners face an elevation change of 66,100 feet over 100.5 miles. The race is run on a looped course that starts and ends in Silverton, Colo. Entry is only guaranteed to the previous year’s male and female winner. The rest of the 1,000 participants are drawn from a lottery. The 2018 race will take place next July.
RELATED: Watch Kilian Jornet Run and Ski the Seven Summits of RomsdalenAustralian interior designer Darren James has sent us one of his recently completed kitchens.
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Project description from Darren James:
The best of East meets West, this design demonstrates the successful combination of minimalist principles seen in traditional Japanese design with the contemporary Australian lifestyle of a typical modern Australian family. The result is simple clean lines paired with warm earthy tones; rich wood finishes married to organic elements and cabinetry artfully arranged to create a balanced, harmoniousand functional kitchen highly sought after by the client.
Re-building a house brings many benefits including the opportunity to plan a kitchen to meet every requirement. Presented with a large blank canvas the owners requested that I design a kitchen that “made a statement about who they are”. For this young family of four this meant creating a simplicitic, relaxing and functional kitchen environment that paid respect to their Japanese heritage and echoed their love for contemporary Japanese design.
At the heart of Japanese design are the principles of minimalism, simplicity, space and order. Beauty lies in how simple and functional each design element is and how harmonious the overall effect. Incorporating these principles into the kitchen design required an exercise in control and attention to detail.
The Japanese concept of “ma”, a conscious feeling of space, plays an important role in this design ensuring freedom of movement and imparting a sense of calm and ambience in the room. The choice of an open-plan galley style kitchen ensures the space is not overloaded. Set-in kicks and an 80mm cantilevered feature stone island bench allow the cabinetry objects to “breath”; and rather than being regarded as ‘empty’ or ‘unused’ as it would perhaps in western design – the space that surrounds these objects creates a “push-pull” effect between empty and occupied and creates visual interest. Sensitive towards the need for non physical boundaries and with the desire to create a modern twist on the traditional tatami wall a small drop down ceiling incasing LED strip lighting subtly and seamlessly defines the space.
Simplicity & Minimalism
Simplicity and minimalism features in both form and function in this kitchen and the result in a functional yet restrained design.
At the rear of the kitchen a butler’s pantry focused purely on function ensures the kitchen is kept clutter free and houses the refrigerator, stores food and bulky everyday appliances whilst also acting as an out of the way prep zone when entertaining. Sliding shoji doors constructed with timber veneer and rice paper glass are typical of traditional Japanese style and provide the perfect divider and between the two rooms.
Clean lined cabinetry consists of flush lines, recessed handles and thin benchtops. A calming Zen like feel is accomplished through the use of natural materials and subdued colours. Natural elements such as the bamboo flooring (typical in most contemporary Japanese design), textured veneer and stone give the space an earthy and organic feel.
But minimalism is not only seen in the esthetics in this kitchen design. Practicality and functionality is equally important and no individual item has been selected solely for its aesthetic or decorative value. For example the selection of two side by side Electrolux ovens offers the ability to entertain multiple guests (as requested by the client) whilst also creating a sense of balance in the veneer feature. The same applies to the placement of the refrigerator which are strategically placed in the centre of the room ensuring both easy access and balance within the space.
Furthermore, each individual surface has been selected for both functional as well as textural and tonal value. Stainless steel for its hardwearing hygienic surface is the perfect material for a home chef that enjoys entertaining; Staron’s durability and stain resistance properties as well as its ability to be resurfaced makes a smart choice for an ‘everyday’ kitchen centre piece; and the undulated surface of the cantilevered bench top and it’s form within the kitchen space contrasts with the smooth surface of the Staron and stainless steel and ensures the casual dining area is defined. Even accessories such as the solid timber stools with their organic shaped seats reflect the minimalistic style encapsulated in this Japanese inspired kitchen.
Subdued Colour & Texture
Ensuring colours do not stand out from the architecture of the cabinetry provides a sense of geometric order. The soothing neutral palette of brown, creams and grays minimizes the feeling of clutter, which is also essential to eastern design and its philosophy of simplicity. Whilst the tonal values are not contrasting, the statement and perhaps the flagship of this kitchen is in the strong exclamation of predominate texture. In keeping with the yin and yang of Japanese culture the kitchen design seeks balance in opposing and contrasting elements. Rough plays off smooth and the texture of the veneer joinery and the ‘Jaipur undulated’ finish of the cantilevered island bench gives the gloss lacquered cabinetry, Staron and stainless steel benchtops an even smoother appearance.
Besides creating a strong textural element the horizontal express joins seen in the veneer cladding and horizontal bars in the feature lights (often seen in Japanese furniture) represent man’s relation to the earth.
Diffused Lighting
Like all Japanese interior design, lighting is given proper importance. Available natural light is accessed through the narrow slot window which also visually extends the space to the outdoors where the owners are able to keep an eye on their young children playing in the back yard.
In Japanese interiors lighting is not only a functional but an integral part of the interior. Here, particular attention is paid to the Japanese style of diffused light. In addition to the concealed LED lights in the surrounding bulkhead, Japanese style custom made pendant lights hang above the island bench. The rectangular linen shades and white etched glass diffuser combined with the geometrical timber squares resemble that of a shoji screen and ensure the light is unobtrusive and gentle creating a relaxed calming atmosphere.The US space agency needs to have better consideration for the sexual needs of their astronauts during long missions in space. Also, more research needs to be done to investigate human embryo development in zero-gravity or low-gravity environments, especially if NASA is serious about setting up a colony on Mars in the next 30 years. These warnings have been issued by a NASA advisor at a time when the agency doesn’t have enough funds allocated for human space physiology. These concerns are by no means trivial, basic human needs and the ability to procreate beyond Earth may be critical for missions lasting years…
At a time when the question “Can we have sex in space?” is becoming more and more popular by the future space tourists hoping to become a member of the 100-mile high club, a serious issue is beginning to surface for our long-term presence in space. Humans have needs, and although the astronauts selected by NASA, ESA and the other international space agencies are highly professional individuals, Dr Jason Kring, a NASA advisor and assistant professor at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, has pointed out that sexual desire is as potent as the need for water and food. “But the bottom line is that, like hunger and thirst, sex is a basic biological motive,” he said in an interview with the UK’s Sunday Telegraph. “The potential round-trip mission to Mars could take three years. It doesn’t make sense to assume that these men and women are going to have no thoughts of it for three years. Nasa and other space agencies should address this in their training and in crew selection.” Kring suggests our future long-term space explorers should replicate what the early polar explorers did and take a colleague as a lover to minimize sexual frustration.
It is difficult to predict the stresses long-term missions into space and to other planets may cause, but there is a very practical reason for this worry. Heightened stress on a spaceship will create an increased risk of confrontations, lack of focus and mission failure. When considering a possible 3-year mission to Mars, mission scientists will want the crew to be as calm and stress-free as possible.
Kring adds that future manned spacecraft to the Moon and Mars should be designed to optimize the privacy of astronauts so relationships can be consummated. This basic human need was recognized by explorers here on Earth where South Pole expedition members took on “expedition spouses” as sexual partners for the duration. When the expedition was over, the explorers would return home to their families and spouses. Pairing up with a colleague therefore sidesteps the biological issues of the possibility of “going without” for months, or years at a time. There are obvious questions surrounding the psychological effect of taking on “expedition spouses” (especially the effect on the partners waiting here on Earth for the astronauts return!), but the biological question will at least have an answer.
The fact remains however, that we are naive of the effects of sex in space, let alone if it is even a pleasurable experience. The mechanics of “human docking procedures” (as described by tests carried out by the Russian space agency) are a lot more complicated when in zero gravity. NASA researchers have pointed out that additional problems include motion sickness, increased sweating and a drop in blood pressure – all of which are big problems for astronauts in space.
There are also huge ethical questions hanging over possible pregnancies in space. Zero-G tests on rat embryos produced decreased skeletal and brain development, the effects on a human embryo will remain a mystery. Also, even if astronauts are having sex for purely recreational reasons, the effectiveness of oral contraception has been brought into question, making the whole procedure highly problematic, risking accidental pregnancies (something no space agency is prepared for, especially during missions to the Moon or Mars).
The fact remains that NASA continues to cut back biological research in favor of future Moon missions, so much about human sexuality in space will remain a mystery. This point is highlighted by a NASA spokesperson who stated, “We don’t study sexuality in space.”
Source: Sunday TelegraphThis first option involves first flattening your partner out, so start by lowering your head and driving into your partner's neck and chest area, and be sure that your elbows and hands are controlling the coveted inside space. Be sure that your hands are controlling their biceps. Next up, choose a side to pass toward. Whichever side you choose, your head is going to go the other direction, and you're going to use your shoulder to drive your partner flat (here it's Trey's left shoulder). Now kick your right leg back to trap your partner's right foot all the way across your hips. Reach down with your right hand to reinforce the foot trap position (their leg should be crossed all the way in front of their body, not in between your legs at all). Being careful not to flare your left elbow out from your body (lest you get Kimura'd), push your partner's right knee back so that you can pass around their legs to side control. Keep in mind that you need to keep constant pressure on your partner's solar plexus the entire time here, or else they can hip out and start to make frames, utilizing basic guard maintenance. Finally, work up to the head for final side control positioning.Chicago History
Louis Jolliet, a Canadian explorer, and the French-born Jesuit Jacques Marquette were the first Europeans to discover the Chicago area in 1673 with the help of local Indians.
1673 - First Europeans discover Chicago area
1781 - First permanent settlement by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable
1832 - Chief Black Hawk defeated
1837 - Chicago is incorporated as a city
1871 - The Great Fire
1885 - The first skyscraper
1893 - World Columbian Exposition
1909 - The Chicago plan
1943 - Chicago's first subway opens
1973 - Sears Tower completed
2004 - Millennium Park opens
First settlement
The first permanent settlement was founded in 1781 by Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an African American from Santo Domingo. The location at the mouth of the Chicago river was chosen for its strategic value for a trading post as the river connected the Lake with the Mississippi river. Later the area at the mouth of the Chicago river was occupied by a military base, Fort Dearborn. The fort was regularly atacked by Native Americans, until Chief Black Hawk was defeated in 1832. One year later, Chicago was officially incorporated as a town and four years later, when the population reached 4170, as a city. Its name was derived from the native indian's word describing the area.
Great Chicago Fire
Chicago World Fair
With the arrival of the railroads, the city of Chicago really started to boom reaching a population of 300,000 in 1870. One year later, disaster struck with the Great Chicago Fire laying the city in ashes. The fire destroyed about 17450 buildings, but the Chicagoans quickly started to rebuild the city. Just six weeks after the fire, construction of more than 300 buildings had already begun. And by 1893 Chicago had recovered well enough to host the 1893 World Columbian Exposition, commemorating the discovery by Columbus of America 400 years ago.
1909 Chicago Plan
Chicago Plan
The foundations of today's Chicago were laid out by some of the leading architects reconstructing the city after the Great Fire.Daniel Burnham designed the first visionary urban plan for a city, the 1909 Chicago plan. It was nicknamed'Paris on the Prairie' and included wide boulevards and parks.
By the end of the nineteenth century the land prices in the city had risen dramatically, which lead to the construction of taller buildings. In 1885, William Le Baron Jenney built what is known as the first skyscraper in the world : the Home Insurance Building. Demolished in 1931, it was 55 meters tall and included 9 stories, later extended to 11. It was built with a load-carrying structural frame, which would be the basic structure for all later skyscrapers. This building marks the start of Chicago as a pioneering architectural city. Many famous architects like Louis Sullivan and later Mies van der Rohe would set new standards for urban architecture in Chicago.As Andrew wrote earlier this week, Virginia Tech is a very strange team. Like usual, they have an outstanding defense and offense that goes only in fits and spurts, but they’ve been incredibly up-and-down this year. They won on the road at Ohio State and have losses to Georgia Tech and Pittsburgh. Simply put, it’s hard to know what to expect from this team game in and game out. I don’t really agree with Andrew’s sentiment when he said, “Simply put, this is a team Miami should beat.” Going on the road in this environment in a fairly even matchup (Football Outsider’s S&P+ rankings, which adjust for opponent, has Miami ranked 19th in the country and Virginia Tech 20th) is no easy task, but this is certainly a game Miami can win. It also serves as a de facto Coastal elimination game as it’s almost mathematically impossible for the loser of this game to win the division. On to the preview.
Game Details
Miami Hurricanes (4-3, 1-2 ACC) vs. Virginia Tech Hokies (4-3, 1-2 ACC)
Thursday, October 23, 8 pm, ESPN
Lane Stadium, Blacksburg, VA
Line: Miami -3 (?!)
Passing Offense vs. Virginia Tech
Let’s start with the bad news right off the bat: this defense is really good. The Hokies rank 6th in the country in Football Outsider’s defensive S&P+ rankings and are 20th in the nation in overall yardage. Looking specifically at the passing defense, this unit is quite stout, though not quite as much as it was a year ago. Still, they give up just 203 passing yards per game, good for 28th in the nation. Stud sophomore Kendall Fuller starts at one corner for the Hokies while sophomore Chuck Clark and junior Donovan Riley rotate on the other side. They’re tough in coverage and Miami’s talented receivers will be challenged to gain separation.
On the Hurricane side of things, this is going to be the best defense the ‘Canes have faced so far this year (although Louisville was pretty good in that department). It will be critical for Kaaya to avoid bad interceptions that have plagued him at times this year. That said, Brad has been superb and surpassed all reasonable expectations for him this season and, as long as he doesn’t try to do too much, he has the ability to have an effective game against a good defense like Virginia Tech. It’s also going to be very important for Miami’s offensive line to continue its run of good play—while VT did lose a lot from last year’s formidable pass rush, they’ve still picked up four sacks for game to this point in 2014.
Rushing Offense vs. Virginia Tech
Here’s another match-up between two very good units: Miami’s ground game and VT’s rushing defense. The Hokies rank 29th in the nation in rushing defense and that includes a game against Georgia Tech. On the other hand, both of Miami’s key backs—Duke Johnson and Joe Yearby—average better than seven yards per carry (!!) this year. The game may very well be decided in this facet of the game as it’s going to be critical for Miami to run the ball effectively in a crazy environment with a freshman quarterback, no matter how outstanding Kaaya has been to this point. One huge break for the ‘Canes is that Hokies LB and leading tackler Chase Williams has been ruled out. With that in mind, I would give the Hurricanes a slight edge here.
While I am a big James Coley fan, I would like to see him to run the ball more and this would be a key game to do that and do it effectively. It’s pretty absurd that both of Miami’s leading rushers are above 7 yards per carry (and the third guy, Gus Edwards is at 6.4!) and Miami ranks just 68th in the nation in rush yards. Some of that is due to Brad Kaaya’s propensity to hold on to the ball too long and get sacked, which comes out of rushing yards, but that’s just a small caveat. Simply put, Miami needs to get the ball to Duke and Gus more often. That should start against Virginia Tech.
Passing Defense vs. Virginia Tech
Now the fun part—talking about the Hokies’ offense! VT quarterback Michael Brewer has been a turnover machine this year, tossing eleven passes to the wrong team against just 11 touchdowns. That’s two more interceptions than Brad Kaaya and Brewer doesn’t have Kaaya’s gorgeous 9 YPA to go with that. Instead, Brewer is averaging a very pedestrian 6.3 YPA while completing 61% of his passes. To state it plainly, he’s not very good and every time he goes back to pass Virginia Tech fans should be just as afraid as the fans of the team on defense. (Of course now that I say that, he’s going to go off like Logan Thomas did in the rain at Sun Life last year.)
Looking at the receiving corps, there’s actually a lot there for VT. The Hokies spread the ball around with six receivers hauling in at least 11 passes this year and four with at least 20. (For reference, Miami has a whopping one receiver with more than 20 catches, Clive Walford.) Isaiah Ford and Willie Byrn both have better than 30 grabs, for 424 and 253 yards, respectively. Other guys to watch for are Cam Phillips and Bucky Hodges. While the VT receivers’ numbers are quite gaudy, this is largely a product of Brewer slinging 265 passes around so far this season (that’s 38 per game!!). The Hokies certainly have some talented playmakers at that position, but I’m not very afraid of this attack.
Rushing Defense vs. Virginia Tech
Virginia Tech ranks 80th in that nation in rushing offense and the stats from the RBs are okay but certainly not setting the world on fire. While there are a lot of carries spread around, Marshawn Williams leads the team with 85 and picks up just 4 yards per carry. He picked up an injury earlier this season against UNC but he’s expected to play against Miami. Shai McKenzie is next in line with 53 and he’s good for a much better 5.1 yards per carry. Behind those two, there is a stable of five running backs with between 10 and 26 touches, averaging about 4 yards per carry between them. These numbers are quite disappointing for an offensive line featuring four seniors, but the Hokies just don’t have a very prolific offense. This match-up should definitely be a win for the Hurricanes, who have performed very well in rushing defense outside of the Georgia Tech game.
Special Teams
The kicker for VT is freshman Joey Slye, who’s been fairly solid—12-of-17 on the year, including 10-for-11 inside of 40 yards. Anything beyond that is pretty shake though as he’s just 2-for-6 from beyond 40. Junior punter AJ Hughes is fine but certainly not spectacular, averaging 41 yards per kick on 39 punts. (Wow this offense must be bad if their punter already has booted 39 punts.) Demitri Knowles and Deon Newsome handle kickoff returns and neither broken one or averages better than 20 yards per return. Greg Stroman returns punts and averages nine yards per return with no touchdowns.
For Miami, the special teams will look the same as it has for most of this year, with Badgely still handling kicking duties.
Three Keys to Victory
1. Get Duke and Yearby more carries. Both average better than 7 yards per carry this year and this will be the toughest defense Brad Kaaya has faced in his young career.
2. Utilize an array of blitzes to get to Michael Brewer. He is an interception machine, especially when he’s under pressure. If the ‘Canes can get to him, chances are they’ll receive a couple of gift turnovers in the process.
3. Avoid turnovers. If Miami can get out of Blacksburg with fewer than two turnovers, it’s hard to see them losing this game.
Prediction Time
I’ve learned to be weary of these primetime road games even though this feels like a game Miami can win if they play decently well. If the ‘Canes can avoid turnovers and giving up big plays, it’s very hard to see Virginia Tech winning this game. That said, it’s all too easy to see turnovers and big plays happening. I like Miami to take care of business because they’d have to play poorly for VT to win this game, but the ‘Canes are far from a lock.
Miami 24, Virginia Tech 17NewsAbortion, Family
OTTAWA, May 12, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “How do you sell an abortion? In the US it’s very simple: You do it through sex education,” former abortion clinic owner Carol Everett told participants at the Rose Dinner following the National March for Life on Thursday in Ottawa.
Everett, who ran a chain of four abortion clinics in Texas from 1977-1983 — where an estimated 35,000 unborn children were aborted before her dramatic conversion and departure from the industry — told about 430 participants at the dinner that she had a goal of becoming a millionaire by selling abortions to teenage girls.
“We had a goal of 3-5 abortions from every girl between the ages of 13 and 18, because we all work on a straight commission inside the abortion industry,” she said. With every customer, Everett became a little richer.
But in order to reach her financial goal, Everett said she first had to create a “market for abortions.” That meant convincing young people from the earliest age possible to see sexuality in an entirely different way than previous generations.
“We started in kindergarten. In kindergarten you put the children in a circle and you go around the room and you ask them all the same question: ‘What do your parents call |
entanyl, and other drugs—"terribly destructive."
But Forrest also pointed to evidence brought forward at trial that Ulbricht had paid to have six people killed, including a former employee and a blackmailer. None of the murders was carried out, nor was Ulbricht charged in connection with the schemes; instead, they appear to have been faked to scam Ulbricht, or in one case spoofed by a law enforcement sting operation. Nonetheless, in Ulbricht's sentencing hearing, Forrest argued, “There is ample and unambiguous evidence that [Ulbricht] commissioned...murders to protect his commercial enterprise."
Ulbricht's defense reiterated in the appeal hearing today that none of the alleged murder plots had actual victims. "We have no evidence they even occurred," Ulbricht's lead defense attorney Joshua Dratel said.
"Why does it matter if they happened or not?" Lynch responded. "The crimes of which the defendant was convicted carried a life sentence, did they not?"
Dratel responded that murder-for-hire typically carries a ten-year sentence not life. "Murderers don't get life sentences," Dratel said. "People who actually commit murder."
The prosecution, for its part, defended the inclusion of the alleged murder plots in Ulbrict's sentencing hearing, as well as the testimony about overdose victims. "This is unprecedented, the amount of drugs, the amount of harm," said prosecutor Eun Young Choi.
The appelate panel was less sympathetic to the defense's arguments that evidence in the trial had been tampered with by two corrupt federal agents, one employed by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the other by the Secret Service. The agents stole bitcoins from the Silk Road, sold law enforcement information to Ulbricht, and attempted to extort him. "How is this material exculpatory?" Lynch asked, pointing out that there was no sign the agents had tampered with information on the Silk Road's server. The prosecution followed up on that point, arguing that none of the evidence in the trial had come from the two agents.
When the defense protested that they hadn't been allowed to bring forward an expert witness to talk about the possibility that Ulbricht's laptop had been hacked to plant evidence, Lynch quickly rebutted the point. "The jury didn't know in this day and age that computers can be hacked?" he asked. "Even the NSA gets hacked."
Ulbricht's defense seemed to have more success when it focused on his sentencing, pointing out that life without parole went beyond even the prosecution's request that the judge impose a sentence "substantially above the mandatory minimum." In fact, the Southern District of New York, where Ulbricht's trial occurred, has a reputation for relatively lenient sentencing, with around 75 percent of cases receiving less than federal sentencing guidelines.
All of that seems to suggest that if Ulbricht has any chance of a new trial, it may not come from attacking the judicial process or the evidence that convicted him. Instead, his last hope of escaping a lifetime in prison may come from the severity of the sentence itself.Wednesday’s announcement that Guinea is resuming ties with Israel almost half a century after severing them is a nontrivial piece of good news. Granted, Guinea is a poor and relatively unimportant African country. But it’s 85 percent Muslim, and few Muslim-majority countries have yet been willing to forge open relations with Israel; consequently, its decision could encourage others to follow suit. Guinea was also the first country in Africa to sever relations with Israel following the 1967 Six-Day War. For both those reasons, its renewal of ties underscores the degree to which a new Israeli strategy aimed at improving relations with the non-Western world has begun bearing fruit.
The Guinea announcement comes on the heels of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s successful trip to Africa earlier this month. Highlights of that trip included announcements by both Kenya and Ethiopia–two of Israel’s closest African allies–that they would push for Israel to receive observer status at the African Union, as well as Tanzania’s announcement that it planned to open an embassy in Israel, 21 years after renewing relations.
Israeli media outlets have also reported that officials from three other Muslim-majority African countries that don’t have relations with Israel–Mali, Chad, and Somalia–recently paid secret visits, indicating that the prospect of other Muslim countries following Guinea’s lead is far from inconceivable. Indeed, just last week, Foreign Ministry Director General Dore Gold visited Chad for a meeting with its president. This prospect is made more plausible by the warming of Israel’s relations with key Arab states. As several African leaders noted during Netanyahu’s trip, there’s little point in African countries continuing to give Israel the cold shoulder when some of the very Arab countries that originally pushed them to do so now have either overt or covert relations with it.
There are two reasons why Israel ascribes such importance to its warming ties with Africa, and both have more to do with the long term than the short term. The first is the need to diversify its trading partners. Currently, about a third of Israel’s exports go to Europe. But the combination of Europe’s slowing economy and its growing hostility to Israel make this heavy reliance on Europe a potential threat to Israel’s economic future. Africa is the world’s poorest continent, but it’s experiencing rapid economic growth, and many of Israel’s fields of expertise fit well with Africa’s needs, including agricultural technology, water conservation, and counterterrorism. Thus by expanding and improving its diplomatic relations with African countries, Israel hopes to eventually expand its trade relations as well.
The second, as Netanyahu said during his Africa trip, is the hope of ending the automatic majority against Israel in international forums. As he readily acknowledged, this could well take decades; long-entrenched voting patterns don’t change overnight. Nevertheless, change is far from impossible: See, for instance, the 2014 Security Council vote on setting a deadline for Palestinian statehood, which was defeated because the Palestinians failed to muster the requisite nine votes. Two of the five crucial abstentions came from Africa (Rwanda and Nigeria).
Even if African countries can’t yet be flipped into the minuscule camp of pro-Israel voters, just moving them from the anti-Israel bloc to the abstention column could ease Israel’s dependence on America’s Security Council veto. Since Security Council resolutions need a minimum of nine “yes” votes to pass, an abstention has the same effect as a “no” for countries without veto power. It should also be noted that reliably abstaining would suffice to make African countries better voting allies than about half the European Union and of equal value to most of the rest: EU countries almost never vote with Israel, and some regularly vote against it.
Israel’s burgeoning relations with Africa obviously stem partly from something beyond its control: the rise of Islamist terror. As several African leaders openly acknowledged during Netanyahu’s trip, counterterrorism assistance is currently the thing they most want from Israel. And if reports of the visits by officials from Mali, Chad, and Somalia are true, it’s a safe bet they were also seeking counterterrorism help; all three have serious problems with Islamist terror.
The improvement also stems partly from Israel’s longstanding policy of proffering aid even to countries it has no relations with, which sometimes bears belated fruit. For instance, Israeli officials said one factor in Guinea’s decision to renew relations was the medical aid Israel gave it during the Ebola crisis two years ago. A salient example from Asia, another continent with which Israel’s ties have recently blossomed, is Singapore. Singapore asked Israel to train its army in the mid-1960s, before the two countries even established relations, and then concealed that fact for decades. But last month, as Elliott Abrams noted, Singapore joined forces with India and Rwanda–the third country in the club of Israel’s closest African allies–to help Israel gain the Non-Aligned votes it needed to win the chairmanship of a key UN committee.
The third reason for Israel’s declining isolation, however, is a deliberate decision by successive Netanyahu governments that the country could not afford, either economically or diplomatically, to keep focusing almost exclusively on the West while largely ignoring the rest of the world. Avigdor Lieberman, now the defense minister, made a major push to improve Israel’s ties with Africa and Asia during his term as foreign minister, and since his departure, the ministry has continued this drive under the de facto leadership of Gold (Netanyahu is the nominal foreign minister).
This constituted a major shift in Israel’s strategy, and it stemmed from a simple realization: Relations with Europe are inevitably being frayed by the fact that what the EU seems to want most from Israel is something beyond Israel’s power to provide. Namely, a peace deal with people who have consistently refused every Israeli offer and are currently refusing even to negotiate with it. Europe’s attitude could change someday, but Israel can’t count on that. Hence it must develop alternative sources of trade and diplomatic support as an insurance policy.
The restoration of relations with Guinea is yet another sign that this strategy is starting to pay off. And that’s very good news for Israel.Apple’s removal of several apps from its mobile store on Thursday shows the challenges iOS developers can face when app guidelines shift.
Among the apps removed was Choice, developed by the Palo Alto-based company Been. The app interrupted encrypted traffic streams sent to a handful of companies, including Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Pinterest, in order to block in-app ads.
Apple said the apps, which it did not name, used root digital certificates that could expose data to untrusted sources.
David Yoon, Been’s co-founder, said in a phone interview Sunday that his company immediately updated Choice in order to remove the root certificate from users’ devices.
Yoon said he is awaiting approval of a modified version of Choice that has been submitted to Apple.
Apple approved Choice in June when it debuted with a root certificate, which the company does not forbid. Otherwise, it would not be possible for vendors like Choice to offer VPN services on Apple mobile devices.
Root certificates are not a security issue per se, but they do allow an app to initiate a new encrypted connection with a Web service and then view the traffic using its private key.
Choice used its root cert to gain visibility on Facebook, for example, which encrypts both its content and in-app ads with SSL/TLS (Secure Socket Layer/Transport Security Layer) encryption.
Choice can also block ads and third-party tracking mechanisms on any service that does not use SSL/TLS.
But many technology companies are moving to fully encrypted services, with both content and ads delivered over SSL/TLS. The move was prompted in part by extensive data gathering by U.S. spy agencies revealed by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
Yoon said his company fully disclosed to users how it was blocking ads within a few SSL/TLS protected services and did not retain any traffic from users’ devices. But he acknowledged Apple’s public justification for removing Choice.
“To be fair, to get rid of the root cert is safer, but we didn’t think we were being unsafe,” Yoon said.
Still, Yoon said it’s unclear what kind of use cases of root certs would not be allowed in apps.
Yoon said his company has a small but growing following. More than 10,000 people had downloaded Choice, which has a business plan that goes beyond blocking ads and third-party trackers.
Choice has an “Earn” mode in which no ads at all are filtered out. In that mode, the plan is for Choice to collect some data—such as what apps a person uses at what specific times—which Been can monetize.
Yoon emphasized that users would be fully informed about the data the company collects and have to opt-in to the program.
The problem Yoon said he is aiming to solve is that users’ online behavior is being widely tracked now by a variety of companies and advertising networks without their consent or compensation.
Earn intends to pay users for the data they give to Choice, a value exchange that doesn’t exist in the online advertising market now, Yoon said.
“Your navigation across your phone is what’s interesting to us,” Yoon said. “You’re giving it away for free, let us pay you for it. Or, don’t let us see it.”
If people use Earn for a day, they get 1,000 points. After 30 days and 30,000 points, they’d get US$20, for example, Yoon said.
If only a small number of people opted into Earn, Been would be able to create sample-based inferences that might be useful to other parties, similar to how Gallup and Nielsen work, Yoon said.
It’s still early days for Been, which is a small, self-funded company. Yoon said it is just he a co-founder, Sang Shin, and three or four part-time employees.
But he’s been working on Choice for a couple of years and believes over the next five years there will be growing interest in paying users directly for their data.
“We are trying to make data more expensive for people so you can own it,” he said.Quebec provincial police, along with the RCMP and Canadian and U.S. border police services, have arrested 25 people, seized 18 guns and 10 vehicles as they work to dismantle a contraband tobacco ring linked to organized crime.
Four-hundred police officers executed search warrants and made arrests this morning on the island of Montreal and in Dundee, about 100 kilometres southwest of Montreal, near the border of the Akwesasne Mohawk reserve.
Investigators with the Canada Border Services Agency carry out search warrants on the island of Montreal, in connection with a suspected contraband tobacco ring. (CBC)
Police said the illegal network has links to the Mafia and aboriginal organized crime.
Authorities allege members of the Mafia bought tobacco in the U.S. and smuggled it into Canada illegally through the Lacolle border or the Akwesasne region.
According to police, members of aboriginal organized crime groups helped the Mafia import the tobacco and sell it on the territory of Kahnawake.
Police have seized 40,000 kilograms of tobacco worth $7 million on the black market.
Investigators also seized more than $450,000 in cash.A Sunday night protest in Kansas City by the Westboro Baptist Church was interrupted when someone drove a car onto a sidewalk and into the group.
None of the 12 protesters was injured. The female driver eluded police who were monitoring the protest when the incident occurred just after 7 p.m. near 18th and Oak streets.
The Topeka-based group, known for its anti-gay stance and picketing at the funerals of U.S. soldiers, was protesting an event at the CrossroadsKC at Grinders venue, according to Kansas City police reports.
The venue’s website shows that the group Panic at the Disco was performing there Sunday night.
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According to police reports, two officers saw a gold Mercury Sable drive onto the sidewalk and “into” the group of protestors at the corner of 18th and Oak.
The vehicle then headed west on 18th Street “at a high rate of speed,” police reported.
The officers attempted to catch up but the Mercury eluded them and last was seen heading north on Broadway from 18th Street.
Westboro group members did not want to prosecute or provide information to police. They continued to protest for about 10 minutes before departing, according to police.Just five months after Ed Koch’s death, a Queens lawmaker is seeking to erase Hizzoner’s name from the Queensboro Bridge.
City Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. says he’s drafting legislation to restore the crossing’s official moniker and to name Manhattan’s Municipal Building after Koch instead.
“Never in a million years would they think to rename the Brooklyn or Manhattan bridges,” Vallone told The Post. “But for some reason, it was OK to slap Queens around.
“I’m not going to rest until it’s rectified, until we get our bridge back.”
The span, built in 1909 to connect Midtown to Long Island City, was renamed the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge in 2011 to celebrate his 86th birthday.
Back then, Vallone helped Queens residents circulate a petition against Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal. A year later, Vallone unsuccessfully pushed a bill prohibiting the city from naming its landmarks after living people.
Koch once called the renaming one of “the high points in my professional life.” In 2012, he was featured near the bridge in a video for Bloomberg’s State of the City address yelling, “Hey! Welcome to my bridge!”
“My problem is not with Ed Koch,” Vallone said. “My problem is with taking a bridge from the people of Queens.”Leeds United defender Scott Wootton could join Rotherham United on a permanent basis after his loan in South Yorkshire ends this weekend.
The Championship clubs are understood to be in talks about arranging a full-time move once Wootton completes his temporary spell in South Yorkshire.
The centre-back signed for Rotherham in November, on the last day of the Football League’s emergency loan window and he has played six times under manager Steve Evans.
Wootton was left out of last weekend’s FA Cup tie against Bournemouth but is likely to be involved against Brentford on Saturday ahead of his scheduled return to Leeds next week.
His involvement at United has been fleeting this season and the club are expected to sign another central defender before FIFA’s January window closes.
Liam Cooper, Jason Pearce and Giuseppe Bellusci are all ahead of Wootton in the order at Elland Road, and Leeds have young Italian defender Dario Del Fabro in reserve.
Nineteen-year-old Del Fabro improved his prospects with a brave performance in Sunday’s FA Cup defeat at Sunderland.
Any deal for Wootton is likely to involve a fee, with Manchester United still owed part of the fee agreed when Wootton move to Leeds from Old Trafford in August 2013.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? Click here to register and have your say on the stories and issues that matter to youEuropol has issued a new report on Internet crime in which it outlined a number of scenarios involving bitcoin.
Called the Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (iOCTA), the report examines the use of bitcoin on various dark web sites, by organised crime and individual actors, and calls digital currencies an ‘enabler’ for cryber-criminals and a challenge for law enforcement.
However, it makes a clear distinction between bitcoin and digital currencies designed with true anonymity in mind, like darkcoin, warning:
“We feel it should concern everyone that the latest cyber currencies are intended to be truly anonymous and to facilitate anonymous transactions. We face a situation where law enforcement may be completely unable to trace even very large criminal transactions.”
The report is in line with Europol’s previous statements and reports on bitcoin. Speaking at a security conference in March, director Rob Wainwright said digital currencies are being used as “an instrument to facilitate crime,” particularly for money laundering.
Dark net, Tor and bitcoin
Europol finds several instances of digital currency use on child sexual exploitation dark net sites. The agency warns that the relative anonymity of dark net services – made possible by platforms like Tor – has led to a proliferation of various platforms selling and distributing child abuse material (CAM).
In addition to disturbing videos and images, some sites host open forums on evading law enforcement and perpetrating a range of perverse offenses involving children.
Europol notes that such content is usually not exchanged for commercial reasons and that a “good level of trust” is necessary of those wanting to purchase CAM.
The report warns:
“There are instances of CAM being exchanged via ‘Tor mail’ in exchange for bitcoins. Even though most offenders do not exchange CAM for commercial reasons, the valuable significance of the material associated to the anonymity of Tor and bitcoin creates the ideal setting to add a financial benefit to a traditional exchange.”
Europol finds that traditional commercial sexual exploitation of children online (CSECO) has been lower in recent years, and the amount of commercially available CAM is small.
However, SCECO hackers-for-hire are sometimes employed to hack servers and provide hosting for child abuse material. These hackers usually demand payment in bitcoin, but most of them were found to be fraudulent – they would simply take the money and run, without providing any CAM in exchange.
Abused by criminals
Europol points out that decentralised digital currencies such as bitcoin and darkcoin use peer-to-peer networks with little in the way of control. The report notes that digital currencies are generally designed for legitimate use, but they are “heavily abused” by cybercriminals.
The report says that volatility is an issue even for criminals:
“Cybercriminals often favour centralised schemes which, being tied to tangible assets, are inherently more stable compared to cryptocurrencies whose price is often highly volatile due to high levels of speculation. Of the centralised schemes favoured by the criminal community WebMoney is still very popular, particularly for criminal-to-criminal payments, as is Perfect Money to a lesser extent.”
Bitcoin is gaining traction in cybercrime circles, according to the report. Europol cites Silk Road as an example of a bitcoin-based illicit marketplace. The report also says that bitcoin is beginning to “feature heavily in police investigations,” particularly those dealing with ransomware and extortion.
Further, it finds that distrust in centralised schemes has been growing since the takedown of E-Gold in 2009 and the dismantling of Liberty Reserve in 2013. Criminals find cryptocurrencies attractive due to their distributed nature, which makes them resistant to law enforcement disruption and government control.
The iOCTA says that cryptocurrencies are not an ideal match for online crime for a number of reasons:
“The transparency of such systems is a likely deterrent, potentially providing law enforcement with a financial trail to follow. The market is also volatile with currency prices fluctuating significantly and often. Furthermore a number of exchange services were hacked in 2014 with many users losing their online e-wallets with no recourse for compensation.”
Money laundering concerns
Although they may not be the perfect currency for some criminals, Europol warns that digital currencies could “become an ideal instrument” for money laundering.
Criminals can use unregistered dark net exchanges, or try to exploit legitimate exchanges with poor know-your-customer (KYC) controls. Another problem is the rise of ‘tumblers’ and ‘mixers’ – services which allow users to launder their cryptocurrency, while charging a relatively small commission. The report looks into the possibility of using online gambling sites to launder ‘dirty’ cryptocurrency.
Europol concludes that law enforcement needs to pursue the possibility of obtaining evidence from virtual scheme operators – as they would from any other institution – and to be able to freeze and seize funds.
It says:
“Virtual currencies represent an example of technology overtaking legislation. Few jurisdictions recognise virtual currencies as a currency or have managed to adopt adequate regulatory controls.”
The report issues a number of recommendations calling for new EU legislation that would apply anti-money laundering regulations to digital currencies and strengthen relationships with money transfer businesses, banks, law enforcement and digital currency operators.
Image via EuropolWhen a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft connected with the International Space Station on May 25, 2012, it made history as the first privately-built spacecraft to reach the ISS. The Dragon was the result of a decision 6 years prior—in 2006, NASA made an "unprecedented" investment in SpaceX technology. A new financial analysis shows that the investment has paid off, and the government found one of the true bargains of the 21st century when it invested in SpaceX.
A new research paper by Edgar Zapata, who works at Kennedy Space Center, looks closely at the finances of SpaceX and NASA. "There were indications that commercial space transportation would be a viable option from as far back as the 1980s," Zapata writes. "When the first components of the ISS were sent into orbit 1998, NASA was focused on "ambitious, large single stage-to-orbit launchers with large price tags to match."
Then in 2003 the Space Shuttle Columbia, a pricey orbiter that had made several trips to space, exploded upon reentry, killing the seven astronauts aboard. The Space Shuttle program was suspended and the expanded construction of the ISS was halted. The next year, President George W. Bush delivered his administration's "Vision for US Space Exploration," which called for NASA to "acquire cargo transportation as soon as practical and affordable to support missions to and from the International Space Station." This led to the creation of the NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS), which led to the investment in SpaceX.
Zapata estimates that SpaceX launches cost NASA around $89,000 per kilogram of cargo delivered to the space station. There's no telling what precisely would have come from a cargo spacecraft developed by NASA, but Zapata estimates that it would be $272,000 per kg.
For future commercial crew missions sending astronauts into space, Zapata estimates that it will cost $405 million for a SpaceX Dragon crew deployment of 4 and $654 million for a Boeing Starliner, which is scheduled for its first flight in 2019. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but Zapata estimates that its only 37 to 39 percent of what it would have cost the government.
NASA's initial 2006 investment, as well as further investments in the company in 2011 and 2014, have had profound benefits beyond the ISS. They have allowed SpaceX to become a global company, working with nations across the globe. "Considering NASA invested only about $140M attributable to the Falcon 9 portion of the COTS program, it is arguable that the US Treasury has already made that initial investment back and then some merely from the taxation of jobs at SpaceX and its suppliers only from non-government economic activity," Zapata says.
All this positive financial ground can only be good news for SpaceX, which has set its bar extremely high as a company. Founder Elon Musk wants to use the company to get to Mars, a vision he's detailed in a speech titled Making Humans a Multiplanetary Species. "Right now we are estimating about $140,000 per ton for the trips to Mars," Musk said in that speech. "If a person plus their luggage is less than that, taking into account food consumption and life support, the cost of moving to Mars could ultimately drop below $100,000."
Only a couple hundred thousand per person to Mars is quite the ambitious estimate, but the company has proven it can significantly reduce the cost of spaceflight.
Source: NASA via Ars TechnicaHello everyone! We hope you got to watch the recent animated short, Star Fox Zero: The Battle Begins! This short was created as a collaboration between Production I.G. (who've been involved with a number of popular anime works such as Attack on Titan), WIT STUDIO, and Nintendo’s own Star Fox development team.
In this article, we'll explain how this short was created and how we brought the Star Fox team to life, led by Fox McCloud, as they move and fight, both inside and outside the cockpit.
3D CG animation
When you think of animation, you probably imagine a series of images drawn one by one which are then shown in sequence to create the image of movement. In this short though, Fox and the other main characters were animated using 3D CG (which stands for Computer Graphics) models to make their movements look more realistic.Yesterday was eventful for GOP representative Marsha Blackburn. First, she was seriously grilled by CNN’s Alisyn Camerota and then she put out a Twitter poll that didn’t quite go how she wanted to.
Do you support the repeal of Obamacare? RT if you do, and share what you want to see as the replacement. — Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) January 3, 2017
See, Republicans have been talking and talking about “repealing and replacing” the Affordable Care Act, but no one seems to have any idea what to replace it with. All they can seem to agree on is that they want to dismantle Obamacare, which provides millions of Americans with healthcare.
Blackburn seemed to be crowdsourcing ideas for what to replace the ACA with, but the poll question — “Do you support the repeal of Obamacare?” — was met with an 84% disapproval rate. That means only 16% of respondents support the repeal.
Responses to the tweet didn’t have a lot to suggest when it came to replacement options, either.
@MarshaBlackburn please don’t take away my healthcare, which I pay for 100% myself, no subsidies. Stop the lies! — Steven K (@Waorguy) January 3, 2017
@Fab_Uni @MarshaBlackburn No! It costs me 1/3rd of what it was pre-ACA. AND I HAVE A ZERO DEDUCTIBLE PLAN! Suck on that, GOP. — Steven K (@Waorguy) January 3, 2017
.@MarshaBlackburn and rest of GOP have no plan for replacing Obamacare. It’s vaporware. Repeal and screw those that lose coverage. — lawhawk (@lawhawk) January 3, 2017
@co_rapunzel4 @MarshaBlackburn @Kris_Sacrebleu This is priceless, 83% DO NOT want to repeal Obamacare using a right wing poll! 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 — Vincent De Mello (@vincedemello) January 4, 2017
@buffaloon @SoulFlyTry @MarshaBlackburn I hope you can all sleep at night knowing kids will go without medical care. — Miss Independent (@Mrs_Grayeyes) January 4, 2017
Twitter users have been worried about the ACA being repealed for a while, but fears seem to be reaching a fever pitch as more and more people realize that without a reasonable replacement plan, they could be left without care.
[image: screengrab]
Lindsey: Twitter. Facebook.
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comnews Opposition Leader Tony Abbott this afternoon confirmed the Coalition would take Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s fibre to the node-based broadband plan to the Federal Election as its broadband policy and appeared to hint that Turnbull would become Communications Minister in an Abbott administration.
Over the past several years, Abbott and other figures such as Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey have regularly taken a no holds barred approach when discussing the NBN, with Abbott in particular claiming that the NBN was not needed for Australia’s future and that a market-based approach to telecommunications would be a better policy for the Government to take. Hockey has regularly cited his belief that the future of Australian telecommunications would be better served by a focus on wireless and mobile broadband rather than on fixed-line communications.
The approach by Shadow Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has differed radically from that of other senior Coalition figures, with the Member for Wentworth broadly believing that the NBN project as a whole should continue, but substantially modified, perhaps using fibre to the node technology to see the project “completed” sooner than Labor could with its current fibre to the home model. This has reportedly led to some within the Coalition to be concerned Turnbull’s approach was too similar to that of Labor.
However, in a major speech delivered this afternoon to the National Press Club, coming after the formal disclosure of the September 14 date for the upcoming Federal Election at the same venue yesterday by Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Abbott backed Turnbull’s fibre to the node model for the first time publicly. The full text of Abbott’s speech is available online.
“Between now and polling day, we will be constantly developing our policy commitments so that you know exactly what will happen should the government change,” said Abbott.
“On broadband, I’ve often said that the Coalition will deliver higher speeds sooner and more affordably than Labor’s nationalised monopoly NBN. We’re committed to super high speed broadband that’s affordable for everyone and built sooner rather than later. But with so many competing priorities, the last thing Australians need is another $50 billion plus in borrowed money to deliver higher speeds – but only in a decade’s time and at about triple the current monthly price.”
“We won’t throw good money after bad but we won’t dismantle what’s been built. Our fibre-to-the-node plan will deliver superfast broadband for a fraction of the price and in a fraction of the time required to deliver fibre to the front door. And Malcolm Turnbull is the right person to give Australians a 21st Century network because he is one of Australia’s internet pioneers.”
The comments reflect the first time Abbott has publicly committed to Turnbull’s FTTN strategy, which runs contrary to the fibre to the home model currently used by Labor’s NBN plan. Coming after a separate acknowledgement by Shadow Treasurer Hockey in a radio interview yesterday that the Coalition would find it hard to “shut down” the NBN and would need to “reformat it” instead, they would appear to indicate that Turnbull has achieved formal Shadow Cabinet approval for his FTTN proposal to become official Coalition policy ahead of the Federal Election.
Similarly, while Turnbull has been Shadow Communications Minister since September 2010, Abbott’s comments today reflect one of the first times the Opposition Leader has commented publicly on Turnbull’s future under a Coalition Government. Industry speculation in the past in some quarters has run along the line that Turnbull would be regarded as too senior to hold the traditionally junior portfolio, and might instead be given a more critical portfolio such as finance.
However, with the importance of the multi-billion NBN as a project within the communications portfolio, it is possible that the portfolio is now regarded by both sides of politics as being at a senior level. This is reflected in the current Federal Government by the promotion of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to the additional role to assist the Prime Minister in a whole of government technology role in the September 2010 reshuffle following that year’s Federal Election.
However, Abbott’s support for Turnbull’s FTTN model does not mean that the model has been fleshed out sufficiently to be compared with Labor’s current NBN plan. Speaking with ABC radio show AM this morning, Turnbull again refused to provide key details regarding to the precise cost of the Coalition’s plan, or address persistent complaints about the Coalition’s vision along the lines that the fibre to the node technology it uses is inherently inferior to the fibre to the home model used by the NBN currently.
opinion/analysis
Well! Now we know.
It’s clear what has happened here. Turnbull’s diligence and extensive research in the communications portfolio has paid off to a certain extent, and it appears the full Shadow Cabinet has now been briefed on and has approved his FTTN vision. In addition, it seems as though that policy has been costed to some extent, due to Hockey’s comments in the area, although Turnbull is of course right that it is difficult for the Coalition to completely cost the policy without full knowledge of the contracts NBN Co and the Government have entered into for the full rollout.
However, it’s also clear Abbott still doesn’t quite understand what he’s talking about when it comes to broadband. I note from his speech that the Opposition Leader still believes NBN retail prices will be “three times” currently monthly prices. That claim has been thoroughly debunked; and I warn the Coalition that it can rely on fact-checking sites such as Delimiter to keep reminding them where they made factually inaccurate statements during this year’s campaign.
What should we expect from here? If you believe Hockey, we’ll get more concrete detail from the Coalition with regard to its rival NBN policy in the next few weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised; Turnbull has been quite quiet recently, but I know his office has been diving deep on the NBN. Hopefully at least, we will have enough time to have a very solid examination of the Coalition’s NBN policy before the election in September.
I would also like to say one thing in closing. Regular readers will know that I regard Labor’s NBN policy as the best communications policy Australia has ever had, even if it is being implemented rather slowly. I don’t expect any FTTN-based policy the Coalition comes up with this year to be better. I just don’t. Regardless of what Turnbull says, there are key technical differences between FTTN and FTTH, and we can’t escape this fact. The NBN has stood the test of time and debate, from its commercial model to the separation of Telstra and the rollout itself. You’ve all been there for that. Almost everyone is on the same page on that
However, consider how far we’ve come.
When Turnbull was appointed (coincidentally, on September 14, 2010), Abbott was raring to tear the NBN down, memorably issuing an order to Turnbull to “demolish” the whole thing.
Fast forward three years and it is Turnbull, the visionary, the technology early adopter, and I would argue, clearly the intellectual superior of the pair, who is more or less getting his way. The NBN will not be demolished off-hand or sold off, although it may morph into a radically different policy. Turnbull’s tenacity, intellectualism and continued engagement with the telecommunications industry over the NBN has generated a situation in which the Shadow Cabinet has had no real alternative but to accept his vision for a better broadband future for Australia.
Sure, it’s not as good a vision as Conroy’s, but it would have been suicide for Turnbull to merely accept Labor’s FTTH vision and not to put up some form of alternative. The genius of Turnbull’s approach has been that he has been able to formulate a Liberal-oriented credible alternative policy which will, in the short-term, achieve many of the same aims as Labor’s NBN policy, thus virtually neutralising it as an election issue and keeping Turnbull in the limelight along the way; with the eventual result that he may take a senior role in Abbott’s cabinet, and position himself well in the long run for another possible tilt at the leadership.
Politically, Turnbull’s FTTN policy and his stewardship of the communications portfolio for the Coalition has already been a victory for him.
The thorn in Turnbull’s side throughout this process, of course, has been the technology press and the industry. Turnbull and Abbott may be able to sell Turnbull’s FTTN policy to the public, but the fact remains that some of the claims Turnbull and others within the Coalition have used to criticise the NBN are just not true, or are misleading at best. In addition, there is the fact that Turnbull’s FTTN policy still remains dramatically inferior and untested compared to Labor’s NBN vision. Good policy is good policy; and the NBN is good policy. Many of us won’t like seeing good NBN policy morphed into mediocre NBN policy in an Abbott government.
From a policy and technology industry credibility viewpoint, Turnbull’s FTTN policy and his stewardship of the communications portfolio for the Coalition has not been a victory; in fact, if he does become Communications Minister, he will suffer a baptism of fire as he attempts to radically alter an NBN project which has become a technology industry favourite. “Why reform a project which is delivering and represents good policy?” will be the question which Turnbull will face constantly as he tried to morph the NBN into a FTTN project as Communications Minister. I’m sure Turnbull will be able to handle this kind of effort; he has more or less proven that he can handle anything at this point. But it does illustrate the dangers of trying to reform already good policy.
However you feel about the whole situation, it’s been a fascinating one. Indeed it may be said that we live in interesting times; and more |
.
In 2015, a charter unit was established under the United Transit brand with a grey and red livery.[6]
Mergers and demergers [ edit ]
In 2009 Transdev's majority owner, Caisse des dépôts et consignations, commenced negotiating with Veolia Environnement to merge Transdev with Veolia Transport. As part of the resulting agreement, it was agreed that the RATP Group, which had a minority shareholding in Transdev, would take over ownership of some of Transdev's operations in lieu of cash payment.
This resulted in London United transferring to the RATP Group, while London Sovereign remained with Transdev and become part of the merged Veolia Transdev group.[7][8][9][10]
This agreement took effect in March 2011, and RATP Group renamed its newly acquired business London United.[11]
Livery [ edit ]
London United had an all red livery with a light grey skirt. This was later changed to all red to comply with Transport for London requirements.
Garages [ edit ]
London United operates eight bus garages.
Fulwell (FW) [ edit ]
As at November 2018, Fulwell garage operated routes 33, 65, 267, 281, 371, 216, 681,.[citation needed]
History [ edit ]
When new, the 11-acre (4.5 ha) site was described as one of the finest plants in the country and was the main depot of London United Tramways with 20 covered tracks. The garage is nowadays divided into two sections, one used by London United, with an entrance off Wellington Road, and the other by Abellio London with an entrance off Stanley Road.
Fulwell was the first garage in London to receive trolleybuses in 1931, and together with Isleworth was the last to operate them until 1962. The last trams operated from the depot in 1935, although some of the tram tracks were, until recently, still visible in the cobbled surface of the Stanley Road entrance. The garage has never reached its capacity, even taking in much of the work from Twickenham when it closed in 1970, and in 2001 107 buses were allocated. In 1999 the garage housed 13 London Country buses after Arriva Croydon & North Surrey shut its Leatherhead garage. The buses on route 85 were operated from the forecourt with Arriva drivers. The large forecourt is at present partly used as the bus stand for route 267.
Hounslow (AV) [ edit ]
As of June 2017, Hounslow garage operated routes 81, 110, 111, 203, 419, 696, 697, H32, H37, H98 and N9.[12]
History [ edit ]
Hounslow garage was opened by the London General Omnibus Company in 1913 on the former site of the District Railway's Hounslow Town station. The garage along with many others was requisitioned in the First World War. Hounslow was the subject of two firsts in 1925 and 1930 with the first pneumatic tyre buses and the original Dennis Dart allocated respectively. The garage had one problem though: the roof was too low and only open toppers and single deck vehicles could use the depot until the mid-1930s when the roof was raised.
A London Transport survey in 1947 found that 92 vehicles were allocated to Hounslow, a garage with a capacity of 72. This was mainly achieved by parking buses on a plot of land behind the garage that was also used to stand vehicles terminating there on layover. The garage was rebuilt in the early 1950s and included a new bus station in front of the garage. The planned allocation was now up to 120 vehicles, although the allocation in 2002 was 127.
Hounslow's first one-man operated double deckers were MCW Metrobuses delivered in 1982 for routes 111 and 202. With the allocation still high, Hounslow runs a number of night services on behalf of other London United garages to enable it to fit the buses into the garage. It was also the first garage in London to operate a low-floor bus with the arrival of Wright Pathfinder bodied Dennis Lance SLF in December 1993.[13]
There were plans to relocate the garage away from the town centre, and allow the expansion of the adjoining bus station. In 2005 an unsuccessful planning application for a site in Hanworth Road was lodged. This was largely due to a campaign by residents overlooking the site.
In late 2007 the bus station in front of the garage was closed for rebuilding. The overall roof was removed and the eight bus bays demolished. In their place have been built just two stands for routes 120 and route 281. The other seven routes that previously served the bus station now stand on the garage forecourt (the old bus station) but pick up passengers in the road outside. One exception was route 81, where buses ran out of service to and from the bus stand at Isleworth Fire Station. This has since been discontinued and buses again layover on the former bus station.
On 24/6/17, 120 will start being operated by Metroline.
Hounslow Heath (WK) [ edit ]
As at January 2018, Hounslow Heath garage operated routes 116, 285, 423, 635, 698, E10, H22 and H91.[14]
History [ edit ]
Hounslow Heath was the original operating base of Stanwell Buses, a company set up by London Buses just prior to deregulation. They traded as Westlink, hence the garage code WK, and initially operated routes 116, 117 and 203 which were all joint Transport for London/Surrey County Council contracts. In 1999 Westlink was taken over by London United and recoded internally as HH. London Buses still use the code WK. The depot has also been extended over the former Travellers Coaches yard next door.
Park Royal (RP) [ edit ]
As at January 2018, Park Royal garage operated routes 18, 220, 283, 398, 440, E11, H17 and N18.[15]
History [ edit ]
Park Royal was opened by NCP Challenger on 26 May 2007, on the site of the former Metroline garage (HR) in Atlas Road, Park Royal, which had closed in 2005.
The garage is actually located in a three places boundary, which are Park Royal, North Acton and Old Oak Common.
On 20 October 2012, the daytime service for route 220 was transferred to this garage.[citation needed] 223 and 224
Shepherd's Bush (S) [ edit ]
As of June 2017, Shepherd's Bush garage operated routes 70, 72, 94, 148, 220 and C1.[15] On 5 March 2016, route N97 was taken over by Tower Transit.[16]
History [ edit ]
Shepherd's Bush garage opened in 1906.
Stamford Brook (V) [ edit ]
As of November 2018, Stamford Brook garage operated routes 9, 27, 272,391 and E3.[17]
History [ edit ]
Stamford Brook opened as a bus garage in 1980 after a two-year construction. Originally built as Chiswick Tram depot, it had latterly been used to operate the British European Airways bus service between Heathrow Airport and the West London Air Terminal on Cromwell Road.
The original plan was to create a temporary home for the Riverside garage buses and staff whilst that garage was re-built with a view to taking on the workload from Mortlake and Turnham Green which were to close. However this idea was changed and the garage took on the work from Turnham Green which closed and also inherited the garage code V. Following service reductions, Mortlake and Riverside closed in 1983, with some of their work moving to Stamford Brook.
In 1981 Stamford Brook took on Airbus routes A1 and A2 following the withdrawal of the existing British Airways services between Heathrow Airport and central London. These vehicles were transferred in 1994 to West Ramp (which became an outstation of V) leaving the garage with an allocation of MCW Metroriders, MCW Metrobuses, Leyland Olympians and Dennis Darts.
The garage closed in 1996 and became a store for unlicensed buses held for possible future use. In 1999 it reopened to cater for increased demand in the area. In 2001 the allocation consisted entirely of Dennis Darts. When route 9 was converted from AEC Routemaster to one man operation in September 2004, it moved from Shepherds Bush, and East Lancs Myllennium Vyking bodied Volvo B7TL double deckers appeared.
Tolworth (TV) [ edit ]
As at May 2015, Tolworth garage operated routes 71, 85, 265, 613, 662, 665, 965, K2, K4 and Kingston University service KU7.[17]
History [ edit ]
Tolworth is one of the newest London bus garages and was built on the site of a former coal yard behind Tolworth railway station.
Tolworth was originally planned in the late 1990s following the closure of Kingston Garage and the announcement that the site was to be part sold off and part converted into the new bus station. A recruitment centre was opened on Tolworth Broadway long before building work ever started.
The sale of the Kingston site was brought forward somewhat, and this appeared to catch out the operator as Tolworth Garage was not yet ready. Buses were temporarily parked in a car park in Kingston until the new 100 capacity bus garage opened in early 2002.
Twickenham (NC) [ edit ]
History [ edit ]
Twickenham garage was opened by NCP Challenger on 12 November 2005.
On 31 March 2012, route 493 passed to London General.[18]
Twickenham closed on 1 March 2013 with route 33 transferred to Fulwell and route 419 to Stamford Brook.
Fleet [ edit ]
As at May 2015, the fleet consisted of 797 buses.[19]Since dawn on Tuesday 84 people have been brought into custody in Istanbul. The arrests are a culmination of a two year probe into allegations of corruption, money laundering, gold smuggling and bribery and have sent shock waves through Turkey.
The Financial Crimes Unit arrested high profile names including the sons of the economics, interior and urban planning ministers. The General Director of the state run lender Halkbank, the Mayor of Fatih district in Istanbul, Mustafa Demir and the construction mogul Ali Agaoglu, as well as several bureaucrats from the environment and economy ministries, have all been taken into custody.
The arrests have shone an uncomfortable light on the close relationship between the government and the construction industry just months before the elections in Spring. The opposition parties have today been calling for Erdogan’s resignation.
Three separate investigations started following tip-offs that high-level bureaucrats and the relatives of ministers were making profits from development schemes, and the complex relationship between the planning authorities and construction companies started to be untangled.
Before the scandal emerged, the government was proud of the rapid expansion of Istanbul’s metro system, most notably the Marmaray construction project, a metro that goes under the Bosphorus connecting Asia to Europe. When the tunnel was opened concerning reports emerged regarding the safety of the tunnel, and these concerns have grown following the arrest of the Mayor of Fatih, a municipality district in Istanbul.
A report was written by the Japanese engineers warning the municipality that the construction of a hotel next to the metro station could put the tunnel in danger. The Mayor, Mustafa Demir, is accused of accepting bribes to shelve this report and approve the construction license for a hotel in this location.
This strand of the investigation has revealed an illegal organisation supposedly led by an architect called Sevinc Dogan. The organisation stands accused of bribing public servants to acquire construction permits for historical areas in Istanbul and selling any historical artefacts found on these sites. This has been the case in three Istanbul municipalities; Fatih, Besiktas and Sariyer. Demir in particular is suspected in taking $1.5m for downgrading a first-degree historical region to a second-degree to allow building projects on these sites.
Another crime ring was also unearthed by this strand of the investigation. Yesterday Abdullah Oguz Bayraktar was accused of establishing a crime ring and accepting bribes from construction companies in return for construction permits. Twenty-two of those detained yesterday are part of this particular investigation.
These arrests show the scale of the corruption. Individuals have been profiting from abusing the authority of the Ministry of Environment and Urban Planning to sidestep the laws surrounding protected areas. These SIT areas are pieces of land designated for local municipalities, but following bribes they were opened for construction.
Photos taken after the raid of the son of the Interior Minister’s house show six safe boxes full of US dollars and Euros were released by the Daily Radikal today.
A large amount of money was also reportedly discovered in a number of shoeboxes at the home of Suleyman Aslan, the General Manager of Halkbank. $4.5 million was reportedly confiscated from his home by police this morning. This is part of another investigation which focused on businessman Reza Zarrab and the Halkbank, a state run lender.
Zarrab has a history of Iran-related crimes. Earlier this year his residence was raided and 27kg of gold belonging to him was seized at Atakurk Airport. It is suspected that the gold was intended for his jewellery stores in Iran.
Yesterday, however, Zarrab was arrested on allegations that he runs a crime ring. He is accused of paying bribes to cabinet members to cover up ‘suspicious’ money transactions and bribing bureaucrats to acquire Turkish citizenship for relatives and friends. The money transfers involve sending money to Iran via the state run lender Halkbank. Yesterday the offices of Halkbank were raided and shares in the organisation fell 5%.
Like Zarrab, Halkbank is no stranger to controversy. In 2012 the bank was suspected of facilitating an exchange with Iran, 60 tonnes of gold for several million tonnes of crude oil, despite the international trade sanctions imposed on the country. In April this year local media reported that 47 members of the US Senate had demanded sanctions on Halkbank, and the bank had to release a statement denying accusations that it was carrying out activities which broke the international trade sanctions with Iran.
So far there has been little word from the Erdogan government. A spokesperson from the government Huseyin Celik, called for the attention to be paid to the presumption of innocence of those taken into custody because “in a state of law everybody is equal before the law.”
However, the main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), have called on the Prime Minister to resign, with the CHP Deputy Parliamentary Group Chair Engin Altay saying:
“This is the biggest scandal in the Republic’s history. The Prime Minister should resign.”
The Deputy Group Leader of the National Movement Party (MHP), Oktay Vural, has also reacted strongly to the arrests, saying that the Ministers whose sons have been taken into custody should not continue in their duties, and noting that:Print Article
-- Photo by LYNNE HALEY Two of Global CBDs new product line of hemp tinctures.
—Photo by LYNNE HALEY Kelsey Kilmartin, left, and Joel Bordeaux, right, owners of Global CBD, show off some of their products.
-- Photo by LYNNE HALEY Two of Global CBDs new product line of hemp tinctures.
—Photo by LYNNE HALEY Kelsey Kilmartin, left, and Joel Bordeaux, right, owners of Global CBD, show off some of their products.
SANDPOINT — Local entrepreneurs are tapping into the therapeutic properties of hemp to produce health-giving tinctures without the cannabis high.
Hemp and marijuana both come from the cannabis plant, but they are worlds apart in terms of laws and use. After generations of selective breeding, hemp contains a minimum of THC, the chemical that causes the signature marijuana high.
Cannabis with THC is illegal in the majority of states, but hemp and hemp products are legal.
Hemp contains cannabidioil, which provides the therapeutic value of Global CBD LLC products.
Owners Joel Bordeaux and Kelsey Kilmartin have spent the past decade researching the hemp industry and planning their exclusive product line, they said.
"Global CBD LLC the first Idaho-based wholesale and online retailing company of agricultural hemp cannabidiol (CBD) products without tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). We are excited to share our products with Idaho and the county," they said in an April 8 press release.
All Global CBD products contain 99 percent CBD and zero THC, according to the owners. Their raw materials come from agricultural hemp stocks and stems processed in Switzerland. The processor ships the dry hemp to Sandpoint where Bordeaux and Kilmartin make their products.
"We have tinctures, vapor and a new product called Ultra Nano water. We will have new products soon as well: lotions, beard oil, whisker wax, sun screen, shaving oil, and many more products," they said.
"Our customers share that they experience many of the benefits known in cannabis CBD products that you see on the news such as feeling less stress and anxiety, better sleep, less pain and other benefits," Bordeaux and Kilmartin said.
"Products range from $30 for vapor, $45 for the tinctures and $130 for the Ultra Nano products," they said.
Information: PureReliefCBD.comTrump Announces Guests to Tonight’s Speech: Jamiel Shaw, Sr. and Widows of Police Officers Murdered by Illegal Alien
President Donald Trump invited Jamiel Shaw, Sr. to his speech tonight to Congress.
Jamiel Shaw, Sr. is a former Democrat whose son was shot dead by an illegal immigrant a block from his home. Jamiel says Donald Trump “was sent from God.”
The Trump White House sent out this announcement on Tuesday morning…
The President and First Lady are pleased to announce the following individuals will be special guests seated with the First Lady at the President’s First Address to a Joint Session of Congress.
Megan Crowley: At 15 months old, Megan was diagnosed with Pompe Disease and not expected to live more than a few short years. To look for a cure, her father founded Novazyme Pharmaceuticals, a five-person startup that he built into a 100-person company. Megan, age 20, is now a sophomore at Notre Dame.
Jessica Davis & Susan Oliver: Jessica and Susan are the widows of Detective Michael Davis and Deputy Sheriff Danny Oliver, who were California police officers killed in the line of duty in 2014 by an illegal immigrant. Their names are memorialized in the Davis-Oliver bill, which is aimed to increase cooperation between Federal and local officials to enforce our Nation’s immigration laws.
Denisha Merriweather: After struggling with coursework as a child and switching schools often, Denisha moved in with her godmother and enrolled in the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program. She began going to a private school, Esprit de Corps Center for Learning, and would go on to be the first member of her family to graduate from high school and college.
Maureen McCarthy Scalia: Maureen is the widow of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, and the mother of their nine children. This month, President Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to succeed Justice Scalia on the Supreme Court.
Jamiel Shaw, Sr.: Mr. Shaw’s son, Jamiel Jr., was a high school football star before he was tragically shot by an illegal immigrant, who was also a gang member, in 2008.
Sacramento County sheriff’s Deputy Danny Oliver, left, and Placer County sheriff’s Det. Michael David Davis Jr. were killed by an illegal immigrant in October 2014.Rob Campbell doesn’t remember a day of his life growing up where there wasn’t a family owned Ford truck sitting in the driveway. “My dad was always a big Ford fan, and with the exception of a 30-day period when we had a loaner Chevy, he’s always had a Blue Oval workhorse of his own,” Rob states. So it was only natural that when Rob wanted to build a hot rod truck with all the fixings, it would have to be a Ford. That would certainly make his dad proud.
Rob grew up along the mighty Mississippi, moving from Iowa to Illinois and finally south to St Louis, Missouri, where he ended up making his home. His dad was a “hands-on” guy and managed a small, local lumberyard. His pop taught him everything he knew, from landscaping to construction and even something that would come into greater use: auto repair.
Since Rob grew up in such a dedicated Ford family, it’s only natural that when the time came, he would follow suit. Even though he has owned a few Jeeps and Chevys over the years, Rob has always maintained a Ford truck. Today you’ll find his daily driver 2017 Ford F10 King Ranch in the driveway, ready to do his daily chores and scratch that Dearborn-bred itch he’d cultivated his entire life.
Turning Point
Though he loves his late-model trick truck, stuffed with the modern conveniences that make life a little easier these days, Rob still felt he was missing something. Deep down he wanted a ride that harkened back to his childhood, and his dad’s old-school Ford rides. So he started looking for a suitable project ride that could be built into a modern-day killer with the vintage looks he craved.
Rob always liked the look of the ’50s Blue Oval pickups. In his book, their styling just couldn’t be topped. So with that thought running circles in his head, he decided to look for a good example that would not only be a good builder, but one that would fulfill his checklist aesthetic values.
He soon came upon a nice 1953 50th anniversary edition F-100 for sale not far away, in Lebanon, Illinois, and decided to take a look. It still boasted its original flathead and three-speed transmission, as well as its original frame. There was some replaced sheetmetal and swathes of excessive filler, which was covered with a poor paintjob over its flanks. But Rob saw the big picture here and knew this ride could be his needed starting point to this build.
The seller was surprised he didn’t bring a trailer with him, but Rob insisted that if he bought the truck, he had every intention of hitting the road and driving the long dormant truck the 40 miles back home. Once a deal was struck he stayed true to his promise and took on the road with the sleepy 1953. He got just 4 miles from home when the truck just flat-out gave up. Now it was time for a tow truck!
Once home, Rob game-planned how he would upgrade the needy F-100 and get her roadworthy. The short list soon turned into a much longer list of needs and wants. Soon he realized to get her close to driveable he had to replace the wiring, add power steering and brakes, install a new bed out back, and, of course, do some much-needed bodywork and paint on the poorly redone body.
Unfortunately the project never hit stride. Due to work and family activities, spare time was hard to come by. However in the summer of 2015 Rob met the guys from Classic Car Studios (CCS) from right there in St. Louis, Missouri. The shop was making waves through their incredible restorations and forward-thinking customs. Rob went over to take a peek at the shop and check out their build quality work firsthand and was undoubtedly floored by what he saw. After some serious deliberation, Rob made the decision to let CCS do an entire makeover of the 1953. Game on!
Build Time
Rob knew exactly what he desired in his new ride. He definitely wanted to keep the original look and styling of the truck, with little or no body changes made to its original lines. Right off the bat, there was a small skirmish over losing the front and rear bumpers between Rob and CCS designer Eric Brockmeyer. After some deliberation, Eric won out, and the bumpers were shaved off. Rob admits he’s happy now with the designer’s decision! He then gave CCS ample space to use their creative juices to design and build this insane ride from the ground up. The owner had one non-negotiable request; the engine had to be a Ford! No problem here sir! CCS was happy to oblige.
So the crew at CCS battened down and took on the 1953 for its full-on transformation into the ballsy show truck they all knew it could be. The Ford was disassembled and taken down to its metal skin. From there were some small rust issues that had to be handled, replacing panels with fresh pieces supplied by LMC Truck. Next the crew prepared for a few slight alterations to the body that would not take away from its original look. CCS first narrowed and tucked the running boards on the flanks and then went on to shave the driprails and cowl vent and louvers for a cleaner look.
Next up, a custom roll pan with a center exhaust port and hand-beaded firewall were added to the list of subtle changes. Out back, a set of frenched taillights and a custom inner bed with wheeltubs finish off the truck’s exoskeleton mods here. Last but not least, the interior received a shaved dash, removing the vents and glovebox for an overall smoother look. Once it was ready, the body was basted a custom mix of Glasurit green base/clearcoat, a color that was inspired by the family’s deep green 1976 Ford Elite. Out back, a new oakwood bed was custom fit and installed.
As for the chassis, several upgrades were made to help this ride perform out on the street. A TCI custom IFS suspension with RideTech shocks all around is the basis for the undercarriage of this stealthy truck. A TCI four-link setup handles the suspension chores out back.
Rob insisted that this truck run under Ford power, and he got what he asked for. A Ford Racing Boss 302 was sourced out for the engine bay. At 345 hp out of the box, it’s got more than adequate power to propel this sporty truck down the byways of Missouri. A Bowler-TREMEC TKO 500 five-speed trans with a Centerforce clutch helps pull this ride through the gears. This all feeds a Ford 9-inch posi-traction rear outback, which is stuffed with road friendly 3.50 gears. All that power goes to a pair of 20×12 Hot Rods by Boyd Columbus wheels wrapped in 335/30ZR/20 meats out back. Up front, a set of 20×8.5 Columbus wheels shod in 245/40ZR/20 handle the duties.
Rob didn’t skimp on the cockpit of this vintage truck. The original seat was tossed in favor of a Glide Engineering bench seat. Like many of the CCS builds, this one is also finished off with Relicate leather. This particular interior was done in Amber Glow distressed leather, which accentuates the paint on this truck perfectly. An original 1940 Ford steering wheel was added and covered in Relicate as well to bring it all together. Classic Instruments gauges bring a vintage feel with modern performance. A Kicker audio system brings the soundtrack for this truck’s future adventures.
The Ford was christened “Betty” by Rob in honor of his dad’s sister Betty Ilene. “A classy lady with a lot of fire and attitude,” Rob states. Definitely a good fit for this feisty F-100. And no doubt, this ride runs as good as it looks, with attitude to spare. A plus here for Rob was that the truck build was featured on Speed is the New Black, the hit new show on the Velocity Channel featuring Classic Car Studio. Future plans: after winning some local top honors, “Betty” will be in the MagnaFlow booth at SEMA this fall! Stop by and say hello to one classy hot rod truck!
Rob and Chris Campbell
1953 Ford F-100
Engine
Type: Ford Racing Boss 302
Displacement: 302
Bore: 4.00
Stroke: 3.00
Compression Ratio: 9.0
Cylinder Heads: Ford Aluminum GT-40 heads
Block: Ford Racing four-bolt main block
Rotating Assembly: Ford Forged crank, forged connecting rods, and forged pistons
Valvetrain: Roller rocker arms 1.60:1 ratio, 1.94-inch intake, 1.54-inch exhaust valves
Camshaft: Hydraulic Roller Camshaft 0.480-inch lift intake and exhaust Duration 0.050 inch
Induction: Ford Racing Intake, Holley 600 carburetor, and Holley Red Fuel Pump
Ignition: MSD ready to run
Exhaust: Custom CCS Stainless Steel Exhaust with MagnaFlow mufflers
Ancillaries: Griffin radiator
Output: 345 hp out of the box
Machine Work/Assembly: Classic Car Studio
Tuner: Classic Car Studio
Drivetrain
Transmission: Bowler, TREMEC TKO 500 five-speed with Centerforce Clutch
Rear Axle: Ford 9-inch Rearend with 3.50 posi
Chassis
Suspension: TCI chassis with RideTech shocks
Brakes: Wilwood Disc Brakes: six-piston fronts and big four-piston rears
Wheels
Rims: Hot Rods by Boyd Wheels “Columbus” finished in Bronze with polished lips; 20×8.5 in front; 20×12 in rear
Tires: Pirelli P-Zeros; 245/40ZR20 in front; 335/30ZR20 in rear
Interior
Material: Relicate
Seats: Glide Engineering
Steering: ididit steering column, 1940 Ford steering wheel wrapped in Relicate Leather
Shifter: Hurst
Dash: OEM
Instrumentation; Classic Industries
Audio: Kicker Audio sound system
HVAC: Vintage Air
Exterior
Bodywork: CCS
Hood: Custom CCS
Grille: 1955 Ford F-100
Bumpers: ShavedHong Kong police have arrested banker Rurik Jutting for the murder of two sex workers, whose bodies were found in his apartment. Below is a screenshot of a story on Mail Online, posted this lunchtime.
Your mole has been trying for some time to come up with a witty, intelligent and thought-provoking insight to accompany it. But we're so incoherent with rage that, try as we might, we can't come up with anything better than, "Oh, for fuck's sake".
Yes, because when a man has been charged with the horrific murder of two women, it must be because of the loose sexual morals of someone who broke up with him two years ago. God forbid that anyone should be allowed to think for a moment that a women was not somehow to blame for this crime.
Four different reporters are credited with this article. Four of them; all men. Their mothers must be very proud of them today.That sound you heard emanating from the Supreme Court yesterday may well have been the unmistakably musical strains of the skids being greased.
The court, in a 5-4 vote, split along ideological lines in turning down an appeal to block the law that abortion rights advocates challenged as unconstitutional. The measure, adopted by Texas lawmakers in July, requires that abortion providers have a doctor on their staffs who has admitting privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of the clinic. By rejecting the request, the justices signaled they do not think the Texas law puts an unconstitutional barrier before women seeking an abortion. The Planned Parenthood Federation said the law had forced 12 of the state's 36 licensed abortion providers to stop offering abortions.
Once again, as it did in Citizens United and in Shelby County, a majority of the court determned to demonstrate to the nation that its members do not live in the same world with the rest of us. In Citizens United, we learned that, in the world where the majority of the court resides, unlimited corporate spending in our elections does not result in even "the appearance of corruption." In Shelby County, we learned that, in the world where the majority of the court resides, we have attained the Day Of Jubilee and institutional racism plays no significant role in the local laws governing elections. And yesterday, we learned that, in the world where the majority of the court resides, having no doctor legally capable of performing an abortion in 24 counties in a state the size of Texas does not place an "undue burden" on women who are attempting to exercise their constitutional right. As always, it was Antonin (Short Time) Scalia, who is impatient with the fig leaves of civility and moderation with which the majority of the court usually cloaks its affection for authoritarian mischief, who cut to the chase.
Justice Antonin Scalia, in defending the high court's action, said Breyer and the abortion rights advocates had no basis for "asserting that the [Texas] law is even probably unconstitutional." He said Planned Parenthood had not "carried the heavy burden" of showing the law was unconstitutional, adding that there was "no special'status quo' standard for laws affecting abortion." Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. signed on to Scalia's statement.
For all of this, of course, we can thank Justice Anthony Kennedy, for nobody is more comfortable on this issue in the alternate universe than is the court's weathervane. It was Kennedy who wrote the majority decision in Gonzales v. Carhart in which he memorably sought to spare the delicate flower of American womanhood from the trauma of exercising its constitutional right to one specific kind of abortion procedure that he, Anthony Kennedy, found to be icky. He then found that his personal concern for the delicate flower of American womanhood was not an "undue burden" on the women who needed the procedure that he found to be icky. His conscience was not an "undue burden" on them. The "undue burden" standard comes to us from the earlier Casey decision which carved a loophole in Roe v. Wade through which you can sail the Nimitz. Now the majority of the court has determined that a law specifically designed to ban all abortions de facto in the state of Texas does not place an "undue burden" on women in Texas who want to obtain one.
Roe looks pretty much doomed, in any case. The majority of the court isn't even trying to pretend any more that stare decisis matters in this case. They look at the sky in their world and admire what a pretty shade of burnt sienna it is.The beloved duo met in 2007 while filming the movie Take Me Home Tonight. The two got engaged in 2008 and eventually tied the knot on July 9, 2009.
Last year, Faris spoke to the Huffington Post about why Pratt's her soulmate and how he's the one person who has really changed her outlook on love and marriage.
She gushed to the outlet, "He is sexy, but more importantly he's a great person." She added, "When I was falling in love with him, I loved how kind he was to people. I loved how smart he is, but he's not pretentious at all. He doesn't wear that as a badge—he kind of lets people slowly discover it."
She said, "He's humble, and he's a great leader, and he's an incredible father and a great husband. And I feel like, after years of dating people that weren't the best for me, I found somebody who's love I could really accept."
Faris had previously been married to Ben Indra from 2004-2008.
In 2015, Pratt spoke to Elle magazine about meeting his future wife while filming. "It was like magnets. Our personalities meshed, she was a goofball, she liked to have fun, it was impossible to offend her... We were friends first but she left her husband at the end of the movie, and we started dating when we were back in Los Angeles," he said. "We were friends, and I was there for her. And we had just played love interests, so we had this tight bond spending so much time and spending nights in Phoenix, but we never crossed the line. But we were, I think, developing feelings for each other at the time, you know? The day that she told me she was leaving her husband, I knew I was going to marry her."Every modern yo-yo is only as good as the bearing inside, and yo-yo bearings just got a little better! This is the new Pixel Bearing!
The Pixel Bearing is a collaboration between CLYW and iYoYo, inspired by their search for the perfect bearing. Their team members expect the very best, and the 8-step design brings a new level of performance to yo-yo bearings. These unique centering bearings play ultra smooth and quiet and once they break in you're in for a treat with some of the best spin time modern bearings can offer!
Please note - Pixel Bearings come lightly lubed from the factory. While you are free to clean your bearing for maximum performance, CLYW & iYoYo HIGHLY recommend that you break in your Pixel Bearing with play, and allow the lube to naturally settle and break down. This will result in a longer life, longer spins, and smoother play.Epic Seattle food challenge beaten after nearly five decades Wedgwood Broiler feat was one of six done by Randy Santel
Bodybuilder and competitive eater Randy Santel just before he finished the Wedgwood Broiler 72-ounce steak dinner challenge. Employees there say he was the first person to complete the challenge since it was first offered in 1965. (Courtesy Mike Hamman) less Bodybuilder and competitive eater Randy Santel just before he finished the Wedgwood Broiler 72-ounce steak dinner challenge. Employees there say he was the first person to complete the challenge since it was... more Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close Epic Seattle food challenge beaten after nearly five decades 1 / 15 Back to Gallery
The rule sheet for the legendary 72-ounce steak dinner challenge has been framed at the Wedgwood Broiler for nearly five decades. Dozens have tried to power through, though legend goes that in all those years even the biggest big guy couldn't stomach it.
In addition to the steak there's also a glass of tomato juice, cup of soup, dinner salad, steak fries or baked potato, slice of bread, a cup of coffee tea or milk, and a dish of ice cream or sherbet – all to be eaten in an hour.
Almost inevitability, the restaurant keeps the $75 cash deposit required at the start. Friday night, bodybuilder and competitive eater Randy Santel got his money |
of how easy it is for the young male to be held responsible for the perceived sins of the father. He is attacked rather than nurtured, scorned rather than understood, and ignored rather than rescued. I call these young men and boys "Little John," for they are the sons of the men's movement.
Vandalism in Singapore does not carry a sentence of caning, only the crime Michael Fay was charged with carries such a penalty. According to the Straits Times, a Singapore newspaper, he was charged with a political crime using a spray can. How could a government that has little respect for the human rights America holds so dear, be so applauded by American society? Because he is a young male accused of being a criminal. In today's America that is all it seems to take to inspire our anger toward him. Many in America abandoned him as they had so many other young males before him. Even Rush Limbaugh and his audience mocked Michael Fay and championed the Singapore government, rather than defend him, on two separate occasions.
He is often abandoned in the media, in the courts, in government, and now even in our schools. It was Robert Bly who first named the forgotten male in his book Iron John. Since then we have become painfully aware of how easy it is for the young male to be held responsible for the perceived sins of the father. He is attacked rather than nurtured, scorned rather than understood, and ignored rather than rescued. I call these young men and boys by an appropriate name - "Little John" -- for they are the sons of the men's movement. They are America's future, and, like Runner, America's only hope.
The Death of Daniel Maracallo
"Runner." His friends call him that. It's a name that carries a great deal of respect in his neighborhood. He was born and raised in a section of New York City deep in the South Bronx. As his name implies, he is a survivor. First he survived ten years of abuse at the hands of his mother, his father having been killed in the same streets that gave him his name.
I helped rescue Runner after being called to his home during one hot and steamy summer's night last July. After we took him to the hospital and filed a complaint of suspected child abuse against his mother, he told my partner and I that a fat lip and a black eye were nothing new to him, he had worn them both before. What was different this time was that he had called 911. He had never done that before. Since then he has lived in a group home for abused children. He sees his mother once a week under supervised visitations.
Runner called me some days ago wondering why his friend died. Young children have a very difficult time understanding death, especially when it happens to a friend. He wanted to talk to me about the death of his friend, a young man named Daniel Maracallo. Runner simply couldn't understand how his young friend could have gone on a school outing that day expecting to have a great time and return with a story to tell, only to never return.
On June 15, 1994, Daniel Maracallo, a 14-year-old student at Intermediate School 166 drowned during a class outing to Wildwater Kingdom at Dorney Park in South Whitehall Township, Pennsylvania. Assistant Principal Winsome Naylor was the chief chaperone for the day. She had five other teachers along for the trip to help her take care of the children entrusted to her. Ms. Naylor learned that Daniel was missing at 5p.m. when students were scheduled to leave the park. Ms. Naylor did not notify the principal of the school that Daniel was missing until she returned to the city at approximately 9p.m. Daniel's body was discovered in the park's pool at 1a.m. the following morning -- over four hours after the rented school buses carrying the remaining children and Ms. Naylor arrived home. Students said they saw Daniel having trouble in the "wave" pool and alerted lifeguards. The lifeguards did nothing to investigate and none of the school chaperones intervened.
Killed by Take Our Daughters to Work Day?
Daniel Maracallo's death is just one example of the high death and injury rate for young men entrusted to our New York City school system. Most of these deaths and injuries could be avoided if young men were not abandoned as they often are in a school system entrusted with their safety.
On April 28, 1994, a program resulting in the physical and emotional abandonment of boys between the ages of eight and fifteen years old took place throughout the New York City School system. Thousands of boys were refused passes to be with their parents for the day or allowed on excursions for a fun day in the work place as were girls. To make matters worse, teachers assigned to these young men throughout the school year left their male students in favor of leading hundreds of female students on excursions to city hall, municipal institutions and private corporate work sites.
Unlike any of the other few school systems in the country that participated in "Take Our Daughters to Work Day," the New York City School System participated in this program in such a way that it virtually imprisoned young boys between the ages of eight and fifteen years old and further relegated them to auditoriums and overcrowded classrooms where they were forcibly indoctrinated with feminist speeches and curricula that essentially made many feel angry and punished. The underlying message conveyed the idea that these boys were being treated differently because they hadn't treated girls better, and that is why they must remain in school while their sisters went into the work place for a fun day with parents and teachers. The program was sponsored by the Ms. Foundation and Ms. Magazine.
The Ms. Foundation's response to this was one that conveyed deliberate knowledge of the feelings of rejection and abandonment that thousands of young boys, many of whom are victims of sexual and physical abuse, would certainly feel.
According to the "Take Our Daughters to Work Day - Parents Guide," published by the Ms. Foundation, "Last year, a number of boys felt slighted because they were not allowed to go to work, yet these feelings of rejection proved an important component in educating boys about the realities of girls' and women's lives." Obviously, a vindictive act of emotional abuse was lodged against young boys under the auspices, the approval, and the guidance of the New York City Board of Education. At taxpayer expense, the plan was carried out by staffers of the New York City Board of Education. This program only took the approval of two people within the entire bureaucracy of the New York City Board of Education. They are, the Schools Chancellor Ramon Cortines, and the Chief Executive for Instructional and Student Support Programs, Beverly Hall, Ed.D. Dr. Hall was later promoted by Mr. Cortines.
Who Protects Our Boys?
If men will not protect these young men and boys, who will? An organization I helped found called the United Men's Coalition is an organization that dedicates itself to rescuing and recovering abused boys. We have since been "adopted" by the National Coalition of Free Men (now the National Coalition For Men). NCFM is now our parent organization, and together we are righting this wrong.
The "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" program is nothing less than a form of civil child abuse. It is not a matter of affirmative action, but oppressive action committed by a select group of people who have far too much power and influence over our school system. Jane Pauley's personal defense on "Dateline" of the American Association of University Women's report, which argued that young girls were being cheated in schools, has succeeded, also under the guise of affirmative action, in justifying the abandonment of thousands of young boys in the classroom. We call this elitist faction in the media and in education the "affirmative faction."
The Federal Attorney's Office, at our request, has consented to investigate the way the "Take Our Daughters to Work Day" program was carried out in the school system. A class action law suit on behalf of the young men in the New York City school system is being constructed, and the Board of Education has been denied the right to continue its existence under its current mandate.
Under the auspices of the NCFM, UMC has lobbied the state legislature in Albany to eliminate the New York City Board of Education altogether, and give back control of the schools to parents. The hardest hit of these schools was a high school that caters to single parent families -- 90 percent of which are headed by women. Those schools whose attending student body had fathers to protect them refused to take part in this program.
Schools Need More Male Teachers
Since only 18 percent of teachers in grades one through eight are male, we have further explored the next course of action. We are prepared to bring suit against the State of New York to force them to attempt to recruit more male teachers under state sponsored affirmative action guidelines. It is our hope that these actions will help prevent the needless deaths of young men and boys in the future, although it is a small consolation to Daniel's family. Or to Runner.
Two years ago an incident similar to Daniel Maracallo's occurred at a theme park in New Jersey. A twelve year old girl was missing and it was discovered as the last two buses were scheduled to leave. Those buses stayed until the girl was found -- safe and sound -- after a two hour search. A much different response to what happened in Daniel's case.
A follow-up report by the New York City School Board cited Ms. Naylor, Daniel's Assistant Principal, for "...poor judgment on her part." According to the New York Times, officials investigating the incident "...questioned why Ms. Naylor did not immediately call school officials or the police when she learned the boy was missing and why she left the park without knowing what happened to him."
"She acted like that was an animal who died that day, not a person," said Daniel's eighteen year old sister. The New York City School system has shown itself incapable of caring for the boys of New York City. We have no doubt that if thirteen year old Daniel Maracallo was a thirteen year old girl, the events surrounding his disappearance and subsequent death would have been very different. The death and injury rate of young boys compared with girls, both in our streets and in our schools, shows the Affirmative Faction incapable of caring for America's future -- for the young men and boys who seem to struggle every day just to stay alive.
In the Name of Little John
I assured Runner that his friend's death would not be in vain. Daniel died as the result of the callousness of the school system charged with his safety. But for us, he died in the name of Little John, so that others like him would not be so forgotten.
As Runner starred out the window, watching the gentle rain kiss the glass, I was able to sort through the nebulous reflection of raindrops and the real tears flowing down his cheeks. "I like the name Little John," he said quietly. "It sounds like the character in Robin Hood. You know, the hero who beat the sheriff and even Robin Hood."
For the first time in his life, Runner had a hero.Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, center, is driven by federal agents to federal court. | AP Photo/Mark Lennihan Silver arrest throws Albany into chaos
ALBANY—The New York State Assembly was thrown into chaos by the arrest of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver this morning, raising immediate questions about the leadership of the chamber and how it might move forward in the new legislative session.
Silver is accused in a federal complaint of taking "kickbacks" and reporting them as income.
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Democrats were scheduled to meet at 10:30 for a private conference, and then convene into session. Silver was taken into custody shortly before 9 a.m., telling reporters, “I hope I'll be vindicated,” as he entered a federal office building.
The federal investigation into Silver's activities reportedly stemmed from payments he received from a tax certiorari firm, Goldberg & Iryami, that were not specifically disclosed.
Capital reported that dozens of that firm's clients received state tax benefits; Silver declined to say exactly what he did for the firm, citing the pending investigation by federal prosecutors, but has long maintained he properly declares his outside income.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara and the F.B.I. are planning to hold a press conference this afternoon to detail the charges against Silver.
“It's obviously huge," said Assemblyman John McDonald, a Democrat from Albany County. "It's right up there with Joe Bruno and Eliot Spitzer."
No lawmaker interviewed by Capital since news of the impending arrest was reported last night was willing to speculate on the record about possible successors to Silver, who has been speaker since 1994 and was recently re-elected by his members.
Brooklyn's Joe Lentol is often mentioned for this role in a caretaker capacity, given his seniority and general affability, as is Herman (Denny) Farrell, a longtime representative of Harlem who chairs the chamber's Ways & Mean Committee.
Speaking on background, several members also mentioned Carl Heastie of the Bronx, Keith Wright of Harlem, Deborah Glick of Manhattan and Jeff Aubry of Queens as possible speakers if Silver is finished.
There was also immediate worry about exactly how Silver's new, as-yet-unspecified legal troubles will impact the nascent state budget process.
Governor Andrew Cuomo—a Democrat who is himself the subject of Bharara's scrutiny for his role in restricting and shutting down a Moreland Commission that was investigating Silver's and other legislators' activities—on Wednesday proposed a spending plan that included a slew of items Silver and the Assembly were expected to oppose.
Most were in the area of education, where Cuomo has squeezed the state teachers' unions for several months while Silver and his 107 colleagues have generally stood as allies.
And with 20 budget cycles under his belt, Silver is the most practiced negotiator in Albany's famed three-men-in-a-room troika of executive and legislative leaders who hash out deals on major policy. It's one of the reasons his members have stood by him amid previous storms, and re-elected him nearly unanimously last week.
Even if Silver stays involved with major negotiations while he fends off the criminal charges, there will no doubt be an element of very public distraction.
Almost immediately after news of the arrest was reported, the speaker's regular Republican critics were joined by Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb and State Senator Brad Hoylman, a reformist Democrat from the West Side of Manhattan, in calls to step down.
Silver's spokesman did not return a request for comment.
With the speaker newly under fire, though, Cuomo and the Republican-controlled State Senate will be able to ratchet up pressure and run the table, gaining action on issues that Silver has blocked for years and, in some cases, decades.
It's equally possible that things grind to a halt, as leadership of the Assembly is shrouded with uncertainty. One Capitol observer recalled how deal-making was difficult in 2009, when a new Democratic majority in the State Senate struggled at times to deliver the needed votes at the conclusion of negotiations.
In this way, the Assembly could just freeze up. Its members do not instinctually follow the governor, but rather act as a backstop for traditional liberal interests while governors from George Pataki or now Cuomo try to pull negotiations to the right.
“The budget needs to be done on time,” McDonald said. “The interests of the Assembly have to be addressed and we'll be represented one way or another.”
For longer than a new generation of legislators can even remember, the Assembly has been a paragon of order in the chaotic capital.
This wasn't a particularly good thing, from a good-government perspective: The Democrats' unassailable majority, and the combination of loyalty and fear that Silver inspired in his members, meant little dissent, debate or—aside from the occasional prosecutorial or investigative-journalistic breakthrough—public scrutiny of the chamber's activities.
Silver, throughout his two decades as speaker, has been the quinitessential Man in the Room.
McDonald said he was unsure whether a leadership change was imminent. Another senior member, Assemblyman Kevin Cahill of Kingston, paused when contacted by Capital this morning before saying, "I don't have any thoughts on this."
“I'm not really thinking about that—I support the speaker,” Heastie, the Bronx Democratic chair, told Capital last week after the New York Times first reported the federal probe of Silver's outside income last year. “Shelly could stay speaker for a long as he wants to, as far as I'm concerned. I have a great relationship with him and support him a 100 percent."
Any potential speaker must balance the geographic power structures and identity politics to be elected, according to Jerry Kremer, a former assemblyman who once bid, unsuccessfully, for the job.
It's unlikely that a speaker outside of New York City could wrangle the votes from the Democratic block, the bulk of which come from the five boroughs. This is considered a major mark against Assembly majority leader Joe Morelle, who by title is next in the line of succession but whose Rochester roots work against him.
Race and gender will most likely play a large role, Kremer said.
“You can't deny the influence of the minority caucus, who will play a role,” he said. “They're going to be a separate group like the boroughs in the city are. They're going to be a separate, powerful group in the decision who the speaker is. You cant discount them.”
Wright, Heastie and Aubry each stands to become the first black speaker elected in the chamber. Glick could be the first woman and openly gay speaker. When approached about the position in January, each either declined to comment or denied they had designs on the job.
Several praised Silver for his longevity.
“We're lots of different interests and you have to learn where to bind them together and you cant do that if you're not listening to them,” Aubry told Capital last week. “Which is not just hearing them but understanding them.... He hardly gets rolled, as we say if you were in the street. He doesn't get rolled.”Xbox Live is Microsoft’s multiplayer gaming platform, built to support online interaction between Xbox users - whether that's playing video games or one of the many other functions it allows.
Those include enabling players to communicate with their friends, manage their apps, and it also acts as a digital storefront for new games and content.
Xbox Live news
04/06/2018: Google Assistant and Alexa may be coming to Xbox One
The Xbox One will soon be getting support for Alexa and the Google Assistant in addition to Microsoft's own digital assistant Cortana, according to new reports.
The news comes from Windows Central, who cites a tip from "a reliable source" with knowledge of Amazon and Microsoft's efforts to link their assistants together. According to this person, upcoming builds of the Xbox One's operating system will feature a new section in the settings menu allowing you to enable a digital assistant, including "Cortana, Alexa or Google Assistant".
After enabling the Xbox skill for Alexa or Google Assistant, users will be able to control their Xbox via voice commands issued to their smart speaker. This functionality was previously offered by Cortana, but because users had to use either a headset or Microsoft's Kinect accessory to access it, comparatively few people chose to take advantage of the option.
Supporting Alexa and the Google Assistant - two of the most widely-used digital assistants in the world - will give much more people the ability to use voice commands to control their Xbox. Along with turning the console on and off, users will be able to perform tasks like taking a screenshot, controlling media playback and launching games - assuming that Alexa and Google Assistant mirror Cortana's capabilities.
It's unknown when Microsoft will formally announce the new feature, but it may come as part of E3. The company usually makes a major presentation as part of the games industry trade show, which it uses as an opportunity to announce platform changes, new products and so on.
09/11/2017: Xbox hints at game streaming by 2021
Microsoft's head of gaming, Phil Spencer. has hinted that the company may well support Xbox game streaming in the next three years.
Spencer let slip to Bloomberg that the company wants to shift from a hardware sales focus to concentrate on game sales, subscriptions and additional services.
"Obviously for us, the console is an important part there... but connecting to gamers wherever they are is the vision of Microsoft around what we're doing in gaming," he said.
Although he didn't provide many details at all about what Microsoft's streaming service could look like, he did say that Microsoft "will probably debut a streaming service that doesn’t require a console for some types of content in the next three years”.
He added that trials to develop such a service five years ago proved too costly, so it was now looking for new ways to introduce the technology into its gaming platform.
Advances in Microsoft's Azure cloud services could make it possible to cut out the console, but still enable people to play games, although whether this would be on TV, computer, mobile or otherwise remains to be seen.
Spencer added that pressures from alternative consoles (Sony's Playstation is consistently outselling Xbox) is changing the way the company measures success. It no longer focuses simply on sales of its hardware, but instead gauges its success upon the sales of games, subscriptions and related services, including on mobile devices and PCs.
24/08/2017: Microsoft 'in talks' with Sony over cross-platform play
Microsoft is reportedly in talks with Sony to offer cross-platform play across Xbox Live and Playstation Network, according to a recent interview with Microsoft's marketing boss.
Sony has so far been reluctant to embrace the idea of allowing users to play alongside others on different platforms, an idea that has been embraced by Xbox, PC and even the Nintendo Switch.
It now appears the blockade is lifting, as the company is reportedly speaking to Microsoft about the possibility of shared play in Minecraft, according to a Gamereactor interview with Microsoft head of marketing, Aaron Greenberg.
"We're talking to Sony, we partner with them on Microsoft and of course we would like to enable them to be part of that; one community to unite gamers," said Greenberg.
Currently, Sony only offers limited cross-platform play with PC players on Street Fighter V and Rocket League, but the company has blocked attempts to extend this to other consoles. This is despite the fact that Rocket League developer Psyonix has previously said that it had solved all the technical issues of cross-platform play, and was awaiting the green light from Sony and Microsoft.
Sony has never explicitly given a reason for its stance, which could either be because of technical limitations with its network, or simply an unwillingness to work with Microsoft. It's also unclear whether these talks are likely to achieve anything, but cross-play on even one game would be a step in the right direction.
14/07/2017: Microsoft adds custom Gamerpics to Xbox Live
Microsoft has rolled out an update to users of its Xbox Live service, allowing them to use custom images for their profile pictures and Clubs.
The company has been trialling the feature in early beta tests, but is now ready to push it out to all users. Custom images can be set for Xbox Live Gamerpics, Clubs and Club backgrounds. Users can set their picture through the Xbox app on iOS or Android, Windows 10 or an Xbox console itself.
Prior to this update, users were limited to preset avatars, similar to Nintendo's Miis, or a selection of images. Now, fans will be able to upload images of themselves, although they will have to abide by Xbox Live's code of conduct, as the images are publicly visible.
Other features introduced in the update include the ability to link certain controllers to specific Xbox Live accounts, which will be automatically signed in as soon as the controller is turned on.
Updates have also been brought to Xbox Live's Arena feature, making it easier to start competitive tournaments with friends. Co-streaming has been brought to Xbox's Mixer streaming service as well, allowing multiple people to broadcast the same game session in one multi-view stream.
12/06/2017: Microsoft reveals Xbox One X, arriving 7 November
Microsoft has revealed that its "Project Scorpio" console will officially be called the Xbox One X, claiming that the device will be the most powerful console the world has ever seen.
The device promises to offer immersive 4K gaming supported by six teraflops of processing power and 12GB of graphic memory. Advanced liquid cooling and supercharger-style centrifugal fan keeps the Scorpio Engine cool while it runs at 1172MHz
This puts it far ahead of Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro, which hit the market in 2013 with noticeably lower metrics of 4.2 teraflops, running at 911MHz.
The One X's black design looks extremely similar to the Xbox One S model. Although it will pack more power than Microsoft's previous consoles, the tech firm said it will be its smallest device yet.
All existing Xbox One games and accessories will be compatible on the new device, but the Xbox One X will hit 60 frames per second and 4K resolution for more than 20 exclusive games that Microsoft also revealed, including Forza Motorsport 7, Super Lucky's Tale and Sea of Thieves. The new Xbox One X Enhanced games are marked with the device's logo.
The Xbox One X is scheduled to go on sale worldwide on 7 November for £449, so shoppers can expect to see it at the top of their favourite gamer's Christmas list this year. For more information, click here.
How does Xbox Live work?
Microsoft maintains vast server farms in datacentres across the world. They connect online gamers, routing players through their servers to connect to each other.
Xbox Live originally needed a mere 500 servers to support its online gamers, but today the massive global service needs over 300,000 servers. Microsoft’s investment costs for Xbox Live now total more than $1 billion on server farms alone.
The principal benefit of this model is that it allows Microsoft to centrally manage all of the servers. This allows it to both prevent cheating and to ensure that they’re kept in peak condition, thereby maximising player access and enjoyment.
From a player’s perspective, this is primarily measured by the server’s latency and response times, or ‘lag’. Based on the time it takes for a user’s Xbox to send and receive information from Microsoft’s servers, lag is a crucial issue for many gamers.
Lag occurs when excessively long server response times lead to games feeling sluggish, with a noticeable delay between physical input and in-game response. This is especially important for players of fast-paced competitive games like racing sims and first-person shooters, where split-second reactions can be the difference between victory and defeat.
How much does Xbox Live cost?
Xbox Live features a tiered pricing structure. Basic members of Xbox Live can join for free and have access to Microsoft’s digital storefront, game demos, a virtual avatar, and Xbox’s social tools for chatting with friends.
If you want to actually use Xbox Live for multiplayer gaming, however, you’ll have to pony up some cash for a Gold membership. Charged at £5.99 per month, or £39.99 for 12 months, this allows players to access the online multiplayer portions of games like Call of Duty.
Subscriptions can be purchased online here, through an Xbox console, or via physical gift cards in certain retail locations.
Microsoft also sweetens the deal by offering various free and discounted games to Gold members.
Xbox Live popularity
Xbox Live has a huge subscriber base, with Microsoft’s latest financial results putting the total number of monthly active users at 39 million (as of November 2015). This far outstrips sales of its Xbox One console and indicates that consumers are still avidly using the service on the decade-old Xbox 360.
The phrase ‘is Xbox Live down’ is Googled over 40,000 times a month on average, and any protracted outage usually sees gamers take to social media to bemoan the loss of service.
The rise of online gaming as a part of mainstream popular culture can arguably be largely attributed to Xbox Live. Titles like Halo 2 and Gears of War were early successes for online gaming while Call of Duty has become such a staple of online multiplayer that it is now played professionally with multi-million dollar prize pools.
Xbox Live has grown in popularity to the point where many major games are released with little to no offline component. Games like Titanfall and Destiny are multiplayer-only, meaning that those without Gold memberships are totally unable to play.
Xbox Live in the cloud
As well as dedicated servers, Microsoft also uses Windows Azure resources to augment its Xbox Live services. Dubbed Xbox Live Compute, the resource is free for developers to use and allows developers to quickly and easily integrate cloud technologies into their games.
The servers are automatically scalable, for example, offering more or less bandwidth as required. This is useful for simply keeping the lights on in older games, whose player-bases may have shrunk to a mere handful of dedicated fans. It also minimises the risk of popular releases forcing the service offline through sheer weight of numbers.
Developers can also shunt certain computational tasks over to the cloud, freeing up CPU capacity for other elements. Forza Motorsport 6 uses the cloud to handle the computations that power its ‘Drivatar’ system, which models your fellow drivers’ AIs on the driving styles of your friends.
As it’s not a gameplay mechanic that’s affected by latency, this can safely be handled by the cloud, while the CPU load it frees up can handle the crucial elements of the game that occur in split-second timeframes. For example, Crackdown 3 uses cloud technology to similar effect, keeping track of a persistent, fully-destructible city in real time.
Other online gaming services
Sony offers a similar service for its PlayStation consoles, called PlayStation Plus. Much like Microsoft’s, a monthly fee buys subscribers online play, social tools and a monthly selection of free games through the Playstation store.
It can also be compared to PC distribution service Steam. It acts primarily as a platform for the purchasing and organisation of PC games, but also facilitates online play. The main difference is that Steam doesn’t host multiplayer games on its own servers, other than those made by parent company Valve.
Older news
27/04/2017: Xbox chief wants to create a 'Netflix of video games'
Microsoft's Xbox boss has revealed the company wants to revolutionise the streamed games industry, creating a Netflix-esque service where people can subscribe to stream video games.
This would help developers come up with new ideas, get those games into the hands of users and offer Xbox users the latest content on a subscription-based model.
“Say there’s 10 people in a garage that have an idea for a service-based game – what does it mean for them to build up the infrastructure to go and create that game?" Phil Spencer, Xbox chief, told the Guardian.
"How can we help them? And at the other end, are there things we can do to support a developer who has to move on to their next thing but still wants to support the player base of their previous game? Those things are important to me.”
Xbox could leverage Microsoft's Azure platform to help smaller studios get the infrastructure they need, with scalability to ensure their services never fall down even if their game becomes the hottest new download.
"We’ve talked a lot in the press about the consumer side of Xbox Live with Arena and Clubs, and other things that we’ve done to innovate," Spencer added. There’s a whole developer side of that, which you’re gonna hear more from us.
"I've looked at things like Netflix and HBO, where great content has been created because there's this subscription model. Shannon Loftis [general manager of Microsoft Studios Publishing] and I are thinking a lot about, well, could we put story-based games into the Xbox Game Pass business model because you have a subscription going?"
01/03/2017: Microsoft to offer Netflix-like 'unlimited' gaming service
Microsoft plans to take the unlimited streaming model made massively popular by services like Netflix and create its own on-demand gaming platform.
The new 'Game Pass' service will allow users to access downloadable copies of more than 100 Xbox One and backwards-compatible 360 titles for a $10 (£8) per month fee.
Some of the titles available on Game Pass
While no official list of games has been released, some titles have appeared on the Xbox blog post to advertise the Game Pass launch, including Mad Max, NBA 2K16, Halo 5 Guardians, and the PC hit Terraria.
Microsoft has stated that it is working with "top industry publishing partners" to provide more than 100 games at launch, covering a range of genres. It also stated that new titles would be added each month, and that users would be able to download as much content as their hard drive can handle. Microsoft confirmed that users will be able to purchase a Game Pass title after their subscription ends at a reduced fee.
Game Pass will be a separate to service to the current Xbox Live Gold, and you will only need a Gold account to access games. Following user feedback, games will only be available as a download to an Xbox device, ruling out the possibility of streaming directly, according to Microsoft.
The current Xbox Live Gold tier (and its rival PlayStation Plus) offers a small selection of free games every month that users can download. But this new service will allow Xbox to take advantage of its significant back catalogue of titles without the bottleneck of a monthly trickle of content.
Game Pass is available today to a select number of Xbox Insider program members through an alpha test, although the majority of users will have to wait until late spring of this year.
Picture courtesy of Xbox
16/12/2016: Xbox One update increases download speeds up to 80%
Microsoft just released an update for Xbox One that should speed up download times for games and apps on the Xbox Store.
In a post on Microsoft's Xbox support website, the company said the new update should speed up downloads of content by up to 80% for users with an internet connection of 100Mbps or faster.
Users with a connection slower than 100Mbps should also experience an increase in download speed, but only up to 40%.
Microsoft added that figures could vary according to individual networks and ISP levels.
The update should also include improvements to the wireless controller, better background streaming music performance, and other general stability enhancements.
Xbox One users can update their console by going to the software update section of their settings menu.
13/12/2016: Xbox One users will now be able to access Dropbox files, such as pictures or movies, on their Microsoft gaming console.
The console runs on a universal Windows 10 operating system, hence developing apps for it has become fairly easy.
Through the Dropbox app, users should be able to access slideshows of their pictures and videos, as well as ripped DVDs and all other documents stored in their account.
The app also allows users to import content from USB drives and import screenshots directly.
The Dropbox app is available on Microsoft's Xbox Store, and can be downloaded here.
28/11/2016: Xbox gamers can get a year of Xbox Live Gold membership for just £24.99 on Amazon.
This is more than ten pounds cheaper than anywhere else on the internet, even if Black Friday is over. It also doesn't matter if users already have an active subscription to Xbox Live Gold, as the code starts working after a current subscription finishes.
In the US, the 12-month subscription costs $50 pounds, $10 dollars cheaper than its original price.
In order to take advantage of the offer, users should switch off the 'auto renew' section of their Xbox Live membership (if it's turned on).
Users can only purchase one subscription, so the deal can't be stacked for the next few years, unfortunately.
15/11/2016: Microsoft's original Xbox turns 15 today, marking a decade and a half since Bill Gates first introduced the revolutionary console. Fans and partners have gathered together to celebrate the anniversary, reminiscing on forums and social media.
Though a bitter rivalry continues to exist between Xbox and PlayStation owners, it's hard to argue that Microsoft's debut console was (if you'll pardon the pun) a game-changer. Short for 'DirectX Box', the Xbox was conceived as a way to bring the Windows PC gaming experience into living rooms and make it more accessible to the general public.
The PlayStation 2 was the main rival to the Xbox, and while the PS2 is remembered as the better console - with over six times the total sales - the Xbox nevertheless introduced a couple of groundbreaking innovations.
Chief among these was the inclusion of an ethernet port, allowing gamers to easily connect to the internet. The launch of the company's Xbox Live service, coupled with the overwhelming popularity of Halo 2, quickly cemented online multiplayer as the biggest development in gaming since the medium's creation.
The Xbox was also the first console to include an inbuilt hard drive, rather than relying on cartridge-based memory. This meant that gamers could rip music from CDs, store saved games locally and download extra games and content from Microsoft's digital storefront. The latter development eventually led to an explosion in both DLC for triple-A games and smaller download-only indie titles, totally reshaping the games industry.
Of course, the original Xbox's time in the sun could not last forever; by March 2009, it had been discontinued worldwide, with its place taken by the Xbox 360. This model enjoyed much greater success, and its mainstream appeal paved the way for the modern games market, where titles are marketed to people in all walks of life.
Whether you're a fan of Microsoft's modern consoles or not, though, you have to admit; they're standing on the shoulders of giants.
09/11/2016: Microsoft announced on Monday that it will be overhauling the current Xbox Preview Program, making it available to all Xbox users who opt in.
The Xbox Preview program, originally launched in 2014, will be rebranded as the Xbox Insider Hub and promises to improve the ability for users to provide feedback on content.
More importantly, the new service will be opened up to every Xbox player who chooses to sign up.
"Since the program launched in February 2014, your feature requests, ideas, and millions of votes have helped shape and improve your Xbox experience for the whole community," said Emily Hanson, Xbox Insider Program manager.
"The first change is that the Xbox Preview Program is becoming the Xbox Insider Program. This new name reflects how we are expanding to offer opt-in opportunities to provide feedback on Game and App Previews alongside System Update previews," added Hanson.
The update will also bring a swathe of visual changes for the app itself. Expect to see greater customisation, allowing users to personalise announcements and quests, as well as more opportunities to gain early access to "select games and apps".
The new Hub will also support multiple profiles on one console and provide an "Xbox Insider profile card where your contributions in the program come front and centre".
The update will initially be limited to a select number of Preview users, before a wider rollout to the whole community. Xbox users who are signed up to the old program, and who have "provided the most feedback since the inception of the Preview Program" will be the first to get access to the new Insider Hub.
Those selected for early access should have their Preview app automatically updated, provided the console is set to 'always on' mode. There is no specific date as yet for the full user rollout.
31/10/2016: To celebrate the launch of the new Surface range, Microsoft will be giving away Xbox one S bundles alongside |
. Wading through his library, Helgeland arranged events into timelines to find points of consensus. From there, he applied what might be called scriptwriter’s licence: peppering the landmark facts – the murders of George Cornell and Jack McVitie, the tabloid sex scandal involving peer Lord Boothby – with more speculative set-pieces such as Reg shinning up Frances’s drainpipe with a ring and Ron parading in a silk scarf with a donkey. “Grounded in reality,” Helgeland says of his approach. “I didn’t want to invent too much.” He says of one pivotal moment: “if it’s not true, then it should be.”
Legend trailer – watch Tom Hardy play both Ronnie and Reggie Kray Read more
Getting the dialogue right was a matter of personal pride, but even with Reg Kray’s Book of Slang it fell to Hardy to change a reference to Betty Crocker into England’s own Fanny Cradock. (Sticklers may still wince as Ron recalls a sexual encounter leaving the other party “like a pretzel”.) With its insistent voiceover from Browning, the sense is that Legend was made for America. Helgeland shakes his head: “No, no. It was definitely made for the UK.”
Helgeland alighted on Hardy as his star not after seeing his singular turn in prison head-trip Bronson, but the low-key boxing drama Warrior. This, he thought, was his Reg. With Working Title just as keen, a dinner was arranged to sound out their quarry. “And all he talked about was Ron. Afterwards, he said ‘I want to do it but only if I can play Ron as well.’”
To Helgeland luring Hardy into playing the matinee idol is a coup. “We get Tom as the groomed leading man everyone wants him as – but he’s never let himself be before – because his side of the deal is getting to play Ron.”
He says his preference had always been for one actor to take both roles, avoiding the parlour game of finding two male leads who could pass for twins. “And actors always get competitive.” But while visual effects can do remarkable things, he realised the basic technology of splicing together split screens hadn’t changed since Hayley Mills played identical twins in 1961’s The Parent Trap. He began to brood. “I looked at films with one actor playing twins, but I’d get depressed because you were always so aware of what they were doing, and by that time I was committed to it. I’d think ‘This is not going to work.’”
In fact, Hardy’s charisma is all you notice. There is, inevitably, a brawl between the brothers, staged in their nightclub Esmeralda’s Barn with an eye-catching degree of violence; Freudian viewers can soon unpick the sight of one Tom Hardy endangering the testicles of another. That same tone pervades the film: Greek tragedy in expensive suits with a large dash of slapstick.
“I’m a big believer that any scene can be goofy and poignant at the same time. But it’s a challenge to make it work. When we were filming you could tell people were looking at us like, ‘What are they doing? This is just silly.’ But you know, in the editing room, we would grind off the stuff that was too funny, or that crossed the line.” On set, Hardy was encouraged to ad lib. “He had to have the freedom to do that. To get it right, he had to …” Get it wrong? “Right.”
Helgeland ponders what the Krays themselves would make of his film. “Well, I think Reggie would say ‘Fair enough. That’s how it was.’” And Ron? “I think Ron would enjoy the fact that Tom Hardy was playing him. So yeah, all told, they would dig it.”
Legend is released in UK cinemas on 9 September
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It will act as the curtain-raiser to the tournament, taking place on July 22 at Coleraine Showgrounds before the tournament’s traditional parade of all the teams competing.
The team will be managed by Northern Irishman Kieran McKenna who captained Northern Ireland at the Milk Cup back in 2005, as well as playing for his County in 2001 in the Junior section.
Man United have been absent from the SuperCupNI for the past two years after Louis van Gaal worried over a clash with his reserves being called up for pre-season games.
The trio of under-18s boss McKenna, José Mourinho and Nicky Butt, Head of Academy, have pushed through a return, though.
McKenna: “If our boys get in the first team, they will play against South Americans and others from all over Europe, Asia and the rest of the world so they need to get used to playing against those kinds of teams collectively as well as individual players. Their styles of play are different to British players so the boys who represent us at international tournaments gain some invaluable experience.”
Victor Leonard, chairman of SuperCupNI, said: “We have maintained a strong, friendly relationship with Old Trafford over many years and particularly in the past two years when they were not able to compete. We are thrilled to not only have them competing at Junior level but also participating in this new venture for us with the Under-18 game.
“We are constantly exploring different ideas to enhance the event and will be taking several innovative ideas forward as we look to develop it in the years ahead.
“To have United playing at this level is massive for us. Manchester United are a major global brand and the game will attract huge media interest.”
AdvertisementsDonald Trump, 2016 Republican presidential nominee, speaks during the second annual Roast and Ride in Des Moines, on Saturday. (Daniel Acker/Bloomberg)
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and a regular contributor to PostEverything
One of the oddities of the 2016 presidential campaign has been the way that Donald Trump has mangled the politics of trade.
It’s not that one can’t make a case that unrestricted free trade has hurt the U.S. economy at times — the case can be made that small towns like Hawkins, Ind., have been hurt by foreign intrusions. But despite a lot of loose talk about how this is the year of economic populism, the polling has consistently shown that populism ain’t all that popular. At best, Trump has turned the GOP against free trade, but at the cost of turning Democrats into free trade supporters. When it comes to trade, most voters are operating in the Vale of Ignorance.
Eli Stokols’s Politico story over the weekend suggests the ways in which Donald Trump seems to be operating in the world of the upside down when it comes to trade — but, just as importantly, how mainstream media coverage of this issue enables Trump to make such mistakes. Stokols’s story is not about trade, really, so much as about the difficulties the Trump campaign is facing this fall. But the relevant paragraph is telling:
Figuring out how to triage a presidential campaign when you’re bleeding in every swing state, all of which seem vital, is a difficult enough equation — and that’s without Trump spending time and resources last week in places that aren’t swing states at all. Trump sandwiched one rally in Tampa, Florida, between appearances in Texas and Mississippi, both solidly red states he’s unlikely to lose. And on Friday, his campaign announced a rally to be held Tuesday outside Seattle in Everett, Washington, home to a Boeing plant that ships planes overseas — a location that’s well suited for Trump to rail against global trade deals but makes no sense electorally.
There are two ways in which that bolded sentence makes no sense, and it’s important to recognize both of them.
The first is the “ships planes overseas” part. Maybe Trump is so used to saying things like “shipping jobs overseas” he thinks that any kind of overseas shipping must be bad. In this case, however, what’s being shipped overseas are U.S. exports, which I think even Trump might support. Indeed, Washington is America’s most trade-dependent state, and exports have been good for the local economy. Trump’s China-bashing is not going to play well in a state that has felt the economic chill from Sino-American trade tensions. I don’t think even Trump would be so ignorant as to bash U.S. exports, but I guess we’ll find out tomorrow.
The second problem with that paragraph, however, is that Stokols seems to share Trump’s confusion. Globalization isn’t some Demogorgon stalking Washington state. To repeat myself: Everett, Wash., is not “well suited for Trump to rail against global trade” at all. Maybe one could make the case that Trump’s speech is intended for a national audience, but his local audience will be one that benefits from the liberal trading order. Indeed, this seems like a guaranteed replay of Trump’s past mistakes of not understanding the locale where he holds his rally.
At this point, I really don’t expect Donald Trump to reverse course on his Big Lie when it comes to the global economy. I do, however, expect the mainstream media to report accurately on the implications of his proposed trade policies. Simply assuming that voters will eat up his mercantilist rhetoric wherever he speaks — like boxes of Eggos — is wrong.Because she's been there and done that, literally, former Bachelor contestant/tear fountain Ashley Iaconetti is recapping this season of The Bachelor for Cosmopolitan.com. With insider insight (she and Nick are buddies, for real) as well as a clear eye for what's going down in the love connection stakes, read on for her thoughts.
First things first: I'm still in a state of confusion as to why we've been given the grand reveal of Rachel as the next Bachelorette while she's still in the running for Nick's heart. We know this mean she's not the winner, and that distracted me a lot of what was happening in this week's episode, especially because I feel like Rachel was finale-worthy. But we'll just have to deal with it — I'm sure she'll be a phenomenal leading lady, and I think it's fantastic that ABC is bringing more diversity into the show.
Picking up where we left off last week, an emotionally distressed Nick has his little pow-wow with Chris Harrison, and expresses real hesitance with moving forward on the show. He's afraid of making a mistake again, and fears feeling something that isn't authentic or as strong as he believed.
Chris Harrison is an expert at easing a Bachelor's worries and, voila, Nick decides to march forward and goes to tell the ladies the good news. That said, if this "decision" left you in a state of suspense, I'm judging you.
The six remaining ladies — Kristina, Vanessa, Danielle M, Rachel, Corinne, and Raven — say goodbye to St. Thomas and head to Bimini without having to endure a rose ceremony. (Remember, Nick eliminated half of the cast last week so yeah, fair enough.) There's three one-on-one dates ahead of us, as well as three women stuck with a group date — let's start with that one, shall we?
The group date consists of Raven, Corinne, and Kristina; even at the final six stage, it's worth noting that Corinne has never had a one-on-one date with Nick. Here, the foursome are going swimming with the sharks and, come on, you couldn't have kept Alexis and her onesie around for this, Nick?! Kristina only stays in the water briefly before hopping back on the boat in fear, and look at that, holding on tight to Nick — speaking of tight, shout-out to those floral swim trunks, Nick — for comfort.
Still, it's Raven who gets the group date rose (see you in Arkansas for the hometowns, Raven!) and, in the most creative shot of the season, Corinne and Kristina are shown through a window looking defeated AF while Nick makes out with Raven behind a door — kinda like that scene where JoJo and Jordan snuck a sneaky makeout out a group date last season with the other clueless guys in a room next door. Anyway, Nick and Raven then go off to a private concert, because that's the official way to celebrate rose receiving on The Bachelor.
Nick and Vanessa enjoy this week's first one-on-one date, out on a yacht. Never afraid to of #srsconversation, Vanessa tells Nick she doesn't understand why he would want to run away from the show if he had strong feelings for her. It definitely makes her question the direction their relationship is headed, but she's still prepared to drop the "falling in love with you" line at dinner. And then she's disappointed at Nick's response — he says that he really, really likes her. While I appreciated her honest reaction, I was also thinking, "girl, you're on The Bachelor. You know he can't say I'm falling in love with you when there are still five other women around."
I'm not sure if they left out some flirty, hot moments, but I wasn't feeling the two of them as strongly as I had during their first date. Their connection just didn't seem the same when Vanessa's stomach is settled?
Look, I've called out what I've felt as a lack of connection between Nick and Danielle M. before, and their date this week proved my point (again). They can't get a decent conversation going — and when Nick flat-out says they're struggling today, well, it's a warning siren. He hopes that they can turn things around during their dinner, but, I'm like, c'mon dude you can't go to everyone's hometown. Despite Danielle M. putting her heart out there (just like her namesake Danielle L. a week prior), Nick has to tell her that he doesn't reciprocate the feelings.
She's clearly crushed, and shocked, and sad, and so shaken — not to rub it in, but if nothing else, it's a further illustration of her and Nick just not being on the same page. Ask any girl who left the show between 8th and 5th place, we usually see it coming. We've developed an idea of where the Bachelor's head is at, and where his heart isn't. We're running around the house saying our goodbyes. By this point just you know, deep down, which girls have the strongest connections with the Bachelor. If it's not you, keep your suitcase packed, OK? (That said, things get more tricky once everybody splits up for hometowns. At this point, the girls only see each other when they're standing next to each other at rose ceremonies.)
Anyway, from one mortifying rejection to another, Corinne cooks up another sexy scheme and, yes, it's the "platinum vagginnnnee" we've been seeing in teasers all season. She tries to seduce Nick after "sneaking" into his hotel room, but he rejects her advance.
He's seen the drama sleeping with a contestant before the fantasy suites can cause (because, you know, he was guilty of it during Kaitlyn's season). He wants to respect the other women and himself, I'd say.
The final one-on-one is a quick day date with Rachel, and the bartender gives her some great advice: "You make sure this guy really needs you, not just wants you." Oh hey, look Rachel is The Bachelorette now and no doubt keeping lines like that in mind. After coming back to the house on a high, a rattled Corinne confides in her — she's convinced she's going home after the sex flop, and I LOVE that she goes to Rachel in this nerve-wracking moment. I want Rachel in my life to calm me.
Nick, meanwhile, enters the girls' abode and asks to speak with Kristina. Immediately, she knew it was bad news: a tearful Nick explains that he's letting her go now because he wants to protect her from being hurt even further down the road.
You can tell he truly cares about her. Even though it was sad, this was one of my favorite moments of the season because it felt full of love, albeit not romantic.
Follow Ashley on Instagram and Twitter.I think Ed Schafer wants to be the interim president at North Dakota State University.
It is only a feeling. Only a hunch. Only a guess. Let me make that clear. This blog is based on pure speculation.
It might even be considered conspiracy theory.
But after sitting through a Forum editorial board meeting with Schafer last week, and reading the tea leaves in the months since the former governor has served as interim president at the University of North Dakota, that is my conclusion.
When asked by another member of the editorial board whether he would like to take over on an interim basis at NDSU if president Dean Bresciani left, Schafer shrugged it off and said he hadn’t thought about it. I think he has. I made some phone calls and sent text messages to others who know Schafer far better than I do and are better informed on the topic of higher education than I am. They think he has, too.
Two things are obvious talking with Schafer these last few months, including at the editorial board meeting:
He is convinced he has done an amazing job at UND (others on campus and around the state aren’t so sure), cleaning up the budget mess left behind by Robert Kelley. He is also convinced the deep cuts he made above and beyond what was required has put UND in a position to be more self-sufficient outside of legislative decision-making. He is absolutely cocksure, without question, that the blueprint he imposed at UND is the right plan — not just for UND but for other schools, too. He is equally convinced the one-time cuts Bresciani made at NDSU, as directed by the university system chancellor, are simply window dressing. Schafer is convinced NDSU is headed for painful, deep cuts and long-term serious problems because Bresciani is not instituting a plan like the one Schafer implemented at UND. There is almost a sense one gets from Schafer that he believes Bresciani is using a shell game to make things look better than they are at NDSU, that he doesn’t believe NDSU was simply in a better financial position than UND to absorb this round of budget pain.
I’ve been wondering for weeks why the narrative out of Grand Forks and from the editorial writers and reporters at the Grand Forks Herald has been: When is the shoe going to drop at NDSU? And why isn’t The Forum reporting it?
I figured out during the editorial board meeting that it’s coming at least partially from Schafer. When I asked him why he seemed convinced NDSU was headed for financial disaster when everybody I’ve talked with at NDSU has consistently said they are in good shape now, but expect pain (and maybe serious pain) when the next round of cuts come, Schafer responded with a bit of agitation.
The Forum is too soft on NDSU, he said, and doesn’t ask the right questions. We should be asking how a major research institution can put off its Grand Challenge Initiative for a year and call it a “cut.” We should be asking how Bresciani gets away with not fixing Dunbar Hall and then goes to the State Board of Higher Education to plead for money for Dunbar Hall in the current budget atmosphere. Schafer questioned whether Bresciani would be sending students and faculty into an unsafe situation and how can he get away with that?
It’s so odd. I’ve asked myself all along why Schafer is so concerned about what’s going on at NDSU. As interim president at UND (or if he was the full-time president at UND), there would be no reason why Schafer need worry about NDSU or continually make references to how he’s handling things at UND compared to “other universities.” (That’s Ed’s way of not saying NDSU directly, when everybody knows he’s referring to NDSU.) He clearly is pushing the narrative that he’s fixed things at UND and things are a mess at NDSU, even if he can offer no direct evidence that things are a mess at NDSU.
Think about it: Schafer publicly preaches collaboration with NDSU and talks about how everybody needs to work together under the system, then in his next breath will tell anybody with an ear or two how the situation borders on disaster in Fargo.
Schafer’s narrative is being parroted by a few others, including blogger Rob Port (who has called for Bresciani’s firing or resignation no less than 4,765 times, to no avail) and most recently by former state legislator John Andrist. Now living in Fargo, Andrist penned a column that called for Bresciani to be fired and replaced by … drum roll … Schafer.
“Send Bresciani down the road, and focus on a team player to replace him — a problem solving business man the likes of Ed Schafer,” Andrist wrote.
What a coincidence. While Schafer is taking a victory lap to editorial boards and using his rediscovered public relevancy to endorse political candidates, a former Republican legislator and card-carrying member of the Good Old Boys Club writes an opinion piece calling for Schafer to take over NDSU.
The timing could not be more perfect. Schafer is a few short weeks away from being the ex-interim president of UND. Mark Kennedy will take over the job July 1. Schafer says he’ll go back to working in the private sector and hanging out at the lake. Not quite as exciting as running one of North Dakota’s two major universities.
Schafer has clearly enjoyed being the Big Man on Campus in Grand Forks. He’s in charge. He’s making decisions. He’s reshaping the budget at UND the way he wanted to, to the point his cutting of the music therapy program miffed some members of the State Board of Higher Education. He’s a one-man wrecking crew with no need to build relationships or take any input. He’s back in the media spotlight. He loves it.
So, one might wonder, what next step might possibly be as exciting as that?
How about taking over NDSU and “saving” it the way he’s “saved” UND? But he can’t do that until the current president is “down the road,” as Andrist wrote.
Clearly, I had some windshield and fishing time last weekend. Time to think. Time to theorize conspiratorially.
So be it. I don’t think I’m far off. And, to repeat, others of far more import than I are thinking the same thing.
Maybe we’re all crazy. But something is strange about Schafer’s continual hammering of Bresciani and NDSU. Methinks he wants the gig.
We’ll have to wait until Bresciani is gone to find out. Ed is hoping for sooner. I’d bet on later.An Anarcho-Capitalist Disney Movie I'd Like to See: Who Paid for The Palace? By Art Carden
WARNING: CONTAINS FROZEN SPOILERS.
My daughter is four years old, which means we consume a lot of Disney Princess merchandise: movies, toys, etc. As one might expect, everyone in our house basically knows every word to every song from Frozen. It’s a great movie, of course, but I’d love to see an anarcho-capitalist take on the Disney Princess narratives. Where did the resources come from that paid for the castle? In one of the songs in Frozen, Anna sings “who knew we had a thousand salad plates?”
Who paid for those thousand salad plates?
Perhaps Anna and Elsa’s parents were the pictures of wise and benevolent rulers, trading protection of property rights for tax revenue, but who had their dreams deferred in order to pay for a thousand salad plates collecting dust in the palace?
The “benevolent ruler” view comes into question toward the end of the movie when there is a royal proclamation that the kingdom of Arendelle will no longer do business with “Weasel Town.” Granted, the Duke of Weselton is a scoundrel, but why should the queen stand between her subjects and willing trading partners in Weselton? How is the edict to be enforced?
I suspect there are much darker histories behind the princes and princesses than Disney (or the original authors of the fairy tales on which Disney movies are based) is willing to admit. What happened before “once upon a time”? How did the royal families get their power? And how, for that matter, would they respond to competing providers of security services in their jurisdictions?
A friend once said a fish doesn’t question the water in which it swims, so we can perhaps expect Anna and Elsa to be oblivious to the (likely) immoral ways in which their ancestors obtained power. One would hope, though, that if they were truly the paragons of virtue the movie makes them out to be, they would seek to make amends for the sins of their fathers post-haste.Swan Song is a massive, 12x12 anthology of comics about music and life and changing the world. We've got over 20 cartoonists from British Columbia and beyond working on full-colour stories to make you smile, cry, or get up and dance.
Prototype only (final design pending)
from "With My Hand on My Head" by Yashaswi Kesanakurthy & Annalise Jensen
from "Dream Is Destiny" by Karen Shangguan
from "Shaman-Hop" by Oliver McTavish-Wisden and Patrick Wong
Swan Song will be Cloudscape's biggest and best book yet. It will be our twelfth anthology in ten years. It's Cloudscape's tenth anniversary! Swan Song will also be the last anthology edited and arranged by members of the Cloudscape board of directors. We want to end on a high note, so this project is a big one. It won't be Cloudscape's last book or even our last anthology. We'll have new teams of editors in the future. The players will change but the band will go on. Whether you've been with us since the beginning or are just joining us now for the first time, however, Swan Song is the book that will stand in for our world tour.
The Cloudscape Comics Society is a non-profit comic collective based out of Vancouver, Canada. Cloudscape seeks to promote and publish independent comic creators in British Columbia.
from "The Songwriter" by K. Kelsay
from "Pier Music" by Sfé R. Monster
from "Radioactive" by Monica Disher
Swan Song will feature a cover by Renee Nault, and the artistic and creative stylings of:
from "Songeater" by Jess Pollard and Simon Roy
from "Going Solo" by Jonathon Dalton and Angela Melick
from "Soundblind" by Anat Rabkin
from "Tegan and Sara" by James Brandi
Our goal for this project is $32,000 Canadian. Which is about $25,000 USD. The biggest portion of that, about 37%, will go to printing the book. It's very big. The second biggest portion (29%) goes towards paying our contributors for the use of their stories. The band would be nothing without the performers. Then comes shipping costs. Supporters of previous Cloudscape projects on Kickstarter will be pleased to know that we've made a deal with a shipping company that will greatly reduce our shipping costs, at least for North America. Nevertheless we've budgeted ourselves 26% for shipping because it's always the part that entails the biggest risk of blowing up. The remainder goes towards Kickstarter and credit card fees, as well as producing the additional rewards listed.
(Prototype Book) Not final product
There's no grant to help fund Swan Song this time, but Cloudscape has earmarked some of our revenue from previous anthologies to bring the total down a little bit as well.
from "Mother's Milk" by Drew Gilmour & Jesse Davidge
from "Llewellyn and the Fairy Bride" by Ed Appleby
from "Mushroom Bard" by Anthony Biondi & Sam Keating
The list on the side has details for all the rewards you can pick from, but here's some pictures to go with a few of them.
Swan Song Out of the Blue
If you like music, you'll like this reward.We have a limited number of vinyl albums we can give away from Sleuth, Cloudscape's favourite Vancouver indie band. Sleuth provided the music for our new Kickstarter video, and Oliver McTavish-Wisden is both a contributor to Swan Song and a member of Sleuth. Sleuth's new album Out of the Blue Period is their best work yet.
Swan Song Deluxe Edition
The Deluxe Edition comes with a few extra treats. The enamel pin with the official Cloudscape coat of arms was designed by Jonathon Dalton for a previous anthology, but now you can own it in pin form. There will also be a set of six post cards with art from Swan Song contributors, and we're really excited to include a set of "gig posters" designed by Kathleen Jacques, creator of Band Vs Band, based on some of the bands that feature in Swan Song stories.
Swan Song Secret Santa
With the "Secret Santa" you get two books delivered. You'll get Swan Song, of course, some time in the new year. But as soon as the Kickstarter finishes we'll ship out a book that SHOULD get there before December 25th. The Secret Santa book will be either 21 Journeys, Mega Fauna, Waterlogged, or Fir Valley by Jason Turner. Any of these books would make a great gift for even a casual comics reader. The mystery book will also go out with a card drawn by Jonathon Dalton. You can ship both books to the same address, or to different addresses, if one of them is a gift.
It's a ballet joke. Get it?
Artist Commission Tiers
We've just added three sets of artist commissions. Each of these comes with the hardcover Swan Song as well as all of the rewards from the Deluxe Edition (the pin, the posters, and the postcards). You can also commission one of our artists to draw a one-of-a-kind illustration on a subject of your choice. The artists who are available for this include Simon Roy, Jesse Davidge, Monica Disher, Anat Rabkin, Jeff Ellis, Hannah Myers, and Jonathon Dalton. Check out the list of contributors above for links to their work.
Cloudscape Library (EP Version)
The EP Library includes a sampling of some of Cloudscape's best and most recent books. Giants of Main Street is our "urban fantasy" anthology; Waterlogged: Tales from the Seventh Sea has stories about pirates, sea monsters, sailors, and mermaids; and Mega Fauna is our all-ages anthology about pets, wild animals, and monsters. Kathleen Gros' Last Night at Wyrmwood High is a graphic novel about a grad prank gone wrong at a magical high school, and Steve LeCouilliard's Una the Blade collects stories about a barbarian single mom in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Jason Turner's graphic novel Fir Valley is about a surreal mystery in a fog-shrouded West Coast suburb, and Sean Karemaker's Feast of Fields is a medium-bending memoir of his mother's childhood in Denmark.
Swan Song Artist Compilation Library
The Compilation Library includes a stack of books from some of our artists' personal ouvres. You get the first two volumes of Sfé R. Monster's celebrated series Eth's Skin, the final two volumes of Angela Melick's auto-bio series Wasted Talent, and the first four volumes of Teach English in Japan by Jeff Ellis and Jonathon Dalton. You also get Anat Rabkin's It Rained Then Too, Jesse Davidge's Mathemagick, Jonathon Dalton's A Mad Tea-Party, and Reetta Linjama's mini-anthology Everyweather Hat. That's a lot of comics! You'll also get this colouring book from Jeri Weaver:
Cloudscape Library (Platinum Version)
Get ready, because this one's a big one. This is the last time Cloudscape will be able to offer every single book we've ever published. Robots, Pine Trees and Broken Hearts, and Epic Canadiana Volume 1 are technically out of print, and Bones of the Coast was so popular last year that it's nearly gone as well. But we've managed to scrape together enough copies to offer a few sets that include these books. You'll also get all of the books from the LP Library, Epic Canadiana Volume 2, plus our older anthologies Historyonics, Funday Sunnies, Exploded View, and 21 Journeys.
EDIT: We managed to track down a few additional copies of Robots, Pine Trees, and Broken Hearts, allowing us to increase the number of sets to ten!
Hey, let's finish this set before we start planning the encore, alright? We'll release some stretch goals as they become unlockable. I'll tell you right now, though, that most of the stretch goals we propose will involve paying our contributors more. We've got to make their well-being our priority.Human computation has come of age in recent times, as an increasing number of projects recruit thousands of volunteers to beaver away on relatively small chunks of a much larger project.
With human computation, there often appears to be a distinction between tasks humans can do and tasks that computers can do, and that boundary remains rather fixed.
Blurring the boundaries
A recent study suggests that this boundary should be blurred however, and that AI and the crowd can work rather effectively together.
The paper proposes a new future for human computation that combines both machine and human intelligence. It paints a vision of a hybrid computational system that is capable of tackling the biggest and most intractable problems currently facing humanity.
They’re thinking of the kind of ‘wicked problems’ that have for so long defeated mankind and that tend to defy more traditional ways of doing things.
A hybrid approach
The authors believe that a well designed AI can significantly enhance our cognitive abilities and that when working together we are capable of forming highly capable collaborative networks.
For instance, AI may be able to effectively manage a crowd of human contributors so that the pool of participants is effectively coordinated.
For instance, such approaches are already being tested, albeit in small ways, in projects such as YardMap. The researchers believe however that it can certainly be scaled up, especially in areas such as medical research.
This is an area where human computation has already achieved substantial results. For instance, the We Cure ALZ project uses crowd based microtasking, and the team hope to shrink treatment discovery times from decades to a few years.
Suffice to say, with such a new area it has a long way to go, but there are strong signs that it could achieve significant results. I’ve already written about the use of AI ‘managers’ in companies such as Uber and it will be interesting to see if it can cross over into scientific domains.The June issue of Shueisha's Jump SQ. magazine is revealing on May 2 that the 20th compiled book volume of Kazue Katō's Blue Exorcist manga will bundle an anime DVD on October 4. The anime will adapt the title story from the Ao no Exorcist: Spy Game short story collection novel (seen right), which shipped on March 3. The story centers on Renzo Shima. Aya Yajima wrote the collection.
Shueisha is also publishing a Kazue Kato Art Collection IROIRO book on May 2.
The Blue Exorcist: Kyoto Saga ( Ao no Exorcist: Kyoto Fujō Ō-hen ) sequel television anime adapted the "Kyoto Impure King Arc" that started in the fifth volume of Kazue Katō's original Blue Exorcist manga. The anime premiered in January. Aniplex of America licensed the series, and streamed the anime on Crunchyroll, Daisuki, and Anime Strike.MONTREAL—Bombardier plans to spend more than $1 billion to develop two new luxury business jets, more than double what some in the industry had expected. The price tag includes capital expenditures to potentially expand existing facilities, although a manufacturing plan hasn’t been completed.
Bombardier Aerospace's Global Family jets Global 7000 and Global 8000 are shown in this illustration released on Oct. 16, 2010. ( THE CANADIAN PRESS )
Steve Ridolfi, president of Bombardier Business Aircraft, said the high program cost reflects the fact that the existing Global Express planes have undergone some major changes for the luxury jet update. “They have a significant amount of change to them. There is a new transonic wing, there is a new engine so those are the things that add to the program costs,” he said in an interview from the National Business Aviation Association convention in Atlanta. Guy Hachey, president of the aerospace division, had updated analysts Tuesday on the program costs.
Article Continued Below
Analysts had expected Bombardier’s plans would cost about $400 million to $500 million (U.S.). A brand new aircraft was estimated to cost $1 billion (U.S.). The Montreal-based aircraft and train maker announced Saturday that it will offer two Global aircraft that combine longer distances with improved fuel efficiency and increased comfort. The new Global 7000 and 8000 will be available for delivery in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Analysts had said the aircraft manufacturer should have adequate financial resources to develop the new planes since development of its CSeries and Learjet 85 programs will be winding down as the new Global program is ramping up.
Richard Aboulafia of the Teal Group said he’s surprised by the magnitude of the program costs. “It’s expensive but it’s a welcome commitment to the product,” he said from Atlanta.
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Aboulafia said the key question is whether the program will be impacted by delays to the commercial CSeries program. “If by some miracle the CSeries happens on time, it’s a piece of cake. Most likely it will be a year or two late, which could push this out.” But Bombardier said it conducted financial “stress tests” to ensure it could handle the new program even if other programs such as the CSeries ran into delays. “We feel fairly confident it would not affect these programs,” Ridolfi added. Technical requirements, rather than financial or development issues, are behind the 2016 and 2017 delivery |
named him the nation's best college president in 2010. He certainly is among the nation's most visible.
Did these clear-cut reasons why Ohio State made Gee the highest-paid college president in the country stop Forde from using Gee's past off-hand remarks as a vehicle to push his opinions? No, because Forde spits ether, no matter how ugly:
And when it came to greedily chasing athletic revenue via corporate raiding of other conferences – to the detriment of the overall stability and health of college sports – many were willing partners with their ego-driven commissioners. Gee's comments to the Athletics Council championing a "predatory" approach to Big Ten expansion illustrate fully where he stood on that issue.
There's so much ownage in this quote I won't be surprised if Gee retires again later today.
How dare Gee champion a "predatory" approach to Big Ten expansion! How dare he try to proactively navigate the seas of billions of dollars in network TV telecast money!
How dare the president of a conference's flagship university advocate something benefiting the conference to which that university belongs!
Why doesn't he advocate a passive approach to Big Ten expansion? That way the SEC and its cohorts can pick apart the B1G's corpse a few years down the road.
To what depths do the horrors of the Gee administration delve? Matt Hayes, senior writer at one of America's premiere investigational outlets, Sporting News, answered this question with the logical opinion Ohio State is "the most blindly loyal and recklessly protective culture in college sports."
Move over, Jerry Sandusky, there's a new Sheriff in town!
It was only a joke. It was just a lie. It was only a gold pants trinket.
The world is too sensitive, you know. Like no one has ever lied at their job. Like players shouldn’t be able to sell something given to them by the university. And on and on and on. Until, that is, someone in the most blindly loyal, recklessly protective culture of any college campus in America decides enough is enough. Then they just cut you loose and let you bleed.
Who amongst us can't remember what a blackeye it was for Ohio State when Gee delivered an impassioned defense of Terrelle Pryor's intrinsic right to sell memorabilia given to him by the university?
I was on a 72-hour bender like Matt Hayes when this quote dropped. I'm not sure if it happened, but the Hague should check it out because it sounds like Gordon Gee may have committed a war crime.
Also, is there any way we could get an identity on this "someone" who cut Gee loose to watch him bleed out? I would hate to see Ohio State go the route of many developing countries by replacing one bloodthirsty autocrat with another.
If this "someone" can pull strings like that, are we sure we've even begun to unravel the enormity of Ohio State's crimes?
Gee has been offending people and embarrassing the university for years. His latest insults of Notre Dame, Catholics, Louisville, Kentucky, the SEC, Bret Bielema—have I missed anyone?—finally did him in. Prior to that, he was the weird uncle who raised a ton of money, so the university put up with him. Tressel had become so beloved and so successful at Ohio State, he was as untouchable as Woody Hayes. That’s right, the same Woody Hayes who wasn’t fired—despite legendary antics—until he was caught punching a player on national television.
Get 'em, Hayes! Of course, Jim Tressel, a man unceremoniously fired, was as untouchable as Woody Hayes, another man unceremoniously fired.
What shining examples of unchecked power run rampant in college sports: Two dudes who were fired for their misdeeds!
This piece is heading to its thunderous conclusion.
Go ahead and make fun of the guy who killed trees in Alabama. Or the Tennessee fans who named their kids Peyton. No one does crazy like Ohio State. More than 16 months ago, Ohio State welcomed new coach Urban Meyer with open arms, despite the odd and controversial way he walked away from another mega program. Blind loyalty, all right. Makes you wonder what Meyer will have to do to eventually get run.
Ohio State fans shouldn't make fun of a man who poisoned a grove of trees due to a backwater college football rivalry, no sir; not when their school employs Gee, a man who kills people.
They also shouldn't make fun of the president of the University of Alabama's defense of racial segregation. Gee told a joke, whereas Robert Witt spoke from his gentile heart. It's that Southern sincerity Northerners know nothing about.
Ohio State fans were foolish in welcoming Urban Meyer. We thought we were getting a young, charismatic coach with national titles.
It was much darker than that. Will Urban sacrifice a virgin in the bowels of the Shoe to gain acceptance into the tight-lipped crime family running rampant at Ohio State?
Only time will tell.
... When all this criticism against Gee is added-up, who isn't awestruck by the deep critical thinking required to amass such a sweeping indictment?
I am a simple-minded hypocrite incapable of getting out of the way of my self-righteousness and preconceived opinions.
That's why E. Gordon Gee had to be shown the door.Today the ACLU announced a settlement with prison officials in New Jersey that will restore the right of an ordained Pentecostal minister to preach to his fellow prisoners.
Howard Thompson, Jr., incarcerated at the New Jersey State Prison (NJSP) since 1986, had preached at weekly worship services and taught bible study classes for more than a decade when, in 2007, without warning or justification, NJSP officials banned prisoners from preaching, even when done under the supervision of prison staff. The ban deprived Thompson's fellow prisoners of his religious instruction, which chaplain staff had previously encouraged and believed had a positive influence. Thompson was ordained as a minister in 2000 by the prison's Protestant chaplain.
In response to the ban, the ACLU and ACLU of New Jersey filed a lawsuit on Thompson's behalf last November, asserting that NJSP officials had unconstitutionally infringed upon Thompson's right to freely practice his religion. Today's settlement will allow Thompson to resume preaching at Christian worship services and teaching bible study classes.
This case is just one of the ACLU's many cases defending the right to religious exercise and expression. You can read about the many, many more cases on our defending religion page.Anyone tearing their hair out trying to answer how it is that this great Keynesian experiment of a nation managed to sneek by with so little new incremental debt over the past month can now relax. As Zero Hedge reported yesterday, the US closed out Fiscal 2010-2011 with a $95 billion surge in debt in one day brining the total to just under $14.8 trillion. That, however was not nearly enough to settle all outstanding debt, and on the first day of the next fiscal year, Timmy G added another $47 billion in debt, to have a closing balance of $14.837 trillion on the first day of the 2011-2012 fiscal year. In other words, in just the past two work days, America has technically settled a whopping $142 billion in debt. There was a time when a year was needed to issue this much debt. Then, a month. Now, we are officialy down to two days. What is ironic is that the recently expanded debt ceiling of $15.194 trillion has just $400 billion of additional dry powder. At this rate, it won't last the US until the end of the calendar year.
Today's Debt summary:
And Yesterday:Tokenomics 101 : The Emerging Field of Token Economics
The Artists Consortium Model — Liga de Artistas (LIGA)
Breaker Blocked Unblock Follow Following Oct 31, 2017
Zach LeBeau, CEO of SingularDTV
Token economics — tokenomics — is the study of tokenized ecosystems and the various economic models tokenized ecosystems can administer.
SingularDTV has developed and is launching over a dozen different economic models for artists and creators with the aim of creating a mesh-web of tokenized ecosystems to ignite a sustainable, decentralized entertainment economy.
Model 4 of 12 — The Artist Consortium Model
One of my favorite tokenized ecosystems here at SingularDTV and the focus of this article, is our 4th token model, what we’re calling the Artist Consortium Model, or the AC model. Puerto Rico is the inspiration for this model and our experiment begins on November 12, 2017 with the launch of Liga de Artistas and the LIGA tokenized ecosystem.
The AC model has been devised for geographical regions that contain a diverse and active community of artists and creators but lacks a prosperous and sustainable entertainment infrastructure. It is through the AC model that tokenomics intends to build sustainable entertainment infrastructures in such regions. Liga de Artistas and Puerto Rico is the first test case to prove such tokenomic models could work for this purpose.
Puerto Rico’s creative scene is prolific, but like most places the infrastructure to sustain its active artists is non-existent. The AC model intends to leverage the creative talent and expression of Puerto Rico and through specific tokenomics ignite sustainability for the purpose of exporting its leveraged expression around the world. In the case of Liga de Artistas it’s to reach Spanish speaking audiences outside of Puerto Rico. To have a truly sustainable entertainment economy in Puerto Rico, amidst all the economic turmoil there, would be an achievement that could help lead to a Universal Basic Income model. If proven in Puerto Rico, various AC models can be established around the world with particular focus on Central America, South America and Africa.
Breaking Down the Tokenomics
Let’s use Liga de Artistas as the example for breaking down the tokenomics of the Artist Consortium model.
STEP 1: Generate a Tokenized Ecosystem w/ Tokit
Tokit generates 20,000,000 LIGA tokens.
STEP 2: Set Token Designations
10,000,000 LIGA are designated as Project Creation tokens. The other 10,000,000 LIGA are designated as Economic Sustainability tokens. These two designations of tokens are entangled mirrors of each other with different purposes.
STEP 3: Establish Fund
From the Project Creation tokens we launch the “Year 1 LIGA Fund”. This Year 1 Fund — and all subsequent annual or bi-annual funds — will fuel project creation and help grow a prosperous entertainment infrastructure in Puerto Rico.
STEP 4: Power the Fund, Create a Reserve
1,000,000 LIGA Project Creation tokens are dropped into this fund. At the same time the other 9,000,000 LIGA designated for Project Creation are put in “Reserve”. The same actions are mirrored with the Economic Sustainability tokens. 1,000,000 LIGA Economic Sustainability tokens are dropped into the Year 1 Fund, and the other 9,000,000 LIGA Economic Sustainability tokens are dropped into the Reserve.
STEP 5: Set the Theoretical Market Cap
The value is set at 1 LIGA = $1 USD equivalent of ETH. This gives the overall tokenized ecosystem a theoretical marketcap of $20,000,000 of ETH and the Year 1 Fund a theoretical value of $1,000,000 USD of ETH.
STEP 6: Private/Public Launch
The 1,000,000 LIGA representing the Year 1 Fund is launched either privately or to the public. The LIGA tokenized ecosystem, if it performs a successful launch, will be the recipient of $1,000,000 USD worth of ETH.
It is this ETH that will be used for Project Creation to begin the 5 year plan to ignite and build a sustainable entertainment economy in Puerto Rico.
Growth & Concentration of Value
This $1,000,000 USD of ETH will be used for Project Creation. All projects created will be placed on the LIGA distribution channel powered by EtherVision. In this case, artists submit proposals to LIGA requesting funds to create their projects. Currently this process is manual but will be automated by smart contracts via a DAO-type architecture in the near future.
It’s important for these projects to be distributable on the LIGA channel, meaning digitally disseminated forms of art and entertainment are preferable. Please note that it is also preferable and in the best interests of LIGA that all artists distribute their content exclusively on the LIGA channel. If artists are unwilling, they may not be ideal candidates. This is because the more value an artist puts into the LIGA economic model in the form of Intellectual Property (IP), the more the artist can theoretically benefit from an increase in that value. Funds are used for the creation of IP. This IP sets value. This value — IP rights and revenue/royalties flow — is embedded in the LIGA token. Audiences interact with this value on LIGA’s distribution channel. Continued creation and placement of content on the LIGA channel is essential to attracting, maintaining and growing an audience-base. Audience interaction is a crucial component to the operation of LIGA’s tokenized ecosystem. The journey to economic sustainability requires a continued commitment of adding value to the LIGA channel rather than utilizing alternative, centralized legacy distribution methods.
Let’s say one of the artists submitting a proposal to LIGA’s Year 1 Fund is the music group International Dub Ambassadors (Int. Dub Amb.) You can sample a little bit of what they’re up to here, “Dr. Dubenstein meets International Dub Ambassadors Vol.2”.
Int. Dub Amb. are looking for $100,000 to produce their next album and go on tour in Asia. They’re perfect candidates because they’re turned on, super talented and believe in decentralization and the LIGA distribution channel. Liga de Artistas gives them $100,000 of ETH for their plans. This $100,000 of ETH will generate the IP they will place on the LIGA channel, which includes a new album, a tour movie of Japan and South Korea and a concert video of their biggest show. Additionally, SingularDTV’s live ticketing payment system is ready so all live concerts can be paid for with the LIGA token and cycled through the blockchain efficiently. A big value add to the LIGA channel.
At the same time Int. Dub Amb. receive $100,000 USD of ETH for project creation to generate their IP, they also receive the equal amount of Economic Sustainability tokens, 100,000. This 100,000 is a representation of the value it took to generate their IP (rights and revenue share) in the LIGA tokenized ecosystem. It cost LIGA $100,000 USD of ETH to produce those rights, therefore International Dub Ambassadors receives 100,000 LIGA tokens to represent those rights. Also, having 100,000 LIGA Economic Sustainability tokens incentivizes Int. Dub Amb. to continue contributing creatively to the LIGA channel.
In addition, the point of the Year 1 Fund is to select scores of artists and projects that can be placed on the LIGA distribution channel. Let’s say 20–30 projects are created and placed on the LIGA channel thanks to the Year 1 Fund. Theoretically, this could add significant value to the LIGA token. When this happens the tokens held by Int. Dub Amb. increases in value. Perhaps by the time the Year 2 Fund comes around, the LIGA token is worth $2 USD per token instead of $1 USD per token, pure speculation. This value increase could be because the LIGA channel charges users either a subscription fee or a per transaction fee and all revenue generated by the LIGA channel is embedded in the LIGA token, theoretically generating more demand for the LIGA token. Please note that marketing prowess is also an important part of this equation and made easier by compounding the social media footprint of all the LIGA artists.
The “Year 2 Fund” could either double in size — because in Year 2 LIGA is worth $2 USD per token, for example. The Year 2 Fund could raise $2,000,000 USD of ETH for that year’s fund, or alternatively use half the tokens to achieve the same $1,000,000 USD of ETH as the Year 1 Fund. It is the author’s opinion that aggressive growth is necessary and that the $/ETH amount of the Funds should increase year by year.
By Year 3, perhaps there are hundreds of pieces of content on the LIGA channel and it is experienced by scores of thousands of people around the world. The LIGA token is worth $4 USD per token. The Int. Dub Amb., if they haven’t let go of their 100,000 tokens that represent their IP, would be worth 4x what they were in Year 1. They could liquidate their own tokens to fuel more of their plans, however, this would burn their portion of the IP generated from their initial project creation. Instead, they are encouraged to submit proposals and draw from the yearly funds for the purpose of new project creation. They are encouraged to hold their IP tokens for their own private purposes, preferably to improve their quality of life and that of their family, friends and other like-minded artists they interact with. Alternatively, they can hold their LIGA to receive revenue/royalties in perpetuity.
Additionally, Int. Dub Amb. could also reach a place of intense interaction with their fanbase and the fanbase of LIGA. Perhaps a large % of the LIGA audience is coming to the LIGA channel to interact with their content, generating revenue for the channel and all that hold LIGA tokens. Int. Dub Amb could either launch their own tokenized ecosystem the “DUB token”, for example, if they feel their audience can bring the DUB economy to sustainability, or the LIGA tokenized ecosystem administrators/DAO could reward them with additional LIGA tokens — both Project Creation and the equal amount of Economic Sustainability tokens.
Ultimately, by the time the Year 5 Fund comes around, it is hoped that a massive movement of creation and a sustainable entertainment infrastructure has been ignited that brings prosperity to the artists and in turn the island of Puerto Rico.
We look forward to the launch of the Liga de Artistas tokenized ecosystem (LIGA), on November 12, 2017.
Zach LeBeau, CEO of SingularDTV
SingularDTV: Twitter // Facebook // LinkedIn // Slack // Reddit(If you like this, you should check out my cartoons on YouTube and my mailing list.)
Computer science is what enables programming, but it is possible to do a lot of programming without understanding the computer science concepts underlying the process of computation. This isn’t always a bad thing. When we program we work at a much higher level of abstraction. When we drive a car, we only concern ourselves with two or three pedals, a gearshift, and a steering wheel. You can safely operate a car without having any clear idea of how it works. However, if you want to operate a car at the very limits of its capabilities, you need to know a lot more about automobiles than just the three pedals, gearshift and steering wheel.
The same is true of programming. Much mundane everyday work that can be accomplished with little or no understanding of computer science. You don’t need to understand computational theory to build a “contact us” form in PHP. However, if you plan to write code that requires serious computation, you are going to need to understand a bit more about how computation works under the hood.
The purpose of this article is to provide some fundamental background for computation. If there is interest I may follow up with some more advanced topics, but right now I want to look at the logic behind one of the simplest abstract computational devices–a finite state machine.
Finite State Machine
A finite state machine is a mathematical abstraction used to design algorithms. In simple terms, a state machine will read a series of inputs. When it reads an input it will switch to a different state. Each state specifies which state to switch for a given input. This sounds complicated but it is really quite simple.
Imagine a device that reads a long piece of paper. For every inch of paper there is a single letter printed on it–either the letter a or the letter b.
As the state machine reads each letter it changes state. Here is a very simple state machine.
The circles are “states” that the machine can be in. The arrows are the transitions. So if you are in state s and read an a you’ll transition to state q. If you read a b, you’ll stay in state s.
So if we start on s and read the paper tape above from left to right, we will read the a and move to state q. Then we’ll read a b and move back. Another b will keep us on s followed by an a which moves us back to the q state. Simple enough, but whats the point?
Well it turns out that you can run a tape through the state machine and once it is done tell something about the sequence of letters by examining the state you end up on. In our simple state machine above, if we end on s, the tape ends with the letter b, if we end on q, the tape ends with the letter a.
This may sound pointless, but there are an awful lot of problems that can be solved with this type of approach. A very simple example would be to determine if a page of HTML contains these tags in this order:
<html> <head> </head> <body> </body> </html>
The state machine can move to state that shows it has read the html tag, loop until it gets to the head tag, loop until it gets to the head close tag, etc. If it successfully makes it to the final state, then you have those particular tags in the right order.
Finite state machines can also be used to represent the mechanics of a parking meter, pop machine, automated gas pump and all kinds of other things.
Deterministic Finite State Machine
The state machines we’ve looked at so far are all deterministic state machines. From any state there is only one transition for any allowed input. In other words there aren’t two paths leading out of a state when you read the letter a. At first this sounds silly to even make this distinction.
What good is a set of decisions if the same input can result in moving to more than one state? You can’t tell a computer, if x==true then execute doSomethingBig or execute doSomethingSmall, can you?
Well you kind of can with a state machine. The output of a state machine is its final state. It goes through all its processing and then the final state is read and then an action is taken. A state machine doesn’t do anything as it moves from state to state. It processes and then when it gets to the end, the state is read and something external triggers the desired action (dispenses a soda can, etc.). This is an important concept when it comes to non-deterministic finite state machines.
Non-deterministic Finite State Machine
Non-deterministic finite state machines are finite state machines where a given input from a particular state can lead to more than one different state. For example, lets say we want to build a finite state machine that can recognize strings of letters that start with a and are then followed by zero or more occurrences of the letter b or zero or more occurrences of the letter c terminated by the next letter of the alphabet. Valid strings would be:
abbbbbbbbbc
abbbc
acccd
acccccd
ac (zero occurrences of b)
ad (zero occurrences of c)
So it will recognize the letter a followed by zero or more of the same letter of b or c followed by the next letter of the alphabet. A very simple way to represent this is with a state machine that looks like the one below, where a final state of t means that the string was accepted and matches the pattern.
Do you see the problem? From starting point s, we don’t know which path to take. If we read the letter a, we don’t know whether to go to the state q or r. There are a few ways to solve this problem. One is by back tracking. You simply take all the possible paths and ignore or back out of the ones where you get stuck.
This is basically how most of the chess playing computers work. They look at all the possibilities and all the possibilities of those possibilities and choose the path that gives them the greatest number of advantages over their opponent.
The other option is to convert the non-deterministic machine into a deterministic machine. One of the interesting attributes of a non-deterministic machine is that there exists an algorithm to turn any non-deterministic machine into a deterministic one. However, it is often much more complicated. Fortunately for us, the example above is only slightly more complicated. In fact this one is simple enough we can transform it into a deterministic machine in our head without the aid of a formal algorithm.
The machine below is a deterministic version of the non-deterministic machine above. In the machine below, a final state of t or v is reached by any string that is accepted by the machine.
The non-deterministic model has four states and six transitions. The deterministic model has 6 states, 10 transitions and two possible final states. That isn’t that much more, but the complexity usually grows exponentially and a moderately sized non-deterministic machine can produce an absolutely huge deterministic machine.
Regular Expression
If you have done any type of programming, you’ve probably encountered regular expressions. Regular expressions and finite state machines are functionally equivalent. Anything you can accept or match with a regular expression can be accepted or matched with a state machine. For example the pattern above could be matched with:
a(b*c|c*d)
Regular expressions and finite state machines also have the same limitations. In particular they both can only match or accept patterns that can be handled with finite memory. So what type of patterns can’t they match? Lets say you want to only match strings of a and b, where there are a number of a’s followed by an equal number of b’s. Or n a’s followed by n b’s where n is some number. Examples would be:
ab
aabb
aaaaaabbbbbb
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb
At first this looks like an easy job for a finite state machine. The problem is that you’ll quickly run out of states or you’ll have to assume an infinite number of states–at which point it is no longer a finite state machine. Lets say you create a finite state machine that can accept up to 20 a’s followed by 20 b’s. That works fine until you get a string of 21 a’s followed by 21 b’s at which point you will need to rewrite your machine to handle a longer string. For any string you can recognize, there is one just a little bit longer that your machine can’t recognize because it runs out of memory.
This is known as the Pumping Lemma which basically says, if your pattern has a section that can be repeated like the one above then the pattern is not regular. In other words neither a regular expression nor a finite state machine can be constructed that will recognize all the strings that do match the pattern.
If you look carefully, you’ll notice that this type of pattern where every a has a matching b, looks very similar to HTML where within any pair of tags you may have any number of other matching pairs of tags. So while you may be able to use a regular expression or finite state machine to recognize if a page of HTML has the html, head and body elements in the correct order, you can’t use a regular expression to tell if an entire HTML page is valid or not because HTML is not a regular pattern.
Turing Machines
So how do you recognize non-regular patterns? There is a theoretical device that is similar to a state machine called a Turing Machine. It is similar to a finite state machine that it has a paper strip that it reads, but a Turing Machine can erase and write on the paper tape. Explaining a Turing Machine will take more space that we have here, but there are a few important points relevant to our discussion of finite state machines and regular expressions.
Turing Machines are computationally complete and anything that can be computed can be computed on a Turing Machine. Since a Turing Machine can write as well as read from the paper tape, it is not limited to a finite number of states. The paper tape can be assumed to be infinite in length. Obviously, actual computers don’t have an infinite amount of memory, but they contain enough memory that you don’t hit the limit for the type of problems they process.
Turing Machines give us an imaginary mechanical device that lets us visualize and understand how the computational process works. It is particularly useful in understanding the limits of computation. If there is interest I’ll do another article on Turing Machines in the future.
Why does this matter?
So whats the point? How is this going to help you create that next PHP form? Regardless of their limitations state machines are a very central concept to computing. In particular, the recognition that for any non-deterministic state machine you can design, there exists a deterministic state machine that does the same thing. This is a very key point because it means you can design your algorithm in whichever way is the easiest to think about. Once you have a proper algorithm, you can convert it into whatever form is most efficient.
The understanding that finite state machines and regular expressions are functionally equivalent opens up some incredibly interesting uses for regular expression engines–particularly when it comes to creating business rules that can be changed without recompiling a system.
A foundation in computer science allows you to take a problem X that you don’t know how to solve and reason, “I don’t know how to solve X, but I do know how to solve Y and I know how to convert a solution for Y into a solution for X. Therefore I now know how to solve X.”
(If you like this article, you might enjoy my YouTube channel where I create an occasional video or cartoon about some aspect of creating software. I also have a mailing list for people who would like an occasional email when I produce something new.)There is a very detailed account published in Rogaland Avis on a decade's worth of pooping on a Norwegian golf course. Beginning in 2005, groundskeeper Kenneth Tennfjord claims a mystery person has been pooping in the holes at the Stavanger Golf Club course with little to no remorse, and this person hasn't stopped since.
UPI also has a writeup about the Poop Bandit and provides some important answers to burning questions:
Do we know the person's gender? Not 100 percent, but the assumption is it is a man "because the poos are too massive to be from a woman."
Does he have a favorite hole in which to poop? "He has a couple of favorite holes."
Does he have a regular schedule? "He poos only on weekdays. On weekends I have never found poo on the golf course."
Has the club done anything to counteract this pooping menace? Yes, "the club installed high-powered spotlights to discourage the defecation, but the poop-etrator disabled them."
Did it work? No. "He climbed up a tree next to the lights and wriggled far out on a branch and dismantled the spotlights. How he managed the feat without electrocuting himself or falling is a riddle."
Does anyone have any theories, or possible motives? "Our idea is that it could be someone who, for unknown reasons, hates the game of golf. Alternatively, the person may have a fetish or suffer from mental problems," said the course's managing director.
Is there perhaps some beautiful imagery about the whole pooping-on-a-golf-course-for-a-decade thing? "In the early morning dew we observed bicycle tracks on the course. Footsteps showed that he had done his business, and the bicycle tracks disappeared back the way they came."
h/t SB NationI had a project where the first step was to merge data from three files into one. I have used the word "merge" deliberately to differentiate it from "copy". With a "merge" I needed to update specific fields if a record is present in the output file with a matching key. If there is no matching key record I add a new record. I have done this many times in RPG, this time I wanted to try something different, like SQL.
After searching IBM's KnowledgeCenter I discovered the MERGE SQL statement. I do not know when it was released, but searching in the different versions of the KnowledgeCenter I can find it in the versions for IBM i 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3, but I cannot find it in the earlier releases. The MERGE does exactly what I want it to, it will update on a match and insert when there is no match.
Before I explain the MERGE I need to show the three files I will be using in this example. The files are named:
FILE1 FILE2 FILE3
They all contain one common field, that I will be using to match with, and two unique fields.
Not all of the files have the records with the same matching key, see below.
Key Present in FILE1 FILE2 FILE3 1 Y Y Y 2 Y Y 3 Y Y 4 Y 5 Y 6 Y
The DDS and the content of for FILE1 looks like this:
01 A R FILE1R 02 A F1KEY1 3A 03 A F1F1 5A 04 A F1F2 10A F1KEY1 F1F1 F1F2 1 AAAAA BBBBBBBBBB 2 CCCCC DDDDDDDDDD 6 EEEEE FFFFFFFFFF
FILE2 looks like:
01 A R FILE2R 02 A F2KEY1 R REFFLD(F1KEY1 FILE1) 03 A F2F1 10A 04 A F2F2 5P 0 F1KEY1 F2F1 F2F2 1 GGGGGGGGGG 1 2 HHHHHHHHHH 2 3 IIIIIIIIII 3 4 JJJJJJJJJJ 4
The reason the field F2KEY1 shows F1KEY1 when looking at the data is because the REFFLD copies the attributes of F1KEY1 from FILE1. As F1KEY1 in FILE1 does not have a column heading, COLHDG, the field name is used.
FILE3 :
01 A R FILE3R 02 A F3KEY1 R REFFLD(F1KEY1 FILE1) 03 A F3F1 7P 2 04 A F3F2 5A F1KEY1 F3F1 F3F2 1 5.00 KKKKK 3 6.00 LLLLL 5 7.00 MMMMM
I decided to put my MERGE into a RPG program, which starts like this:
01 exec sql SET OPTION COMMIT = *NONE ; 02 exec sql DROP TABLE QTEMP.TABLE1 ; 03 exec sql CREATE TABLE QTEMP.TABLE1 04 (KEY_COLUMN FOR "KEYFLD", 05 FIRST,SECOND,THIRD,FOURTH,FIFTH,SIXTH) 06 AS (SELECT A.F1KEY1,A.F1F1,A.F1F2, 07 B.F2F1,B.F2F2, 08 C.F3F1,C.F3F2 09 FROM FILE1 A CROSS JOIN 10 FILE2 B CROSS JOIN 11 FILE3 C 12 WHERE A.F1KEY1 = B.F2KEY1 13 AND A.F1KEY1 = C.F3KEY1) 14 DEFINITION ONLY 15 INCLUDING COLUMN DEFAULTS 16 RCDFMT TABLE1R ;
Line 1: I unless I need commitment control I always add this option into my SQLRPGLE programs.
Line 2: It may be unnecessary to delete a file in QTEMP, especially when the program is running in batch. This program was not, and I ran it repeatedly changing my program. I wanted to delete the table to ensure that the one that was being created would be the way I wanted it and it would be empty. If I use a CREATE OR REPLACE on line 3 the table would not be deleted and the data remain within it.
Lines 3 – 16: I am creating my output table in a similar way to using REFFLD in DDS, defining the attributes of the columns to be the same as the fields in the files used.
Line 3: When creating a table you use the CREATE TABLE statement followed by which library you want it in and its name. I have decided to use "SQL naming convention", therefore the library and file names are separated by a period (. ).
Line 4: I have decided to give the first column a long name, KEY_COLUMN, as well as a short name, KEYFLD. I can use either name for the column in this program.
Line 5: These are the names of the other columns.
Lines 6 – 8: I am using a SELECT statement to give the "referenced" fields that will be used to define the columns on lines 4 and 5.
Lines 9 – 11: These are the files those fields are contained within. I have used a CROSS JOIN here I am just creating an empty table, therefore, I don't have to bother with trying to match records by using some other kind of join.
Lines 12 and 13: This defines how the three files will be joined.
Line 14: I only want to define the table, in other words create an empty table, so I use the DEFINTION ONLY.
Line 15: I have found that by not including the from field defaults did cause me errors when inserting into the table. By including INCLUDING COLUMN DEFAULTS means that if a column is not defined in an INSERT the default value, taken from the DDS field, is used.
Line 16: I have given the table a record format name. I may, at some time in the future, decide to read this file in a RPG program, and by having a record format name removes the need for me to use a RENAME in the file definition.
At the end of this code I have an empty table ready to be filled. Let me start by inserting data from FILE1.
17 exec sql INSERT INTO QTEMP.TABLE1 (KEY_COLUMN,FIRST,SECOND) SELECT * FROM FILE1 ;
When that has finished the output table contains:
KEY_COLUMN FIRST SECOND THIRD FOURTH FIFTH SIXTH 1 AAAAA BBBBBBBBBB 0.00 2 CCCCC DDDDDDDDDD 0.00 6 EEEEE FFFFFFFFFF 0.00
Let me now merge the data from FILE2 into the output table:
18 exec sql MERGE INTO QTEMP.TABLE1 A USING FILE2 B 19 ON A.KEY_COLUMN = B.F2KEY1 20 WHEN MATCHED THEN 21 UPDATE SET A.THIRD = B.F2F1, 22 A.FOURTH = B.F2F2 23 WHEN NOT MATCHED THEN 24 INSERT (KEY_COLUMN,THIRD,FOURTH |
Sidcup Arts & AEC, Alma Rd, Sidcup DA14 4ED
Bookbinding – £210
25th September 2014 – 28th May 2015 (28 weeks, 1 day/week)
London
The Institute
http://www.hgsi.ac.uk/departments/search-courses/?keyword=bookbinding
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 020 8829 4229
Tutor: Chris Damp
Bishop Douglass School, Hamilton Road, East Finchley, London, N2 0SQ
BOOKBINDING T1 16 Sep 2014 – £170-£190
BOOKBINDING T2 13 Jan 2015 – £170-£190
BOOKBINDING T3 21 Apr 2015 – £170-£190
London Centre for Book Arts
http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/london-centre-for-book-arts-2714163072
email: [email protected]rts.org
Tutor: Kate Rochester
London Centre for Book Arts, E3 2NQ London
Introduction to Book Binding – £85
Saturday 18 October 2014, 11am-5pm
Introduction to Book Binding: Hardback Binding – £85
Saturday 25 October 2014, 11am-6pm
Morley College
http://www.morleycollege.ac.uk/courses/search?keywords=bookbinding
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 020 7928 8501
Tutor: Young Sin Kim | David Mills
Bookbinding Beginners – £100 – £140
18 Sep 2014 – 23 Oct 2014
6 Nov 2014 – 11 Dec 2014
15 Jan 2015 – 19 Feb 2015
26 Feb 2015 – 26 Mar 2015
16 Apr 2015 – 21 May 2015
4 Jun 2015 – 2 Jul 2015
Bookbinding: Beginners – £62 – £197
17 Sep 2014 – 22 Oct 2014
17 Sep 2014 – 22 Oct 2014
5 Nov 2014 – 10 Dec 2014
5 Nov 2014 – 10 Dec 2014
14 Jan 2015 – 18 Feb 2015
14 Jan 2015 – 18 Feb 2015
25 Feb 2015 – 25 Mar 2015
25 Feb 2015 – 25 Mar 2015
15 Apr 2015 – 24 Jun 2015
15 Apr 2015 – 20 May 2015
3 Jun 2015 – 1 Jul 2015
Bookbinding: Intermediate & Advanced – £62 – £197
18 Sep 2014 – 23 Oct 2014
18 Sep 2014 – 23 Oct 2014
6 Nov 2014 – 11 Dec 2014
6 Nov 2014 – 11 Dec 2014
15 Jan 2015 – 19 Feb 2015
15 Jan 2015 – 19 Feb 2015
26 Feb 2015 – 26 Mar 2015
26 Feb 2015 – 26 Mar 2015
16 Apr 2015 – 25 Jun 2015
16 Apr 2015 – 21 May 2015
4 Jun 2015 – 2 Jul 2015
The City Literary Institute
http://www.citylit.ac.uk/courses/…/Bookbinding…/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 020 7492 2700 / 2703
Tutor: various
The City Literary Institute, Keeley Street, Covent Garden, London WC2B 4BA
There are too many bookbinding courses available to list here. Please check the City Literary Institute website (above) for more info. Beginner – advance courses available.
University of the Arts London
http://www.arts.ac.uk/lcc/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 0207 514 2111
Tutor: Jane Drinkwater
London College of Communication, Elephant & Castle, London SE1 6SB
Creative Bookbinding for Artists and Designers – £425 (3-day course)
01/11/2014 – 15/11/2014
16/12/2014 – 18/12/2014
08/04/2015 – 10/04/2015
29/07/2015 – 31/07/2015
Bookbinding for Artists and Designers – £425 (3-day course)
09/12/2014 – 11/12/2014
23/03/2015 – 25/03/2015
29/06/2015 – 01/07/2015
Greenwich Community College
http://www.gcc.ac.uk/courses/bookbinding-2996b7
Telephone: 020 8488 4800
Greenwich Community College, Plumstead Centre, 95 Plumstead Road, London SE18 7DQ
Bookbinding – £275
24th September 2014 (25 week course) – Course Started, no longer enrolling
Kingston Adult Education
https://adultedcourses.kingston.gov.uk/coursedetails.cfm?CFID=870416
email: Telephone: 020 8547 6875
King Charles Centre, King Charles Road, Surbiton, Surrey, KT5 9AL
Bookbinding and Repair Workshops – Mixed Abilities – £152 – £180 (10-week Course)
19/09/2014
16/01/2015
24/04/2015
Richmond Adult Community College
http://www.racc.ac.uk/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 020 8891 5907
Parkshot, Richmond, London, Surrey TW9 2RE
Bookbinding Workshop – Intermediate (C00125-141501) – £328 (16 week course)
08/10/2014 – 11/02/2015
25/02/2015 – 01/07/2015
Book Art – Intermediate (C01043-141501) – £265 (10 week course)
14/01/2015 – 25/03/2015
Book Art (C00703-141502) – £205 (10 week course)
15/04/2015 – 24/06/2015
Shepherds Falkiners
http://store.bookbinding.co.uk/store/department/80/Courses/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 02072339999
30 Gillingham Street, London, SW1V 1HU
There are too many bookbinding courses available to list here. Please check the website (above) for more info. Beginner – advance courses available.
Studio Five
http://bookbindingcourses.blogspot.co.uk/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 0208 563 2158
Tutor: Mark Cockram
Studio Five First Floor, The Mews, 46-52 Church Road, Barnes, London SW13 0DQ
No currently announced bookbinding courses, please contact Mark directly or visit his website for more details.
Black Fox Bindery
http://blackfoxbindery.com/page7.htm
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 07929 549140
Tutor: Nicky
Black Fox Bindery, The Glass Door, Units 2-4, 10 Manor Road, London N16 5SA
Please phone or email Nicky for details and bookings.
Haccamoirai
http://www.haccamoirai.co.uk/our-workshops.html
email: [email protected]
Tutors: Rachel Thomson | Nicky Oliver | Agnes Mitchell
Hackney, East London
Get a Sketchbook – £225
various dates throughout the year, contact haccamoirai via email for more info.
Working Men’s College
http://ebs4portal-live.wmcollege.ac.uk/Default.aspx?[…]Book%20Binding%20&%20Book%20Arts
email: [email protected]
Tutors: Lina Avramidou
Working Men’s College, Kentish Town, 44 Crowndale Rd, London, NW1 1TR
Bookbinding & Book Arts – £85 (4-5 week courses)
various dates throughout the year, contact Lina via email for more info.
WE MAKE BOOKS!
http://wemakebooks.co.uk/2014/12/02/learn-how-to-make-a-multi-section-cased-in-binding/
email: [email protected]
Tutors: Lina Avramidou
@ The Create Place 29 Old Ford Road, Bethnal Green, London, E2 9PJ
Introduction to Bookbinding: Case Binding – £65 (includes materials and refreshments)
SUNDAY 25 JANUARY 2015 – 11.00 am – 4.00 pm
Clare Bryan
http://cargocollective.com/clarebryan/workshops
Bookbinding, boxmaking and book arts workshops
Merseyside
Book Transformations
http://www.katebufton.co.uk/page7.htm
Norfolk
The Book Studio
http://www.thebookstudio.co.uk/courses.html
email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Telephone: 01263 734779
Tutor: Judith Ellis
Judith Ellis, 14 Blofields Loke, Aylsham, Norfolk, NR11 6ES
Single Section Binding – £45
Friday 10th October 2014
Flat backed Case Binding – £45
7th & 14th November 2014
Clive Bovill
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01362 860174
Greenburn, River Lane, East Bilney, Dereham, Norfolk. NR22 4HS
Clive offers individual and group tuition and has over 60 years of experience. Please contact him directly for dates and requests.
Northamptonshire
Knuston Hall Residential College for Adults
http://www.knustonhall.org.uk/courses.jspx
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01933 312 104
Knuston Hall, Irchester, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, NN29 7EU
Book Restoration – £175 – £260
13 February 2015 – 15th February 2015
Oxfordshire
Oxford Brookes University: School of Arts
http://arts.brookes.ac.uk/cpd/courses/bookbinding.html
email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Telephone: 01865 793083
Tutor: Ian Ross
Oxford Brookes University, Richard Hamilton Building, Headington Campus, Oxford, OX3 0BP
Bookbinding Basics – £295
13 evenings, Wednesday and Thursday, 6.15 – 8.30pm, September – December 2014
Arthur Green
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 07921457174
The Bartholomew Rooms, The Square, Eynsham, OX29 4HW
Ethiopic Style Binding – £70 – Sat/Sun 18th-19th October
German Case Binding – £70 – Sat/Sun 8th-9th November
Shropshire
The Grange
http://www.thegrange.uk.com/Grange/Bookbinding_Courses.html
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01691 623495
Tutor: Andrew Brown
Grange Road, Ellesmere, Shropshire, SY12 9DE
Bookbinding – An Introduction – £320 – £425
Friday 23rd – Monday 26th October (3 days)
Somerset
Dillington House
http://www.dillington.com/events/arts-crafts/10/bookbinding/539/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01460 258 648
Tutor: Angela Sutton, John Jameson & Sarah Jarrett-Kerr
Dillington House, Ilminster, Somerset TA19 9DT
Bookbinding – £388.00 – £578.00
24th November 2014 – 28th November 2014
Bookbinding Weekend for Beginners & Intermediates – £194 – £289
23rd – 25th January 2015
Hauser and Wirth, Somerset
www.hauserwirthsomerset.com
email: [email protected]
Friday 20 February 10am – 4pm
Tutor: Megan Stallworthy
Chinese accordion books and limp handmade paper bindings
Suffolk
Field Studies Council
http://www.field-studies-council.org/individuals-and-families/arts/crafts-and-traditional-skills/crafts.aspx
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01206 298283
Tutor: George Davidson
Field Studies Council, Flatford Mill, East Bergholt, Suffolk
General Bookbinding & Repairs(for beginners and improvers) – £334 – £468
17 – 21 February 2014 | 27 – 30 May 2014 | 18 – 22 August 2014 | 8 – 12 December 2014 | 17-22 February 2015 | 26-31 May 2015 | 3-7 August 2015 | 7-11 December 2015
Surrey
The Otter Bindery
http://otterbookbinding.com/bookbinding-classes/
email: http://otterbookbinding.com/contact-us/
Telephone: 01730 352042
Classes take place in Midhurst, West Sussex, GU29 9JS.
Masterclass – Onion Skin Binding with Benjamin Ebel
18th – 19th October 2014 – £198
Masterclass – Romanesque Bindings with Ann-Marie Miller
8th – 9th November 2014 – £260
General Bookbinding Tuition Days
22nd November 2014 – £125
6th December 2014 – £125
31 January 2015 – £125
Sussex
West Dean College
Full-Time: http://www.westdean.org.uk/…/BooksandLibraryMaterials.aspx
Short Courses: https://www.westdean.org.uk/…/CourseSubCat.aspx?group=boo
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01243 818239
Instructors: John Robinson | Tracey Bush | Sarah Bryant | Susan Hufton | Jane Ponsford | Jemma Lewis | Kathy Abbott | Mark Hiner
West Dean, Chichester, West Sussex. PO18 0QZ
Bookbinding and Paper – 5th – 10th October 2014 – £482
Multiple messages – Creating Artists’ Books – 26th – 30th October 2014 – £396
Bookbinding Repair Techniques – 27th – 30th November 2014 – £310
Artists’ Books – The Power of Sequence and Time – 11th – 16th January 2015 – £504
Handmade Books using Traditional and Contemporary Techniques – 9th – 13th February 2015 – £406
Creative Papermaking with Colour and Thread –15th – 19th February 2015 – £411
Hand Marbling on Paper – 13th – 15th March 2015 – £234
Bookbinding with Hand-patterned Papers – 27th – 30th March 2015 – £311
Paper engineering for Pop-up Books and Cards – 3rd – 6th April 2015 – £321
Bookbinding for All – 19th – 24th April 2015 – £495
The Old Rectory Adult Education College
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01796 865306
Tutors: Jan Pickett | Tony and Sue Dawkins (Course Directors)
The Old Rectory Adult Education College, Fittleworth, Pulborough, West Sussex. RH20 1HU
Please ring/email Tony or Sue on the contact details above to find out more about bookbinding courses.
Wiltshire
BINDING re:DEFINED
http://www.bookbindingworkshops.com/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01672 851638
Instructors: Benjamin Elbel, Emily Martin, Lori Sauer
Workshops hosted at village hall at MARDEN SN10 3RQ or at Lori Sauer’s studio in the nearby village of BEECHINGSTOKE SN9 6HL
September 20 – 21, 2014 – The Paperback – £150
October 11, 2014 – Elbum and The Shrigley – £80
November 2, 2014 – Leather Decoration – £80
November 15, 2014 – The Fin Book – £80
February 11, 2015 – Chinese Thread Book – £80
March 9 – 11, 2015 – Staples in Stone – £270
April 21 – 22, 2015 – The Pompidou – £150
May 20 – 22, 2015 – Print and Bind – £265
June 30 – July 3, 2015 – Limp Bindings – £310
October 27 – 29, 2015 – Ascona Album – £225
November 10 – 11, 2015 – Binders Wallet – £150
Sailsbury Book Crafts
http://www.salisburybookcrafts.com/salisbury/schedule_links.html
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01672 851638
Instructors: Lori Sauer
HARNHAM SCOUT HUT (next to the Church Hall), Lower Street, just off the Harnham Road on the southern side of Salisbury.
2014 Dates
October 12th (Sunday) and 25th
November 8th and 22nd
December 6th
2015 Dates
January 17th and 31st 2015
February 7th, 14th and 28th 2015
March 14th and 28th 2015
April 11th and 25th 2015
May 9th 2015
June 6th 2015
July 11th 2015
August 15th 2015
October 17th and 31st 2015
November 14th and 28th 2015
December 12th 2015
Shepherds
http://store.bookbinding.co.uk/store/department/80/Courses/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01672 851979
Instructors: Alison Strachan
The Daffodil Barn, Nursery Farm, Woodborough, Near Pewsey, Wiltshire, SN9 5PF
No currently announced bookbinding courses (checked 01 October 2014), check website for further details.
Nancy Winfield
Telephone: 01722 323488
45 St. Andrews Road, Lower Bemerton, Salisbury. SP2 9NT
Nancy offers approximately 15 full-day Saturday courses on bookbinding throughout the year. Please contact her for dates.
Yorkshire
Signature Bindings
http://signaturebindings.co.uk/Workshops.php
e-mail: [email protected]
Telephone: 0797 2648001
Workshops take place at the Hull History Centre, Worship Street, Hull.
Tuesdays: 10:00am to around 4:30pm or Saturdays: 9:30am to 4:00pm
Flat-back Case Bound Book and a Matching Protective Clam-shell Box
Tuesday 20th January and Wednesday 21st January 2015
(2-Day Workshop) – £70 Workshop fee including materials
The Endelpappband Binding – Tuesday 3rd March 2015
£45 Workshop fee (includes £10 materials fee)
Decorative Portfolio Case – Saturday 18th April 2015
£35 Workshop fee including materials
The K118 Binding – Tuesday 16th – Wednesday 17th June 2015
(2-Day Workshop) – £70 Workshop fee including materials
The Workshop
http://www.the-workshop.info/crafts/bookbinding.html
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01723 859060
Level: All | Teacher: Philip Winskill
21a Main Street, Ebberston, Scarborough, North Yorkshire YO13 9NR
Bookbinding
Wed 29th Oct 2014 through to Wed 17th Dec 2014
Fee: £13 per week (plus £10 for the basic materials over the 6 weeks)
Bookbinding Workshop
Dates: TBA
Fee: £45
Conways of Halifax
http://www.conwaysofhalifax.co.uk/#courses
Telephone: 01422 353767
email: [email protected]
Teacher: Stephen Conway
48 New Road, Halifax, West Yorkshire, HX1 2LH, UK
Currently no announced workshops (last course 6th July), check website for further details.
The Artworks
http://www.theartworks.org.uk/en/event/30
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01422 346 900
Teacher: Terry Collins
The Artworks, Shaw Lodge, Shaw Lane, Halifax, HX3 9ET
Various arts and crafts courses, no currently announced bookbinding courses (checked 01 October 2014), check website for further details.
inc workshop (Leeds City College)
http://www.leedscitycollege.ac.uk/index.php/services-projects/inc-workshop/
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 0113 391 2547
Teacher: Various
Unit 11 Sheepscar House, 15 Sheepscar Street South, Leeds, West Yorkshire
Various arts and crafts courses, no currently announced bookbinding courses (checked 01 October 2014), check website for further details.
Wales
Powys
The Farthing Press and Bindery
http://www.farthingpress.plus.com/page4.html
Telephone: 01938 590733
email: [email protected]
Tutor: Alan Fitch
Sarnau Farm, Sarnau, Llanymynech, Powys. SY22 6QJ
Basic Refresher / Repair Course – £350
October 20th – 24th 2014
2-Day Course – £150
Nov 3rd – 4th 2014
Scotland
Edinburgh
Owl & Lion
http://www.owlandliongallery.com/category/bookbinding-classes
Tutor: Isabelle Ting
Owl & Lion, 66 West port, Edinburgh, EH1 2LD
Various Short Classes (1+ days) in Bookbinding, workshop operates from Sunday – Wednesday. Classes bookable online.
Edinburgh Contemporary Crafts
http://edinburghcontemporarycrafts.co.uk/…/bookbinding-beginners
Telephone: 0131 225 5248
9-11 Blair Street, Edinburgh, EH1 1QR
Introduction to Bookbinding Wednesday evening – £210
14/01/15 until 25/03/15 (10-week course)
Fife
The Old Printing Works
http://www.theoldprintingworks.co.uk/book-making-workshops.html
email: [email protected] co.uk
25 Station Road, Thornton, Glenrothes, Fife, KY1 4AX
Various book-making workshops all year round (£55 for a one day workshop)
Glasgow
DAD Bookbinders
http://www.dadbookbinders.com/bookbinding-classes-info.html
email: [email protected]
Telephone: 0141 339 0333
Unit H, Purdon Street, Partick, G11 6AF, Glasgow
INTRODUCTION TO BOOKBINDING – £70
17 January 2015 | 31 January 2015 | 14 February 2015 | 28 March 2015 | 11 April 2015
INTERMEDIATE BOOKBINDING – £70
14 March 2015 | 25 April 2015
ADVANCED BOOKBINDING – £70
4 October 2014 | 6 June 2015
BOOK REPAIR – £70
13 September 2014 | 28 February 2015 | 9 May 2015
BOX MAKING – £70
10am – 4pm (Saturday) | 18 October 2014 | 23 May 2015
HAND TOOLING – £70
10am – 4pm (Saturday) | Dates to be announced
Moray
Logie Steading
http://www.logie.co.uk/logie-steading/courses/#.VD0IpvmSySo
email: [email protected] | [email protected]
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Supabinda/155170974627078
Telephone: 01309 611278
Tutor: Laura and Chris West
Logie Steading, Logie, Forres, Moray, IV36 2QN Scotland
Bookbinding and Book Restoration – £210 each. (3-day Course)
October 27 – 29th 2014
Master Class in Leatherwork for Bookbinding – £TBC
March 2015 – Dates TBC
Bookbinding & Book Repair – £235 for three days
November 2 – 4 2015
** Laura is also available for one-to-one tuition and can also be booked to teach or lecture in a group setting. **
Strathclyde
City of Glasgow College
http://www.cityofglasgowcollege.ac.uk/course-search/bookbinding
Telephone: 0141 566 6222 ext. 4370
email: [email protected]
Tutors: Hugh Whyte
60 North Hanover Street, Glasgow. G1 2BP
Bookbinding: An Introduction – £135
4th Sep 14 – 13th Nov 14
Bookbinding: Book Repair for Beginners – £135
5th Mar 15 – 21st May 15
Bookbinding: Making Boxes and Folio Cases – £135
27th Nov 14 – 12th Feb 15
Further lists of Bookbinding Courses in the UK (+ other countries)
Please share this page:Sprint (NYSE:S) confirmed it will shut off service on its mobile WIMAX network on or around Nov. 6, 2015, giving further clarity on its network evolution.
Sprint spokeswoman Adrienne Norton confirmed the date to FierceWireless. The date was first unearthed in an internal company email posted by the blog Android Central.
In April, Sprint said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it would "cease using WiMAX technology by the end of 2015." As part of that effort, Sprint said it identified approximately 6,000 "redundant sites that we expect to decommission and terminate the underlying leases."
Norton said that dual-band phones with both WiMAX and 3G/CDMA capabilities will continue to work on Sprint's network as 3G-only devices after the WiMAX network is shut down. "Most WiMAX subscribers are upgrade eligible due to the age of their device," she said. "In addition, offers are being planned for targeted postpaid WiMAX subscribers prior to the WiMAX network shutdown."
According to the email, Sprint has started notifying corporate-liable accounts about the shutdown and will notify individual-liable accounts and prepaid customers 180 days prior to the shutdown. The email says Sprint will not support any WiMAX service extensions past Nov. 6, 2015.
Norton added that Sprint is "encouraging our MVNOs to proactively communicate with their customers about the WiMAX shutdown, notifying them of the impacts and their options. We've also created an online resource center to share ongoing updates, marketing ideas etc. with our MVNOs."
One of Sprint's MVNOs, FreedomPop, told Wireless Week that it has had an LTE device swap program in place for the past year for customers looking to replace an older WiMAX device. FreedomPop said it currently conducts a few thousand WiMAX device swaps per month.
The WiMAX network will be the second network Sprint plans to shut down in as many years. The carrier shut down its iDEN Nextel network last year. It is now deploying LTE service on the 800 MHz spectrum freed from the iDEN network shutdown.
In the spring of 2013, before it acquired Clearwire, Sprint started laying the groundwork to get its WiMAX customers onto LTE devices. Under its revised terms of service, Sprint said it "expressly reserves the right to migrate" customers from its WiMAX service to Sprint's LTE service. "Reasonable advance notice" will be given to customers who might be impacted, and they will have several options: They can choose to finish their contract without WiMAX capability, they can deactivate their service without being charged an early termination fee, or they can transition to Sprint's LTE network. If a customer chooses to switch to Sprint's LTE service, they "will receive a free standard Sprint LTE-capable device and can maintain" their existing service plan, "if available." Sprint said it also may provide other offers that are separate from the transition option, and these offers will be subject to a new two-year contract per line.
For more:
- see this Wireless Week article
- see this Android Central article
Related Articles:
Sprint to shutter WiMAX network by end of 2015, will turn off at least 6,000 towers
Sprint changes terms of service to give WiMAX customers more flexibility to switch to LTE
Sprint tweaks 2.5 GHz LTE deployment strategy to target congested parts of network
Sprint confirms most of its LTE devices will be able to access 4x2 MIMO technology
Sprint talks up Spark small cells, 8T8R antennas, but some analysts remain unimpressedFILE - In this Thursday, May 27, 2010, file photo, a worker looks out through the logo at the entrance of the Foxconn complex in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen. As the buzz increases over an expected imminent announcement that Wisconsin may land a massive new Foxconn manufacturing plant, concerns are also rising about what the state may have to offer up to seal the deal. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung, File) The Associated Press
By SCOTT BAUER, Associated Press
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Concerns are increasing among lawmakers and others in Wisconsin over what incentives the state may offer to become the first U.S. home of Taiwanese electronics giant Foxconn.
Little has been revealed about what tax breaks, subsidies, free land and other financial incentives or promises Republican Gov. Scott Walker and state economic development officials may be extending to seal the deal with Foxconn, the biggest contract assembler of smartphones and other devices for Apple and other brands.
Foxconn has said Wisconsin is competing with Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana and Texas for its first U.S. factory with billions in investments and thousands of new jobs. Foxconn is looking to build the country's first liquid-crystal display factory and possibly other operations in the U.S. An announcement on Foxconn's plans could come as soon as this week.
Walker has refused to even confirm that he's in negotiations with Foxconn, let alone disclose what enticements he's extending. State lawmakers have said "huge, big numbers" are being discussed, but even they don't know the details. Michigan recently approved a $200 million annual job-creation tax incentive package to sweeten its offer to Foxconn.
"I hope that cooler heads prevail when putting these incentive packages together," Steve Deller, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of agriculture and applied economics, said Tuesday. "Sometimes states get so caught up in playing the game that they lose sight of the costs these incentives incur. Wisconsin has historically not played that game."
Tom Still, president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, examined deals made in six other states to land large manufacturers. Based on those, if Foxconn is looking to build a plant that employs 10,000 people in Wisconsin, the state may have to offer $2 billion in incentives to be paid over a period of years, Still said.
Whether it's worth the cost is "a calculation that policymakers will have to make," Still said, but he thinks it would be a good deal "because of what a game-changer this could be for Wisconsin."
Democrats who are in the minority in the Legislature have been kept in the dark, said two members of the budget-writing committee. State Sen. Jon Erpenbach is worried that Walker may make promises that require legislative approval, then blame lawmakers if they don't go along because of the cost.
"It's a balance between making sure taxpayers are protected and we're not giving away the store for the political gain for Scott Walker," Erpenbach said. "If it's a deal for both sides, that's great."
Deller is also concerned that Walker — eager to bolster his resume as a job-creator as he heads into re-election next year — may give up too much. Walker ran in 2010 on the promise to create 250,000 jobs, but still hasn't hit the mark.
"If I was in the governor's shoes, I would be making a very sweet offer from the perspective of the company," Deller said. "A sweet offer from the perspective of Wisconsin taxpayers? Maybe not."
Deller said in addition to the cost to state taxpayers, schools and local governments could also be pinched because deals to large companies often allow them to escape paying property taxes, which pay for some local services.
There are also unanswered questions about the quality of jobs that would be created, how much they would pay and how long they would last. Foxconn has replaced at least 40,000 of its workers in China with robots.
But Democratic state Rep. Gordon Hintz said he's optimistic because of what a large factory could mean to the state.
"I just hope we get this right," he said.
___
Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter at https://twitter.com/sbauerAPThis article is about the fruit. For the related species, see Armenian cucumber. For other uses, see Cucumber (disambiguation)
Cucumber (Cucumis sativus) is a widely cultivated plant in the gourd family, Cucurbitaceae. It is a creeping vine that bears cucumiform fruits that are used as vegetables. There are three main varieties of cucumber: slicing, pickling, and seedless. Within these varieties, several cultivars have been created. In North America, the term "wild cucumber" refers to plants in the genera Echinocystis and Marah, but these are not closely related. The cucumber is originally from South Asia, but now grows on most continents. Many different types of cucumber are traded on the global market.
Description
The cucumber is a creeping vine that roots in the ground and grows up trellises or other supporting frames, wrapping around supports with thin, spiraling tendrils.[1] The plant may also root in a soilless medium and will sprawl along the ground if it does not have supports. The vine has large leaves that form a canopy over the fruits. The fruit of typical cultivars of cucumber is roughly cylindrical, but elongated with tapered ends, and may be as large as 60 centimeters (24 in) long and 10 centimeters (3.9 in) in diameter.[citation needed] Botanically speaking, the cucumber is classified as a pepo, a type of botanical berry with a hard outer rind and no internal divisions. Much like tomato and squash, it is often perceived, prepared and eaten as a vegetable. Cucumber fruits consist of 95% water (see nutrition table).
A tendril emerges from cucumber vines to facilitate climbing
A string lattice supports vine growth
A bulb shaped cucumber hanging on the vine
Flowering and pollination
A few cultivars of cucumber are parthenocarpic, the blossoms creating seedless fruit without pollination. Pollination for these cultivars degrades the quality. In the United States, these are usually grown in greenhouses, where bees are excluded. In Europe, they are grown outdoors in some regions, and bees are excluded from these areas.
Most cucumber cultivars, however, are seeded and require pollination. Thousands of hives of honey bees are annually carried to cucumber fields just before bloom for this purpose. Cucumbers may also be pollinated by bumblebees and several other bee species. Most cucumbers that require pollination are self-incompatible, so pollen from a different plant is required to form seeds and fruit.[2] Some self-compatible cultivars exist that are related to the 'Lemon' cultivar.[2] Symptoms of inadequate pollination include fruit abortion and misshapen fruit. Partially pollinated flowers may develop fruit that are green and develop normally near the stem end, but are pale yellow and withered at the blossom end.
Traditional cultivars produce male blossoms first, then female, in about equivalent numbers. Newer gynoecious hybrid cultivars produce almost all female blossoms. They may have a pollenizer cultivar interplanted, and the number of beehives per unit area is increased, but temperature changes induce male flowers even on these plants, which may be sufficient for pollination to occur.[2]
Genomic information NCBI genome ID Ploidy diploid Genome size 323.99 Mb Sequenced organelle mitochondrion Organelle size 244.82 Mb Year of completion 2011
Nutrition
In a 100-gram serving, raw cucumber (with peel) is 95% water, provides 67 kilojoules (16 kilocalories) and supplies low content of essential nutrients, as it is notable only for vitamin K at 16% of the Daily Value (table).
Genome
In 2009, an international team of researchers announced they had sequenced the cucumber genome.[3]
Varieties
Slicing cucumbers
In general cultivation, cucumbers are classified into three main cultivar groups: "slicing", "pickling", and "burpless".
Slicing
Cucumbers grown to eat fresh are called slicing cucumbers. The main varieties of slicers mature on vines with large leaves that provide shading.[4] They are mainly eaten in the unripe green form, since the ripe yellow form normally becomes bitter and sour. Slicers grown commercially for the North American market are generally longer, smoother, more uniform in color, and have a much tougher skin. Slicers in other countries are smaller and have a thinner, more delicate skin, often having fewer seeds and being sold in a plastic skin for protection. Sometimes these are known as English cucumbers. This variety may also be called a "telegraph cucumber", particularly in Australasia.[5] Smaller slicing cucumbers can also be pickled.
Pickling cucumbers
Gher |
after just 15 months, having had no measurable impact on dietary habits. Furthermore, here in Britain, government figures show that there has been a reduction of almost 12 per cent per capita in total sugar consumption for the past decade. In order to make better and more informed choices about the food and drink we consume, we need clear, unbiased, evidence-based information.
Richard Pike
Managing Director, British Sugar
London WC2
SIR – The 1975 sugar crisis put paid to my taste for sugar in my tea and on breakfast cereal. At my convent boarding school, in response to the crisis, only one teaspoonful per cereal bowl was allowed. This was administered from a central point in the dining room. The sugar scatterer did a halfhearted job at distribution, delivering it in one plop which inevitably ended up combined with the milk as a sickly residue at the bottom of the bowl, having missed the cereal altogether.
Virginia Hudson
Swanmore, HampshireThe micro-organism Noctiluca Scintillan on full display. Phil Hart
It's called bioluminescence, a phenomenon found in nature where micro-organisms will start to glow after a disturbance in the water. For photographer Phil Hart and his pals, vacationing along the shores of Australia's Gippsland Lakes, it also offered an opportunity to give unusual meaning to the term, "blue man group."
Phil Hart
These photos, taken in 2009 at Gippsland Lakes, have been making the rounds of the Internet and they are stunning. Following heavy rains, cooler temperature and a growth in the amount of algae, Hart writes that a growing population of Noctiluca Scintillans became visible during the day as "murky red patches. Come evening, though, it was a different story. Hart, who had regularly visited the region for the previous 16 summers and seen the phenomenon, noted that luminescence in the lakes was "never remotely as bright as it was in the summer of 2008/09." For any camera buffs out there, Hart said he shot his Canon 20D Digital SLR with a 10-22mm lens with a wide open setting at f3.5 and an ISO1600.
Phil Hart
Hart found that the masses of Noctiluca Scintillan created a "remarkable form of bioluminescence "in the waves breaking on the shore, in ripples in the water and wherever people played in the water." We agree.
You can check out the rest of Hart's gallery here.Image copyright Top500 Image caption Tianhe-2 supercomputer manages 33.86 petaflop/s
China has the world's most powerful supercomputer for the third time in a row as the country once again ups its presence in the global top 500.
Tianhe-2 was top of the twice-yearly list that keeps tabs on supercomputer development and growth.
Since the last list, China had 20% more supercomputers in the top 500, while US representation went down 15%.
However, the US still dominates the chart with 233 computers making the latest tally.
China had 76, up from 63 in the last count. This is almost as many as the UK (30), France (27) and Germany (23) combined.
The full list will be published on Monday at a conference in Leipzig, Germany.
Power
The top500 list is a widely-recognised barometer of the state of worldwide supercomputing. It has been published twice yearly since 1993.
All the computers are measured against the same criteria - a benchmark first devised in 1979 but since improved as computing has become ever more sophisticated.
Such is the immense power of the supercomputers, their computational ability is measured in petaflop/s - quadrillions of calculations per second.
The top performing computer, Tianhe-2, had its power measured at 33.86 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second). It has been just five years since IBM's Roadrunner became the first computer to break the 1 petaflop/s mark. That machine was shut down in 2013 due to excessive power consumption.
The entire top 500 list of supercomputers combined offered 274 petaflop/s.
Tianhe-2 is owned by the Chinese government and operated by the National University of Defence Technology. It is used as a "research and educational" tool.While scientists have only fairly recently gotten around to studying cognitive biases, philosophers have been teaching about them for centuries-typically in the form of various logical errors. However, it is good that the scientific attention to these biases is serving to attract additional attention to them.
Everyone of us is, of course, loaded down with all sorts of cognitive biases. Some scientists even claim that such biases are hard wired into the brain, thus making them part of our actual anatomy and physiology. If so, it would seem to suggest that people might be more or less biased based on the specifics of their hard-wiring. This would help explain some of the variation in people when it comes to being able to reason well.
While we all suffer from cognitive biases (and other biases) we do have the capacity to resist and even overcome such biases and reason in a more objective manner. As this takes effort and training (as well as the will to want to think critically) it is not very common for folks to try to overcome these biases. Hence, bad reasoning tends to dominate.
One standard bias is known as negativity bias. While some people are more prone to focus on the negative than others, apparently we all have an inbuilt tendency to give more weight to negative information relative to positive information. This would help to account for the fact that people tend to consider a single misdeed to outweigh a large number of good deeds.
Of course, people do also have other biases that can lead them to weigh the positive more than the negative. For example, people tend to ignore or downplay negative aspects of people, causes, and things they like and weigh the positive more heavily. This often involves embracing inconsistency by applying different standards relative to what one likes or dislikes (see, for example, how Fox News and MSNBC in the States evaluate various political matters).
Interestingly, this bias seems to occur at neurological level. The brain actually has more neural activity when it is reacting to negative information than when reacting to positive information. Assuming these results apply generally, we are actually hard-wired for negativity.
The defense against this involves being aware of this bias and exhibiting even greater caution in assessing negative information-especially when it involves negative information about something we do not like. For example, folks who dislike the Tea Party will weigh negative information about them more heavily than positive evidence and will tend to make little effort to determine whether the evidence has been properly assessed. The same holds true for folks who dislike the Occupy Wall Street movement and its spin-offs. They will take any negative evidence as being quite significant and ignore or undervalue positive evidence.
This bias does help explain a great deal about how people see political events and assess them.[EN]Aqours 2nd Live Tour Book: Interview with Takatsuki Kanako
Credits:
Original TL：Here
Scans from: @dyreatic from #teamonibe
CN TL: 高槻家的丁丁桑 from 王之骑士团
Disclaimer: This is a Chinese to EN TL, there would be things that would be lost in translation between the languages.
Please refer to my policies for more details and do not use the translations for commercial use.
Credits to: Rezozo from #teamonibe for the QC
The contents are under the cut.
【Takatsuki Kanako】
A journey filled with excitement! Departing to deliver these feelings to all!
【Hanamaru Kunikida】
Whenever Aqours is performing on stage, I’ll always be nervous —but I’d be very happy if you enjoyed the live as if it were a Summer Festival!
【Questions for Takatsuki Kanako 】
Q. What are the things you want to do at each of the location that you are performing for you this tour?
A: Nagoya
I want to yell “だぎゃあ~” at ナナちゃん人形!
(CN TL Note: ナナちゃん人形 is the name of a doll shop. “だぎゃあ~” is a line in the Nagoya dialect that is uttered when girls or children are startled)
A: Kobe
I want to go with the others to a restaurant that’s full of delicious food!
Chinese fish, Okonomiyaki, there are so many dishes that I really enjoy!
For Sannomiya though, it has to be Pirozhki and Gozasoro (desserts).
Ahh, if only I could bring my chihuahua with me too…
A: Saitama
A: There are members who were born in Saitama (Suwa Nanaka)
So I want to ask them what kind of delicious foods are in Saitama,
Afterwards… I just hope it doesn’t rain!
Q. What do you like about the singing and dancing of “HAPPY PARTY TRAIN”?
A: In the first chorus, during Hanamaru’s verse, this line: “Jinsei tte sa/After all, life~”.
That feeling of awareness, it’s really fitting for Maru-chan.
“Takusan no basho e tsudzuiteru? Wakuwaku darake sa!/connects us to so many places. It’s nothing but thrilling!”
Speaking of the dance, you can’t forget the portion in the song where they make an “L” shape in the song, mimicking how the train wheels would go “gurguru” as it moves forward(?)!
In addition there are the tracks, the rings etc, I hope that everyone notices the many different things about it♡
And for Maru-chan, as stated before it would have to be the dance moves at “Jinsei tte sa/After all, life~”, which deserves special notice!
Q. Please tell us the places you want to go together with all 9 members of Aqours. ♪
A: I want to visit the stage at Times Square, New York in America!!
One my dreams that I kept secret is to ride on the American Subway too♡
As we’re on this topic, I would like to have a vacation together with Aqours, but there are a few of us who are the “indoor types”, so that’ll be a bit difficult (laughs)£100 MILLION UNIVERSITY WORK STARTS AS BULLDOZERS MOVE ONTO SPRINGFIELD BREWERY SITE
Work starts on new School of Architecture
Preparatory work has started on the University of Wolverhampton’s School of Architecture and the Built Environment at the £100m Springfield Campus.
Planning permission was granted in April and now specialist contractors have started work on site to prepare it for construction to start. The original scheme was altered after pre-construction works on the historic site discovered structures of... Preparatory work has started on the University of Wolverhampton’s School of Architecture and the Built Environment at the £100m Springfield Campus.Planning permission was granted in April and now specialist contractors have started work on site to prepare it for construction to start. The original scheme was altered after pre-construction works on the historic site discovered structures of...
READ MORE >
ASTON UNIVERSITY RECOGNITION FOR OUR STUDENT EMPLOYMENT SERVICES
As a company, we are proud to have been selected from 30 employers to be named as Aston University’s Student Employer of the Year 2018, and will now go forward into the regional judging stage to compete against employers chosen by other universities in the Midland... The Coleman Group has scooped double success in the first stage of the Student Employee of the Year 2018 awards from NASES (National Association of Student Employment Services).As a company, we are proud to have been selected from 30 employers to be named as Aston University’s Student Employer of the Year 2018, and will now go forward into the regional judging stage to compete against employers chosen by other universities in the Midland...
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LIVERPOOL SCHOOL BOY HELPS NATIONAL GRID SPREAD SITE SAFETY MESSAGE
Connor Prendergast, age 9, of St. Hugh's Catholic Primary School, won a competition run by National Grid to design a poster to promote site safety during its works to dismantle four unused gasholders on its site off Spofforth Road in Wavertree. His prize was to see his poster installed on the site gates along with a framed version... A Liverpool primary school student got his reward today for helping National Grid spread their message about site safety.Connor Prendergast, age 9, of St. Hugh's Catholic Primary School, won a competition run by National Grid to design a poster to promote site safety during its works to dismantle four unused gasholders on its site off Spofforth Road in Wavertree. His prize was to see his poster installed on the site gates along with a framed version...
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PLANT AND TRANSPORT INVESTMENT PLAN – OLD ASSET DISPOSAL
Our over-arching 5-year strategy is to have diverse modern fleet, compliant with emerging environmental legislation and capable of meeting the business needs of the future.
To part fund the investment we are selling the oldest items in the fleet.
If anyone is interested check out https://... I’m pleased to announce that The Coleman Group board have signed-off on a plant and transport investment plan for the next 12 months.Our over-arching 5-year strategy is to have diverse modern fleet, compliant with emerging environmental legislation and capable of meeting the business needs of the future.To part fund the investment we are selling the oldest items in the fleet.If anyone is interested check out https://...
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HELPING DELIVER PERSONALISED HEALTHCARE
It is a huge issue. In the UK one in six workers suffer from anxiety, depression or unmanageable stress and more than 18 million days are lost to sickness absence caused by mental health conditions each year. In total, it is estimated that ill health by employees costs the UK taxpayer £60 billion a year.
We, like any employer, have an obligation to c... At The Coleman Group we understand the importance of mental and physical health in the workplace.It is a huge issue. In the UK one in six workers suffer from anxiety, depression or unmanageable stress and more than 18 million days are lost to sickness absence caused by mental health conditions each year. In total, it is estimated that ill health by employees costs the UK taxpayer £60 billion a year.We, like any employer, have an obligation to c...
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INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS FROM AALBORG UNIVERSITY, DENMARK VISIT WAVERTREE GAS HOLDERS
Students Eline Øyri, Mikkel Jensen & Lise Sakariassen chose The Coleman Group to visit the Gas Holder site at Wavertree, to support their final dissertation.
Mikkel said, “The site visit has given us an insight into the structure and demolit... We welcomed three international students, studying MSc Urban Design, from Aalborg University in Denmark, currently writing their final master thesis on the Transformation of Old Gas Holders.Students Eline Øyri, Mikkel Jensen & Lise Sakariassen chose The Coleman Group to visit the Gas Holder site at Wavertree, to support their final dissertation.Mikkel said, “The site visit has given us an insight into the structure and demolit...
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BRINGING OUR PEOPLE CLOSER TOGETHER
To ensure that we bring everyone in the Coleman family together, we’ve been using Workplace by Facebook - a simple to... We believe good communication is key to ensuring engagement across the workplace, whatever your industry. But with employees across four separate businesses which make up The Coleman Group, and with staff based on site, at home and at our head office in Birmingham, we understand the challenges of employee communication more than most.To ensure that we bring everyone in the Coleman family together, we’ve been using Workplace by Facebook - a simple to...
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NUTRITION & HYDRATION WEEK 12-18TH MARCH 2018
The Coleman Group encourages the role of nutrition and hydration in maintaining the health and well-being of our employees.
Our employees have access to series of tools and tips on our internal Intranet platform, RewardMe, including a ‘Nourish Resource Pack’ which is a guide to pro... Nutrition and Hydration Week aims to highlight, promote and celebrate improvements in the provision of nutrition and hydration locally, nationally and globally.The Coleman Group encourages the role of nutrition and hydration in maintaining the health and well-being of our employees.Our employees have access to series of tools and tips on our internal Intranet platform, RewardMe, including a ‘Nourish Resource Pack’ which is a guide to pro... Hydrate for Health Tips
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WOMEN IN DEMOLITION: LESLEY MORRIS
Last time we focused on Jemima Wong, Environmental Manager for The Coleman Group. You can read her story
Now we turn to Lesley Morris, Finance Director & Company Secretary at The Coleman Group. This is her sto... We’re running a series of mini profiles with employees from across The Coleman Group titled Women in Demolition – showcasing our commitment to diversity and highlighting the opportunities (and the challenges) for women in our industry.Last time we focused on Jemima Wong, Environmental Manager for The Coleman Group. You can read her story here Now we turn to Lesley Morris, Finance Director & Company Secretary at The Coleman Group. This is her sto...
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THINKING OF PURSUING AN APPRENTICESHIP?
The demolition industry is full of varied and exciting job roles, how did you know which one was right for you?
At first, I wasn’t 100% sure which role was right for me, initially, I joined The Coleman Group as a demolition apprentice and worked my way around each... As part of National Apprenticeship Week 2018 (5-9th March), we asked Jade Hailing, an Apprentice Quantity Surveyor with The Coleman Group, about her experiences to date.At first, I wasn’t 100% sure which role was right for me, initially, I joined The Coleman Group as a demolition apprentice and worked my way around each...
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DIDCOT SECOND ANNIVERSARY STATEMENT
The team at Coleman & Company will be taking time out today to remember their colleagues. We remain committed to learning the lessons of February 23 2016, and reinforce our commitment to share those learnings with the families... Our thoughts today on the second anniversary of the tragedy at Didcot Power Station are with Chris, John, Kenny and Mick, their families and all those who continue to suffer the pain and hurt from that horrendous day.The team at Coleman & Company will be taking time out today to remember their colleagues. We remain committed to learning the lessons of February 23 2016, and reinforce our commitment to share those learnings with the families...
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DRIVING EFFICIENCIES THROUGH INNOVATION
Kirsty Howarth, Management Accountant for The Coleman Group, explains how our new company accounts system has created efficiencies and improved sustainability, including the introduction of new paperless processes.
The b... Investing in innovation is one of our core values at The Coleman Group; innovation of processes, people, plant and technology in order to maintain our position as the contractor of choice for some of the biggest names in the industry.Kirsty Howarth, Management Accountant for The Coleman Group, explains how our new company accounts system has created efficiencies and improved sustainability, including the introduction of new paperless processes.The b...
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Coleman Engineering Services - BSI Certification
ISO9001 (Quality);
ISO14001 (Environment);
OHSAS18001 (Health and Safety) and
PAS99 (Integrated management systems). Congratulations to Andre Jaarson – Technical Manager and his team at CES.
James Howard – Group MD, said “this is a great achievement and another positive step in our plan to have all Gro... We’re proud to announce that Coleman Engineering Services (CES) have been recommended for certification by BSI for standards;Congratulations to Andre Jaarson – Technical Manager and his team at CES.James Howard – Group MD, said “this is a great achievement and another positive step in our plan to have all Gro...
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WOMEN IN DEMOLITION: JEMIMA WONG
This time we are focusing on Jemima Wong, Environmental Manager for The Coleman Group.
Beating off stiff competition
I joined The Coleman Group as Environmental Manager around 18 months ago. Prior to that I had spent ten years in proposal manageme... In this series of mini profiles with employees from across The Coleman Group, we are showcasing our commitment to diversity and highlighting the opportunities (and the challenges) for women in our industry.This time we are focusing on Jemima Wong, Environmental Manager for The Coleman Group.I joined The Coleman Group as Environmental Manager around 18 months ago. Prior to that I had spent ten years in proposal manageme...
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David Coleman – Retires After 55 Years
David joined Coleman & Company in 1962 straight from school, the year it was incorporated, becoming a shareholder in 1966, Managing Director in 1984 and Group Chairman in 2010.
During his career David has been a hugely influential figure in the demolition and recycling industry as regional Chairman of the National Federation... The Coleman Group today announces that David Coleman is retiring as Chairman after 55 years with the company.David joined Coleman & Company in 1962 straight from school, the year it was incorporated, becoming a shareholder in 1966, Managing Director in 1984 and Group Chairman in 2010.During his career David has been a hugely influential figure in the demolition and recycling industry as regional Chairman of the National Federation...
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DIDCOT - INQUEST UPDATE
Statement from James Howard, Director, Coleman & Company
We have heard today from Thames Valley Police, at a briefing to the Oxfordshire Senior Coroner, the current status of their investigation into the deaths of our 4 colleagues at Didcot Power Station in February 2016.
Before I comment on the statement read out by the Police –
I want to take a moment to say again to the families of our deceased colleagues how deeply sorry we... We have heard today from Thames Valley Police, at a briefing to the Oxfordshire Senior Coroner, the current status of their investigation into the deaths of our 4 colleagues at Didcot Power Station in February 2016.Before I comment on the statement read out by the Police –I want to take a moment to say again to the families of our deceased colleagues how deeply sorry we...
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SUPPORTING OUR STAFF WITH THE HELP OF CIOB
The Training Partnership is a service offered by the The Coleman Group is delighted to say that we have entered into a Training Partnership with the CIOB (Chartered Institute of Building) to support the continued development of our staff – with some exciting plans to further develop the initiative.The Training Partnership is a service offered by the CIOB, the professional body that represents construction and property professionals, to help the creation of a bespoke training, learning and develop...
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E-LEARNING. ANYTIME. ANYWHERE.
We’re also committed to innovation – from the most advanced demolition techniques and equipment, to innovative software, solutions and technologies that enab... At The Coleman Group, we’re proud to invest in our people. We recognise that great people are the foundation of any successful business and we have worked hard to develop a structured programme to map competencies, develop careers and nurture talent across our businesses.We’re also committed to innovation – from the most advanced demolition techniques and equipment, to innovative software, solutions and technologies that enab...
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JEMIMA WONG – INTERNAL AUDITOR FOR INTEGRATED MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS
Jemima achieved her competent status in October 2017, having being mentored by Gerrard Associates over the past 18 months.
Lesley Quinn - Group Compliance Manager said: “It was agreed with Jemima that both she and The Coleman Group would benefit from training and co... Jemima Wong an Environmental Manager at The Coleman Group, has recently become an competent internal auditor of ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001 and PAS 99 Integrated Managements Systems.Jemima achieved her competent status in October 2017, having being mentored by Gerrard Associates over the past 18 months.Lesley Quinn - Group Compliance Manager said: “It was agreed with Jemima that both she and The Coleman Group would benefit from training and co...
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ACHIEVING THE STANDARD – OUR CERTIFICATION OF CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
For any organisation, including those in the construction and demolition industries, it is crucial evidence of continuous improvement and of that company’s commitment to Health & Safety, Quality and Environmental standards. It is also independent confirmation that the relevant management systems are up to... Demonstrating compliance with internationally recognised standards to achieve certification is much more than just a box-ticking exercise.For any organisation, including those in the construction and demolition industries, it is crucial evidence of continuous improvement and of that company’s commitment to Health & Safety, Quality and Environmental standards. It is also independent confirmation that the relevant management systems are up to...
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GLOBAL RECOGNITION FOR WATERLOO PROJECT
Bringing together all expertise from across The Coleman Group, the Waterloo project included strip out and structural alterations to help bring the former Eurostar terminal back into use, within some of the most challenging site restrictions we have ever encountered.
After r... The Coleman Group is proud to have been awarded a prestigious World Demolition Award, recognising the success of our complex demolition project at Waterloo International Terminal.Bringing together all expertise from across The Coleman Group, the Waterloo project included strip out and structural alterations to help bring the former Eurostar terminal back into use, within some of the most challenging site restrictions we have ever encountered.After r...
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THE COLEMAN GROUP SHORTLISTED FOR THE CONSTRUCTION NEWS SPECIALISTS AWARDS 2018
We are proud to have been shortlisted for the Project of the Year by a Specialist Contractor category, for the work undertaken as par... The Coleman Group has been selected by the judges as a finalist in the ‘Project of the Year by a Specialist Contractor’ and ‘Training Excellence’ categories at the 2018 Construction News Specialists Awards, the only national awards that recognise the best specialist contractors from across the UK.We are proud to have been shortlisted for thecategory, for the work undertaken as par...
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STECHFORD FOODBANK GROWS FRESH VEG WITH SUPPORT FROM THE COLEMAN GROUP
Under the guidance of the RHS’s ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood’ scheme, which is part of Britain In Bloom, volunteers from the local commu... Stechford Foodbank, which is housed inside a cabin donated by the Coleman family in 2014, has started providing freshly grown vegetables to local families in crisis - all thanks to a grassroots community gardening project by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) with support from The Coleman Group.Under the guidance of the RHS’s ‘It’s Your Neighbourhood’ scheme, which is part of Britain In Bloom, volunteers from the local commu...
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THE COLEMAN GROUP – 55 YEARS AND COUNTING
We will kick off our celebration... Today, 16th October 2017, marks our 55th anniversary as an independent family business. More than five decades later, the family values, together with a continued investment in innovation, facilities and our people, ensure that The Coleman Group remains the contractor of choice for some of the biggest name in the industry. We will celebrate our anniversary across all sites with our most values asset – our people.We will kick off our celebration...
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BEING MINDFUL OF MINDFULNESS
Many of us experience mental health and stressful or transitional points in our lives, which can affect our wellbeing.
By coming together on this day, we can break the silence that often surrounds mental health and create awareness that talking about this once taboo issue does not need to be so difficult.
In addition to stat... World Mental Health Day is recognised on 10th October every year. This year the focus is on mental health in the workplace.Many of us experience mental health and stressful or transitional points in our lives, which can affect our wellbeing.By coming together on this day, we can break the silence that often surrounds mental health and create awareness that talking about this once taboo issue does not need to be so difficult.In addition to stat...
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WATERLOO PROJECT NOMINATED FOR WORLD DEMOLITION AWARD
Our team has recently finished on site at Waterloo, where they have successfully completed partial demolition of the old Eurostar Terminal, within a scope of works which also included internal structural alterati... Coleman & Company is proud to have been shortlisted for the Civils Demolition category at the prestigious World Demolition Awards 2017, for work undertaken as part of the £600million redevelopment of Waterloo International Terminal.Our team has recently finished on site at Waterloo, where they have successfully completed partial demolition of the old Eurostar Terminal, within a scope of works which also included internal structural alterati...
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HEALTH, FITNESS AND WELLBEING AT THE COLEMAN GROUP
Forming part of The Coleman Group’s people strategy, Coleman & Me, team members from across the business now have access to personal... Health and Wellbeing was high on the agenda at our recent strategy day and as a result, we’re proud to tell you about the launch of our new personal development initiative aimed at encouraging employees to exercise, make healthy eating choices and talk openly about mental health and lifestyle challenges.Forming part of The Coleman Group’s people strategy, Coleman & Me, team members from across the business now have access to personal...
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THE COLEMAN GROUP EXHIBITING AT CONTAMINATION EXPO SERIES
Come and see our team on Stand C6150 at Europe’s leading event for contamination professionals, where leading industry names will be showcasing the latest in modern strategies, techniques and technologies. We’re exhibiting as part of the... Around 2,500 contamination professionals will pack out London’s ExCeL for the Contamination Expo Series on September 27th and 28th – and The Coleman Group will be amongst the exhibitors.Come and see our team on Stand C6150 at Europe’s leading event for contamination professionals, where leading industry names will be showcasing the latest in modern strategies, techniques and technologies. We’re exhibiting as part of the...
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RECOGNISING EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT
Ever since the company was first incorporated by John and Norah Coleman in 1962, The Coleman Group has put its people first. We’re proud of our culture and of our family values, which remain at the heart of everything we do.
This nomin... The Coleman Group is delighted to have been shortlisted for the ‘Most Unique Company Benefits’ category in the prestigious Engagement Excellence Awards, which celebrate the best in employee engagement.Ever since the company was first incorporated by John and Norah Coleman in 1962, The Coleman Group has put its people first. We’re proud of our culture and of our family values, which remain at the heart of everything we do.This nomin...
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INTERVIEW: MARK COLEMAN - BIM IN THE DEMOLITION INDUSTRY
What are the main benefits of BIM for demolition and structural alteration work?
At The Coleman Group, we use 3D BIM for structural analysis and design, and 4D BIM to plan and programme. A BIM model helps us understand the impact of removing structural elements, what k... BIM+ talks to Mark Coleman, managing director of The Coleman Group and deputy chairman of the CIOB’s Birmingham Hub, about how BIM can make a difference on demolition projects.At The Coleman Group, we use 3D BIM for structural analysis and design, and 4D BIM to plan and programme. A BIM model helps us understand the impact of removing structural elements, what k...
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STRATEGIES FOR CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
That’s why each subsidiary and department across The Coleman Group recently held its own strategy day, focusing on business strategy, development and ways to im... Like any sector, continuous improvement is essential in the demolition and construction industries and we are committed to continuously innovating, improving and developing in order to maintain our position as the contractor of choice for some of the biggest names in the industry.That’s why each subsidiary and department across The Coleman Group recently held its own strategy day, focusing on business strategy, development and ways to im...
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COLEMAN & COMPANY KICKS OFF UCB PHASE 2
After months of project planning, our team has now started on site in Birmingham’s famous Jewellery Quarter, where works will include the partial demolition of 9 Charlotte Street and 12 George Street, formerly James Cond printers.... Coleman & Company is delighted to be starting work on a major new project in Birmingham this week, as part of the next phase of University College of Birmingham’s (UCB) £90million campus redevelopment.After months of project planning, our team has now started on site in Birmingham’s famous Jewellery Quarter, where works will include the partial demolition of 9 Charlotte Street and 12 George Street, formerly James Cond printers....
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COLEMAN & COMPANY HELPS PRESERVE A PIECE OF WOLVERHAMPTON HISTORY
Built in 1902 and dramatically extended in the 1970s to accommodate a busy bus garage, Cleveland Road Tramway Depot in Wolverhampton, has been demolished as part of the city’s expansive urban redevelopment prog... The Coleman & Company team has once again demonstrated its recovery and restoration expertise by carefully removing, preserving and transporting a historic frieze and coat of arms from an Edwardian tram garage in Wolverhampton.Built in 1902 and dramatically extended in the 1970s to accommodate a busy bus garage, Cleveland Road Tramway Depot in Wolverhampton, has been demolished as part of the city’s expansive urban redevelopment prog... Coleman & Company Helps Preserve a Piece of Wolverhampton History from The Coleman Group on Vimeo.
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WOMEN IN DEMOLITION: JOANNE SULLIVAN
We’re running a series of mini profiles with employees from across The Coleman Group titled Women in Demolition – showcasing our commitment to diversity and highlighting the opportunities (and the challenges) for women in our industry.
Here we focus on Joanne Sullivan, who was recently promoted to Corporate Social Responsibili... We are proud to demonstrate diversity across The Coleman Group workforce and to showcase our commitment to people.We’re running a series of mini profiles with employees from across The Coleman Group titled Women in Demolition – showcasing our commitment to diversity and highlighting the opportunities (and the challenges) for women in our industry.Here we focus on, who was recently promoted to Corporate Social Responsibili...
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NEW BOARD APPOINTMENTS FOR THE COLEMAN GROUP
The Coleman Group, a top ten contractor which brings together award-winning specialists in the field of demolition, remediation, specialist cutting and engineering, is delighted to announce changes to its Senior Leadership Team, including a series of new appointments from within the existing team.
The appointments will help shape the future direction of the Group and its subsidiary companies Coleman & Company, Coleman Remediation Services, Coleman... he Coleman Group, a top ten contractor which brings together award-winning specialists in the field of demolition, remediation, specialist cutting and engineering, is delighted to announce changes to its Senior Leadership Team, including a series of new appointments from within the existing team.The appointments will help shape the future direction of the Group and its subsidiary companies Coleman & Company, Coleman Remediation Services, Coleman...
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AIMING HIGHER: CLIMBING THE LADDER AT COLEMAN & COMPANY
It’s important to us that our staff are given the resources and feel empowered enough to take charge of their own career pathway, whether that’s working closely with senior team members, asking for training or grabbing a promotion opportunity with both hands. And we’re pleased to say that there are people t... Coleman & Company is committed to the continued development of its people, wherever they work and whatever role they fulfil.It’s important to us that our staff are given the resources and feel empowered enough to take charge of their own career pathway, whether that’s working closely with senior team members, asking for training or grabbing a promotion opportunity with both hands. And we’re pleased to say that there are people t...
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THE COLEMAN GROUP NAMED ONE OF UK’S ‘MOST HIGH GROWTH POTENTIAL COMPANIES’
The annual report, which is collated by the London Stock Exchange Group and now in its fourth year, identifies the UK’s ‘most dynamic SMEs and high growth potential companies’ – and we couldn’t be any more proud to be included.
As well as ident... The Coleman Group is delighted to have been named in the latest edition of 1,000 Companies to Inspire Britain, an annual report which highlights the best of British small business.The annual report, which is collated by the London Stock Exchange Group and now in its fourth year, identifies the UK’s ‘most dynamic SMEs and high growth potential companies’ – and we couldn’t be any more proud to be included.As well as ident...
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CELEBRATING THE SUCCESS OF THE FIRST COLEMAN GROUP SEMINAR
The CPD accredited event was the first in a series of free seminars from The Coleman Group focusing on key industry issues and innovations, and the feedback has been unanimously positive.
Led by Mark Coleman, Group Managing Direct... We were delighted to be joined by colleagues, clients and partners from across the industry for our first breakfast seminar in Birmingham, showcasing industry best practice alongside our own technical innovation and expertise.The CPD accredited event was the first in a series of free seminars from The Coleman Group focusing on key industry issues and innovations, and the feedback has been unanimously positive.Led by Mark Coleman, Group Managing Direct...
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FANTASTIC FEEDBACK AT WATERLOO
Coleman & Company, Coleman Remediation Services, Coleman & Company Spe... With all four Coleman Group businesses working side-by-side on the high profile project to redevelop the derelict Waterloo International Terminal, it is one of the most complex and comprehensive projects we have ever worked on. So it gives us great pleasure to be able to report a stream of positive feedback in recognition for the fantastic work being done by our site teams.Coleman & Company, Coleman Remediation Services, Coleman & Company Spe...
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TIME TO ACT ON MENTAL HEALTH
By Mark Coleman, Managing Director, The Coleman Group
I’ve been reflecting on the Mind Matters campaign that Construction News is running to raise awareness of mental health matters in the sector. (For more information, see here:
It is an important campaign that our industry should act on, because the costs of failure are stark.
On a human level, depression, stress and suicide... I’ve been reflecting on the Mind Matters campaign that Construction News is running to raise awareness of mental health matters in the sector. (For more information, see here: https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/best-pr |
absence of biological matter the SCP-1694 entities serve no purpose.
Due to the lack of technological constructions for the inhabitation of entities created by SCP-1694, SCP-1694 has proceeded to cannibalize and enhance man-made exploration probes with biological appendages, most notably the Soviet Venera –class probes. Venera 12 was among the first successful man-made object to land on Venus, functioning for three hours before shutting down due to the extreme heat of the Venus surface. The success lead to the deployment of five further Venera series probes. However, in 1984 the Soviet controllers were alarmed to receive radio signals emanating from Venera 12, henceforth SCP-1694-A, which was now, inexplicably, fully functional. The Venera project passed into Foundation hands and probes were dispatched to investigate the current status of SCP-1694-A and all other man-made objects currently occupying Venus.
+ Document A1694: Essay On the SCP-1694 Exploration Mission, by Dr. Crais - Document A1694: Essay On the SCP-1694 Exploration Mission, by Dr. Crais The Foundation space program was very much in its infancy when the SCP-1694-A anomaly was first identified, or SCP-1694, as it was then known, since we naturally assumed it to be a stand-alone entity. The mission would jointly serve to investigate the anomaly, as well as jointly testing the limits of our new technology. Researchers devised a ‘scattershot’ approach to investigating the status of the 8 man-made probes occupying the surface, with ten relatively simple Foundation probes to be deployed on the surface, each with a five hundred-mile scan radius. Search efforts would be directed via an orbiting satellite. Launch from the Antarctic space center presented difficulties, but occurred without fault. SCP-1694-A was quickly identified as its constant radio messages provided a source to home in on. Probe Delta unfortunately crash-landed, but probe Beta was re-directed to study the anomaly. SCP-1694-A was confirmed to indeed be formerly the Soviet Venera 12, and was largely intact with the exception of several ruptures around the base, through which a reddish-brown tentacle-like mass was being extruded. These ‘tentacles’ were wrapped firmly around the bottom half of the probe, and it appeared that SCP-1694-A had not moved for some time. It was sitting- I believe that is an appropriate term- in a shallow crater, which was smeared with a reddish substances believed to have been created by the SCP-1694-A anomaly. Naively, we believed that it was perhaps too heavy to move, so upon moving in for closer interaction the SCP-1694-A took us by surprise, swiftly destroying the probe with its tentacles, meaning ultimately very little was learnt about the anomaly. SCP-1694-A before its anomalous state. However, our frustration quickly turned to horror as we realized that the same reddish-brown biological matter was being extruded by our own research probes. Probe Delta, I believe, had its manipulator arm replaced with a biological multi-segmented arm and four-fingered hand virtually overnight; these revelations were what lead to the discovery of the SCP-1694 entities. Although the probe remained under Foundation control for a further five hours, control became increasingly erratic and was finally broken, with contact with the other probes similarly lost. Although Probe Epsilon detected another anomalous Venera entity before its destruction, no other interactions were made. Although the mission served as a wake-up call as to the nature of the SCP-1694 entity, it will ultimately be remembered as an expensive failure.
Probe Iota’s final transmission of an unknown SCP-1694 entity.
It is unknown how SCP-1694 acquired the biological matter needed to create the SCP-1694-A entity. It has been hypothesised that a portion of the original Venusian ecosystem is being preserved by SCP-1694, and harvested as required.Assailants, most of whom remain on the loose, have wreaked havoc on neighborhoods and families across New Orleans in the last seven days, fatally shooting six people and wounding nine others, including women and children apparently caught in the crossfire.
The shootings -- several in broad daylight, near busy thoroughfares or bustling street corners -- have sent little kids to emergency rooms with bullet wounds to their faces and mothers searching for answers.
By late Tuesday, no arrests had been made in any of the killings. But in a shooting in Hollygrove that wounded a girl, 7, and her mother a week ago as they ran for their lives toward Airline Drive, two teenagers and a young man are in jail.
The streak of violence that has touched nearly every corner of the city comes 10 months into a year that has seen an overall drop in killings. Compared with the same time last year, murders are down 24 percent, the city says.
The body count is at 116, which remains lower than the 152 killings logged in the city by the same time in 2012.
But the nature of the recent crimes -- a grandmother in eastern New Orleans killed in her home in a shooting that wounded her 4-year-old grandson, revelations that three gunmen chased down the woman and her daughter in Hollygrove during rush hour -- has proven especially terrifying for neighbors who say they are too afraid to speak out.
And the recent spate of shootings comes on the heels of a summer that saw a 1-year-old girl shot dead in the arms of her babysitter just days before an 11-year-old girl was killed in a triple shooting that also wounded her cousin of the same age.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu issued a statement late Tuesday noting the overall drop in murders, and he pointed to the initiatives his administration has launched to address the violent crime problem.
"We launched NOLA FOR LIFE in 2012 to bring an end to the relentless drumbeat of violence in New Orleans," the mayor said in a statement. "Today, the number of murders is down 24 percent compared to this time last year, we have indicted 67 individuals that were once terrorizing our city, and we are intervening to offer young men who are most often the perpetrators or victims real opportunities and alternatives through NOLA FOR LIFE initiatives like Midnight Basketball, CeaseFire New Orleans and Summer Youth Employment."
Landrieu said ending murder in the city "will not be easy and it won't happen overnight," and urged more people to get involved to "change the culture of violence that robs us of our greatest potential."
Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas said in a statement that the rash of crimes that have plagued the city over the past couple of weeks represent "an unexpected spike."
"Most of these recent incidents are still being investigated, which means we cannot release details at this time. However, we can say that in the overwhelming majority of these cases, the suspected perpetrators know (or) knew their victims- whether personally, or through other means," Serpas said.
"These are not random acts of violence, and it is unfortunate and disturbing that perpetrators are in a state of mind that has no reservation about recklessly opening fire and possibly wounding a child," he said.
A bloody Monday
Monday (Oct. 7) marked one of the deadliest days of the year: Police reported three fatal shootings within 12 hours.
That morning, shortly after 8 a.m., police responded to a call of a shooting in Bayou St. John. Inside a parked car riddled with bullet holes, police found the body of 19-year-old Tyrin Whitfield.
He had been shot several times in the 800 block of North Dupre Street and was pronounced dead on the scene.
"He was a strong kid who was struggling to survive," said Valerie Bodet, program director at the Louisiana Outdoors Outreach Program, called LOOP, that was helping Whitfield find his way.
Whitfield was a longtime volunteer and recent employee of the Louisiana Outdoors Outreach Program who had moved to New Orleans from Memphis with his family in 2006.
Bodet said he was a neighborhood kid who from the age of 12 was constantly volunteering with the organization, whose purpose is to teach outdoor skills to students throughout the New Orleans area while emphasizing social and emotional growth. The program partners with several local schools as well as other community organizations.
"We just sort of adopted him," Bodet recalled fondly. "He had a very strong work ethic -- once you taught him something, he could do everything independently.
Whitfield struggled a lot outside of the program but had shown incredible progress throughout the years, Bodet said. The program recruits at-risk youth, and Whitfield's success was seen as inspirational by many who worked and participated in the program.
"We don't know what it's like -- we don't go home to what they are going home to," Bodet said. "But he was the reason we have hope."
Whitfield, whose smile could "light up a room," had started out as a volunteer but in June of this year was hired as a paid employee at the company where he would do maintenance work.
The 19-year-old had been living with friends, his mother, Tarsha Kerr, told reporters.
Police have not released a motive or much information about the shooting. Kerr said someone fired several shots at him from behind.
"He was a beautiful child," his mother said. "He was well-loved, smart, intelligent. A real happy-go-lucky child."
Two more dead by dusk
By dusk, two other men were dead in separate shootings, one on Stemway Drive in eastern New Orleans, another across town on Louisiana Avenue a few blocks off St. Charles Avenue.
Just 12 hours later, around 7 a.m. Tuesday (Oct. 8), the latest homicide victim was found dead in a car with a bullet in the head around Music and North Villere streets.
While the recent mayhem is alarming, the numbers are not necessarily emblematic of a trend, said criminologist and Tulane University professor Peter Scharf.
Scharf said the mayor's murder-reduction strategy, the NOLA for Life initiative, has shown significant success so far in 2013, with a significant drop in the year's second quarter. But considering the recent carnage and the heinous nature of the crimes, he said residents are probably starting to wonder about its effectiveness.
"People thought we had this under control, but now they're starting to ask themselves more questions," Scharf said.
Even if the year ends with the overall number of killings staying lower than last year, New Orleans' murder rate is still astoundingly high compared with other cities, he said.
"We're still a disaster zone," he said. "We have to keep on asking ourselves, 'what is acceptable?'"
*This article has been modified from the original version to include statements from NOPD Superintendent Ronal SerpasThis Casa Fernandez Aganorsa Leaf Maduro comes out with a ton of spice and flavor to it. However, towards the end the bitter notes that I picked up were just too much to overcome which made me end the cigar earlier than I had anticipated.
Initial Thoughts
If you have ever heard of Aganorsa leaf then you are much more versed in tobacco than I am. During my latest visit to my local B&M the manager directed me towards this Casa Fernandez Aganorsa Leaf Maduro. It was something new he was carrying and wanted to know what I thought about it. So I said I’d give it a try. I had never smoked a Casa Fernandez before, so I picked one up.
This particular cigar comes in two sizes: El Supremo (6×58) and Robusto Extra (5×54, the one I’m smoking). As you probably guessed this cigar is a Maduro. The wrapper is a San Andres Mexico Maduro to be accurate. The binders and fillers are 100% Nicaragua and grown by Aganorsa S.A. throughout 4 different farms in 2 growing regions in Nicaragua. Aganorsa S.A. is a tobacco growing company in Nicaragua and they have many other tobacco clients including Padron, Illusione, and Padilla. However, the company’s own brand is this Casa Fernandez line. I’m excited to hop into this review so lets dive on in!
Looks
First look at this Casa Fernandez Aganorsa Leaf Maduro and you might not know what to think. The box is fairly standard and unassuming. Unless you’re looking at a brand new one, in which it has a beautiful maroon ribbon laying across the cigars holding them in place. The rest of the box doesn’t have much going on though.
The band on this cigar is what really caught my eye. It’s a nice cream colored background with a big bold maroon F sitting right in the middle begging for attention. I’ve seen this band before on other reviews online and I instantly knew the brand when the cigar store manager was showing it to me. Like I said before I had never smoked anything from the brand so I was willing to give it a try.
Below the main and is the secondary band that explains the difference in this cigar. The background of this band reminds me of a nice dark old vine zin wine. The deep rich burgundy color with some gold trimming gives it a classy look. The printing on the band is a little difficult to read in certain light. I did finally figure out that it says Aganorsa Leaf in cursive and below that it makes the maduro statement in smaller bold face all caps print. I love the border on this secondary band, it’s trimmed with gold and has small burgundy dots on it to break up the solid gold lines.
The wrapper on this Casa Fernandez Aganorsa Leaf Maduro is interesting. At some points it looks rugged and others it’s a beautiful dark consistent maduro. It all depends on the light though. It’s somewhat hard to tell though in the pictures because some of the poor lighting so you’ll have to take my word for it. I would imagine some of the rugged-ness is due to the fact that it’s a San Andres wrapper. In my experience the wrappers coming out of Mexico aren’t always the prettiest to look at, but they do pack quite a flavor punch. Time for the pre light ritual!
Function
After I brought this cigar home from the store I let it rest for a couple of weeks and get it acclimated to my humidor. So it should be good to go, but I’ll double check it anyway. The pinch test is a little bit harder to do on this cigar because it’s box pressed. The corners are slightly rounded and I don’t want to break the wrapper by pinching too hard. I’ve rarely had any sort of draw issue on a box-pressed cigar though so I’m not too worried about the pinch test. It bounces back enough for me to be happy with the result.
Look at the cap on this Casa Fernandez Aganorsa Leaf Maduro I’m having difficulty determining whether it’s a triple cap or a double cap. There appears to be 3 distinct lines, so for that sake I’m going to say it’s a triple cap. Feel free to argue below in the comments. Either way to cap is about to be sliced up like a “pizza piah”!
I took out the ole capped back guillotine cutter and went to town on the head of this cigar. It only took one quick snip and then I was testing the dry draw. Air was flowing perfectly through the barrel so I figured it had passed all the pre flight checks and was ready to fire it up!
Smoking
Again I’m trying the three match lighting approach for this cigar. It’s worked well in the past so I’m going to stick with it. Unfortunately for this particular cigar the foot didn’t get completely lit during the three match trick. So I had to bring in re-enforcements. My trusty Xikar Stratosphere came and saved the day. I touched up the outer edge of the foot and got this thing burning on the straight and narrow again.
The first third of this Casa Fernandez Aganorsa Leaf Maduro smoked perfectly. The draw was just right, a little bit of resistance but plenty of airflow. The burn line got a little wonky, but nothing out of control that required any touch ups.
The ash held on very well, it was easily over an inch before I tapped it off. The next third continued in the same manner. The ash was slightly gray with some dark black rings to it. It wasn’t flaky and held a fairly solid roll to itself.
Continuing through the cigar the 2nd and final thirds smoked perfectly. Again, the burn line wasn’t razor sharp, but it wasn’t out of control and warranting any touch ups. Can’t ask for much more than that. Overall a great smoking experience. Let’s see what Aganorsa has in store in terms of flavor for us!Just thought I'd write a snippet about how great this movie is (in line with the rest of the franchise, anyway). It functions like an extra-long episode of "A Certain Magical Index," so I would refrain from watching it unless you've at least seen the entirety of both Index and Railgun, or else you might be kind of puzzled as to the states and relationships of some of the characters (specifically Accelerator). Also, since this story happens last chronologically, you sort-of owe it to yourself to do so. The animation is positively eye-blowing, and the story is a rather intriguing one. The music is especially emphasized, and for good reason since one of the newer characters introduced is a pop idol. Even so, the characters are what make this piece. Sure, you've got Touma's self-righteousness blowing off all over the place, but that's nothing when you consider the heart and passion the voices behind the art put into their roles. Of course, how you feel about the characters has probably already been determined in the series, but I digress. Unless you've watched the entirety of Clannad about sixty times, you might even shed a tear towards the end as the movie actually pulls out a tiny twist that plays a big part for one character. Intelligent, entertaining, beautiful, euphonious...It's certainly a must-have on the shelf for any Index fan, and perhaps any anime enthusiast for that matter. It's not perfect (certainly no Studio Ghibli production), even though I give it four stars and a heap of compliments, but I think these imperfections will vary depending on the viewer. I give this extra-long Index episode my hearty recommendation; take my word as you see fit.CBS News
March 2, 2002
WASHINGTON- Key congressional leaders say they didnt know President Bush had established a shadow government, moving dozens of senior civilian managers to secret underground locations outside Washington to ensure that the federal government could survive a devastating terrorist attack on the nation's capital, The Washington Post says in its Saturday editions.
Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) told the Post he had not been informed by the White House about the role, location or even the existence of the shadow government that the administration began to deploy the morning of the Sept. 11 hijackings.
An aide to House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) said he was also unaware of the administration's move.
Among Congress's GOP leadership, aides to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.), second in line to succeed the president if he became incapacitated, and to Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (Miss.) said they were not sure whether they knew.
Aides to Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) said he had not been told. As Senate president pro tempore, he is in line to become president after the House speaker.
Mr. Bush acknowledged yesterday that the administration had taken extensive measures to guarantee "the continuity of government," adding, This is serious business.
Such an operation was conceived as a Cold War precaution against nuclear attack during the Eisenhower administration but never used until now. It went into effect in the first hours after the terror attacks and has evolved over time, said senior government officials who provided details of the plan.
Without confirming details of the government-in-waiting, Mr. Bush told reporters in Iowa: "We take the continuity of government issue seriously because our nation was under attack. And I still take the threats we receive from al Qaeda killers and terrorists very seriously."
"I have an obligation as the president and my administration has an obligation to the American people to put measures in place that should somebody be successful in attacking Washington there is an ongoing government," Mr. Bush said. "That is one reason why the vice president was going to undisclosed locations. This is serious business. And we take it seriously."
Under the classified "Continuity of Operations Plan," which was first reported by The Post in its Friday editions, high-ranking officials representing their departments have begun rotating in and out of the assignment at one of two fortified locations along the East Coast.
The Post said the first rotations were made in late October or early November, a fact confirmed by a senior government official late Thursday.
Officials who are activated for the duty live and work underground 24 hours a day, away from their families, according to the Post. The shadow government has sent home most of the first wave of deployed personnel, replacing them most commonly at 90-day intervals.
A government official who spoke to The Associated Press said President Bush does not foresee ever needing to turn over government functions to the secret operation, but believed it was prudent to implement the long-standing plan in light of the war on terrorism and persistent threats of future attacks.
The team, drawn from every Cabinet department and some independent agencies, would seek to prevent the collapse of essential government functions in the event of a disabling blow to Washington, the official said.
The underground government would try to contain disruptions of the nation's food and water supplies, transportation links, energy and telecommunications networks, public health and civil order, the Post reported. Later, it would begin to reconstitute the government.
The government-in-waiting is an extension of a policy that has kept Vice President Dick Cheney in secure, undisclosed locations away from Washington. Cheney has moved in and out of public view as threat levels have fluctuated.
As next in line to power behind Mr. Bush, he would need help running the government in a worst-case scenario.
"We take this issue extraordinarily seriously, and are committed to doing as thorough a job as possible to ensure the ongoing operations of the federal government," Joseph W. Hagin, White House deputy chief of staff, told the Post, though he declined to discuss details. "In the case of the use of a weapon of mass destruction, the federal government would be able to do its job and continue to provide key services and respond."
According to the Post, the backup government consists generally of officials from top career ranks, from GS-14 and GS-15 to members of the Senior Executive Service. The White House is represented by a "senior-level presence," one official said, but well below such Cabinet-ranked advisers as Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Many departments, including Justice and Treasury, have completed plans to delegate statutory powers to officials who would not normally exercise them, the Post said. Others do not need to make such legal transfers, or are holding them in reserve.
The report said civilians deployed for the operation are not allowed to take their families and may not tell anyone where they are going or why.
The two sites of the shadow government make use of local geological features to render them highly secure, the Post said. They are well stocked with food, water, medicine and other consumable supplies, and are capable of generating their own power.
© MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.
FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of criminal justice, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.M1018BIGSHOTS1
A Bald Eagle is perched on a limb near the Pentwater River in this MLive file photo.
(LOUISE OLSON)
State and federal wildlife officials are investigating how a bald eagle ended up shot dead in Washtenaw County last month. The bird was found in Salem Township April 3, according to Conservation Officer Justin Ulberg of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. The DNR did not provide an exact address of where the bird was found, but said it was in a very rural area with few homes. A resident called the DNR's poaching hotline to report the dead eagle. Ulberg and fellow Conservation Officer Mike Drexler determined the bird had been dead for quite some time and was showing signs of decomposition, according to the DNR. The officers inspected the bald eagle to see if it had been shot with a firearm. "We did locate a small, round hole under the eagle's right wing, but were unable to determine if a broken bone caused the injury or if it was a wound from a bullet," Ulberg said. A necropsy performed April 14 in Lansing revealed the bald eagle had indeed been shot, according to Ulberg. "...Bullet fragments were located in the carcass and an X-ray showed a wound channel," he said. The carcass was sent to the National Eagle Repository. Once officials receive the full necropsy report from the lab, investigators will begin interviewing potential suspects, Ulberg said. U.S. Fish and Wildlife has been notified. The bald eagle is protected under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act. Killing a bald eagle in violation of the act is punishable by a maximum fine of $5,000 or one year imprisonment with $10,000 or not more than two years in prison for a second conviction. Anyone with information about this incident are asked to call the DNR's Report All Poaching Line at 1-800-292-7800.
John Counts covers crime and breaking news for The Ann Arbor News. He can be reached at johncounts@mlive.com or you can follow him on Twitter. Find all Washtenaw County crime stories here.Peiyun Cong
One could be forgiven for mistaking anomalocaridids for creatures from another world. The spade-shaped predators, which lived in the seas during the Cambrian — the geological era stretching from 541 million to 485 million years ago — had eyes that protruded from stalks and a pair of giant appendages on the sides of their mouths. But three stunningly well-preserved fossils found in China now show that the anomalocaridid brain was wired much like that of modern creatures called velvet worms, or onychophorans.
Both anomalocaridids and onychophorans belong to the arthropods, the group of invertebrates that includes spiders and insects and whose brain structures come in three main types. Two of those were already known to be very ancient, and the new fossils, described today in Nature1, suggest that the third type — the neural architecture found in onychophorans — also has changed little over more than half a billion years of evolution.
Named Lyrarapax unguispinus, the three fossils reveal creatures that — at 8 centimetres long — are on the small side for anomalocaridids, some of which are thought to have been as long as 2 to 3 metres. But the fossils’ segmented bodies and frontal appendages are pure anomalocaridid, says Nicholas Strausfeld, a neuroscientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who co-led the study.
What really grabbed Strausfeld’s attention was the creature’s brain, preserved flattened like a pressed flower: “I said, ‘Holy shit, that’s an onychophoran brain!’” he recalls. The animal’s frontal appendages are connected to nerve bundles, or ganglia, in front of optic nerves. Both the ganglia and the optic nerves lead to a segmented brain. The layout is an uncanny match to the wiring of the velvet worm’s brain, Strausfeld says: “It’s completely unlike anything else in any other arthropod.”
Nicholas Strausfeld/University of Arizona
The fossils solve a couple of evolutionary mysteries, Strausfeld adds. First, they suggest that the anomalocaridid’s frontal appendages are analogous to the mouthparts, or labra, of arthropods. The fossils, along with two other creatures discovered by Strausfeld and his team2, 3, also show that the three main kinds of arthropod brains have been around for more than 500 million years, even as their bodies changed drastically.
As top predators of their age, anomalocaridids may have spurred the evolution of the more sophisticated brains of the other arthropods they preyed upon, even though their nervous systems remained comparatively simple, Strausfeld says.“A predator that’s cruising around looking for prey doesn’t need to have a very complicated brain. It doesn’t have many enemies.”Israel and Hamas are in conflict on the ground and at war on Twitter.
In what is thought to be a world first, Israel announced its military campaign against Gaza on Twitter on Tuesday before making it official at a formal press conference, and it continues to live-tweet the campaign.
"The IDF has begun a widespread campaign on terror sites & operatives in the #Gaza Strip, chief among them #Hamas & Islamic Jihad targets," the verified account @IDFSpokesperson, on behalf of the Israel Defense Forces, tweeted Wednesday, adding a short time later, "The first target, hit minutes ago, was Ahmed Al-Jabari, head of the #Hamas military wing."
The announcement was reportedly the first confirmation to media that a military campaign had begun.
Dubbing it Operation Pillar of Defense, the spokesperson stated the goal of the operations were to protect Israeli civilians and "to cripple the terrorist infrastructure in the #Gaza Strip."
What follows is a stream of tweets with updates on the IDF’s action and the attacks coming from Gaza, as well as facts about the conflict, which goes back months but began escalating last weekend.
A video purporting to show an IDF "pinpoint strike" on Al-Jabari was removed by YouTube because it violated the site’s terms of service, but the spokesperson later posted a picture of the man and tweeted "Ahmed Jabari: Eliminated."
An account claiming to belong to Hamas, @AlqassamBrigade, confirmed the death and continues to post its own updates.
After the strike on Jabari, the IDF posted a warning: "We recommend that no Hamas operatives, whether low level or senior leaders, show their faces above ground in the days ahead."
On Thursday, the spokesperson tweeted, "This is 2nd day of #PillarOfDefense." and posted links to more video of attacks by both sides.LONDON -- Swedish hockey star Nicklas Backstrom will receive an Olympic silver medal even though he was suspended from the final in Sochi after a positive drug test.
The International Olympic Committee ruled Friday that Backstrom hadn't intended to enhance his performance, laying the blame for his positive test for pseudoephedrine on the Swedish team doctor.
The Washington Capitals center was suspended and pulled from the team just hours before the Feb. 23 gold-medal game, which Sweden lost 3-0 to Canada.
"While I will always be disappointed that I wasn't able to play in the gold medal game with my fellow countrymen, I'm pleased that my name has been cleared by the IOC," Backstrom said in a statement. "It is important to me that the IOC has acknowledged that I had asked for and received specific advice from my team doctor that taking this allergy medication would not be a violation.
"In addition, I had disclosed my use of over-the-counter medication prior to being tested."
The Swedes were outraged by the timing of the decision and said it affected the team's performance.
The IOC defended the suspension, saying it was "fully justified" because of the positive test and noting that Backstrom conceded also taking the allergy medication on the day of the final. But the IOC ruled that the player should not be kicked out of the Sochi Games altogether, citing "mitigating circumstances."
"There was no indication of any intent of the athlete to improve his performance by taking a prohibited substance," the IOC's three-person disciplinary commission said. "As a consequence, the athlete is entitled to receive the silver medal and diploma awarded in respect of the men's ice hockey event."
Backstrom tested positive for excess levels of pseudoephedrine after Sweden's win over Slovenia in the quarterfinals on Feb. 19. He said the stimulant was contained in "Zytec-D," a medication he had been taking for allergies.
The IOC said the positive result in the "A" sample was confirmed on the morning of Feb. 23. A hearing with Backstrom and Swedish team officials was quickly assembled. Among those attending was Bjorn Waldeback, the Swedish hockey team doctor and chief medical officer of the Swedish Olympic Committee.
The IOC said Backstrom had "nothing to hide" and explained he had been taking the allergy medication regularly for seven years on the advice of a doctor and had never produced a positive test. He said he had taken the medication earlier that day.
"We are certainly pleased that Nicklas Backstrom's name has been cleared by the IOC ruling, allowing him to receive the silver medal that he earned with his Swedish teammates," Don Fehr, the NHL Players' Association executive director said in a statement. "The decision by the IOC Disciplinary Commission makes it clear that Nicklas was open and cooperative throughout the process and had clearly disclosed on his doping control form the Zyrtec-D medication he had been taking for his allergies.
"Moreover, it is also welcome that the decision makes clear that Nicklas had both requested and received specific advice from the Swedish Chief Medical Officer that the allergy medication he was taking would not give rise to an adverse analytical finding. Backstrom did nothing inappropriate, but merely asked for and followed medical advice from his team doctor."
The IOC said Backstrom told the panel he knew the medication contained pseudoephedrine but relied on Waldeback's advice that the dosage wouldn't trigger a positive test. Waldeback said he was "at fault" for that advice.
Backstrom's backup "B" sample was tested later on Feb. 23 and also came back positive.
The IOC ruled that Backstrom committed an anti-doping violation by having the banned substance in his system. But the panel said he had been "open and cooperative," had disclosed the medication on his doping control form and had relied on Waldeback's advice.
The IOC ruled that Waldeback "made a serious error" by telling Backstrom his use of the medication wouldn't result in a positive test. If the doctor applies for Olympic accreditation in the future, the IOC should "seriously consider" his role in the case, the panel said.
The IOC said the decision "should in no way" be seen as taking away from the responsibility of athletes to be vigilant and ensure that no prohibited substances enter their body.
"It is unfortunate that his test results were not disclosed until just prior to the gold medal game on Feb. 23, four days after the test was done," Fehr said. "Had this matter been presented in a timely manner, it is possible that steps could have been taken to resolve this issue before the gold medal game."Here’s something I’ll certainly be keeping one eye fixed on as the Edward Snowden story advances: the degree to which the American right takes him up as a cause célèbre. They’re up a tree either way. If they do, then they’re obviously guilty of the rankest hypocrisy imaginable, because we all know that if Snowden had come forward during George W. Bush’s presidency, the right-wing media would by now have sniffed out every unsavory fact about his life (and a hefty mountain of fiction) in an effort to tar him. If they don’t, then they’ve lost an opportunity to sully Barack Obama. Since they like smearing Obama a lot more than they care about hypocrisy, my guess is that they will lionize him, as some already are. But in the long run, doing that will only expose how deep the rifts are between the national-security right and the libertarian right, and this issue will only extend and intensify those disagreements.
First out of the gate Sunday was Glenn Beck, who tweeted in the late afternoon, not too long after The Guardian posted the interview with Snowden: “I think I have just read about the man for which I have waited. Earmarks of a real hero.” Shortly thereafter, another: “Courage finally. Real. Steady. Thoughtful. Transparent. Willing to accept the consequences. Inspire w/Malice toward none.” And two hours after that: “The NSA patriot leaker is just yet another chance for America to regain her moral compass and set things right. No red or blue JUST TRUTH.”
Beck, I will concede, has a degree of credibility on the red/blue issue. He criticizes Republicans sometimes. Even so, it amounts to a speck of dust when set against his near-daily sermons (for years now) about liberal and Democratic fascism. So I wonder about the degree to which Beck would have hopped up to throw rose petals at young Snowden’s feet if he’d come forward in this way under the Bush administration.
About Beck, we can wonder. About the others, I think there is no reason to wonder at all. If Snowden’s parents had got about the business of conceiving him five or six years before they did, and the progeny had taken up this line of work in 2007 or 2008, it’s obvious that The Daily Caller and Breitbart.com, two right-wing outfits that Sunday evening were triumphantly bannering Snowden’s comments and the National Security Agency’s announced investigation into the matter, would have been savaging the guy. By close of business today, the rumors about his sexuality would be rampant.
They just want any cudgel they can find to beat Obama over the head, so Snowden suits their purposes for now. But let’s see where they go on this one over the long haul. On Sunday morning, Sen. Rand Paul called for a Supreme Court–level challenge to the NSA, in the form of a class-action suit, to end this data-mining. How’s that going to sit with John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Reince Priebus, and the moneymen behind the Republican Party? Not very well.
Yes, the subject of the national-security state gives liberals and Democrats fits. We’re not “supposed” to do or support this sort of thing, because we believe in and hew to certain civil-libertarian principles |
a nasty tendency to renege on contracts and claim credit for other people’s work, but then nobody is perfect. However, even if he wasn’t personally responsible for everything that came out of his shop at Menlo Park and was at time integrity challenged, he was the master of R & D and oversaw the creation and production of many of the great inventions of the nineteenth century, earning him, if not the number one spot, at least a top five showing.
2. Nikola Tesla
Though largely unknown during his lifetime and a man who died in relative obscurity (and as something of a reclusive mad scientist at that), the brilliant Serb—who is enjoying a resurgence in popularity lately—was probably more responsible for the birth of commercial electricity than any man in history. While Tesla’s patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current (AC) electric power systems, including the polyphase system of electrical distribution and the AC motor which helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution, he is probably best known for his work in the field of electromagnetism. He also contributed in varying degrees to the science of robotics, laid the foundation for the development of remote control, radar, and computer science, and even helped in the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics. Some people also believe he developed anti-gravity, teleportation, and even death rays, but that’s a bit more difficult to substantiate. In any case, with 111 patents to his credit, he was genuinely one of the finest and most innovative minds in history whose recognition has been long in coming.
1. Archimedes of Syracuse
How did this ancient Greek scholar come out at number one? Well, first, he did happen to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time who came close to precisely calculating the value of pi, figured out how to determine the area under the arc of a parabola, and thought up lots of other stuff that brings nightmares to generations of high school math students on a daily basis. Oh, and he also invented a bunch of cool machines, including siege weapons and possibly even a device that may have been capable of setting Roman ships on fire by using mirrors to focus sunlight onto their sails. So how does that make him deserving of the top spot? Because he did all of this more than 2,000 years ago, and without the aid of computers or the benefit of the technologies available to many inventors today. Additionally, though he may have studied at the libraries at Alexandria (though this is not confirmed) he acquired much of this knowledge the old fashioned way—by thinking it up himself. Considering the times and the obstacles he faced in doing this, he gets my vote for being the greatest inventor of all time.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
Jeff Danelek is a Denver, Colorado author who writes on many subjects having to do with history, politics, the paranormal, spirituality and religion. To see more of his stuff, visit his website at www.ourcuriousworld.com.
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Winter is Prime Time for Viewing Eagles on National Wildlife Refuges
Division of Public Affairs
External Affairs
Telephone: 703-358-2220
Website: https://www.fws.gov/external-affairs/public-affairs/
Few birds match America’s majestic bald eagle for inspiring awe. Winter is prime viewing season for these incredible raptors, which often are more visible against the backdrop of the season’s sparse landscape. Head to a national wildlife refuge to try to spot an eagle on your own or, better still, head to one of these refuges for an organized tour:
ILLINOIS
Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge, in the greater Marion area
Bald Eagle Tours
January 24 and 31, 8 a.m., 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
January 25 and February 1, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.
Take a guided van tour to see an active bald eagle nest and other eagle hangouts. Seating is limited. $5 for adults, $2.50 for youth under 12. Scout groups can take part in 8:30 a.m. tours on January 25 and February 1. Reservations are required. Call 618-997-3344 ext. 1.
IOWA
Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge, near Clinton
Clinton Bald Eagle Watch
January 10, 8:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.
In winter, bald eagles – sometimes numbering in the hundreds – hunt the open water below the river's locks and dams, swooping down to catch fish. Take a free shuttle bus from Clinton Community College to Lock and Dam 13 for the January 10 event, co-sponsored by the refuge. The refuge surrounds the lock and provides excellent viewing opportunities. Aerial displays are at their peak from January through March. Call 815-273-2732 for more information.
MARYLAND
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay
Eagle Festival
March 14, 2015
More than 200 bald eagles winter on the refuge, which supports one of the highest concentrations of eagles on the East Coast. The free festival includes kids’ activities, guest speakers and exhibits, as well as several “eagle prowls” – short bus tours to see active eagle nests. Pre-registration is not required. Call 410-228-2677.
MISSOURI
Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge, about 100 miles north of Kansas City
Bald eagles generally hang out here all winter unless there’s a deep freeze. Spring migration brings in newcomers from February to April. A 1.5-mile hiking trail called Eagle Overlook offers eagle viewing from the wetlands.
OKLAHOMA
Sequoyah National Wildlife Refuge, in the eastern part of the state
Eagle Tours
January 24, 9 a.m. to noon
January 31, 9 a.m. to noon
February 7, 9 a.m. to noon
February 14, 9 a.m. to noon
February 21, 9 a.m. to noon
February 28, 9 a.m. to noon
March 7, 9 a.m. to noon
Take a free guided bus tour to see nesting bald eagles. Use spotting scopes to get an up-close view of the eagles from the warmth of the bus. Reservations are not required.
Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge, in the southwestern quadrant
“In Search of Eagles” Tour
January 10, 11, 17, 18, 24, 25, 31
February 1, 7, 8, 14,
Take a bus tour to search for bald and golden eagles. Children must be 8 or older. $5 per person. Saturday and Sunday tours depart from the visitor center at 1:30 p.m. The three-hour tour includes a bus ride and a short walk. Reserve a space for a tour. Call 580-429-2197.
OREGON/CALIFORNIA
Klamath Basin Refuges
Winter Wings Festival
February 12-15
Even if you miss the Winter Wings Festival, held each year on Presidents’ Day Weekend, you have a good chance of seeing large numbers of bald eagles around Lower Klamath and Tule Lake refuges in winter. Eagles feed on the abundant waterfowl that live in surrounding fields. Stop at the Tule Lake Visitor Center, 4009 Hill Road, Tulelake, Calif., to learn where the highest concentrations of bald eagles are.
TENNESSEE
Reelfoot National Wildlife Refuge, Union City
Free Eagle Tours
Every weekday in February, 8 a.m. and noon
Take a six-person bus tour along Grassy Island Wildlife Drive to the viewing tower over Reelfoot Lake, where the abundant ducks and geese draw eagles. Get a close-up look at two active bald eagle nesting sites. Bald eagle numbers peak in February, with more than 200 wintering eagles around Reelfoot Lake. Resident eagles account for around 32 nests. Some parts of the refuge close in the winter as waterfowl sanctuary, but two refuge observation decks remain open year-round to accommodate visitors. Reservations are required. Call 731-538-2481.
UTAH
Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, Brigham City
Bald Eagle Day
February 14, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Join the staff and volunteers of the refuge to celebrate Bald Eagle Day. This family-fun open house event will include eagle games, crafts and movies for kids of all ages, and tours on the refuge to view these majestic birds. The refuge will also provide maps to other eagle-viewing locations around the state. Registration is not required. Call 435-723-5887 for more information.
VIRGINIA
Elizabeth Hartwell Mason Neck National Wildlife Refuge, suburban Washington, DC
The first refuge established for the protection of bald eagles, Mason Neck National Wildlife Refuge is a leading place to try to spot them. The refuge lies along a section of the Potomac River that is a breeding and resting area for bald eagles. The Great Marsh Trail offers a good overlook from November through March, when eagles are building nests and laying eggs.
WASHINGTON
Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge, Olympia
Dozens of bald eagles feed on waterfowl and fish where the Nisqually River meets Puget Sound. Washington is one of the largest eagle nesting sites in the country. The big birds are usually easily visible from December through March.
Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge, greater Portland
Six pairs of eagles now have nests on the refuge and on adjoining lands. Migrant birds boost the eagle population to about 50 in fall and winter. The eagles feed on waterfowl and fish along the Columbia River. Look for eagles roosting in trees around the River S Unit auto tour route from December through March and sometimes beyond, depending on the Columbia salmon runs.
Facts about bald eagles: http://1.usa.gov/1yDy6IoFeature photo courtesy of Josh Einbinder-Schatz/City of Basketball Love
Back in mid-March, Nazeer Bostick had recently transferred to Roman Catholic from Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School. At the time, the 6-foot-5-inch junior small forward from Philadelphia had received several offers from a few school but said he would wait it out and make a decision the following summer. However, Bostick did mention that one school was high up on his radar.
“My top school right now, because it’s the biggest school that’s offered me, is Penn State University,” Bostick said. “I think the school is great. I love everything about the school. I think their coaching staff is great, and that’s everything.”
Now it’s May and Bostick did not keep anybody waiting by announcing his commitment to play for Pat Chambers and Penn State. After consulting with his father, Bostick decided Penn State would be the best place for him to elevate his game, he said. He also mentioned that he liked the college’s nearby location as it’s very close to home, but was clear on what really influenced his final decision.
“The coaching staff, the class they have coming in and the future of what Coach Chambers is talking about having Penn State Basketball on the rise is what got me,” Bostick said. “Everybody looks at Penn State as a football school but I think we can change that with the right pieces.”
Coming off of a successful season with Roman Catholic, Bostick emerged as a valuable asset for his team, performing on all ends of the floor. Bostick reflected on his team’s successful year that included winning the 2015 Philadelphia Catholic League Boys’ Basketball Tournament.
“It felt great, man,” he explained. “The Catholic Championship felt like no other championship that I’ve ever played in. The atmosphere was different, it was a special day, it was a special moment and hopefully I can be here next year and win it again.”
With the addition of Lamar Stevens, Roman Catholic will have Bostick and a few other starters returning for their next season. As returning champions, Bostick and company will have plenty of teams trying to dethrone them. Bostick explained the pressure on him now that he is committed to a school in the Big Ten.
“Everybody’s going to try to prove that they can match up against me or that they can prove that they can play in the Big Ten,” Bostick explained. “That’s basically it, this drives me to work in the gym and have the same mindset to go out there more aggressive.”
Bostick mentioned that the past season was a major breakthrough for him, calling it his “best season.” He also mentioned his struggles as a freshman where eight seniors were ahead of him in the line-up. Despite getting injured twice in his sophomore season, Bostick was able to bounce back the next year and earn the honors of being an All-Catholic and All-City player in Philadelphia.
With one final season in high school keeping him from playing with Penn State, Bostick made it clear that the goal next season is to win championships and continue to produce for his school.
“I’m not going to try to play no different,” Bostick said. “I think with me being committed it will make me work harder because everybody will be coming after me now that I’m a Big Ten player.”Everyone—and by "everyone" I mean "a bunch of guys on my Twitter feed"—is up in arms about something Donald Trump said today about John McCain:
He's not a war hero....He's a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren't captured.
And then he reiterated the point:
I don't buy the war hero thing. Anybody can be captured. I thought the idea was to capture them. As far as I'm concerned he sat out the war.
Oh, wait. Sorry. That second quote came from Al Franken 15 years ago. So that's where Trump gets his material.
Bill Kristol says if Trump doesn't apologize for his McCain crack, this will be the "beginning of the end" for his presidential campaign. Given Kristol's spotty record as a prognosticator, that might be a good reason to expect Trump to stick around a long time. But if he is on his way out, maybe he'll head to the Senate instead.× Suspect’s Mother Charged in Long Beach Home Invasion-Robbery That Left Accomplice Dead
The mother of a man who was allegedly involved in a home-invasion robbery that turned deadly has been charged in connection with the incident, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office announced on Monday.
Ruby Adams was suspected of serving as the lookout in a botched robbery that left her son’s accomplice dead, prosecutors said.
Gus Adams, 26, and Andrea Miller, 28, allegedly broke into the home of 80-year-old Tom Greer last Tuesday night, according to the Long Beach Police Department. Greer told officers he came back to his residence to find the pair burglarizing his house.
The elderly homeowner said that after the pair beat him, he got a gun and shot at them, according to police.
Miller was hit by gunfire and killed. Adams initially fled the scene, but was later arrested.
His mother was also taken into custody two days later.
Ruby Adams has been charged with first-degree residential burglary and first-degree residential robbery, a news release from the DA’s office stated.
If convicted on the charges, she faces up to seven years in state prison.SEATTLE, WASH. – Seattle Sounders FC today announced that it has signed midfielder Erik Friberg. The 29-year-old Swedish international is being added to Sounders FC’s roster pending receipt of his P-1 Visa and International Transfer Certificate once Major League Soccer’s International Transfer Window officially opens on July 8. Per MLS and club policy, additional terms of the deal are not being disclosed.
“We’re excited to add a versatile midfielder in Erik to our roster,” said Sounders FC General Manager & President of Soccer Garth Lagerwey. “Erik is a player that is well-liked and respected within our organization, and we’re eager to welcome him back to Seattle.”
Friberg previously played for Sounders FC in 2011, starting 23 of 26 appearances and recording one goal and two assists. He then moved to Swedish side Malmö FF, where he appeared 41 times from 2012-2013, scoring six goals and helping the club to the 2013 Allsvenskan championship. He then spent the 2013-2014 season with Italian side Bologna, starting five of seven appearances for the Serie A side. Most recently, the Göteborg native played 13 games for Esbjerg in the Danish topflight.
“Erik is a smart tactical player and has the ability to put players out of the game with his forward passing,” said Sounders FC Sporting Director Chris Henderson. “He won a U.S. Open Cup Championship with our organization, and after leaving Seattle he played in three strong European leagues. We are happy to add his leadership to the group.”
Prior to joining Seattle in 2011, Friberg played four seasons with Swedish club BK Häcken from 2007-2010, leading the team with seven assists in 2009. He began his career with hometown club Västra Frölunda, spending two seasons with the youth team before making his senior team debut in 2005 and earning team Player of the Year honors in 2006. Friberg also has two career caps for the Swedish national team.
Sounders FC returns to action later this week with a Friday-night matchup with Eastern Conference leader D.C. United. Kickoff is set for 8:00 p.m. PT, with the match being broadcast nationally on UniMas.
Transaction: Seattle Sounders FC signs midfielder Erik Friberg on June 29, 2015.
Name: Erik Friberg
Position: Midfielder
Height: 5-11
Weight: 154
Born: February 10, 1986
Hometown: Göteborg, Sweden
Citizenship: Sweden
Acquired: Signed on June 29, 2015Menopause in women is inevitable. Apparently, the time it occurs in women might vary, but eventually, it will come to happen.
It is this change that symbolizes the culmination of fertility in women and ordinarily comes with some symptoms, both emotional and physical, which often arise from the hormonal imbalance of the body.
But the good news, however, is that nowadays it is easy to determine this particular stage hence possible to deal with it using a variety of treatment options available that would reduce the effects.
In as much as this [natural articular phenomenon can be devastating, it still easy to manage it.
Hormone Imbalance
As women attain menopause, one of the standard effects that they face is hormonal changes that take effect in their reproductive cycle.
Progesterone and estrogen are the major hormones in the female’s body. Estrogen tends to occur about once before menopause especially during the initial parts of the menstruation until ovulation.
Ordinarily, these two hormones are always balanced during menstruation because of the absence of pregnancy.
It is a cycle that continues every time until the moment one gets into menopause. During menopause, thing tends to be a little bit different though.
What happens is that there is no ovulation during this time and for that reason, progesterone hormone tends to be dormant regarding production and hence fail to balance with estrogen.
It is this excessive estrogen that makes the body to become relatively toxic and hence leading to various symptoms of menopause in women.
Let us find some of these symptoms and understand them briefly;
Symptoms
One of the significant effects of hormonal imbalance in women is that it creates different traits that tend to be different from every woman.
Furthermore, these symptoms also occur during various phases of menopause among women. It thus shows that there is no a definite time for a particular trait to arise.
Some of the most common symptoms associated with this particular condition include skin aging, mood swings, hair loss, depression, and memory lapses.
Also, menopause can also lead to relatively low self-drive, headache, weight gain, depression, breast cancer, thyroid dysfunction and uterine fibroids among others.
Nevertheless, the treatment for all these different symptoms also varies from one woman to the other.
Therefore, you need to understand how your body works before even thinking of getting the particular medication or treatment option for any of the symptoms.
How to manage the symptoms
Production of progesterone and estrogen are essential in preventing the adverse symptoms that emanate from the imbalance.
For instance, progesterone is known for generating energy whereas estrogen is known for causing weight gain.
When estrogen is secreted in excess, chances are also high that one can suffer from depression but at the same time progesterone acts as a natural antidepressant,
So primarily, these two hormones are vital to the body in as much as they have opposite effects and tend supplement one another in various ways hence leading to balance without the adverse symptoms.
Treatment
Treatment for hormonal imbalance is something that requires an in-depth intervention if at all it has to be effective.
For once, it is ideal to understand that this type of imbalance cannot be treated in entirety but can only be suppressed to relieve you from the ensuing pain.
The supplements that are often used in suppressing the symptoms of the hormonal imbalance that results in menopause range from pill to creams.
For the body to attain the right balance, it can take up to about four months or so depending on an individual’s response to the drugs.
There is thus no a definite duration for the hormonal balance to take place in the body the moment you start using these particular drugs.
The best news, however, is that in most cases, these symptoms tend to disappear within the shortest time possible even in two weeks upon commencing the treatment.
Hormone therapy is an effective intervention for this imbalance. However, it is not ideal for women who have a relatively adverse history regarding a myriad of diseases such as liver infections, blood clots, vaginal bleeding, breast and uterine cancer among others.
In such cases, it is recommended that if possible find ways of treating each symptom individually and also use the antidepressants if you suffer from depression.
Adjusting to lifestyle changes
The truth of the matter is that your lifestyle plays a minimal role in determining the effect of hormonal levels in your body.
However, you also need to be cognizant of the fact that you can maintain a healthy body especially when it is ready to deal with any probable symptoms that may arise.
It is thus essential that you reduce some of the lifestyle habits such as abusing drugs and alcohol. Also, you also need to exercise most of the time so that you reduce weight and stay fit.
The essence of this is to make it possible for you to reduce the risk of contracting other diseases. Doctors also recommend that you go for a medical breast cancer test at least every year to make it possible for you to detect any possible existence of the disease.
The good thing is that you can always manage the effects of such illnesses before they become serious.
The other essential element that you must also figure out is the fact that you need to eat healthy meals. Healthy meals in this case just mean that you need to eat right portions of balanced diet all the time.
The food you eat has a significant effect on your hormonal balance because it is the food elements that in most cases help to instigate the production of these two significant hormones in women.
When you eat well accordingly, you’ll also be able to attain this particular aspect of dealing with a hormonal imbalance that would result in reduced gruesome effects and better health in general.
Continue ReadingZara, the Spanish fast-fashion empire that’s made a whole business out of “borrowing” ideas from other designers, is back at it again! Their latest victim: Tuesday Bassen, an indie artist with a large internet cult following thanks to her illustrations and line of pins, patches and apparel.
On July 20, Bassen—who’s been previously profiled by Jezebel—posted the following to Instagram:
“Over the past year, Zara has been copying my artwork,” Bassen writes. “...I had my lawyer contact Zara and they literally said I have no base because I’m an indie artist and they’re a major corporation and that not enough people even know about me for it to matter.”
The Instagram photo includes images of her work side-by-side with incredibly similar pieces sold by Zara, along with a letter, allegedly from Zara’s legal team, that states:
We reject your claims here for reasons similar to those already stated above: the lack of distinctiveness of your client’s purported designs makes it very hard to see how a significant part of the population anywhere in the world would associate the signs with Tuesday Bassen.
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According to fashion law blog The Fashion Law, Zara’s legal argument could be flawed (and not just ethically):
Sure, there is the merger doctrine, a caveat to copyright protection that holds that if there is only one conceivable way or a drastically limited number of ways to express and embody the idea in a work, then the expression of the idea is not copyrightable because ideas may not be copyrighted. Given that Bassen’s illustrations consist of intricate details, such as the “Keep Out” and heart-lock designs on the diary (as opposed to a more simplistic drawing of a diary) or the “Erase You” writing on the eraser (as opposed to a straightforward drawing of an eraser), which were all re-created by Zara, this is arguably not an applicable exception. There are certainly ways of depicting the aforementioned ideas - a journal, an eraser, etc. - without including the details included in Bassen’s works, suggesting that the merger doctrine may not apply in the case at hand.
Bassen, who’s already paid thousands of dollars in legal fees, says that she will continue to fight Zara, both for her work and the work of other artists.
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To prove that Bassen is not alone:
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(At press time, neither Zara nor Bassen had returned Jezebel’s request for comment.)
Image via Tuesday Bassen.Share
Emory University students who were offended by pro-Trump messages written in chalk around campus can’t force the university to censor that speech because it offends them, a university committee has found.
The university’s Committee for Open Expression – a group of faculty, staff and students – issued a lengthy report on the matter that affirmed the chalkings are protected free speech under university policy. In March, Emory students attracted national attention, and a healthy dose of mockery, for a protest that occurred after the pro-Trump messages were discovered.
The Emory Wheel, the student newspaper, reported about 40 students protested outside an administration building on March 21 outside the administration building.
One student reportedly said, “‘I’m supposed to feel comfortable and safe [here]. But this man is being supported by students on our campus and our administration shows that they, by their silence, support it as well … I don’t deserve to feel afraid at my school.’”
Sophomore Jonathan Peraza reportedly led a chant and called out, “You are not listening! Come speak to us, we are in pain!”
The student’s pain over the message does not trump Donald Trump supporters’ rights of free speech, the committee found.
“Certainly, if the content of the chalkings threatened violence, force, or injury to persons or property, they would violate the Open Expression Policy as well as other policies, including state criminal law,” the report says. “Such acts would also reasonably evoke feelings of fear—though the acts are prohibited without reference to whether anyone subjectively feels fear; and likewise, a subjective feeling of fear is insufficient, by itself, to bring an act within a prohibition in the Policy. The knowledge that someone supports Donald Trump and is willing to express his feelings in chalk is not a threat, and is not a reasonable cause for fear in this context.”
Similarly, posters portraying Donald Trump as Hitler or a member of the Ku Klux Klan are also protected speech, the committee found. The committee also examined whether one of the pro-Trump messages – “Build the Wall” – constitute a threat to students who are immigrants. That is protected speech as well, the committee determined.
“One can oppose immigration on grounds unrelated to bias against any group, and thus we cannot call the statement ‘Build the Wall’ a bias incident without knowing the speaker’s subjective intent,” the report says.
Certain behaviors, like defacing the political speech of others, are not protected, the committee ruled. There were several instances of this. Someone drew a Hitler mustache on a Donald Trump poster. Another unknown person cut up a poster supporting Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.
“Finally, in response to a Hillel display supportive of Israel at some reserved tables in the DUC Commons, someone else reserved a nearby table and placed a sign on it reading ‘#Propaganda’. Another person covered that sign with an Israeli flag,” the report says.
These acts violate university policy.
“If the vandals were Emory Community members, their actions violated several sections of the Open Expression Policy and should be treated seriously,” the report says.
The report concluded by recommending that the university develop a chalking policy that is reasonable and “neutral to content.”
Here is the committee’s full report:
Open Expression TrumpAdobe Systems has released a new version of its Flash Player software, fixing a critical security bug that could make the Internet a dangerous place for Web surfers.
The new Flash Player 10 software, released Wednesday, fixes security flaws in Adobe's multimedia software including bugs that could allow hackers to pull off what's known as a clickjacking attack, wrote Adobe spokesman David Lenoe in a blog posting.
For those who can't update to this new version of Flash, a Flash 9 security patch is still about a month off, he added. Adobe rates the clickjacking bug as 'critical.'
Although not widely used by criminals, clickjacking has received a lot of attention since it was first discussed a month ago. Flash isn't the only software that is vulnerable to a clickjacking attack, but Flash attacks have been considered among the most dangerous.
The security researchers who discovered the problem, Robert Hansen and Jeremiah Grossman, had intended to fully discuss clickjacking at a Sept. 24 security conference presentation. But they backed off and gave a slimmed-down version of their talk when Adobe asked for more time to patch its software.
Last week, however, security researcher Guy Aharonovsky showed how an Adobe Flash clickjacking attack would work, and with the information now out in the open, Hansen and Grossman went public with their findings.
In a clickjacking attack, the hacker users a variety of techniques to take control of what links the victim is actually clicking. In one attack, for example, the attacker would first have to trick the victim into visiting a malicious Web page and then clicking on what appeared to be a regular Web link. In reality the victim would be clicking on something altogether different such as a Flash object that turned on his microphone. "It's almost impossible for a user to determine what's going to happen when they click on a link," said Hansen, who is CEO of SecTheory.org, in an interview last week.
A clickjacker could wiretap victims' PCs, force them to execute online stock trades, delete blog pages, change a router or firewall configuration, create new Web mail accounts, or even force them to download software, Hansen said.
Because clickjacking affects other browser plugins, the best way to fix the clickjacking problem may be to change the way browsers work, Hansen said. "Browser makers understand the problem and they're trying to find ways to mitigate it," he said.SAN DIEGO -- More than half of people with asthma report that their symptoms are brought on by laughter, according to a study to be presented at the American Thoracic Society International Conference on May 24.
The study of 235 patients with asthma found that 56% had laughter-induced asthma (LIA). Asthma that is triggered by laughter doesn't seem to cause more asthma flare-ups requiring emergency room visits or hospitalizations compared with other types of asthma, according to study author Stuart Garay, M.D., Clinical Professor of Medicine at NYU Medical Center in New York. "But patients did report that during times when their asthma is well controlled they can laugh for longer without getting asthma symptoms. That suggests that laughter-induced asthma may be a sign that a person's asthma isn't as well controlled as it could be. People with asthma should be allowed to laugh."
Nobody knows how laughter brings on asthma, but it might involve hyperventilating, Dr. Garay said. He noted that exercise was the only trigger more common in people with laughter-induced asthma compared with asthma not induced by laughter (61% of people with LIA vs. 35% of asthma patients without LIA).
Dr. Garay was struck by how common laughter-induced asthma is. "It's as common as some of the most well-known asthma triggers, such as grasses, trees, pollen, fumes and odors, and it's even more common than dust mites, allergy to animals and molds," he said. "It's a little-appreciated frequent trigger."
The study found that the most common symptom in patients with laughter-induced asthma was coughing, which generally starts within two minutes. The next most common symptom was chest tightness.
How much laughter can set off breathing problems? "It depends on the patient," Dr. Garay said. "For a majority of patients, mild laughter or even a chuckle will set off coughing. For others, laughing hard will bring on asthma symptoms."A Chicago police officer fatally shot an unarmed, mentally disturbed man in front of his mother after she summoned officers to her Humboldt Park home last year for help because her son had stopped taking his medication, according to a wrongful-death lawsuit filed in federal court.
Police have said an officer shot 33-year-old James Anderson on the evening of Sept. 25 after he lunged at officers with a "knifelike" object in his hand. Before the shooting, other officers had tried to subdue Anderson with a Taser, but he continued to advance in a threatening manner, police said at the time.
But in a lawsuit filed Friday, Anderson's mother, Pamela, said her son was unarmed and had made no threatening moves before he was shot seven times.
According to the suit, Pamela Anderson called police to her home in the 900 block of North Central Park Avenue because her son had stopped taking his medication for a "mild mental illness" and she wanted them to escort him to a hospital, as police had done in the past. She explained that her son was unarmed and not violent, and when officers arrived she was waiting on the porch to let them know he was in his first-floor bedroom listening to music, the suit alleges.
Still, the lawsuit alleges, one officer drew his gun, walked to the bedroom and knocked on the door twice. The officer then positioned himself in a shooting position against the rear door of the kitchen, according to the suit.
When Anderson emerged from his bedroom, he was "suddenly and without warning" shot seven times in front of his mother, the suit says.
Anderson was pronounced dead a short time later at Mount Sinai Hospital.
After the shooting, Pamela Anderson told a WBBM-Ch. 2 news reporter that her "whole kitchen was lit up from (the officer) shooting."
"I had to run to my room for cover to keep them from shooting me," she said.
The account given in the suit differs sharply from statements given by police immediately after the shooting. At the time, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said officers had responded to a domestic disturbance at the residence. They encountered a group of adults and saw a man in the group holding a "knifelike object" in his hand who refused orders to drop the weapon, he said.
An officer twice tried to use a Taser on the man, but the device's prongs didn't reach him, he said. The officers again ordered the man to drop the object. When he did not, one of the officers shot him at least once, Guglielmi said
Guglielmi said a "box cutter-like" object was found at the scene.
Chicago police said in a statement Wednesday that the "use of force" in the case remains under investigation by the Independent Police Review Authority, which probes all police shootings.
"Individuals will be held accountable should the investigation reveal any violation of departmental policies or procedures," the statement said.
In addition to excessive force, the lawsuit alleges that the Chicago Police Department operates under a code of silence that routinely covers up the misconduct of officers and allows them to act without fear of discipline.
Fred Truglio, the attorney representing Anderson, did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday.
jmeisner@tribpub.com
Twitter @jmetr22bCopyright by WNCN - All rights reserved Union County teacher Ruijuan Guo (Photo courtesy of Union County Public Schools)
Copyright by WNCN - All rights reserved Union County teacher Ruijuan Guo (Photo courtesy of Union County Public Schools)
CHARLOTTE, NC (WBTV) - A man shot to death at a hotel in southwest Charlotte Monday night was one of the suspects in a robbery and shooting which resulted in the death of a Union County teacher, according to a police source.
The body of 40-year-old Louis Henry Fuqua was found late Monday night at the Econo Lodge, along the 500 block of Clanton Road, after officers responded to a call for shots fired.
According to a police source, Fuqua was one of the suspects in the robbery and shooting of Union County teacher Ruijuan Guo.
Guo, 33, was a teacher at Kensington Elementary School in Waxhaw, where she taught Mandarin.
Police say she was shot around 11:30 p.m. Friday on East Park Avenue during an attempted robbery. She died Wednesday morning at Carolinas Medical Center.
According to a police report released Monday morning, Guo's boyfriend told police they were attempting to get into a car with another friend when someone approached their car. Guo's boyfriend said that person pulled a gun and demanded his wallet.
The boyfriend told police "he could not get his wallet out of his pocket fast enough, so the suspect shot his girlfriend in the head and then ran off."
Police said the investigation is ongoing, but have not released a description of a suspect.
WBTV's source said Fugua was probably killed by other suspects "to keep him from talking to police."
Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call 704-432-TIPS and speak directly to a detective, or call Crime Stoppers at 704-334-1600.Although there's still a considerable amount of time left until the AMC network airs its fourth season of The Walking Dead in October, bits and pieces of info on the popular series are making their way onto the Internet nonetheless.
According to TVLine, Season 4 will see the cast in a different setting, and also involve a drastic time jump from the moment the third season ended until the upcoming installment picks up.
The site stated that TWD will be |
century, China
Backgammon was popular in China for a time and was known as "shuanglu" (双陆), with the book Pǔ Shuāng (譜雙) written during the Southern Song (1127–1279) period recording over ten variants - but over time it was replaced by other games such as xiangqi (Chinese chess).[71]
In Japan ban-sugoroku is thought to have been introduced from China in the 6th century. As a gambling game it was made illegal several times.[72] In the early Edo-era, a new and quick gambling game called Chō-han appeared and sugoroku quickly dwindled. By the 13th century, the board game Go, originally played only by the aristocracy, had become popular among the general public.[73]
In Korea, it is called Ssang-ryuk or Jeopo.
Western Europe [ edit ]
Herr Goeli, from the 14th century, from the 14th century Codex Manesse
Brädspel ("board game") set recovered from the warship Vasa, which sank in 1628 ("board game") set recovered from the warship, which sank in 1628
The jeux de tables (Games of Tables), predecessors of modern backgammon, first appeared in France during the 11th century and became a favorite pastime of gamblers. In 1254, Louis IX issued a decree prohibiting his court officials and subjects from playing.[2][74] Tables games were played in Germany in the 12th century, and had reached Iceland by the 13th century. In Spain, the Alfonso X manuscript Libro de los juegos, completed in 1283, describes rules for a number of dice and table games in addition to its extensive discussion of chess.[75] By the 17th century, table games had spread to Sweden. A wooden board and checkers were recovered from the wreck of the Vasa among the belongings of the ship's officers. Backgammon appears widely in paintings of this period, mainly those of Dutch and German painters (Van Ostade, Jan Steen, Hieronymus Bosch, Bruegel and others). Some surviving artworks are "Cardsharps" by Caravaggio (the backgammon board is in the lower left) and "The Triumph of Death" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (the backgammon board is in the lower right). Others are the Hell of Bosch and interior of an Inn by Jan Steen.
Great Britain [ edit ]
A Short Treatise on the Game of Back-Gammon, by Edmond Hoyle, by Edmond Hoyle
In the 16th century, Elizabethan laws and church regulations prohibited playing tables, but by the 18th century, backgammon was popular among the English clergy.[2] Edmund Hoyle published A Short Treatise on the Game of Back-Gammon in 1753; this described rules and strategy for the game and was bound together with a similar text on whist.[76]
In English, the word "backgammon" is most likely derived from "back" and Middle English "gamen", meaning "game" or "play". The earliest use documented by the Oxford English Dictionary was in 1650.[77]
United States [ edit ]
The most recent major development in backgammon was the addition of the doubling cube. It was first introduced in the 1920s in New York City among members of gaming clubs in the Lower East Side.[78] The cube required players not only to select the best move in a given position, but also to estimate the probability of winning from that position, transforming backgammon into the expected value-driven game played in the 20th and 21st centuries.[78]
The popularity of backgammon surged in the mid-1960s, in part due to the charisma of Prince Alexis Obolensky who became known as "The Father of Modern Backgammon".[79] "Obe", as he was called by friends, co-founded the International Backgammon Association,[80] which published a set of official rules. He also established the World Backgammon Club of Manhattan, devised a backgammon tournament system in 1963, then organized the first major international backgammon tournament in March, 1964, which attracted royalty, celebrities and the press. The game became a huge fad and was played on college campuses, in discothèques and at country clubs;[79] stockbrokers and bankers began playing at conservative men's clubs.[81] People young and old all across the country dusted off their boards and checkers. Cigarette, liquor and car companies began to sponsor tournaments and Hugh Hefner held backgammon parties at the Playboy Mansion.[82] Backgammon clubs were formed and tournaments were held, resulting in a World Championship promoted in Las Vegas in 1967.[36]
Most recently, the United States Backgammon Federation (USBGF) was organized in 2009 to repopularize the game in the United States. Board and committee members include many of the top players, tournament directors and writers in the worldwide backgammon community. The USBGF has recently created a Standards of Ethical Practice to address issues on which tournament rules fail to touch.
See also [ edit ]For the past week or so, rumors have been swirling around Skype, the Internet telephony company. Reuters has reported that the company has been in talks with both Facebook and Google, either for a partnership or for an outright acquisition. And if my sources are right, we will find out more details very soon.
How soon? People familiar with Skype indicate that some kind of news is forthcoming later this week, perhaps as soon as Monday. At present, corporate attorneys and other senior managers are burning the midnight oil this weekend, ahead of some kind of announcement. A Skype person replied to my email query by saying, “Thanks for reaching out – as a matter of practice – Skype does not comment on rumor or speculation.”
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Sources also say that Microsoft has entered the mix and is interested in either partnering with, acquiring or investing in Skype. While they are late entrants to this game, Microsoft’s interest makes sense for several reasons:
Skype would givemMicrosoft a big boost in the hotly contested enterprise collaboration market places, thanks to Skype’s voice, video and sharing capabilities. It would be particularly useful for competing against Cisco and Google, two of its main rivals in the collaboration business.
It would give them a must-have application/service that can help with the adoption of the future versions of Windows Mobile operating system.
it would give Microsoft an outside chance of working with carriers, many of them looking to partner with Skype as they start to transition to LTE-based networks.
What is my take on all the rumors? First of all, this is not the first time we have heard them. While I clearly see value in these companies partnering with Skype, an acquisition doesn’t make much sense. But an investment from one of the three could give Skype the cash cushion as it waits out for its initial public offering, and could also be a way to buy out an antsy investor. And while a partnership would make sense for Facebook, it doesn’t need to acquire Skype — I’ve heard the two companies are about to make some kind of joint product announcement soon.
Photo of Microsoft Campus courtesy of Flickr User, Wonderlane under Creative Commons license.Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning should not be regarded as whistleblowers as the information they made public did not expose government wrongdoing, the Australian attorney general said.
Speaking on Tuesday to the Security in Government Conference in Canberra, Mark Dreyfus also defended Australia's own telecommunications interception programme.
In his most direct comments to date on the impact of the Guardian's revelations about the US National Security Agency surveillance, Dreyfus expressed concern that Snowden's leaks might cause "long-lasting harm" to Australia's ability to "respond to the many threats that our nation faces". He stopped short of giving any detail on what harm the disclosures might have.
Dreyfus described the leaks as "politically motivated". He said: "Some people have suggested that all of the disclosures by Mr Snowden and Mr Manning were some kind of 'whistleblowing'. Where an activity has been authorised under law and overseen by appropriate government bodies and where no wrongdoing has been identified, the disclosure of information is not 'whistleblowing'."
Defending Australia's interception programme, he said: "I want to reiterate that Australia's intelligence activities are carried out in a manner that is consistent with our law, and for the purpose of protecting Australia's democratic values."
He added that intelligence services' access to telecommunications had resulted in 5,928 prosecutions and 2,267 convictions based on "lawfully intercepted material" in the 2011-12 financial year. "Most of those were for serious criminal offences," he said.
During that 12 months there were 293,501 disclosures of metadata to a range of governmental and non-governmental organisations under the Telecommunications Act, meaning that just 0.7% of disclosures resulted in prosecution.
The Greens communications spokesman, Senator Scott Ludlam, said Dreyfus's attack on Manning and Snowden "beggars belief". The attorney general was making a "decisive statement in the defence of spying on law-abiding citizens, in the defence of universal surveillance", he said.
Senator Ludlam, who introduced a bill to parliament aimed at tightening the government's ability to intercept telecommunications data, added: "If the attorney general believes... that the operation of the PRISM surveillance system does not constitute 'wrongdoing' – then it bodes badly for Australia. If the attorney general believes Bradley Manning did not reveal 'wrongdoing', then what does it take before someone is permitted to blow the whistle?"
Dreyfus's comments sit uncomfortably with a move to bolster and unify shield laws for journalists and whistleblower protection for public servants. In June he announced plans to unify shield laws across the states, which he described as inadequate in some parts of Australia.
"Journalists need to be confident that they can protect the identity of their sources without being held in contempt of court," he said at the time.
The attorney general also introduced the Public Interest Disclosure Act in July, which was described as offering a "historic level of protection" to federal public servants who disclose wrongdoing.Continue Reading Below Advertisement
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He was due to be guest of honour at the event in Belfast City Hall on April 8 to commemorate the centenary of the Dublin rebellion against British rule.
The President's decision to withdraw comes after Democratic Unionist councillors made clear they would be boycotting the dinner.
A spokesman for Mr Higgins said: "The President accepted the invitation to the civic dinner on the basis that there was cross-party support for the invitation.
"This now is no longer the case, leaving the President with no other option but to withdraw as he does not want to become embroiled in matters of political controversy."
Sinn Fein Lord Mayor Arder Carson received a letter from the President outlining his reasons for pulling out.
Mr Carson said: "Both personally, and on behalf of Belfast City Council, I am extremely disappointed that the President is no longer attending this event, part of our decade of centenaries programme.
"The overall programme for the decade was agreed by full council and has cross-party support; and that position has not changed.
"A lot of hard work has gone into creating an inclusive programme of events which is respectful of all viewpoints and which focuses on the key events of our shared history, and those which have impacted on our city.
"In this important year which reflects on the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme, Belfast City Council has shown leadership in how we mark these events and I would wish that to continue.
"The dinner will, of course, be going ahead on April 8 and I am very much looking forward to the occasion."
The President's decision has sparked a row between the DUP and Alliance Party, with the latter accusing the former of breaking an all-party agreement to mark a number of centenaries with civic occasions.
Alliance councillor Michael Long said: "There has been a long-standing agreement that three of the main anniversaries would each be marked with a dinner, which would be events exploring the consequences of violence and looking at the significance of each event.
"It was an all-party approach to the decade of centenaries that was respectful to all traditions, and done with reconciliation and building a shared future in mind. Therefore it was disappointing the DUP has decided to not attend the Easter Rising dinner, which has led to President Higgins pulling out of the event.
"It is particularly hypocritical of the DUP, given the party will likely be in attendance at the Somme event in a few months."
DUP Alderman Brian Kingston rejected the claims.
"It was agreed that Belfast City Council would hold a series of events during the current 'decade of centenaries', from the centenaries of Ulster's Solemn League and Covenant in 1912 to the formation of Northern Ireland in 1921," he said.
"At no stage did the DUP Group say it would attend a civic dinner marking the centenary of the 1916 Rebellion and it will not be attending.
"The DUP refutes the Alliance accusation that any agreement was broken and calls on Alliance Group Leader Michael Long to confirm that no such agreement of attendance was given."The Scoop on Serial Killers [Infographic]
We watch movies and television shows the feature serial killers but we often wonder what makes them serial killers. Are these people born this way? Is it a mental condition? Many questions that people have about serial killers can be answered by this infographic.
The infographic below details some interesting information about what makes a serial killer. There is a certain classification that puts a person into this category and most of them have similar characteristics. The information on the infographic expresses the idea that a chromosomal disorder might be the cause of these people turning into murders. Many of the notorious serial killers in our country have all had some sort of chromosome abnormality.
This is dark information but it gives readers a better understanding of the horrific mind of a serial killer. Thankfully we do not hear of too many serial killers these days but we know of some from the past.
via
Download this infographic.Update + heads up
From:deblasio@att.blackberry.net To: john.podesta@gmail.com, re47@hillaryclinton.com Date: 2015-09-18 14:02 Subject: Update + heads up
Gentlemen (and you two earn that designation DESPITE your prominent roles in American politics :) 1. As I mentioned to Robby, I accepted Bernie Sanders' request for a mtg today. Will try to keep it low-key but assume it will leak out. My message to him (saying this in confidence to you) is that I will always want to work with him in the future and will never have a bad word about him, but won't be supporting him in this campaign. 2. I will ask him (as I have you guys) to participate in our Progressive Agenda forum (NOT debate -- one candidate on stage at a time) in Iowa re: income inequality. But I quietly first want to see what date works for you guys before locking anything down. 3. I'm going on Stephanopoulos on Sunday. My reason for being there is to talk about the Pope's visit and my work on income inequality and the Progressive Agenda. Shockingly, George insists on talking about the presidential horse race. Therefore I will: Have lots of praise for Hillary and her increasingly clear, strong agenda. Will say her campaign is doing much better than the conventional wisdom recognizes. Will praise bernie's ideas if asked. If asked about mtg with him, I'll say I look forward to talking to Hillary soon as well and that I've been in regular touch with her team. If asked about Biden, I will repeat no need for another candidate. If asked what's holding me up on Hillary, I'll allude to The Progressive Agenda and a few areas where I'm seeking clarification. In general, will be positive/optimistic. If you have any concerns or ideas or needs, just let me know. Thanks Sent via BlackBerry by AT&TWal-Mart is taking a major step toward equality for its employees by extending health insurance for its transgender employees. According to Bloomberg News: “Companies from Apple to Xerox are pushing to protect employee rights and improve gender equality as some legislative efforts have stalled. In 28 states, it’s still legal to fire a person for being gay, and President-elect Donald Trump has said he will rescind President Barack Obama’s executive orders, some of which aim at workplace diversity.”
“Corporate America has risen to the top in terms of being a high-impact influencer” on LGBT rights, said Deena Fidas, director of the workplace equality project at the Human Rights Campaign, the largest advocacy group for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights. “We have corporations going on the record at the federal level, at the judicial level and certainly at the state level speaking out against what we would call anti-LGBT bills.”FILE PHOTO: European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker holds a news conference in Brussels, Belgium, April 6, 2017. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker will meet Prime Minister Theresa May in London next Wednesday to discuss Britain’s exit from the European Union, a Commission spokeswoman said on Thursday.
The spokeswoman said May, who has called a snap election for June 8, had invited Juncker to discuss the process of withdrawal. Three days later on April 29, the other 27 EU leaders will meet in Brussels to agree their negotiating positions. The EU expects to start talks after the British election.
Asked about reports that May will pledge ahead of the June 8 election to end the free movement of EU citizens into Britain, the spokeswoman reaffirmed the EU’s stance that people’s rights would be respected and should not be used as bargaining chips.
“We want to reassure EU citizens living in the UK and UK citizens living abroad in the EU that their rights will remain respected and enforceable in a non-discriminatory way so this will be a very prominent part in the negotiations once they formally start,” said Mina Andreeva.
Asked about a Financial Times report on an memo to Commission managers from Juncker aides telling them not to issue contracts to British-based firms if that would conflict with rules on hiring only EU-based contractors after Brexit, she said Britain would be treated equally until it leaves, in 2019.
“The Commission will... respect the rights that the UK enjoys as a result of its continued membership,” Andreeva said. “And everything that is after we will see after.”
EU officials, however, said that it was “only natural” that the Brussels executive starts anticipating the impact of Brexit, now that May has formally triggered the legal withdrawal period.
Diplomats say that their British counterparts already appear increasingly sidelined in discussions in Brussels and the trend will pick up pace as the Union exercises its right to organise legislative meetings of the 27 other states without Britain.
Leaders of the 27 will meet for the first time as a formal lawmaking body when they hold their European Council on April 29 to agree the guidelines by which the Commission’s Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, will steer the talks with London.Authorities in the central province of Quang Ngai Wednesday rescued a father and son who have been living up a tree house in the jungle for more than 40 years.
It took many hours and around 40 kilometers through the jungle for the officials to reach the men's place, which had been found by some of their family members.
The father, Ho Van Thanh, 82, was too weak to walk and some men had to carry him out of the jungle on a hammock.
First investigations found Thanh had fled into the jungle bringing his son Ho Van Loan, then around one year old, during a panicking night in 1971 in the Vietnam War, when his house was bombed, killing his wife and two older sons.
They lived in a house that looks like a bird nest, built from sticks on a big tree around six meters from the ground, and near a stream.
They used dry bark to make pants, though officials found Thanh has carefully kept a little red coat of his son and his soldier's trousers at a corner of the house.
The two also made their own tools like knives, axes and arrows for hunting. The tent on a tree that Ho Van Thanh and his son Ho Van Lang had been living for around 40 years in the jungle
Daily foods include cassava, corn, and wild leaves. They have a field of nearly one hectare (2.47 acre) that also plants sugarcanes.
Both have forgotten the mainstream Kinh language.
Ho Van Tri, Thanh's youngest son who was newly born on the bombing day, found his father and brother more than 20 years ago but he could never persuade them to come home, according to a report by news website VnExpress.
Tri said some relative had saved him that day.
With an uncle's help, he camed to find his father and brother in the jungle 12 years later.
He has been bringing them salt and oil every year but they have not accepted him yet.
He said many times he brought more people to help bring them home but they would hide quickly anytime they saw people.
Ho Minh Lam, Thanh's nephew, said people have brought clothes and pots for him to use but he just kept them in a bag.
They kept a small fire in the house and smoked tobacco they planted themselves to keep warm on cold days.
Like us on Facebook and scroll down to share your commentHere is the poem in the image, and how it's meant to be read:
"The pieces emerge, it's garbled cries at large...
Surrounded by it's brothers, and it's brother's friends...
It cannot speak, it's voice is akin to an electric charge...
The pieces are there for one to put together, and only then will this story end."
The image includes, from the Fredbear's Bite victim: His Plush "friends" and Possessed Fredbear
And, from the Big Brother: The masks of the bullies.
Finally, we have the Puppet, opening the box and revealing what lurked in the box...
"Put the pieces together, especially when the pieces were once one, but are now mutilated and screeching. Though some things should be forgotten, true pain cannot be forgotten."
... Now that the poetic stuff is over, I should clarify: This edit is based on the theory that the Mangle is actually in the Box from the ending of FNAF4. In the FNAF3 minigame "Mangle's Quest", in one of the secret rooms, you can see a hunched-over figure, crying, in a similar position as to how the Bite Victim died. The BV clearly knows the Mangle, since his sister has a doll of her. Scott insists that we haven't found the pieces that need to be put together. What in FNAF is synonymous with that idea? The Mangle, as Phone Guy states, is a Take-Apart and Put-it-Back-Together attraction. I can see the Mangle actually fitting inside the box, since it can likely fold itself in such a way that could allow it to fit, given it's shredded state.
What significance would the Mangle have? She is, in some way, related to the BV's sister, so one could assume the Sister was killed and possessed Mangle, right? But wait, didn't she possess the Baby after she was killed inside of her? There's a lot of questions here that have potential answers. Perhaps SL happened before FNAF2, and the Sister was set free when Baby was dismantled and turned into Ennard?
Well, we can speculate, but here's my conclusion...
Perhaps the Fredbear's Incident from FNAF4 did take place in 1983, and the Mangle caused the Bite of '87? Sister Location's Private Room showed us the setting of FNAF4's main nights when the code "1983" was entered. Even in the days leading up to FNAF4, some of the source code, that was otherwise loaded with 87s, had some 83s scattered in there.
"What about the massive 87 in Nightmare Foxy's eyes for his teaser?"
What is the Mangle? What is Nightmare Foxy?
Both have the same answer: They are counterparts of Foxy. Just because Nightmare Foxy had the 87 in his eyes doesn't mean Foxy, specifically, had to have done the Bite. It could mean an alternate version of him. And what versions have been accepted as possible Bite Culprits? Withered Foxy and Mangle. Given the former was refurbished (And later shut down) for the FNAF1 location, the latter seems more plausible.
Scott had this spectacular build up to the Bite of 87 in FNAF4's teasers. Some may be discouraged that the Fredbear's bite took place in 1983, since it could kill some hype... But here's the thing: He DID show us the 87 culprit. He showed us the box, did he not? The culprit was right there: She was in the Sister's room, she is in the box, and her name is the Mangle.
...
... Well, that was longer than it was supposed to be.On January 1, 1913 the U. S. Post Office began parcel post service for shipping packages throughout the country. Pretty much anything could be mailed that wasn’t dangerous or pose a threat to other pieces of mail.
The new service took right off – almost two million packages were shipped the first week of operations alone. A mortuary in St. Louis mailed human ashes to Illinois for burial, while a mother in St. Paul, Indiana sent lunch to her son who worked in Indianapolis. There were a few snags: a package of skunk hides prompted the evacuation of the post office in Decatur, Illinois.
Pretty soon requests began to be come in with special requests. Within two weeks a letter from Fort McPherson, Ga to the Postmaster General requested: “Sir: I have been corresponding with a party in Pa., about getting a baby to raise (our home being without one). May I ask you what specifications to use in wrapping so it (baby) would comply with regulations and be allowed shipment by parcel post as the express company are too rough in handling?”
On January 22 a woman requested rates for mailing herself from Elgin, Illinois to Washington, D.C.
On January 31 in Batavia, Ohio a baby was actually sent by parcel post. A baby boy, weighing 10 3/4 pounds, was delivered safely by the local carrier to the address of its grandmother, Mrs. Louis Beagle, who lived about a mile from its home. The postage was 15 cents and the “parcel” was insured for $50.
On January 27 Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Savis of Pine Hollow, Pennsylvania shipped their daughter via their rural carrier who delivered her safely that afternoon to relatives in Clay Hollow. The shipment cost 45 cents.
In February another baby was mailed from Stratford, Oklahoma to Wellington, Kansas.
In 1914, a mother going through a divorce shipped her baby from Stillwell to its father in South Bend, Indiana. The child traveled in a container marked “Live Baby” for only 17 cents.
A year later a 48-1/2 pound “package” (just under the 50 lb weight limit) was sent in a train’s mail compartment from Grangeville to Lewiston, Idaho. The “package was a four-year old girl named May Pierstorff whose parents “mailed” her to her grandparents with 53 cents (the going rate for mailing chickens) postage attached to her coat.
On June 13, 1920 the headline in the Washington Herald read: “CAN’T MAIL KIDDIES – DANGEROUS ANIMALS”. The Post Office, in its wisdom, had finally ruled that children were not “harmless animals” and because of their potentiality for danger may not be mailed as parcel post. “By no stretch of imagination or language,” said the ruling, “can children be classified as harmless, live animals that do not require food or water.”The city of Kenora, Ont. is honouring home town hero and Winnipeg Jets superfan Len Kropioski by naming a street after him.
The 98-year-old, who was affectionately known as Kroppy, and was well known at Jets games in both Winnipeg and Kenora for his standing salute during O Canada, passed away in September 2016.
The Second World War veteran made the 2½-hour drive from Kenora to the MTS Centre for every home game, except when his health wouldn't allow it.
He was a fixture on the scoreboard video screen above centre ice at the end of the national anthem, with a salute followed by a wide smile and a thumbs up.
McQuillan Street will be re-named Kroppy Lane.
Len Kropioski was reguarly shown on the Winnipeg Jets video screen, saluting during the Canadian national anthem. (CBC) "For us here it was a no-brainer," Kenora's Mayor David Canfield said.
"Kroppy was so involved in sports as everybody knows, probably the number one Jets fan and obviously in Kenora. I guess his footprint in Kenora in sports, whether it's hockey, baseball or whatever, is tremendous," Canfield said.
Kropioski was key in helping underprivileged children in the community participate in sports.
"Kroppy was doing this years ago. I mean out of his own pocket, it was helping kids get into sports and paying for their jerseys and everything else," Canfield said.
The by-law to change the street name was approved unanimously by a city committee Tuesday and will be voted on officially by Kenora city council Jan. 17.
The street being re-named leads to Kropioski's house.
If approved, Canada Post will be contacted and four homes in the Norman neighbourhood will see their addresses change.
"I think the Norman people will be quite happy about it being called Kroppy Lane, I mean, all of the people in Kenora will be. But it's like the old neighbourhood rivalry that we all have in our communities. I think they will be pretty pleased," Canfield said.
Plans need to be solidified, but Canfield said once the signs are ordered there may be a ceremony when the new ones go up.Achievements & innovations, College of Engineering, 2007-2017
A report to the Berkeley Engineering community
It has been my privilege and pleasure to serve as the Dean and Roy W. Carlson Professor in the College of Engineering at Berkeley during the past ten years. This has been a period of transformation, innovation, and tremendous growth for the College. As I prepare to step down as Dean at the end of this academic year and return full-time to my faculty position, I want to review the wonderful body of work we have achieved together over the past decade.
It has been an exceptional experience for me to carry out this work with so many gifted members of the Berkeley Engineering community, including members of our Engineering Advisory Board, College advisory boards, alumni, partners, department chairs, faculty, staff and student leaders, friends, associate and assistant deans, and indeed all of our more than 240 faculty, about 900 staff, and 5,300 students. I have been fortunate to serve under three Chancellors and their cabinets, who have given their counsel and support to our work in the College, as well as collaborating with wonderful colleagues on the Council of Deans and with other campus leaders.
Our work together this past decade, I believe, has advanced the College’s inspiring mission, Educating Leaders, Creating Knowledge, Serving Society. We have steered and grown the College through times of trying budgets, and I am proud that we have continued to innovate and open new directions for Berkeley Engineering throughout these years.
Beginning on July 1, 2018, I look forward to returning to my research, exploring exciting new directions in robotics, augmented reality/virtual reality (AR/VR) and vision, machine learning, cyber-physical systems, and cyber-security. I will continue as Faculty Director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and remain engaged in many of the international partnerships undertaken by the College and campus. I thank you for your invaluable partnership during my tenure, and for your critical role in all we continue to achieve together.
Education
The hallmark of Berkeley Engineering is the exceptional education we provide to our students, utilizing the newest and most effective educational methods and enhanced facilities. Many of these innovations, including those listed here, have been made possible by philanthropic support:
Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation and the Certificate in Design Innovation : In Fall 2015, we opened a new building, Jacobs Hall, to house the Jacobs Institute. We have now developed the curriculum to offer a new Certificate in Design Innovation with the Haas School of Business, the College of Environmental Design, the Division of Humanities in the College of Letters and Science, and campus programs in the Arts and Design. This fall the Jacobs Institute will serve 3,000+ students from Berkeley Engineering and across the campus.
and the : In Fall 2015, we opened a new building, Jacobs Hall, to house the Jacobs Institute. We have now developed the curriculum to offer a new Certificate in Design Innovation with the Haas School of Business, the College of Environmental Design, the Division of Humanities in the College of Letters and Science, and campus programs in the Arts and Design. This fall the Jacobs Institute will serve 3,000+ students from Berkeley Engineering and across the campus. Professional Master’s Degrees: In 2011 we launched a new professional Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) degree through the Coleman Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership and our engineering departments. Jointly with UCSF, we also began offering a new professional Master of Translational Medicine (MTM) in 2013. More than 480 students entered these programs this fall. Graduates are taking leadership positions in industry and beyond, and are launching a range of exciting new companies.
In 2011 we launched a new professional Master of Engineering (M.Eng.) degree through the Coleman Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership and our engineering departments. Jointly with UCSF, we also began offering a new professional Master of Translational Medicine (MTM) in 2013. More than 480 students entered these programs this fall. Graduates are taking leadership positions in industry and beyond, and are launching a range of exciting new companies. Fostering Entrepreneurship and New Ventures: Our Pantas and Ting Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (SCET) educates hundreds of undergraduates each year about innovation, technology management, and new ventures. To support startups emanating from the Berkeley campus, SCET has partnered with the Haas School of Business and others to establish SkyDeck, an innovation center and incubator located on the edge of the Berkeley campus that has served dozens of promising startups.
Our Pantas and Ting Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology (SCET) educates hundreds of undergraduates each year about innovation, technology management, and new ventures. To support startups emanating from the Berkeley campus, SCET has partnered with the Haas School of Business and others to establish SkyDeck, an innovation center and incubator located on the edge of the Berkeley campus that has served dozens of promising startups. Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology (M.E.T.) Program : The founding class enrolled this fall 2017 in this new program. Through M.E.T., a select cadre of about 50 students each year earns simultaneous undergraduate degrees in business and engineering in four years. The exceptionally popular and rigorous program was created by the College of Engineering and the Haas School of Business.
: The founding class enrolled this fall 2017 in this new program. Through M.E.T., a select cadre of about 50 students each year earns simultaneous undergraduate degrees in business and engineering in four years. The exceptionally popular and rigorous program was created by the College of Engineering and the Haas School of Business. Broadening Participation: Increasing our numbers of women and underrepresented minority students continues as a top College priority, and we are now making solid progress in recruiting more women and underrepresented students. As of fall 2017, women make up 26% of our engineering undergraduate student body (compared to 21% nationally); women make up 30% of our graduate students (compared to 25% nationally). In 2013 the College launched our Center for Access to Engineering Excellence (CAEE) to support recruitment, retention, and outreach to underrepresented engineering groups; thanks to CAEE, as of this fall 2017, 10% of our engineering undergraduates are underrepresented minority students. During the 2017-18 academic year, the College is embarking on a new program of broadening participation in our faculty ranks using a new award from UC’s Office of the President.
Increasing our numbers of women and underrepresented minority students continues as a top College priority, and we are now making solid progress in recruiting more women and underrepresented students. As of fall 2017, women make up 26% of our engineering undergraduate student body (compared to 21% nationally); women make up 30% of our graduate students (compared to 25% nationally). In 2013 the College launched our Center for Access to Engineering Excellence ( |
Angeles City Hall, Tuesday, September 29, 2015.
Republicans also started pushing for “religious freedom” exemptions for businesses and insurance companies, so that they would not have to offer birth control under their plans. As Katha Pollitt notes in her 2014 book, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights, despite the fact that reliable contraception remains the most effective way to prevent abortion, “not one major anti-abortion organization supports making birth control more available, much less educating young people in its use.” In 2014, after a series of legal challenges, the Supreme Court ruled that closely held corporations could be exempt from providing employees with contraceptive coverage. This summer, the Supreme Court will decide if the government can even require nonprofits simply to fill out a form if they object to the birth-control mandate on religious grounds. “We've always known that the right wing has been anti-abortion but some people thought, well, that doesn't extend to contraception,” says Schakowsky. “We know better now. … That was made clear for the world after the Affordable Care Act.”
In early 2012, the Susan G. Komen Foundation, under pressure from conservative activists and with a new anti-abortion senior vice president, announced that it would no longer fund breast cancer screenings at Planned Parenthood. The backlash was swift and unprecedented—Planned Parenthood raised $3 million in three days, and a deeply embarrassed Komen reversed its decision within the week. A whole new generation of supporters moved to social media to defend Planned Parenthood and express their outrage.
While Planned Parenthood and its allies pushed back against attacks on women’s health, other activists were growing worried about the tone and direction of the public conversation. They recognized that the reproductive-rights movement needed a new and bolder strategy—one that aimed to change cultural attitudes around abortion, not just laws and regulations.
Debra Hauser, the president of Advocates for Youth, an organization that focuses on young people’s sexual and reproductive health, says that in late 2010 and early 2011, as the Tea Party swept into power, her group heard from frustrated youth leaders who wanted to respond in some way to the incessant political attacks on abortion. They noticed that while many were worried about the future of reproductive health care, very few people were actually talking about abortions as such. The escalation of the right’s anti-choice rhetoric, says Hauser, was making any such discussion more difficult. “Honestly, the fear-based strategies and the vehemence makes it very, very difficult for people,” she says. “I think all of us have internalized some fear and shame [about abortion] that can be so immobilizing.” She and her team understood that this stigma, which limits the societal conversation, ultimately impacts how legislators think about abortion, too. New laws requiring women to undergo transvaginal ultrasounds and mandatory waiting periods, so they could “think more carefully” about their decisions, were little more than efforts to shame those who didn’t want to carry to term.
Advocates for Youth began to lay the groundwork for a public storytelling campaign, in which people could share their abortion experiences if they felt it was safe to do so. The effort was named the “1-in-3 Campaign”, because the Guttmacher Institute found that a third of all U.S. women will have had an abortion during the course of their lives. “If you tell one abortion story, people tend to shut it down. They say, ‘Oh well she could have done this, or she should have done that,’” says Hauser, who researched how storytelling has impacted other social movements. “But when you start to hear multiple stories at once, it becomes much harder to dismiss.”
Hauser admits that, initially, some mainstream reproductive-rights groups quietly pushed back on this de-stigmatizing campaign. But by 2013 and 2014, the groups started to embrace the strategy, and even more diverse efforts began to take shape. A new anti-stigma organization, Sea Change, formed in 2014 to conduct social science research on reproductive stigmas, with the goal of ultimately reducing them. Another organization, SHIFT, formed in 2015 to amplify the voice of abortion providers—those who understand the complicated ways in which women relate to abortion as both a medical and a cultural experience. These efforts began to effect a real change in the zeitgeist—new film narratives and TV plots started to emerge, featuring women who ended their pregnancies in relatively nontraumatic ways.
And all of this activism has created the space for more women to come forward with their own stories. In 2014, in an essay entitled, “Ending the Silence That Fuels Abortion Stigma,” Richards described her own abortion experience in Elle magazine. She was already raising three kids at the time—Lily, and twins Hannah and Daniel—and felt an abortion “was the right decision” for her and her husband. She said it “wasn’t a difficult decision.”
“Rarely do you see a leader of an organization putting her own skin in the game like that,” says Steph Herold, the managing director of Sea Change.
I asked Richards why, after leading Planned Parenthood for eight years, she had felt the time was right to share her own story. Though she had never hidden the fact that she had an abortion, she said she never really thought to share it so publicly, in a major women’s magazine, in part because her abortion was never a defining part of her life. And it still isn’t.
But she’s glad she spoke out. “Women now come up and tell me their stories about having an abortion—and boy, if this makes them more comfortable about sharing that story with me, or with anyone else, and helps them lift whatever burden is on them, hallelujah!”
Richards’s decision to tell her own story is part of a new effort within Planned Parenthood to take on abortion stigma. “I think the biggest change that I’ve seen in Planned Parenthood is that instead of emphasizing that abortion is only a small percentage of their services, they’re saying that they’re proud to provide abortion care,” says Herold. “They’re moving to a point where they say, ‘Yes we provide all kinds of health care, and abortion is just one service in the spectrum of all health-care services we provide.’” Indeed, this past October, Richards published a piece in Cosmopolitan, articulating that message in a way Planned Parenthood has generally avoided in the past. “If we want women to have fulfilling careers and economic stability, we have to give them full access to the full range of reproductive health care, including abortion,” she wrote. “Of course abortion services are health care.”
Several weeks after the Cosmopolitan piece came out, I asked Richards for her thoughts on the “only 3 percent” talking point, and if she worried it unwittingly contributed to abortion stigma. Planned Parenthood is an unabashed, unashamed provider of safe and legal abortion, she says, and she’s “incredibly proud” of that fact. “It’s just super-important to me that people understand that women have a whole range of health-care services that they need and being able to make decisions about reproduction is pretty fundamental,” she adds.
THE EFFORT TO FIGHT stigma coincides with another development in the reproductive-rights movement: a shift away from rhetoric about “choice” and “rights” to broader themes of justice, access, and security.
After the 2012 election, the Democratic Party started to really grasp what Page Gardner had been trying to communicate for the past decade. Single women, a growing portion of the electorate, proved to be game-changers in Obama’s re-election campaign; he won their vote by a margin of 36 points, despite losing married women to Mitt Romney. In 2013, Democrat Terry McAuliffe was elected governor of Virginia, in large part because he won single women by 42 points. (He lost married women to the Republican candidate.) Campaign research conducted the following year revealed that women’s health and economic security were issues that strongly motivated both the progressive base and swing voters. Researchers also found that drop-off voters (those less likely to vote in midterms) were more motivated to cast a ballot if they felt they were going to be voting against a candidate who would endanger women’s health.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards is sworn in on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, September 29, 2015, prior to testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on "Planned Parenthood's Taxpayer Funding."
The New York Times ran a story in 2014 detailing how mainstream reproductive-rights groups were in the midst of reframing their advocacy to connect with more voters. The article—“Advocates Shun ‘Pro-Choice’ to Expand Message”—explored how Planned Parenthood had taken the lead in conducting public opinion polling after 2011, in order to find talking points, like “women’s health” and “economic security,” that resonated with more people. In 2013, Planned Parenthood released a video, “Moving Beyond Pro-Life vs. Pro-Choice Labels.”
Gretchen Borchelt, the vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center, says that policy-makers have long separated economic issues from reproductive rights, which has meant that reproductive-rights groups generally worked apart from other progressive organizations. “But separating these issues doesn’t make sense; it doesn’t speak to the reality of people’s lives,” she says. “There has been growing recognition of this in the last few years, making it a pivotal moment to push forward policy solutions that place reproductive rights alongside the other policies that help women and their families thrive."
Still, the struggle to push the reproductive-rights movement in new directions has not been without challenges. Even as the Democratic Party and mainstream groups like Planned Parenthood have been linking their advocacy more with other progressive issues—either because they recognize its inherent value, its strategic worth, or both—some smaller organizations that have been making these arguments for years have, at times, felt sidelined. After the Times story ran in 2014, Monica Raye Simpson, the executive director of SisterSong, a reproductive justice group led by and focused on women of color, published an open letter calling out mainstream groups for failing to acknowledge their decades-long work making connections between reproductive choice and women’s health and economic prospects.
“We appreciate that you push us to do this more, and to do it better,” Richards wrote back in response. “And we hear you when you say that we are not doing enough.” A few months later Richards and Simpson met in person, and published a joint statement pledging to build a stronger partnership.
I asked Simpson how things have played out in the year and a half since that meeting. “We’ve really seen mainstream organizations reaching into the women-of-color-led organizations to get our expertise, and actually have us at the table and shape the conversation,” she says. While Simpson acknowledges there’s still a long way to go in terms of truly making the reproductive-rights movement “intersectional” (a social justice concept that means reckoning with different forms of oppression and how they impact, and compound, one another), she does feel Planned Parenthood “is starting to show up more” for them.
One way that Planned Parenthood is “showing up” for a broader range of constituencies is through its membership in the All Above All coalition, a growing political effort to overturn the Hyde Amendment—the 40-year-old law that prohibits federal spending on abortions. Women of color and low-income communities most affected by Hyde have been leading the campaign.
During Cecile Richards’s testimony this past September, she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that in her opinion, the Hyde Amendment “discriminates against low-income women.” Erin Matson, who has been frustrated by some of the rhetorical timidity of the reproductive-rights community, was surprised and encouraged by Richards’s comments. “That’s not how Planned Parenthood talked about Hyde in the past,” she says.
A WEEK BEFORE THANKSGIVING, Planned Parenthood’s political arm launched its 2016 election effort, pledging to spend at least $20 million defending reproductive rights. “We will organize and mobilize to elect lawmakers who are in our corner,” Richards announced in a video ad.
Most public opinion analysts suspect that the conservative strategy of targeting anti-choice voters in Republican primaries may backfire in the general election. An NBC-Wall Street Journal poll conducted in August found that Planned Parenthood has a significantly higher favorability rating than any other group or individual tested—including the Supreme Court, President Obama, both political parties, and key Republicans running for president. Handfuls of other recent polls and surveys have reported nationwide majorities opposed to defunding the organization.
Even on abortion, despite the high-profile attacks, public opinion hasn’t substantially changed. The percentage of Americans who believe abortion should be legal in all circumstances, in some circumstances, or under no circumstances has stayed relatively constant since Gallup first started asking the question in 1975. In 2015, Gallup found that 29 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal under all circumstances, 51 percent believe it should be legal under some circumstances, and 19 percent believe it should be legal under no circumstances. While Republican candidates are staking out positions to appeal to those who oppose abortion under all circumstances, it turns out that not even all those voters are on board with the GOP attacks. A recent YouGov poll found that more than a third of Americans who support strict abortion restrictions nonetheless hold a favorable opinion of Planned Parenthood.
Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, who compared supporting a woman’s right to choose to supporting slavery, has made clear that he’d like to see Roe v. Wade overturned, along with laws that permit women to terminate pregnancies in cases of rape or incest. Marco Rubio, a candidate favored among GOP elites, also wants abortion to be made illegal with no exceptions for rape or incest. But in a CNN/ORC national poll taken just before the 2012 presidential election, 83 percent of all voters—and 76 percent of Republicans—said they favored allowing abortions in cases of rape or incest. “The RNC is not happy about this Republican primary,” says Anna Greenberg, one of the nation’s top Democratic pollsters. “This is not a strategy [for them], it’s a disaster.”
The anti-abortion rhetoric stands not only to motivate the progressive base, but also to agitate independent voters. Independent women in particular tend to be more socially liberal and economically conservative, and Greenberg notes that a lot of the misogynistic and anti–reproductive rights rhetoric has actually helped Democrats more effectively communicate with this swath of the electorate.
“While backing Republicans into a corner might gin up some primary votes, [these positions are] wildly, wildly unpopular with the general public,” says Erica Sackin, Planned Parenthood’s director of political communications. “When Romney said the first thing he’d do as president is defund Planned Parenthood, he lost the 2012 election by the largest gender gap in history.”
Planned Parenthood wants to help elected officials understand that being forthright in their support for abortion and reproductive rights is both better policy and smart politics. In effect, the organization, along with other women’s groups, is now engaged in its own anti-stigma work on the electoral level, pushing leaders away from the “safe, legal, and rare” abortion mantra that pro-choice Democrats used, starting with Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. The Democratic Party officially removed the phrase from its platform in 2012, and advocates are now urging politicians to think of abortion more along the lines of “safe, legal, and where we live.”
Richards believes the country has arrived at a real inflection point. “It’s just abundantly clear,” she says, that the assaults on Planned Parenthood are not about the organization as a health-care provider, but about “folks who resent that women actually have the legal right to make their own decisions about their pregnancies. That’s what they’re mad about, and they’re really mad.”
The stakes are high, but Richards is looking forward to the challenge. “I’m just grateful we’re getting to what is actually the real fight,” she says. “I believe this country is not going to go backwards. It has been incredibly inspiring to see young people, who I do think live their lives in a more public way, who really do want to throw off judgment and shame about so many things, including abortion. To me, that is a bright new day, and I hope, I think, it’s all going to come together in one place.”For some teams, it’s part of the strategy, take a lot of swings, don’t worry too much about striking out, the resulting hits will balance everything out. Others, they just don’t have the power to really take successful cracks at the ball.
We wanted to see what teams average the most strikeouts on offense per game, so we pulled data on the past five seasons (2012-2016) to determine who ended up walking back to the dugout empty-handed the most. Below you will find a breakdown of average strikeouts per team over the last five seasons, and a chart below that shows the five year average of every team as well.
It’s an interesting mix, with the Giants and Royals, who have been very successful the past few years, having very low strikeout averages, which makes sense. But then the Chicago Cubs, having the second worst average, still won the World Series last season.
Get the full scoop below:
Average over the past five years:Like most other automakers, cash cows for Chevrolet typically include its trucks and SUVs, but the 2013 Spark put up some pretty big numbers in its first full month on the market in its bid for profitability. According to Ward's Auto, General Motors was only expecting to sell 1,900 of the minicars in August, and customers ended up snagging 2,630 of the South Korean-built city car.What makes this figure even more impressive is the fact that the Spark hasn't even gotten into full stride yet, as it has only been rolled out in 18 markets across the States. Since it went on sale in July, Chicago has been the Spark's top market, accounting for almost a third of all sales, and "many" sales have come from first-time car buyers. The overall range for Spark customers thus far has been from age 19 up to 83.Showing off a little New GM restraint, Chevy small-car spokesman Mike Weidman pledges that the automaker won't overreact to the Spark's strong initial start with increased production that could lead to an excessive inventory of models on dealer lots. The budget-priced five-door starts at just $12,995.Along with the Spark's initial impressive showing, Chevy's other small cars, the Sonic Cruze and Volt, all set sales records in August.Before Universal created the braintrust to resurrect their monsters universe, they released the god awful Dracula Untold, which starred the bland Luke Evans as the Prince of Darkness. I hate that movie – haaaaaaate it – and wish that both the film and Evans would stay as far away from the upcoming monster universe as humanly possible. Unfortunately, Universal has openly stated that it’s the “first” in the series of films, which will include The Mummy, Invisible Man, Wolf Man, Creature From the Black Lagoon and even Bride of Frankenstein.
When LRM spoke to Evans, who plays Scott Hipwell in Tate Taylor’s upcoming The Girl on the Train, they asked him if he’s heard any word on Drac’s return and the plans for a monster team-up.
“There have been talks and conversations. I think the bigger picture is exciting for all the monsters that they own. There is talk about it. I just don’t know how it will all manifest itself. I think it will happen and I think they’re just working out how these monsters interact and how they end up in the same realm with each other. If they can stick Captain America in a scene with Iron Man and Thor, I think you can definitely put Wolf Man, the Invisible Man, The Mummy and Dracula in the same film as well.”
[Related] 15 Fun Facts About the Universal Monsters Franchise!
The return of the Universal Monsters is a star-studded affair that will include Tom Cruise and Russell Crowe in The Mummy (in theaters June 9, 2017), and Johnny Depp in The Invisible Man, with the studio targeting Angelina Jolie for Bride of Frankenstein, Scarlett Johansson in The Creature From the Black Lagoon, and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson for The Wolfman. Javier Bardem is most recently in talks to star as Frankenstein in Universal’s cinematic universe with rebooted versions of classic monster movies.This article is adapted from The Last Abortion Clinic, a blog started by clinic defenders of Mississippi’s last remaining abortion clinic, the Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The blog’s purpose is to educate the public about the daily life of escorts at the clinic and show what conflicts regarding reproductive rights really look like on the forefront of the battle. You can follow the clinic on Twitter @TheLastClinic.
I’ve known Roy, a constant feature at the clinic and a member of Operation Rescue, (you know, that group who believes they are justified in killing abortion doctors) for about 10 years. I used to write a regular “girl about town” column here in Jackson, Miss. 10 years ago. I was very open about my liberal ideals and opinions. When I finally got pregnant, I wrote a column about it. Roy wrote me a letter in care of the paper telling me he was “happy I was keeping my baby.” This was after several pro-choice columns I had published. So, this idea that he holds the morality for the world isn’t new to Roy. He’s a regular fixture at the Last Clinic and one of the most zealous protesters.
On this particular morning I was doing our regular routine at the clinic. The day for me when I do defense, which I do before I go into my regular employment, starts around 7 a.m. Or rather, that’s when I leave my kid and husband in bed and, during the winter time, wrap up in approximately 14 scarves and head down the five blocks from my house to the clinic. There’s a coffee shop, Sneaky Beans, one block up from JWHO that is my usual stop before I head to the parking lot at 7:30 to await the women who hold 8 a.m. appointments. There’s a ledge along the parking lot where I usually sit.
The first day I did clinic defense—it being around 30 degrees outside and me having a scarf wrapped up to the tips of my ears as I cupped my coffee and bounced my butt off the cold concrete—I was told I was “the Devil,” a “baby killer” and several other choice terms by the Early Risers already sitting outside the gates. We sit there and take verbal abuse for about half an hour most mornings. I’ve tried to beat the “antis” to the clinic but even when I show up at 7:15, I still find at least one. I finally figured out that’s how they know if the clinic is open that day. The clinic is only open three days per week at this point. And those days aren’t publicized to anyone who isn’t escorting or doesn’t have an appointment. So, the only way the antis know if it’s going to be open on certain days is to wait for the early shift of escorts to arrive. They send a “scouter” usually. As soon as he sees me walk up with my coffee, I greet him with a cheerful, “good morning” and then he furiously begins tapping on his phone.
I take my perch on the cold concrete and wait for the other escort on the shift to show up. After the first day, I learned why iPhone ear buds are a constant accessory of the escorts. It just helps to make it through the “Don’t Kill Your Baby!” when you are listening to Beyoncé. When the antis are particularly vocal, or holding “Church,” Derenda—one of the other escorts—carries a boom box behind the patient to drown out the cries of the protesters. Some are so thankful they latch onto us for the 200 feet to the door and ask if these people are going to “hurt” them. We hold a lot of hands and try to make them laugh as much as possible. Sometimes the antis make this easier.
In the beginning of the day I’m a parking attendant. We have precious few spaces at the clinic and they all must be used exactly correctly or the antis will call in a report to the Health Department stating the clinic is breaking standards. So, I usher cars into spaces as tightly as I can—despite the fact that the women driving them are usually not in their best mental state. When the parking at the clinic gets full, we have no choice but to lead them to another public lot down the hill from the clinic. When this happens, usually one or two escorts run down the hill and walk the patient into the clinic. I affectionately call this “Running the Gauntlet,” because once we step off clinic property, we are fair game. The antis chase us to the woman’s car and try to get in between her and us. They will stand outside the car so she cannot open her door. And we cannot do a thing. We are taught to “not engage.” And we keep this rule regularly. But there are days when “not engaging” isn’t something I can do.
The video above is of this exact situation. Me and another escort, Sarah Roberts, were attempting to walk a woman from her car in the public lot, up the hill, and onto the safety of the clinic grounds. Once we get through Roy, we still have to get through the throng of protesters that stay at the clinic waiting to yell at this woman once we step through the gates. And the only point I need to make here is this: In what other place where a human being goes to access medical services are they subjected to this treatment? Because I’d like to remind people some of these women are just here to get birth control pills for a reduced price. And they have to put up with this.The implications of Brexit for farmers and for the food and agriculture sectors are “frightening” and could affect Irish competitiveness to a potentially catastrophic degree, a Seanad committee has heard.
Farming and agri-food organisations, as well as representatives of the horseracing industry, addressed the Select Committee on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union on Thursday.
Irish Farmers’ Association president Joe Healy said analysis of the potential implications of Brexit for the farming and food sectors was “stark”, and for the beef sector it was “frightening”.
The UK was the market for 50 per cent, or 270,000 tonnes, of Irish beef exports.
A loss of access would destabilise the overall dairy sector here, as a third of all our exports went to the UK and it was our main market for cheddar.
Mr Healy said the ESRI had estimated World Trade Organisation (WTO) tariff rates would “virtually wipe out” agri-food trade to the UK, with losses of over €2 billion for our meat and dairy exports.
Badly hit Farmers had also been badly hit by the devaluation of sterling in the past year, with a loss of €150 million to the beef industry alone in the last six months of 2016.
The IFA, Macra na Feirme and the industry body Food Drink Ireland all told the committee the optimum outcome from a trading point of view in the Brexit negotiations was that the UK remained within the Customs Union.
President of Macra na Feirme James Healy told the committee the uncertainty brought about by the UK’s exit threatened the business of every young farmer in the country, as most had not had time to establish the appropriate levels of capital and financial reserves to protect themselves.
Prof Gerry Boyle, director of the agriculture and food development authority Teagasc, warned that very high tariffs could apply post-Brexit to important elements of Ireland’s agri-food exports to the UK.
Irish Farmers’ Association president Joe Healy said analysis of the potential implications of Brexit for the farming and food sectors was “stark”, while for the beef sector it was “frightening”. File photograph: Alan Betson/The Irish Times ‘Prohibitive’ tariffs Such tariffs were “prohibitive” and, on the basis of responsiveness of trade to prices, could “destroy” this trade flow between Ireland and the UK. The competitiveness of Irish products in the UK would be affected to a “catastrophic degree”, he said.
He noted the most valuable trade flow from Ireland to the UK when measured at 2015 levels was fresh, boneless beef. UK imports were worth almost €540 million and World Trade Organisation tariffs calculated at 2015 rates would amount to 64 per cent.
UK imports of cheddar from Ireland in 2015 were valued at over €300 million and would, in the same scenario, face a tariff of 55 per cent.
Director of Food Drink Ireland (FDI), Paul Kelly, said the agri-food sector exported €4.1 billion of food and drink to the UK and accounted for 43,000 jobs.
Market diversification The industry group suggested a number of short and medium-term measures to support the sector, including the delivery of €25 million in funding for market diversification and product innovation, administered by Bord Bia and Enterprise Ireland.
Britain’s exit from the EU also threatened the €1.3 billion contribution the horseracing and connected industries make to the Irish economy, the committee heard.
The Irish Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association said there were 6,777 registered breeders in the 32 counties, accounting for 14,617 mares and 8,563 foals. The industry employs 17,000 individuals and thousands more directly.The board of American Apparel voted Wednesday to fire its controversial founder and CEO, Dov Charney, because of an "ongoing investigation into alleged misconduct," the company said.
Charney, who started selling t-shirts as a student at Tufts University in the late 1980s, and grew American Apparel into a major retailer of made-in-USA clothing, has been repeatedly accused of sexual harassment by employees over the past several years. At one point, seven women had filed suit against him, though many of the cases have been dismissed.
See also: American Apparel Strikes Marketing Gold in Sochi
Charney has also been accused of choking a store manager, has been known to walk in the office in his underwear, and has reportedly propositioned employees and used sexually charged language around colleagues.
However, it wasn't immediately clear on Wednesday which incident had caused the board to move to terminate Charney. American Apparel had defended Charney against various allegations in the past.
American Apparel's board appointed John Luttrell as interim CEO. It suspended Charney as president and CEO, and said it would fire him after a required 30-day waiting period.
"We take no joy in this," said Allan Mayer, who was appointed as co-chairman of the board on Wednesday. "Dov Charney created American Apparel, but the company has grown much larger than any one individual."
Despite the Los Angeles-based company's feel-good image — it calls its products "sweatshop-free," and says it pays its American garment workers 50 times what a Bangladeshi worker might earn — American Apparel has always attracted controversy. The company's ads often feature seminude models in provocative poses, and Charney shot some of those photographs.
American Apparel has also fallen on hard times financially. Its stock lost more than 95% of its value since 2008, and now trades at less than a dollar. Reports have surfaced for several years that Charney was in danger of losing control of his company.
In a statement released Wednesday, American Apparel said that because of the management changes, it "may have been deemed to have triggered an event of default under its credit agreements."Greenland sets melt records in 2015 consistent with ‘Arctic Amplification’
Following record-high temperatures and melting records that affected northwest Greenland in summer 2015, a new study has provided the first evidence linking melting in Greenland to the anticipated effects of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification.
Following record-high temperatures and melting records that affected northwest Greenland in summer 2015, a new study has provided the first evidence linking melting in Greenland to the anticipated effects of a phenomenon known as Arctic amplification.
Arctic amplification is the faster warming of the Arctic compared to the rest of the Northern Hemisphere as sea ice disappears.
It is fuelled by a feedback loop: rising global temperatures are melting Arctic sea ice, leaving dark open water that absorbs more solar radiation which in turn warms the Arctic even more.
Arctic amplification is well documented, but its effects on the atmosphere are more widely debated.
One hypothesis suggests that the shrinking temperature difference between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes will lead to a slowing of the jet stream, which circles the northern latitudes and normally keeps frigid polar air sharply separated from warmer air further south.
Slower winds could create wilder swings of the jet stream, allowing warm, moist air to penetrate further north.
The new study, published in Nature Communications and conduct by researchers from the University of Sheffield and Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, among several other institutes, shows that those anticipated effects occurred over northern Greenland during the summer of 2015, including a northern swing of the jet stream that reached latitudes never before recorded in Greenland at that time of year.
Edward Hanna, Professor in Climate Change in the Faculty's Department of Geography, said: “Our results show the effects of a strongly warming Arctic and disturbed atmospheric jet stream on causing a record melt of the far northern reaches of the Greenland Ice Sheet last summer.
“The study is closely linked to ongoing work conducted at the University of Sheffield which analyses the connection between Arctic climate change and extreme weather events across the densely-populated northern hemisphere mid-latitudes."
Professor Marco Tedesco, Research Professor at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and adjunct scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies is the lead author of the study.
“How much and where Greenland melts can change depending on how things change elsewhere on Earth,” he said.
“If loss of sea ice is driving changes in the jet stream, the jet stream is changing Greenland, and this, in turn, has an impact on the Arctic system as well as the climate. It’s a system, it is strongly interconnected and we have to approach it as such.”
The Greenland ice sheet, Earth’s second largest after Antarctica, holds enough ice that, if it were to melt entirely, it would raise average global sea level by about seven meters. Understanding the drivers of melting is critical to understanding how quickly and by how much sea level will rise in the future and how Greenland’s freshwater runoff will affect ocean circulation and ecology.
Northwest Greenland’s summer of melt started in June 2015, when a high-pressure ridge squeezed off from the jet stream, the study shows. It moved westward over Greenland until it sat over the Arctic Ocean and affected weather across the island through mid-July.
That high-pressure system, called a cut-off high, brought clear skies and warmed northern Greenland, helping set records for surface temperature and meltwater runoff in the northwest, the study shows. With less summer snow falling and melting underway, northern Greenland’s albedo, or reflectivity, also decreased. A less-reflective surface absorbs more solar energy, which feeds more melting, as Tedesco illustrated in a study earlier this year on the darkening of Greenland.
Northern Greenland also set an unusual July record for wind: the winds blew east to west on average, rather than the usual west to east; only two other years on record show easterly winds on average in July, both slower. At the same time, the jet stream’s northernmost ridge swung farther north than ever recorded for that month, passing 76 degrees North latitude, nearly two degrees further north than the previous July record, set in 2009, the authors write.
The same atmospheric pattern had a different impact on southern Greenland, where new melting records have been set over the past decade. The south saw more snow during summer of 2015 and less melting than previous years.
The authors stop short of confirming Arctic amplification as the cause of the warming, but they say the results fit the anticipated effects of Arctic amplification described by Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University and Stephan Vavrus of the University of Wisconsin in a 2012 paper.
Recent studies exploring the potential effects of Arctic amplification have showed that high-pressure blocks connected to northward swings of the jet stream have become more common near Greenland.
Professor Hanna also released a study in May using the Greenland Blocking Index to measure the strength of stationary high-pressure systems over the past 165 years and found that seven of the top 11 systems had occurred since 2007.
“The significant increase in Greenland high-pressure blocking that has occurred in the last 20 to 30 years is clearly related to recent record warming over the region, as well as jet-stream changes,” he said.
“This makes it more likely than not that within the next five to 10 years we will witness further record Greenland melt events like in 2012 and 2015.”
Whether the patterns seen in 2015 will continue in the future remains to be seen. This spring, Arctic sea ice set another record low for its maximum extent for the year.
"Greenland also experienced early season melt in early April of this year comparable to April 2012. Record setting melt occurred later that summer, but it is too early to tell whether the same will hold true in 2016,” said co-author Thomas Mote of the University of Georgia.
“The conditions we saw in the past aren’t necessarily the conditions of the future,” Tedesco said. “If humans change the forcing, we are going into uncharted territory.”
The other co-authors of the new paper are Xavier Fettweis of University of Liege; Jeyavinoth Jeyaratnam, James Booth, and Rajashree Datta of City College of New York; and Kate Briggs of University of Leeds. The study was supported by funding from NASA's Interdisciplinary Data Science Program, NASA’s Cryosphere Program and the National Science Foundation.Manhattan law firm Nesenoff & Miltenberg LLP is now offering its clients the opportunity to pay their fees in bitcoin.
Marco Santori, senior associate at the firm, said a few of his clients asked whether they could pay using the digital currency, so the company looked at how they could work it into their bookkeeping.
“It’s our aim to provide our clients with the flexibility to pay us in their chosen form of currency, and it should come as no surprise that clients in the digital currency space often prefer to transact in digital currency.”
He went on to say that the company also wanted to adopt the ‘practice what you preach’ mentality – it represents bitcoin companies, so it made sense to show some allegiance to the currency.
“We represent clients in the three market segments of the digital currency space, so that’s those involved in payments, mining and businesses that see bitcoin as an investment vehicle,” Santori added.
He admits part of the reason he has done so much work for businesses in the digital currency space is because there isn’t a lot of competition out there.
“There really aren’t a lot of other lawyers who’ve dedicated time, resources and brainpower to figuring out a lot of these complex bitcoin and digital currency problems.”
This could change over the coming months, though, with an increase in bitcoin companies seeking legal advice as governments start |
company “once again posted record revenue and earnings” in 2016, but that “numerous challenges and disruptions in North American retail tempered our fourth quarter results.”
One of the challenges Plank referenced in his statement was the recent bankruptcies of sporting goods retail outlets like City Sports and Sports Authority.
Under Armour’s net revenue grew 12 percent in the fourth quarter of 2016 — a great mark for many firms, but the smallest fourth-quarter growth in eight years for the company, according to CNBC. Net income for the fourth quarter fell from $105.6 million in 2015 to $104.9 million last year.
Under Armour continued its rapid growth from past years, achieving a staggering 23-percent revenue increase, matching its trend for average annual growth since 2012. However, the company set a much lower projection for 2017 revenue growth: 11 to 12 percent, half the average mark from past years.
The announcement shook investors. Share prices declined 24.5 percent through 10:45 a.m. this morning.
Plank said the company is planning to invest more heavily in its products in the coming year. This corresponds to another projection that has spooked investors: an estimated $100 million drop in operating revenue for 2017.
And yet, Plank remained optimistic in a statement. “The current environment represents an inflection point to maximize our unique strengths by staying on offense – investing smartly in innovation, deepening our Brand connection with consumers and amplifying our focus on operational excellence – positioning Under Armour as a stronger company,” he said.
Plank says now is the time for Under Armour to invest in its new tech suite of tech products. He may be right, but his South Baltimore-based company is eyeing a very different year, financially speaking.Much like the athletes Under Armour serves, shares of the company's stock are gaining strength in Wednesday's after-hours trading session. The upward move is for good reason: not only did Under Armour post higher-than-expected top and bottom line fourth quarter results, but it also announced that it will acquire MyFitnessPal, the maker of a popular calorie-counting and fitness-tracking app.
Under Armour reported Wednesday afternoon that it recorded $895 million in fourth quarter revenue, a figure that grew 31% compared to the prior-year period and easily beat the $848 million Wall Street consensus. Net income for the quarter grew 37% to $88 million and resulted in earnings per share of 40 cents, a figure that came in a penny above the analyst estimate.
On a full-year basis, Under Armour recorded $3.08 billion in revenue, up 32% compared to revenue reported in 2013 and slightly higher than the $3.03 billion forecast the company had provided. Net income for the year came in at $208 million and resulted in earnings of 95 cents per share, up from 75 cents per share in 2014.
"We are incredibly proud of recording our 19th consecutive quarter of over 20% net revenue growth, including achieving over 30% growth in each quarter of 2014, demonstrating the unending opportunity we see across our five key growth drivers," Under Armour chairman and CEO Kevin Plank said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. Highlighting ad efforts like the "I Will What I Want" campaign (which featured female athletes like ballerina Misty Copeland), Plank praised his company's growth, particularly that of the international and footwear divisions. International revenues grew 96% year over year (on a full-year basis) while Under Armour's 2014 footwear revenue increased 44% over 2013's levels.
Within Under Armour's other business segments, full-year apparel revenue increased 30% to $2.29 billion, accessories revenue grew 27% to $275 million during the year.
Alongside its earnings results, Under Armour also announced Wednesday that in an effort to build "the world's largest digital health and fitness community," it is acquiring health-and-wellness tracking services Endomondo and MyFitnessPal. The company said that since its December 2013 acquisition of MapMyFitness it has been looking for ways to make its digital platform even larger; with Endomondo and MyFitnessPal, that goal is achieved.
Under Armour will pay $85 million for Endomondo, a fitness tracking platform that lets users map, record and share workouts through social networks. It has 20 million registered users who live primarily in Europe, and due to its international presence, Under Armour plans to use Endomondo to "scale" and grow its Under Armour Connected Fitness community.
MyFitnessPal, meanwhile, has more than 80 million registered users and Under Armour called it "the leading free resource" for providing calorie-and-workout-related data. Under Armour is paying $475 million to acquire the service.
"Similar to MapMyFitness, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal have established track records of unmatched equity, expertise and passion in the fitness and nutrition space, and they are ideal partners to enable Under Armour to provide data-driven, proactive solutions to help athletes of all levels lead healthier and more active lifestyles," CEO Plank said in a statement.
Combined with MapMyFitness, Endomondo and MyFitnessPal help grow Under Armour's digital health community to 120 million users.
As a wholly-owned Under Armour subsidiary, Endomondo will continue to operate out of its headquarters in Copenhagen, Denmark, and MyFitnessPal will continue to operate out of its headquarters in San Francisco. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015.
In other Under Armour 2015 predictions, the company said Wednesday that it expects its full-year net revenues to grow 22% to $3.76 billion and its full-year operating income to fall between $397 million and $407 million, a range that would mark a year-over-year increase of 12% to 15% over 2014. Under Armour did say that this forecast includes the dilutive effect of the Endomondo and MyFitnessPal acquisitions as well as the effect of a stronger American dollar.
The earnings and acquisition news sent shares of Under Armour -- which finished Wednesday's regular trading session up 1.03% -- for an initial pop of more than 3% in Wednesday's after-hours trading session. The stock fell back to the earth as the afternoon wore on and is currently up just 0.3%. Year-over-year, Under Armour is up 38.6%.On May 2, President Barack Obama nominated Penny Pritzker for Commerce Secretary, who faced her first (and likely only) Senate confirmation hearing on May 23. Dozens of Hyatt workers nationwide were present at the hearing to stand in opposition to the nomination of Ms. Pritzker, who is an heir to the multi-billion dollar Hyatt fortune and has served as a Director of Hyatt Hotels since 2004.
The Pritzker family built its financial empire with Hyatt, which has become one of the most recognizable hotel brands worldwide. Increasingly however, the Hyatt brand has become synonymous with labor abuses and housekeeper injuries, as Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst hotel employer in the United States. Our President has said many of the right things about improving the lives of working Americans, but his nominee stands in stark contrast to his positions.
On August 31, 2009--amid the depths of the recession--Hyatt fired its entire housekeeping staff at three non-union Boston area hotels. After decades of service and backbreaking work, these women were handed trash bags and asked to clear out their lockers. Worse still, some of the fired housekeepers reported having to train subcontracted workers that Hyatt hired to replace them.
The Boston firings sparked international outrage and threw into sharp relief a broader pattern of labor abuses at Hyatt: aggressive outsourcing, low wages and the mistreatment of housekeepers. These practices counter President Obama's stated commitment to good jobs and greater prosperity for working Americans.
President Obama has said the right things about improving worker wages. In his 2013 State of the Union address, President Obama committed to fight poverty by raising the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.
Hyatt housekeepers get paid as little as $2 to clean a room. Subcontracted Hyatt workers get paid the least, often earning minimum wage with no benefits. In cities like Indianapolis and Baltimore, over 70% of the cleaning staff are outsourced. Moreover, Hyatt has led opposition to local initiatives to raise the minimum wage or curb abuses by subcontractors.
President Obama has said the right things about worker safety. He has called for better enforcement tools to stop employers who choose speed and profit over employee health and welfare.
But Hyatt remains a dangerous place to work, particularly for women who make beds and scrub toilets as hotel housekeepers. At Hyatt, housekeepers clean as many as 30 rooms a day, requiring rushing that can lead to debilitating injuries. In a study published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine examining a total of 50 hotel properties from 5 different hotel companies, Hyatt housekeepers had the highest injury rate of all housekeepers studied when compared by hotel company.
In May 2012--in a first for the hotel industry--federal OSHA issued a companywide letter to Hyatt identifying ergonomic risks that its housekeepers face on the job.
Some Hyatt housekeepers still clean on their hands and knees. Hyatt led the industry opposition to legislation in California that would end this archaic practice by requiring hotels to provide cleaning staff with simple tools like long-handled mops. Can you imagine if male janitors were denied a mop?
Hyatt's actions have led Hyatt workers to call for a global boycott of their company. They have drawn support from organizations representing millions of workers including the AFL-CIO, the National Organization for Women, the National Council of La Raza and the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce. Hotel workers have risked their livelihoods standing up to a global employer that mistreats them.
Ms. Pritzker may argue that she cannot be held responsible for the actions of Hyatt Hotels. But Ms. Pritzker has continued to serve on Hyatt's board, draw director compensation and purchase Hyatt shares. Although she has indicated she will divest her interest in over 220 holdings if confirmed as Secretary of Commerce, she will continue to hold 10 million shares of Hyatt stock.SINGAPORE - The National University of Singapore (NUS) has suspended its annual Orientation Week next week. This comes on the back of reports of inappropriate behaviour at previous orientation camps.
The Straits Times understands that an emergency meeting was called by the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) on Friday (July 29) afternoon, and a decision was made to cancel the five day event.
Orientation Week, or O Week, is the final orientation camp before the school semester begins, with camps held individually by each of the faculties.
It culminates in the university's Rag and Flag Day, which is the NUS Students Union's major annual charity fund-raising event.
Rag and Flag activities, however will still go ahead.
Related Story Risque games at uni orientation reprehensible: Ong Ye Kung
Complaints had surfaced in a report by The New Paper on Tuesday (July 26), about increasingly sexualised activities at recent NUS orientation camps.
NUS said in a statement on Friday (July 29) that all student-organised team-building activities for freshmen are suspended "with immediate effect" until further notice.
This was after it received information about unauthorised and unsupervised freshmen activities, despite having issued earlier instructions on this matter.
It also confirmed that a video circulating online of people getting dunked in a pond, was a residential activity that took place in Sheares Hall on Wednesday (July 27).
"We are deeply disappointed that some of our students have flouted the rules and behaved in an unacceptable manner in organising freshmen activities."
It said that those found responsible will be brought before the University's Board of Discipline.North Dakota law enforcement officials are investigating a dead body found in the Cannonball River near a campsite used to protest the now completed Dakota Access Pipeline.
Local fishermen found the body of Damjan Nedelkovski floating in a river Sunday morning near the primary campsite holding anti-DAPL protesters. He was a California resident known to frequent protest camps in the area, according to a press statement issued Monday by the Morton County Sheriff’s Department.
An autopsy showed no blunt trauma to the body, and officials are not certain how long he was in the water. Family and friends, meanwhile, told local officials they last had contact with Nedelkovski in October 29, 2016. His stepbrother filed a missing person report in November.
Anti-DAPL activists and Standing Rock Sioux members believe the line’s construction would trample on tribal lands and potentially poison Lake Oahe. The pipeline’s opponents continue to say the protests are largely peaceful and nonviolent.
Local officials argue the demonstration were violent enough to warrant task force help. Former GOP North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple, for instance, asked Wyoming Highway Patrol earlier this year to send riot squads and cops with active shooter training to suppress violent anti-pipeline protests, according to documents obtained by a media advocacy group.
He wanted help dealing with “civil unrest” and “criminal activities” related to the protests, according to public records communications obtained in February by Muck Rock.
The North Dakota Republican asked his Wyoming counterpart in a Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) request to send 40 officers to Morton County for assistance quelling what he deemed increasingly violent protests. An EMAC allows states to share valuable resources during emergency situations.
The demonstrations resulted in significant damage to private property, as well as numerous acts of lawlessness.
Morton County officials believe 94 percent of the 709 arrests at the Oceti and Sacred Campsites were of people from outside of North Dakota. Officials also said 221 of those apprehended had prior criminal records.
The protests also created significant property damage. More than 544 households reported losses ranging from $15,000 to $20,000 each from crop losses. The total equates to over $8 million in total losses.
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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.Unlike my fellow columnist Adam Tod Brown, I am not composed of extremely low pH water and hatred of all things fun. I enjoy fun in all its forms and have often been described by friends and colleagues as "Who?" But those who do remember me seem to remember that I was having a good time when they got stuck near me for a while. The problem with my fun times, however, is that there are outside forces pissing them away from me faster than Adam ruined them all for you. There are things I can't overlook, and therefore I simply can't be having the same fun as other people this summer.
5 Vacation
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In a technical sense, I get vacation time every year. I'm an adult. I'm allowed to stop working for like a week and just do any damn thing I want. If I want to try to become Aquaman by yelling at fish, that's what I can do for a solid week. I could start an Air Supply cover band, or hunt Randy Quaid for sport. I could go to an exotic beach location, like the Bahamas or Newfoundland. Except not.
I don't know if you know this, but if you want to go on a real tropical vacation, you're basically looking the power of nature right in the eye and saying "Hey, Nature, how's your wife? You know, the one I just disgraced with my seed? How is she? Sticky? Yeah, she's sticky." Nature hates you on vacation and as such is going to throw every awful thing it has at you.
Hepatitis exists in pretty much every country you currently don't live in. Yeah, it exists here, too, but when you go on vacation it'll be in the water, in the food and in all the people and monkeys you run afoul of. Every surface you touch will be oozing hepatitis. You like waffles? The inside of every delicious, foreign waffley square will be brimming with hepatitis. All the hepatitises, too; A, B, C, Epsilon, everything.This unit is great and overall satisfactory for the price.
I did some extensive research before finally deciding to buy the Archos 101. Many other units were just too expensive. The 101 was resonably priced and seemed to have the backbone to do what I needed it to do. The latest firmware update is for Android 2.2. Archos doesn't know if Android 3.0 will be available at the time of this review. After receiving the unit, I first noticed how light and thin it was. The interface is pretty user friendly. It does not come with the regular Android Market, but with a little help from your friendly neighborhood hackers, you can install it. Instead, it comes with a program named Google AppsLib. It has many of the regular market apps, but not all. The unit has great battery life. I can leave it on all day and it barely looses any battery unless I am using it non-stop. Some cons: The unit feels cheap. The screen is not as responsive as it could be. The screen resolution is not that great and the camera is very mediocre at best. You trade the reasonable price for a few quality sacrifices with this one, but all together it is a decent unit to mess around with when you don't feel like carrying a laptop or your cell phone screen is just a wee bit too small.Read full reviewYour Objectives
Write an Elite Dangerous story! This could be:
Your CMDR's exploits over the past year Fictional character(s) you've thought up (maybe a pirate lord, or a politician?) The life of a Coriolis engineer/comms tower operator Something else completely wild we haven't thought of
Be creative, there is no "wrong answer" - but please try to keep it PG13!
Follow the rules below & make sure you agree to the terms before submitting your entry
Rules
Your submission must be between 1,000 - 2,000 words in length
Entries to be sent to community@frontier.co.uk with the title "Elite Dangerous Novella Contest"
We will only accept entries that are submitted through email You may cross-post your entry to this thread if you wish to share with the community
All entries to be submitted before December 3, 2017 at 23:59 UTC
Only one entry per person will be allowed - Make sure you proofread, edit, and make changes before submitting
In the event of more than one entry received, only the first will be valid
Winners will be selected by a panel of Frontier Developments staff members
Terms
The works that you submit remains your creation as "fan fiction" and credit remains with you; however, should you wish to sell or profit from works created using Elite Dangerous intellectual property, you will need to acquire a license from our Licensing Team via email: licensing@elitedangerous.com
Any works submitted which includes characters already present in Elite Dangerous will not be considered canon - even in the case of the winning entry - and shall remain fan fiction
By entering this contest, you grant Frontier Developments permission to:
Re-distribute the submitted content on social media channels - in the case of winners and honorable mentions In the case of the winner, read the story live on the 24h Charity Stream
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Greetings Commanders,With this month being November (we checked the calendar, it definitely is!) and this being what is widely known among writers as NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) we thought: what better way to celebrate creativity than to hold a writing contest of our own? So, we present you the Elite Dangerous Writing Contest! You may remember that a couple of years ago we held a similar contest to write CMDR Origin Stories. We received many entries from commanders who produced gripping short stories that made us laugh, widen our eyes in shock, and even water our eyes on more than one occasion. This time we're expanding the scope of the stories and what to write about to anything that you can think up. The rules, terms, and prizes are below.Dear Kevin,
Americans pay the highest prices for prescription drugs of anywhere in the world – and the cost is going up, 12% on average in the last year and in some cases nearly 1,000%.1
The problem is bigger than profit vultures like former hedge fund “Pharma Bro” Martin Shkreli. Giant pharmaceutical companies spend millions on lobbyists to defend their monopolies and benefit from trade deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership.2 Instead of fighting for lower prices, Congress and the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) routinely side with Big Pharma.
We need an FDA chief with the guts to stand up to the pharmaceutical companies. But instead, President Obama has nominated Robert Califf, a doctor described as “the ultimate industry insider.”3 Sen. Bernie Sanders recently made waves by announcing he would oppose Califf’s nomination, and we need to demand the rest of the Senate follow his lead.4
Tell the Senate: No Big Pharma ally as FDA chief. Click here to sign the petition.
According to the New York Times, Dr. Califf “has deeper ties to the pharmaceutical industry than any F.D.A. commissioner in recent memory.” He has an extensive record of close collaboration with pharmaceutical giants, and recently described regulation as a “barrier,” not a safeguard for public health. While he donates his Big Pharma speaking and consulting fees to charity, his lucrative salary at Duke University is directly supported by companies like Merck, Novartis, and Eli Lilly.5
In fact, in the conflict of interest section of one recent article, Califf admitted to receiving financial support from more than 20 companies.6 No matter how good a doctor he is or how fair he attempts to be, Califf is simply too connected to industry. If he becomes the next head of the FDA, his former sponsors and friends in the pharmaceutical industry will have a friendly ear in a major position of power, threatening our financial well-being and physical health.
This is exactly how big corporations go about capturing control. It’s no wonder that Sen. Sanders declared that Califf simply wasn’t someone who is “prepared to stand up to the pharmaceutical companies and work to substantially lower drug prices.”7 But reports indicate that President Obama nominated Califf deliberately to avoid a fight with Republicans in the Senate, and that Senate Democrats have yet to line up to oppose him.8 We need a major outcry right now, before it is too late.
Tell the Senate: No Big Pharma ally as FDA chief. Click here to sign the petition.
Big Pharma deploys armies of lobbyists to increase profits, even at the expense of our safety. The Trans-Pacific Partnership includes years of excessive patent protection for the pharmaceutical industry. Congress has passed multiple bills to speed up FDA approvals, including allowing drug companies to conduct their own tests – even though some estimate that 85-90% of the new drugs on the market since the 1990’s don’t deliver better clinical performance, but simply make money for their creators. And meanwhile, the industry has been wracked with scandals over drug safety and hidden risks.9
We can’t let Big Pharma get away with installing an industry insider as head of the Federal Drug Administration. The Senate must block this nomination.
Tell the Senate: No Big Pharma ally as FDA chief. Click below to sign the petition:
https://act.credoaction.com/ sign/Big_Pharma_Califf_FDA?t= 7&akid=15903.6517714.iB7rrw
Thank you for speaking out,
Murshed Zaheed, Deputy Political Director
CREDO Action from Working Assets
Add your name:Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
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The Andromeda Galaxy (M31) is the closest large galaxy to the Milky Way and is one of a few galaxies that can be seen unaided from the Earth. In approximately 4.5 billion years the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way are expected to collide and the result will be a giant elliptical galaxy. Andromeda is accompanied by 14 dwarf galaxies, including M32, M110, and possibly M33 (The Triangulum Galaxy).
Similar Facts
Triangulum Galaxy Facts The Triangulum Galaxy, also known as M33, is one of the closest spiral galaxies to the Milky Way. It lies 3 million light-years away,...
Milky Way Galaxy Facts The Milky Way Galaxy is our home galaxy in the universe. It is a fairly typical barred spiral with four major arms in its...
Antennae Galaxies Facts The Antennae is a pair of spiral galaxies that are interacting and mingling their stars. They began their galactic dance over a few hundred...An arachnologist from Germany has discovered a harvestman with a leg span of more than 13 inches (33 cm) during a research trip to Laos.
The specimen is one of the largest representatives of the entire order anywhere in the world. The current record is just over 13.4” (34 cm) leg span for a species from South America.
“I collected spiders from the caves in the southern province of Khammouan”, said Dr Peter Jäger of the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt. “In one of the caves I discovered a harvestman that was absolutely huge.”
The expert has so far failed to properly identify the harvestman to species level. “In attempt to categorize the creature properly, however, and give it a scientific name, I soon reached my limits”, Dr Jäger said.
“It’s a shame we can’t identify such an exceptional discovery correctly, i.e. its species”, the scientist said, “we haven’t dealt with these and related genera from China and neighbouring South East Asia before.”
“Other arthropods with similar huge dimensions have been found in the same region – the Laotian huntsman spider Heteropoda maxima with a leg span of up to 11.8” (30 cm), the whip scorpion Typopeltis magnificus with a span of 10.2” (26 cm) and the predatory centipede Thereuopoda longicornis with a total span of almost 15.8” (40 cm).”
“What mechanisms or factors are responsible for this frequency of gigantism is still unclear”, Dr Jäger said. “One possible explanation is the potentially slower rate of growth in the caves.”The Flash‘s installment of #DCWeek’s “Heroes v Aliens” crossover event-palooza on Tuesday drew 4.15 million total viewers and a 1.5 demo rating (per finals), surging 40 and 36 percent week-to-week to beat its season highs (3.17 mil/1.3).
In fact, the speedster series delivered its largest audience in two years (Dec. 9, 2014), and its best demo number since Feb. 16.
Leading out of that, No Tomorrow (940K mil/0.3) was flat.
Elsewhere on Tuesday….
NBC | This Is Us (10.5 mil/2.7) drew its largest audience to date, up 17 percent week-to-week, while also rising 13 percent in the demo. The Voice (10.6 mil/1.9) ticked up, while Chicago Fire (7.9 mil/1.7) rose two tenths to a best-since-premiere rating.
ABC | The Middle (6.6 mil/1.6), American Housewife (5.6 mil/1.5) and Fresh Off the Boat (4.2 mil/1.3) were steady, while Real O’Neals (3.3 mil/1.0) dipped a tenth. Agents of SHIELD (2.4 mil/0.8) returned steady.
CBS | Rudolph (9.4 mil/2.3) was down a tenth year-over-year, yet still beat The Voice.
FOX | Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2.3 mil/1.0) ticked up, while New Girl (1.8 mil/0.8) and Scream Queens (1.33 mil/0.5) were flat.
Want scoop on any of the above shows? Email insideline@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line.Vice president of Russian state bank "Vnesheconombank" Nikita Smirnov told in an interview to the "Kommersant" newspaper that he considers Bitcoin to be the only successful implementation of the blockchain technology.Quote: "Bitcoin is the only blockchain technology in the world that has widespread adoption. It exists for several years already, people tried to hack it, but no one succeeded. So right now, if you ask whether there's another algorithm, which established itself as a solution to distributed consensus problem, then the answer is probably NO. As of the present moment, the only successful solution to that problem is Bitcoin."He also added: "Bitcoin is kind of a philosophical concept. Compare it to a bacteria, which exists separately from humans, but is in a symbiotic relationship with humans. But the word bacteria has negative connotation, whereas Bitcoin in many ways is a positive thing, which satisfies many necessities, involves people in the process and allows itself to exists in this way. It truly is a new philosophical concept, which isn't very well understood quite yet".Vnesheconombank (VEB) is a Russian state corporation that is a former Soviet bank. The Russian government uses VEB to support and develop the Russian economy and to manage Russian state debts and pension funds. It is a part in the government's plan to diversify the Russian economy, and to do so receives funds directly from the federal state budget. The bank was instituted in 1922.WASHINGTON — Democrats eagerly stoked outrage during the 2012 presidential election over millionaire Republican Mitt Romney’s low effective tax rate of 14 percent. Did Romney, they suggested, benefit from a special tax loophole for hedge fund and private equity investors, so “fat cats’’ like him can pay taxes at a much lower rate than many regular Americans?
The issue was simple in its appeal to populist anger.
But a year later, the heated rhetoric of campaign season has fizzled. Concerted initiatives from the White House and Democrats in Congress to close the loophole have not materialized. The “carried interest” loophole — which allows some fund managers to pay taxes at the rate for investments, now 20 percent, instead of the top income tax rate, now 39.6 percent — lives on.
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It’s the tax break that won’t die.
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The contrast between Democrats’ demands for action during the campaign and the merely desultory efforts in the year since reveals how the Democratic Party’s commitment to the issue is more complicated than its campaign slogans of 2012.
Yes, Republicans are dug in so deeply against any change that might raise taxes — in this case, the removal of a tax cut benefit — that odds of passage are small.
But specialists on the issue say they also detect Democratic ambivalence: crusading against the “carried interest’’ loophole at this stage would inflame an important source of campaign contributions for Democrats.
Since 2000, private equity, hedge fund, and venture capital managers have spent a combined $352 million on federal elections, fairly evenly split between the parties, 53 percent for Republicans and 47 percent for Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
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Even with a special committee considering a budget pact in December that could include tax code changes, few are speaking up strongly on the subject.
“The issue has been an effective fund-raising tool for both parties,” said Victor Fleischer, a University of California San Diego law professor who is a leading authority on the issue. “The Republicans, because their base doesn’t like tax increases, and the Democrats because private equity firms believe some legislators can be persuaded.”
Democrats, Fleischer said, “consistently said some of the right things” on the issue but have not put much effort into promoting tax overhaul.
Massachusetts, despite its liberal politics, is one of several epicenters for the financial sector executives who benefit most from the break. Though the state’s Democratic politicians have railed against the tax break, they have a mixed record on follow-through.
Both of the state’s new senators, Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren, pledged during their campaigns to end the break for wealthy fund managers. But neither has so far made it a priority in office. They blame Republican obstruction for thwarting efforts to close the loophole.
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“Republicans really don’t want to in any way engage on the issue of raising revenues,” said Markey, who voted with Democrats when he was in the House to pass several measures to close the loophole that died in the Senate.
“Change occurs over time,” added Warren, who says she is adamant that carried interest should be part of any budget or tax code negotiations with Republicans. “There have to be enough people to stand up and speak loudly enough.”
Still, their elections marked a departure from their predecessors. In the Senate, Scott Brown, a Republican, opposed any change in the tax rate, while John F. Kerry, a Democrat, showed ambivalence, warning about “unintended consequences’’ of the change and at times echoing the industry’s argument that eliminating the tax break posed a risk to the economy, even while voting for the change at least twice.
The tax break may be the best example in Washington of why it’s so difficult to take on a special interest.
The Private Equity Growth Capital Council, a chief lobby for the industry, has pushed hard to link the tax break to bedrock American principles of rewarding risk-takers. Its website has a video depicting a pair of fictional sisters who open a restaurant, noting that the tax structure for billion-dollar private equity firms is no different than it is for small businesses.
The industry group insists that the exemption isn’t a loophole. It asserts that eliminating the exemption would curb investment, including real estate.
Tax specialists say the industry has done an especially good job at capitalizing on the confusing aspects of tax law to sow seeds of doubt about the benefit, which allows much of their income to be taxed at the lower, capital gains rate rather than the higher income tax rate.
“There really is no argument for carried interest to receive capital gains treatment,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, a former chief of staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation and now a law professor at the University of Southern California. “They’re just designed to confuse and bamboozle.”
Though many big businesses tend to favor Republicans in their giving, private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital executives have given generously to both parties. Two of Massachusetts’ top 20 Democratic donors in the most recent election, for example, Jonathan Lavine and Joshua Bekenstein, are top managers at Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Romney. The state’s fifth and eighth biggest Democratic donors, brothers Douglas and George Krupp, cofounded a real estate investment and private equity company. Number six on the list, Walter Gilbert, is a venture capitalist.
The industries have been especially helpful to Majority PAC, a “super committee’’ operated by allies and former staffers of Senate Democrats including majority leader Harry Reid that can accept unlimited contributions. James H. Simons, founder of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, gave Senate Majority PAC $3 million ahead of the last election. Vincent Ryan, founder of Boston-based Schooner Capital, donated $350,000. Multiple donors contacted for this story declined to comment or did not respond to requests.
“The venture community has over the past few decades become an important fund-raising constituency for the Democratic Party and they’ve earned their seat at the table,” said Larry Rasky, a Democratic bundler who runs the public relations firm Rasky Baerlein.
Though Democrats have campaigned on changing the tax rate, many have quietly found ways to weaken those changes. Even Obama, who campaigned against the tax break to draw attention to Romney’s low tax burden, has narrowed his proposal this year to inflict less pain on the industry. Obama’s initial plan would have garnered $24 billion in new taxes over the next decade. The latest version, which excludes more investors, raises $16 billion.
“It’s a good one to demagogue for the Democrats,” said Robert McIntyre, director of the Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal advocacy group. “It’s also a dangerous one for them to do because there’s so much money out there. Even if it’s not going to them, they don’t want it to flood to the other side.”
Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, is often cited for his role in protecting the financial industry. In 2007, he was pivotal in slowing momentum for a bill that passed the House by insisting it apply to more industries, a move both sides saw as a poison pill.
“He broadened it to death,” said former US representative Barney Frank, who backed several bills that passed the House.
Though Schumer consistently ranks among the industry’s top donation recipients, Frank said he believes Schumer was motivated by the impact on his state, the world’s financial capital. Schumer has since voted to close the loophole.
Kerry’s role in protecting the financial industry’s interests is less well-known. His 2004 presidential run coincided with the industry’s initial forays into political activism, and he continued to tap the them when he returned to the Senate. Kerry, like Schumer, has voted to close the loophole at least twice.
But advocates like McIntyre say Kerry did more to tamp down prospects for closing the loophole behind the scenes, using his post on the Senate Finance Committee to breed skepticism. At a series of 2007 hearings, for example, he grilled industry foes and invoked some of the arguments put forth by the industry’s lobbyist, including the notion that any change in the tax structure held risk for the economy.
“The thing we have to think about carefully in the committee are the downstream impacts of how you begin to treat this,” Kerry said then. “If you single out one piece and say we are going to get our chunk here on some theory, that theory may well have a lot of impact on how other deals are made and how other capital is treated.”
Charles Kingson, who testified in favor of imposing higher taxes on the industries, said he was not prepared for Kerry’s and Schumer’s questions, which he considered hostile.
“I |
the Losties died for nothing. Christian Shephard tells Jack that they time that they spent on the Island was the most important thing that they all have done.
It is possible that this story was not meant to have real world consequences, or have as grand a scale as some people are prescribing to it; this is a story centering on very few characters, and on a relatively small location, not the entire world. The said story also happens to be very symbolical; 'push the button, or the world will end' - not the the whole world, just the world these people know, or the Island's world. It's a wagnerian conflict on a miniature scale; there's a proverbial god and devil, but are they even close to what people would normally percieve to be the actual god or devil? No, of course not, both can, and are killed, both play by rules, and both are (albeit, somewhat) bound by human emotions and motivations. Hence, the story's logic should be taken in context of the narrative; perhaps it doesn't matter if the MiB escapes in the wide scope of things, but if he does, evil would have triumphed in that story, so the resolution is negative, regardless of what happens to the rest of the world.
The Smoke Monster Is Back
Jack restarted the light, which means that Smokey can come back too. He's either still the Man in Black, or awaiting a new host to be thrown into the heart. The smoke monster does not necessarily exist independently of a human "host." It could be the case that Smokey is simply the perversion of the person who falls into the Source (not an entity in itself).
Jack is the new Smokey. Jack was dressed in dark (not quite black) clothes that became darker throughout the episode (because they got wetter), echoing his transition into "The Man in Black". Jack moved on with the rest of his group, then after encountering the heart of the Island he awoke in the same place that the MIB's body was discovered by Jacob. Similar to how Jacob thought MiB was loved more and apparently the "obvious choice" to protect the island at their young age, Jack is also the "obvious choice". But, clearly, Hurley becomes the island's protector, and if the writers intended on paralleling the past, then Jack becomes Smokey.
Smokey is gone. Smokey was the boosted manifestation of the MIB's soul: He wanted to leave the island at all costs, he felt betrayed by "Mother" and by Jacob and he was disgusted by people in general - all before his dead in the light. So my interpretation would be this: the light doesn't turn everybody into a smoke monster, it distills the very essence of a human being and manifests it, that's why it doesn't seem to harm Jack - he let go when he stood in the light, there was nothing evil in him anymore. So, the only way to produce another smoke monster would be, IMHO, if a "bad" man enters the light again. Smokey is not gone. There was a Smokey before MIB and mostly likely a smokey after MIB. Mother represents both parts of the protector of the Island (the jacob and MIB parts). she was most likely smokey and this is how she was able to wipe out everyone in MIB's villiage. Then when she died the parts of the island protector were split up between Jacob and MIB. There have been numerous references to Smokey being the protector of the island (Egyptian hieroglyphics, the Others, Dharma folk). MIB had begrudgingly fulfiled this role until he was able to put his plan in place with the Locke loophole. Jack waking up in the same place as MIB after he went into the light gives credence to the theory that he becomes Smokey, although I dont know if I necessarily believe this yet. The ancient Egyptians believed in five parts of a soul: the Ib (heart), Sheut (shadow), Ren (name), Ba (personality) and Ka (life force). When the MIB appears at an "exit point" he has not survived the encounter with the source so the life force is gone. The MIB never seemed to have a name, and very little "heart", so the smoke monster is a combination of Sheut and Ba. Mother said they could not hurt each other. It seems as if Jacob cannot kill MIB and that is why he returned as Smokey. Kate and Jack are not forbidden to kill him.
The smoke monster is the result of Jacob breaking the rules, i.e. he harmed and killed his brother. Darlton suggested in the podcast for Across The Sea that Jacob didn't technically kill the MiB because it was indirect. If you knock someone out and then they float down river into the Source, that's indirect enough not to break the rules. Likewise, manipulating Ben to kill Jacob is indirect and doesn't break the rule. If that's true, why has Smokey never done that to Jacob in the 2000 years they've been there? Seems a pretty good loophole to me. Bash Jacob's head in until he's unconscious and then throw him into a river face down. Using that logic, it's technically the river/water killing Jacob, not Smokey.
Although Jack could hurt the Man In Black he can't kill him, that's why Kate has to kill him. Kate could kill him because the light was off, Jack could have killed MIB too, because the light is what gave them power, but he got stabbed by MIB. Therefore Kate finished it.
The Smoke Monster was never anything more than a "fail safe", intended as last resort in case a Guardian of the Source fails to do his job or cannot do it any longer.
There are two Smoke Monsters
Smoke Monster #1 - The Man in Black's essence. It can shift into someone's form as long as that person is dead. Only killed Bram and Jacob's other security guards while in the smoke form.
Smoke Monster #2 - The Devil. It killed the Pilot, Eko, and Rousseau's team. It was trying to pull Locke down the cave to hell, because of how jealous it was of him that he was healed by the island.
When Jacob chucked the Man in Black down the centre of the island, the black smoke comes out, twice as big as otherwise seen. This is because half of it is the Man in Black's consciousness, and the other part is the Devil.
Jacob and the Man in Black hate each other, but agree to respect each other while the devil is still alive.
The Man in Black disguises as Isabella (someone who Richard would listen to). This is when it gets interesting, because the smoke monster sound is heard, but the Man in Black is in the form of Isabella. This was the devil smoke killing the officers, and then it tries to kill "Isabella", but fails. The Man in Black, in his real form, frees Richard.
The Man in Black knew that the other smoke monster was the devil, so he told Richard to kill him (He knew Richard would immediately think that Jacob was the Devil, but the Man in Black wanted Jacob dead too anyway, so it didn't matter for him to tell Richard that Jacob wasn't the Devil).
The Man in Black thought the island was hell because it is where the Devil lives
The Man in Black says to Richard "the Devil took my body". He could have literally meant that the Devil took his soul out of his body (because the Man in Black's body is found after by Jacob).
The Man in Black tells Richard that he only has one chance to kill the devil, and when Richard unsuccessfully returns after talking to Jacob, the Man in Black got angry that Jacob got in the way, he just said "him" instead of "Jacob".
Isabella's ghost tells Hurley to tell Richard that if the Man in Black leaves the island, they all go to hell. She saw the devil smoke in its real form, and thought it was the Man in Black.
The Man in Black wants Jacob and the candidates dead so he can leave the island, and he wants the devil dead for the curse it had on him.Cyclists are furious after a council blunder led to a cycle lane being blocked by a metal barrier.
The railing, on Chester Road in Birmingham, is next to a pedestrian crossing, but there are no alternative routes for cyclists.
One rider, Michael Scott, claims the barrier could cause a serious crash - although it is visible for 20 feet.
One cyclist, 32-year-old Michael Scott, is worried the barrier could cause a serious crash
Mr Scott is angry at Birmingham City Council for installing the barrier 20 feet away from a blind corner
The 32-year-old called the lane'very dangerous' and called for the council to take action.
He said: 'You come off a busy roundabout and it's pretty much a blind corner and then the cycle lane just stops about 20 feet up.
'It's very dangerous, and it looks like it's only recently been placed there.'
Mr Scott said that the barrier left cyclists with no choice but to ride on the pavement or go onto the 40mph road.
He added: 'The only reason I can think of for having it there is to stop cars crashing into pedestrians.
The railing, on Chester Road in Birmingham, is next to a pedestrian crossing, but there are no alternative routes for cyclists
Mr Scott said: 'The only reason I can think of for having it there is to stop cars crashing into pedestrians'
'But even then you could have done that by putting the barrier along the pavement.'
Mr Scott said that it was risky for cyclists to divert off the cycle path.
'You could possibly hit a person on the pavement or you have to go onto the road, which is very busy.
'It could easily cause a bad crash.'
Birmingham City Council have been contacted for a comment.Muzaffar Wani was in his ashram +
Muzaffar Wani, the father of Burhan Wani was in the ashram for the last 2 days. We discussed several issues. pic.twitter.com/IDyyxJSG83
— Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (@SriSri) August 27, 2016
Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti +
Kashmir problem +
NEW DELHI: With the Centre grappling to bring peace in restive Kashmir after the killing of Hizbul terrorist Burhan Wani, the slain militant's father Muzaffar Wani met Art of Living Founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar at his ashram in Bengaluru.The spiritual guru said this on social networking site Twitter, sayingfor two days and that they discussed "several issues"."Muzaffar Wani, the father of Burhan Wani was in the ashram for the last 2 days. We discussed several issues," Ravi Shankar tweeted, without elaborating. The tweet was accompanied by a picture of the two together.Ravi Shankar referred to the meeting with Muzaffar Wani on a daypresented a "three-pronged action plan" that includes a dialogue with all stakeholders during talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to bring lasting peace in the troubled Valley.After an hour-long meeting, her first with Modi since the unrest broke out on July 8 in the wake of protests over the death of Burhan Wani, Mehbooba told reporters that the Prime Minister was "very concerned" about the situation and has asked for steps to end this "bloodshed" so that peace returns.Mehbooba outlined a "three-pronged action plan" before the Prime Minister for resolution of thewhich includes involvement of separatists and Pakistan in substantive dialogue to work out a solution to the problem in light of the contemporary geo-political realities.Sources said the plan also includes facilitating the visit of an All Party delegation to the Valley, a possible change in Governor and appointing interlocutors to hold talks with all stakeholders in the state.By James B. Gillett in 1921
Sam Bass was a noted outlaw and train robber who led two gangs during the days of the Wild West – the Black Hills Bandits between 1876-1877 and the Bass Gang of Texas that operated in 1877-1878
The noted train robber was born in Mitchell, Indiana on July 21, 1851, to Daniel and Elizabeth Jane Bass. He came to Texas while still little more than a boy and worked for Sheriff Everhart of Denton County until he reached manhood. While still an exemplary and honest young man, Bass came into possession of a small race pony, a little sorrel mare. On Saturday evenings, when most of the neighborhood boys met in Denton, Bass raced his pony with much success. Everhart soon noticed that Sam was beginning to neglect his work because of his pony and, knowing only too well what this would lead to, he advised Sam to sell his mare. Bass hesitated, for he loved the animal. Finally, matters came to such a point that Mr. Everhart told Sam he would have to get rid of the horse or give up his job. Bass promptly quit and this was probably the turning point in his life.
Bass left Denton County in the spring of 1877 and traveled to San Antonio. Here, many cattlemen were gathered to arrange for the spring cattle drive to the north. Joel Collins, who was planning to drive a herd from Uvalde County to Deadwood, South Dakota, hired Bass as a cowboy. After six months on the trail the herd reached Deadwood and was sold and all the cowboys were paid off by Collins.
At that period Deadwood as a great, wide-open mining town. Adventurers, gamblers, mining, and cattlemen all mingled together. Though Joel Collins had bought his cattle on credit and owed the greater part of the money he had received for them to his friends in Texas, he gambled away all the money he had received for the herd. When he sobered up and realized all his money was gone he did not have the moral courage to face his friends and creditors at home. He became desperate, and with a band of his cowboys, known as the Black Hills Bandits, held up and robbed several stagecoaches. These robberies brought Collins very little booty, but they started Sam Bass on his criminal career.
In the fall of 1877, Collins, accompanied by Bass, Jack Davis, Jim Berry, Bill Heffridge, and Tom Nixon, left Deadwood and drifted down to Ogallala, Nebraska. Here, he conceived, planned and carried into execution one of the boldest train robberies that ever occurred in the United States up to that time. When all was ready these six men, heavily armed and masked, held up the Union Pacific train at Big Springs, a small station a few miles beyond Ogallala. The bandits entered the express car and ordered the messenger to open the safe. The latter explained that the safe had a time lock and could only be opened at the end of the route. One of the robbers then began to beat the messenger over the head with a six-shooter, declaring he would kill him if the safe were not opened. Bass, always of a kindly nature, pleaded with the man to desist, declaring he believed the messenger was telling the truth. Just as the robbers were preparing to leave the car without a dime, one of them noticed three stout little boxes piled near the big safe. The curious bandit seized a coal pick and knocked off the lid of the top box. To his great joy and delight, he exposed $20,000 in shining gold coin! The three boxes each held a similar amount, all in $20 gold pieces.
After looting the boxes the robbers went through the train, and in a systematic manner robbed the passengers of about $1,300. By daylight, the bandits had hidden their booty and returned to Ogallala. They hung around town several days while railroad officials, U.S. Deputy Marshals, and sheriffs’ parties were scouring the country for the train robbers.
Collins and his men frequented a large general merchandise store. In this store was a clerk who had once been an express messenger on the Union Pacific and who was well acquainted with the officials of that company. I have forgotten his name, but I will call him Moore for the sake of clearness in my narrative. Of course, the great train robbery was the talk of the town. Moore conversed with Collins and his gang about the hold-up, and the bandits declared they would help hunt the robbers if there was enough money in it.
Moore’s suspicions were aroused and he became convinced that Collins and his band were the real hold-up men. However, he said nothing to anyone about this belief but carefully watched the men. Finally, Collins came to the store and, after buying clothing and provisions, told Mr. Moore that he and his companions were going back to Texas and would be up the trail the following spring with another herd of cattle. When Collins had been gone a day’s travel, Mr. Moore hired a horse and followed him. He soon found the route the suspects were traveling, and on the second day, Moore came upon them suddenly while they were stopping at a roadside farmhouse for something to eat. Moore passed by without being noticed and secreted himself near the trail. In a short time Collins and his men passed on and Moore followed them until they went into camp. When it was dark the amateur detective crept up to the bandits, but they had gone to sleep and he learned nothing.
The next day Moore resumed the trail. He watched the gang make their camp for the night and again crept up to within a few yards of his suspects. The bandits had built a big fire and were laughing and talking. Soon they spread out a blanket, and to Moore’s great astonishment brought out some money bags and emptied upon the blanket sixty thousand dollars in gold. From his concealed position, he heard the robbers discuss the hold-up. They declared they did not believe anyone had recognized or suspected them and decided it was now best for them to divide the money, separate in pairs and go their way. The coin was stacked in six piles and each man received $10,000 in $20 gold pieces. It was further decided that Collins and Bill Heffridge would travel back to San Antonio, Texas, together; Sam Bass and Jack Davis were to go to Denton County, Texas, while Jim Berry and Tom Nixon were to return to the Berry home in Mexico, Missouri.
As soon as Moore had seen the money and heard the robbers’ plans he slipped back to his horse, mounted and rode day and night to reach Ogallala.
He notified the railroad officials of what he had seen, gave the names and descriptions of the bandits and their destinations. This information was broadcast over southern Nebraska, Kansas, Indian Territory, and Texas. In the fugitive list sent to each of the companies of the Frontier Battalion of Texas Rangers, Sam Bass was thus described: “Twenty-five to twenty-six years old, 5 feet 7 inches high, black hair, dark brown eyes, brown mustache, large white teeth, shows them when talking; has very little to say.”
A few days after the separation of the robbers, Joel Collins and Bill Heffridge rode into a small place in Kansas called Buffalo Station. They led a pack pony. Dismounting from their tired horses and leaving them standing in the shade of the store building, the two men entered the store and made several purchases. The railroad agent at the place noticed the strangers ride up. He had, of course, been advised to be on the lookout for the train robbers. He entered the store and in a little while engaged Collins in conversation. While talking the robber, he pulled his handkerchief out of his coat pocket and exposed a letter with his name thereon. The agent was a shrewd man. He asked Collins if he had not driven a herd of cattle up the trail in the spring. Collins declared he had, and finally, in answer to a direct question, admitted that his name was Collins.
Five or six hundred yards from Buffalo Station a lieutenant of the United States Army had camped a troop of ten men that was scouting for the train robbers. As soon as Collins and Heffridge remounted and resumed their way, the agent ran quickly to the soldiers’ camp, pointed out the bandits to the lieutenant and declared, “There go two of the Union Pacific train robbers!”Donald Trump tried to ease fears about his finger being on the nuclear button during Monday night’s presidential debate, declaring that “I would certainly not do first strike.” He added: “Once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.”
But moments later, the Republican presidential nominee seemed to backpedal, claiming that he “can’t take anything off the table.”
Two members of Congress don’t want Trump to have the option.
Responding to the majority of Americans who say they would not trust Trump with the nuclear arsenal, Sen. Edward Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., introduced legislation Tuesday that would bar the president from conducting a nuclear strike unless Congress had issued a formal declaration of war.
“Our Founding Fathers would be rolling over in their graves if they knew the President could launch a massive, potentially civilization-ending military strike without authorization from Congress,” Lieu said in a statement. “The current nuclear launch approval process, which gives the decision to potentially end civilization as we know it to a single individual, is flatly unconstitutional.”
Whatever Trump actually believes about nuclear weapons, neither Clinton nor President Obama nor any former president has ever adopted a firm “no first use” policy.
Although the Obama administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review says that “the fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons … is to deter nuclear attack on the United States,” it leaves open the option of a preemptive strike, saying that the U.S. could use nuclear weapons to “defend the vital interests of the United States” when facing “extreme circumstances.”
In the closing months of Obama’s presidency, some media outlets have speculated that the Obama administration might revise its policy and issue a “no first use” pledge. But the New York Times reported in September that such a proclamation was unlikely, given strong opposition from Defense Secretary Ash Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry.
Opponents of a “no first use” policy argue that nuclear weapons not only deter other nuclear strikes but are required to deter non-nuclear aggression by Russia or China.
But supporters argue that the U.S. military is strong enough to deter those threats without the threat of a mushroom cloud. The U.S. spends more money on its military than its next six rivals combined, it has more military aircraft than Russia and China combined, and more aircraft carriers and military bases than the rest of the world put together.
In a statement of support for Markey and Lieu’s bill on Tuesday, William Perry, former secretary of defense under Bill Clinton, said “During my period as secretary of defense, I never confronted a situation, or could even imagine a situation, in which I would recommend that the president make a first strike with nuclear weapons.”
A 2007 report by the National Security Advisory Group, including current Defense Secretary Carter and current White House National Security Adviser Susan Rice, argued that nuclear weapons are such an extreme (and therefore unlikely) response that they not even a credible deterrent to conventional military aggression:
Nuclear weapons are much less credible in deterring conventional, biological, or chemical weapon attacks. A more effective way of deterring and defending against such non-nuclear attacks … would be to rely on a robust array of conventional strike capabilities and strong declaratory policies.
Obama entered office intending to scale back the U.S. nuclear arsenal, vowing in a 2009 address to seek “the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” He got off to a strong start, negotiating a treaty with Russia that set new limits on the number of deployed warheads each country had. This year Obama also became the first U.S. president to visit Hiroshima, where he called for a “moral awakening.”
But his legacy is being called into question by arms control groups, who have criticized his trillion-dollar plan to modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The plan — which involves buying a whole new generation of land-based missiles, nuclear submarines, bombers, and cruise missiles over the next decade — would be a massive handout for defense contractors.
When asked about the modernization plan at a campaign rally in January, Hillary Clinton responded “Yeah, I’ve heard about that. I’m going to look into that. It doesn’t make sense to me.”
In May, the Pentagon published updated numbers showing that Obama had reduced the nuclear stockpile less than any other post-Cold War president.Julissa Arce is no stranger to working sun up to sundown. She traveled on a Greyhound bus for 80 miles every weekend to sell funnel cakes to pay for college, studied in her down time, just to wake up and do it all over again. All of that hard work landed at the top of her class at the University of Texas at Austin, and eventually an analyst job at Goldman Sachs, one of the biggest investment banks in the world.
She grew up in Taxco, Mexico, and stayed with her extended family while her parents traveled back and forth from Taxco to Texas, importing silver. She moved to the U.S. to be with her parents when she was 11, and her tourist visa expired when she turned 14. Since that moment, all of her actions hinged on this secret. To stay in the U.S. and keep her high-powered job she worked so hard for, she had to hide the fact that she was undocumented, but she stayed strong-willed and pushed through the barrier—just like her parents. The three of them ran a funnel cake cart in Texas for income. But one day as her mother was operating the roasted corn machine, it exploded, throwing her into the air, causing her to hit her head on the sidewalk. She sustained brain injuries and landed in a coma. Julissa’s parents eventually returned home to Mexico so that their family could tend to her mother, leaving Julissa, at this point a senior in high school, alone in the U.S.
Being on her own meant she had to work harder than ever before. By age 27, she became a VP at Goldman Sachs, earning over $340,000 annually. Having all that money in the bank sounds like the life, but it came at a price. She had to endure working long hours, foregoing lunch and bathroom breaks, and work under a workaholic boss, all while keeping her undocumented status a secret, which led to debilitating migraines and back pains that left her laying on the floor for hours. One night in the summer of 2015, the weight of her secret grew so heavy that the stress drove her to the hospital.
But she kept pushing, and sent the money she earned from her job on Wall Street to her parents in Taxco. While she sent money across the border, she had to stay in the U.S. out of fear of getting caught and deported—even when she got the call the her father was dying in Mexico.
As a high-powered go-getter, she felt powerless living in the U.S. undocumented. But in 2009, she married a U.S. citizen, secured a green card and became a naturalized citizen. From that moment forward she vowed to leave Wall Street and use her voice to fight for immigrant rights and education equality. Her memoir is called My (Underground) American Dream: My True Story as an Undocumented Immigrant Who Became a Wall Street Executive.
Featured Image: Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images for INGENUITYThe Premier League says its clubs will be punished with a points deduction if they breach new spending controls.
Each team will not be allowed to make a total loss of more than £105m over the next three seasons and must limit their player wage bills from next season.
"If people break the £105m we will look for the top-end ultimate sanction range - a points deduction," said Premier League boss Richard Scudamore.
Analysis One thing that's been guaranteed in the unpredictable world of Premier League football is that when TV revenues go up, so do the financial rewards to players. It was many people's assumption that the astounding sums agreed by Sky and BT for the live rights for the next three seasons would result in another ticket to El Dorado for the current crop of playing talent. However, against the run of play, the clubs have shown signs of self restraint. Could sustainability become the new spend spend spend? In theory, these measures will present clubs with an opportunity to pay down some debt, secure a more stable financial platform, and even stick something away for a rainy day. Now that would be an interesting development.....
The rules are designed to improve the financial sustainability of clubs.
Investment in areas such as stadia and academies will be exempt.
The aim is a 'break even' model similar to the Financial Fair Play regulations introduced by Uefa for sides in European competitions. The FFP allows only a £38m (45m euros) loss - significantly less than the Premier League's new limit of £105m between 2013 and 2016.
Agreeing to cost controls marks a major change for Premier League clubs - they made cumulative losses of £361m in the 2010-11 season - and Scudamore is adamant the system will be enforced.
"As with all things in our rulebook, you will be subject to a disciplinary commission," the Premier League chief executive warned clubs.
"Normally we stay silent on sanctions as the commission has a free range but clearly if there is a material breach of that rule we will be asking the commission to consider top-end sanctions."
Scudamore confirmed there would be an "absolute prohibition" on teams reporting losses of more than £105m over the next three years, with the first sanctions possible in 2016.
Of the 20 top-flight sides, only Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool have reported losses of more than £105m over the last three years, according to the most up-to-date published accounts.
It emerged that the vote for the financial regulations could hardly have been closer with only 13 of the 20 clubs voted in favour, with six against and Reading abstaining.
The 'yes' vote only narrowly achieved the necessary two-thirds majority of the 19 votes cast.
It is understood that Fulham, West Bromwich Albion, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Swansea City and Southampton all voted against. Chelsea, who had initially been viewed as opponents of financial fair play regulations, voted in favour.
"A new owner can still invest a decent amount of money to improve their club but they are not going to be throwing hundreds and hundreds of millions [of pounds] in a very short period of time," said Scudamore.
"While it has worked for a couple of clubs in the last 10 years, if that's going to be done in the future it's going to have to be over a slightly longer term without the huge losses being made.
Financial regulation key facts The new Premier League rules state each team over the next three seasons will not be allowed to make a total loss of more than £105m
In the same period, clubs whose total wage bill is more than £52m will only be allowed to increase their salaries by an accumulative £4m per season
Any club making a loss of above £5m a year will have to guarantee those losses against the owner's assets
The severest punishment for breaking the new regulations is a points deduction
Fulham, West Bromwich Albion, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Swansea City and Southampton are believed to have all voted against the regulation
Only Manchester City, Chelsea and Liverpool have reported losses of more than £105m over the last three years
The Premier League's regulations are much less strict than Uefa's for sides in European competition which only allow for a £39.4m loss over the three years before the 2014/15 assessment date
"I think at £105m you can still build a very decent club with substantial owner funding but you have to do it over time, not in a season."
Chelsea won the Premier League two years after Roman Abramovich acquired the Stamford Bridge outfit, and Manchester City's title success came three years after Sheikh Mansour's takeover.
Any club making a loss of above £5m a year will have to guarantee those losses against the owner's assets, which should help prevent the situations that afflicted Leeds and Portsmouth.
"In some ways that's the most significant part, this is a three-year rolling system of secure funding - it's one year at the moment," Scudamore added.
Clubs whose total wage bill is more than £52m will only be allowed to increase their salaries by an accumulative £4m per season for each of the next three years (2013-14: £4m, 2014-15: £8m, 2015-16: £12m).
However, that only applies to revenue centrally distributed by the Premier League - essentially TV income - and does not cover extra money coming in from increases in commercial or matchday income.
The'short-term cost control' measure applies solely to clubs with a player wage bill in excess of £52m in 2013-14, £56m in 2014-15 and £60m in 2015-16.
West Ham's co-owner David Gold said that the proposals for controls had received backing of the majority of chairmen.
"We have all voted and it was overwhelmingly supported, not by all the clubs - some are a little concerned - but the vast majority of the clubs voted in favour," he explained.
"It's not a salary cap, it's a restraint on over-spending. If clubs increase their revenues then they can increase their spending.
"We have got restraint, that's the important thing. What's driving the whole thing is we've got to avoid another Portsmouth."
Minister for Sport Hugh Robertson commented: "I am pleased that Premier League clubs have agreed further financial regulations that will help ensure they are run on a more sustainable basis.
"The Government has been clear that we want clubs to be on a secure financial footing for the long-term health of the game. This is a welcome and positive move."Get the biggest Manchester United FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Here are all the latest Red Devils stories from today's Daily Mirror...
United want futures of De Gea and RVP resolved
Louis van Gaal wants to leave David De Gea and Robin van Persie behind when Manchester United leave for their pre-season tour of the USA.
Van Gaal is keen for deals to sell both players to be concluded before he and his squad jet off on the two-and-a-half week trip on Monday.
Striker Van Persie is close to joining Turkish side Fenerbahce, although interest from Spanish duo Valencia and Atletico Madrid may delay a final decision. And United are hoping Iker Casillas' expected move to Porto will see La Liga giants Real Madrid make an acceptable offer for keeper De Gea.
(Image: Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)
United value De Gea at £35million - although with Real reluctant to pay that as the Spaniard has just a year left on his contract, a compromise figure is likely to be reached.
Van Gaal is taking three keepers - Victor Valdes, Anders Lindegaard and rookie Sam Johnstone - on tour, but sees little value in taking a fourth in De Gea, with the 24-year-old set to leave.
Fenerbahce confirm Van Persie talks
Robin van Persie is edging closer to a move from Manchester United to Turkish side Fenerbahce.
Fenerbahce confirmed ongoing dialogue with United over a proposed deal to sign the 31-year-old striker, who was in London today to undergo a medical.
As revealed by Mirror Sport back on April 6, Louis van Gaal decided his fellow Dutchman is not part of his future plans.
(Image: Action Images)
Fenerbahce are leading the race to sign Van Persie, despite other interest from clubs in Spain, and are poised to land him.
A statement on Fenerbahce's official Twitter account read: "Fenerbahce has begun to transfer talks with Robin Van Persie and his club Manchester United."
Evans valued at £10m
Manchester United are demanding £10million for West Brom target Jonny Evans.
Albion boss Tony Pulis wants 27-year-old Evans to bolster his squad, but will not meet that sky-high asking price.
Northern Ireland international Evans has only got one year left on his current contract and United are ready to listen to offers, with the Baggies leading the chase.
(Image: Tom Purslow)
West Brom are also looking at QPR defender Steven Caulker, while Pulis has been put off winger Matt Phillips because relegated Rangers want £10m for him.
Meanwhile, West Brom's England under-21 striker Saido Berahino is set to sign a new contract before the start of the season.
Di Maria is PSG's 'top target'
Angel Di Maria remains Paris St Germain's No.1 summer transfer target, according to reports in France.
PSG are said to be ready to offer Manchester United around £45million for the midfielder, who struggled last season in his debut season in England.
That would represent a £14.7m loss for United on the player they signed for a British record fee of £59.7m from Real Madrid last summer.
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But with Di Maria said to want the move, after problems on and off the pitch last season, United may well decide to cut their losses on the Argentina international.
Di Maria was poised to join PSG last summer, until the penalties imposed on the French champions by UEFA, for failing to comply with Financial Fair Play reulations, ensured the deal did not go ahead.
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Red Devils to step up Muller pursuit
(Image: Reuters)
The imminent departure of Robin van Persie means United will step up their pursuit of Germany striker Thomas Muller.
According to the Daily Star, Red Devils chief executive Ed Woodward is confident of striking a club record £60m deal to sign him.
Bayern Munich are reluctant to sell, but could be helpless to stop Muller leaving.
The 25-year-old has a strong relationship with Louis van Gaal, and could be tempted by the opportunity to reunited with his former boss.
"It's no secret that Louis van Gaal and I have a relationship that goes a little beyond the normal relationship between coaches and players," Muller said in 2014.
RVP betrayal
(Image: Mike Hewitt)
Robin van Persie is leaving Manchester United because he feels betrayed by Louis van Gaal, according to The Sun.
The Dutch pair enjoyed great success together with Holland at last summer's World Cup, but their relationship appears to have suffered since they teamed up at United.
Van Persie's relationship with Van Gaal is now reportedly irreparable, with the striker on the brink of a £5m move to Fenerbahce.
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later to prove a drag on the airline as it struggled to make enough money to service its heavy debt. “Lorenzo must have been laughing all the way to the bank,” wrote John O’Donnell, former president of the Trump Plaza Hotel, wrote in his book Trumped!
“The shuttle was a clear example of how the exaggerated value of his [Trump’s] name led him into a purchase whose foolishness was apparent almost immediately,” he added.
(The Trump organization declined to comment for this article.)
To his credit, though, Trump decided that since the planes, on average about 20 years old, needed an overhaul anyway, he could use the chance to spiff up passenger comfort and service. He spent more than $1 million on each jet, going well beyond the normal cabin upgrades to add thick maroon carpeting, maple-veneer paneling, beige leather seats, and even faux marble sinks and gold-colored fixtures in the lavatories.
“The bathroom was a work of art,” joked Nick Santangelo, who ran maintenance and engineering at the shuttle. “They used ideas from the hotel business, which wasn’t bad, but they didn’t always work.” Older jets in particular guzzle fuel and airline executives are obsessed with saving even a few ounces of weight. Not so Trump: “At first they wanted to put in a ceramic sink, that was too heavy,” said Santangelo. “Then one of his henchman decided they were going to put brass handles on the doors you use to get out in an emergency. Normal handles weigh a few ounces, and these things probably weighed five pounds each... you’d kill to save one pound, and they wanted to add 20 to 30 pounds to each plane.”
Still, the airline lured customers with frills like airport concierges who would book same-day reservations at fancy restaurants; gourmet food and drink and tarted-up departure lounges. “We spent a lot on service,” recalls Harteveldt. “Bagels and coffee in the morning; boxed dinners with sliced chateaubriand and salad; the flight attendants hustled to serve everyone meals and then pour two or even three rounds of drinks” in the 45 minutes the plane was in the air.
Trump’s flight attendants—the female ones, at least—wore matching fake pearl necklaces and earrings to go with what the Trump organization described as an “upscale” look, with outfits of navy with burgundy trim. The uniform belts incorporated the Trump Shuttle “T” logo.
It got noticed: an August 21, 1989 New York magazine column said that Trump apparently wanted his attendants to have “the look of old money.” The jewelry was a “required part of the uniform,” and the magazine quoted a spokesman as saying they were “real, of course,” but according to Harteveldt, they were in fact faux. “But we did raffle off a pair of real ones,” he said, and even as the go-go 1980s were winding down that was an unusual stunt for an airline.
And then there was the cult of Donald. Frequent travelers would often get thank-you letters after a flight with Trump’s personal signature. A glossy inflight magazine was launched, and Trump at first insisted that the cover resemble the Art of the Deal, his best-selling business book. “The attention to detail was incredible,” said Harteveldt.
“Pretty soon we were at 50 percent of the market, and keep in mind, we started with about zero,” the result of Eastern’s prolonged labor strife, said Nobles. “But it was also 50 percent of a shrinking market,” he said.
Yet another reality was setting in: Business travel was slowing in the Northeast.
Nonetheless, Nobles said the balance sheet improved as the shuttle regained market share, enough to show an operating profit, but not to cover debt payments. And the recession was not just affecting the airline but most of Trump’s other assets, like his hotels and casinos. In fact at one point Trump came up with a plan to help both, by giving away casino chips to his airline passengers in the expectation they’d come to one of his Atlantic City properties to redeem them. It was a bust. “I think something like two chips got cashed in,” Nobles recalled with a laugh.
***
Trump’s airline, for all its brass-handled glitz, was a relatively minor player. So in late 1989, he made a bid for control of American Airlines, then the largest airline in the country—and one of the few that had avoided a bankruptcy or merger to survive. His $7.5 billion offer was, at $120 a share, well above the $83 per share the airline was then trading for. But Wall Street and industry insiders were unimpressed, especially after Trump boasted that he’d picked up “substantial insight” in the business he’d just entered. He was, after all, taking on American CEO Bob Crandall, one of the most respected executives in the business. When Crandall immediately took steps to thwart the unwanted advance the bid fizzled. Did Trump he seriously think he could fill Crandall’s shoes? “He thought he saw an opportunity, and he likes to own the best,” said Nobles. “He thought American was the best airline, it was as simple as that.”
Was Trump chastened? Probably not, but it may have dawned on him at that point that he was out of his depth.
“Trump did see that it was a difficult business,” said Nobles. “The number of people who want to fly and the money they’ll pay to do that is pretty much out of your control. All you can hope for is your fair share, and we got our fair share. But the size of the pot was shrinking.” And in the final analysis, the shuttle, whether it had Trump’s or Eastern’s name on it, was a basic conveyance, its short hops that departed on the hour, with no reservations required, were closer to a flying bus than a first-class hop across the pond. Things like punctuality were far more important to its clientele than a better cut of steak. When Trump looked back on the experience in 2008 and wrote that “I knew it could be successful…. it just needed to be buffed up a bit, to make the travel time a bit more luxurious,” it’s clear how little he learned.
Meanwhile, relations between Trump and some of his shuttle executives had started to fray as market conditions went south. Nobles had offered his resignation in early 1990, because he disagreed with some of Trump’s ideas for cutting costs, some of which flew in the face of reality. “He insisted I fly the planes with only two pilots in the cockpit,” said Nobles, instead of the required trio at the controls. To a layman, that might not seem unreasonable, but it spoke volumes about Trump’s lack of understanding of the airlines—and of his very own fleet. The 727s Trump owned could not be flown with two pilots; it was designed for three and “would have been unflyable” otherwise, according to aviation expert (and Beast columnist) Clive Irving. “The FAA would have never permitted it,” he said.
But Trump was unmoved. He fired Nobles in the middle of 1990 and did not honor the executive’s severance contract. His reason? He told reporters at the time that while the airline was doing well, he just wasn’t pleased “with some of the people running it.”
By the middle of 1991, it was clear that the situation was not going to improve; Trump had raised $380 million from a syndicate of 22 banks led by Citicorp, putting in just $20 million of his own money. But the airline was just one of a cluster of assets that were at stake; and Trump finally hammered out a deal that gave bankers control of the airline; the climate was turned so sour that no bidders came forward to buy it. US Airways was later tapped to run it and by mid-1992, the plus-size “T” logos on the planes were replaced by more conventional airline livery.
For all that, it can be said that Trump’s transformation of the Eastern Shuttle was not for naught; he’d ended up stuck with damaged goods when he bought the shuttle and made changes that were welcomed by both customers and employees (given the condition the shuttle was in when he took over, however, anything would have been an improvement). But other claims he’s made about the shuttle over the years don’t really stand up; yes, he did rescue a distressed property—but other bidders did come forward at the time and the value of the shuttle franchise was beyond dispute. True, he hired more than a thousand employees from Eastern—and most of them, understandably were happy to have jobs and enjoyed the brief ride while Trump was lavishing perks on his passengers. Most of them continued on after the tycoon departed. And Trump’s brief shining moment as a flyboy remains a mere footnote in the annals of aviation.
As for the shuttle—it still chugs along today and on October 17 it will enter its fourth incarnation, as American Airlines formally takes over as part of its merger with US Airways."Foot of Toroweap Looking East" by William H. Holmes (1882). Artwork such as this was used to popularize the Grand Canyon area.
The known human history of the Grand Canyon area stretches back 10,500 years, when the first evidence of human presence in the area is found. Native Americans have inhabited the Grand Canyon and the area now covered by Grand Canyon National Park for at least the last 4,000 of those years. Ancestral Pueblo peoples, first as the Basketmaker culture and later as the more familiar Pueblo people, developed from the Desert Culture as they became less nomadic and more dependent on agriculture. A similar culture, the Cinchona, also lived in the canyon area. Drought in the late 13th century likely caused both groups to move on. Other people followed, including the Paiute, Cerbat, and the Navajo, only to be later forced onto reservations by the United States Government.
In September 1540, under direction by conquistador Francisco Vásquez de Coronado to find the fabled Seven Cities of Gold, Captain García López de Cárdenas led a party of Spanish soldiers with Hopi guides to the Grand Canyon. More than 200 years passed before two Spanish priests became the second party of non-Native Americans to see the canyon. U.S. Army Major John Wesley Powell led the 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition through the canyon on the Colorado River. This and later study by geologists uncovered the geology of the Grand Canyon area and helped to advance that science. In the late 19th century, the promise of mineral resources—mainly copper and asbestos—renewed interest in the region. The first pioneer settlements along the rim came in the 1880s.
Early residents soon realized that tourism was destined to be more profitable than mining, and by the turn of the 20th century the Grand Canyon was a well-known tourist destination. Most visitors made the gruelling trip from nearby towns to the South Rim by stagecoach. In 1901 the Grand Canyon Railway was opened from Williams, Arizona, to the South Rim, and the development of formal tourist facilities, especially at Grand Canyon Village, increased dramatically. The Fred Harvey Company developed many facilities at the Grand Canyon, including the luxury El Tovar Hotel on the South Rim in 1905 and Phantom Ranch in the Inner Gorge in 1922. Although first afforded federal protection in 1893 as a forest reserve and later as a U.S. National Monument, the Grand Canyon did not achieve U.S. National Park status until 1919, three years after the creation of the National Park Service. Today, Grand Canyon National Park receives about five million visitors each year, a far cry from the annual visitation of 44,173 in 1919.
Early history [ edit ]
Current archaeological evidence suggests that humans inhabited the Grand Canyon area as far back as 4,000 years ago[1] and at least were passers-through for 6,500 years before that.[2] Radiocarbon dating of artifacts found in limestone caves in the inner canyon indicate ages of 3,000 to 4,000 years.[1] In the 1950s split-twig animal figurines were found in the Redwall Limestone cliffs of the Inner Gorge that were dated in this range. These animal figurines are a few inches (7 to 8 cm) in height and made primarily from twigs of willow or cottonwood.[1] This and other evidence suggests that these inner canyon dwellers were part of Desert Culture; a group of semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer Native American. The Ancestral Pueblo of the Basketmaker III Era (also called the Histatsinom, meaning "people who lived long ago") evolved from the Desert Culture sometime around 500 BCE.[1] This group inhabited the rim and inner canyon and survived by hunting and gathering along with some limited agriculture. Noted for their basketmaking skills (hence their name), they lived in small communal bands inside caves and circular mud structures called pithouses. Further refinement of agriculture and technology led to a more sedentary and stable lifestyle for the Ancestral Pueblo starting around 500 CE.[1] Contemporary with the flourishing of Ancestral Pueblo culture, another group, called the Cohonina lived west of the current site of Grand Canyon Village.[1]
Ancestral Pueblo in the Grand Canyon area started to use stone in addition to mud and poles to erect above-ground houses sometime around 800 CE.[1] Thus the Pueblo period of Ancestral Pueblo culture was initiated. In summer, the Puebloans migrated from the hot inner canyon to the cooler high plateaus and reversed the journey for winter.[1] Large granaries and multi-room pueblos survive from this period. There are around 2,000 known Ancestral Pueblo archaeological sites in park boundaries. The most accessible site is Tusayan Pueblo, which was constructed sometime around 1185 and housed 30 or so people.[3]
Ancestral Pueblo food storage building ruins at Tusayan Pueblo
Large numbers of dated archaeological sites indicate that the Ancestral Pueblo and the Cohonina flourished until about 1200 CE.[1] But something happened a hundred years later that forced both of these cultures to move away. Several lines of evidence led to a theory that climate change caused a severe drought in the region from 1276 to 1299, forcing these agriculture-dependent cultures to move on.[4] Many Ancestral Pueblo relocated to the Rio Grande and the Little Colorado River drainages, where their descendants, the Hopi and the 19 Pueblos of New Mexico, now live.[3]
For approximately one hundred years the canyon area was uninhabited by humans.[1] Paiute from the east and Cerbat from the west were the first humans to reestablish settlements in and around the Grand Canyon.[1] The Paiute settled the plateaus north of the Colorado River and the Cerbat built their communities south of the river, on the Coconino Plateau. The Navajo, or the Diné, arrived in the area later.
All three cultures were stable until the United States Army moved them to Indian reservations in 1882 as part of the removal efforts that ended the Indian Wars.[1] The Havasupai and Hualapai are descended from the Cerbat and still live in the immediate area. The village of Supai in the western part of the current park has been occupied for centuries. Adjacent to the eastern part of the park is the Navajo Nation, the largest reservation in the United States.
Historic exploration [ edit ]
Spanish [ edit ]
The first Europeans reached the Grand Canyon in September 1540.[1] It was a group of about 13 Spanish soldiers led by García López de Cárdenas, dispatched from the army of Francisco Vásquez de Coronado on its quest to find the fabulous Seven Cities of Gold.[2][5][6] The group was led by Hopi guides and, assuming they took the most likely route, must have reached the canyon at the South Rim, probably between today's Desert View and Moran Point. According to Castañeda, he and his company came to a point "from whose brink it looked as if the opposite side must be more than three or four leagues by air line.”[7]
The report indicates that they greatly misjudged the proportions of the gorge. On the one hand, they estimated that the canyon was about three to four leagues wide (13–16 km, 8–10 mi), which is quite accurate.[5] At the same time, however, they believed that the river, which they could see from above, was only 2 m (6 ft) wide (in reality it is about a hundred times wider).[5] Being in dire need of water, and wanting to cross the giant obstacle, the soldiers started searching for a way down to the canyon floor that would be passable for them along with their horses. After three full days, they still had not been successful, and it is speculated that the Hopi, who probably knew a way down to the canyon floor, were reluctant to lead them there.[5]
As a last resort, Cárdenas finally commanded the three lightest and most agile men of his group to climb down by themselves (their names are given as Pablo de Melgosa, Juan Galeras, and an unknown, third soldier).[5] After several hours, the men returned, reporting that they had only made one third of the distance down to the river, and that "what seemed easy from above was not so".[5] Furthermore, they claimed that some of the boulders which they had seen from the rim, and estimated to be about as tall as a man, were in fact bigger than the Great Tower of Seville, at 104.1 m (342 ft). Cárdenas finally had to give up and returned to the main army. His report of an impassable barrier forestalled further visitation to the area for two hundred years.
Only in 1776 did two Spanish Priests, Fathers Francisco Atanasio Domínguez and Silvestre Vélez de Escalante travel along the North Rim again, together with a group of Spanish soldiers, exploring southern Utah in search of a route from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Monterey, California.[1] Also in 1776, Fray Francisco Garces, a Franciscan missionary, spent a week near Havasupai, unsuccessfully attempting to convert a band of Native Americans. He described the canyon as "profound".[8]
Americans [ edit ]
James Ohio Pattie and a group of American trappers and mountain men were probably the next Europeans to reach the canyon in 1826,[9] although there is little supporting documentation.
The signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 ceded the Grand Canyon region to the United States. Jules Marcou of the Pacific Railroad Survey made the first geologic observations of the canyon and surrounding area in 1856.[2]
Explorer in the Lt. Joseph Ives expedition up the Colorado River. Period engraving. The 54-foot (16 m) paddle wheelerin the Lt. Joseph Ives expedition up the Colorado River. Period engraving.
Jacob Hamblin (a Mormon missionary) was sent by Brigham Young in the 1850s to locate easy river crossing sites in the canyon.[10] Building good relations with local Native Americans and white settlers, he discovered Lee's Ferry in 1858 and Pierce Ferry (later operated by, and named for, Harrison Pierce)—the only two sites suitable for ferry operation.[11]
In 1857 Edward Fitzgerald Beale led an expedition to survey a wagon road from Fort Defiance, Arizona to the Colorado River.[12] On September 19 near present-day National Canyon they came upon what May Humphreys Stacey described in his journal as "a wonderful canyon four thousand feet deep. Everyone (in the party) admitted that he never before saw anything to match or equal this astonishing natural curiosity."[13]
A U.S. War Department expedition led by Lt. Joseph Ives was launched in 1857 to investigate the area's potential for natural resources, to find railroad routes to the west coast, and assess the feasibility of an up-river navigation route from the Gulf of California.[2] The group traveled in a stern wheeler steamboat named Explorer. After two months and 350 miles (560 km) of difficult navigation, his party reached Black Canyon some two months after George Johnson.[14] In the process, the Explorer struck a rock and was abandoned. The group later traveled eastwards along the South Rim of the Grand Canyon.
John Wesley Powell in 1869
A man of his time, Ives discounted his own impressions on the beauty of the canyon and declared it and the surrounding area as "altogether valueless", remarking that his expedition would be "the last party of whites to visit this profitless locality".[15] Attached to Ives' expedition was geologist John Strong Newberry who had a very different impression of the canyon.[2] After returning, Newberry convinced fellow geologist John Wesley Powell that a boat run through the Grand Canyon to complete the survey would be worth the risk.[16][a] Powell was a major in the United States Army and was a veteran of the American Civil War, a conflict that cost him his right forearm in the Battle of Shiloh.[2]
More than a decade after the Ives Expedition and with help from the Smithsonian Institution, Powell led the first of the Powell Expeditions to explore the region and document its scientific offerings.[6] On May 24, 1869, the group of nine men set out from Green River Station in Wyoming down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon.[2] This first expedition was poorly funded and consequently no photographer or graphic artist was included. While in the Canyon of Lodore one of the group's four boats capsized, spilling most of their food and much of their scientific equipment into the river. This shortened the expedition to one hundred days. Tired of being constantly cold, wet and hungry and not knowing they had already passed the worst rapids, three of Powell's men climbed out of the canyon in what is now called Separation Canyon.[18] Once out of the canyon, all three were reportedly killed by Shivwits band Paiutes who thought they were miners that recently molested and killed a female Shivwit.[18] All those who stayed with Powell survived and that group successfully ran most of the canyon.
'Noon Day Rest in Marble Canyon' from the second Powell Expedition, c. 1872
Two years later a much better-funded Powell-led party returned with redesigned boats and a chain of several supply stations along their route. This time, photographer E.O. Beaman and 17-year-old artist Frederick Dellenbaugh were included.[18] Beaman left the group in January 1872 over a dispute with Powell and his replacement, James Fennemore, quit August that same year due to poor health, leaving boatman John K. Hillers as the official photographer (nearly one ton of photographic equipment was needed on site to process each shot).[19] Famed painter Thomas Moran joined the expedition in the summer of 1873, after the river voyage and thus only viewed the canyon from the rim. His 1873 painting "Chasm of the Colorado" was bought by the United States Congress in 1874 and hung in the lobby of the Senate.[20]
The Powell expeditions systematically cataloged rock formations, plants, animals, and archaeological sites. Photographs and illustrations from the Powell expeditions greatly popularized the canyonland region of the southwest United States, especially the Grand Canyon (appreciating this, Powell added increasing resources to that aspect of his expeditions). Powell later used these photographs and illustrations in his lecture tours, making him a national figure. Rights to reproduce 650 of the expeditions' 1,400 stereographs were sold to help fund future Powell projects.[21] In 1881 he became the second director of the U.S. Geological Survey.
Clarence Dutton
Geologist Clarence Dutton followed up on Powell's work in 1880–1881 with the first in-depth geological survey of the newly formed U.S. Geological Survey.[22] Painters Thomas Moran and William Henry Holmes accompanied Dutton, who was busy drafting detailed descriptions of the area's geology. The report that resulted from the team's effort was titled A Tertiary History of The Grand Canyon District, with Atlas and was published in 1882.[22] This and later study by geologists uncovered the geology of the Grand Canyon area and helped to advance that science. Both the Powell and Dutton expeditions helped to increase interest in the canyon and surrounding region.
The Brown-Stanton expedition was started in 1889 to survey the route for a "water-level" railroad line through the canyons of the Colorado River to the Gulf of California.[23] The proposed Denver, Colorado Canyon, and Pacific Railway was to carry coal from mines in Colorado. Expedition leader Frank M. Brown, his chief engineer Robert Brewster Stanton, and 14 other men set out in six boats from Green River, Utah, on May 25, 1889.[23] Brown and two others drowned near the head of Marble Canyon. The expedition was restarted by Stanton from Dirty Devil River (a tributary of Glen Canyon) on November 25 and traveled through the Grand Canyon.[23] The expedition reached the Gulf of California on April 26, 1890 but the railroad was never built.
Prospectors in the 1870s and 1880s staked mining claims in the canyon.[22] They hoped that previously discovered deposits of asbestos, copper, lead, and zinc would be profitable to mine. Access to and from this remote region and problems getting ore out of the canyon and its rock made the whole exercise not worth the effort. Most moved on, but some stayed to seek profit in the tourist trade. Their activities did improve pre-existing Indian trails, such as Bright Angel Trail.[3]
Tourism [ edit ]
Transportation [ edit ]
A group photo of passengers who rode on the first run of the Grand Canyon Railway
A rail line to the largest city in the area, Flagstaff, was completed in 1882 by the Santa Fe Railroad.[24] Stage coaches started to bring tourists from Flagstaff to the Grand Canyon the next year—an eleven-hour greatly increased in 1901 when a spur of the Santa Fe Railroad to Grand Canyon Village was completed.[22] The first scheduled train with paying passengers of the Grand Canyon Railway arrived from Williams, Arizona, on September 17 that year.[24] The 64-mile (103 km) long trip cost $3.95 ($102.55 as of 2019), and naturalist John Muir later commended the railroad for its limited environmental impact.[24]
The first automobile was driven to the Grand Canyon in 1902. Oliver Lippincott from Los Angeles, drove his Toledo Automobile Company-built car to the South Rim from Flagstaff. Lippincott, a guide and two writers set out on the afternoon of January 4, anticipating a seven-hour journey. Two days later, the hungry and dehydrated party arrived at their destination; the countryside was just too rough for the ten-horsepower (7 kW) auto. A three-day drive from Utah in 1907 was required to reach the North Rim for the first time.[24]
Competition with the automobile forced the Santa Fe Railroad to cease operation of the Grand Canyon Railway in 1968 (only three passengers were on the last run). The railway was restored and service reintroduced in 1989, and it has since carried hundreds of passengers a day. Trains remained the preferred way to travel to the canyon until they were surpassed by the auto in the 1930s. By the early 1990s more than a million automobiles per year visited the park.
West Rim Drive was completed in 1912. In the late 1920s the first rim-to-rim access was established by the North Kaibab suspension bridge over the Colorado River.[22] Paved roads did not reach the less popular and more remote North Rim until 1926, and that area, being higher in elevation, is closed due to winter weather from November to April. Construction of a road along part of the South Rim was completed in 1935.[22]
Air pollution [ edit ]
The primary mobile source of Grand Canyon haze, the automobile, is currently regulated under a series of federal, state and local initiatives. The Grand Canyon Visibility Transport Commission cites U.S. government laws regulating automobile emissions and gasoline standards, often slow to change because of the automobile industry's planning schedule, as a primary contributor to air quality issues in the area.[25] They advocate policies leaning toward stricter emission standards via cleaner burning fuel and improved automobile emissions technology.
Air pollution from those vehicles and wind-blown pollution from Las Vegas, Nevada area has reduced visibility in the Grand Canyon and vicinity. During the past decade, various regional coal-fired electric utilities having little or no pollution control equipment were targeted as the primary stationary sources of Grand Canyon air pollution.[26] In the 1980s the Navajo Generating Station at Page, Arizona, (15 miles away) was identified as the primary source for anywhere from fifty percent to ninety percent of the Grand Canyon's air quality problems.[25] In 1999, the Mohave Generating Station in Laughlin, Nevada, (75) miles away settled a long-standing lawsuit and agreed to install end-of-point sulfur scrubbers on its smoke stacks.
Closer to home, there is little disagreement that the most visible of the park's visibility problems stems from the park's popularity. On any given summer day the park is filled to capacity, or over-capacity. Basically the problem boils down to too many private automobiles vying for too few parking spaces. Emissions from all those automobiles and tour buses contributes greatly to air pollution problems.
Accommodations [ edit ]
John D.Lee (Utah State Historical Society)
John D. Lee was the first person who catered to travelers to the canyon. In 1872 he established a ferry service at the confluence of the Colorado and Paria rivers. Lee was in hiding, having been accused of leading the Mountain Meadows massacre in 1857. He was tried and executed for this crime in 1877. During his trial he played host to members of the Powell Expedition who were waiting for their photographer, Major James Fennemore, to arrive (Fennemore took the last photo of Lee sitting on his own coffin). Emma, one of Lee's nineteen wives, continued the ferry business after her husband's death. In 1876 a man named Harrison Pierce established another ferry service at the western end of the canyon.[24]
The two-room Farlee Hotel opened in 1884 near Diamond Creek and was in operation until 1889. That year Louis Boucher opened a larger hotel at Dripping Springs. John Hance opened his ranch near Grandview to tourists in 1886 only to sell it nine years later in order to start a long career as a Grand Canyon guide (in 1896 he also became local postmaster).
William Wallace Bass
William Wallace Bass opened a tent house campground in 1890. Bass Camp had a small central building with common facilities such as a kitchen, dining room, and sitting room inside. Rates were $2.50 a day ($69.71 as of 2019), and the complex was 20 miles (30 km) west of the Grand Canyon Railway's Bass Station (Ash Fort). Bass also built the stage coach road that he used to carry his patrons from the train station to his hotel. A second Bass Camp was built along the Shinumo Creek drainage.[24]
The Grand Canyon Hotel Company was incorporated in 1892 and charged with building services along the stage route to the canyon.[27] In 1896 the same man who bought Hance's Grandview ranch opened Bright Angel Hotel in Grand Canyon Village.[27] The Cameron Hotel opened in 1903, and its owner started to charge a toll to use the Bright Angel Trail.[27]
The El Tovar Hotel in the 1900s
Things changed in 1905 when the luxury El Tovar Hotel opened within steps of the Grand Canyon Railway's terminus.[22] El Tovar was named for Don Pedro de Tovar who tradition says is the Spaniard who learned about the canyon from Hopis and told Coronado. Charles Whittlesey designed the arts and crafts-styled rustic hotel complex, which was built with logs from Oregon and local stone at a cost of $250,000 for the hotel ($6,970,000 as of 2019) and another $50,000 for the stables ($1,390,000 as of 2019).[27] El Tovar was owned by Santa Fe Railroad and operated by its chief concessionaire, the Fred Harvey Company.
Fred Harvey hired Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter in 1902 as company architect. She was responsible for five buildings at the Grand Canyon: Hopi House (1905), Lookout Studio (1914), Hermit's Rest (1914), Desert View Watchtower (1932), and Bright Angel Lodge (1935).[3] She stayed with the company until her retirement in 1948.
A cable car system spanning the Colorado went into operation at Rust's Camp, located near the mouth of Bright Angel Creek, in 1907. Former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt stayed at the camp in 1913. That, along with the fact that while president he declared Grand Canyon a U.S. National Monument in 1908, led to the camp being renamed Roosevelt's Camp. In 1922 the National Park Service gave the facility its current name, Phantom Ranch.[27]
Grand Canyon Lodge
In 1917 on the North Rim, W.W. Wylie built accommodations at Bright Angel Point.[22] The Grand Canyon Lodge opened on the North Rim in 1928. Built by a subsidiary of the Union Pacific Railroad called the Utah Parks Company, the lodge was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood who was also the architect for the Ahwahnee Hotel in California's Yosemite Valley. Much of the lodge was destroyed by fire in the winter of 1932, and a rebuilt lodge did not open until 1937. The facility is managed by TW Recreation Services.[24] Bright Angel Lodge and the Auto Camp Lodge opened in 1935 on the South Rim.
Activities [ edit ]
New hiking trails, along old Indian trails, were established during this time as well. The world-famous mule rides down Bright Angel Trail were mass-marketed by the El Tovar Hotel. By the early 1990s, 20,000 people per year made the journey into the canyon by mule, 800,000 by hiking, 22,000 passed through the canyon by raft, and another 700,000 tourists fly over it in air tours (fixed-wing aircraft and helicopter). Overflights were limited to a narrow corridor in 1956 after two planes crashed, killing all on board. In 1991 nearly 400 search and rescues were performed, mostly for unprepared hikers who suffered from heat exhaustion and dehydration while ascending from the canyon (normal exhaustion and injured ankles are also common in rescuees).[28] An IMAX theater just outside the park shows a reenactment of the Powell Expedition.
The Kolb Brothers, Emery and Ellsworth, built a photographic studio on the South Rim at the trailhead of Bright Angel Trail in 1904. Hikers and mule caravans intent on descending down the canyon would stop at the Kolb Studio to have their photos taken. The Kolb Brothers processed the prints before their customers returned to the rim. Using the newly invented Pathé Bray camera in 1911–12, they became the first to make a motion picture of a river trip through the canyon that itself was only the eighth such successful journey. From 1915 to 1975 the film they produced was shown twice a day to tourists with Emery Kolb at first narrating in person and later through tape (a feud with Fred Harvey prevented pre-1915 showings).[29]
Protection efforts [ edit ]
By the late 19th century, the conservation movement was increasing national interest in preserving natural wonders like the Grand Canyon. National Parks in Yellowstone and around Yosemite Valley were established by the early 1890s. U.S. Senator Benjamin Harrison introduced a bill in 1887 to establish a national park at the Grand Canyon.[18] The bill died in committee, but on February 20, 1893, Harrison (then President of the United States) declared the Grand Canyon to be a National Forest Preserve.[30] Mining and logging were allowed, but the designation did offer some protection.[18]
President Theodore Roosevelt visited the Grand Canyon in 1903.[22] An avid outdoorsman and staunch conservationist, he established the Grand Canyon Game Preserve on November 28, 1906.[30] Livestock grazing was reduced, but predators such as mountain lions, eagles, and wolves were eradicated. Roosevelt added adjacent national forest lands and re-designated the preserve a U.S. National Monument on January 11, 1908.[30] Opponents, such as holders of land and mining claims, blocked efforts to reclassify the monument as a National Park for 11 years. Grand Canyon National Park was finally established as the 17th U.S. National Park by an Act of Congress signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on February 26, 1919.[30] The National Park Service declared the Fred Harvey Company to the official park concessionaire in 1920 and bought William Wallace Bass out of business.
An area of almost 310 square miles (800 km²) adjacent to the park was designated as a second Grand Canyon National Monument on December 22, 1932.[31] Marble Canyon National Monument was established on January 20, 1969, and covered about 41 square miles (105 km²).[31] An act signed by President Gerald Ford on January 3, 1975, doubled the size of Grand Canyon National Park by merging these adjacent national monuments and other federal land into it. That same act gave Havasu Canyon back to the Havasupai tribe.[22] From that point, the park stretched along a 278-mile (447 km) segment of the Colorado River from the southern border of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area to the eastern boundary of Lake Mead National Recreation Area.[31] Grand Canyon National Park was designated a World Heritage Site on October 24, 1979.[32]
In 1935, Hoover Dam started to impound Lake Mead south of the canyon.[16] Conservationists lost a battle to save upstream Glen Canyon from becoming a reservoir. The Glen Canyon Dam was completed in 1966 to control flooding and to provide water and hydroelectric power.[33] Seasonal variations of high flow and flooding in the spring and low flow in summer have been replaced by a much more regulated system. The much more controlled Colorado has a dramatically reduced sediment load, which starves beaches and sand bars. In addition, clearer water allows significant algae growth to occur on the riverbed, giving the |
adviser and vice president of Essex Financial Services, said. The taxes will be based on the stock's appreciation in price over the years, while share losses will not be deductible.
"It's going to be a tax nightmare," retired Pfizer executive Tom Althuis of Groton said. "It's a substantial bite."
Pfizer has defended the inversion's effect on stockholders, saying in an online posting that the move will create a stronger company. An inversion occurs when companies buy overseas competitors and then convert to foreign domicile, usually to escape relatively high U.S. corporate tax rates.
"We believe the strategic benefits of the new corporate structure will be more beneficial to stockholders than the existing structure and outweigh the tax implications," Pfizer said in an online overview of the deal.
Pfizer has said it expects to pay out between $6 billion and $12 billion to stockholders who want to cash out of their positions in the company's stock to pay their taxes. Those who choose to convert their Pfizer holdings to the newly reconstituted company's stock will have to pay taxes out of pocket.
"With mergers like this... company shareholders may be forced into realizing gains on shares they have been holding," said Russ Burgess, who owns an independent Charles Schwab & Co. brokerage in Mystic. "Individual investors need to think about their choices and prepare."
Employees at all levels of the company who work at or retired from the Groton laboratories or from Pfizer's former research-and-development headquarters in New London have long enjoyed lucrative stock options. And many of those options were purchased decades ago for just a few dollars, setting up huge appreciations with the stock now trading in the $30 range.
"It's going to be hard on some people," said Madeleine Lewis, an accountant who owns Lewis Representation LLC in Groton. "The higher income end are really going to be hurt."
The tax applies only to investors with personal holdings in the company as opposed to shares of Pfizer stock held in retirement plans or mutual funds.
Many retirees had hoped to hold Pfizer stock until their deaths, transferring their wealth to children and grandchildren, local financial experts said, but the taxes spurred by Pfizer's inversion — a move to reconstitute the drug giant as a foreign company to avoid billions of dollars in corporate taxes — will reduce their relatives' inheritance.
On the other hand, lower-income former Pfizer employees, including janitors and secretaries who were in the stock-option pool along with scientists and other highly paid personnel, may not have to pay any capital gains taxes, Lewis said. Such levies are reduced to zero for those whose earnings place them below the 15 percent tax bracket, she said, and even the forced sale of stock will not put them in a higher tax category.
A married couple in the 10 percent tax bracket would have to make no more than $18,450 a year; a single person qualifying for the lowest bracket would be capped at half that amount.
Tom McGuigan, principal of Exencial Wealth Advisors in Old Lyme, and Robert Henderson, who operates the Lansdowne Wealth Management office in Mystic, each said most investors in the region would not be significantly affected. That's because Pfizer, unlike General Dynamics, has not seen substantial and sustained stock growth over the past decade or so, leading many shareholders to sell out, Henderson said.
The exception, Henderson said, would be for employees from the 1970s through early 1990s who saw exceptionally large increases in the value of Pfizer's shares, including several stock splits.
"It's only a problem for people who never got rid of their Pfizer shares," McGuigan said. "That's why people should be diversifying their shares."
McGuigan said his firm has been reaching out to individual shareholders to let them know about the issue. Most people he has contacted about the inversion were unaware of the tax consequences, he said.
Advisor tips
Local financial experts had several suggestions for investors trying to get ready for the inversion, which is expected to be completed in the second half of this year.
First, McGuigan said, investors should segregate their shares by block and consider giving away shares purchased at the lowest prices to family members who are in a lower tax bracket. Other advisers pointed out that a couple can give away as much as $28,000 in stock to individual family members with no tax consequences on either side of the transaction.
McGuigan warned, however, that for children under age 24, "kiddie tax" rules apply that would result in giveaways to them being taxed at the same rate as parents would pay.
At the same time, he said, investors should start taking losses on some stocks that have plunged over the past year during the current market turmoil. These losses will help offset gains realized with the forced sale of Pfizer stock, he said, reducing taxable income.
Finally, McGuigan and others said, Pfizer shareholders of a charitable bent should consider giving away shares. Donations can be set up in a variety of ways, including as donor advised funds that would allow for an immediate tax writeoff of the full promised amount this year without having to give away more than a part of those funds immediately.
For anyone who regularly gives money to a church or charity, "Donate highly appreciated stocks instead of writing checks every year," McGuigan suggested.
Some brokers noted that this would be a good time for the region's nonprofits to seek out retired Pfizer employees who see the inversion as an opportunity to shift shares to charitable causes as a way of avoiding heavy taxes.
Burgess, the Mystic broker, said there has been so much interest in the tax consequences of the inversion that he is holding a special free presentation for investors later this month at the Mystic Hilton (call (860) 415-8090 to register). The meeting, for which a dozen people have registered, will feature David Toung, a senior healthcare analyst at Argus Research Company, talking about the inversion's potential effects on taxes as well as a look at Pfizer's business prospects after the merger.
Bill Middleton, principal of Sound Portfolio Advisors in Mystic, said one of the biggest problems of the inversion is that it has become an "involuntary sale" of stock for which people were unprepared. The effect is particularly acute in this region of Connecticut because many investors have a "low basis point," he said, meaning they acquired shares before the Viagra effect sent prices soaring in the late 1990s to early 2000s.
Adding to the angst is the question of whether Pfizer executives will be compensated by the company for taxes owed based on the inversion. It's not yet clear what will happen, but the bite is expected to be hefty — over $1 million for chief executive Ian Read alone, according to one estimate — leading many to predict that the company will find a way to offset the cost.
But a Pfizer spokeswoman said such talk is only speculation.
"Pfizer has no plans to pay the capital gains tax for executives," spokeswoman Joan Campion said in an email.
Some locals might be hit nearly as hard, but won't have the same possibility of being compensated. One broker noted that he had a client in his mid-80s with millions of dollars in Pfizer stock who might face taxes in the seven-figure range.
"I'm being taxed for a decision I had no input into," Althuis, the Groton shareholder and Pfizer retiree, said. "It's as if you sold it and rebought it.... I never thought it (the inversion) would mean anything adverse to me as a stockholder."
l.howard@theday.com
Twitter: @KingstonLeeHowNatural compound found in raw coffee beans subtly changes metabolism, slowing absorption of fat and increasing energy levels
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(504) 358-8227The 113th Congress will set some big diversity records, with more women serving than ever before and an entire delegation of women from New Hampshire, but unfortunately none of that diversity will be reflected in House committee leadership.
House Speaker John Boehner announced the chairs of most major House committees for the 113th Congress on Tuesday, and all 19 of them are white males, prompting many Democratic lawmakers to ask, “Where are the women?”—a phrase often echoed last year as women’s voices were kept out of hearings on women’s health issues.
The lone Republican minority congresswoman who has served as chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee during the 112th Congress, Florida’s Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, is stepping down because of term limits.
Republicans have fewer women or minorities to choose from compared to their Democratic counterparts in the House. White men are only a plurality—meaning minorities and women together outnumber them—in upcoming the House Democratic Caucus. House Republicans, on the other hand, are about 90% white males, according to a Bloomberg analysis.
While Senate Democrats have not formally announced their committee chair picks yet, they are expected to retain roughly the same number of women and minority members they already have in the 112th Congress.Land Rover's brand new Discovery officially hits the road today with 4,000 UK orders already in the bag and up to 20,000 worldwide, reports Ray Massey from the launch in Utah, US.
The go-anywhere seven-seater - designed to cope with the rigours of extreme desert and mountain off-roading and the school-run in the urban jungle - is having its global launch in the USA
The US will be one of the biggest export markets for the new Discovery, the fifth generation of the model first launched 27 years, and we will bring you one of the first road tests later this week.
On sale: The US will be one of the biggest export markets for the new Discovery
Prices for the new Discovery start from £43,495 for the 2.0 litre 4 cylinder version. But they can go much higher, a special 'First Edition' version, limited to an initial 600 UK buyers, costs £68,295.
The new Discovery is curvier, more flexible and higher-tech than its immediate predecessor, but with seven seats as standard it is also practical, and being Land Rover needs to be much more than a pretty face – showing real mud and guts off-roading credentials.
The new 'Disco' was launched as Jaguar Land Rover today announced a 13 per cent increase in revenues to £6.5billion, with strong customer demand in the three months to December 31, 2016. Total retail sales of 149,288 vehicles, up 8.5 per cent year-on-year, were a record for the third quarter.
Land Rover itself sold 103,924 vehicles in the third quarter, down 8.7 per cent, with strong sales of the Discovery Sport offset by the run-out of the outgoing Discovery in advance of the start of sales of the all-new Discovery also officially launched today.
Last year JLR enjoyed its best ever full-year global sales of 583,313 vehicles – up three fold since 2009. Land Rover alone sold 434,583 vehicles last year - up 8 per cent year-on-year – with record performances in the UK, US and Europe.
The new Discovery has been packed with technology for the family
The new Discovery has been packed with technology for the family. That even includes a new remote control system that allows owners to configure their vehicle seating from afar via an app on their smart-phone in just 14 seconds.
Adventurer Bear Grylls recently tested it in mid-air during a sky-diving parachute jump from 12,000ft. Grylls said: 'The Land Rover Discovery is invaluable on expeditions, whether filming in deserts, jungles or mountains, yet it's still the perfect vehicle for the family's everyday use.'
Engineers also allowed their young children to 'road test' early prototypes – which led to them to ensure that up to eight electronic devices can hook up to the car's wi-fi hot-spot, up to four iPads can be stored in the centre console. There are nine USB ports and four 12-volt charging points.
Land Rover has reintroduced and upgraded the much-loved 'curry hook' - a handy push-operated spring-loaded hook on which travellers can hang the handle of a take-away, or a carrier bag, to keep it upright during journeys.
A big panoramic glass roof allows outside light to flood in. It has van-like up to 2,406 litres of load capacity when just the first two seats are up and the other five folded down.
View: A big panoramic glass roof allows outside light to flood in
There's also hill-descent control to help on steep inclines and a special 'terrain response' to monitor conditions ranging from general driving on roads, grass, gravel and snow, mud and ruts, sand and rock crawl.
For active families, the new Discovery can tow up to 3,500kg and can wade to a depth of 900mm.
It also has an autonomous reverse technology which helps the driver to guide trailers and horse-boxes into position when reversing without touching the steering wheel. So-called 'hitch assist' uses cameras to help the driver connect a trailer or caravan.
A single-piece tail-gate replaces the split tail-gate on the existing model and rises high enough to provide a shelter from rain when loading shopping. A powered 'inner-tailgate' acts as impromptu seating for a picnic. It is operated either by the remote control key or by gesture control, such as waving your foot.
The new Discovery has shed some weight too. Its single-cell body is 85 per cent aluminium, of which 43 per cent is recycled, making it nearly half a tonne (480kg) lighter.
The new Discovery will also be the first vehicle to be built at Jaguar Land Rover's new factory in Slovakia from 2018 to cope with expected rising demand
There is a choice of three engines, each linked to an eight-speed automatic ZF gear-box:
A frugal twin turbo SD4 Ingenium four-cylinder diesel producing 240 horse-power, fuel economy of 43.5mpg, CO2 emissions of 171g/km, and acceleration from 0-60mph in 8 seconds; A six-cylinder Td6 diesel producing 258 horse-power; fuel economy of 39.2mpg, CO2 emissions of 189g/km and acceleration from 0-60mph in 7.7 seconds A supercharged Si6 3.0 litre V6 petrol engine developing 340 horse-power managing just 26mpg, higher CO2 emissions of 256g/km but acceleration from rest to 60mph in just 6.9seconds
Although the bulk of the new off-roaders will be built in Britain at the firm's Solihull factory near Birmingham the new Discovery will also be the first vehicle to be built at Jaguar Land Rover's new factory in Slovakia from 2018 to cope with expected rising demand.
JLR has stressed that the UK remains 'the cornerstone of Jaguar Land Rover's business.'
It has doubled its workforce from 20,000 to 40,000 in just five years and invested more than £12billion in new product creation and capital expenditure, including at its factories at Castle Bromwich, Halewood and Solihull.
Dr Ralf Speth, Jaguar Land Rover chief executive officer, said: 'Continuing expansion and innovation in our compelling product range have driven up global revenues and retail unit sales, led by the Jaguar F-PACE, Jaguar XF, and Land Rover Discovery Sport.
'Models such as the all-new Discovery mark the latest step in our investment programme, which will underpin long-term profitable, sustainable growth.'Last Monday, TBS aired the first half (“Daesong Heavy Industries”) of a two-episode story of the adult animated sitcom American Dad! to which many humanists and atheists, especially those who were raised in a religious household, can relate.
Stan, the patriarch of the family, loses faith in Christianity after he finally reads the Bible for the first time—something that he does in response to his children Steve and Haley, who are bewildered while attending church that any adult could wholeheartedly swallow the sermons by the pastor.
To anyone who’s left religion, this is no surprise. There’s an aphorism (and accompanying Internet meme) that those who read the Bible become atheists, which is somewhat supported by the lack of Bible literacy in the US.
Stan decides life is no longer worth living since he no longer believes there is a God (a fear that some religiously devout do have, and the reason why organizations that counsel those who’ve recently left religion need to exist). Stan lies face down in his pool, and, as he nears death, he sees a vision of God and brightens in optimism before the god vision explains to him that what Stan’s seeing is merely his brain cells dying due to oxygen deprivation as he loses consciousness.
In order to raise Stan out of his sour spirits, Steve is tasked by his mother Francine to “fix” his father (since it’s Steve’s fault that his father lost his faith). Steve decides that the only solution is to help his dad believe in God again. He reasons that if he can prove to Stan that one story in the Bible is true, then his dad will (illogically) believe the rest of the Bible is true again. He discovers, via Google, Daesong Heavy Industries (a play on a similarly named company that merged with Samsung Heavy Industries in the 1980s) has a natural gas tanker holding many zoo animals that adequately convinces Stan to not only reclaim his Christianity but to believe that he is the next Noah.
It turns out that the company is accustomed to serving those who believe they are predestined to be the next Noah and even offers a built-in Noah’s Ark simulation for all the wannabes.
Stan discovers it was an elaborately constructed illusion and remains on the ship after the end of the simulation. A series of events leads the family to sail off on the ship, with all family members beginning to accept that Stan could be Noah when a heavy storm hits.
Part II (“Daesong Heavy Industries II: Return to Innocence”) starts on the ship with Stan rejoicing, “Thank you lord, you saved us—I’ll never question you again!”
Several moments later, in the midst of a dream about the storm, he wails, “Why me, lord? Why me? What good is faith when God treats you like this? Why me, lord? You speak every language, why are you talking to me in thunder?!”
But Part II does not embody the religion-centric tone of the first episode, and the family does not remain on the ship for long, instead splitting off into three separate stories of shipwreck when the natural gas ship explodes, with Roger the alien and Steve on a lifeboat, Haley and Jeff rescued by the Navy, and Stan and Francine rekindling their love—mockumentary style—on a deserted island.
By the end, the family reunites and resettles at home without attempting a hard answer about religion, returning the show to a more comfortable level of mildly offensive comedy and perhaps indicating that both believers and nonbelievers take the issue and the conversation too seriously. American Dad! pokes fun at this lack of a firm conclusion when Stan says, “We’re supposed to go back to our normal life?…What was all this for?…All this stuff happened and I don’t even know what it means?”
While it seemed like a cop-out ending, this unoffending and safe conclusion was probably to be expected, being a comedy-driven (and sometimes story-driven) adult cartoon, not a theological show (thankfully). At the least, it leaves room for future comedic clashes between theists and nontheists, and is a promising sign that once-considered profane critiques are more accepted.“She’s mad, but she’s magic. There’s no lie in her fire.” ~ Charles Bukowski
The fire that is madness and magic, the fire of creativity in us, the fire of our desires burn bright with SEVEN planets in fire signs. Yes people! The astro is on fire! Sizzling, raw and primal…a certain madness and mayhem lurks in the air!
Oh, oh- the New Moon in Aries is conjunct Venus retrograde and that means that set intentions related to MONEY and LOVE. Of course this will have much to do with planetary positions in your natal chart, but I would say that these two motifs will play out heavily in the collective consciousness.
So I was talking all madness and mayhem, love the alliteration! But then what else do you expect of Aries energy? And so many freaking planets crowding the dance floor. There is a track in my mind. Set the world on fire…David Bowie. I cannot stop thinking of him since the dream I had with him in there. I think we were standing under a canopy of stars, staring at infinity! My dream time is full of such anecdotes and meetings, conversations and eye contact. Fuck it drove me nuts before I learnt how to understand it and accept it. I cannot say control it, for I cannot control any psychic or dreamscape visions.
It’s obviously masculine- this energy, which is why Bowie even came up in my mind. Have to check his astro for more clues. But let me not divert off and leave this piece unwritten. Something about me and not finishing up…hardcore wounds there. But I’m working on it.
Aries- what of them? They are the pioneers and trailblazers of the zodiac! Aries is the HEAD and is associated with BIRTH! But, but, but…there is a certain obstinacy and stubbornness about this sign that can lead to much problems.
A lot of people who consult with me are complaining of head related issues and please be careful yourself as well. There could be headaches and other head related issues that could crop up. I have successfully used numbers, switchwords and Energy Circles to combat headaches. Write 160 HZ AND 53 on your left arm and E=15 at the base of the nape of your neck with a blue pen. Works brilliantly. Feel the blue colour of the pen enter your bloodstream and instantly spread a coolness. You can call upon the Medicine Buddha in case you have some severe health complications.
I would like to suggest BHRAMARI PRANAYAMA to all of you. Please start the practice and you will see how this will help you deal with the fiery stress that could become too hot to handle. I had described how to practice the asana, but it is just making the article bigger than it needs to be, so please google it and watch videos to get a hang of it.
Now if possible, do this pranayama in the woods. I can tell you that you will feel like a new person after this. Just focus on the OM that you are humming is directly oscillating to the AUM of the Universe. To simplify it, just know that your sound is intrinsically connected to the hum of the Universe!
There is so much Aries energy in the air with five planets in this fire sign! Mercury, Venus, Uranus, the Sun and Moon are all here for this astral alignment. Let us run through the Aries archetype! This sign represents the EMPEROR card in the Tarot! The Patriarch!
Usually the Emperor represents a powerful and exemplary leader who is responsible for the welfare of the masses. The Emperor is no demagogue; in fact he is the benevolent father and if you internalise this archetype, then look to acknowledge your potential of mastery. Try to understand where you play the Emperor role and in whose life? I think here the Emperor is telling us to take OWNERSHIP of our own existence! Enough is enough! There is no messiah coming. We are the creators of our lives. Yes that is big responsibility, but it is also an inevitability. If there is any problem you need to address, look within to find answers at this time. Depend on you and it will work out. YOU ARE THE RULER, THE RULED AND THE RULING! Then where is the separation? Integrate this inner sovereignty in your meditation and the rest will fall into place.
Another thing which can be really beneficial to people who seek to use this fire energy would be to perform a HAVAN. Look up the link I have provided below to understand what this is and then figure out how you can simplify it to suit your needs. Neo pagans will have an idea. If you are confused, then contact me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homa_(ritual)
Very effective are FIRE BURST MEDITATIONS, especially for people with physical pain or deep emotional trauma. Focus on the part which is painful. Bring full awareness there, continue deep breathwork and then light a ball inside your body, on the pain. Feel a small flame of light burning where you have the pain. For a wider area, visualise a larger flare. But remember to notice that this internal fire has a bluish tinge and does not feel hot. It feels warm, but NOT HOT! Feel these flames setting fire to the pain. Watch the pain burn away to ashes. Watch it with your internal eye. Then after the pain has been burnt away, thank the flame and the Universe and remember to thank the pain! Yes that pain taught you so much. That pain is your karmic friend. So please thank that pain with sincerity. If you want to know more about how to practice this meditation, email me. It is very effective with chronic pain and psychological ailments. You can even do this for someone else. You can use FULL-IMMUNITY-BE-INFINITY after the visualisation is over and you have burnt all the pain with your mind.
If this Aries New Moon is getting you angry or resentful, because you’re trying so hard to be NUMBER 1, then you can chant- BE-QUIET-SHUT-UP, or write it with blue pen on your left wrist. 55 65 569 is also very effective to control anger. Write this on your body or write it in a piece of paper and carry it in your wallet. Aries energy is very assertive and make sure you do not get caught in the lower vibrations. Things can get nasty. But one thing is sure- we will have a lot more energy. You can channelise it and make it work for you in multiple things- at work, with your spouse and in bed. Yes you can effectively use this energy to set fire to your sheets. Lol! Just don’t channel the selfishness and I’m Khaleesi, the-mother-of-fucking-dragons attitude! Don’t unleash your dragons on us…pretty please!
Now let us talk about the ADVENTURE that is coming our way! Fuck, I love a good adventure! There is a certain exciting escapade coming our way and it packs a heavy punch- sensually and financially. Since the retrogradation always connotes the internal journey, I would say we will be looking at questions like what money means to us? How we spend it? What are our inherent, deep rooted opinions about money, etc, etc. Also questions about love will surface…what does love mean to us? How do we quantify love? Do we even understand love? As a collective? As individuals?
If you are distressed and lonely, I would suggest visit animal shelters and think of fostering and then maybe adopting. Bringing in a furry companion might be the start you need and with all the Aries newness you could reinvent yourself. You could go Vegan, you could decide to concentrate on the NOW and let go of fears…everything is on the table!
Saturn(Maturity, growth, restriction, responsibility) is in Sag(Passion, wanderlust,! Fire again! What do we poor mortals do with so much fire? Depending on where this is falling on your chart, you might be facing disappointments and learning hardcore Saturnian lessons. I have worked with many people and their Saturn issues- Sade Sati or Saturn return and one thing I can tell you that what Saturn wants you to learn, you will learn…no matter what! Come hell or high water.
Oh are you aware that Saturn is also about to freaking go retro on us? Yes from 6th April to Aug 26! And this time the FUTURE is ours to plan. Saturn will level the playing field with doses of karma, yes, but there will be solidity in whatever sticks. Ficgure out what is working and stick with it.
My natal chart has Saturn sitting with Mercury in Leo and my mind has always been Leonine! Filled with creative thought and with Saturn sitting there, I faced a lot of issues trying to bring my creative expression to the surface. It took a while, but it happened.
There is a CARDINAL T SQUARE that I have already discussed. Pluto, Uranus and Jupiter are forming it and this brings SEVEN PLANETS IN CARDINAL SIGNS which govern creativity! The Cardinal signs are active, moody, starters but hate finishing up, know how to pick themselves off the floor and continue and are often positioned as leaders.
So if anything, the astro is screaming- ACTION! Get the fuck off your couch and get doing whatever the fuck tickles your imagination! This is not the time for planning…it is the time for action.
I am suggesting a Sanskrit mantra which you could recite to invoke ACTION in your life. You can chant this to create your dream opportunities and manifest your heart’s desire.
Mantra: Shanti Mantra
Om Saha Naavavatu
Saha Nau Bhunaktu
Saha Veeryam Karavaavahai
Tejasvi Aavadheetamastu Maa Vidvishaavahai Om
There are so many other aspects that I would like to talk about, but not in this article…will continue later…
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I leave you with one of my favourite songs from Tagore.
Purify my life
with the purging touch of fire
Purify my life
With your blessings of searing pain
Make it pure like the gold
That passes the test of fire
Take unto you my mortal form
Make it a lamp of your divine abode
Let the flame of my song glow through night and day
The slightest of your touch on the dark frame of night
Let it spark a new star one after another
To illuminate the darkness
Let my vision be cleansed from all darkness
Whither alights my gaze may it see the light
Let my pain be ablaze and rise above despair
*Another version by Anandamayee Majumdar:
Your flaming touch, let it blaze my heart
Purify this life of mine
Clarify this life of mine
Simplify this life of mine
Glorify this life of mine; atoning, as I burn.
Lift my soul, lift my heart, a blazing torch of light
Glowing in the sky with stars that shimmer in the night
Melody, let it sear, forever, as I burn
Impel my layers of dark, let your hands alight
Kindling stars awake, evoking them with light. May darkness disappear from all my soul and sight
Deluding senses with sanctifying light
Agony, let it sear, forever, as I burn.
AdvertisementsAlexandre Dimitri Song Billong. A player who, a couple of years ago, was seen as little more than dead wood in the Arsenal squad. However, a few years and a hat full of outstanding performances later, Song stands as a testament of Wenger’s policy of faith in youth. But why is the Alex Song of today so different to earlier seasons?
The main evaluation of Song’s season thus far is that he is no longer a true defensive midfielder, but more a deep-lying playmaker. The stats show this transition in team role, with his three main measurements of defensive contribution taking a gradual decrease this season as his main creative stats take a remarkable increase.
[table id=48 /]
With an average of 2.8 tackles per game and 2.1 interceptions per game, Alex Song still maintains a respectable rate in comparison to the divisions other defensive midfielders. However, it is still a long way off the likes of Lucas and Parker, who chalk up averages in excess of 4 tackles per game and only marginally better than the clubs other deep-lying midfielder- Arteta- who averages 2.5 tackles and 1.9 interceptions respectively.
The fact that Arteta has spent the majority of the season as Song’s midfield partner has been one a factor in his change in role. Whereas with Jack Wilshere as his midfield partner Song had to sit back and guard the back four more as Wilshere contributed to Arsenal’s forward play, his new midfield partner plays the majority of his game much deeper, shouldering a good chunk of the defensive responsibility as Song probes the opposition defence with penetrative passes.
More on Page 2: Through ball comparison with Mata, Modric, Fabregas…
Through Balls
[table id=49 /]
However, it is this element of his game which has earned him so many plaudits has been remarkable. This season Song can be ranked as arguably the best player in the league in terms of through balls. In fact, expanding it further, Song ranks respectively amongst footballs world-renowned creative talents, with only Ibrahimovic, Messi and Totti have created more accurate through balls than Song this season. This has paid off dividends, with the 24-year-old chalking up 7 assists- the second highest at the club- as he attempts to help fill the huge hole left by Fabregas in the summer.
One of Song’s main weaknesses, however, is that at times he appears to sometimes try too hard, whether that be in offensive or defensive aspects of his game. For all the delightful through balls and excellent tackles we have witnessed this season, there have been a fair share of overly eager attempts at through balls and unnecessary challenges that have earned him avoidable yellow cards
This season, Song has picked up seven bookings in the league, a tally only beaten by Lee Cattermole (8) and Jason Lowe (9). This is hardly surprising given the fact that he concedes fouls at a rate of 2.3 a game- only Tioté, Fellaini and Grant Holt are more notorious in this aspect.
Although not a massive flaw, he does need to add better decision making to his game (which should hopefully come to the fore as he matures as a player) to move up to the next level and be considered one of the very best central midfielders in the Premier league.
Providing he does this, Song has a very bright future in the centre of Arsenal’s midfield. Given how effective Song has been with added creative license, it will be interesting to see to what degree- if any- his role changes with the re-introduction of Jack Wilshere later in the season. Hopefully though, we will continue to see “Songinho” and his surprisingly delightful vision and passes for years to come.Giants’ Cueto raises pitch count in minor-league game
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Johnny Cueto had an encouraging six-inning start in a camp game against Giants minor-leaguers Sunday. He allowed a run on six hits and a walk with four strikeouts. He also picked off two runners, one at second base.
More important, he reached 74 pitches (50 strikes), catching him up with the starters who have been healthy all spring. His offspeed pitches, particularly his changeup, were ahead of his fastball command.
"I'm working on things," he said, through translator Erwin Higueros. "I'm trying to get my rhythm. I see a lot of pitches up. When they turn on the lights when the season starts, everything will be different."
Cueto again showed some "testiculos" - his word - when he squared to bunt against a pitcher who was in rookie ball last year. The first pitch was high and tight and nearly hit Cueto's head as the ball ticked off his bat. Cueto already has taken one shot off his head this spring on a comebacker.
"You can't be afraid," Cueto said. "You have to be |
’t cool, and says that one day the government will track us all through our cell phones. That he is more or less correct about all these things does not change the fact that he’s also a twerp. He lies to Lady Bird the first time they make out; he tells her he’s a virgin when she blurts out she’s not ready for sex. Thus, when the pair eventually do make it to his bedroom, she believes they’re on the same page, and informs him that she is now ready.
It doesn’t last long, but Lady Bird believes it is special nonetheless. This also doesn’t last long. As soon as she swoons into a girly reverie about how they “deflowered” each other, Kyle corrects her: he’s actually had sex with “like” six people—he doesn’t keep a list. “Why wouldn’t you keep a list?” Lady Bird cries. “We’re in high school!... Who the fuck is on top their first time?” She laments that she wanted her first time to be “special”; Kyle replies, “You’re going to have so much un-special sex in your life.” (Again, annoyingly spot on.) As on a couple of other occasions, a TV broadcasting news about the Iraq War plays in the background; when Kyle tries to start talking about it, Lady Bird snaps, “Different things can be sad... it’s not all war.” She then asks if they’re still going to prom.
It’s an extraordinary scene, perceptive and intelligent in a way you’d want your daughter to be in this situation and in a way that few daughters, if any, ever are. Where Lady Bird was previously a moody and aggrieved teenager, sensitive and prone to outbursts, she now possesses an impossible savvy, a more measured wisdom. Though it’s tempting to say the un-special sex has made her realize the world does not play out as teen-girl fantasy, the effect is too uncanny to be chalked up to mere epiphany. As in another high school movie about bickering mothers and daughters, an adult woman begins speaking through a teenage girl’s body; Gerwig writes herself into a kind of autofictional Freaky Friday.
From here, the pace becomes curiously quick, cutting from scene to scene to tie up loose ends; Lady Bird remains in control of the film, but something has changed in Lady Bird. She gets waitlisted at one of the expensive East Coast colleges she applied to behind her mother’s back and is elated. She goes prom dress shopping with Marion, who tells her, “I want you to be the very best version of yourself you can be.” In the car with Kyle on the way to prom, “Crash Into Me” comes on, and Lady Bird cancels the original joke when he makes fun of it by saying she genuinely likes the song; instead of going to the dance with Kyle, she asks to be dropped off at Julie’s house, and the two make up after a brief tiff caused by Lady’s Bird’s foray into the cool crowd (though Jenna was never a stereotypical snob or queen bee, but actually quite mature). Julie asks what it was like to have sex; Lady Bird is admirably unfazed by Kyle’s betrayal and says she prefers dry humping. She gets into the East Coast college off the waitlist; we get a quick visual of Lady Bird and her father in a bare bank office, the word “refinance” like a door in a horror film the protagonist shouldn’t open. They open it, and it’s fine. In the fall, Lady Bird arrives in New York starry-eyed and excited, goes to a party, leans out a window and honors “Bruce!” in the sky, gets too drunk, pukes, is taken to the hospital, wakes up, is not hurt, goes to church (not something she or her family ever expressed true interest in before), and calls her mom to apologize for the summer-long fight they’d been having about her college application betrayal and to say she loves her.
Much praise for Lady Bird has been rooted in identification with the protagonist, a rave ideally suited to social media.
We’re left with a canned speech that is so unapologetically corny that I couldn’t believe it, and then the credits roll. It is exactly what a mother would want to happen: for all desires to be met without consequence or bad feeling, for all rites of passage to pass painlessly, for her to be the very best version of herself she can be.
Much of the anecdotal praise I’ve seen for Lady Bird has been rooted in identification with the protagonist, a rave ideally suited to social media for the way it allows people to easily associate themselves with a clearly remarkable character (“I was just like this unrealistically with-it teen in high school!”) while rewriting their adolescences from adulthood. Why Gerwig and her audience would want to mother themselves through the horrors of high school, the necessary milestones that range from un-special to uncomfortable to traumatizing, is not hard to figure out; what’s surprising, or at least dispiriting, is the willingness with which adults sacrifice their hard-won autonomy for an existence so remedial.
In an interview with the New York Times Magazine, Gerwig said, “I have a deep need to take care of my characters. It’s not that I don’t want to go down the dark avenues—I want to hold their hands down the dark avenues.” For a bunch of teenage brains trapped in adult bodies, this approach doesn’t seem embarrassing, common, or obvious. It ends up feeling just right.Image copyright EPA Image caption 'At age 91, President Bush is retired from politics,' his spokesman told the media
Former US presidents George H W Bush and George W Bush will not endorse Donald Trump's candidacy for president, aides have told local media.
This marks a first for the 91-year-old former president Bush, who had endorsed Republicans in the past five elections.
Republican politicians are struggling to define their support, or lack thereof, for Donald Trump.
Mr Trump's remaining opponents dropped out earlier this week leaving him as the presumptive Republican nominee.
Both Bush men had previously campaigned this year for former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, who exited the race in February.
They had each supported past Republican presidential nominees John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
Although neither former president has openly attacked Mr Trump or his policy proposals, George W Bush made a veiled criticism at a campaign event for his younger brother saying, "The strongest person usually isn't the loudest one in the room".
"I understand that Americans are angry and frustrated. But we do not need someone in the Oval Office who mirrors and inflames our anger and frustration," George W Bush told the South Carolina audience.
Top Republicans divided over Trump
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Trump has prevailed as the presumptive party nominee, but it remains unclear how many Republicans will support him
Supporting:
New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte
Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie
Former Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal
Senator Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker
Not supporting:
House Speaker Paul Ryan
Former President George H W Bush
Former President George W Bush
Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse
Yet to comment:
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush
Texas Senator Ted Cruz
Ohio Governor John Kasich
Florida Senator Marco Rubio
Many Republican candidates for lower offices are concerned about running on the same ballot as Donald Trump, who has alienated minority voters through his rhetoric about building a wall with Mexico and banning US entry to Muslim travellers.
Many Americans choose to vote for either the Democrat or Republican Party, rather than weighing the individual candidates.
Republican representatives fear that voters who oppose Trump may eschew the Republican Party all together.
Mr McCain, who is running for his sixth term as senator for the state of Arizona, privately told donors that he will face a tough re-election campaign sharing a ballot with Trump.
"If Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket, here in Arizona, with over 30 percent of the vote being the Hispanic vote, no doubt that this may be the race of my life," the former candidate said according to audio obtained by Politico on Thursday.
Previous Republican nominees for president, Mr McCain and Mr Romney, have both said will not attend the Republican National Convention in July.
Hours after Mr Trump's remaining rivals dropped out, the Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton released a campaign ad seeking to take advantage of the vitriolic language and insults that other Republicans have used to refer to Mr Trump.
In her tweet to share the video, Mrs Clinton wrote "Republicans agree: Donald Trump is reckless, dangerous, and divisive."
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Republicans blast Trump in Clinton advert
Some Republicans, including a former top adviser and speechwriter to Senator McCain, have begun to openly call for the party to oppose the presumptive nominee and to work to independently elect a conservative candidate, such as Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who has indicated that he will not be supporting Mr Trump.
In a series of media interviews following Mr Trump's emergence as the sole remaining Republican candidate, he has described his vision for the first 100 days of his administration.
After 100 days the wall on the US-Mexico border will be designed, the ban on Muslims will be in place, and plans to revoke President Obama's executive orders will be under way,
"I know people aren't sure right now what a President Trump will be like," he told the New York Times on Wednesday, "But things will be fine. I'm not running for president to make things unstable for the country."Mark Zuckerberg addressed the UN today — twice — calling on the global panel to make universal internet access a priority.
During the 70th annual U.N. General Assembly session, Zuckerberg first addressed the U.N. Sustainable Development Conference, and went on to deliver the keynote address at the United Nations Private Sector Forum, where U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were also on the roster.
“Connecting the world is one of the fundamental challenges of our generation,” Zuckerberg said. “More than 4 billion people don’t have a voice online.”
In the earlier speech, Zuckerberg issued a global call to action in conjunction with the ONE campaign, an international advocacy organization. Its ‘Connectivity Declaration’ states that internet access is “essential for achieving humanity’s goals” and the group seeks to deliver it to everyone on Earth by 2020.
That initiative comes as part of a U.N. effort to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030.
Supporters include Action/2015, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, Save the Children, TED, the United Nations Foundation, Ushahidi, Bono, Richard Branson, Arianna Huffington, Shakira, George Takei, Charlize Theron, Jimmy Wales and others.
Said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post:
By giving people access to the tools, knowledge and opportunities of the internet, we can give a voice to the voiceless and power to the powerless. We also know that the internet is a vital enabler of jobs, growth and opportunity. And research tells us that for every 10 people connected to the internet, about 1 is lifted out of poverty.
About $25 billion has now been committed to meeting these goals, with $3.3 billion from the US and pledges from Canada, Germany and Sweden.
Zuckerberg also told the U.N. today that Facebook was partnering with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees to bring internet access to refugee camps worldwide.
Zuckerberg has long been involved with trying to expand access to the internet for underserved populations. Just this week, his controversial Internet.org initiative renamed its mobile and Web app and expanded encryption for users, though some have questioned its underlying altrusim in being promoted by an interested party.
Critics have slammed the program for violations of net neutrality, providing limited access to sites and controlling what users can view online.
➤ Facebook [Mark Zuckerberg]
Read next: 7 lessons learned from organizing a hackathonDonald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE and Ben Carson Benjamin (Ben) Solomon CarsonPuerto Rico governor, White House clash over meeting Puerto Rico governor says Trump won't meet to discuss hurricane relief The Hill's Morning Report - Can Bernie recapture 2016 magic? MORE are the undisputed leaders in the race for next year’s GOP presidential nomination, according to two new polls.
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Trump remains the 2016 Republican front-runner while Carson is his only serious competition, according to the polls. The latest CNN/ORC survey found that Trump receives 27 percent Republican voter support, versus 22 percent for retired neurosurgeon Carson. Trump, meantime, earns 25 percent, contrasted with Carson’s 22 percent, according to a fresh Wall Street Journal/NBC News sampling.
Trump said early Tuesday that he is not surprised Carson is his fiercest opponent in the race for next year’s Republican presidential nomination.
“We’re not as different as people think,” Trump said of Carson on CNN’s “New Day." "I have great assets and he has great assets.
“I’m in first place and he’s in second place,” Trump told host Alisyn Camerota. “There’s no question that we’re both resonating.”
Trump refused speculation on whether he and Carson could team up for a Republican ticket in the 2016 general election.
“I like him, he likes me [and] stranger things have happened,” he said. “[But] it’s too early to tell.”
Both polls released early Tuesday show that no one else in the GOP’s crowded 2016 presidential field registers more than 15 percent support from Republican voters nationwide.Sen. Marco Rubio Marco Antonio RubioWhite House pleads with Senate GOP on emergency declaration Sixteen years later, let's finally heed the call of the 9/11 Commission Schumer urges GOP to reject Trump's 'destructive' national emergency MORE (R-Fla.) is alone in third place in the latest WSJ/NBC News sampling with 13 percent. He ties with former Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.) for third in the new CNN/ORC survey, with each candidate receiving 8 percent voter support.
CNN/ORC conducted its latest survey among 465 registered Republicans and Republican-leaning independents during phone interviews Oct. 14 to Oct. 17. It has a 4.5-percent margin of error.WSJ/NBC News, meanwhile, surveyed 400 Republicans who plan on voting in their party’s primaries from Oct. 15 to Oct. 18. It has a 4.9 percent margin of error.After the absolutely stacked Criterion release of A Hard Day’s Night on June 24th, Janus Films will release director Richard Lester’s Beatles classic in more than 50 cities—including at New York City’s Film Forum, Los Angeles’ The Cinefamily, and San Francisco’s The Castro Theatre—over the July 4th weekend for a theatrical run.
The film will be screened in the Lester-approved 4K restoration created by The Criterion Collection with a 5/1 sound mix produced by Giles Martin at Abbey Road Studios. The restoration premiered at a sold-out event last month at the TCM Classic Movie Film Festival.
Peter Becker, president of the Criterion Collection and a partner in Janus Films said, “Nothing beats seeing this film on a big screen in a packed house with the new restoration looking and sounding so good. A Hard Day’s Night sweeps you along on a tide of pure fun, but it’s also one of the must-see wonders of the modern cultural world. The sheer energy and charisma of the Beatles is irresistible, and Richard Lester’s cinematic style is just as infectious. It’s the perfect multi-generational summer night at the movies, and we’re incredibly excited that so many theaters have already committed to show it on July 4th weekend all across the country.”
Check back at Janus Films to see if the film will play at a theater near you.The trigeminal ganglion (or Gasserian ganglion, or semilunar ganglion, or Gasser's ganglion) is a sensory ganglion of the trigeminal nerve (CN V) that occupies a cavity (Meckel's cave) in the dura mater, covering the trigeminal impression near the apex of the petrous part of the temporal bone.
Structure [ edit ]
It is somewhat crescentic in shape, with its convexity directed forward: Medially, it is in relation with the internal carotid artery and the posterior part of the cavernous sinus.
The motor root runs in front of and medial to the sensory root, and passes beneath the ganglion; it leaves the skull through the foramen ovale, and, immediately below this foramen, joins the mandibular nerve.
The greater superficial petrosal nerve lies also underneath the ganglion.
The ganglion receives, on its medial side, filaments from the carotid plexus of the sympathetic.
It gives off minute branches to the tentorium cerebelli, and to the dura mater in the middle fossa of the cranium.
From its convex border, which is directed forward and lateralward, three large nerves proceed, viz., the ophthalmic (V 1 ), maxillary (V 2 ), and mandibular (V 3 ).
The ophthalmic and maxillary consist exclusively of sensory fibers; the mandibular is joined outside the cranium by the motor root.
Clinical significance [ edit ]
After recovery from a primary herpes infection, the virus is not cleared from the body, but rather lies dormant in a non-replicating state within the trigeminal ganglion.[1]
Herpes Labialis may follow from primary herpes infection/herpetic gingivostomatitis
The trigeminal ganglion is damaged, by infection or surgery, in Trigeminal trophic syndrome. Trigeminal trophic syndrome causes paresthesias and anesthesia, which may lead to erosions of the nasal ala.
The thermocoagulation or injection of glycerol into the trigeminal ganglion has been used in the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia.
Other animals [ edit ]
Rodents [ edit ]
In rodents, the trigeminal ganglion is important as it is the first part of the pathway from the whiskers to the brain. Cell bodies of the whisker primary afferents are found here. These afferents are mechanoreceptor cells that fire in response to whisker deflection.
There are around 26,000-43,000 cell bodies in rodent Trigeminal ganglion. It is possible that there are two distinct (or perhaps continuous) populations of cells having slowly and rapidly adapting responses to stimuli.
It is found at the base of the skull and projects to trigeminal brain stem areas including principalis, spinal trigeminal nucleus, interpolaris, and caudalis.
Additional images [ edit ]
Base of the skull. Upper surface.
Nerves of the orbit, and the ciliary ganglion. Side view.
The otic ganglion and its branches.
Trigeminal ganglion
Trigeminal ganglion. Deep dissection. Superior view.
References [ edit ]
This article incorporates text in the public domain from page 886 of the 20th edition of Gray's Anatomy (1918)In 2006, in a yard at the Bronx Zoo, Happy the elephant took a few steps toward an eight-foot mirror — and lumbered into history.
A researcher had painted a white X on her head, just above the right eye. She couldn’t see it or feel it. What would happen if Happy noticed the mark in the mirror?
It was an experiment to determine if elephants, long known for their intelligence and strong family bonds, were also self-aware. If so, they would join a select group of animals — humans, apes and dolphins — with the ability to see themselves as others might.
Happy was the final hope. Two of her fellow residents of the Bronx Zoo had failed the test.
After being released into the enclosure, Happy walked straight to the mirror, then backed away. She moved in and out of view of her reflection. Soon, Happy’s trunk inched up to the mark, touching the X tentatively as if inspecting a new hairdo. She eventually would touch her head 47 times.
The researchers were thrilled. The team, headed by an Emory University graduate student, Josh Plotnik, published the results in a journal of the National Academy of Sciences.
Video of Happy gazing at herself in the mirror went viral. A book on elephant behavior devoted a chapter to her as the study proved the earth’s largest land animals have a depth previously unknown. Happy was a star.
Six years later, a reporter took a ride into the elephant area of the Bronx Zoo called Wild Asia, which is accessible only by monorail. It’s a rambling, leafy section of terrain where the zoo’s biggest attractions reside: tigers, rhinos and elephants.
It’s the same area where a man was mauled two weeks ago after leaping into a tiger den.
Not far away is the elephant exhibit, where on this day two of them plodded about near a small pond.
“There’s two of our beautiful friends, Patty and Maxine!” chirped a tour guide.
Afterward, he was asked if they were the only elephants at the zoo.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just those two.”
An informal survey of other zoo workers revealed an astonishing fact: Most thought that Patty and Maxine — 40-year-old Asian females and the two other research subjects that failed Plotnik’s self-awareness test in 2006 — comprised the zoo’s full complement of pachyderms.
Happy, one of the most famous elephant in the zoo, if not the nation, had vanished.
‘She should be there; that’s what our records indicate,” said Ashley Byrne, a spokesperson for the animal-rights group PETA, which closely monitors elephants in captivity, including those in The Bronx.
“We do keep track because when a zoo has decided an animal is no longer useful to them, we sometimes see them being sold off to roadside zoos or even canned-hunting facilities.”
A clue was provided by a YouTube video posted on June 8, 2010. It showed Patty and Maxine near their pond. A caption read: “Happy is not here, as she does not ‘get along with’ one of these two.”
Wildlife conservationist and author G.A. Bradshaw noted something similar in her book, “Elephants on the Edge — What Animals Teach Us About Humanity.”
“She has two neighbors who are contemporaries, Patty and Maxine, but the two have formed a fast friendship, leaving Happy something of a third wheel.”
The question of Happy’s circumstances was put to the zoo’s spokesperson, Mary Dixon, who didn’t immediately respond. A closer look at Happy’s life revealed a disturbing secret.
She was born in 1971 in Thailand and captured as an infant. She landed at a zoo in Hawaii for a few months. In 1973, she was shipped off to West Palm Beach, Fla. Four years later, she arrived in The Bronx.
During all that time, she had a constant companion, a male named Grumpy. He was the same age, also from Thailand, and was captured in the same year as Happy — meaning he was probably her brother, cousin or other close relative. He traveled with her to Hawaii and Florida and came to The Bronx with her in 1977.
But in 2002, Grumpy died, the cause of death listed initially as “unknown.”
A follow-up record uncovered by a Swedish elephant authority, Dan Koehl, showed that Grumpy was attacked by Patty and Maxine and “killed after sustaining injuries from being beaten up by [them].”
“It had to be a pretty violent situation,” said Ed Stewart, co-founder of the animal-advocacy group PAWS, which runs an elephant sanctuary in Northern California. “It’s a tragedy, but things like that just don’t happen in the wild.”
Deaths in captivity are not uncommon.
Another elephant, Tus, died at the Bronx Zoo in 2002 from an unknown cause. The passing of Grumpy and Tus went unreported in the press.
Happy — approaching middle age at 31 in 2002 — was left to herself.
The zoo found Happy a new companion. Sammy, a male young enough to be her son, was introduced and the two hit it off. The handlers were encouraged.
Four years later, when Plotnik launched his study, he took note of how well Happy and Sammy got along.
“They had a very good relationship,” he told The Post. “Just as Patty and Maxine had a very good relationship.
“But the two groups stayed away from each other. I never saw them mixing — and I was there for months.”
Happy’s luck didn’t last. Shortly after Plotnik’s research concluded, Sammy passed away from liver disease. Happy was alone again.
Plotnik’s study of elephants shamed many zoos. After its publication, the Bronx Zoo announced it would close its elephant exhibit after any of its three remaining elephants died.
And it would take on no new animals until that time.
The announcement was considered a bold move — elephants have long been among the most popular among visitors, and their loss could hurt revenue.
But it was applauded by conservationists and behavioral scientists, who believe elephants should be left in the wild or kept in sanctuaries, where they have significantly more room than zoos can provide.
It also intensified the scrutiny of the conditions of elephants at zoos.
In The Bronx, a team of caretakers must constantly work on the feet of Happy, Maxine and Patty, scrubbing the pads and filing down their nails — something not necessary in the wild, where elephants walk as much as 30 miles per day.
Without that care, they likely would develop foot or joint problems, a common cause of death for zoo and circus elephants.
Happy’s mental state was another matter.
“If that animal is all alone, that would be extremely stressful,” said Byrne. “Elephants have close family dynamics, and interaction is essential to their well-being.”
Observers worry that Happy, forced to live in proximity to two alpha females who killed her lifelong companion, could slide into despair, something that has occurred at other facilities.
So the zoo went against its vow — and brought in another elephant to keep her company, according to a zoo handler.
But the new arrival, a young male named Jumbo whose mother passed away at another location, was adopted by Patty and Maxine. The gamble backfired.
Happy spends most of her time indoors in a large holding facility lined with elephant cages, which are about twice the length of the animals’ bodies. The public never sees this.
On Sept. 22, after Post inquiries, Happy was finally spotted. She’d been put in the elephant exhibit — alone — while Patty and Maxine appeared mostly out of view in a separate enclosure on the opposite side of the monorail.
In a written statement, Dixon claimed Happy was out in public “regularly.”
“Rotating animals through exhibits is part of our behavioral-enrichment efforts,” she wrote. “I am not sure, but she may even be out tomorrow. When not on exhibit, they still have time outside.”
Advocates are pushing the Bronx Zoo to fulfill its promise to shut down the elephant exhibit.
“They should do it now and send those elephants to a sanctuary,” said Byrne of PETA, which has been pressing the matter with the Wildlife Conservation Society, which owns the zoo.
But acting right now would be a financial risk.
“Zoos are concerned about a domino effect,” said animal advocate Stewart.
“Next year it’s polar bears, then grizzly bears, though Detroit got rid of their elephants and attendance is better than ever.”
Besides the potential loss of visitors, several obstacles must be overcome.
The zoo would have to find a suitable location, though there are two likely places: PAWS in California, where eight animals live on 115 acres, and the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., which has 14 pachyderms and more than 2,000 acres.
Stewart estimated the cost of building three crates for the trio and trucking them to Tennessee at about $80,000.
“It’s quite a bit harder moving elephants that don’t travel that often — it’s stressful for them and it takes conditioning. You have to take precautions.
“And you worry about their health. They’d have to be quarantined for tuberculosis for a time. Putting a new elephant into a group that’s been together for a while is a risk. Climate is an issue, but if they’re in New York, they should be fine going anywhere.”
He thought transferring Happy, Patty and Maxine would be great for them — and not overly difficult to pull off.
The good news?
“Some of the most social elephants are the ones that were alone.”
Plotnik hopes for the best for his research darling — and saddened to hear of her circumstances. If Happy truly has a sense of self, she may also know loneliness.
“Elephants should not be kept isolated,” he said. “Their social welfare is a priority.”As demonstrations in Chicago erupted as part of #EricGarner protests, claims from demonstrators have been circulating that official vehicles of Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) have deployed fake cellular phone towers to spy on protesters’ mobile phones (also known as Stingrays).
Protesters uploaded pictures to Twitter of an OEMC Ford Excursion SUV kitted out with communications equipment. The SUV was present throughout demonstrations. The pictures show cameras on a telescopic mount in the rear, license plate readers on the front corner and LED light bars on the side.
@may20p Wtf is this? It keeps flowing the protest. And It messes up my phone when it drives by #ericgarner https://t.co/yDFdwqgZ2y | |
@SPOTNEWSonIG I forget who it was that told me the #CPD's #Stingray is in an Excursion. #ICantBreathe #Chicago https://t.co/J9ZeYAqeUP | |
A different version of the vehicle can be seen in the clip below.
Uploaded By: The Video Catalyst Project
In addition, a two-minute audio clip was released, allegedly from the Chicago Police Department’s dispatch center, in which a police officer can be heard saying that a protest organizer is using her cellphone and asking if the dispatch has “picked up any information on where they’re going”. The clip is being put forward as evidence that the police are scanning people’s calls, however, there is no explicit mention of the technology being used.
The cellphone surveillance technology, called an International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI) Catcher or locator, mimics a cellular phone tower and then tricks and intercepts your smartphone into thinking it is connecting with a legitimate source of reception. From there, operators can collect your call details, location and other (seemingly) private information without you knowing. Several months ago, the Chicago Police Department admitted that it had purchased IMSI Catchers in 2008.
Any snooping using an IMSI Catcher would be imperceptible to the phone owner, with their phone operation and signal strength remaining unaffected.
In response, several Reddit threads addressed the issue, picking it apart with various theories. In one thread titled “A message to all protesters. Specifically Chicago” a Reddit user claiming to be a former OEMC contractor explains that the Chicago Police Department works closely with OEMC on surveillance. In another thread, a former emergency management employee claims that the use of an IMSI Catcher from within a Chicago OEMC vehicle is unlikely.
The alleged spying attempts provided fodder for plenty of Twitter and Internet paranoia.
@EmersonHart13 @PeterNickeas @samjcharles OEMC has about 5 of these and they provide an uplink (or live feed) straight to the command center. No spying.... | |
@gameism @may20p @JoshYTsui from the OEMC https://t.co/wwm7CTiaPx Probably a police only mobile cel tower that may block others bc it's "private" | |
While evidence of the deployment of IMSI Catchers in Chicago remains inconclusive, protesters who have been alerted to the existence of such spying technologies are starting to download an app for detecting IMSI Catchers, meaning that more direct proof may be forthcoming from future protests.There is that one story that gets told almost whenever My spouse and I meet with some of the CRM folks in the community. Usually over beer at some conference. The problem for me personally is that is actually a story of 1 of my failures.
The storyline description is this - 10+ years ago, the company I worked for fixed a CRM deal in the early days of CRM. We were fledgling CRM implementers at the time and agreed to more than we bargained. Long story short, we failed and someone otherwise arrived and saved the day for this client. It was their first CRM project and made an excellent addition to their already successful business and, ultimately, developed into an huge boon for the community as a total. I failed, they don't, the CRM community acquired a couple GREAT experts.
We laugh about this and I groan when it gets told - again. We move on to the next story and the next round.
Although, that story, it twigs with me at night. I moved on from that employer several or so years in the past and ended up starting our new CRM firm. Every prospect I actually talk to, every customer request, I think returning to that story, that inability. Our commitment to give attention to CRM only, comes from the teachings We learned from that account. My hiring decisions, our programs, our growth strategy, are all driven by the teachings that account have provided me. All of us thrive today because of that story.(Sean Gallup/Getty)
Understanding Vladimir Putin
Attempts to understand Vladimir Putin and the Russian revanchism that now threatens to dismantle the basic security architecture of post–Cold War Europe ought to begin not with reference to Lenin and Stalin, or by digging into one’s dog-eared copies of books by Hans Morgenthau, Samuel Huntington, or George Kennan. To be sure, there is a Leninist component in Putin’s methods, but save that for a moment. At the outset, consider the possibility that the best literary guide to Putin, Putinism, and early-21st-century Russia is Mario Puzo.
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Russia is, in many respects, dying. Alcoholism is rampant. Life expectancy is sinking: Today, a 15-year-old Haitian boy has a longer life expectancy than his 15-year-old Russian counterpart. The economy is stagnant, and the ruble is cratering. Russia imports potatoes from Romania. Churches are largely empty. Yet atop this rotting body politic is an oligarchic elite that functions very much like the Mafia families depicted in Puzo’s novel The Godfather and the films spun off from it.
These “families” are different, however, in that they were bred, not in Sicily or in Italian-immigrant neighborhoods in New York, but in the Soviet KGB — which, going back to its origins as Feliks Dzerzhinsky’s Cheka, considered itself an elite body, a cut or two above the usual political riffraff. Which, in the sodden political atmosphere of Leonid Brezhnev’s USSR, it was — and as such, the KGB was smart enough to figure out, rather before the rest of the Communist apparatus, that the jig was going to be up sooner rather than later.
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So, in the waning days of the Cold War, KGB officers, far too clever to believe in Mikhail Gorbachev’s “reform Communism,” began siphoning Communist-party and Russian-state funds into KGB accounts, safely hidden offshore in banks run by the kind of men who ask no questions. Those funds, in turn, provided the financial leverage by which Vladimir Putin and some of his former-KGB comrades, taking advantage of the Wild West atmosphere in the post-Communist Russia of Boris Yeltsin, muscled their way into political power, allying themselves with other, previously non-KGB-related oligarchs and big-time Russian criminals — and then, when the time was right, liquidating those temporary allies, literally or through bogus criminal proceedings and long prison sentences. Thus Putin and his friends in the KGB, now-rechristened the Federal Security Service (FSB), drew all the strings of political power into their own hands while constantly enlarging their bank accounts.
No one knows for sure, but Vladimir Putin may well be the wealthiest man in the world today — a super-don, far beyond the ambitions of Vito Corleone, who has created something quite new on the global political landscape. Once upon a time, countries had intelligence services. Today, Russia looks a lot like an intelligence service that has gotten itself a country. And having done so, the FSB-dominated Russian oligarchy is buying up as much of what’s available — in London, on the Riviera, wherever — as it can.
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Why has this vast theft of a nation’s wealth gone unchallenged? In part, because of Russians’ traditional deference to political power: The tsar — be he tsar, commissar, or president-for-life — is, well, the tsar. Putin has also been exceptionally clever in associating his regime with elements of traditional Russian civic piety, aided by the thoroughly corrupt leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church, which has been shameless in advancing Kremlin propaganda and lies and in lining its own pockets in the process.
Then there are the Russian mass media, which are completely under the thumb of the regime, which function as an extension of the state, and which have created an alternative reality so comprehensive that it’s not altogether clear what the Russian people do and don’t know — although if the available polling data are to be believed, the overwhelming majority of Russians have swallowed, without much pushback, the regime’s fictitious “narrative” of the immediate Russian past, the beleaguered Russian present, and the potentially glorious Russian future. That media barrage, combined with Putin’s appeal to classic Russian belief in the Fatherland and the fevered theories (propounded by some in the extended Putin circle) of a Muscovite “Third Rome” that will save Christian civilization, has done grave damage to Russian civil society. And because of that damage, Russian civil society has, thus far, proven incapable of producing dissident antibodies in sufficient numbers, and of sufficient strength to provide anything remotely resembling a check on Putin’s power, much less a challenge to it.
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Overlaying all of this, however, is the Leninist add-on to Putin’s Mafia-like operation. Communism as an economic theory and a worldview died in Russia a long time ago. But Leninism is still very much alive there. And its most sophisticated and ruthless practitioner is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
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A lot of what is wrong in Russian public life today can be traced to a chapel on London’s Tottenham Court Road. There, in 1903, the Second |
52 Senate Republicans to vote in favor of the bill in order for it to advance. Here is what you need to know.
What are the implications?
If McConnell can't get the votes, Republicans will go right back to the drawing board and Obamacare will continue to be the main health care system as they renegotiate.
If the bill passes it will move on to be debated on the House floor. Republicans will continue to revise the bill behind closed doors to make sure it will pass in the House.
John McCain will cast a vote
Sen. John McCain's office announced that he will be in the Senate to vote Tuesday after being diagnosed with brain cancer on July 19.
McCain has not said whether he will support the bill on Tuesday. He said he would not support the revised health care bill in a press statement on July 13.
“The revised Senate health care bill released today does not include the measures I have been advocating for on behalf of the people of Arizona," McCain said. "That’s why if the Senate takes up this legislation, I intend to file amendments that would address the concerns raised by Arizona Governor Doug Ducey and other leaders across our state about the bill’s impact on Arizona’s Medicaid system."
Which Republicans might vote no?
Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) opposed the GOP's previous attempt to repeal and replace Obamacare, saying the bill had serious flaws.
"There are many of us who have concerns about the bill, particularly the cuts in the Medicaid program," Collins said in a interview with ABC News. "If we are not able to reach a consensus, the Senate should return to regular order, hold hearings and receive input from senators of both parties, and produce a bill that finally provides Americans with access to affordable and quality health care.”
Sen. Jerry Moran and Sen. Mike Lee also released statements saying they could not support that version of the bill. Moran called the bill a "bad policy."
What about'repeal only'?
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he will support repealing Obamacare but will not support replacing it with a bill that keeps certain Obamacare provisions.
"The previous Senate bill kept the majority of the Obamacare taxes and spending, and it had a $200 billion bailout for insurance companies,"Paul wrote in a USA Today op-ed. "The 2015 clean repeal is far better; it simply offers repeal and a two-year window to fix our broken system."
Others are more hesitant to repeal Obamacare without a replacement in place. Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) has made clear that "repeal-only" is not a option for him.
"I don’t think it’s appropriate just to repeal, we’ve also got to put a replacement in place to help deal with the very issues I just talked about," Portman said in a statement.
Trump urged Republicans to'step up to the plate'
President Trump said it's time for Republicans to "step up the the plate" Tuesday morning ahead of the vote. He said he has his "pen in hand."
Big day for HealthCare. After 7 years of talking, we will soon see whether or not Republicans are willing to step up to the plate! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
ObamaCare is torturing the American People.The Democrats have fooled the people long enough. Repeal or Repeal & Replace! I have pen in hand. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 25, 2017
The president has been adamant about replacing Obamacare and has referred to it as a "total disaster." He has warned the GOP of the "repercussions" of failing to repeal and replace Obamacare.
If Republicans don't Repeal and Replace the disastrous ObamaCare, the repercussions will be far greater than any of them understand! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 24, 2017
"For the last seven years, Republicans have been united in standing up for Obamacare's victims. Remember repeal and replace, repeal and replace, they kept saying it over and over again. Every Republican running for office promised immediate relief from this disastrous law," Trump said on Monday during a White House speech. "We, as a party, must fulfill that solemn promise to the voters of this country to repeal and replace.ILHAN TANIR
American journalist Seymour Hersh, at his 77th birthday, talked to Diken and answered some of the questions that have been raised by his latest piece published on London Review of Books on April 4.
One of the most controversial claims Hersh makes is that it was the Turkish government behind the August 21st sarin gas attack in Damascus. Hersh also responded to criticism leveled against him by people like Eliot Higgins and Dan Kaszeta.
Reklam
Hersh defended his claims, elaborated that chemical material used in the attack was transported to Syria by Turkish gendarme under the supervision of MIT, the Turkish intelligence agency,
The White House refuted your claims in a statement. What do you think?
Reklam
It’s very much like the first statement they made ( in December Hersh wrote a piece titled ‘Whose Sarin’ and he refers that WH denial). They basically claim that everything they say is true. And they say, ‘We do not acknowledge that the paper Mr. Hersh claims he holds in his hands really exist’ (laughs..). So if they want to put their heads in the sand, they can.
You are talking about a 5-page intelligence document. Do you actually have that document?
Yes, of course. It’s right here. Let me read the first line if you want me to. The first line is in bold sentence, called ‘ talking points.’ A brief to a high-level official, Deputy to the Department of Defense Intelligence Agency David Shedd. Dated 20 June. Title says, ”Al-Nusrah Front-associated sarin production cell is the most advanced sarin plot since Al Qaida’s pre-9/11 efforts.”
We know this because there was a footage captured (in Afghanistan) when we began the war there.. we know that, captured images showing the Al Qaida tested sarin with animals.
Is this production center in Syria or somewhere else?
No, it’s Al Nusra cell. This is obviously near Aleppo. The document I am talking about, it talks about Al Nusra is operating, has facilitators inside Turkey to buy chemicals, including nerve gas, components and equipment and hardware. It talks about that. We obviously tracked that (the U.S. government) and we know what they are doing. We have watched them happen and it is very unlikely that MIT doesn’t also watch them. But this is a different story. So, it is in Syria, not in Turkey.
Since the story is published, has anyone from the Syrian regime contacted you?
No. But it’s fascinating to watch it… Obviously there are tons of stuff on internet about this. Some people, for example, question that since these stuff came from Russia.. Oh my God.. How can we trust something Russian (they ask…). Look, this has been looked by the high authority, senior general of the Britain, then it has been looked at by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, then taken to the president. What are they talking about? Because it is Russian?? (laughs) It’s crazy. Also I am now Alawite fascist. I didnt know that! (laughs)
So far Deputy PM of Turkey said that your claims are total slander. What do you say to that? Do you think if what you are saying is true and proven, this can be considered as crimes against humanity?
Turkey was helping Sarin gets developed inside Syria..
Forget about Turkey now.. Let me tell you what the issue is. I’m an American. My government still insists that we don’t have any evidence Sarin exists inside the rebel opposition.. whether secular or non secular…
Meanwhile, just last month, there was an exercise in Florida, at the headquarters of the ‘ Central Command’, commander-in-chief for central operations in Florida… which is in charge of the Middle East. Just as an intellectual exercise conducted. The Issue was being a counter-terror operation on what do we do if Al Nusra, AQI or ISIS, as they get driven out, in desperation and as a final act, if they give Sarin stock, and expertise and methods to other Sunnis, Jihadists, Wahhabis or Salafi group or operations in Middle East or N. Africa. That was the exercise.
At the same time, my government in Washington saying, ‘We don’t know if anyone has any Sarin.’ The Military community responsible from operations in Middle East is worrying about how to defend against Sarin showing up who knows where. I mean… Are you kidding me?
It’s called heads buried in the sand. So why do it? As I said in the article, because if the U.S. President said something, you can’t say it is wrong.
In your essay, after August 21, you talked about how the Turkish intelligence officials being eavesdropped by the US intel. How widespread do you think this is?
I answer this with a question for you. Two times two is what? Four. The answer is here. Do you want me to say anything else? What’s left to say?
Generically, smart people understand, often in the days after the incident is when you learn most about the incident. Because before the operation many security measures are taken. After the operation, generally you get to hear a lot of chest beating. That’s why smart people go and listen afterwards too. That means you listen in real-time. Most of the time, those calls are just being collected by the computer and often not looked at right away. This time, you may listen in real-time, on the same day.
In your piece, the Turkish intel conversations you said that were intercepted. Have you seen those transcripts?
First of all, this is an improper question. I quote somebody that exists. As you know I am not new to this. I talked to some people I ‘ve known for 30 years while writing this piece. We have grown up together. They are nice people. So, you gotta sense of trust. Today is my birthday, I am 77. I am old!
There are obviously pieces written that are criticizing your essay. One of them was about volcano rockets..
Oh, yes, you mean Elliot Higgins, or Brown Moses they call..
Yes, Higgins and also Dan Kaszeta..
Do you know of Kaszeta? He says that there had to be some 1000 gallons you need. Have you heard of Ted Postol? I would suggest you talk to Ted Postol. Postol (currently at the University of MIT physicist and missile defense experts), was scientific adviser to Chief of Naval Operations. You know when he (Postol) first called me months ago (after the first piece), told me: “Hersh, you are in really trouble this time. You are wrong!” Later he wrote back to me and said “Shit!”
Look! So, I do not know anything about Higgins. All he talks about is volcanos. Have you looked at the UN meeting on September the 16th by Åke Sellström ( UN chemical weapons team chief in Syria). He gave a news conference on that day, he wrote about how the rockets couldn’t have gone more than a mile. He says that. It’s on the report.
All I want to tell you, if you think that the Syrian Army would fire nerve gas a mile away.. (laughs..) when the wind can change.. you believe in suicide. You gotta be really gutsy to do that baby.. Because that stuff blows back.. that’s a terrible weapon.. because the wind change any minute.. you know that.. also it wasnt persistent.. that also tells you something too.
He (Higgins) is saying the same things for four months now. Somebody asked me about it yesterday and i told them, this was way back.. This was last year… (laughs) We are talking something different now. We talk about new information now. He keeps quoting this other guy.. Go and look at his website. What is his name? K..a..s..
Kaszeta?
Yeah. Do me a favor. He got a website. He is in defense business. And he got a bunch of companies. Look at them carefully. All those companies are consisted of one person. I mean who is he? He doesn’t have qualifications.. Because he worked at the chemical warfare more than 10 years ago? Would you trust anyone who worked in the cell phone business 10 years ago and now? Has there been no change in the chemical warfare in the last ten years? He is just somebody..
Higgins repeats the same thing because he doesn’t change his opinon. And I know he had private communication with Postol and man named David Lloyd or something… In which he sort of acknowledged that maybe he isn’t right. But he cant undo it. He is defending the base too. Higgins is a bit like the White House to me.. Once I said something, I m not gonna change it.
I talked to Ted Postol matter of fact this morning.. He sent me an email and said “What? does he (Higgins) still talk about volcanos?” Has there been anything said by my government to substantiate the argument (Volcano argument)?
No.
What does it tell you? Has Israel said one word about this since the August 21st? No. What does it tell you? You think Israel wants to see Salafists on the borders? If they think Assad did it, wouldn’t they have talked about it?
But you understand, the problem is, and it’s a legitimate problem, people don’t like Bashar. And automatically since I write these, I’m assumed two things, lackey for the Russians, because the Russians provided the chemicals, and I am now Baathist. Alawite Baathist.
But when I was writing in 1969 Vietnam, and told that the American soldiers killed 550 children, men and women, that was worse.
Turkey’s training for Sarin, handling, transporting into Syria under the war conditions.. All these sound like a big operation and needs a big facility center, some suggest. What do you think?
American intelligence has concluded that Turkish intelligence, MIT, by the way, MIT doesn’t do hands-on… Technical stuff. But they do thinking, strategic staff. Turkish gendarme are the people actually trucked the stuff in. So, materials trucked from Turkey into Syria and Aleppo. Including chemical to make up nerve gas… When they melted together, and they became something different. There is an intelligence report to that effect. That’s what I have written.New police substation to go up in troubled area Share Shares Copy Link Copy
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WEBVTT YOU'LL ONLY SEE ON 7.ROYALE: SAN MAT AND KATHRYN,ITS REPUTATION ISN'T GOOD.>> WE HAD MORE THAN 300 911CALLS FOR SERVICE IN THE LASTTWO YEARS HERE.>> WE WOULD HAVE HOMELESS PEOP, TRANSIENTS, PEOPLE GETTINGMURDERED IN THESE BUILDINGS.ROYALE: DAVID DAVNEY WHO LIVESNEARBY IS SICK OF IT.>> IT'S BEEN A CONSTANT ONGOINGSOURCE OF IRRITATION.ROYALE: SO THIS SOUND IS ONE OFSALVATION.>> THIS IS GOING TO BE THEANCHOR OF A BIG NEW INVESTMENTBY THE CITY.ROYALE: COUNCILOR PAT DAVIS SAYSTHE CITY BOUGHT THIS PROPERTYFOR $1.5 MILLION.FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS,BUILDING A POLICE SUBSTATION.>> WE'VE HAD A COUPLE HOMICIDES.PUTTING A POLICE STATION AND 200POLICE OFFICERS RIGHT HER EONTHIS CORNER IS GOING TO DO ALOT.ROYALE: HELEN PETROPOULOUS LIVESAROUND HERE TOO.SHE'S BEEN FIGHTING FOR YEARSFOR THIS.>> I HOPE IT'S A TURNING POINTFOR THE NEIGHBORHOOD.ROYALE: AS YOU JUST HEARDNEIGHBORS ARE EXCITED ABOUT WHATCOULD GO IN HERE AND FROM WHATWE KNOW RIGHT NOW IT'S GOING TOBE A BIG PROJECT.WE NEED SKY 7 TO SHOW YOU.THE POLICE SUBSTATION IS GOINGHERE.THE CITY OWNS WHAT'S SOUTH OFTHAT TOOIN ALL, ABOUT SIX ACRES.DAVIS SAYS NEIGHBORS WILL BE APART WHAT GOES IN HERE NEXT.DAVNEY AND PETROPOULOS WOULDLIKE A PARK AND A GROCERY STORTHEY SAY ANYTHING IS BETTER THANWHAT'S BEEN HAPPENING HERETurn 10 Media Team Game Capture Artist
Turn 10 Studios, the creators of the top selling and critically acclaimed Forza Motorsport franchise, has an exciting opportunity for an experienced Game Capture Artist to join the Media team.
This person will play a critical role in helping the Forza Media team create world-class videos & imagery that support the series and generate brand awareness. The ideal candidate brings a wealth of experience in game camera layout/composition, as well as game-engine content manipulation, and has a proven track record in the video games industry. This role involves combining an understanding of visual narrative and edit flow, technical craft, creative problem solving, and execution in a team-centric environment.
Responsibilities
Create compelling gameplay videos and screenshots
Generate cameras based upon shot lists, storyboards and pre-production worksheets, with a careful focus on camera framing, shot composition and flow
Work closely with the Cinematic Lead to improve readability of visual storytelling
Establish continuity of the brand look & appeal, while also creating fresh visuals that help increase brand awareness
Balance quality with efficiency while working under tight deadlines
Follow and maintain pipelines & technical requirements
Essential Skills and Experience
A deep knowledge-base of cinematography and/or photography
A great eye for camera motion, composition & framing
2-4 years of experience with 3D camera animation and/or game-engine cameras
Accepts criticism well and integrates feedback effectively
Must be responsive to deadlines and work well under pressure
Self-motivated team player with excellent communication & interpersonal skills
2-4 years of production experience with the Adobe Creative Suite (primarily Photoshop and Premiere)
Ability to quickly learn new/proprietary software
Preferred Skills and Experience
Experience working on automotive videos and/or creating video game cinematics
Understanding of traditional photography/videography techniques
Passion for cars and video games (especially racing games)
Amazing Forza driving skills
Understanding of conventional and engine-based lighting concepts & methodologies
Experience with conventional cameras (DSLR, HD, Red, etc.)
Serious inquiries only, and you must submit your resume and a link to your demo reel/portfolio & breakdown with relevant examples of your work – please send to forzafb@microsoft.com with the subject line “T10 CAPTURE ARTIST”.
While we’d love to respond to everyone, only the most qualified candidates will be contacted.UPDATE: Nov. 14 ― The letter from Alabama pastors that Kayla Moore, the wife of Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, posted Sunday to her Facebook page appears to be re-release of an endorsement originally written in August before the GOP primaries, AL.com reports.
The newer version deletes three paragraphs from the original letter, which still appears on Roy Moore’s campaign website and contains sentences urging voters to “join us at the polls on Tuesday, August 15th.”
At least two of the pastors listed as signatories on the recent post have said they were not contacted about the update, and have asked for their names to be removed.
Previously:
Fifty-three pastors in Alabama have signed a letter throwing their support behind Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who has been accused of sexually assaulting multiple women.
“For decades, Roy Moore has been an immovable rock in the culture wars ― a bold defender of the ‘little guy,’ a just judge to those who came before his court, a warrior for the unborn child, defender of the sanctity of marriage, and a champion for religious liberty,” the pastors wrote. Their letter was posted to the Facebook page of Kayla Moore, the candidate’s wife, on Sunday and published Monday on Alabama news site AL.com.
The letter detailed the two times Moore was suspended from court during his tenures as chief justice of Alabama ― first for refusing to take down a Ten Commandments monument he had erected in the Alabama Judicial Building and later for defying federal orders on same-sex marriage.
The pastors described these incidents as evidence of Moore’s “unwavering faith in God and his immovable convictions for Biblical principles.”
The letter did not address that multiple women have accused Moore of sexual misconduct when he was in his 30s and they were teenagers.
“We are ready to join the fight and send a bold message to Washington: dishonesty, fear of man, and immorality are an affront to our convictions and our Savior and we won’t put up with it any longer,” the pastors wrote. “We urge you to join us at the polls to cast your vote for Roy Moore.”
“The Washington establishment has declared all-out war on his campaign,” they added.
Tom Williams via Getty Images Roy Moore, who is slated to face Democrat Doug Jones in a Dec. 12 special election to fill the Senate seat vacated by Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Senate’s campaign arm, severed its ties with Moore on Friday. The committee’s decision came one day after The Washington Post reported that four women had said Moore pursued them when they were teenagers and he was in his 30s. One woman, Leigh Corfman, said she was 14 years old when Moore sexually assaulted her in 1979.
Another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, came forward with allegations on Monday. She said in a press conference that she met Moore while working as a waitress roughly four decades ago. Nelson said Moore offered to give her a ride home one night in 1977. But instead of taking her home, she said, he drove around the restaurant and assaulted her.
“I thought that he was going to rape me,” she said.
“He looked at me, and he told me, ‘You’re just a child.’ And he said, ‘I am the district attorney of Etowah County, and if you tell anyone about this, no one will ever believe you,’” she added.
Carol Kuruvilla contributed to this report.This handout photo released by The Chosunilbo shows Thaksin speaking at the Asian Leadership Conference in Seoul on May 19, 2015. (AFP Photo/The Chosun Ilbo)
The Foreign Ministry has revoked Thaksin Shinawatra's Thai passports and police are looking to file lese majeste and other charges against him.
The ministry announced the decision in a statement on Wednesday.
Police believed one of his media interviews recently violated the lese majeste law, as well as other criminal and computer-crime laws.
The statement said security officials had asked the ministry to take action now that the Royal Thai Police Office had found the content of his interview undermined "national security and dignity".
"Police are investigating and preparing to take criminal action against him under Sections 112, 326 and 328 of the Criminal Code and Section 14 (3) (5) of the Computer Crime Act," it said.
As a result, the ministry revoked both Thaksin's Thai passports — No. U957441 and Z530117 — effective May 26, 2015.
Section 112 provides: "Whoever, defames, insults or threatens the King, the Queen, the Heir-apparent or the Regent, shall be punished with imprisonment of 3-15 years".
Sections 326 and 328 involve defamation, with imprisonment not exceeding two years and a fine not exceeding 20,000 baht.
Section 14 of the Computer Crime Act involves importing and disseminating computer data involving such offences. The penalty is imprisonment for not more than five years or a fine of not more than 100,000 baht, or both.
Thaksin's passports were previously revoked shortly after the 2007 coup, but when his sister Yingluck formed a government in 2011 they were reinstated to him.
The statement does not say which of his interviews police found offensive but the former prime minister told Choson Media in Seoul last Wednesday some groups were behind the May 22, 2014 coup.
In 2008, Thaksin was sentenced in absentia to two years in jail by the Supreme Court for Holders of Political Positions for abuse of power in sale of state land to his then wife when he was prime minister. He fled Thailand before he was sentenced and has since lived in self-exile abroad.Photo
Here in the United States, if you whip out a clamshell flip phone, chances are you’ll be called a caveman or Luddite. But elsewhere, there are still some emerging countries where the old-school cellphone has yet to become passé.
In India, Russia and Brazil, the older types of cellphone are still the most popular, according to a study published Thursday by Nielsen, the research firm. In India, 80 percent of phone users own an old-style feature phone, and only 10 percent have a smartphone, according to Nielsen’s estimates. In Brazil and Russia, feature phones account for roughly half the market.
Why the sluggish adoption for smartphones? In such countries, smartphones can be even more expensive than they are here. In Russia, for example, the full price of an iPhone 4 is $663 through Beeline, the Russian carrier.
China is one emerging country where the smartphone is dominant, with 66 percent of the market. That is largely thanks to the plethora of cheap Android smartphones available there.
It’s no wonder there are whispers of Apple’s making a cheaper iPhone. In the coming years, manufacturers will be fiercely competing for the remaining nonsmartphone owners, who are mostly in emerging countries. Recent data from Qualcomm suggests that emerging regions including Latin America, China and India are adding substantially higher numbers of smartphone subscriptions than North America, Japan, Korea and Europe.Editor's Note: This has been updated from the original editorial to reflect the report posted by TMZ.com.
TMZ.com reports that Austin Aries apologized privately to Christy Hemme for his actions on last Thursday's episode of Impact, and was fined a "severe" amount by the company.
Forgive my skepticism. Until Aries apologizes publicly, I'm not buying it.
Hemme was humiliated on national TV. Shouldn't Aries apologize on national TV? At the very least, on Impact's website? On Twitter, even?
Let’s clarify a few things that have been said since this story broke:
*This was NOT part of an angle. It was NOT scripted. It was absolutely a shoot. Absolutely spontaneous.
*What Aries did may have been in keeping with his heel character. But that DOESN’T MATTER. Punching Hemme in the face would be in keeping with Aries’ heel character, too, but that’s still assault. Being in character does not provide a free pass. What Aries did was bullying, and sexual harassment.
*Some feel that I should not comment on this matter because I’ve allegedly said misogynistic things in the past. That doesn’t matter. No matter who reported this, this is legit news. A legit case of sexual harassment. Everything I reported was accurate. If it’s accurate, it doesn’t matter if it’s me, or Walter Cronkite.
*Some feel that Hemme deserved what happened because she botched the intro. That’s nonsense. It’s been said that Aries should get a break because he’s a star. More nonsense. The perceived abilities of either DO NOT MATTER. ARE NOT RELEVANT. If a secretary at a major corporation forgot cream for the boss’ coffee and he sexually harassed her afterward, her error would not justify what he did. Learn to live in the real world. This is a real-world matter.
*There is no reason to trust Dixie Carter to do the right thing. She has lost control of her wrestlers, and too often is allowed to tap-dance around that fact.
*The reaction of many wrestling fans to my reporting and editorializing was vile and disgusting. I’ve been threatened. I’ve had AIDS wished upon me. I’ve been insulted in every way possible. That’s OK. I consider the source. But I don’t think you marks understand: This isn’t debatable. What Aries did was wrong. Spike TV VP David Schwarz called it SEXUAL HARASSMENT. His words. If you don’t think what Aries did was wrong, you may have bigger problems than he does.
Some male wrestlers have spoken out for Aries, like Konnan, Chavo Guerrero and Mike Bennett. Not surprising. The boys are going to stick together.
I’m disappointed the WWE Divas and TNA Knockouts aren’t speaking up for Hemme. They should. They could very easily be next.
Women get treated just terribly in wrestling. I’ve previously said that they are put on the road for the boys’ amusement, and I stand by that statement. I’m not celebrating that fact. But it is a fact. Some awful things have happened.
When I worked for WCW, I heard an executive offer a woman a job in return for sex. A married TBS executive got his mistress a job with the Nitro Girls. Melina and her boyfriend, John Morrison, were separated on the road so a WWE superstar deemed more worthy of Melina could maneuver her into his bed. Trish Stratus had to bark like a dog and strip on WWE television.
But Melina could have refused Batista. Stratus was scripted to do that. Hemme was ambushed by what Aries did. She was terrified. Watch the video. If she laughed, it was nervous, scared laughter. She did not enjoy it. IT WAS NOT SCRIPTED.
Dixie Carter can do what she wants. Impact can be whatever it is. Austin Aries is a wrestler very few colleagues respect or want to work with, but he can keep impressing the smart marks with whatever-star matches. Christy Hemme needs a paycheck. She didn’t walk out, and I don’t blame her.
Follow Mark Madden on Twitter: @MarkMaddenX. Listen to his THE VOICE OF WCW podcast at WXDX.com.Apprentice Cartographer's Sextant 10 Adds or rerolls a mod for a white map on the Atlas. Right click this item then left click a white map on the Atlas to apply it.
Armourer's Scrap 40 Improves the quality of an armour. Right click this item then left click an armour to apply it. Has greater effect on lower rarity armours. The maximum quality is 20%.
Blacksmith's Whetstone 20 Improves the quality of a weapon. Right click this item then left click a weapon to apply it. Has greater effect on lower rarity weapons. The maximum quality is 20%.
Blessed Orb 20 Randomises the numeric values of the implicit modifiers of an item. Right click this item then left click another item to apply it.
Cartographer's Chisel 20 Improves the quality of a map. Right click this item then left click a map to apply it. Has greater effect on lower rarity maps. The maximum quality is 20%.
Chaos Orb 10 Reforges a rare item with new random modifiers. Right click this item then left click a rare item to apply it.
Chromatic Orb 20 Reforges the colour of sockets on an item. Right click this item then left click a socketed item to apply it.
Divine Orb 10 Randomises the numeric values of the random modifiers on an item. Right click this item then left click a magic, rare or unique item to apply it.
Exalted Orb 10 Enchants a rare item with a new random modifier. Right click this item then left click a rare item to apply it. Rare items can have up to six random modifiers.
Gemcutter's Prism 20 Improves the quality of a gem. Right click this item then left click a gem to apply it. The maximum quality is 20%.
Glassblower's Bauble 20 Improves the quality of a flask. Right click this item then left click a flask to apply it. Has greater effect on lower rarity flasks. The maximum quality is 20%.
Jeweller's Orb 20 Reforges the number of sockets on an item. Right click this item then left click a socketed item to apply it. The item's quality increases the chances of obtaining more sockets.
Journeyman Cartographer's Sextant 10 Adds or rerolls a mod for a yellow or white map on the Atlas. Right click this item then left click a yellow or white map on the Atlas to apply it.
Master Cartographer's Sextant 10 Adds or rerolls a mod for any map on the Atlas. Right click this item then left click any map on the Atlas to apply it.
Mirror of Kalandra 10 Creates a mirrored copy of an item. Right click this item then left click an equipable non-unique item to apply it. Mirrored copies cannot be modified.
Orb of Alchemy 10 Upgrades a normal item to a rare item. Right click this item then left click a normal item to apply it.
Orb of Alteration 20 Reforges a magic item with new random modifiers. Right click this item then left click a magic item to apply it.
Orb of Annulment 20 Removes a random modifier from an item. Right click this item then left click on a magic or rare item to apply it.
Orb of Augmentation 30 Enchants a magic item with a new random modifier. Right click this item then left click a magic item to apply it. Magic items can have up to two random modifiers.
Orb of Chance 20 Upgrades a normal item to a random rarity. Right click this item then left click a normal item to apply it.
Orb of Fusing 20 Reforges the links between sockets on an item. Right click this item then left click a socketed item to apply it. The item's quality increases the chances of obtaining more links.
Orb of Regret 40 Grants a passive skill refund point. Right click on this item to use it.
Orb of Scouring 30 Removes all modifiers from an item. Right click this item then left click on a magic or rare item to apply it.
Orb of Transmutation 40 Upgrades a normal item to a magic item. Right click this item then left click a normal item to apply it.
Portal Scroll 40 Creates a portal to town. Right click on this item to use it.
Regal Orb 10 Upgrades a magic item to a rare item. Right click this item then left click a magic item to apply it. Current modifiers are retained and a new one is added.
Scroll of Wisdom 40 Identifies an item. Right click this item then left click an unidentified item to apply it.Police report a mother who didn't pay for her gas at Casey's left two of her children behind when she left.Jefferson police told KCCI that the incident happened at the Casey's Store on 508 North Elm St. about 4 p.m.Latoya Watkins, 35, of Fort Dodge, left her 8-year-old and 11-year-old sons alone at the Casey's store Thursday for over an hour.“I'm not a mother, but I wouldn't leave my kids at a store for almost two hours," said Ashley Defenbaugh, an employee at the Jefferson Casey’s.Watkins told employees she needed to run across the street to get money from Hy-Vee to pay for gas she just pumped.“The kids were good,” Defenbaugh said. “They actually played hide and go seek the whole time.”Casey’s employees called Jefferson police after waiting nearly two hours for Watkins to return.“She'd already been gone almost two hours, and so who knows if it would have been longer," Defenbaugh said.Police found Watkins' car around 4:15 p.m. in the Hy-Vee parking lot, around 2.5 after Watkins had left her sons at Casey's.Police said a deputy found Watkins and her daughter, 11, inside the grocery store. Police arrested Watkins, and the children were taken into protective custody.According to police reports, Watkins was also banned from the Wild Rose Casino the morning she left the children at the gas station. The staff at the casino said Watkins was disorderly and disrupted business at the casino.Watkins was charged with two counts of child endangerment.
Police report a mother who didn't pay for her gas at Casey's left two of her children behind when she left.
Jefferson police told KCCI that the incident happened at the Casey's Store on 508 North Elm St. about 4 p.m.
Advertisement Related Content Mother defends leaving two kids at gas station
[VIDEO: Police: Mom who didn't pay for gas leaves 2 kids at Casey's]
Latoya Watkins, 35, of Fort Dodge, left her 8-year-old and 11-year-old sons alone at the Casey's store Thursday for over an hour.
“I'm not a mother, but I wouldn't leave my kids at a store for almost two hours," said Ashley Defenbaugh, an employee at the Jefferson Casey’s.
Watkins told employees she needed to run across the street to get money from Hy-Vee to pay for gas she just pumped.
“The kids were good,” Defenbaugh said. “They actually played hide and go seek the whole time.”
Casey’s employees called Jefferson police after waiting nearly two hours for Watkins to return.
“She'd already been gone almost two hours, and so who knows if it would have been longer," Defenbaugh said.
Police found Watkins' car around 4:15 p.m. in the Hy-Vee parking lot, around 2.5 after Watkins had left her sons at Casey's.
Police said a deputy found Watkins and her daughter, 11, inside the grocery store. Police arrested Watkins, and the children were taken into protective custody.
According to police reports, Watkins was also banned from the Wild Rose Casino the morning she left the children at the gas station. The staff at the casino said Watkins was disorderly and disrupted business at the casino.
Watkins was charged with two counts of child endangerment.
AlertMeMay 26, 2012. It was supposed to be a momentous occasion—the day I would walk down the aisle in my mother's lace wedding gown, peonies in hand, best friend at my side, family and friends looking on with joy. It was supposed to be the day I started a new chapter, the day my dreams would be fulfilled. Little did I know, God had other plans.
We met in the winter of 2010—me and God, that is. He always had his eye on me, but I barely even knew who he was. Once I began spending time with him, our relationship blossomed into something special. He cared for me and loved me like no other. He filled a huge void in my heart.
That's how I came to know God. It's also how I came to know the man I thought I would marry.
The relationship started out like many others, following cultural expectations rather than God's design. Dating, sex, spending the night, meeting the parents, integrating the |
to sign up before the guild placement happened.
Elder Scrolls Online Headstart
I thought I would devote this mornings post to getting everyone ready for the big event. There are several things about this launch that should make things significantly easier. Firstly there are no servers to worry with, there is the North American mega server and the European mega server. I do not however know if characters cross over between the two. We will be focusing on the North American mega server for this, and I am hoping that our European friends will have decent lag there or even be able to roll there at all. Have I mentioned how much I hate regions in video games? House Stalwart will be aligning ourselves with the Daggerfall Covenant, as was decided in a poll that ran some time ago. This means that in order to play with the guild and group easily, you also need to roll Daggerfall Covenant. Guilds span factions, but it is logistically impossible to group together at low levels if you are of two different factions.
Thanks to the preorder bonuses however you will be able to roll any race in any faction. If you did not preorder, then grats… if you want to play with the bulk of the guild you have to play either a Redguard, Breton or Orsimer. Really if you were interesting in this game at all, you should have preordered to long before this point to make sure you could have that very important preorder perk. Those who did preorder… I am sure we will see plenty of elves in our guild as a side effect. Most of the people I know going cross faction classes are doing so in order to play a Bosmer, Dunmer or Altmer. I personally will be rolling an Imperial because it is the race that best fits the character of “Belghast”.
Getting Invited to the Guild
As I said earlier, my goal is to be up at the time the servers go live and get the guild created asap. One of the cool things about Elder Scrolls Online is the fact that you can friend people at an account level. The easiest way to get invited to the guild is to friend @Belghast, as the game uses a system similar to twitter. My goal is to get several people who can do invites in the interim and then deal with creating a formal “officer” structure later. Additionally I will be using the Alliance of Awesome Reddit thread to organize invites for the “new to Stalwart” crowd. For those who have access currently to our mumble server, I will be streaming the launch tomorrow in the “Bel is Streaming” channel. So that is a really quick way to get invited is just to pop into the channel and ask for one.
The only other real decision looming on the horizon is what campaign we want to choose for Cyrodil. There is a thread up on the Elder Scrolls website listing the various campaign names. At this point they are all named after the iconic weapons that you get in the Elder Scrolls series by doing quests for the various Daedra. As a result some of them are going to be far more popular than others. I would imagine that Wabbajack would fill up before any of the others, thanks to the fond memories of Sheogorath. Other names will appeal to the “sounds cool” crowd, and Auriel’s Bow will be full for the “I pick whatever the first name is in a list” crowd. Right now I am thinking either Volendrung or Dawnbreaker might be good options. Both are iconic weapons, but also not as iconic as say the Wabbajack. However this is something we can decide later.
Big Easy Summary
Where?
Daggerfall Covenant Faction
North American Mega Server
How?
When?
If you have any questions feel free to post them here, or over on the Reddit Thread, or via Twitter, or ask them the day of via Mumble. It is my goal to make this as clean and orderly a process as possible. There are always some issues with any game launch, but hopefully thanks to the copious amounts of stress testing we have done to this game… it will go nice and smooth.
Like this: Like Loading...The White House spokesperson said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on Trump brands.
Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images
President Trump declared it "Made in America" week — but White House spokesperson Sean Spicer struggled on Monday to answer whether Donald and Ivanka Trump's brands will stop making many of their products outside the United States. A reporter asked during the daily press briefing — which, again, was not allowed to be televised — if "as part of 'Made in America' week, the Trump Organization or Ivanka Trump's brands will make any kind of commitment to stop manufacturing gifts, clothes and other wares abroad." "I can tell you in some cases there are certain supply chains or scalability that might not be available," Spicer said. "I'm not going to comment on specific products, but I will tell you the over-arching goal is to grow the US manufacturing base and to grow US workers here."
Spicer says not appropriate for him to comment on Trump companies but certain supply chains and scalability not available in this country.
Asked about Ivanka Trump products again later in the briefing, Spicer replied, "I can tell you it depends on the product. Certain industries we don't do as much anymore in terms of scalability. Certain things we may not have capacity to do here in terms of a plant or a factory."
BuzzFeed News has reported on the factory in Honduras that produces Trump-branded clothing, and other outlets have found the line's shirts are made in China, Bangladesh, Honduras and Vietnam, sport coats in India, and eyeglasses in China. Trump Home products, including light fixtures and kitchen wares, are made in China, and Ivanka Trump’s apparel brand manufactures products in China and Singapore, CNBC has found. "We will protect our workers, promote our industry and be proud of our history because we will put America first," Trump said while delivering a speech on Monday, kicking off "Made in America" week. "America will be first again. We will make America great again. Remember that," the president said. "We will turn boarded-up communities into new outposts of American commerce," Trump later said. "And we will once again rediscover our heritage as a manufacturing nation. We used to be a manufacturing nation. Not so much anymore." Given the dissonance between the message touted on Monday and the reality of the Trump brands' producing goods abroad, Spicer was asked whether Trump was the correct "vessel" for supporting home-grown manufacturing. "I look at it in a very different way," Spicer said, arguing that Trump's experience in business leads him to better understand the tax and regulatory burden in America, and the disadvantages of tariffs and "arcane trade laws."
Spicer: "I look at this in a different way." Argues as businessman he understands what disadvantages tariffs and "arcane trade laws" cause.There are few cameras in the world as recognizable as Hasselblad's V-series. NASA even used one (the 500ELs) to take photographs on the moon. Their cube-shaped bodies have been around for more than half of a century and have been popular with pros to hipsters and everyone in between. Now, the final unit has rolled off the assembly line and the V-series is no more.
It has been clear for some time that the V-series wasn't the priority in the Hasselblad line-up. The 503CW was the final hold-over and, according to the press release, demand for it has dropped rather sharply in the past five years. Sad, but not-at-all surprising. The 503CW spent 17 years as part of the Hasselblad line-up, representing the V-line, which was in-action for more than 50 years.
The company will be concentrating on their H-series cameras, which are excellent, if inaccessible for most shooters, as well as their new Lunar camera, which was recently delayed.
Hasselblad has said they will continue to offer the camera until stock runs out, but then the first-hand market will be done. Luckily, if you still want one, the second-hand market is very robust. It will be interesting to see if prices of older models go up now that there are a finite number of these square-format cameras in the world.
Read the official press release hereWALNUT GROVE, Minn. - A small town Minnesota police chief has been "suspended without pay indefinitely" after being caught in a minor prostitution sting.
Redwood County prosecutors have charged 45-year-old Michael Robert Zeug with prostitution-attempting to hire a minor under 18. The charge is a felony and carries the possibility of a five-year prison sentence, $10,000 fine or both.
The criminal complaint filed against Zeug details how he was busted as part of a covert operation to target men in southwest Minnesota trying to hire minors for sex. Members of the task force posted an ad on Craigslist offering sexual services in exchange for cash and Zeug responded to the ad, thinking he was communicating with a 17-year-old girl. Instead, it was an undercover officer who arranged to have sex with Zeug at a home in Redwood Falls.
Prosecutors say during the conversation to set up the sexual encounter the undercover officer told Zeug that the reason for the Craigslist ad was "just like to make a little extra money here and there ya know? plus, I like to **** so why not!!" Correspondence reveals that Zeug responded, "yeah this isn’t my first time" and "humm yeah I’m wanting to meet up but man you need to reassure me your not working with the cops and crap."
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Electronic communication revealed that Zeug also sent the undercover officer several messages that were sexual in nature, and requested nude photos. He also asked that the 17-year-old flash her breasts at him as he drove by so he could make sure no cops were involved.
Zeug was arrested after driving several laps around the home where the two were supposed to meet. When taken into custody, he had a police radio on him. The defendant was previously listed on the Walnut Grove city website as police chief, but as of Monday afternoon that posting had been taken down.
Walnut Grove City Clerk Paula McGarvey tells KARE 11 that at a special meeting Monday night, the city council decided to suspend Zeug without pay indefinitely.A puff of smoke from an explosion inside a car can be seen in this still image sent to KATU from a viewer. Authorities say a man set off a small handheld device during a traffic stop, injuring himself and a Washington County Sheriff's Office detective. (Photo: Eli Fowler)
Police arrested a man Wednesday after there was a small explosion inside of his car during a traffic stop on NW Rock Creek Boulevard, the FBI said.
A Washington County Sheriff's Office detective was walking up to the vehicle when the explosion happened. Both the suspect and detective were taken to the hospital for an evaluation.
"As the detectives approached the window, they were actually communicating with him at the window of the vehicle when he did detonate the device," said Sgt. Bob Ray of the sheriff's office.
The detective was treated and released from a local hospital Wednesday, while the suspect suffered more serious non-life-threatening injuries.
"As far as the size and the intensity, it was a pretty significant blast, it did cause pretty significant injuries to him," Ray said.
There is no threat to public safety at this time, officials said.
Initial reports say FBI agents were serving a search warrant in an apartment on Rock Creek Circle as part of an explosives case when just before 4 p.m. the sheriff's detective spotted the suspect returning home.
Deputies and troopers tried to pull the suspect over. After a brief chase, the suspect stopped on Rock Creek Boulevard and "there appeared to be a small explosion inside the vehicle," bureau officials said.
According to the sheriff's office, the suspect detonated a small, handheld device.
"It could have been much much worse, it’s bad enough as it is. You have a couple people that are injured but fortunately it didn’t turn out worse than it did turn out," said Ray.
Watch video of the explosion below shot by KATU viewer Eli Fowler:
The suspect got out of the SUV and officers took him into custody on a probation violation. The FBI says he could face more charges, but at this time its investigation is part of a sealed federal search warrant.
The suspect has been identified as 26-year-old Jason Schaefer. A bench warrant was issued for his arrest Wednesday, after he violated probation for a possession of body armor charge from earlier this year.
After Schaefer receives treatment for his injuries, the sheriff's office said he will be taken to the Washington County Jail.
KATU viewer Eli Fowler lives in an apartment near the one being searched by FBI agents, and he caught the explosion on his phone's camera.
"Within seconds of me recording, that’s when the explosion took place," said Fowler.
Officers closed off Rock Creek Boulevard and part of 185th Avenue, as well as the nearby exits from Highway 26. They reopened the roads just before 10 p.m.
Residents who live nearby weren't allowed back into their homes for several hours before getting the "all-clear" from authorities; although, Fowler isn't feeling totally comfortable returning home.
"To be honest with you no, I’m not. I’m pretty sure most of the residents there are probably thinking about moving now," he said.UPDATE (Aug. 9):
The man arrested for dressing as "The Joker" while carrying a sword in Winchester earlier this year has been cleared of all criminal charges.
Jeremy Putman, 31, was arrested in March and charged with wearing a mask in public, which is a Class 6 felony in Virginia. He first faced court in April, had the trial continued, and then, on August 9, the charge was dismissed in WInchester General District Court.
According to local media, the charge against him was dropped for good behavior, after he did not go out dressed as the fictional Batman villain at any point in the months since the arrest.
Marc Abrams, the Winchester Commonwealth's Attorney, also argued that the Virginia law was too ambiguous for Putman to be prosecuted under it.
You can find the full text of that part of the Virginia Code, and more details from Putman's arrest, below.
_____
A man was arrested in Winchester on Friday for walking along roads dressed as "The Joker" while carrying a sword.
The Winchester Police Department says several calls came in around 2 p.m. on March 24 about a suspicious male dressed as the fictional Batman villain, who callers said was walking along Papermill Road and South Pleasant Valley Road while wearing a black cape and carrying a sword.
Officers with the department caught up with him in the 2600 block of South Pleasant Valley Road, where they took him into custody.
He was identified as Jeremy Putman, 31, and charged with wearing a mask in public. Police say they've received similar reports over the past week and believe Putman was the one responsible in those cases too.
The charge is a Class 6 Felony and is punishable with up to five years in jail.
He is being held at the Northwestern Regional Adult Detention Center under a $2,000 secured bond.
Officers want to take this chance to remind the community of the seriousness of this crime.
According to Virginia Code 18.2-422: “It shall be unlawful for any person over 16 years of age, with the intent to conceal his identity, wear any mask, hood, or other device, whereby a substantial portion of the face is hidden or covered, so as to conceal the identity of the wearer, to be or appear in any public place, or upon any private property in this Commonwealth, without first having obtained from the owner or tenant thereof consent to do so in writing. However, the provisions of this section shall not apply to persons (i) wearing traditional holiday costumes; (ii) engaged in professions, trades, employment, or other activities, and wearing protective masks which are deemed necessary for the physical safety of the wearer or other persons; (iii) engaged in any bona fide theatrical production or masquerade ball; or (iv) wearing a mask, hood, or other device for bona fide medical reasons upon (a) the advice of a licensed physician or osteopath, and carrying on his person an affidavit from the physician or osteopath specifying the medical necessity for wearing the device, and the date on which the wearing of the device will no longer be necessary, and providing a brief description of the device, or (b) the declaration of a disaster or state of emergency by the Governor in response to a public health emergency, where the emergency declaration expressly waives this section, defines the mask appropriate for the emergency, and provides for the duration of the waiver. The violation of any provisions of this section is a Class 6 felony.”They will say no.
They will say no and laugh at me for not having enough existing friends to get coffee with.
They will not answer, and I’ll be left waiting for their response for months, unable to focus on anything else because I’m totally distracted imagining how they’re going to say no.
They’ll say yes, but with a lack of enthusiasm just distinct enough that I’ll know they don’t really want to and are just too polite to decline, and then I’ll feel vaguely guilty the whole time we’re having coffee because it’ll be clear that they’d rather not be there.
They’ll say yes, but on the way to the coffee shop I’ll be abducted, and they won’t know so they’ll think I stood them up and be really angry at me, and also I’ll be abducted.
They’ll say yes, and we’ll have a perfectly nice time and bond over what it’s like being in our twenties and working in creative fields and struggling to find fulfillment on a day-to-day basis. It will slowly grow dark outside as we share and laugh late into the evening, and when we part we’ll agree that it was a truly lovely time and that we’ll definitely do dinner soon, and then we will never speak again.
They’ll say yes, and we’ll have a great time and become fast friends and then they’ll make me go to their wedding and it will be expensive.
They’ll wear something cooler than me to the coffee place.
I’ll forget my wallet at home and not realize that I’ve forgotten it until after I’ve already ordered some complicated six-dollar coffee drink and then they’ll have to pay for me and they’ll think I only invited them to con them into buying me a fancy beverage.
They’ll think I invited them to coffee because I have a crush on them.
I will develop a crush on them.
We will develop crushes on each other and then we’ll fall in love and have three kids, but we’ll both still want to work, so there won’t be enough parental attention to go around, and the house will grow full of tension, and years later one of the kids will murder one of the other kids and I’ll be overcome by grief and guilt and drown myself in the lake at our summer home.
Snakes.
They will pretend to become my friend in order to get close enough to me to discover my weaknesses and then sneakily use Sun Tzu-style manipulation to destroy me.
They’ll say yes, and I’ll look forward to our coffee date for weeks and then, on the planned day, I will be feeling tired and not be a good conversationalist and I will hurt their feelings by seeming uninterested in them.
They’ll want to talk about CrossFit.A significant investment programme is now being implemented to ensure that the stadium maintains the exceptionally high standards set when it opened. The most significant aspect of the work will see a rolling replacement programme for the stadium’s seats, which will commence soon.
The installation will be carried out in a number of phases, to fit around the busy itinerary of football matches and other major events. The first phase will see seats in the east stand replaced.
The remaining seats will be installed gradually, in order to minimse any disruption to the stadium operations.
Sunderland AFC’s CEO, Martin Bain said: “After almost 20 years, naturally some areas of the Stadium of Light are in need of a face-lift. It is a magnificent home for our football club and we want to ensure that it is a stadium our fans can continue to be proud of. The replacing of the seats will be the most visual aspect of the work we are undertaking and is something I am sure Sunderland fans will welcome”.
The stadium’s largest hospitality and function room, the Montgomery Suite - named after the much-loved 1973 goalkeeping hero – will also undergo a make-over, bringing a contemporary new look to the popular matchday hospitality venue.
Added to this, Sunderland’s squad will see a new-look tunnel as they take to the field against Middlesbrough in the opening home game of the season, with imposing life-sized graphics featuring first-team players and a nod to the mining heritage of the site, adorning the walls.
The Wear-Tees derby is David Moyes’ first game at the Stadium of Light since his appointment. The Black Cats welcome newly-promoted Middlesbrough on Sunday 21 August, in a 1.30pm kick off.
Tickets and matchday hospitality for the game are still available.
HOW TO BUY TICKETS
Online: www.safc.com (24-hour service)
Telephone: 0871 911 1973 (24-hour service)
In-person: Stadium of Light ticket office, opening hours as listed…
Monday-Friday, 9am – 5.30pm
Saturday, 10am – 1pm
Match day, 10am – kick-off
HOSPITALITY
A fantastic range of hospitality options are available for 2016-17, priced from just £55 per person, per game (in the popular Black Cats Bar). For more information on suites, executive boxes and availability, call 0871 911 1555 or email hospitality@safc.com.Nina Garcia is a familiar face: She’s been a judge on Project Runway for the show’s 16 seasons, she’s written four best-selling books on style, she’s a staple in our fashion week street style galleries, and of course, she was a driving force as fashion director of ELLE, and most recently, creative director of Marie Claire. Now, Garcia is taking on a new role that will again make her a fundamental part of the brand: editor-in-chief of ELLE.
"As an original disruptor, ELLE has always been a leading force in the fashion space," says Garcia, who was with the magazine for 13 years before joining Marie Claire in 2008. "It's a fearless brand that embraces change and new ideas. It's for independent, smart, and energetic women who love fashion and are hungry for discovery. I love that it embodies the qualities that are most relevant today: It’s democratic, innovative and inclusive."
Garcia succeeds Robbie Myers, who helmed the magazine for 17 years and helped position ELLE as an authority on fashion, culture, and politics. In her role as editor-in-chief, Garcia plans to build on the brand’s core identity as a leading voice in the industry. "When I was the fashion director of ELLE, I got to see the magazine be first-to-market in profound ways," says Garcia. "It was the first to have a fashion TV show, the first to make front-of-book fashion pages interesting, and the first to really focus on 'personal style.' It's always been a pioneering brand that sets new standards for the industry."
My vision is to resurface those elements of its DNA and to position it at the forefront of fashion, beauty, technology, and culture. I look forward to creating stories that are as thought-provoking as they are beautiful."
"At a time of great change in the industry, the brands rising to the top are the rule-breakers," she says. "It is not enough to merely chronicle the times we’re in; the pages of the magazine and the content on all of the brand’s extensions must be strong enough to play a part in creating the trends. Every story should be extraordinary, full of life, and take a stance."
"Nina is the ultimate ELLE woman—her life is incredibly full, she’s curious about everything and she's passionate about fashion, beauty, technology, art, travel, the environment, women's issues and the ways that they all intersect," says Joanna Coles, Hearst Magazines' Chief Content Officer. "She understands the multiplatform world and embraced it early on, becoming one of fashion’s first social media influencers with the largest following of any editor-in-chief. Nina is a force of personality, and she'll bring her energy, her unique sensibility and style to ELLE, a brand she knows so well."
Garcia’s first day at ELLE is September 18.Maybe you saw the headlines blasting the rich (again!) for failing to spend money in order to enable us to get out of this everlasting recession. It turns out that in boom times, the rich spent $145 per day. Now they are only spending $119. So, there we go: a new scapegoat! Those greedy rich people are failing to do their duty.
The press reports that the rich are not booking at the Four Seasons, not putting on the Ritz, and not filling their closets with furs and jewels from Saks. It gets worse. The women who shop for goodies by Dries van Noten and John Galliano told the New York Times that their husbands are telling them to cool it on designer bags, shoes, and dresses. Yet another reason for the recession: patriarchy!
But still, I’m not entirely sure I can follow this. In normal times, we are told that the rich are rich only at the expense of everyone else. One man’s wealth is another man’s poverty. It’s a fixed pie, and one reason for human suffering is precisely the tendency of the rich to spend their filthy lucre on fripperies. They engage in conspicuous consumption that does nothing but feed their egos even as the world’s poor suffer.
Suddenly, the line has changed. Now it is the moral obligation of the rich to cough up in order to help the rest of us. Especially now that government stimulus has proven to be ineffective, the rich should make it their patriotic obligation to spend, spend, spend! To be sure, the left-leaning commentariat is not willing to go so far as to favor tax cuts for the rich. For that would put us "in an Alice in Wonderland world," says Sam Pizzigati of the Institute for Policy Studies, in which we help the people we are supposed to hate.
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I’m just trying to come to terms with the intellectual model here. On the one hand, the rich are usually blamed for poverty simply because they have money while others do not. On the other hand, their failure to behave like rich people is also to blame for economic hard times. It’s like this swath of the population can’t do anything right.
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Now, under crude Keynesian thinking, one can sort of make sense of this. The idea is that a rich person buys a yacht and that provides jobs for yacht salesmen, boat makers, wood finishers, boat repairmen, paint makers, and everyone else involved in making and maintaining the yachting world. These people get money and in turn spend it on clothes, booze, movies, and other things along those lines. This is the circular flow of perpetual economic motion that keeps the world afloat; any saving then becomes a "paradox" because it delays recovery.
The trouble is that spending is not the cause of economic growth. Investment, which begins in saving, is the root of economic growth. It doesn’t matter that consumption makes up a certain percentage of economic activity. That’s only the surface you are looking at. Spending and consumption without saving and investment is a prescription for devouring the prospects for prosperity down the line. In this case, the best thing that the rich can do for a future of economic growth is not to spend but to save toward investment.
The circular-flow model that sees spending as the fuel of economic activity fails to account for saving and investment, which come about only through deferred consumption. The view that economies grow through consumption leaves out the real drama behind the scenes. As Robert Murphy explains, "The finished goods you buy at the store are made of components that passed through probably thousands of different hands, in dozens of countries, before all coming together into the item you throw in your grocery cart."
Speaking of Liberty Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. Best Price: $1.80 Buy New $2.40 (as of 04:50 EST - Details)
The core problem with the economic boom is precisely that it led to wealth-consuming activities that secretly ate away the core productivity of the economic structure. What needs to happen is a retrenchment, a new pattern of saving and deferred consumption.
And why would people save? In order to spend later, once the foundations of future prosperity are rebuilt. But this takes time (another feature of reality left out of circular flow). The best approach the government can take is to back off, let people keep what they earn, and permit the economy to rebuild on its own.
In other words, tax cuts for the rich would in fact help get us out of recession. But there is no reason to limit these cuts to the rich. There should be tax cuts for everyone. And that has to go along with massive cuts in government spending too, so that we stop running debts that have to be paid later with inflated dollars.
In other words, stimulus and browbeating the rich to spend more are going to have exactly the opposite effect. They will delay recovery. In fact, the current political environment is following the script of the Great Depression in delaying prosperity year after year through terrible political ideas and policies.
The rich can indeed help us all, not by spending but by being thrifty and even miserly for as long as necessary to fix what the government has broken.
The Best of Lew Rockwell
The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.The United States’ exit from its costly 10-year war in Afghanistan has begun. This is a welcome step, but will it be peace with honour? That’s far from certain with so much remaining unclear with the longer-term outlook.
Two recent developments have certainly changed the picture for the better, if not yet as radically as some would like. First, it has been announced in both Washington and Kabul that talks with the Taliban leadership, or at least contacts of some sort, are underway. German mediators are thought to be playing a role. Secondly, US President Barack Obama has announced a fairly bold timetable for US force withdrawals, defying some of his hard-line military advisers who had argued for a more cautious drawdown.
Of the almost 100,000 US soldiers in Afghanistan today, 10,000 are to return home this summer, another 23,000 by September 2012 (in time to have an impact on November’s presidential election) and many of the remaining 67,000 by the end of 2014, when Afghan forces are due to assume responsibility for their country’s security.
The fly in the ointment is that there’s talk of some 20,000 US soldiers remaining in Afghanistan stationed at permanent US bases. No doubt the intention is that they will continue to play a counter-terrorism role in both Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan. But this could prove seriously counter-productive, as it will arouse bitter opposition in both Iran and Pakistan (and no doubt in Afghanistan as well).
But that is to look too far ahead. The current message from Washington is that US disengagement from the Af-Pak theatre of war has begun. Driving the withdrawal is the United States’ patent war weariness. US politicians of both parties have grasped that the American public is fed up with what has come to seem an unwinnable conflict, and it wants out. A deficit-ridden United States, wrestling with high unemployment and a crumbling infrastructure, can no longer afford the exorbitant cost of the Afghan war. The bill for the last decade has topped $450 billion, with $120 billion spent last year alone. Expenditure on the war is currently running at $2 billion a week.
Obama is well aware that this must stop. But his policies are still plagued by contradictions and plain muddle. The dominant view in Washington is that the Taliban must first be weakened, if not actually defeated, before serious negotiations can succeed. This was the argument behind the ‘surge’ in US troop numbers, which Obama agreed to last year. But the Taliban have proved resilient. They may have fallen back here and there in the face of overwhelming US pressure, but their hit-and-run attacks and suicide bombings are more frequent and lethal than ever. They have also pushed their tentacles into northern provinces well beyond their Pashtun heartland. Killing their leaders by missile strikes may raise a cheer, but it has resulted in more radical commanders taking over, younger men even less inclined to negotiate than their elders. In a word, the policy of ‘kill them first and negotiate afterwards’ has been a failure.Whaling in Norway involves subsidized hunting of minke whales for use as animal and human food in Norway and for export to Japan. Whale hunting has been a part of Norwegian coastal culture for centuries, and commercial operations targeting the minke whale have occurred since the early 20th century.[1] Some still continue the practice in the modern day.[2]
History [ edit ]
Norwegians caught whales off the coast of Tromsø as early as the 9th or 10th century. Vikings from Norway also introduced whaling methods for driving small cetaceans, like pilot whales, into fjords in Iceland. The Norse sagas, and other ancient documents, provide few details on Norwegian whaling. The sagas recount some disputes between families over whale carcasses but do not describe any organized whale fishery in Norway.[3]
Spear-drift whaling was practiced in the North Atlantic as early as the 12th century. In open boats, hunters would strike a whale, using a marked spear, with the intent of later locating the beached carcass to claim a rightful share.[4]
Svalbard [ edit ]
From the early 17th century through the 18th century, Basque whalers hunted as far north as Svalbard and Bear Island, to include participation in Dutch and English whaling expeditions there. Competition between nations led to over-exploitation of whale stocks (and armed naval conflict in 1613, 1618, 1626, 1634, and 1638). By the middle of the 17th century other European nations also hunted whale in these lucrative waters.[5]
The whales were primarily hunted to render oil from the blubber for production of soap, paint, varnish, and more—including oil for illumination. The baleen, or whalebone, was also used in products like corsets and umbrellas. On arrival at Spitsbergen, the whalers would set anchor, then construct a shore station with materials from the ship. The whales were spotted from shore, then chased and lanced repeatedly from the bow of a shallop. The whale carcass was next towed back to the shore station where the blubber was removed and boiled down. Finally, the whale oil was stored in wooden casks which were loaded onto the anchored ship.[5]
The Dutch used Jan Mayen Island as a base for whaling having also established a semi-permanent shore station in the early seventeenth century on Amsterdam Island, Svalbard, which became the village of Smeerenburg. Norwegian ships were also sent to Svalbard during the 18th century.[6]
Modern whaling [ edit ]
Svend Foyn (1809–1894)
New techniques and technologies, developed in the mid 19th century, revolutionized the whaling industry and Norway's prominence as a whaling nation.
In 1865, Americans, Thomas Welcome Roys and C. A. Lilliendahl, tested their experimental rocket harpoon design and set up a shore station in Seyðisfjörður, Iceland. A slump in oil prices after the American Civil War forced their endeavor into bankruptcy in 1867.[7] A Norwegian, Svend Foyn, also studied the American method in Iceland.[8]
Svend Foyn, was born in Tønsberg in 1809. His father was lost at sea when he was only four. Raised by his mother, Foyn later came to be considered the 'Father of modern whaling'.[7] His own harpoon design proved to be much more effective than the American experiment.
There were many others whose ideas predated Foyn's method. In 1867, a Danish fireworks manufacturer, Gaetano Amici, patented a cannon fired harpoon. An Englishman, George Welch, patented a grenade harpoon, also in 1867, very similar to Foyn's invention. In 1856, Phillip Rechten, of Bremen, Germany, together with the gunsmith Cordes, produced a double-barreled whale gun (and later claimed credit for Foyn's success) with a separate harpoon and bomb-lance. Another Norwegian, Jacob Nicolai Walsøe experimented with an explosive tipped projectile design. A third Norwegian, Arent Christian Dahl, also experimented with explosive harpoons from 1857-1860.[8]
In 1863, Foyn contracted the building of his first whaling ship—a steam powered ship (also with sails) that had seven whaling cannons—the Spes et Fides (Hope and Faith). The ship was also fitted with check boards to increase the drag on harpooned whales. He also incorporated a 'compensator' or 'accumulator' from the Roys system—a series of rollers and springs installed below deck—to help the thick whale line, attached to the harpoon, to take up some of the shock without breaking.[7]
Svend Foyn, after years of experiments and expeditions, patented the modern whaling harpoon in 1870, and his basic design is still in use today. He perceived the failings of other methods and solved these problems in his own system. He included, with the help of H.M.T. Esmark, a grenade tip that exploded inside the whale. This harpoon design also utilized a shaft that was connected to the head with a moveable joint. His original cannons were muzzle-loaded with special padding and also used a unique form of gunpowder. The cannons were later replaced with safer breech-loading types.[7][8]
"God had let the whale inhabit [these waters] for the benefit and blessing of mankind, and consequently I considered it my vocation to promote these fisheries."[7]
Svend Foyn
In 1864, Foyn took his |
DeLoach and Williams grew up just 30 minutes down the road from each other.
“Me and Paul, we’ve known each other our whole lives,’’ DeLoach said. “I’m from Augusta, Ga., and he was right across in Aiken. We knew each other when I was coming up as an amateur. He came to my last pro fight that was in San Antonio. When I saw him, I got so excited. We started to talk and I said something like, ‘Hey, Paul, wouldn’t it be cool if we got together?’
“Once I came home, we started working together and he’s been training me since. I think we’re going on about three months now. It’s an unbelievable feeling to be able to work with one of my favorite fighters.”
In his last outing, DeLoach won a shutout four-round decision over Santos Benavides last Dec. 12. DeLoach, a pro since March 2013, fought six times that year and four times each in 2014 and 2015.
“I’m really looking forward to fighting for the first time for him,” DeLoach said. “I’ve gone crazy waiting for my break and an opportunity like this to fight on SHOWTIME. I know it’s not easy fighting in your opponent’s backyard, but with Paul, George Peterson and me and my skills, we are confident it will be a good fight.’’
Cook, 25, is from Seneca, Mo., which is located about 20 minutes from Buffalo Run Casino where he has fought six times. A top amateur, he won six Golden Gloves titles, a Junior Golden Gloves National title, a Heartland title and four regional Silver Gloves titles. He is popular at Buffalo Run and will be making his premium network television debut against easily his most dangerous assignment as a pro. Cook’s brother, Jesse, a welterweight with a record of 15-1-1, will box on the non-televised portion of the event.
Dillon Cook turned pro in August 2012, fought twice that year, seven times in 2013, four times in 2014 and three times last year. Five of his last seven took place at Buffalo Run, including two out of three in 2015. He’s coming off a lopsided eight-round decision over Rahman Yusubov last Nov. 14.
“I couldn't be more excited about making my ShoBox debut, right at home, at the Buffalo Run Casino,” Cook said. “This is a huge opportunity for me, and I plan on putting on a spectacular showing, for all my fans there that night and everyone watching on TV.”
In the ShoBox main event, unbeaten super lightweight knockout artist and emerging rising star, Regis “Rougarou” Prograis (16-0, 13 KOs), Houston by way of New Orleans, will meet experienced Aaron “The Jewel” Herrera (29-4-1, 18 KOs), of Valladolid, Mexico, in a 10-round match.
Four undefeated fighters will clash in the two other eight-rounders on the telecast: Hard-hitting Ivan “The Beast” Baranchyk (9-0, 8 KOs), of Brooklyn, N.Y., faces Nicholas “King Beamen” Givhan (16-0-1, 10 KOs), of Kalamazoo, Mich., in a super lightweight scrap and Ukrainian Ivan “The Volk” Golub (10-0, 8 KOs, 5-0 in World Series of Boxing), of Brooklyn, N.Y., meets Marlon Aguas (9-0, 6 KOs), of Quito, Ecuador, in a welterweight match.
Tickets for the event promoted by DiBella Entertainment and Tony Holden Productions are priced at $45, $55 and $75 and are available for purchase at buffalorun.com and at stubwire.com.
Barry Tompkins will call the ShoBox action from ringside with Steve Farhood and former world champion Raul Marquez serving as expert analysts. The executive producer is Gordon Hall with Rich Gaughan producing and Rick Phillips directing.Never though you would already release this feature after last week's outrage. Well, nice job. The new style shoutboxes can now be used as intended and to the fullest.
All I want to see being added is the 'new follower' notifications, which is already planned, according to one mod's reply above. With this added I'll be 100% fine with the notification system.
Sidenote: Honestly I'm a little sceptic about the future upvoting notifications to come. First of all the'most recent' shouts view works best and I would like to see a possibility to set this as a default for all shouts (*hint-hint* = not having to switch the setting at every artist shoutbox).
Even though I see the point the logical introduction of upvoting notifications, this may lead to an overload of information, especially from very popular artists' shoutboxes. Anyway the future will tell, and I can't stop you from introducing it.As Alice's Adventures in Wonderland reaches 150, Francine Abeles surveys its creator's wide-ranging legacy.
Charles L. Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, in a self-portrait from the 1880s. Image: SSPL/Getty
In 1855, Charles L. Dodgson became the mathematical lecturer at Christ Church College in the University of Oxford, UK. His job was to prepare Christ Church men (for it was all men) to pass examinations in mathematics. Dodgson (1832–98) would go on to publish Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) under the pen name Lewis Carroll, but he also produced many pamphlets and ten books on mathematical topics.
In some of these, he exhibited unusual methods — for rapid arithmetic, for example. Others featured innovative ideas that foreshadowed developments in the twentieth century, for instance in voting theory. All but two of these books were published by Macmillan (until this year, the parent company of this journal's publisher). Macmillan co-founder Alexander Macmillan was Dodgson's trusted publisher and friend for 35 years (see go.nature.com/9q8oqe).
What unifies Carroll's oeuvre is the wit and colour apparent in the manifestations of his wide-ranging mathematical interests, particularly in geometry and logic. The Alice books contain many supreme examples. The “Mad Tea-Party”, for instance, has the Hare, Hatter, Dormouse and Alice circling around static place settings like numbers on a circle, as in a modular system, rather than in a line. Carroll developed the earliest modern use of today's 'logic trees', a graphical technique for determining the validity of complex arguments that he called the'method of trees'. This was a step towards automated approaches to solving multiple connected problems of logic. True to form, the puzzles that Carroll solves with his trees are given quirky names — “The Problem of Grocers on Bicycles”, “The Pigs and Balloons Problem”.
Alice's circular conversation with the Caterpillar is a gem of semantic wordplay. Image: Illustration by John Tenniel from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Macmillan, 1995)
The ten sections of Carroll's book of droll mathematical stories, A Tangled Tale, first appeared between 1880 and 1885 as a serial in the popular magazine The Monthly Packet. Carroll dubbed each part a 'knot' to signify the difficulty of the one, two or three problems it featured. In the following issue of the magazine, he would summarize the puzzle, solve it and comment on the solutions he had received from readers, often amusingly presented (see http://www.onlinemathlearning.com/tangled-tale.html). A Tangled Tale became a favourite of Josiah Willard Gibbs (1839–1903), the applied mathematician and physical chemist praised by Albert Einstein as “the greatest mind in American history”.
Carroll believed that beyond their entertainment value, mental recreations such as games and logic puzzles conferred a sense of power on the solver. This, he felt, enabled them to analyse any subject clearly and, most important, to detect and unravel fallacies. In this vein, Carroll puns about other knots in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. In Chapter 3, for instance, the Mouse responds to Alice's comments that he had got to the fifth bend in his tale (which appears on the page as a serpentine, tail-shaped paragraph) by crying, “I had not!” Carroll's ever-curious adventurer misunderstands amusingly: “'A knot!' said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. 'Oh, do let me help to undo it!'”
Carroll was, of course, a devotee of wordplay, as almost any page of Alice's Adventures and A Tangled Tale reveals. A fan of acrostics, Carroll dedicated the latter — published in book form in 1885 — to his friend and pupil, the 19-year-old Edith Rix, in the form of a poem that spells her name out in the second letter of each line:
Beloved Pupil! Tamed by Thee, Addish=, Subtrac=, Multiplica=tion, Division, Fractions, Rule of Three, Attest thy deft manipulation! Then onward! Let the voice of fame From Age to Age repeat thy story, Till thy hast won thyself a name Exceeding even Euclid's glory!
A love of puzzles is clear in the call to behead the bodyless Cheshire Cat: what, exactly, would you behead? Image: Illustration by John Tenniel from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Macmillan, 1995)
In the last decades of his life, Carroll published three mathematical pieces in Nature. The first, on a method for finding the day of the week for any date (L. Carroll Nature 35, 517; 1887), reflects the calendar problems of the time: to obtain information on future days and dates, you had to consult an almanac. Carroll found mental calculation methods gripping. Introducing the piece, he wrote, “I am not a rapid computer myself”, yet noted that he could do ten such problems in less than four minutes. His rule uses four integer calculations: two for the year, the third for the month and the last for the day.
Carroll's publisher, Alexander Macmillan. Image: Chronicle/Alamy
In an era before calculators, standard arithmetic processes were onerous and prone to error. Carroll (writing this time under his real name) summarized his work on simplifying ordinary arithmetical calculations in his second piece in Nature, 'Brief Method of Dividing a Given Number by 9 or 11' (C. L. Dodgson Nature 56, 565–566; 1897) which also included division by 13, 17, 19 and 41, as well as by numbers within 10 from a power of 10, either way. The third piece, 'Abridged Long Division' (C. L. Dodgson Nature 57, 269–271; 1898), by his own admission, uses ideas put forth by others that he improved on, particularly an accuracy test. However, this paper has implications for modern computing in its emphasis on minimizing the number of steps in an algorithm.
Carroll did not influence his contemporary colleagues in the development of mathematical ideas. However, posthumously, beginning in the last half of the twentieth century, his contributions to voting theory were uncovered in three papers written between 1874 and 1876. The third, 'A Method of Taking Votes on More Than Two Issues', is the most important. Carroll was the first to create a voting method that would achieve biproportional representation — that is, proportionality with respect both to the population in the districts and to the apportionment of seats to the political parties in the legislature. Despite Carroll's friendship with Lord Salisbury, the UK prime minister at the time, it was not applied for political reasons. (Today, the European Parliament uses a form of proportional representation.)
“Carroll created a vivid tapestry of work, presaging in many ways developments in the twentieth century and beyond.”
Carroll's work in logic, notably the unpublished second part of his book Symbolic Logic, foreshadowed results that appeared about 100 years later. This long-lost section, which contains the method of trees, was described by philosopher W. W. Bartley (Sci. Am. 227, 38–46; 1972). Carroll's book on linear algebra (An Elementary Treatise on Determinants with Their Application to Simultaneous Linear Equations and Algebraic Geometry, 1867) is also groundbreaking. His 'condensation' method for computing determinants sparked research that led to a formulation of the alternating sign matrix conjecture by David Robbins and Howard Rumsey in the 1980s. And his 1895 'What the Tortoise Said to Achilles', a logic problem he published in the philosophical journal Mind, remains unsolved. In 1858, he was the first to create a cypher in matrix form based on a non-standard (modular) arithmetic; it was published more than 100 years later.
As a mathematician, logician, writer and innovative photographer, Carroll created a vivid tapestry of work, knotted, twisted and multistranded, and presaging in many ways developments in the twentieth century and beyond. Yet for all the complexity and playfulness of this master gamester's body of work — from voting theory to his great creation, Alice, on her long, strange journeys towards identity and maturity — his underlying concerns were fairness, certainty and truth.
Author information Affiliations Francine F. Abeles is professor emerita of mathematics and computer science at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. Francine F. Abeles Authors Search for Francine F. Abeles in: Nature Research journals •
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About this article Publication history Published 18 November 2015 DOI https://doi.org/10.1038/527302aYemeni leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, under opposition pressure to stand down, said on Wednesday he will freeze constitutional changes that would have seen him become president for life.
On the eve of a “day of rage” called by civil society and opposition leaders, Saleh told parliament he had also put off controversial plans for elections in April, and appealed for an end to street protests.
“I will not extend my mandate and I am against hereditary rule,” said Saleh, who has been head of state of the Arab world’s poorest nation for decades but whose term is due to end in 2013.
In his address to parliament, which was boycotted by the opposition, Saleh announced the “freezing of constitutional amendments” and the postponement of elections scheduled for April.
Yemen, at the strategic southern tip of the Arabian peninsula, is wracked with conflict — including a separatist movement in the once-independent south, a Shiite rebellion in the north, and a growing presence of Al-Qaeda guerrillas.
Saleh’s pledge came a day after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, 82, facing unprecedented mass protests to stand down immediately after 30 years in power, declared that he would not seek another term in office.
Tensions soared in Yemen after parliament, dominated by the president’s General People’s Congress, endorsed a draft constitutional amendment that, if approved, would have enabled Saleh to stay in office for life.
Saleh’s critics also suspect him of grooming his eldest son Ahmed Saleh, who commands the Republican Guard, an elite unit of the Yemeni army, to succeed him.
Until last weekend, demonstrations had taken place on a nearly daily basis in the capital Sanaa, calling for an end to Saleh’s rule, and protest leaders have called for Thursday to be a “day of rage” all over the country.
Unimpressed by Saleh’s remarks, they said mass protests would go ahead.
“Thursday’s demonstration will continue as scheduled,” said Mohammed Kahtan of the Islamist Al-Islah (Reform) party, while Mohammed al-Sabri of the Common Forum opposition alliance said Saleh’s call to halt protests was “unacceptable”.
Poverty is widespread in Yemen, with 45 percent of its 21.1 million people living on less than $2 (1.45 euros) a day, says the UN Development Programme on its website.
In geopolitical terms, Yemen’s fate is important, given its position at the southern end of the Red Sea, across from the Horn of Africa — a critical and busy passageway for shipping between Asia and the West.
Facing growing protests among Yemenis since last month’s downfall of Tunisia’s president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and the ongoing mass protests in Egypt, Saleh, who has already taken measures to try to soothe popular discontent, urged the government to provide Yemen’s unemployed youths with jobs.
On Monday, after increasing wages and reducing incomes taxes, he ordered the creation of a fund to employ university graduates and to extend social security coverage.
Emulating the self-immolation in Tunisia that touched off the popular revolt there, four people have set themselves on fire in Yemen, most recently in the port city of Aden a week ago.
Saleh, re-elected to a seven-year mandate in September 2006, also renewed calls onto the opposition parties to resume dialogue aimed at forging a unity government.
The mandate of the current parliament was extended by two years to April under a February 2009 agreement between the General People’s Congress and opposition parties to allow dialogue on political reform.
But reform talks have stalled since a decision to hold legislative elections on April 27, without waiting for the dialogue process to run its course, and a special committee set up to oversee reform has met only once.
Reforms on the table included a shift from a presidential regime to proportional representation in parliament and further decentralisation of government — both measures that have not been implemented.
This video is from the Associated Press, published Feb. 2, 2011.
With AFP.The “Conservative century” would seem to have lasted less than a decade. Monday’s provincial election in Newfoundland brings to precisely zero the number of nominally Conservative governments in the country, following earlier defeats in Alberta, Prince Edward Island, Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Manitoba and of course the federal Conservatives’ dismal showing in October.
Manitoba’s Conservatives may break the string in next year’s vote, if they can finally shed their habit of handing victory to the NDP, but elsewhere Conservatives, and conservatives, seem destined to spend some considerable time in the wilderness. Conservative parties in Atlantic Canada control barely a quarter of the seats in the region’s legislatures. Alberta’s Wildrose party did well to come back from the dead in this spring’s election, but will have to wait four years for a shot at power.
It isn’t just that there are no Conservative governments anywhere in the country, for the first time since 1943. There aren’t even any conservative ones. British Columbia’s Liberals and Saskatchewan’s Saskatchewan Party are sometimes identified as such, but they are more defined as not-NDP than anything else.
There is nothing resembling a conservative party in Quebec — the closest thing to it, the Coalition Avenir Québec, holds just 22 of the province’s 125 seats — nor it seems in Ontario, where new leader Patrick Brown presents himself as an almost perfectly blank slate.
It would be too much to blame all this on Stephen Harper. However toxic the Conservative brand may have become federally, provincial politics has its own rhythms and concerns. Still, if the proposition, heard until quite lately, was that Harper had brought about a fundamental realignment in Canadian politics, that he had not only made the Conservatives contenders for power but discernibly moved Canadian public opinion in a conservative direction, there is scant evidence of it.
The tragedy, from a conservative perspective, is that it has been the left that has taken up the space vacated by the right
Quite the contrary. Only four previous governments in our history have gone down to worse defeats, measured either by the percentage loss in seats or popular vote. And while those previous defeats can be explained either by terrible economic conditions (1935, 1984, 1993) or profound social divisions (1921, the first election after the First World War and the conscription crisis), the Conservatives’ present plight seems wholly self-inflicted.
Electoral defeat, moreover, is only the half of it. Conservatism is not just losing elections. As a political movement, it has — let us not mince words — ceased to offer a coherent or attractive alternative. On the most pressing questions of the day, from the environment to social justice, it is either unwilling or unable to present any serious answer to the prescriptions of the left, or even to offer much resistance.
At best it can hope to profit from the left’s miscues, but even in power it lacks the self-confidence to define an agenda, let alone pursue one. The nastiness of the Harper government may have been peculiar to it, but in its aimlessness and timidity, its unwillingness to invest political capital or confess to an ideology, it has its counterparts in conservative parties across the country — in sharp contrast to the robust self-confidence of the left.
The most striking example of this — and the most glaring missed opportunity — is on the environment, and global warming in particular. Conservatives could have, if they chose, dismissed the scientific consensus as alarmist, which would have been nervy but at least an argument. Or they could have accepted the science, and proposed their own, distinctly conservative solutions. In the event they did neither, publicly accepting the science but offering in response a melange of the most costly, regulatory-heavy policies this side of Charles de Gaulle.
The tragedy of this, from a conservative perspective, is that it has been the left that has taken up the space vacated by the right. A generation of environmentalists has grown up fully versed in the potential for market solutions to be applied to environmental problems; markets, they realize, are social institutions, like governments, each with its own proper sphere. Conservatives could have seized this opening, and run with it. If you like what the market can do for you in the environment, they could have said to voters, can we interest you in what it can do for your schools and health care?
Or, having lost the market-based initiative to the left, they could at least have criticized them for the inconsistencies of their approach. They could have insisted, for example, that any revenues from a carbon tax be used to cut other taxes. They could have protested that a carbon tax was the necessary and sufficient solution, that it should be used as a replacement for existing approaches, not a supplement. What, instead, do we hear from the right? “It’s a tax on everything.” They have, almost literally, nothing to say.
As indeed they do on too many other issues. It would be nice to see a principled conservative opposition to Liberal neo-Keynesianism, but having earlier embraced it themselves they can scarcely be credible. Conservatives might equally attack the Liberals for their propensity to subsidize corporations in pursuit of grandiose industrial strategies, but again that ship left long ago. They could insist on the need for sharp cuts in marginal tax rates as a spur to capital investment, or call for broader tax reform, had they done anything about either in their time in office.
Privatization. Deregulation. Opening up Canada’s cosseted telecoms, transportation and financial sectors to foreign competition, to say nothing of the farm price cartels. It has been a long time since Conservatives had anything to say about any of these. That the right needs to rebuild is self-evident. But it needs an intellectual rebirth first. It has, shall we say, the luxury of time before it next contends for power. It should use that time to figure out what to do with it.
National PostWeekly Journal - Travelling Fast
Hey everyone,
Nothing major to announce this week except that the team is working hard towards the next update. We also had a call with [REDACTED] for the soundtrack for We Happy Few and we couldn’t be more excited! Any guesses?
Art Team
Marc-André
This week, I have been doing a bunch of fixes here and there. Visual gameplay issues, material tweaks, etc.
I am in the process of improving the first two garden district islands, adding variation to the building shapes and materials. The goal is to make them feel less repetitive and uniform.
I have also started to tweak the buildings that will later appear in a new biome - the often rumoured Parade District! I added decorators to them and fixed the most glaring material issues.
Near the end of the week, I did a sign integration pass for the two underground construction levels. I also fixed footstep sound issues for the majority of the next update's encounters.
Carylitz
This week was all about fixing things, so the first task was to add some Joy booths in some parks and art them up. I also created the material for the buttons of the Jubilator, and made some bug fixing in the bridges, again. After all that I had some time to start on my first location! But this I will show next week (:
Narrative Team
Alex
Every now and then we tear ourselves away from the day-to-day of building encounters to tear down and rebuild one of the playthroughs. These past few weeks, it’s been Miss Thigh Highs.
I think it’s fair to say our cutscenes are fairly complex and cinematic for video game cutscenes. I don’t know how much carnage other teams have, but I suspect most dev teams don’t iterate as much on the cutscenes as they do on gameplay. We’re iterating on both.
So I’m rewriting almost every single script in the playthrough.
Naturally this means a flock of new recording sessions coming up. We also felt that one of our character voices wasn’t as charismatic or as menacing as we wanted. So I proposed recasting. That meant looking at about 200 submissions from Britain, listening to 70 demos, sending 15 actors an audition text to record, doing a directed callback with seven actors, all in order to pick the guy we thought was the best.
I’m pretty sure most dev teams don’t recast. It’s expensive. But why not take advantage of the iterative nature of videogame development in the story as well as the gameplay? If someone’s not bringing it, why leave the results in the game?
Every game teaches you how to make that game. If we ever have to make exactly this game again, it will be super easy.
As soon as I’ve re-recorded and re-cut all these scenes, it will be up to the animators to block (and in some cases re-block) the scenes. It’s a lot of extra work, but I hope you’ll be pleased with the results.
Design Team
Hayden
Hello folks,
This week my focus was on realization for two of our encounters (and a third to follow next week!); though most of the work fell onto our animators, artists and programmers—who have done such an awesome job at complementing our design vision.
To explain it a little better; let’s assume we already have the idea for the encounter squared away, the narrative is in place and the level is built, all the basics are there (I won’t speak for everyone, as a lot of folks here can nail their shit down on the first attempt; for me, it’s a totally iterative process—sweet, sweet layers of “cool, that works!” and fixed mistakes).
During this realization phase, we lean on the animators and artists to help bring in the bells and whistles, the sparkly bits and bedazzle beads that help create a cohesive vision.
In this case, I’m fortunate to be working with these guys; as they not only have these amazing artistic chops, but they also bring a lot of technical mumbo-jumbo to the table—totally helpful. Let’s put it this way, there is no doubt in the world, the combined ability of this outfit can construct anything your video game brains can think of – it’s just a matter of time.
With that said… A lot of my week was talking with artists and animators, prepping and repairing script for placement of matinees and conversations, fixing bugs here and there, reworking previous ideas that fell short, and to put it simply, keeping my head above water and completing these levels—as a friend of mine from Beijing once said when asked how his day was going, “Work is many!”. It’s true, work on this project is many… But so fucking worth it.
Adam
Long week. But a good one: I started on the final character's playthrough!
Eric
Ditto’ Adam’s long week comment. Getting near finished on the underground level I am working on, and making a pretty crazy playable sequence that I’m sure we’ll show something from it soon. Making it work has been easy, making it work and look perfect has been a strange challenge. It should be pretty wicked when it’s done though. I’m pretty happy with it so far. Next week should start back on some fixes for some of the old encounters to sneak in a few more fixes for the next update.
Programming Team
Michael
I have started working on a new gameplay system, Fast Travel.
Now that our procedural worlds are getting so big it makes sense to give the players a way to cut down the amount of playtime they spend traversing across the islands when they are heading somewhere specific. The fast travel in the game will make sense within the world, and will even explain more about the functioning of Wellington Wells.
To start I have built on top of the current respawn code, which already moves the player to certain points in the world. I have also added a little interface on top of the map menu which lists out the locations that the player can currently travel to.
It won't be possible to just open a menu and move anywhere in the world; Fast travel will be possible only between a discrete locations that the designers have placed in the world.
It’s early stages, but it should be very cool and add a lot when it’s finished.
Thanks for tuning in!
Compulsion Team
Discuss this post hereNORTH BERWICK — Estimates of the transgender population of the U.S. are incomplete and limited, but researchers put the figure at about 0.3 percent.
Many Americans – and many Mainers, for that matter – do not know anyone who is transgender (or think that they don’t); have never met or spoken with someone who is transgender (or don’t think that they have), and still don’t really understand what it means to be “trans.”
about the author Mark Eves, D-North Berwick, is speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.
The phrase “gender identity” sounds alien to many, often ridiculed as another attempt at political correctness by individuals who have never felt the imprisonment of the seemingly innocuous gender box since birth.
Yet 41 percent of transgender people attempt suicide, choosing to leave this world rather than face another day in its hatred.
Calls for unisex bathrooms and anti-discrimination laws have reached a resounding pitch in an effort to combat screams about public safety that cover thinly veiled hatred. Unfortunately, many well-meaning Mainers have been caught in the middle.
Like many Mainers, I support the full and unequivocal rights of the transgender population; however, this piece is not meant to be a litany of all of the reasons I support those rights.
I want to talk to the Mainers whose voices haven’t been heard in this debate: the hardworking Mainers who aren’t engaged in the trench warfare and heated rhetoric surrounding this issue.
Despite a mostly shared determination to eliminate discrimination, across our communities there remains a silent discomfort that shadows this debate in new ways – a discomfort many Mainers have struggled to name as we’ve watched the news and worried about the supposed threat to our children.
And while we don’t talk about it, beneath that quiet internal discomfort grows a truth that affects the futures of us all.
In what is becoming a hallmark of American history, in our fear, in our ignorance and in the empty place of an answer strong enough to defend against hate, we have once again turned our backs on each other.
Good people shy away from defending transgender rights, avoid the hard questions at the dinner table and turn off the news so we can ignore the pit in our stomach that says we should be braver, that we should have said something.
And we walk away instead of standing up, even as transgender youths beg for equal rights, for the peace we take for granted. We walk away because we don’t understand them; we walk away because we are afraid.
When did we decide that the safety of one Mainer meant more than another’s? That as long as we claimed it was in defense of our families, we could terrorize someone else’s?
And elected officials right here in Maine, including our governor, have pushed for discrimination against transgender youth in punishment for the sin of existing. If these elected officials have their way, our children and neighbors could face legalized discrimination every time they step beyond the safety of their front doors.
Over 75 percent of transgender youths feel unsafe at school, compromising their self-esteem, threatening their ability to learn along with their classmates and making it less likely that they’ll graduate and go on to receive the higher education or job training they need to succeed.
Later on in life, these transgender youth will face diminished prospects and be sent home from their jobs and remain unemployed at twice the rate of the general population, punished for something they cannot control no matter how hard they work.
We must be better, and we must do better. For the female student who enters a bathroom at her school, terrified of being beaten because she was born a boy. For your son who watches as you, embarrassed and at a loss for words, let a neighbor demean and threaten that person he saw in a restaurant, that person who he thought was transgender. For all of our transgender brothers and sisters.
Dr. Martin Luther King once said, “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral. Returning violence with violence only multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”
Fellow Mainers, we have to stop deepening the darkness. Inaction and silence do not absolve us of the responsibility to refuse to accept discrimination, segregation or violence against any single person, in our state and across our country.
We must stand by and support our community members who are transgender. Because at the end of the day, they are simply our neighbors, our children, our family members and our friends, and they deserve the same rights and protections that are afforded to each of us as citizens of this great state.
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filed under:Nicklas Bendtner was fined for being late for training after sleeping through his alarm while at Wolfsburg
Nottingham Forest have signed former Arsenal striker Nicklas Bendtner.
BBC Radio Nottingham reported on Tuesday that the 28-year-old, who was a free agent after leaving German club Wolfsburg, was discussing terms and he has now agreed a two-year contract.
The Denmark international told BBC Nottingham Sport: "My main goal was to come back to England.
"What happened in Wolfsburg was a sad situation. I have made mistakes in the past, but I am looking to the future."
Watch Nicklas Bendtner's first news conference as a Nottingham Forest player at BBC Nottingham Sport's Facebook page.
Bendtner had an unhappy spell in Germany and left the club after several disciplinary issues.
He said the move to a club with a "big history", and the chance to work with Forest manager Philippe Montanier, was the ideal way to make a "new start".
Forest chairman Fawaz Al Hasawi announced the Bendtner deal on social media
"It is important to prove myself and get back to scoring goals," said Bendtner.
"The coach has given me a great impression of the club and how he wants to do things.
"He cares a lot about football. He wants to play football, he is a nice man and I look forward to working with him."
Forest face Aston Villa on Sunday and Bendtner, who has scored 29 goals in 72 appearances for his country, said he was not quite ready to play.
"I need a little bit of time to settle and adjust but it won't be long," he added.
Bendtner scored 45 goals for Arsenal in 171 games between 2005 and 2014 and also had loan spells at Sunderland, Birmingham and Juventus during that period.
Analysis
BBC Radio Nottingham's Nottingham Forest correspondent Colin Fray
"Nicklas Bendtner is certainly a controversial figure and has his detractors, but Forest will be hoping that their marquee signing can combine with Britt Assombalonga up front and fire the club into top-six contention.
"He's a player who's proved he's capable of scoring goals in his career - including in the Championship during his loan spell with Birmingham, when he was only 18 and was sent out by Arsenal to gain first-team experience. That spell apart, his entire career has been spent in the top flights in England, Italy and Germany, and he has a wealth of international experience with Denmark, too.
"So, as a free agent, you can see why Forest would be prepared to offer him a deal. At 6ft 4ins tall, he's likely to be handful for Championship defenders, and is the highest-profile signing of 12 this summer."
Find all the latest football transfers on our dedicated page.(CNN) -- The 15 countries that share the single European currency are in recession for the first time in the 10-year history of the eurozone, according to initial estimates the European Union said Friday.
A giant euro symbol, the currency of the EU, stands in front of the European Central Bank.
According to the latest EU figures, GDP fell 0.2% in the third quarter, the second successive quarter of negative growth.
The news comes a day after Germany -- Europe's biggest economy -- announced it had dropped into recession territory.
With the UK expected to follow suit, France is the only one of Europe's biggest three economies to expand in the third quarter, with figures showing it had grown by 0.1 percent between June and September. The UK is not part of the eurozone.
There was further economic misery in the U.S. as well Friday as beleagurered mortgage lender Freddie Mac reported a $25 billion third-quarter loss that will force it to start tapping into the $100 billion in taxpayer money set aside for its bailout by the U.S. Treasury.
The Treasury took control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the U.S.'s other mortgage finance giant, in September when it became clear that rising losses on bad mortgages would cause them to run out of capital.
California-based software and computer networking giant Sun Microsystems also became the latest company to slash its workforce, announcing that it will cut 6,000 jobs, or 18 percent of staff, as part of cost-cutting measures.
Meanwhile U.S. retail figures for October suffered the worst monthly drop |
The Transformer object is responsible for shuffling the data from the “simple.fo” file (through the InputStream wrapped in a StreamSource) to the output stream (response.getOutputStream()) which takes the data to the browser. Think of its job as pulling data on one side and pushing it on the other. The Fop object handles how that data is transformed in between being pulled and being pushed.
The hard part of working with Apache FOP is generating the “.fo” file that gets you a PDF looking how you want. The input file is written using XSL-FO, a particular schema for XML. There are a number of examples in the distribution, and I strongly recommend you start by modifying one of them. The XSL-FO namespace http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format, is usually identified by the prefix fo:.
A basic file has as its root element a <fo:root> tag. In it, the <fo:layout-master-set> declares how the pages are laid out. This in turns contains one or more <fo:simple-page-master>. The simple-page-masters must be named using the master-name attribute, so you can refer to them from the content. In the page-master, you set up the page size, orientation, margins, header, footer, and so on, defining how the page should look.
After the <fo:layout-master-set> is the <fo:page-sequence> that describes the actual content of the document (about time!) you can have one or more page-sequences, and each may refer to a different page-master. This allows you to have, for example, a layout for the title page, a different layout for the regular pages, another layout for the table of contents, and one for the index. This is very useful if you’re writing a book. It’s a little cumbersome if you’re writing a “lost cat” flyer.
In your page-sequence, you have one or more <fo:flow>. A flow is a collection of content items, mostly <fo:block>s that correspond to paragraphs, but also <fo:list-blocks> that represent lists holders (think of <ul>s and <ol>s) and tables (<fo:table>).
From there, you can include links, images, tables, and lists. You can decorate the text in any of those. For instance, you can change the font, alter the weight and size, pick a color, or strike through the text.
Apache FOP, clearly, is very powerful if you can handle XSL-FO. If the content to format comes to you in XML, but using a different schema or layout, you can use XSLT to restructure your document into something Apache FOP accepts. You only have to pass a reference to your XSLT source to the Transformer above:
Source xsltSrc =
new StreamSource(getServletContext()
.getResourceAsStream("myTransform.xsl"));
Transformer transformer = tFactory.newTransformer(xsltSrc);
But you know the joke: Now you have two problems. This is particularly dangerous if you think that, well, HTML is just like XML, and it should be easy to translate HTML to XSL-FO. Remember that HTML does not need to be well-formed. Browsers happily accept HTML with unclosed tags and render it correctly. The HTML5 specification even contains some detailed ways in which HTML5 does not need to be well-formed; for example, attribute values don’t have to be quoted if they do not include a space.
You should therefore generate the XSL-FO directly, through your templating engine.
iText
The last tool I introduce in this article is iText. It is a programmatic way to generate PDF files on the fly. It does not rely on any input and you can even draw with it. You have complete control over how elements of the page are rendered. Conversely, using iText means you have to hand-render every element on the page.
iText is a free/open source software (FOSS) project covered by the GNU Affero General Public License, which means that you have to obtain a license if you use in a commercial product. If that puts you in a bind, older versions were released under LGPL, giving you more freedom with how you use it, but obviously, not all features will be available.
To get started, download iText from SourceForge and install the jar (or jars, if you want the added functionality they offer) in your path, or use maven (see documentation for a pom snippet).
You can start with a simple servlet that generates a PDF as follows:
response.setContentType("application/pdf");
Document doc = new Document(PageSize.LETTER);
PdfWriter.getInstance(doc, response.getOutputStream());
doc.open();
doc.add(new Paragraph("hello world!"));
doc.close();
The Document object, unsurprisingly, is your PDF document. By setting up the PdfWriter, you say where the document is to be written as you make various calls to write/draw on the document. Once the document is closed, you’re done, and the browser gets to render it.
For a typical text and images document, you use Document.add() to add content. This requires the use of various Element implementations. A bit of text is a Chunk. One or more Chunks make up a Paragraph. You can then put Paragraphs in Chapters or Sections. You also add Images and Lists. You can control the appearance of the text by passing a Font object when you create a Chunk or Paragraph. The Font represents the font family, size, style, and color. So to display one word of a paragraph in red, you need to create a chunk for the content before that work (using a font with the base color), then a chunk for the word to highlight with a font with color red, and one more chunk for the rest.
Where you can go totally wild with iText is that you can draw on your document. You get the drawing context with:
PdfContentByte cb = writer.getDirectContent();
And call any of the drawing metods on cb:
Rectangle pageSize = doc.getPageSize();
cb.setColorStroke(BaseColor.CYAN);
cb.setColorFill(BaseColor.RED);
cb.circle(300, 400, 100);
cb.ellipse(100, 100, 400, 600);
The grid is setup so the lower left corner is at (0, 0) and goes up in value towards the top and the right of the document. The units are “points,” that is 1/72 of an inch. In my example, the page size of my “letter” document is 612 by 792. All values are floats.
Remember to set the color for your stroke (the virtual pen drawing the shapes and lines) and for the fill, if you want your circle, ellipse, or path created with moveTo()/lineTo()/closePath() to be filled. You must also complete all your drawing with a “stroke” – either closePathFillStroke(), closePathStroke(), fillStroke() or stroke() – otherwise all your drawing efforts are ignored.
With iText, you can also modify existing PDFs, such as to fill out an existing form with dynamic data, for example. You can insert pages into a document, or extract certain pages out into a new one. If you have extensive document manipulations to perform, your best approach is iText.
How you go about supporting printing on your site and for your application depends on what needs to be printed or transferred as a printable document, and how much control you want or need on the result. While CSS media queries are the easiest, you have to contend with browser idiosyncrasies. Apache FOP gives you output that is consistent across platforms since it is generated on your server, and it works well with longer documents where you can dictate the layout at a higher level. iText gives you the most control on the complete presentation of the PDF, but requires more work on your part to style each element. It is often more suitable for shorter documents with various pieces that do not follow the usual flow of a page of text.
Did you find this How-To useful? Need tips on something else? Got an insatiable curiosity about other methodologies? Leave us a comment and let us know.
About the author
Nancy Deschênes (@ndeschenes) has been developing for the Web for more than 15 years. In that time, she has worn many hats, acting at times as a front-end developer, database specialist, and (her favorite) application architect. She has used various technologies, mostly Java and the Spring MVC framework, but has recently spent most of her time using the Grails framework. She is the technical co-founder of myTurn.com, a platform for online rental of physical goods.
See also:Chrome: The web is full of distractions, but none are more distracting than Facebook. If you find yourself particularly drawn to wasting time on Facebook, this Chrome extension will block access unless you have notifications.
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If Blocking Facebook entirely seems like overkill to you, Facebook Nanny is a good middle ground. If you have notifications, it'll let you respond to them, and you can always visit your profile or send messages if you need to. But if you don't have anything waiting for you, it'll block you so you can't just sit around on your News Feed, where the real time wasting takes place. Of course, if you find you need a more aggressive blocker, previously mentioned Nanny will do the job (and it'll work for any site, not just Facebook).
Facebook Nanny is a free download, works wherever Chrome does.
Facebook Nanny | Chrome Web Store via AddictiveTipsString cheese is a bit of a problem at Iron Horse. It wasn’t too long ago that Nicole, who handles events for us, had a string cheese go missing from the break room. I can’t say that I know exactly how she discovered who was responsible, but suffice it to say, she did her due diligence and found out it was Nic, who is responsible for shipping all the beer that leaves the building. Upon confrontation, Nic was apologetic for the mishap which was a case of mistaken cheese identity. Nicole was satisfied, more or less, with that explanation.
Fast forward a few weeks and lo and behold, Brooke, our retail operations manager comes to work in the morning to find a wrapper to her string cheese on her desk, string cheese missing. Hmmm. Brooke proceeds to do her due diligence and after considerable quizzing and no conclusions decides to review security video. What she found is when this story gets really interesting. No, it wasn’t Nic. Stop jumping to conclusions. Who was it? This is where the power of crowdsourcing comes in.
We are not going to tell you how the string cheese caper gained entry. Suffice it to say, she exploited a hole in our security and we have since closed that hole. She was also lucky enough to align with a late night cleaning service who disabled the alarm which saved her from setting off the motion sensors. The cards were definitely dealt in her favor.
Here is a chain of events.
Caper gains entry.
Caper lies low for a few hours.
Caper exploits late night cleaning crew disarming the alarm.
Caper tries on some swag. She also rummages through the apparel looking for her favorite item and makes a sizeable mess. Come on. What are you some kind of animal? Do you have no mother who reminded you frequently to pick up after yourself?
Caper decides on an irish death hoodie and a hat. So, it turns out the hoodie is a favorite item whether you are buying it or stealing it. Noted.
Caper needs a snack. Does she head into the kitchen to enjoy any number of pre-made cuisine options such as Oaxaca Quinoa, Curry Chicken Salad, Potato Salad? Oh no. She takes Brooke’s string cheese.
And then she disappears.
Now, many of us have different ideas about what our next steps should be but, me being the chief bosshole, I get the final call.
Should we have called the cops? I suppose. Should we be angry that someone violated our space? Brooke sure was, not to mention super-pissed about the cheese.
“Arrghh, I was really looking forward to eating that string cheese!!” Brooke expressed to me when I said I thought it was mostly funny.
Nor did I follow the suggestion that we act as our own law enforcement agency and post her pictures online to see who it is to crack down. Nope. In usual fashion, I have ignored most of the good advice I have received and have decided to offer this person a sort of unofficial mascot status.
Seriously. The string cheese caper is no average human. There are a range of things that a normal human might do in this situation, first of which would be not breaking and entering but let’s assume that we all find ourselves in that situation and under the assumption that we are not going to get caught. When I imagine that situation I am going to do any number of devious activities. Eat through all the ready made food with my bare hands, maybe throw some into the ceiling fan on high. Yeah, definitely that, and with the Glondo’s hot dogs. I’ve done that once before and what fun it was. (when I was a kid, not at the pub). I’m also going to drink as much of all the different beers as humanly possible lay down an upper decker, tie a t-shirt on my head like a turban and ride a keg. I would probably grab a dollie and race a keg around the building and likely bang into a bunch of stuff. I would probably jack up the tunes and moon the security camera, jump from table to table, spin wildly on the chairs and, well, who know what else.
What did the caper do for the almost 2 hours that she was at-large in the pub in the middle of the night. She stole a hat, a hoodie, a string cheese and just kind of wandered around. Ok, so she did make a mess of the merch too, but that’s it. For me, this begs the question; was that what she had planned? Did she have a plan? If she didn’t have a plan, well, what the hell was she thinking?
Here is the next step. We post this information and photos to see if we can track this person down. While I don’t condone this type of criminal activity I don’t think there is adequate harm to press charges. I am dying to know from you, string cheese caper:
What were you high on?
What were you doing for 2 hours?
Why just the string cheese?
Are you interested in being featured in some way? You know, as the deviant id of iron horse brewery or as the poncho goblin of Ellensburg?By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent
12 Feb 2013. Statistics readily accessible through the Office of National Statistics (ONS) prove government & BBC claims concerning monthly employment statistics are misleading and/or inaccurate.
Claims
ONS released its latest monthly estimates of employment on 29 January. On 30 January Prime Minister David Cameron claimed once again during Prime Minister’s Questions that the economy under his government's policies had generated 1 million new private sector jobs.
Whirled View previously published ONS' written disavowal of the claim, a claim allegedly based on ONS reported net gain in employment over a year’s period of time. I pointed out the ONS standard for counting one person as “one person in employment” is the person worked at least one paid hour per week. I also pointed out the figures are estimates not audited actuals.
The day the first article published I brought it directly to the attention of the Twitter accounts of Prime Minister David Cameron, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, Labour Leader Ed Miliband, Labour Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls, BBC News and others.
Subsequently, I brought it to the attention of Liberal Democrat Party President Tim Farron, the Vice Chair of the British Competition Commission and others.
Mr. Farron and the Vice Chair discussed the figures with me but I argue even the public figures who did not should be considered “on notice” when I contacted their Twitter account.
BBC (unlike the Prime Minister) adjusted their account. BBC described the ONS “headline” figure as a 556,000 net overall increase in employment. But BBC described it as a 556,000 net growth in employment over the course of last year, as if 556,000 jobs of equal value to the economy had been newly created. BBC also “analyzed” these figures as “good news” "indicative" of a “strengthening” economy. The presenter expressed puzzlement how an economy that flat lined could have produced so many jobs, but affirmed it had.
BBC itself undercut that story 6 Feb with a report on the growing category of “Independent Contractor.” BBC explained that a large number of people, especially men over 50 who have lost their regular jobs but cannot afford to retire, set up their own businesses. For many their “business” is gardening or other light work more designed to take advantage of a marginal benefit to tax credits over benefits. BBC explained this increase in raw numbers is not necessarily evidence of earnings or good news to the economy.
The government claimed the ONS figures indicate that their management of the economy is “on the right track.” BBC reported that claim without an in depth analysis that compared claims to facts.
Available statistics debunk the claims
BBC’s regular reports have been misleading although arguably technically accurate as far as they go. The Prime Minister’s claims were and are both misleading and inaccurate. The facts that could give an appropriately nuanced view have been available all along. There is an abundance of statistics that could put the raw increase in “in employment” into appropriate perspective.
ONS publishes on its web site data which hardly paints a picture of a strengthening economy. Particularly useful is a graphic representation of the relationship between employment and overall population. Even in headline form, the ratio of UK employment to UK population remains stubbornly below pre-recession levels. That is neither cause for celebration as good news or an indicator of a strengthening economy.
In a follow up FOI request I asked ONS for clarification. On 12 February 2013 ONS replied.
Comparing September through November 2012 to September through November 2011, ONS reports 552,492 net more people “in employment.” This ties roughly with the BBC headline figure. But significantly, of the 552,492 in employment, 67,607 were in government supported training and employment programmes, 239,282 were employed part time and 30,013 were “self-employed working part time.” Less than half - a total of 254,097 - worked as full time employees. The largest percentage increase was among part time self employed. The rate of increase in full time employment was only 1.4% on the year.
ONS does show a 1 million increase in private sector employment in the three years since 2010 but at least 196,00 of that is due to the reclassification of public jobs. Over 150,000 is attributable to Labour according to the Vice Chair of the Competition Commission. More importantly, the headline figure disguises what the detailed data shows.
ONS also publishes an Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings. Its "headline" shows an average plus 1% Median increase for 2012 among full time employees. Sometimes Press cite this figure as if the small annual increase in the wages of Full Time Employees applies across the board. But the figure for Part Time Employees, found in the detail tables, is a.3% increase in Median wages. Median Earnings were £155 a week for Part Time employees. That is less than one pound in a year. Median Earnings for Full Time employees were £548 per week for women, £556 for men. Moreover the highest earning salaried employee category dropped.To most eyes, a chain-link fence in the front yard does not scream curb appeal. Simple — but not what you’d call “elegantly simple” — it’s what a set decorator might prescribe when he wants to conjure up mean streets. A white picket fence it ain’t.
Which is why some homeowners in Old Town Alexandria were surprised to learn recently that their chain-link fences were historic and that removing them could put them in hot water with the city’s historic preservation office.
Anita Hall grew up in the Buchanan Street rowhouse her parents bought in 1963. It’s in the city’s Parker-Gray neighborhood, hard by the Metro tracks. After her parents’ deaths she bought the house from her siblings and set about sprucing it up. Her nephew, Dallas Hall, runs a contracting business. Three months ago, he pulled out the old chain-link fence and put in a black aluminum fence, its narrow posts topped with arrowhead-shaped details.
“It looks better than a chain-link fence, and the chain-link fence was falling down,” Anita said.
Dallas hadn’t gotten planning permission — “I didn’t even know this section was deemed historic,” he told me — but he did approach the city’s zoning folks with a question about replacing a stockade fence at the back of the property. When they came out to take a look at that, they noticed the chain-link fence was gone.
Dallas Hall stands outside his aunt Anita Hall's house on Buchanan Street in Alexandria. Dallas removed the old chain-link fence and replaced it with this black aluminum fence. The city's historic preservation officers would have preferred him to have left the old fence in place.
“They asked me, ‘Where is that fence? Can you recover any of that fence?’ ” Dallas said. They wanted him to reinstall it, which would have been hard. He’d given it to some friends to sell for scrap.
As the historic preservation staff wrote in its recommendation: “While many feel that [chain-link] fences have negative connotations, this material has played an important role in the development of mid-century vernacular housing and their cultural landscape.... By eradicating this ‘simple fencing solution,’ the applicant would be removing an important contextual clue to the original occupants of this neighborhood.”
Who were those original occupants? Working-class folk, some white, some black. Over time, the neighborhood became predominantly African American. Longtime residents marvel at what some of the houses are now going for; $500,000 isn’t uncommon.
“I think those are interesting houses,” said Al Cox, historic preservation manager in Alexandria’s Department of Planning and Zoning. They are relatively unadorned, two-story brick houses built right after World War II. They represent a side of Alexandria that’s different from the Federal, Georgian and Greek Revival homes closer to the river.
Charles Hall has been helping his sister with the red tape. He said he understands the need for zoning rules. “You cannot have everybody in the city doing what they want,” he said. “You’d have chaos.” But many of the chain-link fences of Parker-Gray have been replaced over the years, some with fences similar to the one Anita installed.
What it seems to boil down to is this: Does keeping a house historically accurate mean keeping it dinky and plain, when people no longer want dinky and plain? As people’s tastes and means change, can’t they reflect that in their homes?
That’s a valid argument, Al said, but one that is “at odds with the whole definition of historic preservation, which tries to take a neighborhood or a building and say: This is a great snapshot of what the city was like in this period. This is how people lived. They didn’t all live in mansions.”
Charles isn’t convinced by that argument. He observed that when the public housing projects in Alexandria were torn down, the townhouses built in their place didn’t look anything like the projects. Weren’t the projects, in their own way, historic?
Anita was told she could keep her new fence, but the issue isn’t over. Though the replacement fence stands where the old one was, it encroaches on the public right of way. The city council may decide she needs to move it back from the sidewalk. If so, Anita will have to replace it with something less ornate, such as a crimped wire or double-loop fence. Last month, a homeowner around the corner, on Princess Street, lost his bid to remove the chain-link fence from his property.
It’s inevitable that every year more things will become “historic” and communities will have to wrestle with what that means. Al said that over the next six months his office will work with the neighborhood to come up with some guidelines. Perhaps they’ll decide that just one or two sets of 1940s townhouses are worthy of preservation and celebration. “People who like that style can move there and appreciate them,” he said.
Those who don’t can move down the street and put in whatever kind of fences they like.A statue of the Olympic Rings -- which represent the world's five continents -- outside the the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland A statue of the Olympic Rings -- which represent the world's five continents -- outside the the International Olympic Committee (IOC) headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland (AFP Photo/Fabrice Coffrini)
Athens (AFP) - A cross-nation team of refugees will participate in this year's Rio Olympics to send a "message of hope", International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach said on Thursday.
"The IOC has decided to invite the highest-qualified refugee athletes to the Olympic Games in Rio," Bach said at the Eleonas camp in Athens, a facility housing hundreds of migrants hoping to find passage to northern Europe.
The refugee team, around five to ten strong, will participate as a delegation in its own right and be lodged at the Olympic Village with the rest of the athletes, Bach said.
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"We want to send a message of hope and confidence to the refugees and turn the attention of the world to the fate and problem of the 60 million refugees of the world," the German said.
In December, the IOC said it had already identified three athletes who had fled their home countries and could qualify for the Games in August.
They are a Syrian swimmer currently training in Germany, a Congolese judoka who found refuge in Brazil and an Iranian taekwondo athlete in Belgium, the IOC said.
On Thursday, Bach took down the details of Farhad Takallo, an Iranian man at the camp who said he was a shooting champion.
While he welcomed the prospect of training in Greece, Takallo asked Bach to help him reach Germany.
Only war refugees -- at present Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans -- who reach Greece are allowed to continue the journey to northern Europe.
Bach added that the Olympic torch relay, beginning in ancient Olympia in April, will pass from the Eleonas camp and a refugee will carry the flame.A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to get some time with Cheese (based in Australia), who worked on the recent port of Day of the Tentactle Remastered by Double Fine. We actually ended talking for a very long time (Cheese is very talkative, but that’s great because most of what he talks about is really interesting and insightful) so his podcast is just a short, edited version of the bits we found the most relevant to share with you.
Since Day of the Tentacle Remastered was the first port of Cheese (while he was already involved in Linux game development for a long time), it was a great opportunity to learn more about how you should approach porting and games packaging for Linux. He had already provided some great amount of details in his blog post, and I wanted to go a little further with this podcast on some particular points.
You can grab the podcast below, or open it directly from your browser. There’s a feed as well for all episodes.
Download file | Play in new window | RSS Podcast Feed | Duration: 1:21:56 | Size: 104.67M | Recorded on August 19, 2016
Here are a couple of links related to the topics covered in the podcast – since Cheese is a podcaster and blogger himself, there are some links to some of his previous talks if you want to dive in more details in some of the stuff we talked about:
We hope you enjoyed this episode. Let us know what you think in the comments below! If you are interested in learning more about what Cheese does, I’d recommend checking his Youtube channel. Cheese is often one of the hosts of the SteamLUG Cast, too.
At BoilingSteam, we strongly dislike ads and that is why you won't find any during your visit. If you like what we do, please consider signing up to our newsletter (No Spam!). Register to our RSS feed also works. We are on Mastodon and on IRC too (Freenode, channel #boilingsteam). You can reach us anytime via the contact form for feedback, ideas and news tips. We are always looking for more editors/contributors - feel free to candidate!On Friday, June 26th, the Supreme Court of the United States announced its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, holding that the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution guarantees the recognition and provision of same-sex marriage. It requires each of the 50 states in the US to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples seeking them, and to recognize legitimate same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, said in his decision:
The Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex….
The fundamental liberties protected by the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices defining personal identity and beliefs…. Courts must exercise reasoned judgment in identifying interests of the person so fundamental that the State must accord them its respect. History and tradition guide and discipline the inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries. When new insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed.
The decision is a landmark in the development of the rights and liberties of gay and lesbian people in the US, and is not without its controversy, of course. Many questions have arisen about the reasoning of the majority and that of the dissenting justices, as well as the significance of the decision. To get clearer on some of these issues, I asked several philosophers to contribute some brief remarks on the ruling. They are: Elizabeth Brake (Arizona State), Cheshire Calhoun (Arizona State), Clare Chambers (Cambridge), John Corvino (Wayne State), Brook Sadler (South Florida), Edward Stein (Cardozo), and Kevin Vallier (Bowling Green). I am grateful to them for sharing their thoughts and doing so on such short notice. I’d also like to thank Esa Diaz-Leon for suggesting a group post on this topic.
The idea of the “Philosophers On” series (this is the third one at Daily Nous; the first was on Rachel Dolezal, the second was on the Charleston Massacre), is to prompt further discussion among philosophers, and also to explore the ways in which philosophers can add, with their characteristically insightful and careful modes of thinking, to the public conversation about current events. Others are, of course, welcome to join the conversation. Additionally, if you come across particularly valuable relevant philosophical commentary elsewhere, please provide a link in the comments.
Elizabeth Brake:
The Supreme Court’s decision deserves celebration. If there is to be a state-recognized and state-regulated institution of marriage, then equal treatment demands that it be extended to gays, lesbians, and bisexuals. In a context of marriage inequality, this decision is an important statement of legal equality. However, should there be a government-backed institution of marriage in the first place?
A number of philosophers have argued that the state should get out of the marriage business, leaving the celebration of weddings to churches and Vegas chapels, and allowing relationship partners to use the tools available in private contract to create enforceable property agreements. Some have argued that for the state to support – much less promote, as the U.S. does – an essentially religious or ethical institution is simply illiberal, just as supporting state-run baptisms or bar mitzvahs would be. Others have argued that the institution bears traces of its patriarchal heritage (in which women were legally subordinate within marriage) and that some provisions of marriage law, in some jurisdictions, facilitate domestic violence. Still others argue that marriage law wrongly imposes a single template for ‘the good life’ when in fact people seek intimacy in many forms. The state’s preference for one form of relationship fails to treat citizens in different relationship forms—and with differing ideals of love relationships—evenhandedly.
In my view, the state should recognize marriage relationships, because such recognition serves important functions. Most importantly, it protects and supports certain relationships in which people care for one another. Such caring relationships are widespread constituents of people’s views of the good life, and they allow citizens to further their life plans in many ways. But not everyone wants, or finds, or idealizes dyadic, sexual, romantic, monogamous love relationships. People seek and find care and intimacy in many forms. Two single female friends might cohabit, raising children together, or elderly friends might cohabit, providing mutual care. Some adults freely choose to enter polyamorous relationships, in which more than two parties share their sexual and emotional lives. Close, committed friends who share their lives, or small polyamorous groups, can provide the care that some marriages do.
Just as equal treatment demands that same-sex marriage be recognized, it requires that these other committed relationships be eligible for the support and protection which legal marriage provides. That is, if one of the main rationales for marriage law is the protection of devoted love and family life, love and family should be recognized in all their variety. This is not to say that friendships and polyamory should be styled as marriage: many would not want to be viewed as married, and it is important to keep alternate forms of civil recognition for those who oppose marriage on principle. However, such relationships deserve equivalent protection to marriages on grounds of equal treatment. On my view, recognizing and legally protecting the array of relationships in which people live would go a long way towards answering the arguments against legal marriage listed above.
Three caveats should be mentioned. First, while we are celebrating good marriages, we should recall that marriages can go bad – lethally bad – and that it is important to protect exit options. Second, the distribution of health benefits through marriage continues to be an injustice. Third, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and polyamorists have important interests not covered by marriage law – such as protection against discrimination in employment. Marriage equality is an important step forward, but it is only one step towards full equality.
Cheshire Calhoun:
Having just finished reading Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, and the dissenting opinions by Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito, I am struck by the unclarity about what marriage is, why it is a fundamental right, and why it is important not to restrict that right to opposite-sex couples. I don’t think that unclarity is local to the Supreme Court; it is endemic to judicial, legislative, and broader cultural reflections on the nature and importance of marriage. Here are four options for why marriage and the right to it is of fundamental importance.
One might think that marriage has some “transcendent” value and meaning. Indeed, Justice Kennedy refers more than once to the transcendent nature of marriage. He notes, for example, that “same-sex couples, too, may aspire to the transcendent purpose of marriage and seek fulfillment in its highest meaning.” But where does that transcendent meaning come from? At one point in time, one might have claimed that marriage is an institution designed by God and its transcendent value thus consists in its sacredness (Kennedy also mentions the sacredness of marriage). To do so now in a Supreme Court decision quickly raises the concern that Scalia articulates about the limited “we,” namely the nine Supreme Court justices, enforcing this evaluative conception of marriage.
Alternatively, one might think that marriage is fundamental because since ancient times and across cultures societies have recognized some kind of marital arrangement. As Kennedy observes, “the right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition.” But as many have noted, there have been enormous variations in the socio-historical forms marriage has taken, including patriarchal polygamy and same-sex marriage. The socio-historical prevalence of some form of marriage is not going to be useful for anyone to draw on. And in particular, it doesn’t narrow down the fundamental form of marriage to the one singled out by Kennedy—two-person marriage. Nor is it obvious why marital arrangements in other time periods, countries, and cultures, would be relevant to US legal and judicial thinking.
Alternatively, one might think that marriage “is fundamental because it supports a two-person union unlike any other in its importance to the committed individuals.” As Alito observes, the emphasis in this part of the majority opinion appears to be on the happiness of married individuals—their finding emotional fulfillment, support in times of need, stability in their relationship. As Scalia observes the emphasis is also on their finding other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. But going this route requires a romantic inflation of what actual marriages deliver, so that an idealized version of marriage replaces the empirical reality of actual marriages, as a ground for claiming that marriage has some fundamental value in human lives. It also requires an implicit deflation of all other forms of human bonding that might supply these same things (and as Scalia notes, if freedom of intimacy is what you want, there are better options).
Finally, one might think that marriage is fundamental simply because we have made it so, and we have made it so for quite a long time, both in our cultural practices and in the ever growing range of rights, benefits, and responsibilities attached to marriage. On this point, Kennedy aptly observes that “the States have contributed to the fundamental character of the marriage right by placing that institution at the center of so many facets of the legal and social order.” And when we get down to what the petitioners wanted, it is not access to transcendent meaning, inclusion in a persistent socio-historical practice, or an emotional fulfillment and support, intimacy, spirituality, and so on that they didn’t already have in their relationships. What they wanted were basic state-granted entitlements such as being listed on a partner’s death certificate, being able to jointly adopt, and being able to set up residence in Tennessee without losing their lawful marriage.
There is another sense in which we have made marriage fundamental. We have constructed and deeply bought into an ideology of marriage as a pre-political institution, the sort of human arrangement “without which there would be neither civilization nor progress” (here Justice Kennedy was quoting the 1888Maynard v. Hill decision). To the extent that we remain in the grip of that ideological construction of marriage as a pre-political institution that provides the indispensable keystone in the arch of civilization, we are also caught in the grip of the idea that only those social kinds who are fit for marriage are the truly essential citizens, since only they make possible the existence and progress of civilization. As I have argued elsewhere, this means that reserving marriage for heterosexuals amounts to reserving for them a unique citizenship status—that of being essential citizens.
Sometimes Supreme Court decisions shed clarifying light. Both Loving v. Virginia and United States v. Windsor did this for our marriage law. Both narrowed in on what was fundamentally wrong |
as the country transitions — peacefully — from one president to the next.
The images provoked strong reactions on both sides of the debate. One of the Facebook videos showing the convoy was viewed tens of thousands of times before it was taken down.
Social video from Kentucky of an "unauthorized" flag-flying display by a military convoy prompted the Navy to open an investigation. (Indivisible Kentucky)
The punishment, whatever it may be, was hardly a surprise and came after Maxwell, the Naval Special Warfare Group 2 spokeswoman, said last month that the display was “unauthorized.” She noted at the time that the vehicles captured on camera were based in Fort Knox, Ky., and were driven by members of an East Coast Naval Special Warfare unit. At the time, officials confirmed, the convoy was traveling between two military training areas.
The action may have run afoul of a Defense Department directive that bans service members from acting in political manners while on active duty. Among the specific actions banned are displaying political signs or banners on a private vehicle and displaying a “partisan political sign, poster, banner or similar device” outside a residence on a military base.
“Department of Defense and Navy regulations prescribe flags and pennants that may be displayed as well as the manner of display,” Maxwell said last month.
“Naval Special Warfare strives to maintain the highest level of readiness, effectiveness, discipline, efficiency, integrity, and public confidence,” her statement continued. “To this end, Naval Special Warfare leaders are committed to thoroughly and impartially investigating all non-frivolous allegations of misconduct. Where misconduct is present, the Naval Special Warfare commander responsible for ensuring good order and discipline within his unit will make a disposition decision as to the appropriate administrative and/or disciplinary action, if any.”
The videos were widely circulated by Indivisible Kentucky, a newly formed political organization that is opposed to the Trump agenda.
Chris Rowzee, a 28-year Air Force veteran who serves as the Louisville-based group’s spokeswoman, said she’s not happy people were punished; but she is pleased the incident was investigated and “appropriate corrective action was taken.”
Rowzee said Wednesday that she believes the flag display was “an isolated incident” and said she’s seen no evidence that similar political displays are widespread within the military.
“Our concern was military members showing a partisan political allegiance to a person as opposed to the Constitution or the country,” she said. “They simply cannot — in uniform in military vehicles and in an official capacity — show partisan political leanings.”
It’s common for military convoys of the likes captured on camera in Kentucky to display boutique flags on deployment, though it’s rare for it to happen in the United States. Gadsden and pirate flags are common, as are flags with the logos of various sports teams.
Dan Lamothe and Thomas Gibbons-Neff contributed to this report.
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With aging jets and a shortage of pilots, the Air Force weighs buying throwback ‘light-attack’ planes
Retired generals cite past comments from Mattis while opposing Trump’s proposed foreign aid cuts
Nominee to be Navy secretary withdrawsANAS Sarwar is facing fresh questions about his credibility and judgment after admitting he owned shares in a company in a tax haven.
The millionaire Scottish Labour leadership candidate had a stake in a software company based in the Channel Islands while an MP.
Parliamentary registers of interest show he declared a shareholding in Picsel Group Holdings Limited, which was based in Guernsey’s capital Saint Peter Port.
Unspun: the political diary
Mr Sarwar declared an interest in the firm after his election as the MP for Glasgow Central in May 2010 until January 2011.
One of the company’s UK subsidiaries subsequently went into administration owing more than £500,000 to the taxman.
At the time, MPs were only required to declare an interest in a company if they held more than 15 per cent of the issued share capital, or a smaller stake worth more than their salary.
An MP’s salary in the relevant period was £65,738.
Mr Sarwar’s campaign claimed he paid nothing for the shares and never profited from them.
Unspun: the political diary
Labour’s recent General Election manifesto promised a swift crackdown on tax havens.
It said: “Labour will act decisively on tax havens, introducing strict standards of transparency for crown dependencies and overseas territories, including a public register of owners, directors, major shareholders and beneficial owners for all companies and trusts.”
Scottish Labour this week won a Holyrood vote calling for more progressive taxes to fund better public services.
Guernsey has a zero per cent corporation tax rate on most companies, and does not levy taxes on capital gains, inheritance, capital transfer, or the equivalent of VAT.
It was blacklisted by the European Commission for being “non co-operative” on tax in 2015, alongside 29 other tax havens such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and Monaco.
However the blacklisting was lifting two months later after furious complaints from the island.
Unspun: the political diary
A Scottish LibDem spokesperson said: "Anas Sarwar needs to come clean on the use of tax havens. Surely a Labour leadership contender should know better than to deprive public services of essential funds?"
Mr Sarwar, 34, now a Glasgow list MSP and the centrist candidate in the Labour race, has been under mounting pressure over his business links.
The family business in which he has a 23 per cent stake worth an estimated £4.8m does not pay staff the £8.45 an hour real living wage promoted by Labour.
Nor does United Wholesale (Scotland) Ltd have trade union recognition for its 250 staff.
Mr Sarwar says no union has ever asked to set up a collective pay bargaining unit at the firm since it was founded by his father, the former Labour MP Mohammad Sarwar, 16 years ago.
The MSP is not a director of the company, and says he has no hand in running it.
On Wednesday, he also told Radio Scotland he did not take a dividend from his shares.
However UWS accounts later showed he had received £333,000 in dividends between 2013 and 2015, and his wife Furheen had received another £196,000.
Unspun: the political diary
Despite saying he had never had a part in the firm’s operation, Mr Sarwar also signed a company resolution creating a new class of share in 2010 which benefited his wife.
He now says he has waived his unearned dividend income since becoming an MSP in 2016.
It also emerged yesterday that a Labour branch in Mr Sarwar’s former Westminster seat had endorsed his left-wing rival for the leadership.
Glasgow Kelvin Constituency Labour Party (CLP), which overlaps Glasgow Central, backed Richard Leonard, as did Glasgow Anniesland CLP.
Of the six other CLPs in Glasgow, three more are seen as likely to back Mr Leonard, and three are considered better for Mr Sarwar.
If Mr Leonard, who lives in Paisley and represents Central Scotland, was backed by most of the CLPs in Mr Sarwar’s home patch, it would be a major coup for the former GMB official.
A senior Labour source added: “If Anas can’t win most of the Glasgow seats he’s f***ed.”
Mr Leonard is expected to pick up the support of most trade unions, and also has Scottish Labour’s youth wing behind him.
A spokesman for Mr Leonard said he was “pleased that the first CLPs to endorse a candidate have backed him as the best person to lead Scottish Labour”.
Asked why Mr Sarwar had shares in a tax haven, his spokesman said: “Anas paid nothing for these shares, received no dividends or remuneration, had no role in the running of the company, and received nothing when the shares were disposed of.
“He fully complied with parliamentary rules on declaring interests.”A green moist but light cake perfect for cookouts, brunch, or holiday get-togethers. Here is an easy dessert recipe for Pistachio Cake.
Ingredients:
6 egg yolks, lightly beaten
2/3 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 2/3 cups sifted cake flour
1/3 cup unsalted roasted pistachios, finely ground
1 cup superfine sugar
1 (3 1/2 ounce) package Jell-O instant pistachio pudding mix
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened to a cool room temperature
1 tablespoon almond extract or 1 tablespoon walnut oil
powdered sugar for dusting
Procedures:
Prepare a 9-inch spring form pan, line bottom with parchment, grease and flour.
In a small bowl, mix together the egg yolks, vanilla extract and 1/4 of the sour cream. Set aside.
Sift all dry ingredients and combine using an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Add softened butter and remaining sour cream, continue mixing on low until well combined. Scrape bowl and beat again on medium (med-high for a hand mixer) for another 90 seconds.
Scrape the bowl down and in two additions add the egg mixture, beating for 20 seconds after each addition. Scrape the bowl one last time and give it a couple pulses.
Pour batter into prepared pan and bake at 350 degrees for 40-50 minutes, (rotate pan 180 degrees after 25 minutes) a toothpick inserted in the center will come out clean and the top of the cake will spring back when lightly pressed.
Remove from the oven and cool on a rack for 10 minutes, remove sides of pan and allow to cool to room temperature.
Dust with powdered sugar and served with sweetened whipped cream or pistachio ice cream.
Get These Other Easy Dessert Recipes:
Comments
commentsYou’ve admitted to sucking at video games, but you co-host a video game show. How did you make it through the rigorous video game host screening process? Performance enhancing drugs? Cybernetics?
Well, I don’t know if I’ve ever used the term “sucking”, but I’m far less sophisticated at video games than all of my viewers. Does that sound better than “sucking”? No? Okay, I might suck.
But, to answer your question of how I made it through the censors to become the new host of “Attack of the Show”… well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know. Maybe the best way to describe how I got the job is to tell you about my audition. My agent called me and gave me an appointment to audition for G4. I went in and did my thing. I remember very clearly that I walked into the audition promising to just “be myself”. See, as an actress/host in LA you’re always running around trying to get work and you just want everyone to like you and in that process, I think it’s easy to lose sight of who you are and you just try to be “perfect”. And what you have to realize, and what I realized right before my G4 audition, is that trying to be perfect is annoying and no one likes that. And the only thing I can bring to the table that no one else can, is me. If I was myself, they’ll either love it or hate it. But at least I was being true to myself, and that, I could live with. Thankfully, the executives really liked me and offered me the job. The fact of the matter is that Kevin, my co-host, is tech-savvy and amazing at video games. I didn’t need to be. I came in to be myself and I’ve found out more about myself on air than I did off-air. For example: I’ll slip around in baby oil and dislocate my shoulder on live TV and not cry. I’m stronger than I thought.
You have a pretty quick-witted, well-developed sense of low-brow humor. With women, I’ve noticed that this is usually a direct result of being raised in a household filled with men or filled with tragedy. Where do you think your humor comes from?
It’s both. From the outside, my family seemed perfect. Like “The Brady Bunch.” My mother remarried when I was two years old to a man who already had two children. With my sister, that made four children and then my mother had my little brother- there were five of us in this traditional mixed family. I knew early on to make people think everything was amazing.. In reality, my stepfather (who my mother later divorced) was a horrible person, father, husband and man. To escape the yelling and hitting, I became the clown of the family. I wanted to do anything to make my brothers and sisters laugh. After almost every movie we watched, I would act out all the parts… but in a completely satirical, not-quite-perfect way. I soon moved on to teachers. If you ever see me, ask me to do “Miss Phillips”… it was my trademark back in the day. It was my impersonations that got my first laughs. And when my big brother, Jimmy, would laugh, I felt like the coolest kid in the world. I always admired him and wanted him to think I was funny. So, I was always taking cues from him and trying to learn to keep up with his quick-wit. My older sister has a very dry sense of humor, so I got a lot of that from her.
When are you gonna pull a “Greg Kinnear” and make the jump to indie movie super stardom?
When I first started at G4 I had to turn down a lot of theatrical work. It sucked. I only came onto the network if I could continue to act. By the time I came onto the network, I had only been in LA for a year before I got my first movie and TV series. I really wanted to keep up both.. But, some “stuff” had to be figured out and now G4 works with me on letting me take on other work. I just finished a movie with the Broken Lizard comedy troupe called “The Slammin’ Salmon” and we actually created a TV series together that we’re pitching. But, indie movie stardom? I would be so thankful to keep working and making movies. I’m always reading scripts and ready to work. I love working. And I love being creative. But, I do mean it when I say I don’t want to leave G4. I love my coworkers, fans, and Kevin. As long as I can keep acting, I will stay at G4 as long as they’ll have me.
You vs. the boys at Penny Arcade: who would win in a fight?
Now are we talking virtual fighting on an arcade game or like anything goes-scratch your eyes-kick you in the crotch-fighting? If it’s the latter, I’m totally dominating. My mom put me in years of karate, so I’m pretty good at taking care of myself…. That combined with the fact that I am feisty, scrappy, and don’t back down could be fatal. But seriously, I feel confident I could hold my own.
You vlog and blog pretty often as a way to keep in contact with your fans, even going so far as to give people a glimpse into your private family life. Even in this age of overexposed celebrity, do you feel like you have a responsibility to do this? Has it mostly been a good experience?
I started blogging and vlogging because I do want to stay connected with the fans. I don’t know if I would say I feel “obligated” to do it, but I do know that I owe so much to my fans. And I know they like me as a person. Because on my show, I’m not just a talking head reading a prompter or asking stupid questions like “and how do you feel?” or “who are you wearing?” I know they feel like they know me and in a way they do. So, I like reaching out to them and giving them a closer look at me off air. I might regret being so open, but right now I feel like I want them to be a part of my life. If you met any of my fans, you would know that they are some of the most loyal friends, smartest and coolest people and you’d want them in your world, too.
Because of your work on G4 you’ve become a sort of geek/gamer sex symbol and you used to model when you lived in Japan. What are the ups and downs of working in a business so concerned with your sex appeal?
Pie. I can’t eat all the pie I want. On the show we answered a viewer question about how we stay in shape. And in a moment of pure honesty, I confessed that sometimes I eat so much pie (banana cream to be exact) that I don’t…correction, can’t button my size 25 jeans and go an entire show with my pants unbuttoned. I think that there are so many bad body images out there. We see all these celebrities that are so skinny and we think that’s what beauty is. And it’s not just girls and women.
I was at an Academy Awards party recently in New York. I was the only female amongst a sea of men. And on the high-def flat screen we watched all of the beautiful stars walk the stage. But, apparently they weren’t beautiful enough. These men started talking about the upper arms of all these actresses. The upper arms! When did men stop talking about asses and boobs and start talking about upper arms? It made me realize that all these guys are influenced by the media just as much as us women. They’re so used to seeing all these super skinny girls be put on pedestals and they think “oh, that’s what’s beautiful.” And I hate that. Now we’re all living up to some ridiculous, unhealthy image…and not just that–some men want us to be like that, too. So I want to change the face of beauty because if there are more regular-sized, not perfectly toned, not artificially augmented women in the media, maybe that will be the new beautiful. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be healthy and workout, but we shouldn’t have to always fight to look a certain way. It’s okay to be a little soft in some areas and to not be super skinny. Yes, I want to look like Giselle. But, I don’t. I want to be happy with myself and I don’t want pressure to be someone else. And I think women all over should stand up and be at their physical best for themselves and know that whatever that “best” is, is beautiful.
What’s the hardest part about doing live TV? Any horror stories?
Live TV is so much fun, because you get one take. So, if you mess up you learn to roll with it and laugh at yourself. And you learn to improv a lot more…it keeps me quick on my feet. My biggest problem is censoring myself…I’ve been accused of “not thinking before I speak.” But, if you know me, you’d know that I’m a quick thinker and talker. The problem, is my censor. I think of something crass or horrible to say, and I speak it. The thought that goes through my head in the split-second before I say it is usually, “Oh man, that’s horrible. I bet someone will laugh.” Like today I announced on air that I wasn’t wearing panties. It was kind of within the context of what I was talking about. But still I said it. That’s live TV.
What do you miss most about Japan?
I miss the tradition. I love how rich and proud Japan’s culture is. When you’re in Japan you really feel like you’re there. Sometimes when you go to a foreign country, you’re like, “Wow, it’s so crazy to be here, next to the Colosseum…is that a McDonald’s?” And it kind of takes you out of it. But, in Japan, you’re like, “Holy crap! That’s Mt. Fuji…and there’s a real life Geisha…and there’s seaweed on my Filet o Fish?” Even when they bring in outside/American influences, they give it their own touch. You still feel like you’re in Japan. I love it there. And miss it often.1,400 girls abused by Asian gangs in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013
But never properly promoted as many feared it was not politically correct
It was made following reports of sexual abuse, according to film's producer
An educational video warning schoolgirls about Asian grooming gangs was commissioned for schools in 2007 but was never promoted in the UK amid fears of appearing racist.
The 20-minute film, My Dangerous Loverboy, features an Asian man in his 20s grooming a younger white girl - lavishing her with gifts and getting her drunk before forcing her to have sex for money.
It was commissioned by child protection chiefs based in Yorkshire following reports of vulnerable girls being passed around groups of men for sex, according to a TV producer who worked on the project.
Scroll down for video
The 20-minute film, My Dangerous Loverboy, features an Asian man in his 20s grooming a younger white girl - lavishing her with gifts and getting her drunk before forcing her to have sex for money
Despite winning plaudits at international media festivals, the video was hardly used as it was thought not to be politically correct, the Sunday Mirror reports.
Yorkshire has since been shaken by the revelation that 1,400 girls were abused by Asian gangs in the town of Rotherham between 1997 and 2013.
The female TV producer, who preferred not to be named: said: 'The project was set up to specifically raise schoolkids' awareness of the dangers.
'The police and social workers were very clear it was Asian men who were seducing white British girls.
'I can't help wondering how many girls the film might have saved from being sexually exploited if the UKHTC and police had put their needs before political correctness.'
She said that men would find young girls in shopping centres and win their affections before forcing them to have sex with their male friends.
Despite winning plaudits at international media festivals, the video was hardly used as it was thought not to be politically correct
The movie was produced by a company called Eyes Open Creative, who say the aim was to 'open up people's eyes to the harsh realities of sexual exploitation'.
It was also commissioned by the UK Human Trafficking Centre (UKHTC), which is now part of the National Crime Agency.
At the time of its release, the UKHTC said: 'We want this film to create awareness of the circumstances in which this kind of exploitation can occur, and encourage vigilance from everyone in a position to notice the behavioural and physical signs that indicate abuse.'
A spokesman from The National Crime Agency today said: 'The film was officially launched in 2010 and the annual Safe and Sound conference. It was not suppressed.
'It was put on the UKHTC website, sent to every police force and to child protection agencies.'
The video was commissioned by child protection chiefs based in Yorkshire following reports of vulnerable girls being passed around groups of men for sex, according to a TV producer who worked on the project
They were unwilling to offer a comment on why it was never made compulsory for schools and was only seen in a few classrooms.
Shaun Wright, head of children's services in Rotherham between 2005 and 2010, resigned as Police and Crime Commissioner for South Yorkshire last week following weeks of intense pressure to quit.
Joyce Thacker, director of children's services at the time of the scandal also quit on Friday.
The resignations follow last month's report, from Professor Alexis Jay, which indicated that at least 1,400 children were abused between 1997 and 2013 in Rotherham amid widespread failings by authorities.
The devastating report made 'painful reading' for the police force covering the town, its chief constable admitted.
Martin Kimber, chief executive of Rotherham Borough Council, also stepped down after the findings, which suggested that the authorities were too scared to take action against the gangs for fear of appearing racist.Habitat for Humanity is accepting Ether donations to help those displaced by Hurricane Harvey.
On August 29, 2017, in response to the overwhelming humanitarian crisis caused by Hurricane Harvey, the Texas-based office of Habitat for Humanity has opted to accept donations in the form of Ether.
The charitable organization tweeted that it would provide relief for Hurricane Harvey victims, and directed holders of Ether to visit a website where donations could be sent to an Ethereum address. At time of press, a little over 14.8 Ether, worth approximately $5,572 at a $375.03 valuation, has been donated to the cause. According to its website, "100% of the proceeds are donated directly to Habitat for Humanity Texas to fund their long term disaster relief efforts in Harvey's aftermath."
@HabitatTexas accepting Ether donations to provide relief for Hurricane Harvey victims. Donate at https://t.co/rxGzNsH3d7 #ETH4Harvey — Habitat Texas (@HabitatTexas) August 29, 2017
Habitat for Humanity encourages anyone with means to contribute either Ether or fiat currencies to help those impacted by Hurricane Harvey. Visit the Habitat for Humanity website or, to donate Ether, visit ETH4Harvey.com.SEATAC, Wash. -- NBA legend Bill Russell was arrested this week at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport after a loaded gun was found in his carry-on luggage.
The Transportation Security Administration says airport police arrested Russell on Wednesday night at a security screening after agents noticed a.38-caliber Smith & Wesson pistol in his carry-on bag.
TSA spokeswoman Lori Dankers says Russell was turned over to Port of Seattle police and cited on a state charge of having a weapon in a prohibited area. Russell had a permit for the gun, which was loaded with six rounds and confiscated, and he was released, according to Dankers.
Airline passengers are permitted to travel with firearms only in checked baggage. They must be stored properly and unloaded.
Russell, 79, has lived in the Seattle area for decades. He was an 11-time NBA champion with the Boston Celtics and coached the Seattle SuperSonics from 1973 to '77.
Russell was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in 1975. President Barack Obama in 2011 awarded Russell the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor bestowed by the U.S. government.
Information from The Associated Press contributed to this report.5 years ago
(CNN) – When a Washington state man was charged last year with unlawfully firing a shotgun, he had a simple explanation: Joe Biden told me to do it.
It appears, however, he no longer needs that defense.
The prosecuting attorney in the case against Jeffery Barton, 52, told CNN on Wednesday that the weapons count is out. He’ll now be charged with obstructing a law enforcement officer.
Follow @politicalticker Follow @danmericacnn
In July 2013, Barton told a judge in Clark County that he thought people were trying to break into his car at his home so he fired his shotgun in the air to scare them off.
"I did what Joe Biden told me to do," Barton told CNN affiliate KOIN. "I went outside and fired my shotgun in the air."
Biden did, in fact, tell people to fire a shotgun in the air if "there's ever a problem."
At the height of the gun-control debate that followed the 2012 Newtown shooting, Biden said during an online question-and-answer session that "If you want to protect yourself, get a double-barreled shot gun."
He added that he tells his wife, Jill, that "if there's ever a problem just walk out on the balcony here... put that double-barreled shotgun and fire two blasts outside the house."
His comments were likely intended to underscore the position that shotguns were sufficient for self-defense, rather than semi-automatic weapons.
But Barton used the defense in his case.
Tony Golick, the county's prosecuting attorney, told CNN that "the charge of unlawful discharge of a weapon will not be pursued" because from the outset it was a "close call."
"We were concerned based on the facts of the case that a jury will not convict," Golick said. "The area that he discharged the fire arm in is a no shooting zone," the attorney said, adding though that people have the right to "protect their property as long as they use justifiable force."
Golick's trial for misdemeanor obstruction is now set for October 24.GORKHA, Nepal (AP) — Helicopters crisscrossed the mountains above a remote district Tuesday near the epicenter of the weekend earthquake in Nepal that killed more than 4,600 people, ferrying the injured and delivering emergency supplies. Officials said 250 villagers were feared missing in a new mudslide.
Two helicopters brought in eight women from Ranachour village, two of them clutching babies and a third heavily pregnant.
"There are many more injured people in my village," said Sangita Shrestha, who was pregnant and visibly downcast as she got off the helicopter. She was quickly surrounded by Nepalese soldiers and policemen and ushered into a waiting van to be taken to a hospital.
© Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo Nepalese residents gather in an open space at the site of destruction caused after Saturday's earthquake in Bhaktapur, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, Nepal, April 27, 2015. The little town of Gorkha, the district's administrative and trading center, is being used as a staging post to get rescuers and supplies to those remote communities after Saturday's magnitude-7.8 earthquake.
Not far from the quake's epicenter, 250 people were feared missing after a mudslide and avalanche on Tuesday, district official Gautam Rimal said.
Heavy snow had been falling near the village, Ghodatabela, and the ground may have been loosened by the quake. Rimal said officials received initial reports of the disaster by phone but then lost contact.
The village, about a 12-hour walk from the nearest town, is along a popular trekking route, but it was not clear if the missing included trekkers.
Across central Nepal, including the capital of Kathmandu, hundreds of thousands of people were still living in the open without clean water or sanitation more than three days after the quake. It rained heavily in the city Tuesday, forcing people to find shelter wherever they could.
On Tuesday night, French rescuers freed a man from the ruins of a three-story Kathmandu hotel, one of a cluster near the main bus station. The man, identified as Rishi Khanal, was conscious and taken to a hospital, but no other information about him was released.
In Gorkha, some women who came off the helicopters on Tuesday were grimacing and crying in pain and unable to walk or speak, in agony three days after being injured in the quake.
Sita Karki winced when soldiers lifted her. Her broken and swollen legs had been tied together with crude wisps of hay twisted into a makeshift splint.
"When the earthquake hit, a wall fell on me and knocked me down," she said. "My legs are broken."
After an hour of dark clouds gathering, the wind kicked up in Gorkha and sheets of rain began to pour down.
© Niranjan Shrestha/AP Photo Family members break down during the cremation of an earthquake victim in Bhaktapur near Kathmandu, Nepal, Sunday, April 26, 2015. A strong magnitude 7.8 earthquake shook Nepal's capital and the densely populated Kathmandu Valley before noon Saturday, causing extensive damage with toppled walls and collapsed buildings, officials said. Geoff Pinnock of the U.N.'s World Food Program was leading a convoy of trucks north toward the worst-affected areas when the rain began to pound, leaving them stuck.
"This rain has caused a landslide that has blocked my trucks. I can maybe get one truck through and take a risk driving on the dirt, but I think we'll have to hold the materials back to try to get them out tomorrow by helicopter," he said.
Aid workers who had reached the edges of the epicenter described entire villages reduced to rubble.
"In some villages, about 90 percent of the houses have collapsed. They're just flattened," said Rebecca McAteer, an American physician who rushed to the quake zone from the distant Nepal hospital where she works.
And yet, the timing of the earthquake — near midday, when most rural people are working in the fields — meant most villagers were spared injuries when buildings collapsed, she said. So far, police say they have 373 confirmed deaths in Gorkha district.
Most those injured, she added, were young people and the elderly, since most young men long ago left their villages in search of better-paying work.
"The immediate need is getting support to where it's needed, but there will be a lot of work rebuilding," said McAteer, who was heading back soon to the center of the quake zone.
Thomas Meier, an engineer with the International Nepal Fellowship who accompanied McAteer to the devastated villages, said the disaster's aftermath would stretch long into the future.
"This is a long-term emergency," he said. "This will need major attention for the next five years. People have nothing left."
Jamie McGoldrick, the U.N. resident coordinator in Kathmandu, told reporters that 8 million people had been affected by the quake, and that 1.4 million needed food assistance.
The challenge is to reach them in rugged isolated villages.
After flying by helicopter over the Kathmandu Valley, he noted the erratic path of the quake's power.
"Some areas on one ridge are completely untouched, on the other side it's completely flattened," he said.
At Kathmandu airport, flights arrived with emergency aid and helicopters brought in both foreign trekkers and local villagers from quake-struck areas. Helicopters chartered by trekking companies reached the Langtang area, about 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of Kathmandu, a popular area for trekking — a key contributor to the country's economy.
Dave Gordon, from San Francisco, said he was in the area until Tuesday waiting for the rescue flight.
"Cliffs came down, four or five porters were deceased, buried in the rock fall," he said of the quake. "Trails are completely destroyed. People are stuck. They can't get out. It was very bad."
The U.N. says it is releasing $15 million from its central emergency response fund for quake victims. The funds will allow international humanitarian groups to scale up operations and provide shelter, water, medical supplies and logistical services, U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said.
Trucks carrying food were on their way to affected districts outside the hard-hit and densely populated Kathmandu Valley.
Many of the ornate, historic buildings in Bhaktapur, a key tourist site just east of Kathmandu, were reduced to rubble. Residents began returning to collect whatever belongings they could.
The country's confirmed death toll rose to 4,680, said police Inspector Sharad Thapa at the Nepal Police Control Room in Kathmandu. Another 61 were killed in neighboring India, and China's official Xinhua News Agency reported 25 dead in Tibet. At least 18 of the dead were killed at Mount Everest as the quake unleashed an avalanche that buried part of the base camp packed with foreign climbers preparing for summit attempts.
Some 8,063 people have been injured, Deputy Inspector General of Police Komal Singh Bam said. Tens of thousands are believed to be homeless.
Rescue workers and medical teams from at least a dozen countries were helping police and army troops in Kathmandu and surrounding areas, said Maj. Gen. Binod Basnyat, a Nepal army spokesman. Contributions came from large countries like India and China — but also from Nepal's tiny Himalayan neighbor of Bhutan, which dispatched a medical team.
Foreign planes from India, the U.S., China, Malaysia, Pakistan and Israel that brought aid and rescue personnel lined up on the crowded tarmac at Kathmandu's airport.
Coming out of the airport with dried blood on his face and legs, Min Bahadur Raut said he got a ride on a helicopter from a neighbor who had chartered a flight for his mother. He was not able to move his left arm.
"We haven't seen any government help or relief at our village" northeast of Kathmandu, he said. Roads have been closed by landslides. "I don't know what is wrong with me. I have no money," he said. "I have been in pain for days now."
___
Associated Press writers Todd Pitman and Binaj Gurubacharya in Kathmandu contributed to this report.
___The Islamic State called on supporters to pull off deadly lone wolf attacks on the West in response to attacks on Mosul in November.
Via Express reported:
ISLAMIC State have called for deadly lone wolf attacks in the West in response to the terror group’s impending loss in Mosul.
The comments were made in an ISIS-linked propaganda magazine, which is published in English, Arabic and French by the Nashir Media Foundation.
The magazine said: “Every soldier fights on the Caliphate land in Iraq and Syria wishes to be in your place. We can cut the tail of the snake but it will sooner grow again. But you have its head.
“Brave Mosul is bleeding. You should stop its bleeding by carrying out exhaustion operations of the Enemy’s power and blood, cut their heads by your knives, let us hear your guns blasting their heads.”on •
THE GUERRILLA ANGEL REPORT — It’s hard to imagine this kind of law was still on the books in such an educated European country, but nonetheless, the practice of sterilization ended this week after a Swedish court of appeal ruled the 1972 law was unconstitutional in December. They also said the forced sterilization violated the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Swedish parliament recently passed legislation to ban the practice, but it wasn’t scheduled to begin until later this year.
LGBT advocates in Sweden are hoping that parliament will compensate those who were sterilized. They are threatening a lawsuit if this doesn’t happen. There is a precedent for this — sterilized patients of Swedish a eugenics program were compensated when the practice ended in the late 1990s.
A bit more on the compensation hopes here: Sweden ends forced sterilisation of sex change patients.
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Categories: Judicial, Courts, Policy, Administrative, Transgender, Transsexual, TransNEWS RELEASE
MINISTRY OF
NATURAL RESOURCES
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New fires
Three new fires were confirmed late |
the budget, contact the Corporate Services Department by email at treasury@whitby.ca or by phone at 905.430.4300 x2232.Abstract
Kimura's disease (KD) typically presents as a mass in the head and neck region in association with eosinophilia and elevated serum IgE. Excisional biopsy is often required in order to obtain an adequate sample for histological diagnosis and exclude malignancy. If suspected, patients should also be investigated for renal involvement as this may complicate KD. Treatment options include surgical excision and medical therapies such as corticosteroids depending on the extent and severity of disease.
INTRODUCTION
Kimura's disease (KD) is an uncommon, benign, chronic inflammatory disorder of unknown aetiology [1]. KD typically presents as a painless subcutaneous swelling in the preauricular and submandibular regions, though involvement of the orbit, eyelids, epiglottis, axilla, forearm, groin or popliteal region has been reported [2].
CASE REPORT
A 52-year-old female of Chinese decent was referred regarding a persistent right submandibular swelling thought to be related to an odontogenic infection.
History revealed 2 months of progressive painless right submandibular swelling despite several courses of oral antibiotics and recent dental extraction. She denied any infective or respiratory symptoms, weight loss or dysphagia. Aside from right submandibular chronic sclerosing sialadenitis treated via surgical excision, the patient had no medical history, no known allergies and took no regular medications.
Clinical examination revealed a firm, non-tender, swelling of the right submandibular region with no overlying skin changes. No trismus or intraoral abnormality was noted. Laboratory investigations were unremarkable other than an increased eosinophil count of 1.8 × 109/l (normal range 0.0–0.5 × 109/l) and serum creatinine of 91 µmol/l (normal range 49–90 µmol/l).
Computed tomography (CT) identified several enlarged submandibular lymph nodes (Figs 1 and 2).
Figure 1: View largeDownload slide Axial CT neck (post contrast) showing enlarged right submandibular nodes.
Figure 1: View largeDownload slide Axial CT neck (post contrast) showing enlarged right submandibular nodes.
Figure 2: View largeDownload slide Coronal CT (post contrast) showing enlarged right submandibular nodes.
Figure 2: View largeDownload slide Coronal CT (post contrast) showing enlarged right submandibular nodes.
Fine needle aspiration (FNA) biopsy of a right submandibular lesion was non-diagnostic; however, subsequent excisional biopsy indicated KD.
The patient was referred to rheumatology and commenced on cetrizine and a tapering course of oral prednisolone. By 3 months, the submandibular swelling had clinically resolved, and at 9 months, the patient remained recurrence free with normal renal function and eosinophil count. Shortly after cessation of prednisolone, submandibular swelling and eosinophilia recurred; therefore, oral steroids were recommenced.
DISCUSSION
KD most commonly, though not exclusively, occurs in young and middle-aged adults of Asian descent affecting men more commonly than women [3].
Although the aetiology of KD remains uncertain, the general consensus is that KD is a chronic inflammatory condition [4]. Alternative proposed aetiologies include neoplasia, parasitic infection, atopic reaction or immune response to various pathogens, in particular, candida albicans [4]; however, no causative agent has been isolated in lesions of KD [5]. No malignant change has been reported [3].
Differential diagnoses of KD include tuberculosis, nodal metastases, lymphoma, eosinophilic granuloma, granulomatous diseases, salivary gland pathologies, lymphadenitis, drug reaction and angiolymphoid hyperplasia with eosinophilia (ALHE) [1, 4, 6]. The most controversial of these is ALHE, as at times ALHE and KD have been considered to be the same disease. Recent literature, however, describes these as two distinct entities [4].
Laboratory investigations typically reveal eosinophilia and elevated serum IgE levels. The degree of eosinophilia may correlate with the size of lesions [7], and recurrences may be more likely in patients with eosinophil counts >50% and serum IgE >10 000 IU/ml [8].
Magnetic resonance imaging and CT assist in assessing lesions and their relations to surrounding structures, with lesions often being ill defined and of variable appearance on cross-sectional imaging [2]. Lesions have been found to be diffusely avid on positron emission tomography scanning and may resemble neoplastic disorders [9]. Given the non-specific radiological findings, imaging alone is often insufficient to exclude malignancy; thus, diagnosis is based on biopsy in conjunction with clinical features and laboratory findings [3]. Once the diagnosis of KD has been established, further imaging to assess for distant lesions is not considered essential.
Histologically, KD demonstrates follicular hyperplasia with reactive germinal centres, and there is often IgE deposition and eosinophilic infiltration of germinal centres and interfollicular zones. Lysis of follicles with microabscess formation may also be present [10] (Figs 3 and 4). FNA is generally inadequate to diagnose KD; consequently, open biopsy is often required to provide diagnostic tissue samples [11].
Figure 3: View largeDownload slide Photomicrograph of haematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained sections (×400) showing collection of eosinophils within the paracortex.
Figure 3: View largeDownload slide Photomicrograph of haematoxylin and eosin (H&E)-stained sections (×400) showing collection of eosinophils within the paracortex.
Figure 4: View largeDownload slide Photomicrograph of H&E-stained sections (×200) showing microabscess formation.
Figure 4: View largeDownload slide Photomicrograph of H&E-stained sections (×200) showing microabscess formation.
Management options include observation, medical therapies, surgical excision and radiotherapy. Observation may be acceptable if lesions are asymptomatic and not cosmetically concerning; however, untreated lesions tend to slowly enlarge and may become disfiguring [11]. Reported medical treatments include corticosteroids, cetrizine, trans-retinoic acid, pentoxifyline, cyclosporine, oxyphenbutazone, vincristine and pranlukast [1, 3].
Excisional biopsy has been advocated as the initial treatment of choice as it provides tissue for histological diagnosis and may be curative [4]. Recurrence has been reported in up to 25% of patients treated with surgical excision alone [1]. In cases of initial recurrence, where feasible, re-excision is an option [4]. Iwai et al. reported that recurrences occurred between 1.3 and 2.5 years in patients treated with surgery [8], whilst Zhang et al. found recurrences developed between 15 and 20 months in patients treated with radiotherapy [12]. Given these reports, it would appear prudent to keep patients under review for at least 3 years following the completion of treatment to monitor for recurrence. Given that KD is a non-malignant disease, radiotherapy is generally limited to cases not amenable to surgery or those who have failed medical therapies [4].
Nephrotic syndrome and renal impairment are important sequelae of KD, which may affect up to 60% of patients [6]. Patients with renal complications should be referred to a renal physician. In patients with severe renal disease, aggressive treatment with corticosteroids, cyclophosphamide and antiplatelet drugs has been recommended [5].
In summary, all patients presenting with a progressive head and neck swelling should be thoroughly investigated to exclude malignancy. Although KD is an uncommon disease, medical and dental practitioners should be aware of the condition because of its ability to become disfiguring, recur and result in renal complications. The presence of eosinophilia and elevated serum IgE should suggest the possibility of KD and if suspected patients should be investigated for renal involvement and referred accordingly.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
None declared.
REFERENCES
1 Karaman E Isildak H Ozdilek A Sekercioglu N Kimura disease. J Craniofac Surg 2008 ; 19 : 1702 – 5. 2 Park SW Kim HJ Sung KJ Lee JH Park IS Kimura disease: CT and MR imaging findings. AJNR Am J Neuroradiol 2012 ; 33 : 784 – 8. 3 Sun QF Xu DZ Pan SH Ding JG Xue ZQ Miao CS et al. Kimura disease: review of the literature. Intern Med J 2008 ; 38 : 668 – 72. 4 Messina-Doucet M Armstrong W Pena F Allison G Valera Kim JK Kimura's disease: two case reports and a literature review. Ann Otol, Rhinol and Laryngol 1998 ; 107 : 1066. 5 Moriya T Shinoda T Kannou Y Nakajima K Takeda T Takasu N et al. Diffuse and broad podocyte detachment in a case of nephritic syndrome associated with Kimura's disease. Jpn J Nephrol 1994 ; 36 : 69 – 74. 6 Abuel-Haija M Hurford MT Kimura disease. Arch Pathol Lab Med 2007 ; 131 : 650 – 1. 7 Sakamoto M Komura A Nishimura S Hematoserological analysis of Kimura's disease for optimal treatment. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 2005 ; 132 : 159 – 60. 8 Iwai H Nakae K Ikeda K Ogura M Miyamoto M Omae M et al. Kimura disease: diagnosis and prognostic factors. Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg 2007 ; 137 : 306 – 11. 9 Wang TF Liu SH Kao CH Chu SC Kao RH Li CC Kimura's disease with generalized lymphadenopathy demonstrated by positron emission tomography scan. Intern Med 2006 ; 45 : 775 – 8. 10 Kuo TT Shih LY Chan HL Kimura's disease. Involvement of regional lymph nodes and distinction from angiolymphoid hyperplasia with eosinophilia. Am J Surg Pathol 1988 ; 12 : 843 – 54. 11 Viswanatha B Kimura disease: an unusual cause of head and neck masses. Report of 2 cases. Ear Nose Throat J 2010 ; 89 : 87 – 9. 12 Zhang JZ Zhang CG Chen JM Thirty-five cases of Kimura's disease (eosinophilic lymphogranuloma). Br J Dermatol 1998 ; 139 : 542 – 3.
Published by Oxford University Press and JSCR Publishing Ltd. All rights reserved. © The Author 2015.Written by Adam Tzur
Last updated: 26.12.2016
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Greg Nuckols of Strengtheory for giving me feedback when writing this article.
Summary
mTOR has many functions. It regulates fat storage, the immune system, hypertrophy, atrophy, metabolism, and whole-body energy balance (along with AMPK).
mTOR activation does not guarantee gains, and AMPK activation does not guarantee atrophy. In fact, some studies show the opposite could be true.
Non-hypertrophic stimuli like cardio, inflammation, and the immune system can activate mTOR.
Anabolic signalling mechanisms are complicated; it’s very hard to predict gains by looking at acute changes in hormones, muscle protein synthesis, and mTOR activation.
Introduction
In this article, the following questions are answered:
What are the functions of mTOR?
Can mTOR activation lead to hypertrophy?
Are there situations where mTOR activation does not lead to gains?
The multiple functions of mTOR and AMPK
HyperTORphy: an introduction
Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) is considered to be one of the wheels that drive the anabolic machinery in our body. It is activated by nutrition and exercise, and has been thought to alter muscle protein synthesis. mTOR is often called the “master regulator” of anabolism and cell growth for this reason (Foster & Fingar, 2010; Schoenfeld, 2010; Gonzalez, 2015b; Tee, 2014; Watson & Baar, 2014). Several researchers link mTOR with muscle protein synthesis (MPS). Thus mTOR is probably connected to hypertrophy (Mitchell et al., 2011; Goodman, 2014; Bond, 2016).
However, recent studies have questioned whether mTOR can be causally linked to MPS. This is because MPS can be activated independently of mTOR (Burd et al., 2011; Murton and Greenhaff, 2013).
Here is an illustration from Goodman, 2014 of the mTORC1 signalling cascade:
As we can see in this illustration, mTOR connects to protein synthesis and cell growth via different pathways. This means that mTOR influences hypertrophy indirectly. Kind of like how the engine of a car is necessary to make it move, but you still need other “pathways” like the steering wheel, cooling mechanisms, clutch, etc. to functionally drive the car.
Resistance exercise activates mTOR (Mascher et al., 2011; Watson & Baar, 2014) and since resistance training stimulates gains, there seems to be a link between mTOR and hypertrophy.
mTOR associates not only with MPS, but muscle protein breakdown (MPB) as well. As you may recall from my ASM article, MPB has a catabolic effect. Researchers like Goodman (2014) state that mTOR is inversely connected to MPB. This means mTOR deactivates MPB. By doing this, mTOR could help prevent catabolism (Sandri, 2013).
Metabolism and energy balance: how amino acids and glycogen affect mTOR and AMPK
Similarly to exercise, amino acids activate mTOR (Goodman, 2014; Bond, 2016). But not only amino acids are important for mTOR regulation; the energy status of a cell influences this as well. Cells have energy stores (i.e. glycogen) that can be depleted. For example, this depletion could happen after a long or intense bout of exercise (Boutcher, 2011; Aragon & Schoenfeld, 2013; Knuiman et al., 2015). The cell monitors 1 and senses when it’s low on energy (Carbone, 2012; Lopez et al., 2016). When this happens, it may try to conserve energy by activating pathways (i.e. AMPK) that inhibit anabolic signalling (i.e. mTOR) 1 (Xu et al., 2012; Morentin et al., 2014; Cai et al., 2015; Lopez et al., 2016). AMPK observes what and when we eat and uses this information to regulate energy balance.
[expand title=”1“][themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”] AMPK is activated by stresses that deplete cellular energy status, such as (…) muscle contraction or food deprivation (…) The overall effect of AMPK activation is to produce ATP and (…) maintain cellular energy homeostasis (Lopez et al., 2016)[/expand]
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According to this theory, we will likely experience atrophy in periods of energy deprivation. However, the body tries to bounce back from energy deficits. One of the ways it does this is by upregulating glycogen resynthesis in muscle cells after exercise (Aragon & Schoenfeld, 2013). By supplying carbs post-exercise when the cell is energy depleted, we could maximise glycogen resynthesis. However, this probably isn’t something you need to focus on if you’re in an energy surplus. It could be more important if you are in a deficit or do several workouts per day (more on this in a future article about nutrient timing).
As I mentioned, cells always try to maintain cellular energy homeostasis (Carbone, 2012; Bond, 2016). By feeding, we diminish catabolic response that come from AMPK activation (Lopez et al., 2016). This is because macronutrients like protein activate mTOR, which in turn cross-talks with AMPK. Together, they control whole-body energy balance (Morentin et al., 2014; Cai et al., 2015; Hardie, 2011; Xu et al., 2012; Lopez et al., 2016). Some studies find that mTOR and AMPK influence your hunger and activity levels, but most of these studies are done on animals as of date. There are ethical considerations when playing around with mTOR in humans, since it affects the body in a lot of different ways.
Immune system
mTOR plays an important role in adaptive immunity (Araki et al., 2011). This system specialises in eliminating specific pathogens (i.e. viruses, bacteria). There’s also the innate immune system that functions a bit differently. This system produces non-specific responses to pathogens, like inflammation. And since mTOR is connected to both systems, it is also regulates part of the inflammatory response.
Whenever the body is infected, T-cells, along with other immune mechanisms, fight against the threat. mTOR activation helps regulate T-cell traffic (Araki et al., 2011).
This means that mTOR activation isn’t always directly related to hypertrophy. This is a confounding variable that needs to be controlled for in mTOR hypertrophy research. In different terms, let’s say there’s a ball rolling down a hill. You know that your friend Frank went up the hill a few minutes ago, so you assume that Frank kicked the ball down the hill (classic Frank). This means you have created a causal relationship between Frank (the cause) and the ball rolling down the hill (the effect). However, it’s also possible that a strong surge of wind pushed the ball down the hill. Frank’s visibility and the wind become confounding variables we need to control for. So the next time a ball rolls down a hill, you need to be certain that you can see Frank kicking the ball, but you should also check that the wind isn’t blowing very hard at that moment. Now replace yourself with researchers, Frank with amino acids/resistance training, and the ball with mTOR, and the wind with alternative mTOR activation (i.e. immune system-related activation) and you can see my concern; we need to control for how mTOR is activated, and what type of protein synthesis it affects.
With that said, 2015 review by Weicchart et al., notes that mTOR activates the innate immune system as well as whole-body protein synthesis at the same time. This might seem weird, because why would infections cause gains (assuming MPS elevations = gains)? There are several reasons why they wouldn’t, one of them being that whole-body protein synthesis does not predict hypertrophy (Tzur, 2016). Myofibrillar protein synthesis is a better proxy for gains if measured alongside MPB. Ultimately this means that mTOR can active MPS in circumstances that are not hypertrophy-specific. At least this is what the animal research suggests. Another argument for mTORs connection to the immune system is that mTOR inhibition leads to immunosuppression in animals (Weichhart et al., 2015).
Other functions
Fat sTORage
I won’t go into great detail about mTOR’s role in fat storage in this article, but it should suffice to say that mTOR regulates adipose tissue in many animals, and possibly humans 2 (Woods et al., 2008; Mannaa et al., 2013)
[expand title=”2“][themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”] In nutrient-abundant circumstances, mTOR signaling stimulates adipose tissue expansion (…) By contrast, mTOR exerts the opposite actions in adipose tissue under nutrient-deficient conditions (Cai et al., 2015)[/expand]
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Aging
Even though mTOR has been associated with growth and anabolism, there’s also evidence suggesting it drives the aging process (Hands et al., 2009; Ristow & Schmeisser, 2014). By inhibiting mTOR activation, you might be able to slow your natural aging (Lamming et al., 2013; Araki et al., 2011) using, for example, caloric restriction (Fontana et al., 2010; Frankson et al., 2013; Ristow & Schmeisser, 2014; Medkour et al., 2016).
mTOR has many important roles in the body. I think it is important to point this out because I usually see mTOR described as a hypertrophy switch and then nothing else is said of its multiple, complicated functions. It should be clear that mTOR does not function on it’s own; it’s connected to many other mechanisms.
Limitations of mTOR research
Some of the mTOR and AMPK research cited in this section is done on animals. Animal research is not directly applicable to humans 3. But this doesn’t mean animals and humans are completely different 4. In fact, some researchers think there is considerable overlap between species because they have many biological mechanisms in common 5. So there is definitively a basis for interspecies comparison. Even so, in the next section we completely discard animal science in favour of human research.
[expand title=”3“][themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”] Experimental animal models are not fully reliable [but] reproduce at least some aspects of human disease. Expression and activation pattern of AMPK isoforms differs between rodent and human muscle and between muscle fiber types (149, 150). Furthermore, sex difference in muscle AMPK activation has been observed in humans, probably due to sex specific muscle morphology (higher proportion of type 1 muscle fibers in women) (Viollet et al., 2009)[/expand] [expand title=”4“][themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”]AMPK is a cellular energy sensor that exists in almost all eukaryotes (Hardie, 2011)[/expand] [expand title=”5“][themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”] The recent evidence (…) suggests that the problem of [caloric restriction] longevity can essentially be reduced to a cell-biological one. If we unlock the mechanisms of [caloric restriction] in lower organisms, we might be much closer to solving that problem in mammals than previously suspected (Bishop and Guarente, 2007)[/expand]
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Human hypertrophy and mTOR: applied research
We’ve discussed whether mTOR activation could lead to gains from a molecular point of view. But molecular logic is only one perspective. We need to look at the applied science; does mTOR activation lead to hypertrophy in real life human subjects?
I will present both sides of the argument independently, then critically evaluate the research that supports or challenges mTOR as a predictor of hypertrophy.
Before we start, let’s clarify some issues on causation and correlation:
What does it mean that mTOR “predicts gains”? In short, the assumption is that a greater degree of mTOR activation leads to more hypertrophy. A logical follow-up to this assumption is that mTOR deactivation should lead to atrophy (or at least non-hypertrophy). We also assume that if mTOR is causally connected to gains, then any activation of mTOR should lead to hypertrophy, even if there is no exercise-related stimulus. If mTOR activation does not lead to hypertrophy, it is not causally connected to gains. We have a correlation but no causation if mTOR is connected to gains only in some circumstances. And if there’s only a correlation, then mTOR’s predictive powers aren’t as strong, because we would need to control for other factors that would influence hypertrophy. Ideally we would like to be able to quantify it (Rennie et al., 2004).
For example: “x% mTOR activation leads to x amount of LBM gains”
The case for mTOR
We’ve already partially established how mTOR works, but let’s dig deeper into the theory. Let’s start with how we know whether mTOR is “activated” or not.
As per the illustration further up in this article, mTOR is connected to various downstream effectors like p70S6K. These factors can be phosphorylated, which is a complicated way of saying they can be switched on or off (Laplante and Sabatini, 2009). When researchers want to see if mTOR is activated, they usually measure the activity of enzymes like p70S6K. In other words they measure mTOR activation indirectly. There are many different ways of activating mTOR and downstream effectors (Hay and Sonenberg, 2004) but since I don’t want to write War and Peace part 2: The Paths to mTOR, I’ll stick to the effector that’s most relevant to us: p70S6K
Let’s start with a study from 2006, by Dreyer et al. where they put 11 untrained men and women through 6 resistance training sessions and measured mTOR downstream signals like p70S6K and 4E-BP1. They also looked at the mTOR inhibitor AMPK and compared the results to mixed muscle protein synthesis*. The researchers found that AMPK was activated during exercise, as is to be expected per our discussion on energy sensing and cellular energy depletion. Exercise lowered MPS temporarily. One to two hours post-exercise, mTOR downstreams were activated alongside increased MPS. So there is a correlation between mTOR and MPS.
[expand title=”However, there are some issues with this study (click if you want to go in-depth)”]
1: the subjects were untrained, meaning their anabolic signalling responses “overreact” to resistance training stimuli compared to trained people (Coffey et al., 2005; Gonzalez, 2015; Gonzalez et al., 2015a)
*2: Mixed muscle protein synthesis does not predict gains (Tzur, 2016)
3: They didn’t measure LBM, or muscle fiber CSA. It’s important to measure gains directly.
4: N=11 (genotypic and phenotypic variation could affect the results)
With that said, they did make a cool discovery:
amino acid concentrations [did not regulate] mTOR signalling during and after resistance exercise, since mTOR phosphorylation was increasing while amino acid concentrations were decreasing.
This finding is a bit of a surprise since we would expect to see increased amino acid concentrations with increased mTOR activity.
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Another study from 2008 got six untrained male students to participate in a 14-week resistance training program that added 40kg (mean) to their squat and 20kg (mean) to their bench (Terzis et al., 2008). They measured p70S6K and found an association with mTOR activation and strength and hypertrophy gains. However, the authors acknowledged that p70S6K may not be correlated to gains in trained athletes. Several other research teams agree that trained athletes respond differently to anabolic signals 6 (Coffey et al., 2005; Gonzalez, 2015; Gonzalez et al., 2015a).
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[themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”] Several studies have suggested that a greater training status can attenuate resistance exercise-induced intramuscular anabolic signaling (Gonzalez et al., 2015a)
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Luckily, Terzis et al. did measure hypertrophy directly (FFM and muscle fiber type CSA) in this study.
The low participation number was corrected (N=50) in a similar study by Kumar et al., 2009. This study has 360+ citations and is perhaps one of the hallmark studies of mTOR and MPS. They found a correlation between p70s6k in myofibrillar MPS and gains in young subjects. They concluded that older people had anabolic resistance, because of their reduced anabolic signalling. Sadly, Kumar et al. didn’t directly measure hypertrophy.
Things were turned on their head a year later when Terzis et al. published a study with eight untrained men doing 14 weeks of resistance training (Terzis et al., 2010). They discovered that p70s6K was correlated with muscle hypertrophy (but not strength) after a bout of training, while mTOR activation was not 7. This is slightly “shocking” given that p70s6K was previously considered a sign of mTOR activation. But in this study, p70s6K was independently linked to hypertrophy.
[expand title=”7“]
[themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”] The differential signalling pattern between mTOR and p70S6k suggests that p70S6kis activated via a pathway other than the one involving mTOR (Terzis et al., 2010)
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I’m not quite sure whether to put this study in the case against or case for hypertrophy. On one hand it shows us that mTOR downstream signals are linked to gains, but on the other hand it says these signals function independently of mTOR. It raises the possibility that we can get gains without mTOR activation.
In addition to the studies mentioned, several other researcher teams find correlations between p70s6K and gains 8. Others find a weak correlation between p70s6K and MyoMPS 9. It’s possible p70S6k is independent of mTOR, meaning mTOR might not be directly involved in some of the hypertrophic processes.
[expand title=”8“]
[themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”] In many cases, acute p70S6K phosphorylation correlates with long-term changes in muscle size (Baar and Esser 1999; Terzis et al. 2008; Mayhew et al. 2009; Mitchell et al. 2013) (D’Souza et al., 2014)
[/expand] [expand title=”9“] [themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”]the phosphorylated state of p70S6k has been shown to significantly correlate with myofibrillar protein synthesis rates (r = 0.31–0.34) (Kumar et al. 2009; West et al. 2010a) (Gonzalez et al., 2015a) [/expand]
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We also have some studies showing that whey protein can increase mTOR activation in a dose-dependent manner (Kakigi et al., 2014; Reidy and Rasmussen, 2016).
The case against mTOR
We will start the counterargument with Philp et al. challenging the assumption that molecular mechanisms like mTOR can predict gains by themselves:
It is likely that more than one factor is responsible for growth signaling in response to resistance exercise. It is possible that one sensor starts the cycle and the others function to maintain mTORC1 activity at various times after resistance exercise (…) in humans it is likely that many molecular signals are required to maintain or increase muscle mass (Philp et al., 2011).
This line of reasoning is acknowledged by other research groups (Hoppeler, 2016; Mitchell et al., 2015; Camera et al., 2016; Atherton & Smith 2012; McGlory and Phillips, 2015; Burd et al., 2015; Smiles et al., 2016; Phillips et al., 2013; Murach and Bagley, 2016; Tzur, 2016; D’Souza et al., 2014; Nakada et al., 2016; Gonzalez et al., 2015a; Timmons & Gallagher, 2016). Perhaps we need to look at several signalling mechanisms and pathways at different points in time to see “the big picture” of gains.
As an example, some studies find no link between mTOR and MPS (in some circumstances) (Burd et al., 2011; Mitchell et al., 2016; Nakada et al., 2016; Gonzalez et al., 2015a; Murton and Greenhaff, 2013). For example, a study from 2016 found that leucine supplementation (which strongly influences muscle protein synthesis) did not increase mTOR/AKT signalling (Church et al., 2016). Another study from the same year noted that fish oil supplementation reduced anabolic signalling but not muscle protein synthesis after strength training (McGlory et al., 2016).
Even though several studies say p70s6K is correlated with hypertrophy and MPS, there are others that contradict this 10 (D’Souza et al., 2014; Gibala et al., 2009 Nakada et al., 2016; Mitchell et al., 2012)
[expand title=”10“]
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The results of the present study suggest that p70S6K phosphorylation can regulate only a small rate of muscular growth [in humans], and that [other mechanisms are] required to gain a larger magnitude of hypertrophy (Nakada et al., 2016)
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Beyond this, some authors critique the idea that mTOR causes gains because endurance exercise can activate mTOR in humans (Murach and Bagley, 2016). If mTOR is an anabolic pathway and endurance exercise activates mTOR, does that mean endurance exercise is anabolic? Probably not. Perhaps mTOR can also initiate mitochondrial protein synthesis which is usually elevated after cardio (Mascher et al., 2011). But MitoMPS isn’t related to hypertrophic gains. We have a similar problem with older individuals. In a recent 2016 review, Timmons and Gallagher discuss that mTOR activation is elevated in fasted elderly people. This sounds very strange, since we would expect mTOR to be deactivated because (1) fasting = anti-mTOR and (2) aging = anabolic blunting. However, T & G explain that the mTOR activation is probably a “compensatory response reflecting increased relative muscle loading in daily life (due to reduced muscle strength or conditioning)”. This is one example where the body has to upregulate an anabolic mechanism because it’s, paradoxically, having problems maintaining muscle mass and/or function.
Three years ago, Philips et al. published a study where they looked molecular networks and genes in 45 untrained participants. They analyzed anabolic signalling mechanisms to predict gains to a 20 week, monitored resistance training protocol. The cool thing was that they analyzed every individual in isolation, because humans have very different responses to exercise 11. This is a different approach to most studies who lump all subjects together into one analysis and ignore individual differences in signalling mechanism activation and gains. Surprisingly, the research team found that those with the greatest hypertrophy did not “require” mTOR activation 12.
[expand title=”11“][themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”]The justification for this approach was based on the marked heterogeneity in capacity for muscle growth in humans, with gains ranging from 0% to 22% (Philips et al., 2013)
[/expand] [expand title=”12“][themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”]‘more’ mTOR activation (…) in humans is neither a hallmark nor a necessity for gains in lean mass in vivo (…) Our data demonstrate that high-responders for muscle hypertrophy evoke an “anti-growth” (…) response during a period of successful muscle growth (Philips et al., 2013)
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Conclusion
Several researchers now question whether anabolic signalling mechanisms can predict hypertrophy at all, because the body is so complicated and so many of its anabolic signals are interconnected 13. The signals might function non-linearly; activation of p70s6K/mTOR might predict gains when measured 1 hour after exercise, but perhaps not 2 hours after exercise. Perhaps another signalling pathway takes over and continues the work towards hypertrophy (Schoenfeld, 2013; Camera et al., 2016). But then again, the body can send as many anabolic signals as it wants to; without proper recovery and nutrition it won’t be able to grow. This shows us how futile it is to tunnel-vision on singular anabolic mechanisms without analysing your lifestyle, diet, sleep, diseases, etc.
[expand title=”13“][themify_icon icon=”fa-quote-left”] we may have to face the prospect that seeking ‘master regulators’ such as AMPK, AKT and mTOR in humans is naive and that spreading our nets wider, i.e. to encompass genomic mRNA/miRNA measures, is necessary to truly understand the role of protein turnover in determining heterogeneity in adaptive specificity and capacity (Atherton & Smith 2012).
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[themify_hr color=”white”]By Andrew Burnes
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, the last US Navy ship in the region was the USS John L. Hall (FFG-32), a Perry class guided missile frigate. A Russian spokesman said, “The US is trying to turn the Black Sea into an American lake.” The US is also maintaining a training and observation command in Tiblisi, a unit from Ramstein AFB in Germany, that is coordinating air traffic and radar functions. With regular visits by the US Navy scheduled and ramping up at the same convenient time Israel is building up its arms cache in Georgia for the upcoming attack on Iran, the current debacle with Turkey may have set things back or ended this gambit completely. Turkish air controllers had to know something was afoot when the attack bombers failed to return to the agreed upon flight plans and return to Israel. A critical issue, of course, is the S300 air defense system that Russia has agreed to withhold from Iran as part of the program of sanctions. The current Tor 1 system, though robust, can be defeated by a well planned low level attack. As the use of Georgia may be seen as a provocation by Russia, even if the attacks never manifest as anything other than more “firing blanks” like Israel’s tussle with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Russia may reconsider the delivery of this vital defense technology. Without the ability to use forward bases in either Georgia, Azerbaijan or Kazakhstan, Israel would be unable to attack Iran at all except by flying a circuitous 4500 mile “each way” route or using the limited capabilities of its nuclear armed submarine off the coast of Iran. It is uncertain how Turkey will deal with the illegal use of their airspace by Israel as relations are already at a low ebb. With a number of former Soviet airfields spread across Georgia and 4 of 5 fields in Azerbaijan available for operations and support, the region makes a perfect area for broad operations, not only against Iran but for movement of contraband of every variety.
Deep Background: Only Bridge Between West and Caspian Falling Apart
2002 False Report of Terrorism and Drug Running By Iran, Army War College As Ordered by Security Advisor Karl Rove (Classification Uncertain)
Caspian Region: Purpose: Staging for an attack on Iran
04-10-2002 – BACKGROUND: Despite Central Asia’s new prominence, few observers have reported about rising threats to and from naval forces in the Caspian. Russia’s Caspian Fleet is the only one of its fleets to have grown since 1991, but the more direct threat is posed by Iran.
Iran’s open desire to expand its territorial sector in the Caspian, obstruct agreement on delimiting the Caspian and dividing it among the littoral states, and to use force to threaten its neighbors is well known and quite visible to those governments.
Recently it was revealed that Iran had deployed some 38 ships in the Caspian. In Summer 2001, it threatened Azerbaijan’s exploration ships in the Caspian and Foreign Minister Kamil Kharazzi told Baku that it should heed Iran’s warnings “if it knows what is good for it”. Exploration in the area was subsequently suspended because of the uncertain security and the unclear political situation in those waters.
Iran could make such threats, force Azerbaijan to recall its exploration ships, and compel the cessation of exploration precisely because Azerbaijan lacks the means to defend its coastline. Thus it is not surprising that Baku turned to Washington.
Nor is it surprising that Washington responded and is assisting Azerbaijan, like Turkey has for years, with training and educating military officers, and training its forces for peacekeeping and drug control operations. Those activities are certainly connected not just with the war on terrorism as such, but with growing signs of Iran’s cooptation of the Al-Qaeda network.
Over time, it has also become clear to the United States that Iran continues to be the leading state sponsor of terrorism, deliberately supports terrorism throughout the Middle East, undermines U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan under Hamid Karzai’s government, and shelters Al-Qaeda terrorists.
As some of those terrorists seem also to have fled to Georgia, the threats of terrorism and/or Iranian military activity in the Caucasus no longer appear to be remote contingencies. And since it is unlikely that the scheduled conference of April 24-25, 2002 to define the Caspian’s territorial delimitation will resolve the issue, the undefined situation there could stoke the fires of conflict in the area. Iran might also be able to contribute to the looming succession crisis in Azerbaijan since it harbors Mahir Javadov, who plotted against Azeri ruler, Heydar Aliyev.
IMPLICATIONS
Iran’s mischief-making potential is enhanced by the fact that Azerbaijan’s domestic situation is none too secure. Its 78-year old ruler, Heydar Aliyev, appears to be in failing health and his regime is under increasing pressure from popular disaffection at home.
Public demonstrations protest against rigged elections, and the transparent effort to ensure that his son Ilham succeed him, as well as the unresolved war in Nagorno-Karabakh that owes much to elite and popular refusal accept the changes needed to make peace there all suggest the possibility of a major domestic crisis if and when Aliyev leaves the scene.
This domestic crisis, the possibility of terrorists trying to exploit it either for themselves or for Iran’s benefit, or the alternative of an Iranian military operation against Baku, and the energy assets at risk should Azerbaijan fall into crisis, are all proximate causes for the spread of U.S. military influence to Azerbaijan.
Nor is that presence solely a naval one. In November, press reports announced that the U.S. Air Force was considering obtaining an air base in Azerbaijan. And since Congress has repealed section 907 of the Freedom Supports Act (that prohibited government-to-government assistance to Azerbaijan) the United States can now openly render Azerbaijan military assistance and aid.
On March 27-28, the first bilateral U.S.-Azerbaijan military consultations took place in Baku, which focused on naval defense in the Caspian and on standardization of air controls, as well as training programs. As the ban on U.S. arms exports to Azerbaijan and Armenia has been lifted, the road is now cleared for Washington to support Baku substantially.
CONCLUSIONS
We should not lose sight of the potential for a major crisis either in Azerbaijan’s internal arrangements or in its external relations, or even more likely, coinciding crises. Just as in Georgia’s case, the structural weaknesses of Azerbaijan, combined with its enhanced strategic relevance makes the likelihood of crisis and conflict rather high.
By inserting its presence into this lion’s den, the United States is not only asserting its power and influence throughout the Caucasus and the overall former Soviet Union, it is also putting its influence and perhaps its military assets at some risk.
Whether or not the American military presence will be a long-lasting one cannot be definitively ascertained at present. But there is little doubt that American economic and political influence throughout the area is rising, and is intended to be there for the long run.
Unfortunately, that presence is also accompanied by ever more numerous signs of domestic crises and interstate rivalries across the entire region. Only time will tell if those who wager on crisis and conflict or on the United States’ pacifying presence are correct. But in the meantime the Caucasus and Central Asia will undoubtedly live through what the Chinese call “interesting times.”Stan Wawrinka has qualified for the Barclays ATP World Tour Finals for the third year in a row after beating Kevin Anderson 6-4, 6-4, 6-0 on Wednesday in New York to reach the US Open semi-finals.
The Swiss is the fourth player to book his place in the elite eight-man field. He will join World No. 1 Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray and Roger Federer at the prestigious season finale, to be held at The O2 in London from 15-22 November.
Kei Nishikori, Tomas Berdych, two-time former finalist Rafael Nadal and 2007 runner-up David Ferrer all feature in the Top 8 of the Emirates ATP Race To London standings, with four singles spots left up for grabs.
Wawrinka reached the semi-finals on his first two appearances at The O2 in 2013 (l. to Djokovic) and 2014 (l. to Federer).
Wawrinka opened his 2015 campaign with victory at the Aircel Chennai Open (d. Bedene) and reached the semi-finals on his title defence at the Australian Open (l. to Djokovic). After capturing the Rotterdam title in February (d. Berdych), Wawrinka would go on to claim his second major title at Roland Garros in May, denying Djokovic the career Grand Slam with victory in the final in Paris. One month later, he reached the Wimbledon quarter-finals (l. to Gasquet).
The Barclays ATP World Tour Finals has welcomed more than 1.5 million fans to The O2 arena over the past six years, establishing itself as the biggest indoor tennis tournament in the world since moving to London in 2009. Tickets can be purchased at: www.BarclaysATPWorldTourFinals.com.ReachTel poll puts Coalition on 50% of two-party preferred vote and Malcolm Turnbull as preferred prime minister by 62% of voters
Turnbull pressed on climate change and marriage equality – politics live Read more
Malcolm Turnbull is aiming for “boring, predictable, competent government” according to one of his closest colleagues, as a new opinion poll shows the leadership change has shot the Coalition back to an even-pegging position with Labor.
The Turnbull-led Coalition has 50% of the two-party preferred vote, according to the ReachTel poll, taken for Channel Seven on Tuesday night. Last month the Coalition was stuck in the election-losing position of trailing Labor by 47% to 53% after preferences.
Turnbull was also preferred prime minister by a massive 62% of voters according to the poll, with Labor leader Bill Shorten preferred by only 38% in the poll of 3,278 voters.
Turnbull is taking his time to consult on key decisions and reach out to those who will be key to his legislative success.
He spent his first full day as prime minister calling all eight of the Senate crossbenchers, taking a congratulatory call from US President Barack Obama, signing an agreement with two state premiers and calling others. And he’s said his new ministry won’t be sworn in until Monday.
“What we want is boring, predictable, competent government,” said senator Arthur Sinodinos, former chief of staff to John Howard and close Turnbull supporter.
“He’s been leader once before and there were fireworks and he’s had six years to reflect on that. When you get a second break like this you really want to hold on,” Sinodinos told Sky News.
Turnbull's so-called $4bn bribe to Nationals more wishes than fulfilment Read more
Labor continued to put Turnbull under pressure over his promise to retain Tony Abbott’s Direct Action climate policy, given his previous strident attacks on it and insistence it could not meet deeper greenhouse gas reduction targets in an affordable way.
Sinodinos said Turnbull would deploy “pragmatism in pursuit of principle... we will be pragmatic if it’s on the road to something. Turnbull says the important thing is to achieve reductions in greenhouse emissions”.
Turnbull is also constructing a new prime ministerial office, and sources did not discount that former treasury secretary Martin Parkinson could be offered the position of chief of staff – although no offer has been made.
In between constructing his new frontbench and managing a parliamentary sitting week, Turnbull sought to build bridges with the crossbench senators who will determine the fate of his legislative agenda, telling them he wanted “good communication”.
Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm said it was a short “hello how are you” call, with an agreement to talk again.
“I’ve said publicly Malcolm Turnbull could help the government’s cause in the Senate. His predecessor never tried very hard. He left negotiations up to his ministers, and some of them weren’t all that good at it.”
Palmer United party senator Dio Wang said he thought the early conversation with Turnbull was a good sign.
Senator Glenn Lazarus told Radio National on Wednesday he also expected Turnbull to be easier to work with.
“I was pretty frustrated with Tony Abbott, I’ve got to admit with my crossbench colleagues. They had the same opinion, there was no enthusiasm to meet with us. It was very difficult to get a meeting with him and in the 15 months or so I have only had one meeting,” whereas Turnbull “seems to be prepared to listen, and that was something Tony Abbott didn’t do”.
Turnbull is also considering his new frontbench, which will be sworn in Monday. Social services minister Scott Morrison is widely tipped to take treasury. Joe Hockey said he had had “discussions” with the new prime minister, but declined to say whether he had been offered an alternative portfolio. The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has offered his resignation by text, but said he was also prepared to stay and serve in the Turnbull ministry. Turnbull said he had not spoken to Dutton.
It has been speculated that the education minister, Christopher Pyne, could become defence minister, although some in the Coalition thought this would be a mistake given the conflict between objective decision-making and his self-interest as an MP with a slim margin in South Australia, where voters are demanding Australia’s future submarine fleet be built.
Turnbull said he would definitely like to include more than the two women in the cabinet.
Conflicting promises present Malcolm Turnbull with core leadership dilemma Read more
“There is no greater enthusiast than me for seeing more women in positions of power and influence in parliament, in ministries right across the country,” he said.
“I can assure you that. I am very committed to that, but I am not going to say any more about the new ministerial arrangements. You don’t have long to wait.”
Turnbull attended a prearranged signing for the national disability insurance scheme with NSW Premier Mike Baird and Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews and also called Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk.
Meanwhile, ministers, unsure whether they will still have their jobs by the end of the week, went about their ministerial business.
Hockey announced legislation to crack down on multinational tax evasion, the defence minister, Kevin Andrews, announced the first successful bombing raids on Syria and the trade minister, Andrew Robb, introduced enabling legislation for the China-Australia free trade agreement.The United Kingdom’s sense of itself and its place in the world are more in question now than they were before Donald Trump’s election. The precarious process of Brexit has destabilised the nature of 50 years-plus of UK foreign policy and international alliances.
This, combined with Trump, has now brought into the open a whole host of tensions and doubts about the so-called “special relationship” between the UK and US.
All of this should be a moment for opposition but Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour is letting the struggle with the Tories slip through its fingers. Whatever the views of Corbyn as a leader, this has and is costing the UK dear, and has long-term damaging consequences.
This offers a historic opportunity for critics of the dominant version of Britain
One of these is that the UK – as currently composed – has very little future. To add to the international and national challenges it faces is one based on the territorial dimensions of the state, the failure of the political centre to understand this, and the decline of any popular account of unionism that tells a story about the future of the UK.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are in very different places from the UK government, not just on Brexit, but where they see their future. The first two voted to remain in the EU, but it is about much more – namely, a rejection of the Britain peddled for the past 40 years based on London-centric capitalism and the global classes of the south-east.
Many in Westminster hope and pray the above just goes away, and that they can ignore it, and the rebellious Celtic nations will ultimately acquiesce in Brexit. This is the world from the Downing Street bunker and Westminster village. It just isn’t going to happen.
One clue to why is the threadbare defence of taking Scotland out of the EU. David Mundell, secretary of state for Scotland, argues that Scotland didn’t vote to remain in the EU, it voted on whether the UK should stay or go, and that is what has been decided. It is politics as pedantry and desperation.
This reveals that the rich, once all-powerful tradition of unionism in these isles is on its knees. It has been hollowed out and diminished by a host of factors – by globalisation, the decline of religion, the rise of Scottish nationalism and a renewed Scottish self-identity, and as we are currently witnessing, the emergence of an English nationalism.
Scottish nationalism has been and is a benign force: civic, progressive, pluralist, and deeply multicultural. The English nationalism we are witnessing is practically the mirror opposite – ethnic, regressive, anti-pluralist, and at war with multiculturalism and diversity.
There is something troublesome in this: of a set of competing claims, which could already be seen in Scotland’s indyref and its aftermath. This was a struggle between two nationalisms, Scottish and British – the former, out and comfortable as a nationalism; the latter, closeted and not out. This is still one of the main dynamics of Scotland and Britain, with Murdo Fraser, MSP and former deputy leader of the Scottish Tories, claiming on Twitter at the weekend that: “I dislike all nationalisms … I think it’s just daft to claim some are better than others.”
The self-denial of British nationalism has contributed to its long retreat, and challenge from an English perspective. But we should be wary for all Scottish nationalism’s moderateness of a debate restricted to the claims of nationalism. As Fintan O’Toole wrote about the experience of Ireland, nationalism is like “a rocket fuel” which can get you far in the early days, setting up an independent nation state, but it burns up quickly, and doesn’t provide a guidance for what to do once you are at your destination.
Where does that leave the UK? Scotland has already left the building. It is a different nation in its own place and already in much of how it thinks, talks and acts, quasi-independent. That isn’t going to be reversed. In my book, Scotland the Bold, I look at the consequences for Scotland and the UK and what political terrain may emerge after the exhaustion of social democracy and neoliberalism.
This anglo-centric government is putting the union at risk over Brexit | Archie Bland Read more
The “idea” of Britain is now in question and while that is a threat to the power elites and apologists for the neoliberalism and unequal Britain of recent decades, it is an opening and liberation. The transformative changes of Britain of Thatcher and Blair were brought about by the rotten, undemocratic, centralising manias of the British state and British nationalism. Their end should be no cause for mourning, but one of celebration.
This offers a historic opportunity for critics of the dominant version of Britain. Not to roll out Gordon Brown’s worn rhetoric on a constitutional convention or vague confederal Britain. But instead to imagine a Britain of different, self-governing peoples and nations, which has room for an increasingly independent Scotland, an autonomous Wales, a pan-Irish dimension, and a set of English voices and dimensions, which offers a set of collaborative relationships fit for the 21st century.
The above creates anxiety and worry in Britain’s political classes. That is a good thing. The way the UK, the British state and its elites see the world is now being brought into question by the forces of disruption and change they once claimed to represent. Status quo Britain is no longer viable. The future is going to be much more disputatious, diverse and fragmented, with multiple voices representing what used to be a more homogeneous Britain. That’s exciting and liberating. The old imperial version of Britain that continued under the Thatcher and Blair eras is finally coming to its end.I didn’t start riding bikes because I thought it would make everyone like me. I started riding, in fact, in a hot fever of anticipation, thrilled at the idea that I would be viewed by all and sundry as an outsider, a rebel – and quite possibly a dangerous one.
Old people and postmen would roll their eyes as my mates and I rolled into town and leaned against our bikes in the market square. When I was knocked off at a junction, having bounced off the car’s bonnet in the time-honoured fashion and lain in the road for a bit, I stood up shakily and looked at the driver. Surrounding the car were various witnesses to the accident. Of course the young biker, with his long hair and smelly jeans, was in the wrong. The police agreed. It was my fault.Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn speaks during a "Labour In for Britain" campaign event in London, Britain June 22, 2016. REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth
LONDON (Reuters) - The leader of the UK’s opposition Labour party Jeremy Corbyn said Britons voted to leave the EU because they were angry about their treatment by successive governments.
“Many communities are fed up with cuts, fed up with economic dislocation and feel very angry at the way they’ve been betrayed and marginalised by successive governments in very poor areas of the country,” Corbyn told BBC TV on Friday.
He said there would be consequences for British jobs as a result of Brexit, which the government should work to minimise.
“Article 50 has to be invoked now so that we negotiate an exit from the European Union,” Corbyn added.
No member state has ever left and Article 50 of the EU treaty, which sets out how a state can exit the bloc, offers little detail.Chelsea Fletcher, 5, with dad Howard, of Buderim, was hit by a cyclist at Mooloolaba and suffered a broken collar bone, multiple abrasions, a cut head, cut knees, cut elbows, cut ankle, tyre marks on her back and bruising. Photo: Iain Curry / Sunshine Coast Daily
Chelsea Fletcher, 5, with dad Howard, of Buderim, was hit by a cyclist at Mooloolaba and suffered a broken collar bone, multiple abrasions, a cut head, cut knees, cut elbows, cut ankle, tyre marks on her back and bruising. Photo: Iain Curry / Sunshine Coast Daily Iain Curry
A FIVE-YEAR-OLD girl has a broken collarbone, cuts, bruises and a tyre tread mark on her back after being mowed down by a cyclist on a popular shared pathway near Mooloolaba on Father's Day.
Her angry dad, Howard Fletcher, is calling for fast-moving cyclists to slow down or get off shared pathways, particularly when there is a clearly marked cycle lane next to it.
Mr Fletcher, from Buderim, said he and his family were walking back to their car at Alexandra Headland after enjoying ice-creams at Mooloolaba.
"We stopped off at the exercise area along the pathway," Mr Fletcher said
"I went with my older daughter, Grace, 7, and Chelsea went to walk across to the park.
"A cyclist going downhill took her out. She didn't know what happened but she became his human brake pad.
"The guy came off the bike, but she was underneath it.''
The cyclist, who was clad in proper cycling gear, stopped and was extremely apologetic. He appeared uninjured.
"My focus was to get Chelsea home, but she was bleeding on the head so we took her to the emergency at Nambour,'' Mr Fletcher said.
"She has a broken collarbone, multiple bruising and lacerations.''
Mr Fletcher said the cyclist said he was going slowly, but it did not appear that way.
"The beauty of cycle paths is you can hurtle down hills. He reckoned it was nobody's fault, but it was an accident waiting to happen.
"On weekends everyone is using paths - rollerbladers, cyclists and walkers.
"But when you have a good road area with cycle lanes painted on it, why can't they use that area?
"This was a guy out for a good ride and he cleaned up a little kid in the process."
Mr Fletcher's wife, Amanda, said the couple were also keen cyclists, but shared footpaths should be for people going for an amble and not those moving at speed.
Thankfully Chelsea's injuries will heal, although she was "sore and wounded" yesterday.
"I had to pick the bike off her. She was screaming her head off," Mr Fletcher said.
"This guy had the proper gear on, he wasn't some commuter picking up a loaf of bread."
Grace watched the horrific incident unfold, but it happened too fast for her to warn her sister.
Suncoast Cycling Alliance spokesman Damien Jones said accidents of this kind were upsetting, but it would be too extreme to ban cyclists from shared footpaths.
"Most cyclists travel slowly, no more than a fast walking speed, on a shared footpath, particularly when there are young families around," Mr Jones said.
"Unfortunately accidents happen."It's official: Virgin Mobile USA will indeed begin selling the iPhone with contract-free, prepaid plans for as low as $30 per month for some users. The company made its announcement early Thursday morning on its website, offering both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S on its CDMA network licensed through Sprint.
As earlier rumors suggested, the devices will indeed be available before July rolls around—Virgin Mobile says its new iPhones will hit the streets on June 29. The 8GB iPhone 4 will sell for $549 while the 16GB iPhone 4S will go for $649. The tradeoff for those relatively high handset prices is the lack of a contract—users can pay as low as $30 per month for 300 voice minutes, unlimited text messages, and "unlimited" data—throttled after the 2.5GB mark is crossed—when you set up your account to autopay. (Without autopay, the plans are $5 more per month.) For $40/month with autopay, users can get 1,200 voice minutes with unlimited messaging and data, and for $50/month, they can get unlimited everything.
Virgin Mobile is the second prepaid cell carrier in the US to offer the iPhone. Cricket was the first to announce its plans in May, offering the 8GB iPhone 4 for $400 and the 16GB iPhone 4S for $500. Those up-front prices are lower than Virgin Mobile's by a good $149 each, but Cricket's monthly plans are higher—the company offers a $55 monthly plan with unlimited calls, texts, and data, with the same caveat that data speeds will be throttled after 2.3GB.
If you only use a handful of voice minutes per month and don't need unlimited calls, though, Virgin's $30/month plan will likely save you the most money—about $180 per year, which would make up for the extra $149 premium you'd pay for the handset through Virgin, and then some (especially if you stick around after the first year). Virgin Mobile's network has a wider reach than Cricket's as well, so there's a good possibility that some users might live in a market that only has one of these carrier options.
The lingering question is whether these prepaid carriers will offer the next-generation iPhone when it is announced (most likely later this year). If so, will any of you be ditching your contracts for one of these prepaid options, or will you be too drawn to the inevitable LTE support that will likely only come through Verizon and AT&T?In the video embedded below, the Guttmacher institute — a nonprofit organization dedicated to the promotion and protection of women’s reproductive health — explained succinctly why family planning is now more important than ever.
With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, U.S. women can now have access to reliable contraception for free.
Reliable contraception allows women and their partners to plan their families, to space babies apart to allow for healthier mothers and children and to delay childbearing until they can achieve goals that will make them better able to provide for a child. Women can finish school or take the time to find good jobs.
“All of this is good not just for women,” the video said, “but for their families and society as a whole.”
Reliable, available contraception helps prevent women from becoming impoverished by the financial demands of childbearing. Publicly supported family planning services help women prevent an estimated 2.2 million unintended pregnancies each year, meaning 1.1 million fewer unplanned births and an estimated 760,000 fewer abortions.
The national network of health centers that provides for 6.7 million U.S. women is currently under fire. Conservative politicians and pundits have waged an ideological and legislative war of attrition against women’s clinics.
Women’s health care — and thereby women’s health — is threatened in the U.S.. Guttmacher urges Americans to get the facts and stand up for women, their families and society.
Watch the video, embedded below via the Guttmacher Institute:A Maryland couple who failed to disclose that they owned federally subsidized rental properties, even as one of them held a county job related to public housing, was ordered to pay more than $300,000 after they were convicted of fraud in federal court.
Carla and Raymond Carter covered up their role as landlords while Carla Carter worked as deputy director of the Prince George’s County Housing Authority, federal prosecutors said.
In that job, Carter was not allowed to receive money from the federal government for renting out property to low-income tenants. But the Mitchellville couple had been renting properties they owned in Bowie and Capitol Heights since 2004 to tenants who used Housing Choice Vouchers to pay their rent.
According to prosecutors, when Carter took the job in 2007, she did not stop. Instead, the couple listed someone else, who did not own the properties, as the owner on federal paperwork.
They received more than $100,000 from the federal government, which pays rent for families with the vouchers to live in private housing, prosecutors allege.
After they were convicted following an eight-day jury trial, the couple faced up to 20 years in prison for wire fraud and money laundering. A judge instead sentenced them to three years of probation each on Monday, including one year of home confinement, U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman Marcia Murphy said.
She said that Carla and Raymond Carter were each ordered to pay a fine of $100,000. And together, they were ordered to forfeit $112,355 in either property or cash.
Their attorney, Robert Bonsib, had argued at trial that the Carters were good landlords who never cheated their needy tenants. After their conviction, he said he thought they never should have been prosecuted.
“This is not a situation where somebody got money for services they did not provide. These folks gave the county a bang for their buck. They provided good quality housing for Section 8 tenants,” Bonsib said at the time.I'm a 25-year-old independent artist that specializes in "amigurumi" -- or little crocheted dolls. I mostly enjoy making animals, and right now creating art like this is my only source of income. My full-time job!
My grandmother taught me to crochet when I was 9 years old, and I was immediately stricken by all of the things you can make from a ball of yarn. I went to college and received a BA in literature, but the entire time I worked on my art on the side and realized that it brought me the most pleasure and fulfillment.
Unfortunately, working on commission (making custom items for individuals) and selling items in my Etsy shop is an unreliable form of income and there are months when I barely make any sales at all, making it very hard to continue doing what I love.
I see myself improving every day, and I'm still so excited and passionate about what I do -- I really want the opportunity to continue doing what I love, and knowing that I might have some stable income would free me up to expand my art tremendously and become more adventurous in what I do, hopefully leading to more exciting and interesting work!Families in outer Melbourne suburbs struggling to pay bills and put food on the table, survey finds
Updated
Almost one in 10 families living in Melbourne's outer growth suburbs could not afford food at least once over the past year.
A new household survey by the City of Whittlesea shows increasing pressure on middle-class families in so-called growth corridors, who are struggling to pay utility bills and put food on the table.
"A total of 8.9 per cent of respondent households reported that they had run out of food and had not been able to buy more at least once in the last 12 months," the survey said.
The City of Whittlesea covers almost 500 square kilometres in Melbourne's north and will see its population grow from 186,000 to 300,000 by 2030.
Its issues mirror those in growth areas on city fringes around Australia, where roads, public transport, health and education services are not keeping up with population growth.
The council's Mary Agostino said the survey also showed that about 14 per cent of families in traditionally middle-class areas of the municipality were struggling to afford food.
"Policy and governments have not caught up that something's not right there," Ms Agostino said.
"You've got these really high income-earning families, yet mortgage pressures and all that goes with living there is putting pressure on food security, children's outcomes and a whole range of other social issues, so it's something quite different to what we've experienced in the past."
Sorry, this video has expired Video: Mary Agostino says 14 per cent of families struggling to afford food (ABC News)
Melbourne-based support agency Kildonan Uniting Care told the ABC demand for financial help had increased more than 100 per cent in the last year.
There had also been a 40 per cent jump in demand for family support services.
The agency's chief executive Stella Avramopoulos said the face of economic hardship was changing, as even those with jobs struggled to make ends meet.
Mortgages, rent, transport and medical costs, rates and rising utility bills were all contributing to the crisis.
"The income that people are receiving is just not keeping up with the cost of living and the range of pressures and increases that they are faced with," Ms Avrampoulos said.
"For example, utility bills have significantly increased in the last five to 10 years."
Support agency Whittlesea Community Connections provides emergency relief to those struggling, but is turning away twice as many people as it can help.
It has seen a 40 per cent jump in demand from middle-class areas in the last six months and now makes appointments by phone only, after dozens of people began sleeping outside the premises each week to secure an appointment.
If you are experiencing financial hardship you can contact Whittlesea Community Connections' Emergency Relief, Kildonan Uniting Care's financial counselling service or call Kildonan for counselling toll free on 1800 545 366.
Topics: community-and-society, community-organisations, electricity-energy-and-utilities, family-and-children, consumer-finance, whittlesea-3757, melbourne-3000, vic
First postedRajkot: In a strange incident, an elderly couple died after the woman slipped from the staircase and fell on her husband in Ramdham Society on the posh Kalavad Road on Monday.The 68-year-old woman, Manjula Vithlani, who weighed around 128 kg, slipped when she hurriedly took the staircase after her son Ashish developed a breathing problem. Manjula's husband Natvarlal, who was following her upstairs, got crushed under her weight and suffered serious head injuries. While Ashish and his wife Nisha lived on the first floor of the bungalow, the couple was staying on the ground floor."At around 4am, Nisha came downstairs to get some medicine for Ashish. Her in-laws also woke up and hurriedly tried to go upstairs to check his health. However, Manjula could not keep her balance and slipped. She fell on Natvarlal who was climbing behind her. They were rushed to a private hospital where both died of cerebral haemorrhage," said Rajkot Taluka police station officials.A shocked Nisha also slipped on the floor while trying to reach out to them. She was admitted to the hospital with injuries on her leg.Pradhyuman Ravaiya, investigating officer, Rajkot taluka police station, said, "The couple always remained anxious about their son's health. On getting to know that he had taken ill, they tried to reach the first floor in too much hurry."Behind every smart TV show, there is a tireless script coordinator, technical adviser, researcher or producer who makes sure the jargon is right, the science is accurate and the pop culture references are on-point. To get a better sense of who keeps the angry nerds at bay, Wired.com spoke with fact-checkers behind the fall TV season's geekiest shows.
Profiles of researchers at our favorite television shows.
See Also:
Ex-NYPD Cop Brings Realism to Unforgettable
Know how many steps it takes to construct a public park? Or perhaps how to run for mayor of a small Midwestern town?
Greg Levine does. Since the first episode of NBC's Parks and Recreation, the 29-year-old has been responsible for researching all the intricacies of local government that make the sitcom's jabs at little-city life so punchy.
"Many of the writers have been here since the beginning, so I think they have the knowledge of what it's like to be in a smaller Midwestern town," Levine told Wired.com. "So the jokes have become more natural."
Levine, who became a writer's assistant and script coordinator on the show after a chance meeting with showrunner Mike Schur, keeps tabs on several small-town websites – Muncie and Bloomington, Indiana, in particular – and also keeps a list of civil servants on call to help explain how Parks and Rec's fictional Hoosier hamlet of Pawnee should run.
Check out Levine's TV Fact-Checker bio below. He (probably) can't tell you the probability of Ron Swanson marrying two women named Tammy, but he'd know who to call to find out what Ron would say at a town hall meeting.
TV Fact-Checker: Greg Levine —————————-
Title: Writer's assistant, script coordinator, web content writer for Parks and Recreation (season premiere airs Thursday at 8:30 p.m./7:30 p.m. Central on NBC)
Bona fides: Studied screenwriting at USC film school. Did not study political science or city government (self-taught in those areas).
How did you come to be the research guy on Parks and Rec?
"When the writer's strike happened, I wound up in casting.... When it ended I was still there and this company happened to be casting The Office, so I got to know the people there. They said, 'Hey we're going to do a new show, do you want to come on board as a writer's assistant?'... Very early on there were only a few of us on the show. It was just Greg Daniels, Mike Schur, the line producer and myself, really. Mike and Greg would constantly work on stories for the pilot |
53 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of TKR and found extensive variation in the tools that were employed ( 12 ). However, this review included only trials published in English over a 7-year period and focused on functional outcome measures rather than pain specifically. The use of many different outcome measures renders comparisons across studies and meta-analyses problematic ( 13 ). An agreement on core outcomes would allow comparative research and facilitate the development of multicenter clinical databanks or repositories.
The expectation of pain relief is a primary reason why patients elect to undergo TKR ( 10 ), and it is crucial that research assesses whether this expectation has been met. For clinical trials investigating efficacy of chronic pain treatments, the Initiative on Methods, Measurement, and Pain Assessment in Clinical Trials (IMMPACT) recommends that outcome assessment should include domains that reflect the multidimensional nature of pain (pain, physical functioning, emotional functioning, participant ratings of global improvement, symptoms and adverse events, and participant disposition 11 ). According to the IMMPACT guidelines, the assessment of pain should encompass pain severity, pain medication usage, pain quality, and the temporal aspects of pain.
Chronic postsurgical pain (CPSP) is defined as pain that occurs after a surgical procedure and lasts for at least 2 months ( 7 ). However, the International Association for the Study of Pain recognizes that the timeframe in the definition of CPSP may vary according to surgery type ( 8 ). Pain severity generally plateaus at 3 months after TKR ( 9 ) and therefore for the purposes of this research, chronic pain after TKR was defined as pain that is present 3 months after surgery.
Total knee replacement (TKR) is one of the most common elective surgical procedures, with 81,979 operations performed in the NHS during 2010 ( 1 ). The procedure is performed to provide pain relief and restore physical functioning; it can also improve health-related quality of life and enable some people to return to social, leisure, and sporting activities ( 2, 3 ). Although TKR is successful in providing pain relief for the majority of patients, ∼20% of patients continue to experience chronic pain in their replaced knee ( 5 ). The potential burden of this pain is considerable, particularly given recent evidence suggesting a trebling in rates of TKR surgery within the UK over a 16-year period ( 6 ).
Descriptive statistics were used to show the number of different outcome measures that assessed pain. The outcome measures used were then categorized into 2 types: multi-item tools were measures that included ≥1 questions about pain among other questions (e.g., the Oxford Knee Score [OKS]) and single-item questions consisted of only 1 question about pain (e.g., visual analog scale [VAS] for pain). For all multi-item and single-item pain-related questions, details of the question content and response options were extracted and coded to explore which aspects of pain were captured. Preliminary coding was performed by 1 researcher (VW) and all codes were checked independently by a second researcher (AB, JB, or RG-H). Development of the coding framework was based on the IMMPACT guidelines for pain assessment in chronic pain trials ( 11 ). Thus, the questions were coded into domains that can be assessed by outcome measures (pain, physical functioning, emotional functioning, and participant ratings of global improvement). The pain domain was further broken down into pain severity, use of pain medications, pain quality, and temporal aspects of pain.
Where data could not be extracted from the full-text article because the article was unobtainable, data were extracted from the abstract. Attempts were made to contact the authors of these studies to verify the accuracy of the extracted data. Data were extracted from 184 abstracts and the research team successfully traced contact details for 84 authors. These authors were e-mailed and asked to complete a validation form or return a copy of the full-text article. Replies were received from 36 authors (14 authors returned a completed validation form and 22 authors provided full-text copies of their article).
A standardized data extraction form was used to extract data from eligible articles and data were entered into a Microsoft Access database. The data extracted included the study objective, study design, setting, country of the first author, number of study participants recruited, timings of assessments, and outcome measures that contained pain items. All screening and data extraction were performed by 1 reviewer with postgraduate qualifications in the field of pain after joint replacement (VW). Because of the large volume of articles that were identified in the literature search, it was impractical to perform duplicate screening and data extraction on all studies; however, we acknowledged that single data extraction is associated with the probability of an increased number of errors ( 16 ). Therefore, blind duplicate screening was performed (AB) on a 10% subsample of the references retrieved (n = 851), which found that the primary reviewer missed 1 eligible article, suggesting that few eligible studies may have been missed. Thereafter, blind duplicate data extraction was performed (KE) on a 5% subsample of full-text articles (n = 63); full agreement was found between the primary and secondary reviewers on the type and content of the outcome measures that assessed pain.
We used systematic review methods in accordance with the Meta-Analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology proposal for reporting systematic reviews and meta-analyses of observational studies ( 15 ) (see Supplementary Appendix A, available in the online version of this article at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acr.22050/abstract ). MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, Cochrane Library, and CINAHL databases were searched for articles published from January 1, 2002 to November 22, 2011. The study design filters were not applied to the search strategies in order to maximize the number of hits obtained. The search strategies were modified for different bibliographic databases. No language restrictions were applied. The search terms included combinations of terms, such as “arthroplasty, replacement, prosthesis, implant, knee, pain, outcomes.” Truncation terms and synonyms were used to maximize the efficiency of the search. Full details of the search terms can be found in Supplementary Appendix B (available in the online version of this article at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/acr.22050/abstract ).
Single-item questions were used 333 times in 228 studies to assess chronic pain after TKR. The aspects of pain assessed by the single-item questions on the basis of the framework provided by the IMMPACT are shown in Table. Pain severity was the most frequently assessed aspect of pain, with 68% of single-item questions providing a measurement of pain severity. The pain VAS was the most commonly used question format to assess pain severity. Only a small percentage of the single-item tools assessed pain medication use, pain quality, temporal aspects of pain, emotional functioning, or participant ratings of global improvement.
The percentage of studies using the 5 most commonly used multi-item tools over a 10-year period is shown in. Over the past 5 years, there has been a reduction in the proportion of studies that have used the AKSS (from 66% of studies in 2006–2007 to 52% of studies in 2010–2011). Over the same time period, there has been an increase in the proportion of studies that have used the WOMAC (from 19% of studies in 2006–2007 to 32% of studies in 2010–2011).
The use of multi-item tools by countries that contributed >50 articles to the review (the US, the UK, China, Germany, South Korea, Canada, and Australia) was compared ( ). Together, these countries published 779 (67%) of the studies included in this review. The percentage of studies from each country that used the 5 most common multi-item tools was compared. Nation-specific preferences for particular tools were apparent, with the AKSS being the most commonly used tool in studies published from the US, the UK, Germany, South Korea, and Australia. The HSS was most commonly used in studies from China, whereas the WOMAC was the tool most frequently used in Canadian studies. Over the past 10 years, the OKS was predominantly used in studies from the UK.
Table shows an overview of the aspects of pain assessed by each of the 5 most commonly used multi-item tools, classified according to the IMMPACT recommendations for pain assessment ( 11 ). Pain severity and pain during physical functioning were the only dimensions assessed by all of the multi-item tools; none of the tools assessed pain quality, pain medication use, or participant ratings of global improvement. In terms of the number of questions included that assessed pain and the breadth of pain dimensions captured, the OKS and WOMAC provided the most comprehensive assessments of chronic pain.
Overall, 54 different multi-item tools containing pain questions were used in the TKR studies. The 5 most commonly used multi-item tools were the American Knee Society Score (AKSS) ( 17 ), Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) ( 18 ), Hospital for Special Surgery Knee Score (HSS) ( 19 ), Short Form 36 (SF-36) ( 20 ), and OKS ( 21 ). The details of the multi-item tools that were used in >5 studies and the number of items that assessed pain within each of these tools are shown in Table. Eleven of the 18 multi-item tools included only a single question about pain.
A total of 8,486 articles were identified in the study search and screened for eligibility, with 1,164 (13.7%) meeting the selection criteria. The reasons for excluding articles are shown in. Of the 1,164 included studies, 775 were cohort studies, 198 were RCTs, and 191 were cross-sectional studies. The duration of postoperative followup ranged from 3 months to 18 years. The number of TKR patients recruited could be determined for 1,149 studies (99%), with a total of 316,247 patients recruited (range 10–13,627 patients). In the 1,164 articles, the outcome measures that assessed pain were used 1,990 times. The studies used a variable number of outcome measures that incorporated pain items (range 1–14), with 658 studies (57%) using 1 measure, 304 (26%) using 2 measures, 138 (12%) using 3 measures, and 64 (5%) using ≥4 measures. Multi-item tools containing pain questions were used 1,657 times, and single-item pain tools were used 333 times.
DISCUSSION
This is the first systematic review to assess the methods used for the measurement of chronic pain in epidemiologic and experimental studies of TKR. This review involved mapping the existing literature, exploring trends in the use of outcome measures to assess chronic pain, and comparing the assessment of chronic pain after TKR with recent guidance from the IMMPACT. Previous systematic reviews have found variation in the assessment of generic outcomes in musculoskeletal and orthopedic clinical trials (12–22). This review found extensive variation in the outcome measures used to assess chronic pain after TKR, adding to the existing knowledge base through a focus on the assessment of CPSP. Of the 5 most common multi-item tools used, the OKS and WOMAC provided the most comprehensive assessment of chronic pain, although they did not assess all of the pain-related domains that the IMMPACT recommends should be measured in clinical trials investigating the efficacy of chronic pain treatments. Future studies investigating the outcome after TKR could incorporate either the OKS or WOMAC to capture basic features of pain; however, other multidimensional measures would provide a more comprehensive assessment of chronic pain.
There are numerous tools available to assess general health and functional outcomes after TKR (12), but there is no agreement on which tool provides the optimal assessment of pain. A key finding of this review was that, despite a growing interest in investigating the burden, characteristics, and impact of chronic pain after TKR, the assessment of pain has been inconsistent. The gaps in pain assessment involve 3 main areas. First, many studies reporting outcomes after TKR failed to include any assessment of pain; a total of 1,188 articles were excluded from the review because they did not include any assessment of pain beyond 3 months postsurgery. In light of the current evidence about the prevalence of chronic pain after TKR (5), this is highly problematic. Second, the most commonly used multi-item tools include only a small number of questions about pain; this is because the primary focus of many of these tools is the assessment of function or general health. Although readily available, few studies have used established pain assessment tools such as the McGill Pain Questionnaire (23) or the Chronic Pain Grade (24) to capture the intensity, characteristics, and limitations associated with chronic pain after TKR. These and other pain assessment tools provide comprehensive mapping of pain characteristics, and omission of these tools from studies means that chronic pain after TKR remains poorly quantified and characterized. Third, the pain tools used were predominantly oriented toward assessing pain severity and there was little assessment of other key aspects of pain, such as temporality and quality, as recommended by the IMMPACT (11). While we acknowledge that 222 (19%) of the articles included in this review predate the release of the IMMPACT guidelines in 2005 and that a similar number published in 2006–2007 may have been designed prior to dissemination of the guidelines, the majority of studies published after 2007 did not assess the pain domains recommended by the IMMPACT. Although the IMMPACT guidelines were developed to provide guidance for the assessment of chronic pain within clinical trials, a comparison of the IMMPACT recommendations with wider clinical and epidemiologic TKR literature highlights that commonly used measurement methods fail to capture the broader postoperative pain experience. Along with understanding the causes of pain, a comprehensive assessment of pain is central to the development and evaluation of interventions and improvements to clinical practice. Most TKR procedures are conducted as a way of managing osteoarthritis (OA), and recent developments in OA pain assessment may signal the start of interest in more comprehensive assessments of pain before and after TKR. For example, the assessment of qualities of OA pain may assist in the identification of pain of a neuropathic nature (25), which may prove useful in informing future assessments of chronic pain after TKR. In addition, more comprehensive OA pain measures have been developed and are starting to be used (e.g., the measure of Intermittent and Constant Osteoarthritis Pain) (26).
This review found that the AKSS was overwhelmingly the most commonly used outcome measure to assess chronic pain after TKR. This is true for other interventions, with reviews finding that the AKSS has been one of the tools most commonly reported upon in orthopedic studies (12–27). The AKSS includes only a single question on pain with multiple response options; the scale involves a clinician-conducted assessment and calculation of a composite score based on pain, functional ability, and measurements such as range of motion and joint stability. Although it is widely used, the AKSS was not formally validated during its development and subsequent studies assessing its psychometric properties have identified limitations such as a low correlation between items and poor inter- and intraobserver reliability (28–29). Furthermore, clinician-administered tools have been widely criticized because of the recognized discordance between the views of patients and clinicians (30–31). It is therefore apparent that, despite its extensive use, the AKSS has a limited utility in the assessment of pain-related postoperative outcome. This suggests that continued use of the AKSS represents a conservative approach to outcome assessment in orthopedics, with convention hindering progression. However, our review identified a slight reduction in the use of the AKSS over time accompanied by an increased use of the WOMAC, which may herald a change due to an increased awareness of the importance of assessing outcome from the perspective of the patient. In the UK, this change is reflected in the national patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) initiative, which collects Oxford Hip and Knee Scores on all patients undergoing elective primary lower extremity replacement in the NHS (32). In the US and other countries, PROMs are increasingly promoted as an appropriate way to collect information about patient outcomes (33–34). Future research will be required to explore if this early trend away from clinician-administered tools and toward PROMs continues in orthopedics. Additionally, future research could explore the trends in data collection methods (e.g., postal or online questionnaire versus data collected during clinic appointments) and the cost implications of these different methods.
International variation in the use of multi-item tools was found, with some of the more popular tools used more frequently in some countries than others. These trends for nation-specific preferences for particular tools to assess TKR outcomes are similar to those of studies found in the general orthopedic literature (35). For example, the US published the highest percentage of studies using the AKSS, while the UK published the highest percentage of studies using the OKS. The greater use of tools in the countries that developed them is not unexpected, although it could pose difficulties for international comparisons of outcomes in meta-analyses (13). The finding of international variation in the use of tools suggests that standardization of pain assessment on an international level may prove difficult; however, an alternative could be the promotion of national standardization through the merging of large cohort data sets to create registries or data repositories. This is one of the aims of the Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials initiative, which promotes the standardization of outcomes assessment through the establishment of core outcome sets (36).
It is important to acknowledge the limitations of this review when interpreting the results. First, although contact with authors yielded some full-text articles and data extraction validation, extraction of data from abstracts alone represented 13% of the data set. This may have led to an underestimation of the number of tools used to assess pain because data may not have been reported in the abstract. Second, it is also possible that we underestimated the number of studies and tools used to assess pain; some studies may have assessed but not reported pain data (reporting bias). Third, because of the high volume of studies, it was not feasible to analyze the assessment of pain according to study quality.
The strengths of this review were the wide inclusion criteria that enabled scrutiny of a high volume of original epidemiologic and experimental research articles, systematic and rigorous methods used to search and screen eligible articles, and attempts to contact authors. The inclusion of literature published over a 10-year period in all languages enabled comparisons of temporal and geographic trends in the use of pain-related outcome measures. This systematic review highlights that the assessment of chronic pain after TKR could be improved. Future research is needed to develop a consensus and standardization on which pain domains should be assessed after TKR; this can be achieved by working to establish a core outcome set and subsequent guidance on the most suitable outcome measures for assessment of the core pain domains after TKR.Back in 2008, digital cameras fell into two basic categories: point-and-shoot cameras, and digital single-lens reflex cameras (digital SLRs or DSLRs). Now, there’s a new camera category that attempts to bridge this divide: Four Thirds Cameras. These cameras combine the compactness of a point-and-shoot camera with the advanced features of a DSLR camera. Depending on who you talk to you, you’ll hear these cameras called “Micro Four Thirds”, “Interchangeable Lens Compacts”, “Hybrid Digitals” or even “EVIL cameras” (Electronic View-finder, Interchangeable Lens).
Basically, the appeal of these cameras is that they are small enough to fit into a jacket pocket, but are capable of taking professional photographs. So, if you want to take high-quality photos while traveling, hiking, or while strolling through the city, these cameras are for you. Because they have interchangeable lenses, they allow for a photographic versatility previously unavailable on a compact digital camera.
Four Thirds Cameras achieve this compactness by doing away with the mirror lens system, and some of the manual controls normally found on DSLRs. Instead, Four Thirds cameras use a LCD viewfinder, and typically have most controls accessible via on-screen menus.
Like DSLRs, these cameras have image sensors that are much larger than point-and-shoot cameras, which makes for better photos, especially in low light.
Right now, only four companies make interchangeable lens compact cameras: Olympus, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony. Olympus and Panasonic use the Micro Four Thirds standards, while Samsung and Sony have proprietary systems.
Currently, the range of lenses made specifically for these cameras is limited. But you can fit them with older lenses by using a simple adaptor ring. They actually support a wider range of lenses than most DSLRs, because they have a thin lens-to-sensor distance. This means you can make use of lenses from Canon, Nikon, Leica M, Contax / Konica, Contax G, Sony / Minolta A-mount, Olympus 4/3, Olympus PEN, and even cinema C-mount lenses. Note, however, that these lens may be manual focus only and require an aperture ring or control mechanism for usability.
Here is our round-up of the best “Micro Four Thirds” or “Interchangeable Lenses Compact” cameras for under $600:
Olympus PEN E-PL1 Micro Four Thirds Camera
The Olympus PEN E-PL1 is the Micro Four Thirds camera that has received the most recommendations from experts and buyers. We surveyed reviews on the major camera review sites: Imaging Resource, DPReview, CNET and Amazon.
The Olympus PEN E-PL1 is a sturdy, 12.3-megapixel camera that includes a built-in pop-up flash. You can purchase this camera with a 17mm lens, making for a very portable configuration.
Reviewers say this camera takes great photos, rivaling the quality available from the best DSLR cameras. Additionally, this camera has the Olympus JPEG engine which is regarded in the business as one of the best. It has a 2.7-inch LCD screen that incorporates a “Live View” function, replacing a built-in viewfinder.
This camera does have a few drawbacks. Reviewers say the auto focus feature is quite slow, and that the camera has noticeable delays between shots compared to a DSLR (although a firmware upgraded has helped this). Also, the camera has no manual control wheel but instead has menu commands for adjusting aperture, shutter speed and exposure. Those who are accustomed to a control wheel might find this process tedious. It has a maximum shutter speed of 1/2000th sec — most DSLR cameras have max of 1/4000th sec or above.
Also, the battery life is not stellar on the PEN E-PL1. Most reviewers said the camera lasted only one full day of use before needing a recharge (about 290 shots per charge). Some reviewers suggest bringing extra batteries if this is an issue.
Pros:
Solid, compact construction
Features a pop-up flash
Features image stabilization
Cons:
Delays between shots
Slow Auto-Focus
No manual control wheel (for aperture, shutter, and exposure adjustments)
Battery life is not great
Maximum shutter speed 1/2000th sec, vs. 1/4000th for most DSLRs
Overall, this is a top-rated, rugged camera that can take gorgeous pictures. The slow auto-focus and menu-based controls may frustrate some. Selling for under $500, this is a great step-up from a point-and-shoot camera, it provides many of the advanced features found in DSLRs.
The Olympus PEN E-PL1 is available at Amazon for $490. The older Olympus Pen E-P1 with a slim-line 17mm lens is available here.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-G2 Micro Four Thirds Camera
The Lumix DMC-G2 is another Micro Four Thirds camera that gets top marks from expert reviewers. Like the Olympus PEN PL-1, the quality of the images from this camera are typically stunning, and on par with images from a quality DSLR.
The Lumix DMC-G2 features 12.1-megapixels sensor, and a touch-screen LCD that rotates 180° from side to side and tilts 270° up and down. Reviewers were very impressed by the build quality and the ergonomics of this camera. They say the camera is quick to start up, and has snappy performance, compared to its competition.
On the negative side, reviewers pointed out that the camera has no image stabilization, and the image quality is poor in ISO 1600 and above. The Lumix DMC-G2 is also not the most compact camera of its kind — it’s a bit heavier and larger than the Olympus PEN E-PL1.
Pros:
Fast auto-focus
Fast start-up time
Easy-to-use menus
LCD accurately shows the image you’ll get
LCD screen can be rotated
Sturdy build
Cons:
Not as quite as compact as competition
Image quality in ISO 1600 and above is not as good as a DSLR
Delay between photos is 0.5-1 secs
The Lumix DMC-G2 is available at Amazon for $547.
Sony Alpha NEX-3 Interchangeable Lens Camera
In response to the Micro Four Thirds cameras introduced by Panasonic and Olympus, Sony has created its own line of compact, lens interchangeable cameras. So far there are only two cameras in this line: the Sony Alpha NEX-3, and the Sony Alpha NEX5. These cameras use E-mount lenses, but other lenses can be used together with an adaptor.
The Sony Alpha NEX-3 is one of the highest rated cameras of its type, priced under $500, and directly competing with the two cameras we reviewed above. Sony’s Alpha NEX3 is even more compact that those cameras. Sony claims it’s the world’s smallest and lightest interchangeable lens camera. The exact dimensions are: 117 x 63 x 33mm, and it weighs 297g (10.5 oz). Despite its size, this camera boasts a sensor that is 50% larger than the Micro Four Thirds format. This is a breakthrough unique to Sony, and reviewers say this improves image quality overall.
The NEXs don’t have a built-in flash, but come with an attachable external flash, which draws its power from the camera’s main battery.
One thing to note — the range of lenses available for this camera is quite limited at this time. You can use A-mount lenses (used by Sony’s Alpha DSLR cameras) by using a LA-EA1 adaptor. This is an optional accessory. The bundled 18-55 mm F3.5-5.6 lens has a metal finish and is of excellent quality. However, you will need buy a compact lens if you don’t want to obliterate the camera’s slim profile (see photo above). You can buy this camera with a 16mm lens bundled with it.
Pros:
High resolution image sensor
Good ISO performance
Good build quality
Tiltable high-resolution screen
Good point-and-shoot support
Cons:
Limited lenses available
LCD hard to see in bright sunlight
Potentially short battery life (if screen is left on)
The Sony Alpha NEX-5 is very similar to NEX-3, the only important difference is the that NEX-5 supports 1080 HD video recording. It sells for $699 from Amazon.
The Sony Alpha NEX-3 is available from Amazon for $499. The 16mm version is available here.Converters are a special set of items in Guild Wars 2 that allow players to convert certain materials and currencies into something more useful. Many of these converters were introduced in order to address player feedback related to the over-abundance of materials such as Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore and Empyreal Fragments. There are currently seven different converters available and most of them are reasonably attainable. This guide provides an overview of the converters in Guild Wars 2.
Material Converters
The following items convert crafting materials (Bloodstone Dust, Dragonite Ore, Emyreal Fragments) into gift containers that provide various types of loot.
Herta
Acquisition:
Herta is the reward for completing the “Where Exalted Dare” achievement in Heart of Thorns, which involves locating the character “Herta” in the Vinetooth Den area of Auric Basin. To unlock this achievement players must complete the prerequisite “A Study In Gold” Achievement.
Dulfy’s “A Study In Gold/Where Exalted Dare” Achievement Guide
Mawdrey II
Consumes 50 Bloodstone Dust in exchange for a “Gift From Mawdrey II”
A Gift From Mawdrey II contains random loot ranging from crafting materials/ingredients to trophies, gear and consumables.
Mawdrey II can be fed 3-6 times per day depending on how many other gifts an account has already received.
Acquisition:
Mawdrey II is automatically awarded after creating Mawdrey, an ascended back item. Creating Mawdrey involves a kind of scavenger hunt that involves growing a vine back item from various seeds over several generations. Aside from the time investment required, Mawdrey also requires a significant amount of Gold to complete.
Dulfy’s “Mawdrey” Guide
Princess
Consumes 50 Dragonite Ore in exchange for “Gunk-Covered Pellets”
Gunk-Covered Pellets contain 3 items; one from each of the following categories: A random piece of level-dependent gear of at least Masterwork rarity A random trinket or junk item A random crafting material or salvage item
Princess can be fed 3-6 times per day depending on how many other gifts an account has already received.
Acquisition:
Princess is the reward for completing the “Lion’s Arch Exterminator” Achievement. This achievement is mini-quest activated in Lion’s Arch that involves locating and exterminating 50 Karka Hatchlings around the city.
Dulfy’s “Lion’s Arch Exterminator” Guide
Star of Gratitude
Consumes 50 Empyreal Fragments in exchange for “Generosity’s Rewards”
Generosity’s Rewards contain 3 items; one from each of the following categories: A random piece of level-dependent gear of at least Masterwork rarity A random trinket or junk item A random crafting material, upgrade component, salvage item or container
Star of Gratitude can be fed 3-6 times per day depending on how many other gifts an account has already received.
Acquisition:
Star of Gratitude is the reward for completing the “For The Children!” achievement, which can be unlocked during Wintersday. Players must collect 6 different ornaments by completing jumping puzzles around Tyria.
Dulfy’s “Warming Grawnk’s Heart” Achievement Guide
Sentient Anomaly
Consumes 25 Bloodstone Dust and 25 Dragonite Ore in exchange for a “Fluctuating Mass”
Fluctuating Mass contains 3 items; one from each of the following categories: A random piece of level-dependent gear of at least Masterwork rarity A random trinket or junk item A random crafting material, upgrade component, salvage item or container
Sentient Anomaly can be fed 6 times per day
Acquisition:
The Sentient Anomaly is rewarded after completing the “Conspiracy of Dunces” achievement as part of the “Out of The Shadows” episode of Living World Season 3 (requires Heart of Thorns). This achievement requires players to collect each of the White Mantle Journal Paper Scraps scattered across Bloodstone Fen.
Dulfy’s Conspiracy of Dunces Achievement Guide
Currency Converters
The following items convert various GW2 currencies into purchasable items.
Fractal Reliquary
Trade 25 Fractal Relics for one of four daily items A Fractal Encryption Key is always the first item listed Other possible items include ascended rings, equipment boxes, agony infusions, crafting materials and other Fractal Vendor items.
The vendor list locks after the purchase of your daily item
Acquisition:
The Fractal Reliquary is awarded after completing the “Ascended Recycling” achievement. This achievement requires players to obtain 6 powerful ascended salvage items by salvaging various types of ascended gear.
Karmic Converter
Trade 4,998 Karma for one of three daily items from the following categories: Bag of Obsidian (Large/Med/Small) Bag of Runes/Sigils/Gear Crafting Material Bags (T1-T7), Trophy Bags, Bag of Scrap, Bag of Educational Supplies, Box of WvW Supplies, Bag of Jewels
from the following categories: The vendor list locks after the purchase of your daily item
Acquisition:
The Karmic Converter is awarded for completing the “Exotic Hunter” achievement. This achievement involves collecting 34 unique exotic weapons that drop from various Champion Bags. These weapons can be purchased directly from the Trading Post, although some weapons sell for more than 50 Gold.
Ley-Energy Matter Converter
Trade 25 Ley-Line Crystals/Aurillium/Airship Parts for other currencies or items
One item can be purchased daily from each of the four tabs: Map Chest Keys (No Cost): Machete Vial of Chak Acid Exalted Key Pact Crowbar Ley-Line Crystals: Large Bag of Airship Parts Bag of Aurillium (Plus other common vendor items) Aurillium: Large Bag of Airship Parts Bag of Ley-Line Crystals (Plus other common vendor items) Airship Parts: Bag of Ley-Line Crystals Bag of Aurillium (Plus other common vendor items)
By default players will only have access to the “Chest Keys” tab. Additional tabs for each Maguus Falls currency are unlocked by purchasing the currency “essence” (e.g. Airship Essence) from the appropriate vendor for 100 units of the respective currency Ley-Line Crystal Essence = Nuhoch Mastery Vendor Aurillium Essence = Exalted Mastery Vendor Airship Essence = Itzel Mastery Vendor
The vendor tab(s) will lock after the purchase of your daily item(s)
Acquisition:
The Ley-Energy Matter Converter is awarded for completing the “Mouth of Mordrem Master” achievement. This Dragon’s Stand achievement requires players to defeat the “Mouth of Mordremoth” (meta-event) in under 20 minutes.The Navy’s littoral combat ship (LCS) was supposed to be the ship of the future, designed to be easily converted from one role to another with a relatively quick swap-out of “mission modules.” But what the Navy got instead was a range of headaches and a ship with significantly less flexibility and capability than the ships the LCS was replacing. Now, as National Defense reports, the Department of Defense has cut the number of ships to be built nearly in half, and it has put future purchases on hold while it considers its options.
But there could still be good news for the defense contractors building the LCS: the options include a beefed-up version of the ship that could raise its cost further—and increase the profits of Lockheed Martin and Austal USA in the process. Considering the fact that these ships have already had significant problems (including “aggressive corrosion“ of one design’s hull because it didn’t include cathodic protection), yet another design change could cost the US billions more for a class of ships that has never lived up to its concept.
Stu Slade, warship analyst for Forecast International, told National Defense, “This isn’t a done deal. It’s certainly a setback for the LCS program viewed in isolation, but it’s one that could yet be reversed” because the cuts won’t hit until 2016—when the White House gets a new occupant.
Back to the future
In a way, the LCS is a hangover from the Army’s Future Combat Systems program. The Navy intended the LCS to be an all-in-one replacement for its aging guided missile frigates and minesweepers, taking on both anti-mine and anti-submarine roles. But the Navy also wanted to use the ship to provide fire support for troops ashore, using technology being developed by the Army for its force modernization: the Fire Scout unmanned helicopter and the Non-Line Of Sight (NLOS) Missile system.
To accommodate all of these roles, the Navy pushed for a ship design that would ideally allow the LCS to change jobs by swapping out modules. Additional modules, such as anti-surface ship systems and “irregular warfare” packages to support special operations troops, could be built separately to avoid the need to build other specialized ships, saving money. And all of this was bundled together with technology to reduce the required crew size for the LCS.
The NLOS was supposed to give the LCS serious firepower, with a range of 25 miles and the ability to hit targets on land and sea. The modular missile system was supposed to provide two capabilities: a “precision attack munition” (PAM) using inertial and GPS guidance, with infrared and laser designation by the Fire Scout or a ground spotter, and a “loitering attack munition” (LAM) that could fly to a designated point and wait for a target of opportunity.
But the NLOS has never materialized, mostly because of the collapse of the Army’s Future Combat Systems project. Another system, the Griffin missile, is still being considered as an alternative. The Griffin, which only has a range of 3.5 miles, was designed for use on aircraft against ground targets and would only be effective against “swarm” small boat attacks.
The mission modules themselves also turned out to be something of a bust. After evaluations, it was determined that it would take weeks, not days, to swap out an LCS’ mission modules, and the process would be much more expensive than anticipated. So the Navy decided that those “modules” would be more or less permanent instead, fixing the role of the ships they were deployed on outside of a major overhaul.
In the end, what the Navy got was a ship that was suited to none of these jobs in particular, designed to operate in what Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel recently described as “permissive environments.” In other words, it was designed for wars like the Iraq War, where there was no need to worry about threats from aircraft, ships, or coastal missile batteries. And by ordering 52 of them, the Navy was effectively guaranteeing that a sixth of its fleet would be made up of sitting ducks for those sorts of attacks.
The cost overruns of the LCS program haven’t helped its case much. The Navy ended up picking two winners for the program: Lockheed Martin’s more traditional Freedom class design and the General Dynamics/Austal USA trimaran Independence class. (Full disclosure: the Lockheed Martin program was run by my former commanding officer aboard USS Iowa, Fred Moosally.) Cost overruns caused the Navy to hold up building more ships several times. Only three LCS ships have been delivered so far; a fourth, the Milwaukee, was launched in December, and another 20 are already on order. So the Navy’s “freeze” actually allows the Navy to order 12 more ships before 2016, down from the 28 planned.
Back to the drawing board (sort of)
This month, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Jonathan Greenert created a task force to look into alternatives to the LCS that would be more effective against air attacks, |
% worse than the Galaxy S5.
I suspect Samsung is using this as a differentiator to refine its product tiers in 2015. The Galaxy S series is stylish, slim, and offers one day of battery life. The Galaxy Note, meanwhile, comes with a much larger battery and a bigger screen.
This is just speculation on my part, but I bet the Note 5 will continue to be the battery king in 2015. That's just not the market the Galaxy S6 is aimed at. So, yes, the battery life is problematic, but it's not a deal breaker for me. It's good enough. You are free to feel differently.
TouchWiz Is Still TouchWiz
There were rumors leading up to the Galaxy S6 launch that Samsung was going to go for a more stock look and feel. Well, that's not really the case. This version of Android 5.0.2 Lollipop is still clearly related to previous versions of TouchWiz, but there are some notable changes. Some of those are good and others not so good.
The experience of booting up a Galaxy S6 for the first time is much less annoying than it was with the Galaxy S5. Not only are there fewer weird and unnecessary features enabled by default, there are fewer of them included. Things like Air View, toolbox, one-handed mode, high screen sensitivity, and others are not just disabled—they're gone. I'm sure the seven people who used Air View on the Galaxy S5 will be devastated.
Most of the TouchWiz UI tweaks are still present. You're still looking at a light blue UI with green accents, but it's less garish than previous versions of TouchWiz. Also, that hilariously large screen of quick setting toggles has been done away with. Now you have two screens of toggles in the notification shade and that's it. The (useless) notification buttons for S Finder and Quick Connect are still present, though.
The settings look mostly the same, but everything has been condensed. That's mostly a good thing, but sometimes useful things (like Smart Lock, for example) are buried several layers deeper than in stock Android. The settings shortcuts at the top of the list help a bit with that. Slimming down the feature list is a great thing overall. There are fewer things running in the background and you don't need to go through and disable 30 settings just to use your phone.
Samsung has adopted Android 5.0's priority notification scheme, but there's still a traditional silent mode option.
Samsung has adopted Android 5.0's priority notification scheme, but there's still a traditional silent mode option. It's actually kind of a strange hybrid system—the volume toggle can go to vibrate and silent, but there's no all/priority/none selector. Those modes are all in the system settings under "Do not disturb" without the standard Android naming scheme. You can still set apps as "priority," though, which seems oddly disconnected from the rest of Samsung's terminology. Everything is still there, but it's weird that Samsung decided to do its own thing here. But hey, silent mode.
Slimming down the feature set seems to have made the software on the Galaxy S6 quite stable. I haven't had any crashes or random reboots, which is more common than it should be with brand new phones. I've given this phone all I have by letting the Android setup process install a few dozen apps, but everything is going smoothly with no unusual wakelock activity. The Galaxy S5 had a nasty habit of staying awake for no real reason, but this phone seems fine. The GS6 has been running for a full week with no reboots or crashes. Switching apps is sometimes slow, though.
As for the TouchWiz home screen, I have not traditionally had much trouble with it. Well, I don't really like what Samsung has done with the home screen this time.
For starters, the Galaxy S6 has a parallax effect that shifts the wallpaper around as you move the phone, a little like iOS. Every wallpaper image (included and third-party) does this on the stock launcher. I find it annoying, but whatever you can just turn it off, right? Wrong. There does not appear to be any way to disable this feature. Ugh.
The My Magazine panel is back, but now it's called Briefing (as I believe it was on the Note 4). This Flipboard-powered news feed is on the far left home screen panel and acts like a poor man's BlinkFeed. I'm not opposed to the idea of having some sort of content over there, but Briefing is so laggy. This device feels incredibly fast almost all the time, but then you swipe over to the Briefing screen and the UI just stops for a second. Once you're there, Briefing is still a buggy mess that frequently fails to load articles. I would say Samsung still has some work to do here, but they just shouldn't bother. Luckily, you can turn this feature off.
The app drawer also earns my scorn with its complete lack of consistent organization. It comes with a custom layout and folders, but even when you organize it alphabetically, it doesn't stay like that. New apps are tacked on at the end and removing apps leaves gaps on the various pages. You can hit the A-Z button at the top to reflow it in the right order, but what? I don't even understand why they would design it like this.
Another TouchWiz oddity is the way third-party widgets behave on the home screen. Scrollable widgets (i.e. Twitter clients, calendars, etc.) have extremely stuttery animations. They work fine on other launchers, so I'm not sure what's going on with Samsung's launcher. This, along with the parallax thing, are enough of an annoyance that I can't see myself using the stock home screen going forward.
If you're going to twist my arm and force me to say something nice about the launcher, well, it's cool that you can change the grid size to 4x5 or 5x5 from the standard 4x4. The widget list in TouchWiz is also excellent. It groups all the widgets from an app into a single folder that you can select from.
Samsung did make some questionable decisions with TouchWiz, but replacing the home screen alleviates almost all of my pain points. TouchWiz on the Galaxy S6 is overall faster, less cluttered, and more refined than it has ever been.
Themes
Let's talk about the theme store for a moment. As I mentioned above, there are still some things about TouchWiz that aren't great, but maybe a theme could help? That requires the themes be good first, and thus far there are only a few that are even close to being acceptable.
Samsung's themes are the whole package—ringtones, background, system UI, and icons. You can't choose individual parts of a theme to apply, but you can change the wallpaper or sounds after applying.
A lot of what is included at launch are very over-the-top with ridiculous colors or cutesy characters. There are a few somewhat more understated options, but none of them seem completely baked. For example, the AMOLED-friendly Cogul Black theme has white wire-frame icons that are completely invisible in system dialog pop ups. Many themes also include background images in the settings or dialer that make text harder to read. Here are some screens of the themes.
It's not clear if Samsung is going to open this up or if it will tightly control what is allowed in. A batch of themes was added while I was in the middle of this review, so hopefully there's more to come. Everything in the theme store is free right now, but there's support for paid content as well. I would pay for a clean AOSP theme. Just throwing that out there, Samsung.
ConclusionVN:F [1.9.22_1171]
please wait... Rating: 5.0/5 (1 vote cast)
Square Enix Ltd. has revealed a brand new gameplay trailer, new screenshots and concept art for the forthcoming Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, following stage show reveals at the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary celebration event in Tokyo. The ‘Limit Break!’ gameplay trailer highlights the new party-based battle system coming to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn, and is a full, expanded version of a short teaser trailer first unveiled on stage at Gamescom 2012.
The artwork and screenshots reflect the presentation given at the Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary celebration event in Tokyo, including images of the newly announced battle class, the Arcanist, and job that stems from this class, the Summoner. All of these new visual assets are available below, and Electronic Theatre will keep you updated with all the latest details on Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn.
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Related Posts:Man who 'beat up priest for molesting him when he was seven' sobs as he recounts the horrific abuse - and says he is looking forward to facing attacker in court
A man accused of beating up a priest who he says molested him as a seven-year-old boy sobbed as he recounted the horrific details of the alleged abuse.
In the heartbreaking interview, Will Lynch added that he is looking forward to facing his abuser in court at the assault trial this week - as he was never dragged before a judge for his alleged crimes.
'I've always wanted the opportunity to bring the truth into the light,' said Lynch, who now lives in San Fransisco, California. 'I did [it] for compelling reasons. There's a system here that's broken.'
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Pain: Will Lynch sobs as he recounts his alleged sexual abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest when he was just seven years old. Lynch is in court this week accused of beating up the priest in 2010
Explaining why he pummeled Father Jerold Lindner in May 2010, leaving him with bruises and in need of stitches, Lynch told the San Jose Mercury News : 'I did everything I could do under the law.
'Where does my moral obligation to myself, to society... supersede the law of the land and his rights?'
In the interview, he recounted the horrific abuse during religious camping trips in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 1975 - when he was seven and his brother was just four.
He sobbed as he detailed how Father Jerry cornered him in his tent and forced him to perform a sex act on him. Later, he dragged the boy to his own tent - where Lynch's brother was already waiting.
'I felt like I was being led to the slaughter,' he said. 'I remember thinking at that time, I'm not going to get out of this. I thought he was going to kill me.'
There, he allegedly raped Lynch as he was forced to commit a sex act on his younger brother. Father Jerry said if the two boys ran for help, he would kill their little sister.
'He broke me': Lynch recalled how he was allegedly raped and forced to perform a sex act on his own brother
Redemption: Will Lynch is pictured grinning in his mug shot after he allegedly beat up the priest who molested him as a boy (right). He left the priest, then 65, with bruises and needing stitches 'He broke me, he totally broke me,' Lynch, 44, said as he wiped away his tears.'I can't even fathom as an adult how somebody could do that.' He said he is still plagued with guilt at how he was unable to save his younger brother - 'I let myself and my family down' - and the pain and shame of the abuse means they now rarely talk. 'We don't have anything to do with each other,' he said. 'Every time we see each other... there's just this component. It's a reminder of terrible things.' The abuse ruined other family relationships as he angrily lashed out at anyone in authority, he said. By fourth grade, he was smoking pot, and by seventh, he was dealing it and drinking heavily. When he was 15, he tried to commit suicide by slitting his wrists.
'Abuser': Father Jerold Lindner, known as Father Jerry, allegedly sexually abused at least 12 children Hopes: Lynch, right as a child, said he cannot wait for the priest, left, to finally face a judge when he testifies in the assault trial. He was never arrested as his victims spoke out too many years after 'The one thing people don't really understand about this whole thing, the collateral damage is just ridiculous,' Lynch said. 'There's no fear. What are you going to do, kill me? Go ahead, take me out of my misery.'
'I did everything I could do under the law. Where does my moral obligation to myself and to society supersede the law of the land and his rights?' Will Lynch
Finally, his brother revealed to his baffled parents the reasons behind Lynch's destructive behaviour. Lynch was furious at first, but then felt enormous relief that the secret was out.
He then began asking around and found a total of 12 children who had been molested on the camping trips, including Lindner's sister, niece and nephew. But the priest was never prosecuted as the victims reported the abuse long after the time set by the statute of limitations had passed. To meet this, Lynch would have had to testify within just six years.
Instead, Lynch and his brother - as well as many other victims - sued the Jesuits and each received a $187,000 pay off. In total, the group has paid out millions to Father Jerry's victims.
Innocence: Lynch said he feels guilt he was unable to protect his younger brother, pictured
During the payout process, Lynch learned Lindner had been evaluated twice at a psychiatric hospital program for Catholic priests accused of molestation - yet was allowed to return to work.
Lindner was sent to the Jesuit's Sacred Heart retirement and medical center, which riled Lynch even further.
'I have to live with, OK, this guy is sitting up here with impunity in Los Gatos, one of the finest places in the country, by the vineyard, overlooking the valley,' he said.
'There's 18 educational institutions around that place, ranging from preschools, to high schools, to private schools, to charter schools, to day care, to community centers.'
Lynch would not detail what led him to attack Lindner that particular day, but the details are likely to come out in the court case, which starts on Wednesday.
No way out: The boys were allegedly cornered in their tents while on family camping trips in the Santa Cruz mountains (pictured), where Father Jerry was a spiritual adviser
Lynch could have negotiated a plea deal and received no more than a year behind bars, but he instead chose to go to trial and could face up to four years in jail if convicted.
'I want to take responsibility for what I've done,' Lynch said. 'I don't think I'm above the law like the church and Father Jerry.'
Lynch said if he is convicted and sent to jail, he has no regrets. He told the Mercury News he has felt peace and satisfaction since the alleged attack in 2010 - and it will only get stronger at the trial.
'For the first time in my life I have a voice,' Lynch said. 'I'm empowered. I'm kind of in control of my destiny and that's all I've ever wanted.'
Lindner has denied the accusations.
See below for video - WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT - NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDRENIf the 2014-15 Milwaukee Bucks are known for one thing above all else, it would be consistently doing everything at a.500 pace (which means that for each game the Bucks win, they lose one). There’s nothing wrong with that for these Bucks, though. A.500 record is going to get them into the playoffs because they play in the weaker Eastern Conference, and considering last season the Bucks were a.223 team I think most Bucks fans are alright with the team’s record thus far.
The Bucks are currently 23-22, just one game above.500. They haven’t been very far away from that mark at all this season-only three times throughout the season have these Bucks won or lost more than two games in a row (twice they won three in a row, once they lost three in a row), and the last such streak was broken in early December. Even more eerie is the fact that the losing streak came right after one of the winning streaks. The consistency thus far has been uncanny.
The Bucks proved once more that they’re a.500 team when the squad won two of their four games this week. The Bucks’ week began with two home games (against the Jazz and the Pistons) and ended with two road games (against the Spurs and the Heat). The Bucks, again determined to be even in every way, won one home game and one road game.
To find out which games the young Bucks managed to win, read on! We’ll start with the game against the Utah Jazz.For Release: Wednesday, October 14, 2015
Washington, DC — State laws allowing private citizens to carry concealed handguns in public have done little to keep us safer and instead expose the public to more danger, ongoing research from the Violence Policy Center (VPC) finds.
Since 2007, the VPC has identified at least 579 fatal, non-self defense incidents involving concealed carry permit holders nationwide, a number that likely represents a fraction of the actual total.
Details on these fatal incidents can be found on Concealed Carry Killers (concealedcarrykillers.org), an online resource that provides examples of non-self defense killings involving private citizens with permits to carry concealed handguns in public. Information on these incidents is organized by state.
Overall, Concealed Carry Killers documents 579 fatal incidents since May 2007 in 38 states and the District of Columbia, resulting in the deaths of 763 people. Twenty-nine of the incidents were mass shootings as defined by federal law (three or more victims), resulting in the deaths of 139 victims. At least 17 law enforcement officers died at the hands of concealed carry killers since May 2007.
“Far more often than they use their guns to kill in self-defense, concealed handgun permit holders kill themselves or others,” states VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand. “The tragic incidents documented month by month in Concealed Carry Killers should put an end to the gun industry myth that concealed carry permit holders increase public safety.”
Because there is no comprehensive recordkeeping of deaths involving concealed handgun permit holders and many states in fact bar the release of such information, the examples on Concealed Carry Killers are taken primarily from news reports and most likely represent a fraction of actual events.
Concealed Carry Killers does not include the small number of incidents that are eventually determined to involve self-defense or where no verdict is reached at trial. All such incidents are removed from the database’s ongoing totals.
In the vast majority of the 579 incidents documented in Concealed Carry Killers (485, or 84 percent), the concealed carry permit holder either committed suicide (223), has already been convicted (197), perpetrated a murder-suicide (48), or was killed in the incident (17). Of the 73 cases still pending, the majority (63) of concealed carry killers have been charged with criminal homicide, four were deemed incompetent to stand trial, and six incidents are still under investigation. An additional 21 incidents were fatal unintentional shootings involving the gun of the concealed handgun permit holder.
Concealed Carry Killers includes detailed information for the majority of the 579 incidents, including (if available) the age of the perpetrator and the victim(s), the weapon used, the relationship(s) of those involved in the killing, and motives for the killing when stated.
Below is a chart showing the status of all concealed carry killers since May 2007:
The findings of Concealed Carry Killers are consistent with the latest academic research, which shows that state laws allowing concealed handguns in public do not increase public safety — in fact, they do the opposite. A recent study from Stanford University concludes that state concealed carry laws actually lead to an increase in violent crime.
And a recent VPC study, Firearm Justifiable Homicides and Non-Fatal Self-Defense Gun Use, shows it is extremely rare for private citizens to use guns in justifiable homicides. The study found that in 2012, there were only 259 justifiable homicides involving a private citizen using a firearm. That same year, there were 8,342 criminal firearm homicides, based on data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s Supplementary Homicide Report.
Additional information, including a state-by-state breakdown of fatal incidents involving concealed carry killers, is available at concealedcarrykillers.org. To review all deaths involving concealed carry killers, click on “Total People Killed by Concealed Carry Killers.”
The Violence Policy Center is a national educational organization working to stop gun death and injury. Follow the VPC on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.Google Inc. is now aligned with the notorious ALEC.
Quietly, Google has joined ALEC -- the American Legislative Exchange Council -- the shadowy corporate alliance that pushes odious laws through state legislatures.
In the process, Google has signed onto an organization that promotes such regressive measures as tax cuts for tobacco companies, school privatization to help for-profit education firms, repeal of state taxes for the wealthy and opposition to renewable energy disliked by oil companies.
ALEC’s reactionary efforts -- thoroughly documented by the Center for Media and Democracy -- are shameful assaults on democratic principles. And Google is now among the hundreds of companies in ALEC. Many people who’ve admired Google are now wondering: how could this be?
Well, in his recent book “Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy,” Robert W. McChesney provides vital context. “It is true that with the advent of the Internet many of the successful giants -- Apple and Google come to mind -- were begun by idealists who may have been uncertain whether they really wanted to be old-fashioned capitalists,” he writes. “The system in short order has whipped them into shape.”
McChesney adds: “Any qualms about privacy, commercialism, avoiding taxes, or paying low wages to Third World factory workers were quickly forgotten. It is not that the managers are particularly bad and greedy people -- indeed their individual moral makeup is mostly irrelevant -- but rather that the system sharply rewards some types of behavior and penalizes other types of behavior so that people either get with the program and internalize the necessary values or they fail.”
Google has widely mythologized itself as some kind of humanistic techno-pioneer. Obscured in a fog of digital legend is the agenda that more than ever is transfixed with maximizing profits while capitalizing on anti-democratic leverage of corporate power. Google’s involvement in ALEC is consistent with the company’s mega-business model that relentlessly exploits rigorous data-mining of emails, online searches and so much more.
Yet image-conscious companies can be skittish about public pressure. That helps to explain why dozens of firms withdrew from ALEC during the last year.
A few days ago -- when my colleagues at RootsAction.org sent out an email alert about news of ALEC’s connection with Google as well as with Facebook and Yelp -- more than 25,000 people quickly signed a petition urging those companies to “stop funding ALEC.” Several thousand of the petition signers added comments that can be read online along with the petition.
Those comments reflect widening comprehension of Google and the significance of its alignment with ALEC. Here’s a sampling:
“I expected better. Maybe that was naive.” James C., San Jose, CA
“What happened to your big pledge? ‘Don't be evil’? Guess it was just words...” Lois W., Sun City, AZ
“Better check your definition of EVIL -- look it up on Google…” Armando A., Vista, CA
“Please don't fund tyranny. You were supposed to be one of the good guys.” Ernest W., Easthampton, MA
“Your credibility is fading associating with this kind of scum.” John B., Easton, CT
“You are subverting the wishes of your clients/users while undermining democracy.” Vincent G., Sioux Falls, SD
“Shame on you. Think about what the majority of your users want instead of the ‘rich’ guys.” Karen B., Westminster, CO
“If you continue to support ALEC, I will along with countless others, discontinue use of ALL your products and services!” Ronald P., Milford Center, OH
“Quit helping to Destroy our democracy.” Kevin B., Lynnwood, WA
“Corporate power is corrupting this nation's ability to have a decent governing system.” Jean and Jesper C., Louisville, KY
“What is wrong with Google acting like the one tenth of the 1%? Too much filthy lucre has covered their conscience.” Doug Y., Albany, CA
“Google! How could you do this? Don't you realize this organization stands for ALL the wrong things? I'm sure most of your employees would not want to belong to ALEC. Please reconsider for their sake and that of all of us.” Judith S., Carbondale, IL
“If you sleep with dogs, you get fleas.” Robert J., Fern Park, FL
“Shame! We thought you were supposed to be a tool for the people, not a tool for the corporations!” Sharon T., Irvine, CA
“Happy Sociopath Day to you people!” Gary S., Big Bear Lake, CA
“Google has evolved to be one of the most unethical corporations in the world!” Eric K., Montclair, NJ
“This is so obviously evil, and it causes real suffering.” Terrell S., Seattle, WA
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“Don't you corporate executives make enough money? How much can you spend? Don't you realize that people have to have money to buy your product? What the heck are you ‘dumb-asses’ thinking?” Lon K., Waterloo, IA
“Good companies are becoming evil in order to please ALEC and the upper 1%. I thought Google would never need to stoop to that. I'm sadder than sad.” Linda A., Medina, WA
“ALEC promotes corporate dominance over the democratic processes that our country was founded on. Shame on you!” Judy D., Port Townsend, WA
“Laws should be written by elected representatives with citizen input, NOT by cookie-cuttered legalese templates created by and for the corporate interests.” Liz A., Los Angeles, CA
“Noooooo Google! I love you but I will have to abandon you and many of your products should you do this. I really, really, really don’t want to do that! But will...” Rochelle W., Reading, PA
“ALEC organizes capital to crush people by gaining any all benefits for the wealthy. That has consequences for children, elderly, disabled, veterans, working people -- your customers. Please look beyond the near-term bottomline.” Benita C., Burgettstown, PA
“Greed may be the worst terror facing this country. Greed, of corporations and some individuals, seems bent on destroying our democracy. We have to fight back!” Anne G., Arlington, TX
“ALEC is evil. Those who fund ALEC are enabling evil. Enough said.” Monty N., Helena, MT
“Google: Better get your house in order and your priorities straight. Average Americans are in no mood for this crap.” Lawrence H., Fall Creek, WI
“For a company that loves to talk about the forward thinking way it treats employees, it surely seems acts just like every other ultra conservative corporate giant.” Andrew W., Pittsfield, MA
“Why such cowardice?” Mitchell S., Philadelphia, PA
“I knew the Don't Be Evil mantra would disappear once the big money started flowing in. They're no different than any other sleazy money-grubbing corporation in the cesspool of greed the USA has become.” Gill F., Olympia, WA
“Disgusting professional activity on the part of this huge corrupt business. Google is going to have to do a lot of work to earn back the respect of a huge segment of the public; this only one of many recent revelations about Google's despicable conduct as an entity.” Susan H., Lafayette, IN
“Big money, big business, big lies.” Stephen D., Grants Pass, OR
“Please stand for individual's freedom rather than corporate greed and stop supporting ALEC.” Carol B., San Rafael, CA
“Your company went from hip and caring to right of Attila the Hun and nasty in a few years...” Roger W., Montpelier, VT
“ALEC has been a disaster for the vast majority of citizens in Wisconsin and other states. It has become a leading supporter of fascist attacks on women's sacred reproductive rights.” Edith M., Milwaukee, WI
“ALEC has done tremendous harm to this country and its political system. Any support for the organization is support for tearing down constitutional government.” James F., Minneapolis, MN
“Just provide a service and take home your inflated paycheck. Stay out of the rest. And by the way, erase my browsing history, you nosey anti-American hacks.” Jeff Cole, Tucson, AZ
“If Google and Facebook have any integrity left, please prove it by not funding ALEC!” Douglas W., Chicago, IL
“ALEC is trying to dismantle our civil society. Do not be part of it.” Jean Beck, Lynnwood, WA
“Have a heart!!!!!!” Artalious S., McDonough GA
“ALEC is a big step backwards in human evolution, or a big step toward Big Brother.” Victoria G., Portland, OR
“Disgusting. More government for the highest bidders.” Michael P., Morton Grove, IL
“The worst thing about ALEC is its anti-democratic nature which buys votes to override the will of the people. As an information source this should violate your principles.” Lon H., Ferndale, MI
“When you are as giant as Google, you ALMOST have stomp on us little people. Please please please be with US…” Jon S., Lafayette, CO
“This is indicative of what happens when the founders of a company grow extremely wealthy. They align themselves more and more with the organizations that will further their agenda of market dominance and profit taking. The support of ALEC by the two founders of Google is particularly hypocritical because of their original pledge to not be evil. Shame on both of you.” Bruce B., Port Townsend, WAGiants: Citizen Kabuto is a third-person shooter video game with real-time strategy elements. It was the first project for Planet Moon Studios, which consisted of former Shiny Entertainment employees who had worked on the game MDK in 1997. Giants went through four years of development before Interplay Entertainment published it on December 6, 2000, for Microsoft Windows; a Mac OS X port was published by MacPlay in 2001, and the game was also ported to the PlayStation 2 later that year.
In the game, players take control of a single character from one of three humanoid races to either complete the story in single-player mode or to challenge other players in online multiplayer matches. They can select heavily armed Meccaryns equipped with jet packs, or amphibious spell-casting Sea Reapers; the game's subtitle, "Citizen Kabuto", refers to the last selectable race, a thundering behemoth who can execute earthshaking wrestling attacks to pulverize its enemies. The single-player mode is framed as a sequential story, putting the player through a series of missions, several of which test the player's reflexes in action game-like puzzles.
Game critics praised Giants for its state-of-the-art graphics on Windows computers, a humorous story, and successfully blending different genres. Criticisms focused on crippling software bugs and the lack of an in-game save feature. The console version rectified some of the flaws found in the PC versions, at the cost of removing several features. The game initially sold poorly for Windows and PlayStation 2; however, it sold well afterwards, and gained a cult following.
Gameplay [ edit ]
In Giants: Citizen Kabuto, players take on the roles of three humanoid races: gun-toting Meccaryns, magic-wielding Sea Reapers, and the gigantic Kabuto. Each player is assigned direct control of a single character. The game's developers, Planet Moon Studios, created this design to encourage players to focus on the action and not to be burdened with micromanagement.[1] Players can customize the controls, which are largely the same for each race, with slight differences for abilities.[2]
The single-player mode consists of a sequence of missions set as an overarching story. Each mission requires the completion of certain objectives to progress to the next mission. The objectives are usually the elimination of enemies or a certain structure, but several of them test the player's eye–hand coordination or require the player to rescue and protect certain units.[3] Players control their characters from a default third person perspective; a first person view is optional. Each race has its own offensive style, and a special mode of fast movement. Killing a creature releases a power-up, which heals or awards weapons to its collector.[4]
A Meccaryn player and his jet pack equipped team attacks targets through the default third-person interface.
The real-time strategy elements of Giants consist of base building and resource gathering, wherein the resources are small humanoids called Smarties.[5] There are a limited number of Smarties in a mission, and players must rush to gather them, or kidnap them from each other to gain an advantage.[1] Players also gather sustenance for the Smarties to make them work; Meccaryn and Reaper players hunt the cattle-like Vimps for meat and souls respectively. The options in building a base are limited; players can neither choose the locations for the structures nor manage their workforce in detail.[6] Players in control of Kabuto need not build a base; instead, the character gains strength and produces subordinate characters by hunting for food.[7] Kabuto consumes Smarties to increase his size and power; at maximum size, he can produce smaller Tyrannosaurus-like units as subordinates. To restore his health, Kabuto eats Vimps and other units (player- and computer-controlled).[8]
Multiplayer mode allows a maximum of five Meccaryn, three Sea Reaper, and one Kabuto player(s) to play in each session.[9] Due to the lack of a game server browser, players connect through online services MPlayer or GameSpy Arcade for the Windows version,[2] and GameRanger for the Mac OS X version.[10] Besides the standard "destroy all enemy bases and units" missions, the multiplayer mode includes deathmatches and "Capture the Smartie (flag)"-type games.[11] Players are permitted either to start with a full base or to build one from foundations.[12]
Plot [ edit ]
The game world of Giants is set on a fictional "Island" traveling through space.[13] Its surface comprises grasslands, deserts, and forests, surrounded by azure seas.[4][8] Players have an unobstructed view of the game world to its horizon; whereas distant objects are slightly blurred to convey a sense of distance.[14] Missions for Meccaryns provide cover to hide behind, large spaces of water for Reapers, and creatures for Kabuto to eat.[14]
Characters [ edit ]
Planet Moon intended for the player characters to provide a varied gameplay experience,[1] laying down requirements to make the characters distinct with unique advantages and disadvantages.[14]
Meccaryns use high technology and attack as a pack led by the player. [15] Meccaryn players sport guns, explosives, and backpacks that provide special abilities: [4] jet packs allow players to fly over obstacles and outmaneuver opponents, [16] and the "Bush"-pack camouflages the character as a shrub. [17] In single-player mode, players assume the role of Baz, leader of a group of Meccaryns comprising Gordon, Bennett, Tel, and Reg. Several scenarios in the game shows the responsible Baz frustrated with the laxity of Gordon and Bennett, and the inquisitive Tel and Reg. [18]
Meccaryn players sport guns, explosives, and backpacks that provide special abilities: jet packs allow players to fly over obstacles and outmaneuver opponents, and the "Bush"-pack camouflages the character as a shrub. In single-player mode, players assume the role of Baz, leader of a group of Meccaryns comprising Gordon, Bennett, Tel, and Reg. Several scenarios in the game shows the responsible Baz frustrated with the laxity of Gordon and Bennett, and the inquisitive Tel and Reg. Sea Reapers are amphibious, humanoid swimmers.[1] Therefore, they regain health in contact with water, and the game's Piranhas do not attack them.[2] To travel fast over land, players can "turbo boost" their Reapers to targeted areas. The Reapers can use swords, bows, and spells, such as summoning firestorms or tornadoes, in combat.[19] Planet Moon Studios initially conceived the Sea Reaper single-player character, Delphi, as evil, but later gave her a conscience.[18]
Kabuto is the title creature of the game, and the only one of his race.[20] In his back-story, the Reapers created him as their guardian, but found him beyond control. Creative Director Tim Williams gave the "Citizen" title to Kabuto for its allusion to the character's wish for a sense of belonging to the Island.[13] The game developer modeled Kabuto's attacks after those of giant monsters in classic monster movies,[21] allowing him to use professional wrestling attacks and aerial techniques such as elbow drops, foot stomps, and the "butt flop" described as "like the body slam, but with less dignity".[4] To balance his strength, a weak point at his waist inflicts heavy damage when struck.[8] Players playing the giant monster can assume a perspective through his mouth to target prey.[22]
For non-playable races, the team designed Smarties to have oversized heads, bulging eyes, and idiotic personalities for comedic effect.[3][4] Players labor for the Smarties while witnessing their hedonistic indulgences. The payoff, however, is a "giant gun".[18] Standard enemies include Reaper Guards (male Reapers with no magical ability, who serve as common soldiers), as well as fauna such as the insectoid Rippers, beast-of-burden Sonaks, and bat-like Verms.[13]
Story [ edit ]
Originally featuring each race in its own distinct story, the single-player mode now depicts a single sequential story[18] wherein the player begins as Baz and must complete a sequence of missions before assuming the role of Delphi. On completion of Delphi's story, the player takes control of a Kabuto character.[23] Williams used cut scenes to introduce and conclude each mission.[24]
As Baz, the player searches for Reg and Tel. Timmy, a Smartie rescued in the first mission, |
of these records were censored by the NEB, prior to release through Canada’s access to information law. The legislation requires the government to release records upon request, but it allows the government to withhold information that contains legal advice and matters under consultation.
Comrade whistleblower
Later in April, as the NEB employees discussed an access to information request about its investigation into the safety allegations, Lapointe, the vice-president, and Ochitwa both leaked out their deliberations about the whistleblower to Murray. The latter responded by pointing out that it was inappropriate for them to share this information outside of the organization.
“I know Doug is polite and means well in including me in this saga however I think it is appropriate that I am removed me (sic) from this thread and being privy to your deliberations,’” wrote Murray in an April 24 email, released through access to information legislation.
Ochitwa replied with a message that was also released by the NEB, but censored. Then Murray responded.
Video of Dr. Alan Murray - ASME Pipeline Medal 2014
Alan Murray in video for 2014 ASME Pipeline Medal. Murray was presented the Pipeline Division Medal during the International Pipeline Conference (IPC) 2014 in Calgary.
“No need to apologize Doug but you know how email threads work. No one checks who is on the addressee list. At least it didn't include Comrade (whistleblower). Oops! now you will have to include this email in your package! It is almost midnight in Norway, So I’m signing off! have a great weekend.”
Murray said that he called the whistleblower “comrade” in reference to the past when he worked with him and Ochitwa in the 1990s at Nova Gas Transmission, which eventually merged with TransCanada.
When asked by National Observer, the NEB did not say whether it attempted to notify the whistleblower that it had breached his privacy, through emails to Murray that included some of its deliberations.
But by May, Lapointe, the NEB executive vice president, sent the whistleblower a letter that defended the other staff. Her letter made no mention about the mistake she made by emailing information about the case to Murray.
“With respect to the allegations you have made respecting safety practices at TransCanada, as previously advised, the Board has been aware of your concerns since shortly after your initial communication with Board staff in March 2014,” Lapointe wrote. “The Board’s active investigation of TransCanada practices in respect of those allegations is ongoing.”
Murray declined to comment on the details of the NEB report, which largely dismissed most of the whistleblower's allegations. Murray said he retired several years ago and was no expert. “An expert is somebody who is actively involved in what’s going on and actually, at least just in Canada, an expert is anybody who’s 100 yards away from their office carrying a briefcase. Even the people who cut your lawn are supposed to be a professional,” Murray said.
He added that the whistleblower was free to pursue complaints and that there should be reasonable limits to how far he can go.
“He’s perfectly entitled to make - I would say - fresh allegations if he has them and they’re supported by specific facts,” said Murray, a founding member of the pipeline division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. “If those are true, fine."
Murray doesn't believe the pipeline industry is perfect.
He wrote a blog post last July for a pipeline industry lobby group that explained that pipelines were necessary for modern lifestyles and that they were generally safe. But he also said in the blog that pipeline companies needed to improve efforts to detect spills.
Most companies report all safety incidents as required by federal pipeline regulations, but there is room for improvement, he said. “If you’re going to ask me what my opinion is of the reporting procedures in the country and could they be improved? Of course. When I say they could be improved, there’s the legal obligation. Does every company report? I would say the vast majority do, but go and ask the Board that… How many? What’s their reporting like? Is it 100 per cent? If they tell you it’s a 100 per cent, they’re lying through their teeth. So, they wouldn’t tell you it’s a 100 per cent. They know very well it’s not. But it’s quite high.”
Whistleblower training
In its final report into the whistleblower's allegations, released in October, the NEB said there was no evidence that TransCanada was using risky welding practices in the field, based on internal company documents, reports and memos.
The whistleblower said that several employees he knows were ready to speak about those welding procedures and confirm his allegations, but were waiting for the NEB to approach them.
He said the NEB doesn't seem to want to pursue the matter.
Loewen, the NEB's vice president of operations, told him that there was no point in getting names of people who could confirm allegations of safety violations.
“It’s not like we actually go out there and cross examine staff at TransCanada. If you have names, I don't know what those names would help us accomplish,” Loewen told the whistleblower in a phone conversation on Oct. 30, 2015 that was played for National Observer. “We don't put them under oath or anything like that. We’re looking for documentation. This is not a criminal case. The kind of stuff we’re looking for is records, pictures, that kind of stuff. That’s the kind of stuff that helps.”
As they were speaking, the TransCanada website posted a new blog that publicly thanked the NEB for its investigation. The blog featured a message from Mark Yeomans, the TransCanada vice president who had received a "heads up" from NEB engineers in December 2014, before they started a formal investigation into the whistleblower's allegations.
“We are very pleased to see the NEB determined that not a single allegation involved a violation of NEB regulations,” said Yeomans, in the blog, posted online right after the NEB released its report. “The investigation involved dozens of staff members investing hundreds of hours to clear up these allegations.”
The NEB has since recognized that it needs to improve its interactions with whistleblowers. It has received about two dozen complaints about industry from whistleblowers since 2012. Last year, it awarded a contract, worth about $40,000 to a firm, Clarium Fraud and Compliance Solutions, to design a new training program to help its staff develop better methods to communicate with whistleblowers and investigate their allegations.
“We want to avoid having those kind of one off conversations where we have coffee and things like that,” said Loewen, the NEB vice president of operations, during the Oct. 30 conversation last fall with the TransCanada whistleblower.
Editor's note: Also see Part I of our series: NEB emails reveal pattern of off-record meetings with pipeline industry. And part II of our series on how TransCanada edited a federal investigation report.BY BRYAN PERKINS
Occupy Baton Rouge
“If you want to affect any real change, you have to work inside the system.”
There’s not a self-identified occupier who hasn’t heard these words or something to their effect. I would almost guarantee it.
Being one of those “occupiers”, I don’t agree with this assessment of the situation, not entirely at least. At the same time, I’m not writing this essay to argue against it. Instead, I’m writing to analyze the commonly accepted definition of “the system” and the repercussions of allowing the political establishment to control the terminology we use.
When this refrain is sung, it often falls from the mouth of Democrats who, not unlike concern trolls, claim they support the aims of the movement but are worried about the strategy of working “outside” the system. The problem arises then as to their misconception of what constitutes the system. This refrain is invariably followed by a chorus of vote, vote, vote. A chorus that reveals the depth of the singer’s political analysis.
“The system”, according to those who hum the tune thus described, only allows us to express ourselves once every three or so years–depending on the level and branch of government. The only thing we can do to affect it is to vote for a representative, is to play their game. Everything else is outside.
I think this a limited vision of the system. Our democratic process as it stands was not forged in the voting booths, it was forged by the masses in their workplaces and in the streets, forcing the establishment to pay attention to the very people our government was created to represent.
Women and blacks didn’t win suffrage by playing electoral politics, they won it by taking their bodies and voices directly to the people. Workers didn’t win a shorter workweek by electing a savior to think for them, they won it by shutting down their factories and reminding those in power who really makes this country run. We will not win our government by replacing one politician with another, we will do it by taking control of our own lives.
Throughout history, “the system” has been affected by more than the voting booth. Marches and protests do in fact constitute working within the democratic system. We can now see that the song we started this essay with is misguided, because we are already inside, we don’t have to move to get here.
That’s the very problem. We are too far inside. We were born inside. We grow up in the system’s schools. We are taught history according to the system. We are thus formed into the cogs and springs and gears that keep the system running.
If we ever want to make any useful, lasting change, we’re going to have to finally break out of the system. That won’t be an easy task.
I picture us as the first astronauts, born on Earth and told we will never be able to leave. After a long period of research and testing on Earth, we make our first forays outside of the atmosphere, outside of the system.
The Paris Commune! Tahrir Square! Zuccotti Park!
The experiments are relatively brief, and they always end in a return to Earth as we know it, but the experiences are invaluable. We utilize decision making methods that are unheard of within the narrow confines of the system. In doing so, we accomplish feats unimaginable and convert all those who experience the wonders of outer space to a higher level of social consciousness. Through our experiences, we learn that what we once thought was impossible only needs to be attempted again and again.
So, though I agree that we must work inside the system–since that is what we have–to reclaim our democracy, we must also take the fight into our own spaces, out among the stars, where we can shape the new possible. Only then will we come to a planet on which human needs are more important than profiteering, and only then can we imagine the structural changes that will save us all.Francisella tularensis is classified as a Class A bioterrorism agent by the U.S. government due to its high virulence and the ease with which it can be spread as an aerosol. It is a facultative intracellular pathogen and the causative agent of tularemia. Ciprofloxacin (Cipro) is a broad spectrum antibiotic effective against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Increased Cipro resistance in pathogenic microbes is of serious concern when considering options for medical treatment of bacterial infections. Identification of genes and loci that are associated with Ciprofloxacin resistance will help advance the understanding of resistance mechanisms and may, in the future, provide better treatment options for patients. It may also provide information for development of assays that can rapidly identify Cipro-resistant isolates of this pathogen. In this study, we selected a large number of F. tularensis live vaccine strain (LVS) isolates that survived in progressively higher Ciprofloxacin concentrations, screened the isolates using a whole genome F. tularensis LVS tiling microarray and Illumina sequencing, and identified both known and novel mutations associated with resistance. Genes containing mutations encode DNA gyrase subunit A, a hypothetical protein, an asparagine synthase, a sugar transamine/perosamine synthetase and others. Structural modeling performed on these proteins provides insights into the potential function of these proteins and how they might contribute to Cipro resistance mechanisms.
Funding: The work was funded by the Department of Homeland Security. The funder provided support in the form of salaries for authors [CJJ, KSM, JBT, AZ, SNG, LV, FB, SM, VF, HK, PJJ], but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.
Studies have shown that naturally occurring F. tularensis strains are susceptible to streptomycin, gentamicin, doxycycline, chloramphenicol and quinolones, and have heterogeneous susceptibility to erythromycin [ 9 – 11 ]. While F. tularensis can acquire Cipro resistance under selective pressure, the mechanisms of Cipro resistance in F. tularensis are not well understood. We selected for survival of F. tularensis LVS isolates in the presence of increasing Cipro concentrations, then compared whole genome sequences of resistant and related sensitive isolates to identify mutations likely to be found in F. tularensis subjected to Ciprofloxacin selective pressure. We performed whole genome analysis using a combination of two methods to assess the relative strengths of each platform for mutation detection. First, we developed a comparative genome hybridization (CGH) tiling microarray for F. tularensis LVS, with successive probes overlapping by at least 85% of their length, and performed two-color hybridizations of each resistant isolate together with the parent LVS strain. We then used Illumina next generation shotgun sequencing to generate large numbers of short sequence reads for each isolate, with more than 200X coverage over the entire genome. Here we describe the mutations found by these experiments and report the results of protein structure analyses to elucidate the underlying resistance mechanisms.
Unintended selection has resulted in a wide range of antibiotic resistant, clinically important pathogens. Most antibiotic resistance mechanisms fall into one of three classes: (1) Resistance based on changes in the structure of proteins targeted by the antibiotics, such as when changes in genes encoding components of topoisomerases change the shape of the sites where Cipro ordinarily binds to them; (2) resistance based on acquisition or increased expression of proteins that directly act on the antibiotic molecule, e.g. of β-lactamase enzymes that break down penicillins; and (3) resistance based on acquisition or upregulation of energy-dependent efflux pumps that actively remove antibiotics from the bacterial cells, such as the Bmr and Blt multi-drug transporter proteins of Bacillus subtilis (1). Efflux pumps are very common in Gram-negative bacteria, are often poorly characterized, and can result in co-resistance to several antibiotics. All three types of resistance mechanisms may be chromosomally encoded or may be acquired on extra-chromosomal elements.
While unintended selection of naturally occurring antibiotic resistant mutants through antibiotic overuse is a long-standing public health issue, a more recent concern is the possibility that hostile individuals or organizations could engineer resistant strains deliberately. These strains could be created either by targeted introduction of resistance elements or by selection of spontaneous mutants. Methods of inserting genetic material have been developed for a number of microbes including B. anthracis, Y. pestis, F. tularensis and B. pseudomallei [ 6 – 8 ]. It is therefore feasible that, by targeting genes that function in microbes closely related to specific threat agents, threat agent isolates that are resistant to therapeutically important antibiotic concentrations can be developed. Knowing which genes or combinations of genes are modified in Cipro resistant isolates, rapid assays can be developed that would detect these changes very quickly. These assays can be used to analyze the antibiotic resistance profiles in order to properly treat the exposed individuals as rapidly as possible. Moreover, such information would be valuable for forensic analysis to determine possible association with a suspected biowarfare or bioterrorism activity.
Ciprofloxacin (Cipro) is a broad-spectrum bactericidal fluoroquinolone antibiotic effective against many Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Its known mode of action is to bind to DNA topoisomerases involved in bacterial DNA replication, resulting in multiple double-stranded breaks in the bacterial chromosome. Studies of naturally-occurring mutations in several Gram-positive and Gram-negative pathogens that result in Ciprofloxacin resistance show that amino acid substitutions within the quinolone resistance-determining regions (QRDRs) of the gyrA and parC (and, in some cases, gyrB and parE) genes play crucial roles in resistance to this and other quinolone compounds. Cipro resistance in B. anthracis is associated with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in gyrA and parC ([ 1 ] and our own unpublished results) but may also result from changes in either the structure or expression of multi-drug efflux pumps that actively remove antibiotics from microbial cells [ 2 ]. A single mutation within either a topoisomerase or an efflux pump gene or its regulatory region may be sufficient to make B. anthracis resistant to low Cipro concentrations. However, a combination of mutations is apparently required to confer resistance to higher antibiotic concentrations (19). Recent studies of B. anthracis ([ 3 ] and our own unpublished results) also identified mutations associated with Cipro resistance in TetR-type transcriptional regulator genes. Point mutations in gyrA and marA associated with multi-drug and Cipro resistance have been observed in Yersinia pestis [ 4, 5 ] though they likely represent a minor fraction of the mutations that confer antibiotic resistance in this species.
Methods
Selection of Cipro resistant mutants A parental avirulent F. tularensis subsp. holartica LVS strain was provided by the CDC. F. tularensis LVS culture was streaked onto a Mueller Hinton broth (MHB) agar plate (enriched with Proteose Peptone, NaCl 2, Bovine serum, D-(+) Glucose, Ferric Pyrophosphate, and Iso-Vitalex). The wild-type Ciprofloxacin minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) value was determined for F. tularensis LVS by picking a single colony to inoculate 2 mL enriched MHB and incubating overnight at 37°C, 180 rpm. A subculture containing 2 mL enriched MHB was inoculated with 200 μL of the overnight culture and incubated at 37°C, 180 rpm to an optical density at 600 nm of 0.8. A Cipro E-test (BioMerieux) was applied to an enriched MHB agar plate swabbed for full coverage with the F. tularensis LVS subculture, and the E-test plate was incubated overnight at 37°C in an atmosphere containing 5% CO 2. An approximate Cipro MIC was determined to be 0.023 μg/mL for the wild-type F. tularensis LVS. Cultures were prepared for first-round selections by inoculating each well of a 24 well bioblock containing 2 mL of enriched MHB with the same single F. tularensis LVS colony. The bioblock was covered with an airpore tape seal and incubated at 37°C, 180 rpm overnight. Fresh subcultures were prepared by adding 20 μL of each overnight culture to 2 mL enriched MHB. The subcultures were incubated at 37°C, 180 rpm for approximately 4–6 hours to an optical density at 600 nm of 0.8. Cell suspensions were concentrated by centrifugation at 4,000 g for 2 min. The supernatant was discarded and each cell pellet was suspended in the remaining 200 μL of enriched MHB. Each of the 24 suspensions was plated on enriched MHB agar plates containing 0.075 μg/mL Cipro (approximately three times the wild-type MIC value). These 24 first-round selection plates were incubated at 37°C, up to 72 hours in a CO 2 enriched atmosphere. One Cipro resistant colony was picked from each plate into 2 mL enriched MHB containing 0.05 μg/mL Cipro (75% of the resistant concentrations) and incubated at 37°C, 180 rpm overnight. Subcultures were prepared by adding 20 μL of the passage culture that grew in the presence of Cipro to 2 mL enriched MHB without Cipro and incubating at 37°C, 180 rpm to an optical density at 600 nm of 0.8. These subcultures were used for MIC value determinations (as indicated above) and to prepare frozen stocks by adding 700 μL of the subculture to 300 μL sterile 80% glycerol followed by storage at -80°C. Second- and third-round selections using first-round resistant isolates were carried out by increasing Cipro concentrations to approximately three-fold the parent generation MIC values at each step. Approximately 10 second-round resistant isolates were collected following selection for resistance to a higher Cipro concentration for each of 24 first-round mutants (approximately 240 total), and up to five third-round resistant isolates were collected following exposure of each second round isolate to even higher Cipro concentrations producing approximately 1,000 Cipro resistant F. tularensis LVS isolates. Resistant colonies were verified to be F. tularensis LVS by colony morphology and F. tularensis-specific PCR with a forward primer of: GGCTATATGATGGCATTTTTATTAG; and a reverse primer of: GATATATACCCATTATCGAACCATCC. Glycerol stock dilutions were used directly as templates for the PCR analyses.
Whole genome tiling array design for F. tularensis LVS Tiling arrays were designed for F. tularensis LVS using the NimbleGen 388K array platform, which supports probes of multiple lengths on the same array. We developed computational tools to design probes that tile across entire bacterial genomes while satisfying length, overlap and melting temperature (T m ) constraints. By designing and hybridizing F. tularensis DNA to several test arrays, we determined that a length range of 32–40 nucleotides (nt) provided optimal sensitivity and specificity; reference genomic DNA did not consistently bind to probes shorter than 32 nt, while probes longer than 40 nt did not discriminate well between perfect match targets and targets containing SNPs (data not shown). Individual probe lengths were selected to minimize the overall variation of melting temperatures, given the allowed length range of 32–40 nt. A T m range of 74±3°C was selected, based on GC content of the F. tularensis LVS genome and a median probe length of 36 nt. Melting temperatures were calculated using Unafold [12] which employs accurate nearest neighbor thermodynamic predictions. Probes were tiled with an overlap of 85% (every 5–6 nt) across the sequences of the Francisella tularensis subsp. holarctica LVS chromosome (GenBank gi number 89143280) and plasmids pOM1 from F. tularensis LVS (gi number 10954617), pFPHI01 from F. philomiragia subsp. philomiragia strain ATCC 25017 (gi number 167626220), and pFNL10 from F. tularensis subsp. novicida strain F6168 (gi number 32455353). There were a total of 363,359 unique tiled probe sequences on the array. Every seventeenth probe was replicated on the array. We included 3,494 probes containing randomly generated sequences, matching the length and GC% distributions of the tiled probes as negative controls for assessing the distribution of background signals.
Microarray hybridization of mutant and reference DNAs Genomic DNAs from wild type and Cipro resistant isolates were isolated using a Promega Wizard™ genomic DNA purification kit. DNA labeling and hybridization were performed as described in [13] with the following modifications. The reference LVS DNA was labeled with Cy3-labeled random 9-mers and the DNA from the Cipro resistant isolates was labeled with Cy5-labeled random 9-mers. Two μg of the Cy3 labeled reference DNA and Cy5-labeled DNA from a Cipro resistant isolate were hybridized to the same array. Hybridization was for 17 hours at 42°C temperature. Following hybridization, arrays were washed, then scanned using an Axon 4000B scanner (Molecular Devices, Sunnyvale, CA) at 5 μm resolution. Excitation wavelengths of 532 nm and 635 nm were used to detect Cy3 and Cy5 hybridization, respectively. Array images were saved as TIFF files. NimbleScan software 2.4 (Roche Diagnostics) was used to compute the probe fluorescent intensities from TIFF images and overlay them to pair file reports (text files with the signal intensities from the array). The pair reports were used for statistical analysis of microarray data.
Statistical analysis of sequence changes from tiling microarrays An algorithm called TAPS (Tiling Array Polymorphism Sensor) was developed to analyze data from the two-color hybridizations. The TAPS algorithm is based on a thermodynamic model that predicts the effect of mutations on probe-target hybridization affinities, and estimates the likelihood of a mutation at every reference genome position, given the intensities of all probes overlapping the position, The algorithm superficially resembles the “SNPscanner” algorithm of Gresham et al [14], but requires fewer training parameters (70 vs. 4608), and is less susceptible to over-fitting. It can also analyze two-color data sets, and is not restricted to Affymetrix array designs. The TAPS algorithm models the effect of a SNP on the intensity of an overlapping probe as a function of several variables: the reference channel probe intensity, the position of the SNP in the probe sequence, the base substitution relative to the reference genome, and the two perfect-match bases on either side of the SNP locus. We assume that probe intensity decreases as the free energy of hybridization increases (becomes less negative), and that the free energy ΔG is a sum of contributions from aligned pairs of nearest-neighbor (NN) nucleotides. A SNP in the target sequence increases the free energy by replacing two perfect-match NN pairs with pairs having a single mismatch. For example, a mutation that changes the sequence AGC to ATC replaces the perfect match pairs AG/TC and GC/CG with the mismatch pairs AT/TC and TC/CG. Since our tiling array only has probes for the reference genome sequence, it does not provide information about the specific base substitution in the target genome. However, we can predict the average effect of the three possible substitutions at the central base of a particular base triplet. To estimate these average mutation effects for the different base triplets, we performed experiments in which labeled DNA from the reference LVS strain was hybridized to an array, together with a differentially labeled DNA from a different F. tularensis strain of known sequence (subspecies tularensis strain Schu S4 or subspecies novicida strain U112), and thus, with known sequence variations relative to the LVS strain. S1 Fig shows the distributions of log intensity ratios for probes overlapping known sequence variations between the LVS and Schu S4 strains, for an array hybridized to these two strains. The distributions are shown as a box plot, with probes grouped by the reference triplet centered at the SNP locus. As expected, SNPs affecting a triplet with a central G or C base have a stronger effect on average than those replacing an A or a T. The TAPS model also includes a multiplicative position effect, in which SNPs aligning near the middle of a probe cause larger intensity drops than SNPs aligned near the ends, especially the 3’ region closest to the array surface. We expected to see this positional effect based on our earlier work with virulence gene arrays [13]. S2 Fig shows a typical profile of intensity change vs. SNP position, for the same Schu S4 vs. LVS array used in S1 Fig. Each column in this plot represents the distribution of log intensity ratios between the Cy3 (LVS) and Cy5 (Schu S4) channels, for probes overlapping a Schu S4 variation at a given position in the probe; the central bar represents the range from the 25th to the 75th percentiles. We see that, on average, the intensity drop is almost two-fold when a SNP affects the nucleotides binding near the middle of the probe, but is reduced to zero at either end. Even in the absence of SNP effects, probe intensities will differ between the two channels due to dye effects, scanner bias and noise. To correct for these effects, each pair of intensities (y ref, y mut ) was transformed into the log ratio (M) and log geometric mean (A): A semi-parametric regression model was fitted using the M vs. A data for all probes: in which the error term (A) has mean 0 and variance 2(A), and μ(A) and σ2(A) are smooth mean and variance functions. The functions μ(A) and σ2(A) were fit to the M and A values for all probes on each array, using regression on cubic splines to fit μ(A), and a smoothing spline on binned squared residuals to fit σ2(A). Since SNPs only affect a small fraction of probes on the array, the fitted μ(A) closely approximates the mean function for perfect match probes (those not overlapping variations between the reference and target strains). To model the effect of a free energy change ΔΔG = ΔG mut − ΔG ref on the log intensity ratio, we assume that the probe DNA oligomers within an array feature can be in one of three states: unbound, bound to target DNA from the mutant strain, or bound to target DNA from the reference. At thermodynamic equilibrium at temperature T, the fraction of oligomers bound to mutant DNA is given by the Boltzmann equation: where R is the gas constant; a similar equation holds for the fraction of oligomers bound to reference DNA, θ ref. It follows that Since the probe intensity for each dye at concentrations well above background and below saturation scales with the fraction of oligomers bound to target labeled with that dye, we expect the SNP effect on the log intensity ratio to be proportional to ΔΔG. Therefore, for probes overlapping SNPs, our semi-parametric regression model is modified to include a term for the SNP effect: where w is a proportionality constant (typically < 0) and the noise term (A) is assumed to be Gaussian with mean 0 and the same variance 2(A) as was estimated for perfect match probes. The free energy effect w ΔΔG is modeled as a product of triplet and position effects: where τ indexes the triplet and x is the position of the SNP within the probe, as a fraction of the probe length. The position effect h(x) is approximated by a polynomial function of degree 5: The triplet effects are assumed to be equivalent for reverse complements, so there are 32 β τ parameters and six α j parameters to be fit. Note that the proportionality constant w has been absorbed into the triplet effects. The model parameters were fit to data from the experiments described above, in which arrays were hybridized to DNA from F. tularensis strains of known genome sequence, and thus with SNPs at known positions relative to the reference LVS genome. To make the parameters identifiable, we scaled the coefficients α j so that h(0.5) = 1. To apply the model to data from target strains of unknown sequence, we computed a log likelihood ratio test statistic for every position z in the reference genome. Let P(z) be the set of probes overlapping position z, and let M i and A i be the log intensity ratio and average for probe i. The semi-parametric regression model given above leads to the following expression for the log likelihood: Under the null hypothesis that there is no SNP at position z, then ΔΔG i = 0 for all probes in P(z), and the log likelihood is given by: Under the alternative hypothesis that there is a SNP at position z, ΔΔG i was computed for each probe using the fitted model parameters, leading to a different log likelihood value log L alt (z). The log likelihood ratio test statistic is simply: To identify candidate SNP loci, we computed log LR(z) for every position z in the reference genome and compared it to a threshold value, which we selected by analyzing data from the test arrays hybridized to DNA from F. tularensis strains with SNPs at known positions relative to the LVS strain, and choosing the threshold that gave the best tradeoff between false positive and false negative error rates. This threshold was 20 for the F. tularensis arrays. Typically SNPs were characterized by a contiguous series of position values with log LR scores above the threshold. The most likely SNP location within the series was identified by the position with the maximum score. As an example, Fig 1 plots the test statistic values for a short region of the DNA gyrase A gene in one of the Cipro resistant F. tularensis LVS isolates. The log likelihood ratio has an obvious peak in this region. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Fig 1. The test statistic values for a short region of the DNA gyrase A gene in one of the Cipro resistant F. tularensis isolates. The log likelihood ratio has a clear peak in this region. Candidate SNP positions were identified by looking for regions of the genome where the log likelihood ratio exceeds a fixed threshold. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163458.g001
Illumina sequence data generation and quality control Illumina paired end libraries were prepared from 1 μg of genomic DNA from each of eleven third round Cipro resistant isolates, for the purpose of single-end sequencing on the Genome Analyzer IIx. Briefly, the gDNA was fragmented, ends repaired, A’ tagged, ligated to adaptors, size-selected and enriched with 13 cycles of PCR. Each library was assigned one lane of a flow cell to undergo cluster amplification and sequencing on the Genome Analyzer IIx, and 36 cycles of single-end sequence data were generated. One lane of paired end 51 cycle sequence data were generated for F. tularensis LVS Cipro resistant isolate 1:1:5. The resulting sequencing reads were filtered using the default parameters of the Illumina QC pipeline (Bustard + Gerald). As an additional quality control step, all reads were analyzed using the PIQA pipeline [15]. This pipeline examines genomic reads produced by Illumina machines and provides tile-by-tile and cycle-by-cycle graphical representations of cluster density, quality scores, and nucleotide frequencies. This method allows easy identification of defective tiles, mistakes in sample/library preparations and abnormalities in the frequencies of appearance of sequenced genomic reads. All reads were determined to be of sufficient quality to proceed with subsequent analysis. The amount of sequence data generated for each sample is indicated in Table 1. PPT PowerPoint slide
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larger image TIFF original image Download: Table 1. Illumina sequence data summary. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0163458.t001
Mapping and identifying candidate mutations The sequence reads from each of the samples were mapped with up to 1 mismatch to the reference F. tularensis LVS genome (RefSeq accession NC_007880). To avoid uncertainty associated with identifying mutations in repeatable parts of the reference genome, for each position in the reference sequence a uniqueness score based on the subsequences covering this nucleotide was determined. Specifically, the copy number of each subsequence of size 36 (the length of reads used in sequencing) present in the reference genome was first calculated; the uniqueness score of each position in the reference genome was then defined as the total number of subsequences (factoring in the copy number) which covered this position. For example, in this metric, the score of 36 will appear only if each subsequence covering a given nucleotide is unique in the reference; higher scores indicate that one or more subsequences are present in the reference in several copies. 94.11% (1,784,242 bases) of the F. tularensis LVS (NC_007880) reference genome has a uniqueness score of 36. Mutations in these positions can be detected without the ambiguity caused by the presence of repeatable regions. A given position is predicted to contain a mutation if: (1) the number of reads confirming the mutation on each strand exceeds the minimum count threshold–ensuring that only positions that achieve the minimum required coverage are considered, and (2) the proportion of reads confirming a mutation out of all the reads covering a given position exceeds a ratio threshold–ensuring that only mutations that have the minimum required support are identified. As a compromise between mutation detection sensitivity and false discovery rate, the minimum count threshold was set at 10% of the median of the nucleotide-by-nucleotide coverage for each sample, and the ratio threshold was set at 30% of the total coverage on a per-nucleotide basis. In the present analysis, mutations confirmed on both strands (if the number of reads supporting the mutation exceeds the minimum count threshold on each of the strands separately) are distinguished from mutations for which such a condition was met on only one strand. In the case of insertions, the mapping process results in the association of both perfect matches (PM) and insertions to the same location on the reference genome. Thus different ratio threshold criteria are used to detect different types of mutations at a given genome position. The criterion for detecting a substitution of base B for the reference base is: The criterion for detecting a deletion is: The criterion for detecting an insertion of base B on the plus strand is: In the numerators of the above formulas, SubB+/-, Del+/-, and InsB+/- stand for the numbers of reads confirming a substitution, deletion, or insertion, respectively, mapping to the genome strand indicated by the superscript. For substitutions and insertions, SubB- and InsB- indicate the numbers of reads mapped to the minus strand in which the base complementary to B is substituted or inserted. In the denominators, the variables PM, SubACTG, and InsACTG respectively indicate the numbers of reads confirming a perfect match (PM), a substitution of any base, or an insertion of any base, at the genome position of interest. While paired end data was generated, the reads were decoupled and a single-end read assembly (using in-house algorithms) was performed |
decay.[30]
In December 2009, it was announced that Kristofferson would be portraying Joe in the upcoming album Ghost Brothers of Darkland County, a collaboration between rock singer John Mellencamp and novelist Stephen King.[31]
On May 11, 2010, Light in the Attic Records released demos that were recorded during Kristofferson's janitorial stint at Columbia. Please Don't Tell Me How the Story Ends: The Publishing Demos is the first time these recordings have been released and includes material that would later be featured on other Kristofferson recordings and on the recordings of other prominent artists, such as the original recording of "Me and Bobby McGee".
On June 4, 2011, Kristofferson performed a solo acoustic show at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center, showcasing both some of his original hits made famous by other artists, and newer songs.
In early 2013, Kristofferson released a new album of original songs called Feeling Mortal. A live album titled An Evening With Kris Kristofferson was released in September 2014.
Kris Kristofferson voiced the character Chief Hanlon of the NCR Rangers in the hit 2010 video game Fallout: New Vegas.
In an interview for Las Vegas Magazine Q&A by Matt Kelemen on October 23, 2015, he revealed that a new album, The Cedar Creek Sessions, recorded in Austin, would include some old and some new songs.[32] In December 2016, the album was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Americana Album.[33]
Kristofferson covered Brandi Carlile's "Turpentine" on the 2017 album Cover Stories.[34]
Personal life [ edit ]
Kristofferson married Lisa Meyers in 1983. They own a home in Los Flores Canyon in Malibu, California,[35] and maintain a residence in Hana on the island of Maui.
Kristofferson has encountered a few serious medical issues in the past few decades. He had successful bypass surgery in 1999, but from 2004 to 2015 suffered from what was finally diagnosed as Lyme Disease, although it was initially and incorrectly thought to be early onset Alzheimer's disease. It is unclear how Kristofferson contracted Lyme Disease, but it is suspected that he caught it while filming a movie in the remote woods of Vermont in 2002. Kris's wife credits Kristofferson's successful diagnosis and recovery to getting second opinions when dealing with auto-immune and Alzheimer-type diagnoses. Kristofferson is currently being treated by a specialist in California "who added antibiotic intramuscular injections to Kris's protocol and is continuing to treat Kris," his wife reported.[35][36]
Kristofferson has eight children from three marriages: daughter Tracy (b. 1962) and son Kris (b. 1968) from his first marriage to Fran Beer; daughter Casey (b. 1974) from his second marriage, to Rita Coolidge; and Jesse (b. 1983), Jody (b. 1985), Johnny (b. 1988), Kelly Marie (b. 1990), and Blake (b. 1994) from his marriage to his current wife Lisa (Meyers) Kristofferson.[37]
Kristofferson has said that he would like the first three lines of Leonard Cohen's "Bird on the Wire" on his tombstone:[38]
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Awards and nominations [ edit ]
Discography [ edit ]
Filmography [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]"There is only one thing in this world, and that is to keep acquiring money and more money, power and more power. All the rest is meaningless."
Napoleon Bonaparte
Former Senator Fritz Hollings wrote a piece for the Huffington Post asking why we are still in Afghanistan since our wars are producing more terrorists than they kill. He started off well, but sidestepped the geopolitic grown up talk that America never had about why we killed a million Iraqis and whey we are still in Afghanistan.
It certainly has nothing to do with threats to our security. If that was the case, we would have invaded North Korea after they fired missiles over Japan.
And it had nothing to do with 9/11 since al Qaeda was financed and given logistical support by Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, the latter going as far as evacuating top al Qaeda leaders from Tora Bora when we had them cornered there.
If we didn't go after those two nations, it's hard to believe that having our troops in Afghanistan has anything to do with 9/11.
Instead, it is more likely we are in Afghanistan because someone thinks they can make a lot of money there, from the Trans Afghanistan Pipeline and so Wall Street can continue to collect the income from the Heroin poppies, just as the British did when they tried to force Afghan opium on the Chinese way back in the Opium War, and just as Bush was trying to force oil laws favorable to oil companies on Iraq, so they could collect up to 88% of the income from Iraq's tens of trillion of dollars worth of oil.
Energy companies courting the Taliban for a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to take natural gas to India ended shortly before 9/11. In 2006, India was concerned about continuing the project until America gave assurances that we would protect the pipeline.
The drug story is even less well-known, though the New York Times did cover the story of the Afghan president's brother being one of the largest drug smugglers in the country.
When Britain controlled Afghanistan, they owned the poppy trade. When the French owned Indochina, they owned the poppy trade there. Once we allied with the fundamentalists in Afghanistan in the 80's, drugs started flowing out of there, through Pakistan, and to the US. Do you suppose our leaders and business people are so pure they aren't getting a cut of that?
Wall Street has a bad habit of covering up their incompetence as businessmen with drug money.
The BCCI money laundering scandal involved some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country, profiting from drug trafficking and handling money for terrorists. The New York Times and even PBS has even covered this drug money laundering business, and if you googled the name of your favorite big bank, you would more likely than not find they have been involved.
John Kerry has documented CIA drug dealing, confirming the work of San Jose Mercury News Reporter, Gary Webb's uncovering of the Contras selling cocaine that flooded America's inner cities. The CIA itself has an odd history of picking a fair number of directors who came not from the intelligence community but from Wall Street or corporations. Like corporate lawyer John Foster Dulles or oil man George HW Bush. So it would make sense that the agency is looking after business more than our security.
It is about money. I appreciate Hollings asking the question, but he should have provided part of the real answer too.
And I guess it would be too much to ask that our new president set aside the propaganda bullshit about our various military operations, tell us who profits from them, and what if anything the average American gets out of them, so we could make an informed decision about whether to support killing people in dirt huts with our troops and our tax dollars, and nineteen and twenty year old American kids coming home in aluminum coffins.
SUPPORTING LINKSJosef Stalin, 1949. o.Ang./Wikimedia Commons.
This month, the Senate by a vote of 61-38 failed to amass the two-thirds majority needed to approve the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities. The treaty’s supporters, lamenting America’s broader reluctance to join international human rights treaties, snorted at the vote and lampooned the antediluvian (but not prelapsarian) Republicans who shot the convention down. And it’s true that there are about a dozen human rights treaties, the vast majority of countries have ratified them, and the United States, frequently, has not. And rightly so. These treaties are little more than a collective back-scratching exercise involving many of the world’s most unsavory nations: The United States does well to keep its distance.
To understand why the United States is an outlier, one must begin with America’s unusual voting rules for approving treaties. Virtually no other country requires two-thirds approval from the legislature. Our system enables interest groups to block treaties by stiffening the spines of a few senators already temperamentally submerged in the isolationist right.
Supporters of the treaty argue that the disabilities treaty doesn’t actually obligate the United States to do anything that is not already incorporated in U.S. law. (Most of the other human rights treaties do not either.) Moreover, the globalists continue, treaties like this one are a free lunch. While not obligating the United States to compromise its values or interests, they do obligate other countries—including the authoritarian countries that routinely ratify these treaties—to improve their treatment of their people. Why would the United States object to such a good deal?
One learns little by examining the arguments of the critics of the disabilities treaty. One of their claims is that the disabilities treaty would prevent Americans from homeschooling disabled children (don’t ask). Many critics reflexively invoke “sovereignty costs,” as though any treaty must be unacceptable if it could reduce America’s freedom of action, but the United States has entered thousands of treaties. Trade treaties, military alliances, and environmental treaties limit our actions somewhat but also generate considerable benefits for the country.
Still, supporters of the disabilities convention go too far when they claim that this treaty would impose no costs on the United States at all. One obvious but overlooked point is that the word “disability,” is not self-defining; nor are other key terms. Reasonable people can disagree about what sorts of conditions count as a disability entitling one to legal privileges. Currently, U.S. courts resolve these disputes, and Congress can revise their interpretations. If the treaty binds the United States, then it is possible that the views of other parts of the world could come into play. Other human rights treaties have given rise to such interpretive disputes. For example, Europeans frequently argue that a provision of a treaty ratified by the United States that bans “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” forecloses the death penalty.
The disabilities treaty also prevents the United States from repealing or narrowing its disabilities law. Now that may not be likely, but one must still ask why the United States should remove from democratic politics an area of policy that just 20 years ago was considered open for debate. To be sure, the United States could exit the treaty if it wanted, after giving notice, but then in what sense does it really bind? (Other human rights treaties lack withdrawal clauses; the United States could withdraw only with the consent of other treaty parties, raising this question: Why if we want to modify our law we should first have to ask for the permission of countries like Azerbaijan, Benin, and Cuba?)
So human rights treaties may impose some small costs to democracy. What about the benefits? That free lunch is less than nutritious: Academic research has suggested that human rights treaties either do not improve human rights at all or do so very little, for a limited group of treaty rights, and among a select group of countries, not the worst offenders. In addition, U.S. failures to ratify other human rights treaties have not stopped nearly all other countries from doing so. And it is unclear why states would think they can ignore their treaty obligations just because the United States has not taken them on.
Then there’s the question of whether it makes sense to impose Western-style standards for disability rights on other countries. Poor countries face many problems. A country that is required to build ramps and elevators for disabled people has less money to build health clinics for sick people and schools for children. Governments must make trade-offs, and we in the West really have no idea what these trade-offs should be in Angola or Suriname. The impulse behind the human rights regime bears more than a passing resemblance to the naïveté with which the West has supplied poor countries with power plants, dams, and other development projects that turn out to cause more harm than good, as William Easterly and other development economists have documented again and again.
So why do other states enter all these treaties in the first place? In 1936, Stalin engineered the ratification of the Soviet Constitution, which guaranteed rights to free speech, religious freedom, due process, work, rest, and all sorts of other good things—even while he was sweeping political opponents into the gulag. Stalin considered his constitution a propaganda coup. And while he did not fool everyone, he fooled a lot of people, including many influential Western intellectuals.
Today, there are many countries with sham constitutions like the Soviet Constitution. A recent paper by two law professors, David Law and Mila Versteeg, lists dozens that promise the moon in terms of constitutional rights but flagrantly violate most of them. You might think of these countries’ participation in human rights treaties in the same light as their constitutions, as a kind of propaganda, albeit blessed with the imprimatur of the leading liberal democracies, aimed at ignorant, especially Western, observers.
If you need evidence, consider a country like Uzbekistan, a party to the convention protecting the rights of the child, and a place where, according to Human Rights Watch, there is “Government-sponsored forced child labor during the cotton harvest.” Or Saudi Arabia, a party to the convention banning discrimination against women (“girls and women of all ages are forbidden from traveling, studying, or working without permission from their male guardians”). Or Vietnam, a party to the treaty that guarantees political freedoms (“systematically suppresses freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly”). Or China, a party to the treaty that bans torture (“forced confessions under torture remain prevalent”). Or Nigeria, a party to the convention outlawing racial and ethnic discrimination (“State and local government policies that discriminate against … people who cannot trace their ancestry to what are said to be the original inhabitants of an area continue to exacerbate intercommunal tensions and perpetuate ethnic-based divisions.”). (All quotations from Human Rights Watch’s 2012 World Report.) Or consider India, which ratified a treaty that confers a right to housing, and yet is unable to house tens of millions of homeless Indians who live in shanties on streets and garbage dumps. The nine most repressive countries of 2011, Freedom House‘s “Worst of the Worst,” including Eritrea, Syria, and Turkmenistan, belong to most of the major human rights treaties.
The human rights regime is a vast international Potemkin village, a kind of communal effort among states to deceive one another and mainly their citizens, or an excrescence of the bureaucratic imperative to deny error and bad intentions, using whatever legal forms happen to be available. Think of it as the modern version of the brass band and fancy bunting that surround the dictator while he harangues the crowd. Fine if other countries want to do that, but why should we be complicit?Shares
The 1023 campaign is a UK based organization whose purpose is to raise awareness of the actual claims of homeopathy. The name is a reference to Avogadro’s number (6.02214179×10^23), which is the number of atoms or molecules of a substance in one unit called a mole. This is an important basic concept in chemistry, for it means that there are a finite number of bits of a substance in any solution, which further means that solutions cannot be infinitely diluted. You cannot have fractions of a molecule of any substance. There is therefore a dilutional limit – a point beyond which if you further dilute a solution you are increasingly likely to have removed all of the original substance.
Homeopathic preparations frequently use serial dilutions that vastly exceed this dilutional limit. This is a central fallacy of homeopathy (what homeopaths call a “law” of homeopathy). Samuel Hahnemann, who invented the fiction of homeopathy, knew about the dilutional limit but believed that substances gave their magical essence to water when diluted. Modern homeopaths believe this too, but in order to make their nonsense more marketable to a 21st century culture a tad more used to science (or at least scientific jargon) than Hahnemann’s, they have desperately tried to wrap “magical essence” in sciencey technobabble.
The 1023 campaign’s main purpose is public awareness. It appears that the best tool defenders of science-based medicine have against homeopathy is simply to make the public aware of what it actually is. I have not found any good surveys that quantify public beliefs on the subject (sounds like a good project) but it is my subjective experience (and that of many of my colleagues) from talking to countless patients and acquaintances that many if not most people are simply not aware of what homeopathy actually is. The term is often conflated with herbal or “natural” remedies. Shock and disbelief is a common reaction to explanations of what homeopaths actually claim.
Therefore there is much to be gained by raising public awareness of what homeopathy is, so at least it doesn’t get a free pass out of simple ignorance. As part of this mission the 1023 campaign has had a public event in which groups around the world commit “homeopathic suicide” by massively overdosing on a homeopathic product. This is a stunt, but it is effective in garnering media attention, and so meets the mission of public awareness.
There is now a new event planned:
While international participation is yet to be announced, the challenge will culminate in a demonstration in Manchester on February 6th, at the ‘QED: Question. Explore. Discover. event, with over 300 protesters participating the largest ever single demonstration against homeopathy.
They also wisely add a word of caution – not all homeopathic remedies are highly diluted. Some products “cheat” by including measurable amounts of an active ingredient, and so a real overdose is possible. Before attempting such a demonstration, therefore, one should be sure that the product is truly “homeopathic” and contains, essentially, nothing.
These efforts are essential as the amount of misinformation available to the public about homeopathy and other medical pseudoscience is immense. For example, we have complained extensively about the National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine ( NCCAM ) and their soft promotion of nonsense. On their homeopathy page, for example, they write:
If You Are Thinking About Using Homeopathy * Do not use homeopathy as a replacement for proven conventional care or to postpone seeing a doctor about a medical problem.
* Look for published research studies on homeopathy for the health condition you are interested in.
* If you are considering using homeopathy and decide to seek treatment from a homeopath, ask about the training and experience of the practitioner you are considering.
* Women who are pregnant or nursing, or people who are thinking of using homeopathy to treat a child, should consult their health care provider.
* Tell all your health care providers about any complementary and alternative practices you use. Give them a full picture of all you do to manage your health. This will ensure coordinated and safe care. For tips about talking with your health care providers about CAM, see NCCAM ’s Time to Talk campaign.
The first recommendation is very important, but the fact is that once in the hands of a homeopath there is no guarantee that homeopathic nostrums will not be used instead of effective medicine. Homeopaths believe that their magic water works for treating and preventive real disease, and they are often hostile to science-based medicine. For example, there in an ongoing scandal regarding the use of homeopathic products instead of effective treatment for malaria. So this recommendation is like saying, “If you are going to play 3-card monte on the streets of New York, be sure you don’t get cheated,” when the only effective advice is, “don’t play, it’s a scam.”
The second recommendation to look for published research is ridiculous – while I am all in favor of patients being well-informed, it is not reasonable advice to tell the average patient to do the research for themselves to determine which treatments are safe and effective. That is the job of professionals and professional organizations. The body of research on homeopathy is large and complex, and it takes time and expertise to sort through it and come to a meaningful conclusion about what the evidence says. It seems like the NCCAM is trying to avoid doing this themselves – but isn’t that part of their mission? In fact experts have combed through the research, such as this review by Edzard Ernst, and have found that the clinical evidence shows that homeopathy does not work for any indication. Shouldn’t the NCCAM just state that?
Next they suggest you ask about the training and experience of the practitioner. But training and experience in nonsense is meaningless. There is no evidence that the training and experience of a homeopath means anything, or allows them to effectively treat any condition. This is akin to advising that one seek the council of only experienced psychics, or well-trained astrologers. And make sure you only consult certified numerologists.
The caution regarding women who are pregnant or nursing makes it sound like there is some potential effect from homeopathic treatment, which there isn’t (unless, as I stated above, they are not really homeopathic and sneak in some actual drugs). This recommendation also makes it sound like if you are not pregnant or treating a child you don’t have to consult your health care provider.
The last recommendation is the only one that is reasonable – patients should disclose their use of all treatments to their physicians. Although again, it is carefully worded to imply that the primary purpose is “coordinating” (or integrating) fake treatment with real medicine.
These recommendations, from a government agency allegedly dedicated to science and health, are an embarrassment. Here is what the recommendations should say:
If You Are Thinking About Using Homeopathy * Do not use homeopathy. It is dangerous nonsense.
I much prefer the 1023 summary of what homeopathy is to the NCCAM ’s.
Homeopathy is an unscientific and absurd pseudoscience, which persists today as an accepted form of complementary medicine, despite there never having been any reliable scientific evidence that it works.
Nuff said.By
Andrew McKillop
21st Century Wire
With everything on the line, no country hosting a Olympiad can afford to take it easy on security – especially Russia.
With terror threats already made openly and through back channels, the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics has already been ramped-up as one of the biggest security operations in events history. But there’s a bigger story unfolding here – a tectonic shift in world geopolitics.
Putin Winds Back His Gains of 2013
News reports now place the probable cost of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia at more than $51 billion making them the most expensive-ever. Security costs help explain this. Vladimir Putin’s ironclad determination to make the games a success – makes them a rising political risk, not only for domestic political consumption but also a challenge to Russia’s federal unity and relations with its Asian neighbors, and internationally. Making the Sochi games a PR disaster is the goal of Putin’s enemies.
Source: http://www.blogsochi.ru/category/temy-publikatsii/novosti-sochi
The Islamic Bomb Lady was officially seen by Russian police. They identified her as 22 year old terrorist Razmena Ibragimova, displayed on Russia’s official Sochi blog sites like the one above. Her terrorist credentials were bolstered by a clumsily falsified side-profile photograph, portraying her bulging neck probably hiding explosives behind her scarf. Officially she was part of the Volgograd bombing conspiracy and Razmena is now the Most Wanted Lady in Russia.
Once Upon a Time There was Pingpong Diplomacy
Cold war-era diplomacy of the 1960s included the “ping-pong diplomacy” US-China phase, but today’s Russia-Saudi Arabia jousting is measured by the number of body parts on the pavement after each designer bomb attack by a throwaway human suicide bomber. To date, Saudi Arabia has scored several direct hits against Putin’s Russia, but the ex-KGB chief is unlikely to take that lying down. Revenge hits against Saudi-backed Arab capitals, and against Riyadh-backed forces active in Syria are either certain or not impossible, to ram home the Putin message that Saudi Arabia is a small country on the edge of “The World Island” that talks a lot too loud – only thanks to oil.
At home in Russia, the Islamic kamikaze bombing scare, which in fact may have been Soviet-era agitprop not needing any Saudi petro-dollars or American nods to be executed, enables Putin to further seal the power of his New State apparatus. The new state is little changed from the old USSR, which set the southern Caucus Republics as the acid test arena for total power by Moscow.
Today, Razmena is placarded on wanted posters all across Sochi. According to one poster on display at all security checkpoints in Sochi’s airport, Ibragimova is “currently located on Sochi territory” and ‘could attempt a suicide bombing’ at any time, according to the poster.
Ramming home the fear message for visitors who will pay at least $500-a-day to be in Sochi for the Winter Olympics, she is described as having been spotted on the street near the Russian foreign ministry building, and in streets near the upmarket hotels of Sochi. Imagine that. Not great in terms of events marketing, but the Russian Bear can ill-afford to be shy this time around.
Stalingrad and the Terror Republic
Under its former name Stalingrad, today’s Volgograd was the Martyr City for Soviet resistance to Nazi Germany, but security analysts estimate that hundreds of the 2000-odd Islamic terror attacks on Russian Federal territory since 1990 have been in or around Volgograd. Veterans of the 1990s-era conflict waged by Moscow against breakaway independence movements state that at the time most of them flew the Islamic flag and were eager to receive Saudi petrodollars. The theater was however already widening across the Caucasian Republics including Chechnya, Ingueshetia, Daghestan, Tatarstan, and in Russian satrape republics such as Azerbaijan, and the 1990s veterans recall that in that period, ruthless terror-versus-terror tactics and strategy became the norm.
These veterans, some of them now Douma parliamentarians say the intensity of conflict has moved up, from that previous terror war level to a much wider “conflict of civilizations”, even a threat to the continued existence of Russia. Tom Nichols, a professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College cited by Stripes.com 15 January said the intensity of conflict.. “ has made the Russians — who already are used to a strong state security apparatus — far more willing to empower its internal security forces way beyond anything Americans would ever allow”.
Saudi terror strategy may be comfortable for its Riyadh purveyors, players and payers safe in Riyadh, when it concerns Mali, Niger, South Sudan, the Central African Republic or Riyadh’s other low-income Black African asymmetric war theaters, but in the Russia Caucuses this is a high risk gambit and historic conflict that Islam always lost. Inside the Russian Federation, longstanding political conflicts are already sufficient to make government difficult. Adding a layer of Saudi-financed and American-tolerated Islamic extremism may create a runaway process of domestic conflict – which for Putin and his oligarchs is exactly what they want to intensify and seal their total power.
For Russian leaders, the calls by some Syrian rebels for the creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state in their homeland sound uncomfortably similar to the goals of Doku Umarov, the Chechen leader of the so-called, ‘Caucasus Emirate’. The stated aim of Umarov’s group, designated by Moscow, and by Washington as a terrorist organization, is to establish an Islamic state on Russian territory. Chechen fighters like Omar Abu al-Chechen, who leads an expatriate jihadist force known as the Faithful Immigrant Brothers in Syria, have sparked Kremlin fears that the real goal of extremists is to make Syria into a base for future terror operations inside Russia.
Chechnya has become ever more critical to Kremlin strategists, the front line theater for Russian-Saudi conflict with Sochi an easy ride from its borders. This theater is particularly acute due to the fact that Syria has thousands of fighters who, according to the Russian Spetznaz special services, are a serious and real threat for the country. Ramzan Kadyrov, the former Chechen rebel placed in charge by Kremlin and an adept at counter-terror war, has on many recent occasions said that Islamist insurgents in Chechnya have reached “plague proportions” and in his view are only biding their time before moving north to Russia – and to Europe.
Syria Split Could Set Russia Alight
State Douma deputy and Foreign relations commission chief Anatoly Ermolin, with a long military track record in Chechnya and the Caucuses during the 1990s bluntly says : “I think this is one of the most dangerous things for any government. They (the Islamists) are very serious and believe they can organize an Islamic state….They consider (Russia) to be their territory. We are dry wood; it’s very easy to set fire to the situation.”
Ermolin is openly alarmed and alarmist because he believes the disastrous conflict in Syria divided Russia and NATO-member countries into two camps, with the US-led west leaning to support or at least tolerance of the Islamists, despite the increasingly frenzied extremist nature of Syria’s opposition. For Russia this means it is next in line for destabilization, by Islam under the guise of, and stoked by Western-Russian rivalry and conflict. Ermolin says there can soon be a major realignment of international relations and vital interests.
Add the Saudi terror chief, Prince Bandar Bin Sultan (photo, above) into this mix and the fuse is nearly lit. The London Telegraph reported back in October about Saudi Arabia’s under the table offer to Russia for a chance to ‘control the world’s oil market’ in some type of strategic alliance between OPEC and Russia – but only if Russia would wash its hands of the Assad regime in Syria. That was the carrot. The stick was somewhat more barbaric:
Bandar threatened to unleash his Chechen terrorists in order to shutdown, and possibly kill civilians at Sochi. He is alleged to have said:
‘‘I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the Games are controlled by us’’
Beyond Saudi Arabia international racketeering and extortion, in there is fear in Germany, France, the UK and Italy – as there is in Russia, of what happens when thousands of young “jihadis” return from the Syrian war. Russian foreign relations experts like Ermolin say this will be the acid test, and in the Middle East will surely and certainly coincide with the equally rising threat of more open and wider conflict between Sunni Saudi Arabia, and Shia Iran. The dangers of another Iran-Sunni war like the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war are claimed by Russian policy experts to have been completely underestimated in the west. As they and Russian military analysts say, the potential for a repeat of the 1980-88 war “going nuclear” is high.
Russian experts also say the dangers of Iran itself destabilizing and “turning to terror” have been ignored or underestimated in the west. Both Saudi Arabia and Israel, backed by the US and several EU countries, especially France give either open or covert support to anti-Iranian Sunni terror movements, making all out Iran-versus-Sunni war the logical follow-up. In the case of Iranian defeat, spillover will, the Russians say, be large scale regional, not contained. As a result, although never stated as a driver for US and European thawing towards Iran, the risk of Iran being destabilized have to be taken seriously.
Whistling in the Dark
To date, western understanding of the war theater’s dimensions and component drivers is, Russians say, woeful. The USA’s Boston Bombings, for example, were laughably unprofessional pinpricks. European domestic experience of eradicating Islamist insurgents, they add, is close to zero making for permanent underestimation of the threat.
Reasons for this western blind spot to the insurgent threat, which in Russia now straddles both ethnic religious and nationalist political lines – notably in Tartarstan – can be traced to different Russian and western interpretations of geopolitics. For Russians, even in the 1930s Stalin era, Halford Mackinder’s theory of “The World Island”, centered on Russia but spreading south through the Caucuses to Arabia, North Africa and Europe was taken as a game plan and threat – or prize – for the USSR. Putin’s Russian Federation of today is driven by geopolitical hopes and fears linked to the Mackinder theory.
To be sure, Washington has decided the dispatch of a small anti-terror group of experts to Sochi, more for protecting US athletes and comforting domestic political opinion than aiding Moscow, but soon, analysts and Russian leaders say, Moscow and Washington will have to collaborate better. To do this, they will have to set aside other issues that get in the way. The USA’s new isolationism, however, may also hamper this needed collaboration, and like the Europeans, the US may be tempted to turn Russia’s difficulties to its advantage – by pouring oil and Saudi petro-dollars on the fire.
Senior Russian political figures like Alexander Khinshtein, Vice chairman of the State Douma’s Security and anti-corruption commission, make it plain that formerly contained, localized and specific Islamic terror threats and action have massively changed since the 1990s. Khinshtein says that “Terrorism cannot be a local problem; it is not a problem for just one place.” Russian news releases and investigations concerning the Volgograd bombings already say these attacks – which are part of a longstanding organized campaign – link closely to non-Islamic political independence movements in Russia’s Caucasian republics.
The challenge from the Islamic south, to Russia’s “world island” has now mutated and coalesced with other movements and issues that, in the 1990s, were totally separate. The Sochi theater for terror war and counter-terror war concerns the whole world.
READ MORE RELATED STORIES AT: 21st Century Wire Bandar FileItalian police started firing teargas and using water cannons to break up the protesters that have started setting cars on fire and breaking store windows in Rome, Reuters reports.
As thousands of people joined the Occupy Wall Street protests globally on Saturday, the crowd became violent, clashing with police in some of the worst violence to hit Rome in years, Reuters reports.
Read more at GlobalPost: Scandal-plagued Berlusconi survives once again
Heavy smoke filled the air as protesters in downtown Rome caused chaos in the streets close to the Colosseum, AP reports.
Police repeatedly fired teargas and water cannons in an attempt to disperse the crowds, leaving dozens injured, the Associated Press reports. At some points the crowds began throwing rocks, bottles and fireworks at police, who responded by charging the protesters, Reuters reports. At least 30 policeman were injured according to Reuters.
Read more at GlobalPost: Occupy Wall Street goes global
According to the BBC, protesters started out peacefully on Saturday until militants dressed in black joined the crowd and started destroying property. The protesters retaliated against the militants, shouting “No to violence!” BBC reports.
Italian cities joined the now global protest due to discontent over high unemployment and raised taxes and cost of health care, Reuters reports.
Read more at GlobalPost: Protesters storm Goldman Sachs office in Milan0 Shares
Edge & Christian reviewed the Tables, Ladders and Chairs Pay-Per-View on their podcast: E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness. Edge admitted that he doesn’t really get the hype behind Asuka when speaking about her debut match against Emma.
Here is what Edge had to say about Asuka’s debut and
“I’m sure I’ll get lambasted for this, but I don’t get the Asuka thing. I really don’t. Like, she’s fine and she’s solid but I don’t know,”
Christian says that sometimes when there is a lot of hype, it is difficult to live up to. He also says he really liked Asuka’s body language, presentation and persona in her debut.
Edge explained more of his opinion on Asuka:
“Even going back to the NXT stuff I’ve watched and I’ve never… I don’t know… I’ve just never really bought in. And it’s not because I don’t want to or anything like that. I just, I don’t know. Even the entrance and everything it’s very Nakamura-esk and he was doing it first so it just, I don’t know. I’ve never really understood the hype and then last night as I’m watching [at TLC] and I know the ‘powers that be’ hate the head-to-head thing and I was like, ‘ooo that’s not gonna go over well’… more than that what I didn’t get was using an ankle lock on a night when Kurt Angle is stepping back in a WWE ring for the first time in eleven years and it’s actually being used in the main event as something pretty pivotal. Why do you do it as a spot that goes nowhere? That doesn’t lead to anything that leads to kinda getting pitched outa the ring that leads to a trapped-leg German, okay cool but still didn’t lead to anything consequential to the finish. It didn’t make sense to me and those things that I see and I’m like ‘mmm somebody doesn’t get it,’ you know what I mean? Ah…maybe I’m being a d*ck… I don’t know.”
Certainly an interesting take, what do you think?
Read Next – Edge Reveals What Vince McMahon Told Him Before He Cashed In His Money In The Bank Contract In 2006
Let us know what you think in the comment section below.And by "awe" we mean pants-shitting horror. If this is the future, then the future is filled with terrible, terrible ideas.
Every couple of months you hear about some new, fantastic space-age construction project they're building somewhere in the world. Towers that stretch a mile into the sky, or rest under the sea. Entire cities built into massive skyscrapers. You can't help but gasp in awe.
5 Hydropolis
Hydropolis is a sprawling underwater hotel under construction in Dubai of the United Arab Emirates, the home of most of the world's ridiculous construction projects. Sixty-six feet below the Persian Gulf and covering an area equal to London's Hyde Park, this $5,500-a-night undersea pleasure dome caters to a very select clientele--obscenely rich folks who have never read Michael Crichton's Sphere.
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Why It's Awesome:
Juxtaposing an aquatic city next to the world's biggest desert boomtown is such a goofily whimsical idea you can't help but smile. It's like the UAE hired Dr. Seuss as their urban planner. If you |
cents" domain = "boolean">Show cents?</field> <field domain = "audit"/> <index name = "primary"> <field name = "isocode" /> </index> </table>
We then specify an 'object' that inherits from the database table, and we add some flair (such as here, the name is mandatory when creating or updating a currency):
<object name = "currency"> <require> <field name = "name" /> </require> </object>
Behind the scenes, iAF bases that object on a 'default' object that looks like this (this is a standard model that the developer doesn't need to know about, or touch):
<class name = "default" default = "1" > <!-- The create view is required by the object layer --> <view name = "create" read = "0" write = "1" delete = "0" /> <!-- The delete view is required by the object layer --> <view name = "delete" read = "0" write = "0" delete = "1" sameas = "create" /> <!-- These views are recommended but not obligatory --> <view name = "detail" read = "1" write = "1" delete = "1" sameas = "create"/> <view name = "summary" read = "1" write = "1" delete = "1" sameas = "create"/> <query name = "detail" view = "detail" /> <query name = "summary" view = "summary" /> <state name = "object exists"> <view name = "detail" /> </state> </class>
And then I describe how I want the object views to appear to the user. At this point I start mixing Visual Basic code with my model. The code generator includes my custom code in the generated result. Complex screens have thousands of lines of custom code. Simple ones like this, just a few:
<screen object = "currency" style = "select" alpha = "1" /> <screen object = "currency" style = "list" alpha = "1" /> <screen object = "currency" style = "create" /> <screen object = "currency" style = "detail" /> <macro name = "currency_validate"> <use object = "currency"/> <handler event = "on_accept" > fld_currency_isocode = ucase (trim (Request.Form ("currency"))) <if condition = "fld_currency_isocode <> """> <fetch object = "currency" view = "summary"> <missing> cur_message = "Please enter a valid currency code or select from the list" cur_error = "currency" </missing> </fetch> </if> </handler> </macro>
The application architecture isn't complex. It's 1999 and we're aiming for consistency and simplicity, not features. It is monolith built on a single database. There are no asynchronous updates to the web page, no AJAX. We use JavaScript for local validation and cosmetics, such as flagging an error input red, and putting the cursor there.
What we built turned out to have some interesting aspects:
It was a large application, with a hundred database tables and five hundred screens. With our tools we were able to build new functionality rapidly.
It was slow to use because often it took lots of clicks to get to a certain place. We did not spend much time on creating fast paths or shortcuts.
Users loved the application.
The thing was, users did not work 24/7 on the system. They used it for perhaps half-an-hour a day. Some users (especially inside Manpower) used it full time, yet they were happy too.
The reason was simple in retrospect. This was an application meant for clients of Manpower, thousands and thousands of HR managers in random firms. The number one expense for Manpower, in previous projects, and the number one fear of users, was training and complexity. What we built was so consistent and simple that you could use it with zero training (of course, you had to know the business).
For instance we used a list/detail design for working with data. You clicked on 'Currencies' and got a list of currencies. Click on a currency and you see its detail. Click 'Edit' and you can change it. And so on. Learn this design once, and it worked almost universally across the application.
Obvious, and yet hand-built applications simply did not work like this.
Occasional users cannot learn complex UIs. And when they get confused they ask for help, and that will overwhelm any support structure you can build, and be ruinously expensive. And this was the reason no-one wanted to take on the hot potato.
The lesson here is a devious one, and that is that you often don't know what the real problem is until you get very close to it. We were lucky our approach fit Manpower's way of working.
We eventually rolled the application out to Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and the USA. This happened gradually, over years, without major stress. We built a translation tool that let local offices translate the screens. We added customizable order pages so that local offices could make orders as baroque as they wanted.
The system wasn't perfect, in many ways. We had bugs here and there that only showed when the system got stressed. There was an order export process which pushed completed orders out to other applications for processing. This was long before we understood how to do messaging, so our designs were clumsy and not fully robust.
Above all, MTS would panic and shutdown threads when too many users worked at once. There was no way to fix this. It left the database with dangling locks that ended up killing the entire system. We had to limit the number of users, and move to larger machines.
Despite these stumbles, the application ("Ultrasource") became Manpower's first global web application, and ran for many years. It produced vast amounts of new business for our client, and gave iMatix a healthy income in ongoing maintenance fees.
And then in the summer of 2000, I got an email from a Nigerian beer company (Nigerian Breweries, or NB) asking if we had any experience with electronic payments systems, and could I please read the attached documents.
E-Payments in Lagos, Nigeria
East Africa was my first home and I'd traveled many times to the continent, for family and work. Sema would send me on short trips to do UNIX trainings, help with EASY installations, and so on. I'd been to Burkina Faso, Togo, Rwanda, Angola.
Either you love Africa or you hate it. There is no easy middle ground. Even stepping foot in Africa as a European is a political act, conscious or not. It took me many years to understand it as a continental prison filled with innocents, as I've written in my book Culture & Empire.
So the prospect of a project in Nigeria was appealing. I read up on the place in Lonely Planet and a book called "The Most Dangerous Countries in the World," which ranked Nigeria just after Columbia. My mother pleaded with me to not go there.
Not being a fearful person, I read the client's requirements, and started to work on a project proposal. It was an interesting case and I realized why they'd come to me. They used EASY for their accounting and sales. They had to extend that with some kind of a network that could carry payments to banks. We'd started to get experience connecting bizarre systems together, and building successful web applications.
NB's IT manager had asked Sema, "who do you know who could possibly make this work?" and they had replied, "ask Hintjens, he's probably the guy you want."
Let me explain what the problem was. NB was doing well. They dominated the market, and Nigeria was (and still is) a huge market for beer. The profit per bottle was low, yet sheer volume made up for that. NB was expanding, building new breweries across the country. They had powerful marketing and sales, and frankly, their beer was excellent.
Two things struck me, when I first visited. First, the brewery was perfectly organized. The buildings were all in good state, the gardens neat and tidy, the production line modern and shiny. It was a striking contrast from a brewery I'd visited in Kinshasa some months before, where crates of broken bottles lay around randomly, where people seemed tired, and where a heavy feeling of tropical lassitude lay around the place. NB's facility hummed with positive energy.
The second thing was it was run entirely by Nigerians with some other Africans. There was just one European, the financial director, or FD. Later, as the brewery upgraded its capacity, teams of eastern European engineers would fly in. And there was our team, as the project progressed. Yet in my first visit, I don't think I saw a single white face from leaving the airport to departure, two weeks later.
The IT manager took good care of me. We visited Lagos, a massive and busy city filled with life, most evenings after work. I've spent a lot of time in Africa and was rapidly at home, no matter where we went. After a week of design discussions and meetings with other managers, I went back home to write up a detailed proposal. I can still remember my shock, in the airport departure lounge, to see white faces and feel, "how strange they look!" and then realize.
Anyhow, back to the problem. Nigeria, at the end of the 20th century, was a huge and booming economy driven almost entirely by cash and favors. Much of the country's wealth came from oil, yet there was (and has been, in this part of Africa, for hundreds of years) a solid commercial middle class. Spend a day in Lagos and you see the sort of frenetic hustle that feels more like New York than Atlanta.
And yet, as the FD of the brewery explained, there is no system of credit. A "long term" bank loan is 3 months. No credit cards, unless you're a foreigner in a foreign operated hotel. No checks. Few people have bank accounts, and when they do, it's for moving hard currency in and out. Salaries are paid in cash. Cars and houses are bought and sold in cash. There are no mortgages, no car financing plans.
The brewery produces beer, which it puts into glass bottles. These go into crates of 12 or 24, which get stacked onto lorries. The lorries then take the beer to distributors. The smallest unit of sale, for the brewery, is one lorry load. The distributors then resell the beer to shops, clubs, bars.
When a lorry loaded with beer leaves the brewery, the distributor has paid for the beer, the empties, and the crates. The lorries belong to the distributor or their transport firms. The brewery does not own and operate its own trucks.
And the distributor has paid for the liquid beer, the glass bottles, and the plastic crates, in cash. One lorry of beer comes to, let's say, two large suitcases of cash in the highest denomination notes. The brewery staff count and check the money before the lorry leaves. The cash is then put into the treasury, a large room that is literally filled to the ceiling with notes, at times.
When a lorry returns, the brewery counts and checks the crates and bottles, and the distributor gets repaid (in cash) for the value of the empties. Remember that this is rather more than the value of the liquid beer. This means the brewery is, at any time, holding a lot of cash simply as deposits. It can keep some of the deposited cash in a bank yet a lot must remain on-site.
The backdrop to this successful business is a currency (the Naira) that continues to fall in value, so that the stack of paper needed to pay for one lorry keeps getting larger.
Then, a culture of criminality that is pervasive and can be shocking to foreigners. We're used to trusting others around us, and we're shocked when someone steals a wallet, or a car, or a phone. In Nigeria, there is no trust. All business runs on the assumption that theft will happen if it can. Entire lorries of beer have disappeared, never to make it to the distributor.
Then, a severe lack of technical infrastructure. In 2000 there was a fixed phone network that mostly worked, though only wealthy people and businesses had a phone. Electricity would fail several times a day, so everyone who could afford them had back-up generators. There were some good highways yet most roads were miserably bad, and jammed with traffic.
Driving around Lagos was the fuel of nightmares. You'd see a flame ahead on the motorway, it was a burning truck tire that someone had left in the road. Why? To mark a hole large enough to fall through. People would carry extra fuel in their car boot (since fuel supplies were so sporadic). So if they were hit from behind, their car would explode. Taxis and scooters ("okadas") drove maniacally around pedestrians, goats, street vendors.
After dark, there were roadblocks with armed police. I don't really know what they were looking for. We just greeted them, said we were from the brewery, and they waved us on. This happened so many dozens of times that I'd greet them with a huge smile, a handshake, and "shine shine bobo!" which is the slogan for NB's most popular beer, Star. They'd laugh and we'd drive on.
I'm rambling. Back to money. The question was, how could we cut out the cash transactions at the brewery?
After some thought, our solution was to have transactions happen at the bank side of things, rather than in cash on-site. So each time a distributor bought a truckload of beer, they'd transfer money from their account to the brewery's account. And each time they returned an empty truck, the deposit would flow in the opposite direction.
It sounds simple and obvious enough. Yet bear in mind, we can't trust individual bank employees, nor do we have any kind of remote (web based?) banking system.
Our first problem was to convince the banks to work with us. We learned quickly that a meeting for a certain day meant, "we'll arrive at some point during the day." Traffic jams could last several hours, even though from the brewery to Victoria Island, and the financial district, was just 15 minutes' drive.
The banks at first thought we were somewhat insane. No-one had ever suggested electronic payments seriously. As thought experiments, sure. For real, live business use, let alone for considerable amounts of money, they were skeptical. So we explained the model, which was based on a secure messaging system running over pure old email.
This took us some time to figure out. First we hooked into the accounting system, which was our old friend EASY. First we ran a continuous background job that caught orders flagged for electronic payment. This was simple to do. These orders were sent to our app, running as a web application on a local Windows server. A manager would get an email alert and click the URL to sign in. They'd review and approve the order. That would then go to their boss, who would also review and approve the order.
Once approved, a payment instruction would go to the bank. This tells the bank the accounts to pay from, and to, the amount, and a reference. We signed and encrypted the payment message, then sent it to an email address that the bank used. There were five or six banks, as distributors used their own banks.
Each bank ran a Windows server with the app on, but when they logged in they saw payments, rather than orders. The app would fetch email continuously: dial up to the ISP, log in to the POP3 account, fetch email, delete email from the POP3 account, wait for five minutes, and repeat. As payment instructions arrived they'd be loaded into the app database and be visible to the bank.
We looked, in each bank, at integrating with their systems. That turned out to be infeasible. These systems were all different, and all bizarre, and the expected volume of orders was not so high (a dozen a day per bank).
So we agreed that the bank staff would simply make the transfer by hand on their own systems and confirm it on our app, when done. This left scope for fraud yet no more than normal inside the bank. Banks could, and did, have their own internal approval systems for transactions above a certain size.
Once the transfer was made, a payment confirmation would be sent back (again, by encrypted email) to the brewery. Our app would receive this, flag the order as paid, and tell EASY.
EASY had no existing way to import such data, so I wrote a small tool that acted as a TELNET client, and could log into the application and push the right buttons. Sema were quite surprised when they realized how we'd done this. They were expecting NB to pay for work to make a new import program.
Corinne (perhaps the fastest developer I've ever worked with in my life) and I designed the app and she did most of the development. Pascal helped with the backend, as he'd done for UltraSource. It ran nicely. By this time we knew our tools well, and had built other apps with them, like our own issue tracker, ChangeFlow.
Somewhat to my surprise, we were able to deploy the system in test, and we started to expand it to other breweries (NB had seven or so, in different cities). The amount of skepticism was massive, both in banks and in the brewery itself. Distributors — who suffered the most under the cash based system — were enthusiastic. To test, we sent payment requests to banks, reconciled the responses, and checked that things didn't get lost. At the bank side, the responsible manager simply clicked "Done" without actually making a transfer.
Dial-up in Nigeria was fragile. There are lots of failed attempts, busy lines, dropped lines. It might take half a day for messages to start getting through. If a driver had been waiting for their order to clear, they'd wait half a day. That happened with cash too, as it might take some time to assemble the needed stashes of notes. One thing you quickly learn in Africa: patience.
Yet apart from that, messages did not often get lost. I learned that email is surprisingly robust, even though it has no delivery guarantees. We used a simple retry mechanism to resend messages if we didn't get a response within some timeout. We ignored duplicate requests and responses. And so on, the usual stuff.
Lesson here is: you can do a lot with little, if you are creative.
Then just a month or so before we were going to go live, Heineken bought NB (they were already a minority owner, then they bought more shares, to get a controlling stake). They stopped all investment in EASY and the electronic payments system and began to plan a SAP deployment. And that was that. We packed our bags, and went home.
Building the Perfect Kiosk
In 2003-2004 we rebuilt the delivery system for CBR's cement factory in Gent. This time we got the full project, down to the kiosks.
We'd done a good job with the previous automation project, so CBR called us in to one of the earliest planning meetings for their new factory project. They drew a schema of all the pieces. We had, as before, one supplier for the kiosks, one for the loading bridge automation, one for the Unix application, etc.
By this time CBR were talking to us (iMatix) directly, rather than Sema. In the meeting I stood up. "Last time, we had real difficulty integrating all these pieces," I told the managers. "So what do you suggest?" they asked me. I took the pen, and drew a large box around all the pieces except the loading bridge, which was out of our competence. "We'll do all these," I said. There was about two seconds' silence and then the project lead, who still adored us from the work we'd done, said "OK," and that was that.
I did what I often did in those days, when starting a new project. I sat down and wrote a design spec.
For once, and because we knew exactly what we had to make, and why, the design spec was almost perfect. My main goal was full off-site testability, for every piece of software and hardware, alone and together. I also wanted to make the kiosks completely fool proof. Plug and play and never break.
I asked CBR what their budget was. We agreed on a budget for the software on the usual lines: days times rates equals total. For the hardware, we agreed on unlimited budget, with no profit for iMatix. This freed us to find the very best hardware. The kiosks turned out very expensive to build, yet considering the cost of failure, and the overall project cost (automating the deliveries for a major factory), this was easily justifiable.
Julie and I designed the hardware by looking for all the smallest, most resistant pieces on the market. Sun-readable screens, dust-resistant printers, badge readers, PCs. We designed the casing and interior layout ourselves, and found a firm to build six metal housings. Julie found a paper supplier and got a palette of custom thermal paper produced.
Let me tell the printer story as an example. We were discussing with CBR about the tickets the kiosk should print, size and type of printer. We agreed, thermal printers, no ink to smudge or replace. I asked if they had a preferred supplier, and they did. So we asked the supplier what kind of printers they had. The smallest was the kind you see in an airport, about 30cm high, 75cm deep and high.
"It has to fit inside a small box. Got anything smaller?" I asked. I had made this sketch of the internals of a kiosk design, and the printer had to fit in the space of a small stack of paperbacks. "No," they replied. "I'll find another supplier on-line," I told them. "Good luck, it's impossible!" they replied, not entirely sweetly.
We did finally find the right printer, tiny and fast, designed for fitting inside a kiosk. So the eventual kiosk was about 75% dedicated to holding paper, which was perfect. The kiosks could run a week without needing a refill.
Lesson here is, don't take "impossible" as an answer. Everyone lies, not always deliberately. We just have our assumptions and ignorance and we believe we're telling the truth.
Mato designed a multilayer Linux OS that booted off DHCP, and then fetched its application from the network and then connected to the server. The kiosks were plug-and-play: connect power and Ethernet, and they'd boot in about 10 seconds and show their welcome screen. Access control to admin functions on the kiosk was via special badges and PINs.
Thierry and Pascal wrote a new dispatcher, and I designed XML messages that connected kiosks to this backend system. Jonathan and I wrote a new reliable messaging system (STEP) that talked to the central SAP system.
Ewen and I built the kiosk application; I designed the twenty or so screens in black and green, using a large sci-fi font and movie-style computer graphics that were bold and easy to read even in direct sun. Ewen brought them to life, with his code talking to the dispatcher over the network, using a simple TCP/IP protocol.
In total eleven people worked on this, in offices around the world. We tested each piece, and each kiosk separately, without setting foot in the factory. The client build kiosk housing, took our work, installed it, and it all ran first time.
What else do you expect?
There's a review of the project that I published rather later that gives more details.
There were some good lessons here:
Build up trust with the client and sometimes they will reward you for it.
When you've paid for all the mistakes, you should know how to do it right the next time.
A good specification lets diverse people work together without confusion or conflict.
If you can test each piece alone, and you have reliable ways of putting them together, the whole should work.
Don't be afraid to charge the real cost.
On the downside, the kiosks worked so well that the client never came back for support or maintenance. While this project made us money, it did not lead to any new business, and did not push my vision for iMatix forwards at all.
In that sense, it was a total failure. It is ironic that a "successful" project can be a failure, while catastrophically bad projects can push you through to better things.
I also learned that building a team just to have a team was wasteful. Employees take time to manage. I was becoming a middle manager, and not coding any more. We tried extremely hard to find new clients, and built several potential products:
A HR sourcing application ("Sourceflow") inspired by UltraSource. We rebuilt the whole core and UI and database. We'd made numerous apps using iAF by then, and Sourceflow was elegant and nice to use. We showed it to many large businesses and HR suppliers. Lesson learned: don't make stuff and then try to sell it unless you are growing an existing client base. Sourceflow went into the trash.
A plug-and-play kiosk design for factories, airports, carparks. In 2004, this was still a new thing. We had excellent software, and what I think was a nice hardware design. We did some sales work. No luck. Into the trash (luckily it was just a paper design). Lesson learned: breaking into markets you don't know is probaby impossible.
A group-chat-as-a-service application called SMS@. You created a "site" using the sms-at.com website, and then people could use it via their mobile phones. We deployed this in Belgium and sold it to TV stations, and events like Brussels Rollers (people subscribed via text message and got news back, about cancellations etc.) SMS@ was really neat and worked well. However we had to pay so much to the mobile phone operators (2,000 EUR/month per operator just to be connected), that we needed to charge the users per SMS. I wanted much cheaper text messages but the operators were pushing for premium messages. Lesson: mobile phone operators are crooks who steal billions, fifty cents at a time. I finally killed the product.
In 2004, the IT industry in Belgium was still in crisis and though we spent a lot of effort and money on marketing and sales, we could not sustain it. We simply could not find new clients. Years of built-up cash reserves were draining away. One by one I fired my team, until it was just a skeleton crew (Fabio and myself) left.
It was terribly sad to walk through our offices, where fifteen people had once worked, to see one or two people there. Yet without shutting down our projects and going through the pain of firing friends, iMatix would have gone bankrupt.
Lesson: be aware of your expenditure and manage your losses. You can survive a long time with less income if you are in tight control of what you spend.
Second lesson: it is no favor to pay people to do idle work. When you hire someone, tell yourself, and them, one day this will be over. Today I far prefer working with self-employed partners because that doesn't need to be stated, it's explicit.
The Investment Bank
In late 2004 as we wondered what was happening next, I got a timely phone call from JPMorganChase investment bank (JPMC) London to help design a new protocol. I had one white paper and benchmarks (100K pub-sub messages per second) to reach. The existing messaging layer could handle 10K messages per second, per server, and they ran a fan-out cluster of dozens of servers to reach the capacity they needed. So I wrote a prototype and demoed it, and we got the full contract.
We migrated an existing trading system off a closed message bus that was costing eight million pounds a year. I did not know how much we were saving the business… and our contracts were meager. Our design was a messaging system, and an emulation layer that let existing apps work without changes.
It was not an easy project. Hitting 10K messages per second was easy; we could do 50K in one thread quite easily. To hit 100K we had to rewrite the code to be multithreaded, and in those days it meant locks and semaphores.
It took three major redesigns of the protocol to get something we were happy with. The full history of this is on GitHub: https://github.com/imatix/openamq. The first designs were based on reverse engineering JMS. The third was based on an abstract exchange-binding-queue model (EBQ) that came to me on a beach in Lisbon, our last holiday for some time.
The nice thing about EBQ was that it defined how the server worked, formally. So your app could rely on this no matter who wrote the server. One day we met a team from RabbitMQ, who'd gotten the AMQP/0.6 spec and implemented iVirtual reality is here to stay. It is showing up everywhere – from taking center stage at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco this year, to making a splash at the VRLA Spring Expo in Los Angeles, California. Practically everywhere you look, VR is sliding in to alter every industry it touches; but where did it all come from? Why is virtual reality proliferating now like never before?
In a series of interviews and re-publications, we venture into the past to see where this exciting virtual reality ride began. Today, we interview Tony Parisi who is best known as the co-creator of the Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML) developed in the 1990s. He has been living in San Francisco for the last 20+ years. When Parisi first arrived, he got involved with virtual reality almost as soon as his feet hit the ground. He started working on software technology called VRML, which was the first attempt to transmit 3D graphics over the internet so that anyone could experience it in a browser. Parisi is passionate about 3D visualization and has working in that field ever since. Now that VR has resurfaced in a big way, Parisi has taken a keen interest in it again and is currently working on a virtual reality startup in San Francisco.
We caught up with Tony Parisi at a virtual reality-focused event called the VRLA Expo in Los Angeles, California and recorded a 40+ minute interview. The video is posted at the end. The following transcript is a discussion that takes us back in time to one of the high points in VR during the 1990s. Topics of conversations include the development of VRML, virtual reality meetups that occurred at the time, notable influencers of the culture, current webVR technologies, the bandwidth needed for virtual reality experiences streaming through servers, some potential input solutions for the web, security implications, and much more.
So Tony, what got you into VR to start?
I’m a person who is really a believer in visual interfaces. I had always been working in user interface software. I had been in the field for about 5 years already as a professional software engineer, and then I met a fellow named Mark Pesce. I met him through some mutual friends; I’m from New England originally, and so was Mark.
My wife and I moved out to San Francisco in 1993. We looked up Mark just to try and know some people locally. He laid this idea on me. He had been coming out of a virtual reality hardware startup called Ono-Sendai, named after the famous Ono-Sendai in Neuromancer, which was a technology company creating VR hardware. That didn’t work out so well for [Mark], but he still was a believer in this metaverse idea, and the World Wide Web was just coming out. 1993, there was a browser called Mosaic, which is the predecessor to Netscape, which became the first big internet browser. Mosaic came out of a university in Illinois—the University of Urbana-Champaign, where Marc Andreessen worked. Mark Andreesen created the first big web browser called Netscape. He moved to Silicon Valley, investors gave him a bunch of money, and the web took off.
While the web was taking off, Mark Pesce cooked up this idea: “hey, let’s put 3D graphics into it. PCs can do 3D graphics now.” At the time they really couldn’t. They were doing everything in software, it was really slow, graphics were really primitive. We were still getting on the internet using dial up modems, but we actually made the technology work. We created a demo called Labyrinth which let you browse the web with some 3D graphics connected to it. And that was the beginning of what came to be known as VRML.
VRML stands for “virtual reality markup language,” correct?
Yes. It’s been alternately known as virtual reality modeling language as well. I’m retconning it, if you will. I’m just going back the original markup language term, because that was the original term for it. At this point, that’s what matters to me, so I go with markup.
You were working with Mark, and were there other people in your team?
Mark and I were a team building that demo. And then, Mark discovered there was a World Wide Web conference happening, actually the first ever World Wide Web conference happening in Geneva, 1994. And there was a call for proposals for various topics. A fellow named Dave Raggett, who is working with W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium) for the prototype for that; I don’t even know if it was so named in 1993. Raggett put out a call for proposals for virtual reality.
Mark discovered [the proposal], we submitted to it, and we were invited to come present our work in Geneva, 1994. We just sent Mark because we didn’t have enough cash to afford two plane tickets. So we put him on a plane, and he went out there. Dave had this birds of a feather session, and people got together in a room, the size of a hotel room like this, to talk about the topic. Dave said, we’re looking for people who are building virtual reality interfaces, thinking about how we could make that a standard for the web.
And Mark got up, with his typical bombast; and if you know Mark, you’ll appreciate this: he said “We’ve already done it.” And he showed a demo, and what he showed was a demo on a PC of, it’s kind of comical in hindsight, a spinning banana. It was the only model we could find for free in an OBJ file format. We got the banana spinning up on the screen in a little PC program called Labyrinth, and when you clicked on the banana, it launched you into a webpage. So that was the first technology proof you could connect 3D graphics to the web.
So the program was called Labyrinth, and the demo was the banana?
The banana. And it was a banana in typical 3D graphics of the time, against a blank black screen; which is kind of hilarious because I realized about 20 years later as VR was taking off again, I drunk dialed Mark about a year ago. I said, we just got the background color wrong. If it had the white background color, it would’ve been the cover of the Velvet Underground & Nico album.
So that was the thing, and to me it’s poignant because we’ve always been approaching this as technologists, but it really is an artistic medium in so many ways. I couldn’t help but thinking that if maybe we had the background colored white it would’ve pushed VRML farther faster, at least with the artists.
Interesting. So Dave Raggett also put in a paper at the first World Wide Web Conference, and Wikipedia says that he coined the term VRML. Does that sound right?
That is correct. He came up with the term. Yes.
From there, what happened? It seemed like a lot of people started using VRML for a few years. One person said Nickelodeon had a little bit on there. What other companies were using it?
So 1994 ended up getting pretty frothy, if you will, for the web. There was an explosion of web things. At the end of 1994, that’s when the company Netscape was formed around Marc Andreessen’s browser technology who is doing work at Mosaic. All of a sudden, everyone wanted to do some kind of web startup. VRML was in that conversation. There’s a company that’s still in existence but has fallen from being a very large company, a multibillion company at the time. Silicon Graphics, had high end graphics work stations and was starting to experiment with graphics in PCs as well.
They heard about VRML, and they got involved in the project. The next significant thing that happened was Mark Pesce and I teamed up with Rikk Carey and Gavin Bell from Silicon Graphics. They had a software tool kit for doing 3D graphics called Open Inventor. We decided to use Open Inventor as the basis of what eventually became VRML.
The first piece of really cool VRML content that was created, we partnered with a 3D production studio and Intel to do a fly through of the graphics chip they were starting to promote which was then called the Pentium.
So to go from our Labyrinth prototype to actually a format you can publish 3D graphics in, we partnered with the Silicon Graphics on that, and Silicon Graphics started running with it and promoting VRML a lot in their PR. This was early 94, 95. There was so much attention on it that I started my own little startup in my garage called Intervista Software, and I had the first PC-based VRML viewer.
I got some seed investment and started a company around that. VRML took off, there was a lot of hype around it from 1995 through 1997. Every major company technology was into it. Netscape was doing something, SGI, Silicon Graphics, Apple, Oracle, IBM, Intel. Everyone was involved. The first piece of really cool VRML content that was created, we partnered with a 3D production studio and Intel to do a fly through of the graphics chip they were starting to promote which was then called the Pentium. I don’t know, your phone can probably do like 100 Pentiums worth of processing now, but at the time it was the big thing from Intel. We did that as a marketing piece, and that was part of the flurry that was happening.
Microsoft got very interested, and my company partnered with Microsoft, and our World View viewer was actually distributed with Internet Explorer for several years. We had about 10 million copies of World View installed on PCs worldwide, which was a pity though because people weren’t really ready to create content for it yet. There was a big gap between what people could do as a business with it. You had to install a plugin. In the case of Internet |
her but Luffy slammed him into the ground during a confrontation. Afterwards, Luffy kept blocking every weapon that Decken threw at the Mermaid Princess. Decken decided to throw the giant ship, Noah, because of Luffy thwarting his attempts to kill Shirahoshi.
Hody Jones Edit
Decken formed an alliance with Hody Jones, with the understanding that they are equals, not leader or subordinates.[12] However, Decken has no interest in the goals of the New Fish-Man Pirates and only used this alliance to get closer to Shirahoshi. After Shirahoshi rejected him, he is willing to see Fish-Man Island destroyed as revenge which clashes with Hody's goal of becoming King. Likewise, Hody used Decken in the hopes of eliminating Shirahoshi, but upon his failure, Hody considers Decken to be useless. Once Hody sees Decken's treachery, which is attempting to destroy Fish-Man Island and everyone on it including Hody himself, the alliance is void and Hody becomes an enemy. Therefore, when Hody reaches Noah, he stabs Decken in revenge. Decken, in return, declared that he will kill Hody at all cost for that attack.
Jinbe Edit
No direct interaction is seen between the two but the Knight of the Sea is aware of his obsession with Shirahoshi and his ingestion of a Devil Fruit. He assists Luffy by giving him Bubble Coral to battle Decken on Noah and defeating his underling Wadatsumi.
Abilities and Powers Edit
Vander Decken IX is the eighth descendant of the legendary wicked pirate Vander Decken and the captain of the Flying Pirates: as such, he has authority over his crew and controls the legendary, enormous ship Flying Dutchman.[1] He also has at least two gigantic sea creatures at his command, these being the fish-man Wadatsumi and the giant anglerfish Ankoro. When Decken joined forces with Hody Jones, it was stated that these two pirate captains working together would be unstoppable, although their relationship was fragile, which hampered, and ultimately broke off, their alliance.
Physical Abilities Edit
In terms of physical prowess, Decken has extraordinary strength as demonstrated when he was able to carry and throw a battle axe that is larger than himself. With a single kick, he easily break a giant coral. By dual wielding two axes, Decken easily defeated multiple fish-men when they attempted to stop him from going after Shirahoshi.
He also seems to hold a great deal of endurance, as he was able to recover just moments after Luffy pummeled him into the ground with a Jet Hammer attack. He was also able to survive getting stabbed by Hody's trident, slashed by his own axe, and falling from considerable heights. He was also capable of surviving Luffy's assault on Noah despite being hit by the attack. However, it is shown that he has limits, as he was knocked out just by hitting his head on a step after slipping.
Devil Fruit Edit
Further information: Mato Mato no Mi
Decken ate the Mato Mato no Mi, a Paramecia type Devil Fruit which allows him to throw any projectile, including people, at targets he has designated. By touching people with his bare hands, he can "lock on" to them and make them his targets. From there on, any projectile he throws with that respective hand will automatically seek out a targeted person of his choice like a homing missile, and will not stop until it reaches it or is hindered by an obstacle. It is revealed that he does not necessarily have to throw the object in order for it to fly at his target, but merely touch it with the hand that marks his target, as demonstrated when he touches the Noah to send it flying towards Shirahoshi. His homing ability can be used to moved immensely heavy objects such as a large coral and even Noah, a gigantic ship. He can also only remember as many people as he has palms (i.e. two), which is why he wears a red glove on one of them. Also, if Decken dies or falls unconscious, the effects of his ability will disappear.
Decken used his power to threaten Shirahoshi by sending weapons to both woo and try to kill her, which is why the princess is locked up in her room, as evidenced by the many weapons that are stuck in the tower's door. He also used this power to throw people so they could arrive at Shirahoshi's door and infiltrate the palace. He can also use his powers as a means of locating one of his targets and can even ride on some of the objects he throws, as shown when he threw and jumped on a large piece of coral to find Shirahoshi. He uses his right hand to lock onto Shirahoshi and wanting her as a permanent target, Decken only uses his left hand to switch his secondary targets such as Hatchan and Hody.
In addition, the loss of the ability to swim affects Decken more than a human Devil Fruit user since, as a fish-man, he would have a huge advantage underwater, an advantage he can no longer use due to the side-effects, but still can survive underwater.[14] Also, as a Devil Fruit user, he is powerless in the sea, as he requires a flutter kick coating.
Weapons Edit
Despite not being visible anywhere on his body, Decken has a great array of weapons at his disposal, which have mostly been seen used in conjunction with his Devil Fruit powers.
He seems to have a penchant for large battle-axes with a rose design on the sides and knives. He throws giant double-bladed ones at Shirahoshi from afar during several occasions, and tried to kill her with single-edged smaller (but still rather large) ones, which he also employed proficiently in melee when fending off some inhabitants of Ryugu Kingdom who were trying to stop him. However, judging from the exterior of the Hard-Shell Tower he has a large variety, including swords and maces.
He also has knives installed in his front sandals, so he can raise his front legs to fight with them while being supported by his hind legs.
Luffy blocking one of Decken's giant double-edged axes. Decken wielding two of his single-bladed axes. Decken's hidden knives in his sandals.
Aside from the large amount of weapons he currently carries on his body, he has other weapons alongside him. Ten years prior to his introduction, he was seen carrying a rifle on a hip holster.
In the New Fish-Man Pirates' hideout, after making Hatchan his target, he showed off his Devil Fruit powers by hitting the fish-man with a thrown knife and then threw a volley of arrows at Hatchan, forcing him to flee.
History Edit
Past Edit
Vander Decken IX became captain of the Flying Dutchman and formed a crew which included Wadatsumi and Ankoro, hunting down coated ships that tried to descend to Fish-Man Island for their treasure.
Arlong once offered Decken a place in the Arlong Pirates, but Decken declined, citing that he does not work under anyone.[11]
Ten years ago during an uproar with a World Noble, Decken witnessed Princess Shirahoshi's legendary ability to call upon Sea Kings. He was overjoyed, as encountering the mermaid with this power was the dream of his ancestors. He declared to his ancestors that he had succeeded in accomplishing their goal. Decken then set his sights on marrying her.[15] Seeing as she was too young at the time, Decken came up with a plan to use the Tamatebako to age Shirahoshi into a woman. The problem was that the Tamatebako was in the Ryugu Palace and Decken could not enter the palace unless he marries Shirahoshi. Since Decken does not have a problem with big women, he decided to give Shirahoshi ten or twenty years first. He started writing wedding invitations even though he had not propose to Shirahoshi yet, and then realizing that he did not have any friends to begin with.[16]
During the confusion when Queen Otohime was shot by Hody Jones, he managed to "mark" Shirahoshi with his acquired Devil Fruit power using his right hand before getting chased away by a soldier.[17] Before Otohime's funeral, he started sending letters to Shirahoshi, which the princess never replied to.[18] Decken relentlessly sent more letters, then packages and eventually, threatening marriage proposals. His actions terrified the princess and angered her father, King Neptune. The Ryugu Kingdom responded to Decken's threats by raising an army against him and his crew.[1] Decken then became a wanted man on Fish-Man Island.[10] Thanks to the Mato Mato no Mi, Decken was able to remain a stalker while the Neptune Army was unable to find him.[1]
Fish-Man Island Saga Edit
Fish-Man Island Arc Edit
Ten years later, he encountered the Straw Hat Pirates when Wadatsumi stopped Ankoro, the angler fish, from eating the Thousand Sunny. Decken then ordered Wadatsumi to attack the Thousand Sunny so he could take their treasure. Unfortunately for him, the kraken, Surume, having been tamed by Luffy, intervened and defeated Wadatsumi. Decken then yelled at Wadatsumi to get up and retaliate, but was informed by one of his crew that the undersea volcano was about to erupt.
With the volcano starting to erupt, he ordered Ankoro and Wadatsumi to pull the Flying Dutchman away from the approaching magma and said that his business with the Straw Hat Pirates was not finished.
He was later seen with Wadatsumi and Ankoro, asking Wadatsumi how long it was since he had started proposing to Princess Shirahoshi. Wadatsumi replied that it had been ten years. He blamed Neptune, saying that he thought the king had a politically motivated wedding planned for her. He commented on how painful it was, as he thought that they were both in love (though really it was just him). He then brandished a large axe with a rose painted on it, saying that he would present her with it. He then threw it, but the axe doubled back and took out the mast of his ship, causing one of his crew members to tell him that he missed. Decken then crossed his arms, saying he never missed. He then declared his love for Shirahoshi by saying that he would never find another woman like her. He said it was good if her love united them, but that she cannot live her life with another man, as he would kill her if she does. He declared that she must pledge her love to him or die, saying her fate was either marriage or death.
Later, he and his crew arrived at Noah, where the New Fish-Man Pirates were waiting for him. He was told where to go, and he apologized for being late, citing his earlier trouble with the volcanic eruption. He then greeted Hody Jones and after putting on a glove, he shook hands with him. As their crews cheered them on, the two then cemented their intent: the complete collapse of the Ryugu Kingdom.[19]
As Decken set the plan into motion, Hatchan appeared and tried to talk Hody and Decken out of going through with the operation. When Hatchan asked Decken about why he was helping the New Fish-Man Pirates when he did not help Arlong, Decken stated that he was not the kind of person who followed under anyone and his relationship with Hody was nothing more than a partnership. Hatchan was unable to sway Hody and Decken proceeded to use Hatchan as a demonstration for his powers while saying that violence is the way to express opinions. Decken then touched Hatchan, making him a target. Decken threw a knife in the air behind Hatchan, and it flew back towards Hatchan, stabbing him in the back. Decken explained that after a person becomes his target, he can hit that target from anywhere. He then sent Hatchan running when he threw a volley of arrows. With that settled, Decken then used his ability to throw a group of captive pirates and send them flying into Shirahoshi's tower, thus infiltrating the palace.
He was later seen heading for the Ryugu Palace with Hody Jones and his crew while riding on top of sea monsters. Decken was eager to have his marriage with Princess Shirahoshi. Once they entered the palace, they found King Neptune and the palace guards already subdued, courtesy of the Straw Hats. Decken was immediately met with accusations by Neptune, who assumed that Decken was behind his daughter's inexplicable disappearance. Decken denied these convictions, saying that he had yet to be properly engaged to Shirahoshi, and demanding her be returned at once would be too egotistical even for Neptune. Ignoring his statement, Neptune pressed on and angrily asked where was his daughter taken, which informed Decken that Shirahoshi was no longer in the palace.
He then went into a frothing rage, but was promptly assured by Hody that she might still be somewhere nearby, since the human pirates that Decken sent flying landed directly within the Ryugu Palace and even if she wasn't, Decken would still be able to track where Shirahoshi was. This calmed Decken and he proceeded to once again enter a bubble as he embarked outside, where he used a giant coral as a medium for his power to discern Shirahoshi's location. The coral flew away from the palace, confirming Decken's suspicions that the princess was not in Hard-Shell Tower anymore. He was then seen riding on top of the coral, stating that only "death" could keep him and Shirahoshi apart.
He soon arrived at Coral Hill and demanded Shirahoshi to marry him. She bluntly rejected him, claiming he was not her type. Enraged, Decken prepared to kill her, but Luffy got in the way. Luffy smashed the flying coral and pummeled Decken into the ground. He recovered just moments later and said to Luffy and Shirahoshi that they were not getting away as they prepared to leave on Megalo. He called out to Wadatsumi to attack them, but Wadatsumi got hit in his front tooth by Luffy's Jet Pistol. As Wadatsumi cried out in pain, Shirahoshi escaped Decken's clutches, much to the latter's anger. After Decken got away from the locals, he threw weapons at Shirahoshi several times only for them to get deflected by Luffy.
He later went back to Noah, lamenting his lost love. He was so crushed by Shirahoshi's rejection that he even shaved the top of his head. His crew tried to console him, but he did not want them to. He reminded them that even when Shirahoshi was still a child, he decided to marry her for the sake of his ancestors. He then recited a haiku to himself about his rejection, and was frustrated by Luffy saving her every time he tried to kill her. He then got an idea that he said would make everything break apart.
He touched the giant ship, Noah, with his right hand, making it fly to Shirahoshi. As Decken's crew was shocked, he stated that both Shirahoshi and Fish-Man Island would be destroyed. When Noah was above Gyoncorde Plaza in Fish-Man Island, Wadatsumi fell into the plaza. Wadatsumi begged Decken to help him, but Decken told him that he would have to be a sacrifice for the cause because he cannot stop the ship anymore once it had been launched. He then noticed that Shirahoshi disappeared from the plaza and appeared in front of Noah. When she told him that he should only kill her and not the people on the island, he showed glee at her bravery and noted her beauty knows no ends, and then threw a knife at her that hit her in the shoulder.
While Hody and Luffy climbed up to Noah, Decken threw some knives towards Shirahoshi, asking her whether she would die from her blood being spilled or Noah crashing into her. The thrown knives were blocked by Manboshi and Ryuboshi. Hody reached the deck of Noah and Decken welcomed him. Hody then pierced Decken with his trident. However, Decken managed to touch Hody with his left hand.
Decken stepped back and cursed Hody for his betrayal. He threw one of his axes towards Hody but he easily evaded it. Decken then tried to hit him once more with the knives in his sandals but missed him. Hody then bit Decken in the leg. When the axe returned for Hody, he used Decken as a shield and the axe hit Decken instead which caused him to fall in the boat.
Decken survived and started plotting to kill Hody for what he had done to him. However, when Noah shook, Decken slipped and hit his head. Decken passed out and the ship started falling towards Fish-Man Island.
After the Sea Kings stopped Noah from crashing into the island, the princes brought the unconscious Decken and Hody to the plaza and put them in chains, with Fukaboshi declaring that both pirate captains would be incarcerated forever.[20] Decken was then locked up in the palace prison along with the officers of the New Fish-Man Pirates.[21] He apparently remained unconscious and out of the picture when the officers woke up and critically aged by their Energy Steroids abuse.
Major Battles Edit
Vander Decken IX vs. Monkey D. Luffy
Vander Decken IX vs. Hody Jones
Merchandise Edit
Video Games Edit
Playable Appearances Edit
Support Appearances Edit
Trivia Edit
His Devil Fruit only allows him to target as many people as he has hands. [7] Ironically, while he has four legs, he only has two hands.
Ironically, while he has four legs, he only has two hands. Because of his Devil Fruit, he is also a fish-man that is unable to swim. [22] This is a reversal of most adaptations of the Flying Dutchman legend: the captain is a human spirit who cannot step onto land.
This is a reversal of most adaptations of the Flying Dutchman legend: the captain is a human spirit who cannot step onto land. Decken being the "cursed" captain of the Flying Dutchman and his pursuit of Shirahoshi somewhat follows a motif used in Richard Wagner's opera: the captain can be freed from his curse if he can find a faithful woman.
Decken is the first new Paramecia Devil Fruit user to appear after the time skip.
References Edit
Japanese bullhead shark – Wikipedia article about the type of fish the fish-man Vander Decken IX is.America’s voting system is so scattered and bulky that cybercriminals would struggle to hack into the system and change the results –according to officials.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said he wasn’t too concerned about cyber-attacks on the voting system when addressing the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday.
“The beauty of the American voting system is that it is dispersed among the 50 states, and it is clunky as heck,’’ Comey said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “A lot of people have found that challenging over the years, but the beauty of that is it’s not exactly a swift part of the internet of things, and so it is hard for an actor to reach our voting process.’’
Comey argues that since the computing systems are decentralized and voting is done in such a localized manner, that it would be hard to infiltrate the technology and alter the official results.
Hackers may try to use cutting-edge technological capabilities, but could discover “it actually isn’t a fiber optic cable, it’s a woman named Sally, a guy named Joe [who] pull out the punch cards, and that’s hard to reach,” Comey explained to the audience. “There’s a lot of pain in that, but there’s a lot of beauty.”
These comments come at the same time U.S. officials are ramping up investigations into the cyber invasions of state election systems, after Yahoo reported that Arizona and Illinois‘ databases were compromised only a couple weeks ago. Intelligence and law enforcement officials will be informing Senate and House leaders about the investigation, CBS News reports.
Comey’s confidence seems somewhat brazen since not every state uses tangible paper for its voting mechanism. Georgia, for example, has a shoddy history of protecting voters’ personal information and is one of five states that employs electronic voting without paper records backing up the data. (RELATED: Hundreds Of Organizations Worldwide Fail At Cybersecurity)
If cyber intrusions do occur, it could be very difficult to detect.
There are so many hacks in recent days, ranging from the Democratic National Committee to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, that it is not implausible for voting systems in America to be a target come election day.
Comey, who heads the top-ranking law enforcement agency in the U.S., is casting doubt on the prospect of foreign hackers by asserting that such anachronistic technology is too primitive for advanced hackers.
In a report called, “Hacking The Elections Is Easy!”, James Scott with the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology outlines numerous ways voting infrastructures could be breached and exploited.
“This discussion only happens every four years, so after everybody calms down after the election, unfortunately, after the election is done and everybody is done counting, there will be abnormalities,” Scott told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “And somehow they always get swept under the rug.”
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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.Every Muslim, whether be male or female, is recommended to pray 12 Rakaat of supererogatory prayers every day: four of these Rakaat (units of prayers) are before noon prayer, two after it, two after Maghrib prayer, two after Isha (night) prayer and two before the morning prayer ‑ These supererogatory prayers are called (Rawatib) which means: “Certain supererogatory exercises of optional prayers.” The Prophet peace and blessings of Allah be on him, preserved the performance of these optional prayers wherever he settled. During his travels, he used to practice the two optional Rakaat before the morning prayer and also the Witr prayer (after the Isha prayer).
There is no objection to perform these optional prayers in the mosque, but it is better to perform it at home, because the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be on him, said “The best of the prayers are those which are furfilled at one’s own home, with exception to obligatory prayers which should be performed in congregation at the mosque.”
Observance of fulfilling these optional prayers is a means for gaining admission to paradise. The Prophet, may peace and blessings of Allah be on him, said (which means): “Whoever prays optionally twelve Rakoat every one day and night, Allah will reward him by an established dwelling in the paradise. “
It is also advisable to the Muslim to pray four optional Rakaat before Asr prayer (afternoon prayer), two before Maghrib prayer (evening prayer), and two before Isha prayer (night prayer), because this manner was reported to be one of the traditions of the Prophet. Allah, the Almighty says: “Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah an excellent exemplar” (33:21).
Source for the above: Prophet Muhammad’s Manners of Performing Prayers – Shaik ibn Baaz
Imam Al-Nawawi’s Riyad-us-Saliheen
Chapter 195
The Excellence of Optional Prayers (Sunnah Mu’akkadah) along with the Obligatory Prayers
1097. Umm Habibah (May Allah be pleased with her) the Mother of the Believers reported: I heard the Messenger of Allah (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam) saying, “A house will be built in Jannah for every Muslim who offers twelve Rak`ah of optional Salat other than the obligatory Salat in a day and a night (to seek the Pleasure of Allah).”
[Muslim].
Commentary: Tatawwu` means to offer more Nawafil (optional prayers) on one’s own after performing the Faraid (obligatory prayers). Thus, this Hadith tells us the merits of optional prayers and holds promise of (Jannah) for those who make it a practice.
1098. Ibn `Umar (May Allah be pleased with them) reported: I performed along with the Messenger of Allah (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam) two Rak`ah of optional prayers before Zuhr and two after the Zuhr (noon prayer), and two after the Friday prayer, and two after the Maghrib (evening) prayer, and two after the `Isha’ (night) prayer.”
[Al-Bukhari and Muslim].
Commentary: There are two kinds of Nawafil which are performed before or after the obligatory prayer. Firstly, the one which were performed by the Prophet (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam) more frequently. According to the present Hadith, their total comes to ten Rak`ah while in other Ahadith their total is twelve or fourteen Rak`ah. They are called Sunnah Mu’akkadah or As-Sunnan Ar-Rawatib That is, the Rak`ah which are proved from the saying and practice of the Prophet (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam) and which were performed by him usually. These are said to be Compulsory prayers. Secondly, such Nawafil which were not performed by the Prophet (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam) regularly. These are called Sunnah Ghair Mu’akkadah and are said to be Optional prayers. In any case, Nawafil have great importance in creating a special link between the worshipper and Allah, and for this reason the believers do not neglect them. But their status in Shari`ah is of Nawafil the performing of which is rewarding and omission of which is not sinful. One thing that should be borne in mind in respect of As-Sunnan Ar-Rawatib or Mu’akkadah is that it is better to perform them at home. This was the usual practice of the Prophet (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam), and this is what he ordained the Muslims.
1099.`Abdullah bin Mughaffal (May Allah be pleased with him) reported: The Messenger of Allah (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam) said, “There is a Salat (prayer) between every Adhan and Iqamah; there is a Salat between every Adhan and Iqamah.” (While saying the same for the) third time (he (sallallaahu ’alayhi wa sallam) added), “It is for him who desires (to perform it).”
[Al-Bukhari and Muslim].
Commentary: The two Adhan here means Adhan and Iqamah, as has been elucidated by Imam An-Nawawi. That is, offering of two Rak`ah between Adhan and Iqamah is Mustahabb (desirable). It comes in the category of Ghair Ratiba or Ghair Mu’akkadah Nawafil. These Nawafil can be performed after the Adhan of every Salat before the congregation stands for the obligatory Salat.Resolution signals rare show of unity from 15-nation council, although future of president Bashar al-Assad is not mentioned
The UN security council has unanimously agreed a resolution endorsing an international roadmap for a peace process in Syria, a rare show of unity among major powers on a conflict that has claimed more than 250,000 lives.
“This council is sending a clear message to all concerned that the time is now to stop the killing in Syria and lay the groundwork for a government that the long-suffering people of that battered land can support,” the US secretary of state, John Kerry, told the 15-nation council after the vote.
The resolution came after Russia and the US clinched a deal on a text. The two powers have had very different views on what should happen in Syria, where Islamic State militants control considerable territory.
Kerry made clear that there were still differences on the future of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of Russia and Iran. Western governments want him to be ousted. The resolution does not touch on the question of Assad’s fate.
“We are under no illusions about the obstacles that exist,” added Kerry. “There obviously remain sharp differences within the international community, especially about the future of President Assad.”
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said of the resolution: “This is a clear response to attempts to impose a solution from the outside on Syrians on any issues, including those regarding its president.”
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A group of protesters, some holding Syrian revolutionary flags, gather in front of UN headquarters. Photograph: Justin Lane/EPA
The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said talks between the Syrian government and opposition would only succeed if there were “guarantees on the departure” of Assad.
Fabius said: “How could this man unite a people that he has in part massacred? The idea that he could once again stand for elections is unacceptable to us.”
The text called for the UN to present the council with options for monitoring a ceasefire within one month of adoption of the resolution. It also backed a timeline previously agreed in Vienna for talks between the government on a unity government and opposition, and eventual elections.
The talks between Syria’s government and opposition should begin in early January, the resolution said. It also endorsed the continued battle to defeat Isis.
The British foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, called the resolution a “significant step” towards ending the civil war. But he accepted that there was “still a very long way to go” and that the text failed to address what role Assad should play.
Britain remains insistent that Assad can remain in place temporarily as part of a transitional administration, but cannot have a long-term role in government.
Hammond said: “This process necessarily involves the departure of Bashar al-Assad, not only for moral reasons because of the destruction that he has unleashed on his own people, but also for practical reasons – because it will never be possible to bring peace and unity to Syria as long as he remains in office.
“But we must and will protect the institutions that are necessary for the future governance of Syria and that will be possible with a representative transitional governing body.”
Kerry praised “the unprecedented degree of unity” in the council, which has been stymied in the past over a political solution in Syria, and called the resolution a milestone.
Foreign ministers met for more than five hours to discuss how to implement their call in Vienna last month for a ceasefire and the start of negotiations between the government and opposition in early January. At the same time, diplomats worked to overcome divisions on the text of the resolution.
Iran calls for concerted international effort to beat Isis and end Syrian war Read more
The resulting agreement “gives the Syrian people a real choice, not between Assad and Daesh, but between war and peace”, Kerry said, using the Arabic acronym for Isis.
“We’re under no illusions about the obstacles that exist... especially about the future of President Assad”, where “sharp differences” remain, Kerry said.
But he made clear that Assad must go if there is to be peace in Syria.
“Assad has lost the ability... to unite the country,” Kerry said. “If the war is to end, it is imperative that the Syrian people have to agree on an alternative” to their government.Originally Posted by dannno Originally Posted by
No, he wants to end our foreign empire and bring all of the troops home.
I'd say Rand is a bigger interventionist in practice as he seems to not be as unsupportive of our empire and having all our troops out there as Schiff.
Schiff made a statement about how IF Iran had nuclear weapons AND IF they were threatening our national security then we could blow them up as a defense mechanism (the weapons). But he never said Iran had nuclear weapons and he never said that Iran was actually threatening us. It was a statement pandering to Republicans because Schiff was running purely on an economics platform for a Senate seat. He is very much aware of how our military interventionism is tied to economics and would bring up that often when speaking, but still wanted to make sure he had a strong defense platform.
In the sense that Schiff is more interventionist than Ron, I'd say that Scheuer is more interventionist than Schiff. Or at least as much so.The Boy with the Chainsaw Heart
A Bio-Mech pilot drafted into Hell’s army must fight his way through a surreal afterlife in order to save his wife from slavery.
Dark and pulpy.
Neverday
The story of what happens to society after everyone in the world gets trapped in a never-ending time loop.
Dark and dystopian.
Stacking Doll
The story of a man who falls in love with a Russian nesting doll.
Dark and surreal.
Parasite MIlk
A travel show producer is infected with deadly sexually transmitted parasites after visiting a brothel on an alien planet.
Body horror science-fiction comedy.
The Big Meat
A kaiju tribute novel that explores the surreal aftermath of a giant monster attack.
Dark and gritty.
Spider Bunny
A group of college kids get trapped inside a deranged children’s cereal commercial from the 1980’s.
Creepy and absurd.
Exercise Bike
The story of a man who transformed himself into a human exercise bike and the woman who is forced to ride him.
Absurd body horror.
The Terrible Thing That Happens
In a post-apocalypse world, a small community of scavengers must survive by looting a grocery store that’s stuck in a time loop.
Dark and surreal.
Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen, Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes
A tale of childhood love and spontaneous face explosions.
Cute and disturbing.
Bio Melt
Within a toxic wasteland, six strangers find themselves trapped in an abandoned hotel, surrounded by a mysterious black ooze.
Dark and surreal.
ClownFellas
Six interconnected novellas revolving around the Bozo clown crime family
Surreal and Pulpy.
As She Stabbed Me Gently in the Face
A sociopathic killer meets an even more sociopathic victim
Dark and strange.
Sweet Story
A children’s book gone horribly wrong.
Dark humor.
The Tick People
In a city where people live like parasites on the back of a giant animal, a professional sadness-maker discovers that his soul mate is a hideous mutant.
Dark and surreal.
Hungry Bug
In a world where magic exists, spell-casting has become a serious addiction.
Gritty and pulpy.
Clusterfuck
A bunch of douchebag frat boys get trapped in a cave with subterranean cannibal mutants and try to survive not by using their wits but by following the bro code.
Comical and violent.
Quicksand House
Two children who have never met their parents before, even though they live in the same house with them, must fight for survival once their nursery becomes uninhabitable.
Dark and Dystopian.
Village of the Mermaids
An eccentric doctor travels to an isolated village of carnivorous mermaids to investigate a new disease spreading through the herd of human livestock.
Dark and Dystopian.
Cuddly Holocaust
A tale of survival set in a world where most of the human race has been exterminated by vicious stuffed animals.
Apocalyptic and brutal.
Hammer Wives
Six novellas and short stories.
Kill Ball
A slasher thriller set in a city where everyone lives in plastic bubbles.
Dystopian and surreal.
Tumor Fruit
Seven castaways stranded on a bizarre deserted island must go to extremes in order to survive.
Surreal and disturbing.
The Handsome Squirm
It’s Franz Kafka’s The Trial meets an erotic horror version of The Blob when a man is forced by law to marry an alien woman who devours her mates.
Absurd and dystopian.
Armadillo Fists
Set in a world where people drive mechanical dinosaurs instead of cars, a female boxer with armadillo hands is on the run from deranged mobsters.
Pulpy and fun.
I Knocked Up Satan’s Daughter
A parody of romantic comedies about a man who finds himself engaged to a succubus who’s pregnant with his child.
Light and satirical.
Fantastic Orgy
One novella plus four short stories.
Barbarian Beast Bitches of the Badlands
The sequel to Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland.
The Morbidly Obese Ninja
A 700 pound killing machine must go against his corporate employers in order to save a terminal child.
Pulpy and fun.
Crab Town
A bizarre bank heist set in a radioactive post-nuke ghetto.
Dystopian and relevant.
Zombies and Shit
It’s Battle Royale meets Return of the Living dead in a fight to the death game of survival where twenty contestants are put against each other in the middle of the zombie wasteland.
Apocalyptic, pulpy, and epic.
The Kobold Wizard’s Dildo of Enlightenment +2
A group of adventurers learn they are actually fictional characters trapped in the worst Dungeons & Dragons campaign of all time.
Satirical and dumb.
Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland
A Wonderland Book Award-winning novel about a three-armed man who finds himself in the middle of a war between a gang of road warrior werewolves and mutants from a dystopian version of McDonaldland.
Apocalyptic, pulpy, and epic.
The Cannibals of Candyland
A man finds himself imprisoned in an under ground world populated by child-eating mutants made of candy.
Erotic and horrific.
Apeshit
A parody of cabin in the woods horror stories where the victims turn out to be far more deranged than the mutant killers who hunt them.
Campy and fucked up.
The Egg Man
It is a survival of the fittest world where humans reproduce like insects, children are the property of corporations, and having a ten-foot tall brain is a grotesque sexual fetish.
Dark, dystopian, and ugly.
Cybernetrix
A dark and bizarre parody of the movie Tron where a game world and our world bleed together into one reality.
Pulpy and awesome.
The Faggiest Vampire
A bizarro children’s book about two vampire rivals competing in a mustache contest to determine which one is the faggiest.
Cute and relevant.
The Ultra Fuckers
A landscaper and a trio of Japanese punks find themselves stranded in a suburban gated community that seems to go on forever.
Nightmarish and absurd.
Adolf in Wonderland
Nazis from an alternate world of absolute perfection go down the rabbit hole into a dark surreal world of chaos and imperfection.
Absurd and horrific.
Sausagey Santa
A bizarro Christmas story… filled with sex and violence.
Satirical and pulpy.
The Haunted Vagina |
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Now go to Tools » Admin Colors you will find the following screen. Here you can create your own custom admin color schemes.
On this page, you can set your desired color by selecting a color from the color picker.
You custom color scheme will be displayed under user profile page which can be found at the top right of the header.
There are four options on the screen Base, Icon, Highlight, and Notification.
Base – It is the background color. Icon – You can choose a color for menu icons Highlight – This option helps you to change the color when you hover over the menu item and the selected one. Notification – You can customize the notifications circle counter which generally appears when there are new comments, plugin, theme and core updates.
When you click the advanced option you can find more options to customize every element found in the admin panel.
You can customize following elements in the advance option of Admin Color Schemer:
Button
Text (over Base)
Body background
Link
Link interaction
Checked form controls
Menu background
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Menu icon
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background Menu highlight text
Menu highlight icon
Menu current background
Menu current text
Menu current icon
Submenu background
Submenu text
Submenu alt background
Submenu text interaction
Submenu current text
Bubble background
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Bubble current background
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Menu collapse text
Menu collapse icon
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Toolbar avatar frame
Toolbar input background
In the end, it’s all about making your admin panel more interesting and a better user experience. Feel free share your thoughts in the comments section below!TAMPA — Steven Stamkos had to laugh. So did some of his teammates.
Of course he did it again.
The Lightning captain opened Wednesday's practice by re-creating his brilliant final act from Tuesday's 4-3 shootout win over the Panthers. Shortly after taking the ice at Amalie Arena, Stamkos darted below the left circle, near the goalline. He ripped the puck into the top corner of the empty net. It was similar to Stamkos' wild-angled, how-did-he-do-that shot with 5.5 seconds left Tuesday.
The goal forced overtime, and put Stamkos' goal No. 314 on highlight reels all over the hockey world.
"I told you I work at it," Stamkos said, smiling. "It's not all luck."
A lot went into one of the best shots of Stamkos' career, and the biggest goal of the Lightning's young season. Stamkos is one of a handful of players who can convert that shot, and probably the only one who actually practices it. But it might not have been possible without the net-front presence of Alex Killorn, who distracted goalie James Reimer, or the timely on-the-tape pass by defenseman Victor Hedman.
"There were a lot of moving parts," coach Jon Cooper said. "You need them all to work."
•••
As Hedman surveyed his options with six seconds left in regulation, he quickly realized that shooting wasn't one of them.
"It's tough when 10 guys are in front of the net," Hedman said. "If you get it through, you've got to get really lucky. Stammer was open."
Hedman, one of the game's most proficient passers, delivered a smooth feed right into Stamkos' sweet spot.
"If (Hedman) puts that behind or in front, that's not going in," Cooper said. The ice tends to get soft late in games, which could make a pass bounce. "It stayed flat the entire way," Stamkos said. "Whether it was meant to be."
•••
Killorn positioned his 6-foot-2, 205-pound frame in front of Reimer in the waning seconds Tuesday, hoping to deflect a Hedman shot or pounce on a rebound.
Reimer tried to look over Killorn's screen, making him late to react to Hedman's pass down low to Stamkos. "If Killorn is not in front to distract, Reimer probably sees the pass and easily moves over," Cooper said.
•••
Still, Killorn didn't think Stamkos would shoot.
"I was shocked," he said.
Most wouldn't. And that's the point.
"Maybe 80 percent of the players don't even think about shooting that," Stamkos said. "Where I've done it a number of times in practice. I have a certain amount of confidence I can get a decent shot off from that angle, and maybe surprise the goalie."
Said Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman, who attends most Lightning home games as a Blackhawks adviser: "He has that special ingredient in that he anticipated perfectly without any hesitation."
It wasn't a typical one-timer, more of a redirection, the puck hitting the heel of Stamkos' stick, moving down to the toe, riding the blade to hit that elevation.
Several teammates joke that Stamkos' strong golf game played a role. But it was his slick, and quick, hands.
"He shows he's a good chipper with touch like that," goalie Ben Bishop said.
The puck soared over Reimer's shoulder in the tiniest of openings. Bishop said Stamkos is one of the more accurate shooters in the league. "He's one of the few guys that when he misses, he misses in the net," Bishop said.
Capitals coach Barry Trotz said that his Alex Ovechkin and Stamkos are among "three or four guys" in the league who can put the puck in that small of a window.
"They're shooting from ridiculous angles," Trotz said. "The rest of us mortals will be shooting from the middle and we still can't hit the net."
It made for an imperfect storm for a helpless Reimer.
"Obviously you'd like to make those saves in the end," Reimer said. "But sometimes it's not possible."
ROSTER MOVE: Defenseman Slater Koekkoek, a healthy scratch the first three games, was reassigned to AHL Syracuse on Wednesday, likely to get more playing time. Defenseman Matt Taormina was recalled. For more, go to tampabay.com/blogs/lightning.
Joe Smith can be reached at [email protected] Follow @TBTimes_JSmith.Construction firm Aecon Group Inc. sold to a state-controlled Chinese firm after years of losing out on Canadian government contracts to larger global rivals, says its chief executive officer.
Faced with increasing competition at home and abroad, Aecon CEO John Beck and the board opted on Thursday to sell the 140-year-old company to Beijing-based China Communications Construction Co. Ltd. (CCCC) for $1.45-billion.
CCCC is one of the largest infrastructure companies in the world, with 118,000 employees and sales of $62-billion (U.S.) last year. Aecon has 12,000 employees and revenues of $3.2-billion (Canadian).
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The sale comes after a strategic review that began in the summer, when Mr. Beck said the Aecon board concluded "we were too big to be small and too small to be big." The company, which helped build the CN Tower, will keep its name and management team under CCCC's ownership.
Mr. Beck said Aecon will use the Chinese company's backing to win larger, more complex projects in Canada and in international markets, in which Aecon is currently a minor player.
First, though, the deal will have to get through the federal approval process.
Foreign takeovers of this size are required to meet a so-called "net benefit test" to ensure they are in the interest of Canada.
The transaction will fall under close scrutiny because of CCCC's ownership structure – it is 64-per-cent owned by China Communications Construction Group, which is owned by the Chinese government – and because of the nature of some of Aecon's work.
CCCC is bidding for Aecon at a time when federal and provincial governments are projected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new infrastructure over the next 13 years – a figure that includes work on Ontario nuclear facilities that are current or previous Aecon clients.
The Toronto-based company builds, refurbishes, maintains and decommissions nuclear plants, having worked on 400 projects globally, according to its website. In Canada, the company has had contracts for various projects at the Bruce and Darlington plants on Ontario.
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But Mr. Beck said that with CCCC's backing, Aecon is better-positioned to win large mandates for government infrastructure projects in competitions against domestic, U.S. and European construction and engineering rivals.
Aecon has won international projects in the past, including work on a nuclear power plant in China and airports in Europe, South America and Bermuda, and Mr. Beck said with CCCC's backing, the company plans to bid more aggressively for work outside of Canada.
Acquiring Aecon is part of an international expansion push at CCCC, and follows the takeover of a Texas-based engineering firm in 2010 and Australian construction company John Holland in 2015. Mr. Beck said he talked to executives at both firms while negotiating with their Chinese parent. "The feedback I got was that CCCC is a professional and supportive partner, a better partner in many regards than some companies based in the West."
CCCC is offering $20.37 a share for Aecon, a 42-per-cent premium to the stock price prior to announcement of the sale process in August. Analyst Benoit Poirier at Desjardins Capital Markets called the price "fair." Mr. Poirier said: "We believe CCCC's past acquisition of Australian construction company John Holland in 2015 will give investors confidence with regard to the transaction's benefits for both parties."
Aecon investors are expected to vote on the offer in December and if two-thirds of shareholders approve, the takeover is expected to close in the first quarter of 2018. In addition to Ottawa's process, CCCC's bid also requires regulatory approval in China. Some analysts see high odds that the deal will win approval at the federal level. "As much as we like Aecon, it is a contractor. It doesn't own any of the intellectual property that would make the deal a no-go with the Canadian public and investors," said analyst Frederic Bastien at Raymond James & Associates.
The Aecon deal represents one of the first major tests of the Trudeau government's approach to Chinese takeovers.
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Lawyer Peter Glossop at Osler Hoskin & Harcourt LLP said: "Not to say there's necessarily a problem, but it's logical to assume that if you're in the nuclear business or power-generation business, these are the kinds of things that the government has identified as areas that they'd like to understand from a security perspective."
Investment bank Barclays advised CCCC on the acquisition, the firm's latest trans-Pacific deal. Barclays also advised China's Li family when it purchased Reliance Home Comfort in March for $2.8-billion. Aecon's financial advisers were BMO Nesbitt Burns Inc. and TD Securities Inc. CCCC's lawyers are at Blake, Cassels & Graydon LLP while Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP worked for Aecon.
With files from Reuters“What you had was the intermix between the content hub and the tech hub that turned out to create a lot of job gain,” Mr. Mandel said. That is, New York is not a broad-spectrum competitor to Silicon Valley, but is seeing extensive growth in areas of the tech industry that benefit from exposure to other industries with a large concentration in New York, especially media, but also fashion and finance.
What New York and Provo have in common is they provide not just the resources necessary to start a high-tech business, but also the impetus to keep it there once it succeeds. In the Provo (or Boulder) example, the businesses stay local because the owners and the workers really want to live there. (This is something else Silicon Valley has always had going for it.) In the New York example, they stay local because the location provides an irreplaceable business advantage.
Mr. Florida pointed to Pittsburgh as a cautionary example. He used to teach at Carnegie Mellon, a top research university that produces a lot of graduates capable of starting and staffing great technology companies. But start-ups that spin out of Carnegie Mellon have neither a strong lifestyle reason nor a strong economic reason to stay in Pittsburgh once they succeed. “If there was a successful start-up, eventually it got sucked into the Silicon Valley vortex,” he said.
So, what lessons does this provide for someplace like Orlando, if it wants to shift its economy toward high tech?
“I think what Orlando has is a combination of the space stuff and the Disney stuff,” Mr. Florida said. “It’s not trivial, those things taken together, but it’s hard to see how you put them together.”
Local officials point to one way they might. Orlando is a center for modeling and simulation technology, because flight simulators and theme park rides can rely on a lot of the same technology. Tourism isn’t generally thought of as a tech-intensive field, but Disney recently developed its MyMagic Plus system (waterproof wristbands with RFID chips that give visitors access to rides and unlock their hotel room doors) in-house in Orlando.
Still, tourism is heavily dispersed geographically, and while there are a lot of tourism dollars in Orlando, even Disney is not headquartered there. Companies that produce technology for the hospitality industry do not need to cluster in Orlando.Political correctness is often cast as an insincere attempt to shut down free speech on controversial topics.
For instance, all the way back in 1991, then-President George W. H. Bush said the “notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones.”
He added, “It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expressions off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.”
More recently, Republican candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson frequently complain about political correctness on the campaign trail. The former uses this complaint to justify his own brand of easy, destructive tactlessness; the latter uses it to draw attention from the fact that his gentle manner belies irresponsible, inflammatory partisanship.
Perhaps most appallingly, Trump and Carson have both called for intentionally killing innocent women and children in the war on terror, each specifically stating that it is only “political correctness” which keeps American soldiers from committing what would unquestionably amount to a war crime.
What both of them apparently fail to grasp is that political correctness in its worst forms can be employed to shut down speech—but so can complaining about political correctness, as Colby Itkowitz argues today at the Washington Post:
In a nation where people often use language carelessly, the term politically correct is usually wielded very strategically. Often it’s used as a put-down, a way to brush off the offended person as being overly sensitive. So while Trump is asserting his right to free speech, he is at the same time calling into question the listener’s right to complain about what he’s saying. “It’s a verbal jiu-jitsu,” said Derald Sue, a psychology professor at Columbia University. “When you say, ‘I have no time to be politically correct’ what you are doing is turning the tables on the person raising a legitimate issue. You detract away from the issue that is being presented. You make the person the problem.” It’s not exactly an invitation to open dialogue….It tells the offended person or group that they have no right to express their feelings, shutting down any further discussion and putting them immediately on the defensive.
There is lots to critique in the way Americans discuss controversial issues. (I’ve argued that claims of offense too often function as a magic formula for attention and sympathy, diluting focus on very real offenses which deserve our anger.)
But simply dismissing everyone who has an ounce more decency than Trump & Co. as bound by political correctness is neither fair nor conducive to productive debate.
And frankly, fewer people would feel the need for more political correctness if chronically rude people like Donald Trump got a little bit of decency themselves.Viewpoint: A Closer Connection Between Entanglement and Nonlocality
Serge Massar and Stefano Pironio, Laboratoire d’Information Quantique, CP 225, Université libre de Bruxelles, Av. F. D. Roosevelt 50, B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
A generalization of one of the most famous experiments in quantum foundations provides a powerful new unifying concept.
Figure 1: S distributes the two parts of an entangled state ρ A B to two measuring devices. The measuring devices are provided with instructions on what measurement to perform. The measuring device then provides a classical output, symbolized here by which light bulb—green or red—lights up. (a) In the standard Bell scenario, the instructions to the measurement devices are classical [ σ A B. This scenario enables the “activation” of hidden nonlocality. (c) In the semiquantum scenario introduced by Buscemi [ i and j fed to the detectors are encoded in quantum systems described by quantum states σ A i and σ B j. Appropriate choice of the states σ A i and σ B j can produce nonlocal correlations for all entangled states ρ A B. Different experiments can be used to test nonlocality. In each case, a sourcedistributes the two parts of an entangled stateto two measuring devices. The measuring devices are provided with instructions on what measurement to perform. The measuring device then provides a classical output, symbolized here by which light bulb—green or red—lights up. (a) In the standard Bell scenario, the instructions to the measurement devices are classical [ 3 ]. The state exhibits nonlocality if the correlations between measurement settings and measurement results violate a Bell inequality. (b) In the scenario considered by Masanes, Liang, and Doherty [ 8 ], the instructions are classical, as in the standard Bell scenario, but the measurement apparatuses have access to an auxiliary entangled state. This scenario enables the “activation” of hidden nonlocality. (c) In the semiquantum scenario introduced by Buscemi [ 4 ], the instructionsandfed to the detectors are encoded in quantum systems described by quantum statesand. Appropriate choice of the statesandcan produce nonlocal correlations for all entangled states Different experiments can be used to test nonlocality. In each case, a source S distributes the two parts of an entangled state ρ A B to two measuring devices. The measuring devices are provided with instructions on what measurement to perform. The mea... Show more
Figure 1: Different experiments can be used to test nonlocality. In each case, a source S distributes the two parts of an entangled state ρ A B to two measuring devices. The measuring devices are provided with instructions on what measurement to perform. The measuring device then provides a classical output, symbolized here by which light bulb—green or red—lights up. (a) In the standard Bell scenario, the instructions to the measurement devices are classical [3]. The state exhibits nonlocality if the correlations between measurement settings and measurement results violate a Bell inequality. (b) In the scenario considered by Masanes, Liang, and Doherty [8], the instructions are classical, as in the standard Bell scenario, but the measurement apparatuses have access to an auxiliary entangled state σ A B. This scenario enables the “activation” of hidden nonlocality. (c) In the semiquantum scenario introduced by Buscemi [4], the instructions i and j fed to the detectors are encoded in quantum systems described by quantum states σ A i and σ B j. Appropriate choice of the states σ A i and σ B j can produce nonlocal correlations for all entangled states ρ A B. ×
Entanglement, first introduced by Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen [1], and Schrödinger [2] in 1935, can arise when two quantum systems are produced from a common source, for instance, when two particles are produced with opposite spin in a decay process. Mathematically, this means that the state of the quantum system cannot be written as a mixture of product states of its constituent subsystems. As shown in 1964 [3], such states can violate a set of relations now called Bell inequalities, implying that quantum theory exhibits a form of nonlocality. That is, entangled quantum systems behave as if they can affect each other instantaneously, even when they are extremely remote from each other. Entanglement and nonlocality are two of the main concepts studied in the quantum information sciences. Although it is immediately clear that entanglement is necessary for nonlocality, a detailed quantitative relation between these two concepts is not yet established. Writing in Physical Review Letters, Francesco Buscemi of the University of Nagoya, Japan, makes important progress in this direction [4].
Nowadays, entanglement is viewed as central to most of quantum information science. It is at the basis of quantum teleportation and the power of quantum computers, and it is understood to be behind all the really complex quantum phenomena, such as the complex quantum phases of matter encountered in solid-state physics. Entanglement thus represents a genuinely quantum resource. In particular, two initially independent parties necessarily need to exchange quantum systems to establish a shared entangled state: the exchange of classical messages is not sufficient to create, or even increase, entanglement. This observation is at the basis of the quantitative study of entanglement, which classifies and measures the entanglement content of quantum states by considering how they can, or cannot, be interconverted using what is known as “local operations and classical communication” (LOCC).
Although entanglement is a purely quantum phenomenon, its consequences in the laboratory are ultimately formulated in terms of classical quantities. Indeed, a measurement apparatus can be seen as a device that receives classical instructions (what measurement to perform) and produces classical results (the measurement outcome). Even if prior quantum messages are necessary to generate entanglement between initially independent parties, couldn’t the exchange of prior classical messages be sufficient to reproduce these classical measurement statistics? For generic entangled states (actually, for all pure entangled states [5]), the answer is no! Indeed, the correlations between distant parties that can be generated through the prior exchange of classical messages—what computer scientists call shared randomness—necessarily satisfy Bell inequalities, but the correlations obtained by measuring entangled states violate these inequalities! Such correlations are called nonlocal. Operationally, nonlocality is therefore important because it allows discriminating classical from entangled states simply by analyzing their measurement statistics [see Fig. 1(a)].
The relation between entanglement and nonlocality, however, is more subtle than it appears at first sight and the two concepts are not entirely equivalent. Indeed, there exist mixed entangled states that cannot generate nonlocal correlations, i.e., cannot violate any Bell inequalities [6,7]. Recently, however, Masanes, Liang, and Doherty showed that for any entangled state ρ A B, there exists another state σ A B that does not violate the CHSH inequality (the simplest Bell inequality), but such that the combination of both states is nonlocal [8] (see also Ref. [9]). Thus entangled states always have some hidden nonlocality that can be activated. Figure 1(b) illustrates this scenario. The approach of Masanes, Liang, and Doherty is not entirely satisfactory because, in essence, it provides the measuring devices with access to auxiliary entanglement (the state σ A B ). It is not clear, for instance, how to interpret this extra resource in the context of possible applications such as communication complexity or cryptography (more on this below).
In his paper, Buscemi introduces a semiquantum generalization of the usual Bell scenario that makes much tighter the relation between nonlocality and entanglement [4]. Instead of providing the measurement devices with classical instructions, as in the usual Bell scenario, Buscemi considers a situation in which these instructions are written on quantum systems [see Fig. 1(c)]. If distinct instructions correspond to distinguishable quantum states, then the situation is no different than before. But things become more interesting when the measurement instructions correspond to nonorthogonal states that cannot be perfectly distinguished.
A semiquantum Bell scenario is specified by the set of states σ A i that are used as inputs for one measuring device and the set of states σ B j which are used as inputs for the other measuring device. By analogy with the usual Bell scenario, the correlations between which states are used as inputs and the measurement outputs are called local if they can be reproduced using only shared randomness, and nonlocal if they require entanglement. As in the usual scenario, the local correlations are separated from the nonlocal ones by Bell-type inequalities. The key result of Buscemi [4] is the proof that for each entangled state ρ A B there exists a semiquantum Bell scenario that reveals through the violation of a Bell-type inequality the entanglement of the state. In particular, the negative result of Refs. [6,7], which showed that some entangled states did not violate any Bell inequality, does not hold in semiquantum Bell scenarios.
To prove this general result, Buscemi uses quantum teleportation—the ability to use prior entanglement to transmit quantum states without sending them physically—in order to spread the information about the inputs between the measuring devices. He also makes contact with quantum state tomography (the procedures used to experimentally characterize quantum states) and entanglement witnesses (operators that can reveal the entanglement of states). Indeed the semiquantum Bell scenarios he considers can be viewed as novel forms of entanglement witnesses. Simultaneously, Buscemi introduces a new class of transformations between entangled states, namely those allowed by local operations and shared randomness, that departs from the usual LOCC paradigm of entanglement theory, but which promises to be a rich avenue of research. These connections are novel. They suggest a possible unification between aspects of quantum information research that previously seemed disconnected.
The work of Buscemi will also have an impact on other areas of quantum information. Communication complexity is a fruitful subfield of computer science that studies the minimal amount of communication required for distributed parties to achieve a given task. Nonlocality and communication complexity are intimately related [10]. The new result [4] suggests that by enlarging the communication complexity scenarios to the case where the inputs are quantum, we will obtain an interesting new class of problems. Finally, entanglement and nonlocality also have deep connections with quantum cryptography [11,12]. This suggests that the new result [4] will lead to an improved understanding of quantum cryptography, as well as other quantum information processing tasks.window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'thumbnails-c', container: 'taboola-interstitial-gallery-thumbnails-5', placement: 'Interstitial Gallery Thumbnails 5', target_type:'mix' });
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Photo: Seattle Mariners Image 1 of / 8 Caption Close Image 2 of 8 This artist's rendition shows the clubhouse at the Mariners' planned baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. The clubhouse would house all the baseball operations and equipment.
less This artist's rendition shows the clubhouse at the Mariners' planned baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. The clubhouse would house all the baseball operations and... more Photo: Seattle Mariners Image 3 of 8 <big><font color="000000">Here's another view of the clubhouse.</font></big> <br/> <big><font color="000000">Here's another view of the clubhouse.</font></big> <br/> Photo: Seattle Mariners Image 4 of 8 <big><font color="000000">Here's another view of the main building.</font></big> <br/> <big><font color="000000">Here's another view of the main building.</font></big> <br/> Photo: Seattle Mariners Image 5 of 8 Image 6 of 8 <big><font color="000000">And another view of the main building.</font></big> <br/> <big><font color="000000">And another view of the main building.</font></big> <br/> Photo: Seattle Mariners Image 7 of 8 This birds-eye design view of the Mariners' planned baseball academy shows the location of the main building, the clubhouse, the full fields and other facilities. A link to a larger version of this design is below.
less This birds-eye design view of the Mariners' planned baseball academy shows the location of the main building, the clubhouse, the full fields and other facilities. A link to a larger... more Photo: Seattle Mariners Image 8 of 8 Mariners to build new baseball academy in Dominican Republic 1 / 8 Back to Gallery
The Seattle Mariners on Wednesday announced plans to build a new baseball academy for Latin American prospects in the Dominican Republic.
The $7 million, 24-acre complex, located near the city of Boca Chica on the south coast of the Caribbean nation, will include enough facilities and equipment to host two full teams and their developmental staff. The Latin American Academy, as the M’s are calling it now, will also feature a residential area where prospects can live, work out and go to school, in addition to honing their baseball skills.
“This is an investment in the Mariners’ future,” general manager Jack Zduriencik said in the team’s announcement. “Having state-of-the-art facilities in the Dominican Republic will help not only with the training of our top Dominican prospects, but with development and recruitment of talent from across Latin America.”
Mariners fans likely will be happy to see the team’s “investment in the future,” though the academy is certainly a long-term approach to improving the ballclub. The M’s finished the 2012 season with a 75-87 record, and as for quick fixes are are moving in the fences at Safeco Field and are expected to be gunning this offseason for a free agent with a powerful bat.
The team already shares a Latin American developmental complex in the Dominican Republic with the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the M’s also have a developmental operation at a rented facility in Venezuela. The new Mariners facility in Boca Chica would make Seattle one of just a handful of teams with their own academy in the Dominican Republic, the club said.
The new facility will be the first big project for the Mariners’ new director of international operations, Tim Kissner. Kissner, who calls Kirkland home, joined the ballclub on Oct. 29 — just last week — to replace Bob Engle, who resigned earlier in October after nearly a decade at the position.
As all baseball fans know, most non-U.S. born professional baseball players come from Latin America. And a majority of them come from the Dominican Republic, with Venezuela a close second, the M’s said. MLB teams generally identify prospects when they’re in their teens — or younger.
“The upside to these players is unbelievable,” Kissner told MLB.com. “But the don’t have the coaching, the housing, the nutrition that kids we’re signing out of the States do, and they don’t have the organized baseball.
“When we sign them, they have the raw tools, but their skills need to be developed. If we have our own facility to feed and house and educate them, it’s a safe place for them to live and have instruction on the field and in the classroom to help them reach their maximum potential. If you’re going to be active down here, you need something like this.”
Here’s what the new baseball academy, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2013, will include:
Two full-sized baseball fields, with room for a third.
A practice infield.
An agility field.
Lighted, covered batting cages.
Bullpen facilities with six pitcher’s mounds.
Dorms with space for up to 80 players, plus coaches and trainers.
A dining hall.
Classrooms for English and Spanish.
A computer lab.
Other on-site recreational activities.
(Here’s a larger image of the complex’s design, as referenced in the gallery above.)
Recent Mariners who came out of the Dominican Republic include Michael Pineda, Carlos Triunfel, Hector Noesi and Carlos Peguero. Venezuela has produced such players as Felix Hernandez, Franklin Gutierrez, Jose Lopez and Jesus Montero.
“If you bring in a player and try them out, they’re going to have experience with the coaches and people working with them,” Kissner told MLB.com. “So when it comes to signing, they might remember that as a positive. If the facilities are nice, that can only help.”
Visit seattlepi.com for more Seattle news. Contact sports editor Nick Eaton at nickeaton@seattlepi.com or @njeaton.If you were watching television past primetime last night, there’s a good chance you stumbled upon Trevor Noah’s debut as host of “The Daily Show” — and that’s exactly what Viacom wanted.
The 31-year-old South African comedian’s first night averaged 3.475 million viewers across 12 Viacom channels monitored by Nielsen. This is virtually identical to Jon Stewart’s final night on Aug. 6 (3.471 million), which was his second largest same-night audience ever.
On Comedy Central alone, last night’s premiere averaged 1.086 million viewers, including 561,000 adults 18-49 (0.44 rating). “Daily Show” also drew 558,000 viewers on Nick at Nite; 534,000 on VH1; 360,000 on TV Land; 299,000 on BET; 293,000 on Spike; 116,000 on MTV; 74,000 on MTV2; 45,000 on CMT, 44,000 on Centric (44,000); and 33,000 on Logo and VH1 Classic.
According to Comedy Central, roughly 7.3 million people watched at least of “Daily Show” on Monday. The network also pointed out the show’s younger skew, as its average median age across networks was 41.
Cable congloms have done similar roadblock programming in the past, including Viacom itself last month for the “MTV Video Music Awards.” The strategy helps bring more attention to an event by corralling the resources of the disparate channels under its umbrella while at the same time lowering expectations for viewership on the primary channel.
Related Trevor Noah Makes Smooth Transition Into ‘The Daily Show’ Host Role ‘Daily Show’s’ Trevor Noah on Donald Trump: ‘Hopefully, We’ll See Him Disappear’
Of course, Noah will be airing on Comedy Central only going forward, so any comparisons to its premiere night will be misleading. It will take a while to get a handle on his ratings strength.
Stewart didn’t move above the 1-million viewer mark until 17 months into his run (December 1997), though his popularity over the years has certainly raised the ratings bar for the program. Prior to its finale, “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” was averaging 1.22 million viewers (and a 0.43 rating in adults 18-49) for the summer.
Noah’s debut as “Daily Show” host comes at a time of transition in late-night television. David Letterman exited CBS’ “Late Show” and was replaced by Stephen Colbert, while Jimmy Fallon, Seth Meyers, James Corden and Larry Wilmore have all been in their posts for two years or less.The U.S. government has released a new batch of evidence against Kim Dotcom, the cagey founder of file-sharing site Megaupload who is fighting extradition from New Zealand, as part of its long-running copyright and conspiracy case.
In a 191-page document filed last week in Virginia federal court, the Justice Department cited emails and Skype transcripts to claim that Megaupload waged a quiet campaign against rivals by identifying them to investigators and working to cut them off from payment services.
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As Wired reports, Megaupload cooperated with a criminal investigation in 2010 into a service called NinjaVideo, which was piggy-backing on Megaupload’s platform in order to offer its own movie and music download service.
Meanwhile, Dotcom also sent an email to PayPal in 2011 to say Megaupload was suing five other file-sharing companies — Fileserve.com, Videobb.com, Filesonic.com, Wupload.com, Uploadstation.com — and urged PayPal to cut off their accounts on the grounds they were committing copyright infringement.
Dotcom’s efforts to throw rival file-sharing services under the bus, if true, also coincided with a cynical attempt to portray Megaupload as clean when it came to copyright violations.
Specifically, Megaupload provided an “Abuse Tool” for copyright owners to remove their works from the service, but one that was effectively useless. According to a part of the Justice Department report (via WSJ):
The Abuse Tool allowed copyright holders to enter specific URL links to copyright-infringing content of which they were aware, and they were told by the Mega Conspiracy that the Mega Conspiracy’s systems would then remove, or disable access to, the offending material. The Mega Conspiracy’s Abuse Tool did not actually function as the copyright owners were led to believe, however, because the Abuse Tool only disabled the specific URL link identified, and the Abuse Tool failed to disable access to the underlying copyright-infringing material or remove the file from the server.
All of this led, in part, to the U.S. government’s controversial decision to raid and shutdown Megaupload in early 2012, a move that triggered hacking group Anonymous to launch an online retaliation campaign.
Since the raid, Dotcom has shrewdly manipulated media coverage to portray himself as the victim of American aggression as he fights the Justice Department’s effort to extradite him from New Zealand.
He apparently has the resources for a long legal fight. Prosecutors say Megaupload earned $25 million through advertising revenue, prosecutors said, and collected about $150 million from premium subscription fees.
Dotcom’s lawyer in San Francisco has described the case against his client as a “house of cards” but, if the allegations about Megaupload’s Abuse Tool are true, then Dotcom faces an uphill legal battle. This month, another “cyber-locker” site known as Hotfile agreed to shut down and pay a massive settlement to the entertainment industry.
Update: Ars Technica‘s Joe Mullin has a full rundown of the filing, including an explanation of Megauploads system for shoveling money to those who uploaded hit content.
Here’s the new Justice Department filing:
Megaupload evidenceGeorgia State University would have to cut the amount of student fees and tuition that fund its athletic programs by about $700,000, according to a new policy adopted by the state’s Board of Regents on Tuesday.
The Regents set limits on the amount of money from student fees and tuition that can go toward athletic programs at the state’s public colleges and universities. The cap will be between 65 percent and 85 percent of the athletic budget at most schools, depending on each school’s athletic association.
The new |
noticeable change and not just a difference in your overall weight but also your body composition. If you are exercising as well, get ready for maximum results. Let's get going.Fact Number One: It's Important To Utilize A Calorie Deficit.So, what exactly is a calorie deficit? It is actually pretty simple stuff. Work out how many calories per day you currently consume and then lower it. The best way to do this is to keep a food journal for a week then work to drop your daily intake total each day.If you want steady fat loss the key is to lower your daily calorie total steadily, too. Don't suddenly half your calories or your body will enter starvation mode and will hang onto as much fat as it can. You have probably seen that happen to a friend on a celebrity quick fix diet.Cut your calories by no more than 15% per week until you have reached your target number of calories per day, and never go below 1000 a day in total.Fact Number Two: When Carbohydrates Come Down, Protein Goes Up.Cutting down your carbohydrate content is a good way to lose fat. This is now a proven dieting method and has stood the test of time. But there is one thing people always forget to do and it kills their progress. When you lower your carbohydrate intake you must also increase your protein intake. During exercise your body's main energy source comes from carbohydrates so if you are not eating many you give you body a choice between using fat or muscle to fuel your workout. You do not want to be burning muscle.The Third Rule: Protein Snacks.Snacking is the biggest temptation when trying to lose weight and the solution is to use protein rich foods. Not only is this better for your body than sugary, fatty food but it is also proven to have a massively reduced level of fat storage within your body.Whether it's a protein shake, chicken, turkey or anything else, the fact remains is will help your fat loss goal exceptionally.These rules are all proven beyond any doubt. If you look at the best diet plan you will see they are the foundations of which it is set. If you have been trying to figure out how to lose weight fast and have been getting misled by quick fix gimmicks or miracle pill solutions, these three rules will help you to finally get some real and lasting results.Paths to Liberation
What if they built a factory and no one came?
A lot of people in the broader anarchist movement seem to focus more on goals or endpoints and ignore or underemphasize the means to achieving them. This is understandable, in that statists are constantly challenging us to identify what a stateless society will be like. (Statists are generally concerned much more with outcomes than the means to get to them, or most of them would be horribly shamed by the programs they advocate.) This creates a great deal of internecine squabbles that I think are unnecessary. Existentially, intentions are much less important in determining someone’s character than actions. Now there are many, many varieties of anarchist individuals and organizations with their own characteristics and philosophy, but I think, in terms of their program to achieve anarchism, we can divide them into 5 basic groups. I will attempt to explore these groups and their means, and see what their impact would be.
First off are the insurrectionary anarchists. Though they come in different flavors, most of them would consider themselves revolutionary anti-capitalists. Though dormant for a long time, the insurrectionary mode of anarchism was one of the oldest varieties, right alongside anarcho-syndicalism as anarchism became defined as a unique offshoot of the labor movement. The insurrectionary anarchists often get a lot of criticism from the rest of the “left” at large, criticism that I believe is un-deserved. This criticism, I believe, points to how much most people have been tamed by the powers that be, which have absorbed and co-opted their ostensible “opposition”. While I have a different “most preferred” strategy, they are certainly useful allies. When I saw the pictures from Greece, of the crowds successfully attacking riot police, my heart swelled.
Basically the insurrectionary anarchists follow a program of confronting capitalism when and where it exposes its major coordinating events, and of finding techniques to reclaim the abandoned or easily re-expropriated parts of the system for the use of the people. It is largely not a “productive” strategy, but rather a negative force, attacking state-capitalism while providing nothing for the capitalists to consume. In the beginning, food, shelter and clothing for the insurrectionary anarchist comes from refuse or unused property, though ideally, as the revolution advances, they will be in position to make bold strikes into re-expropriation of actual exchange value. Now, this will be considered “stealing” by vulgar libertarians. But the as insurrectionary anarchist argument goes, the capitalists already stole their capacity to produce these goods from us. It would be no different than robbing the vaults where the IRS keeps their ill-gotten tax gains.
In terms of dialectical materialism, the IA movement could be seen as the revolution of the sub-proletariat, taking place in the midst of the incomplete revolution of the proletariat. For this reason, many statist Marxists see insurrectionary anarchist as a counter revolutionary force… in a sense they are considered “too radical for the times”. As far as I can tell though, the insurrectionary anarchist movement, to the extent that it succeeds, provides quite a few boons to the working class. First off, it reduces the “reserve army of the unemployed”, placing upward pressure on wage rates, by giving the workers a viable alternative to submission. Secondly, it removes goods from availability, increasing effective demand, which, while inflationary, also adds upward pressure on wage rates from the bottom up. Plus it gives psychological relief to the bottom, marginal strata of the working class by giving them a concrete viable alternative to their situation which is not submissive but defiant and proud, not alienated but passionate.
In theory this combined pressure on the capitalists should yield shocks and amplify the basic contradictions in the system… in some areas capitalism will collapse or be forced to withdraw. In these spaces the insurrectionary anarchists will build a new way of life (somehow), rinse, and repeat.
So far the most successful insurrectionary anarchist movements in recent times have been the EZLN, the Zapatistas of Chiapas. In many areas of Oaxaca there have been large pockets of success, but a lot of backlash as well.
Then there are the Philosophical anarchists. They come in both anarcho-capitalist and anarcho-socialist varieties. Their essential idea is to eschew political activism largely, but to make attempts to convince people far and wide of the essential rightness of their position. In theory, this will undermine the power and prestige of the state at all levels of society. Fewer and fewer individuals will actively take part in the various workings of the state, until one day the last bureaucrat turns the lights out in the last office. Though they tend not to openly advocate the other paths, their methodology requires people to pursue them, lest this method take 100s of years. They tend to be the most pessimistic about the short term prospects for anarchism. Many anarchists will combine philosophical outreach with other strategies, though the insurrectionary anarchists often seem to be a bit less sanguine about this, seeing it as a diversionary waste of time.
There are the “Parliamentary” anarchists. These types also come in both anarcho-capitalist and anarcho-socialist varieties. They want to “work from the inside” to undermine the state through direct engagement with its machinery. They will field candidates, vote, agitate for specific laws, etc. In theory, by pressuring the state they will force it to act against the ruling classes’ wishes, weakening them step by step until the state itself is easily abolished altogether.
Anarcho-capitalists who follow this path are often indistinguishable from minarchist “libertarians” except in their idea of the endgame, and possible radicalism of their proposals. Anarcho-socialists who follow this path are often indistinguishable from Fabian social-democrats except in their idea of the endgame, and possible radicalism of their proposals.
The weakness of this position is that it tends to yield a very stable state. As the radical left and right parliamentarians collide, the economic positions will stabilize around a sort of mixed economy capitalism, while civil liberties will be high and militarism low. Very much like Western Europe actually. This sort of state will eventually collapse under its own economic contradictions but if both parties are dedicated to advancing their positions it could take a very long time.
Then there are the anarcho-syndicalists, or labor-anarchists, and the agorists. Despite evolving from very different positions, these two strategies have the most in common with each other, and are capable of co-existing with insurrectionary anarchism, at least in theory. They are not political revolutionary strategies, but economic revolutionary strategies, that employ force primary as a last ditch self-defense tactic.
Anarcho-syndicalism is one of the oldest varieties of anarchism, basically evolving out of the labor movement of the 19th century. They seek to find ways to use direct action in the workplace to disrupt the employing class, while also developing alternative forms of production (often called syndicates, thus the name) that are worker-owned and often not tied into a profit motive. (Since the laborers would be receiving the full product of their labor, there would be no profit per se, no excess revenue going to a third party.) Anarcho-syndicalism is not confrontational with “capitalism” as a unified force, but confronts the capitalists inside the workplace. The IWW, while not officially “anarchist” in name, is basically a model of how this sort of method works. They did not seek to engage the state directly, but to pressure the state to concede to their demands as workers.
In theory the employers will be pushed back and gradually replaced, until independent workers collectives will control the means of production and the state will cease to have any meaning or power.
Kevin Carson’s Labor Struggle: A Free Market Model has a lot of historical and speculative ideas about this path in detail.
The major advantage of this strategy is that it is productive and immediate. Using the techniques of direct action gets immediate, tangible results for the working class, which empowers them to engage in further action. The major disadvantage is that it tends to draw the fire of the state, literally and figuratively. As the conditions of production are moving away from large-scale material outlays, this methodology is becoming more and more practical again. At the same time, it is becoming more and more similar to agorism.
Agorism is the idea of counter-economic production with a philosophical underpinning of anarchism. Counter-economic production is production that exists outside of the purview or approval of the state. The black and grey markets, so called. In a sense, agorism could be seen as freelance anarcho-syndicalism. One difference is that agorism is something that can be practiced by individuals, small business owners and workers alike. The basic idea is to operate outside the eye, and thus control, of the state. Stealth, exile and cunning, as James Joyce put it, are required. This strategy is also productive and immediate, it is also direct action, only outside an official workplace.
The website agorism.info has a great deal of information about agorism and its possibilities as a revolutionary economic anarchist strategy.
As each of these paths advance, we can expect that there will be an overlap between an-syn and agorism. Unofficial unions, syndicates and labor associations will form their own production firms not dependent on a capitalist owner and in ways unauthorized by any state, thus being equivalent to agorist firms. Profit taking agorist firms and syndicates will trade with each other for parts and material and services. Both agorism and anarcho-syndicalism remove laborers and a marginal number of unemployed from the market for state-capitalist labor, thus providing upward pressure on wage rates. They are both deflationary forces, by adding goods and services to the market at lower prices than a statist firm which must absorb the costs of the state’s taxes and regulation. This puts state-capitalist firms in a vice. The state will have to expend more and more resources to fight these unauthorized mills of production, while at the same time dealing with a larger and larger insurrectionary movement. It is quite reasonable to expect that at least some anarcho-syndicates and agorist firms will donate materials and services to the insurrectionary anarchist movement, perhaps in exchange for labor or crafts, as each of these movements grow. The insurrectionary movement will develop, perhaps, into the “sword” of the anarchist movement while agorism and anarcho-syndicalism will serve as the “plowshare”.
Each of these movements can co-exist and synergize each others activities if they can get over their philosophical differences at least for strategic purposes. That may seem like a big “if” right now, but as the state in its desperation grows more authoritarian, exposing the iron fist from below the velvet glove, the pragmatic benefits may bring all of these “direct action” movements together, at least at the margins.Performance against waiting times targets in Scottish hospitals has improved since the same time last year, with 94.6 per cent of patients were seen and transferred or discharged within four hours at core departments during the week ending November 29.
With NHS England figures also released today, this makes Scotland the only UK nation to see an improvement compared to the same period last year, but is short of the Scottish Government’s interim 95 per cent target.
Last year NHS England saw 93.7 per cent treated in four hours, compared to 92.3 in the latest figures. Scotland’s stats were 91.8 per cent last year, which has up moved to 94.7 per cent seen within the timescale in the latest figures.
Welsh A&E departments treated 83.7 per cent of patients, while Northern Ireland’s A&E treated only 77 per cent within four hours in the same week.
Health secretary Shona Robison said the figures were “reassuring” as the NHS heads into a difficult winter period.
“Our winter guidance for boards was also issued two months earlier this year compared to previous years, and boards are continuing to progress with our six essential actions which aim to minimise long waits in A&E and assessment units by improving patient flow throughout all areas of the hospital and community.
“We want to see long-term, sustainable change put in place in order to maintain a high level of performance during peaks and troughs of demand,” she said.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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“A nation without borders,” Donald Trump declared on the campaign trail, “is not a nation at all.” Don’t react too quickly—there is at least some historical truth to that statement. Ad Policy BOOKS IN REVIEW A Nation Without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910 By Steven Hahn Buy this book
The nation—more precisely, the nation-state—is nothing if not a system of boundaries. In this country, it arose in the middle of the 19th century, powered by the revolutionary advance of industrial capitalism as it moved across Europe and the Atlantic and on to American soil. Like its contemporaries around the world—Bismarck’s Prussia, say, or Qing China—the ascending American nation-state never really had precise boundaries and it faced a vast array of local and foreign challenges to its authority. Likewise, its expansion never seemed to end. What was first an open-ended settler confederation on the imperial fringe became an enclosed nation-state, which then transformed into an unbounded empire.
The process through which the American nation-state emerged and then grew into an empire is the subject of A Nation Without Borders, a compendious new work on America’s 19th century by New York University historian Steven Hahn. The third entry in the Penguin History of the United States, A Nation Without Borders takes us from the Jacksonian dawn of American “democracy” to the First World War.
Hahn reminds us that our little postcolonial republic had imperial inclinations even at its birth. From its outset, the country was seeking to seize new lands and resources as well as to consolidate those territories it had already absorbed. That America’s economic and political origins can be found in its imperial expansion—first within the American continent and then abroad—is well-established. But Hahn manages to do something new by showing how the Civil War and the struggle to abolish slavery from this country fits into this narrative as well.
The conceptual heart of Hahn’s new history is an argument that the nation-state has never been a stable political form that is distinct from empires. It has always emerged out of and then sustained itself on the imperial conquest of new territories. Just as the 19th-century European nation-states had to plunder and exploit the “third world” to quell various social upheavals at home, so too has the American nation-state needed to go hunting abroad in search of natural resources, new markets, and cheaper labor.
The irony, of course, is that the triumph of American empire outside the country’s borders has also meant the weakening of the American nation-state within them. Once a critical instrument in marking off American territory, defining its citizens’ identity, and enabling economic growth, the success of American empire has created all sorts of domestic uncertainties and calamities. American identity, sovereignty, and democratic control—especially over the economy—all began to dissolve just as the United States came to dominate the rest of the world. While international imperium and the formation of the American nation-state once ran together, it is now clear that they also have the capacity to tear each other apart.
Hahn’s expert history offers us a reminder that this was true in the 19th century as well. That Trump’s campaign-trail observation mirrors the book’s title is not a coincidence. The contradictions of American imperialism abroad and nation-state building at home have been with our country from the start, even if they have now boiled to the surface.
* * *
A Nation Without Borders begins in northern Mexico, where the vast and thinly peopled deserts and prairies on both sides of the Rio Grande formed a crossway of empires. From the south stretched the grasp of the new Mexican state, racked by postrevolutionary strife and scarcely able to enforce its legal claim on far-flung territory. Reaching from the east were the increasingly aggressive American slave drivers, hungry for the new cotton lands of Texas and whatever else might be grabbed. And from the north and west thundered the horseback power of the Comanche, arguably the true rulers of the southern plains in the early 19th century.
Classical sovereignty—the territorially delimited monopoly on force—was not much in evidence in this area, even after Texas declared itself an independent republic from Mexico in 1836. Comanche raiders ranged freely across the land, taking captives, goods, and horses. The local population consisted in large part of Anglo plantation owners and their slaves, and the plantations formed states within a state, where semi-sovereign owners wielded violent power by dint of race and property. Likewise it wasn’t always clear who really was in control of the state. The United States, at the time, was considering a potential annexation of the republic, and to make matters worse, the British turned up on the scene after Texas declared independence, hoping to block American expansion and secure a cotton supply while they were at it.
Hahn opens with the story of Texas’s strange halfway house of nationhood in order to highlight an idea that he returns to again and again. As the nation-state began to take form in the early 19th century, sovereignty—that is, who is ultimately in control—was often hard to locate. Across the South, plantation masters reacted to the abolition of slavery in Haiti and in much of the North with a redoubled militancy that often posed a direct challenge to the American state. Paramilitary and vigilante police forces emerged throughout the country, particularly in the South, constituting local pockets of semi-sovereign political authority; and ideas like secession and nullification were in the air.
In the North, too, there was a wide distribution of political sovereignty. Small farms governed by yeoman patriarchs dominated the countryside. They participated gingerly in the market, but they didn’t depend on commerce for what they needed to survive and ruled their family farms as tiny fiefdoms. In the cities and mill towns, authority was similarly dispersed. Industrialization had begun, but in a haphazard fashion. Corporations were mainly unheard of. Manufacturing took place on a small scale, in workshops headed by master craftsmen. The first significant labor movements in America appeared in these years, organized by apprentices who sensed their shrinking chances of becoming master craftsmen themselves and who began to challenge the traditional centers of economic power.
The money economy didn’t reach deep into American society, and the urban bourgeoisie couldn’t form in such shallow waters. Rather, the great landowners and merchants who “controlled the wharves, the shipping, and the warehouses, extended loans,” and “owned the most fertile and well-situated lands” formed the ruling class. As Hahn explains. “The dynamism was to be found in the circulation of goods and people, at times over great distances, rather than in major transformations in the way the goods were produced or the people deployed.” He names this antebellum dynamism “market intensification.” The wheels of commerce spun faster, but the basic pattern of society didn’t change as it would later on. The only way to accommodate the ensuing demographic and economic growth within the existing social structure was to spill westward, seizing territory from native people and the Mexican state.
As is well known, this expansionary dynamic led to a political crisis. It did so by scattering across the country a vast archipelago of sub-sovereignties within US territory: Planters set up vast cotton plantations in the Deep South and Old Southwest; yeoman farmers spread across the upper Midwest; Mormons set up Utah as an isolated theocracy; Native Americans still dominated the plains; settlers fought vicious border wars in “Bleeding Kansas,” and miners did the same in Gold Rush California. The rival ruling classes of the North and South each sought to impose their own order on this chaos.
* * *
Above all, there was the problem of slavery. Slave drivers repeatedly sought, on their own initiative, to conquer pieces of the Caribbean and Central America to increase the reach of the slave system. They stood for the absolute authority of the household patriarch, and they defied any federal limit on their property rights—that is, their rights to own slaves, a position validated in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which insisted, as Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote, that Congress “could confer no power on any local Government, established by its authority, to violate the provisions of the Constitution.”
The newly conquered territories in the western half of the United States served as an outlet for the accelerating pressure of market capitalism, and for this reason, these territories were hotly contested. Compromise would only last so long; eventually, one labor system and one area of the country would become dominant.
The newly formed Republican Party emerged in this context. Hahn offers a compelling revision of Abraham Lincoln and his cohort not only as antislavery politicians but as nationalist ones. Lincoln railed against the implication in Dred Scott of “squatter” sovereignty—the idea that masters ought to be able to bring slaves anywhere they pleased without the interference of the state. The Republican platform sought to make freedom a “national” principle and invoked Southern slavery and Mormon polygamy as “twin relics of barbarism.”
Lincoln’s Democratic Party rival Stephen Douglas presciently accused the future president of seeking to impose “uniformity among the institutions of the different states.” Douglas, on the other hand, spoke for “the principle of diversity in local institutions and laws.” Douglas wanted to preserve the heterogeneity of political and economic power. At the center of the 1860 election was thus not only the question of slavery but a struggle to redefine sovereignty. The scope of federal power, as neo-Confederates have long claimed, was indeed a critical spur to Southern secession—not because of slavery’s irrelevance to the secessionist project, but precisely because the question of slavery was at one with the question of political authority.
* * *
Hahn is at his best on the years of war and reconstruction. Drawing on his Pulitzer Prize–winning 2003 book A Nation Under Our Feet, he rightly treats the solidarity of the slaves— a nation within a nation if ever there was one—as the central engine of the revolution of the 1860s that remade the balance of political and economic power. He quotes William Webb, a slave and organizer of resistance, who foresaw “a great light coming. And it will be here sooner than we expect.” The war, of course, proved him right.
The war marked what Hahn calls, not without irony, the “birth of a nation.” The exigencies of the brutal struggle called forth an astonishing new degree of federal power in the North. Some examples are famous: the establishment of the land-grant colleges; the opening of the West to homesteaders and the transcontinental railroad, accompanied by a new phase of aggressive warfare against indigenous people; conscription, enforced in the military suppression of the New York draft riots; the income tax. Others are less well-known, but at least as significant. In particular, the financing of the war effort proved of lasting significance. Rather than establish a central bank, Lincoln’s administration sold securities on the domestic market. This approach created a new stratum of finance capitalists, and in so doing begot the first consolidated American ruling class—centered in New York, based in finance capital, in alliance with the Republican Party.
The same set of questions was called on the Confederate government but, as historian Stephanie McCurry has shown (and Hahn retells), the dynamic that was generative in the North proved destructive in the South. To prosecute the war, the new Confederate nation—founded on the principles of decentralization and plantation sovereignty—had to attempt the same kinds of state-building efforts it had rebelled against. The classic case was the failure of the South to arm the slaves—imperative for the survival of the Confederate state, but unthinkable for the slave drivers who were its principal constituents. The Confederacy thus failed to produce anything like the nation-state built up in the North, and it foundered amid Northern invasion and slave unrest.
The defeat of Southern rebellion thus brought not restoration but revolution. Freed people had begun to assert their rights to the land they had worked and to citizenship in the nation they had struggled to defend. “We called upon them in the day of our trial, when volunteering had ceased, when the draft was a partial failure,” recalled a Union colonel. “They were equal to the crisis.” And so, under the threat of federal force (Union troops stayed in the South until 1877), they became equals.
* * *
The creation of a new nation—one organized around a federal state—meant the creation of new citizens. Reconstruction brought the most dramatic instance in American history of the revolutionary experience of a world turned upside down. Although Andrew Johnson, a Jacksonian Democrat après la lettre, attempted to obstruct the egalitarian agenda of Reconstruction—blocking civil-rights bills as “strides towards centralization”—black determination on the ground combined with the Radical Republicans’ ascendancy in Congress to overrule him. The central government, after years of challenges to its sovereignty, was now able to assert its power.
The Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution, the legal capstone of the emerging nation-state-building project, imposed the protections of citizenship evenly on all states. Freed people in huge numbers joined the Union League, the organizing wing of the Republican Party in the South. The US Army conducted a massive voter- registration drive, and between 80 and 90 percent of Southern black men enrolled. “Black voters now composed a substantial portion, if not a majority, of the total electorate in the rebellious states,” Hahn writes. Across the South, African Americans took local and, occasionally, statewide political power. Black legislators funded schools, and black sheriffs protected constituents from lawless white violence. W.E.B. Du Bois described the situation in South Carolina, where black political power reached its zenith, as showing tendencies toward a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Describing Reconstruction in Louisiana, Hahn makes a similar point, comparing the moment, in its revolutionary import and brutal defeat, to the Paris Commune.
Hahn identifies a parallel reconstruction in the West in the same moment. The federal government engaged in a bitter struggle with Native Americans, determining in 1871 that “no Indian nation or tribe within the territory of the United States shall be acknowledged or recognized as an independent nation.” Military triumph led to a policy of “detribalization,” the active effort to undo the remaining knots of indigenous culture—a culture described as “socialist” by federal officials. Federal pressure forced a similar process on the Mormons in Utah. Just as we “dissolve tribal relations of the Indians in order to make the Indian a good citizen,” said a Democratic congressman, “so we shatter the fabric of this church organization in order to make each member a free citizen of the Territory of Utah.”
Nation-states, Hahn reminds us, differ from empires in how they “define themselves in relation to constellations of values.” Empires dominate and extract. The people they rule are not subjects of the nation; conquered Sioux were not Americans until the country forced them through a political and cultural mill to make them so. Filipinos, for example, would be subjugated without ever becoming Americans. Nation-states, unlike empires, establish “ideas of citizenship and belonging that undermine previously existing forms of personal and group sovereignties. They champion a ‘rule of law’ that stands as an alternative to the long-prevailing rough justice of local communities” and compel their subjects to embrace “the modern and proper way of doing things.” Nation-states form communities, beloved or not, and produce national subjects—in this case, Americans.
* * *
With the country successfully reconstructed and under the leadership of a nationalist political coalition, the obstructions that had impeded the rule of capital before the war fell. The postbellum decades saw railroad tracks laid across the country, great factories and corporations rise in the cities of the North, and vast streams of immigrants come to work there. The nation-state, finally fully realized, immediately looked outward: to Alaska, Hawaii, the Caribbean, and beyond. The mechanisms that allowed the United States to colonize a vast stretch of its own continent and to consolidate power over its territories were now pointed toward those lands outside its dominion.
Hahn concludes his book with the most explicit intersection between the emerging American nation-state and its increasingly pronounced and explicit forms of imperialism: the emergence of figures like Teddy Roosevelt, who sought to build a consolidated “progressive” state at home and spread American power abroad to the Philippines, Cuba, and Puerto Rico.
The coincidence of global imperialism and domestic Progressivism provides Hahn with his resolution. He ends his book with the American state at the doorstep of global rule, only just beginning to shift its energies away from colonizing its own continent. “Every argument that can be made for the Filipinos could be made for the Apaches,” explained Teddy Roosevelt. “Every word that can be said of Aguinaldo could be said for Sitting Bull.” America’s overseas empire was intended to complement and secure the domestic nation-state, not stretch it into some distended global form.
By the turn of the century, a new articulation of nation and empire had thus begun to develop—a new sense of where boundaries fell, and who was inside and outside of them. A national community, self-contained, had finally come into existence. This new nation-state depended on both a domestic “exterior” of subjugated and second-class citizens—the disenfranchised racial other, black America—and the creation of an “interior” abroad, through the economic and military subjugation of a growing part of the world.
This set of tensions—between insides and outsides, inclusions and exclusions, citizens and subjects—are, Hahn reminds us, the central political contradictions of global capitalism. “Ideals of nationalism, anticolonialism, and social democracy mixed in a most explosive way,” he concludes. Hahn, of course, is writing about the American 19th century, but much the same could be said of the political crisis that has gripped much of the world over the past decade: The same tensions that accompanied the rise of the nation-state have reemerged with its decline.
* * *
A Nation Without Borders answers the question that social history was asked a generation ago: What larger picture of American society can we derive from a thousand local historical studies of colonization, enslavement, industrialization, and immigration? Hahn has shown the insight that comes from synthesizing these local studies into a sweeping narrative of the 19th century. He has taken into account the revisions of younger scholars in the intervening years and given us, above all, a truly political history. While A Nation Without Borders locates the most profound forces of historical change in political economy and traces their mediation through society and culture, it also insists that historical contradictions can only be resolved through expressly political forms of confrontation. Economics and history’s propulsive force are not enough. Without struggle, there can be no progress.
That capitalism’s tensions play out in full force not only in economic crisis but in political life helps us better understand our own moment: an era in America’s history in which the denationalization of capitalism over the past four decades and the accelerated mobility of capital, goods, labor, and people, the problem of sovereignty has created all sorts of social and political crises. Mass incarceration and free-trade zones, immigrant-detention centers and global financial markets, a lost sense of control coupled with a growing concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few—these are the contours of the worsening crisis of sovereignty that is being experienced in much of the North Atlantic. What we face in the United States is not, as is often remarked, imperial decline; it is the decline of the nation-state that has emerged alongside and co-existed with two centuries of American empire.
As a result, many on the right and left have turned to more local forms of political organization to provide shells for resistance. On the right, these new movements have often come in truculent and hateful expressions: the Birthers who called into question the citizenship of our country’s first black president; the emergence of “tea parties” protesting federal regulations and social protections; and as of late the resurgence of white supremacy and the openly xenophobic and misogynist campaign rhetoric of Donald Trump. On the left, there have been more positive and productive forms of protest. The Occupy Wall Street movement emerged in 2011 to call into question the ways in which financial and political power was concentrated in the hands of the few. With Trump’s ascendence, sanctuary campuses and cities have become a common rallying point—a demand for local defiance of national authority. The struggle at Standing Rock also offered an acute example of how a local body of people can generate, through concerted action, the right to determine their own fate.
We cannot borrow any answer to the question of sovereignty wholesale from the 19th century. But we can place ourselves in the historical period Hahn examines in his book and begin to see what is going wrong. By understanding the rise of the nation-state and its operative contradictions, we also can get a sense of the immense task that lies before us.
No return to the bounded nation-state is possible today. To assert democratic control over capital will require a politics that works on an international scale. Although the visions of egalitarian internationalism that dominated the mid-19th century were utopian even in their formation, our task is no smaller today than it was back then. And there are far worse examples to invoke than the activism of the antislavery movement, which serves as the central hinge of Hahn’s narrative. The abolitionists imagined a new order of things that was at once cosmopolitan and local. They made use of bastions of support in the North before the war to shelter runaway slaves and undermined federal law when need be. They sabotaged the South from within and organized politically, managing to get partial hold of a major party. They fought bitterly with its establishment. They were often on the margins. And they turned the world upside down.Oct 31, 2014 This week's theme
Rhetorical devices
This week's words
antimetabole
zeugma
synecdoche
epanalepsis
hendiadys
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Well-traveled words Rhetorical devicesAnd contest results: A.Word.A.Day with Anu Garg
hendiadys PRONUNCIATION: (hen-DY-uh-dis)
MEANING: noun: A figure of speech in which two words joined by a conjunction are used to convey a single idea instead of using a word and its modifier.
Example: "pleasant and warm" instead of "pleasantly warm"
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin hendiadys, from Greek hen dia duoin (one by two). Earliest documented use: 1589.
USAGE:
'I compliment you on the superb hendiadys re: Julio.'"
John Fredrick; The King of Good Intentions; Verse Chorus Press; 2013.
See more usage examples of "'One good student and nice is Julio.''I compliment you on the superb hendiadys re: Julio.'"John Fredrick;; Verse Chorus Press; 2013.See more usage examples of hendiadys in Vocabulary.com's dictionary
A THOUGHT FOR |
Apple.
Safeties
Old Team New Team Years Total Contract Amount Total Guaranteed Money Average Annual Value 2011-2013 Dollar Value Performance Average Past Performance Surplus Nate Allen PHI PHI 1 $2 TBD $2 $2.5 $0.5 Usama Young OAK OAK 2 TBD TBD TBD $1.7 TBD Roman Harper NO CAR 2 $4.5 $1.5 $2.3 $1 -$1.3 Brandon Meriweather WAS WAS 1 $1 $- $1 $0.7 -$0.3 Craig Steltz CHI CHI 1 TBD TBD TBD $0.7 TBD
There wasn't as much action at the safety position, with low- to mid-range re-ups dominating the scene. The Eagles will content themselves with another season of Nate Allen, who is a fine, if unspectacular, player. The division rival Redskins will take a similar approach with the unspectacular and frequently fined Brandon Meriweather.
The only team change in the last few days was Roman Harper heading east to Carolina to replace the departed Mike Mitchell. You know how punt returners are frequently told to simply plant their heels at the ten yard line and not back up no matter what? The Panthers may want to take a similar approach with Harper - under no circumstances should he attempt to cover anyone more than ten yards past the line of scrimmage.The next time you instantly erase 114 minutes of your life by getting sucked, once again, into the vortex that is a cable viewing of Road House, rest assured that Bill Murray and his idiot brothers are out there somewhere, watching with you. At least that’s the story from Road House co-star Kelly Lynch, who, in a frankly awesome interview with The A.V. Club, says that Murray calls her husband, Mitch Glazer (co-writer of Murray’s 1988 Christmas Carol redux Scrooged), whenever the movie is on TV during one scene in particular:
Every time Road House is on and he or one of his idiot brothers are watching TV — and they’re always watching TV — one of them calls my husband and says [In a reasonable approximation of Carl Spackler], “Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now. They’re doing it. He’s throwing her against the rocks.” [Away from the receiver.] What? Oh, my God. Mitch was just walking out the door to the set, and he said that Bill once called him from Russia.
To clarify, Bill Murray’s idiot brothers include fellow Saturday Night Live alumnus Brian Doyle Murray and Mad Men star Joel Murray. Apparently, their sex-scene heckling is so reliable that Lynch has come to expect it every time — and she means every single time — Road House is on TV, which is a whole hell of a lot of times. “I dread it,” she says. “If I know it’s coming on — and I can tell when it’s coming on, because it blows up on Twitter when it is — I’m just like, ‘Oh, my God …’ And God help me when AMC’s doing their Road House marathon, because I know the phone is just going to keep ringing. It doesn’t matter if it’s 2 or 3 in morning. ‘Hi, Kelly’s having sex with Patrick Swayze right now …’”
Somehow, this only elevates our enjoyment of both Bill Murray and Road House.3 – 2 – 1 Everyone On: A National Campaign for Digital Literacy
Today marks the launch of Everyone On – a national campaign to promote the importance of digital literacy skills and increase access to computer and Internet training. I just took the EveryoneOn pledge to help at least one person learn how to do something better online. Librarians take that pledge every day, and that’s why public libraries have been partnering with Connect 2 Compete to make sure people know where to find resources in their communities.
Often those resources are at public libraries. According to the most recent library technology report from the American Library Association (ALA), nearly every one of the 16,400+ public library buildings in America offers free access to computers and the Internet; 44% of public libraries offer formal digital literacy courses; and a third of public libraries (34.8%) invite patrons to schedule one-on-one appointments with a librarian to get coaching on digital access. Even at those libraries without formal classes, a librarian is usually ready to help people access a computer and the Internet. Patrons can also get online assistance through DigitalLearn.org, a new site developed by ALA.
People do go to the library to use those computers! According to a recent report on Library Services in the Digital Age from the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 91% of Americans believe that libraries are important to their community. Survey respondents marked access to technology on par with research assistance and borrowing books – three quarters of Americans (77-80%) say these services are very important. One in four Americans went to the library last year to use a computer and the Internet. But more important than the numbers are the people. See how a Colorado resident found resources at his library to learn computer skills and apply for job, how students in Cuyahoga County connect with friends and mentors and get homework help, and how seniors in Houston are learning that “at least they can’t break it” and that the Internet opens access to a world of exploration.
Mayor Brad Sellers of City of Warrenville Heights, Ohio said “technology is important because it opens doors. Libraries matter because they change people’s lives.”
Take the pledge. Help someone do something better online. And support your local library because librarians take that pledge every day.Last year, the National Advertising Division recommended that T-Mobile discontinue some of the claims it was making in its “Ditch and Switch” ad campaign. T-Mobile appealed the decision to the National Advertising Review Board, another unit of the advertising industry’s self-regulatory system, and now the NARB’s decision has come out.
The National Advertising Review Board has recommended to T-Mobile that they better explain to consumers the terms of their “Ditch and Switch” campaign.
First, the NARB recommends that T-Mobile be clearly disclose in the body of the ad how it “pays off” a switcher’s phone. Some folks might think that T-Mo would directly pay their former carrier, for example. To avoid confusion, the NARB recommends that T-Mobile should clearly explain that it “pays off” switchers with trade-in credit and a prepaid card.
It was also suggested that T-Mo make clear that the credit can only be used to pay for things at T-Mobile and that they explain the time it’ll take for the consumer to get their trade-in credit and prepaid card.
Then there’s the part of T-Mobile’s campaign that says that they will pay “up to $650” of a customer’s switcher fees. A majority of the NARB panel determined that the “up to $650” message conveyed that that was the most that T-Mo would pay to a switcher’s former carrier. “However, the record indicated that T-Mobile does not impose any limits on the amount that it will reimburse for what is owed to a previous carrier for the consumer’s phone,” the NARB said.
The NARB panel agreed that any limit on what T-Mobile will pay to a switcher’s former carrier must be accurately disclosed, so they recommended that the “up to $650” part of T-Mobile’s claims be tweaked or discontinued so that any limits as to what T-Mo will pay are clearly explained.
T-Mobile responded to the NARB by thanking the panel and saying that it would take their “recommendations into account in formulating its future advertising.”
It’s important to note that with these recommendations, the NARB isn’t going after T-Mobile legally or anything like that. The purpose of the NARB is to self-regulate and avoid litigation. With these recommendations, the NARB is suggesting ways for T-Mobile to make its advertising more clear so that it doesn’t run into bigger problems with its advertising in the future. Now T-Mobile can take what the NARB said and use it to ensure that its future advertising is more clear.
You can read the NARB’s full recommendation letter to T-Mobile right here.
Via: Consumerist
Source: NARBAmid wars, increasing poverty, declining education, and the country’s crumbling infrastructure, the good folks at OneMillionMoms.com are finally taking on the enemy. Ellen DeGeneres. Back in the good old days, homosexuals knew their place and wouldn’t dare be out in the open with their queerness. But nowadays, the gays openly flaunt their homosexuality like it’s normal or something. Ms. DeGeneres has somehow gotten the nerve to be openly gay and the new spokesperson for JC Penney stores. Can you believe that? She forgot her place was quietly in the closet under the heel of normal, traditional, heterosexuals. Hmph.
Astroturf group, One Million Moms (a front for the American Family Association, an SPLC designated hate group) has declared war on JCPenney:
“Recently JC Penney announced that comedian Ellen Degeneres will be the company’s new spokesperson. Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an open homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families. More sales will be lost than gained unless they replace their spokesperson quickly. Unless JC Penney decides to be neutral in the culture war then their brand transformation will be unsuccessful.”
I have to agree, it is rather funny that JC Penney thinks a woman who fights against animal abuse would project a good image for their company. Someone who cares deeply about the struggles everyday Americans are going through and shows it by bringing them on her television program, giving them the chance to laugh and have a good time, while helping those in need who ask. The epitome of loving kindness. Eek! Who would want someone like that to represent a business? We all know that the most important thing about a person is whether they are gay or not. What they actually do with their life is irrelevant. Right?
“Ellen DeGeneres is one of the most fun and vibrant people in entertainment today, with great warmth and a down-to-earth attitude. The millions who watch her on television and follow her through social media relate to her and trust what she has to say,” said Michael Francis, president of J. C. Penney Company, Inc. “Importantly, we share the same fundamental values as Ellen. At jcpenney, we couldn’t think of a better partner to help us put the fun back into the retail experience. Moving forward, we’ll be focused on being in sync with the rhythm of our customers’ lives and operating in a ‘Fair and Square’ manner that is rooted in integrity, simplicity and respect. We’re thrilled that she’s joining our team to help convey the exciting transformation under way.”-JC Penney Press Release
I’m going to go out on a limb here and propose that maybe, just maybe, we should more concerned with who she is as person than with whom she loves. That, perhaps, human beings should be recognized for depth of character instead of a fading traditional paradigm. Maybe if society celebrates people who do good things for humanity, more people will follow their lead. And here’s a crazy thought, why does someone’s sexuality come into play in the first place? After all, what really is traditional anyway?
UPDATE: Since the initial complaint by was made by OneMillionMoms.com, JCPenney has soundly rejected the call to fire Ellen DeGeneres:
In a statement made to Yahoo! Shine on Friday, JCPenney confirmed it “stands behind its partnership with Ellen DeGeneres.”
Herndon Graddick, senior director of programs and communications at GLAAD responded:Intel first started working on its "Bonnell" microarchitecture in 2004. The Bonnell design team was assigned the task of creating a small, low-power core that could be used in a variety of applications, such as in a many-core CPU or a low-powered Internet device. The team's focus was narrowed in 2005: aim for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs) and smartphones. MIDs first, with smartphones as an evolution.
Seven years later, Intel's Medfield platform built around the Atom Z2460 system-on-a-chip has scored Intel's first smartphone design wins, with Lenovo shipping a handset to the Chinese market within the next few months and Motorola Mobility shipping smartphones and tablets in the second half of the year.
The modern smartphone market is dominated by chips based on the instruction set, and often designs, developed by British company ARM Ltd. In the early days of the smartphone, ARM's own ARM architecture had competition from the SuperH and MIPS architecture, but these long ago fell by the wayside: any Android, iPhone, or Windows Phone is ARM-powered.
ARM Ltd doesn't make processors itself; it just sells licenses to its designs and instruction set. The ARM processors used in modern smartphones come from a range of vendors, including Samsung, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm, with some manufacturers using ARM's own designs—notably the Cortex A8, A9, and, soon, A15.
Whether using an ARM Ltd design or not, a common feature of all these procesors is their extremely low power usage: idling at a few tens of milliwatts, drawing no more than about one watt at full power. ARM came to dominate the smartphone market through a combination of low power, (relatively) high performance, and small, highly integrated packages. The challenge for Intel was to produce a chip that could match the ARM processors on all three counts.
Packaging
Bonnell evolved into Saltwell, and the Saltwell architecture is the core of Intel's entire range of Atom processors. Intel has three main lines of Atom processors: Atom N, for netbooks (drawing 6.5-8 W); Atom D, for nettops (drawing 10-13 W); and Atom Z, for MIDs, with the first few Atom Z models drawing around 3 W.
Intel's first attempt at an Atom Z for smartphones was the Moorestown platform in 2010. Moorestown required five chips. Three of these came from Intel: a Lincroft system-on-a-chip, a Langwell I/O controller, and a Briertown power management IC (PMIC). To this, manufacturers had to add another chip for DRAM and another for wireless connectivity.
Moorestown never made it to market in a smartphone. Compared to more highly-integrated ARM designs it just wasn't very compelling; though the performance seemed to be good, the number of chips was high, and the power consumption in certain important workloads, such as video playback, was also high.
Medfield is Moorestown done right. The Medfield platform replaces the two-chip Lincroft and Langwell combination with a single chip named Penwell. Penwell comes in a package-on-package configuration, with DRAM stacked on top of the SoC. Medfield still needs to be coupled with a Briertown PMIC and a wireless chip, but by going from (essentially) three chips into one, it's now much more comparable to ARM SoC designs.
Performance
Compared to Cortex A9, Atom's performance has never been a problem. The basic Saltwell architecture is all but identical to the Bonnell core that Jon Stokes covered four years ago; the biggest change between the two is manufacturing process, with Bonnell on 45 nm and Saltwell on 32 nm. Each Penwell chip contains a single Saltwell core. This core is a simple in-order design with only limited execution resources. There are two floating point arithmetic units: one with SSE support, two integer arithmetic units, and two address generators. The integer units have no multiply capability, instead using the floating point pipe for those operations. The core is hyperthreaded, able to run two threads concurrently in order to make better use of its execution resources.
The Atom Z2460 has a similar kind of turbo boost capability to Intel's mainstream Sandy Bridge processors. Its normal maximum clock speed is 1.3 GHz, but it can ramp up to 1.6 GHz should workloads permit. It can also reduce its clock speed to as little as 100 MHz.
Compared to Intel's mainstream performance-oriented processors, Atom is very weak indeed, but the competition in the smartphone space is currently Cortex A9. The mix of execution resources in a Cortex A9 is not all that dissimilar to Bonnell: A9 has only a single floating point unit, which also supports ARM's NEON SIMD instructions and its mix of integer units is slightly different: instead of two address generation units, it has one AGU and one multiply unit. But overall, it's similarly narrow. However, Cortex A9 has a much shorter pipeline: 8 stages, compared to 16 in Atom, and is an out-of-order processor. Instead of hyperthreading, most Cortex A9 implementations are dual core, with some even quad core.
Cortex A9 clock speeds vary greatly. The design can operate at speeds of up to 2 GHz, but the parts found in smartphones are much slower, typically between 800 MHz and 1.2 GHz.
With a combination of similar execution resources as its competitor and a higher clockspeed, Z2460 beats both high-end Android phones and the iPhone 4S, at least in a limited set of browser-based benchmarks. Its JavaScript performance is particularly strong. Such benchmarks tend to favor single-threaded performance, so the Atom part may well be able to reach its full 1.6 GHz speed; meanwhile, one of the Cortex A9's cores will be essentially unused. Still, this shows an essential truth of processor performance: increased single-threaded performance makes everything faster, whereas adding more cores only makes parallel programs faster.
The GPU performance is less of a standout. Alongside the Saltwell core, each Penwell SoC includes a PowerVR SGX 540 GPU running at 400 MHz and dedicated video encode and decode units from Imagination Technologies. The PowerVR 5 series GPUs are found in a number of competing SoCs; Apple's A5 includes a dual core SGX 543MP2 at 200 MHz, TI's OMAP4430 (found in many phones including the Motorola Droid RAZR and some Samsung Galaxy SII versions) has an SGX 540 at 304 MHz, and TI's OMAP4460, found in the Galaxy Nexus, has a SGX 540 at 384 MHz. The clock speed advantage does give Intel a slight edge over the SGX 540 competitors, but they're all within the same ballpark, and it isn't enough to compete with the much stronger SGX 543MP2.
The performance picture does have a slight wrinkle: the operating system of choice for Medfield smartphones is Android. While most Android applications are written in processor-independent Java and compiled to processor-independent bytecode—and hence equally at home on both ARM and x86 processors—around a quarter of them use native ARM code. Intel has devised a binary translator that will allow x86 phones to run most native code-using Android applications, but compatibility won't be perfect, and performance won't be up to native levels. It's too early to know what the impact will be—we won't get a clear picture of that until the phones ship—but it could well be the case that the faster-in-theory Intel processor becomes slower-in-practice, especially for performance sensitive native code games.
Power
Intel is claiming that the power consumption of Medfield is low, though not quite best-in-class. On some workloads, such as browsing the Web, Medfield scores well—a total draw of 1 W, compared to 1.3 W for an iPhone 4S or 1.2 W for a Samsung Galaxy S II. Others are less favorable; 850 mW for 720p video playback on Medfield, versus 650 mW on the Galaxy S II, and just 500 mW on the iPhone 4S. But even the bad numbers aren't that bad: Medfield is undoubtedly competing in the same space as the Cortex A9 processors—perhaps a little worse in some areas, perhaps a little better in others, but overall it's a wash.
Intel's process technology is instrumental in achieving this low power. Medfield is built on the company's 32 nm LP (low power) process. Compared to Moorestown, built on Intel's 45 nm process, this has allowed Intel to use 43 percent less dynamic power at the same frequency, or alternatively, offer a 37 percent higher frequency for the same power draw.
By contrast, the competing ARM designs are currently built on 45 nm processes. 32 nm and 28 nm parts will start to materialize over the next few months, and these will give a boost to the power and performance figures of the ARM designs. The process shrink gains might be enough to nullify Intel's current performance advantage.
Good enough to compete
With its combination of power, performance, and packaging, Medfield is a genuinely viable smartphone platform. Atom has always had the performance it needed to compete in this space, and now it also has the low power and high integration to tackle Cortex A9 head on. It might not always be the best in class, but it doesn't have to be the best. It has to be competent and credible, and it is both of those things. It is the first Intel Atom design that has deserved smartphone design wins, and it's got them. If Lenovo and Motorola make a succcess of their Intel smartphones, other design wins are likely to follow.
Intel is hoping that Medfield will be enough to at least get a foothold in the smartphone market. It should achieve this.
In the short term, it may struggle to do more. Perhaps surprisingly, it's the performance front that it will meet its toughest challenge. Later this year, the first Cortex A15 devices should trickle onto the market, and they raise the game considerably. Cortex A15 designs will have as many as four cores, and each core will be considerably more capable: as with Cortex A9, Cortex A15 is an out-of-order design, but it has considerably more execution resources than its predecessor, with two floating point units, both supporting NEON, and on the integer side, an extra AGU. Coupled with the shrink to 28 and 32 nm, ARM processors are set to get quite a bit faster in coming months, so Intel's performance lead may prove to be short-lived.
But Intel isn't standing still. By the end of the year, a dual core Medfield variant with an improved GPU—the same dual-core PowerVR SGX 543 MP2 as is used in the Apple A5—should be on the market.
Longer term, Intel's process advantage could prove decisive. In 2013, Saltwell will be replaced by Silvermont, built on the company's 22 nm process. The 22 nm process will allow for substantial improvements in power consumption, frequency, or both. In 2014, the process shrinks again, to 14 nm. This is more aggressive than the path that TSMC, IBM, Globalfoundries, and Samsung plan to take, and from 2013 onwards, Intel could attain a sustained process advantage for its smartphone processors—an advantage that may prove all but insurmountable.
One possible difficulty for Intel may be matching ARM's flexibility and variety. With ARM, a smartphone manufacturer can design a custom SoC by picking and choosing which building blocks and features they want to support. Apple's A5, for example, is similar to other Cortex A9 SoCs, but the exact combination of features (GPU, memory, support for optional parts of the ARM instruction set) is unique to Apple. Intel's business is geared towards mass production of identical units, not shorter runs of customized designs. Matching these capabilities is not part of Intel's usual business model.
Phone manufacturers might also be unwilling to commit to a single-source supplier. Samsung, for example, builds smartphones using processors from Qualcomm, TI, NVIDIA, and its own in-house line. Adding Intel as a fifth processor source might be palatable, but switching to make Intel the sole processor source would be a big risk.
Seven years after deciding to aim for the smartphone market, and at the second attempt, Intel has a platform that can compare favorably with the ARM competition. The company still has much work to do if it wants to turn these early design wins into the same kind of dominance as it has over the desktop market, but in Medfield it has the foundation it needs.LONDON (Reuters) - Hours after a Brexit deal collapsed, British Prime Minister Theresa May came under pressure on Tuesday from opposition parties and even some allies to soften the EU divorce by keeping Britain in the single market and customs union after Brexit.
May’s ministers said they were confident they would soon secure an exit deal, though opponents scolded the prime minister for a chaotic day in Brussels which saw a choreographed attempt to showcase the progress of Brexit talks collapse at the last minute.
The Northern Irish party that props up May’s minority government said it was only shown the draft of a deal promising regulatory alignment for both parts of Ireland late on Monday morning.
In a sign of just how politically precarious May’s Brexit balancing act has become, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) also said it had warned May that it would not support her legislation in parliament unless the draft was changed.
The opposition Labour Party said one way for alignment of Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland to become acceptable was for the whole of the United Kingdom to stay in the single market and the customs union.
“What an embarrassment - the last 24 hours have given a new meaning to the phrase ‘coalition of chaos’,” Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer told parliament. “Yesterday, the rubber hit the road: Fantasy met brutal reality.”
“Will the Prime Minister now rethink her reckless red lines and put options such as a customs union and single market back on the table for negotiation?” Starmer asked.
Nicola Sturgeon, the leader of Scotland’s devolved government, said May’s failure could signal a push to keep Britain in both.
“This could be the moment for opposition and soft Brexit/remain Tories to force a different, less damaging approach - keep the UK in the single market and customs union,” Sturgeon said on Twitter. “But it needs Labour to get its act together. How about it @jeremycorbyn?”
Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who has been tipped as a potential future leader of May’s party, also suggested May should consider keeping the United Kingdom in the single market and customs union.
May has repeatedly said Britain will leave both groupings when the United Kingdom ends its membership of the EU at 2300 GMT on March 29, 2019. But she has also called for a bespoke economic partnership.
Brexit minister David Davis said voters had chosen to leave the EU and that included both the single market and the customs union.
Davis said the government would never allow one part of the United Kingdom to remain in the single market after Brexit, though he did allow that regulatory alignment for Northern Ireland could apply to the whole of the United Kingdom.
Sterling rebounded from a six-day low against the euro on Tuesday to trade flat on the day, with investors cautiously optimistic that a deal on opening up talks on post-Brexit trade would be reached by the end of the week.
DUP TAIL WAGGING THE DOG?
May, who is now scrambling to thrash out a deal with the EU while keeping Northern Ireland’s DUP and her own party onside, may return to Brussels as early as Wednesday to continue talks, a Downing Street official said.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May leaves 10 Downing Street, London, December 6, 2017. REUTERS/Toby Melville
“We’re very confident that we will be able to move this forward,” finance minister Philip Hammond said as he arrived for a meeting with EU counterparts in Brussels.
A European Commission spokesman said it was ready to resume Brexit negotiations as soon as London signals it is ready.
But the EU will only move to trade talks if there is enough progress on three key issues: the money Britain must pay to the EU; rights for EU citizens in Britain and British citizens in the EU; and how to avoid a hard border with Ireland.
Britain must present the European Union with a good offer this week on the terms of its divorce from the bloc, or it will be too late for the EU to prepare by mid-December for the start of talks on a future trade deal, a senior EU diplomat said.
“The ‘deadline of deadlines’ is this week,” the diplomat said.
All sides say they want to avoid a return to a hard border between EU member Ireland and the British province of Northern Ireland, which might upset the peace established after decades of violence.
But DUP leader Arlene Foster said she had told May on Monday that the party could not support her minority government’s legislation unless the Irish border draft deal was changed.
“When we looked at the wording and saw the import of all that, we knew we couldn’t sign up to anything that was in that text that would allow a border in the Irish Sea,” Foster told RTE in an interview.
After May lost her party its majority in parliament in a June snap election, she is dependent on the DUP’s 10 lawmakers in the 650-seat British parliament to ensure she can pass legislation.
Slideshow (3 Images)
Nigel Dodds, deputy leader of the DUP, said it would work for as long as needed to get the Brexit deal right but accused Dublin of acting in a reckless and dangerous way that was putting years of Anglo-Irish cooperation in danger.
Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said London had to make the next move, while Labour’s Starmer said the DUP tail was now “wagging the Tory dog”.
“As things stand, the ball is very much in London’s court. There is time to put this agreement back on track and we await to hear from London as soon as they’re ready,” Varadkar told parliament.U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson says the U.S. will stay in Iraq as long as the Islamic State poses a threat. “We will remain in Iraq until ISIS is defeated and we are confident that ISIS has been defeated,” he explained to U.S. lawmakers.
ISIS or ISIL is in retreat, slipping away to remote areas in the desert. But there is little question the extremist group will continue its insurgency.
For the time-being, the Canadian government remains committed to the region with its Canadian Forces presence of surveillance and transport aircraft, helicopters and special forces. It is unclear how long that commitment will be.
But in particular it appears a Canadian-led military hospital will be northern Iraq for however long it is needed.
“As part of Canada’s ongoing commitment to aid in the fight against Daesh, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) is extending its military contribution and leadership of the Canadian-led Role 2 medical facility located in Erbil, Iraq until April 30, 2018 or until no longer required,” the military noted in a statement.
The Coalition Role 2 medical facility provides medical and surgical care. It is being reorganized and having its stay extended, according to the Canadian military. The medical facility will continue to provide emergency surgery, resuscitation, intensive care support, dental care, diagnostic imaging, and medical lab capabilities. It provides medical and surgical care to coalition forces and provides both emergency and non-emergency care treating over 1,220 dental and medical patients to date, of which three were Islamic State fighters. Canada had originally committed to providing the hospital until the end of October. It currently has 50 staff and that will be scaled back to 35.
With ISIL driven back from nearly all of Iraq, U.S. officials have called for the thousands of mainly Shiite paramilitary fighters who mobilized against the Sunni extremists three years ago to lay down their arms. But Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who once battled U.S. troops and is now the deputy head of the state-sanctioned Popular Mobilization Forces, tells the Associated Press that they are here to stay.
“The future of the (PMF) is to defend Iraq,” he told The Associated Press in his first extensive interview with a Western media outlet. “The Iraqi army and Iraqi police say they cannot operate without the support of the Hashd,” he added, using a shortened Arabic term for the paramilitary force.
In the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, al-Muhandis led the Hezbollah Brigades, a feared Shiite militia with close ties to Iran and the Lebanese militant group of the same name. His real name is Jamal Jaafar Ibrahim, but he’s still better known by his nom de guerre, and his rise to the top ranks of Iraq’s security apparatus reflects the long, slow decline of U.S. influence over the country.
He participated in the bombing of Western embassies in Kuwait and the attempted assassination of that country’s emir in the early 1980s, for which he was convicted in absentia and added to the U.S. list of designated terrorists. But like many Shiite militants, he returned to Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Two years later, he was even elected to parliament, before being forced to step down under American pressure.
In 2009, the State Department linked him to the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, calling him a “threat to stability” in Iraq, and as recently as last week it referred to him as a terrorist.
But in the summer of 2014, when the Islamic State group swept across northern Iraq, and the U.S.-trained and funded army collapsed, his and other Shiite militias mobilized in defense, halting the extremists on the outskirts of the capital. The mostly Iran-backed militias remained separate from the U.S.-led coalition, but over the next three years they helped Iraq’s reconstituted military to drive ISIS out of most of the country.
Today, al-Muhandis, in his mid-60s, is among the most powerful men in Iraq, splitting his time between the front lines, Iran and his home and office in Baghdad’s heavily-guarded Green Zone. He describes the PMF as a “parallel military” that will help keep the peace once ISIL/ISIS is gone.
(With files from the Associated Press)Darjeeling: West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee arrives to visit Darjeeling after a clash between police and GJM supporters on Friday. GJM supporters are agitating against Banerjees decision to teach Bengali in schools in the hills. (PTI Photo)
Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) chief B Gurung Saturday attacked West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, calling her style of politics as “dictatorial” and worthy of finding a place in the Guiness Book. “With respect I say don’t do divisive politics. Her (Banerjee’s) dictatorial politics will find place in Guiness book,” Gurung said. Gurung’s statement came a day after the 12-hour bandh called by the influential GJM for revival of Gorkhaland agitation. On Saturday, life limped back to normalcy in the hill city as people resumed their daily work with hotels, shops, eateries and markets opening for regular business today.
The GJM Yuva Morcha had called the bandh on Friday following Thursday’s violence between GJM supporters and state police. The GJM Yuva Morcha is protesting against the alleged imposition of Bengali language in the schools in the hills as well as for a separate Gorkhaland, among other issues.
In the wake of the unrest in the hills, the state government is providing free bus service to Darjeeling. Several tourists took benefit of the service on Saturday. Banerjee, who was present in Darjeeling on Thursday, had stayed back after the protests broke out. She supervised the entire operations.
The state government has announced a special audit of Gorkhaland Territorial Administration’s (GTA) handling of finances in another two weeks. GJM chief Bimal Gurung is likely to meet his party colleagues to decide their next strategy.
On Friday, Darjeeling Superintendent of Police (SP) Amit Javalgi was removed from his post and Deputy Commissioner (Central), Kolkata Police, Akhilesh Chaturvedi, was tipped to be the new SP, PTI reported a senior Kolkata Police official said. Banerjee had earlier said a three-member team comprising senior IPS officers had been formed to look after the law-and-order situation in Darjeeling. The state government’s decision to do a special audit of the GTA is being seen as an attempt to put pressure on the GJM. Gurung had earlier challenged Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to stop the agitation in the hill saying that it was his writ that “runs in the hill”.By Whatsupic with the Agencies
Yeshayahu Leibowitz, Orthodox Jewish editor of the Hebrew Encyclopedia who identified the occupation after the 1967 war as a mortal danger for Israel that would lead to “bestial” behaviour by its army.
Back in 1954, after the Qibya incident – in which 69 Arab villagers, most of them women and children – were killed in a raid, Yeshayahu Leibowitz noted, “From a perspective of morals and conscience, we lived for generations in an artificial hothouse, in which we were able to grow and nurture values … that never stood the test of reality.
"We thought of ourselves … as having overcome one of the most horrid passions lurking within man … the desire for intergroup bloodshed. While considering ourselves above that, we ignored … the fact that in our historical situation bloodshed was not one of the measures available to our group … In terms of our moral role … the Diaspora reality allowed us to dodge the acid test.”
Leibowitz, warned that, followed to its logical conclusion, the occupation of the Palestinians would mean "concentration camps would be erected by the Israeli rulers" and "Israel would not deserve to exist, and it will not be worthwhile to preserve it." He feared the ascendancy of right-wing, religious Jewish nationalists and warned that "religious nationalism is to religion what National Socialism was to socialism." Leibowitz laid out what occupation would finally bring for Israel:
The Arabs would be the working people and the Jews the administrators, inspectors, officials, and police -- mainly secret police. A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 to 2 million foreigners would necessarily become a secret-police state, with all that this implies for education, free speech and democratic institutions. The corruption characteristic of every colonial regime would also prevail in the State of Israel. The administration would suppress Arab insurgency on the one hand and acquire Arab Quislings on the other. There is also good reason to fear that the Israel Defense Force, which has been until now a people's army, would, as a result of being transformed into an army of occupation, degenerate, and its commanders, who will have become military governors, resemble their colleagues in other nations.
For Leibowitz, Israel was not holy and thus was not beyond criticism. It would not surprise him that one executive officer of a division brigade recently wrote to his soldiers to persevere in Operation Protective Edge because it amounts to a defense of God against God's enemies. In 1989, Leibowitz compared Israel to apartheid South Africa.
Leibowitz, predicted:
“A state ruling a hostile population of 1.5 million to 2 million foreigners |
inception. Only one other defensive player, Lawrence Taylor, has ever received the award. Page was also voted the NEA NFL Defensive Player of the Year in 1973.
NFL player representative [ edit ]
Page was National Football League Players Association player representative from 1970 to 1974 and in 1976–1977, and a member of the NFLPA Association Executive Committee from 1972 to 1975. He was named to the Vikings' 40th Anniversary Team in 2000. Along the way, Page was named the Associated Press NFL Defensive Player of the Week three times: Week 9, 1967; Week 8, 1968; Week 13, 1971. In 1988 Page was further honored by his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. In 1999, he was ranked number 34 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Football Players, the highest-ranking Viking player. He received the NFL Alumni Career Achievement Award in 1995 for attaining success in his post-NFL career.
Post career [ edit ]
Broadcasting [ edit ]
After his playing career he dabbled in the media, first as a commentator on Turner Broadcasting System covering the College Football Game of the Week series during the Fall of 1982 and then as a commentator on National Public Radio in 1982–1983.
Legal career [ edit ]
Long before Page's football career came to a close, he was laying the groundwork for his future role as a justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court. While still playing for the Vikings, Page attended the University of Minnesota Law School, from which he received a Juris Doctor in 1978. After graduating, he worked at the Minneapolis law firm Lindquist and Vennum from 1979 to 1984 outside the football season. Page was appointed Special Assistant Attorney General in 1985, and soon thereafter promoted to Assistant Attorney General.[8]
In 1992 Page was elected to an open seat as an Associate Justice of the Minnesota Supreme Court, becoming the first African-American to serve on that court. He was reelected in 1998 (becoming the biggest vote-getter in Minnesota history), again in 2004, and for a final time in 2010: Minnesota has mandatory retirement for judges at the end of the month in which they turn 70.
On January 7, 2009, Page was appointed by Chief Justice Eric Magnuson to select the three-judge panel that heard the election contest brought by Norm Coleman in the 2008 U.S. Senate election.[9]
Page said, "To me the law is about solving problems and helping people."[3]
Personal life, community work and other activities [ edit ]
President Donald J. Trump presents the Medal of Freedom to Alan Page Friday, November 16, 2018, in the East Room of the White House.
Alan and Diane Sims Page were married from 1973 until her death in 2018.[10] They met while she was working for General Mills and he was playing for the Minnesota Vikings.[11] In 1988, the Pages founded the Page Education Foundation. It provides financial and mentoring assistance to students of color in exchange for those students’ commitment to further volunteer service in the community, an idea suggested by their daughter Georgi. The Page Education Foundation has awarded grants to more than 6,750 students, who in turn have given more than 420,000 hours of their own time to young children. Upon his retirement from the bench, Page plans to continue the foundation's work, and find other ways to encourage students of color to be successful in school, especially by developing critical thinking skills.[12]
Page and his daughter Kamie Page have written three children's books: Alan and His Perfectly Pointy Impossibly Perpendicular Pinky (2013), The Invisible You (2014), and Grandpa Alan's Sugar Shack (2017). Proceeds from the sales of these books support the Page Education Foundation.[13]
Page has a passion for running and runs on a regular basis. In 1979, he became the first active NFL player to complete a marathon. His running routine, which he took up while helping his wife quit smoking, is believed to have contributed to his dismissal from the Minnesota Vikings. His running schedule of 35–40 miles per week during the season, and 55 miles per week in the offseason, caused his weight to drop below that dictated by the Vikings.[14]
Page owns an extensive collection of Jim Crow-related memorabilia.[15] He appeared in a 2012 Minnesota-filmed episode of PBS's Antiques Roadshow with an 1865 banner mourning the death of Abraham Lincoln.[16] In 2018, items in his collection were exhibited at the Minneapolis Central Library, coinciding with Super Bowl LII in Minneapolis.[17]
In June 2017, after a campaign initiated by students at Alexander Ramsey Middle School in Minneapolis, the school's name was changed to "Justice Page Middle School."[18]
In November 2018, President Donald Trump awarded Page the Presidential Medal of Freedom.[19]
Professional accolades and memberships [ edit ]
Honorary degrees [ edit ]
Honorary Doctorate in Humane Letters: Winston-Salem State University, 2000; Gustavus Adolphus College, 2003; University of Notre Dame, 2004; Duke University, 2011.
Honorary Doctorates of Law: University of Notre Dame, 1993; St. John's University, 1994; Westfield State College, 1994; Luther College, 1995; University of New Haven, 1999; Carleton College, 2016.
Professional organizations [ edit ]
Member, American Law Institute, 1993–present
Member, Minnesota State Bar Association, 1979–1985, 1990–present
Member, Minnesota Association of Black Lawyers, 1980–present
Member, National Bar Association, 1979–present
Member, American Bar Association, 1979–present
Member, Advisory Board, Mixed Blood Theater, 1984–present
Founder, Page Education Foundation, 1988. Assists minority youth with post-secondary education.
Member, Board of Regents, University of Minnesota, 1989–1993
Helped establish Kodak/Alan Page Challenge, a nationwide essay contest encouraging urban youth to recognize the value of education.
Member, Institute of Bill of Rights Law Task Force on Drug Testing in the Workplace, 1990–1991
Board of Directors, Minneapolis Urban League, 1987–1990
See also [ edit ]Oakland police's war room the new normal OAKLAND POLICE
Public safety personnel work in the situation room of the Emergency Operations Center ahead of an Occupy march. Public safety personnel work in the situation room of the Emergency Operations Center ahead of an Occupy march. Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle Photo: Mathew Sumner, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Oakland police's war room the new normal 1 / 4 Back to Gallery
The massive undertaking by Oakland officials and police to prepare for protests would be an exceptional challenge for most Bay Area cities. In Oakland, it's become the new normal.
It involves months of planning, orchestrating hundreds of police and other public workers, and has cost millions of taxpayer dollars.
The Occupy Oakland protesters who took to the streets last week were largely peaceful. But the city had prepared for the worst: They surrounded the protesters with more than a hundred officers on bicycles, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, cars,
vans and foot.
Meanwhile, inside a downtown building, dozens of city, county, regional and state workers gathered at the city's Emergency Operations Center to provide support and coordinate the troops on the streets.
Three officers sat at computers monitoring Twitter and other social media for clues on protester plans. Other officers coordinated the taking of internal affairs complaints, and some oversaw the gathering of street intelligence. Five televisions and several other screens showed live streaming video from locations around the city.
"This is a huge task, but it's our job to ensure public safety," said Officer Johnna Watson, a department spokeswoman.
There have been 16 such mobilizations over the past year, according to city spokeswoman Karen Boyd. The cost for Occupy events alone has been $4.8 million from Oct. 10, 2011, through July 3.
The city braces itself because on Oct. 25, Nov. 2 and Jan. 28, Watson said, "we did see disruptions and violence to community members and law enforcement. It's incumbent upon us to ensure that we have all of the logistics and safety precautions in place."
The city has increasingly been the region's base for protest. But a violent clash between Oakland police and Occupy protesters last October intensified that status, making international news. Police command staff say their goal is to allow peaceful expression of First Amendment rights - and they stress they won't tolerate vandalism or other crimes.
Enormous scrutiny
Deputy Police Chief Darren Allison outlined tactics and policies to officers before they hit the streets Thursday. But he also gave them a simpler but more fundamental goal: "Be safe."
The operations place officers under a phenomenal amount of scrutiny. Past police failures to abide by crowd-control policies have helped push the department toward possible federal control. At the same time, a slew of protesters come ready to catch any misstep with a multitude of cameras.
"Assume that you are being filmed," Allison told his men. "There's a lot of video out there."
Although Thursday was relatively incident-free - only two people were arrested - the work was intense.
At one point, at least 150 protesters marched by the Cathedral of Christ the Light, the home of the Catholic Diocese of Oakland, on Harrison Street. Trailing perhaps 50 yards behind protesters were 15 police officers on foot and others in six cars and seven vans.
Bubble around protesters
On parallel streets and in front of the marchers were more officers, in position in case the marchers should turn. Motorcycle cops cleared traffic ahead of protesters, anticipating their movements and keeping potential conflicts with motorists at bay.
This went on for nearly two hours.
"We set a bubble around them," said Lt. Nishant Joshi, who led a platoon of officers for the evening. "As they move, the bubble adjusts."
Part of the police strategy is patience. One protester threw rocks - one of which struck an officer - before hiding in the crowd.
Instead of trying to arrest him immediately and possibly rile up demonstrators, undercover officers tracked him, partly by using some undisclosed technology. They arrested the suspect - identified as Alexander Loutsis, 29, of Stockton, who police say came to the demonstration with a Plexiglas shield - nearly an hour after the first rock was thrown.
"It's tactically smart to have eyes on him and grab him later," said Watson, the police spokeswoman. "The bottom line here is, at the end of the day, is everyone safe?"The election season has predictably driven broad and necessary conversations around jobs growth, with much of the dialogue focusing on the Obama-era economy and wage disparity. But little discussion, if any, has focused around people of Mustached American heritage who have been struggling with subpar employment opportunities since 1980.
Indeed, if you are a Mustached American and wish to work in food service, horseshoe fitting, ball washing or as a laundry room mechanic – you can. But these are lower wage positions, typically paying between $7 – 11 per hour.
There must be more in this land of opportunity, no? Perhaps, it would seem, as this week Pizza Hut unveiled a new corporate position paying $50,000 annually that does not involve classic Mustached American roles of cleaning pizza ovens, washing dishes, slicing salami into pepperoni, unclogging impossibly clogged toilets or floor mopping. Instead, the restaurant chain is seeking to hire a “Pizza Hut All-American” who during 2016-17 will attend as many as 30 NCAA Division I championships ranging from water polo to wrestling to NCAA March Madness, soccer, the College World Series, bowling, the Frozen Four, beach volleyball – the full gamut.
“We encourage applications from all, even those often misunderstood Mustached Americans,” said Doug Terfehr, Pizza Hut’s clean-shaven senior director of marketing and corporate communications. “Some of the greatest athletes and pizza eaters in history have donned an upper lip sweater. We know some highly qualified individuals already wake up each day with one advantage – they bravely rock a great Chevon everyday – and we hope to hear from them. And for all of them to support and encourage our selected Pizza Hut All-American.”
Fair enough. But how does a person of facial hair qualify for this opportunity? Terfehr described a three-tiered criteria:
First: A passion for college sports. This is fair, and when combined with beer nearly any college sport is tolerable – even the University of California at Irvine’s Medieval Sword Combat Society.
A passion for college sports. This is fair, and when combined with beer nearly any college sport is tolerable – even the University of California at Irvine’s Medieval Sword Combat Society. Second: Be outgoing, enthusiastic and eager to share experiences through social media. OK, this is doable. Mustached Americans can operate Netscape Navigator Internet browsers will relative dexterity.
Be outgoing, enthusiastic and eager to share experiences through social media. OK, this is doable. Mustached Americans can operate Netscape Navigator Internet browsers will relative dexterity. Third: Willingness to travel a lot and eat copious amounts of free pizza. Getting out of our trailers is healthy and pizza is filled with vitamins and minerals that are essential to daily living and strong fingernails.
Applications are now being accepted on Pizza Hut’s blog site until November 6, 2016. Then, with the help of former Duke University basketball player Shane Battier, Pizza Hut will narrow the list of candidates to final group of three, conducting Skype and in-person interviews to further narrow the field. Candidates will also traverse through live questions coming from Pizza Hut’s social media communities – most likely via MySpace and Friendster.This article is from the archive of our partner.
The Associated Press reports that four suspected Nazi war criminals currently living in the United States that have been stripped of citizenship and been given deportation orders, are still in America because they have nowhere else to go. They have also identified several other suspected Nazis who were also meant to be deported, but died living in the United States, which was unable to kick them out of the country.
The men were all investigated by a special Justice Department office that was created decades ago to find and remove suspected Nazis who fled to the U.S. after World War II. According to the AP, less than half of those suspects who had legal proceedings opened against them ended up being kicked out of the country. And at least 10 fell into the legal black hole where they could not be tried in the U.S., yet could not be sent to another country to face justice. Even after exhausting all appeals and losing their citizenship, they continued to live out their lives as normal in America. They were even eligible for public assistance, such as Social Security, while their appeals were being heard.
Legally, the United States cannot put suspected Nazis on trial, because their crimes were not committed on U.S. soil. Meanwhile, most of the countries in Europe where the crimes did take place do not want the suspects sent back, particularly if they were never citizens of that country or if the evidence against them is not overwhelming. Germany has made it a policy to prosecute any suspected war criminal, no matter how old they are, but is reluctant to accept suspects who aren't German citizens. Some other suspected criminals were given reprieves on deportation, because of poor health.Questions raised over Australian Defence Force's tracking of suspected civilian casualties from air strikes
Updated
On December 13 last year an air strike obliterated a house in East Mosul. The target was Islamic State, but 11 members of one family were reportedly killed, with five children among the dead.
Key points: Australia described as one of the least transparent military coalition members
Defence tells FOI request it does not track enemy and/or civilian casualties in Iraq or Syria
UN Special Rapporteur says if true, Australia may not be meeting obligations under international law
"You don't get to drop bombs on cities and towns and not kill civilians. It took a month before it was safe enough to dig those bodies out but now we know the names of every one of those victims," said Chris Woods, director of Airwars, an independent NGO set up to hold nations accountable for civilian deaths from air strikes.
What is not known is who is responsible for the loss of these innocent lives.
"We know the coalition bombed in Mosul that day, Iraq may have also bombed that day … if it was the coalition that carried out the strike, it may have been the US it may have been Britain, Australia, Belgium, France, we just don't know," Mr Woods said.
"It's important to try and understand, and attribute responsibility."
The risk of civilian casualties in the air campaign against Islamic State is incredibly high.
Thousands of hardline jihadists are deliberately hiding alongside more than a million civilians across eastern Syria and north Iraq.
As a member of the coalition, Australia's Air Force has been carrying out air strikes in Syria and Iraq, some of them in densely populated civilian areas.
Now, serious questions are being raised about Australia's tracking of suspected civilian casualty incidents.
"In our view, there's no real transparency from Australia here and there's no real accountability either," Mr Woods said.
Australia one of the least transparent coalition members: Airwars
For many years the United States was criticised for secrecy surrounding alleged civilian casualty incidents, but there has been a significant shift towards transparency.
Airwars said there was an unprecedented level of cooperation by the United States Central Command (CENTCOM) to investigate suspected civilian casualty incidents.
Each month Airwars shares all of the allegations they are aware of regarding civilian casualties with CENTCOM, providing dates, locations and GPS coordinates.
"The Americans will then come back and say, 'No, we categorically weren't involved in this — we didn't bomb in this location'," Mr Woods said.
"They might come back and say, 'Yes, we've already got an assessment underway', or they'll say, 'We're going to trigger an investigation or assessment because of your information'.
"Other coalition partners tell us every week— sometimes even daily — where they bomb, when they bomb, and what they target.
"That's really, really important information because it allows us to cross-reference the public record where there are claims, allegations of civilians killed on the battlefield."
But Airwars said Australia was refusing to disclose the date, location and targets of their air strikes and that the NGO now ranks the ADF as one of the least transparent military coalition members.
"The contrast with Australia couldn't be starker. With Australia we get nothing," Mr Woods said.
"We're incapable of engaging with Australia because they won't tell us where they bomb, they won't tell us when they bomb and they won't tell us what they bomb — and that's been going on for 30 months."
FOI shows Australia keeps no record on civilian deaths
Newcastle lawyer and human rights advocate Kellie Tranter decided to dig deeper on Australia's record on suspected civilian casualties.
She lodged a Freedom of Information request to the ADF and was surprised by the response.
The department told her it "does not specifically collect authoritative (and therefore accurate) data on enemy and/or civilian casualties in either Iraq or Syria and certainly does not track such statistics".
"I was, to put it mildly, in shock," Ms Tranter said.
"How do we refute allegations that we've killed civilians if we are not tracking and holding that information?"
Ben Emmerson (QC) is the UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights, reporting annually to the UN General Assembly and the Human Rights Council.
He said that if what the ADF told Ms Tranter was true, Australia may not be meeting its obligations under international law.
"I find that extremely surprising that there is no central index kept of the number of combatants killed or civilian casualties," Mr Emmerson said.
"[If it is true] then that would certainly not be consistent with the principles laid out in my reports to the general assembly and the human rights council.
"A blanket refusal to release data on civilian casualties, regardless of the circumstances and regardless of any operational risk which there may or may not be, would not be consistent with any view of a state's responsibilities in international law."
7.30 asked the ADF what data they collect on enemy and civilian casualties.
They said they do not provide "mission-specific details on individual engagements for operational security reasons".
The ADF said the US collects statistics on casualties and any information needs to be sought directly from them.
But when the 7.30 asked CENTCOM, they said each coalition country is responsible for tracking their own data in relation to suspected civilian casualties.
"We do not speak for our coalition partners and only talk publicly about US actions. Coalition nations speak for themselves," CENTCOM said in an email.
The ADF declined 7.30's request for an interview and said "all ADF personnel are required to immediately report suspected instances of civilian casualties" and "all reports are investigated".
The Defence Force also refused to say whether it was currently investigating any suspected civilian casualty incidents in Iraq or Syria.
So far the Americans are the only coalition nation to admit they have killed civilians.
They said at least 220 people had been unintentionally killed by the US since the fight against ISIS began.
Airwars believes the real toll is 10 times higher — more than 2,500 — with hundreds of civilians allegedly killed in just the first two weeks of March as the battle for Western Mosul gets underway.
Mr Woods said that with the number of air strikes Australia has conducted in Syria and Iraq, it was "impossible" that civilians would not have been killed.
"We're not saying these are war crimes or deliberate killings of civilians," Mr Woods said.
"Even when your bombs are going to the right place there's still human error, you still get civilians coming into the kill zone at the very last second you can't avert the missile.
"If all we get is denial how can we make things better? How can we improve on things?"
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, defence-and-national-security, defence-forces, foreign-affairs, government-and-politics, iraq, syrian-arab-republic, australia
First posted“Ecstatic” Wayne Rooney declared winning silverware with his beloved Blues would be the “pinnacle” of his career after the forward sealed his emotional return to Everton Football Club.
The 31-year-old forward penned a two-year-deal with the Toffees, moving for an undisclosed fee from Manchester United, to come back to the club he has supported all his life and first joined as a nine-year-old, before rising through the Academy and becoming a first-team star from 2002-2004.
England’s all-time leading goalscorer admits putting on the Blue shirt again will be “an emotional day”.
And having enjoyed a trophy-laden 13-year career at Old Trafford – including winning the Champions League, Europa League, five Premier League titles, one FA Cup and one FIFA Club World Cup – Rooney believes helping the ambitious Blues to silverware would be extra special.
After becoming the Club’s sixth summer signing – following the arrivals of goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, defender Michael Keane, midfielder Davy Klaassen and forwards Sandro Ramirez and Henry Onyekuru – an “excited” Rooney told evertontv: “(Winning trophies with Everton) would be the pinnacle. I really feel now the Club is moving in the right direction, bringing the right calibre of players in. I want to be part of it and hopefully part of a successful Everton team.
“It’s a great feeling to be back. I’m excited, I cannot wait to meet the lads, get on the training pitch and then get on the pitch to play. I’m ecstatic – I just cannot wait to get back playing.
“I’m excited, and I’m excited by the signings that the Club have made. This club is moving forward. This football club should be winning trophies and we’re taking huge steps to being involved and trying to win trophies.
“The first game back will be an emotional day for me and I’m looking forward to it. I’m not just coming back because it’s the team I support, the team I grew up playing for - I’m coming back because I feel the Club can move forward and be successful. I want to be part of it. There will be pressure on me to perform, but I’m ready to go. I believe I can help move this club forward and be more successful on the pitch.“With the new stadium in the pipeline, it’s an exciting time to be an Everton player, to be an Everton fan. It’s on us players to make those times even more exciting by giving them good performances and try to help them be successful and bring trophies to the Club.”Rooney became Everton’s second youngest player after Joe Royle at the time when he made his debut aged of 16 years and nine months against Tottenham Hotspur at Goodison in August 2002.In October of that year, he was back in the record books as the Club’s then-youngest scorer – beating Tommy Lawton’s 70-year record – with a late double in a League Cup win at Wrexham. And weeks later, he grabbed worldwide attention with a stunning 25-yard injury-time winner in a 2-1 Premier League success over Arsenal at Goodison.England’s most-capped outfield player made the switch to Manchester United in the summer of 2004. And after a successful 13-year career with the Red Devils, he spoke of how there was only one club he wanted to move to for once he discovered Everton’s interest.
Excited to be back at @Everton. Can't wait to meet up with @RonaldKoeman and the lads! #EFC 🔵 pic.twitter.com/0CjD0i1aXg — Wayne Rooney (@WayneRooney) July 9, 2017
“As I’ve said for the last few years, if I left Manchester United, there’s only Everton and Manchester United I’d play for - I wouldn’t play for another Premier League team,” said Rooney.“I was true to that and I firmly meant that. I didn’t want to play for another club in England other than Everton. Once I knew Everton were interested and wanted to sign me, I made my agent aware, ‘Go and speak to them, let’s make it happen. That’s where I want to go’.”Rooney revealed how Everton manager Ronald Koeman and Chairman Bill Kenwright played key roles in bringing him back to Goodison.“Ronald Koeman was very influential in me coming here,” he added. “When it was obvious I was going to be leaving Manchester United this summer, Ronald came out a few times and said how much he wanted me at the Club and that had a huge impact on me. There were other options there but once I knew that Everton wanted me to come back then it was the only option for me.“Bill obviously played a big role in it but the important one was Ronald Koeman. He was the one who picks the team and he’s the one who has his ideas on the football pitch. There were a lot more things behind the scenes which needed to happen but, for me, the important person to speak to was Ronald Koeman.“As I spoke to Ronald and saw it in his eyes that he wanted me to be part of his team, it was a no-brainer for me and the only place I was going to go.”Bill introduced to redirect NASA to Moon, establish sustained presence
Derek Richardson
A bill that would direct NASA to return to the Moon and establish a sustained presence was referred to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology on Feb. 3, 2017.
Sponsored by Rep. Bill Posey, R-Fla., HR 870 would direct NASA to plan to return to the Moon and develop a sustained presence on the Moon. It has two co-sponsors, Rep. Sheila Jackson, D-Texas, and Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas.
Under the current directive, NASA is working toward sending astronauts to cislunar space by the mid-2020s to visit a yet-to-be redirected small asteroid boulder, and to Mars orbit by the mid-2030s.
SpaceFlight Insider reached out to NASA for comment on the new legislation.
“It would be inappropriate for NASA to discuss any pending legislation until it passes both houses and is signed by the President,” said Bob Jacobs, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for communications.
Other legislation
Several bills over the years have been proposed to direct NASA to send astronauts to Earth’s nearest neighbor, one of which was proposed only last Spring. All of them have gone nowhere. It is possible HR 870 is destined for the same place as the other “Moon first” bills.
The difference this year, as opposed to the last seven, is there is a new presidential administration in the White House and it is of the same party that controls Congress – Republican. The Trump administration, however, has given few clues as to its intentions for the U.S. space program.
The first indication of any new space policy from the executive branch will likely come from the administration’s first omnibus budget proposal. As Space News reported on Jan. 26, the consensus in Washington is that the end of March would be the earliest such a budget would be produced.
In addition to HR 870, according to Space News, a new NASA authorization bill is in the works with a goal of having something concrete by the end of February 2017.
In 2016, before the end of the 114th Congress, the Senate had passed the 2016 NASA Transition Authorization Act. It would have essentially reaffirmed the current NASA plan for another year while the Trump administration formulates its goals for the space agency. There wasn’t enough time for the House to pass the bill before the close of that Congress. Any legislation that doesn’t pass in one Congress must start over in the next.
According to Space Policy Online, a similar bill is being readied by Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, and Babin. Its goal, like last year’s attempt, would be to achieve some form of continuity as to avoid a drastic change in direction, similar to what happened in 2010 when then-President Obama canceled the Constellation program in favor of a flexible path. Smith said that the first space-related hearing the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology would likely be in mid-February and look at NASA’s past, present, and future.
“The [House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology] will continue to ensure that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration pursues a balanced portfolio of programs reinvigorated with bold exploration objectives,” the committee said in a press release about its priorities for the 115th Congress. “Building upon the progress made towards development of the Space Launch System, Orion, and the commercial crew and cargo programs, the committee will ensure NASA stays the course and leads the world in not only space exploration, but also space science.”
Vision for Space Exploration
Over the years, Republicans have tended to support the idea of a return to the Moon with the ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars. Between 2004 and 2010, NASA was directed by the George W. Bush administration to do just that.
The Vision for Space Exploration, as it was called, gave birth to the Constellation program which would have seen the development of a medium-class launcher and a super-heavy lifter called Ares I and Ares V, respectively. Both of them would have been Space Shuttle-derived. Additionally, a capsule called Orion and a lunar lander called Altair was to also have been developed under the program.
Along with completing the construction of the International Space Station by 2010, NASA was directed to retire the Space Shuttle program. In addition, Bush set a goal to develop what would become known as Orion by 2014.
This new vehicle would have been capable of both ferrying astronauts to the ISS and back, but also to carry out deep space exploration, such as a return to the Moon and on to Mars. Furthermore, a return to the lunar surface was planned for 2020.
The program was expected to start slowly as the Space Shuttle program was ended, after which, with the funding from the Shuttle Program freed up, more investment into Constellation would have been given.
When the Obama administration took over in January 2009, it formed what became known as the Augustine Commission to review the human spaceflight plans for the U.S. It found the Constellation program to be behind schedule, over budget and underfunded, and would not meet the goals set forth by President Bush under the current conditions.
In May 2009, the committee made three recommendations for deep space exploration. The first, called “Mars first”, would have seen a crewed landing on Mars. The second, called “Moon first”, would be similar to the Constellation program with a return to the Moon focused on the development of capabilities to enable a Mars landing.
The last option was a flexible path option that would take crewed missions to different locations in the Solar System as the budget allowed. Among the options were lunar orbit, Lagrange points, asteroids, the moons of Mars, and then either a return to the Lunar surface or a mission to the surface of Mars.
Constellation Canceled
As a result of the commission, the Obama administration’s 2011 budget request, released on Feb. 1, 2010, effectively canceled Constellation in favor of a more flexible path. This path, however, did not include the Moon. In an April 2010 speech to employees at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Obama directed the agency to send a crew to an asteroid by 2025.
“By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth,” Obama said in the speech. “And I expect to be around to see it.”
That speech also called for the development of an advanced heavy-lift rocket and a new spacecraft designed for long journeys, among other things. This was essentially a rebirth of Ares V and Orion. While Orion would keep its name, Ares V would be reborn as the Space Launch System (SLS).
Congress, in the NASA authorization act of 2010, ordered the new rocket and spacecraft to be ready to fly by 2016, a deadline that would never come to be for a variety of reasons, including a lack of funding. Much like Constellation, the SLS and Orion are behind schedule and underfunded.
The Journey to Mars
The flexible path has been a moving target. President Obama had originally proposed a crewed mission to an asteroid in his 2010 proposal. Since then, it has morphed to a robotic mission to retrieve a small boulder from an asteroid, one about 13 feet (4 meters) or so in diameter, and redirect it to a stable orbit around the Moon called a “distant retrograde orbit”.
Once there, spacewalking astronauts would rendezvous with it using the Orion spacecraft and retrieve samples from it to return to Earth for study.
After that, NASA would focus on sending a crew to orbit the Red Planet by the 2030s.
Much progress has been made in the development of the rocket that would do the job of lifting equipment and astronauts out of Earth’s gravity well. While the SLS is years behind schedule, it is on track for its first uncrewed mission, Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), with an Orion capsule in late 2018.
Orion itself is also well into development. The spacecraft had its first test flight, Exploration Flight Test 1, in December 2014. Launched by a Delta IV heavy, that Orion capsule was sent into a high-Earth orbit to test, among other things, its heat shield and recovery techniques.
Multiple pieces of development hardware and test equipment have been produced for the SLS and Orion, and 2017 is expected to see a flurry of activity to ready hardware for EM-1.
After EM-1 flies, however, the schedule after that is less certain. EM-2, the first crewed flight of Orion, which will see the SLS send the spacecraft and astronauts into a lunar orbit, is expected sometime between 2021 and 2023 with the latter being more likely.
The projected likely budget for NASA into the 2020s also only allows for one, maybe two, SLS flights per year.
Implications of returning to the Moon
There are a number of questions that will need to be addressed if a return to the Moon with the goal of creating a sustained presence is indeed ultimately chosen by the Trump administration and Congress.
If it only means setting up a habitat in cislunar space, then NASA is already working toward that goal, which is also directed by Congress. In the 2015 omnibus spending bill, NASA was ordered to develop a prototype habitat by 2018.
Under the agency’s NextSTEP program, it is doing just that. Currently, six companies are competing to develop a prototype deep space habitat that could be used in cislunar space.
However, if there is a massive change, be it to go to the surface of the Moon or directly to Mars, NASA will need additional funding. Will Congress and the president allocate the funds to achieve such a goal? If the past is any indication, the outlook isn’t good.
Additionally, if a change in direction ultimately does happen, does that mean NASA is destined to have its direction changed every 4 to 8 years when presidential administrations change? Only time will tell.
Jason Rhian, Lloyd Campbell, and Curt Godwin contributed to this story.A Syrian army soldier places a Syrian flag during a battle with rebel fighters at the Ramouseh front line, east of Aleppo, on Monday. (Hassan Ammar/AP)
Russia and China vetoed a U.N. Security Council proposal to stop fighting in the Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday, thwarting flurried international efforts to end violence that has killed hundreds of civilians in recent weeks.
A Syrian and Iranian-backed push to retake the flash-point city has brought President Bashar al-Assad close to his biggest victory in more than five years of war.
Russia, a key ally of Assad’s, has vetoed several Security Council resolutions aimed at easing the war. On Monday, Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the latest proposal was rejected because it ignored parallel diplomatic efforts with the United States.
Washington’s representative, Deputy Ambassador Michele Sison, described that remark as a “made-up alibi.”
“We will not let Russia string along the Security Council while waiting for a compromise that never seems to come,” she said.
Aleppo’s rebels rejected calls to withdraw from their shrinking enclave Monday, despite government advances through what was once the opposition’s most important stronghold.
The offensive has boxed the rebels into a small patch of territory, killing at least 500 civilians and shattering the area’s remaining infrastructure.
Yasser al-Youssef, a spokesman for the hard-line Islamist Nour al-Din al-Ziniki faction, insisted that a withdrawal was “unacceptable.” Another rebel representative, Abu Abdel Rahman Al-Hamawi of the Jaish al-Islam group, |
, he turned his attention under the guidance of Ross Gunn to applying nuclear power to naval propulsion. While not written at an engineering-design level, he wrote the first physics report detailing how a nuclear reactor could be installed in a submarine, providing both propulsion and electrical power. His report anticipated the nuclear submarine's role as a missile platform. This concept was later supported by Admiral Hyman G. Rickover and others. Under Rickover, the concept became reality in the form of USS Nautilus, the world's first nuclear submarine.
In 1946, he returned to work at the Carnegie Institution, which published his report "Atomic Energy Submarine," in March of that year.[3] From 1953 until 1971 he served as the director of the Carnegie Institution of Washington's Geophysical Laboratory, and as president from 1971 to 1978, and as a trustee from 1978 on.[1] From 1962 to 1984 he was editor of Science, one of the most prestigious academic journals, and served as its acting executive officer in 1974, 1975 and 1984. From 1972 until 1974 he served as the president of the American Geophysical Union.
Abelson was outspoken and well known for his opinions on science. In a 1964 editorial published in Science magazine, Abelson identified overspecialization in science as a form of bigotry. He outlined his view that the pressure towards specialization beginning in undergraduate study and intensifying in PhD programs leads students to believe that their area of specialization is the most important, even to the extreme view that other intellectual pursuits are worthless. He reasoned that such overspecialization led to obsolescence of one's work, often through a focus on trivial aspects of a field, and that avoidance of such bigotry was essential to guiding the direction of one's work.[4]
In a 1965 article he described his work in paleobiology and reported evidence of amino acids recovered from fossils hundreds of millions of years in age and fatty acids in rocks dating over a billion years old.[1] He estimated that based on his experiments alanine would be stable for billions of years. [5]
Perhaps his most famous work from this time period is an editorial entitled "Enough of Pessimism" ("enough of pessimism, it only leads to paralysis and decay"). This became the title of a 100 essay collection.[6]
During the 1970s he became interested in the problem of world energy supplies. Books on the topic include Energy for Tomorrow (1975), from a series of lectures at the University of Washington, and Energy II: Use Conservation and Supply. He pointed out the possibilities of mining the Athabascan tar sands, as well as oil shale in the Colorado Rockies. In addition he urged conservation and a change of attitude towards public transit.[7]
After 1984, he remained associated with the magazine. Some have claimed him to be an early skeptic of the case for global warming on the basis of a lead editorial in the magazine dated March 31, 1990, in which he wrote, "[I]f the global warming situation is analyzed applying the customary standards of scientific inquiry one must conclude that there has been more hype than solid fact." However, this contrasts what is said in a US National Research Council, Energy and Environment report on which his name appears along with Thomas F. Malone over a decade earlier in 1977:
What is important is not that there are differences [in the models] but that the span of agreement embraces a fourfold to eightfold increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide in the latter part of the twenty-second century. Our best understanding of the relation between an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and change in global temperature suggests a corresponding increase in average world temperature of more than 6°C, with polar temperature increases of as much as three times this figure. This would exceed by far the temperature fluctuations of the past several thousand years and would very likely, along the way, have a highly significant impact on global precipitation. Philip H. Abelson, Thomas F. Malone, Cochairmen, Geophysics Study Committee [8]
Abelson died on August 1, 2004, from respiratory complications following a brief illness. He was married to Neva Abelson, a distinguished research physician who co-discovered the Rh blood factor test (with L. K. Diamond). Their daughter, Ellen Abelson Cherniavsky, worked as an aviation researcher for the MITRE corporation in Virginia.
Awards and legacy [ edit ]
Abelson received many distinguished awards, including the National Medal of Science in 1987,[9] the National Science Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award, the American Medical Association's Scientific Achievement Award, the Navy Distinguished Civilian Service Medal and the Waldo E. Smith Medal in 1988. In 1992 he was awarded the Public Welfare Medal, the National Academy of Sciences's highest honor.[10] He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958.[11]
The mineral abelsonite is named after Abelson in recognition of his contribution to organic geochemistry.[12]
The Philip and Neva Abelson Hall at Washington State University was named in his honor.[13]
Bibliography [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Kennedy, D (2004). "In memoriam. Philip Hauge Abelson, 1913–2004". Science. 305 (5685): 765. doi:10.1126/science.305.5685.765. PMID 15297640.There aren’t many electronic dance musicians more cantankerous than deadmau5. His beefs are legion, his tweetstorms legendary. And the scrawny, tattooed Torontonian’s self-loathing is nearly as famous as his short fuse. Sometimes, the self-deprecating potshots—making fun of his own costume, admitting that most EDM performances are pure pantomime—scan as refreshingly down-to-earth takes on an industry full of metastasized egos and virtually no self-awareness. But sometimes, his snark takes a darker tone. Just a year ago, he threatened that he was thinking about “killing off” the deadmau5 “bullshit” and starting over. “fuck it. why not,” he tweeted, sounding not unlike a man standing on the railing of a bridge.
But where many neurotic artists’ work actively benefits from their neuroses, the same can’t necessarily be said of deadmau5, aka Joel Zimmerman. His music isn’t without its strengths: It can be catchy and immersive, and it’s remarkably well-engineered, packed with satisfying oomph and spine-tingling timbres. And for all the shit that deadmau5 has gotten for being, well, deadmau5, his music has often been markedly less corny than 99% of mainstream EDM. The best deadmau5 tracks burrow into the kind of long, dark groove that has characterized four-to-the-floor dance music since the very beginning; for listeners, they’re more about losing yourself in the beat than gawking at the bozo onstage. (That’s ironic, given his mouse-head gimmick.) Nevertheless, his music tends to be relatively uncomplicated, conflict- and friction-free—in short, far more polite that you’d expect from a guy who smokes like a chimney, swears like a sailor, and, you know, wears a gigantic, light-up cartoon mouse head on stage.
Perhaps it’s this disconnect between his music and his persona that led deadmau5 to trash his latest album upon its release. “i don’t even like it,” he tweeted. “it was like... so fucking rushed / slapped together.” Later, despite “orders from above” not to bad-mouth his own work, he explained to Rolling Stone that it wasn’t written “from start to finish; it’s over a year’s worth of work that doesn’t correlate. It's not *The *fucking Wall!” (Remarkably, this isn’t the first time he’s criticized one of his own records in almost identical language. Of 2012’s >album title goes here<, he lamented the fact that his “tour-heavy year” had stood in the way of him sitting down and making something “from start to finish like The Wall.”)
Still, the album isn’t without its pleasures. The opening “4ware” is wistful and driving, with a pinging lead reminiscent of Eric Prydz or Gui Boratto’s progressive trance. The nu-disco number “Cat Thruster” manages the perfect balance of slouching cool and giddy kitsch, playing legato synth riffs and ersatz electric bass off harp flourishes and clever chord changes; if someone told you it was a new Todd Terje tune, you probably wouldn’t bat an eye. And the grinding “Deus Ex Machina” sounds a lot like the kind of gravelly, psychedelic techno that Robag Wruhme and the Wighnomy Brothers used to be known for.
Some songs are more lackluster. Both “2448” and “No Problem” tear pages from the Daft Punk playbook, but the former wastes a perfectly good synth riff on a formulaic big-room stomp whose slow rise in pitch mimics a trick he already tried on 2010’s “Bad Selection,” while the heavy-handed touch of the latter tune makes Justice’s most lunkheaded jams look like surgical implements. And the unrequited-love song “Let Go” aims for bittersweet release, but it gets hung up on the earnest-yet-anodyne vocals of the young singer and producer Grabbitz.
Even on some of the stronger tracks, Zimmerman seems to be going through the motions. His synthesizers have never sounded richer, but once introduced, his sounds don’t morph and his themes don’t evolve; loops simply loop, unvarying and uninflected, and once a track gets through its obligatory mid-way breakdown, there's really no point in sticking around for three or four minutes of reprise. His drums, meanwhile, favor cleanliness over character; the disco-leaning “Cat Thruster” has more to do with abstract ideas of disco than the music’s actual essence.
What’s most frustrating is that Zimmerman clearly has it in him to make a better, more exciting record. “Glish,” a three-way merger between IDM, digi-dub, and skweee, could pass for Aphex Twin, and “Snowcone” is a perfectly serviceable Boards of Canada tribute—not a goal in and of itself, necessarily, but at least a stepping stone toward greener pastures. Best of all is “Whelk Then,” which mixes thundering breakbeats and glistening synths until they swirl like the interior of a snowglobe. Finally, here on the album’s penultimate cut—it would have made for a killer close if they hadn't tacked on an unnecessary, 12-minute edit of “Let Go”—we’re given a sense of what one suspects Zimmerman *really *wants to do. So why isn’t he doing it? What's strange about *W:/2016ALBUM/ *is that it’s Zimmerman's first album since buying himself out of his contract with EMI; in theory, that means he should finally be beholden to no one but himself. Yet he still sounds like he’s hemmed in by others’ expectations of what deadmau5 is supposed to deliver, and who deadmau5 is supposed to be. Maybe it really is time for him to build a better mousetrap once and for all, and see what happens next.TORONTO -- Matt Cooke saw Patrick Kaleta waiting for former Sabres teammate Jason Pominville after Monday night’s game in Buffalo, so he decided to introduce himself.
The two players didn’t know each other.
But knowing that Kaleta faced an in-person hearing with Brendan Shanahan the next day, Cooke wanted to let Kaleta know that he knew how he felt.
For years, Matt Cooke found himself crisscrossing the line between effective and danger to hockey society. Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
"I told him, 'I’ve been there, it’s not fun.’ It’s hard," Cooke told ESPN.com Tuesday night after his Minnesota Wild lost 4-1 in Toronto.
The real reason Cooke wanted to say hi was he had a message for him.
"I laid it out there that if he wants to know what I did, I’d gladly talk to him about it," said Cooke, the NHL’s poster boy as proof former repeat offenders can reform. "He knows Pommer, so I told him `If you want to get hold of me, I’m there to talk.’"
In the 2010-11 season, Cooke was suspended for the final 10 regular-season games and the first round of the playoffs for an elbow to the head of the New York Rangers' Ryan McDonagh. But Cooke returned to the game a changed player. It’s the challenge that now faces Kaleta after his 10-game suspension Tuesday, the biggest one of his career, one which resulted from an illegal check to the head of Jack Johnson. (As I expected, Kaleta is appealing the suspension, his agent Anton Thun confirmed.) If Kaleta is ever called on the carpet again, it’s going to be an even bigger whopper; so this is it for him, adjust your game or else.
It’s not easy, but it’s doable, Cooke said.
"During my suspension, with either [Dan] Bylsma or [Tony] Granato, I probably watched about 30 or 40 hours of video; watching players that play a physical style," Cooke recalled.
"The hours of video work I did seriously helped me," he added. "The work that I put in has helped me not only take the risky plays out but also become a more effective player. I’ve got a way more active stick on the forecheck, and I’m more aware of my surroundings, which has helped me offensively."
He indeed returned a transformed player in 2011-12, colleague Scott Burnside documenting it that season. But it wasn’t easy. Cooke remembers that season when a player dove into the boards after he barely touched him.
"My heart was racing," Cooke said. "I thought I was getting suspended. But before I was even off the ice Brendan [Shanahan] had called [Penguins GM] Ray Shero to tell him he knew I didn’t touch the guy. That reassured me."
With time, Cooke grew more confident in the way he approached the game.
"It’s never going to be over for me, and I realize that, and I’m fine with that," Cooke said. "Right now, I err on the side of caution. I still watch video to reassure that there are good times to go out and be physical....
"It’s just a read. If you don’t change the way you visually see the game, then change is impossible."
He’s been a welcome addition in Minnesota after signing with the Wild as a free agent in July.
"Matt brings so much to the table for us," Wild head coach Mike Yeo told ESPN.com Wednesday. "We were looking for a physical player who could play in a checking role and provide some secondary scoring. Those players are hard to find, and he has brought it all. It says an awful lot about him that he has been able to adjust his game. Some guys would be unwilling, some would be willing but incapable. He is a smart guy."
Former NHL GM Craig Button, now an analyst for TSN and the NHL Network, said the Penguins’ management deserved great credit for helping rehab Cooke as well as Shanahan for working with the player. And he said Cooke remains an effective player.
"A smart, good skating player who can read plays," Button said. "He is a strong penalty killer and can make good offensive plays. He is a determined player who gets involved and is one who can contribute in those areas that are not flashy but incredibly important to winning. The Penguins PK has been very good a number of times in terms of ranking and he was a big part of that. So he brings all those qualities [to Minnesota] without any of the dangerous part and that makes him a valuable and contributing member of a team."
Cooke leads the Wild in scoring with six points (3-3) in seven games and has yet to pick up a penalty minute this season.
"There’s a huge difference in the way I approach the game now. The days of just going for the big hit, every time possible, is just not feasible," Cooke said. "The way the game is played now, the speed of the game, and the way the kids are taught to play the game."
He then recalled a play Monday night in Buffalo, a "close one," as Cooke put it, with Sabres defenseman Mike Weber.
"Weber turned his back last second, I bear hugged him and we smashed into the boards," Cooke said. "I tried not to hit him but I still did because he turned at the last second."
The point being, that even with all the best intentions, the game is 100 miles per hour, and sometimes it’s hard to react in time to avoid a scary play.
But Cooke believes that with the way he approaches the game now, he’s cut down on the number of situations that could get him into trouble.
"If it’s reasonably low risk that I can go in and get a decent hit and not worry anything bad will happen, then I will," he said. "That’s not to say anything bad won’t ever happen, but the odds of anything bad happening are totally different."Toro Y Moi is a master of psychedelic electronic music. Chaz Bundic is close friends with fellow chillwave artist Ernest Greene (Washed Out), together they defined the genre of chillwave. Toro y Moi's second album, Underneath the Pine, was released February, 2011 and marks the point in which Chaz moved toward a new style. Underneath the Pine was made up of all live instrumentation and contained no samples, a great change from his previous album Causers of This. Chaz stated, "...what influenced Underneath the Pine was finding stuff that I wanted to sample for Causers. A lot of the things I sampled for Causers ended up being the main musical inspiration for Underneath the Pine." Chaz felt by then it was time to move beyond chillwave. "New Beat" is the second track on the album and seems talk of the new sound he is going for on the album. It is quite refreshing to hear actual instruments mesh on this album. "Still Sound" is a bit more down-tempo and applies a dreamy sound to Chaz's vocals, providing a bit of the chillwave vibe before leaving it behind. This is a chill album and a transitory album for Toro Y Moi as he moved away from a full chillwave sound.The European Space Agency will launch a deep-space mission to explore the icy moons of Jupiter in 2022, agency officials announced Tuesday (May 2).
The ambitious space mission, called the Jupiter Icy moons Explorer (JUICE), is expected to reach Jupiter in 2030 and spend at least three years studying the gas giant's major moons, ESA officials said.
The JUICE mission to Jupiter is the first major mission selected by ESA under the agency's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program. It beat out two other proposed missions; a space observatory to hunt gravity waves and an advanced high-energy astrophysics telescope.
"Jupiter is the archetype for the giant planets of the Solar System and for many giant planets being found around other stars," said Alvaro Giménez Cañete, ESA's director of Science and Robotic Exploration, in statement. "JUICE will give us better insight into how gas giants and their orbiting worlds form, and their potential for hosting life." [Best Missions to Explore Jupiter]
The JUICE spacecraft is a solar-powered orbiter that will spend seven-and-a-half years cruising to Jupiter after its launch. Once at its destination, the probe will study Jupiter's atmosphere and magnetosphere, and investigate how the so-called Galilean moons (Callista, Europa, Ganymede and Io) interact with the gas giant, ESA officials said.
The mission is expected to cost about $1.1 billion (870 million euros). According to its mission plan, the JUICE probe is expected to conduct an extensive survey of Jupiter's largest moons.
The spacecraft will take a close look at the crater-covered Callisto, the most battered object in the solar system, and fly by the icy moon Europa twice. At Europa, JUICE is expected to record the first-ever measurements of the moon's icy crust, and seek out potential landing sites for future missions, ESA officials said.
In 2032, the JUICE probe will enter orbit around Ganymede, which is Jupiter's largest moon and the biggest moon around any planet in our solar system. Ganymede is the only moon in the solar system known to harbor its own magnetic field. The JUICE mission aims to study that magnetic field, as well as map the moon's icy surface and probe its interior structure, which may conceal a subsurface ocean, ESA officials said.
ESA's Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 program aims to develop space missions that seek to better understand how planets form and what conditions allow life to arise. Its main goals also include investigating how the solar system works, the fundamental laws of the universe, as well as how the universe began in the first place and what it is made of, according to an ESA description.
The decision to pick the JUICE probe from among the three finalists for the first Large Class (or L-class) mission was a tough one, ESA officials added. The selection process officially began in 2007.
"It was a difficult decision to choose one mission from three excellent candidates. All three would produce world-class science and put Europe at the forefront of space research," Giménez Cañete said. "JUICE is a necessary step for the future exploration of our outer solar system."
The next call for new ESA L-class candidate missions to explore the solar system is expected in 2013.
JUICE is not the only new mission aimed at the planet Jupiter. NASA's Juno mission launched toward the planet in August 2011 and is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016.
Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.David Chen reported this story on Thursday, June 4, 2015 12:38:58
ELEANOR HALL: Scientists in Townsville say they have promising results from their bold trial designed to eradicate the deadly mosquito-borne disease, dengue fever.
The trial has involved the release of millions of specially bred mosquitoes across the North Queensland city as David Chen reports.
(Sound of popping)
RESEARCHER: Oh look, we've got a lot of skins in the water. It looks like everything has gone well.
DAVID CHEN: Hidden away in the front yard of a house in suburban Townsville is a small bucket that could hold the solution to ending dengue fever.
(Sound of water)
RESEARCHER: And got cleaner at the car.
DAVID CHEN: Researchers are checking on their specially bred mosquitoes to see if they've hatching and breeding with the wild population.
The mosquitoes carry the wolbachia bacteria which makes them less likely to transmit dengue.
Scientists had hoped the mosquitoes being released would pass on the bacteria, leading to the eradication of the deadly virus - dengue kills more than 10,000 people every year worldwide.
Over the past seven months, more than 2,000 Townsville residents, including Sharon Fuiamingo, have had a container placed in their backyards.
SHARON FUIAMINGO: Just basically they come and put it there and that's it. I don't have to do anything so it's very simple.
DAVID CHEN: She volunteered in the hope her children won't have to experience the disease's debilitating effects.
SHARON FUIAMINGO: I've had kids growing up in North Queensland all their life and there's always mosquitoes biting. You always have the fear that they're going to get something else along the line with dengue or Ross River or those sort of things. So anything that I can do to help to eliminate, I'm more than ready to do so.
DAVID CHEN: The Eliminate Dengue project is being run by a team of international researchers, including scientists from James Cook University and Melbourne University and has the backing from the Australian and Brazilian governments as well as groups such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The latest results show the trial is working as planned.
Dr Andrew Turley is the field trial manager for the Eliminate Dengue program.
ANDREW TURLEY: So what we're seeing at the moment is we're seeing the spread of the wolbachia bacteria increase and we're seeing the frequency, sorry how common this bacteria is in the local mosquito population increase over time.
DAVID CHEN: Data shows that in the suburbs where the insects were initially released, up to 80 per cent of mosquitoes now carry the bacteria.
Gary Eddiehausen is a local councillor and sits on the project's reference group.
He says the results are exciting.
GARY EDDIEHAUSEN: Dengue fever affects nearly 400 million people a year right throughout the world and if this trial is successful, it's certainly very exciting for what can happen right across the world in the future and reduce and if not totally get rid of dengue fever across the world.
DAVID CHEN: Dr Turley from Eliminate Dengue says while there are still years of analysis and research that needs to be done, the results show the project can be replicated across the country and the world.
ANDREW TURLEY: All our of previous field trials both in Australia and in different field sites around the world have always focused on sort of small individual suburb-wide trials whereas this is the first time where we've done a large chunk basically a city-wide, or a large, it's basically the inner city area of Townsville we've done a release in within only a few months period.
So it's really encouraging that potentially using wolbachia could be applied to some of these large cities around the world where the dengue version is much higher than what we have here in Australia.
ELEANOR HALL: That's Dr Andrew Turley ending David Chen's report.Some refreshing words from the Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner this morning on Meet the Press. He had this to say: (15:20 into this clip) Note: An 8 second clip of Tim's words: Link
We don’t have the ability (because of the overhang in housing and the problems in the financial sector) to artificially engineer a stronger recovery.
Imagine that! Geithner acknowledges what I (and many others) have felt all along. The structural issues in the economy trump the government’s ability to engineer a recovery.
The Fed has taken extraordinary measures on the monetary front. Since 2009 we have had $1.2 trillion of fiscal stimulus measures as well. We have had TARP and the bailouts of Fannie and Freddie. But the evidence is clear that it has not worked. Unemployment is today near a record and the more important measure, U6, is at 16.2% (about where it was a year ago) Nothing that has been done has moved the needle.
Geithner might have put it differently. He could have really put it on the line. I would have preferred that he had said:
"Keynesian economics has not worked. At best, it has given us a small reprieve from the restructuring that must happen. Our government can’t fight the forces of economics any better than we can fight the forces of nature. Large stimulus measures will not bring the desired results. We have to suck it up and take some pain. We can’t go on spending money that we don’t have to fix a problem that can’t be fixed. If we tried, it would be just be a waste of time and precious financial resources. We can no longer afford to throw good money after bad."
Of course Tim was not as blunt as that. But read his words. It means the same thing. Sorry Keynesians, I know the truth hurts.(Reuters) - Genesee & Wyoming Inc (GWR.N) struck a deal to buy rival RailAmerica Inc (RA.N) for $1.39 billion in cash to create the biggest short-line railroad operator in the United States, hoping to benefit from an economic recovery.
The deal, which relies on bank lending as well as private equity money, will stretch the balance sheet of Genesee, which will more than triple its debt in the hope that the merged group’s cash flow will allow it to quickly deleverage.
The U.S. rail infrastructure sector has not seen major deal activity since Warren Buffett’s $26.5 billion acquisition of Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway in 2010. That deal was seen as a bet on the long-term strength of the U.S. economy.
Combined, Genesee and RailAmerica will originate or terminate more than 4 percent of all carload traffic in the United States, Genesee said. They will have 111 railroads and 15,100 miles of track, and annual revenue of over $1.4 billion.
“This footprint not only provides us with strong leverage to any eventual recovery of the U.S. economy but also creates a powerful platform for future industrial development,” Genesee CEO Jack Hellmann said in a statement.
Genesee offered $27.50 per share for RailAmerica, a premium of about 11 percent to the stock’s Friday close. The stock had already risen two-thirds this year in anticipation of a bid. The shares were up 10 percent at $27.28 in Monday afternoon trade.
Genesee shares were little changed at $56.02. They are down almost 8 percent this year.
REGULATORY APPROVALS
The closing of the deal, subject to approval from the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, could be delayed into next year.
Depending on whether the deal is deemed minor or significant, STB approval could come as early as the fourth quarter of 2012 or be delayed until the third quarter of 2013, CEO Hellmann said on a conference call.
Under a worst-case scenario, Genesee may have to divest some assets to gain regulatory approval, Hellmann said, but added that the probability of that was low.
The company said it expects to hold the RailAmerica assets in a trust from the third quarter, while it awaits approval.
“We expect the STB to approve the transaction because short-line rail traffic is competitive with other modes (such as trucking), by and large; therefore, there should be no anti-competition issues,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst John Larkin said.
If the deal is approved by the end of the year, it will increase Genesee’s earnings per share by more than 10 percent in 2013, the company said.
RailAmerica has agreed a 30-day period in which it can exit the merger agreement for a termination fee of $49 million, should it receive a better offer from another party. If Genesee fails to execute the deal for certain reasons, it will have to pay RailAmerica $135 million.
Genesee said it has received $2.3 billion of committed debt financing from Bank of America Merrill Lynch, part of which will refinance its debt of about $655 million, and up to $800 million of committed equity financing from private equity firm Carlyle Group (CG.O).
Carlyle will get Genesee board seats, depending on the size of the investment, Hellmann said on the call.
FORTRESS EXITS
RailAmerica is 60 percent-owned by Fortress Investment Group FIG.N. Fortress bought RailAmerica in 2007 for $1.1 billion, including debt, and took it public in 2009. The deal with Genesee values RailAmerica at about $2 billion including debt.
Fortress made over two times its initial investment with the Genesee deal and the 2009 IPO, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Fortress declined to comment.
RailAmerica said in May it was considering a potential sale of the company and had begun preliminary talks with third parties.
Besides Genesee, Watco Companies LLC, several infrastructure funds and some Canadian pension funds were evaluating bids for RailAmerica, Reuters reported earlier this month.
Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan submitted a bid for RailAmerica as well, a person familiar with the matter said on Monday.
BofA Merrill Lynch served as financial adviser to Genesee, while RailAmerica was advised by Deutsche Bank Securities.One question congressional and presidential candidates should be asked is how we should go about restoring the rule of law to our federal government. Not even during the world wars of the last century was the executive branch as brazen in assuming sweeping and unlegislated powers, changing laws without the consent of the legislative branch and ignoring laws it didn't like.
Lawsuits are certainly one possible avenue to take, but a slow one--which is what the White House is counting on. It will do what it wants, and by the time an unfavorable decision is handed down, it will have done many other things. It will also find ways to circumvent such a decision or just ignore it altogether.
How will the Administration act when, as is likely, the Supreme Court delivers an adverse ruling concerning the President's appointment of members to the National Labor Relations Board when the Senate wasn't technically in recess? Obama's appointees went on to make rulings that were harmful to business. Of course, the
Administration will promise to comply and will then pull who knows what cards it has up its sleeve to make an end-run around the decision.
The IRS got caught singling out conservative groups for harassment--and nothing was done. The President, with a straight face, told Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that there wasn't a "smidgen" of evidence of any corruption, and the Justice Department has made clear it's deep-sixing any serious probe. But even worse is the fact that the IRS is readying regulation that will make it legal to deny tax exemptions to predominantly conservative groups, while it turns a blind eye to organizations more friendly to the Administration's Big Government agenda.
To add insult to injury, the new IRS commissioner has decreed that the agency will pay $62 million in bonuses, declaring, "I firmly believe that this investment in our employees will directly benefit taxpayers and the tax system."
The unending changes the White House has unilaterally made to ObamaCare have been well documented, the latest being the extension until 2016 of the employer mandate for midsize companies.
The ways in which the EPA has waged its jihad against the eastern coal industry has also been well documented--and science be damned. Forbes.com columnist Larry Bell cites a flagrant example of the EPA's ignoring inconvenient science: "A group within EPA's own Science Advisory Board (SAB) determined that the studies upon which that regulation [setting CO 2 -emission limits for new power plants] was based had never been responsibly peer reviewed and that there was no evidence that those limits can be accomplished using available technology."
The EPA is also set to ban production and sale of 80% of current wood-burning stoves. Who knows what aroused its ire against these innocuous devices? But this will impose a real hardship on people who live in remote areas, such as much of Alaska. The EPA has arbitrarily decided that stoves cannot emit more than 12 micrograms of fine particulate emissions per cubic meter of air. To put that silly limit in perspective, Bell notes that "secondhand tobacco smoke in a closed car can expose a person to 3,000–4,000 micrograms" per cubic meter.
By what authority did President Obama decree an increase in the minimum wage for workers on federal contracts? A clause in a 1931 piece of legislation that innocuously stated that the President should ensure that federal contracts are administered efficiently!
While we can take heart from the upcoming NLRB case, the courts are going to have to be more aggressive in going after executive branch abuses. Since the late 1930s federal courts have been very solicitous regarding acts of the federal government. An egregious example was the court's acquiescence to the raw, politics-laden way the Administration unilaterally handled the bankruptcy of GM and Chrysler, shafting bondholders and giving sweetheart deals to the United Auto Workers union.
Federal judges should also consider throwing out such laws as Dodd-Frank, in which the language is so vague and ambiguous that it puts immense power in the hands of imperious regulators who are the ones deciding what the rules really mean. A healthy start would be to rule unconstitutional the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has no accountability to Congress and can throw out regulatory thunderbolts, with very restricted opportunity for any judicial review. The agency gets its money not from Congress but from the Federal Reserve's printing press.
Following the 2014 elections the Senate, which will then be Republican-controlled, can hold serious hearings on what this White House has been doing and can slash the budgets of recalcitrant departments and agencies (the GOP will also increase its majority in the House).
The election losses the Democrats will suffer will chasten a good part of the party, and many will work with Republicans to punish these breaches of trust by the White House. After all, wise Democrats will know that Republicans may well win the presidency in 2016, and they won't want the new Chief Executive bending the rule of law the way President Obama has done out of habit.
For more from this issue’s Fact and Comment see here: Obama's Corruption of the English Language Comes Right From Orwell's "1984"AN/PVS-4 (Night Vision Sight, Individual Served Weapon, AN/PVS-4) is the U.S. military designation for a specification of the first second generation passive Night vision device.
The AN/PVS-4 first saw widespread use during the Gulf War and later some deployment in the Iraq War and has since been replaced by modern third-generation weaponsights.
Introduction [ edit ]
Although passive night vision technology capable of allowing vision under ambient starlight conditions has existed since the 1950s, it was not until the AN/PVS-4 was developed that a practical, high quality device that met military requirements was first made available.
Unlike earlier passive starlight weaponscopes the AN/PVS-4 provided a high quality image without significant distortion, could adjust to changing ambient light conditions, was able to take multiple reticles to operate in many roles and had protective features allowing it to shut down in the event of exposure to bright light, but still recover in time after a muzzle flash for the operator to see the round hit the target.
Using the MX-9644 Image Intensifier tube the AN/PVS-4 became one of the most widely used night vision scopes and has been in active use for more than a quarter of a century.
History [ edit ]
US Marine with a M240G machine gun in the Persian Gulf, 2004.
Initial engineering development of the AN/PVS-4 was undertaken by Optic Electronic Corporation of Dallas, Texas, in 1975 as a replacement for the Vietnam War era AN/PVS-2 |
50 tours fell 12% in 2010 to $2.93bn (£1.9bn), down from last year's $3.34bn, according to an annual survey by the music-business publication Pollstar. The total number of tickets sold fell 15% as new stars such as Lady Gaga failed to prove a match for veteran rockers such as U2, who cancelled the American leg of their 2010 tour because of 50-year-old lead singer Bono's bad back.
Bon Jovi, led by 48-year-old Jon Bon Jovi, had the biggest tour of the year with the band's 80 concerts worldwide grossing $201.1m. Veteran heavy rockers AC/DC (a five-piece band with a combined age not far short of 300) and U2 took the next two slots in the Pollstar poll. Sir Paul McCartney, the Eagles and former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters, 67, all made the top 10, underlining the music industry's reliance on its elder statesmen.
The youngest stars in the top 10 were Lady Gaga, 24, who took the fourth slot with $133.6m in sales and Canadian big-band vocalist Michael Bublé, 35, who came in sixth with $104.2m. Teen sensation Justin Bieber came in 17th with gross ticket sales of $48.3m. Much of the top 50 reads like a 1980s radio-station playlist: Tom Petty, Aerosmith, Rod Stewart, Rush, Depeche Mode, Elton John, Whitney Houston, Cher and Simply Red all polled highly.
The drop in ticket revenue is another blow for an industry still struggling with the impact of digital technology on recorded-music sales. Live concerts have been a bright spot in recent times, with increases in gross revenues in eight of the previous nine years. But that growth has been largely been driven by rising ticket prices, with the number of tickets sold remaining steady.
Concerts have become highly profitable for the musicians themselves, with touring grosses rocketing as ticket prices have risen. Worldwide, the face values of tickets increased 3.9% on average to $76.69 in 2010, up from $73.83 in 2009.
But the high prices have come under pressure as western economies have weakened. Poor sales have led promoters to offer steep discounts on concerts and cancel or postpone dates for even popular acts such as the Jonas Brothers, Christina Aguilera and Simon & Garfunkel.
Although ticket prices rose slightly worldwide, in the US the average ticket price for the top 50 tours dropped 2% to $64.74, Pollstar reported.
The discounting has been led by Live Nation, which became the world's biggest promoter this year after merging with Ticketmaster. In November, Live Nation's chief executive, Michael Rapino, told analysts that the company had "scrapped and fought" through the third quarter, offering heavy discounts to stem the damage of declining attendance. Live Nation said attendance from July to September had dropped 16% from a year ago, even after it cut prices for dozens of acts, including Rod Stewart.
Rapino believes the discounting will continue in 2011. "We know that if you lower the price, they'll come," he said. "If you want to get a casual concert buyer to come to a show that he's debating, we know in the amphitheatres that if you price it at $20 all-in they will come."
"Artists worked fewer shows in a tough business climate and those that overreached suffered the consequences," said Pollstar.The Web is an ever changing place and the first half of the year has been rich in surprises, big announcements and industry shifts! A diversity of implementations is good for many reasons we will discuss. But a more fragmented web could be the price to pay. Will it be the case?
About Implementation diversity
A few weeks ago Opera announced they were stopping work on their Presto rendering engine and switching to Chromium. They have already started contributing code to the project. Then, earlier this month, Google announced the Blink project, essentially a new fork of WebKit. And now Opera announced they will contribute to Blink!
Reactions were interesting as we went from WebKit monopoly concerns to worries about web platform fragmentation in a matter of weeks. Quite a 180 degrees turn!
At Adobe, we actively contribute to Web standards and browser implementations (historically mostly WebKit and Chromium, even though we also make some contributions to Gecko). As such we are delighted to see Opera join one of the projects we contribute to. Their considerable web expertise will undoubtedly be an asset.
There was some debate before the Blink announcement about whether or not we were heading for a WebKit monoculture: a web where content can be written with the assumption a WebKit-based engine is most likely to render it. While WebKit browsers share much core layout code they also differ in many ways at runtime: different JavaScript engines and graphics libraries, even different sets of features enabled by default. This makes it difficult in practice to write once for WebKit and run everywhere.
So we were not too concerned about a WebKit monoculture. But…
… there was a but in that view. The web is bigger than any one of its leading browser implementations and too important to be limited to a single code base even if that implementation has variations. The web is even growing to be an OS platform (e.g., ChromeOS, FirefoxOS, the new Windows Runtime), the core technology behind packaged applications (like PhoneGap applications). And ongoing innovation across HTML, JavaScript (in the TC-39 group at ECMA) and CSS needs validation, testing, consolidation.
As Brendan Eich says in his blog about “why Mozilla matters”:
“The web needs multiple implementations of its evolving standards to keep them interoperable.”
I believe this tenet to be central to delivering on the promise of the Open Web. A single implementation does not establish a standard. The W3C process even recommends two implementations in order for a specification to reach completion.
The Web needs Mozilla’s Gecko and Microsoft’s Trident engines to nurture an open, innovative environment. Historically, both companies have done a lot for the Web – think of XHR which Microsoft invented (among other key contributions) or WOFF from Mozilla – and they continue to innovate: Microsoft and Mozilla co-edit the CSS Grid specification, which provides much needed and improved layout flexibility to CSS.
I trust that the addition of Blink will strengthen an already healthy browser competition. Over time, the Blink code base will diverge from WebKit’s but no harm to the web occurs if both engines implement the same features in different ways. Only significantly different feature sets could result in harmful fragmentation. Making sure that WebKit, Blink and other browser engines interoperate is more important than it has ever been.
About testing, fragmentation and experimental features
As the founders of Test the Web Forward, we have come to appreciate the mutually reinforcing benefits multiple independent implementations bring to standards. Historically, testing has been key to the success of web standards. For example, the focused testing effort on CSS 2.1 has shaped that specification and its implementations in the corner stone CSS has become. A single implementation would leave a lot of stones unturned.
It should also be noted that the Blink policy regarding prefixes is really good for standards and compatibility across browsers: draft standard features can become truly experimental features that will not be used (and abused) in production. This should help avoid browser compatibility headaches down the line and I hope this example will be followed by all browsers.
About fragmentation and Adobe’s contributions
In this new web platform landscape, what about Adobe’s contributions to open source browsers? What impact does additional browser fragmentation has on Adobe’s efforts?
Adobe contributes to standards in open browser implementations for many reasons.
One of them is that our new generation Edge tools use a ‘web design surface’. For well over a year now, we have chosen to use the Chromium Embeded Framework (CEF) to provide this ‘web design surface’. So naturally, we will contribute to Blink since it is now the core engine that powers CEF.
Another reason for contributing to open browsers is to accelerate the availability of new features on the web. This is why we collaborate with Mozilla on a number of standards and contribute code to Gecko (like this patch on masking for canvas). And this is why we will also contribute to WebKit, in addition to Blink, now that the two are separate projects.
An open, innovative and tested web!
So yes, I think it is good to have multiple browser engines and Blink is a welcome addition to the web platform landscape. It is bringing a healthy diversity that I hope will help keep the web open and foster innovation as long as all browsers strive to implement ‘the same web’.
And this is where testing efforts are key to achieving diversity without fragmentation. I hope testing activities (of browser code of course, but of standard test suites as well and major initiatives that the W3C is driving) will be a major focus for all the browser vendors going forward, in particular for Google with its new Blink implementation.Hi all,Just wanted to make the Bitcoin community aware of BitQuick.co's promotion next month.A little bit about each of the charities:PinkRibbonGirls- Pink Ribbon Girls is an organization run in the Cincinnati region that provides support to breast cancer survivors and their families. We heard about the organization and believe it is a great way to make an immediate impact to families today, as opposed to waiting for research money to help out humanity down the road.ZeroCancer- Zero Cancer is a national nonprofit organization with the mission to end prostate cancer. Zero Cancer has shown a great record of transparency on finances, which was an extremely important factor for us when choosing our two charities.
25% of the 2% buyer fee (.5% of each BTC purchased) will go toward the donation total, which will be tallied from October 1st to October 31st, 2013. At the end of the month, the sum will be split into two (50% each) and given to The Pink Ribbon Girls and ZeroCancer
Want to donate without buying BTC? All donations sent to 1PinkGMRRhPyMjjR4UFDCwgSEFEneByoyG will also be donated at the end of the month, and added to the total sum shown above on the front page. So, at the end of day one, we have raised.521 BTC!
While it is a great organization backing a great cause, fighting cancer seems to be a more universal cause. We want to encourage participation and donations so we chose something we can all fight against (Breast and Prostate Cancer)
While it is a great organization backing a great cause, fighting cancer seems to be a more universal cause. We want to encourage participation and donations so we chose something we can call fight against (Breast and Prostate Cancer)
Errm, unfortunately we are only running this promotion as a side thing and cannot convert BTC to USD for any donations to any organization other than the two current ones lol
While it is a great organization backing a great cause, fighting cancer seems to be a more universal cause. We want to encourage participation and donations so we chose something we can call fight against (Breast and Prostate Cancer)
Day 28 and we have raised $981.37 so far! Thank you to all Bitquick.co users for making this possible. If anybody would like to donate, we are still accepting donations via our donation wallet: https://blockchain.info/address/1PinkGMRRhPyMjjR4UFDCwgSEFEneByoyG There are onlyIt is up toto help bitquick.co in their fight against breast and prostate cancer.
The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion. Albert Camus
Sorry but I can not donate to this cause.I know people in my own community who are deserving of charity. In my own small life I can make a bigger difference than donating to big pharma.I have no idea if the recipients of this money have poor diets, lack of exercise, treat their bodies like dumpsters. etc.It's not like people get cancer from eating carrots and broccoli.Cancer is a lifestyle disease. So why would I donate money to someone who lives a shoddy lifestyle?Furthermore "thinkpink" only donates to "approved" "cures", like chemotherapy which the AMA cartel has approved. Thinkpink wont donate a dime to alternative medicines or prevention.Please educate yourself before donating money to a cause. Donating makes us feel good, especially when we conveniently ignore the truth behind "causes".Respectfully,My opinion only,*edit* consider donating thru gofundme to this cause insteadCancer related
This isn't true, while bad habits may increase the chance of getting cancer, they are not the only cause for it.You probably should read about Steve Jobbs death, he declined all medical treatment in order to use a wide range of alternate medice and it failed.Not saying all of those are bad, but there is a lot of pseudy-science in there. (Lucky for them, believing does help a bit though, placebo effect is kinda strong)RespectfullyBirdyBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
March 17, 2017, 1:09 PM GMT / Updated March 17, 2017, 1:09 PM GMT By Alex Seitz-Wald
President Donald Trump has said no one cares about his tax returns, but tens of thousands of people want to prove him wrong next month with massive protests in Washington, D.C. and around the country that organizers hope will be the biggest anti-Trump demonstrations since January’s Women’s March.
Scheduled for April 15, the day federal income taxes are due, The Tax March aims to pressure Trump to release his tax returns, something every president since Richard Nixon has done.
Tax Day also marked the official kick off of the Tea Party movement in 2009. It’s a sign of how much quicker the opposition to Trump has organized itself that this year, the date will see the third or fourth major wave of demonstrations against the new president.
The protests started the day after Inauguration with the Women’s March, then moved to airports to condemn Trump's travel ban, then took over town hall meetings during last month’s congressional recess.
Like the Women’s March, which started with a Facebook post by a grandmother in Hawaii and snowballed into one of the largest single demonstrations in U.S. history, the idea for the Tax March began on social media.
A single tweet from a comedian and former writer for the Colbert Show, Frank Lesser, is credited with sparking the idea.
Now, dozens of liberal groups and activists have signed on to help organize the Tax March. They are expecting tens of thousands to attend the main march in Washington, D.C. or one of the dozens of other demonstrations in cities across the country.
On Friday, 11 new groups joined the effort, including Common Cause, CREDO, Daily Kos, the Economic Policy Institute, and Public Citizen. They joined major unions like the American Federation of Teachers, organizing groups like MoveOn.org and the Indivisible Project, Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Our Revolution, and the liberal Working Families Party.
“Accountability begins with transparency, and for President Trump, transparency begins with his tax returns,” said Karen Hobert Flynn, the president of Common Cause. “If Donald Trump’s claims that he has nothing to hide are to be believed, then he must begin by releasing his taxes – a low presidential bar that even Richard Nixon met while he too was under IRS audit.”
This week, Trump’s tax returns were back in the spotlight after the White House confirmed the veracity of a portion of Trump’s 2005 tax return first reported on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show.
Experts say Trump’s tax returns would provide critical information about his effective tax rate and charitable giving, and could potentially expose conflict of interests he may have with businesses or foreign governments.
Trump has refused to release his returns, claiming he is under audit. The IRS say that should not stop him, and previous presidential candidates have released returns while facing audits, but Trump has claimed, “the only ones that care about my tax returns are the reporters.”
Nearly seven-in-ten Americans say Trump should release his tax returns, according to a recent Quinnipiac Poll, including 65 percent of independents. Just 27 percent said he should not release then.Gadget bloggers and Amazon.com reviewers now must disclose freebies and financial interests or face fines up to $11,000, according to rules announced by federal regulators Monday in an attempt to make word-of-mouth endorsements on the net easier to believe.
The Federal Trade Commission introduced the rules to prevent the net from being flooded with paid-for reviews which appear to be the work of everyday netizens, but are actually paid for with free products. But the new rules (.pdf) are confusing, ambiguous and likely unenforceable in the real world, given the size of the net, the sheer number of blogs and reviewers, and the difficulty of making distinctions between media professionals and amateurs – and between sponsored posts and pure reviews.
Under the new rules, a hiking enthusiast with a personal blog who got a free backpack would have to tell her readers about the gift and also disclose it in any online review. By contrast, established review sites such as Consumer Reports or Wired.com's Gadget Lab do not need to disclose whether they get freebies or what they do with them. (For the record Wired.com returns most anything of value that can be returned.)
The FTC's logic is that people trust established sites. They can't do the same for a blog or reviewer, so disclosures are a must.
The Commission acknowledges that bloggers may be subject to different disclosure requirements than reviewers in traditional media. In general, under usual circumstances, the Commission does not consider reviews published in traditional media to be sponsored advertising messages. [K]nowing whether the media entity that published the review paid for the item in question would not affect the weight consumers give to the reviewer’s statements.... In contrast, if a blogger’s statement on his personal blog or elsewhere (e.g., the site of an online retailer of electronic products) qualifies as an “endorsement” – i.e., as a sponsored message – due to the blogger’s relationship with the advertiser or the value of the merchandise he has received and has been asked to review by that advertiser, knowing these facts might affect the weight consumers give to his review.
The rules break down roughly like this:
If a well-known dog blogger reviews dog food they bought, no disclosure is necessary. If they review free dog food acquired through a coupon spit out by the supermarket's computer, no disclosure is necessary. But if the dog food company sends the blogger a free sample based on their review, both the company and the blogger are on the hook if any subsequent review doesn't include that info.
That rule will strike the wine-blogging community hard, according to Joel Vincent, a tech consultant who runs OpenWineConsortium, a social networking site for the wine community.
One of the perennial, hot topics among wine bloggers is the ethics of accepting and disclosing samples, which are given out widely by the nation's wine industry – composed of 6,000 mostly family-owned operations that are looking for cheap ways to market their product.
That debate just got a lot simpler – disclosure is now required by the FTC rules – at least if you are not a "professional."
"The vast majority of wine bloggers are citizen bloggers," Vincent said. "You are going to want to disclose just to make sure you never get called on by the FTC."
But the rules leave much to interpretation.
For instance, is it enough to disclose on an "About Me" page that one accepts samples or does each review need to have that disclosure?
What's the short code for disclosing that information in 140-character tweet?
What responsibility do review aggregation sites, such as those run by Google or Microsoft, have if they display posts that are'sponsored'?
The FTC also failed to clarify much about the grey area surrounding affiliate links – links to purchase sites that have special codes to reward the site that drove the traffic to Amazon, or Wine.com or website-hosting provider.
Do sites need to disclose that their links to a product within a review will profit the site owner, even if the product was something the person bought or paid for?
Are the rules different for an establishment site different from those for a site run by a wine connoisseur with a writing habit?
And perhaps, the hardest question of all in an age where everyone has access to an online printing press, how can you distinguish a professional site from an amateur one?
For a concrete example, take BoingBoing.net, one of the net's top blogs that is published inside the United States. Cory Doctorow, one of the site's principal writers, occasionally reviews books there, but he's not a professional book reviewer.
Still, readers of his reviews bought 25,000 books through Amazon.com last year, and his affiliate links to those books earned him a commission – which, assuming a $10 average price likely netted Doctorow about $20,000 a year.
But, he's a professional writer, among other things, and Boing Boing as a blog has a larger readership than many mainstream publications who escape the FCC's rules. Doctorow also seems to reside mostly in the U.K., complicating jurisdiction. And no one seems to have accused Doctorow of being on the take.
But do the rules apply to him? It's very unclear.
UPDATE: Doctorow responds in the comments that he always discloses and disposes.
"For the record, I always disclose when a book review was generated from a free galley, ARC or finished book (if the book is a printed manuscript or an ebook, I sometimes skip it, since I tear off and discard sheets from the former and generally delete the latter once I’m through with it)," Doctorow wrote. "Though, to be honest, “free” books are a substantial liability, since I get sent about 20 dumb, off-topic or not-quite-right books for every one I review, and I have to pay for a PO Box and a monthly taxi to get them all to the local charity shop."
That's far more stringent than any policy I've ever heard of from a mainstream publication, including Wired.com.
It's also unclear just how enforcement will actually work, given the FTC doesn't have the manpower to go after many offenders, since it's also in charge of policing spamming, telemarketers, infomercials and business fraud of all kinds, electronic and real-world.
And by the way, this post was brought to you by Twinings English Breakfast tea, but I think Wired.com is established enough that I don't have to tell you if we paid for it or not. Though then again, we are using Wordpress to publish this blog.
See Also:There is some debate about whether Mississippi State cornerback Darius Slay would have been available to the Detroit Lions at the top of the second round were it not for a torn meniscus in his knee, which probably dropped him on a few draft boards. The Lions are now dealing with what they hope is a limited fallout from the injury.
According to ESPN's Adam Schefter, Slay had arthroscopic surgery last Friday. He won't participate in this weekend's rookie minicamp but the recovery period is expected to be about two weeks. There is every expectation that Slay will be ready for training camp.
Of course, it's only fair to point out that Slay said last month: "I was told I won't have to have surgery." Meanwhile, general manager Martin Mayhew said shortly after the draft that he expected Slay to participate in the rookie minicamp.
Clearly plans clearly changed since then. Did the injury prove worse than anticipated? For the Lions' sake, I hope not. The likeliest explanation is the team decided to clean up a relatively minor injury to provide maximum time for recovery and conditioning before training camp begins. But whenever people say one thing and do another, it's at least fair to start wondering if there is more to the story.
The injury occurred March 7 during Slay's pro day workout. Here's what Mayhew said after the draft:
"We are aware of his physical condition and he's in good physical condition. He visited with us in the last couple weeks and we're on top of that. We are aware that there is a physical issue with his knee. We're aware of that and we're comfortable with that."
Coach Jim Schwartz said: "[W]e didn't draft him as a redshirt. We didn’t draft him as a guy for further on down the road. We think he can get up to speed pretty quickly, both physically and mentally and help us on the field this year."
Stay tuned.David S. Goyer, co-writer of The Dark Knight, will revamp Superman with a new film called The Man Of Steel. Can he do for Supes what he and the Nolans did for Batman? Spoilers ahead. Update: It's confirmed!
Latino Review reports that Goyer's been hired to write the script for the new movie, which will be called The Man Of Steel, in addition to helping to craft the story for the third Nolan Batman film. Sources claim Goyer pitched a Superman idea that gets the character back to the mid-1980s John Byrne era, when he was last rebooted and given a fun, splashy new attitude. Says Latino Review's source, the new version will be "Modern. Believable. Fun!". And no, Bryan Singer and Brandon Routh probably won't be back.
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Adds the anonymous source:
Goyer's story involves Luthor and Brainiac. It is NOT an origin and assumes audiences already know about Lois, Clark, Jimmy and Perry. I know the Daily Planet is struggling due to the internet. And I know it sets up a huge Kryptonian mythology.
Update: Variety has confirmed this report. [Latino Review]List of freeware tools and other releases from The Windows Club
This page list down all the Freeware, Tools, eBook, Themes, Screensavers, Wallpaper and other releases from The Windows Club. Maybe you have landed here out of choice, or maybe you clicked on a direct.zip link on another website and ended up here! Scroll down to see what interests you. We are that sure you will find something of value here!
BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD: Click here to scan Windows for issues causing speed loss
FixWin 10 for Windows 10 is a portable freeware that allows you to fix and repair Windows 10 problems, issues, and annoyances.
Ultimate Windows Tweaker 4 for Windows 10, apart from offering you the usual tweaks, lets you tweak Privacy settings and more.
10AppsManager will let you easily uninstall and reinstall Windows Store apps in Windows 10.
AltPlusTab lets you customize Alt+Tab menu in Windows 10.
Thumbnail and Icon Cache Rebuilder for Windows 10 will purge, clear and delete your Thumbnail and Icon Cache Rebuilder in a click.
Download this VPN to secure all your Windows devices and browse anonymously
Ultimate Windows Tweaker 3 for Windows 8 and Windows 8.1 is just 340 KB in size and includes over 170 tweaks.
Ultimate Windows Tweaker 2.2 is a freeware TweakUI Utility for tweaking and optimizing Windows 7 & Windows Vista, 32-bit & 64-bit.
FixWin v1 for Windows 7 is a 529 KB freeware portable application to repair & fix common Windows and Windows Vista annoyances & issues
FixWin v2 for Windows 8 is a free portable application to repair & fix common Windows annoyances & issues in Windows 8, and Windows 8.1.
Ultimate Windows Customizer lets you customize Windows Explorer, Context Menus, Libraries, Logon Screen, Start Orb, Taskbar, Windows Media Player and many areas of Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Fix IE Utility re-registers all the concerned dll & ocx files required for the smooth operation of Internet Explorer.
Fix WMP Utility is a portable app which re-registers all the concerned Windows Media dll files required for the smooth functioning of Windows Media Player.
Fix MSE Utility is a portable utility which will reset all the Registry and other settings of Microsoft Security Essentials to its default value. This utility will restore all its registry values & service settings to known good defaults, without re-installing MSE. It also re-registers the concerned.dll and.exe files, required to run MSE properly.
Fix WU Utility will re-register the files, required for the proper functioning of Windows Updates. This utility will re-register a total of 114.dll, ocx and.ax files which are required for the proper functioning of Windows Updates.
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Windows Themes Installer is a freeware portable utility which allows you to install a theme, remove a theme and restore defaults easily.
Winter White Windows 7 Theme, includes screensaver, cursor set, wintry wallpapers.
Windows 7 Start Button Changer allows you change the Windows 7 Start Orb or Button easily. The program will backup you original explorer.exe, change the start button and restart explorer.exe. To restore the default Start Orb and explorer from the backup, click Restore Original Explorer Backup.
Right-Click Extender for Windows is a freeware utility which allows you to add some important items to the right-click context menu. It allows you to add or remove many additional options to a Drive, File, Folder, Computer and Desktop’s Right Click Context Menu.
Prevent stops Cut, Stops Paste, Stops Copy, Stops Delete, Stops Copy To, Stops Move to, Stops Send To, Prevents renaming, Disables Task Manager’s End Process button. It also grays out the context menu items, disable Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V and/or stops the process.
Windows Access Panel is meant to minimize your trouble in accessing certain programs in Windows.
Handy Shortcuts will help you create the oft-used desktop shortcuts for your Windows desktops easily: Lock WorkStation, Switch Account. Shutdown, Restart, Log Off, Hibernate, Show Desktop, Uninstall Programs, Device Manager, Security Center, Windows Defender, Windows DVD maker, etc.
The Windows Feeds Gadget displays the RSS Feeds of The Windows Blog and The Windows Club. Stay abreast with whats happening in the world of Windows!
CleanDesktop is a small portable freeware app which will help you clean up your unused desktop icons, in Windows 8, Windows 7 & Vista. This utility is for those who miss the XP’s wizard.
I’M A PC Themepack and Wallpapers for Windows 7 and Windows 8.
The Complete Windows 7 Shortcuts eBook includes a lot of new keyboard shortcuts that are unknown to a new user. This eBook comprises of more than 200 keyboard shortcuts containing almost all the keyboard shortcuts that are available in Windows 7 and its default programs.
Windows 7 for Beginners eBook which covers topics which would typically interest a novice wanting to start using Windows 7 or a beginner trying to get his hands wet on Windows 7.
Quick Restore Maker is a smart 1-click freeware app for creating a System Restore Point in Windows 10, Windows 8/7 & Vista.
GodMode Creator is a freeware utility which lets you create 38 “GodModes” in Windows 10/8, Windows 7 & Vista, with a click.
SMART (Service Management And RealEasy Tweaking) Utility for Windows 7 is a freeware utility which helps you tweak Windows 7 Services, based on the suggested configurations of BlackVipers.
Context Menu Editor for Windows 8, Windows 7 & Vista. Context Menu Editor is a freeware tweaking utility to add/delete application shortcuts, Win32 commands, files, and website URLs to your desktop and folder context menu.
Quick Clean for Windows 8, Windows 7 & Vista is a freeware tool which lets you clean up the junk files from your Windows desktop quickly.
Taskbar Thumbnail Tweaker & Resizer for Windows 7 makes Taskbar Previews appear faster or increase taskbar thumbnail preview size easily!
Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer allows you to resize & tweak the Windows 7 taskbar thumbnails left & right, in & out! You can change the size of the thumbnail, its spacing, top, bottom, left, right margins and mouse delay time too!
File Association Fixer v2 for Windows 10 / 8 / 7 will be able to easily help you fix, repair and restore the broken file associations.
File Association Fixer lets you fix file type associations easily, with a click! To fix the association for a particular file type simply click on the file type association icon or name. These pages contain the file association fixes for some of the most common file types. Currently, the app offers 18 fixes for Windows 7 & 26 fixes for Windows Vista.
READ: Reimage Repair Review.
Windows Themes Installer is a freeware portable utility which allows you to patch system files, install a theme, remove a theme and restore defaults easily in Windows 7 & Vista.
OneWorld Theme For Windows 7 changes the Task Pane & the Welcome Center too and is thus a ‘first of its kind‘ theme for Windows 7. We may think we are different … of different nationalities … of different color or cultures, but every once in a while we need to be gently reminded that, we are ONE … and ALONE in the Universe.
Royale Blue Theme For Windows Vista is a theme you may want to check out! Those of you who miss the Royale Blue XP Theme, may want to try this Royale Vista theme.
Windows 7 Regional ThemePack for Asia takes you to a journey in Asia. Visit countries from Japan to Taiwan, from Thailand to India, China to Hong Kong and Malaysia. See if you can recognize the 12 sights. Enjoy the change every hour, every day!
Hide Taskbar lets you hide only the taskbar, and not the Start Button, with a click. Simply download and run the app. Use hotkeys Ctrl+Esc to hide or un-hide the taskbar.
Windows 7 DreamScene Activator is a small freeware portable app which will allow you to activate DreamScene in Windows 7 too! Those of you who missed the DreamScene feature of Windows Vista Ultimate, in Windows 7, can now add it easily to Windows 7 and Windows 8.
Windows 7 Folder Background Changer is a freeware portable application which allows you to change the folder backgrounds in Windows 7. You can also change the color of the text and show shadows under the text and even apply the same background to all the subfolders!
QRM Plus Manager lets you create restore points, carry out system restore operations & selectively delete system restore points in your Windows computer. You can also add these options to your right-click context menu.
System Restore Manager is a freeware portable utility which allows you to completely manage your Windows system restore points and customize its options. Using this utility, you can even select a Drive and change the maximum amount of disk space to use, System Restore can use, change the System Restore Point Creation Interval, etc.
Start My Day is a first of its kind freeware process launcher for Windows users. Simply put, Start My Day is for those users who hate going through the same process each day, loading this and that.
Create A Shortcut adds the ability for a user, to select where to create a shortcut for a file system object, from anywhere on a users computer.
Sliced Themepack & Wallpaper set for Windows 7 comprises of 7 beautiful abstract wallpapers. Various colors have come together to play with black to bring out a mysterious glazed glass look.
Icon Cache Rebuilder repairs and rebuild a corrupt icon cache in Windows easily in a click.
Windows Logon Notifier lets you create user logon messages for Windows 7 and Windows 8 users easily.
IE 9 Tweaker, which lets you tweak some select settings of Internet Explorer 9 easily. The main feature of IE9 Tweaker is the ability to create your own customized Homepage similar to IE9 About:Tabs page. You can also make IE9 show more rows in the about:tabs page. Please also see IE9 Tweaker Plus.
HomePage Maker, is a freeware portable app that allows you to customize your Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome & Opera browser home page.
Windows Event Viewer Plus is a portable freeware app that lets you view Event Logs faster than the default in-built Windows Event Viewer and also export the Entry to a text file, select the Web Search Button to look up the entry online, to find out more information or troubleshoot errors.
WP7 MarketPlace Enabler allows you to access the MarketPlace from anywhere in the world via your Zune software.
The Ultimate Guide to Speech Recognition in Windows 7 explains everything about a superb feature of Windows 7 which is called as ‘Speech Recognition’. Speech Recognition is a technology which is used for controlling computers using some voice commands and that too, very accurately.
Windows 8 Clock Logon Screensaver for Windows 7 has been inspired by Microsoft’s next version of the Windows operating system.
IE9 Tweaker Plus allows you to tweak, customize and change over 27 settings in Internet Explorer 9 RTM, all from one single window.
C# Tips, Tricks for Beginners eBook will help you learn the basics of C sharp programming, tips, tricks tutorials the easy way.
RegOwnit allows you to take ownership of a Windows Registry key using Administrator, Home Users or the current Logged On User account.
AeroTile is a freeware portable app that adds glassy backgrounds to system folders and places them on your Windows desktop to give you ready access to these folders.
Ease Of Access Replacer replaces Ease of Access button on Windows 7 or Windows 8 Logon Screen with buttons to take out Lock Screen and Logon Screen Screenshot, CMD, Powershell, Registry Editor, Run and Task Manager.
System Folders Customizer lets you add Internet Explorer, important System folders, Control Panel applets to your Computer folder, Libraries and Desktop.
Right Click Restart Explorer is a simple tool that adds Restart explorer to your right-click context menu.
QuickHide hides taskbar processes, programs and applications quickly. And why would you want to do that? Maybe you are doing something you shouldn’t be doing and your dad or Boss comes in … QuickHide could be a life saver – by letting you hide all in a click!
RightClick ReplaceThis allows you to replace files in Windows 7 easily. It is also helpful in cases where Windows will not allow you to replace files which are being used.
Show Desktop Remover is a freeware tool that lets you easily remove and restore the Show Desktop button appearing in the right side of Windows 7 taskbar.
Taskbar Shadow is a small tool that adds a cool drop shadow effect to the Windows 7 taskbar. It creates a shadow for the taskbar in any position – bottom, top, right or left!
Taskbar Color Effects lets you add Color, Background and Shadow Effects to the Windows 7 Taskbar.
PinToStartMenu adds the ‘Pin to start menu’ item to the context menu of folders and the Control Panel applets and lets you pin Control Panel items and folders to Windows Start Menu, via your right-click context menu.
Disguise Folders is a free tool that lets you camouflage your secret folders and allows you to disguise them as system folders in Windows.
HotShut is a free tiny app which lets you do something very simple. It lets you shutdown, restart |
, you have to play colors—you have to play musically.”
The Best of the Beat tribute to Johnny Vidacovich will consist of Vidacovich’s Astral Project bandmates James Singleton (bass), Steve Masakowski (guitar) and Tony Dagradi (sax). Joining them will be former Astral Project member David Torkanowsky (keys) and frequent Vidacovich collaborator/Nolatet bandmate Mike Dillon (vibes, percussion). Renowned jazz drummer Brian Blade, who studied under Vidacovich at Loyola, will hold down the drum kit for the night.
“Hearing him for the first time was a revelation,” Blade told us for January’s cover story. “I wanted to be around these inventors, these sound makers and Johnny was at the heart of that. What touched me was the depth of expression and the joy in the sound and the spark in everything that he played. The drumming is a reflection of the man. When you watch him walk or when he talks to you there is such a swing and groove in it and humor and joy.”
Tickets for the 2016 Best of the Beat Awards are on sale now. You can check out the nominees and cast your votes for the awards here.For a team operating outside the national radar since the Dwight Howard fiasco, the Orlando Magic stir a lot of debate among curious front-office types from the league’s 29 other teams. The Magic in these arguments are either an intriguing young team hoarding a lucrative trove of assets, or an uninspiring collection of pieces with no clear path back to 50 wins.
Orlando is on pace for 24 wins after a 20-win season last year, and everyone involved knew the rebuilding process post-Dwight would be painful. (It would also involve less farting and candy.) Year 3 of rebuilding is often when the facade of promised patience begins to fall apart — when owners, management, and fans who signed up for long-term pain grow restless and agitate for change. “As players, we don’t believe in rebuilding,” says Arron Afflalo, the team’s leading scorer. “But I do think, in Year 3, it starts to escalate with fans, the coaching staff, and management, in terms of expecting to win night-to-night. In Year 3, it builds up. It’s time to get it done.”
A third straight awful season wouldn’t be an unprecedented death knell in the rebuilding process. Ten of the league’s 30 teams have suffered through three consecutive sub-30-win seasons since the 1999 lockout, and some, including the Cavaliers and Grizzlies, have trudged through two such stretches of depression during that time. The pile of sad sacks reveals how easy it is to get stuck at the bottom. Almost every team on that list went through multiple coaching and management changes, and required at least one foundational roster shift to emerge from the dreariness — a massive hit in the right lottery (LeBron James, Blake Griffin, John Wall), a free-agent coup, or an unprecedented spending spree (Brooklyn).
The Magic are guaranteed none of those things, but the team’s management and its obnoxiously young head coach, 39-year-old Jacque Vaughn, remain confident in the process. Business is still booming, says Alex Martins, the team’s CEO. The Magic also have three extra first-round picks coming in the next half-decade, and ownership will spend up to the tax if need be — and over it once the team is near “one piece away” status again, Martins says. There is no push for a specific leap next season. “As long as we’re seeing incremental improvement, we’re going to be happy,” Martins says. “And every single one of our young guys has improved from the start of the season.”
Vaughn, perhaps the most intriguing piece of the team’s organizational puzzle, isn’t even discussing win-total goals for 2014-15. “What we want to do is have growth,” he says. “My job is to get these guys better every day. Where that leads us, I’m not sure. I don’t know what our win total is going to be. I don’t know how the East is going to look, or if it’s going to take just 30 wins to make the playoffs — or if it’s going to take 50.”
The Personnel
You can understand the skepticism some of the league feels about the Magic’s path. Maurice Harkless has stagnated in his second year. He is uncertain with the ball, he rarely shoots, and he has not met the organization’s expectations for him on defense. But he’s not yet 21. Tobias Harris has lost his jump shot and remains a tricky lineup fit. He gives up size at power forward, where he thrived last season during Glen Davis’s absence, and has struggled this season at some of the basic things an NBA small forward has to do. He’s a poor long-range shooter and a shaky ball handler, and he has trouble at times tracking quicker wing players scurrying around the floor. The number of post-up threats in the Magic’s core lineups — Nikola Vucevic, Afflalo, Davis — limits Harris’s chances to bully smaller wings down low. “That’s how it goes,” Harris says. “I have to be patient and not complain. I feel like we’re taking steps in the right direction, and I want to do whatever I can to help us win games.”
Davis and Jameer Nelson are not going to be part of the next Magic era. Ryan Anderson, perhaps the league’s most lethal 3-point shooting power forward, is already gone — signed and traded to New Orleans on a fair contract, with almost nothing beyond payroll flexibility to show for it.
Everyone assumes Afflalo won’t be around long, either, but his game has blossomed as a featured player in Orlando, and he’s the kind of good character guy the Magic value perhaps more than other teams. The Magic likely could have dealt Afflalo for some rebuilding fodder by now, but they’ve chosen not to — at least so far, with just 48 hours until the league’s trade deadline. “I love the opportunity this team has given me individually,” he says. “In a perfect world, I’ll continue to grow, the young guys will continue to grow, and I’ll be able to win while being an elite player.”
The Magic are, to some degree, leaning on veterans who won’t be here in two or three years. The young guys have plateaued early, the story goes. But there are two huge exceptions to that narrative: Victor Oladipo and Vucevic. Oladipo is a two-way beast who’s handling the ball more than almost anyone anticipated and showing flashes of being an explosive pick-and-roll creator. His jump shot isn’t great, but it isn’t broken, either. The pessimists see Oladipo as a complementary piece unlikely to ever reach All-Star level. The Magic are cautiously optimistic he’ll be better than that, and with good reason. If you set the over/under on Oladipo All-Star appearances at 2.5, I’d take the over — but barely.
Vucevic is among the most divisive players in the league, and he’s looking at an eight-figure salary when his rookie deal expires after next season. He has worked himself into a versatile offensive player, he’s a killer rebounder on both ends, and he has done well containing opposing pick-and-rolls in an Orlando scheme that asks big men to drop back:
But he’s not an explosive athlete, and despite his mammoth size, it’s unclear if Vucevic will ever scare anyone at the basket. “Defensively, he has some work to do,” Afflalo says of Vucevic. “But offensively and with his rebounding, he’s been great for us.” Vucevic knows he has to master timing and positioning down low to emerge as a rim protector worth a major investment. “I’m not the type of guy who’s going to get three or four blocks a game,” he says. “But just being there to protect the basket — that’s what I need to get better at.”
The Plan
The Magic don’t just want to win 50 games and lose in the second round. They want to contend for championships, and even win one. And almost all of NBA history suggests that to do that, you need a top-10 or top-15 player in his prime. “We’ve had a lot of success in 25 years,” Martins says. “We’ve been to the Finals twice. Not a lot of teams can say that. But that is not our goal. Our goal is to win a championship. And we haven’t been able to sustain our success. We keep getting to the pinnacle, and then something happens, and we’ve got to start over again.”
The top of the draft is the best way to find and keep such superstars, and the Magic will have a high pick in a very good draft this June. But it’s possible the picks that Philadelphia, Denver, and the Lakers owe Orlando will all fall outside the lottery. It’s hard to find above-average starters in those draft slots, let alone franchise changers. So what happens if the Magic don’t nail their own pick? Is it just mediocrity into the 2020s?
Those draft picks are more than just picks, of course. They’re currency on the trade market. Cap space can work the same way, and the Magic are flush with that. They’ll have max-level cap space in each summer going forward, even factoring in high salaries for future first-rounders and potential new deals for guys like Vucevic, Oladipo, and emerging backup center Kyle O’Quinn. Like the Suns and Celtics, Orlando would seem poised to chase the rare veteran free agent itching to switch teams — either via outright free agency or trade.
Orlando is a good market with a great basketball facility. Players enjoy it there, and Florida famously has no state income tax. Executives and agents view it as a strong enough draw to attract a second star-level player, provided the Magic somehow land a first star — sort of how Houston used the lure of James Harden to bait Howard.
But landing that first star is going to be an enormous challenge if Rob Hennigan, the team’s sharp young GM, can’t find one in the draft. Boston, Phoenix, and perhaps a few other asset-rich teams can compete for the Kevin Love types on the trade market. The Lakers are in position to chase anyone in free agency. New York is New York. Miami looms as a wild card going forward.
More than that, there just aren’t star-level types available in a way that fits Orlando’s timeline. The Love situation in Minnesota isn’t good, but Love has a player option for 2015-16, which means he’ll essentially be playing under an expiring contract the minute this season ends. With the Lakers hovering over any potential free-agent talks, a midmarket team like Orlando can’t shell out assets for a Love-type rental without a longer-term guarantee — an extend-and-trade, or perhaps Love opting in for 2015-16 as Howard and Chris Paul have done in recent melodramas. Rajon Rondo, who plays a position of need for Orlando, is coming off ACL surgery and working under an optionless contract that expires after next season. LaMarcus Aldridge is happy in Portland.
There might not be a single Harden type available anywhere in the league: a guy on a rookie contract with a history of star-level production, on a team cornered into trading him by the luxury tax or some other factor. Harden hitting the trade market was an anomalous situation, and not enough teams recognized that and acted with appropriate aggression. Teams have been more careful with their cap sheets under the new collective bargaining agreement, leaving fewer of them so desperate to shed money that they’d sacrifice a quality player to do so.
This is why at least one team outside Indiana is going to throw a ton of money at Lance Stephenson in free agency. Stephenson is an unrestricted free agent, and 23-year-olds as good as Lance Stephenson almost never hit free agency unfettered so early in their careers. But the odds are probably against Orlando being one of those teams. Stephenson is a very good player, but there is anxiety around the league that he won’t be quite as selfless, on and off the court, if someone extracts him from the Indiana–Larry Bird cocoon of winning veterans. He also has some positional overlap with Oladipo, though in a modern NBA in which having multiple expert ball handlers on the floor at once is a basic necessity, they could easily function together.
But free agency is a delicate thing for any rebuilding team. Orlando basically punted last summer, signing fringe rotation players in Jason Maxiell and Ronnie Price on cheap deals to provide that magical “veteran leadership.” They barely exceeded the minimum salary floor, a stance that screams, “We don’t really care how many games we win.” If they sign similar stopgap contracts with borderline NBA players this summer, it will be a sign that ownership is indeed onboard with an ultra-patient approach.
The Philosophy
The Cavaliers stand as an example of a rebuilding team that ditched prudent patience to goose the process. They spent big on both Andrew Bynum and Jarrett Jack, and though Bynum’s deal represented an almost consequence-free gamble, the Cavs are already working to get out of Jack’s four-year contract, per several reports that surfaced Monday. Losing hurts. Losing over three or four seasons, leaving cap room unspent, requires a high pain tolerance.
The Magic say they have it. Martins is fond of saying the team is “on plan,” and Vaughn delights, for now, in teaching his young players the day-to-day habits it takes to function in the NBA grind. He’s also discovering, gradually, what kind of coach he wants to be. The Magic are a stodgy bunch on offense, and they don’t look much like the pick-and-rolling, 3-point shooting machine Gregg Popovich built in San Antonio — the team that nurtured Vaughn as a coach.
Orlando plays at an average pace, jacks more midrange jumpers than all but three teams, and attempts a below-average number of 3s, per NBA.com. They sport an idiosyncratic offense built on running Afflalo, Harkless, and Harris through a maze of pin-down screens in all directions, with one player often following another around the circle. Afflalo doesn’t get to run the offense as much as he would probably like, and Vaughn says all the screening is designed in part to free Afflalo for midrange jumpers. “When your leading scorer doesn’t handle the ball as much,” Afflalo says, “you have to go more to pin-downs and post-ups. It’s just the way they use me for the moment. It is what it is, and it’ll work best for Jameer and Victor to have the ball in their hands.”
Vaughn says at this point in his coaching career, he’s catering strategy to personnel instead of fitting players into a rigid system. The team is midrange-heavy because it features midrange shooters in Afflalo, Oladipo, and especially Davis, who enjoys tossing up 18-footers almost as much as computer keyboards. (Sorry.) Vaughn says he’d like to play a more free-flowing style, but not until he has the roster to do so. “I have probably less ego than a lot of people,” Vaughn says. “For me, it’s about maximizing our guys’ talents. Would I like to play faster and get up and down more? Yes. And I think we’ll build that kind of roster. We’ll get there.”
The team is growing on defense, where it ranks 17th in points allowed per possession — not bad, considering the roster. Vaughn has installed a very aggressive help system in which wing players stray farther from shooters than most teams would permit in order to protect the paint. Here’s Nelson abandoning his man, George Hill (in the right corner), to patrol a Paul George isolation:
George skipped the ball to Hill for an open 3-pointer. Here’s Afflalo leaving George in the corner to pester David West on a pick-and-pop as West’s defender (Big Baby) recovers:
They generally creep in from the weak side earlier and farther than most team defenses:
It’s a risky strategy. Teams that move the ball well can swing it around for open 3s as the Magic scramble in help rotations. But not every team is equipped to make those kinds of smart passes, and Vaughn wants to start the process of growing a defense inside-out.
It’s working, to a degree. Only nine teams allow fewer shot attempts in the restricted area, and only three allow fewer points in the paint, per NBA.com.
That’s a start, and the Magic locker room is a strikingly harmonious place — a rare thing for a team featuring veterans who want the minutes they’re accustomed to and young guys chasing numbers and money. The organization credits the positive vibes to Vaughn’s straight talk with each player.
But the Magic have so far to go, and they know it. Finding a star in this draft is crucial for the Magic’s long-term championship aspirations. If they find merely a good player, the road is going to be very difficult.
10 Things I Like and Don’t Like
1. The Terror of Lance Stephenson
You can learn a lot about a team when you’re lucky enough to snag a courtside press-row seat, especially if you’re along the baseline next to that team’s bench. I had such an experience with the Pacers for the first time last week in Orlando, and the main thing I learned is that Lance Stephenson is even more terrifying at close range.
We all know he loves to grab defensive rebounds, turn upcourt, and dribble like a madman down the middle — even if the numbers are against him. The power of that process is an incredible spectacle. Stephenson doesn’t just rebound the ball; he ensnares it with one hand, and then slams it into his other hand with such a loud thwack that it sounds as if someone has let off a loud firecracker. Stephenson is a snarling, speeding bull in the open court. LeBron might be the only player with the same combination of speed, size, strength, and outright ferocity.
Stephenson doesn’t always make the right decision, and as his star has risen over the last couple of months, it seems he is more often choosing flashy highlight-chasing over sound fundamentals in the open floor. That probably drives Frank Vogel mad. But for a neutral observer, it only adds to the terror quotient.
2. Watching the Sixers
The Sixers play at the league’s fastest pace, jack a ton of 3s, and break out something like a full-court press during stretches of every game. It was fun for a while, but they’ve become very hard to watch as we enter the stretch run. Their style of play almost has a numbing effect. “Oh, another missed 3 with 18 seconds left on the shot clock and no potential rebounder under the rim.”
Philly simply doesn’t have the talent to compete this way, or any way. The Sixers’ bench is a D-League team, and both Michael Carter-Williams and Evan Turner have been slumping from the field for weeks. Their press functions more as a mechanism for easy opponent layups.
The Sixers insist playing fast isn’t a tanking ploy, and I believe them. There are those around the league who argue playing fast and launching 3s is the wave of the NBA’s future, and that it will make the league more exciting. I can see that. But a bad team playing this way is horrid to watch.
3. The Kyle Lowry Pass-and-Cut
Lowry’s not the only guard who regularly turns an “Uh-oh, I picked up my dribble” crisis into an instant give-and-go, but I’m not sure anyone does it more often:
He’s a wonderfully creative player on both ends, doing things just a hair differently than the typical NBA guard might — passing the ball a beat later, dishing it from a weird angle, crashing down into the paint unexpectedly on defense, etc. It’s insane he wasn’t in the All-Star Game. Insane. The coaches should be ashamed.
4. Very High Pick-and-Rolls for Melo
The Knicks are still a dangerous offensive team when they take even the tiniest steps to vary their boring isolation-heavy attack, and doing that involves using Carmelo Anthony in lots of different ways. One I really like:
That’s a classic high pick-and-roll with Melo as the ball handler, only the Knicks will sometimes have Tyson Chandler set the screen a few steps closer to midcourt than most teams would. It gives Melo more space before he hits the first layer of help defense, and thus more of a head of steam, and he can absolutely kill big-guy help defenders in space with the lefty hesitation move he uses here.
Hey, Knicks: PLEASE PLAY FUNCTIONAL BASKETBALL MORE OFTEN.
5. Marcus Thornton’s Defense
It just hasn’t happened for Thornton, whose contract is now one of the very worst in the league. His shooting has been a disaster this season, and he has never improved as a defender. He still gets lost away from the ball, and he’s always spacing out or ball-watching as his man cuts behind him. He has never shown any organized commitment to team defense or help schemes. He’s just not a useful NBA player right now.
6. The Wolves’ Monster Handoff
Ladies and gentlemen, the most unfair dribble handoff in the NBA:
First of all, a dribble handoff from one big to another is so rare that it will almost automatically catch a defense off guard.
But there is even more going on here. Before heading over to Nikola Pekovic, Kevin Love sets a down screen for Kevin Martin on the right wing:
Minnesota has no other player on the right side, meaning Love’s guy, Pau Gasol, has to sink down to account for Martin’s cut. That tiny pause puts Gasol way behind Love as Pekovic prepares the handoff, leaving Jordan Hill to figure out what is going on here and (if he does figure it out) try to fight through a very scary pick from a very scary man:
Just a beautiful use of three skilled players.
7. Kevin Seraphin’s Hook Shot
It’s a useful shot, and Seraphin has a soft touch with either hand. But it sometimes seems as if Seraphin would rather shoot hooks than do anything else, regardless of where he is on the court. “I’m posting up 17 feet from the basket at a weird angle? HOOK SHOT, BABY!” “I’m directly underneath the rim, in dunking range? FIRE UP THE HOOK!”
The hook addiction is one of many reasons Seraphin has never gotten to the line or passed the ball enough to be a reliable post player. He has 43 combined free throw attempts and assists this entire season.
8. George Blaha–isms
I’ve praised Blaha, Detroit’s play-by-play man, before, and specifically for his use of the term “glasser” to describe a bank shot. But Blaha’s entire arsenal of catchphrases just gets more and more endearing. He calls the 3-point arc the “long line,” as in, “Josh Smith, again, from behind the long line.” A 3-point shot might be a “long gun.” And instead of announcing that there are “two minutes and 45 seconds left,” or the simpler “two forty-five to go,” Blaha might add a little flourish: “two and 45 left.”
I just like this guy’s style.
9. The Instant Steal-Shot Sequence
A pet peeve: when a little guy grabs a steal in the backcourt, usually right after an inbound pass, and immediately attempts to shoot it, regardless of the situation. I admit, it’s a great way to shift the momentum and demoralize an opponent — following one gut punch by landing another right away.
But the pursuit of the double highlight often involves a little guy flinging a wild layup over two defenders, including a bigger player who likely just inbounded the ball and is lingering nearby. There are times to pull it out.
10. LeBron’s “Push It Down” Dance
LeBron stole this post-shot taunt from Nick Van Exel, though he admits the plagiarism. It was apparently Van Exel’s attempt at an inverse of “raise the roof” for use in road games, symbolically quieting enemy fans after a big shot.
I love it. It’s powerful and emphatic, and anyone can imitate it. It should be approved for gratuitous and silly use in pickup games.The most violent and beloved runner in Seahawks history is hurting. Marshawn Lynch held out of training camp last season due to a dispute about compensation, but his health may be the deciding factor in determining whether he returns for another year. Pete Carroll and John Schneider have been vocal about their desire to have Lynch back. Multiple sources have indicated they are prepared to double his salary. It may not be enough, and Seahawks fans should consider that it may be best for both sides for Lynch to hang up his cleats.
Few things in football are more compelling than watching Lynch punish defenders. He is an inspiration to fans, players and coaches. He is devastating to opponents. The idea of losing that from an offense that struggled at times last season causes panic in most fans. Take a moment to consider the full picture and that feeling should subside.
Banner free agent class
There are those that are arguing this is the best free agent class in NFL history. It is easy to see why with depth at key positions like defensive tackle, defensive end, tight end, and wide receiver. Seattle just so happens to have needs are the positions where rare talent is available. Groups like this do not come around very often, and the Seahawks ability to dip into this pool of players is greatly impacted by the money earmarked for Lynch.
No guarantee next season will resemble previous seasons
Assume that Lynch does return. There is a very real chance that he is not able to overcome the back injury that has plagued him the past few seasons. It definitely impacted him more this year than last year.
Nobody wants to see the Beast tamed and broken
Forget the effect to the offense. Think of what it would be like to see this proud warrior go out on a down note. This is a player who should leave the game on his terms at the top of his position.
The assumption that everything will just continue as it has should Lynch resign is naive. Durability and degradation of running backs near the age of 30 is well documented in the NFL. Seattle was in a similar position with a far less physical runner in Shaun Alexander, and chose to give him big money. That was money poorly spent on a player who never approached his past production.
Time is now to transition the offense
Robert Turbin is a free agent after next season. Christine Michael has only two years left on his deal. Even if Lynch did return and make it through the year, the chances that he would be back in 2016 are very slim. That would leave Seattle without anywhere close to enough information about how Turbin and Michael are worth in this offense.
There are also some decent runners in this draft who the team could learn about this year to help inform their future plans. Running back is one position that can have immediate impact as a rookie. The team would be hard-pressed to keep four true running backs on the roster if Lynch returns, so a player who could help after he leaves would be let go. That feels short-sighted for a team that prides itself on a win forever long view of roster management.
Russell Wilson needs to improve the team’s ability to be efficient in the passing game with, or without, Lynch in the backfield. Expecting to be a championship team again that relies so heavily on the run is not realistic. That is not to suggest a major shift away from being a run-first team. Getting back to the formula from 2012 and 2013 would be an improvement. There would be less of a safety net for that without Lynch, but that might help coaches and players focus on the task at hand even more.
Tom Cable knows running
For all the fair criticism Tom Cable receives for his tendency to field poor pass blocking lines, there is no doubt the man knows how to clear the path for a running game. The Raiders were in the top ten in rushing yards for three of the four seasons he coached there with players like Justin Fargas, LaMont Jordan, and Michael Bush in the backfield.
Lynch ran for 1,306 yards on 280 carries last year. Turbin ran for 310 yards on 74 carries, and Michael ran for 175 yards on 34 carries. There is a very real chance that the Seahawks would get more rushing yards from the combination of Turbin and Michael than what Lynch produced last season. If you just took those 280 carries and doled them out at the same ratio that Turbin and Michael ran last year (69% Turbin vs 31% Michael) and at their same rate of yards per carry, you wind up with 192 carries for Turbin and 803 yards plus 88 carries for Michael and 454 yards. That is a total of 1,257 yards.
Of course it is not that simple. The point is the cupboard is not bare. Michael has a career average of nearly 5.0 yards per carry. He is a very different back from Lynch, but has tremendous upside if he can find a way to stay on the field. None of those calculations even include the possibility of a rookie running back joining the fray. The yards may not come on runs as punishing as what Lynch features. The fumbles could increase. But the breakaway runs could also increase. The likelihood of these young backs being available for all 16 games also is higher than Lynch persevering again.
If you love it, let it go
Lynch will be leaving the NFL soon one way or another. The hope here is that it is on his terms, and with his head held high. It is scary for Seahawks fans to ponder what the offense will look like without him. Plenty of pundits will tell you the whole offense relies on him and the team will take a big fall when he moves on. I am here to tell you otherwise.
The $10M the Seahawks would spend on Lynch this year could go a long ways toward helping this team transition into their next stage. Passing on great players in order to retain a player who, at best, will last one more season is only in this team’s best interest if you believe the championship window is just one more year. It is not. At least, it does not need to be if courageous decisions can be made.
This is one Seahawks fan who is hoping the last memory of Beast Mode is punishing the Packers, the Patriots, and the press.Anonymous
How to know if you are actually atracted to guys or you are just brainwashed through heteronormativity letting you believe you have to give guys a go because you have some kind of connection?
This is such a good question and it’s really important for any woman questioning their orientation/attraction. I’m going to explain the difference using three specific examples of times when attraction gets confusing, but there are a ton of different ways compulsory heterosexuality manifests, so if none of these hit on what you’re feeling, feel free to shoot me another anon.
Attraction vs. Compulsory Heterosexuality
Nervousness and Blushing
A ton of romance media and common cultural tropes have this idea that you know you’re attracted to someone if you’re nervous or blushing around them. Because of this, you might feel like you must be attracted to a man if you feel nervous around him, just because you’re experiencing the physical bodily response you’ve been told to expect, not because you actually want to date him.
Actual Attraction: You’re nervous because you’re excited to get to know someone. You find them attractive first and because you’re thinking about your attraction to them, you get self conscious because you hope they might like you too.
Compulsory Heterosexuality: You’re nervous because you are aware that he is attracted to you, and because he’s paying such close attention to you– especially if he’s pushing boundaries or getting too close into your personal space– you become self conscious because you know he’s watching you. You blush because you’re uncomfortable.
Hypothetical Attraction
Many questioning women have a hard time sorting through their attraction because of hypotheticals. Our culture, in general, disregards or challenges wlw’s attraction and it gives this anxiety that we need to know 100% that we are not and will never be attracted to men no matter what in order to claim labels.
It’s hard to do that as a young person who is just learning about themselves, flooded with “what if”s about the future. Because of this, you might feel like you can’t rule out being attracted to men because you might hypothetically be attracted to one someday. Who knows?
Actual Attraction: You imagine a hypothetical future where you end up with a man and it feels exciting and makes you feel good and hopeful and happy and right. It’s a nice feeling and is comfortable to think about. Reassuring.
Compulsory Heterosexuality: You imagine a hypothetical future where you end up with a man and it makes you feel uncomfortable, scared, sad, disappointed, wrong. It’s an upsetting thing to think about and you hope it doesn’t happen. You don’t want to end up with a man even if you feel like you could.
Sexual Fantasies
Our culture places a big emphasis on sex when it comes to orientation. Some people’s orientation includes sexual attraction and some people’s orientation doesn’t, but most of us feel like our sexual fantasies are the most important indicator of non-straight sexuality because LGBPQ+ people have been so thoroughly reduced to sexual acts and sexual objects in the homophobic culture we’ve grown up in.
Along with that, we’ve also grown up in a heteronormative and cisnormative society that repetitively teaches and reemphasizes the same singular sexual “script” for how sex is supposed to go, over and over and over. They do not teach any others, and it requires non-straight and non-cis people to invent their own sexual scripts individually and with partners.
But as a young person, when you’re aroused, your mind has a very limited template of potential narratives associated with that feeling, so many people default to the same heteronormative script in their fantasies because it’s unconscious and easy. Because of this, you might feel like you must be attracted to men because you imagine abstract situations of sex with men, even though you have absolutely no desire to sleep with men in real life.
Actual Attraction: When you fantasize about men, it is because you’re attracted to their bodies or specific men or the idea of having sex with men. You imagine qualities of their body and you like the idea of what you’re imagining. If you think about the fantasy later that day, you might feel like it’s embarrassing, but you also feel like it’s sexy.
Compulsory Heterosexuality: When you fantasize about men, it is mostly just enacting a kind of narrative. More focused on movement than features– the men in your fantasies might be faceless or blank-featured or their bodies might symbolize some emotion. You don’t really like the idea of what you’re imagining. You might not even be in the fantasy, but instead another faceless woman might be. You might even imagine yourself as the man. The narrative follows the sexual script, but the details are more vague and abstract and might even shift and change throughout the fantasy. If you think about it later that day, you might feel vaguely nauseated or uncomfortable or feel invalidated and wrong.
It’s really difficult to unroot compulsory heterosexuality. My simplest advice on getting through it is this: even if you are attracted to men, you do not need to date them if you don’t want to. If you only want to date other women, then you have the right to that. The rest is less important than the simple reality of what you want right now.While many of you are already joining us on Twitter, we just want to take a second and tell you about other ways you can follow The International.
On Flickr, you will see high quality, beautiful images covering all aspects of the event.
In that collection you will find the lead image for this blog post. It perfectly captures the moment when LGD and Dignitas flipped a coin to start their playoff for the last spot in Group A’s upper bracket. While we track the coin, the two team captains smile and look directly at each other. They know their fate isn’t decided by a coin flip but by their performance in the game.
If you prefer your images a maybe little more grainy but a little more timely, make sure to follow our Instagram feed. There you will see images the second they happen.
All of this is recapped and talked about on Twitter and our News blog. But we wanted to remind you of the visual options because sometimes you don’t need words, you just need an image to tell you everything that just happened.Albany
Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation that allows the Capital District Transportation Authority to become the de facto regulator of the region's oft-maligned patchwork of taxis.
The bill will allow municipalities to opt-in to having CDTA become the entity that administers registration and licensure of cabs. The idea is not to take those decisions out of the hands of the region's municipalities. Rather, CDTA would take on administrative duties, which would include a unified complaint process.
A blanket draft ordinance will be provided to municipalities throughout the region — and could be modified by municipalities if they so choose — which could pave the way for cabs having the same fare structures and modern conveniences, such as credit card readers.
Bill sponsors specifically highlighted the need for cab quality and consistency for travelers between Albany International Airport and the Rensselaer Train Station and their destinations.
"A little more structure is in everybody's best interest," CDTA CEO Carm Basile said after the legislation passed in late June. "Right now there is no structure. The companies do a good job of managing themselves. But I think everyone is sort of off doing their own thing and trying to do the best job that they can. I think we'll add consistency, predictability; we'll provide a system where there is no system now."
The legislation was seen as the region's consolation prize after a bill that would have allowed ride-hailing companies, such as Uber and Lyft, to operate outside of New York City failed amid tense debate and last-minute legislative changes at the end of the session.
Also among the more than two dozen bills Cuomo signed Friday is legislation that increases penalties for assaulting utility workers, terminal cleaners and process servers from a misdemeanor to a class D felony.
Cuomo vetoed legislation that would have allowed regional off-track betting corporations to divert up to 75 percent of total pari-mut |
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So what does 20 seconds of courage have to do with leveling up our lives? It comes down to 2 realizations:
REALIZATION #1: Our lives are made up of a never ending series of decisions that require less than 20 seconds of action:
What to eat for breakfast.
What workout to do at the gym.
Which school to attend.
Which job to take.
Who we sit next to on the train.
What lane to drive in.
Although our life’s path seems fairly set in stone, the direction is often set in motion as a result of a single action that took less than 20 seconds: signing a document, picking a seat, saying yes or no, swiping left or right.
Each decision can cause a new branching path in our history.
As David says in Prometheus,”Big things have small beginnings.”
REALIZATION #2: We are a species (especially us nerds) that tends to be risk averse, comfortable, and wary of doing things that scare us.
This isn’t surprising or unusual: we’re hardwired to trust our gut and be cautious of things that raise our anxiety. The decision to avoid certain things is what kept us alive during our cave-dwelling days.
In other words, wome cautious cavewoman 120,000 years ago listened to that instinct, avoided the scary noise coming out of the brush, and lived long enough to pass along her cautious genes to you today.
These days, we’re still avoiding things that scare us – not animals in the brush, but rather conversations with strangers, activities that might embarrass us, and events that are anxiety-inducing.
If we are going to get the things we actually want out of life, it’s going to require us to overcome that fear mechanism to make a decision that is counter to 120,000+ years of DNA-sequencing.
Which ain’t easy.
Enter 20 seconds of courage.
By using 20 seconds to do something you normally would have avoided, or saying YES when you normally say NO, three amazing things happen:
If it doesn’t work out, you become more resilient. You quickly learn the world didn’t end, and you are more likely to try new things in the future because failure wasn’t that bad! You quickly learn the world didn’t end, and you are more likely to try new things in the future because failure wasn’t that bad! If it DOES work out, your life is now better as a result of your targeted bravery. A relationship, a new job, a new hobby, lifelong friend, are often results of a single decision made by somebody. This is you taking action rather than waiting for fate to intervene. You NEVER have to wonder “what if?” when thinking about what could have been had you done that thing!
How 20 Seconds of Courage Can Change Your Life.
“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” – John Wayne, clearly a fan of 20 Seconds of Courage.
Here’s how to implement 20 Seconds of Courage into your life:
Identify the thing you terrified of. Put ALL of your focus into a single specific action that will take less than 20 seconds but will result in you attempting the thing you’re scared of. Work yourself up into a frenzy if you need to. Give yourself a pep talk in the mirror. Recruit a buddy if you have to.
Get scared to hell before.
Pee your pants after.
Just focus on the 20 seconds where you can make a different decision than you would have made in the past.
And then go do the damn thing:
Afraid of the free weight section at your gym? Turn on Berserker mode. Give yourself 20 seconds and walk into the section before you realize how scared you are. After your 20 second are up, you can go back to being afraid, but you’re already IN the free weight section, maybe even with a weight in hand. Might as well do the workout now, right? Who cares about the people around you – they’re too busy being self conscious anyway. Turn on Berserker mode. Give yourself 20 seconds and walk into the section before you realize how scared you are. After your 20 second are up, you can go back to being afraid, but you’re already IN the free weight section, maybe even with a weight in hand. Might as well do the workout now, right? Who cares about the people around you – they’re too busy being self conscious anyway.
Don’t think you can start your workout? Too tired? Turn on the Bloodwrath, baby! Put on a great freaking Turn on the Bloodwrath, baby! Put on a great freaking pump up song, jump around, psyche yourself up, and just GET started. Don’t worry about what happens in the 20 seconds after you get started. JUST focus on those 20 seconds that are needed to get you out of bed or out the door.
Afraid to sign up for a class? Afraid to try something new? No problem, be afraid. Sign up in those 20 seconds and make your commitment before you have a chance to back out. All of a sudden, you’re signed up and have to follow through!
No problem, be afraid. Sign up in those 20 seconds and make your commitment before you have a chance to back out. All of a sudden, you’re signed up and have to follow through! Are you typically a push over? Do you never stand up for yourself at work? Beast mode. At the next meeting, take 20 seconds to really stand up for yourself and present YOUR opinions. Work up the courage to begin the conversation with your boss about getting that raise you deserve. Once you’re in the office and the conversation has begun, you might as well keep going.
Beast mode. At the next meeting, take 20 seconds to really stand up for yourself and present YOUR opinions. Work up the courage to begin the conversation with your boss about getting that raise you deserve. Once you’re in the office and the conversation has begun, you might as well keep going. See that cute girl/guy at the coffee shop? Normally you say NOTHING, and then go home and wish you had? Give yourself 20 seconds of courage. Be scared shitless before and scared shitless after, but give yourself 20 seconds of courage: “Hey, I need to get back to my friend/work, but I saw you from across the room and think you’re really cute. Can I buy you a cup of coffee sometime?” At the very least, give them a drive-by compliment. You’ll never have to wonder “what if…”
Chinese philosopher Laozi once said, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
A life where you actually get what you want and deserve begins with 20 seconds of courage. Make the step. Approach that girl/guy. Sign up for that club/class/speaking engagement.
It’s how Jaime, after 3 decades of struggle, managed to change her life. It started with 20 seconds of courage and a single decision:
I’ve used 20 seconds of courage dozens of time in my life too.
Sometimes with health or fitness, sometimes with relationships, and other times with my own life level up quests, which I discuss in my book, Level Up Your Life.
I’m most proud of the time I used 20 seconds of courage to perform on a street corner in NYC:
A post shared by Steve Kamb (@stevekamb) on Sep 9, 2015 at 5:29am PDT
“Steve this is great. But I’m still cautious and Matt Damon is cool and all, but give me more stories I can learn from regarding 20 seconds of courage!”
Fine! Here are my favorite examples of 20 seconds of courage:
Super Mario Bros: Star Power makes Mario invincible for a short amount of time. He’s normal before and after, but in those few seconds he can cover some serious ground and wipe out a LOT of Koopas.
Star Power makes Mario invincible for a short amount of time. He’s normal before and after, but in those few seconds he can cover some serious ground and wipe out a LOT of Koopas. Transformers: Some transformers had the ability to transform from a robot into an animal form, just for a time. This was referred to as “Beast Mode!”
Some transformers had the ability to transform from a robot into an animal form, just for a time. This was referred to as “Beast Mode!” Ancient Viking lore: Berserkers were Norse warriors who worked themselves into a rage before battle, and fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury.
Berserkers were Norse warriors who worked themselves into a rage before battle, and fought in a nearly uncontrollable, trance-like fury. Lord Urthstripe in the Redwall Series: A badger lord who goes into “bloodwrath” mode to vanquish his foes.
A badger lord who goes into “bloodwrath” mode to vanquish his foes. Will Ferrell in Old School: He puts together less than 20 seconds of pure genius in his debate with James Carville. Sure, afterwards he has no recollection of his answer (and before he was probably freaking out), but this 20 seconds saved his fraternity:
The 20 seconds Of Courage Challenge!
Today, I’m issuing a 20 Seconds of Courage Challenge.
You have 7 Days. Not to watch a VHS tape, but to use 20 Seconds of Courage to do something you’re scared of.
Everybody is fighting their own demons and chasing their own dragons (not a euphemism),
Going to that part of the gym that you’re afraid of.
Signing up for a new class.
Taking more initiative at work.
Doing a new workout/exercise.
Talking to a complete stranger.
Saying yes to something you’d normally say no to.
Eating a new vegetable that you’d normally avoid.
Leading an army of Transformers against the Decepticons.
Change can happen in an instant, and your life’s path can change as a result of any single decision you make. And I think this quote paints that picture better than most:
“Easy choice, hard life. Hard choice, easy life.”
Fortune favors the bold, and doing shit that scares us is often the only way to actually get what we want out of life.
So here’s how to not let that fear keep you prisoner: 20 Seconds of Courage!
Here’s how to participate:
Pick something you want to do but have been too scared to attempt.
Freak the F out before you do the thing.
Muster up 20 seconds of courage and take that one action.
Pee your pants after (optional).
Leave a comment below on how it goes and what you learned.
Just 20 seconds!
-Steve
PS: This week’s Rebel Hero is Mike, who took his daughter and niece on an epic hike in his Nerd Fitness gear:
Want to be the next Rebel Hero? Send a photo of you doing something epic in your NF Gear to contact@nerdfitness.com so we can feature you in future posts!
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photos: berserker, watch, fire poi, beast mode,The Colorado Department of Corrections will pay $3m to the family of a mentally ill prisoner who died in a state facility while guards watched and after a nurse ignored him.
Christopher Lopez, 35, died at San Carlos correctional facility in Pueblo in 2013. He was suffering from hyponatremia, a condition that occurs when there is not enough sodium in the blood, but prison staff ignored his seizures and shackled him to a restraint chair, thinking he was being intentionally unresponsive.
Lopez, who had schizophrenia, was incarcerated multiple times for minor offenses. A lawsuit that his mother, Juanita Lopez, filed against the department in June suggests that the hyponatremia could have been caused by the consumption of too much psychotropic medication and asserts that “almost all instances” of the condition are treatable with prompt medical care. The $3m payment is a result of the settlement of that suit.
The incident was documented in six hours of video that shows him suffering from two grand mal seizures and labored breathing, which prison staff ignored. At one point, mental health clinician Cheryl Neumeister can be heard saying “I can see you breathing” to Lopez, who was already dead. The audio also captured staffers talking about mundane topics, like shopping, as well as joking with each other.
Neumeister is one of three employees who were fired in the days following Lopez’s death. Prison officials disciplined five others connected to the incident.
“The death of Christopher Lopez was easily preventable and was caused by a mentality that the lives of prisoners are worthless. Hopefully, this settlement sends a message not just to Colorado prison authorities but to prison and jail authorities all over the country that the human beings they incarcerate must be treated like human beings,” the lawyer for Lopez’s family, David Lane, said in a statement Thursday.
Prison staff noticed Lopez lying on the floor of his cell around 3.30am on 17 March 2013. Thinking he was intentionally not responding, prison staff removed him from his cell, covered his head with a spit hood and put his body into a restraint chair. He had been removed from the chair but was in shackles facedown on the floor when he died around 9.10am.
Prison officials did not inform the state health department of his death for 17 months, though state law requires inmate deaths to be reported within one day. A call from The Denver Post about the incident prompted the Colorado Department of Health and Environment to open an investigation.
‘We wish to reiterate that the Department does not condone the actions or omissions of the employees involved. Their actions were well outside of the Department’s established training, policies and practices,” the department of corrections said in a statement.
US correctional facilities are overwhelmed by the amount of prisoners suffering from a mental illness – in 44 of the 50 states and Washington DC, a state prison or jail holds more individuals with serious mental illness than the largest remaining state psychiatric hospital, according to an April 2014 Treatment Advocacy Center report.Research Garden Design Browse photos, get design ideas & see the hottest plants
Make an Escape to the Gardens of Alcatraz Thanks to volunteers in the Bay Area, the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, the Garden Conservancy, and the National Park Service, the gardens at Alcatraz are now flourishing after 40 years of neglect. By Anne Balogh Share:
With good soil and carefully selected plants, a garden can thrive anywhere, even on the Rock. Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay has a delightful surprise in store for visitors who expect to see nothing but abandoned prison cells and a stark, barren landscape. They will also get to experience the Rock’s softer side—flourishing gardens, tide pools, bird colonies, and stunning views of the bay. Thanks to a decade-long partnership of the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy, Garden Conservancy, and National Park Service, the historic Gardens of Alcatraz have been fully restored and are now alive with fragrant roses, fig trees, wildflowers, and colorful succulents.
The gardens at Alcatraz needed tough plants that could survive with little water or care. Many of the species were imported from other Mediterranean climates and flourished despite 40 years of neglect after the prison closed. Today, volunteer crews from the bay area work with Garden Conservancy staff to help plant and maintain the restored gardens. Photo by: Elizabeth Byers.
“Our hope is that the beauty and complex nature of these gardens will become better known,” says Greg Moore, president and CEO of the Parks Conservancy. “The Alcatraz Gardens project is a tribute to those who tended the gardens in the past, as well as to those who work to preserve and tend them today.”
Alcatraz was first inhabited in the mid-1800s, when it was used as an army fortress and then transitioned into a military prison in 1861. In an effort to cultivate the barren island, the military imported soil from nearby Angel Island and the Presidio, and as early as 1865, army officers began planting Victorian-style gardens. In the 1920s, the military and the California Spring Blossom and Wildflower Association initiated an island-wide beautification project and prisoners planted hundreds of trees and shrubs and many pounds of flower seed. In 1933, when the Federal Bureau of Prisons took control of Alcatraz, they were surprised to find the island adorned by hillside terraces, a rose garden, and a greenhouse. Under the guidance of California horticulturists, inmates were permitted to continue working the gardens, and they eventually transformed the island’s western slopes.
The officers’ row gardens provided cutting flowers for the guards living on Alcatraz. In this photo, Calendula, Centranthus, and bearded iris bring cheer to the Rock. Photo by: Shelagh Fritz.
After the prison closed in 1963, the gardens were abandoned for 40 years and the landscape deteriorated. In 2003, the Garden Conservancy, the National Park Service, and the Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy joined forces to restore the gardens to their original glory. The ambitious project included removing 40 years of overgrowth and decay, gathering historic documentation, and developing an ambitious volunteer garden program. More than 200 species of ornamental plants survived the long period of neglect and the challenging growing environment. Historic plantings that were lost have been replaced by new low-maintenance plants with water needs more suitable to the harsh climate conditions.
Many succulents, such as the Aeonium seen here, have been able to thrive despite the challenging environment. More than 200 species of ornamental plants survived the harsh growing conditions. Photo by: Elizabeth Byers.
“Vintage images and historical records of the Alcatraz gardens from the mid-1800s through 1963 help guide our continuing restoration efforts,” says Frank Dean, general superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. “The Gardens of Alcatraz are a wonderful and unexpected surprise for the 1.4 million annual visitors to the island.”
The Prisoner Gardens, on the west side of Alcatraz, were restored in 2009. The recreated birdbath is surrounded by Salvia, Pelargonium, Osteospermum, Erysimum ‘Bowles Mauve', and Tropaeolum. Photo by: Shelagh Fritz.
The Gardens of Alcatraz are open to the public year-round, but the best time for viewing is from January to September, especially during the spring. Seven key gardens have been restored, including the Main Road Landscape, Rose Terrace, Officers’ Row Gardens, Warden’s Garden, Prisoner Gardens, Cellhouse slope, and West Lawn and Terraces. Docent-led tours are available on Fridays and Sundays. For more information and to take a virtual tour, visit the Gardens of Alcatraz.
The gardens tended by the prisoners of Alcatraz became a refuge from the tensions in the cell house. A view of San Francisco can be seen across the bay. Photo by: Shelagh Fritz.
In the morning light, the Officers’ Row Gardens are awash in soft pastels, including white Centranthus, purple bearded iris, pink Nicotiana, and roses. Across San Francisco Bay is a view of Angel Island. Photo by: Shelagh Fritz.
Rose Terrace and Greenhouse Complete with a new greenhouse, propagation tables, and composting space, the rose terrace is once again functioning as the center of garden activities at Alcatraz. Photo by: Elizabeth Byers.
See more gardens in the Bay AreaThe NFL's gaggle of fashion police have taken a swipe at Colin Kaepernick.
The San Francisco 49ers quarterback told reporters Thursday that he's been fined $10,000 by the league for wearing unauthorized gear after last week's win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
Kaepernick met with scribes after the game while wearing Beats by Dre headphones around his neck, which flew in the face of the NFL's exclusive agreement with Bose. The league wasn't swayed by the fact that the gear was pink (as pictured below) in a nod to Breast Cancer Awareness.
Asked if Beats by Dre -- who signed the quarterback to an endorsement deal -- would pick up the tab, Kaepernick was vague, saying: "We'll let that be unanswered."
The latest Around The NFL Podcast recaps the Colts' win over the Texans and previews every other Week 6 game. Find more Around The NFL content on NFL Now.The year, we're sure you know, is ending. And with 2016 nine days away, Rolling Stone had a chat with Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor about his thoughts on 2015.
Asked for an opinion on Justin Bieber, Taylor quickly brushed by Purpose to talk about the pop he did interact with this year:
"Honestly, the only real pop music that I hear is through my kids. There was a lot of Babymetal being played in my house this year. There was a lot of 5 Seconds of Summer, who I actually got to meet not too long ago, and apparently they're massive Slipknot fans, which I did not see coming. And they were really, really cool guys. I couldn't name one of their songs, but I've heard them. I'm just so out of the loop when it comes to pop music, because it all sounds the same. It's all the same chord progressions with the same quirky chorus, or the same hip-hop beat that took 21 people sitting in a room to come up with. It bores me."Now that the Kochs have bought themselves the Kansas statehouse and governor's office, they're out for the state courts.
According to the Lawrence Journal-World, legislators are "threatening to cut off all funding for the judicial branch of state government if the Kansas Supreme Court strikes down a law enacted last year spelling out how chief judges in the district courts are selected."
Got that, Kansas Supreme Court? Do what they want or the budget gets it.
It is an entirely partisan effort, intended to control the courts and their decision about school funding. When Kansas legislators passed funding for the courts, they inserted a provision stripping the Supreme Court of the right to appoint chief judges. They then inserted a non-severabiility clause, which means that if any part of the legislation is struck down by the courts, all of it is, including funding.
If the courts don't rule in favor of the KochPublicans, they cut off their own paychecks. No pressure there, guys.
Rep. John Carmichael, of Wichita, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said he believes the language is meant to send another message to the courts. "It leads me to only one conclusion, and that is that the Legislature is attempting once again to hold a gun to the head of the courts in an attempt to intimidate the courts into ruling in the school finance case in a way that pleases some members of the Legislature," Carmichael said. Carmichael, an attorney who practices in Wichita, said the selection of judges has been a hot issue in the Sedgwick County District Court, where judges are elected in partisan races. For several years, he said, the chief judge of that court was a Democrat while the majority of judges on the bench were Republicans.
Republicans, of course, deny that it's political at all, and make their usual empty gestures toward "fixing" the funding issues if their measure is found to be unconstitutional.
We all know what that means. And if that ruling should come when the legislature is not in session, well, that's just too bad.
↓ Story continues below ↓
So much for an independent judiciary. Kansas, when are you going to take your state back?February's been a good month for the Cleveland Cavaliers. The team is 6-2, with nice wins over the Los Angeles Clippers, Miami Heat, and Washington Wizards, and they've gotten back to within half a game of the three-seed in the Eastern Conference. The defense has finally climbed out of the bottom ten in the league in efficiency, and the offense is as glorious as ever.
There have been many factors contributing to the Cavs' sustained success. They've been consistently healthy this month, minus Shawn Marion's hip issues. They've played a relatively easy schedule, with the Clippers, Heat, and Wizards all struggling, and the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers also on their docket. They're shooting 37.5 percent from three as a team for the month. And probably most importantly, Kevin Love's been playing really well.
Love's had his struggles this year, for certain. He's still posting his lowest per-36 numbers for scoring and rebounding since his rookie season. Love has been a target for criticism the entire season, from fans, media, and his teammates. Heck, it was just barely over a month ago that Love's play forced William Bohl to start talking to himself in a roundtable. It feels like we're a long ways away from Love averaging 26/13/4 last season.
And if you look at Love's base stats for February, there's not much that's been impressive. Through seven February contests (he missed the Bulls game after getting poked in the eye by Mario Chalmers against the Heat), Love is averaging a season-low 14.6 points per game, 10.0 rebounds per game, and 2.6 assists per game. His usage rate has been 20.4 percent, which seems ridiculous given his talents, and besides going off against the Lakers for 32 points and 10 rebounds, he's had some poor scoring performances, including two five-point efforts in the 76ers and Pacers games that sandwiched the Lakers performance. So why did I claim Love's play has been helping drive the Cavs this month? Because a deeper look shows that Love's play is currently at its most efficient.
Love's posted his best shooting numbers of the season in February. Here are his shooting numbers by month, showing February's been his strongest overall showing:*
For purposes of sample size, I'm combining October and November in this article, creating a 15-game sample instead of a random two-game sample and a 13-game sample.
PPG FG% 3PT% FT% TS% Oct & Nov (15G) 17.3 43.9 37.3 84.0 57.6 December (16G) 16.3 41.7 31.6 83.3 59.2 January (16G) 17.9 42.6 30.6 77.4 53.8 February (7G) 14.6 45.5 43.8 72.0 58.0 Season (54G) 16.8 43.0 34.2 80.6 55.5
Love's posting his best field goal percentage and three-point percentage over a sustained stretch in February, and while his attempts have dropped slightly (11 FGAs per game in February compared to 13 FGAs per game for the season), he's hitting much more efficiently, especially from three-point range. Given where his numbers were in December and January, the rise in efficiency is welcome, even if it has come with Love being less involved in the offense.
Love is also rebounding at a better rate than he has all season. While his per-game numbers are again down, he's posting his best total rebound rate of the season, at 18.1 percent. This has come because Love's been better on the defensive glass, grabbing 8.9 defensive rebounds per game, again his season-best for a month. The Cavs have been a league-average defensive rebounding team this season, despite the rebounding talent on the roster, but Love's been getting better over the past two months after an absent November (6.8 DREBs/game), and that's helped the Cavs both on the glass and overall on defense.
Defensively, Love's February has been quite good. Love's three most commonly used lineups this month have defensive ratings under 90 points allowed/100 possessions, and in an admittedly small sample-size, the Cavs have been 19.2 points/100 possessions worse defensively with Love on the bench in February. A good amount of this is influenced by time spent with Timofey Mozgov; the Cavs' DRtg is 87.9 with both Love and Mozgov on the floor and 106.1 with Love but no Mozgov in February, per nbawowy.com. However, we shouldn't just discount the effectiveness of this pairing as being all Mozgov's doing. Love and Mozgov look like they've developed solid defensive chemistry. Love's been a good post-up defender this season per Synergy data (81st percentile), and he's gotten particularly good at funneling his man into Mozgov help defense in the post. Watch the first clip of Mozgov's highlights against the Heat for an example:
Love sets himself in front of this Bosh face-up, and when Bosh drives left, Love forces Bosh away from the middle of the lane and into Mozgov, lurking on the weak side. As a result of this chemistry, lineups with this two-man unit have allowed just 50.9 percent shooting in the restricted area, per NBA.com's media stats page. It's something to monitor as we continue on towards the end of the season.
But seriously, it's not just playing with Mozgov when it comes to Love's defense. Player-tracking data has backed up that Love's been better defensively in February too. Love's opponents are shooting five percent worse than average when he's defending them, per SportVU data, and he's been forcing a worse shooting percentage on all types of shots that are tracked. Interestingly, Love's been defending more away from the basket, where he's been pretty good, allowing opponents to shoot 7.5 percent worse from 15 feet, which has accounted for 45.6 percent of his total defensive possessions. For the season, Love's defended beyond 15 feet on 34 percent of his possessions, allowing opponents to shoot 1.2 percent worse than their average. Love's been a better individual defender in February, and it appears that being asked to defend more away from the basket, where he can be more aggressive and doesn't have as much of his neurotic fouling apathy that comes when defending at the rim. Sticking Love on a big with better shooting touch and letting Mozgov, Tristan Thompson, and Kendrick Perkins handle the rim seems like it could be the answer for the Cavs' interior defense.
Love may not be putting up the gaudy numbers that we were used to when he was with the Minnesota Timberwolves. But despite his early struggles and controversy about his relationship with LeBron James, Love has been incredibly effective over the past month. His offense has become more about quality over quantity, and defensively, he's contributed to the recent God-status of the Cavs' D thanks to his individual defense and budding relationship with Mozgov. If he keeps playing like this, it won't matter that his scoring is down. The Cavs will be getting an incredibly efficient Love, and that's a Love that this team can absolutely succeed with.Written by Ben
Last updated on 2015-12-24
Note: This guide has fewer step-by-step instructions. Supercannon II is a more advanced water gun. Building Supercannon II usually requires some sort of previous experience with PVC, so I'll assume my readers are familiar with PVC. If you are not, please read some of the tutorials in my air pressure homemade water gun guide to learn a thing or two. I do not explain everything in detail here and if this is your first attempt, you will miss important details about cutting/preparing PVC pipe, solvent welding, and safety in the APH guide.
Supercannon II is not intended to be shot at people or used in water wars. Unless your friends want to be shot with something with power equivalent to a small fire truck, don't use Supercannon II in a water war at full pressure with the full sized nozzle. Even if you build Supercannon II properly such that it has no risk of bursting, you still have the risk of the stream causing damage to someone or some property in some way. Large streams can cause blindness and internal bruising. Supercannon II is not meant to be shot at people ever. If you choose to ignore this warning, you do so at your own risk.
Supercannon II is the most powerful homemade water gun made yet. It boasts unparalleled range and water output on the same scale as a fire hose. Supercannon II performs nearly exactly like a fire hose.
Supercannon II was designed to improve upon the original Supercannon, which did not work very well. The main difference between the two is the Supercannon II uses a piston, while the original Supercannon used a tube that went to the bottom of a PVC chamber. The piston or tube were necessary because the air always floats on top of the water, so to fire a water gun at an angle without either solution, only compressed air would shoot from the gun. The original Supercannon had leaks and unusual problems with getting the water out the tube, so that idea was scrapped in favor of a piston design.
Shot images
My brother and I took some photos of Supercannon II shooting.
Performance statistics
Effective range @ 100 PSI: 73 feet*
Last drop range: not measured because it doesn't matter
Effective range with 5% glycerin @ 95 PSI: 78 feet
Water output @ 100 PSI (fire hose nozzle): 135X
Water output @ 60 PSI (no nozzle): 542 - 812X
* I only measure the range until the end of the puddle. Most other people use last drop, which is misleading because the last drop can't soak anyone and often is 5 or more feet ahead of the puddle. That is my "effective range" measurement. The range is only useful for the part that will deposit major amounts of water... not 10 mL 5 feet ahead of that.
Comparatively, Supercannon II blows every other water gun out of the water. Supercannon II compares most closely to a fire hose. A fire hose has water output of 4.0 L/s approximately, which converts to 133X. Compare a fire hose's 133X to Supercannon II's 135X—the figures are identical! Supercannon II is a fire hose.
Performance on graphs
I realize a lot of people new to water guns might read the statistics and think "That's cool, but I don't know what's good." In the graphs below I compare the performance of Supercannon II against other popular water guns. You can see the difference in performance very clearly.
The graph above shows Supercannon II's range compared against the range of other water guns. You can easily see that it is over twice as far as most water guns, and 20 feet more than the most powerful manufactured one, the CPS 2000.
What is more startling however is the output graph. Note that the scale above is logarithmic, that is, each notch means 10 times as much as the last notch. If we did the scale with normal axises, simply put, you wouldn't be able to see the competition. Supercannon II performs at about 10 times as much flow as the APH, and 20 times as much flow as the CPS 2000. A linear-axis graph follows.
Materials
The list below is approximately what I used. You can and I do suggest making changes based upon what is available to you and what you prefer.
1 1/2 inch NPT female threaded PVC ball valve
3 1 1/2 inch NPT male threaded adapters
teflon tape
2 1/4 inch 4 inch long bolts
2 1/4 inch washers
2 1/4 inch nuts
1/2 inch PVC pipe
3/4 inch PVC pipe
1 1/2 inch PVC pipe
4 inch PVC pipe (pressure rated)
1 1/2 inch fire hose nozzle (McMaster-Carr part number 6424T62)
2 Buna-N piston cups (McMaster-Carr part number 9411K28)
1/2 inch PVC check valve
Male air coupler
2 female 1/4 inch to 1/2 inch male threaded bushing
1/4 inch NPT air pressure gauge
1/2 threaded coupling
1/2 inch PVC ball valve
2 1/2 inch male threaded adapter
2 1/2 inch tees
1/2 inch threaded female to 1 1/2 inch male bushing
2 1 1/2 inch female to 3 inch male bushings
2 3 inch female to 4 inch female reducers
1/2 inch bolt about 3 inches long
2 1/2 inch metal fender washers
2 1/2 inch rubber fender washers
2 1/2 inch washers
1/2 inch spacer
1/2 inch nut
Vaseline (petroleum jelly)
Loctite
The tools this water gun requires are a drill (either a hand drill or drill press will be adequate), a 1/4 inch drill bit, a hacksaw, an air compressor, a wrench, and preferably a clamp.
Construction
The first part of Supercannon II I constructed was the valve assembly. Brass valves are easier to open, but, they are far more expensive and heavy. I choose a plastic ball valve that would be hard to turn if I didn't add a torque arm. The torque arm makes the valve extremely easy to turn while saving some money.
To construct the torque arm, cut a length of 3/4 inch pipe as long as you want the torque arm. Get the 1/4 inch nuts, washers, and bolts and the valve itself. Drill a hole about in the center of one of the sides of the ball valve's current handle. Drill another hole near the end of the PVC pipe in the center.
Put the bolt through the two drilled holes and use the washer and nut on the other end to put it on more permanently. This procedure allows you to make aligned holes very easily. Now, drill straight though both the PVC pipe and the ball valve's handle like you were doing both at the same time. Look at the image above if you are confused.
After drilling the holes, put the bolt, washer, and nut on to finish the handle. Tighten the nuts on pretty good, but not good enough to break the ball valve's existing handle.
To further quicken valve opening, you also can lubricate the valve with some spray silicon lubricant. Close the valve, spray the lubricant on the ball part, spread it, and open and close the valve in rapid succession to spread the lubricant over the parts of the valve. Wipe off excess lubricant.
The image above shows all of the non-piston parts of Supercannon II except for the pressure gauge and the bushing used to attach it. Compared against other water guns, Supercannon II is remarkably simple in concept, involving no pump and no water reservoir.
The 4 inch PVC pipe was cut about 4 feet long. Think about how much water you want in your water tank. With a 1:1 water to air ratio, approximately half the volume of the pipe |
Muslim Brotherhood members had been charged with “inciting the killing and torture of protesters in front of the Etihadeya (presidential) palace”.
The charges relate to the deaths of about a dozen people in violent clashes outside the presidential palace last December after Mursi enraged protesters with a decree expanding his powers.
Egypt has been in a state of upheaval since the army removed Mursi following mass protests against his rule and then launched a tough crackdown against his Brotherhood, killing hundreds at protest camps and arresting about 2,000.
On Wednesday, Minister of Social Solidarity Ahmed al-Baree dissolved the Muslim Brotherhood, acting on a court order, a spokesman said, adding that the group had used their offices to store weapons. The Brotherhood denies the allegations.After ages of abandonment, the stronghold of the Elemental Lords is found once more!
The forces of the four great Elemental Lords were cast down from their place of supremacy an age ago, their works destroyed and their followers scattered… but now, with the help of intrepid adventurers exploring their long-lost stronghold in search of treasure and glory, they will awaken!
AL 7: The Elemental Lords Awaken! is the latest release from Purple Duck Games for the popular Dungeon Crawl Classics game system. It can be played as a sequel to AL 6: Playing the Game (a 0-level funnel) or stand alone as an intriguing adventure for 1st level DCC characters.
The Elemental Lords Awaken! includes a great map, adventure for 1st level characters, rules for elemental imp familiars, and begins the quest for the powerful parts of the quadrelement key! The restored base can be used as a home-base for questing adventurers seeking to return the Lords to glory…get your copy of AL 7: The Elemental Lords Awaken! today, from the morose minions at Purple Duck Games!Welcome to this College Football Offseason Column™.
Around here back in 2011 these types of columns were mostly about Tatgate, a scandal which delivered brand new - often fictitious - but always terrible and meaty twists to break down every day. That got old and sad very quickly.
Fast-forward to 2015 and offseason column frequently means batting around our three Heisman-caliber quarterbacks who all plan on starting this fall. Jesus once fed 5,000 hungry men with only a few loaves of bread, two fish and a series of blog posts about Braxton Miller transferring. We live in miraculous times.
However, when you aren't equipped with a scandal or have Unprecedented Quarterback Controversy fatigue, this is how you're customarily fed by writers during the offseason:
Lists of bests. They're futile, mildly-provocative and laced with clickbait.
That one linked above (tantalizing you with a sexy Ohio State teaser) is of the dreaded slideshow variety and begins with Maryland at #14 - which means it takes you a dozen clicks to find out they have the Buckeyes' uniforms ranked third behind Penn State's and Michigan's.
They in this case and most others like it is just one guy with a deadline. It's his opinion riding atop the Athlon brand. See, there's no Coaches Poll to whine about so he's done you the courtesy of creating this list to disagree with and scrutinize. It's a public service, albeit unneeded.
That's because you already know which B1G team has the best uniforms - it's Ohio State's CFP ones from last season that were perfect in every single way, which is why they won't be wearing them again. You don't need a stupid slideshow to confirm what you already know is true.
Clicking all the way through slideshows is bad. if you do this you should feel bad.
But you still always click on Best-Of list slideshows because it's the offseason. You're starving. Sometimes you click all the way through them, artificially inflating the advertising rates for mediocre web sites and keeping them in business. This is very bad and you should feel bad.
Since we're scandal-free, tired of Ohio State quarterback articles and enjoy lists of bests so much I'll reluctantly engage in perpetuating these Internet herpes - but on a couple of conditions: first, you won't have to click through any pages or endure a slideshow. Your friends who operate this web site are committed to keeping it a slideshow-free community.
Similarly, if there was an 11W telephone hotline an actual human would answer it on the first ring and you wouldn't be forced to listen to a long list of options, as some of them have changed. Those options haven't changed. They never fucking change. It's a lie. Automated attendants are the slideshow of telephony and it's one of the main reasons why people don't use phones anymore.
Second, we can skip ranking Ohio State against its college football brethren in these lists. We already know where the Buckeyes rank with you. Hooray Eleven Warriors says the Horseshoe is the best stadium in the Big Ten! Share if you agree. Whew, that's a grueling exercise.
Okay, let's list!
BEST THEME SONG
You will remember meeeeeeeeeeee remember meeeeeeeeeee for centurieeeeeeeees
Yeah, the winner here is Fallout Boy. Super lame Fallout Boy, overplayed Fallout Boy, incredibly grating Fallout Boy, composers of the screamy jingle you were repeatedly subjected to as Ohio State won 13 consecutive games including its last couple against the previously #1 and #2 teams in the country Fallout Boy. That Fallout Boy.
Had ESPN chosen a baby elephant belching over the sound of two Korean barbers fighting each other for a pair of rusty scissors for its 2014 season theme song, that would occupy this space. That trio lost out to Fallout Boy, and its queefcore anthem will be in our hearts forever. Thrill by association.
Previously ESPN hired Eminem to provide the soundtrack, and before that it used a bizarre collaboration between Perry Farrell, 50 Cent and Kelly Rowland. It's going to be someone else for 2015. Maybe they'll revisit the elephant/barbers idea.
Honorable mention: Bubba Sparxxx's Back in the Mud. Big n' Rich stole your empire, buddy.
BEST B1G MASCOT
This is an ass-kicking and shouldn't be controversial at all. After Goldie, the rest in order:
IOWA - Herky
NORTHWESTERN - Student who inexplicably has a job offer prior to graduating
SPARTY - Sparty
WISCONSIN - Bucky
NEBRASKA - Lil Red
RUTGERS - Fat Darrell
ILLINOIS - OneTouch™ Ultra Blood Glucose Monitor
MICHIGAN - General Studies (pictured)
PURDUE - BTN Check-Cashing Welfare Queen
PENN STATE - Creepy Giant Hand Puppet
MARYLAND - Delicious Crabcake
INDIANA - Tom Crean
BEST B1G FIGHT SONG
Purdue's fight song Hurt is the clear-cut winner, capturing the true spirit of West Lafayette and boundless energy of Northwest Indiana like no other B1G song outside of Buckeye Battle Cry. The Iowa Victory Polka In Heaven There is No Beer merits mention should be enjoyed by everyone without restrictions.
Every other song played by an opposing team's marching band is bad. Remember, fight songs are played when teams score, which makes them their O-Face theme music. Gross.
BEST RIVALRY
First day back on campus for #UConnFootball! And just 130 days until the next Civil Conflict with @UCF_Football! pic.twitter.com/RgOkXiob0T — UConn Football (@UConnFootball) June 1, 2015
As One Direction famously sang - it's not even real, that's what makes you beautiful. UConn-UCF is an instant classic, even if one of the teams doesn't know it yet.
Best of the Rest: USC vs. UCLA because everyone is the home team, Florida State vs. Cognitive Dissonance, Lane Kiffin vs. Just Running the Damn Ball, Indiana vs. Bowl Eligibility.
BEST Jedd Fisch Resumé Omissions
Michigan covered most of the important stuff - but there's so much more to this legend; this pillar of the assistant coaching community that shouldn't be glossed over:
1. Assistant coach for the Houston Texans during their undefeated season, 2001.
2. Born on Cinco de Mayo, just like Bishop from Aliens.
3. QB Coach for the worst playoff team in NFL history.
4. Worked under two Super Bowl coaches during seasons after which their entire staffs got fired.
5 (tie). OC for Minnesota's 100th-ranked offense, 2009.
5 (tie). OC for Miami's 70th-ranked offense, 2011.
5 (tie). OC for the NFL's 31st-ranked offense, 2013 and 2014. #back2back
HYPOCRITICAL BONUS: TOP FIVE ZACH SMITH CHAMPIONSHIP RINGS
Trying to be objective about this, but the Florida rings look like they were all procured from a coin-operated vending machine in front of a Publix and delivered to each player and coach in their original plastic bubble casings.
The Ohio State ones are clearly better. Share if you agree!TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - Florida authorities vowed on Friday to capture a monkey last seen running through a Tampa neighborhood that they described as “three-foot tall, brown and fast.”
A resident initially reported seeing a fleet-footed monkey running through a yard in the middle of a sunny Thanksgiving Day afternoon, Tampa police said.
An hour later, another caller spotted a monkey about a dozen blocks away, near a bridge on a road that is several miles (km) from downtown Tampa.
“There is no probable cause for this monkey’s arrest, however, we will work tirelessly to apprehend him,” Tampa police said in a Facebook post.
Both sightings occurred near Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo, whose officials told police that its monkeys were all accounted for.
With some on social media questioning whether the primate was a monkey or a chimpanzee, Tampa police clarified that the exact species was unknown, but that the sightings appeared to be credible.BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank’s (ECB) plan to test the health of the euro zone’s largest lenders without the means to plug any holes it uncovers risks foiling what some see as the bloc’s final chance to put its financial crisis behind it.
European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi waits for the start of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee meeting in Brussels September 23, 2013. REUTERS/Yves Herman
Unlike in the United States, where rapid infusions of capital put its banks quickly back on track, Europe’s financial system remains frozen, with lenders in countries such as Greece, Spain and Italy hurt by weak demand and soured loans.
To break the “doom loop” between indebted European countries and their banks and reassure investors that stressed euro zone lenders would be dealt with on a regional level, a banking union, with the ECB as supervisor, is viewed as crucial.
“The U.S. turned the leaf on its banking crisis in 2009,” said Francesco Papadia, former head of the ECB’s financial market operations, who helped guide the central bank’s management of the financial crisis.
“Now the euro area has a great opportunity, probably the last one, to achieve this.”
But the political will to forge full banking union has waned as the heat of the crisis has passed, and German reluctance to back a central fund that would potentially come to the rescue of any troubled euro zone bank means that the ECB is preparing to take on its role from late next year in a dangerous vacuum.
The ECB, both for its own reputation and the future of the bloc, is under pressure to ensure that banks undergo a thorough health check that will force them to recognize hidden losses.
But without a pan-euro-zone bailout fund, such tests could highlight problems without a convincing solution, potentially undermining the banking union project before it has fully taken off.
“To really solve the asset quality concerns, you need to have a backstop. If you find a gap, you need to be confident you can fix it,” said Ronny Rehn, analyst at Keefe, Bruyette & Woods (KBW) in London.
“If you don’t have this, then we might have to lie to ourselves again and say there is no problem because we couldn’t afford to fund the problem.”
CONFIDENCE OR COMPROMISE
The ECB wants to check the health of big banks, under a so-called Asset Quality Review (AQR), before taking over their supervision. This will also help shape wider testing of banks outside the euro zone, overseen by the European Banking Authority (EBA).
In Frankfurt, home of the ECB, there is growing resignation that a pan-euro-zone backstop is unlikely and that countries may be left to prop up their banks alone, as they were when the financial crisis struck.
“We’ll have to have national backstops in place,” ECB President Mario Draghi told the European Parliament earlier this week. “If it (single resolution scheme) is not there in place, it will be up to the national authorities... which is suboptimal, of course.”
Such a compromise exasperates bankers, who want confidence restored to the sector so their cost of funding drops.
“The ECB, EBA and EU are all saying that the AQR and stress tests will be stringent,” said a credit banker at a large London-based investment bank. “It’s easy for those to say that; they don’t have to come up with the money.
“It’s the government I want to hear it from. I want to hear from the government what happens if banks fail.”
With confidence in European banks still low, the sector is valued at a significant discount to U.S. peers, trading at around par with the book value of its tangible assets compared with around 1.7 times for the United States, according to an analysis by KBW.
Europe’s top 42 banks are already about 70 billion euros short of meeting new international capital norms, even before taking into account that they have often set aside too little to cover unpaid loans or an economic slump.
“We see a problem primarily in Spain and Italy, because that’s where you have a housing market that’s still in freefall,” said Jon Peace, an analyst with Nomura. “The small banks have bigger problems than the large ones.”
OUT ON A LIMB
Germany, the euro zone’s strongest economy, which has shouldered much of the burden for country bailouts, does not want a scheme that leaves it on the hook. That aversion is unlikely to change, whatever the outcome of current government coalition talks.
Berlin has suggested that a bank resolution agency should only have power over the euro zone’s largest lenders. That would reduce any potential bill to be shared by the 17 euro zone countries, but such a deal could mean that small risky banks, at the heart of the current crisis, slip through the net.
The absence of a financial backstop to help banks once their problems are laid bare may prompt the ECB to delay the tests of banks altogether, a move that could postpone supervision and damage the euro zone’s image internationally.
The situation would be even worse if haggling between EU governments delays agreement - now penciled in for December - on the ‘resolution’ framework to cope with laggard banks.
That would have a knock-on effect on talks to finalize the regime with the European Parliament, potentially leaving the ECB out on a limb when it takes on supervision, as now planned, towards the end of next year.
“We will not start before governments have agreed on a backstop - emergency funding for capital holes - which we might find in the balance sheets,” Yves Mersch, the member of the ECB’s executive board in charge of supervision, said on Monday, referring to the bank balance sheet checks.
“This has nothing to do with sitting something out, but with responsibility,” he said. “This assessment could throw us back into crisis, without clarifying the financing beforehand.”
Putting off the day of reckoning could make the months ahead easier but would likely come at a heavy cost for the ECB, which has already lent the banks over a trillion euros in cheap funding, mostly now repaid, and is expected to open the taps again, possibly by the end of this year.
Most agree there cannot be a repeat of the two earlier stress tests, widely considered flops for a series of blunders, including giving Irish banks a clean bill of health months before their problems pushed the country into an international bailout.
Ex-ECB man Papadia warned of the consequences should “the ECB get scared” and soften its assessment of banks.
“The risk of this is that you would continue with the opacity... where people suspect there are big problems but nobody knows where and how big they are,” he said.
“The trust in the ECB would be affected, and, ultimately, there would be consequences even for the currency.”China's militarization of the South China Sea (SCS) continues to be a point of contention as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) tries to hammer out a maritime code of conduct to prevent further militarization and territorial conflict.
Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay, at a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers on February 21, said that Chinese militarization of man-made islands was of "grave concern."
Yasay added that he was confident a framework agreement could be finalized by mid-2017 based on the fact that the ASEAN member states and China were "pushing hard" for a deal - although he admitted that he was unsure if China would cooperate.
The Philippines currently has chairmanship of ASEAN
The finalization of the framework for the full enforcement of the maritime code of conduct between ASEAN states and China is seen as a high priority during the ASEAN meeting this week.
The Philippines took over chairmanship of ASEAN this year. Since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in June 2016, he has been taking a more conciliatory tone toward Beijing.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters in Beijing that Yasay's comments on China's SCS militarization were "baffling and regrettable," adding that they were a turnaround from the agreements reached between Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping on improving relations after a series of maritime disputes.
Will China cooperate?
Arsenio Andolong, the public affairs chief for the Philippine Department of National Defense (DND), told DW that China's installation of military-grade equipment and facilities in the disputed waters and reclaimed islands was "very troubling."
"Those are well within our exclusive economic zone (EEZ)," he said. "These actions do not square with the Chinese government's rhetoric that its purpose is peaceful and friendly."
For years, territorial disputes and the harassment of Filipino fishermen eking out a living in contested waters have made the Philippines and China frosty neighbors. In 2013, the Philippines elevated its territorial dispute to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), an international tribunal in The Hague. Last July, the PCA ruled against Chinaand classified its nine-dash-line territorial claim as being devoid of historical and legal basis.
China and the Philippines agreed in 2016 to resume talks over territorial disputes in the SCS
But after taking power, President Duterte's administration signaled friendlier relations between the two countries by deciding not to pressure China to abide by the PCA's ruling.
From a national defense standpoint, the DND sees PCA ruling as a strong leverage point in talks with China over territorial rights in what some in the Philippines call the "West Philippine Sea."
Andolong also stressed that the DND views China's actions with deep concern and vigilance. "They have used their propaganda and military might to enforce their claim. But we will always keep our lines of communication open to arrive at peaceful solutions to the issues."
Diplomatic channels
"We may have our differences with China, but we share more things in common such as our desire to thrive in a world that is in constant flux," Charles Jose, spokesperson for the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), told DW.
After Duterte's state visit to China last October, those shared interests were formalized in 13 government-to-government agreements covering trade and investment, public infrastructure funding, and tourism valued at an estimated $24 billion (22.6 billion euros). Filipino fishermen were also able to fish in the Scarborough Shoal again.
"His tact was to get the Chinese to agree that we could temporarily set aside our dispute, to be resolved at a later date," Jose said. "Since President Duterte's visit to China, the situation in the Scarborough Shoal has dramatically changed."
But despite the offering of an olive branch, China continued to increase its military presence.
In response, Duterte announced his intention to declare the South China Sea a marine sanctuary. The proposal did not gain traction or support as experts said it would be difficult to enforce without the consensus of other neighboring states.
A satellite image of one of China's militarized islands in the SCS
And Reuters news agency on February 23 cited two US officials as saying that China had almost finished building up to two dozen structures that appear to house long-range surface-to-air missiles in three reefs claimed by the Philippines.
Balancing act
The Philippines faces a delicate challenge when it comes to balancing its relations with China, given Beijing's immense economic clout and growing military prowess.
"The issues will be separated into two parts," Chito Sta. Romana, the incoming Philippine ambassador to China, told DW. "Non-contentious issues include economics, commerce and education. These are issues we can move forward and fast-track. The contentious issues cannot move as fast. What we cannot solve, we will try to manage. Disputes will not be put forward."
But Sta. Romana remains optimistic. "The prospects for friendly diplomatic relations are bright. Diplomacy is always a good strategy for a medium-sized country with a weak military," he said.
Strategic sweet spot
But there are also less optimistic assessments of the Philippines' ability to attract concessions from China. "The president claims that we have normalized bilateral relations but in order for that to happen, there has got to be some modicum of compromise on a range of issues - including the South China Sea," Richard Heydarian, a geopolitical analyst at De La Salle University in Manila, told DW.
This opinion was echoed by the DND which said it would also push for the finalization of a code of conduct in the South China Sea to avoid any untoward incidents.
The Declaration on Code of Conduct in the South China Sea harped on the principles of self-restraint and non-militarization and was signed by ASEAN and China in November 2002.
However, the declaration failed to prevent skirmishes between countries. In 2014, China placed an oil rig in the Paracel Islands, an archipelago claimed both by Vietnam and China. The move triggered confrontations between Chinese and Vietnamese vessels, and the sinking of a Vietnamese fishing boat after being rammed by a Chinese vessel.BEIRUT (Reuters) - Refugees waved flags and held pictures of Bashar al-Assad as they crushed into Damascus’s embassy in Lebanon on Wednesday to join Syrians worldwide voting early in an election that looks certain to give him a third seven-year term as president.
Syrian nationals living in Beirut cast their votes ahead of the June 3 presidential election at the Syrian Embassy in Yarze, east of Beirut May 28, 2014. REUTERS/Sharif Karim
Expatriates and those who have fled the war were casting their ballots at dozens of Syrian embassies abroad ahead of next week’s vote inside the country that opponents have dismissed as a farce as the fighting rages in its fourth year.
Several countries that oppose Assad, including France, have blocked the voting but Syrian government media said people were still able to participate in many countries.
Assad has been in power since 2000 when he took over from his father, Hafez, who ruled before that for 30 years. The election is an illustration of how effectively the government has weathered the revolt that has killed more than 160,000 people and how it exerts influence beyond its borders.
In Lebanon, which holds a million Syrians - most of them refugees - citizens were driven to the Syrian embassy in Beirut. Their buses blocked one of Beirut’s three main highways and men and women waved Syria’s flag and held up pictures of Assad.
Refugees have told Reuters that they had been mobilized by pro-Assad Lebanese groups to vote and said the buses were paid for. Some say that those who did not vote will be banned from entering Syria again.
Tens of thousands of people were bottle-necked into the entrance, some getting squashed by the hordes behind them. The Lebanese army had brought armored vehicles and firemen sprayed the crowd with water to help cool them in the midday heat.
Inside the embassy, men and women voted. None said they had voted for the two candidates other than Assad - Hassan Abdallah al-Nouri and lawmaker Maher Abdel-Hafiz Hajjar.
“Allah, Syria and Bashar only,” the crowd of men shouted inside the ballot room. Many of the staff and volunteers who were helping to organize the election wore pro-Assad T-shirts.
Radwan Said, a 23-year-old man from the Syrian province of Raqqa, said he had voted for Assad. “He’s the only choice. He will crush the terrorists,” he told Reuters.
“PARODY OF DEMOCRACY”
Syrian state television said voting was taking place in 43 embassies. It broadcast footage from Kuala Lumpur, Tehran and Amman.
Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told the channel that he “was surprised by the undemocratic decisions taken by countries which say they are democratic - like the French, Belgian and Bulgarian governments - but which are not in line with international law”.
He said the countries had banned Syrians from going to embassies, which he said is in violation of the Vienna Protocol on Diplomatic Relations.
The European Union has said holding an election “in the midst of conflict, only in regime-controlled areas and with millions of Syrians displaced from their homes would be a parody of democracy, have no credibility whatsoever, and undermine efforts to reach a political solution”.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has also said such elections are “incompatible” with peace talks in Geneva that broke down in February but which both sides have agreed to continue. The peace talks are based on seeking a political transition in Syria.
Slideshow (5 Images)
Syria, which had a military presence in Lebanon from the start of the civil war in 1975 to 2005, continues to wield strong influence in the small Mediterranean country.
This power is mostly channeled through the Lebanese Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah, which is helping Assad fight majority Sunni rebels in Syria. Many voters carried Hezbollah flags as they went to vote on Wednesday.
Reuters met Syrians of many sects who voted, including Sunnis, Shi’ites, Syrian Armenians and Kurds.Have you ever noticed when someone is addicted to something people will often say things like, “Oh, once they hit rock bottom they’ll really figure it out.” “Once they hit rock bottom they’ll open their eyes and want to get clean.” What exactly is “rock bottom” though? At what level does a person have to be at for others to feel the pressure to intervene or for the addict to understand something has to change? There are varying degrees of how to ruin your life.
I know all too well an addict has to want to change for change to happen. There’s a fine line between enabling someone and wanting to be there for them, letting them know at the very least they have someone in their life that cares, but that line is blurred and often wavering. I’ve struggled with understanding that line my whole life with my addicted siblings.
My brother died last year from a drug overdose. He died alone at the age of 37 and was found a week later. Whether it was an accidental drug overdose or a suicide, no one can be certain. There were a lot of events leading up to his death and there are strong indications either could have happened.
Only a couple years prior to my brother’s death he had been a successful restaurant owner. He was a warm, loveable, and funny guy who loved making art, visiting the Caribbean Islands, and John Grisham novels. He had struggled with drug abuse his entire life. From the time he started using drugs when he was 13 until his death he had used and abused nearly every drug available but crack, coke, and prescription pills were what he always went back to.
When my brother died he was living in a condemned house with no water, no electricity, and no heat. He had been sleeping on a lawn chair in his living room because junkies kept breaking into his house and stealing whatever remnants of a life he had, beating him up when he was too high to defend himself, leaving him with a broken nose and ribs on Christmas two years ago. He had bought a gun but couldn’t bring himself to use it on someone. He adopted a big dog but someone took her.
So what does rock bottom look like? For my brother, this was his. For others, their rock bottom is much less severe, maybe even easier to come back from. Regardless, his struggles were apparent and yet, still, no one intervened to help him, to get him out of that house. Everyone thought he’ll figure it out. He’ll get clean on his own. But he had no resources to really do so. He was alone in a city with no family and no friends. A week before he died I had just moved into a new 2 bedroom apartment and considered calling him and asking him to come live with me. But life happened and I put it off and put it off, asking myself if I really wanted to deal with “that” – “that” meaning the drugs, the addiction, the repair of someone who had become lost and broken. I’ll never know if it would have made any difference.
Three months before his death I was heading out on a backpacking trip throughout South America and wanted to see him and our sister one last time before I left. My sister, who has also dealt with addiction for most of her life, agreed we should all meet at her house and spend the night hanging out and catching up. But ‘catching up’ to her doesn’t ever mean what it usually means to most people. For her and my brother it meant buying crack, smoking it in the bathroom, and drinking until blacking out.
Like a million other similar situations I had been in with my siblings I felt stuck. I could either just deal with what was going on or not have any relationship with them. There was, and never has been, any in-between. I’m not sure if there any right answers with addiction. Sometimes when you feel like you’re buying time with people’s lives, knowing that their addictions will be the very thing that eventually consumes them, you just feel lucky to have these moments with them, as fucked up and ugly as they can get.
The next morning I took them out to breakfast and somehow, I had this feeling this would be the last time I would ever see my brother. His eyes had changed. They were sullen and…I don’t know…just not his. He looked like a different person. I called my mom up after I dropped them off and I told her, “Kevin will be dead or in prison within a year.” I never really thought I would be right.
Since my siblings are 10 and 15 years older than me and had been experimenting with drugs from the time I can remember I’m not sure if I’ve ever really known them. You know, the real them; the people they were before their vices took over their lives. Because of who they became I wanted nothing to do with drugs and always controlled my drinking. I still get freaked out when I’m around people who exhibit extremes of behavior caused by their drug or alcohol use because it just brings me back to every shitty night I’ve had with one of my siblings.
It’s so easy to wash your hands of someone, hope they get better, and then move on with your own life. But too often they don’t get better and we let them slip through the cracks. We knowingly ignore the fact someone we love is destroying their lives because we think; hey, if they wanted to get better they would just stop what they’re doing or go to rehab and if they die or end up in prison they did it to themselves.
People who have addicts in their lives struggle between feeling guilty over not helping the addicted person more and being pissed off this person is killing themselves and ruining their relationships with their dependence. I don’t know if I’ll ever figure out which side of the line I’m on. Again, there are no right answers.Deep Dreams of Tomorrow
Science fiction tells us that a change in a past event, caused by the intervention of a time traveler, will open up a parallel timeline that leads to an alternate present. The example that comes to mind, for some reason, is Back to the Future, Part II. After an unexpected disturbance in the spacetime continuüm, Marty McFly visits a world in which Biff Tannen, his father’s high school bully, has gone from unscrupulous small-time businessman to a replica of our current president.
If you accept this idea, it raises the stakes of the present moment: each decision leads not to one inevitable outcome, but a multitude of possible futures. The passage of time isn’t a story, following a hero’s journey from “call to adventure” to “return home.” It’s a website with a series of links, each of which leads to a subsequent series of links. You may begin an evening by reading the Wikipedia entry for tulips or graham crackers, and, depending on the decisions you make, find yourself becoming an expert on Jeffrey Dahmer or Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory by dawn. Unlike the linear media of the printed page, time branches out into alternate possibilities, corresponding to what sociologist Ted Nelson, anticipating the internet decades before its invention, named hypermedia.
On July 23, 2010, Roko, a user of the online forum LessWrong, accidentally opened up a new timeline. LessWrong is a community dedicated to the advancement of rationality, overseen by Eliezer Yudkowsky, a co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI). In Harper’s, Yudkowsky characterized its project as a “New Enlightenment.” The forum is a hub for discussion of the Singularity, a vision of the future that anticipates artificial intelligence both surpassing the human mind and merging with it. Yudkowsky’s aim is to make sure that any future sentient machine — a “superintelligence” — is interested in peaceful coexistence with its makers. Rather than the violent mercenary of Terminator, the altruistic companion of Terminator 2.
The Terminator himself accounts for his Manichean mutability in the second film. “My CPU is a neural-net processor,” he says, “a learning computer.” The direction of actually existing artificial intelligence has followed this path, increasingly deploying a method known as “machine learning.” The New York Times recently reported on Google’s application of machine learning to their translation function, generating a paradigm-shifting improvement that caused a global stir among followers of AI. The result is said to be closer to the elusive open-ended general intelligence that humans possess even in infancy, rather than the goal-oriented algorithmic intelligence to which machines have traditionally been limited.
Instead of being programmed with a set of grammatical rules and a dictionary of vocabulary, Google’s new “neural network” examined volumes of phrases, sentences, and paragraphs in multiple languages, and drew its own conclusions. Like an infant learning a first language, it learned through observation rather than computation. Of course, like a child, a program needs a parent for guidance, and programmers had to monitor and correct its behavior. And like a child, a program will be both eager to please and prone to disobey.
This tendency is brought into stark relief in Google’s Deep Dream program, in which a neural network scans an image for recognizable patterns, attempting to identify its contents the way a human would. The program produces evidence of its thought process by superimposing other corresponding images onto the original. Google’s image recognition system, trained by its programmers to recognize human faces and differentiate between kinds of pets, sees eyes and dogs everywhere. The desires, conscious and unconscious, of the machine’s creators are inevitably implicated in its ostensibly autonomous development.
If the builders of technology are transmitting their values into machinery, this makes the culture of Silicon Valley a matter of more widespread consequence. The Californian Ideology, famously identified by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron in 1995, represented a synthesis of apparent opposites: on one hand, the New Left utopianism that was handily recuperated into the Third Way liberal centrism of the 1990s, and on the other, the Ayn Randian individualism that led more or less directly to the financial crisis of the 2000s.
But in the decades since, as the consumer-oriented liberalism of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs gave way to the technological authoritarianism of Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, this strange foundation paved the way for even stranger tendencies. The strangest of these is known as “neoreaction,” or, in a distorted echo of Eliezer Yudkowsky’s vision, the “Dark Enlightenment.” It emerged from the same chaotic process that yielded the anarchic political collective Anonymous, a product of the hivemind generated by the cybernetic assemblages of social media. More than a school of thought, it resembles a meme. The genealogy of this new intellectual current is refracted in the mirror of the most dangerous meme ever created: Roko’s Basilisk.
The Simulated Afterlife
The primordial soup that led to the Basilisk’s genesis is transhumanism, the discourse of Singularity as personal narrative. For some of its advocates, most famously Silicon Valley icon Ray Kurzweil, the animating desire of building machine intelligence is apparently apolitical. It is the ancient fool’s errand, most famously enacted in the legend of the fountain of youth: the desire to eliminate mortality. If we can bring a machine to life, we should be able to bring someone who has died back to life. We will accomplish this by inputting information about that person into a program, which will then run a simulation of that person so accurate it will be indistinguishable from the original. In anticipation of this eventuality, Kurzweil keeps a storage unit full of his father’s old possessions, whom he intends to resurrect by means of feeding information into a superintelligent computer.
If you were to be duplicated in an exact replica, including not just all of your bodily characteristics, but every one of the thoughts and memories that has been physically engraved onto your brain, would that replica be you? This is a problem that troubles both philosophers and scientists, but not Ray Kurzweil. “It would be more like my father than my father would be, were he to live,” he told ABC News.
Hedging his bets, Kurzweil himself fends off the threat of expiration by taking hundreds of nutritional supplements a day and receiving weekly vitamin injections. In order to make it to |
, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger during the Cup final series. “He’s a good guy,” Cherry said. “He’s a nice guy. I don’t think he knew who I was. He’s a left-winger now. A tree hugger.” Cherry on whether Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson deliberately shot the puck at Scott Niedermayer, his Anaheim counterpart, following the second period of Game 4″ “I can’t believe he’s that stupid,” Cherry said. “If he did, he’s awful dumb.”... Live harness racing will resume Sunday at Dresden Raceway and Saturday at Woodstock Raceway after the Ontario Harness Horse Association and Winrac Development, a subsidiary of Windsor Raceway which operates the two tracks, reached agreements on a new contracts earlier this week... Detroit Tigers pitcher Kenny Rogers, out all season since suffering a blood clot in his pitching arm, threw 37 pitches to 11 batters in a simulated game Tuesday and reported no discomfort. If there are no setbacks, the Tigers remain hopeful that Rogers could be back in their starting rotation by the end of the month.The American Catholic nuns got a slap across the knuckle from the Pope’s ruler this week, when the Vatican told them that they are doing too much to help the poor and not enough to support the wars on women and on the LGBT community.
In an assessment issued Wednesday, the Vatican complained of “serious doctrinal problems” and assigned a babysitter Bishop to oversee the nuns.
The nuns, in daring to serve the people instead of hating the gays are being accused of “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” From the New York Times:
The sisters were also reprimanded for making public statements that “disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” During the debate over the health care overhaul in 2010, American bishops came out in opposition to the health plan, but dozens of sisters, many of whom belong to the Leadership Conference, signed a statement supporting it — support that provided crucial cover for the Obama administration in the battle over health care.Lenovo is making more VR-related products than simply the Tango phone. One of them is a live-streaming, 360-degree camera.
The camera had been expected to be unveiled at Lenovo Tech World 16 in San Francisco this week, but it wasn't. However, a Lenovo executive discussed its efforts with VR-focused site UploadVR. The camera uses Movidius Myriad 2 processors and can stitch together a 360-degree video and live-stream the content wirelessly. Lenovo and Movidius did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
There are a lot of companies making 360-degree cameras this year, including Samsung and LG. The ability to live-stream would be unique, though. Other cameras need to process the video content and upload it afterwards.
This is camera one of a suite of VR-related products from Lenovo, though the others haven't been revealed yet. According to Movidius, another upcoming product is a standalone mobile VR headset. It could track position in-headset, perhaps in a similar way to how the Lenovo Phab2 Pro Tango phone can track position through its cameras.
Movidius had previously said that VR hardware would be announced during the first day of Lenovo's event, but those plans changed for unclear reasons.NewsFaith, Family, Freedom, Politics - U.S.
DOVER, Delaware, September 26, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Delaware has become the first state in the US to effectively outlaw corporal discipline of children by their parents.
Gov. Jack Markell signed Senate Bill 234 into law on September 12.
The legislation, sponsored by Senate Majority Leader Patricia M. Blevins, redefines the term “physical injury” in the child abuse and neglect laws to broadly include any act that causes “pain.”
“This bill establishes the offense of Child Abuse,” the legislation states. “These new statutes combine current statutes and redefine physical injury and serious physical injury to reflect the medical realities of pain and impairment suffered by children.”
Under the new law, a parent causing “physical injury” (e.g., pain) to a child under age 18 would be guilty of a class A misdemeanor and subject to one year in prison. A parent causing pain to a child who was three years of age or younger would be guilty of a class G felony and subject to two years in prison.
The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), along with the Delaware Home Education Association and the Delaware Family Policy Council, opposed the legislation, saying the bill was “a violation of the right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children, including the long-recognized right to administer reasonable corporal discipline.”
HSLDA points out that while Delaware law had permitted a parent to use force to punish a child for misconduct, it already prohibited any act that is likely to cause or does cause physical injury.
By redefining “physical injury” to include the infliction of any pain on a child, even the reasonable use of spanking has become a crime in Delaware punishable by imprisonment.
The full text of Senate Bill 234 is available here.
Contact information:
Gov. Jack Markell
Office of the Governor - Dover
150 William Penn Street
2nd Floor
Dover, DE 19901
Phone: (302) 744-4101
Fax: (302) 739-2775
Email: [email protected] or via websiteCLEVELAND, Ohio -- By all accounts, Wayne Peltz is a quality visiting clubhouse assistant manager at Progressive Field. He works hard to make sure players' needs are met from before they arrive until after they leave. He and the rest of the staff receive tips.
Peltz's hobby, Lego artist, puts him in another league. When those same players see his mosaics, they are the ones treating him like a king. Some get out their checkbooks -- but not for tips. For payments.
Peltz has made an estimated 60 mosaics since he began five years ago, mostly of baseball players and/or their family members. His work largely has remained out of the public eye, his celebrity contained within the boundaries of Progressive Field and players' homes.
Not anymore.
Peltz's portrait of Stan Musial, the St. Louis Cardinals legend, is part of an exhibit at the Louisville Slugger Museum Factory in Kentucky titled, "Big Leagues, Little Bricks.'' The exhibit, which opened March 3 and runs through Labor Day, features 15 sculptures and portraits that used a combined 222,180 Legos.
Nathan Stalvey, exhibitions director and curator for the museum, said more than 100,000 visitors had passed through the Lego gallery as of July 1.
"The popularity has been even greater than we anticipated,'' Stalvey said. "People of all ages come in here and are absolutely blown away by what they see.''
Stalvey said the Lego exhibit is the first if its kind for the museum. It almost certainly won't be the last. Who knows what Peltz might have in store for the next one.
"Highlight of my Lego career, for sure,'' Peltz said. "I never would have guessed that something I did would be under glass in a museum. It's an incredible feeling.''
Peltz's road to Louisville is as improbable as it is remarkable, for he is the accidental artist. Creating Lego mosaics was not part of some master plan for life. Peltz, 33, grew up in Northeast Ohio and attended Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School. He dropped out as an upperclassman to care for his ailing grandmother. He eventually earned his GED and worked odd jobs for several years before getting a call late in the 2004 MLB season from his friend Willie Jenks, then the visiting clubhouse assistant at Progressive Field. Jenks needed help with late-night unpacking.
Peltz moved up the chain and enjoyed it. He was content. He wasn't seeking a side gig -- which, he thinks, had a lot to do with why it happened.
During the 2008 season, Peltz noticed index card-sized drawings periodically being handed to visiting players by the home clubbies.
"The drawings were awesome,'' Peltz said. "Players would drop everything to sign them. I said, 'Who did these?' I was jealous.''
They came from the hand of Tribe infielder Jamey Carroll. Little did Carroll know that he would be the inspiration for Peltz.
"I wanted something like those cards,'' Peltz said. "Something artistic. Something unique that maybe I could get a player to sign, instead of a common item such as a baseball.''
So Peltz went to work. He put pencil and pen to paper and began drawing. The fun lasted about 10 minutes.
"I realized I couldn't draw,'' he said.
Peltz remembered how much fun he had playing with Legos as a youngster. He checked out mosaics online and thought he could do it. Simple as that.
"Legos was the second thing I tried,'' he said.
Peltz had no training as an artist. Any art classes in school were for fun, nothing more. And the sketching phase of the process, as expected, was a hoot. "Unrecognizable shapes,'' Peltz said.
But when it came time to place the Legos, everything clicked. He began with a portrait of Jim Thome, one of his favorite players, in June 2009. Thome was a member of the White Sox. Peltz finished on Aug. 31, 2009 -- the day Thome got traded to the Dodgers.
"When I found out Thome was traded, I said to my buddy, 'That's awesome,''' Peltz said. "I was being sarcastic.''
Peltz needed 25 hours to complete the piece. With the permission of Jenks, now visiting clubhouse manager, he hung it on a hallway wall. Numerous players saw the Thome and were impressed. Peltz added one of Mets pitcher Johan Santana, another of his favorites. More kudos.
Then Tigers pitcher Dontrelle Willis came to town in 2010. The hobby was about to grow teeth.
"Dontrelle loved the Thome and the Santana and asked if I could make one for him,'' Pelz said. "I said, 'I suppose I could.' He asked, 'How much?' I really didn't know how to answer that because I never thought someone, let alone a player, would want to buy one.''
Peltz asked Willis to cover the cost of the Legos, plus a small amount for labor. Willis had none of it.
"He told me, 'What you're asking is way too cheap; you've got to charge me a lot more,''' Peltz said. "It's unbelievable to hear something like that. I said, 'OK... I guess.'''
The next thing he knew, Twins pitcher Carl Pavano was asking to buy the Thome piece. Peltz declined to sell it, but he made a mosaic of Pavano and his baby.
It has been a whirlwind since.
Peltz's Lego credits include a 30-by-30 of Yankees lefty CC Sabathia and a 55x45 of Sabathia's four children. Peltz drove to Sabathia's home in New Jersey to deliver the latter. Peltz also has done work for, and delivered to the homes of, Nick Swisher in Florida and Justin Verlander in Virginia.
In 2010, Peltz completed a spectacular "Core Four'': attached portraits of Yankees stars Jorge Posada, Derek Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte. Peltz needed 100 hours.
"The biggest challenge was Posada's mask,'' he said. "It had to be realistic.''
Each Yankee signed it. Peltz has received numerous calls from prospective buyers, but he said he has no plans to sell. The Core Four hangs in a secure location in the visiting clubhouse.
In October 2012, Peltz was approached by Scott Green, a Cardinals fanatic. Green was aware of Peltz's skill and commissioned him to do a portrait of Musial. Peltz completed the 2,500-brick item in November and shipped it directly to Musial's residence to be autographed.
Musial died on Jan. 19, 2013.
"I'm told it was one of the last major things he signed,'' Peltz said.
Stalvey, when organizing Louisville's Lego exhibit, found out about Peltz through a Google search. He called and asked if Peltz would loan him the Musial piece. Peltz told him he didn't own it but would act as liaison between Green and the museum.
Stalvey asked Peltz what he wanted for having his work on display.
"I didn't want anything,'' he said. "I was more than happy to get nothing out of it. He insisted, so I told him I would like for the museum to give a behind-the-scenes tour for my wife and mother and me. To treat us like royalty for a couple of hours.''
Done. Among the items seen on the tour was Musial's original Louisville Slugger contract.
At the moment, Peltz is working on pieces for Phillies closer Jonathan Papelbon and Reds starter Mat Latos.
"The hardest ones I've ever done always are the ones I'm currently working on,'' he said. "Because I put a lot of pressure on myself to be better each time.''For Calpers, the prospect of a California city in Federal Bankruptcy Court portends a potential test of the constitutional mandate that federal law trumps state laws — in particular, the state laws that protect public workers’ pensions in California. Such a challenge could blow a hole in what experts consider the most airtight pension protections anywhere.
“Obviously, what Calpers wants is that it doesn’t come up in the process, which I think is ridiculous,” said David A. Skeel Jr., a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania who writes frequently on bankruptcy. “My view is that even the California Constitution is subsidiary to federal bankruptcy law.”
As the United States population ages and more and more public workers qualify for retirement, the cost of their pensions is growing fast, turning into a major drag on many local governments’ finances. The pension contributions that cities must make every year are rising, but their revenue, which often depends on property taxes, is not keeping up. Taxed-out residents, many of whom have lost their own pensions in the private sector, are unwilling to pay more. In tax-averse California in particular, where every tax increase must be put to a vote, officials are running out of options and some are considering bankruptcy.
Bankruptcy in America is a collective process, where creditors of a distressed company or municipality come together under court oversight and negotiate a plan to share the losses equitably, for the sake of the greater good. Some creditors may stand more toward the front of the line and others at the back, but there isn’t generally one big creditor that gets paid in full without having to get in line at all.
Yet that’s what Calpers appears to be doing.
“They will probably say it’s a statutory right and it can’t be changed by a bankruptcy court,” said James E. Spiotto, a Chapter 9 specialist with the firm of Chapman & Cutler. “I think it’s still subject to some question.”
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A spokeswoman for Stockton’s city manager, Connie Cochran, said she could not discuss the city’s dealings with Calpers, citing the confidential mediation process.
When a company with a pension plan goes bankrupt in Chapter 11, it typically stops making most of its required pension contributions, just as it can stop paying many other bills. Some companies, like Northwest Airlines, even declare bankruptcy the day before a pension contribution is due, to save the cash.
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Chapter 11 also permits companies to shed their pension obligations completely, if they can convince the bankruptcy judge that’s the only way they can restructure. The federal government, which insures traditional company pensions, then takes over the defunct plan and pays retirees their benefits, up to statutory limits.
There is no such backstop for state or municipal pensions. But cities, until recently, have managed to avoid bankruptcy, so there is almost no precedent for how public pensions will fare in Chapter 9.
Now that is starting to change.
Prichard, Ala., tried to file for Chapter 9 bankruptcy in 2009, after its pension fund ran out of money, but its case was thrown out by the judge, who cited a rule that Alabama cities must have bonds outstanding to qualify for Chapter 9. Prichard had no bonds at the time, just a big debt to its retirees. The city went for nearly two years without paying them their pensions, then reached an out-of-court settlement that gave them about one-third, on average, of what they had earned.
Central Falls, R.I., declared bankruptcy in 2011, after its pension fund for police officers and firefighters nearly ran out of money. The state withheld aid, and passed a law forbidding any effort to revive the pension plan by issuing bonds. Central Falls had little choice but to negotiate sharp cuts with the retirees.
In California, the only precedent is in the city of Vallejo, which declared bankruptcy in 2008. Unlike Prichard and Central Falls, which had their own pension plans, Vallejo is part of a state-run system. It kept making all of its contributions to Calpers throughout its three-year bankruptcy.
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“We never shortchanged Calpers,” said Robert V. Stout, Vallejo’s finance director at the time.
Mr. Stout said he had expected to renegotiate the city’s retirement plans in bankruptcy, since everything else was on the table. At the time, Vallejo was in a fiscal tailspin with the mortgage debacle, which hit cities in California unusually hard.
But Calpers drew a line in the sand, warning Mr. Stout and his lawyers that in California, public pensions can be increased but never decreased, not just for retirees, but also for workers at midcareer.
What if the city is bankrupt and cannot afford it?
“They made it quite clear that they take that law very seriously,” Mr. Stout said. Calpers also warned that if the bankruptcy judge ruled that the state pension laws stopped at the federal courthouse door, Calpers would appeal, and make Vallejo pay its legal bills.
“We interpreted that as, ‘If we try, they’ll fight us through the courts forever,’ ” Mr. Stout said. He and Vallejo’s lawyers decided the city couldn’t afford it.
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The city ended up cutting services sharply, gutting its retiree health plan, adding a 1 percent sales tax and cutting payments on its bonds. But its police officers and firefighters still qualify for full retirement at 50, and other city workers at 55.
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Since Vallejo made no effort to cut pensions in bankruptcy, the legal issues remain untested, said Mr. Spiotto, the Chapter 9 lawyer.
“It’s something that’s in the process of being worked out, not only in California, but in every state,” he said. “It’s a global issue.”
A Calpers spokeswoman responded to questions by providing a 20-page position paper on the laws that protect public pensions in California. The report did not mention bankruptcy but acknowledged that some California cities were struggling.
“It will be vitally important for all interested parties to heed the legal rules protecting the vested rights of Calpers’s members,” the paper said. Challenges “may lead only to additional litigation and administrative costs.”
Critics in academic and legal circles say they believe Calpers wants to keep municipalities in its system because it needs to keep their contributions flowing in without interruption to cover the payouts it makes each month to retirees. Gov. Jerry Brown called that situation “a Ponzi scheme” last December, when he proposed a plan to lower public pension costs gradually, by offering smaller pensions to the workers that cities will hire in the future. The governor’s plan was strongly opposed by public employees’ unions, which have a strong voice in Calpers, and his fellow Democrats in the state Legislature have let it languish.
After Vallejo’s bankruptcy, Calpers’s board passed another rule that any municipality wanting to withdraw from its system would have to first pay off its shortfall, calculated in a way that makes the payment two to three times as big as in the past.
Stockton’s city manager, Robert Deis, is focusing on cutting retiree health benefits instead of pensions, because he said the retiree health plan was completely unfunded — as opposed to its pension being 70 percent funded — and the cost was growing at a faster rate.
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Changing the pensions would also be complicated by the fact that some of Stockton’s retirees get both pensions and Social Security, and others get only their city pensions.
Still, the city’s annual contributions to Calpers for pensions, currently $30 million, are greater than its retiree health costs, $9 million this year. Even before the collapse of 2008, Stockton was struggling with its pension contributions. In 2007, it issued bonds to raise the cash it needed to send to Calpers. But then Calpers’s investments took a pounding in 2008, leaving Stockton with a new pension shortfall to cover — plus about $7 million of principal and interest to pay on the bonds every year.
Bankruptcy lawyers said that if such issues were not addressed in Stockton, they were likely to come up elsewhere soon.
“There are a bunch of cities in bad shape, and pensions are part of the problem,” said Mr. Skeel. “If you have a string of Chapter 9’s, I don’t think every one of them is going to say, ‘This enormous obligation can’t be touched.’ I think one of them is going to take the plunge.”We know today where the Vancouver Canucks are likely to finish in the Western Conference. They may not technically have clinched the Northwest Division crown at this point, but with an 18-point gap separating them from second-ranked Colorado, that’s simply a formality. They also don’t have a mathematical lock on the first or second spot in the West, but with a 13-point gap between them and the current Pacific Division leader (Dallas), that’s another mere formality.
With so much certainty for the Canucks, who are their likely playoff opponents?
Chicago!
Yes, the ever-popular Chicago Blackhawks are in the mix again. Currently sixth in the West, if the Blackhawks maintain their current position they’ll have a nice, cushy first-round series against whoever wins the Pacific division. Of the teams currently vying for that title, only the San Jose Sharks (currently third in the Pacific) have a better goal differential (plus-14) than the ‘Hawks. Still, the likeliest outcome is that the ‘Hawks finish in sixth and end up as a potential second round opponent for whoever wins the West.
Pacific Division Also-Rans
Dallas, with 79 points, currently holds the Pacific Division lead, but Phoenix (76), San Jose (75), Los Angeles (74) are all still in the running. Anaheim (68 points) is probably too far back to take the division lead, but they’ve been one of the NHL’s best teams in 2012 and could make the playoffs.
Of those teams, the matchup to avoid is obviously San Jose. San Jose may be trailing in terms of points but by goal differential (plus-14) they’re the only team with some positive distance between themselves and the break-even mark. Phoenix and L.A. are both plus-2 teams, Dallas is even, and the Ducks are minus-20 thanks to their terrible start to the year.
Northwest Division Also-Rans
Though unlikely, the Northwest Division could sport a second playoff team, with Colorado (74 points) and Calgary (72 points) the most likely contender to squeak into the playoffs. Neither team is a particularly strong bubble team; the Avs have a minus-5 goal differential and the Flames are sitting at minus-21.
The Rogues’ Gallery
There are two opponents that the Canucks would clearly prefer not to play: San Jose and Chicago. The Sharks are better than their record, while the Blackhawks are a strong team let down by shaky goaltending – and all it takes is one goalie to catch fire for that situation to change. From a Vancouver perspective, ideally the Sharks would take the Pacific and face the Blackhawks in the first round.
Aside from that, there really isn’t a formidable team in the Western Conference bubble race. The Ducks are hot, the Coyotes and (especially) Kings are good defensively, but none of them are particularly fear-inspiring. The likely outcome is Vancouver facing a comparatively weak team in the first round of the playoffs.
Of course, while an easier first round is always preferable, it’s hardly necessary. The Canucks faced one of the toughest eighth seeds in recent memory last year when they played Chicago – the Blackhawks had a plus-33 goal differential on the season, which was the third best total in the West and just two goals worse than second-best San Jose. Despite that tough initial challenge, Vancouver made it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals.1. In an interview with Fox Business Network’s Neil Cavuto, Romney, said of his tax returns “We have of course released all of the financial statements that are required by law and then released two years of tax returns.”
In reality, he has only released his tax returns for one full year.
2. Also on Fox Business, Romney said his tax disclosures included “the same information” John Kerry released during his 2004 campaign.
In reality, that is completely false. During his presidential run eight years ago, Kerry released five years of tax returns, and during his Senate campaigns, made a habit of releasing several years worth of tax documents as part of his commitment to disclosure.
3. In response to a question about the tax code, Romney argued, “For me … this campaign is about the middle class, and about the poor. It’s not about the rich. The rich are going to do fine, whosever elected.”
First, Romney intends to give the wealthy a massive tax cut on top of their existing massive tax cut AND what about Romney’s now infamous quote of February that he’s “not concerned about the very poor.”
4. At a fundraiser in Montana, Romney told supporters, “The great majority of small business — 54% of American workers work in businesses taxed as individuals. So when the president wants to raise taxes on individuals as he’s proposed from 35% to 40%, he kills jobs. If your priority is crushing people, vote for him.”
Only about 3% of American small businesses would be affected by the higher rate, and there is no evidence to suggest Clinton-era top rates on the wealthy “kills jobs”.
5. In response to a reporter’s question about health care, Romney said, “You know, I’ve spoken about health care from the day we passed it in — in Massachusetts and people said, is this something that you’d apply at the federal level? And I said no.”
There are entirely too many news videos and articles out there demonstrating the opposite to hope to list them all.
6. At a town-hall meeting in Grand Junction, Colorado, Romney claimed Obama is “putting money into energy companies, solar and wind energy companies that end up making their products outside the United States.”
This is completely false.
7. Romney also claimed, “This president has increased the rate of new major regulations by about threefold over his predecessor.”
In reality, Obama approved fewer regulations in his first three years in office than Bush did in his first three years.
8. Romney went on to say he’s “going to get rid of ObamaCare” so the government won’t have to borrow more money.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act will save over $100 billion over the next decade, and over $1 trillion in the decade after that. So, Romney has it completely backwards as in reality – we would need to borrow more money if he does “get rid of Obamacare.”
9. He added that “dreams are being crushed when taxes go up and up and up on job creators.”
Taxes haven’t gone up; they’ve gone down. In fact, Americans’ federal tax burden has down and down and down, reaching a 30-year low after Obama cut taxes in 2009.
10. He also said “no, no, no” to the notion that he would “cut” Medicare.
Romney endorsed Paul Ryan’s House Republican Budget plan, which ends the Medicare program and replaces it with a private voucher scheme.
SPECIAL ONGOING BONUS LIE: I did not have anything to do with Bain Capital after February 1999.
The only question now is whether he lied to the American people or to the American government through felonious SEC filings, etc. …more to come out this week……
For the complete list of lies this week see the Rachel Maddow Show’s ongoing series: Chronicling Mitt’s Mendacity.
(Visited 11 times, 1 visits today)Try chief economist for a teen-oriented virtual world.
Gaia Interactive announced Monday morning that Michael Boskin, still a Hoover senior fellow and Stanford professor, will become chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors for, a virtual world that attracts 2.5 million monthly participants who engage in more than 100,000 daily transactions.
In its announcement of the new council and Boskin's leading role, Gaia Interactive said the new organization would be tasked with providing "ongoing analysis and guidance" of the virtual economy.
Boskin said he would remain in his Hoover and Stanford positions.
In recent years, the economies of virtual worlds have become increasingly complex and varied and have attracted significant amounts of popular and media attention. Economies like those of Second Life regularly see more than $1 million day in user-to-user transactions. Anshe Chung, who became a millionaire by developing and selling real estate in Second Life, was even featured on the cover of Business Week.
Despite the growing importance of these economies, it surprises some to see a heavy-hitter like Boskin taking on such an important advisory role for a virtual world catering to teens. After all, this is a man who, in addition to his academic positions, serves on the boards of companies like Exxon Mobil, Oracle and Vodafone. According to his, he also serves "as an adviser to presidents and prime ministers, finance ministries, and central banks around the world, from the United States to China."
Gaia Online, said Boskin, is just another economic environment--populated by real people doing real things--worthy of study.
"I find it very interesting how many people are willing to spend time" in the virtual world, Boskin told CNET News.com, adding that he was attracted to his new role by "how the economy of these sites, and in particular of Gaia, have evolved; how people are making decisions on how to spend their time, (and) how much time to spend."
Essentially, Boskin said, an economy is an economy, regardless of whether the participants are teens in a virtual world or captains of industry in the physical world.
"The fundamental similarity is people making decisions about how to allocate their time and use their skills," Boskin said. "That is at the core of what is similar about them. There's some things we can learn about what (is going on) in the real economy by what is going on in Gaia.
--Bruce Boston, former economist for There "What a lot of companies haven't figured out yet is why they're bringing in economists. Is it to increase profits, or to come up with a fair way to distribute goods?"
For now, Gaia Interactive is expecting the virtual world's Council of Economic Advisors to have three members, one of which will be Boskin. Another will be Stanford economics doctoral student Saar Golde, who will be tasked with studying the Gaia economy. In all likelihood, Golde will be the one doing the heavy lifting, as Boskin said, "I will be giving overall advice and guidance and will be available for inquiries."
Gaia Interactive has not said who will be the third member of the council, though it is looking for candidates from academia, government or industry and with experience with monetary policy.
To be sure, Gaia Interactive is hardly the only company that has engaged someone to look after its virtual world. Second Life publisher Linden Lab recently brought on someone for that role, and companies like Sony Online Entertainment and Makena Technologies (publisher of 3D virtual world There) have also had people specifically responsible for virtual world economies.
"One of the core questions you have to answer is why are you using economics in the first place," said Bruce Boston, the former economist for There.
"What a lot of companies haven't figured out yet is why they're bringing in economists. Is it to increase profits or to come up with a fair way to distribute goods?"
Or, it might be for publicity, Boston added.
In the case of Gaia Online, which Boston is not particularly familiar with, it doesn't matter what the motive is in a virtual world where currency is not directly convertible to the U.S. dollar (as is that of Second Life--but not most virtual environments). It's really about time and energy spent, according to Boston.
"There is no difference between the exchange of something for money and the exchange of something for value," he said. "Money is nothing more than one of the many commodities that exist in life. You can have that commodity so that it can be traded across the real life (and) virtual life border, or not."
In many virtual worlds, one of the major concerns for those governing the economies is how to keep them stable. Frequently, they suffer from inflation or deflation, causing prices to skyrocket or drop.
To Boston, the real issue is not the occurrence of inflation or deflation, but whether players can plan ahead for such events.
"Changes in currency tend to confuse people," Boston said, "and that confusion makes it very difficult to make accurate assumptions on the results of their actions. If you have steady inflation or hyperinflation, and people can make decisions in that state, you're OK."
The Gaia Online Council of Economic Advisors has not yet determined what its policies will be for managing the economy, said Boskin. So players should keep a close eye on how the economic council handles fluctuations in the game's economic health.
To date, Boskin said, the Gaia Online economy has been healthy. There are signs to corroborate that, such as the daily listing of more than 5,000 items for sale, the 100,000-plus transactions a day, and the virtual environment's millions of users. But Boskin and his fellow council members will be judged on how they deal what might happen down the road.
In the meantime, the council will be focused on conventional economic analysis, such as looking at what happens to the prices in auctions for similar items, said Boskin.
"Are they going up or down? How much Gaia gold is being accumulated by people investing their time and energy and talent and skills," Boskin said.
Ultimately, though, Boskin' job is to ensure that Gaia players keep on having a good time.
"I'll be providing analysis and guidance to the (Gaia) management team, and some of the creative people," Boskin said. "The idea is to anticipate things that may come up that could enrich and improve the site."Former Sen. Joe Lieberman is no longer under consideration to head the FBI as President Donald Trump continues to search for a replacement for ousted James Comey, CNN is reporting.
Joe Lieberman no longer being considered for FBI director. President's team has hit the restart button on the search for a new FBI Director — Shimon Prokupecz (@ShimonPro) May 24, 2017
Lieberman, an ex-Democratic senator and former candidate for vice president who changed his affiliation to Independent, had been considered a frontrunner for the post, The New York Times reported.
And shortly before leaving on his current foreign trip, Trump said he was "very close" to selecting someone to fill the position that became vacant when he fired Comey.
But, according to the Times, Trump's staff had urged him to take more time in making the decision.
And now Trump has decided he want a broader range of candidates for the post, CNN reported.
Trump is retaining the services of lawyer Marc Kasowitz to help navigate the investigations into his campaign, The Washington Post reported.
And the Post noted naming Lieberman to head the FBI would likely have presented a conflict of interest since Lieberman is currently a senior counsel at Kasowitz's law firm.
Democrats were opposed to naming Lieberman as FBI director, Politico reported.
"Some Senate Democrats hold a grudge against Lieberman for his rightward turn and opposition to some of President Barack Obama's agenda late in his Senate career," Politico wrote in its report. "Others say even though they respect Lieberman, the job of FBI director should not go to a former politician. And all Democratic senators interviewed for this story said the former Connecticut senator lacks the kind of experience needed for the post."Introduction
Radeon R9 290X Market Segment Analysis Radeon
R9 280X GeForce
GTX 770 HD 7970
GHz Ed. GeForce
GTX 680 GeForce
GTX 780 Radeon
R9 290X Radeon
HD 7990 GeForce
GTX Titan GeForce
GTX 690 Shader Units 2048 1536 2048 1536 2304 2816 2x 2048 2688 2x 1536 ROPs 32 32 32 32 48 64 2x 32 48 2x 32 Graphics Processor Tahiti GK104 Tahiti GK104 GK110 Hawaii 2x Tahiti GK110 2x GK104 Transistors 4310M 3500M 4310M 3500M 7100M 6200M 2x 4310M 7100M 2x 3500M Memory Size 3072 MB 2048 MB 3072 MB 2048 MB 3072 MB 4096 MB 2x 3072 MB 6144 MB 2x 2048 MB Memory Bus Width 384 bit 256 bit 384 bit 256 bit 384 bit 512 bit 2x 384 bit 384 bit 2x 256 bit Core Clock 1000 MHz 1046 MHz+ 1050 MHz 1006 MHz+ 863 MHz+ 1000 MHz 1000 MHz 837 MHz+ 915 MHz+ Memory Clock 1500 MHz 1753 MHz 1500 MHz 1502 MHz 1502 MHz 1250 MHz 1500 MHz 1502 MHz 150 |
. This team was once devastating on set pieces (thanks to a free kick specialist in Michel) back in 2013 and 2014 but have moved away from relying on that for their goals as the delivery had become inconsistent. However, a good team doesn’t shy away from their weaknesses but works at limiting and improving them.
Ulloa delivered great service into the penalty area all evening, either finding his intended target or forcing a Rapids defender into a clearance. (The worst thing is over hitting the ball to where the defender doesn’t have to do anything.)
As long as Ulloa keeps delivering better service into the area, I wouldn’t read much into Acosta removed from set piece duty for now.
Speaking of Which
It’s certainly a good sign for Ulloa as he’s had a couple of rough outings and needed to show he still has a place on this team.
2 tackles, 3 interceptions, 3 clearances, 11 recoveries.
I’m an Ulloa truther, I think when it’s all said and done, he’ll go down as an FCD legend and be remembered in the same way Pareja was as a player. After two poor outings where his defensive rotations were too slow and he was caught ball watching too much, Ulloa played like the midfielder that we’ve expected from the heir apparent to Pareja’s #8.
Ulloa was quick off his blocks to win second balls and kept his positioning in tact. More performances like this will certainly make Pareja wonder if Ulloa should start more in place of Acosta or Gruezo moving forward.Some of the most exciting skateboarding these days is coming out of crowded cities: NYC, San Francisco, Paris, but most of you probably didn’t grow up in these areas. As much as some people like to brag that they live in Williamsburg or The Mission (and have a sleeve of tattoos to prove it) most of us probably started skating the town’s department store parking lot, “that one 6 stair” or your best friend’s driveway.
To me, that’s what makes this montage from Hathenbruck stand out, besides the super clean editing and solid tricks, it transports us back a simpler side of skateboarding that doesn’t get as much shine. A place that’s a little bit slower, a little more nostalgic, a little more romantic. Instead of blaring taxis you have empty playgrounds, endless mountains and innocent rollerbladers.
Filmed around Salt Lake City by Seamus Foster, and produced by Caleb Flowers (the owner of Hathenbruck, a menswear shop and brand) this new edit may inspire you to revisit some old spots (and friends!) when you go home for the Holidays.
Skaters
Kenwood Merrifield Nirva
Mitchell Mciver
Paul Curtis
Jake Flood
Caleb Flowers
Colin Brophy
Sam Hubble
Colt Morgan
Joseph Sandoval
Jeffrey GriffinColin Beavan became made his mark as No Impact Man (and see here). That was his first grand experiment, and it taught me how threatening it is to most people to suggest that we should take concrete steps to live in a truly sustainable way.
Now Beavan has begun his second grand experiment: to run for Congress as a member of the Green Party. Beavan is not a polished politician; rather he talks like you and me. He speaks from the heart and with thoughtfulness. He bemoans that Americans lack meaning and purpose. He notes that we’ve lost our ideals. He repeatedly points out that our warmongering country is run by the people who have most of the money and that they will do anything to keep it through the use of their financial resources and their lobbyists.
Here is the question that haunts me. Assume that we didn’t have a history of two main parties (Beavan calls them the “old-fashioned parties) running on corporate money and warmongering, and assume that it was NOT the case that one of those two parties invariably prevailed in Presidential elections. Assume, then, that you were asked to vote from one of the slick candidates with the heavy corporate ties, or for a thoughtful candidate who is not beholden to corporate money and who stands for the ideals listed below.
In that case, it would be my belief that Colin would have a substantial chance to win the election based on his ideas and his utter lack of corruption and corporate ties. The problem is that he doesn’t have hundreds of millions of dollars or a slick party machine, and he is not buffeted along by that intractable American assumption that it is preordained that one of the old-fashioned party candidates will be the winner.
Immediately below, you’ll see Colin’s 18-minute speech at the Green Party National Convention. Below that video, you’ll see Beavan’s main talking points, which he sent to me today in a mass emailing.
Here is the speech I made at the Green Party National Convention on Saturday. It’s 20 minutes long so if you don’t want to watch it but you want to know the themes: 1. Democracy works on the principle that wisdom is collected from a group in order to make decisions that result in the greatest good for the greatest number.
2. The two old-fashioned parties have betrayed that ideal and are so frightened by the crises that face us that they no longer trust the people.
3. Instead, they meet behind closed doors with their corporate campaign contributors and make decisions from there how our country should move forward.
4. This approach is failing, not least because attempts to be practical instead of idealistic.
5. By no longer being idealistic, we find ourselves in wars for other people’s oil, letting the rich have too many privileges, torturing people, keeping people in jail without due process of law etc.
6. Americans can handle hard times but not when they have no sense of meaning or purpose. When the politicians betray our ideals, people feel meaningless and they abandon the political system in droves.
7. But this is just the time when we need everyone involved. To keep the boat afloat we need all hands at all oars.
8. The only way to get the American people back into our democracy is to cloy to our ideals rather then abandon them in this time of crisis.
9. We need to be more idealistic rather than less if we hope to get through.
10. And that is why I am running for Congress with the Green Party, because the Green Party does not truck with corporations and lobbyists.
11. It trucks with people. And with ideals. That approach will draw people back into the democratic process.
12. If that happens we might get back to the idea of the greatest good for the greatest number.
13. And then maybe we have a chance.
Category: Campaign Finance Reform, Corporatocracy, CorruptionERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said that the presence of Turkish forces in Iraq “hinders our efforts to liberate Mosul” from the Islamic State (ISIS), and called on the international community to demand Turkey withdraw its forces, in a speech to world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.“I call on the international community to support and respect the sovereignty of Iraq and to call on Turkey to withdraw its forces in Iraq, whose presence, despite the rejections from the Iraqi people, hinders our efforts to liberate Nineveh province (Mosul),” Abadi said.He said the interference of other states in the country’s internal affairs “has exasperated the civilian suffering” and “deepened the divisions in our region which is already suffering from internal wars, and the external interventions have brought the civilian suffering to a serious level.”Turkish armed forces are in Bashiqa, northern Iraq, providing training for Peshmerga and Iraqi Sunni forces. Last December, Turkey boosted its troop numbers at the camp sparking a diplomatic confrontation with Baghdad who asserted that the Turkish troops were in the country without Baghdad’s permission or knowledge. Turkey maintained that the troops were necessary to protect their training mission at the camp.Last Friday, Firdous al-Awadi, a member of the State of Law coalition led by former Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, said the local militias have the right to use force against the Turkish troops stationed in Iraq.“Turkish forces will not be safe from attacks by resistance groups and Hashd al-Shaabi who have all the rights to expel them by force,” she said.Hashd al-Shaabi is a mainly Shiite militia and is expected to take part in the operation to recapture Mosul which has been under the control of ISIS since June 2014.When American Jews usher in Rosh Hashanah next week, most will dip an apple in honey for a sweet new year. Some will eat a date, and others will display a bowl of pomegranates on the table.
But when Persian-American Jews sit down to celebrate, their tables will be laden with an abundance of symbolic foods. In fact, they call the Rosh Hashanah meal a Seder, and the Aramaic blessings they recite follow a particular order. Cookbook author Reyna Simnegar, whose beautiful book Persian Food From the Non-Persian Bride and Other Kosher Sephardic Recipes You Will Love came out earlier this year, says these customs originated more than 2,500 years ago.
“We first dip an apple in honey, then we tear a piece of leek—meaning to rip the enemy apart—and then throw the leek over our shoulder,” she said. Included on the table is fried zucchini, black-eyed peas, lamb’s head, tongue or a fish head, roasted beets, and dates. “In Iran the cooked lungs of a cow or lamb were used,” she told me. “But here, we put something fluffy like popcorn on the table.”
Even before the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E., Jews were living in Babylon, which would later become the Persian Empire under Cyrus the Great. The Persian world offered a enormous variety of food. “When you ask for oranges, pistachios, spinach, or saffron, you are using words derived from the Persian,” said Najmieh Batmanglij, author of cookbooks like Food of Life and doyenne of Persian cooking in America, who noted that Persia was a great trading post in the ancient and medieval worlds. “The land was the first home of many common herbs, from basil to cilantro, and to scores of familiar preparations, including sweet and sour sauces and kebabs.”
As Persian Jews traveled, so did their food—a taste for meat with sweet and sour sauce, egg frittatas with greens called koukous, and especially rice. Jewish traders from Persia brought rice to ancient Israel at the time of the Second Temple. By the eighth century C.E., a network of Jewish traders called the Radhanites emerged and maintained international trade routes between the Christian and Islamic worlds. They combed the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean for new foods, furs, and spices. First described by the postmaster of the caliph of Baghdad in the ninth century, the Radhanites brought a revolutionary international trade network to the area, trading products like papyrus, textiles, wine, spices, and olive oil. Their four major trading routes began in Iberia or France and, each passing through various Jewish communities, ended in the silk route of China or India, 500 years before Marco Polo traveled east.
One Persian Jewish dish often served at Rosh Hashanah and Shabbat is gundi. Simnegar calls it the Persian matzoh ball. This large chickpea dumpling, made with either ground chicken, turkey, or beef, and flavored with turmeric, cardamom, and sometimes cumin, is cooked in chicken soup. For Persian Jews, the holidays would not be complete without it.
A series of chorosht—sweet and sour stews with meat, vegetables, and fruit—are also on the menu of festive Persian Jewish meals, along with a salad of fresh dill, cilantro, scallions, and radishes. But the centerpiece is usually a variation of perfectly cooked rice, served with a crispy tadiq, or crust. Like pasta for Italians, rice sets the standard for a Persian cook.
The story of how Simnegar came to write about Persian cuisine is a fascinating one. Born in Venezuela, she spent her early years as a Catholic and discovered her family’s converso past as an adolescent. She moved to Los Angeles to study at UCLA, and while there she met her husband, Sammy, a Persian Jew. Simnegar’s mother-in-law was the one who taught her the lexicon of Persian Jewish cooking, which she serves today to her five small children. I promise you that her quince stew with veal, served with Persian rice and decorated with carrots and oranges, will enhance your Rosh Hashanah table. These dishes serve as a wonderful reminder of how Jewish traders centuries ago made the culinary world smaller. As they moved so did their recipes and traditions, enhancing Jewish tables for generations to come.
Joan Nathan is Tablet Magazine’s food columnist and the author of 10 cookbooks including King Solomon’s Table: a Culinary Exploration of Jewish Cooking from Around the World.India has launched its first inter-planetary mission in an attempt to become the only Asian country to reach the planet of Mars.
A rocket carrying a 1.35-tonne unmanned probe vehicle lifted off from the country's southern island of Sriharikota on Tuesday, where it began a 300-day, 780-million-km journey to study the Martian atmosphere.
After 44 minutes, applause rippled around the control room after monitoring ships stationed in the South Pacific reported that the spacecraft had successfully completed the first stage of its 300-day journey.
The Mars Orbiter Mission, known as Mangalyaan [Mars Craft] in Hindi, was programmed to first ride a rocket into an elliptical orbit around Earth.
After that, it was due to perform a series of technical manoeuvres and short burns to raise its orbit before propelling towards Mars.
K Radhakrishnan, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chairman, slapped a colleague on the back and said he was "extremely happy" to announce that the rocket had placed the probe in an orbit around Earth.
The mission is India's first inter-planetary journey that requires developing technology to allow a probe to run autonomously.
"The biggest challenge will be precisely navigating the spacecraft to Mars," Radhakrishnan had said before the launch.
Indian scientists sent a probe called Chandrayaan to the moon five years ago. The mission faced several challenges, including losing contact with controllers in 2009 and when a new, larger launch vehicle blew up after take-off in 2010.
Manmohan Singh, Indian prime minister, announced the Mars mission 15 months ago shortly after a Chinese attempt to reach the faraway planet failed to leave earth's atmosphere.
Failed Asian attempts
More than half of all attempted missions to Mars have failed, including a Chinese attempt in 2011 and Japan's in 2003.
Only the US, Russia and the European Union have successfully reached Mars to date.
The Indian project will cost Rs4.5bn ($73m), only a fraction of the cost of previous foreign missions.
Still, local critics of the project have said India should focus on meeting its citizens' socio-economic needs, rather than spending money on space travel.
India has defended its $1bn space programme, saying it helps the country's economic development through satellites that monitor weather and water resources, and enable communication in remote parts of the country.
ISRO also shares its rocket technology with the state-run defence agency responsible for India's expanding missile programme.
One of the main goals of the Indian mission is to find evidence of methane gas on Mars, which would support the idea that the Red Planet can host primitive life forms.
A 2012 US exploration mission to Mars, known as Curiosity, disproved this theory when it discovered only trace elements of methane in the Martian atmosphere.
The US was the first country to successfully send a robotic explorer vehicle to Mars.
NASA will launch another Martian study probe on November 18.A shocking video has been released showing the moment a brazen cyclist grabbed a man's motorbike keys in the middle of the road.
The incredible incident was filmed in Kent on the motorcyclist's helmet camera.
In the video uploaded last week a cyclist says to the biker: 'What's all that about?'
He replies: 'I'm vlogging' before another cyclist in a green top and a hooded gilet reaches over and grabs the keys from the RunAwayGT Keeway motorbike.
The furious biker tackles the cyclist to the floor and screams: 'Give me my f****** keys you c***!'
After a very brief struggle, the cyclist hands over the keys and replies: 'You've got them!'
The biker then returns to his motorcycle which has been left in the middle of a busy road.
A shocking video has been released showing the moment a cyclist grabbed a man's motorbike keys in the middle of the road
The furious biker tackles the cyclist to the floor and screams: 'Give me my f****** keys you c***!'
In a statement the biker later said: 'This incident went through Kent police and is still ongoing.
'A big thank you to all the people that stopped and helped me.'
He also added that the bike suffered around £300 worth of damage.Following the gradual retreat of other stereotypes, political ideas are becoming established as a significant reason for arousing trust or mistrust between people. This is one of the main conclusions in an article ("The tie that divides: Cross-national evidence of the primacy of partyism") recently published in the prestigious European Journal of Political Research. The article, in which Sean Westwood (Dartmouth College) figures as the lead researcher, has among its co-authors different researchers from the Universities of Stanford and Antwerp, and the Berlin Social Science Center, as well as the UPV/EHU lecturers Rafael Leonisio and Luis Miller.
The article starts with the experimental studies conducted in the United States using the so-called "confidence game", an experience in which two players participate. Player A is assigned 10 dollars and has to decide how much of this amount he/she will send to player B. The amount B is sent will be multiplied threefold. At the end, player B has to decide how much money to return to A in such a way that the money that A sends would be a measure of the degree of trust he/she would have in B, in other words, the degree to which A trusts B to return part of the money handed over.
In the study, the authors found that the participants had less trust in (sent less money to) participants holding a different ideology (democrat or republican) than in those with whom they in fact shared the vote. While the partisan division has a significant effect on trust, interacting in the game with people of a different racial origin was not found to affect trust in the same way. This led to the conclusion that antagonism towards ideologically opposed people is greater than that expressed towards people of a different race.
Following this study conducted on North-American society, the research presented now consisted of replicating the experiment in three societies with political systems that are different from the American one: the United Kingdom, Belgium and the Basque Country. The results obtained according to ideology were compared with those obtained according to other parameters: religion, in the case of the United Kingdom; region in the case of Belgium; and origin (indigenous ancestry or not) in the Basque Country.
As in all the other countries analysed, discrimination based on the ethnic criteria was found to be very low in the Basque Country, much lower than that produced by sympathies towards different political parties. In the same way, bearing in mind the double left-right, nationalist-constitutionalist parameter, closeness to one or more of the axes was found to moderate the negative effect of the partisan bias.
What causes partisan discrimination to go on increasing when one is witnessing advances in the reduction in other types of discrimination? In the view of Rafael Leonisio and Luis Miller, "there are social norms against any kind of discrimination but not against partisan discrimination. Thus, unlike what happens with racial or gender discrimination, which are severely penalised by social norms, the corresponding pressures in the case of partisan discrimination do not exist. As we can see every day in the political debates and chat-shows in Spain, and in other countries in our area, hostility towards and prejudice against those who do not share our political ideas are fully accepted socially and they barely make us blush. And the fact that the rhetoric of most of the leaders of the parties makes it seem perfectly acceptable to despise political opponents".Israelis always find time to celebrate something, and summer is the pinnacle for festivities. Dozens of events take place across the country every single day. While most require an entrance fee, there are many free happenings on hand as well.
The country’s sandy beaches are open, water fountains are geared up to delight, and beautiful nature hikes are just a stone’s throw away from wherever you are in Israel.
Summer 2015 is also serving up city-sponsored activities and festivals that will bring the cream of music, dance, urban tours, sports and art to the public completely free of charge.
From Tel Aviv’s White Night event to the finest classical music in Jerusalem; from jazz in the Negev to ethnic beats in Herzliya; and from guided tours of Beersheva to casual walks in Haifa, it’s all happening here.
ISRAEL21c suggests a baker’s dozen of free summer events in 2015:
TEL AVIV WHITE NIGHT – June 25
Tel Aviv White Night (Laila Lavan) is one of the biggest annual nighttime events and the unofficial launch of summer festivities in this “city that never stops.” Tens of official events include concerts, theater, dance, art, block parties, literature workshops, tours, lectures and culinary tours for all ages. The main events take place in Jaffa Port, Rabin Square, Sarona Complex, Hatachana Train Complex, Habima Square (Kikar Hatarbut), Kiryat Sefer, Gan Hahashmal and Menachem Begin Park.
FRIDAY LIVE AT JAFFA PORT – June 26 through September
Jaffa Port is busiest on summer evenings, especially when the Friday Live series is in session. The weekly event, which runs from 10-5, includes free musical concerts (by the likes of Maor Cohen, Elisha Banai, Geva Alon, Ester Rada and others), a designer market, holistic treatments and art workshops. Take a stroll along the boardwalk and soak up the Mediterranean vibe.
CHAMBER MUSIC IN JERUSALEM – June 29
The Jerusalem Theater hosts live chamber music concerts performed by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra on many Monday evenings, free to anyone aged eight and up. The June 29 concert at 5pm will feature a world premiere of baroque music in Yiddish. Reservations are a must: 1-700-70-4000.
TLV WATER WAR – July 3
The Tel Aviv Water War is now in its 11th year. Organizers of the coolest and wettest free fun in the city hope to clinch a Guinness World Record this year. So grab a water gun or bucket, and head over to Rabin Square. At exactly 2:15pm the public water fight begins.
BEACH SOCCER IN NETANYA – Fridays, June 12 to July 31
Head to Netanya Poleg Beach Stadium to watch the Israeli Beach Soccer League in action every Friday during June and July, from 1-6pm. Entrance to all games is free.
SUMMER CITY TOURS OF BEERSHEVA – July Fridays
Every Friday in July, the Abraham’s Well International Visitors’ Center will offer two guided tours – by minivan or by foot – to the city’s historical sites, galleries, train yard and museums. The tours end at the Visitors Center with street theater in the public square. The tours, which set out at 9am, are completely free of charge but must be booked in advance: 08-646-4978 or officeatika@br7.org.il.
MUSIKAITZ IN HERZLIYA – June through August
The annual music series Musikaitz (a mashup of the Hebrew words for “music” and “summer”), is already underway in Herzliya. Every Sunday from June to August in Ben Shefer Park, at 6:30pm, catch a different traditional concert of Greek, South American, Gypsy or oriental music.
The free festival also offers Classical Saturdays, with a different composer/ensemble taking the stage at 7pm in Herzliya Park. Don’t miss out on the “Big Concert” in the park at 8pm on July 23, 2015, featuring Miri Mesika, Gil Shochat, Keren Hadar, Yotam Cohen and the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.
MUSICAL TUESDAYS IN NETANYA – June
Every Tuesday evening in June, the municipality of Netanya hosts a free Sunset Classical Music series open to the public from 7-8pm at 19 Hamaapilim Street. The program includes Yiddish and Hebrew songs, piano, accordion melodies and cello works.
FRIDAY STREET PARTIES IN JERUSALEM – July through August
Every year, the Young City Authority of Jerusalem hosts Friday street parties throughout July and August. Deejays and musicians take to the streets at noon and turn the downtown area of the capital city into one big outdoor party. Check for updates here.
10. CUBAN SALSA IN THE HOLY LAND – all summer
Come with a friend or solo; the Media Noche groups in Israel want to make your summer even hotter than it already is. The volunteer-based groups in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Herzliya, Netanya, Haifa and Kiryat Shmona offer free classes to the public all summer long. For complimentary salsa lessons, head over to Netanya’s Independence Square on Tuesdays, Haifa on Wednesdays, or Tel Aviv University on Thursdays.
11. LIVE JAZZ AT MITZPE RAMON – all summer
The Mitzpeh Ramon Jazz Club may be a little off of the beaten track, but it’s one of the best venues in Israel to catch a live jazz jam. Located at the Mitzpeh Ramon crater, this is the place to spend a summer night or two listening to original variations. Not every show is free, so check ahead.
12. DANCE FESTIVAL – July 30
The annual Karmiel Dance Festival, held every summer in the northern city of Karmiel, is one of the biggest around-the-clock dance marathons the world over. With 80 performances, 5,000 dancers and more than 300,000 visitors in a 72-hour time period, it’s really one of the country’s premiere cultural events. Most of the performances require paid entry, but the last show of the season is always free to the public. Mark down July 30, 2015, in your calendars and head to the biggest dance party in Israel
13. JERUSALEM SACRED MUSIC FESTIVAL – August 30
The annual Jerusalem Sacred Music Festival kicks off this year with free Circle Singing at Gan Habonim on August 30. “When we sing together, circling the stage, a personal and communal meaning will emanate from each and every one of us and will continue, Inshallah, to resonate from within us to Jerusalem and from there to the rest of the world,” reads the program bill. “Together with us, you are invited to sing a new song in a circle of many.”
Get more great ideas from previous ISRAEL21c features:CINCINNATI (AP) — Gunner Kiel let it fly on the first series, completing a 47-yard pass to Chris Moore. And that was just the start of a wide-open spring football performance that left coach Tommy Tuberville feeling a whole lot better.
Kiel threw for 300 yards and looked smooth running Cincinnati's first-team offense during the Bearcats' spring game Saturday. The transfer from Notre Dame was 17 of 22 while leading the offense to three touchdowns and a field goal in the first half, giving him the edge for the starting job. Cincinnati needs to replace quarterback Brendon Kay, who graduated.
"Obviously, Gunner looked really, really good today," Tuberville said.
It was a big improvement from the second-to-last scrimmage a week earlier. The offense struggled all-around in that one, with Kiel going 9 of 20 for 44 yards. Junior college transfer Jarred Evans, who is competing with Kiel, threw three interceptions.
Two offensive linemen didn't play in the previous scrimmage, leaving the quarterbacks under pressure. The offense was back to normal Saturday, and the quarterbacks gave much better showings.
"First of all, the offense: I can sleep a little bit better now," Tuberville said.
Kiel sat out last season after transferring, but got to learn the offense. He ran it smoothly Saturday, completing every type of pass. He had completions of 47, 46 and 42 yards, and he ran 3 yards for a touchdown.
"I came out with a chip on my shoulder to get better and compete and have fun and play fast, because that's what we're good at," Kiel said.
The Bearcats will have a deeper receiving corps next season. Tuberville is hoping for more long passes out of their spread offense. Kiel got plenty of chances Saturday.
"All these fast offenses are kind of dink-'em-around offenses," Tuberville said. "We don't want to do that."
Evans is still learning the offense. He was 17 of 30 for 172 yards on Saturday while playing against the starting defense most of the time.
"It's coming real well for me now," Evans said. "I understand the reads, what the defense is doing, where to go with the ball faster."
Munchie Legaux, the starter at the beginning of last season, tore ligaments and damaged cartilage in his left knee during the second game. The NCAA granted him an extra season of eligibility.
Legaux is rehabilitating the knee, hoping he can play again. It's unclear whether he'll be ready when the Bearcats open training camp during the summer. During spring football, he was limited to throwing the ball during drills. The knee wasn't strong enough to allow him to run.
"We're not going to forget about Munchie," Tuberville said. "We've all got our fingers crossed."
___
Follow Joe Kay on Twitter: http://twitter.com/apjoekay
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.REUTERS/Robert Galbraith Reddit is launching a new way to make money.
Starting on June 3, the site is going to use a popular strategy called affiliate linking to get a small cut of purchases that happen after a person clicks through to an online store from Reddit.
For example, if you click a link to a glitter phone case on Reddit and then buy that phone case, Reddit will make some money.
It's partnering with the advertising company VigLink to automatically rewrite links to around 1,500 different merchants.
As Reddit has been trying to ramp up its ads business, this new affiliate linking strategy will give it another stream of money.
The company originally planned to launch this feature sooner, but changed the roll-out date after commenters protested that the announcement should be posted more broadly first.
People using the site can opt-out by right-clicking a link and copy and pasting it into their browser instead of clicking it directly.
You can read the full post and comment thread here but here's the main announcement:Still hawking her book overseas, Hillary Clinton appeared on The Graham Norton Show and cracked a joke about former President George H.W. Bush’s health, and referred to President Trump’s inauguration speech as “some weird shit.”
Hillary was asked about attending Trump’s inauguration, and she claims she and Bill tried to get out of it — a statement that contradicts what she said only days ago.
“I really tried to get out of going,” she said. “I was going not as the candidate or as the opponent, but as a former first lady.”
She said it’s tradition for Republican and Democratic former presidents and first ladies appear, but acknowledged she wanted to break that.
“So we thought may others aren’t going. So we called the Bushes and the elder Bushes were in the hospital, which I think was legitimate,” she said, triggering laughs from the audience.
On January 18 — three days before the inauguration — NPR reported, “The elder Bush was admitted to the hospital over the weekend and sent to the intensive care unit at Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas on Wednesday as he battles pneumonia.”
Hilarious, Hillary.
She then acknowledged that George W. Bush, and Jimmy Carter both said they were going.
“So Bill and I looked at each other and said, ‘Well, we gotta go,” Hillary said.
She said she was “so sad” Trump’s speech wasn’t an “outreach.”
“It was reported George W. Bush, as it ends, said, ‘That was some weird shit,’” she said, triggering more laughs.
During a recent appearance on The Late Late Show on Ireland’s RTÉ One, Clinton claimed it was her “duty” to appear, saying nothing about trying to get out of it.
Speaking about the difficulty of being on the Inauguration platform as a first lady, Clinton said she had to consciously watch her actions.
“It was our turn to walk our to a crowd that I thought would be hostile to me because it was largely— well, it wasn’t a large crowd,” she laughed, landing a petty dig at the audience size.
“And then going down the steps and just trying to summon up my internal fortitude to be in the moment and to be appropriate. Not be caught making faces or doing something like that,” she said.
“Or rolling your eyes,” the interviewer interjected, which she affirmed.
“i didn’t want that to happen,” she said.
“Did you want to scream?” he asked.
“Oh, I did, but that was a common occurrence in those days— you know, scream into the pillow when I saw what was happening,” she continued.
“Did you ever scream into the pillow?” she was asked.
“Oh yes!” Clinton exclaimed, adding it felt good.Rate this poetry Sending User Review 4.71 ( 21 votes)
Lay Me Bare
written by: Kathy Parker
@kathyparker2206
Lay me bare, pull back my layers and see all I hide beneath.
Lay me bare, force away the surface of my pretense. Expose me. Expose the parts of me I conceal. Excavate through the rubble of my make-believe, find the truth I leave unseen.
Lay me bare, rip away my skin, tear away my flesh, reach into my bones, into the marrow that lies within. See it. Touch it. Feel it. For it is not pretty but it is real and beauty deceives while flesh and bone cannot lie.
Lay me bare, hear all I do not say and all I say but do not mean. Strip me down and see my fears, see my pain, see beyond my subterfuge.
Lay me bare until all that remains is everything I am afraid to reveal, and then lay your flesh next to my flesh and let us love the bare bones of one another’s soul in the wakefulness of this moment.A fully updated edition of one of the most original accounts of evolution ever written, featuring new fractal diagrams, six new 'tales' and the latest scientific developments. THE ANCESTOR'S TALE is a dazzling, four-billion-year pilgrimage to the origins of life: Richard Dawkins and Yan Wong take us on an exhilarating reverse journey through evolution, from present-day humans back to the microbial beginnings of life. It is a journey happily interrupted by meetings of fellow modern animals (as well as plants, fungi and bacteria) similarly tracing their evolutionary path back through history. As each evolutionary pilgrim tells their tale, Dawkins and Wong shed light on topics such as speciation, sexual selection and extinction. Written with unparalleled wit, clarity and intelligence; taking in new scientific discoveries of the past decade; and including new 'tales', illustrations and fractal diagrams, THE ANCESTOR'S TALE shows us how remarkable we are, how astonishing our history, and how intimate our relationship with the rest of the living world.
Publisher: Orion Publishing Co
ISBN: 9781474600569
Number of pages: 800
Weight: 1232 g
Dimensions: 164 x 236 x 58 mmHalf of all police forces in England and Wales expect to spend less time tackling illicit drugs as a direct result of budget cuts, according to a survey by a drugs policy thinktank.
The UK Drug Policy Commission says that the areas most likely to suffer include the test purchasing of drugs, forensic testing and drug-related undercover surveillance operations – all of which will have a detrimental effect on operations to pursue higher-level drug importers and traffickers.
Yet, the survey shows that many forces are expecting to spend more time reclaiming and seizing assets from drug offenders, including the detection of drug money laundering and other activities which could raise income.
The results of the UKDPC's survey are being presented on Tuesday to the Association of Chief Police Officers' drugs conference. They are based on returns from 29 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales as well as 52 basic command units, representing 25% of all police commanders. One officer anonymously responded to the survey: "It's just a timebomb in society. If we don't continue to fight it we will gradually lose the battle."
The findings include:
• 58% of forces expect to reduce their spending on tackling illicit drug problems and 51% expect to reduce the time they spend on drug-related activities. A third of the forces that responded said they expected drug-related activities to fare worse than any other area of policing.
• 45% expect reduction in test purchasing; 44% expect reduction in forensic testing; 38% expect reduction in drug-related covert surveillance operations.
• Many forces also face reductions in local partnership work, with 38% expecting to do less drugs works with community groups, and a third expect less work with local authorities. Officers expressed concern that this could lead to knock-on effects as gaps were created that some might expect the police to fill. A third of forces said they were going to reduce the drugs education work they do with schools.
• Just over a quarter also reported that their use of drug dogs would be curtailed.
Police forces raised concerns not only over the potential impact of cuts on their ability to prosecute those involved in drug supply, but also their ability to identify and keep up to date with new drugs.
"Reducing capacity to access intelligence about drugs in their area [through test purchasing and forensic testing operations] could also diminish their capacity to fulfill anticipated new powers around the temporary banning of new substances," says the report.
The UKDPC survey cited one officer who noted that it was impossible |
.5 million more Comcast customers. The new group, called SpinCo, will be publicly traded, with a Charter holding company controlling 33 percent of it. The remaining 67 percent will be in the hands of Comcast shareholders, but Comcast itself will have no connection to the company, and SpinCo's actual operations will be managed by Charter. Exact terms of the overall deal haven't been disclosed, but Bloomberg previously reported that Charter would pay around $20 million for the customers and a stake in SpinCo.
When Comcast first announced its plans to acquire Time Warner Cable, it promised to keep its share of the cable market under 30 percent by divesting around 3 million customers. FCC rules once barred any cable company from owning more than 30 percent of US subscribers, reasoning that anything larger could give a company quasi-monopolistic power in negotiating TV programming deals. In 2009, a DC court threw out that rule, but Comcast is still adhering to the cap in order to allay regulators' fears about its overwhelming size. Charter, for its part, has made multiple failed attempts to acquire Time Warner Cable, and this deal gives it a fraction of those customers — even if Comcast is still ending up with most of the TWC pot.This work is titled “I Wish You Hadn’t Asked” – presumably the question was: what would it be like were the rain to fall within rather than outside of your home?
Created by The Glue Society (images by Nicolai Lorenzen) for the Sculpture By the Sea Festival in Denmark, this quaint but fully furnished one-story abode was built abroad, shipped in and outfitted with pipes that blast 200 liters per minute into its various rooms.
Most of this impressive torrent is recirculated back within the semi-closed system, sheeting down before being pumped back up from below the porous floorboards … like an endlessly-recycled, never-fixed ceiling link times a hundred thousand or so.
A combination of architecture and installation art, the piece concerns “that moment in a relationship when something is said, or done, that can’t be taken back. And the rot sets in.”
And it will play out as planned- while visitors can walk through now (with or without a raincoat) it will soon become a hostile and then downright dangerous place to occupy, before utterly falling apart. In many ways, it is simply a fast-forwarded look at the life of any human-built structure.A new type of road junction designed to make it safer and easier for cyclists to turn left has been officially unveiled on Cycle Superhighway 2 at Whitechapel Road and Cambridge Heath Road.
The original design and layout for CS2, which runs from Aldgate in the City to Stratford in the east of the city, has long been criticised by bike users and safety campaigners.
A number of cyclists died while using the route which failed to segregate bikes from motorised vehicles and required bike users to navigate lanes carrying large numbers of lorries and other heavy vehicles.
The route is now being overhauled to introduce a segregated cycle track, a two stage right turn and the introduction of a phased traffic lights system in which motorised traffic is held back while cyclists turn left and bike users are then held back while other vehicles make their turn.
Transport for London hopes the changes will help “significantly cut” the number of cyclists injured and killed.
Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, said: “I made a firm commitment that we would upgrade Cycle Superhighway 2 to ensure that cyclists get the time and the space they need to cycle safely. That’s exactly what’s happening here in east London.
“The innovations we’re using at Cambridge Heath are a fantastic taster of the raft of improvements that are coming down the track, ensuring that people can cycle safely and more confidently in our city.”
The improvements to Cycle Superhighway 2 are part of a £1bn programme to make London safer and more attractive for cyclists which also includes new segregated routes across the city and a network of ‘quietways’ which guide bike users away from busy roads into back streets and car free spaces.
Leon Daniels, Managing Director of Surface Transport at TfL, said the new road layout meant “London is leading the way in bringing safe cycling infrastructure to our streets.”
He added: “This innovative junction, conceived and designed by our in-house team of designers and engineers, is a key part of the Mayor’s wider cycling vision. By improving Cycle Superhighway 2, as well as miles of roads and numerous junctions across the Capital, we can encourage more safe cycling and further bolster London as a truly world class cycling city.”
The new junction design on CS2 has been welcomed by Caroline Pidgeon, leader of the Liberal Democrat group on the London Assembly who said: “While it is regrettable that serious mistakes were made with the initial Superhighway 2 it is very welcome that such innovate designs and safety measures are now being adopted.”
Ms Pidgeon also repeated calls for the Mayor to take steps to end the repeated underspend of TfL’s cycling budget and ensure the cash was used to deliver improved junctions wherever they’re needed.
Darren Johnson, a Green party AM, said the Mayor was now on course to deliver improvements to just 13 junctions before leaving office next May, down from the 500 initially earmarked for review.
He commented: “Whilst I welcome the safety improvements to a few of the worst central London junctions, the Mayor is failing to deal with what is a pan-London problem. London’s next Mayor must make sorting out the capital’s treacherous junctions a top priority, whether they are in central, inner or outer London.”"Just the Beginning isn’t a revolutionary album but it is a considered and artfully created example of pop music and one that far surpasses a lot of the work put out by artists twice Grace VanderWaal’s age."
November 3, 2017
Grace VanderWaal is 13 years old. At the age when most of us consider managing three different types of homework a herculean task, VanderWaal has already won America’s Got Talent, released an EP and is now putting out her debut full length album, for which she has a writing on every song. At 13! And the worst part: the album is good. Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever been so annoyed while being so in awe.
Let’s be clear though, I’m not saying Just the Beginning is a piece of music revelation, nor am I saying that it’s one of the best albums of the year. But I am saying that it’s a solid debut that an artist of any age could be proud of, never mind someone who has yet to finish puberty. The album has a defined and consistent style, with no severe misfires or low points, something that largely differentiates it from the works of other child artists – a group that is far more established in the music industry than it has any right to be.
VanderWaal certainly stays true to the ukulele, folk-inspired brand of pop that first propelled her to popularity on the stage of America’s Got Talent. Creating a successful and mature sound in this genre is certainly not the easiest thing after every tween that has ever been told that they have a good voice has got their hands on a ukulele and posted 100 terrible karaoke covers online. However, VanderWaal’s sound maintains a high level of uniqueness and authenticity that elevates her beyond a genre that is so often overly saccharine and generic. This achievement is absolutely helped by the fact that VanderWaal not only wrote every song on her album but also contributed to the background vocals and has instrumental credits for bass, ukulele, glockenspiel and percussion. It is this clear evidence of her involvement in many aspects of the album’s development that distinguishes VanderWaal as a talented artist with large potential for success.
Just the Beginning opens on a strong note with the lead single Moonlight providing a great first burst of energy and a strong a developed vocal. Stylistically, the song isn’t the album’s best but the fun-loving attitude of the track and almost ethereal tone in VanderWaal voice lays a great foundation for the tracks to come. The first real highlight of the album comes with the third track, Burned. Rather than being driven by the usual ukulele sound that had featured heavily in the previous two tracks, Burned instead uses piano to build the base of the song and, in doing so, creates a sound that is somewhat reminiscent of a Lady Gaga acoustic track. Accompanying the piano and vocal melodies is a bed of what sounds like an organ (although it could easily be a keyboard effect) which provides the track almost gothic eeriness and, when combined with VanderWaal’s airy vocals and the use of a backing choir, creates a powerful and haunting atmosphere. On top of this, the synthetic repetition effects on the chorus add an unusual but effective blending of acoustic and electronic techniques that gives Burned a solidly current feel.
The next high point of the album comes from VanderWaal’s third and most recent single from the album, So Much More Than This. The song is probably the most inventive on the album as the way it employs rhythm in the vocals and builds texture on the track through the combination of the lead vocal with backing vocals and accompaniment constructs a genuinely great sound; one that encourages multiple listens.
My third pick from the album is the most unique track on Just the Beginning. Florets takes a very different stylistic to the album’s other tracks, using VanderWaal’s usual bevvy of classical instruments to build a sweepingly emotive acoustic form of tropical house. The song showcases the best parts of VanderWaal’s music, her age-defying vocal range for one, while packaging them in an unexpected but fun pop composition. This track more than any else from Just the Beginning exemplifies Grace VanderWaal’s range and potential as an artist.
This album certainly is a referential work. Never stepping in the bounds of imitation or plagiarism, it is definitely built on inspiration from many different artists and while much has been made of VanderWaal being the next Taylor Swift, the voices of Sia, Florence Welch and Regina Spektor can be heard far louder here. Overall, Just the Beginning isn’t a revolutionary album but it is a considered and artfully created example of pop music and one that far surpasses a lot of the work put out by artists twice Grace VanderWaal’s age.
Picks:
Burned, So Much More Than This, Florets
Rating: 3.5/5Battlefield creators DICE will give us our first peek at the long-awaited Battlefield 3 tomorrow, February 4, in video teaser form. But the latest Game Informer magazine cover gives us a small hint at what to expect.
Visually, Battlefield 3's art has the same vibe present in Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and its Vietnam expansion, but it's the decimated environments that may offer the biggest clues to the next Battlefield game's big selling point. GI mentions a few new technical features, including animation techniques borrowed from the EA Sports guys and an "exponential leap in destructibility."
Keep an eye peeled tomorrow for the first teaser for the upcoming PS3, Xbox 360 and PC game, when we'll hopefully see what DICE's "Frostbite 2" game engine is capable of—and if Battlefield 3 is capable of chipping away at Call of Duty's ever-increasing fan base.
March Cover Revealed: Battlefield 3 [Game Informer]Details Published: Monday, 01 October 2012 09:51 Written by Sam Mcgill
29 September, Caracas
[RCG 29.09.12] Today we had the chance to visit the Alexis Vive collective near Agua Salud, Caracas and interview Ana Marin, militant of the the collective and key member of the 'El Panel 2021' comuna.The Alexis Vive collective is famous for its autonomy and independence, yet it is a crucial part of the Bolivarian process as a whole. We were given a first hand account of the dialectical relationship between the development of popular power in these collectives, and the development of the Bolivarian Revolution nationally in the progression towards socialism.
The Alexis Vive collective was formally created in 2004, but this was the realisation of community work that has been developed since 1993, following the response to the Caracazo in 1989 and the failed uprising that Hugo Chavez led in 1992. Based on political lessons they had drawn from studying the Paris Commune, the Zapatista movement in Mexico and the soviets of the Soviet Union, Ana explained that the aim was to 'develop the maximum participation of the community in producing what is needed to live'.
Named after Alexis Gonzalez, an activist from the community who was killed on 11 April 2002 whilst defending the sovereignty of Venezuela against the coup d'etat, Ana explained that 'Alexis lives in all of us, in the development and defence of our community spaces, our politics, our process, our practice, the creation of our comuna '
She explained that the collective currently organises around four pillars, social production, defence, the development of the comuna and REDES*, a political party that has been created nationally to mobilise for the presidential elections. The collective seek to involve everyone in their community, regardless of whether they identify themselves as Chavistas or not, through participation in developing the comunas, developing proposals and representing these in the National Assembly, producing goods to sustain the community or through the councils that are developing community education, sport, culture an social media amongst other sectors.
Ana emphasised 'we aim to involve everyone in something, respecting political and cultural diversity. This is because the revolution is a way, a mode of life, its not just about wearing a T-shirt or a jacket from a political party, not everyone fits in the same mould, there are various moulds.'
Underpinning each of the four pillars is the development of popular power and political consciousness. The comuna has its own sugar packing factory, textiles workshop, alternative radio and TV station, bakery, urban farm and a brick factory for producing the materials necessary for constructing houses.
Ana explained the process of empowerment inherent in this social production, 'We receive financial support from the government but we work to develop our independence from the state, the government gave us funding to buy tools, for example in the bakery, but on the basis that we use these tools to produce, we're not just parasites taking from the government, we don't just ask the state to give,give, give, we need to diversify the economy and produce the basic necessities to survive. With this development of popular power, we seek to redistribute the riches of the country, we don't depend on the mayors, the governors, the people can solve their own problems given the means, this strategy is what we are fighting for' she added 'It is our role to develop the political will, to be motors that drive forward the process of empowering the people'
The theme of defence is crucial, the collective polices itself and is an organized, armed community, a practice which is firmly located in political theory and understanding. Comparing the difference between a paid soldier under capitalism, and the political approach of the Alexis Vive collective, Ana pointed out 'In the constitution we are charged with the responsibility of defending the country, take the example of the paid soldier, they receive money from the state, and under capitalism, if they don't get paid, they are not going to defend their country, they are only paid to defend the capitalist state, they act as mercenaries. Our method of defence differs from this, in our community we don't believe in remuneration for the defence of our sovereignty, we believe in defending the revolution through political consciousness, where the people are organised and armed for the love of their community and country. Defending our way of life'
Ana also spoke of the importance of alternative media as a method of defending the gains of the revolution, and specifically their community, 'Our role is to raise consciousness, to be protagonists, exercise our power, for this we produce our community newspaper and radio which is called 'Arsenal', this is to disseminate the ideas and vision of the the Alexis Vive collective, to explain our successes and achievements. Since the last century when TV's became the norm in most peoples homes, this created public opinion, dominated by capitalist consciousness, we have to break the modes of capitalist media, to provide an alternative'
The development of popular power, through the comunas and the communal councils is a key process in the destruction of the old bourgeois state. The ruling class continues to wield a significant amount of power in Venezuela and there exists a state of dual power, where the comunas and social missions continue to grow and strengthen but the old structures of mayors, governors and private services are still maintained.
In discussing the necessity of destroying the bourgeois state, replacing it with a socialist state, Ana argued that 'we have to remember that following the Caracazo in 1989 and the failed 1992 uprising, the Bolivarian revolution has assumed a democratic path through elections, beginning with the election of Chavez in 1998. We've not seen a revolutionary war like in the Cuban or Russian revolution. Of course we study the teachings of Mao and Lenin in the necessity of insurrection and the destruction of the capitalist state. However, at this point, in order to destroy capitalism we have to compare the approaches, capitalism produces death, we produce life, in a capitalist bakery, they produce exploitation, we have a bakery where we develop consciousness, where we work as a collective, this is our insurrection, to show that there is another way of life, another system. Currently our form of insurrection depends on developing the consciousness of the Venezuelan people, creating popular power, if you ask me how do we overthrow the old state? My answer is through the comunas'
Whilst mobilising for the presidential elections is certainly a necessity at this moment in time, Ana was completely clear that in order to advance the socialist process, they have to look beyond the elections. 'whilst we are participating in REDES and mobilising for the election, our politics and aim is to develop the comunas'.
This is not solely an organisational question but based in Marxist politics, 'whilst its true that these ideas didn't originate from our continent, you must remember that colonialism brought capitalism to Latin America, the merchants developed capital and capitalism, from this developed trans and multi national companies that robbed our continent. We have experienced the globalisation of exploitation, the globalisation of hunger, of death, so now we believe in the globalisation of ideas, Marxism isn't a dogma, a doctrine, its not copy and paste, its a knowledge that allows you to interpret the world and to change it, transform it, its a science. Marx analysed the reality of capitalism, exploitation, and its contradictions, this is why these ideas remain so important to us today.'
The process of communal power in Venezuela demonstrates the dialectical relationship between theory and practice, it is not possible to develop the politics of the bolivarian revolution without community organisation, neither is it possible to achieve the aims of the collective by organising autonomously outside the struggle for socialism.
Whilst Ana was showing us round the comuna bakery, it struck me how the experience of Alexis Vive contained vital lessons for the Bolivarian process as a whole, simultaneously developing popular power, the forces of production and raising socialist consciousness. Calling for the development of 3000 comunas, that will represent 68% of the population, Chavez clearly recognises the value of the comunas in building the Bolivarian revolution, as a tool in dismantling the old bourgeois state.
Sam McGill
*(Comparing the role of REDES, a new party based on communal councils and social missions set up to mobilise and politicize for the elections amongst those who don't identify with PSUV (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela) or other existing parties, Ana stressed 'REDES political aim currently is solely to mobilise for the election, and whilst we are participating in REDES, our politics, and our aim is to develop the comunas' she further explained 'REDES is not against the PSUV, the PSUV was formed by Chavez, our commandante, but it has a rigid structure, it doesn't always respond to our needs, so we have created REDES to reflect this, though we work together, its important to remember that PSUV is one only part of the platform of the revolution')Jon Stewart really seems to be making the most out of his retirement from the Daily Show, and one of his projects, a 45-acre animal sanctuary planned with his wife, Tracey, has been approved by the board of Colts Neck, New Jersey, for a proposed 2018 opening.
Plans for the sanctuary focus on taking care of rescued farm animals, including cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and chickens. The Stewarts will also be growing crops with a focus on sustainable agriculture. According to NJ.com, the animal sanctuary will also offer educational tours to schools and the public on a reservation and invitation basis. Special events will also be planned with a focus on getting the greater community involved, which Jon Stewart stressed is an important aspect of the project.
“So much of the project is about community. So you want the community that you are invested in to want you to be there and to be invested in it as well,” Jon Stewart said. “You want it to be mutual love, not unrequited love.”
Jon and Tracey Stewart purchased the Hockshockson farm, the site of the planned animal sanctuary, in 2016, reportedly paying $4 million for the property, which includes a historic manor built in 1777, two smaller cottages, a pool, pond, equine facility and arena, six barns, five pastures, five paddocks, and a farmstand area. Tracey Stewart is a renowned animal activist, whose book, Do Unto Animals: A Friendly Guide to How Animals Live, and How We Can Make Their Lives Better, reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list in 2015.
Tracey Stewart presented the plans for the animal sanctuary before the Colts Neck board on Tuesday night and it was approved unanimously. Only one member of the community present at the meeting raised any specific concerns at the end of her presentation.
“I’d like to know how much this is going to cost me,” Jon Stewart joked.
In May of 2016, Jon and Tracey Stewart made headlines when they adopted an abandoned horse named Lily that was found malnourished and covered in paint, according to Philadelphia Inquirer. Lily was sore to the touch and believed to have been shot by over 100 paintballs when she was rescued. Despite the Stewarts’ best efforts, Lily died from a fall a month after they adopted her.
Tracey Stewart with Lily. [Image by Matt Rourke/AP Images]
According to Asbury Park Press, members of the Colts Neck community have expressed overwhelming support for the Stewart animal sanctuary.
“This is the first of its kind in this area. If there was ever a time to err on the side of approval,” said community member Jay Saleh. “This facility has the opportunity to be a crown jewel for Colts Neck.”
The Stewarts will be partnering with Farm Sanctuary, a national farm animal protection nonprofit, to help with the logistics of running an animal sanctuary and to locate new animals when space is available. The sanctuary will not be set up as a drop-off location for local community members to leave abandoned animals, but local organizations that offer such services will be listed on the sanctuary’s website.
Jon and Tracey Stewart at the 2015 Farm Sanctuary Gala in New York. [Image by Grant Lamos IV/Getty Images]
Jon Stewart retired from The Daily Show in 2015. During that time he’s made occasional talk show appearances and has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election. Stewart appeared frequently as a guest on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert during the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2016, lending his trademark political wit and pointed commentary to the broadcasts. According to Variety, Jon Stewart will premiere a new animated news parody show on HBO sometime in 2017, specific details of which have not yet been released.
Jon and Tracey Stewart are realizing a personal dream by opening their animal sanctuary, and in the process, they will be helping animals and contributing to their community, educating children and enriching lives as they go.
[Featured Image by Dave Kotinsky/Getty Images]Michael Gove, pictured today arriving for an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr
Michael Gove today denied there would be a recession triggered by a Brexit vote on Thursday, rejecting an economic consensus warning of a downturn if voters quit the EU.
The Justice Secretary said Britain would in fact thrive if freed from the constraints of Brussels and in an 11th hour plea to the electorate, urged them to 'vote for hope'.
Mr Gove's intervention, ahead of a major TV interview today, comes as the referendum campaign gradually resumes following the shocking killing of Labour MP Jo Cox.
Both sides of the referendum battle shut down for two days after the shocking events on Thursday as a shattered Westminster was left reeling by the attack.
Mr Gove's intervention, in the Sunday Telegraph, urged voters to support democracy when they go to the polls on Thursday.
He told the paper: 'There are great things that Britain can do in the future as a progressive beacon.
'By voting Leave, we have that opportunity.
'People should vote for democracy and Britain should vote for hope.'
Mr Gove said: 'I can't foretell the future but I don't believe that the act of leaving the European Union would make our economic position worse, I think it would make it better.'
Amid reports some Tories are lining up Theresa May as a 'caretaker' replacement for David Cameron should he lose on Thursday, Mr Gove insisted the Prime Minister should stay on whatever the result.
He told the Telegraph: 'I absolutely think that David Cameron should stay, whatever the result of the referendum and I hope that he will stay for the full second term which he was elected to serve.
'I don't want to have anyone else as Prime Minister other than David Cameron and if people spend their time thinking about some of this stuff then they are getting in the way of two things: one a fair, open, fact-based referendum debate; and two, the Conservative government continuing afterwards in a stable and secure fashion.'
In his own return to campaigning today, Mr Cameron warned the economy 'hangs in the balance' on Thursday.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the Prime Minister said: 'If you're not sure, don't take the risk of leaving... If you don't know, don't go.'
He added: 'If we choose to go out of the EU, we will go out – with all of the consequences that will have for everyone in Britain.
Prime Minister David Cameron resumed campaigning activities today, two days after an extraordinary joint appearance with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn in Birstall, Yorkshire, pictured. Mr Cameron warned the economy 'hangs in the balance' on Thursday
'If we were to leave and it quickly turned out to be a big mistake, there wouldn't be a way of changing our minds and having another go.'
The Sunday Times today said senior Conservatives were planning on how to deal with the aftermath of the referendum 'if everything goes wrong'.
Sources told the paper Home Secretary Mrs May could be thrust forward to ease the party through a transition period.
An unnamed cabinet minister said: 'Several of us are talking about whether she should be a caretaker leader to get things back on an even keel.Best Practices
To encourage retention, and ultimately growth, you not only need to how frequently users access your app but understand the depth of their use.
It has been argued that as a SaaS metric, active users leaves something to be desired. It’s easy to measure and it is cause for celebration when it surges, but it only scratches the surface of what you stand to learn from your users.
At a minimum, it doesn’t give any indication of how successful your marketing campaigns are at attracting new users. Because of this, you’re missing out on a prime opportunity to learn from your users and implement strategies that are meaningful to them and keep them engaged.
So, having said that, how should you analyze active users to get to the heart of what users need and what you can do for them?
Here we take a deep dive into user analysis strategies to measure who’s downloading your app, how they’re using it or whether they’re sticking around.
What does active user mean?
Daily active users (DAU) refers to users who engage with your app on a daily basis. You can measure this for longer periods such as weeks (weekly active users or WAU) and months (monthly active users or MAU). If you have a messaging app, DAU measures the number of users engaging with your service daily.
What DAU doesn’t tell you is who’s active in your app. There’s no insight into whether you’re engaging your target audience, you just know that people are interacting with it. Without knowing who your users are, it’s difficult to improve your product or position relevant marketing campaigns.
To start building user profiles, install software on your website or app that compiles user profiles when they submit their email address. A tool like Clearbit provides enriched data— name, location, mini bio— that you then collect and feed through an app like Segment that sends it to an analytics platform like Amplitude for review and interpretation.
Use Clearbit, Segment and Amplitude together to build user profiles.
Another way to find out more about your users is to ask them. Conduct short surveys that ask your users about themselves and why they use your app. You can also review user activity in your app to see if any behavioral patterns stand out.
Group together users who take different actions, like those who downloaded your app and uploaded pictures or played a song or sent a message, by creating behavioral cohorts. These cohorts represent groups of users you attract and let you learn about how each one distinctly uses your product. For each user group, you’ll not only see whether you’ve captured your target audience, but you’ll also see how they behave your product.
Knowing who your users are allows you to align their needs with your values. Your campaigns will be extremely targeted because, in addition to knowing the number of users coming back on a daily basis, you have a clearer picture of who they are and their needs.
How to analyze active user paths in your product
While measuring DAU gives you the absolute number of users who open your app in a day, it doesn’t tell you what they’re doing with it. Based on how you’ve defined your active users, it only shows you how many people fit that criterion. In this scenario, you may be capturing many users as ‘active’ who are not engaging with your product in a meaningful way.
DAU tells you how many users have been active in a day, but you also need to know what they do when they do open your product.
To figure this out, you need to start by laying out the ideal path or critical events for them to follow when they open up your app that truly represent activity and engagement. For a messaging app, it might look something like this:
Send message → Upload comments → Upload content
When coming up with your critical events, ask yourself a few questions:
What actions do you want your users to consistently perform when they access your app?
What metrics are most important?
What user behavior will influence these metrics?
After reviewing the critical events you’ve set up, you find that after sending messages, users log off without uploading comments to messages in their network or uploading content. Now you can dig deeper to see what it is about the process that makes your users unsuccessful. By analyzing your app’s path, you’ll be in a better position to create a product that meets the needs of your target audience.
The goal here is to set up a sequence of events that users can follow— and you analyze over time—that will tell you of the users downloading and sending a message, who’s using it they way you intended, and whether to tweak processes to make your desired path clearer.
Analysis strategies that boost user retention
Because growth is important to you, user retention is paramount. The secret to achieving retention is being able to convey your app’s core values to your users quickly. If users don’t see you as an integral part of their lives, they’re not going to stick around for very long.
You want them to automatically turn to your app to solve a problem. That’s what demonstrating your core values does. Measuring DAU falls short of this because while you might see growth in numbers, you’re blind to the fact that users are dropping off.
Here you see that even though users are logging into a music streaming app at record numbers, users playing songs is low to the point usage plateaus at zero.
So how do you solve this and boost retention? Lincoln Murphy, a consultant who focuses on growth based on customer success, recommends starting by defining what active users mean to you, “the definition of “active” should build upon the value that you’re delivering to your customers.”
Simply put, figure out what you want users to get out of your product and measure it. For instance, with the messaging app, if you want users to send a message and comment on other messages sent on their network because it creates a sense of community, measure that. It’ll tell you how engaged users are within your app and whether you have a habit-forming product.
To help measure, test features that have the most impact on retention. Do users convert at a higher rate when they see step-by-step instructional pop-ups or reminder push notifications? For features that don’t help retention, figure out why and fix it before users start leaving by the masses. For example, if after sending a message users have issues with ads appearing or errors popping up, they’re not encouraged to come back.
If you have power users, figure out what keeps them coming back and entice other users to interact with those features as well. Consider publishing case studies to your blog or promoting testimonials that pique user interest.
Similarly, if you have identified groups of churned users, find out what makes them unique and what you can do to prevent new users from becoming like them.
Next, evaluate your app’s stickiness. That is, how frequently monthly active users return to your app daily. You calculate this by dividing DAU by MAU. If you have 5,000 daily active users and 8,000 monthly active users, the calculation would look like this:
5,000 DAU / 8,000 MAU = 62.5%
This means that in a month, users return to your app an average of 18 days out of 30. A high percentage means users are very engaged with your app and that monthly active users are moving closer to becoming daily active users. This analysis provides more insight into your retention curve because you know that users are consistently engaged.
Boost stickiness by practicing ongoing product iterations and monitoring how your stickiness changes over time. Even if you have a good guess as to why some users don’t come back, you have to keep re-assessing your stickiness curve. This is the only way you’ll know exactly what keeps users coming back.
Various user analysis strategies
The key to successful analysis of active users is to be clear on what DAU means to you. Different companies define it in different ways:
Facebook: Registered users who logged into Facebook or used the messaging app
Twitter: Registered users who follow at least 30 other accounts and have at least one follower
LinkedIn: Measured by what they call “unique visiting members”
Find what makes the most sense for your product and begin to build a profile around who these users are. To encourage retention, and ultimately growth, you not only need to how frequently users access your app but understand the depth of their use.
This information arms you with strategies that help you attract and retain users that relate to your product because it solves a problem and demonstrates them how.
Want to learn more about analyzing, activating and retaining your users? Download the Product Analytics Playbook: Mastering Retention.It may be one of the greenest and cleanest, but Toronto was pulled down by urban sprawl and a lack of cultural assets in its final ranking in a recent contest to pick the world’s top city. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and data-sharing company BuzzData had contestants devise data-based rankings of cities worldwide to determine which one is the best.
Toronto scored high for its green space and lack of pollution in a new ranking of the world's most liveable cities. ( DAVID COOPER / TORONTO STAR )
Toronto — the only North American city in the top 10 — was ranked eighth out of 70 cities around the world. The survey didn’t include perennial winners of similar rankings like Vancouver, B.C. Hong Kong came out as No. 1, with Amsterdam and Osaka taking the second and third spot. In 14th spot, Washington was ranked next highest in North America, after Toronto. Toronto received the highest possible rating for green space and pollution, but its marks floundered in categories such as “cultural assets” and “sprawl.”
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The survey is different than the Global City Liveability Index published by the London-based EIU, the research arm for the company that publishes the influential Economist magazine. In 2011, that ranking put Toronto fourth — one spot behind Vancouver and one above Calgary. This latest ranking, however, comes after the EIU released data used in its index and called on contestants to “mine, mix and mash it up to create fresh perspectives on what makes a city truly great.” The winner, architect Filippo Lovato, created something called a “Spatially Adjusted Liveability Index,” which added seven indicators to EIU’s ranking methods. Lovato’s additional categories measured attributes like green space, urban sprawl, natural and cultural assets, pollution and connectivity and isolation. The survey is not exhaustive. Cultural assets were measured by proximity to UNESCO World Heritage Sites — explaining why Toronto did poorly in that category as compared to, for example, Berlin and Rome. Lovato excluded 70 cities that were on the EIU list, focusing on the largest and most geographically diverse, of which Toronto was the only Canadian city.
Councillor Michael Thompson, who chairs the city’s economic development and culture committee, said Toronto consistently ranks high in international measures. “But I don’t think we use them as our benchmark for success. I think we have our own definition of what makes a great city,” said Thompson.
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Top 10 Cities in the Spatially Adjusted Liveability Index 1.Hong Kong 2.Amsterdam 3.Osaka 4.Paris 5.Sydney 6.Stockholm 7.Berlin 8.Toronto 9.Munich 10.Tokyo Other North American cities and their rankings: 8. Toronto 14. Washington DC 15. Chicago 16. New York 17. Los Angeles 18. San Francisco 19. Boston 21. Atlanta 23. Miami
Read more about:With the 2015/16 English Premier League season approaching its final third, two teams’ impressive away records stand out among the crowd: Tottenham, who are staking a refreshing claim for the league title, and Everton, who are enduring a far more underwhelming campaign stuck in mid-table.
I took a further look to see just why two clubs who have suffered just a solitary loss away |
a promising rookie in Steph Curry, so I pulled the trigger.
It was also the first time I ever got the chance to treat my dad to a game, rather than the other way around. We saw the Suns' Amare Stoudemire absolutely destroy Anthony Tolliver, a moment that remains vivid in my memory. I witnessed Dallas Mavericks' rookie Rodrigue Beaubois drop in nine three's in another game and even caught a rare win when the Warriors took down a young Oklahoma City Thunder squad led by Kevin Durant.
These are memories I hold close to my heart and will forever cherish. But for those who are in the same stage of life today that I was in then might not have that same opportunity to create such memories of their own.
In 2010 a beer cost $7.50 and parking was a manageable $15 for Golden State home games, according to TeamMarketing.com. Jump forward five years with the Warriors fresh of their first NBA title in the Bay Area since 1975. Parking for the 2015-2016 season is now $40 and two beers at the last game I attended in November cost $26. That is about the price of four bottles of Pliny just in case you were wondering.
As for the tickets, you might want to grab your chum bucket because these prices might just make your stomach churn. According to ticket marketplace VividSeats.com, the Golden State Warriors have the most expensive median ticket price this season at $238. Two hundred thirty-eight dollars per game. The only team that is even remotely close to having tickets as expensive as the Warriors are the Lakers, who have seen a spike in prices since Kobe Bryant announced his farewell tour.
(Image via VividSeats.com)
The Warriors play in 13 of the 25 most expensive match-ups this season, including seven of the top 10 most expensive games. The Christmas day matchup between Golden State and Cleveland is the fourth most expensive ticket in the NBA this season with an average price of $400. But it will cost you only $202 to just get inside the door to watch the self proclaimed greatest player in the world make his return to Oracle.
The most expensive game in the 2015-2016 NBA season is Kobe's last home game of his career. The median price to see this game live is a staggering $1,249 per ticket. But if you enjoy watching a 40 year-old huck up air-balls while making the "I've been making that shot since before you were born" face, I would suggest attending a Sunday morning open gym at Koret Rec Center to get more bang out of your buck.
The Warriors most expensive game is the last home game of the season against the Grizzlies, with an average ticket price of $499.
Only 13 teams in the NBA this season have an average ticket price of $100 or more, while nine teams have median ticket prices of $70 and lower. You can buy five tickets to a Pistons game for the price of one ticket to watch the Warriors play. Hell, you can buy a round trip flight to Detroit, hotel accommodation and two tickets to a Pistons' game for the price of one ticket to watch a game inside Oracle.
Are these ticket prices justifiable? Who is to blame? With those prices you'd think that you were paying to watch one of the greatest teams in NBA history play.. oh right, that is exactly what you are paying to see. Many are willing to pay that price, but only so many can truly afford it.
(Image via Mercurynews.com)
Techies are pricing out low to middle income families all over the Bay, and they are now creeping into the Mecca of Bay Area hoops. The demand to watch the greatest show on hardwood in person is skyrocketing and with the abundance of wealth available in the Bay Area, the astronomical increase in ticket prices is not hard to understand.
The Niners catered to the rich by building a billion dollar stadium in the Skrillacon Valley without much regard to the faithful San Francisco mainstays. It looks like the Warriors are now next in line.
Owners Joe Lacob and Peter Gruber are privately financing over a billion dollars of their own money to build a state of the art entertainment complex in downtown San Francisco. If Warriors' tickets are over 100 percent more expensive than the team they played in the NBA Finals last season, what the hell is going to happen to prices once the team moves into their shiny new arena across the Bay?
It's unfair to say that Warriors' ownership doesn't have the fans best interests in mind, especially when they are willing to spend so much of their own money to build what might possibly be the best stadium in all of professional sports. Joe Lacob mentioned before that he worries about losing the vibe in the new arena that is so unique to Oracle. Lacob should be worried. As David Aldridge writes, times are changing for the Warriors fan base.
"Here is what you see at Oracle, which you do not see in many arenas around the NBA today: real diversity. You see Asians and Latinos in the stands, and black people with gray hair, people who have stuck by this team when there was no good reason to do so. They are ushers and security guards -- and, they are season ticket holders..."
"But there is also apprehension that runs through Oracle. The people sitting courtside -- among them, many of the biggest movers and shakers of Silicon Valley -- likely won't have any problems getting seated and sated in the new place. But what about the fans in the 200-level seats, in the corners, who've been there through all the bad times and now, finally, have a great team for which to root?"
"That momentum highlights an economic reality: new things cost more than old things. No one believes ticket prices in San Francisco will be the same as they are in Oakland. And while it is true that most fans never set foot in a stadium or arena, and watch their favorite teams on TV (or, today, their computers), the visceral experience of actually being there in the arena creates memories that can last a lifetime, and be passed down from parent to child."
Aldridge hits the nail right on the head. The one downside to success is that everyone wants a slice of the pie. But with only so many slices available, the price per slice is forced to increase. Which is a shame because experiencing a game at Oracle Arena, even just purely as a fan of basketball and not the Warriors, will leave you with goosebumps for years to come.
I am surprising my dad with Dub's tickets for his birthday later this month, It is the first game we are going to see together since 2010. Luckily I purchased the tickets before the season and got what is now a great deal on fantastic seats through a season ticket holder. With that being said, I still forked over about $425 for the pair of tickets. The closest tickets I could find on StubHub to our seats are going for about $500 each, which is cringeworthy to say the least.
It may be time to invest in a new television and a comfortable couch. Because watching the games from home may be the only feasible option for the majority of DubNation to watch the Warriors play.
★★★• Oregon college’s “Whiteness History Month” an attack on Caucasian race and culture.
By Ronald L. Ray —
Portland Community College (PCC) claims to be Oregon’s “largest post-secondary educational institution.” It may also be the Beaver State’s largest educational fraud, promoting not knowledge but Soviet-style propaganda.
The college recently announced a “Whiteness History Month” for April 2016. Not a celebratory “White History Month,” like all the months for blacks, Mexicans, Pacific Islanders, and even homosexuals, but rather a month dedicated to attacking “whiteness”—the supposed “social construct” that allegedly allows whites to dominate their darker-skinned neighbors.
PCC is not the first college to foray into what could be called “white deracialization”—akin to post-World-War-II propagandistic “denazification”—but really is something closer to attempted white deracination, i.e., the extirpation of the Caucasian race.
Oregon’s Portland State University offers an entire course on “white privilege” that “endeavor[s] to make whiteness strange,” because “to preserve whiteness is to preserve racial injustice.” The University of Alabama-Birmingham, University of Southern California, and Bingham ton University, among others, also offer racially bigoted anti-white courses.
“Whiteness History Month” has garnered significant media attention, perhaps due to its surreal parallel to other “heritage” months. The organizing committee has made clear its intent, however, even if its use of language lacks both terminological accuracy and intellectual honesty. Consider the following two definitions posted at its “What is Whiteness” web page, for instance:
White, as a term describing people, refers to light skinned people of European descent. Whiteness refers to the construction of the white race, white culture, and the system of privileges and advantages afforded to white people in the U.S. (and across the globe) through government policies, media portrayal, decision-making power within our corporations, schools, judicial systems, etc.
The first definition is scientifically imprecise and, although perhaps intended as non-controversial, already reflects the authors’ racial and political bias. “Light-skinned” potentially can include lighter shades of brown or yellow—and in fact does, when darker-skinned haters demand it. This was revealed at more than one “Black Lives Matter” event, where Asian-Americans were harassed for being over-achievers.
The description also ignores key components of race written into our very genes. Apart from potentially controversial aspects like average intelligence, aggressiveness, and creativity, it ignores traits such as skull shape, lactose tolerance, and variations in hair and eye color found only in white DNA. And it ignores the many non-Europeans who obviously, although somewhat racially mixed, are largely Caucasian: e.g., Syrians, Iranians, Afghans, the upper castes in India, and even the Berbers of North Africa.
The definition of “whiteness,” however, is the pin pulled from the hand grenade in this society-destroying “Whiteness History” project. According to the organizers: “The project seeks to challenge the master narrative of race and racism through an exploration of the social construction of whiteness. Challenging the master narrative of traditional curriculum is a strategy within higher education that promotes multicultural education and equity.”
What all this high-sounding gobbledygook is saying is that whites of a former time constructed societal laws and constraints that purportedly—or in some limited circumstances, truly—gave institutional disadvantages to other races. As a consequence, just the fact of being born white makes a person a “racist,” because he inherits a society that supposedly favors his ability to achieve greater things than non-whites.
But this ignores differing, statistically identifiable strengths and weaknesses of all races and, ultimately, dishonors all. In truth, the anti-white racism of “whiteness studies” is just rehashed Marxism. Whites are portrayed as the elites and petite bourgeoisie, while non-whites are the allegedly oppressed proletariat.
Class war is fomented by Saul-Alinskyite “social justice” activities. Just as in the French and Russian revolutions, the end goal is the destruction of society and white cultural achievements. The present propaganda war precedes the anarchy and white genocide that will follow. But, following the “whiteness” definition, whichever non-whites come out on top will be the new “white” oppressors, no matter the darkness of their skin. It is successful achievement that these people envy and hate most. All must be equally poor.
The terminology of “whiteness history” also ignores present reality—the radical, systematic discrimination against whites, especially white men, in all areas: education, employment, sports, politics, etc. Non-white invaders can flood Europe, but not white refugees from Zionist-destroyed Ukraine. Wealthy blacks in suburban Atlanta, Georgia, can exclude whites from buying homes in their neighborhoods, but not vice versa.
Whites are a minority of government workers, although 80%-90% of the population. White men have been disparaged by the entertainment and advertising industries for a century.
PCC Interim President Sylvia Kelley claimed in a statement that, “PCC’s event is intended to enable a rich and engaging exchange of ideas.... There is no intention, as some may have feared, to ‘shame or blame’ anyone.”
We doubt that. Shaming and blaming are fundamental components of the social construct of “whiteness history.” We doubt also that any white nationalists, or even proud whites, will be allowed to speak openly or without harassment.
It is not justice that these anti-white racists seek. It is revenge. Stop the escalating cycle of hatred against whites. Stop white genocide. Protest to PCC now.
Ronald L. Ray is a freelance author and an assistant editor of THE BARNES REVIEW. He is a descendant of several patriots of the American War for Independence.Former Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci will jump into Northern Ontario's Ring of Fire as the province seeks to start massive mining projects in the remote area and create thousands of jobs.
Queen's Park announced Mr. Iacobucci's appointment as its lead negotiator Tuesday in talks with Chiefs of the Matawa Tribal Council, which represents local First Nations. Matawa's negotiating team is headed by former Ontario premier Bob Rae.
Mr. Iacobucci, who will report directly to Northern Development and Mines Minister Michael Gravelle, said he was "honoured" to take the post.
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"I feel passionately about involving First Nations in decisions about development in their communities and traditional lands and ensuring they benefit from the economic opportunities to be realized from development in the Ring of Fire," he said in a statement.
Mr. Iacobucci said he is hoping for an invitation to visit First Nations communities in the area before sitting down for formal talks.
Among the top issues to be worked out between the two sides will be deals on resource revenue sharing to ensure First Nations receive a share of the wealth generated from the mines, environmental protection and infrastructure building.
The Ring of Fire, a region more than 500 kilometres northeast of Thunder Bay in a low-lying wetland, contains large deposits of chromite and other minerals.
Both the province and the federal government, which has compared the Ring of Fire to the oil sands of Northern Alberta, believe developing the region could create thousands of long-term jobs with economic spin-off benefits for locals and net the treasury piles of money in resource royalties.
However, Queen's Park must find ways to develop the area without compromising wetlands.
"The province is taking a smart, sustainable and collaborative approach to resource development in the Ring of Fire," Mr. Gravelle said in a statement. "We want development to deliver social and economic benefits for all Ontarians, while collaborating with First Nations and ensuring environmental responsibility."
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The 76-year-old Mr. Iacobucci, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2004 after 13 years, has worked on First Nations issues for the province before. Earlier this year, he finished an investigation that found First Nations people are discriminated against in the courts, and made recommendations to change the situation.
With a report from Josh WingroveTestimony from more than 60 soldiers who served in the operation, including some of high rank, include accounts of receiving orders to hit targets with as much firepower as possible, and to shoot anyone in zones that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had already occupied or where they had dropped leaflets warning civilians to evacuate immediately. Breaking the Silence claims that safe-distance guidelines for artillery bombardments differed for targets near Israeli troops and those that were near clearly identified Palestinian civilians.
Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip — a narrow piece of land less than half the size of New York City — on July 8, officially targeting Hamas militants who were launching rockets into Israel. By the time the operation ended on August 26, more than 2,100 Palestinians had been killed, according to UN statistics, including more than 1,400 civilians, while 66 Israeli soldiers and seven Israeli civilians had died. More than 9,000 homes in the area were completely destroyed during the assault.
If accurate, the testimony, released earlier this week by a group of former and current Israeli soldiers known as Breaking the Silence, could contain evidence of possible war crimes that might ultimately be reviewed by the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, the Israeli military and other critics of the report have countered that the interviews are unverifiable, misleading, and out of context. For now, it's unclear what, if anything, will come of them.
Newly published testimony from members of the Israeli military who took part in last summer's assault on Gaza has painted a picture of an intervention that encouraged soldiers to shoot first and ask questions later, leading to the abuse of civilians caught in the crossfire.
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Newly published testimony from members of the Israeli military who took part in last summer's assault on Gaza has painted a picture of an intervention that encouraged soldiers to shoot first and ask questions later, leading to the abuse of civilians caught in the crossfire.
If accurate, the testimony, released earlier this week by a group of former and current Israeli soldiers known as Breaking the Silence, could contain evidence of possible war crimes that might ultimately be reviewed by the International Criminal Court. Meanwhile, the Israeli military and other critics of the report have countered that the interviews are unverifiable, misleading, and out of context. For now, it's unclear what, if anything, will come of them.
Israel launched Operation Protective Edge in the Gaza Strip — a narrow piece of land less than half the size of New York City — on July 8, officially targeting Hamas militants who were launching rockets into Israel. By the time the operation ended on August 26, more than 2,100 Palestinians had been killed, according to UN statistics, including more than 1,400 civilians, while 66 Israeli soldiers and seven Israeli civilians had died. More than 9,000 homes in the area were completely destroyed during the assault.
Related: Fallout in Gaza: Six Months On (Full Length)
Testimony from more than 60 soldiers who served in the operation, including some of high rank, include accounts of receiving orders to hit targets with as much firepower as possible, and to shoot anyone in zones that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had already occupied or where they had dropped leaflets warning civilians to evacuate immediately. Breaking the Silence claims that safe-distance guidelines for artillery bombardments differed for targets near Israeli troops and those that were near clearly identified Palestinian civilians.
"Anything inside [the Gaza Strip] is a threat, the area has to be'sterilized,' empty of people — and if we don't see someone waving a white flag, screaming, 'I give up' or something — then he's a threat and there's authorization to open fire," said an infantry first sergeant who, like all of the soldiers in the report, remained anonymous. "The saying was: 'There's no such thing there as a person who is uninvolved.' In that situation, anyone there is involved."
'When the premise of war is that anyone in this area is a legitimate target, then the shooting, even if it isn't intentional, causes extreme damage.'
Another first sergeant in the armored corps was asked whether his superiors had discussed how the troops should deal with uninvolved civilians.
"No one spoke about that at all," he answered. "From their point of view, no one should be there at all."
Avner Gvaryahu, a member of Breaking the Silence who served as a paratrooper in the West Bank between 2004 and 2007, told VICE News that the testimony was more disturbing than the accounts it collected after Israel's previous invasion of Gaza in late 2008.
"The whole methodology used in the operation was very troubling," said Gvaryahu, speaking of last summer's ground offensive. "The citizens were given notice by pamphlets that were thrown down from the air, and hours after that entire areas were basically declared war zones, meaning anyone in them was declared not innocent."
Particularly alarming for Gvaryahu was the IDF's deployment of some 35,000 artillery shells, including 19,000 explosive shells capable of killing anyone in a radius of 50 meters.
"The Gaza Strip at the end of the day is totally closed," he noted, referring to the area's confinement between Israel and Egypt. "There wasn't really anywhere people could go."
Among the testimony are accounts of instructions to enter houses only after expending a great deal of fire.
"During training, in that respect, [they told us] that we only enter houses 'wet,' with grenades, and the more of them the better," said one soldier. "Aim, fire and only then go in. You don't know if there is or isn't someone in there."
Other IDF members discussed using disproportionate amounts of fire.
"We were firing purposelessly all day long. Hamas was nowhere to be seen," said one. "You have no idea what's going on, and because you don't, your human nature is to be scared and 'over' defensive, so you 'overshoot.' "
Related: 'Paradise Is in This Life, Not the Next': The Marxists of Gaza Are Fighting for a Secular State
Damage in Gaza during Israel's offensive in July, 2014. (Photo by Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/Reuters)
Critics of the report question the authenticity of the soldiers' testimony and argue that low-level soldiers were not in a position to evaluate specific military maneuvers in Gaza. They also contend that the narrative presented by Breaking the Silence belies the danger posed by Hamas fighters during the incursion.
IDF spokesperson Peter Lerner said in a statement that the Israeli military does not deliberately target civilians, and stressed that it was fighting Hamas militants who had embedded themselves in civilian areas.
"Breaking the Silence repeatedly refused to provide the relevant IDF authorities with any proof of their claims," he said. "The report and its contents remain unsubstantiated, unverified, and unnamed. For obvious reasons such conduct makes any investigation by relevant IDF bodies impossible, and does not allow for the claims and incidents brought up to be deal with."
Other groups, including the Israeli organization NGO Monitor, which claims to "publicize distortions of human rights issues in the Arab-Israeli conflict," have accused Breaking the Silence of pandering to international critics of Israel.
"Breaking the Silence aims many of its activities at foreign (non-Israeli) audiences, including journalists, who usually have little knowledge or independent capabilities to assess the allegations," Gerald Steinberg, NGO Monitor's president, told VICE News via email.
Breaking the Silence insists that it seeks to properly inform the Israeli public and prompt the military to reconsider its internal laws of war. It also wants the testimony to ultimately lead to an independent Israeli investigation into the IDF's strategy in Gaza.
The report comes at a sensitive time. In April, Palestine officially joined the International Criminal Court (ICC). Though Palestinian officials have not officially lodged complaints against Israel at the Hague-based court, its prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, has launched a preliminary inquiry into any crimes that were committed in Palestinian territory after June 13, 2014 — a month before Operation Protective Edge was launched and just as Israel began a severe crackdown in the West Bank.
Related: Occupation: Voices from the West Bank
Any future investigations and possible prosecution could target illegal Israeli settlement activity and abuses committed by Hamas in the past year, along with violations perpetrated by Israel during Operation Protective Edge — alleged crimes that are described by the Breaking the Silence report.
"Some of the allegations in the report are quite shocking," Jens Ohlin, a professor of international law at Cornell Law School, told VICE News. "If true — and that's a big if — they might constitute evidence of multiple war crimes."
Ohlin said that the testimony could reflect the crime of disproportionate collateral damage to civilians, but cautioned that the soldiers' testimony didn't fully address the military value of targets within Gaza — a critical element in weighing possible violations.
"Second, there is the war crime of intentionally targeting civilians," he added. "For that crime, the real question is whether the alleged war crimes were the result of rogue soldiers or a top-down policy that can be traced to higher officials in the military hierarchy."
Though the ICC would theoretically attempt to conduct similar interviews on its own, court judges are expected to be able to evaluate evidence that hasn't been directly gathered. Ohlin, like other observers, said a case implicating Israel's military command structure will be hard to prove, but added that the report's testimony might at least illustrate for the court negligence on the part of military leadership to avoid civilian casualties.
The Breaking the Silence report arrives in a context that is by now familiar to Palestinians: alleged Israeli mistreatment overshadowed by more demanding international issues and a disinclination among American officials to antagonize Israel.
Among the various criticisms directed at Breaking the Silence is the point that the IDF is singled out among advanced militaries that also enjoy vastly superior firepower and inflict so-called "collateral damage." Former AP journalist Matti Friedman said as much in a Facebook post that was later picked up by elements of the Israeli and Jewish press.
"Civilian casualty rates are high — compared to what? Compared to the US in Fallujah? The British in Northern Ireland? The Canadians in Helmand Province?" wrote Friedman, who has for years criticized what he believes are unfavorable media portrayals of Israel.
If the debate over what crimes, if any, Israel might have committed in Gaza is contentious, it is also true that the ICC would be breaking new ground in tackling that very question.
Ohlin pointed out that the ICC and other global justice mechanisms have not focused on disproportionate force employed by advanced militaries instead preferring clearer-cut cases of atrocity crimes. In fact, the ICC has not prosecuted anyone outside of Africa.
"If you look at Nuremberg, at the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, if you look at the ICC, the Special Court for Sierra Leone and Cambodia, none of those cases involve cases of violating the rule on proportionality," said Ohlin.
George Bisharat, a Palestinian-American professor at the University of California's Hastings College of the Law, told VICE News that in lieu of serving as direct proof, the soldiers' testimony could give the court political cover to pursue what would be by far its most controversial case yet.
"These statements are not in themselves evidence at this point," cautioned Bisharat. "But there is little question to me that some of these incidents described would be considered war crimes cognizable under the Rome Statute."
The Rome Statue is the ICC's founding text, which Palestine signed last December. The move came a day after a resolution setting a timetable for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territory was shot down at the United Nations Security Council, one vote shy of forcing a likely US veto. Palestine officially joined the court in April.
Related: Little Comfort Taken as Palestine Formally Joins the International Criminal Court
Bisharat said that with Israel and Palestine peace talks all but dead, Palestine's decision last year was as much political — intended for both domestic audiences and diplomatic leveraging purposes — as it was a statement of principal.
France has publicly pushed for a toned down Security Council resolution to set parameters for peace talks. In March, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters at the UN that his country would propose such a text "in the coming weeks." No resolution has yet been introduced, and council diplomats say that none should be expected ahead of the resumption of talks over Iran's nuclear program in June. Despite the Obama administration's cold relations with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it appears in no hurry to act on Palestine.
"There is only so much political capital that the administration believes it has to deal with Israel, Palestine, and Iran," said Bisharat. "The administration is having to choose between the Iran deal and the Palestinians."
The Breaking the Silence report arrives in a context that is by now familiar to Palestinians: alleged Israeli mistreatment overshadowed by more demanding international issues and a disinclination among American officials to antagonize Israel.
Israel has launched probes into several high-profile incidents during the 50-day war, including the shelling of a beach in Gaza City on July 16 that resulted in the deaths of four children. Lerner said that 19 criminal investigations had been initiated and indictments filed against three soldiers accused of theft and obstruction of justice.
But Gvaryahu is discouraged that Israel's military has shown no willingness to reconsider its conduct of an operation that killed more civilians than purported targets.
"The military is not questioning its rules of engagement," said Gvaryahu. "That's what we think should be investigated, and that can't be investigated by the military because it is ultimately subordinate."
The experts that VICE News consulted agreed that, for the time being, an ICC investigation into the Gaza conflict is a long way off. If any cases on Palestine do come, the court will find it easier to consider Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, which even its closest allies have characterized as illegal.
In the meantime, Gvaryahu notes that Breaking the Silence's testimony should not be taken as evidence that Israel troops intended to murder Palestinian civilians.
"I think there is a very big difference between indiscriminate fire and intentional killing," he said. "But when the premise of war is that anyone in this area is a legitimate target, then the shooting, even if it isn't intentional, causes extreme damage."
Follow Samuel Oakford on Twitter: @samueloakfordCarrot Cake Sticky Rolls. Made with cinnamon, nuts and dried fruit these sticky rolls make a great treat or snack. Vegan Recipe. Jump to Recipe
I have a to do list for the next few weeks, from the requests on my facebook page.. Some sticky buns, a gluten free vegan daily bread, and some yummy dim sum recipes!! I spent some time this week browsing around and thinking of something different to add to the sticky buns.. some on making a list of flours to order for the gluten free bread, and reading up on a couple of gluten free recipes!.. And in the middle of it all our refrigerator’s defrost timer went bad leading to warm squishy freezer items! That got fixed thankfully but I am craving some Kulfi(Indian icecream )!.. so thats added to the to do list too.. to make with oats and cashew milk, cardamom and saffron!
MY LATEST VIDEOS
Back to sticky buns! I like cinnamon, but dont love the whole lot of it in as in a cinnamon sticky roll.. I saw some big organic carrots looking back at me yesterday, when I opened the fridge to give some baby carrots to Chewie (Chewie loves carrots, cauliflower, peas and what not, he probably was a herbivore in his previous life)! And then a bulb went on somewhere..
A Carrot cake and a sticky cinnamon bun had a baby…A carroty, not too sweet, sticky cranberry cashew filling and topped with simple glaze, or not.. roll was born… you can use chopped walnuts and raisins in the filling for a more carrot cake effect. I was out of walnuts and I like cranberries more than raisins.:) Pictured below without any glaze.This article is from the archive of our partner.
This crazy statistic comes from the Wall Street Journal's Amy Chozick and Cecile Rohwedder, who discovered, as proof of the media madness that will be Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding, "CNN alone will have a team of roughly 400 reporters, cameramen and crew assigned to the wedding." To compare: A group of just 50 CNN employees, one-eighth the size of the anticipated wedding fleet, are currently on the ground in Japan covering the aftermath of the earthquake and the continuing nuclear containment problem.
CNN isn't the only network with such disproportionately big plans for the royal wedding. On the day of the earthquake, Technolayer reported that NBC News sent four anchors and correspondents to join the staff at its Tokyo Bureau. The same day, the Associated Press wrote that NBC was planning to send "an army of people--in the hundreds" to cover William and Kate's nuptuals. ABC's senior vice president wouldn't confirm to the AP how much manpower it would have in London on the wedding day, but did say "it's a major event that takes resources and people." ABC sent three anchors and corespondents to Japan the day of the earthquake.As we enter the second half of the season, the NHL trade market, were it to be adapted to film, would best be titled "All Quiet on the Western Front."
As the calendar turned to 2017, only two transactions have been made. The Leafs traded Jhonas Enroth to Anaheim (or more accurately, San Diego) for a conditional 7th round pick in 2018, while Nashville acquired fourth-line enforcer Cody McLeod from Colorado for an AHL forward. These two milquetoast deals come over a month after the last major "blockbuster," which saw the Leafs move Peter Holland to the basement-dwelling Arizona Coyotes for a conditional 6th rounder. The NHL hot stove- usually setting off smoke alarms at this time of year- is barely above a simmer.
NHL general managers have been so conservative on the trade market this season, one would wonder if the NHL Trade Deadline is better programming for FOX News than TSN. That is, however, likely to change, as it always does. While this deadline (and the weeks leading up to it) may not be as exciting as previous deadlines, impactful moves will be made, some teams will be definite buyers, and others definite sellers.
While there's still a lot of uncertainty in the standings, the top and bottom tiers of the league have essentially crystallized. The certain buyers are teams that, barring an unforeseen collapse, are definitely postseason-bound (e.g. Washington, Columbus, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Minnesota, Montreal). The sellers will be the teams that realistically know there's no hope this season, meaning their goal is to acquire as many futures as possible (e.g. Arizona, Colorado, Buffalo, and perhaps some other teams in denial that need to confront reality). Beyond that, however, lies some two-thirds of the league that need to make a decision on what their plan will be.
For the first time in a few years, the Leafs are in that latter category. They woke up this morning in a playoff spot, in the thick of a competitive race for playoff berths in the Atlantic Division and wildcard that will involve several teams. On one hand, they're still a young, rebuilding team; on the other, they've exceeded expectations so far this year. Elliotte Friedman even made his case for Shattenkirk as a Leafs rental this week:
Shattenkirk made it known he would not consider Edmonton long-term, but would he do it for a few months as the Oilers chase the playoffs? Why not? Montreal and Toronto would also make sense as teams that need a short-term burst. Think about it: Those clubs (or anyone else who would be interested) get a good rental. Shattenkirk gets a situation where he’s going to play a big role and make himself look even better for his upcoming free agency. (Although, as I’ve said before, other teams are convinced he wants to play for the Rangers.) Shattenkirk breaking out with Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner or Connor McDavid would be fun to see.
So, what should the Leafs do? Should they buy, and bolster what has a decent chance at being a playoff team? Or, should they sell to strengthen the pipeline of a continuing rebuild?
Here's what, in my humble opinion, would be in the Leafs' best interests.
(1) Sell High on Roman Polak
The rationale for this is quite simple from the Leafs' standpoint. The Leafs have carried eight defensemen all year, and Polak is a pending UFA on a reasonable deal. What's more, Leafs management knows it can get something of value for Polak because it has done so before; last February, they netted two 2nd round picks from the San Jose Sharks for he and Nick Spaling (now of the Swiss league).
There are reasons some teams may think highly of Polak. He is a physical presence and has been a workhorse in blocking a ton of shots for a penalty kill that ranks 5th in the NHL at 84.5% (as of January 19). Contenders that are thin on defense and need to stengthen their PK may see some value in acquiring Polak for a long playoff run, as San Jose did last year (this, by the way, describes the Blackhawks to a "T").
While Polak would have enough value to some front offices to net another draft pick, it also makes sense for the Leafs to trade him. He's a pending UFA and not a long-term piece of the team going forward.
(EDITOR'S NOTE: if you're an NHL GM interested in acquiring Polak, the piece ends here. Don't mind the words down there. Just go about your day; you're a busy man!)
More important is this fact: at even strength, Roman Polak is just not that good.
Polak's 46.2% CF ranks last among Leafs defensemen, and his CA60 is last on the entire team. He seems fundamentally incapable of making a clean possession through the neutral zone. His game is entirely based on blocking shots and clearing pucks which, while providing some value to the PK, is not much of an asset at 5v5. He doesn't even pass the eye test; he generally looks confused on the ice, and seems to have the decision-making speed of Homer Simpson trying to think of a comeback to being called "slow." While he made it to the Stanley Cup Final last June, his performance was so abysmal that he still calls Evgeni Malkin "dad."
The only other Leaf defenseman with 5v5 numbers as abysmal as Polak's is Matt Hunwick. The numbers, however, bear out that Hunwick is a capable third-pair defenseman that is being significantly dragged down by- wait for it- playing with Roman Polak.
By trading Polak, he gets to go to a contending team for the second straight year; meanwhile, the Leafs get better in the present (by playing a defenseman who could presumably play better at 5v5 and, in turn, elevate Hunwick's game) and future (by getting an asset in return), and open up a roster spot for potentially another forward, to boot. As the Michael Scott school of conflict resolution would say, that's a "win-win-win" scenario.
(2) That's It.
Do you work in the Leafs front office? Have you just traded Roman Polak for a high pick? Great work; you've earned the rest of the deadline period off! Put down the phone, go play some golf, kick your feet up in your favourite recliner and crack open a cold one while getting caught up on some Netflix. Maybe phone in a minor AHL swap early on deadline day so TSN has something to do. You've earned it, big guy!
In all seriousness, the Leafs really should do absolutely nothing else of significance on the trade market. No buying, no selling, no matter where they wind up in the standings. If I haven't convinced |
3, Pakistan beat England by one run to square the T20 series after being hammered in the opening game Getty Images
Mir concludes her point purposefully: "Sometimes the perceptions that we make out of small bits of news do not reflect the reality."
Despite being an active member of the team, Mir plays the dual role as an elder as well, in the absence of any former players to draw on ("We do not enjoy senior players like Clare Connor or Belinda Clark in our set-up."). In turn, she doesn't hesitate to state administrators "definitely need to improve" their facilities, citing a single ground women cricketers have in Lahore.
Mir also advocates strongly for Pakistan's involvement in domestic competition like the Women's Big Bash League in Australia and England's inaugural Women's Super League later this summer. "Players from all the countries are getting that exposure and I don't think the Pakistan girls should be missing out," she says, citing left arm-spinner Anam Amin as one who could excite.
Amin is part of the cohort of Pakistan players on their first England tour, leaping to third in the ICC T20 bowler rankings after a superb World T20 at age 23.
She leads a spin-heavy attack benefiting from Mir's experienced offbreaks, Bismah Maroof's wristspin, (also promoted to succeed Mir as T20 captain), and Nida Dar's finger spin that accounted for three England wickets in their World T20 fixture.
With the bat, the seventh-ranked Pakistanis are bolstered by the return of in-form opener Javeria Khan (who has too graduated to the leadership team) and Sidra Ameen, who established her credentials in Javeria's absence.
Mir is very respectful of her hosts and knows their depth isn't to be underestimated, but believes her side can beat anyone. Underdogs no doubt, but unquestionably about to face a transitional England team at a good time.
Whether or not they take home the trophies on offer this time around, Mir is eloquent in explaining what her team now means to Pakistan, stating simply: "They appreciate us for living our dreams."
Thanks to the leadership of Mir and her ever-improving team, many more will now go on to do exactly that.Phil Spencer has been at Microsoft for 28 years, currently leading the global creative and engineering teams at Xbox. He's overseen the launch of the Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and now he is guiding the company's launch of its new, upgraded Xbox One console, codenamed Scorpio.
We sat down with Spencer at Australia's EB Expo convention and asked for his thoughts on the announcement of the PS4 Pro, how development is shaping up for the Scorpio, 4K resolution gaming as the new standard, and more.
GameSpot: Sony recently announced the PS4 Pro. What was initial your reaction to the announcement? It's coming out a year before Xbox Scorpio; how does that affect your plans, if at all?
Spencer: It didn't affect our plan at all. About two and a half years ago we started to look at a hardware refresh that we might want to do, which in the end led to the Xbox One S and Scorpio in terms of designs. We'd looked at doing something that was higher performance this year, and I'd say the [PS4] Pro is about what we thought--with the GPU, CPU, memory that was here this year--that you could go do, and we decided that we wanted to do something different. So we looked at Scorpio and 4K and what I thought was a bigger step in terms of performance. It was something that we wanted to focus on.
I watched their event, I thought they did a nice job. It's hard to show 4K and HDR over an internet stream in general. It's something frankly that I'm trying to watch and learn. For these kind of graphic and visual technologies, seeing is believing.
I want to make sure that when people see the games and if they want to see 4K and HDR that we're able to give them that experience, and I think as I look at E3 and stuff it's like okay, how do we make sure that people can get the full experience that these devices can offer. Sometimes the internet and streaming solutions that are there can't support it. Announcing a new platform is always both risky and challenging.
Speaking of which, when Xbox first discussed its iterative model for console gaming, there was some backlash from the core audience, who questioned the vision. How do you feel now that Sony have revealed they're following a similar path?
I think that it'll always play out in the product truth that we're able to deliver. Right now, we've shipped an Xbox One S that's doing incredibly well in all markets, which is nice to see. Because I know when we announced Scorpio right after the Xbox One S, some people criticized that we'd cut the legs out of the Xbox One S and that we wouldn't see it do well. Because everybody would just wait. But I think we've almost seen the opposite. We've seen a lot of interest and frankly, sales, of the Xbox One S, globally.
When I look forward though, I think on the Scorpio; people are still going to evaluate it not based on our video announcement or interviews like this, but getting their hands on it and saying, "This is something for me. Does it do something that I find different than what I'm playing today?" And that's our responsibility. To live up to that bar and exceed that bar with the games and service and platform that we build. The criticism will come or not based on our ability to deliver there.
With the S, people seem to be really happy with the 4K UHD drive, the games, HDR, the 4K streaming, the stuff that we put in the box, and it kind of peps us up when we think about what we want to go do with Scorpio.
One thing about gamers I always value is that they're direct with you about how they feel. Both before something comes out, and after. So I know I will feel how the gamers feel about the product set that we're launching. But I have a lot of confidence with what our plan is with Scorpio, and if anything with the launch of Xbox One S and watching what's gone on in the last month or so, I feel even more confident about our plans.
Project Scorpio was announced at E3 this year.
How is Xbox Scorpio development shaping up? You said announcing at E3 in June was in part to give developers time to get themselves familiar with the hardware. How is that coming along?
Really well. Actually, with the hardware timelines right now we're a little ahead of plan. We'll see, there is a lot of time to go, but we feel good about how the things are coming together. The teams understand the performance spec that we're building. We went through some of the high-level specs at E3 in the video. And it gives the teams time to make sure that they're targeting that performance for their games. Luckily so many of both our internal teams and partners are also building on PC.
So it's not hard for us to say, "Okay this is the PC spec that you can expect with what we're building on Scorpio," so it allows them to make sure they have the assets and capability to deliver. Since we're focusing on a box that can support true 4K and a 4K frame buffer and a lot of PC games already support that; it's not a new language or asset base for them in terms of things that we're asking them to go do. I'm also pretty confident in the content line-up that we'll see.
Microsoft GM Shannon Loftis recently said all first-party games launched in the Scorpio time frame will run be rendered natively at 4K instead of upscaled--do you think third-party games will generally follow suit?
I want to put the tools in the hands of the creators and let them decide. Even for our first-party games, and Shannon owns a large portion of our first-party portfolio and I know she's got a vision that she wants to drive in gaming, and I'm glad she's got her voice and is setting a vision for her teams… even on the launch of the original Xbox there was some push to say "Okay, shouldn't we mandate HD, that everything is 1080p?" and I just think that the best games aren't defined by their resolution or framerate, frankly. I know a lot of people say that 60fps is the holy grail of frame rate. But I'll just say, give the developers the power and the tools to develop the best realisation of their vision and their game, and they will make the right decisions.
On the third-party side, a lot of the teams already have a 4K version of the game because of PC and what they're building. And they'll decide on Scorpio and what they're going to go do. I definitely think we're going to see native 4K games, but you'll also see teams take different approaches and I think that's absolutely fine.
We shouldn't let gaming turn into an artform that's defined by a number. Nobody asks when you look at a painting, how many colours were used? Even the standards in the way movies are shot, there's also a lot of flexibility and artistic flavour in what's put in TV and movies and we should allow that same freedom in the gamespace and not try to excel or review things based on X plus Y equals how good something is.
You've described Xbox Scorpio as the "most powerful console ever made" and also as a "premium product" so what can we expect in terms of pricing?
Spencer claims Scorpio will be the most "powerful console ever made"
We're not announcing price here. I guess I'd just say we announced the Xbox One S and it's out in market at $399 [in Australia]. We expect both of these products to be in market at the same time, and that there's a clear performance difference and obviously there will be a price difference between the two things. But I also want people to understand that Scorpio is going to be a premium console. Like, I'm not trying to sell you a high-end gaming PC rig for a couple of thousand dollars or something. We look at consumer price points of consoles and definitely our target is to hit that. But it will be a premium version of an Xbox One and we'll talk more about pricing as we're cutting it closer to the launch and everything else. But I'm confident that we'll be able to deliver a product at a price point that gamers will feel like is worth it.
After Sony announced PS4 Pro, the Xbox social media channels jabbed at the console's lack of a 4K Blu-ray player. Does this erase some of the goodwill you were trying to build up by being anti-console war?
I am of two minds on this one. We have a 4K UHD blu-ray drive in our Xbox One S. I think us stating a feature that we have in our box that we think is an important selling feature of our box is completely within fair game. It is a feature of our box and for somebody to look and say that talking about the features that you decide… I mean, we made a bet on a 4K blu-ray disc, and they didn't. And I'm not saying they made the wrong decision and we made the right decision, but if somebody wants a 4K UHD blu-ray drive we have a console that has one, then we're going to make sure that people know that. And if people say that that's console wars, I think they're wrong.
We should be able to talk about the features that are in our box, but I also want to be respectful of what other companies are doing. And I don't think we crossed the line there, but as it was going on I also made sure that we remain respectful. Confident, but respectful of what other people are doing. But I don't want anybody to ever try to put us in a box of, "Hey, you've got a feature but because somebody else doesn't have it you can't talk about it," and somehow that's unfair and console wars-like. Because I don't believe that. I will always be respectful of my friends at the other platform holders; Nintendo, Sony. I have a lot of friends at Sony and Nintendo and both those companies are doing their best to deliver products based on their vision and I respect that. We're doing the same. You won't see me bad-mouth what the other platforms are doing but I am proud of the product decisions that we make and I think that we should be able to talk about it.
Social media is a funny thing. I think gamers like to see that sort of banter go down.
ReCore received lukewarm reviews.
And I don't. I've been vocal about that as well. I'll turn it around now. Like, when ReCore came out and there were some of the lower scores that were given, I would have PlayStation fans tweet me, happy that ReCore wasn't getting great review scores from some outlets. I just thought it was such a negative thing for our industry for somebody to be gleeful that somebody gave a game a review that was lower than what the team expected. And I don't just think about that in terms of the games that we build. I can look at Hello Games and No Man's Sky. I've known Sean Murray for years, and I said I want them to be successful with the games that [the industry] builds. The games industry gets bigger and better as more people enjoy playing games. And I also think about the teams behind these games, and these are people who spend years of their lives, so committed to the artform of building games. And then when it comes out, for somebody to kind of fold that into a "My console is better than your console" in a very petty way, I find it completely distasteful.
I don't have more fun with my Xbox based on the review scores of games that are on PlayStation, or vice versa. If you have an Xbox, I want to ship great games for you and have you have a great time on that console. And that is our focus, right there. It's not about what somebody else is out there doing with their platform. I know there's pockets in every community, I'm not saying Xbox is completely clean here, but as much as I have any influence on it at all, that's not something I will support or entertain. Sorry, that's just something I needed to get out.
How do you feel about the response to ReCore from critics, given it was highlighted as one of the major Xbox One exclusives?
I feel great about ReCore. About being able to work with with Inafune-san and Armature. And I'm very proud that it's in our portfolio. I wish it reviewed higher, but I don't necessarily look at the reviews as a reflection of the game's importance to us. The game is selling well, which I like. The gamers' response to the game has been positive, which is the most important thing.
And we priced ReCore lower than a full triple-A game because we knew the game that we were building and the size of the team, I wanted to make sure that people felt like it was fair value for what it was. I think in the end that was a good decision, because I think trying to get people to buy a $60 game when it's not a $60 game short-term might feel like a money-making thing but in the long run I don't think it helps the game or the IP.
On the reviews, honestly I thought some of the reviews were a little harsh in terms of their view on the game. But for us, inside, again I feel really proud to have the character, the story, the gameplay style, and the partnership with Armature and Inafune-san as part of our portfolio.
I didn't try to tell anybody that it was a ten. I think we knew, as with any games, that there are certain things… if we started from the beginning and we knew what we'd get, there's a couple of things we would've done slightly differently. But we're very proud of how the game ended up. And I think seven, eight, nine, like anywhere in there is fine. Three or four… I mean somebody gave Forza Horizon 3 a four. I think there's certain reviews that are written more to get clicked on than they are to actually accurately reflect the quality of the game, and that kind of bums me out.
ReCore was one of the first new Play Anywhere games. How has the adoption of Windows 10 gaming been?
It's been really strong. Obviously as you said, with the Play Anywhere feature ReCore was first and Forza Horizon 3 was second. I think we're seeing thousands of people that are playing the game on both platforms. In the case of Forza Horizon there's multiplayer, you can actually play together. [With] the Play Anywhere for ReCore, the feature that obviously most people take advantage of is that the save game is compatible [between platforms].
I think those features are strong. And now I look at Forza Horizon 3 and I see people on both platforms and I see people playing at the same time across Xbox Live. I think in Gears of War 4 you'll see people playing the co-operative modes together across both platforms. I feel good about the adoption early on and I feel good about the roadmap with the games that we have.
Speaking of multiple platforms, what did you think about Nintendo bringing Mario to iPhone as a way of broadening its reach? Would Xbox consider doing something similar?
Well we have Minecraft on iOS and Android. Obviously we bought it after it was already there but we've expanded--we put it on Wii U after we owned it. I think having games where people want to go play those games makes a ton of sense. And I applaud Nintendo. We put Minecraft on [the Wii U] and they actually put the Mario skin pack into Minecraft. It was great to be able to partner with them on that.
There are technical limitations to certain devices that may make them not appropriate for all games, but the idea that I can stay connected to my Xbox Live community on any device whether it be iOS, Android, Gear VR, PC, Xbox, whatever it is, I can connect to the games that makes sense on the devices that I'm on. If I already bought the game it just runs on the device, the Play Anywhere stuff makes a lot of sense. I think for Nintendo, and I have nothing to do with their strategy or moves, but I think it's a smart move for them.
Do you think there would ever be a day where we see Xbox IPs on mobile devices?
Age of Empires: World Domination was released for mobile devices in 2015.
Yeah, I actually do. We've had Age of Empires, other things show up. I think we did Viva Pinata on the DS. You've seen us do things on those other platforms. The thing that has been a barrier to us in the past is the fact that we didn't have Xbox Live on those platforms, which we do now. Without Xbox Live on those platforms we end up shipping these games kind of into a vacuum. Meaning that we ship them but when you play it you're not connected back to the community of friends and the achievements and other things that you have with Xbox Live. So now that we've launched Xbox Live on iOS and Android, we have millions of people that we see on those platforms connecting to Xbox Live that gives us a good basis to do more things there with our franchises. And I expect that we will, because we want to put the IP where people want to play.
Moving on to a different subject, we have not heard much about Kinect in a long time--what future does Kinect have for the Xbox brand?
We made a decision on Xbox One S in terms of how we were going to support Kinect plugging in. We wanted to make sure that the hardware support for Kinect was there. We didn't have the custom Kinect controller plug-in because it allowed us to kind of double-up and have a USB connector in there as well, which I think is just a good feature for the box. For me, Kinect will succeed based on how much people enjoy using it. We're investing in things like Cortana coming to Xbox, which gives people voice control and in which obviously Kinect is a great way for voice to come into the box.
As games come out, Fru was a game that came out recently that I wanted to promote because I thought it was a nice Kinect game. But I also can't be in a position of making gamers care more about Kinect or less about Kinect. It's kind of like any technology in our ecosystem--its success and popularity will come from how people use it. And I like what Kinect brought to the 360, I like some of the games that have come to the Xbox One. We're going to continue to focus on making sure it's a supported part of the platform, but we also won't force it on people and say that we're somehow going to make it something that's a required part of the platform.
We have not heard much about Kinect as of late.
What are some industry trends today that excite you? What are the ones that keep you up at night?
In a good way?
Yes, in a good way.
You know, I love how the social phenomenon of games and the way that people can kind of share their experiences… it was interesting to watch Pokemon Go, and I know it went up and went down, but gaming is just such a more mainstream part of society than maybe it was when I was a gamer back as a wee lad. The fact that as people have these fun experiences in games they're able to so easily share and create community around those experiences--I mean, all you have to do is watch the League of Legends World Championships and you see millions of people online and thousands of people in an auditorium just getting so excited about what's going on in gaming. I think it's really great that we've hit this mainstream capability as an artform but also the technology of today let's me share that experience. We recently acquired a small company called Beam that does very low latency streaming of games so that the interactivity between streamer and people watching the stream is usually sub-one second so you really get a direct interaction there. And it's not so much about Beam because there's other streamers out there like Twitch and stuff, but I'll just say that whole community now that has been built, I think you're going to start to see games that actually get created around that community of streamers and viewers and social. Where now you have more the game and then people kind of sit on top and stream.
I just think that's so cool because our artform and our medium is this combination of art and interactivity. The interactivity in my mind makes us care more about the art because we feel like we impact it in some ways by where we move Joule around the screen and what we decide to go do. And then you add the social component on top of that and I think gaming just has such a massive opportunity in front of it to become bigger than any media the planet's ever seen.
Do you mean like games where the streamers controller what's happening? For example, Twitch plays Pokemon.
Or maybe even the other way around, because you might say that was the stream viewers controlling what the streamer [can do]… we're seeing that with Beam already. Not to make this an ad for Beam but because of the low latency, we can have streamers that are actually setting up an Xbox controller and the community can actually hit the buttons on the Xbox controller in real time and play a game like Killer Instinct, which I think is fantastic. And that's taking a game that was never built thinking that that's what would happen. And so it's kind of this add-on. Even Twitch plays Pokemon was obviously something the team would have thought about when they created that. So now you open it up and say creators knowing that this is a possibility are going to integrate that directly into their creative process. And instead of these bolt-on experiences I think you're actually going to say community-driven games that are part of the core game loop that you play, as opposed to something that sits on top. I think that's going to be fantastic.
We did a game a few years ago called 1 vs. 100... and it was an avatar-based game show that you played real-time online. It was kind of a trivia game. But I think about now, and we could do it in a very non-interactive way because it was questions that you answered because we didn't have streaming and the capabilities that we have now. But I think you're going to see game genres get build up around the social connection that I think will be just really, really cool.WASHINGTON -- A small bipartisan group of senators opposed to broad filibuster reform are closing in on a compromise package that would derail the building momentum toward a rules change in January. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) has been the most vocal internal opponent of substantial Senate rules reform, and Democratic sources say he is now finalizing talks with the bipartisan group of senators. On Tuesday, Levin told HuffPost that he was optimistic an agreement would soon be reached and that he was opposed to the "talking filibuster," the most far-reaching reform on the table. "There's a lot of conversations going on. There's a lot of things I'm involved in. There's a lot of things that I think are going to happen -- that I'm optimistic are going to happen. I don't want to be more specific," he said. "I'm optimistic it's going to happen. Hopefully we're going to be able to work out something."
Schumer said the right filibuster package could sail through the upper chamber. "I would say there are 90 members of this chamber, a significant majority of both parties, which would like to see something change and are fed up with how the Senate works," he said. "It's a bipartisan yearning to fix it. Whether we can come to an agreement or not between the parties, we'll see."
Filibuster reform is very close to happening. You know it's close because of the bipartisan gang freak-out in trying to derail it. Unfortunately, senators flock to "bipartisan" proposals like flies to porta-potties. At least when it comes to things like the precious dysfunction of Senate procedure.If it's bipartisan, it won't work. That's because Republicans don't want it to work. The Senate has gone this route before. Obviously, if it had worked the first two times, we wouldn't be where we are now, would we. That's a lesson that a handful of Democrats, like Levin, seem completely incapable of learning. One of them, schockingly enough, seems to be Chuck Schumer There is no yearning on the part of Republicans to fix this. If there was, well then there wouldn't be any fixing needed, would there. Because those Republicans yearning to make the Senate functioninstead of helping the rest of the Republicans obstruct. Given that three of the Republican senators whohave been interested in helping out in the cause of bipartisanship (Richard Lugar, Olympia Snowe and Scott Brown) are gone, this is one more exercise in bipartisan futility.
We need real reform, not what a Senate Republican leadership aide calls "another ineffectual ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ or some watered-down cosmetic changes that won’t make the Senate more functional."
Tell your senator to vote to make the filibuster a real, talking filibuster that requires affirmative votes to continue.Here’s a look at what’s filming on location Wednesday, Jan. 8, 2014:
If you have any scoop about where a movie or TV show is filming, let us know about it at olv@onlocationvacations.com or at Twitter.com/olv! We depend on your tips to keep the site going, all of our info comes from our amazing readers!
Don’t forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter too for all of the latest up-to-the-minute celebrity sightings and filming info!
Filming in British Columbia:
Motive is filming in the 100 block of W. Cordova St in Vancouver. (Thanks @canadagraphs)
Filming in California:
Scandal is filming at 431 W 7th St (6:00 AM – 11:00 PM), 600 S Main St (4:00 PM – 1:00 AM) and W 7th St, S Hill St – S Olive St in Los Angeles (7:00 AM – 6:00 PM).
True Blood is filming at 939 S Figueroa St, Los Angeles (4:00 AM – 11:59 PM).
NCIS: LA is filming at 336 S Hill St, Los Angeles (5:00 AM – 10:00 PM).
Shameless is filming at 409 200 N Spring St, Los Angeles (4:00 PM – 9:00 PM).
Castle is filming at S San Pedro St and E 11th St in Los Angeles.
Filming in Georgia:
The pilot Complications is filming at 2384 Havenridge Dr in Atlanta.
Filming in Illinois:
Chicago Fire is filming at 1001 S Jefferson St in Chicago.
Fox is filming something at 1842 W 18th St in Chicago.
Filming in New York:
Elementary is filming at Silvercup Studios East in Long Island City.
Orange Is The New Black is filming at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens.
Law & Order: SVU is filming at Chelsea Piers in NYC.
The Blacklist is filming around Bronx Park Rd and Southern Blvd in Bronx.
Blue Bloods is filming around Forest Park/Forest Park Dr in Woodhaven, Queens. (Thanks @CarmelaMSW and @lmsball91)
Power is filming at Forsythe St and Canal St in NYC and in studio at Steiner Studios in Brooklyn.
The Americans is filming at North St and Bryant Ave in White Plains.
The Knick is filming at Hudson St and S. Broadway in Yonkers.
The Black Box is filming at East 87th St and Park Avenue in NYC. (Thanks Det. Movie Buf)
Filming in Tennessee:
Nashville is filming in studio at 444 Brick Church Park Drive, Nashville.
Thanks to @rokocat for sharing this photo with Cameron Diaz in NYC. If you have a celeb photo to share, let us know at olv@onlocationvacations.com!How pokemon got their names
This section has information on how the pokemon got their names. I got alot of mail saying some are wrong. Well now you can send me how they got their names. Thanks. How Pokémon (& Other Stuff) Got it's Name: Written © 1999 by Kid Kool (not me). Pokémon: Pocket Monsters, directly translated. It was left as Pokémon, however, due to legal issues (Remember the Monster in my Pocket fad around 7 or 8 years back?) Pallet Town: Pallet is another word for your tastebuds. What you like, what you don't like. It also refers top an artist's pallet, as "Shade's of your Journey await you" Viridian Forest/City: As far as I can tell, it's from Viridescent, meaning slightly green, or greenish. Makes sense with the forest. Plus the Earthbadge is here, Earth is Green. Pewter City: Brock's the rock master, and Pewter is a semi-precious stone. Mt. Moon: Pieces of the moon fell on it, so what do you expect? Cerulean City: Meaning azure, as in water. Obviously because of Misty's gym. Nugget Bridge: What do you win at the end? Vermilion City: It means a variety of bright shades of red going up to Scarlet. I believe it is also a spice. Don't know how this relates to the game... SS Anne: Anne could be anyone, maybe one of the creators? In the show it was changed to St. Anne. Diglett's Cave: Digletts dug it. Rock Tunnel: The Tunnel is made of dark rock. Lavender Town: It's another spice, European. Notice how these relate to Pallet? It also means Purple, another relationship to Pallet. No leader here, though. Celadon City: The big town is named after Celandine, another herb. Don't know about a colour reference for this. But it makes sense, considering the gym leader uses plants. Rocket Game Corner: Team Rocket runs it. Saffron City: An orange powder used to... it's another spice, okay? It could also relate to Sapphire. Silph Co.: I believe Silph relates to mages and wizards, but I may be wrong. It would make sense though, they did make the Silph scope for ghosts and the Master Ball. Fuchsia City: If you've ever used Crayons when you were little, you've seen it before. A vivid reddish-purple, or, as it says on the town's sign, "It's Passion Pink!" And, guess what, it's a plant with flowers on it. Plus, poison is that colour sometimes. Safari Zone: Safari, as in jungle hunting type stuff. Seafoam Islands: The Sea Foams, people. No big deal. Cinnabar Island: Cinnamon kinda jumped out at me. Cinnamon does come in bars/sticks. It's also an ore from Mercury. Spicey and ore, both relates to the volcanic tendencey's of the island and it's leader. Indigo Plateau: Plateau's are flat lands. Indigo is the forgotten colour of the rainbow. It's also a dye from plants. Victory Road: You're beating the game, you think they're gonna name it Loser Street? Characters - (* means it is only from the show) Professor Oak: He was Dr. Ochido (I believe) in Japanese, which means (Another I think) Orchid. A flower. Oak is just a tree, though. Ash Ketchum: Ketchum, Catch 'em, if you didn't get that... Ash I originally thought meant he was a fire trainer, but then I saw why. It's from Satoshi (SatOSH, ASH) in Japan, and the creator of the game was named Satoshi. Kinda surprised me as the credits rolled by. Gary Oak: Oak, as in he's Prof. Oak's Grandson. His name in Japan was Shigeru. I think this relates to Shigeru Miyamato (Apologies if I mispelled that), creator of Mario and Donkey Kon and Zelda and producer of Pokémon. Brock: Take off the 'b' and what do you get? Misty: Water creates Mist. Lt. Surge: Surge is from electricity. Erika: I honestly don't know. Maybe some florist? Sabrina: This jumped out at me. They even mention she's teenage in the game. Sabrina the Teenage Witch! Koga: It sounds Japanese, and he is a Ninja. Blaine: Maybe related to Blaze? Not sure about this one. Nurse Joy*: She's so happy, and her Chansey's are too. Officer Jenny*: Just a name, I believe. Dome Fossil: A dome is a sphere like shape. The Kabuto within is dome shaped. Helix Fossil: Helix is a spiral, like the Omanyte. Pokémon: Bulbasaur: Bulb as in flower bulb, saur as in dinosaur. Ivysaur: Ivy is just another plant. Venusaur: refers to the flower on the back, a Venus fly-trap. There may be other origins. Charmander: Char refers to charred, char-boiled, etc. Mander is charmander, the red lizard. Charmeleon: Meleon refers to Chameleon Charizard: Izard -> Lizard Squirtle: Squirt as in, well, squirt, urtle as in Turtle. Wartortle: War as in war, Tortle as in kinda turtle, kinda tortoise. Blastoise: Blast from the cannons, Oise from Tortoise. Caterpie: Caterpillar Metapod: Meta as in metamorph, changing. Butterfree: BEFREEE! Butterfly, Freedom, Butterfree. Weedle: The worm in the weeds. Kakuna: Cocoon. Beedrill: Bee with drills. Pidgey: Pidgeon. Pidgeotto: Same as above. Pidgeot: Same as above. Rattata: Rat attack Raticate: Eradicate, Eraticate, Raticate! Spearow: Spear-like beak, sparrow. 'Nuff said. Fearow: You're supposed to fear it. Ekans: This is an interesting one that you'd miss if you didn't think about it. Reverse it: Ekans - snakE. Cool, eh? Arbok: Same as above. Arbok - kobrA! Cobra! Pikachu: Everyone's favourite. You can say it means yellow all you want, Pika is a rabbit that lives in the Arctic and eats Bird Brains, according to PFX, I believe. Raichu: It's the same as Japan, so I guess it's got some origin there. Any ideas? Sandshrew: A shrew (mouse-like) in the sand. Sandslash: It knows the Slash move. Nidoran: Jumbled up it spells Ironand, a metal candle-holder. Nidorina: Just an advanced Nidoran. Nidoqueen: Same as above. Nidoran: Jumbled up it spells Ironand, a metal candle-holder. Nidorino: Just an advanced Nidoran. Nidoking: Same as above. Clefairy: Don't know about the Cle, but a fairy is obvious. Notice in the game it says "Pi pi pii"? It's named Pippi in Japan. Clefable: Same thing, Fable is a mythical tale. Usually with a moral. Vulpix: From vulpine, meaning relating to a fox. Ninetales: It's got nine tails, and a tale is a story.The use of undocumented workers on a Trump construction site such as the hotel described by The Washington Post this week is certainly nothing new.
Thirty-five years ago, a small army of illegal immigrants was used to clear the site for what became the crown jewel of Donald Trump’s empire.
The 200 demolition workers—nicknamed the Polish Brigade because of their home country—worked 12-hour shifts, seven days a week with no overtime to knock down the old Bonwit Teller building and make room for Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
According to testimony in a protracted civil suit in federal court, the laborers were paid $5 an hour or less when they were paid at all. Some went unpaid after the contractor had financial troubles. A few never received even the paltry sum that was owed them for their dirty and hazardous efforts preceding the construction of Trump’s monument to his own wealth.
“They were undocumented and |
size and sink.
In videos recovered from the cellphones of passengers aboard the ferry Sewol, a voice can be heard over the ship’s intercom urging students and their teachers to stay put, telling them they are safer where they are. But as the ship continued to tip and the voice over the intercom repeated the same instructions, panic spread. Some passengers apparently sensed the approaching doom, and sent farewells to their families.
“This looks like the end,” a boy shouted into a smartphone held by one of his classmates, Park Su-hyeon.
Before he could finish, another boy cut in: “Mom, Dad, I love you.”
The young passengers were among 325 second-year high school students on board the 6,825-ton ferry, which sank on April 16. After Su-hyeon, 17, was found dead, the police returned the boy’s recovered personal items to his family, who discovered the video on his phone. This week, his father, Park Jong-dae, released the video to the local news media, saying that South Koreans must watch it to learn what went wrong.
As of Wednesday, 210 people were confirmed dead, with 92 still missing. Of the dead or missing, 250 were students on a school trip to a resort island.
Among the text messages, photos and video clips that have been produced by passengers of the ill-fated ship, Su-hyeon’s 15-minute footage bears the most dramatic witness to the panic and fear, as well as youthful naïveté and optimism, of the students trapped inside the ship while many of the crew members, including the captain, were among the first to desert their vessel.
“This is by far the most heartbreaking scene I have seen in my 27-year broadcasting career,” said Choi Seung-ho, a veteran television producer, when he introduced the footage on Newstapa, a website run by the Korea Center for Investigative Journalism. JTBC, a cable channel, also broadcast a shorter version of the video.
The video was edited to blur the faces of the students, and the students whose voices were captured were not identified.
Su-hyeon’s video begins at 8:52 a.m. on April 16. That was three minutes before the ferry sent its first distress signal to maritime traffic controllers on shore.
“The ship is leaning!” one passenger can be heard saying.
“Help me!” another said, sounding almost as if it were part of a youthful prank.
As students felt the ship shuddering and wondered whether it was sinking, a crew member came onto the intercom, urging students to stay put.
“Nonsense,” one student shouted. Another said: “I want to get off. I mean it.”
Though the vessel had tilted so much that some students were grabbing the railings on the wall to hang on, the video showed no sign of students trying to escape.
At 8:53, a voice on the intercom again advised the passengers not to move.
“What? Hurry! Save us!” a student shrieked. Another wondered, “Are we going to die?” A minute later, as the ship listed further, some students suggested donning life jackets. An announcement over the intercom again instructed passengers to stay where they were.
At 8:55, while the ship’s crew sent its first distress signal, one student in the cabin below shouted, “We don’t want to die!”
Over the intercom, the students were again urged not to move and to hold onto what they could. The ship’s captain and crew members later told reporters and investigators that they had thought it was safer for the passengers to stay in their cabins than to move in a panicked mass, causing the ship to list faster, or for them to jump into cold waters when the rescue ships were still far away.
Some of the male students appeared to hide their growing fear with jokes and uneasy laughs. One student said, “We are going to make news with this.” Another said, “This is going to be a lot of fun if we get it onto our Facebook.”
At 8:57, as another announcement from the crew advised “please never move,” one student said: “Should I call Mom? Mom, this looks like the end of me.”
After a two-and-a-half-minute break, the video resumed at 9:00, when students began passing one another life jackets and one wanted to have a picture taken as a “souvenir.” Some students complained that the zippers of their life jackets did not work and one student gave his life jacket to a classmate who could not find one.
“What about you?” the classmate asked.
“Don’t worry,” his friend responded. “I will get one for myself.”
Amid the growing panic, one boy shouted that he did not want to die. “I still have lots of animation movies I haven’t watched yet,” he said. Another boy made a V sign with his fingers in front of the phone’s camera.
At 9:03, one student wondered, “What is the captain doing?”
Three minutes later, students yelled “Silence! Silence!” as the ship’s intercom crackled again, repeating the same message: Stay put and wear life jackets if possible.
“Yes, sir!” a few students responded in a hopeful tone. But another questioned the instruction: “What’s going on? If they are telling us to wear life jackets, doesn’t that mean that the ship is sinking?”
At 9:07, the voice over the intercom repeated the instruction.
At 9:08, a minute before the video ends, one student was heard saying, “I am scared,” and others wondered whether their teacher was safe.
More than 20 minutes later, the first Coast Guard helicopters and ships arrived at the scene. Video from another student’s phone shows female students cheering when they hear helicopters overhead. That four-minute video was taken beginning at 9:37 by Park Ye-seul, who died on the ferry, and was released to JTBC by her father.
One of Ye-seul’s classmates could be heard pleading: “Save us, save us.” But one of the first things the Coast Guard rescuers did was help the ship’s captain, Lee Jun-seok, and other crew members off the sinking ferry.
Video footage released by the Coast Guard showed no officers trying to move below deck where the students were trapped. Investigators are reviewing the cellphone videos as part of their investigation.
Mr. Lee, the captain, was in his room and the least experienced of his four mates was in charge of its navigation when the vessel suddenly listed in waters notorious for rapid and unpredictable currents. Mr. Lee and 14 other crew members have been arrested on charges of abandoning their passengers in an emergency.
When he was deserting the ship, the 69-year-old captain was still in his underpants.The killings touched off a storm of criticism. Mr. Awlaki’s father tried to sue the government, which used the “national secrets” defense to have the case tossed out. But the administration has refused to acknowledge that the killing took place or that there is in fact a policy about “targeted killings” of Americans.
It has even refused to acknowledge the existence of a Justice Department memo providing legal justification for killing American citizens, even though that memo has been reported by The Times and others. It is beyond credibility that Mr. Obama ordered the Awlaki killing without getting an opinion from the department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Even President George W. Bush took the trouble to have lawyers in that office cook up a memo justifying torture.
The administration intended Mr. Holder’s speech to address the criticism and provide a legal argument for the policy, but it was deeply inadequate in important ways.
Mr. Holder agreed that killing an American citizen requires that he “poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States,” that capture “is not feasible,” that the target has military value, that other people are not targeted intentionally, that the potential “collateral damage” not be excessive and that the weapons used “will not inflict unnecessary suffering.”
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But he gave no inkling what the evidence was in the Awlaki case, and the administration did not provide a way in which anyone other than the people who gave the order could review whether the standards were met. Mr. Awlaki made tapes for Islamist Web sites that justified armed attacks on the United States by Muslims. But was he just spouting off, or actively plotting or supporting attacks?
All Mr. Holder did say was that the president could order such a killing without any judicial review and that any such operation would have “robust” Congressional oversight because the administration would brief Congressional leaders. He also said the administration provided Congress with the legal underpinnings for such killings.
In the Awlaki case, we do not know whether that notification was done in advance or after the fact, if it was done at all. We do know the administration has not given Congress the legal memo with the underlying justification for killing American citizens, because Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, was asking Mr. Holder for it just the other day.
Perhaps most disturbing, Mr. Holder utterly rejected any judicial supervision of a targeted killing.
We have said that a decision to kill an American citizen should have judicial review, perhaps by a special court like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which authorizes eavesdropping on Americans’ communications.
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Mr. Holder said that could slow a strike on a terrorist. But the FISA court works with great speed and rarely rejects a warrant request, partly because the executive branch knows the rules and does not present frivolous or badly argued cases. In Mr. Awlaki’s case, the administration had long been complaining about him and tracking him. It made an earlier attempt to kill him.
Mr. Holder said such operations require high levels of secrecy. That is obvious, but the FISA court operates in secret, and at least Americans are assured that some legal authority not beholden to a particular president or political party is reviewing such operations.
Mr. Holder argued in his speech that judicial process and due process guaranteed by the Constitution “are not one and the same.” This is a straw man. The judiciary has the power to say what the Constitution means and make sure the elected branches apply it properly. The executive acting in secret as the police, prosecutor, jury, judge and executioner is the antithesis of due process.
The administration should seek a court’s approval before killing an American citizen, except in the sort of “hot pursuit” that justifies the police shooting of an ordinary suspect. There should be consequences in the event of errors — which are, tragically, made, and are the great risk. And the administration should publish the Office of Legal Counsel memo. We cannot image why Mr. Obama would want to follow the horrible example set by Mr. Bush in withholding such vital information from the public.A Botox gap in understanding emotion
The inability to show those subtle messages about our feelings – that smile or that frown – could hamper social awareness.
"We know that language moves us emotionally," said the lead author, David Havas, a psychology graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "What this study shows is that that's partly because it moves us physically."
In a recent study of women undergoing cosmetic treatment with Botox, researchers found that the treatment, which blocks facial nerve impulses, seemed to slow the ability to comprehend emotional language.
Not only do our facial expressions reflect our emotional ups and downs, they appear to send crucial feedback to our brain, suggests a growing body of research. Without that full feedback loop, our ability to understand — and be understood — might be constrained.
Botox may be famous for erasing frown lines, but it also may disrupt an important chain of communication between the face and the brain.
Those findings, which will be published in the journal Psychological Science, complement earlier research showing that mimicking emotional expression triggers a matching emotional response, says Fritz Strack, a psychologist who was not involved in the research and who studies emotion and cognition at the University of Würzburg in Germany.
He cited, as an example, the response elicited by holding a pen in one's teeth, activating the muscles used in smiling. In studies using this pen-in-mouth procedure, which Strack and his colleagues pioneered, people actually feel happier and respond more positively to stimuli such as cartoons when they hold a pen between their teeth than when they hold it between their lips, which forces a frown.
In a study published in 2007, Havas and colleagues built upon those findings. They found that participants holding a pen in the "smile" position read happy sentences — such as "Finally, you reach the summit of the tall mountain" — more quickly than they did while holding the pen in the "frown" position. In contrast, participants read sad sentences — such as "You hold back your tears as you enter the funeral home" — more quickly when holding a pen in the "frown" position.
Similarly, research using electromyography, or EMG, to measure fine muscle activity indicates that written materials' emotional meaning triggers activity in specific facial muscles. For example, reading words such as "murder" or "fight" activates the corrugator supercilii, a muscle anchored above the nose that spreads outward across the brow. This muscle is responsible for the parallel, vertical furrows produced when a person frowns.
Frown line links
Such findings have raised the question of whether emotional expression is itself necessary for fluid processing of emotional language, Havas says.
In the new study, he and colleagues investigated whether temporarily paralyzing the corrugator muscle blocked people's ability to process negative emotional language.
The researchers asked 40 women waiting to receive first-time Botox injections to read a series of 60 sentences on a computer, pressing a key when they understood each sentence. To make sure participants were actually reading the sentences, the researchers periodically checked their reading comprehension. Participants repeated the test, using a fresh set of questions, two weeks later when the Botox treatment's paralyzing effect was at its height.
After treatment, participants were slower to understand sentences conveying sadness or anger than they had been before treatment. There was no such change for happy sentences. Mood analyses ruled out the possibility that the women were simply happier after receiving Botox, making them quicker to comprehend happier material.
The results indicate that our own facial expressions help the brain make sense of the social world, Havas says.
"Our facial expressions reveal social context by mirroring expressions of those around us, giving us insight into their emotions, states of mind, and future actions," he says. The Botox study, he says, suggests that our facial expressions also guide how we interpret language.Donald Trump's campaign insists he is within striking distance of Hillary Clinton in several states that have been won by Democrats in recent presidential elections. Evan Vucci/AP
One week from Election Day, Donald Trump is spending precious time campaigning in blue states that haven't been carried by a Republican presidential candidate in a generation.
On Monday, the GOP nominee made two stops in Michigan and is scheduled to stump in Wisconsin on Tuesday evening. It's an itinerary that is baffling some longtime political analysts in that many see the pair of states as a fool's errand, especially when Trump remains either tied or slightly behind in some of the premier conventional battleground states he must carry to have a chance at the presidency.
The bold moves are either a sign of supreme confidence or utter self-delusion.
The last Republican White House nominee to carry Michigan was Vice President George Bush in 1988; President Ronald Reagan was the last GOPer to win Wisconsin in 1984.
But the Trump campaign claims its internal polling is showing the New York City billionaire briskly closing within striking distance of Hillary Clinton in traditional blue bastions across the map, the product of a national tightening that has occurred in the race over the last week.
"We think we're gonna win them," a Trump campaign aide says. "The numbers are there to justify that. It's margin of error."
On Sunday night, Trump made an evening trip to New Mexico, another blue state that Republicans haven't carried nationally since President George W. Bush's re-election in 2004.
"New Mexico's a point," the Trump aide says, again citing the margin in internal campaign polling.
There are no public numbers to support the Trump campaign's case.
In Michigan, the most recent two surveys of the race out last week gave Clinton a lead of 6 to 7 points. In Wisconsin, Trump's deficit to Clinton is between 4 and 6 points, according to the latest public reads of the race. There haven't been any recent published surveys of New Mexico, but the last one, released in the first week of October, put Clinton up 13 points.
But the Clinton campaign isn't taking any chances either. It began running television advertisements in the Badger State this weekend and is dispatching Clinton's running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, to make two stops in Wisconsin on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the Democratic nominee's daughter, Chelsea Clinton, will crisscross the state with three stops.
A former Democratic Party official in Wisconsin says he sees these actions being made only out of an abundance of resources and caution and not as a sign of panic.
"I don't think we're in play, based on everything I've seen internally," says the Democrat, requesting anonymity to speak about confidential information. "I've seen her with a high single-digit lead here. Will it tighten? Yeah, because everything tightens."
Trump's campaign believes its momentum was already building ahead of the FBI's decision on Friday to notify congressional leaders that investigators would be reviewing a new set of emails relevant to Clinton's use of a private server while secretary of state. The emails were discovered as a part of a separate investigation of Anthony Weiner, the former New York congressman who is married to Clinton's top personal aide, Huma Abedin.
It remains unclear what exactly is in the emails being reviewed and if the FBI will release any more information about its renewed inquiry before Election Day. But, jolted by the surprise development, the Clinton campaign has responded with a pointed offensive against FBI Director James Comey, who they believe has improperly stoked new suspicions about her, even though she hasn't been criminally charged with any wrongdoing.
In a sign the campaign is spooked about the potential political fallout, Clinton addressed the inquiry again on Monday during a rally at Kent State University in Ohio.
"Now, they apparently want to look at emails of one of my staffer's, and by all means they should look at them. And I am sure they will reach the same conclusion when they looked at my emails for the last year," she said. "There is no case here."
In Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump used the news to badger Clinton, saying "we can be sure that what is in those emails is absolutely devastating."
"Thank you, Huma. Thank you, Huma. Good job, Huma," Trump taunted to cheers and laughs from his crowd.
When chants of "Weiner!" broke out, Trump smiled, pointed and obliged his fans, "Thank you, Anthony Weiner."
In order for Trump to flip Michigan, he will need to run up a large margin over Clinton where he campaigned Monday in the western part of the state – by likely at least 10 points – to offset losses in Detroit.
Dave Doyle, a former chairman of the state Republican Party who successfully managed the 1988 Bush campaign in Michigan, says he's skeptical of Trump's chances in the state but has been surprised by the level of advertising on both sides.
The political consulting firm he works for, MRG, placed Trump down to Clinton by 5 points in its last survey and is set to publish its newest poll results on Wednesday.
"If he carries Michigan, he's not getting 270, he's probably getting 300 [electoral votes]. If you're winning Michigan, you're winning Ohio, you're winning Florida, you're winning a lot of other states," Doyle says. "I'd be surprised."
Wisconsin, a state with an 88 percent white population, is also a Trump target because of its large percentage of blue-collar residents.
He'll rally in Eau Claire on Tuesday night, accompanied by his running mate, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who dropped his own bid for president long before the first primary vote was cast.
Pence usually campaigns separate from Trump, but his scheduled presence with him at the Wisconsin rally, along with Walker's, is meant to bring leery Republicans on board. Trump was badly beaten in April's Wisconsin GOP primary by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas after many conservative activists in the state lined up against him.
Still, Trump aides believe his economic populism and anti-free trade posture will resonate with voters in upper Midwest states that have been touched by manufacturing losses.
"When I win on Nov. 8, I am going to bring your jobs back to America," Trump told the Grand Rapids crowd. "You know it better than anybody else in this country. The long nightmare of jobs leaving Michigan will be coming to a very rapid end. We're going to make Michigan the economic envy of the entire world again."
The Clinton campaign has garnered the majority of the attention for being able to make traditionally red states – like Arizona and Utah – competitive. This spate of visits by Trump is an attempt to even out that narrative and perhaps just pull off an upset in an unlikely place with a coalition of new voters.
"She has a blue wall, but if you take bricks out of her blue wall it loses all of its structural integrity," the Trump aide says.Have you watched at least five minutes of the NBA over the last 18 months?? Enough to make it through a couple TV timeouts? Then you’re well aware of the million-dollar question that’s hung over the league, making its way into our collective consciousness in ways we can hardly perceive.
The Andersons got tickets to the game? How’d they get tickets?
What began as a 30-second TV spot for NBATickets.com has become something much more, evolving into one of the NBA’s greatest mysteries. And in the pursuit of truth, we connected with K.J. Middlebrooks, better known as the “genius” dad who finesses tickets for his family, in spite of their arch-nemeses, the Andersons.
Middlebrooks lives and works in Los Angeles as an actor, and he also writes and produces promos for Freeform TV. You may have spotted him in commercials for Honda and Hyundai. He’ll soon make his way to the stage in “Sirens of Titan” with Sacred Fools Theater Company. And he may be the only one on Earth who understands what’s really happening in this commercial. He graciously passed his knowledge on to The Crossover.
Jeremy Woo: We gotta get this out of the way first. How did the Andersons get tickets to the game?
K.J. Middlebrooks: You know, it’s funny. The director, Rudy Crew, his mindset about the whole thing was really about the FOMO of missing out, in terms of being an average dad who has this next door neighbor, borrowed your stuff, never given it back, the kind of folks where if there’s a potluck they don’t show up with anything other than an appetite, it’s those people you love to hate, that are always one-upping you. I guess ultimately the idea was that the Andersons kinda knew somebody that got them in the game, because this thing had already been sold out for weeks. I got the impression they knew someone in the organization or something. The Andersons had a hookup.
JW: So the Andersons are the worst.
KM: Pretty much.
JW: Do people come up to you on the street and ask you how they got tickets? Do you get spotted at all?
KM: Well, not literally “How’d the Andersons get tickets,” it’s more about, hey are you that guy, were you in a commercial? Especially folks on the professional side, writing and producing, because I keep those things separate—my boss actually came to me and said, Do you have a brother? (Laughs) And I was like, no, that was me.
JW: The whole thing has kind of taken on a life of its own in a way.
KM: And I’m actually curious about that—I did a little bit of Googling and was surprised to see Dwyane Wade made a comment after a game in an interview.
JW: I was about to ask you that. When did you find out about the D-Wade thing?
KM: This weekend. After you reached out, I did a little research. I was like, “Oh wow, okay…” all the memes, and sportswriters doing stuff about it.
JW: Did you realize what the scope of the ad was going to be?
KM: No, as an actor, you go out and audition for things, and the cool part about this was, the director, in the call-backs, he was very much encouraging people to ad-lib and play around with things. The top part was always the same in terms of the Andersons, but the back side, “Your dad’s a genius,” was actually the line that I ad-libbed in the auditions. He was really cool enough to cast me, because he decided he was going to use that line and put it in the spot. And I have had situations in the past where I’ve auditioned for stuff, ad-libbed things and heard my own words in the spot later without me being in it.
JW: When your family finally buys tickets, the Andersons are already there and the game has either started or is extremely close to tip-off. How far from the arena do you live? Did you guys get there in time? Was there traffic? Where did you park?…
KM: Supposedly, they live close enough to get there. The idea is that when games do start, if all the tickets haven’t been filled, you can use NBA tickets to get hooked up and get there. But yeah. It helps if you live close to the arena. Or else you’re not getting there until the third quarter.
JW: Alright, so what about the confetti? It must have been a huge game. No way you got tickets to a Game 7 right at tipoff.
KM: (laughs) This was a game people had wanted to go to, and it had been sold out in all the other places. He didn’t know about NBATickets.com, his kid did, then he stole the idea. You know, to look good to his wife.
JW: Was there a theoretical real-life location for this? I’ve deduced it can’t be Miami, because, you know, the Andersons actually showed up on time for tip-off.
KM: I imagine it was some place on the West Coast. That might just be me, because I’m out here in L.A. I mean, it was definitely a sunny day. The idea was for it to be the average dad, average family, that anyone could do this. But at the same time, I always felt the trappings of the house made it look like I was living pretty good.
JW: What was the last NBA game you went to in real life?
KM: Uh, it actually was a Clippers game last year. Actually, it was a hookup that I got into the game, one of my co-worker’s husbands at the time was working for the team.
JW: Yeah, my next question was how you got tickets to the game.
KM: Yep, a friend of a friend. Guess I got an Andersons hookup.
This interview was edited and condensed for clarity.What's different about the MOTHER 1 translation? Why should I care? For many (most?) Western fans, the first game in the series is really hard to get into. My goal was to create a translation of the game that tries to make the game more palatable. Some of the things I did were: Retranslated the script from scratch. The EarthBound Zero ROM has a good number of changes, censoring, and mistakes with plot details and dialog. The text in the EarthBound Zero ROM is also very dry due to limited NES resources. Doing a retranslation with this GBA version allowed for a lot more text, and censoring/changes weren't necessary. The result is a script that should hopefully be more engaging and natural-sounding.
Expanded many text boxes, allowing for more dialog text at a time, making the text more natural, more presentable, and easier to read
Expanded menus and names wherever possible, allowing for more natural-sounding text
Improved the font for better readability
Added a gift box with an "Easy Ring" to Ninten's room for those who don't like to grind for experience and money. This item, when equipped, greatly increases the experience and money you win from enemies while also reducing the amount of random battles. It makes the game much less of a chore, which is one of the main reasons EarthBound fans have a hard time getting into the game.
The GBA port already included a number of extra features - for example, the L Button acts as a shortcut key now, just as it did in EarthBound
Some of the bugs in the Japanese GBA version have been fixed
Connections with EarthBound and MOTHER 3 have been left intact, so fans of the series will surely appreciate that. The EarthBound Zero translation had changed a lot of things, which broke many of these connections. This WAS just a Famicom game originally, so it's not as if all of this will suddenly make it an entirely new game, but my hope is that it will at least make it easier for fans to get into and enjoy.
Why didn't you translate the MOTHER 2 part too? Can't you just stick EarthBound's translation into the ROM? Short answer: if it were that easy, it would have already been done a long time ago. Long answer: It's a LOT more complicated than what you can imagine. It would probably take me just as much time - if not more - than the MOTHER 3 project took. I don't think it would be worth the effort; the GBA version of MOTHER 2 has a bunch of bugs, the music and sound effects are significantly inferior, the programming is a nightmare, etc. etc. Still, if I had a lot of free time and/or money I'd love to work on the MOTHER 2 side of the game so we could have all three GBA games fan-translated. But I don't think that'll ever happen. For more details, I wrote up a thing about it here.
I equipped the Easy Ring in MOTHER 1. How do I take it off? The only way to unequip items is to equip something in its place.
I want to translate this into my own language! I've released all the files, tools, and source code I used to make this translation. I designed this project with other languages in mind, so it should be very easy for anyone to translate the MOTHER 1 part! You can download the tools here.This article is about the practice of deliberately missing calls to communicate information. For missed phone calls in general, see Telephone call. For other uses, see One Missed Call (disambiguation)
A missed-call icon
A missed call is a telephone call that is deliberately terminated by the caller before being answered by its intended recipient, in order to communicate a pre-agreed message. It is a form of one-bit messaging.
Missed calls are common in emerging markets where mobile phones with limited outgoing calls are widely used; as the call is not actually completed and connected, it does not carry a cost to the caller, hence they can conserve their remaining prepaid credit. Specific patterns of consecutive missed calls have been developed in some countries to denote specific messages. Missed calls are also referred to in some parts of Africa as beeping,[1][2] memancing (fishing) in Indonesia,[3] flashing in Nigeria,[4] a flashcall in Pakistan,[3] and a miskol in the Philippines.
Missed calls are especially prominent in India. Expanding upon their use as a communications method, they have been adopted as a form of marketing communications, in which users can "missed call" specific numbers and receive a call or text back that contains advertising and other content. Other forms of services have also been built around use of missed calls in such a manner, primarily to take advantage of the fact that feature phones are still relatively common in India as opposed to smartphones.
Justification and impact [ edit ]
Prepaid mobile phones are popular in emerging markets, due to their lower cost in comparison to post-paid contracts.[2][3] Prepaid plans have a limited number of minutes allotted for outgoing calls; as a missed call does not connect, they can be used to convey communications without consuming outgoing phone credit.[5][3] Missed calls also bypass the language barrier, since they do not require voice or text to be transmitted.[3][5] Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode professor of marketing management Keyoor Purani remarked that missed calls are an "economical and wide-reaching mechanism of communication."[3]
In countries where missed calling is common, some wireless carriers have shown concerns that the practice uses their networks in a manner they cannot derive revenue from.[3][6] In August 2005, a Kenyan mobile operator estimated that four million missed calls were placed on their network daily.[7][8] In 2006, industry estimates indicated that 20–25% of mobile calls in India were missed calls.[9] In 2007, the Cellular Operators Association of India announced that it would conduct a study on the effects of missed calls on Indian mobile networks.[9]
"Miskol", a Tagalog loanword for "miss call", was declared the "word of the year" at a language convention held by the University of the Philippines Diliman in 2007.[10][11]
Use cases [ edit ]
Social usage [ edit ]
The information communicated by a missed call is pre-agreed and contextual in nature.[6] They are typically used to signal the sender's status, such as indicating their arrival at a specific destination, or a business informing a customer that their order is ready for pickup.[8] In some countries, patterns have been established to indicate specific messages; in Bangladesh, two missed calls in a row is considered an indication that someone is running late, and in Syria, five missed calls in a row is considered a signal that the sender wishes to chat online.[8] Young couples miscall one another to see if the line is free, or to intentionally keep the line busy.[8] In Africa[clarification needed] there are established norms for how missed calls are used, such as for indicating who should call back with a voice call (and thus, bear the responsibility of paying for it).[2]
One-bit messaging apps such as Yo (which is only capable of sending the word "Yo" to other contacts) have been compared to the social practice of missed calls.[3]
Marketing and services [ edit ]
Missed calls have been adopted as a method of mobile permission marketing, known as missed call marketing (MCM).[12] MCM campaigns take advantage of how cellular providers may offer unlimited incoming calls and text messages: advertisements contain an instruction for customers to place a missed call at a specific number.[3] The number may be configured to automatically hang up on the caller when dialed.[13] The number then calls or texts back with supplemental content, such as product information, offers, or sponsored celebrity messages. Advertisers can retain the phone numbers of callers to build a customer database, which can be used for future engagement and analytics.[14][3][12]
MCM is a prominent practice in India, where it appeals to the country's cultural and economic environment. At least 90% of all cellular phone users in India are on prepaid services, feature phones are still commonplace,[14][15][2][3] internet access is not widely-available in some rural regions, and there is low market penetration for mobile broadband services.[16][3] Along with advertising, missed call numbers are also used for other services, such as telephone banking, as well as program listings and viewer voting by television channels.[17][18][19]
There are a number of companies which specialize in MCM, including Flashcall,[15][20][3] VivaConnect,[15][3] and Zipdial.[12][21][22] Zipdial was popularized by missed call services for cricket scores and Anna Hazare's anti-corruption movement; after serving over 415 million calls in its first three years of operation, the company was acquired by Twitter in 2015 for a value reported to be between US$20 and 40 million.[12][21][22][13] In 2014, the social networking service Facebook announced that it would support links to missed call numbers as an ad format, as part of an effort to bolster its advertising business in emerging markets such as Brazil, India, Indonesia, and South Africa. The company partnered with Zipdial, and later VivaConnect, to offer this service.[15][3][23]
In 2013, Hindustan Unilever launched Kan Khajura Tesan (Earworm Radio), a missed call service which plays blocks of Hindi entertainment content (such as Bollywood music and devotionals), interspersed with advertising for the company's brands. Unilever intended the service to be a method of engaging consumers in markets that were underserved by media and internet communications (such as Bihar, where the service was described as being the state's most popular "radio station"); as of 2015, it had achieved 200 million impressions. Companies that are not direct competitors to Unilever were also allowed to advertise on the service;[15][24][25] a campaign promoting the film Singham Returns through Kan Khajura Tesan generated 17 million calls.[25] In 2014, Kan Khajura Tesan earned two gold Cannes Lions in media for "Use of Audio" and "Use of Mobile Devices", and a third in mobile for "Response/Real Time Activity".[26] In 2015, the campaign won a bronze Lion for "Creative Effectiveness".[27]
MCM has faced criticism; Purani warned that "just as shortsighted abuse of advertising, direct mail and telemarketing has contributed to spamming-related problems, MCM runs the risk of degenerating into a marketing tool shunned by a large number of phone users."[3] High-end brands have perceived MCM as being inappropriate for targeting their respective markets.[3] Flashcall found that the concept was not viable in regions where missed calls were not an established social practice, such as the United States (where smartphones and mobile broadband are widely-available).[3]
As activism [ edit ]
During the Indian anti-corruption movement in 2011, citizens could pledge support to Anna Hazare's campaign through a |
National Post
• Email: jedmiston@nationalpost.com | Twitter: jakeedmistonThere are many deserts which look Western sweets but originate from Japan. Japanese-Western deserts have Western taste many foreigners will love. So in this article, I will introduce 7 representative Japanese-Western deserts.
Gateau Chocolate
It is similar to American chocolate cake, But, unlike it, gateau chocolate is made of meringue and is softer.
Strawberry Shortcake
a Japanese strawberry shortcake is different from American one. It is a layered sponge cake with a strawberry and whipped cream filling, and whipped cream frosting while American one is sweet biscuits topped with strawberries and whipped cream.
Mille Crepe
The Mille Crepes cake is many layers of paper-thin crepes with a whipped pastry cream or fruit in between every layer. A crepe comes from France, but Mille Crepes were invented in Japan.
Pudding a la mode
It is a desert including pudding, whipped pastry cream, ice cream and some fruit on one plate. A Japanese chef invented it accommodating a request from his American wife.
Crispy Sand
People around the world enjoy it`s taste, but Haagen-Dazs in Japanese branch was first person creating this Crispy Sand in 2001.
Fresh Cream Chocolate
It is made of a mixture of chocolate, fresh cream, and liqueur. It’s a different texture from normal chocolate, and is softer and melts in your mouth.
Castella
Japanese invented it based on a cake from Portugal in the 16th century. It is one of the most popular Japanese sponge cakes made of sugar, flour, eggs, and corn syrup.Nearly two months into the assault on the Islamic State’s last major stronghold in Iraq, the unbridled optimism that accompanied the initial, rapid advance is gone.
Iraqi security forces, which had cut through IS defenses in the outer suburbs of the northern city of Mosul, have met with stiffer than expected resistance in the city’s east. Their losses have been significant and, to both Iraqi and U.S. officials, surprising.
“They front-loaded the fight,” a U.S. official told VOA, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “They threw a lot of their best fighters at east Mosul."
U.S. and Iraqi officials had expected the opposite, that IS would wait to make its strongest defense in the older, Western part of the city, making use of the narrower streets and counting, perhaps, on the support of Sunni-dominated neighborhoods.
Intelligence gathered prior to the assault on Mosul only served to reinforce that thinking, showing IS fighters concentrating their defenses to the West of the Tigris River, which cuts through the city. IS was ready, having made the most of the two years its fighters had occupied the city.
“They’re pretty well defended throughout,” said a second official, also requesting anonymity due to the subject’s sensitivity.
The official said making the fight more difficult is that IS commanders have “been adapting all along,” changing tactics to keep Iraqi forces off-balance as they push further into Mosul.
IS tactics
In defense, IS has used everything it can to slow advance, from mounting ambushes after appearing to be retreating, enticing Iraqi units forward, to launching an unexpected large number of suicide bombers in vehicles packed with huge amounts of explosives, to changing the design of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and where they plant them.
“It is a cat-and-mouse game for bomb disposal teams, IS bomb-makers are quick to alert other IS members about changes that make it harder to defuse devices,” says Kurdish Gen. Mahmood Kakaye.
Iraqi security forces battling their way into Mosul, and Shi’ite militias in the countryside west of the city, are suffering heavy losses from the IEDs, much as the Kurds did in their battles close to Mosul, culminating in the seizing from IS of the town of Bashiqa last month.
The difficulty in taking territory from IS and then holding it was on clear display in Bashiqa.
Massively outnumbered by Kurdish forces, the up to 200 IS fighters, Kurdish military officials still can’t agree on how many jihadists defended the town in the final assault, proved to be a cunning enemy. After the center of the town had been seized by the Kurds there was almost another day of riotous gunfire and what the peshmerga termed chase-the-jihadist.
IS fighters kept popping up from a labyrinthine of tunnels dug under houses, launching attacks from 360 degrees. In one attack a key Kurdish bomb-disposal expert died when a suicide bomber suddenly appeared before him and embraced him in a death-hug as he detonated an explosive vest.
“ISIS has been very creative in the way that they are fighting,” Kurdistan Regional Security Council Chancellor Masrour Barzani said Thursday in Washington, using another acronym for the Islamic State group.
“When you go to the western bank of the Tigris River, we expect that the fighting is going to be even harder,” he said.
But Iraqi forces ran into a prime example of IS’ deadly creativity earlier this past Tuesday when they tried to take the city’s al-Salam hospital.
After initially meeting little resistance, the Iraqis were met with a fierce counterattack. More than a dozen suicide car bombs later, the soldiers were forced to beat a retreat with the help of a U.S. airstrike and Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service.
Iraqi PM optimistic
Despite such setbacks, some optimism persists, with Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi continuing to insist Mosul can be taken by year’s end.
Other Iraqi officials, such as the governor of Kirkuk province, think while that timeline may be a bit ambitious, it is not necessarily far off.
“The Mosul operation is actually going as well as it was expected. Nobody thought it is going to be something very quick,” Najmaldin Karim said during a visit to Washington late last month. “Maybe President [Barack] Obama will still be president [when it happens].”
Last week U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter agreed it was “certainly possible” Mosul could be taken before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20.
“But this is a war, so I'm not going to predict that,” Carter added. “It's going to be a tough fight.”
Western diplomats based in Turkey are skeptical that the fight will be over before Trump is sworn-in.
“I think this could take another four months,” said a European attache who asked not to be named in this article. “I am suspicious of the numbers being bandied about in terms of IS casualties and people also forget about the casualties on our side, the Iraqis, as the Kurds, won’t give out the statistics about their own loses but I can tell you they are high."
He and other Western diplomats fear that by the time the Iraqi security forces have reached west Mosul, they will be exhausted, having fought for months, and will then have to call for help on the irregular Shi'ite militias around Tal Afar for assistance. The Iraqi government has promised not to use those militias, which have been accused of war crimes against Sunnis, in Mosul.
Help from Kurdish forces, at that point, is almost out of the question, Barzani indicated. “We are hoping the rest of the Iraqi security forces are able to finish the job.”
The fight ahead
Yet there is reason to think the fight will get somewhat easier. Military officials say the IS strategy of “front loading” the fight in the eastern part of Mosul could backfire.
Many of the terror group’s best fighters are dead. And U.S. officials insist the number of fighters has been whittled down considerably from an estimated 5,000 at the start of the Mosul operation in mid-October.
U.S. and coalition airstrikes have also destroyed four of the five Mosul bridges that span the Tigris River.
Other supply routes have also been cut off, either with the help of airstrikes or due to the advance of Iraqi militias, the so-called Popular Mobilization Forces or PMF, which have moved to cut-off Mosul from Tal Afar, a smaller IS stronghold to the west.
“Mosul is completely surrounded on all sides and Daesh have no ability to resupply or reinforce their fighters,” said Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman, Col. John Dorrian, using the Arabic acronym for the terror group.
Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, who once led the Pentagon efforts against IEDs in Iraq, remains cautious and says holding on to the city after taking it "is a different ballgame."
Many current U.S. officials believe IS intends to use any and all tactics at its disposal to turn Iraq's second largest city into "hell on earth.” They also point to what IS fighters were able to do in its former stronghold in Libya, as a model for what can be expected in Mosul.
Libyan forces, aided by hundreds of U.S. airstrikes, confined IS to just a few blocks in coastal city of Sirte. But it took hundreds of additional airstrikes and another month to finally rout IS from the city.
And there are worries about the preparations IS has made which cannot easily be seen. Some weapon experts fear IS will use mustard gas or other toxic material.
“They have totally dug into the sewer system,” said one of the U.S. officials, referring to the challenges that still await in the western part of Mosul. “A lot of this is going to be underground.”
And the Iraqis will face a lot more bombs.
According to a report to be published Wednesday by Conflict Armament Research, a Britain-based organization funded by the European Union that monitors the movement and use of conventional weapons, the jihadists’ IEDs “are anything but improvised.” The group will highlight in the report the high and rapid output of IEDs in IS’s Mosul workshops, all part of a centrally managed weapon production system that can churn out bombs to high military standards.Microsoft is bringing more customization options to quick actions found in the Action Center on Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile, with latest internal builds allowing the user to drag-n-drop actions into any order they please, making for a much more personalized and customizable quick action bar.
Unlike with the current public version of Windows 10, the new and improved quick action customization options allow actions to be placed in any order, even when the quick actions area is expanded in Action Center. On the current public builds of Windows 10, only the first row of quick actions are customizable.
Furthermore, internal builds now allow you to add and remove quick actions as you please, meaning users can now select only a specific amount of quick actions that they want to show up in Action Center, instead of having all of them display even if you don’t use them. This too should help make the Action Center more personal.
Microsoft is doing lots to improve the Action Center experience in Windows 10, and with the Anniversary Update these changes should make synergy between Windows 10 and Windows 10 Mobile much more prominent. It is currently unclear when these new improvements will show up in an Insider build, if not the next one then it’ll definitely be the one after that. Stay tuned at WinBeta for more Windows 10 news.
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Further reading: MicrosoftThe Beloved Dust, a group of investigators and operatives with Divine mandate, learns that there is an imminent threat targeting Composure's Coliseum* during a important (and highly populated) ritual. Former excerpt and pilot of the Divine Belgard, ⸢Signet⸣, trades favors religious and mundane. The dilapidating assassin Fourteen Fifteen blends into the audience to see things from a higher ground. And Tender Sky, a highly skilled digital architect, enters the event directly in order to protect it from the inside.
Before anything else, recognize what is at stake.
This week on Friends at the Table: The Beloved Dust
The Living Library of Memorious // VOLUME 778Φ
Composure's Coliseum
In the year 28350AM, in the middle of a boom in historical interest on the part of the Fleet's citizens, the Divine Composure built a this innovative structure that blended virtual mesh space and and material reality. At first, the Coliseum simply offered its audience a place to watch re-enactments of foundational events in the broad history of the MIlky Way. But not content with pure replication, Composure's excerpt made these simulations interactive, allowing for outcomes far different than the recorded past. Because of the many possible outcomes, these re-enactments offer the public a chance to consider other possible worlds. Attendees describe the experience as stimulating to both mind and soul, and it is due to their popularity that the events continued long after the death of Composure.About This Game The wicked and cunning boars-cyborgs captured the world and made a hell on Earth. The bloody dictatorship was established over all. But a robot with iron wings appeared out of nowhere and decided to end the tyranny of the boars-cyborgs.
This game is a scroller where the player will have intense battles with a lot of amazing enemies in different places of the world. In the destruction various species of boars, robots and bosses will help different types of weapons such as the glass bullets or the black ravens.
Features:
- Unusual atmosphere and style of game for this genre
- Many different types of enemies such as boars who hide behind heaps of skulls or metal grasshoppers with a firearm
- Amazing weapons such as the glass bullets or dangerous ravens
- This game is easy to learn but difficult to masterUMass to host Mississippi State in football in 2016
Last season, the Mississippi State football team was ranked No. 1 in the country. Next season, the Bulldogs will visiting Foxborough.
According to multiple athletic department sources, UMass is expected to announce Monday afternoon a series between the Minutemen and Bulldogs beginning Sept. 24, 2016, at Gillette Stadium.
The game is part of a two-for-one contract between the two schools. UMass will visit Starkville, Mississippi, on Sept. 23, 2017 and Oct. 17, 2020.
It is the third game added to the 2016 schedule since new athletic director Ryan Bamford was hired. When the Mid-American Conference chose to terminate UMass’ football-only membership last year, the Minutemen were left scrambling to fill its 2016 schedule. NCAA rules require all FBS schools to play at least five home games.
When former athletic director John McCutcheon announced he was leaving in February, UMass had one home game solidified for 2016 — Sept. 10 vs. UConn.
Since then, the Minutemen have added home games with Tulane (Oct. 1), Louisiana Tech (Oct. 15) and now Mississippi State.
That leaves one game left for UMass to schedule to fulfill NCAA requirements. It will likely be against a Championship Subdivision opponent at McGuirk Stadium. The other four home games are all contracted to be played at Gillette Stadium. The FCS game will be either Sept. 24, Oct. 22 or Nov. 12.
The Bulldogs will be the second Southeastern Conference team the Minutemen have hosted. Vanderbilt visited Gillette in 2013.
Mississippi State finished 10-3 (6-2 SEC) in 2014 after opening that season 9-0 en route to a No. 1 ranking. The Bulldogs lost to Georgia Tech, coincidentally Bamford’s former employer, in the Orange Bowl.
UMass has road games in 2016 scheduled at Florida (Sept. 3), Boston College (Sept. 17), Old Dominion (Oct. 8), Appalachian State (Oct. 29), Troy (Nov. 5), BYU (Nov. 19) and Hawaii (Nov. 26).
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage*This was originally published on May 7, 2015, and updated with Tancredi Palmeri's tweet on May 24, 2015
He's got a UEFA Champions League final to worry about in the meantime, but Juventus and Italy star Andrea Pirlo continues to be linked with Major League Soccer by European media.
Reports out of Italy on Sunday morning claim that Pirlo, who was supposedly on the LA Galaxy's radar last year, has received an offer from MLS as he ponders his next career move.
Pirlo received an offer from MLS according to Sky Italy — Tancredi Palmeri (@tancredipalmeri) May 24, 2015
Now in his fourth season with Juve, Pirlo said recently in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport that he intends to keep playing beyond this season, even if his time with Juventus comes to an end.
Pirlo's Italian career includes three World Cups, three European Championship appearances and two Olympic Games, and he was called into the Italian squad as recently as last October. With 27 starts and five goals in all competitions for Juventus this year, Pirlo still feels he has plenty to contribute, and Major League Soccer seems to be one of his options.
"I won't stop playing; I'll go on as long as I have the same great desire to keep training every day," Pirlo said. "Juventus will be my last Serie A team, whatever happens. MLS could be an idea, but for the moment I don't have anything; Juve are the only thing on my mind.”
Juventus defeated Real Madrid to book a date with Lionel Messi and FC Barcelona in the Champions League final in Berlin on June 6. Could it be Pirlo's last hurrah in European club soccer?But the teenage girl has tragically taken her own life after an onslaught of physical and online abuse from her peers at Seaford Secondary School in Adelaide, South Australia.
Her family are speaking out about the cost of bullying and have issued a plea to all parents to look out for the warning signs.
“We understand schoolyard behaviour and what starts off as pointless teasing and ridicule which can soon escalate,” Libby’s uncle, Clint Gow-Smith, told Adelaide Now. “So please, as a parent, hold your babies tight and for the teenagers, we plead for you kids to talk and walk tall.”
“She had a million-dollar smile, her face lit up the room, she just had a beautiful smile – that was our Libster,” he added.
The Daily Mail reports that Libby was filmed being bullied at a fast food outlet in 2016, one of a slew of incidents that her family believe led to her death.
Libby died on August 28. A GoFundMe page has been set up for her family, which you can donate to here.
If you or someone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.Today, net neutrality regulations, which protect your right to an open and fair internet, have been repealed. For anyone who uses the internet (so, everyone), you may think this sounds really scary. And you’d be right. The protections that made it illegal for ISP’s to throttle certain websites or make you pay more to access others are gone.
But, what we’re here to tell you is that no matter what,
Sonic always has and always will keep our internet connections open and equal. You can watch what you want, when you want, on any content provider you choose (Netflix, Hulu, HBO, SlingTV-- it’s all the same to us). We will continue to protect your right to privacy, and your right to not have your own data sold or shared. Ever. We will never charge you more to access certain sites, and we will never slow down others for any reason. Sonic will continue to stand up for everything net neutrality stands for, whether the regulations require it or not.
Since the beginning, Sonic has stood up for our customers. And that’s never going to change.
For us, the responsibility we have to our members is not a passing trend. When we say there is nothing more important than the customers who make up the Sonic network, we mean it. We’ll continue to back up our words with official policies that benefit you.
Please also share with your friends, family, and colleagues: you have a choice to support the ISPs that continue to support net neutrality and consumer privacy.If you know who this is, you are un-American
Of all the annoying things about the royal wedding—the crass materialism, the outrageous invasion of a young couple’s privacy, the bad TV—none is more troubling than the occasion this event gives for the non-English to transform themselves into besotted Anglophilic wusses. It is one thing for the English to care about the wedding. Paying attention to the royal family, even if only to read sensationalist tabloid articles about them, is one of the proper jobs of English people. But for an American to be excited about the royal wedding is undignified and lame. And, I would add, if you get up at 3 a.m. on Friday to watch the wedding on television, you are a traitor to your country.
Good Englishmen might mock the royals, but good Americans should not even consider them royal. (Just writing this column I risk paying the House of Windsor too much mind. I’m like Phyllis Schlafly, whose work outside the home was to convince women not to work outside the home.) Americans are supposed to loathe and reject monarchs. In the earliest years of English settlement, this land was a proud haven for king killers. In 1660, it was to the New World that Edward Whalley, John Dixwell, and William Goffe, all responsible for the beheading of Charles I, fled after the restoration of the monarchy imperiled their lives. A century later, descendants of the New Englanders who had hidden the regicides, now banding together as overtaxed colonists, fought a bloody war for the privilege to ignore the king of England.
Anti-monarchism was then written into our Constitution. The United States was born in sin—slavery, the murder of Indians—but one thing our founders got right was the banishment of titles as inimical to republicanism. To wit, Article 1, Section 9: “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.” Not only were we not to bestow our own titles—we were not even supposed to accept them from foreigners.
No nobility—what a noble sentiment.
That is not to say that certain (ignoble) Americans have not acceded to monarchy by accepting its bestowals, like titles of nobility. On June 15, 1989, the New York Times reported: “Queen Elizabeth II conferred an honorary knighthood on former President Ronald Reagan today, the highest honor Britain can give a foreigner. … The palace said the Queen made Mr. Reagan an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath, an order established in 1725 that recognizes services to Britain.” Apparently, Reagan was the 58th American to receive an honorary knighthood, earning the right to use the initials “G.C.B.” after his name.
It is unclear why anyone would want to take the Bath, given the company you would keep: Yes, you join Lech Walesa and Colin Powell (who got bathed after the Gulf War), but also Zimbabwe’s murderer in chief, Robert Mugabe, who at least got stripped of his G.C.B. in 2008, after the foreign secretary pointed out that Mugabe was not a nice person (a fact that had escaped the queen in 1994, apparently).
Technically, only current office-holders are barred from accepting such titles, so Reagan’s post-presidential knighthood was kosher. What concerns me is not the legal propriety of becoming part of the machinery of royalty, but the unseemliness. After all, are we not taught, as Americans, that all are equal, if not in wealth and education and type-of-car-we-drive, than at least before the government? It is surprising, and dispiriting, to see Americans accept symbolic taps on the shoulder from foreign governments that hold to such official vestiges of inequality.
This eagerness to be ensconced in royal velvet has many roots. For some, like the late, weird billionaire John Templeton, moving to the Bahamas, renouncing his American citizenship, and accepting a knighthood seems to have been a tax dodge, although he said it was to keep his distance from Wall Street. (Asking his employees thenceforth to call him “Sir” was just garden-variety boobery.) For others, like Mick Jagger, one can only surmise that accepting a knighthood was an acceptance that his days as any sort of rebel were over. At least Keith Richards had the good sense to dissent: “It’s not what the Stones is about, is it?” he asked.
For many Americans, however, the love of monarchy and titles is simply one aspect of a generalized Anglophilia. It is perhaps not surprising that there exists a pernicious strain of Anglophilia in the United States: As writers from Malcolm X to Orlando Patterson to Claude Steele have noted, oppressed (or enslaved, or colonized) peoples often internalize the message of the oppressor. Ian Buruma wrote a very good book, Anglomania, about the powerful draw that the idea of England has had for people all over the world, not least nations once ruled, or killed in great numbers, by the English. The child who rejects his mother often loves her more than the child who simply drifts away.
The rejected-child aspect of Anglophilia helps explain why marginalized peoples are perhaps most susceptible to Anglophilia. Just as Indians are more prone to Anglophilia today than Canadians are, in my own experience, a great number of the enthusiastic Anglophiles I have known have been gay men, Jews, or black people. They may perceive that the empire, and its personification the queen, is capacious enough to love them all. That even if their bosses or families or neighbors condescend to them, they are still enobled by being subjects of Her Royal Highness.
If American royal-worship were confined to this twisted pathology of self-loathing, or to buying newsstand copies of People magazine every time Princess Diana is exhumed for another cover story, it would not be such a problem. But instead we forget our American-ness. We shuck and jive—I mean bow and curtsy—for the royal box at Wimbledon’s Center Court. We call them “the Queen Mother,” “Prince Charles,” or “Your Highness,” instead of the more American, and more dignified, “Mrs. Windsor” or “Charles.” We accept their worthless titles. We forget ourselves.
I come not to bury the English royal family, that sad tribe of oft-divorcing, panty-sniffing, plant-whispering non-intellects whose matriarch still embarrasses otherwise dignified countries like Canada and Australia by staring out from their money. Christopher Hitchens has done a better job than I ever could shoveling dirt on their living entombment. That son of a Royal Navy officer put it very succinctly, writing that if Kate Middleton loves Prince William at all, she will abscond the both of them out of the monarchy altogether: “Many of us don’t want or need another sacrificial lamb to water the dried bones and veins of a desiccated system.”
And I certainly mean no disrespect to the English, that island people that gave us abolitionism, church-ratified divorce, the modern novel, and the Beatles. Rather, I simply want to recall to us our own inheritance, which is of a vision still quite radical: that we are all created equal. Being human, some number of us will always have the urge to ogle couture wedding dresses and generally wonder how the other half gets married. And the American version of that will involve people named Trump, Kennedy, or Kardashian. That tendency is not the United States of America at its best. But at least it is our bad tendency, born here, of a free people, one that calls each of us “Mr.” or “Ms.”—that, in fact, encourages the familiarity of “Kim,” “Kourtney,” and “Khloe.” That is worth something, and it is worth sleeping on Friday morning.The Cowboys were led once again on Sunday by their rookie duo of Ezekiel Elliott and Dak Prescott, beating the Browns 35–10.
Elliott entered the game averaging 114.1 yards per game, on pace for 1,826 yards over 16 games, which would break Eric Dickerson’s rookie record of 1,808.
Elliott carried 18 times for 92 yards and two touchdowns in Sunday’s game. He is now averaging 111.4 yards per game, which puts him on pace for 1,782, just behind Dickerson’s mark.
Also on Sunday, Prescott broke Troy Aikman’s franchise record for touchdown passes by a rookie with 10.
• WATCH: Odell Beckham catches his second TD
He added two more TD passes and now has 12 in eight games. It took Aikman 11 games to record 10 touchdowns.
With the win, the Cowboys improved to 7–1 on the season and remained atop the NFC East.The Rigol DS1052E is the de facto oscilloscope for any tinkerer’s bench. It’s cheap, it’s good enough, and it’s been around for a long time; with the new 1054 zed model out now, you might even be able to pick up a 1052E on the cheap.
[wd5gnr1] came up with a really interesting piece of software that allows a Linux system to control most of the functions on this popular scope. With just a USB cable, you can read and log all the measurement of the scope, save waveforms in CSV format, and send data to gnuplot and qtiplot.
Since the 1052E has been around for such a long time, there’s a bunch of software out there that takes advantage of the nifty USB port on the front of this scope. If you need a cheap spectrum analyzer, here ‘ya go, and tools for the.WFM files native to this scope even exist for Windows. [wd5gnr1] even says his tool can probably be ported to Windows, but ‘just use Linux.’…directly. But in practice, the pain of arthritis limits activity and discourages exercise. The chronic pain of arthritis wears people down, contributing to depression, which is a substantial mortality risk factor. Limitations on mobility combined with disspiriting effects of pain can destroy the will to live. There is no cure for arthritis yet, but anti-inflammatories can slow its progress, and one Swiss company claims a cure in the pipeline.
The “commonsense” view of osteoarthritis is that the cartilage that lubricates our joints gradually wears down over time, and when we are old, bone grinds against bone. Ouch! In fact, the commonsense view became the medical view which dominated for many years. But is it really so commonsensical? Wearing down of the lubricant cartrilage takes place in the course of hours and days, and, in young people, it is rebuilt and replaced as fast as it is worn away. (Even the association of extreme exertion with early-onset arthritis (Sandy Koufax’s elbow, : Shaquille O’Neal’s foot) is an effect of chronic inflammation rather than physical wear.) Thirty-year-olds don’t have more arthritis than ten-year olds, but by sixty, almost everyone has symptoms of enlarged joints, degenerated disks or lumbar pain. What happens over decades is not explained by the sum of tiny deficits in repair from day to day. Rather it is changes in the metabolism (initiated by epigenetics, and mediated by signal molecules in the blood) that causes a slowing of regeneration and an acceleration of inflammatory damage.
Historically, the medical community distinguishes rheumatoid arthritis–an autoimmune disease–from osteoarthritis, which is accumulated wear on joints. The emerging view, however, is that there is no fundamental distinction between them, and that the same metabolic forces are at play in both. The symptoms were always the same, but the distinction was based etiology: osteoarthritis is almost universal in older people, whereas rheumatoid arthritis is traceable to trauma or an autoimmune condition. We know now that autoimmunity is part of human aging, an icon of the self-destruction program coded in our genes.
Spinal stenosis is a particularly painful and debilitating complication of arthritis in the spine. Inflamed bone grows until it impinges on the spinal cord, generating numbness or referred pain in the legs and compromising movement. Fibromyalgia seems to be a generalized inflammation of joints and muscles.
What can be done?
Exercise may be the best treatment. The cruel paradox is that arthritis makes exercise much less appealing, and so a vicious cycle begins.
“Patients’ fear for disease aggravation and an indefensible traditional approach of rheumatology health professionals to recommend exercise restriction may account for the inactive lifestyle of this population. It is now established that well-designed physical exercise programmes promote prolonged improvements without inducing harmful effects on disease activity and joint damage.” [ref]
Exercise may hurt, but you won’t hurt yourself with exercise. Cycling and water aerobics are often suggested, not because they are inherently better for arthritis, but because people experience less discomfort and are more likely to stick with the program.
There is no cure for arthritis, but all the emerging anti-aging technologies are expected to slow or turn back the arthritis clock.
I’ve recommended vitamin D for many reasons, especially lowering risk of cancer and preserving the immune system. In this study, vitamin D supplementation lowered incidence of arthritis by 1/3. This study found that people with high circulating levels of vitamin D in the blood had risk of arthritis lower by 2/3. Depending on your metabolism, you may need to take jumbo doses of vitamin D (10,000 – 30,000 IU) to get your blood level up above 90, which I think is ideal. (Here’s a study that looked for a protective effect of vitamin D and didn’t find any. Here’s another study that finds more tentative evidence of a benefit from high blod levels of vitamin D.)
Arthritis may also be one more reason to keep your magnesium intake high.
Glucosamine supplements have been used for more than 20 years, and are well-researched. On average, they are marginally effective, if taken in sufficient quantity of 3 or more g per day. Response varies with the individual, and glucosamine is well worth trying. One study has found a lower all-cause mortality rate in people who take glucosamine.
A dark horse worth trying is boron, a trace mineral for which there is indirect evidence for a powerful benefit [ref].
S-adenasyl methionine (SAMe) is a pro-hormone, sold by prescription in Europe, where it is used as a treatment for arthritis. Here’s a study that found SAMe worked as well as Celebrex. My opinion is that SAMe is worth trying, despite thin evidence, because side-effects of SAMe are likely to be salutory.
A study with krill oil produced the best reported results. Over the first month of treatment with 300mg/day, patients reported substantially less pain and more mobility, and their subjective experience was corroborated by a 30% drop in C-Reactive Protein (CRP) in their blood (a marker of inflammation).
Boswellia is a resin from the sap of a tree, classically known as frankincense. It is well-known for anti-inflammatory effect, and there are four well-controlled studies that show objective and subjective benefits [1, 2, 3, 4]. (References collected by Examine.com)
Curcumin (from turmeric) is the best known of the herbal anti-inflammatories. In clinical trials, it has been found to be effective, but not a magic bullet, comparable in benefit to ibuprofen. Getting an adequate dose absorbed into the bloodstream is always an issue.
Nigella sativa produced benefits for some patients. It is a tasty black seed, used in rye bread and middle-eastern cooking, known variously as charnoushka, kalonji, or black cumin seed (no relation to cumin).
Here is a review of many herbal anti-inflammatories, with explanation of the role of the signaling by NFkB as a bad actor. (Full text available from ResearchGate.) This team of distinguished Indian-Americans, with thousands of publications among them, highlights curcumin, resveratrol, tea polyphenols, genistein (soy), quercetin (onions), silymarin, guggulsterone boswellia and ashwagandha. Here is their table, including other candidates that have shown some promise in at least one study.
Drugs
NSAIDs are effective. Aspirin and ibuprofen are safe but of small benefit. COX2 inhibitors (e.g. Celebrex=celecoxib) are more effective but raise the risk of heart disease. For some, the tradeoff may be worthwhile. Celebrex has been marketed by Pfizer for about 20 years, and has been the subject of commercial law suits unrelated to safety.
Steroids (esp dexamethasone) work temporarily and make you feel good for awhile, but are not a long-term solution because of side-effects from upset stomach to diabetes to depression.
Humira, Remicade, and Enbrel are more recent entries into the arthritis marketplace. They all target tumor necrosis factor (TNF) cytokines, they are all fantastically expensive, and clinical data is yet thin. Talk to your insurance company.
On the horizon
Two years ago, there was a report from a Swiss pharmaceutical claiming a cure for arthritis in mice. They combined dexamethasone with targeted immunotherapy, paradoxically using the immune system itself to attack inflamed sites [ref]. Interleukin4 is fantastically expensive, probably one motive for modifying the molecule with an antibody that would seek out inflamed target cells, so the dose can be reduced. (Of course, lowered dosage also means fewer side-effects.) The journal article and news reports from 2014 indicated that trials in humans were imminent, but I have been unable to find evidence that this has come to fruition yet. While you’re waiting, you might write to scientists at ETH, which is a sort of Swiss MIT.
The Bottom Line
As with so many aging conditions, there is no miracle cure, but there are lots of possibilities for treatments that have great benefit for a few, and small benefit for others. Until we have personalized medicine based on your genetic and epigenetic profile, there is no substitute for personal experimentation. Many of the recommendations above have beneficial side-effects, or none. |
Ebell is a public-policy wonk—not, he hastens to clarify, a lobbyist for the energy industry, as many of his fellow skeptics are, or a scientist whose research is underwritten by the energy industry, or a politician who takes contributions from the energy industry. He lives in a suburb of Washington, D.C., where he and his wife are raising four children, ranging in age from an 11-year-old son to a 21-year-old daughter, all of whom, Ebell says proudly, take a skeptical view of global warming. He goes to work at a think tank on Connecticut Avenue called the Competitive Enterprise Institute (C.E.I.), where his office is modest, but not his influence. Every day, journalists around the world call C.E.I. for its take on the latest global-warming studies, and Ebell, or one of his colleagues who also deal with the press—Marlo Lewis, Iain Murray, and Christopher Horner—happily obliges. The journalists like to air all views—"on the one hand, on the other"—so they plug in Ebell's latest retorts, giving them equal weight with new scientific findings. Gore is right in one sense: almost no scientist doubts that global warming is here, that man-made greenhouse gases are to blame, or that if we don't cut back on those gases fairly soon we'll be in a heap of trouble. But as the "other hand" in all those news stories, Ebell and his quotable cohorts sustain the impression that a scientific debate is still raging. The more studies that confirm global warming, the more ink Ebell gets. Journalist Ross Gelbspan, a longtime skeptic-tracker, says that's how the skeptics operate. With those doubts neatly planted in the press, the public shrugs, politicians push the problem off to another day, and ExxonMobil parries new fossil-fuel regulations, earning more windfall profits in exchange for a pittance to the skeptics and their work.
Like its ideological soulmates, C.E.I. has taken money—a considerable amount—from ExxonMobil. Ebell says that's irrelevant. "We're not beholden to our donors, because we don't say, 'If you give us this money, we'll do this project,'" he explains, tilting back nonchalantly in a C.E.I. conference-room chair. "I can't even quite tell you who supports us on global warming." In fact, Ebell could go to the ExxonMobil Web site and see that in 2005 the oil giant gave C.E.I. $270,000, a not inconsiderable portion of the institute's $3.7 million budget, and that between 1998 and 2005 ExxonMobil gave it more than $2 million. He could also ask one of his colleagues and learn that C.E.I. gets money from the American Petroleum Institute, various pharmaceutical companies (Dow Chemical, Eli Lilly), and William A. Dunn of Dunn Capital Management. But he says he's never done that. Since its founding, 23 years ago, by free marketer Fred Smith as an all-purpose bullhorn against government regulations, C.E.I. has simply tinkered with issues it chooses—from higher mileage standards in cars (bad) to the Endangered Species Act (worse)—trying to affect public policy and hoping donors come along for the ride. That may be how C.E.I. sees it. To ExxonMobil, though, C.E.I. has been one of the brightest stars in its constellation of climate skeptics. Other oil companies fund global-warming-skeptic think tanks through the American Petroleum Institute, and various coal interests weigh in, too. But, for the skeptics, ExxonMobil is Big Daddy. From 1998 to 2005, ExxonMobil spent a reported $16 million funding climate studies at some three dozen institutes. The recipients range from the well-known right-wing clearinghouse American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research ($240,000 from ExxonMobil in 2005) to the obscure Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($90,000 in 2005), bookends to a Who's Who of skeptics. None of these groups has any standing in mainstream climate science. Their fellows and scholars crank out policy papers that purport to disprove the latest findings about global warming and only rarely publish studies in peer-reviewed technical scientific journals. Instead, the institutes publish the papers themselves or get sympathetic newspapers such as The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times to run them as op-ed pieces. From there, the papers are taken up by a handful of lawmakers—such as Oklahoma Republican senator James Inhofe and Texas Republican congressman Joe Barton, who deride global warming as an alarmist hoax—and get disseminated on the Internet like viral advertising. It's an all too effective approach.
The stars, as in any constellation, are an eclectic bunch. They include fringe scientists such as David Legates and Patrick Michaels, of the George C. Marshall Institute ($115,000 from ExxonMobil in 2005), a Washington-based public-policy think tank; economists like Kyoto Protocol–basher Margo Thorning, of the American Council for Capital Formation ($360,000 from ExxonMobil in 2005); and historical-climate theorists such as the Battling Idsos—father Sherwood, sons Craig and Keith—of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change ($25,000 from ExxonMobil in 2005), who say high levels of CO2 in the prehistoric era led to lush plant life and better times for all. The skeptics appear on one another's panels, defend one another's work, and give the public the sense that mainstream scientists are nothing more than so many Chicken Littles. The case for global warming has grown all but irrefutable, yet the skeptics have enjoyed enormous influence, for the audience that matters most to them occupies the White House. Eagerly, their papers have been snatched up by the Bush administration as rationales for all manner of public policy, from striking down the Kyoto Protocol to blocking any cap on carbon dioxide emissions. C.E.I. has become the best known of these global-warming skeptics not just because Ebell is as quotable as he is. Like the hero of Thank You for Smoking, he courts notoriety. He first made the news a few years ago when a Bush White House senior official named Phil Cooney was caught watering down language on global warming in a U.S. government report issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. Ebell, as an e-mail later showed, advised the once and future oil-industry flack on how to spin the embarrassment. Not long after, Ebell stirred the wrath of the British Parliament by declaring in a BBC radio interview that the U.K.'s chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, had made a "ridiculous claim" on global warming despite knowing "nothing about climate science." The House of Commons proposed a motion to censure Ebell. (The motion never passed, Ebell says wistfully.) Last year, C.E.I. ran a public-service commercial on television about carbon dioxide so cheeky it verged on parody. "They call it pollution," ran the tagline about CO2. "We call it life." Ebell was delighted at the howls it provoked. There is, however, one key difference between Ebell and his doppelgänger in Chris Buckley's novel. The tobacco lobbyist of the novel and upcoming TV series is a cynic: he knows he's blowing smoke. Ebell actually seems to believe what he's saying. Which is remarkable, really, because every one of his arguments, put to scrutiny by a murderer's row of the country's top climate scientists, seems to fall apart.
Like any effective debater, Ebell tends to start by ceding a point or two. It disarms the opposition. "Everyone knows CO2 is a greenhouse gas," he says blithely. "All things being equal, if you add CO2 to the atmosphere, you'll get a little warming." Actually, that's a revision of what Ebell's fellow contrarians believed in the early 1990s. They used to say that all the CO2 and other greenhouse gases put into the air by man since the start of the industrial age had caused no warming at all. They said this because that was what satellite readings suggested if you read them a certain way and if you decided the satellites were right and all temperature readings taken on the surface of the earth were wrong. Unfortunately for the skeptics, it was the satellite readings that turned out to be wrong. So the skeptics retreated to a view that Ebell still holds. "There has been a little bit of warming," as he puts it, "but it's been very modest and well within the range for natural variability, and whether it's caused by human beings or not, it's nothing to worry about." This view, too, needs revision, though Ebell isn't surrendering that ground quite yet. Precisely to test the "range for natural variability," climatologist Michael Mann and colleagues charted temperatures going back 1,000 years. They did this by studying the natural records of climate in tree rings, ice cores from glaciers, and coral reefs. The temperature, they found, made modest zigs and zags until the late 19th century—a range of natural variability just as the skeptics claimed. But once the industrial age got under way there was a dramatic rise in global temperatures not seen in the past 1,000 years, concurrent with CO2 concentrations rising from their pre-industrial level of 280 parts per million to their current level of 380 parts per million. Now the climbing lines of the graph shot up like a hockey stick laid on its side. Hence the hockey-stick debate. Ebell and his fellow skeptics have poured no end of bile on Mann and his hockey stick—because if Mann's findings are true, the skeptics have no case. The graph is global warming proved. The skeptics say the evidence is shaky for the earliest centuries of Mann's 1,000-year period. So the hockey stick, they declare, is wrong.
To settle the debate, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed Mann's hockey-stick data and methodology last year, along with similar studies. The N.A.S. concluded that Mann's evidence for the years from 1600 to the present was very solid indeed. It said the evidence for the years from 1000 to 1600 was necessarily less solid—fewer tree rings and ice cores to go by—but, overall, Mann's evidence did suggest that the 20th century was warmer than any of those six centuries, too. "Which is exactly what we said in our original report," observes Mann, now a professor at Pennsylvania State University. The headline in Mann's report had noted the "limitations and caveats" of the evidence, given how far back it went. "The principle of caution is what scientists go by," Mann says. Ebell and the skeptics had pounced on those caveats to conclude that Mann didn't know what he was talking about. "It's not surprising coming from C.E.I.," Mann adds. "I've never seen any evidence that they have any interest in being intellectually honest." "The complaint about the hockey stick has been that the people who did the research didn't know what they were doing," Ebell maintains. "The methodology they used was not adequate to properly evaluate the data that they had." (The n.a.s. specifically rejected that charge in their report.) In the documentary-film version of An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore stands beside an elongated hockey stick—a graph that goes back not just 1,000 years but 650,000 years. The story it tells is the same. Ebell says the Gore chart is not just inaccurate but misleading in a profound way because it implies that CO2 levels have never been higher than they are now. "Everybody knows it's been higher than that," Ebell says of CO2 in the past, "just more than 650,000 years ago, which is when Gore started counting." It's a canny point. If earth survived prehistoric periods of higher CO2, when man and industry had nothing to do with it, why are we worrying about CO2 now? "Yeah, CO2 was higher in the early Cretaceous period," Mann explains. "It probably exceeded 1,000 parts per million. And, yes, temperatures were almost certainly higher then, too. But nature produced these changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations—from volcanic activity and plate tectonics that released gases trapped in the solid earth—on timescales of tens of millions of years! Eco-systems and species were thus able to adapt," Mann says. "Now we're talking about dramatic changes in the period of a century or so. There's no evidence that nature knows how to adapt so quickly."
Ebell is unfazed by such seemingly authoritative talk. O.K., he says: if CO2 levels have indeed gone up a third in the last hundred years, as Gore's hockey-stick chart indicates, and global temperature is supposed to follow, why haven't we seen a commensurate rise in temperature? "That's pure nonsense," Mann says. "As we increase CO2 levels, we are changing the boundary conditions, if you will, too rapidly for the climate to be in equilibrium while we do this. So the climate is always trying to catch up to what we've done." The correlation between CO2 and temperature, he says, has been studied very well in physics and chemistry. "Our best estimates indicate that the increase in CO2 from pre-industrial levels to the present has already produced roughly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit of warming in global temperatures." Ebell is ready for that. What if the earth has actually embarked on a natural cooling phase—a new Little Ice Age—and the CO2 we're putting out there is offsetting it? After all, says Ebell, "we just came out of a Little Ice Age in the middle of the 19th century. And the Little Ice Age was a time of great trial for human civilization." "Another specious argument," Mann says. First, he says, the so-called Little Ice Age wasn't a major event in terms of impact on global temperature: "While Europe cooled, the tropical Pacific was in an unusually warm state. So you can't just broad-brush the global temperature changes in this way. Models and paleoclimate data both suggest that the global cooling during the Little Ice Age was modest, much smaller than the global warming of the past century." The skeptics say that natural changes, such as a slight reduction in solar intensity, made the Little Ice Age happen. Ebell's suggestion is that that could be happening again. Mann observes that there's no evidence of this. Even if solar variations have had some modest effect on climate today, he adds, they would be more than offset by greenhouse-gas warming. Given the huge and growing volume of gases mankind is generating, says Mann, such natural factors would be dwarfed. As indeed they are. Every year now, with no discernible slowing from "natural variations" such as solar intensity and volcanic activity, global mean temperatures rise. Twenty-one of the 22 hottest years on record have occurred in the last 25 years. The only reason temperatures rise, agrees virtually every climate scientist not funded by ExxonMobil, is the increasing prevalence of man-made greenhouse gases. As these hot years accumulate, a skeptic of less determination might throw in the towel—after mopping his brow with it—but not Ebell. He says that one of the three official records of those surface temperatures—the one kept by nasa—is "cooked," because the agency's weather stations are often set too close to "urban heat islands," which read disproportionately high, and that other stations fail to cover large rural areas. The other two records show that 2005 wasn't as warm as 1998. That, Ebell says, is more evidence we're at the start of a cooling period. Unfortunately for this novel theory, 2006 has just been declared the hottest year on record in the United States. "The United States is not the world," Ebell says. "It's a very small part of the world."
A lot of very strange weather appears to be occurring as a result of those rising temperatures. Global warming, scientists say, evaporates moisture from wet land, leading to more precipitation. It sucks up what little moisture resides in dry land, producing more droughts. As global warming accelerates, they say, the climates of both kinds of terrain will grow more extreme. Ebell says no. "This is crazy," he declares. "Who could possibly believe that? You can't predict regional climate change." He claims that the federally funded U.S. National Assessment of Climate Change proved this. "They had two climate models for the precipitation impact of global warming in the Midwest. One showed the Midwest becoming a desert and the other one showed Kansas becoming as lush as Indiana." "Those studies are dated and irrelevant," says Kevin Trenberth, one of the country's foremost climate experts. Trenberth heads the Climate Analysis Section of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (ncar), in Boulder, Colorado. "They were done in about 1995," he says of the studies. "The state of climate modeling was immature.… As many as 23 models since then have superseded them. These models can now simulate the last hundred years quite well, and thus are useful for broadscale predictions of the future." Those models, says Trenberth, prove that the global mean temperature has gone up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in that time, most of that since the 1970s. "Warmer air holds more water," Trenberth explains. "So in the U.S. the overall precipitation since 1900 has gone up, mostly in the last 35 years, by 7 percent. Heavy rainfall has gone up l4 percent, and the heaviest rainfall—the top 1 percent—has gone up by 20 percent. It rains more, and when it rains, it rains harder than it used to, and that certainly applies to the Midwest." Dry areas of the U.S., mainly the Southwest, do become drier as warm air pulls up what little moisture there is in the soil, Trenberth says, and so one sees more droughts. "There's simply no rational reason to doubt that those trends will not continue if global temperatures rise, as they seem set to do."
Mainstream scientists say that, along with a warming atmosphere, our oceans are heating up, too. "I think that's made up," Ebell says. "I understand that the oceans are primarily heated by direct solar radiation. I do not understand how—beyond just the surface—they are heated by the warming up of the atmosphere. It seems to me that the atmosphere would have to warm up significantly above the previous level before that radiation could actually heat up the ocean." "That's the most preposterous bullshit I've ever heard," exclaims Tom Wigley, another senior scientist at ncar and co-author of a new study on ocean warming. "Perhaps that would be the case if the oceans didn't move. But the ocean is continually moving, horizontally and vertically, and continually mixing heat down to the depths. The top 100 meters has warmed about the same amount as the atmosphere—about one and a half degrees Fahrenheit. The deeper ocean warms much more slowly, but each degree increase in atmospheric temperature does propagate down.… In fact, the amount of warming agrees exceptionally well with what computer models say should have happened." Wigley says the models suggest that the rate of ocean warming in the 21st century will probably be four times greater than in the 20th century. Ebell has a phrase for such predictions. Computer models for predicting climate, he says, "don't even pass the laugh test." Wigley is astonished: "Does he think modeling is a hoax? Has he ever tried to talk to people about this?, I wonder. Or is he just having a guess?" Wigley observes that scientists have charted actual weather data from the 20th century, then programmed computer models to see how well the models predict the weather that actually occurred. "There are hundreds of papers," says Wigley, "showing that models do a fantastically good job." Warming oceans already appear to have stirred tropical hurricanes of greater intensity and duration than in the past, though scientists are wary of suggesting that any particular storm—Katrina, for example—is the direct result of warming. What they do say, Wigley observes, is that, if warming trends continue, ocean storms will definitely grow stronger. Ebell has a cheerier forecast. "Everybody involved in this debate who knows anything about storms knows that a warmer world will be a more stable planet with less big storms," he says. "There may be more hurricanes … but most of the big storms that kill a lot of people are in the winter, right? Cold kills a lot more people than warmth."
Scientists who do believe the ocean is warming—which is to say, nearly all of them—can already measure the cost to sea life. Researchers at the Sir Alistair Hardy Foundation for Ocean Science, in Plymouth, England, have found that, as a result of warming, the entire eco-system of the North Sea is in a state of "ecological meltdown." Ebell disputes that. "If the oceans are warming, or the acidity is changing, that will benefit some species more than others," he says. "Some will take over, others will die out or move on somewhere else. The oceans are changing all the time." For oceanographers, one worrisome sign lies right offshore: in tropical oceans all over the world, coral reefs are bleaching and dying as the acidity caused by warming, apparently, kills the plankton that sustain them. Ebell is unconcerned. "My impression of corals," he says, "is that they have successfully adapted in the past to warmer temperatures and to cooler temperatures, and there is a good deal of evidence that they can adapt—that they actually changed their composition based on the temperature and the chemistry of the waters surrounding them over time." "He is, of course, right and, of course, wrong," replies Dr. Elliott Norse, president of the Marine Conservation Biology Institute. "Corals and their relatives have lived on earth for hundreds of millions of years. They've been more and less abundant, if you take the long view. On the other hand, there have been cataclysmic changes that have happened five previous times in the earth's history. The last was 65 million years ago when a celestial body the size of Mt. Everest hit the earth and caused the extinction of dinosaurs and many other species. It was not a nice time to be around, as I'm sure Mr. Ebell would have found in the minutes before he died."
Actually, warming has already affected countless species on land—or so say experts such as James Hansen, the nasa scientist who first sounded the alarm about global warming, two decades ago. Warming temperatures, he says, are forcing animals to migrate north out of their habitats. As they do, they disrupt the chain of life in their eco-systems, putting themselves and other species at risk. They may also run into man-made barriers that kill them, leading ultimately to their extinction. "I've never seen a good study on that," Ebell counters. "What you see are studies that show that animals are living at higher elevations than they used to, or higher latitudes. Like you find robins now all over Canada." Most immediately threatened, says Hansen, are animals of the polar climates: they have nowhere colder to go. As their world warms, the icebergs on which many of them live are melting, dooming them to drown. "Polar bears, in effect, will be pushed off the planet," Hansen has written. "James Hansen was not trained as a climate scientist," Ebell says. "He was trained as an astronomer. He's a physicist. His dissertation was on the atmosphere of Venus, and he has applied what he's learned in physics and in astronomy to become a climate scientist, but you know from him talking about species' going north, he knows nothing about biology. Have you seen Legates's study?" David Legates is another hard-core skeptic, director of the University of Delaware's Center for Climatic Research, who recently issued a paper declaring that only 2 of the world's 20 polar-bear populations are decreasing. Most of the others are stable; two are growing. What Ebell neglects to mention is that Legates's paper was published by another think tank, the National Center for Policy Analysis—whose global- warming-denial research was partially funded in 2005 with a $75,000 contribution from ExxonMobil—not in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.
The polar-bear study that was peer-reviewed—predicting that polar bears are moving toward extinction—was the work of more than 300 scientists and experts around the world in a consortium called the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. Even the U.S. Department of the Interior has now proposed that polar bears be listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because polar sea ice is melting—an extraordinary admission for an administration philosophically aligned with the skeptics. But Ebell is unwilling to concede that polar bears are in any trouble at all. The assessment team also concluded that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world—with some parts of Alaska warming as much as 10 times as fast. As a consequence, over the past 30 years, areas of ocean that are at least 15 percent ice have decreased annually by nearly 390,000 square miles, an area larger than Norway, Sweden, and Denmark combined. "We're facing unprecedented changes," says Dr. Robert Corell, senior policy fellow at the American Meteorological Society, who chaired the study. "Corell is not a climate scientist," Ebell says. "He's not an Arctic expert. He's not a glaciologist. He's not any of those things. He is an oceanographer and an engineer." The whole Arctic assessment, he declares, is cooked data. "If you look at the temperature graph … they show a strong warming trend in the last 34 years.… They cut the data off at 1950. There's a well-known Arctic temperature record that goes back to the early years of the 20th century. The reason they cut it off at 1950 is it was warmer in the Arctic in the 30s and 40s than it is today." The truth, Ebell says, is that "the Arctic warms and cools according to a period of natural cycles of several decades. And we're now in the warm phase; in the 50s and 60s and 70s we were in the cool phase. This is how you cook the data, and this is what these people are all about." "That's baloney," Corell says. "We did go back further; we have historical records that go back 400,000 years. Parts of the Arctic were probably a little warmer in the 1930s than they are today, but the whole Arctic is warmer today certainly than it's been in the last thousand years—and probably a lot longer than that." As for his background, Corell notes that, after studying engineering and oceanography, he made his first trip to the Arctic in 1968 and has been in and out of it ever since, taking sediment cores and writing papers, all while heading up the National Science Foundation's climate-study program. "I have never met Ebell," he adds. "He's never contacted me or sent anyone in the assessment any questions." Corell's team feels that if warming continues at current rates the Arctic polar ice cap will soon start melting completely every summer. Ebell says so what. "The period in which the ice might disappear is a fairly limited one," he says. Besides, he points out, the Arctic polar cap is ice that's floating on water. "So that doesn't have any effect on sea levels at all—just like the ice cubes in your drink, when they melt, they don't change the level." The same can't be said for the ice sheets over much of Greenland and all of Antarctica: they sit on land. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore explains how the melting of either the Greenland ice sheet or the western arm of the Antarctica ice sheet would increase the level of the world's oceans by as much as 20 feet, inundating low-lying coastal areas from the Maldives to Manhattan. Ebell says that all this is exaggerated or plain wrong. The new alarm about Greenland, he points out, was based on a study of three years of melting. "It's melting slightly faster than it was four years ago, and we get worldwide consternation."
Though he likes to bash scientists for working outside their degreed fields, Ebell, it turns out, isn't a scientist at all. He majored in philosophy at the University of California in San Diego, then studied political theory at the London School of Economics and history at Cambridge. He was, he readily admits, a misfit growing up in rural Oregon on his father's 2,000-acre cattle ranch: a "pointy-headed intellectual" who "loathed the counterculture." He was a misfit in England, too, he discovered: not smart enough to get a fellowship at Cambridge, as Ebell modestly puts it, and not English enough to make do with the modest pay of an English academic. So he returned—with his Albuquerque-born wife, whom he'd met in England—to the U.S., working a succession of public-policy jobs in Washington, carving out conservative positions on property rights, federal lands, and endangered species. In none of those realms did he have any more than his curiosity and convictions. "I'm not claiming to be a climate authority—the way Jim Hansen is, or Robert Corell," says Ebell. "Every interview I do, when I'm asked about scientific issues, I say I'm not a climate scientist. I'm just giving you the informed layman's perspective.… If science is going to be discussed in the public arena, then shouldn't people other than scientists be allowed to participate? Isn't that what a representative democracy is?"
With evidence of global warming piling ever higher, even the best of the skeptics has a harder time making his case. So Ebell and his colleagues have hit on a new theme. Maybe warming will occur at more than modest rates in the future, he acknowledges. Some people think that's not so bad. "People prefer warmer climates," Ebell declares. "They do better in them. People do better in Phoenix than they do in Buffalo. They feel better, they're happier, they're more productive. They live longer." All predictions of global warming, Ebell observes, suggest that the tropics will stay about the same. The real effects of warming will be in the upper latitudes. "Northern cities like Saskatoon will be more like Calgary, and Bismarck, North Dakota, will be more like Kansas City, and Kansas City will be more like Oklahoma City. Now, is this really bad?" Yes, it is, says Dr. Paul R. Epstein, of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School. "It's not just the warming," he says. Or the storms and other weather extremes. Or the stress put on visible creatures of sea and land. "It's the pests and diseases!" Epstein has studied the spread of malarial mosquitoes to ever higher mountain altitudes in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. "In the very places where glaciers are retreating and plant communities are migrating upward and temperatures are warming, mosquitoes are circulating." The pattern is consistent from one continent's mountains to the next. "That," Epstein notes, "creates conditions conducive to disease transmission at high altitudes."
Wrong again, says Ebell. "What Paul Epstein publishes is total rubbish," he exclaims. "Temperature is one of the least important factors in the spread of tropical diseases. Malaria didn't used to be called a tropical disease, because it was endemic throughout the world. It's tropical now because it's the rich countries that were able to eradicate it." Actually, that's not true. Malaria was originally called ague or marsh fever because it emanated from warm-weather swamps. Mosquitoes are warm-weather carriers, and the pioneering work done more than a century ago to identify them as carriers, before rich countries had any inkling they were to blame, was done in Algeria, Cuba, and India—all tropical or subtropical climes. Epstein has another example: bark beetles. Not long ago, vigilant forestry had drastically reduced their prevalence in the U.S. Now because of warmer winters, he says, they've spread back north as far as Alaska. Frost used to kill them off, but now they "overwinter" and produce more generations each year as they go. "They kill the trees, laying eggs inside the bark," Epstein explains. "So we see vast stands of dead trees, and more forest fires." Ebell says he grew up with bark beetles on his family's ranch. Their recent spread, he says, is simply due to poor forest management, not global warming. "Epstein is a medical doctor, not a scientist," he says. "He's a mountebank." "What does that even mean?" Epstein says wonderingly. Though the Harvard doctor does know who Ebell is: "He works for that group funded by ExxonMobil, doesn't he?"
Every five to seven years now, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (I.P.C.C.), a United Nations–backed consortium of more than 2,500 experts from around the world, issues a voluminous report on global climate—the largest exercise in scientific research ever undertaken. Drafts of the latest report—the fourth—began appearing in February. Its conclusions are devastating. Casting aside the scientific caution of the first three reports, it says global warming is "unequivocal" and largely man-made. It predicts with greater than 90 percent confidence that if carbon dioxide levels rise to double what they were in pre-industrial times, which they'll likely do by the end of the century if fossil-fuel emissions aren't drastically cut, they will push global mean temperatures up between 3.5 and 8 degrees. That would warm the earth to a level not seen in 125,000 years. (That last rise was, of course, a very gradual one, allowing nature to adjust, not a flip-switch jolt in the blink of 350 years.) Already, the warming that's occurred seems likely to increase sea levels 7 to 23 inches by 2100. That's without taking into account the consequences of polar-ice-cap melting, the factor that Al Gore, James Hansen, and others say might cause sea levels to rise by 20 feet or more. The I.P.C.C. scientists say they can't predict the rate of ice-cap melting, and are forbidden, by their United Nations charter, to include speculation. So they just leave that part out. A second part, issued in March, predicts tens of millions of environmental refugees each year from flooding, the rampant spread of tropical diseases (including malaria), and widespread starvation by 2080. Ebell says the I.P.C.C.'s verdicts are highly misleading. Most of those 2,500 experts work on small, specific bits of one of three 1,000-page reports. Their work isn't alarmist. Only the summaries are. "Who writes the summary for policymakers?," Ebell asks. "The member governments that belong to the I.P.C.C., not the scientists who work on the three 1,000-page case reports." "Mr. Ebell doesn't understand how the I.P.C.C. works if he claims that the summaries are only the products of the governments," replies Richard H. Moss, senior climate director at the United Nations Foundation, who's a leading member of the I.P.C.C. as well as a senior research scientist at the University of Maryland. "All lead authors do have input into the summary documents, not just to the underlying chapters or specific portions of the summaries related to their expertise. Almost all concur that the evidence is mounting that we have a serious problem on our hands that we must begin to address."
For Ebell, being a contrarian has proved to be a pointy-headed misfit's idea of good fun. Still, with new studies appearing almost weekly confirming global warming, why not come out for doing something—anything—to help slow its onset in the bizarre event that it's as real as thousands of scientists say it is? Ah, says Ebell with the grin of a debater who's saved his best points for last, because of the risk. "It's a risk-risk analysis," he says. "What is the risk of some of the consequences of global warming happening and having to deal with them compared to the risks of putting the world on an energy-rationing diet?" The Kyoto Protocol, the United Nations agreement ratified by, as of February 2007, 170 countries to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions but shunned by President Bush, has proved his point already, Ebell says. Many European nations will miss their 2010 targets for reducing fossil-fuel emissions. They're making huge sacrifices—in industry and capital growth—for tiny or nonexistent energy savings. President Bush was right to avoid it, Ebell says: it would cost the U.S. between $100 billion and $400 billion a year by 2050 to offset global warming by seven-hundredths of a degree Celsius. Not by chance was Kyoto's approach voted down 95–0 by the U.S. Senate in 1997—it is a dead end, Ebell says. "Ever since Kyoto was negotiated," Ebell says, "there's no way I could lose. I hate to say that, because it sounds arrogant." But there it is. "It has nothing to do with us. It has to do with the reality. Al Gore and others … said we think that in order to solve this problem we'll have to reduce emissions by 60 to 80 percent by 2050." Meanwhile, Ebell observes, the U.S. Department of Energy and the International Energy Agency have each gauged the world's future energy needs. "Between now and 2030—not 2050—world energy use is going to go up by 60 percent!" (The International Energy Agency predicts the world will be using the same percentage of energy from fossil fuels that is used today, around 80 percent.) "This is a vision coming up against reality," Ebell says. "It's a train wreck, and I know which side will win. Reality will win."
As governments fail one by one to curb their greenhouse gases, Ebell suggests, a new generation of leaders will see the Kyoto Protocol for what it is: a loser. "They will want to distance themselves from it because it is a train wreck, and the scientific community will go, 'Oh, well, uh, maybe it wasn't as big a problem as we thought it was!'" "Ebell may be proved right about Kyoto," says longtime New York Times environment reporter Andrew Revkin. "And because global warming isn't a catastrophe in the traditional definition of the word, its full impact won't be felt tomorrow, or next year, or perhaps even |
’s vice president of engineering, in a blog post.
The changes will be rolling out over the next few weeks on Twitter’s native apps and on the web, the company said.
Correction, 6:04 p.m. The headline for this article originally stated that tweets were filtered from the timeline. In fact they are hidden in replies.How To Add Users To Linux OS From A Text file
This tutorial is about a bash script to add, delete and verify the users either from a text file; it can also add, delete and modify the users manually. This script can be used to add, delete and verify the users to the Linux OS by fetching the user's information from any text file and this script can also add, delete or verify the users manually, I have put both of these functions in one script file. The text file can be specified by the administrator.
:-)!!!The script is totally user friendly!!! :-)
You can find the script at the end of this tutorial.
Starting the Script
When you start the script a menu will appear like this:
### MENU ###
1. ADD USERS
2. Varify Users
3. Delete Users
4. EXIT
1. Add Users
Now the Script confirms that the user must be root, and we know that the UID of root is zero( 0 ). so first I compare the UID of the current user with the zero (0), if the UID doesn't match with the UID of root then it will display the following message:
****You must be the root user to run this script!****
***Identity Verified_You are the Root***
We can check the UID of the current user by typing the following command in the terminal:
echo $UID
If the user is root then the 1.ADD USERS function will be performed.
Now the script will ask the user either if he/she wants to add the users manually or let the script get the user's information from the text file. For that it will display the following menu:
#########################################
"Please Select the Mode!!!
1. Add the Users Manually
2.Read the Users Automatically from Text File
###########################################
Now if the user selects 1. Add the Users Manually then the script will prompt for user the username, group and password; it will use the following commands for username and group:
read usr_nameread usr_group
Now by using above information it will add the user by using the following command:
useradd -g $usr_group -m $usr_name
For the password it will use the following command:
passwd $usr_name
Now if the user selects the option 2.Read the Users Automatically from Text File then the script locate the text file and verifies that it exists, then it will read the information like username, group, password from the text file.
Now the script will display the current working directory where the text file should be located to the user, by using the following command:
echo $(pwd)/users.txt
Now the script asks if the above path of the text file is correct or if you want to enter the file path manualy, it will display the following message to the user:
Do you want to use the above Default PATH? Yes=1 & No=2
If the user presses 1 for Yes then the script will load the text file from the shown path, by using the following command:
Path=$($pwd)users.txt
If the user presses 2 for No, then the script will ask the user to enter the correct path for the text file, and read the file path by using the following command:
read Path
The path of the text file is stored in the variable "Path". The Following command will be used to verify the Existence of the file:
if [ -e $Path ];
It will extract the username from the text file by using the following command:
Username=`grep "Username00$num" $Path | cut -f2 -d:`
It will extract the group from the text file by using the following command:
Group=`grep "Group" $Path |cut -f2 -d:`
It will extract the password from the text file by using the following command:
Password=`grep "Password" $Path | cut -f2 -d:`
Now the script uses the variables which contain the information about the users and add them to the Linux OS, by using the following commands:
For adding a group it will use the following command:
groupadd $Group
For adding the users to the group it will use the following command:
useradd -g $Group -m $Username
For setting the password for all the users it uses the following command:
echo $Password | /usr/bin/passwd --stdin $Username
Password is the variable which contains the same password for all the users, it's extracted from the text file.
2. Verify Users
From the menu:
### MENU ###
1. ADD USERS
2. Varify Users
3. Delete Users
4. EXIT
If user select the option 2. Varify Users the another menu will be appear like:
#################################
Please Select the Mode!!!
1.Varify All the Users of System
2.Varify All the Users of TEXT file
#################################
From the above menu if user select the option 1.Varify All the Users of System, then all the users of the system will be displayed to the user, I have used the following command for this purpose:
cat /etc/passwd |grep bash
The result of the command in my case will return the following bash users:
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
lucky:x:501:501:Lucky:/home/lucky:/bin/bash
Now if the user selects the option 2.Varify All the Users of TEXT file, then all the users that are mentioned in the text file will be verified. In my case I have used the following command to verify the users of the text file either that are added to the Linux OS or not, and how many users I have.
To verify the users I have used the following command in my script:
Path=$($pwd)users.txt
varify=`grep "varify" $Path |cut -f2 -d:`
cat /etc/passwd | grep $varify
Varify is the variable that contains the unique value of the usenames.
To display the total number of users I have used the following command:
echo -e "
You have Currently"
cat /etc/passwd | grep $varify |wc -l;
echo "users added from your Text File"
The result of the above command in my case is:
fa05btn001:x:502:502::/home/fa05btn001:/bin/bash
fa05btn002:x:503:502::/home/fa05btn002:/bin/bash
fa05btn003:x:504:502::/home/fa05btn003:/bin/bash
fa05btn004:x:505:502::/home/fa05btn004:/bin/bash
fa05btn005:x:506:502::/home/fa05btn005:/bin/bash
fa05btn006:x:507:502::/home/fa05btn006:/bin/bash
fa05btn007:x:508:502::/home/fa05btn007:/bin/bash
fa05btn008:x:509:502::/home/fa05btn008:/bin/bash
You have Currently 8 users added from your Text file
3. Delete Users
### MENU ###
1. ADD USERS
2. Varify Users
3. Delete Users
4. EXIT
If user selects the option 3. Delete Users then the verification of the user as root will be done before going further. If the user verified as root succesfully then another menu will appear like:
##############################################
Please select the Mode!!!
1.Delete Specific User
2.Delete all Users Specified in the TEXT File
##############################################
Now from the above menu if user selects the option 1.Delete Specific User then the script will display the current users of the system and ask the user to enter the name of the user to delete.
To display all the users of the system I have used the following command:
cat /etc/passwd |grep bash
The above command will display the following result:
You have currently following USERS Added to your System
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
lucky:x:501:501:Lucky:/home/lucky:/bin/bash
fa05btn001:x:502:502::/home/fa05btn001:/bin/bash
fa05btn002:x:503:502::/home/fa05btn002:/bin/bash
fa05btn003:x:504:502::/home/fa05btn003:/bin/bash
fa05btn004:x:505:502::/home/fa05btn004:/bin/bash
fa05btn005:x:506:502::/home/fa05btn005:/bin/bash
fa05btn006:x:507:502::/home/fa05btn006:/bin/bash
fa05btn007:x:508:502::/home/fa05btn007:/bin/bash
fa05btn008:x:509:502::/home/fa05btn008:/bin/bash
Type the Name of the User you wants to Delete :
Now the user will asked to enter the name of the user to delete, and when the user entered the name of the user that he/she wants to delete the Linux OS will search the user in the above file and delete the user by using the following command:
read user_name
userdel -r $user_name
The following command will extract the usernames from the text file:
Username=`grep "Username00$num" $Path | cut -f2 -d:`
The following script segment will go to the end of the file and terminates the loop:
if [ $Username == "EOF" ]; then
clear
main
fi
The following command will delete the users listed in the text file:
userdel -r $Username
Note: I have tested my ADDUSER.sh script on PCLinuxOS, and I hope that it will also work well on other Linux distributions. Anybody can modify the code as well, and please share it with others.
Have a nice time. :-)
THE FOLLOWING IS THE COMPLETE SCRIPT TO ADD, DELETE and VERIFY THE USERS IN LINUX OS. Created by USMAN AKRAM (ajaonchat)
#!/bin/bash ############################################################### #This Script is Created by # # USMAN AKRAM (ajaonchat) # # FA05-BTN-005 # # BTN-6 # ############################################################### add_users() { ROOT_UID=0 #The root user has a UID of 0 if [ "$UID" -ne "$ROOT_UID" ]; then echo "****You must be the root user to run this script!****" exit fi echo echo Identity Verified_You are the Root echo echo -e "
#########################################
" echo -e "Please Select the Mode!!!
" echo -e "1. Add the Users Manually
2.Read the Users Automatically from Text File
" echo -e "###########################################" read add_opt case $add_opt in 1) echo -e "Please Enter the User name:" read usr_name echo -e "Please enter the User Group" read usr_group groupadd $usr_group useradd -g $usr_group -m $usr_name echo -e "Please enter the Password for User $usr_name" passwd $usr_name ;; 2) echo echo "Present working directory is: `pwd`/users.txt" echo echo -e "Do you want to use the above Default PATH? Yes=1 & No=2" read yn if [ $yn == 1 ]; then Path=$($pwd)users.txt else echo -n "Please enter the correct path to the file (e.g. /root/folder/filename.txt): " read Path fi if [ -e $Path ]; then #If the file user specified exists Username=lucky num=1 while [ $Username!= "EOF" ] do Username=`grep "Username00$num" $Path | cut -f2 -d:` #Extract Username from text file num=$(($num+1)) Password=`grep "Password" $Path | cut -f2 -d:` #Extract Password from text file Group=`grep "Group" $Path |cut -f2 -d:` #Extract Group From text file groupadd $Group #Adds user to the system and gives them a password if [ $Username == "EOF" ]; then clear main fi #Adds user to the system useradd -g $Group -m $Username #Add users password echo $Password | /usr/bin/passwd --stdin $Username #user Password will be assigned done else #If the user Specified file doesn't Exists echo -e "
#############################################" echo -e "
######CANNOT FIND or LOCATE THE FILE!!!!#####" echo -e "
#############################################" fi;; *) echo -e "You have selected the Wrong Choice!!!" esac } varify() { echo -e "#################################" echo -e "Please Select the Mode!!!
" echo -e "1.Varify All the Users of System
2.Varify All the Users of TEXT file
" echo -e "#################################" read varify_user case $varify_user in 1) cat /etc/passwd |grep bash;; 2) echo echo "Present working directory is: `pwd`/users.txt" echo echo -e "Do you want to use the above Default PATH? Yes=1 & No=2" read yn if [ $yn == 1 ]; then Path=$($pwd)users.txt else echo -n "Please enter the correct path to the file (e.g. /root/folder/filename.txt): " read Path fi if [ -e $Path ]; then Path=$($pwd)users.txt varify=`grep "varify" $Path |cut -f2 -d:` cat /etc/passwd | grep $varify echo -e "
You have Currently " cat /etc/passwd | grep $varify |wc -l echo "users added from your Text file" else #If the user Specified file doesn't Exists echo -e "
#############################################" echo -e "
######CANNOT FIND or LOCATE THE FILE!!!!#####" echo -e "
#############################################" fi ;; *) echo -e "Wrong Choice" esac } del_users() { #This Script will delete the Users from the HOME DIRECTORY!!!! ROOT_UID=0 #The root user has a UID of 0 if [ "$UID" -ne "$ROOT_UID" ]; then echo "****You must be the root user to run this script!****" exit fi echo echo Identity Verified_You are the Root echo echo echo "Present working directory is: `pwd`/students.txt" echo #This is the Menu to select the mode to Deletion the users, either delete selected user or to delete all the users you have in the TEXT file...??? echo -e "####################################" echo -e "
Please select the Mode!!!
1.Delete Specific User
2.Delete all Users Specified in the TEXT File
" echo -e "####################################" read del_opt case $del_opt in 1) echo -e "
You have currently following USERS Added to your System
" cat /etc/passwd |grep bash echo -e "
Type the Name of the User you wants to Delete :" read user_name userdel -r $user_name ;; 2) echo echo "Present working directory is: `pwd`/users.txt" echo echo -e "Do you want to use the above Default PATH? Yes=1 & No=2" read yn if [ $yn == 1 ]; then Path=$($pwd)users.txt else echo -n "Please enter the correct path to the file (e.g. /root/folder/filename.txt): " read Path fi if [ -e $Path ]; then #If the file user specified exists num=1 Username=lucky while [ $Username!= "EOF" ] do Username=`grep "Username00$num" $Path | cut -f2 -d:` #Extract Username from text file if [ $Username == "EOF" ]; then clear main fi userdel -r $Username num=$(($num+1)) done else #If the user Specified file doesn't Exists echo -e "
#############################################" echo -e "
######CANNOT FIND or LOCATE THE FILE!!!!#####" echo -e "
#############################################" fi ;; *) echo -e "Wrong Choice" esac } main() { opt=1 while [ $opt -le 4 ] do clear echo -e " ### MENU ###
1. ADD USERS
2. Varify Users
3. Delete Users
4. EXIT
" read opt case $opt in 1) add_users ;; 2) varify ;; 3) del_users ;; 4) exit 0 ;; *) echo -e "You have Entered the Wrong Choice!!!" esac echo -e "
Want to run Script Again Yes=1 & No=4." read opt done } main exit 0
This is the text file that I used with my script
####################################################### CREATED By USMAN AKRAM (LUCKY) FA05-BTN-005 [email protected] ####################################################### COMSATS Abbottabad Student's Account ============================== Filename:users.txt Year:2008 Campus:CIIT-ABTD Group:btn ##Following are the users that will be added to the HOME Directory!!! Username001:fa05btn001 Username002:fa05btn002 Username003:fa05btn003 Username004:fa05btn004 Username005:fa05btn005 Username006:fa05btn006 Username007:fa05btn007 Username008:fa05btn008 Username009:EOF #it will be the End user varify:fa05btn Password:123456 End of Text File!!!!
Created by USMAN AKRAM(Lucky), Student of COMSATS University Abbottabad [BS(TN)-6] Email Address: [email protected]I could choose any number of beginnings, but the one that seems to explain most is a conversation that took place at school when I was 10 years old. I was talking to my classmate Jacob as we got changed to play cricket. Jacob was a weird kid. He had longer hair than the school rules allowed. He smelled funny and had peculiar facts at his disposal, to do with ancient languages and the sexual habits of dinosaurs. He made no secret of his scorn for cricket. He was, it goes without saying, not popular. I was telling him about the cosmic greatness of The Lord of the Rings, a book which at that point I considered the alpha and omega of world literature. "It's good," Jacob allowed. "But have you read Dune?" I'd never even heard of Frank Herbert, or his saga of rebellion on a desert planet. Jacob mentioned a couple of other writers, both unknown to me. "You should go to Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed," he said.
I was impressed. That was the name of a place? A shop, Jacob said, specialising in science fiction. Books and comics, fanzines. It was named, he told me, with the air of someone imparting vital knowledge, after a short story by Ray Bradbury. I don't know how long it was before I found my way to Dark They Were. At weekends I was allowed to take the tube up to central London, where I'd wander round the British Museum or the trashy souvenir shops on the Tottenham Court Road. But I did find it, in an alley off Wardour Street. I have only the vaguest memory of what it was like, overlayed by other memories of the many such places I've been in since – the grimy floor, the racks of publications, the supercilious staff, always ready with an acid remark or an eye-roll to show a prepubescent newbie his lowly place on the ladder of fandom. Almost certainly I didn't buy anything. I expect I self-consciously perused the shelves, made mental Christmas present notes, then left.
It was my first experience of a subculture. I was hooked, not just by the content, but by the realisation there was stuff out there being made and thought and done that wasn't visible on the TV screens of suburban Essex. As I got older I became a kind of subcultural junkie, foraging around in music, street fashion and eventually art, politics and the freakier reaches of the internet, hunting the next discovery, the next seam of underground gold. But in my early teens, science fiction and fantasy had an almost-total hold over my imagination. Their outcast status was part of their appeal. The cool kids held them in disdain. It was territory I could own. When I wasn't reading about alternate realities I was trying to live inside one, playing Dungeons and Dragons or Traveller or Call of Cthulhu or Bushido, games that allowed me to inhabit ancient Japan or deep space or various arcane fantasy worlds.
Most of my books came from charity shops or the Whipps Cross Hospital fête, where my dad – who as a doctor was expected to put his hand in his pocket on such occasions – would give me pound notes to convert into teetering piles of paperbacks. There was something so much more interesting about these books, fished out of crates and cardboard boxes, than the ones in the library, let alone the expensive, sensible fare which seemed to be on sale in ordinary bookshops. They were musty-smelling 10p messages from the futuristic past, complete with cover designs (and content) that were unlike anything I'd seen before.
I'm fairly certain that this was how I first came across Michael Moorcock, in an early-70s Mayflower paperback, with a psychedelic cover by Bob Haberfield. Soon I was combing London for these editions, which I've carried through numerous house-moves, keeping them even after I ditched the majority of my SF and fantasy collection in favour of student bookshelf-adornments intended to attract potential sexual partners. That first crucial title could well have been Moorcock's 1968 novel The Final Programme. Haberfield's cover for this is one part Bosch, one part pop-art and one part Tibetan tantra. A naked woman, hair in flames, lies in a kind of amniotic ocean, her breasts rising up with architectural impressiveness. From her open mouth pours a carnivalesque stream of figures – rock musicians, ringmasters, rapists and murderers, businessmen, freaks and addicts of all kinds. She's flanked by twin skeletons, a pope and a king. Behind her some kind of skyscraper is shattering under the influence of beams of cosmic energy. The writing behind this cover was itself an orgiastic riot, featuring the adventures of one Jerry Cornelius, a hipster secret agent in swinging London, who seemed to jump into bed with men and women, and who appeared, shockingly, to be aware of himself as a character in a novel. As far as I could follow the plot, it concerned Cornelius's attempt to rescue his brother from some kind of peril, but then diverted into something really weird, involving Cornelius being fused in mystical union with an evil sexpot called Miss Brunner, from which he emerged as a hermaphrodite, the world's "first all-purpose human being". The Lord of the Rings it wasn't.
In retrospect, it's easy to place The Final Programme as a product of the same culture (and period) that spawned Gravity's Rainbow, Trout Fishing in America, Giles Goat-Boy and The Atrocity Exhibition – part of the headspace opened up by the associative riffs and "routines" of William Burroughs's The Naked Lunch. But at the age of 12, this was my first clue that anything like it even existed. It blew (as they say) my tiny mind. Through Moorcock I was introduced to a whole set of countercultural possibilities, as well as to the idea that writing didn't have to conform to – well, to anything really.
I soon discovered that the Cornelius novels were only a tiny corner of Moorcock's sprawling oeuvre. There seemed to be innumerable books, most of them with some kind of fantastical setting, often featuring heroes with names that appeared to echo Cornelius – Jherek Carnelian, Erekose, Elric, Corum. There were books that were straightforward genre works, books which fused, pastiched or even created genres (his 1971 novel Warlord of the Air, with its alternate-world Edwardian setting, can lay claim to being the first steampunk novel) and books that belonged to no genre at all. The quality varied – I later found out that Moorcock was capable of writing 15,000 words a day and had produced some of his slighter works in as little as three days. Other books are high literature. The Dancers at the End of Time trilogy is one of the great postwar English fantasies. In 1977 The Condition of Muzak was awarded the Guardian Fiction prize, and Mother London, an intricate and affecting love letter to the city, was shortlisted for the 1988 Whitbread award.
Moorcock's biography reads like a rebuke to every wannabe novelist who's pottering through a creative writing MFA. At 16 he got a job editing Tarzan Adventures, moving on to write pulp detective fiction for Fleetway's Sexton Blake Library. His first novel was published in 1961, when he was 23, by which time he was already a veteran writer. In 1963 he became editor of New Worlds magazine, using it to transform science fiction, moving the genre away from the "golden age" of rayguns and spaceships towards a concern with psychology, the mass media and altered states of consciousness. By the late 60s he was a pivotal figure in London's underground scene, a point of contact between science fiction novelists such as JG Ballard and Brian Aldiss and the musicians and artists who were transforming British pop culture. He became a lyricist and occasional performer with the west London psychedelic band Hawkwind, while in New Worlds he was publishing writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Christopher Logue and George Macbeth alongside Ballard, Harlan Ellison, Philip José Farmer and M John Harrison. Since the New Worlds days he has carried on writing at a furious pace, weaving an ever more complex web of novels and stories, filled with associations, refractions and knowing references, a delightful maze for his fans and a source of perplexity for bibliographers. This prolific, promiscuous output is perhaps one reason he's not accorded the status he deserves in the postwar canon of English literature. Unlike his friend Ballard, whose reputation has been transformed in recent years, Moorcock remains something of an outsider, regarded with trepidation (if he's known at all) by a literary establishment that prefers clear blue water between literature and genre writing.
These days Moorcock lives in Texas, in the town of Bastrop, just outside Austin. It's always a risk to meet one's heroes, and a small Texas town seemed an inhospitable spot for a writer who, throughout all his multifarious work, has retained a specifically English sensibility. Mummery, the knowingly named central character of Mother London (who shares much biographical information with his creator), says "London is my mother, source of most of my ambivalences and most of my loyalties." I wondered if I would find a writer in exile, or adrift.
Instead, I discover Moorcock with his feet up in the den of a charming Victorian house, surrounded by books, cats and a clutter of antique furniture. He is tall, impressively bearded, though less Falstaffian than some of his publicity photos. Why did he and his wife move to Texas? "We'd lived in England for 15 years, and Linda was sick of it. She used to get shit all the time just for being American. I didn't want to live somewhere that was an enclave of the British abroad. I thought: where am I going to get the most experience and hear what people really think?"
I ask how he came to be an editor at such a young age. "I'd started doing fanzines from the age of nine. I'd been doing as many copies as you can get carbon paper into an upright typewriter and I'd try to sell them at school." He was a fan of school stories, particularly PG Wodehouse, and when he ran out of stories in book form he started buying old magazines from dealers, eventually coming into contact with a fan subculture, much as I did many years later. "If you were interested in popular fiction, the only place where it was discussed at all was in fanzines. It gradually put you in touch with other people. It was like a very slow-working internet."
These old-fashioned stories must have been remote from his own school experience. "Oh, totally. I was expelled from a Rudolf Steiner school. I was the only person ever expelled until quite recently. I kept running away. Looking back it was pure separation anxiety. My father had buggered off at a very early age. I had this funny family. At one end they were breeding dogs in south-east London – for greyhound racing – and at the other my uncle was living in Downing Street. And I would actually go to Downing Street, which didn't strike me as funny. I'd get on the number 15 bus."
Moorcock then tells an anecdote about this uncle who'd been Winston Churchill's secretary and served a succession of prime ministers. It's a piece of back story he gives to Mummery in Mother London. Throughout our conversation there's a kind of free-associative drift, as one thing tumbles into another. Biography melds with fiction. It's a quality one also finds in Moorcock's work. As he published at breakneck pace during the 1970s, he came up with the notion of the "multiverse", a kaleidoscope of interconnected parallel realities. His various fictional heroes all became avatars of a single hero, the "Eternal Champion" who struggles for the cosmic balance between Law and Chaos. This metaphysics is sometimes explicit in his novels, often not. Moorcock soon invited other writers to set stories in his worlds, a cheerful openness which is one of his salient characteristics.
Moorcock's "funny family" gave him an outsider's perspective on postwar England. He was a rebellious teenager, something he thinks of as a family trait. "I really did have a very egalitarian upbringing."
At Fleetway, the publisher of the Eagle, Look and Learn and innumerable cowboy, detective and superhero comics, Moorcock's anti-authoritarian streak continued. Violent second world war stories were a mainstay of Fleetway's output, featuring square-jawed Tommies bayoneting craven Germans while snarling xenophobic insults. When Moorcock refused to write for these titles, "they decided I was a communist. But the boss of my department wouldn't fire me, because he was convinced the Red Army was going to come marching up Fleet Street any minute, and there I'd be with my Makarov pistol and my rimless glasses, lining people up to be shot. They kept me on as a kind of insurance." Another Fleetway executive was "a raging fascist", an ex-member of Mosley's blackshirts. Moorcock, who was a member of the West London Anti-fascist Youth Committee, once found him closeted in his office, drawing a world map to illustrate a proposed racial resettlement plan. The British got all of Africa. During this time, Moorcock also infiltrated Colin Jordan's British National party, posing as a young recruit and going for tea with the elderly widow of Arnold Leese, an infamous far-right politician who regarded his rival Mosley as a "kosher fascist". "It was a bit like The Man Who Was Thursday. There were three of us who'd go and see her and we were all infiltrators. Not one of us was an actual follower. She'd pour out the tea and say 'you know the Jews did so and so' and we'd pretend to agree with her."
Moorcock has an initially perplexing relationship to literary Englishness. On the one hand, he's steeped in the conservative canon of popular fiction, from the boarding-school stories he loved as a child to the various upright chaps – from Sexton Blake to world war one flying aces – he channelled for Fleetway. On the other, he has a strong anarchist streak and is deeply hostile to the Christian pastoral fantasy tradition of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis. His own fantasy writing has always delighted in ambiguity, in contrast to the nursery-school morality of much of the genre. In a 1978 essay he skewered The Lord of the Rings, calling it "Winnie-the-Pooh, posing as an epic." He derided Tolkien's "petit bourgeois" artisan-hobbits, who are portrayed in the novel as a "bulwark against chaos", standing for "solid good sense" against the evil industrial-worker orcs. Tolkien's work, he writes, is nothing more than "a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class", something not so far from the fascism he had agitated against as a young activist. Against Tolkien, Moorcock has always championed the work of Mervyn Peake, whose Gormenghast books were informed by his experience as one of the first civilians to enter the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. Peake's work is shot through with an uncanny darkness, a tone which Moorcock (who as a young man was a friend of Peake) often adopts. I ask him why he dislikes Tolkien and the Inklings so much. "It would be the same if we were talking about Warwick Deeping or RC Sherriff. It's the British character sentimentalised, the illusion of decency, that whole nonsense of 'no British boy would do this sort of thing'. It was also the tone of the BBC when I was growing up. I hated it."
In contrast to the rural decencies of Tolkien, Moorcock's writing belongs to an urban tradition, which celebrates the fantastical city as a place of chance and mystery. The wondrous spaces of M John Harrison, China Miéville, Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe and Alan Moore are all part of this, as are Iain Sinclair's London, Judge Dredd's Mega-City One, the part-virtual cyberpunk mazes of William Gibson and the decadent Paris of the Baudelarian flâneur. Like these other urban fantasists, Moorcock delights in a kind of sublime palimpsest, in imagining an environment that through size, age, scale or complexity exceeds our comprehension, producing fear and awe. Crucially, the city isn't a place of moral clarity.
Moorcock's dislike of authoritarian sentiment has led him in many directions: Jerry Cornelius's ambiguity is sexual, social and even ontological; one of Moorcock's most popular heroes, Elric, was written as a rebuke to the bluff, muscular goody-goodies that populate so much fantasy fiction. Elric, a decadent albino weakling, is amoral, perhaps even evil. As a not-so-metaphorical junkie, Elric allowed Moorcock to revel in unwholesomeness, and helped return fantasy to its roots in the late romanticism of the decadents, a literary school close to Moorcock's heart. In a recent introduction to The Dancers at the End of Time, which is set in a decadent far future, Moorcock claims to have sported Wildean green carnations as a teenager, not to mention "the first pair of Edwardian flared trousers (made by Burton) as well as the first high-button frock coat to be seen in London since 1910". Elric, much less robust than his creator, who admits his dandyish threads gave him "the bluff domestic air of a Hamburg Zeppelin commander", is part Maldoror, part Yellow Book poseur and part William Burroughs; within a few years of his first appearance in 1961, British culture suddenly seemed to be producing real-life Elrics by the dozen, as Keith Richards, Jimmy Page and others defined an image of the English rock star as an effeminate, velvet-clad lotus-eater. Moorcock was very popular among musicians, and it's tempting to see him as co-creator of the butterfly-on-a-wheel character, which still wanders the halls of English culture in guises ranging from Sebastian Horsley to Russell Brand. I ask him whether he felt at the time that the 60s rockers were living out a role he'd imagined. He's too modest to agree, but tells an anecdote that seems to sum up psychedelic London's openness to fantasy of all kinds. "I'm in the Mountain grill on the Portobello Road, where everyone used to meet to get on the tour buses. I'm sitting there, and this bloke called Geronimo is trying to sell me some dope. He says 'have you heard about the tunnel under Ladbroke Grove?'. He starts to elaborate, about how it's under the Poor Clares nunnery, and you can go into that and come out in an entirely different world. I said to him, 'Geronimo, I think I wrote that'. It didn't seem to bother him much."
Younger than most of the writers who were remaking postwar British science fiction, Moorcock acted as an important conduit between the SF chaps (still, judging by contemporary pictures, pipe-smoking collar-and-tie types) and the denizens of the music and art scenes. "At first I was the only one," he says. "Then the people who worked on New Worlds started coming in. They shared the lifestyle. When I first met Tom Disch, he'd got stuck in Spain because he contracted hepatitis from taking bad acid. Soon all of the really good writers on New Worlds apart from Jimmy [Ballard] and Brian [Aldiss] had basically had the same cultural experience as I did."
Moorcock's good friend Ballard was reluctant to leave his suburban lair in Shepperton, and relied on Moorcock to introduce him to people and experiences useful for his fiction. In the early 80s, when Moorcock was living in LA, he wrote Ballard a series of long descriptive letters about the city, which were later published as Letters from Hollywood. "I was," Moorcock says, "his running-boy for experience." In the late-60s west London melting-pot, it was Moorcock who introduced Ballard to pop artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi and who brokered uneasy meetings between his whisky-drinking, socially-awkward friend and loon-panted extroverts like Hawkwind's Nik Turner, who had a predilection for make-up, strong drugs and ancient Egyptian stage outfits. Occasionally, Ballard would "dip in" to the scene, with mixed results.
"I got Jimmy some acid one time," Moorcock reminisces, with a grimace. "He insisted. I got him a sugar cube and I said to him 'don't take it now' because he was as drunk as a skunk. And of course, being Jimmy, he took it immediately. Appalling, psychotic – snakes all over the bed. Everything bad about Shanghai on top of everything bad about everything else. He didn't describe this. His girlfriend at the time told me |
sue over a boy in a skirt and the government considers removing ‘male’ and ‘female’ from official forms, gender has become a contentious issue in modern Britain.
Read more
Increasing numbers of young Brits are expressing doubt about their gender identities. When the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at London’s Tavistock Clinic opened in 1989, it received two referrals. Last year, 1,400 children under 18 were referred there – double the number of the year before. Nearly 300 were under the age of 12, with some as young as three years old.
Schools are on the frontline of a fierce and polarized debate. This week a Christian couple threatened to sue a Church of England primary school because it allowed a boy in their son’s class to wear a dress.
A handful of schools, facing backlash from some parents, are opting to make their bathrooms and uniforms gender neutral to accommodate transgender students. Others are seeking training on gender issues, holding courses in non-gendered biology and creating unisex safe spaces.
Stephanie Davies-Arai, who founded the Transgender Trend website, a group for parents who “question the trans narrative,” says policies which “pretend there are no biological differences between boys and girls” are “harmful.”
“Toilets are not ‘gender-neutral’, but ‘sex-segregated’ for the privacy and dignity of both sexes. For adults to teach children that girls can be born in the body of a boy is obviously confusing and upsetting for children, because it is not true,” she told RT.
Davies-Arai believes it is “ridiculous and cruel” to suggest children can be transgender.
Read more
“Telling a child they are ‘transgender’ sets them on a path of fear of puberty followed by puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones which will sterilize them, possible surgery and a lifetime of medication. We have never done this to children before. We have no idea of the long-term effects.”
Children should be given the space to develop their personalities without labels, Davies-Arai says.
“We should not be telling any child that they are really the opposite sex, but allowing them to express themselves without getting bullied for not conforming.”
Dr. Joanna Williams, a university lecturer and author of the book ‘Women vs Feminism’, says the "war on gender" is bad for children. She believes schools are sowing confusion in children’s minds and forcing them to unlearn the difference between boys and girls.
“Formally presenting a gender-neutral uniform suggests to children that gender is inherently problematic – something toxic which needs to be, quite literally, neutralized,”she says.
“In the case of the trousers-for-all policy, it is the feminine that is eliminated. Instead of giving children more choice, girls are told that wearing a skirt, choosing to dress like a woman, is not acceptable.”
She says the “blank state of grey neutrality” forces children to see gender as “complicated and problematic.”
“Rather than encouraging children to take delight in who they are or revel in pushing the boundaries of what is considered acceptable for men and women … they need to spend time working out how they feel about gender.”
The CEO of Mermaids UK, Susie Green, a charity which supports gender diverse and trans children and their families, says transgender people are the most “marginalized, isolated and prejudiced group in the populace.” She says gender-neutral policies in schools help take away some of the stigma.
“Why victimize somebody who is probably being victimized a lot in their own lives already? They are having to explain who they are, insist who they are, questioned constantly, their families questioned constantly,” she told RT.
Read more
“Bringing in gender-neutral uniforms, toilets, some of that takes the stigma away, and helps somebody at the beginning stages of thinking ‘I have to do this.’
“Whether people are in the minority or not shouldn’t mean their views and their wellbeing is dismissed just because there is not many of them … We know what happens when you make them feel bad about who they are – you get mental illness, depression, anxiety, self-loathing,” she adds.
Green, who has a transgender daughter, says children are clear about their gender identity from a very young age.
“What they are coming to terms with is the fact they are different to [most people], which is really, really tough. That doesn’t mean they are confused about who they are, it just means they are in a society that keeps telling them they are wrong.”
The internet, more open discussion and transgender celebrities talking about their experiences have helped to open up space for greater understanding and awareness, Green says.
“Trans people have been part of our society, our culture, for centuries. It is not a new thing. It is not a trend. It is not a mental health issue. It is just becoming more talked about – and children are being listened to.”
Green questions why people are “so determined” to tell parents of transgender children how to bring them up.
“What difference does it make to them whether somebody is transgender, gender fluid, or just likes dressing up in dresses? All they have to say to their children is ‘some people are different.’ It shouldn’t be a big deal,” she says.
By Mary Baines, RTHillary Clinton's campaign is working with her doctor to release "additional medical information" in the next couple of days and promised that she has "no other undisclosed condition," press secretary Brian Fallon said Monday in an interview on MSNBC.
"We'll release that to further put to rest any lingering concerns about what you saw yesterday," said Fallon, referring to Clinton's abrupt departure from a 9/11 memorial ceremony — which the campaign initially said was due to her being "overheated."
Clinton's doctor, Lisa Bardack, later released a statement that she diagnosed the former secretary of state with pneumonia on Friday.
Fallon said Monday, "There is no other undisclosed condition."
Pressed on what the additional medical information may reveal, Fallon said Clinton's doctor indicated that "there was nothing here in terms of anything that was caused by what happened in 2012," referring to the candidate's suffering from a blood clot four years ago. "All of that, I think, will be indicated in the further material that we are going to release this week," he said.
Donald Trump said Monday on Fox News that health "is an issue" in the campaign. Referring to Clinton's pneumonia diagnosis, he said, "Something is going on, but I hope she gets well."
ABC News has confirmed that Trump, who released a short note from his doctor claiming he would be "the healthiest individual ever elected," recently had a physical exam and told Fox he will be releasing "specific numbers."
Neither of the two major-party presidential candidates has yet divulged full medical records.
A Look Back at Hillary Clinton's Health
Donald Trump Calls Health 'an Issue' in Campaign, Will Release Own Test Results
ANALYSIS: Hillary Clinton's Health Scare Creates Major Campaign Moment
Trump told ABC's David Muir in an interview on Labor Day that if Clinton wants to make her medical history public, he would do the same, "100 percent."
"Why not go first?" Muir pressed.
"I might do that. I might do that," Trump answered. "In fact, now that you ask, I think I will do that."
Even with the pneumonia diagnosis, the Clinton campaign continues to say the medical information it has already released "far exceeds" what Trump has put out.
"Between her health records, her e-mails, her schedules from when she was secretary of state, three-plus decades worth of taxes, the reality is there is more information out there about Hillary Clinton than any nominee in modern presidential history," said Fallon.MP3 Audio [21 MB] Download Show URL
In this episode I talk with Zach Kessin. We talk his transition to using Elm for front-end web development, using it with Erlang back-ends, his goal to help grow the community around Elm, and more.
Our Guest, Zach Kessin
@zkessin on Twitter
Pain Free Web Development YouTube Channel
Conference Announcements
RacketCon is October 7th & 8th at the University of Washington, with keynote speakers Dan Friedman and Will Byrd. Visit http://con.racket-lang.org/ for more information and to register.
Celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of Clojure October the 12th – 14th at the Clojure/Conj in Baltimore, Maryland. Visit http://2017.clojure-conj.org/ for more information and to register.
LambdaWorld will be taking place in Cadiz, Spain on October 26th and 27th. For more information visit and to keep updated visit http://www.lambda.world/.
CodeMesh is coming up November 8th and 9th in London. For more information, and to keep an eye open for registration, visit http://www.codemesh.io/.
Moonconf will be taking place the 9th-11th of November. For more information visit http://moonconf.org/.
Clojure SYNC will be taking place in New Orleans on February 15th & 16th of 2018. For more information and to register visit: http://clojuresync.com/.
LambdaDays 2018 will be taking place February 22nd and 23rd in Kraków, Poland. For more information, and to register, visit http://www.lambdadays.org/.
If you have a conference related to functional programming, contact me, and I will be happy to announce it.
Announcements
Some of you have asked how you can support Functional Geekery, in that vein,
Functional Geekery now has a Patreon Page.
If that is one of the ways you would like to show your support, you can
find out more at https://www.patreon.com/fngeekery.
Topics [@3:22]
What Zach has been up to in since Episode 4
Erlang
Elm
Mostly Erlang
What put Elm on Zach’s radar
Perl
Going from loan calculator to large complicated applications
CoffeeScript
ClojureScript
Friendliness of “you are viewing out of date version” message on package documentation
The Elm Architecture
Initial hump of Elm looking very different than JavaScript
Scheme
Prolog
Only handful of ways to crash an Elm program vs a JavaScript program
“Like superheros, [programming] languages have origin stories”
Thinking in types in Elm compared to JavaScript compared to Erlang
“Level 1 Elm is ‘Yay! Types!”
“Level 2 Elm […] is how can we use the type system as a design tool”
QuickCheck
Curry-Howard Correspondence
Haskell
Idris
Ability to get runtime errors in Haskell
Upcoming Elm in Motion video course
Pain Free Web Development
Using Elm with Erlang
WebMachine
Cowboy
Parse Transform library in Erlang
JavaScript interop via “ports”
JSON Decoders and Decoders in Elm
Problems around silent errors
MySQL and column value truncation in non Strict Mode
Handling JSON decoder parse errors
Result type
HTTP Errors as a type in Elm
Being forced to think about errors and how to handle them
“Suddenly a 12-hour debugging session has become 12 seconds of fix a typo”
Bootstrap CSS Elm Package
The Elm compiler as the best pair you could have sitting next to you
Making Impossible States Impossible
Pain Free Web Development YouTube Channel
Leave comments as suggestions for upcoming topics
Elm Weekly Training Course
_FunctionalG12_ discount code to get it at $12/month instead of $15/month
Zach’s goal of helping building up the community around Elm
NoRedInk
Building the business case for using Elm
As always, a giant Thank You goes to David Belcher for the logo design.When a budget is released, it’s tradition for economy watchers to pick apart the announced spending plans and cutbacks to declare the day’s winners and losers. There are certainly a lot of groups and interests that Finance Minister Bill Morneau would like everyone to think of as winners from his $300-billion budget—middle-class families, municipalities, veterans, middle-class families, Indigenous people, the environment, scientists, and even, in a roundabout way, the not-quite-middle-class royal family (Prince Harry’s Invictus Games will get $10 million to support its upcoming event in Toronto).
Yet one of the clearest winners from this budget has to be the wonks at the OECD and the IMF, two organizations that for some time now have been calling on governments to dig deep and spend their way out of their economic malaise. Translation? Run big deficits. Has there ever been a politician more eager to cloak himself in their counsel? As Morneau said during his speech, and repeatedly in the budget plan: Everything his government is doing now is at the “urging” and “recommendation” of the OECD and IMF.
If the election of Justin Trudeau last fall didn’t drive home the point enough, Tuesday’s budget had one underlying message for Canadians: big, activist, interventionist government is back in Canada’s economy.
Its outline is still vague, but it began to take shape as the government released details of its sprawling 10-year, $120-billion infrastructure plan. There was the usual mix of infrastructure as most people understand it—things like transit, roads and sewers—and the more amorphous social and cultural infrastructure the Harper government also liked to embrace.
At this point, Morneau’s budget only details phase one of his government’s infrastructure plans, a shovel-ready sum of around $12 billion.
But phase two—the “ambitious” infrastructure that will guide Canada’s transition to a low-carbon economy—will only start to develop its flesh later this year through consultation with other levels of government and institutional investors. It will be accompanied by direct investments in clean technology, infrastructure for electric vehicles and alternative fuels, as well as an innovation agenda that, the budget claims, will use a “client-centric” approach to scale up thousands of growing Canadian companies.
(As the government had indicated ahead of time, there was nothing in the budget about bailing out Bombardier. But it will be a shock to everyone if the activist Liberals don’t come through with the $1 billion Quebec has asked it to pitch in to save the company’s C-series jet program.)
There is clearly not the rush now to get Ottawa’s finances back in the black that existed during last year’s election campaign, when Trudeau promised a balanced budget by the end of his mandate. Both Trudeau and Morneau have already grown comfortable with the language of bigger government. Of the government’s $30-billion deficit for 2016-17, Morneau would only say he believes the government will “get back to a balanced budget over time.”
In fact, the only area where the Liberals are reeling in the size of government is in the realm of defence. The budget revealed the government is pushing back spending on new defence hardware to save themselves a whopping $1.32 billion in 2017-18.
The move toward a government-led economy was evident in Morneau’s speech in another interesting way. The word “government” warranted nearly 40 mentions in the 13-page speech, compared to just six mentions of “business”—an almost complete reversal from former finance minister Joe Oliver’s final budget speech.Media Sifter Roadmap
2017–2018
Media Sifter Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 21, 2017 Unlisted
The Origins
Media Sifter was born almost two years ago as a thesis project at CIID (Copenhagen institute of Interaction Design) to reduce the impact of misinformation and instigate critical thinking.
In early 2017 the original idea of an enhanced news aggregator pivoted to integrate a blockchain-powered validation platform. This integration would allow to incentivise collective action and solve an inherent problem in today’s media landscape: trust.
Currently the Media Sifter team is working on the two core aspects of the platform, the news aggregator and the SIFT Protocol. The latter is a community-driven open-network to source information from the crowd and qualify it through blockchain-powered user-consensus and is designed to be used beyond Media Sifter.
Product Development
Raising large amounts of money for projects without a product, IP or technology has become the default for the blockchain space. We want to avoid this by delivering a representative MVP, build a committed community as well as finalise the Whitepaper before setting the ICO in motion.
For product development reasons, all 2017 product releases will be off-chain.
If you are familiar with the lean startup methodology popularized by Eric Ries, we are applying the Build → Measure → Learn loop. Attempting to do so on the blockchain would just slow down our process with marginal benefits. This off-chain review process will allow us more flexibility to gather data on user behaviour and interactions, before we develop the protocol on the Ethereum blockchain.
Our first prototype will be out in a few weeks and we want to have our early adopters tackle it first. The innovators of the news industry and the blockchain space that don’t care about buggy software or occasional breakdowns.
We will be improving and upgrading the platform with two additional releases through the end of 2017. By 2018, we are anticipating that the Ethereum infrastructure will have developed considerably and will allow us to introduce testnet functionality to the platform. If things progress as planned, a mainnet release of Media Sifter is scheduled for the last quarter of 2018.Depending on who's talking, Sidney Crosby scored the second or third most important goal in Canadian hockey history.
Paul Henderson will always top the list, with his famed goal that beat the Soviets during the historic Canada-Russia battle in 1972.
Then there's Mario Lemieux, whose game-winning goal in the third and final game of the 1987 Canada Cup series sunk the Russians.
But on this day, Feb. 28, 2010, it was Crosby who electrified a nation.
On the last day of the final event of the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, Canada and the U.S., were battling for hockey supremacy. With the gold-medal game tied 2-2 in overtime, Crosby found himself free down low.
Yelling for linemate Jarome Iginla, Crosby took a pass from "Iggy" and fired the golden goal past U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller.
The goal sent the Canadian crowd into delirium and cemented Crosby as a cultural icon.Toddler returns home after she's hit by gunfire near Sampson Co. party Copyright by WNCN - All rights reserved Video
CLINTON, N.C. (WNCN) -- The search continues for two men who were involved in a Sampson County shooting that wounded a toddler girl, who is now home from the hospital.
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Copyright by WNCN - All rights reserved CLICK FOR 13 LARGER PHOTOS OF THE GIRL AND RELATED IMAGES
Adaiah Rodriguez, who is 18-months-old, was hit twice when gunmen showed up at a nearby birthday party Sunday night on Bumpy Road in Sampson County, her family and officials say.
The armed men approached another man, who ran from the scene toward his vehicle.
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The two armed men opened fire, but the man they tried to hit got away. Instead, a little girl in a nearby home was wounded by the gunfire, deputies say.
A CBS North Carolina reporter counted eight bullet holes in the home where the girl was shot.
Inside the nearby mobile home was little Adaiah Rodriguez, who was hit by gunfire in her torso.
She was rushed to Sampson Regional Medical Center and then airlifted to UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.
Rodriguez spent two days at the hospital in Chapel Hill and returned home Tuesday night with her family surrounding her.
Rodriguez came home wrapped in a blanket and dressed in a Batgirl costume because her family said she is a superhero after recovering from the shooting.
But, the family says it doesn't feel like home anymore - as the bullet holes from Sunday's shooting now line their walls.
"Why would you do that when there is a birthday party here? A little girl has nothing to do with it and she's the one that got shot," said Caroline Reyes who is Rodriguez's aunt.
Reyes pointed out the bullet holes in her niece's home.
"You can see the gunshots right here," Reyes said.
Now Reyes says both her nieces and her son are scared of their own homes.
"They're a little bit traumatized -- my son said he heard the shooting and he said he got scared," Reyes said.
The family says they want justice for what happened to their little girl.
The Sampson County Sheriff's Office says both gunmen are still on the loose.
Deputies have not released any possible motive for the shooting or information about the suspects.MANILA, Philippines - The bicameral conference committee on Tuesday approved the anti-dynasty provision in the Sangguniang Kabataan (SK) reform bill.
The provision marks the first legislation against political dynasties that will be implemented in the country.
"An official of the Sangguniang Kabataan, either elective or appointee... must not have any relative in elective public office, local or national, within the second degree of consanguinity or affinity," the bill said.
Sen. Bam Aquino headed the bicameral committee from the Senate while South Cotabato Pedro Acharon headed the House of Representatives.
Other members of the bicameral committee were Sens. JV Ejercito, Koko Pimentel, Nancy Binay; Dinagat Rep. Arlene Bag-ao, Cebu Rep. Raul del Mar, Akbayan Party-list Rep. Barry Gutierrez and Davao del Norte Rep. Anthony del Rosario.
National Youth Commission Chair Gio Tingson said that the approval of the anti-dynasty provision is a delivery of the legislators' promise of reforms for the youth.
"We have always recognized the role of the youth in electoral reform. Having this provision in place is an important step towards empowered and meaningful youth participation in governance," Tingson said.
The bill also introduces other key reforms such as age expansion and stronger youth consultative mechanisms.
The proposed measure will be forwarded to President Benigno Aquino III for approval.
For more proposed measures in the House of Representatives, visit our Bill Tracker.The Georgetown University Master's in Cybersecurity Risk Management prepares you to navigate todays complex cyber threats. Take classes online, on campus, or through a combination of both -- so you dont have to interrupt your career. Learn more.
Microsoft on Wednesday announced plans to streamline its smartphone business by cutting 1,850 jobs. It will record an impairment charge of US$950 million, with severance payments accounting for $200 million of the charge.
The restructuring will entail up to 1,350 job losses at Microsoft Mobile Oy in Finland, and 500 more cuts around the world.
"We are focusing our phone efforts where we have differentiation -- with enterprises that value security, manageability and our Continuum capability, and consumers who value the same," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "We will continue to innovate across devices and on our cloud services across all mobile platforms."
"What this is, is an acknowledgment that the overall Windows mobile hardware business has been failing," Ian Fogg, head of mobile analysis at IHS Technology, told the E-Commerce Times.
The move comes just a week after Microsoft announced the sale of its flagging feature phone business to Hon Hai/Foxconn Technology unit FIH Mobile and HMD Global Oy, which in turn will orchestrate Nokia's return to the smartphone arena, which it abandoned after selling its mobile phone business to Microsoft two years ago.
Mobile Miss
Given that Microsoft's mobile strategy over the past decade for the most part has flopped, the company's ability to grow its mobile business on the enterprise front has generated some doubt.
"They have been trying to break into the enterprise front for more than a decade with no success," said industry analyst Jeff Kagan. "They started out with regular wireless handsets, then moved to Lumia smartphones, then acquired Nokia, but still could not move the needle."
The blame lies in two areas, he told the E-Commerce Times. First, Microsoft could not interest the marketplace with any of its ideas in the mobile space, barely eking out a fraction of market share, compared to Apple's iPhone or Google's Android platform.
"The other area is the fact that Microsoft has never shown respect for their customers and users, whether business customers or consumers," Kagan maintained.
For example, customers are being forced to upgrade from the popular Windows 7 platform to Windows 10, which is meeting resistance, he pointed out.
That will have a negative impact on both the consumer and enterprise market, Kagan predicted.
Loss of Trust
Further, "the whole point of Windows 10 was to have an integrated system between smartphones, tablets and computers," Kagan observed. "Taking the smartphone out of the picture makes you wonder how a two-legged stool can stand."
Microsoft was unable to crack the mobile operating system nut, suggested Todd Day, senior industry analyst for mobile & wireless at Frost & Sullivan.
Apple's iOS thrived because of its simplicity and elegance, and Google's Android managed to take the most appealing elements of iOS and make them more user friendly, he said.
"Microsoft, on the other hand, has continued to be caught up in the idea that they will try to force customers to try something slightly different -- more like a PC, and in their eyes better," Day told the E-Commerce Times. "If this did not work with Windows Mobile, Windows Mobile 6, [Windows Phone and Windows 10 Mobile]... they should have changed their strategy while there was time to fix it."
Most of the cuts will be completed by the end of 2016, and all of the cuts will be completed by July 2017, when the company's fiscal year ends. Microsoft will record a charge during the fourth quarter of fiscal 2016 for the impairment of assets in its More Personal Computing segment.
The company plans to disclose additional information on the charges in its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings announcement in July, as well as in its 10-K report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
David Jones is a freelance writer based in Essex County, New Jersey. He has written for Reuters, Bloomberg, Crain's New York Business and The New York Times.And that brings us to the end of this chapter! That means a couple week break as usual, with the cover page for next chapter coming up this Friday and updates will commence next Friday, on the 17th. So be back then!
And at last, we have a date set for the book 2 Kickstarter! It's been a long time in the works and waiting in the pipelines, but I've been given permission to reveal that it is planned to launch this month on the 20th! So the Monday right after the break is over, barring any unforseen obstacles. I'll of course announce it visibly here once the campaign is live and all, but just letting you know a bit beforehand since I know many of you have been eagerly waiting for it. :3
CommentsKarine Vanasse will guest star in the pilot as a designer with an option to become a regular.
Pan Am’s Karinne Vanasse has a new role at ABC.
The actress has been tapped to guest star as an designer named Valentine in the drama pilot Scruples, with an option to become a regular if the show based on the best-selling 1978 book goes to series.
Scruples, which centers on a rich and powerful clothes designer in a world of sex, revenge and scandal, hails from Flame Ventures in association with Warner Bros. TV.
Bob Brush and Mel Harris will pen the pilot as well as executive produce alongside Tony Krantz, Annette Savitch and Natalie Portman. Michael Sucsy is on board to direct the pilot.
The news comes as Pan Am has seen its ratings nosedive on ABC. In fact, it was Vanasse, who plays a French flight attendant in the heavily hyped airline drama, who caused a stir about the show's status when she prematurely tweeted: "Well, we received THE call, #PanAm is only coming back for one more episode after Christmas. But up to the end, we'll give it our all!"
Although the series has not been canceled, the likelihood of a second season is grim. Still, Vanasse’s Scruples casting is in second position to her role on Pan Am.
Vanasse is repped by WME.Screen capture via YouTube
Three Stars of Comedy
The third star: This small child – Wow, kids can be cruel. (But don't worry kiddo, Peter Chiarelli will have traded that pick for a sixth-rounder from the 2026 draft who's hard to play against.)
The second star: Evgeny Kuznetsov – This is me every time I make a joke on the podcast and Dave doesn't laugh.
The first star: The Joe Thornton bobblehead – In a callback to one of the greatest fan photos ever, the Sharks are actually giving these out:
Debating the Issues
This week’s debate: The annual Forbes report on NHL franchise values, revenues and incomes was released this week. But can fans really believe the publication's numbers?
(Programming note: Unfortunately, "opposed" could not make it for this week's debate. Luckily, we were able to arrange for a special guest debater: The NHL owners.)
In favor: Fans should take the rankings seriously. Sure, they won't be perfect, but the whole thing is pretty much the only insight we get into NHL finances from a neutral third-party.
NHL owners: Don't be naïve. The Forbes rankings are nonsense. We tell you this every year.
In favor: Well, yes, you do, but you'll excuse the fans if we don't completely trust you guys when it comes to this stuff.
NHL owners: But even Forbes itself acknowledges that these are only estimates. They're basically guessing.
In favor: Well, they're estimates, sure, but they're based on publicly available information and other data points. And it's not like this is some random blogger—Forbes knows a thing or two about money, right?
NHL owners: Not when it comes to the NHL. They're miles off base.
In favor: OK. So enlighten us. Where are they wrong?
NHL owners: Well, all you have to do is look at the bottom two-thirds of the list. Once you get past the Rangers, Leafs, Habs and Blackhawks, they make it sound like everyone else is barely breaking even. They show plenty of teams losing money every year, including a few listed as eight figures in the red.
In favor: And that's not correct?
NHL owners: Come on! Business is booming!
In favor: Well, maybe overall, but isn't that basically because a small handful of teams make almost all of the profit?
NHL owners: Maybe decades ago, but not anymore. Gary Bettman is a visionary, and the salary cap is his signature work of genius. He says so himself. Pretty much every time he speaks, actually.
In favor: Huh. OK, so Forbes is wrong and the league is doing great top-to-bottom.
NHL owners: We are swimming in it, my friend. Times have never been better. This league is run by financial wizards, and we are all rolling in cash.
The final verdict: I guess that settles it. Thanks for clarifying. I suppose that when it comes to Forbes, smart fans will just have to block out the…
NHL owners: Wait, did someone say "lockout?"
In favor: What? No, he said…
NHL owners: It's already lockout time? Wow, that one snuck up on us. OK boys, you know the drill.
In favor: What are you doing?
NHL owners (feebly) : We are so poor…
In favor: Why are you turning your pockets inside out?
NHL owners: We're barely scraping by. Can hardly keep the lights on. We desperately need a new financial system, because this one just isn't working.
In favor: Stop shaking that cup at me.
NHL owners: Please, kind sir. Our poor, sickly mothers can barely afford their medicine. Surely you can see your way to giving up a half-season or two of hockey so that we can make ends meet?
In favor: Look, you guys, he said "block out," not "lockout."
NHL owners: He did?
In favor: He did.
NHL owners: Oh. Well this is awkward.
In favor: Yeah.
NHL owners: Well, anyway… Ignore the Forbes numbers, we're all filthy rich and business has never been better.
In favor: We hate you.
NHL owners: See you in three years, suckers.
The final verdict: I'm sure the NHL is telling the truth, I don't think they'd lie about something like this.
Calgary Flames and Ottawa Senators (feebly) : And remember that anyone who needs a new arena is very very poor.
Obscure Former Player of the Week
Earlier this week I wrote about Jacob Markstrom and his quest to catch Pokey Reddick's seemingly unbreakable record for most games played by a goalie who's never recorded a shutout. It's one of those weird hockey flukes—based on his number, it should be borderline impossible for Markstrom to have made it this far without a single shutout, especially in the dead puck era. Yet here we are.
Or were, at least. Markstrom went out that very night and finally got his first career shutout after eight years. It was pretty great to see. So Reddick keeps the record.
But with all due respect to Pokey, who was awesome, he holds the record based on semantics. After all, we're talking about goalies who never recorded a single shutout, meaning that once a goalie gets his first goose egg, he drops off the list. That leads to the question: Which goalie had the longest start to a career without a shutout but did eventually record one?
The best guess I could come up with was Ed Staniowski, and apparently I was right:
I think that warrants giving Ed our obscure player honors this week.
Staniowski was the Blues' second-round pick in 1975 after winning the CHL player of the year award in junior. Staniowski broke into the NHL that year, playing 11 games, and was a part-time starter for the Blues for the next six years. He never played more than 40 games in any of those seasons, and by the end of them he'd played 137 career games without recording a shutout.
That streak continued after he was traded in 1981, to the Jets along with Bryan Maxwell and Paul MacLean for Scott Campbell and John Markell, all of which sounds like made-up names you'd get if your hockey simulator didn't have an NHL license. He played a career-high 45 games for the Jets that year. And on March 20, 1982 against the Maple Leafs, in his 176th NHL game, he made 33 saves to finally record his first shutout.
He'd play one more full year in Winnipeg (collecting a second and final shutout) before a midseason trade to the Whalers, where his career ended in 1985. All told he played 219 games, winning 67, and posted a career 4.06 goals-against which wasn't all that bad for the era. After his playing days were over, he went on to a distinguished military career.
Be It Resolved
The IOC announced this week that Russia would be banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics due to their doping scandal. Some Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete, but will have to do so under a neutral flag, meaning any medals they win won't be officially credited to Russia.
Man, the 2018 hockey tournament is shaping up to be terrible.
The Russia/IOC issue is complicated, and we probably can't do it justice here. Yes, doping is bad, and it sure seems like Russia was doing an awful lot of it. But there is an argument to be made that this decision will end up punishing some athletes who were clean all along. And that might include the nation's hockey players.
The key word there is "might," since at this point the country's various sporting bodies have largely lost any benefit of the doubt we might give them. Remember, the nation's entire under-18 team was yanked out of a major tournament just a year ago after almost all of the players failed a doping test. That doesn't mean that the Olympic players were cheating, but it's not hard to wonder.
The bigger picture, at least as far as hockey fans go, is what happens next to the 2018 tournament. There's already talk that the KHL might decide that it won't allow its players to go to the Games after all. We already know the NHL isn't going, and neither are AHL players on two-way contracts. So the talent pool was already thin. The combination of Russia not having a formal team (if they even go at all) and the KHL pulling out would decimate the tournament even further.
We've already covered the awkwardness of the 2018 Olympics in a previous grab bag, and its only getting worse. There will be a tournament, and the players who participate will be busting their tails to try to win gold. Some great stories will emerge, and you'll want to root them on. But it's just not going to be the same as the last five times. It won't be close. And plenty of fans won't bother watching.
This tournament is going to be a mess. And there's only one way to save it.
So, be it resolved: The 2018 Olympics needs to feature a best-of-seven between the Canadian and American women's team.
You can still have a men's tournament, one that hopefully includes Russia (even if it's under a different name). And you can have the women's tournament too, under the usual rules.
But we all know that barring a huge upset, the women's final is coming down to the USA and Canada. So let's make that a best-of-seven. The two programs already hate each other—well, OK, almost all of them hate each other—and the last time they met in the Olympics it was quite possible the most ridiculous game of the year in any sport. What could be better than that? How about: That, but times seven.
Help us out, IOC. Hockey fans are hurting here. If we're going to get up in the middle of the night, at least give us as much as possible of the best possible product.
Classic YouTube Clip Breakdown
Have you ever forgotten an important anniversary, then halfheartedly tried to make up for it a few days later? That's what we're doing today, as we break down the Rob Brown/Sylvain Lefebvre fight.
So it's December 5, 1992—in other words, 25 years ago Tuesday, an anniversary I completely missed until a TV network kindly reminded me. The Blackhawks and playing the Maple Leafs on a Saturday night at the Gardens. It |
you imagine five workers queued up for that single position, the longer you’re unemployed, the farther back you stand. Economists have found that long-term unemployment dims a worker’s prospects with each passing day. “This pattern suggests that the very-long-term unemployed will be the last group to benefit from an economic recovery,” Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley, told Congress in June.
But when you consider the plight of the long-term unemployed, don’t just think jobs. The 2008 recession was a housing-driven crisis, thanks to the rise of subprime mortgage lending, government policy, and greed. As a result, 11 million borrowers—or nearly 23 percent of all homeowners with a mortgage—now find themselves “underwater,” owing more on their mortgages than their houses are worth. Negative equity at those levels creates what Harvard economist Lawrence Katz calls a “geographic lock-in effect,” stifling jobs recovery. Typically, American workers are a mobile bunch, willing to bounce from one city to the next for new jobs, but not when homeowners are staying put to avoid selling their underwater houses for a loss.
Another factor in the explosion of long-term unemployment lies in a shift away from temporary layoffs. In the recessions of 1975, 1980, and 1982, 20 percent of unemployed workers had been only temporarily laid off; as of August of this year, just 10 percent had. In their heyday, automakers and steel companies laid off workers as demand dipped, but backstopped by powerful labor unions, those workers were regularly recalled as demand and production revved up again. No more. Now, if you’re long-term unemployed, you’re undoubtedly trying to find a new job with a new employer, a more daunting process. Add it all up and you have Rick Rembold.
“Feast or Famine” in RV Land
Rembold calls himself a Democrat—”not the peace sign, hit-the-bong type,” he hastens to add, but “a tear-off-your-head-and-shit-down-your-neck Democrat.” He can’t stomach Glenn Beck or talk radio here in the Land of Limbaugh, and with equal zeal he watches MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and FX’s Sons of Anarchy, a gritty drama series about outlaw motorcycle gangs.
It was a Friday morning, and we were in Rembold’s kitchen, drinking coffee and talking politics. He wore jeans and a black polo shirt, and paced as he spoke. Ideas and frustrations poured out of him like water from an open spigot; the man had a lot on his mind. The night before, I had asked him to show me around the area, especially the economic engine that sustains it: the recreational vehicle, or RV, industry. Once the coffee ran dry, we piled into my car and set off.
Cities such as Elkhart and Middlebury and Mishawaka and Wakarusa are the cradle of the RV industry. Headquartered here are major manufacturers like Jayco and Forest River. At its peak, northern Indiana churned out three-quarters of all RVs on the road—motor homes and fifth-wheels, pop-up campers, travel trailers, and toy haulers. Producing them was grueling work, but you could fashion a middle-class lifestyle out of what it paid. “Workin’ in the RV industry, they’ll work you to death,” Rembold said. “People would literally be sprintin’ from one place to the next with power tools in their hands.”
Then came “the Panic of ’08,” as one RV salesman put it to me. Teetering banks choked off consumer lending as credit markets froze. The downturn pummeled the industry. In 2009, sales of fifth-wheels, a smaller trailer you hitch to a truck or SUV, plummeted by 30 percent, travel trailers by 23.5 percent, campers by 28 percent. Manufacturers like Jayco, Monaco Coach, and others collectively laid off thousands, and the region’s unemployment rate spiked by more than 10 percent in a year. When a newly elected Barack Obama arrived in Elkhart in February 2009 to tout his stimulus plan, the jobless rate was 15.3 percent; a month later, it reached 18.9 percent, more than twice the national rate. At one point, Elkhart County, with a population of 200,000, was shedding 95 jobs a day.
In the 1990s and first years of the new century, RV manufacturers couldn’t hire enough workers. They ran ads in regional and national newspapers looking for more bodies. “We couldn’t even get people to drive over from South Bend to work in Elkhart,” a sales rep for Jayco told me.
By the time I arrived, though, the industry had left its feast years, hit the famine ones fast, and was showing the first signs of crawling back. Driving through Middlebury, a town of 3,200 east of Elkhart, I saw a few carrier trucks hustling in or out of plants, some full employee parking lots, and rows of gleaming new RVs dotting the green landscape like herds of boxy cattle.
Whether the industry will ever fully recover, however, is unclear. The manufacturers I spoke to were optimistic about future sales. “Despite the logic of what’s going on in the economy, the buyers are still there,” said Jerimiah Borkowski, a spokesman for Thor Motor Coach. But a 2009 analysis by Indiana University’s Business Research Center projected that by 2013 annual RV shipments still won’t have returned to their 2006 peak. “I personally don’t think it’ll ever rebound to pre-2008 levels,” says Bill Dawson, vice president and general manager of Clean Seal Inc., a South Bend-based supplier of parts to the RV industry. Dawson points to industry contractions—Thor’s $209 million acquisition of Heartland RV, the Damon Motor Coach-Four Winds merger, as well as numerous factory closings—and says, “Fewer players mean fewer units and fewer people making them.”
Rembold knows the RV industry’s ebb and flow all too well. He’s lived in its shadow for the majority of his working career, including 18 years with Architectural Wood Company (AWC), an Elkhart-based manufacturer of wood products used to outfit RVs and conversion vans. He’s made handcrafted tables, faceplates, valences, and overhead consoles, usually from oak or maple, finishing them with the gloss that gives Kimball grand pianos and Fender guitars their shine.
But by the 1990s and 2000s, his line of work looked to be headed the way of the 8-track tape. The conversion van industry was sinking. RV manufacturers had begun replacing wood with cheaper plastics and vinyl-wrapped plywood. (At an RV show we visited, Rembold could step inside a vehicle and determine by smell alone if the manufacturer used the real thing or not.) Orders plummeted at AWC. By early 2006, the company’s financial health was so dire that the owner, a good friend of Rembold’s, let him go. A few years later, the company itself folded.
Rembold then caromed from one job to the next: selling used cars and motorcycles, driving a semi truck, working behind six inches of bulletproof glass as a teller at Check$mart. He briefly ended up back in RVs, supervising employees sewing tents for campers, and then, last winter, temped at a struggling wood shop. That was his last job. After the holidays, he was never called back.
Like millions in his predicament, Rembold knows his chances of finding a decent-paying job doing what he loves decrease with each temporary, non-manufacturing job he’s taken. What doesn’t fit on a resume—and so frustrates him most—is his adaptability, if only he could convince an employer of it. College degree or not, certification or not, he insists, he’s always adapted to new settings. “Could I do construction? Hell, yeah, I could do it. I could measure in metric, in standard; I’d correct cutting mistakes, do it all. I just can’t get anyone to let me do it.”
As we talked, the RV plants gave way to lush farmland and we found ourselves driving through Amish country, sharing quiet two-lane roads with horse-drawn buggies. By early afternoon we rolled into the town of Topeka (population 1,200), past the Seed and Stove store and the Do-It Better hardware shop. Then Rembold’s cell phone buzzed, a rare break in the conversation. It was his daughter, Angie, 28, the youngest of his three kids.
He listened, then yanked off his sunglasses. “You what?”
Angie managed the Check$mart in Goshen, the check-cashing outfit Rembold once worked for, and she was good at her job, Rembold had told me earlier. Now she was agitated, talking so loudly that I caught bits and pieces of the conversation over the din of the radio. Something about a bonus owed that she didn’t receive. When Rembold abruptly hung up, he muttered, “Jesus H. Christ.” Later, over lunch at what looked to be Topeka’s lone diner, he explained that Angie planned to quit her job over the unpaid bonus. After a full morning telling me about the nightmare of being out of work, he looked stunned. “You’d think she’d have learned from my situation. I don’t think she realizes how her life is going to change.”
The Trauma of Long-Term Unemployment
It’s hard, even for the long-term unemployed, to grasp just how drastically life can change without work. Studying past recessions to discover just what does happen, researchers often focus on the collapse of the steel industry in Pennsylvania in the late 1970s that would turn a once-thriving region into a landscape of shuttered factories and ghost towns. Eighty thousand people worked in steel in the 1940s; by 1987, 4,000 remained.
In one study, male Pennsylvania workers with high seniority experienced a 50 to 100 percent spike in mortality rate in the first year after job loss. The life expectancies of those laid off after age 40 decreased by one to one-and-a-half years. In the long run, these laid-off Pennsylvanians suffered a 15 to 20 percent reduction in earnings. Those hardest hit in terms of lifelong earnings, economists found, were not low-skilled laborers or highly skilled wealthy elites, but workers who had managed to forge a middle-class lifestyle.
Suicide rates also increase, researchers have found, when unemployment rises. (In Elkhart County, near where Rembold lives, suicides exceeded the annual average by 40 percent last year.)
The 1980s recession in Pennsylvania was no outlier either, economic researchers have discovered, and the effects of long-term unemployment spread well beyond directly afflicted workers. In the short run, for instance, a child whose parent loses his or her job is 15 percent more likely to repeat a grade year in school, according to University of California-Davis economists Ann Huff Stevens and Jessamyn Schaller. This is especially true for children with less-educated parents.
Over their lifetime, the children of jobless fathers earn, on average, 9 percent less each year than similar children without laid-off dads, and are more likely to receive unemployment insurance and social welfare support at some point in their lifetimes. New research also suggests that the children of laid-off parents may have lower homeownership rates and higher divorce rates.
“I’m Not Competing With Some College Kid”
In the early evening, Rembold and I holed up in his office, a small room off the main hallway with a computer, two desks, and countless framed photos. Rembold clicked open a folder on his Internet browser labeled “Careers” and walked me through his daily online job-hunting routine. He checks half-a-dozen job boards regularly, though openings tend to pay only in the $8- to $10-an-hour range. He rejects most of those out of hand.
“Wouldn’t that be better than no job at all?” I ask.
Rembold gnaws on the question. “I can’t afford my home at $8 or $10 an hour,” he finally replies. Right now, he’s getting by on unemployment checks, a small inheritance from his mother that’s rapidly dwindling, and loans from family members. Still, he’d rather keep trolling the job boards in the hopes of finding something offering a living wage. “I’ve got a mortgage to pay, for Christ’s sake,” he told me. The few openings he sees with good pay, however, involve odd hours, dusk-to-dawn shifts that would mean he’d almost never see Terri, whose schedule at an aluminum company in Elkhart is early morning to mid-afternoon.
And then, under the dollar signs lurks something else: self-respect. Unlike his father, Rembold never went to college, and doesn’t consider himself too good for service-sector jobs. But he visibly agonizes over the fact that, as a 56-year-old man with decades of experience, he’s competing with people half his age for low-wage jobs. After all, as a machine operator fresh out of high school at White Farm Equipment, he earned $8.64 an hour. That was 1976. Adjusted for inflation, that’s equivalent to $42.42 today. No wonder the man’s reluctant to flip burgers or trim hedges for $9 an hour.
His friends have suggested selling his condo and moving somewhere smaller and cheaper, maybe renting for a while, but that’s the last thing he wants. It’s that self-respect again. He’s already sold off one motorcycle and various musical instruments, and he and Terri now skip the big vacations that were part of their past life. Which isn’t to say that Rembold currently lives like a monk. He still has the big screen in the basement, the DVD collection, the video-game systems for when the grandkids visit, a life’s worth of possessions from decades of earning good money. “Why should you have to give up your home?” he wanted to know. “It’s so unbelievable to me that I don’t even want to think about it. I’m in denial.”
A Lost Generation?
What’s to be done for people like Rick Rembold? As in most economic debates, the answer to this question divides economists and policymakers. On the left are those who lobby for more aid to jobless Americans, including another extension of unemployment insurance beyond the present cut-off date of 99 weeks. (In normal times, laid-off workers once got 26 weeks of unemployment insurance.) Some Democrats in the Senate had hoped to extend unemployment insurance by another 20 weeks up to 119 weeks, an effort spearheaded by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) that ultimately failed last week in the face of Republican opposition. That same camp supports a one-time “reemployment bonus,” a lump-sum payment that unemployed workers would receive to reward them for finding a new job and leaving the unemployment rolls.
Another idea gaining traction in policy circles is “wage insurance,” in which the government would supplement the income of workers rehired at lower-paying jobs. Consider Rembold who, in his prime, earned $25 an hour. He says can’t live on a $10-an-hour job, but if that were to become $12 or $15 an hour, thanks to a government subsidy, he’d be much more interested.
More conservative voices believe cutting jobless benefits—a bitter pill, to be sure—will force people back into the workforce. The Rembolds of America will then scramble harder and take those low-wage jobs faster. Of course, those who can’t find work at all will be left adrift with no safety net. What’s more, the cost of such cuts to taxpayers might actually prove higher, economists note, because without those benefits the jobless might instead apply for disability or other support programs and give up the search altogether.
Ideally, of course, employers and governments should avoid widespread layoffs altogether. One option sometimes suggested would be a “work-share” program. Imagine a factory of 100 workers with a boss looking to cut costs. Instead of laying off 25 workers, he would reduce all of his workers’ hours by 25 percent. The government would then step in to fill the earnings gap. Think of it as the equivalent of collecting unemployment before you’re laid off, a preventive measure to avoid the trauma—to income, health, family—of job loss.
None of this is likely to happen soon, which is little consolation for the long-term unemployed like Rembold. Unfortunately, there are few proven solutions to their situation. Job retraining programs for unemployed workers are all the rage these days, touted by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and President Obama as a transition to a new line of work. But a 2008 study commissioned by the Labor Department found minimal to no gains for 160,000 workers who went through retraining, concluding that the “ultimate gains from participation are small or nonexistent.”
In the end, facing an economy that may never again generate in such quantity the sorts of “middle class” jobs Rembold was used to, what we may be seeing is the creation of a graying class of permanently unemployed (or underemployed) Americans, a genuine lost generation who will never recover from the recession of 2008. As Mike Konczal and Arjun Jayadev of the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank, recently wrote, unemployed workers today are more likely to abandon the workforce than find work—something never before seen in four decades’ worth of labor data. “These workers need targeted intervention,” they concluded, “before they become completely lost to the normal labor market.”
“All I Need Is One Chance”
I first noticed Rembold’s tic on Sunday, my last day in Indiana. Out of nowhere, without provocation, he’d suddenly say things like “Man, I just need a job,” or “All I need is a chance,” or “I wanna work, make stuff with my hands.” He’d been filling the lulls in our conversations with these little outbursts, symptoms, I assumed, of the worry and anxiety that never left his side. Which is why I called a few weeks after my visit, hoping for good news.
And there was, after a fashion. Angie, his daughter, had ended up sticking with Check$mart, much to his relief. But for him, the leads were sparser than ever. “There’s this neighbor here,” he said, “her son’s a shift manager at the Walmart, so he’s gonna see what they might have.” He also mentioned an electronic wire and cable manufacturer with openings in Bremen, a half-hour south. He’d recently applied there for the third time this year. This time around, he went on, he planned to march in and demand the interview he’d never gotten. “I mean, what’s it take to get in to see someone there?” he asked me.
Rembold doesn’t have time on his side. Unlike the now-famous “99ers,” the folks who received nearly two years’ worth of unemployment benefits, his will expire sometime this winter, short of the 99-week mark. He’s not sure what he’ll do by then if he can’t find work. Maybe take one of those $8-an-hour jobs after all. For now, though, he’s just checking the job boards each morning, shipping off resumes and cover letters, firing up the Suzuki, chasing leads.
I asked if he still had any hope left that something good would happen. “I don’t know,” he replied. ” ‘Course if ya don’t go, ya don’t know.”
Andy Kroll is a reporter in the D.C. bureau of Mother Jones magazine and an associate editor at TomDispatch. He’s always looking for new stories in this economic downturn: You can email him at akroll (at) motherjones (dot) com. To catch him discussing the jobs crisis on Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here. This story was written with research support from the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.Phew. I’m still slightly bummed that I wasn’t able to make as many critters as I wanted to this year due to a hand injury, but I’ve got seven little buddies of my own to take with me to Comic-Con next week! Here’s the final roundup of adoptees for San Diego Comic-Con 2017!
Classic Batman & Penguin:
With Adam West’s passing, this inadvertently turned into a tribute piece, but otherwise they’ll be wreaking plenty of campy havoc at SDCC!
Deadpool+Unicorn friend
The thing I love about Deadpool is that he can be accessorized with just about ANYTHING. This one is based on a NSFW unicorn gag from the movie!
Doctor Strange
Will he be at San Diego Comic-Con to bargain? For a few exclusives, maybe. 🙂
Superman
Superman has been a “regular” for my drops since I started in 2011, and this will be his seventh year getting stranded in San Diego!
Yondu Poppins
“I’M MARY POPPINS, Y’ALL!” One of the most popular lines from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, I loved how it also took into account that in the alien universe, Yondu has no clue that Mary is a female name when he asks “is he cool?” The worst nanny ever will be dropping into SDCC next week!
Wonder Woman
The final addition to my lineup this year! After I injured my hand making Yondu Poppins, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to finish this one up before Comic-Con rolled around, but here she is!
Can’t find a critter in the wild? There’s also going to be 3 critters available as raffle prizes if you donate blood at the Comic-Con Blood Drive!
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!!
Since I wasn’t able to make as many critters as I wanted this year, I made an open call for guest art. And guys. Artists from around the country and as far as the Czech Republic sent me THIRTY-SEVEN pieces for me to drop. Check them all out HERE!
And if you haven’t done so already, read the 2017 critterdrop guidelines. It’ll help.
That brings me to a total of 44 critters to drop. Holy crap. HO-LY CRAP. I’ll admit I’m nervous about dropping so many because I feel a certain responsibility to make sure all the guest critters find new homes. It’s one thing if some of my own work goes missing, but I’d feel terrible if someone else’s hard work went unanswered. I’ve recruited help with the drops, but it’s still a lot. The drops have generally been a one-woman show all these years, so 1) taking in work from others, and 2) recruiting people to help with the drops are both new processes to me this year. Hopefully all will go well, fingers crossed for a 100% response rate on all 44 pieces this year!
If you want to join my hunt for crocheted critters at San Diego Comic-Con this year, follow me on either twitter or facebook to track my drops! I just ask for two things if you find a critter: 1) Send me a photo of your new friend! 2) Let me know where the little buddy’s new home will be! Good luck, and happy hunting!
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The Geeky Hooker
AdvertisementsThis week’s count extends a day and is published late because of the holiday. Baltimore went five days without a murder last week, while police made four murder arrests and three arrests for attempted murder.
A police officer shot a man who had allegedly broke into a person’s house and assaulted them with a pipe, and a man was found dead on the campus of Morgan State University, but foul play was not suspected.
Over the Labor Day Weekend there were three separate triple-shootings, during which two people were murdered. There were a total of 17 non-fatal shootings with 24 victims between Aug. 28 and Sept. 7.
A non-fatal shooting from 2012 was upgraded to murder and added to this week’s list. The man who stood trial for that crime was acquitted by a jury. A 2-year-old baby who ingested methadone last month and died was ruled a homicide, and her parents were charged with manslaughter and added to the list.
Friday, Sept. 2
10:30 a.m. Police found the body of Annquinette Dates, a 48-year-old African-American woman, on the 3700 block of Bancroft Road, in the Glen neighborhood. Police say it looked as if Dates, who lived on the other side of the Reisterstown Road Plaza shopping center, on the 6600 block of Eberle Drive, had been beaten to death.
11:00 p.m. Lloyd Tyson, a 28-year-old African-American man, was on the 6100 block of Shipview Way, in the O’Donnell Heights neighborhood, with several other people when someone shot him in the torso. Police say he ran across Cardiff Avenue to the rear of the 1500 block of Elrino Street and collapsed. He died there.
Sunday, Sept. 4
10:01 p.m. Three people were shot on the 2300 block of Wilkens Avenue. One of the shooting victims, a 29-year-old man who police have not yet publicly identified, died of a gunshot wound to the chest. A 62-year-old woman sitting in a nearby pizza shop was hit in the arm by gunfire and is expected to recover. A 29-year-old man was also shot in the leg in this incident. He is also expected to survive.
Monday, Sept. 5
1:00 a.m. Daniel Small (aka Smalls), a 34-year-old African-American man, was on the 2600 block of E. Monument Street when someone opened fire on him and others. Three people were shot, including Small, who was hit in the chest; a 23 year-old woman who was hit in the leg; and a 22 year-old woman who was hit in the abdomen. Small was pronounced dead at a hospital. He had resided on the 2300 block of Winchester Street. He was the fourth person this year to be murdered in the Madison-Eastend neighborhood.
UPDATES:
On Feb. 6, 2012, at 1:15 p.m. someone shot Deonte Sylve, a 19-year-old African-American man, in the face as he walked along the 1100 block of N. Stricker Street. Police arrested Brandon Kelam, 19 years old, and charged him with attempted murder. A jury found him not guilty in May of 2013. Three years later, on May 5, 2016, Sylve died. The medical examiner determined on Sept. 6 that his death was caused by the 2012 shooting, and so Sylve is added to this week’s homicide roster.
Korri Thompson, a 2-year-old African-American boy, died on Aug. 27 at the University of Maryland Medical Center’s pediatrics unit, two weeks after being rushed there after ingesting methadone, a drug used to treat opiate addiction. On Sept. 6, police arrested both parents, Alvin Thompson, 25, and Sinead McNair, 25, of the unit block of Exeter Street. Both are charged with manslaughter. Thompson was held without bail, and McNair’s bail was set at $250,000.
Sept. 6, 2016: Baltimore police arrested Erik Mullins, a 35-year-old Caucasian man (listed as African-American in current charging documents) of the 6400 block of Washington Square, and charged him with first degree murder in the death of John Davis, a 48-year-old African-American man who was shot on June 30 near his home in Cherry Hill. Mullins, of Anne Arundel County, has previous arrests for assault and drug dealing, but no prior convictions.
Police announced the Aug. 25 arrest of Roy Clark, a 36-year-old African-American man, who is charged in the Aug. 19 shooting death of Cedric Whitehead, 46, on S. Monastery Avenue. In separate cases, Clark is also charged with drug possession and fourth degree sex offense. He was convicted of handgun possession by a felon in 2012, and previously in 2007, drawing five-year prison sentences each time. He was charged with illegal gun possession in 2000 as well but the disposition of that case was not immediately available.
Police announced the Aug. 27 arrest of Tarik Kelly, a 15-year-old African-American boy, who they charged with first-degree murder in the July 28 shooting murder of Blake Hammond, 17, on the 2400 block of Washington Boulevard. Kelly, who as a juvenile has no publicly-available prior arrest record, was held without bail.
Police announced the Sept. 1 arrest of Adrian W. Brown, a 33-year-old African-American man who they charged with the Aug. 27 murder of Tykim Fisher, 23, who was shot on the 1300 block of Cliftview Avenue, near his home. Brown’s last case was a 2012 disorderly conduct conviction. His prior criminal history appears modest.
Click here for more from Edward Ericson Jr. or email Edward at eericson@citypaper.comThis article is over 3 years old
Many of the party’s high-profile pledges – such as scrapping tuition fees and opposing nuclear power – have been ditched but perhaps more have been adopted than might have been expected for the smaller party in a coalition
How much of the Liberal Democrats' 2010 election manifesto was implemented?
The Liberal Democrat manifesto launched on 14 April 2010 was built around “four steps to a fairer Britain”. Many of its pledges have gone nowhere, particularly in areas like education, and a number of high-profile ones have been ditched, like scrapping tuition fees and opposing nuclear power. However, perhaps more have been adopted than might have been expected for a minor party in a coalition.
Economy
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Lib Dems wanted the governor of the Bank of England (among others) to have a say on the timing and scale of a deficit reduction plan. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA
1) The first £10,000 people earn will be tax-free. The party makes that a tax cut of £700 for “most people”.
Met – This has been delivered under the coalition.
2) Introduce a “mansion tax” at a rate of 1% on properties worth more than £2m.
Not met – This was blocked by the Conservatives although taxing higher value properties is still party policy.
How much of the Conservatives' 2010 election manifesto was implemented? Read more
3) Break up the banks and “get them lending again”.
Not met – The banks are still intact and there are still questions over whether efforts to get them lending to small businesses have been effective.
4) Cut the deficit with £15bn of savings in government spending, including a £400 cap on pay rises for public sector workers, a banking levy and not renewing the Trident nuclear deterrent system.
Partially met – The public spending cuts have been steeper than this, the banking levy remains and public sector workers have been subjected to an extended pay squeeze. But the decision on Trident has been delayed and it will probably be renewed.
5) Create a Council on Financial Stability with representatives of all parties, the governor of the Bank of England and the chair of the Financial Services Authority to work on the timing and scale of a deficit reduction plan.
Not met – This did not happen. Deficit reduction remains the responsibility of the chancellor.
What happened to Labour's 2010 election manifesto? Read more
Education
Facebook Twitter Pinterest A poster of Nick Clegg is displayed on a placard held by a student demonstrator on 9 December 2010 in London as parliament voted on whether to implement the coalition government’s proposals to increase university tuition fees. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
1) Increase funding for the most disadvantaged pupils by £2.5bn.
Met – The coalition brought in a pupil premium giving schools extra money for each pupil on free school meals.
2) An extra £2.5bn to cut class sizes to 20 in primary schools, increase one-to-one tuition and provide catch-up classes for 160 pupils in each secondary school.
Not met – Class sizes have slightly risen and one-to-one tuition scaled back.
3) Workplace scheme for 800,000 pupils to give them the opportunity to gain skills and experience.
Not met – This does not seem to have been launched.
4) 15,000 extra places on foundation degree courses, which can lead to undergraduate courses.
Not met – This does not seem to have happened.
5) Raise the adult learning grant from £30 to £45 a week. This grant is to encourage poorer students to return to college.
Not met – This is still £30 per week.
6) The cleverest students from the lowest-achieving schools are guaranteed a degree place.
Not met – No evidence of this being proposed under the coalition.
7) Scrap university tuition fees for undergraduates by 2016.
Not met – The party famously voted for an increase in fees under a new post-degree repayment system.
8) Replace academies with schools that are accountable to local authorities, but that have a charity or parent group as sponsor.
Not met – There has been an expansion of academies and introduction of free schools under the coalition.
9) Slim down the national curriculum and scale back Sats. Bring GCSEs, A-levels and vocational courses under a single diploma qualification.
Not met – The curriculum was reformed by education secretary Michael Gove in a very different way.
Health
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nick Clegg talks to nurses in the maternity unit at Kingston hospital, Surrey, before the last election in 2010. Photograph: Katie Collins/PA
1) Cut the Department of Health in half. Scrap strategic health authorities and limit managers’ pay.
Partially met – The Department of Health was not cut by half. Strategic health authorities were scrapped under then health secretary Andrew Lansley’s reforms.
2) Local health boards would work with councils to take over from primary care trusts.
Partially met – Primary care trusts were abolished and replaced with clinical commissioning groups, alongside health and wellbeing boards.
3) Patient entitlement to diagnosis and treatment on time or the right to go private.
Met – If patients are not seen with 18 weeks, the NHS body that commissions the care must investigate and offer a range of suitable alternative hospitals or community clinics. It is not clear if this happens in practice.
4) Patient right to register with any GP and access GP by email.
Not met – You may still have to live in the GP surgery’s catchment area and there is not requirement for access by email.
5) Require hospitals to be open about mistakes.
Met – Jeremy Hunt, the Conservative health secretary, has made hospital transparency a major theme in the aftermath of the Mid Staffordshire hospital scandal.
6) Compulsory language and competence tests for doctors working in UK.
Met – The General Medical Council has new powers to conduct language tests for doctors working in the UK.
Crime, immigration and civil liberties
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Lib Dems promised to recruit 3,000 more police officers. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
1) Recruit 3,000 more police officers, paid for by scrapping ID cards, electronic fingerprints on passports, the prison building programme and Whitehall plans to track all emails and internet use.
Not met – There were 127,909 police officers in March 2014, compared with 143,734 in 2010.
2) Replace prison sentences of six months or less with community penalties and cancel the £800m prison-building programme.
Not met – Short sentences remain and several new prisons have been ordered under the coalition.
3) A freedom bill to regulate CCTV, end the collection of DNA from innocent citizens, scrap ID cards, the children’s contact database and anti-terrorist control orders. Halt the creation of new criminal offences.
Partially met – ID cards never went ahead and there was a “protection of freedoms act” but a number of new criminal offences have been created, such as forced marriage.
4) Immigration: a regional points-based system to ensure migrants can only work where they are needed.
Not met – This is now close to Ukip party policy of wanting an Australian points-based immigration system.
5) An independent agency to decide asylum claims and an end to the detention of children.
Partially met – There is no independent agency but the coalition promised to end child detention. This has not always been successful.
6) Effectively, an amnesty for illegal immigrants who entered the country before 2010. Prioritising deportation efforts on criminals, people-traffickers and other high-priority cases and letting law-abiding families earn citizenship.
Not met – The Conservatives would not have supported this.
7) Immediately reintroduce exit checks at all ports and airports.
Partially met – This has only just begun at ports and cross-channel rail stations after five years of coalition.
Defence and foreign policy
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Royal Navy’s nuclear submarine Vanguard. The Lib Dems pledged no like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system. Photograph: PA
1) There would be a full judicial inquiry into allegations of British complicity in torture and state kidnapping.
Not met – This has been under taken by the intelligence and security committee of parliament which has frequently been accused of being too close to the authorities.
2) No like-for-like replacement of the Trident nuclear missile system.
Not met – The decision has been delayed to the next parliament
3) The Lib Dems say it is in Britain’s long-term interests to join the euro, but only after a referendum.
Ditched - The Lib Dems are no longer promoting entry into the euro.
4) There should be a “strong and positive” commitment to Europe.
Met – This has not happened at a coalition level because the Tories have signed up to a referendum but Clegg always makes clear his commitment to staying in the EU and debated Nigel Farage on the issue.
Families
Facebook Twitter Pinterest The manifesto promised 20 hours’ free childcare for every child from the age of 18 months. Photograph: John Macdougall/AFP/Getty Images
1) Fathers to get the right to time off work for antenatal appointments.
Met – This was brought in by business minister Jo Swinson in October.
2) Extend shared parental leave to 18 months, allowing parents to share their allocation of maternity and paternity leave.
Partially met - Extended parental leave was championed by Nick Clegg and implemented from April this year but only for a year, not 18 months.
3) The right to request flexible working for all, especially grandparents looking after children
Met – This was introduced under the coalition.
4) A move to 20 hours free childcare for every child from the age of 18 months.
Not met – There is only 15 hours of free childcare |
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